#anyway yeah the whole zero escape trilogy

[wolfsnake]

Every single vlr character is centre of their own tragedy. And they expect me to be NORMAL about it????

[starfanatic]

Luke Skywalker vs Rey... Nobody

I hate the argument that a lot of sequel trilogy stans use whenever anyone criticized Rey or labels her a Mary Sue. It’s probably the weakest argument a sequel stan can ever possibly say to me. (Besides the people hate Rey because she’s a women argument).

Lets compare them shall we?

Luke Skywalker in A New Hope is whiny, inexperienced, and very naive. There is multiple moments in a new hope that proves this. When he was whining about not wanting to stay on the moisture farm and wanting to join the Academy like his friend, Biggs. He constantly was slightly annoying throughout the film, especially to Han. When Han named his price and Luke was like “We can buy our own ship with that!” or when Han was flying the Milennium Falcon and Luke was practically yelling in his ear to go into hyperspace. Han and Luke did not get along at first because of Luke’s behavior. Luke went against Obi-Wan’s orders and saved Princess Leia, not thinking of the consequences. How he could possibly be killed or put in a cell with the Princess. He doesn’t think of a plan to get out AFTERWARDS only the spur of the moment. He was constantly shown to be inexperienced and needed his friends help or HE WOULD HAVE DIED THE FIRST MOVIE. While on the millennium falcon, Obi-Wan taught him things about the force. Maybe not a lot but he knew how to use the simple basics of it. Like sensing the force and letting it guide your actions (as Obi-Wan was trying to teach him before). For once Luke listened and trusted Obi-Wan and destroyed the death star.

Lets do Rey now WHOOP. So far the only personality flaw she seems to have is that she’s also naive? She had the same wide-eyed innocence as Luke had but it’s different and here’s why. Rey never suffers for any of her so-called almost non-existent flaws. Rey is experienced enough to hold her own in a fight against men WAY stronger then her (that’s realistic though but that’s one tool in her belt). She’s bilingual. She can fly the millennium falcon better then Han Solo even though she never flew one before. She is constantly saving people by herself, never the one being saved. (Before y’all bust my balls, Rey escaped that damn starkiller base by her damn self. Luke didn’t and couldn’t). She uses powers that takes years to learn and the excuse is the force dyad. So she downloads Kylo’s skills and training. Great. Magnificent. Rey is on a amazing start. And this is the first movie! She can only get stronger from here.

Luke is more mature and responsible in ESB. He’s a respected hero of the rebellion. Luke still struggles using the force. Even with the training Luke goes through with Obi-Wan he had to truly focus to pull the lightsaber to him. Plus as a common occurrence, he still needed help from his friends. He’s not invincible. He actually gets severely hurt (makes sense). He goes to Dagobah to get trained (because unlike Rey he doesn’t have the “learn force jedi shit that takes years to learn” cheatcode). And then he’s impatient. He wants to learn how to use the force so he can help his friends. Luke is again reckless, impatient, and he’s also insecure in his own belief. Him not believing he can lift the X-wing was why he couldn’t. Against his master’s and Obi-Wan’s orders he decides to save his friends. It’s a noble reason to but it still got him fucked up. He got his hand cut off, he was beaten and humiliated, and then he was told a horrifying revalation that twisted around everything he knew and believed. He was scared of Vader, you can see it on his face, but he did not succumb to fear.

Rey goes to the island to convince Luke to go help them fight the war. Why doesn’t Leia go instead? Who knows. Why does Luke act the way he does? Who knows. Luke dismissed her and was quite rude to her. Rey was having cute little talks with Kylie Renner in their little force dyad BS. She called him a monster and a murderous snake. I like the insults. It fills me with joy! But then she finds out the truth. Rey did do something reckless and stupid but as usual she doesn’t suffer the consequences to her actions. Technically she’s morally superior to Luke because she saw the good in him and felt like she could turn him to the light (after slicing his face open. Ok). Rey decides to give herself up to the First Order thinking Kylo would save her. And he does. So she wasn’t even wrong... Rey fight the very elite guards of the (bootleg emperor palpatine) Supreme Leader Snoke. Reminder, TFA and TLJ are like 3-4 days apart. She had zero training within these days. Luke refused to train her so don’t start that bullshit. Luke trained her for like 5 minutes and none of that training had anything to do with lightsaber dueling. Rey is then told she was a nobody. Now why did Rey cry about this? I truly don’t know. How the hell would Kylo accurately know that Rey’s parents were nobody? Didnt Rey been know this from the force awakens? Eh whatever. She tries to force pull the lightsaber from Kylo Ren and do a dumbass tug a war instead of walking up and grabbing it. It reminds me of JJ and Rian fighting over where the star wars sequels). Anakin must be screaming and yelling from above... or below... idk. The lightsaber then breaks. Rey then saves her friends by showing her once again superior piloting skills that rival or is possibly better then Anakin Skywalker himself. Hitting 3 in one shot? You go girl! She then uses the force to effortlessly move the big ass boulders out of the entrance to save the resistance. Last I remember... Luke struggled to do that with a few way smaller rocks and was also focusing hard to do.

Luke is finally at jedi status! Woohoo! Now Luke first saves Han from Jabba. It shows his very dark side tendencies by choking the guards (like father like son). Luke thinks of a actual plan before going in (CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT). Luke “Chanel Boots” Skywalker goes to Yoda on his death bed. All he wants is answers but Yoda wants to be cryptic as fuck. Luke has been lied to for years by his mentors and his family. Luke’s father isn’t hero Anakin Skywalker but actually a big, asthmatic, merciless, murderous asshole who has a choking kink. Luke then says he cannot kill his own father and Obi-Wan, who believes Vader isn’t a human but a machine, has no faith in Luke. He believes that Luke will fail and the Empire would win. Luke feels the conflict and good in him that nobody else does. He knows that Vader is unloyal to the emperor and he actually cares about his own son. When he is with Han and Leia he realizes he made a mistake and has a bad feeling about it. (*gasp* Luke is not being super reckless). He’s not arrogant (not in anyway) but he’s completely confident that Vader would turn. (He isn’t flawless there is still obvious problem with this plan he has. He fails, the empire wins. He dies, the emperor wins. Vader doesn’t turn, Luke fails. Luke almost succumbs to the dark side and it’s actually plausible he might fully turn. He wants to desperately save his friends and his father has done horrible things to Luke. Luke had every reason to kill Vader. But he doesn’t. He throws the lightsaber away and foolishly puts his life in Vader’s hand. Luke doesn’t save the galaxy because he can make things levitate with the force. He wins because he had the strength to resist the dark side and has so much love and pure good in his heart he saw the good in his father.

Rey starts off with a training session (no idc it’s too fucking late now. 3 movies in? Is she doing reverse character development?) and basically Poe gets mad at Rey for not accompanying them on missions. I still don’t know why she needs training, when she is at a decent strength to fight elite guards, fight kylo ren, and a variety of other things that typically takes a long time to learn. After finding out Palpatine returned, Rey goes on a mission to find the way finder almost like a shitty videogame. I don’t even want to talk about the force dyad anymore because it’s fucking dumb. Rey gets chased by the force order and hear this out, FORCE HEALS (i forgot what the animal was but idrc). Which means Rey had the power to stop the painful truth of death themself. Why am I not surprised? Rey did something that no other jedi nor sith or jedi have ever done this. Anakin went to the dark side to save the ones he love. This movie was just a slap in the face to Anakin. Rey then fights Kylo Ren and lost??? again it seems a little too late and it also didn’t make sense. Rey defeated those guards all by herself with Kylo needed help from her. She’s obviously the better lightsaber duelist but hey, at least JJ was trying to mellow her out a bit. Rey stabs him while our beloved Princess died. She then regrets her decision and as always, doesn’t have any consequence to her actions. By the force I forgot, the whole scene where she is revealed as a Palpatine? Completely invalidates the first two movies but eh whatever. She uses a power that only the elite sith does... something Kylo Ren himself could not do (and he’s on the dark side). Rey “killed” Chewie but actually no she didn’t because Chewie is perfectly fine. Rey is supposed to be all dark and edgy now, “you don’t know me” BS. Yeah I’m sorry I won’t tolerate this because my only allergy is the fish smelling coochie bullshit called the sequel trilogy. Rey got scared of her dark self. Well at least JJ tried? Rey then almost gives up but Luke was like “nah fam you cant”. Rey dies trying to fight Palpatine but then as usual, she gets zero consequence cuz Benny Simp saved her using the force. Then she kissed him... no. No. No. This made my eyes burn like they just threw bleach in my eyes. It made no sense. “A Kiss of Gratitude”? What the shit was that? GIRLS DO NOT INSPIRE TO BE REY.

[msindrad]

If you like the series just ignore me (or don’t and learn something about some freaking great movies that are subsumed under the title the Dollars trilogy)

Anyway, as I’m in a bad shape today, I’ve decided to watch that Mandalorian thing that has been bombarding me with its ads on all my devices for ages now. I wanted to do it just because somebody here on Tumblr had brought up how many parallels – that’s a very nice way of talking about this kind of atrocious thoughtless plagiarism, btw – there are between the Dollars trilogy and the series in question. So, I had seen a lot of similar screenshots before I sat myself down to watch the thing, but, girl, I was not prepared to see this product.

That’s a pure experiment setting, mind you. I have exactly zero concrete knowledge about the SW movieverse, so, I’m pure tabula rasa in that sense. Never seen Firefly or the like, too. All I see is the story in front of me – the directing, the script, the performances etc. And it’s bad.

We have a literal ‘guy walks into a bar’ situation. Except there is no real anecdote/punchline after that set-up, it doesn’t pay off, okay. A couple of aliens/weird but still humanoid creatures threaten/torture somebody in that bar in plain sight. Because they’re bad, you know. And they threaten this other alien by telling them that they’ll be eaten alive and stuff. Because they’re bad, just in case you didn’t get it. Offensively bad, have no doubts about it, otherwise the subsequent brawl will be kinda less impactful, right? Right, yeah… Then, the protagonist enters this fine establishment and his entrance causes the drink of one of the torturers to spill. For this reason, the torturers approach him, momentarily forgetting about their victim and clearly looking for a fight, but “Mando” remains silent, the bartender tries to interfere and deescalate the situation when the aliens crowd Mando. Then, one of them scratches his armor, and only then he brutally fights back, using a mug that he’s given by the bartender to make the first hit.

Now, why is this a sub-optimal introduction to a character, imo, boring and blunt? It’s a terribly missed opportunity in characterization. Why not asses a situation verbally? Make a comment about these a-holes? Make a joke? Instead, he’s just being _mysterious_ samurai type until it’s stupid to let himself be insulted any further by these aliens.

Also, you can argue that the protagonist here just isn’t the type to mix up into random fights that aren’t in any way relevant for him personally or won’t get him paid (he’s an assassin or the like, right?). So, then, he is the type who doesn’t care whether somebody will be tortured in his vicinity? Are we supposed to be rooting for him? (And, yeah, I know what the deal with this tortured guy was, but it doesn’t make the scene anymore interesting, damn it!).

Remember Joe in AFOD? He also seemed to be keeping his head low after he witnessed the conflict between the Rojos’ people and Marisol and her family. But the key word here is “seemed.” He wasn’t okay with the situation at all, he was calculating his chances, and towards the end of the film he did free Marisol and her family just because it was the right thing to do (and he later suffered some brutal punishment for the goodness of his heart) and because he had seen such situations before and couldn’t let the familiar scenario happen on his watch again. That’s a smart, brave, compassionate, and humane hero. He is also humane because he has learned from his experiences. He saw it happen before, maybe he actively disregarded a similar situation back then and regretted it a lot. Maybe somebody with whom he sympathized suffered, and it’s the reason why he is empathizing with this family of strangers and risks his life for them. Either way, he _is_ fighting the injustice, and he’s doing it as a good tactician.

(Note: I don’t have to explain any of these to my Jusitfied people because the show is a fantastic example of how to do even the shortest scenes funny and/or meaningful. Remember the disabled hacker’s escape from Raylan? That time when Raylan got his ass kicked by two random drunks in a bar for trying to defend the honor of an unknown woman? The introduction of Bo? The introduction of Loretta? Of Carol? How in a brief exchange we learned everything we needed to know about the dynamics between Helen and Raylan? HOW JUST ONE SINGLE LINE from Arlo told us everything about their relationship with Raylan during their first encounter after decades of not having sent one kind thought to each other? I mean, common!!! All you got to do is to think when writing a scene to make it interesting and to know what your characters are (and to have found something interesting about them in your head in the first place).)

On the other hand, let’s take Manco and Mortimer. They also get into conflicts and irritate people in the bars they enter in FAFDM, right? But they do it actively, as any protagonist/deuteragonist with personality should. And so, they do it by being two bad-ass professionals and also two little shits.

Manco? Walks into a bar, casually figures out that the sheriff of this town is bought, provokes a fight, interrupts a card game and makes a bet with the wanted criminal, wins that game, beats the shit out of the guy, kills his henchmen. A quiet type, barely says three phrases during the scene. Also, a few minutes later, he disgraces the bought sheriff by stating his disdain and demonstratively throwing away his star.

Mortimer? Lights a match off the hump of an unhinged criminal to look at his reaction and assess how serious the game of the gang is this time, uses his cigarette to light up his pipe when the hunchback blows the first match out, actively causes the whole gang to leave, reaches several conclusions during a very short interaction, comments on how somebody with a gun wouldn’t allow themselves to be insulted like that in front of everybody. And when Wild approaches Mortimer after recognizing him as the smoker who humiliated him before in another scene Mortimer at first pretends that it didn’t happen and they’re complete strangers. Then, when it doesn’t work, he implicitly admits having humiliated him before and laughs at him. And then, when Wild provokes him Mortimer savagely humiliates him AGAIN.

Now, that’s writing, that’s characterization with unique colorful personal responses. And it’s entertaining, ingenuous, and suspenseful. In one word: creative.

Also, lol, 

I guess, you dropped your Josie Wales, Disney. Shame on you. 

And I have nothing against homages or citations, re-inventions, etc. Everybody quotes everybody (e.g. AFOD is inspired by Yojimbo, but those are two completely different movies for different audiences!). But if reiteration is mindless and doesn’t re-invent a single thing, then it’s just stealing and disgustingly pretending like you have the mental capacity to understand what you’ve stolen.

ALSO ALSO this series managed to incorporate in the final product three things that I hate the most in film/on TV: 1) stupid plagiarism 2) RUSHED WESTERN YOU IDIOTS YOU DON’T RUSH A WESTERN UNLESS IT’S A COMEDY AND EVEN THEN YOU THINK HARD BEFORE DOING IT 3) no goddamn light on my screent!! you think if I can’t see your idiotic story I won’t judge it, that’s the plan?!

Ridiculous.

[gothamdetected-a]

multiverse.

i know what you’re thinking. sim are you absolutely fucking insane, don’t even TRY to tackle this one. you’re right i am insane. and yes i am still going to try and tackle a meta about DC multiverses HOWEVER, to give myself on shred of sanity on this treacherous journey, i will say that this is mainly going to be about the multiverse from a bruce perspective. this ride is a batman focused train i’m afraid. also i want to state that this is by no means a perfect explanation – i’m a) trying to keep it simple and b) still am lost on parts of the timeline myself so. its what i can offer.

ok so, originally NCP, or the national comics publication (who will one day become DC), wrote their golden age heroes on an earth now designated as earth-2. in the 30s, just before the war, comic books absolutely exploded as a media format, and a bunch of companies all jumped the gun on creating superheroes. many of DCs most endearing and recognisable heroes were created all the way back then, however many of them also are not quite who you will recognise as the character today. hal jordan wasn’t green lantern, but was instead a man called alan scott, jay garrick was the flash instead of barry allen etc etc. don’t worry though! batman is still batman, and has been bruce wayne since 1939. earth-2 batman, as he will come to be known, is a bright kind of guy found on technicolour pages with a cute lil robin by his side – there is a reason for this. the war. literally NCP said we cant be sending out dark and gritty comics to people dying in trenches so time to make it colourful and faintly ridiculous, and bruce wayne is a surprisingly optimistic guy for a man who watched his parents be slaughtered in front of him.

of course, by the 60s, NCP (who are also sort of known as NPP and really known by your average joe as superman-dc, based on their most successful comic runs) had realised their timelines were getting a bit squiggly for their golden age heroes, and most of them had been replaced out by their silver age counterparts anyway. so between 1961 and 1963, NCP start creating another “earth”, officially designated earth-1, which would become their main planet for all kinds of superhero shenanigans. the justice society of america becomes the justice league of america, and when you think of batman, you’re probably thinking of earth-1 batman. at least pre crisis. and, once they get taste for building whole new earths, we also get earth-3 (1964), or “opposite world”, where the good guys are bad guys, and batman is owlman and instead of the jla we have the crime syndicate of america.  

so sim, what other earths did dc come up with? well, i literally refuse to list them all because it was a multiverse and they did not slow down, but the ones that are most important to me are earth-5 where the only hero to live on this planet is bruce wayne/batman, and earth-89 where lois marries bruce instead of clark ahAHAHHAA. but i can tell you that pre-crisis there are 91 designated earths, and basically it could have gone on forever. there was an earth-c minus, earth-124.1, an earth where everyone was reptiles, honestly it was a MESS. and therein lies the problem.

now i’ve just used the term “pre-crisis”. what’s that, sim? maybe you’re not very familiar with comics, or with the recent dctv version of said comics, and so i will endeavour to explain one of the most brain numbing storylines that spans DC. also known as a retcon. see all these earths with their own histories and heroes and well everything really was becoming very inconvenient and meant a lot of world jumping and who can interact with who and everything was getting like spaghetti because they couldn’t calm down on the earth-building. so DC (who are officially DC at this point, 1977 babeyy), specifically a guy called marv wolfman (coolest name ever) who was sick of so many earths, comes up with the bright idea that will later form into a comic run called crisis on infinite earths (1985-1986). it was a serious crossover event, really considered by many to be the first of its kind. it sold extremely well, boosting dc’s flagging sales against it’s biggest rival, marvel. and as for the plot, it’s a bit convoluted but essentially some bloke turns up and starts to destroy all these worlds, and it becomes a race between the heroes and villains as to who can save/conquer the remaining earths that are left. although there are crises before and after this specific run, pre-crisis basically always refers to this particular crisis event, as it really shaped DC for the next 30 years.

for a while the retcon does an okay job of keeping the number of earths low. there’s still some earths that are considered non-continuous floating around, but mainly there’s just earth-1, which is now a merger of the most important “earths” that existed pre-crisis, and a way for all of DCs heroes to now be in one place and interact with each other. other earths at this point include;

earth-23 (1986) – a small pocket dimension

earth-17 (1990) – we don’t talk about this. honestly spare yourself and. don’t look. its horrific.

earth-27 (1990) – a historically divergent planet with a hero actually called vegetable man.

earth-85 (1987) – a hodgepodge of post-crisis characters live here, chillin

earth-988 (1990) – superboy is the only hero in this universe

the antimatter universe – all of pre-crisis’ earth-3 villains, including owlman, get shoved here for later use when dc need a couple of villains to come back.

and for a while all is well. then comes DC elseworlds (1989). which. you know. i love. it gave me victorian batman. pirate batman. caveman batman. vampire batman. frankenstein batman. terrorist batman fighting against russian!superman. they even gave me marvel crossovers, with captain america meeting batman. it was a glorious time. technically elseworlds is not considered canon, ran outside of canon as a way for writers to explore those wacky kind of worlds lost to the crisis, which is dumb because some of the plot lines are both hilarious and incredible. but the numbers started to get ridiculous again. most elseworlds are named after the year that the plot takes place in, so we get earth-1889, earth-1938 etc, but even more of them just seem to have random designations. i think by the time they reached earth-5050 they sort of knew that theyd fucked up again. we’ve had zero hour, we’ve got hypertime and kingdom come, and besides, its been a while since they had a good crossover, so by the time 2005 rolls around its time for crisis pt 2 (because dc love to use the word crisis for crossovers) or as it’s officially known infinite crisis. infinite crisis has an even more confusing plot involving a bunch of slightly nuts versions of characters escaping a pocket dimension, earths being created and then merged, and a rogue ai which batman made and then has to destroy because his own creation becomes too powerful etc etc. the only good thing to come out of it was earth-0, or bizarro world, because bizarro & batzarro are my babies. don’t worry though, this new set of earths won’t last long either, as in 2008 DC conclude their trilogy of crises with final crisis that featured one of the most important events in batman’s history – darkseid “killing” him. yes the quotations are important. i’ll leave you to infer what they mean.

so 3 crises later and everything is still just as messy as they’ve ever been and there’s 60 years worth of comic history being tangled about, and marvel had already established a very successful reboot in 2000, and anything marvel do, we can do better, so DC do their first, full and proper reboot. unlike retcons before it, which is where they retroactively try to fix what people already know and simplify timelines & earths, this is like someone shaking the etch-a-sketch and starting fresh. back in infinite crisis an arbitrary number was assigned to how many “earths” there could be – 52. and so in 2011, DC go hey that’s neat and create what becomes known as the new- or nu-52. heroes are given shiny new backstories, everything is streamlined and wonderful, sales rise, DC has a clean slate to build off again.

ha.

yeah that doesn’t happen.

this reboot, also known as flashpoint, due to it being spawned from another big ol’ crossover of the same name, shows barry allen trapped in an alternate universe where everything is not quite right – his mother is alive, superman is nowhere to be found and he doesn’t have his powers. worst of all thomas wayne is batman. yeah, batman’s dad is batman. thanks DC, i hate it. reverse-flash has tried to change history and stop the jla from ever being formed – le gasp. barry goes to fix it, merges three universes together – earth-0, which isn’t a bizarro world but now the “main" earth, also called new earth or prime earth (DC), earth-13 (vertigo) and earth-50 (wildstorm), but also causes 10 years to be “lost” to these characters. there are now 52 brand spanking new earths, each sitting in their own universe as part of the multiverse. no one remembers anything except barry. even for a reboot and convergence of DC’s franchises, it’s messy as fuck. and it goes to shit very very quickly. people don’t really like n-52. DC have cancelled everything, certain characters such as cassandra cain-wayne are fucking ERASED from existence, no one likes the new costume designs, its an absolute shit show and the plots get very confusing very quickly.

so what do DC do?

they reboot again. sigh.

only 5 years after the mess of nu-52, they produce DC rebirth, a new relaunch of all their famous runs. brainiac does some magic and collects a bunch of worlds together and magically we’re all going to forget the last 5 years of comic hell. it is a reboot to retcon flashpoint as though that never happened. yes, DC are actually retconning their own reboots. talk about sweeping it under the carpet. technically “rebirth” only ran for a year as a promotional thing for the reboot, before joining with the larger, now-singular DC universe, however everyone still calls it rebirth because if we don’t give these things names it will get even more fucking confusing than it already is. rebirth also still has 52 universes making up the DC multiverse, just to make things even more simple and easy to understand (DC what is it with 52. why 52.) although lots of the earths in this multiverse have been re-designated – eg. pre-crisis earth-31 was home to an aged batman who fakes his death to go train a bunch of new vigilantes (the dark knight returns), and now 31 is an apocalyptic wasteland or some shite. a lot of these earths were re-designated during the flashpoint/nu-52 era, and even though rebirth was supposed to erase that, DC have decided never mind we’ll keep it. there’s also 7 mysteriously undesignated earths – ooh spooky, they definitely won’t feature in the next major crossover. also for a multiverse with 52 universes, they sure do have more than 52 : there’s the microverse, a bunch of universes collectively called “the sphere of the gods” where apokalips and like, literal heaven & hell exist, an innerverse???, dreamworld, limbo, DC are taking the piss they only said there were 52 earths but that means they can make as many other shitty dimensions and pocket-universes as they please apparently. don’t even get me started on the source wall. for the most part the writers just. don’t acknowledge this and stick to the main prime earth. for the most part. thanks for throwing thomas wayne as batman back into the mix, rebirth.

so that’s the last of it, right sim? eh, almost. it should have been the last of it, really. and then geoff johns couldn't keep his mouth shut and produced possibly the worst comic in recent history, if not ever, doomsday clock. now doomsday clock is a nightmare for an impossibly long list of reasons that i won’t get into here because this isn’t a rant about why i think doomsday clock is the worst thing to ever happen to dc (although that’s a catchy title i should use that some day) - no, the reason i bring up doomsday clock is because. oh my god even saying this makes me sad. doomsday clock proves that the pre-crisis universes still exist and are still out there. somewhere. canonically. sim why is that sad i thought you liked everything pre-52. it’s sad because it means at any point now, DC could bring them back, ruin their own legacy, make everything even more confusing than it already is. i love pre-52 stuff but you gotta leave it alone. currently doomsday clock has only established that these universes exist as a way to honour every era of superman, because DC didn’t want to completly erase some of the incredible work and storylines put into him as a character. fine, fair enough. but it does leave the possibility that they will try and return to them too. comic book writers love doing funky story lines like that. they think they need to write something that’s never been done before and instead of coming up with something actually unique, they just poke around in the multiverse WHICH IS HOW WE ENDED UP WITH THIS AS A PROBLEM IN THE FIRST PLACE.

ahem.

hopefully this helped clarify some stuff for people, especially those folks who aren’t big comic fans/expereience dc through the DCEU or DCTV, when encountering rpers who say they base their characterisation off of, for example pre-n52/flashpoint comics, like myself.

oh, and thank you for coming to my ted sim talk.

[littlemonstersau-blog]

The Feels Awaken, Part 2: The Fandom’s Menace

Written by @jkl-fff, illustrated by me

PART I - PART II [Interlude]  - PART III (you are here) - PART IV [Interlude]

———————————————————————————————-

Soos, excitedly setting up everything: Dude, I knew exactly what we should watch as soon as Stan said “movie day”. The prequel trilogy of Cosmos Conflicts! I’ve been meaning to show you them since, like, the first time you said you love the first two originals movies, and even more since we all sat down together so you could finally see Return of the Jelived, Bitch! The prequels’re actually, like, seriously three of my all-time favorite movies ever.

Ford, actually smiling: Heh. I would’ve watched them before now— especially now that I know how keen you are to share them with me— except Dipper and Mabel would never let me. They kept saying they loved me too much to let me watch them, if you can believe it.

Soos: Well, I admit they’re not the most popular with fans, yeah, but that’s just ‘cause, like, most people can’t handle this much raw, concentrated awesomeness.

Melody, deadpan on the floor: Uh huh. That’s exactly what it is.

Soos: It’s like really spicy food; some people just don’t have a— whatcha call it?—sophisticated enough palette to appreciate the awesome sauce. Y’know?

Melody, still deadpan: Most just aren’t refined enough. For sure. Yep. That explains it.

Stan, entering TV room: I got drinks for everybody!

Bill, right after him: And I got the popcorn! Let’s jump right in to this glorious madness!

Melody, mildly surprised: You like these movies?

Bill, passing around bowls of popcorn: Absolutely! They’re one of the hottest messes in cinematic history!

Stan, passing around cups of soda: Mel, you sure you don’t want my easy chair? It’s no problem, really.

Melody: Lying flat is the best thing for my back lately. Besides, I can put my feet up in my honeybear’s lap while he rubs them for me.

Soos, genuinely happy at this prospect: Sure can, honeybadger!

Stan, taking his seat: Well, if you’re sure. C’mon, gremlin! [picks up Bill]

Bill, almost giggling: Whoahoho! Careful, I’m gonna spill!

Stan, setting Bill next to him (on opposite side of Ford): There. All comfy, kiddo?

Bill, deciding to settle in like a cat: Alright, yeah, I’m okay with this. Primo seating and everything!

Ford, making himself look straight ahead: Let’s start it.

TV: George Dufasfilms Ltd. and 20th Century Foxups presents … Cosmos Conflicts, Episode 1! The Phantom Nuisance! [fanfare theme song plays, prologue crawls upward]

Ford: Wait, what? “Turmoil has engulfed the galaxy because taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute”?! This is about freaking tax policy? And that leads to galactic turmoil?

Stan: Don’t know ‘bout you, but the IRS certainly causes me turmoil. [Soos stops rubbing Melody’s feet long enough to highfive him]

Ford, incredulous: This is a prequel, right? So why is all their tech more advanced? Why are there more and better droids?

Soos: Well, the Trade Union canonically uses droids more than other species. It only makes sense they’d create more advanced—

Bill: Because George Dufas has a robot fetish. That’s seriously why. He uses the entirety of this film like normal people use hardcore porn.

TV: Master, I have a bad feeling about this. TV: Be mindful of the Living Force, my rattail-coiffed padawan.

Ford: Pada-what-now? That’s not a word. Why didn’t they go with “apprentice” or—heck!—“squire”, since they’re Jelived Knights?

Soos: Shhhhh!

TV: Gee thanks, Master, that’s certainly helpful and not at all vague. That advice will definitely help me be a diplomat, even though Jelived like us are more like killer, magic samurai-priest-cops. TV: Indeed, my superfluously-ponybobbed padawan, which is why we have openly worn our iconic bathrobes and lasercutlasses instead of even the most basic of disguises. Letting the Trade Union know the Senate sent trained killers will surely put them at ease.

Melody: Nope, they’ll try to gas you both now. Good thing they kept all that toxic gas in their air vents.

TV: My fellow crafty and greedy Trade Unionist insectoids. First, I raise a glass to our race’s abandon of our native customs and tongue in favor of caricatures of antiasian stereotypes and accents. TV: Hear hear! TV: Second, we have done well in executing our secret Shit master’s evil plan to blockade this world of minor socio-economic importance (for some reason), and to kill those two Jelived. They must surely be dead by now, so let’s send in some droids to kill them further. TV: But, sir, they’ve only been in there for fifteen seconds. TV: OPEN THE DOOR, I SAY! AND SEND IN … FIVE DROIDS! TV: Sir, predictably, they weren’t dead, and destroyed the five droids. Now they are cutting through the door to our command center. TV: IMPOSSIBLE! SEND … TWO MORE DROIDS! NO, THREE!

Ford: Wasn’t the hangar full of battle droids?

Melody: Oh, the whole ship is. They just want the fight to be fair.

Ford: … what. [watches as Trade Union leader makes a call to Queen Imdolledupa] … What. [watches as she tells her council “I won’t condone actions that could lead Planet Baboon to war, even if we have been blockaded for months at this point and they’re clearly planning an invasion”] … What. [watches as invasion lands on opposite side of planet than cities] … WHAT.

Bill, grinning: Don’t worry. It gets worse. Much, much worse. Starting … right … now.

TV: Tank yusa for saving mesa from dose bombad battle droids, yusa Jelived who escaped da main starship by sneaky-sneaky on dat transport! Mesa love you! Mesa follow you forever and ever! TV: Master, I sense that this Jerkjerk creature will bring suffering to millions. May I please cut him down for the good of the Force? TV: No, my practically mulleted padawan. We need him alive, because … reasons. Probably related to merchandising. TV: Mesa take yusa to secret, bubble city of mesa people now!

Ford, through gritted teeth: Who the fffff … fuzz is that annoying frog-lizard-man, and why do I feel a collective unconscious urge to beat him to death with my bare hands?! Why aren’t the Jelived Force Choking him, or at least Mind Tricking him into leaving?

Bill: That is Jerkjerk Kinks, a monument to Dufas’s amphibian fetish and the first reason the Twins wouldn’t let you watch this movie.

Soos, defensively: He’s not that bad! He’s got a good heart!

Melody, sighing: Oh, my sweet, innocent, naïf honeybear …

TV: Boss Gass, even though you dislike the humans who invaded and colonized your planet, and even though you live completely apart from them in your Plasmatlantis, you are symbiotic with them. TV: Mesa tinking yusa no understand what “symbiotic” means. TV: Well, if you won’t help the humans, at least don’t kill Jerkjerk—

Ford, spitting out popcorn: YES, KILL JERKJERK!

TV: —because he owes me a life debt and is now basically my slave. Your gods and laws demand that his life belongs to me. TV: Mesa tinking it racist for yusa to claim to understand oursa laws and culture, white man. And to claim ownership of a sentient being (dat isn’t a droid). But yusa hair so fabulous and mesa so bored wit dis conversation, mesa give yusa Jerkjerk and submarine so yusa go. TV: Excellent. Now, to boat through the planet’s watery core.

Ford: … That is literally impossible. Even if the core was water, the center would be denser than rock because of all the pressure. [watches as ship navigates past giant sea monsters] There would be no light, no life, no nothing down there.

Soos, patiently: Yeah, but it’s fun. That’s what matters.

Stan: I like how they just happen to pop up in the capital city, and how nobody notices them, even though it’s occupied.

Bill: I like how the people of Planet Baboon put up absolutely zero resistance to the Trade Union’s invasion, despite all the forewarning they had since the blockade and from the invasion landing clear on the wrong side of the planet. If only Imdolledupa had been Mayor of Gravity Falls, am I right? Heh heh … heh … What? Too soon?

Ford, grimacing at Bill: Mmm …

Stan, patting him: Gremlin, it’ll prob’ly always be too soon for that.

TV: Master, there’s the Queen. How fortunate we came up next to her, and that the Trade Union decided to march her through the streets instead of simply landing a shuttle outside the palace. TV: Yusa big fortunate dey only escorted by six droids even dough hersa entourage has twenty people! TV: … Master, yet again I beg you to let me kill this irritating— and you’re already gone … and the droids are already dead. TV: Majesty, I am Jelived Master Leam-Nee San. Come with me if you want to Jelive. We’ll escape this planet, take you to the Senate, and tell them how heated this tax policy dispute has gotten here. TV: You arrived at a fortunate time, Jelived, because they were about to make me sign a treaty legalizing their invasion of Baboon.

Melody: ‘cause that’d be totally legit, right? No coercion at all.

Stan, nudging Bill, whispering: Maybe you should’ve forced Mayor Cutebiker to sign a treaty, eh?

Bill: Heh! But you just said—

Ford, grimacing at Stan: Mmm … [watches as they find an unguarded ship and fly straight at blockade instead of around it; ship gets away, but with hyperdrive damage] Okay, why is that Jelived—what’s his name? Yuan-Mac Gragor?— repairing the hyperdrive instead of a pilot? Is that supposed to be standard training for Jelived, or something?

Soos, shrugging: Seems like it’d be pretty easy to pick up to me.

Melody: Well, yeah, it would be for you, honeybear. Mr. Handyman with the magic fingers! Aw, yeah, that’s the spot … Keep rubbing …

TV: We can’t land on Hallowine, it’s controlled by Pitsa-Hutts! They’re gangsters! It wouldn’t be safe for Queen Imdolledupa! TV: I’m sorry, non-Jelived person, I couldn’t hear you over how luxurious my hair is. And I don’t care what you said anyway. Now, I’m off to buy us a hyperdrive. Time and stealth are of the essence, so naturally I’m going to take with me a slow-rolling droid, my frog-lizard-man slave who is so idiotic he will step in every literal and figurative pile of doodoo, and this willful teenage girl. TV: Master Jelived, not to question your wisdom, but— TV: Good. See to it that you never question any Jelived ever again, for we are infallible and will take off your head. Tata for now.

Stan: Why take Jerkjerk? D’you think he was hopin’ to sell him? Or maybe just ditch him?

Ford: Being amphibious, it’s likely the extreme heat and dryness might’ve proved fatal to him. Perhaps the hope was he’d drop dead.

Soos, whimpering softly: Why does everyone hate him? He just wants to help!

Ford, curtly: Because he’s the worst, Soos. He’s just … the worst. [watches shadowy Shit Lord Farth Sidious bitch at Trade Union for letting the Queen get away, then dispatches Farth Maul to fix it; watches heroes wander into a desert town on Hallowine]

TV: How fortunate the first shop we enter has a hyperdrive for sale. Now to use my Mind Trick on the disgusting, pig-butterfly proprietor without once having the least of scruples about how unethical that is. TV: Ha! Mind Tricks won’t work on me, only MONEY! I’m surprised you couldn’t tell from my Yiddish accent and hooked nose, human.

Ford, eyes wide in shock: Did they really just—

Stan, shaking his head: Moses—

Soos, blanching: Oh, yeah … I, uh, k-kinda forgot about him. Sorry, dudes. I guess all the lasercutlass duels and space battles made me forget about the, um, antisemitic stereotypes.

Ford: Not … Not your fault, Soos. We’ll just—

TV: Are you an angel? I know it doesn’t make sense that angels exist as a mythological concept in our galaxy, but you’re really pretty, so … I’m a slave, by the way. So is my mom, though you’d never know it since we dress like everybody else and get to walk around freely. I saved your frog-lizard-man friend thing from a brawl, by the way. My name’s Otherkin Skyjogger. I’m 9, but that doesn’t matter, angel. TV: I’m Padmy Resume. I’ll try to forgive you for saving Jerkjerk. TV: Is your friend with the magnificent hair a Jelived, angel? He has a Jelived weapon. There’s a sandstorm coming, even though the air looks exactly the same as it did a while ago, so you should all come have dinner at my place. My mom won’t mind, even though we have very little money for food, presumably, what with being slaves. TV: Why not? Story’s not going anywhere. I’ll get Leam-Nee San.

Bill, stifling a cackle at the next scene: (My favorite dialogue!)

TV: Queen, this is a holo-transmission from Baboon, even though we have no idea where your ship is because you’re hiding. Anywho, the Trade Union is awful, the death toll is catastrophic, the weather is a little humid. Please contact us; this is not an obvious ploy. Love ya, bye! … Wait, did I just say “love ya” to the Que— TV: I know I’m just a padawan with a pointlessly stupid haircut, but I’m gonna tell your planet’s leadership what to do now. *Ahem*. That was an obvious plot to learn where the Queen is. Don’t reply.

Stan: If I was that security office, I’d bitchslap that uppity teen.

Melody, warningly: Language.

Bill: Sorry, Mel, he meant to say “teenslap that uppity bitch”. [highfives Stan]

Ford: Pffhaha! *ahem* [watches Otherkin take them home and mother is all “Sure, why not? I’ll give room and board to three strangers who’ve taken a not-at-all unsettling interest in my prepubescent son. Now for a dinner chat!”] Wait, what? Did he seriously just say he’s the only human who can rocket-chariot race? But racing is just … racing!

Bill: He just wants to impress the “angel”, so he’s exaggerating. But she believes him even though he’s 9 and obviously has a crush on her ‘cause she’s kind of a Dumasc.

Melody, more warningly: Language.

Soos, reluctantly: Actually, he’s not swearing. It’s an in-canon term for “politician” ‘cause the galactic capital is on Planet Dumascent.

Bill: And it’s very political of her—gets them free room and board. Yep, that Dumasc ain’t no dumbass.

Ford and Stan, cracking up: Pfffhahahaha!

TV: There’s a problem, my should-just-get-a-buzzcut padawan. I found a hyperdrive, but couldn’t Mind Trick the owner to give it to me for racist and plot-related reasons, and it’d be unethical to just steal it (and I just can’t be unethical). Nor could I buy it with a promise of higher repayment next week from Jelived funds. But, fortunately, there’s a rocket-chariot race soon, and if this 9-year-old Force Sensitive I just met wins … we’ll get the money to buy it!

Stan, exasperated: What, does George Dufas also have a fetish for 80s sitcom clichés? Don’t answer that question, Bill.

TV: And I’ll win the kid as a slave—Jelived apprentice, I mean— because I unironically rigged a dice toss with my powers. I had to bet the Queen’s ship, but I’m sure she won’t mind if we don’t tell her. TV: Ah, but you’re going to use Jelived powers to rig the race, right? TV: What?! Never! That would be unethical and spoil the suspense! TV: … Master, I’m concerned your gambling addiction is— TV: What? Khshh! Can’t hear you! Khshh! There’s a sandstorm! Oh, also, I’m transmitting the kid’s blood sample through our radio. TV: That’s not how radios work, Master, but okay … dum di dim … Got the results, and this kid has more midi-chlorians than Yoda.

Ford, suspicious: What … are … those?

Bill, grinning: The second reason the Twins wouldn’t let you see this movie. Heh heh heh …

TV: My 9-year-old son is meant to help you in this dangerous race. It’s destiny, and stuff. That’s why I’m so criminally permissive. Oh, did I mention his conception was immaculate?

Ford, jumping up: WHAT?! JESUS CHRIST!

Bill, grinning: Exactly. Space Jesus Christ.

Ford: Does … Does this mean … midi-chlorians …

TV: Sir, you were talking to my mom about midi-chlorians? TV: Ah, yes, the omnipresent, microscopic organisms that confer the Force randomly upon some individuals, are not at all mystical or magical, and are probably your daddy, O Chosen One of the Jelived.

Ford, apoplectic: WHAT THE FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF—

Soos, whimpering softly: Oh, no! the Angry Words™!

Melody: Don’t you dare, Stanford Pines!

Ford, like a death metal singer: —UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU—

Melody: Don’t! You! Dare!

Ford: —NDAMENTALLY STUPID IDEA IS THIS CRAP?! AND HOW DOES FARTH MAUL KNOW TO CHECK THIS PLANET, BUT THE JELIVED DON’T SENSE HIS DARK PRESENCE?! I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS BULLSHI—

Stan, as though his brother wasn’t screaming: Oh, look, Sixer. It’s time for the big rocket-chariot race.

Ford, breathing heavily: If this isn’t the best race ever, I swear … [watches race] Okay, yes, that was genuinely exciting.

Soos, relieved: Hooray!

Ford: Enough that I’m going to overlook the sabotage in front of a stadium of spectators, the fact it didn’t actually impede his winning, the ludicrousy of Otherkin catching up to but not passing his rival, and Java the Pitsa-Hutt being shown sleeping through the race. I mean, really? Why would you suggest your own film is boring?

Melody: To be fair, this is basically space NASCAR, and earth NASCAR is boringer than golf.

Ford, muttering to himself: More boring … Grammar …

TV: Alright, my shamefully beardless padawan, take the hyperdrive and everyone else back to the ship while I make Otherkin say goodbye to his mother forever and ever and ever. TV: About that, Master. Why don’t we just take her with us, too? I mean, slavery’s incontestably morally abhorrent, and we’re Jelived and can screw the consequences of most our actions. TV: What?! Never! TV: Because it’d be unethical to steal someone’s property, Master, even if that property is a sentient being? TV: Well, that, and we already have one major woman character for this whole trilogy. Why would we have more than one woman?

Melody: Grrrr, sexism … Makes me always hope Maul’ll kill him.

TV: Goodbye, son. Jelived, promise you’ll take care of my son? TV: What? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over how opulent my hair is. Anyway, tata forever. Come along, Otherkin. TV: I love you, mom! I’ll never forget you!

Stan, looking sideways in surprise: Gremlin, are … are you crying?

Bill, swiping at eyes: W-what, me?! No! Not like goodbyes’re s-sad! I just got, um, some g-glitter dust in my eyes … All Mabel’s fault the stuff is freakin’ everywhere in here …

Stan, putting an arm around him: Heh. Tell me about it, kiddo.

Ford, silently glancing sideways at Bill: (… hmm …)

TV: Excuse me, Yuan-Mac, but isn’t that a Shit Lord attacking your master right outside the ship? Shouldn’t you go help him? TV: I would, but this chair’s just too comfy. If I get up, you know Imdolledupa will steal it (that bitch!). Besides, look, Leam-Nee San got aboard the ship just fine. Oh *sigh* and so did his new slave boy. Guess I should go introduce myself to that homewrecking hussy— er, kid! I meant kid … Hello, Master and filthy slave boy. TV: Ah, my worst-hair-of-the-three-of-us padawan, meet my new younger and cuter padawan, Otherkin Skyjogger. The Chosen One. I’m sure you two will be best friends and as close as brothers. TV: Hi! (I’m daddy’s new favorite. Die jealous about it.) TV: Hi! (I will throw you into a volcano the first chance I get.) TV: I knew you two would hit it off. But I wonder who that person in black with a red lightsaber was who attacked me just now … Well, I’m off to bed. Don’t stay up too late becoming best friends.

Ford: Does he really not pick up on them hating each other then?

Soos, confused: What’re you talking about? They get really close.

Ford: Pff. Yeah, which is why Farth Vaper strikes him down in the original movie, right?

Stan: Eh, what’s a little strikin’ down between brothers?

Melody: “Space is cold,” Padmy Resume says to the kid. Like, don’t they have temperature controls in their ships?

Bill: Don’t forget, this was “a long time ago”. They hadn’t invented space heaters yet.

Ford: Ha! Haha—er, *ahem* that was … that was clever. [watches them land on Dumascent, a planet-wide city] That … is also impossible. Completely unsustainable. Without trees, how do they breathe?

Bill: They export all their CO and CO2, and import … everything, pretty much. Oxygen, food, water … It’s the reason they named the planet Dumascent; they’re all—

Melody, warningly: Don’t say it.

Bill, silently mouthing at Ford: (… dumbasses.)

Ford: Heh heh … [watches Imdolledupa’s retinue go with Baboon Senator Shiv Saltine while the Jelived threesome goes to the Temple and tests Otherkin]

TV: Esteemed fellow Senators, I haven’t made a big deal about it, because I kinda suck at my job, but Baboon was invaded recently. I now introduce Queen Imdolledupa and Representative Jerkjerk—

Ford, sarcastically: Well, he certainly is qualified.

TV: —who will speak on my planet’s behalf, thereby rendering my presence here as a Senator utterly redundant. Majesty? TV: I— TV: I’M THE SENATOR FROM THE TRADE UNION, BECAUSE IT TOTALLY MAKES SENSE A COMPANY HAS EQUAL REP WITH INHABITED PLANETS, AND I NOW FORMALLY MAKE A MOTION OF “SHUT UP, BITCH”! TV: Motion is seconded. The bitch is hereby required to shut up. TV: … Okay, y’know what? Screw y’all bureaucrats. As queen, I raise my planet’s middle finger at all of you. Now, I’m going back to do what I should’ve done months ago … fight the invaders! TV: Mesa going wid you? TV: Sure, why the space heck not?! We’re out. Peace between worlds!

Melody, raising a fist: You go, girl! Better late than never!

Bill: And the moral of the story is that democracy doesn’t work.

Ford, dubious: Thank you, Farth Cipher. Anyway, if we get lucky, Jerkjerk will die painfully in the coming battle.

Soos, whimpering: He’s just doing his best!

TV: Spoken, the Jelived Council has (meaning a decision, I’ve made with Master Sa-Myul Jaxon, which abide the other masters will, if what’s good for them, they know). Your padawan, Otherkin won’t be. TV: Master Jaxon, for clarity’s sake, could you explain why not? TV: Our code forbids someone as old as he is be trained. For reasons. Our code forbids you having two padawans at once. For reasons. TV: And much fear in him, we sense. Which bad, always is. TV: But, Master Yoda, his midi-chlorians—

Ford, jumping up: RRRAAAAAARRRGHGHGHGHGHGH!

TV: —and he’s the Chosen One prophesied to bring balance—

Ford: WHO EVEN MAKES THESE PROPHECIES?!

TV: —and it’s kind of hypocritical of you to say his fear is bad even as you are all too afraid to let train him be trained. TV: Clutching my pearls, I now am! A scandal, this is! TV: The council forbids you training him, Leam-Nee San. TV: Huh? Sorry, Master Baldy, I couldn’t hear you over how sumptuous my hair is. Oh, and now my middle fingers are up for some reason. Strange … Well, better go train Otherkin. I’ll start by taking him to the soon-to-be Baboon warzone. Tata, bitches.

Bill: I guess we call that Leam-Nee San’s act of … HAIResy!

Ford and Stan: Pffhahaha!

Melody, annoyed: The prophecy (we almost never hear about again) is to bring “balance to the Force”, right? Why do none of them ever consider that might signify strengthening the Dark Side? I mean, Jelived are kinda dominating the galaxy right now, and are always trying to stomp the Shit out of existence.

Ford and Stan and Bill, uncontrollably: Hehehehehehehe!

Soos, plaintively: Why must we always question it, dudes? Why can’t we just enjoy it?

Stan: ‘cause they’re flyin’ back to the planet without any trouble. Look, the blockade is gone. Where the heck did it go?

Bill: They got sucked into a black plot hole. Lots of those in space.

Ford: And they just happen to land in the swamp right where all the frog-lizard-men are hiding?

Bill: Don’t forget George Dufas made good actors act woodenly. See?

TV: Boss Gass, I woodenly beg you to help us. To be our allies. After this, we’ll return lands and first-class citizen status to you, even though your people are slimy and inferior non-humans. TV: Hmm … Wesa live in a bloody swamp. Wesa need all the land wesa can get. Okay, wesa fight wid you, and Jerkjerk is a general.

Ford, sarcastically: Well, he certainly is qualified.

TV: The plan’s for us to sneak into the palace via secret passages that of course it has. While one team seizes the Trade Union leader, 12 pilots will take on the blockade that just barely reappeared. Well, it’s just one ship for some reason now and not a blockade. So, yeah, 12 should be enough. Meanwhile, Boss Gass’s and *snicker* General Jerkjerk’s armies’ll be a cannon fodder distraction. TV: Mesa have no qualms wid taking on a better armed force. TV: Good, because you blinked and we’re in the palace already. TV: Oh, blast. I was going to leave you on the ship, Otherkin, but the Queen scene-transitioned us here too quickly. Okay, listen. I want you to find somewhere safe to hide, alright? TV: Yes, daddy. I mean, Master Leam-Nee San. TV: Uh, daddy—I mean, Master? That Shit from Hallowine is back. Should I have the Queen’s troops gun him down? TV: No, my why-didn’t-you-get-a-haircut-on-Dumascent padawan, we will seductively slip out of our Jelived bathrobes and duel him despite his badass, double-ended lasercutlass. BONZAI!

Ford, excited: Finally, the good stuff! [watches movie cut back to Jerkjerk; his people’s shields stop blasts, but not droids and tanks rolling right through them] … what. [watches Otherkin hide in a ship, activate it on accident, fly it into the heat of a space battle on accident, not get shot down but rather shoot down bunches of droid ships on accident—because the Force and because rocket-chariot racing and because fuck the audience— “I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ll try a spin; that’s a good trick.”] … What. [watches Jerkjerk shoot more enemies than all the stormtroopers in the original trilogy combined on accident, explode some on accident] … What. [watches Otherkin crash land inside the Trade Union ship on accident blow up its power core or something on accident, escape on accident] … WHAT.

Soos, unironically: Hooray for Jerkjerk! Hooray for Otherkin!

Ford: Boo for Jerkjerk! Boo for Otherkin! Why aren’t they dying?! [throws handful of popcorn at screen]

Bill, excitedly joining in: Woooooo! Anarchy in the living room!

Ford, ranting: Why are all the droids shutting down?! Why would anyone design battle droids without independent operating systems?! Why isn’t there at least one other battleship with a backup for them?! And where the fffff-funky music is my lasercutlass duel?! [watches Queen’s retinue capture the Trade Union leaders “Your invasion of the planet we invaded is over, immigrant sc … um, I mean, Asian sc … uh, no, that’s much worse … Well, anyway, it’s over, you scum who aren’t white or that token black guy!”]

Stan, blinking in surprise: I don’t remember this movie bein’ so racist the first time I watched it. Was it always like this?

Ford, throwing more popcorn: Get to the Jelived already! [watches legitimately epic duel with great choreography progress from starfighter hangar into some sort of massive power plant] … What is a power plant doing inside the palace?

Soos: Shhhh!

Bill: Well, on Baboon, the palace is the seat … OF POWER!

Ford: Ha! Indeed … Wait, why is there a corridor of laser doors? And who’s turning them on and off? Are they on an automatic timer, or something? That’s a terrible security design.

Stan: Especially since what they’re guarding is just a dead-end room with a gaping, bottomless pit.

Bill: Lady and Gentlemen, I give you … the movie’s plot hole!

Ford and Stan: Pffhahahahaha!

Soos: Guys, c’mon! You’re spoiling the emotional climax!

TV: Da—I mean, Master, I’m stuck behind a laser door! Hold on! TV: Not to worry, I’ve got this well in hand, my less-than—Gah! Oh, look at that … I’ve been impaled … Huh … Down I fall … TV: DAAAAADDDDDDYYYYY!

Ford, surprised: Wow … I actually am moved right now … [watches Yuan-Mac Gragor attack once door opens, get kicked into the pit but catch onto a convenient pipe thing or something]

TV: It’s over, Jelived. I, Farth Maul, have the high ground. TV: What a stupid thing to say, Shit Lord murderer! You will pay!

Ford: But how can Yuan-Mac Gragor possibly defeat him now? [watches him connect with the Force and do a flying backflip while drawing the lightsaber to him … and cutting Maul in half] OH, BULLSHIT!

Melody: STANFORD PINES!

Ford: The whole fight scene was the coolest except for that ending! Maul just stood there with his guard down let himself get killed off like a little bit—um … idiot. A genuinely intimidating villain, gone without a chance to develop, and in the least satisfying of ways!

Bill, casually: It was assisted suicide, really, ‘cause he couldn’t bear to live any longer in a universe where George Dufas is his god.

TV: Daddy! Master! I’m here! Hold on, please! TV: Listen … my first padawan, my first son … you must train him. Otherkin is the Chosen One … will bring balance to the Force … TV: I promise. No matter what. TV: And you must … get rid of that rattail, grow a proper mane … It’s important … for being a badass Jelived who don’t give a crap … TV: I will. The most magnificent mane ever, I swear. TV: Finally … most importantly … make sure to bury me … with winged eyeliner … *death rattle* TV: NOOO! I mean, I’ll do that, yes, of course. But NOOOOOOO!

Soos, tearing up: *sniffle* He was such a good Jelived.

Bill, evilly: I think you mean “Jedied”.

Ford and Stan: Pffhahahaha!

Bill: And don’t you meatbags usually consider owning slaves to be something that disqualifies a person from being good? Like, he had two of ‘em. Speaking of, you think this means Yuan-Mac Gragor inherits Jerkjerk? Is he legally permitted to euthanize him now?

Melody, considering that: I think the life debt is fulfilled now.

Soos, muttering: (You dudes all suck …)

TV: Come to Baboon, I have. Along with Senate soldiers to arrest the Trade Union (now that matters, Senate involvement does not). TV: Thank you, Master Yoda. That means a lot during my grief. TV: Out of pity, promote you to Knight we do. Also, more impressive than our lame, traditional trials killing a Shit, we consider. So … TV: And may I take Otherkin as my padawan? Just so you know, I made a deathbed promise to train him, so I’m going to anyway. TV: Changed their minds for no reason, the other councilors did. Little bitches, I consider them to be … But no reason, I have really to oppose his training. Other than that grave danger, I fear in his training for us all. For foreshadowing purposes, you understand. TV: Aren’t you always saying “fear leads to the Dark Side”? TV: Like your master, you are. Meaning go screw yourself, you can.

Stan: Convenient decision, ain’t it? Oh, time for the funeral.

Bill: I’m always amazed and, to be honest, a little jealous at the caliber of the winged eyeliner they get on Leam-Nee San.

Stan, shaking his head: Can you believe Yoda and Sa-Myul Jaxon are discussing Jelived business during the guy’s funeral? That’s just inconsiderate, is what that is. And why would the Shit follow that rule of two, anyway? I thought they were anti-Jelived.

Soos, dismal but unable to not answer: ‘cause they know treachery’s gonna happen sooner or later. One apprentice means only one person to keep an eye on.

Ford, derisive: Why not? Makes as little sense as everything else. Oh, they’re having a parade now. And … there’s a glowing orb? Why is the Queen giving a glowing orb to Boss Gass?

Bill: For his coffee table. It’ll make a great conversation piece.

Ford: Or would, except he’d then have to tell this awful story. Just awful … But the rest of the trilogy, it has to be better, right? It couldn’t possibly be worse.

Bill, smiling evilly: Heh heh heh … You say that now …

Soos, sulking: … I guess if you wanna watch ‘em, we can.

Melody, picking up on her husband’s dejection: Can we leave the movies with them, honeybear? I’m starting to not feel well.

Soos: Uh, sure thing, honeybadger, if you like. [gets up, helps her up, goes out the door with her] Um, see you dudes tomorrow!

Stan, with a tinge of regret: Y’think maybe we hurt his feelings raggin’ on the movies so much?

Ford, realization dawning: He … He did say they’re three of his favorite movies. Though I fail to understand why or how … All the same, perhaps I was being insensitive … again … [sighs, shrugs] Oh well. He’s not here anymore, so I suppose we can be as unbridled in our ragging as we want. And tomorrow, we’ll make it up to him. Somehow … Shall we put in the next one?

Bill, excitedly: 79 Hecks yeah! Oh, wait, they’re both gone now.

All three together: We can swear for real!

[dailybestiary]

Patch Has Issues: Dungeon #2

Issue: Dungeon #2

Date: November/December 1986 (Pretty sure my Christmas haul that year was full of dope toys from The Transformers movie/show.)

The Cover:

(Use of cover for review purposes only and should not be taken as a challenge to status. Credit and copyright remain with their respective holders.)

Ah, Clyde Caldwell. He, Larry Elmore, Jeff Easley, and last issue’s Keith Parkinson were the mainstays of TSR’s amazing stable of artists. I have a soft spot for Caldwell. He did the covers for the D&D Gazetteer series, which means his work emblazoned some of my absolute favorite books from my middle school years. (At the time I had the whole series except the two island books, GAZ 4 & GAZ 9 (which I’ve since collected), plus the Dawn of the Emperors box set. My favorites, for the record, were GAZ 3, 5, 10, and 13. I...may like elves...a little too much.) And even as I sit here, other covers demand to be named. The very first Dragonlance adventure, the iconic Dragons of Despair? The Finder’s Stone trilogy? The first Ravenloft box? Dragon #147? Yep, he did those covers too. He was amazing.

But hoo-boy, we also have to talk about the not-amazing parts. Once Caldwell settled on a way of doing things, that’s how he did them. Points for consistency, but man, he had tropes. Even his tropes had tropes. He had a way of painting dragon’s wings. He had a way of painting swords and boots. He had a way of painting jewelry, and belts and coins—ovals upon ovals upon ovals.

And his way of painting women was with as few clothes as possible. Everything I said about Parkinson last entry? Yeah, that goes double for Caldwell. He never paints pants when a thong will do. His take on the reserved and regal Goldmoon—thighs as long as a dwarf and bronzed buttcheeks exposed—reportedly left Margaret Weis in tears. Magic-users (God, I hate that term) famously couldn’t use armor in D&D and AD&D, but Caldwell’s sorceresses pretty much stick to gauze just to be safe. And the Finder’s Stone trilogy I mentioned above? Yeah, the authors of Azure Bonds took one look at Caldwell’s cover art and literally had to come up with in-text reasons why the heroine Alias—one of the most surly woman sellswords in existence—would wear armor with a Caldwell boob hole.

Don’t get me wrong, I love cheesecake as much as the next dude. (Actually that’s not true; I came up in the grunge ’90s—our version of cheesecake was an Olympia brunette in three layers of thrift store sweaters reading Sandman while eating a cheesecake. Hell, that’s still my jam.) But context matters. The sorceress from “White Magic,” Dragon #147’s cover, may barely be wearing a negligee, but she’s also in the seat of her power and probably magically warded to the hilt—she can wear whatever she damn wants; it’s her tower. So no complaints there. But this cover’s pirate queen Porky Piggin’ it seems like an unwise choice. (The friction burns alone from clambering around the rigging…)

It’s clear from reading The Art of the Dragonlance Saga that TSR was trying to turn the ship around when it came to portrayals of women in fantasy, however slowly. And in Caldwell’s defense and to his credit, he definitely delivered women with agency—in nearly every image, they are nearly always doing something active and essential. They just tend to be doing it half-dressed.

Which is all a way of saying I dig this cover—the explosion, the churning sea (even if it does more look like snow drifts than waves), the sailors all running to the rail to look—but yeah, that pirate captain needs to put on some damn pants.

The Adventures: Before we get started, I have to note that though we’re only an issue in, already the magazine feels more noticeably like the work of editor Roger Moore. This is 100% a guess, but it really feels to me like Dungeon #1 was made of adventures that the Dragon office already had laying around, whereas Dungeon #2 was composed of adventures that Roger Moore and the new Dungeon team had more of a hand in sifting through. (He also has an assistant editor this time in Robin Jenkins, which had to have helped.) Even the cartography looks better. Again, I have zero confirmation of this, but the feeling is strong.

“The Titan’s Dream” by W. Todo Todorsky, AD&D, Levels 5–9

PCs visiting an oracle accidentally walk right into a titan’s dream and must solve some conundrums to escape. What an awesome concept this is! (Spoilers for “Best Concept” section below.) It’s a shame I don’t like this more.

First of all, dreamworld adventures are really hard to do well. And for them to work, there usually need to be real stakes—and not just “If you die in the dream, you die in real life!”—and/or a real connection to the PCs in your campaign. The latter, especially, is really hard to pull off in a published adventure; typically it’s only achieved through tactics that critics deride as railroading. (For instance, @wesschneider’s excellent In Search of Sanity does a great job of connecting the characters to their dream adventures...but it does that by a) forging the connection at 1st level, and b) pretty strongly dictating how the adventure begins and how the characters are affiliated. It works, but that’s high-wire-act adventure writing.)

Being a magazine adventure, “The Titan’s Dream” doesn’t have that luxury—it’s got to be for a general audience and work for most campaigns. That unfortunately means the default “Why” of the adventure—a lord with a child, a wedding, and an alliance at stake hires the PCs to chat with a wise titan—is little more than that: a default.

On top of that...I cannot get excited about anything Greek mythology-related. To me, just the fact I’m seeing it is a red flag.

Look, Greek mythology is why I got into this hobby. Hell, it’s why I got into fiction, period. (For some reason I somehow decided I had no use for fiction books targeted to my age, with the exception of Beverly Cleary. Then in 4th(?) grade, I got a copy of Alice Low’s Greek Gods and Heroes, and the rest is history.) But Greek mythology is often the only mythology anyone knows. When people think polytheism, that’s where most people’s minds go. Which is why, if you ever played D&D in the ’80s, I pretty much guarantee your first deity was from that pantheon. (In my first game, my first-level cleric pretty much met Ares and got bitch-slapped by him, because that’s what 4th-grade DMs do.)

So to me, putting Greek deities or titans in your adventure is the equivalent of putting dudes riding sandworms into your desert adventures—you can do it, but you better blow me away, because that is ground so well trod it’s mud. And this one doesn’t do the job.

The format is three dreams, each with five scenes. Parties will move randomly—a mechanic meant to represent dream logic (or lack thereof)—through these scenes, until all the scenes from one dream have been resolved. This is actually kind of fascinating, and I wonder how it would play at the table—I have a feeling observant players will dig it, but others may find the mechanism’s charm wears off quickly, especially if they have difficulty solving the scenes or get frustrated with the achronicity of events. I also like that every scene has a number of possible resolutions, so the PCs aren’t locked into achieving a single specific objective like they were stuck in a computer game.

But...I can’t shake the feeling of weak planning and execution (or even laziness?) that stayed with me throughout the adventure. Like, okay, the first adventure is a cyclops encounter out of the Odyssey. Cool! But then...why does the Titan follow it up with pseudo-Norse/Arthurian encounter? Did the Odyssey not hold the author’s attention? (Nor the Iliad, the Aeneid, or Metamorphosis? Really?) And then why is the third dream “drawn from the realm of pure fairy tale”? Like, were you out of pantheons? Horus didn’t return your calls? Or be more specific—why not German fairy tales, or Danish, or French Court, or Elizabethan? It feels like a class project where one group was on point, one group got the assignment a little wrong, and one didn’t even try.

Again, it’s not even that this adventure is bad—I honestly can’t tell if it is or not; I’m sure a lot of its success is determined at the table. And I could totally see throwing this at a party if I was out of inspiration that week or we needed a low-stakes breather before our next big arc. But the instant I think about it for more than a second, it all falls apart for me.

Have any of you tried this one? Let me know what you thought. And for a similar exploration into dream logic/fairy tale scenarios, I recommend Crystal Frasier’s The Harrowing for Pathfinder.

“In The Dwarven King’s Court” by Willie Walsh, AD&D, Levels 3–5

Willie Walsh is a name we’re going to see a lot more in issues to come—he’s a legendarily prolific Dungeon contributor, delivering quality, typically low-level, and often light-hearted or humorous adventurers issue after issue after issue. His first entry is a mystery with a time limit: A dwarf king is supposed to make a gift of a ceremonial sword to seal a treaty, but the sword has vanished. Brought to the king’s court courtesy of a dream, adventurers must find the sword and the surprising identity of the culprit before the rival power’s delegation arrives.

At first I was going to ding this adventure for its “What, even more dreams this issue?” hook...but here’s the thing with Walsh—never judge his modules until you reach the final page. Nearly every time I’m tempted to dismiss one of his sillier or more random adventure elements, it turns out that it makes sense and works just fine. In this case, the cause of the dream is haunt connected to the mystery, and I feel dumb for being all judgy.

So anyway, the PCs are given leave to search for the stolen object and the thief, but of course it turns out there is a whole lot of light-fingeredness going around. As Bryce (see below) puts it, “It’s like a Poirot mystery: everyone has something to hide.” This castle has as much upstairs-downstairs drama as any British farce, with nearly every NPC having either a fun personality and/or a fun secret (and with the major players illustrated by some equally fun portraits) that should make them memorable friends and foils for PCs to interact with. Not to mention the actual culprit is definitely a twist that will be hard explaining to the king...

GMs should be ready to adjust on the fly, though—a) it’s a lot of characters to juggle, and b) since the PCs are 3rd–5th level, the right spells or some lucky secret door searches could prematurely end the adventure as written. You may want to have some last-minute showdowns, betrayals, or other political intrigue outlined and in your back pocket if what’s on the page resolves too quickly.

Overall though, I’m a big fan of this adventure, and look forward to the rest of Walsh’s output. Also, given the dwarven focus and the geography of the land, this adventure could be a very nice sequel to last issue’s “Assault on Eddistone Point.”

“Caermor” by Nigel D. Findley, AD&D, Levels 2–4

Look at this author’s list of writing credits! Findley was amazingly prolific, and his work was pretty high-quality across the board, as far as I know. I particularly loved the original Draconomicon, one of the first and only 2e AD&D books I ever bought as a kid. I also loved his “Ecology of the Gibbering Mouther” from the excellent Dragon #160, and some of his Spelljammer supplements are currently sitting upstairs in my to-read pile, recently purchased but as yet shamefully untouched.

Now look at his age at the time of his death. Life is not always fair or kind.

(Speaking of unkind, man is the bio in this issue unfortunate in retrospect: “[H]e write for DRAGON® Magazine, enjoys windsurfing, plays in a jazz band, and manages a computer software company in the little time he has left.” As Archer would say, “Phrasing!”)

Anyway, this adventure is simple: An otherworldly force has been murdering the locals. The locals have pinned the blame on a handsome bard from out of town, and their own prejudices and general obstinacy are sure to get in the way of the investigation—that is, if the true culprits, some devil-worshipping culprits and and an abishai devil, don’t get in the way first.

All in all, this is a tight, well-written adventure, so I don’t have much to say about it, other than that if you like the idea of sending your party to help out some young lovers and save some faux-Scots/Yorkshiremen too stubborn to save themselves (and maybe slip in a valuable lesson about prejudice and xenophobia as well), this is the adventure for you.

One thing that does jump out to a contemporary reader, though, is the comically overpowered nature of the baddie pulling the strings in this adventure: Baalphegor, Princess of Hell (emphasis mine). Overpowered, you-won’t-really-fight-this-NPC happens with a lot of low-level adventures, when the writers want a story more epic than characters at the table can handle or are trying to plot the seeds for future evils. But still, any princess of Hell would already be a bit much...but an 18-Hit Dice, “supra-genius”, the Princess of Hell? Like, what the f—er, I mean, Hell?

If you use the adventure as written, the only way to have Baalphegor’s presence make sense is to eventually reveal that the area is an epicenter of some major badness. (Maybe that explains the lost nation of evil dwarves in the adventure background.) For a good model on how to seed early adventures in this matter, Dungeon’s Age of Worms Adventure Path and Pathfinder Adventure Path’s Rise of the Runelords AP, both from Paizo, are exemplars of small-town disturbances that eventually have world-shaking implications.

It’s also fascinating in retrospect to note Ed Greenwood’s massive impact in the hobby. Any article that appears in Dragon has the sheen of being at least semi-official, but it’s clear that Greenwood’s content was a cut above even that. In this case, an NPC from a three-year-old article of his is not just treated as canon, but also supplies the mastermind behind the adventure! It’s no surprise that in the following year his home campaign, the Forgotten Realms, would soon become AD&D’s newest and then its default setting.

Two final thoughts: 1) There’s some fascinating anti-dwarf prejudice in this article. Nearly every mention of dwarves paints them as exceptionally greedy and/or villains. And 2) how did one even begin to balance adventures in those days? This adventure is for “4–8 characters of 2nd–4th level.” There are a lot of difference at the extreme ends of those power scales…

“The Keep at Koralgesh,” by Robert Giacomozzi & Jonathan Simmons, D&D, Levels 1–3

One of the problems of BECMI D&D being known as “basic D&D” is that writers often assumed the players to be basic (that is, younger/new) as well. Which probably accounts for some of the early suggestions to the DM we get at the beginning of this adventure—like some pretty patronizing advice along the lines of not immediately announcing to PCs what the pluses are on their magical swords.

Fortunately, after that the article settles down and gives us Dungeon’s first real D&D adventure. In fact, not just real, but massive: 20 full pages of content—nearly half the issue! It’s a fully fledged dungeon crawl that has the PCs taking advantage of the summer solstice to open a shrine door that will lead them inside a long-ruined keep said to hold great treasure.

Now, I imagine in the coming installments it’s going to seem to many of you like I’m grading D&D adventures on a curve, because of my love for the system and the Known World/Mystara. That’s a fair accusation, but a better way to consider it is that I’m reviewing D&D adventures for what they are—adventures from a separate system, with a more limited rules system and palette of options than AD&D. You don’t go to a performance of Balinese shadow puppetry and compare it against Andrew Lloyd Webber; you look at it for what it achieves in its own medium. Since they appear side-by-side in the same magazine, comparison is going to be inevitable, but that’s with the understanding that AD&D was the kid coloring with the 64-crayon box of Crayola, while D&D was getting by with just eight.

On its own terms then, “The Keep of Korgalesh” is a decent, if not superlative, success. I love that it’s practically module-length and that we get three complete levels—a far cry from the previous issue’s side-trek-at-best, “The Elven Home.” We also get two new monsters, which absolutely fills my inner BECMI D&D player with glee. And I like that what starts as a dungeon crawl/fetch quest evolves into a “kill the big bad thing” and “find out what really happened to this city.”

There are issues, though. If the whole city was destroyed, getting to see some of it besides the keep would have been nice. Some of the ecology for the dungeon inhabitants is questionable. There pretty much wasn’t a single pool or fountain in this era of D&D adventure design that wasn’t magical, and this adventure was no exception. One of the new monster’s names makes no sense except that “tyranna” and “abyss” are cool words (I mean, I guess you could read that as “tyrant of the depths,” but still…) And there are painfully obvious borrowings from other works, especially Tolkien—a door that only opens at solstice, a lake monster, an orc with a split personality that is clearly a Gollum homage, etc.

What this adventure really needs is stakes—just something to give it a bit more oomph beyond the dungeon crawl. (Finding a blacksmith’s lost hammer is the hook offered in the adventure but it’s pretty flimsy.) Perhaps the PCs are some of Kor’s last worshippers, and clearing out the dangers here and resanctifying his temple is one of their first steps toward returning him to prominence. Maybe the PCs’ grandparents were involved in the city’s demise and restoring Koralgesh will restore the families’ honor. Or you could keep it simple and have a band of pirates or a rival adventuring group also trying to clean out the keep, turning it into a race (with the tyrannabyss causing the scales of fate to wobble at appropriately cinematic moments).

So the final analysis is this is a decent dungeon crawl upon which you can build a good adventure. The real reward of this module isn’t treasure; it’s finding out just what happened to Koralgesh. But for that to matter, it needs to tie into the PCs’ pasts, futures, or both.

BONUS CONTENT FOR KNOWN WORLD/MYSTARA NERDS: Kor is almost certainly a local name for the sun god Ixion. The chaotic deity Tram is probably a local version of Alphaks, though Atzanteotl is another strong candidate, especially since deceit was key to the pirates’ success. Koralgesh could be located somewhere on the Isle of Dawn, the northern coast of Davania, or an Ierendi/Minrothad Isle that those nations haven’t made it a priority to rebuild.

Best Read: “Caermor.” Nigel D. Findley was a pro.

Best Adventure I Could Actually Run with Minimal Prep: “The Keep at Koralgesh,” as a well-written, straight-ahead dungeon crawl. Every other adventure here relies on a pretty strong handle of very mobile NPCs and their motivations, or a Titan’s dream mechanics.

Best Concept: “The Titan’s Dream,” as noted above. It’s a great idea very worth exploring, even if I wasn’t about the execution we got in this case.

Best Monster: This was actually a monster-light issue. Despite some awesome art for the tyrannabyss, I have to go with the epadrazzil, a scaly ape from a two-dimensional plane of existence that has to be summoned via a painting. All of those details are just so wonderfully and weirdly specific it has to win. (Extra points for anyone who noticed the thoul—a classic D&D monster (though it did make its way into AD&D’s Mystara setting) born from a typo.)

Best NPC: Since this is a role-playing-heavy issue, there are a bunch of contenders, and the final verdict will go to whoever your party sparks to at the table. Obviously King Baradon the Wise should get the nod for [spoiler-y reasons], but I also really like the opportunity the executioner Tarfa offers, thanks to his incriminating goblet and how it might bring the PCs to the attention of a far-off assassin’s guild at just the right level.

Best Map: All together the maps from “The Keep at Koralgesh” form an extremely appealing whole. But for best single map I have to go for the palace of Mount Diadem—that is a bangin’ dwarven demesne.

Best Thing Worth Stealing: Jim Holloway’s illustrations of dwarves. Good dwarf, gnome, and halfling art is hard to find, and even the good stuff often leans stereotypical. While Holloway’s art is often humorous—I have a feeling he and Roger Moore jibed really well, though that’s totally a guess based purely on what assignments he got handed—his dwarves, especially in this issue, are fresh, specific, and unique. You could identify them by their silhouettes alone—always the sign of good character art. If you need an image of a dwarf NPC to show the players, “In the Dwarven King’s Court” is a great first stop.

Worst Aged: Female thong pirates on magazine covers. Also using the actual names of actual mental illnesses in game materials.

What Bryce Thinks: “This seems to be a stronger issue than #1, although half of the adventures are … unusual.”

Bryce actually almost likes “The Titan’s Dream,” confirming my loathing of it. He in turn loathes “In the Court of the Dwarven King.” Like me, though, he is pro-”Caermor” and sees potential in “The Keep at Koralgesh.” (Also credit where it’s due: I might have missed the condescension at the start if he hadn’t called it out.)

So, Is It Worth It?: If you’re a Clyde Caldwell fan, this issue might be worth searching out in print. So much of Caldwell’s work from this era was dictated by product needs, cropped and boxed up in ads, or shrunk down to fit on a paperback cover. So to get this cover in full magazine size, with only the masthead tucked up top to get in the way—that could be well worth a few bucks to you.

Also, if you’re BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia-era D&D fan (or know someone who is), again, this one might be worth having in print. “The Keep at Koralgesh” is a legit, proper BECMI D&D adventure, spanning 20 whole pages and with two new monsters to boot. I would have practically have cried if someone had given 7th-grade me this.

Beyond that you can probably just rely on the PDF. But both “Caermor” and “In the Dwarven King’s Court” have strong bones worth putting some modern muscle and skin on.

Random Thoughts:

The Caldwell cover painting was also used for the Blackmoor module DA4 The Duchy of Ten. PS: I’m not trying to tell you what to do or anything, but if you do happen to run across a physical copy of The Duchy of Ten or and of the DA modules, holla at ya boy over here.

Since this is our second issue, we now have a “Letters” column. Turns out Dungeon had been announced in Dragon #111 with a really detailed set of writer’s guidelines; most of the correspondence is questions re: those. In the process of answering, we get some surprisingly frank talk about payment. The $900 for a cover seemed low until I converted it to 2018 dollars, and ~$2,000 does seem right to my ignorant eye. I then made the mistake of converting my current salary to 1986 dollars and felt a lot worse about myself and what I’ve achieved.

Apologies this took so long to post. I had the issue read by early October and most of this review written with the next week or two after...but then I got involved in dealing with a 4.5 week hospitalization and aftermath...and then a second still-ongoing hospitalization...and even though I only had about four paragraphs left I just couldn’t find time to put a bow on it.

Notable Ads: The gold Immortals Rules box for D&D. (I also still don’t have that one yet, and Christmas is coming. Just saying, guys, if you happen to find one in your attic.) ;-) Also an ad for subscribing to Dungeon itself, starring “my war dinosaur, Boo-Boo.” No, really.

Over in Dragon: Beneath a glorious cover, Roger Moore is the new editor of Dragon #115, three authors (including Vince Garcia, who I like a lot) share credit on a massive six articles about fantasy thieves, a famous article proposing that clerics get the weapons of their deity (people were still talking about it in the “Forum” column when I was buying my first issues two years later), and a look at harps from the Forgotten Realms (notable because behind the scenes Ed Greenwood’s home setting was being developed for the AD&D game for launch in 1987.) A photographic cover and a 3-D sailing ship are served up in Dragon #116, along with maritime adventures, more Ed Greenwood (rogue stones), and articles for ELFQUEST, Marvel Super Heroes (Crossfire’s gang), and FASA’s Dr. Who game (looking at all six(!) doctors). (Incidentally, I had an Irish babysitter around this time who first mentioned Dr. Who to me—I wish I’d explored more but I was too young to understand what I’d been offered.)

PS: Yes, I’ve heard about the upcoming Tumblr ban. It is a terrible idea that will affect way too many of my readers. It shouldn’t affect me much (and I have all my monster entries backed up at the original site), but I will keep you posted as I learn more, particularly if I find you, my readers, packing up and going elsewhere.

[cromulentbookreview]

Weaponized Jaws

Or: Seafire by Natalie C. Parker!

Action on the seas featuring badass female protagonists? Yeah, I’m definitely going to read that. Very little needed in the way of convincing me to read this book.

Seafire had been advertised before as Fury Road meets Wonder Woman meets the ocean, which makes sense. Though with much less Wonder Woman and way more of Kevin Costner's Waterworld.

Alright, children, gather around while I explain to you what Waterworld was.

Yeah, Waterworld. Not a video game, it was a movie starring Kevin Costner, the world’s only American-accented Robin Hood (hey, I like that movie, Alan Rickman was a treasure and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise). Waterworld came out in 1995 and was massive flop, now a bit of a cult-classic. I remember 1995, somewhat vaguely. God I’m an Old now, aren’t I?

I’ll never be as cool as Steve Buscemi, though.

For those of you who enjoy both Fury Road and Waterworld, then you’ll definitely like Seafire. I love anything that takes place on the ocean - a side effect of my strange Dudes on Boats fixation that I’ve mentioned previously (my apologies to For a Muse of Fire, . Sea stories are kind of my thing. So is post-apocalyptic YA fiction. So this book ticked all the “I need entertainment and want to forget the news exists right now” boxes and worked out perfectly.

Caledonia Styx lives in Crapsack Waterworld, a post-apocalyptic flooded version of our world (referenced occasionally as the “old world”, flooded/destroyed as a result of some unknown calamity). Caledonia has the misfortune to live in an area controlled by Aric Athair, a vicious warlord and sir-not-appearing-in-this-book (since Seafire is the first in a planned trilogy, I’m sure we’ll meet him eventually). Anyway, Athair controls his war boys, called Bullets, by drugging them with something called Silt, made from some sort of weird hybrid poppy-flower-thing. Life in Athair’s territory sucks, so Caledonia’s mom, Rhona, and a bunch of other families have gotten together on the Styx family’s ship, the Ghost, to break through Athair’s blockade and head off to freedom elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the night the Ghost intends to escape, Caledonia and her best friend Pisces (they’re really big on the names from Greco Roman mythology in crapsack Waterworld) are sent ashore to gather some last minute supplies. Caledonia comes across a bullet called Lir, who asks for her help. It’s all bullshit, though - the second Caledonia gives away the location of the Ghost, Lir and his fellow bullets attack, slaughtering Caledonia and Pisces’s families and sinking the Ghost.

Pisces didn’t witness Lir’s treachery, though, and Caledonia, feeling responsible for the deaths of all those onboard the Ghost, keeps that bit where she gave away the position of the ship to herself. That makes sense, considering how guilty it feels, but later, as Caledonia refers to Pisces as her “sister”, the fact that she kept this bit of intel under wraps does become a tad annoying. Especially when Caledonia refuses, multiple times, to clarify why it is she does’t trust Bullets. She’s just like “nope, can’t trust Bullets” instead of “no, that one time I trusted a Bullet, he slaughtered our families.”

Anyway!

Four years after the deaths of their families, Caledonia and Pisces have raised and repaired the Ghost, renaming it the Mors Navis.

(Language nerd sidebar: Mors Navis, by the way, is Latin for Death Ship. Thank you Google translate! No thanks to my 10+ years of German education. Why couldn’t I have picked a Latin language? Noo, I had to go with the Germanics. Mors Navis does sound way more menacing than Totenschiff. Eat it, B. Traven).

Over those four years, Caledonia, acting as captain, and Pisces, her first mate, have collected a crew composed entirely of girls and women, all of whom have no love for Aric Athair and his Bullet army. Caledonia and her crew basically go around the Bullet seas, making life hell for Athair’s people. During one such mission, Pisces is wounded and then captured, only to be rescued and returned to the Mors Navis by a Bullet who claims he wants to escape. Caledonia, who has literally zero reasons to trust Bullets, doesn’t trust him. Pisces points out, reasonably, that he saved her life when he could have left her to die. But Caledonia simply repeats her mantra of “no trusting Bullets” while refusing to elaborate.

Until the Bullet lets it slip that Donnally and Ares, Caledonia and Pisces’s brothers, respectively, survived the massacre on board the Ghost and were pressed into Athair’s drug-addled Bullet army. He knows what ship Donnally and Ares are on, and the route it takes to bring in conscripts (read: children stolen from their families, drugged, and forced into Athair’s army, refusal to comply met with extreme violence, in the usual fashion of a murderous tyrant).

Suddenly, Caledonia has reason to question her strict “don’t trust Bullets” policy. But it’s one of those Meek’s Cutoff situations: the Bullet could be a lying sack of shit and leading the Mors Navis into a trap. Or he could be telling the truth, leading Caledonia and Pisces to their long-lost brothers. What to do?

Well, it’d be a pretty short book if they just shot the Bullet, dumped his body in the ocean and moved on, wouldn’t it?

It took me a little longer to read Seafire than I intended - I’m a slow reader anyway, but while I was reading Seafire, I was also binging on Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastard series (which are fantastic by the way - highly recommend the audiobooks, Michael Page is an amazing audiobook narrator) so my focus may have been just a wee bit divided. My biggest complaint is now we have yet another seafaring heroine with red hair. How come all the seafaring heroines have to have red hair? Also, it’s funny you should bring up red hair, because in the world of the Gentleman Bastards, bad things happen to girls with red hair. Seriously, how come all the fiery heroine types have to have red hair? I mean, it’s not like I’m jealous or anything. I mean, it’s not like I should have been born with red hair, but no, it ended up a dull, boring blonde, and hair dye is expensive and smells terrible...

Uhm.

I mean.

Seriously, though, red hair is a rare thing - if Caledonia’s father had dark hair and her mother had red hair, the most likely outcome would be a bunch of kids with...dark hair. Though if her father did have a recessive red-hair gene, then it’s entirely possible for him to have produced red-headed children... So I guess it’s possible. 

Not that I’m annoyed that my hair didn’t turn out red. Even though it should have, goddamn it! I know those recessive genes are in there somewhere!

Stupid lousy blonde hair grumble grumble grumble...

Ok, back to Seafire - it is definitely a highly enjoyable book, lots of nonstop action, but not a lot of resolution because it’s the first in an intended series. I highly recommend breezing through the book in one go, rather than endlessly picking it up and then putting it down in order to find out whether or not Locke and Jean finally kiss (they don’t). 

But yes, jealousy over fictional characters’ red hair aside, the only major complaint I have about Seafire rests with a single line. The thing about reading ARCs, which I think I’ve mentioned before but, again, nobody reads these, so I might as well: ARCs are not finished copies. The final copy of Seafire might not even feature this line, so it seems silly to complain about it, but complaining is fun so I’ll do it anyway.

So the secondary-boss villain, Lir, Caledonia’s sworn enemy as he killed her whole goddamn family, is described as having a “long face with a jaw that looked sharp enough to be a weapon of its own.”

From that line onward I found I was unable to focus on anything except how a man’s jaw could be sharp enough to constitute a weapon. It’s a question that’s been driving me to distraction for weeks now. Is Lir’s jawline sharp enough that it comes to a point, like a knife? What would that look like on a three-dimensional human person? How would one wield their weaponized jaws? Like a battering ram? Or would you just like, wave your head around like a sword? Does this mean his chin comes to a point, too? That one line of the galley proof of Seafire has caused me more consternation than anything else in the book - and this is a book that features lots of violence. Lots and lots of it. And here I am contemplating a man with a weaponized jawbone. 

I mean, of the whole book it’s one line and it doesn’t even matter but...but...gah, I can’t help but picture a guy with knives for a jaw. 

RECOMMENDED FOR: Fans of badass female protagonists kicking ass on the high seas, fans of YA lit who also happen to be fans of Kevin Costner’s Waterworld.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone who takes physical descriptions of fictional far too literally.

RELEASE DATE: August 28, 2018

RATING: 4/5

ANTICIPATION LEVEL FOR SEQUEL: Lhotse

OBLIGATORY STYX REFERENCE:

[scarletwelly-boots]

Books Read 2017

I read 35 books this year. I'm about halfway done with #36, so I might make a smaller post later if I finish it before the New Year. I will also make a follow-up with the top ten so you don't need to read this whole thing. This post will briefly review each book (and damn I slacked this year; last year I got through 39 books).

As last year, each entry will include the title, author, and the entry of this year's reading challenge that it fell under.

1. All the King’s Men, by Nora Sakavic (A book that’s been on your TBR list for way too long). This is book three of the All for the Game trilogy, and holy shit you have to read this. It’s the best book in the trilogy. It is a series about a college sports team who play a made up sport called Exy, which is basically a more violent version of lacrosse. I’m not a huge sports fan, but the way she writes Exy matches had me on the edge of my seat. The team is made up of all “at-risk” students, the main character being a kid on the run from his mob boss dad. Trigger warning for the series for violence, sexual assault/rape, abuse, drug use, I may be missing some things. It was so good though.

2. Chopsticks, by Jessica Anthony (A book of letters). This book was recommended to me by a friend, and I kind of cheated on including this for this part of the challenge. It’s not entirely epistolary. It’s more mixed media. The story is told through pictures, letters, newspaper articles, notes, etc. It was good. It’s about a girl who’s basically this piano prodigy who meets a boy and falls in love.

3. East, by Edith Patton (an audio book). This year was going to be the year I reread books I haven’t read since junior high, but I kind of fell through on that, so I think this might be the only one I actually read. It’s a retelling of the Scandinavian fairy tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon, which in turn is basically a version of Beauty and the Beast. I was obsessed with Beauty and the Beast retellings (and fairy tale retellings in general) when I was fourteen. The book certainly holds up over time. I definitely recommend it.

4. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Saenz (a book by a person of color). Guys, everything you have heard about this book is true. It is so cute, and beautifully written. Two very different boys meet at a swimming pool when they are fifteen, and almost immediately become inseparable best friends. Also, if you can, the audiobook is surprisingly cheap on Amazon and read by el amor de mi vida, Lin-Manuel Miranda, so the book has that going for it too. 11/10 would recommend.

5. The Summer Palace, by CS Pacat (a book with one of the four seasons in the title). This is a short story in the Captive Prince series, and while it is absolutely adorable and so sunny, you need to read the trilogy to understand and appreciate it. It’s so sweet, with Laurent and Damen finally allowed to get to know each other and explore their personalities without the immediate threat of death hanging over them. Definitely recommended, but only after you read the trilogy, which I also obviously recommend.

6. The Course of Irish History, by TW Moody &co (a book with multiple authors). This is like 800-page textbook-grade Irish history, from the Ancient Celts to the Celtic Tiger economy in the 2000s. It is the leading book for Irish History courses, as I understand it. Guys. I loved this book. It took me forever to read, but I love Irish history books. It’s almost the only nonfiction I can sit through. Will you like it? Probably not. Do I recommend it anyway? Absolutely. 

7. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire (a book with a cat on the cover). Might’ve cheated on this entry too. Okay, listen. I have zero interest in reading the other books in the series and I’m sorry, but the musical was ten times better. However, there are several things about this book that I love. (And I read this in January so how accurate my memories are is questionable.) Elphaba is absolutely bi/pan in this and you cannot convince me otherwise. There are two munchkins who aren’t in the musical but who are absolutely gay as the Fourth of July. I’m pretty sure I remember someone who could be read as trans. This book was very queer. I just have no attachment to the characters that I know will be in the other books. If you want to read it, I’d recommend it. If you have the opportunity to see the musical instead, go with that option even if it’s the more expensive choice.

8. Fence, vol. 1, by CS Pacat (a book by an author who uses a pseudonym): CS Pacat is back, this time with a modern sports comic about fencing. This is a literal comic book guys, so it was really short, but vol. 2 is out soon so it’s okay. I liked it. I like fencing and CS Pacat, so I enjoyed it. Too short, but I know that’s how comics work. Yeah, go read it and support comics.

9. The Raven King, by Nora Sakavic (a bestseller from a genre you don’t normally read). “This was a bestseller?” Yeah, okay, so I cheated a lot this year. It should have been a best seller. This is book two in the All for the Game series. I already explained this series above, but guys read it, it’s so good!

10. Turtles All the Way Down, by John Green (a book by or about someone who has a disability). Yay, John Green wrote another book! Yep, it’s a Green book all right. But it was really, really good. Yes, this is coming from someone whose favorite book is still The Fault in Our Stars, but listen. The main character has anxiety like crazy, and Green, having anxiety himself, writes it so well. Almost too well; the character’s anxiety was starting to give me anxiety. I loved it. Read this book.

11. A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson (A book involving travel), this is a classic. Bryson goes to hike the Appalachian Trail, which is very very long. He takes along his somewhat stupid friend from home. Another nonfiction book, but it was good and had no Ireland at all in it. It was really funny, too. I recommend the audiobook, because it’s really fast to get through, but good. 

12. The Immortal Irishman, by Timothy Egan (a book with a subtitle). I know, but it’s got a subtitle actually but I just can’t remember what it is. Guys, I know it’s Irish history again. This book is whole leagues above The Course of Irish History. It’s not a textbook, and doesn’t read like one. It’s a biography on Thomas Francis Meagher, a revolutionary in Famine-decimated Ireland trying to free his dying and oppressed country from the English. It doesn’t go well. He’s imprisoned and sentenced to death. But instead of dying, he is transported to the Penal Colony in Australia, where he lives and works to free Australia from Britain’s clutches as well, before he escapes to the United States just in time to be a general in the Civil War. It’s really good.  

13. Weird Ireland, assorted authors (a book that’s published in 2017). A very small, independently published book about paranormal, supernatural, and extra-terrestrial sightings in Ireland. It was okay. I finished it in two hours. I knew everything that was in it, and some of it they even got wrong. Even if you’re crazy-obsessed with Ireland like me, you can skip this one.

14. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the movie script, by JK Rowling (a book involving a mythical creature). Did you see the movie? Then you’re good, you don’t need to read the script. Bye.

15. Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones (a book you’ve read before than never fails to make you smile). Did I say TFiOS is my favorite book? Sorry, I meant this one. Did you see the movie? Don’t care, book’s better, go read it. This may be my most frequently read book on my shelf. It’s sooo good!

16. Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt (a book with career advice): I hate to say this about a fellow Irishman and a celebrated author, but Frank McCourt? not a great guy. The book was good, because I’m also a teacher, so some of what he was saying was relatable to me. But the guy teaches high school English, and even though the book follows him from his thirties to like his sixties, he’s kind of salivating over the high school girls and it was making me very uncomfortable. He never actually does anything about his attraction (at least not in the book), but I was still like this is wildly unprofessional please stop. 

17. Loki: Agent of Asgard vol. 1, by Jason Ewing (a book from a nonhuman perspective): This was the second-ever graphic novel I’ve ever read guys. Yes, I had a weeabo phase in junior high like everyone else, so I did read manga, but comics were never really that interesting to me. So I was Thor: Ragnarok six times this year. Why did I see it six times? I love Loki and their genderfluidity, even if the MCU won’t acknowledge that my love so obviously gf. So I decided to read all the comics where it’s canon that Loki is genderfluid. This book was so good, please read.

18. Graceling, by Kristen Cashore (a steampunk novel). Cheating again, sorry. This was more fantasy than steampunk. It was also a junior high favorite I’m reading again. In this world, there are people born with two eye colors that signify they have special abilities. Some are benign, like being an amazing baker or the ability to tell someone is lying to you, but some are more sinister. The main character, Katsa’s grace is for killing. It’s a good book.

19. The Irish Civil War, by Tim Pat Coogan (a book with a red spine). A very short book highlighting the Irish Civil War 1922-1923. I liked it, because the civil war is basically the only section of Irish history I was still a little foggy on, so it was helpful. Will you like it? Only if you’re into Irish history like me. This is not Immortal Irishman.

20. Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan (A book you loved as a child). We read this with my fifth graders last year. I loved this book when I was ten, but I got so much more out of it this second time around. It’s a really good book, even if you’re not a child. Esperanza starts out the daughter of a wealthy rancher, but when her father dies under shifty circumstances, she and her mother are forced to flee to America, where they live with their servants’ relatives in a migrant worker camp in California, facing hardship, discrimination, and immigration laws. It’s very good.

21. Cupid, by Julius Lester (a book with a title that’s a character’s name). This was okay. I thought I’d read it in junior high, but I had no memory of any of it. It’s a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, which is very similar to East of the Sun and West of the Moon. The author tried to be tongue-in-cheek in a few places, which I didn’t appreciate, but overall it’s a pretty good YA novel. 

22. Loki: Agent of Asgard vol. 2, by Jason Ewing (a book with an unreliable narrator). Loki? Unreliable? Since when? Still good, still queer, Freyja pissing me off as always.

23. Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel (a book with pictures): Okay, I guess I lied, since this book was a graphic novel and I read it before Loki. It was really interesting. It’s autobiographical of Bechdel’s life and relationship with her dad.

24. The Pirate Queen, by Barbara Sjoholm (a book about an interesting woman). Not only was this about my favorite person ever, Grace O’Malley, stone in Britain’s imperial sandal, but also talked about the relationship between Atlantic-dwelling women and the sea. It covers goddesses, fisherwomen, pirates, adventurers, and sea-witches from Ireland, Scotland, the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland. It was really interesting and I recommend it. 

25. Timekeeper, by Tara Sim (a book set in two different time periods). Cheated here, too, don’t know what I was thinking. Anyway, this is a steampunk novel in which clock towers actually control time, which means that if there’s a flaw, it affects time itself in more literal ways. It’s about a clock mechanic and a clock spirit who lives in one of the towers and watches over the clock. They are adorably gay, but that’s more of a subplot because someone has been sabotaging the towers and throwing time into chaos. The sequel comes out in January. Good for a debut novel.

26. Across Five Aprils, by Irene Hunt (a book with a month or day of the week in the title). This is about a ten-year-old boy growing up in rural Illinois during the Civil War, so it talks about how it affects him and his family, as well as covers the course of the war in a more general perspective. It was interesting, and well written, but I think I prefer Hunt’s Up a Road Slowly.

27. The Adventures of Charls, by CS Pacat (a book written by someone you admire): Another Captive Prince short story that should be read after The Summer Palace. Where Green But for a Season (the first CP short story) was sad, and Summer Palace was passionate and cute, The Adventures of Charls is hilarious. Charls, the cloth merchant, was such a great side character in the CP trilogy, and telling the story from his perspective was great. It doesn’t have to be read after the Summer Palace, but at least the trilogy should be read first.

28. Wonder, by RJ Palacio (a book that’s becoming a movie in 2017). Did you watch the movie? Whitewashed, go read the fucking book. I read this with my fifth graders last year too, who loved it. It’s a very sweet story, and the movie was good, but it goes too fast and leaves out some scenes that I liked. Highly, highly recommend.

29. The Foxhole Court, by Nora Sakavic (the first book in a series you haven’t read before). First book (obviously) in the All for the Game series. What are you still doing here? Go start this trilogy!

30. Symptoms of Being Human, by Jeff Garvin (a bestseller from 2016). I think I cheated again, but this book should have been a bestseller. Quality of the story gets a solid 7/10, but this is the only novel I know of that has a canon human genderfluid character, and representation is so important and for a cis dude, this guy wrote genderfluid shockingly well. Characterization and representation gets a 10/10 because I just ignored the “I’m a whiny teenager, no one likes me, my parents don’t get me, woe is me” chorus. Some of it was justified, because they were being bullied, and they weren’t out to their parents, but still, the book was written very young adult-y. 

31. The Story We Carry in Our Bones, by Juliene Osbourne-McKnight (a book about an immigrant or refugee). The subtitle describes the book best: Irish history for Irish-Americans. Down side: very watered down Irish history because it’s a small book and just an introduction to Irish history. Up side: More information and context of the history of the Irish in America, because my personal studies have pretty much entirely skipped over that aspect of my heritage. If you’re Irish-American and looking to learn a little more about your ethnic past, but don’t want to dive headfirst into the deep end of Irish everything like me, you should read this book. If you’re willing to study more in-depth Irish history, skip this book and I have some better recommendations for you. 

32. Loki: Agent of Asgard vol. 3, by Jason Ewing (a book from a genre you’ve never heard of): Cheated; I know what a comic book is. This is the last volume in this series. My only qualm is a spoiler, so I’ll give it 8/10.

33. Original Sin: Thor and Loki in the Tenth Realm, by Jason Ewing (a book with an eccentric character): Who is more eccentric than Loki “Always-Extra” Laufeyson? This is the first comic I’ve ever read, and I have to say it was very good. Featuring genderfluid!Loki all the way, actual Father-of-the-Year this time Odin, Freyja’s shockingly shitty parenting skills (maybe this is a theme in the comics, but coming from actual-angel!Frigga in the MCU, this was upsetting for me), and Thor abandoning the Avengers in a fight to start another battle in another realm because Thor is a fucking over-dramatic bastard. 

34. Huntess, by Malinda Lo (a book that’s been mentioned in another book). I read Lo’s Ash a few years ago and loved it. Huntress, while okay, didn’t quite live up to the hype I’d applied to it after reading Ash. It was good, and had a very mythical Ireland feel to it that I liked, and it was very gay, but I don’t know, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. 

35. Ever, by Gail Carson Levine (a book based on mythology). I read this book when I was fourteen, too (guess I did read a lot of books from junior high). I love this book. It’s about a young god who meets a monotheistic mortal girl and they fall in love despite the differences in their religion. I didn’t love it as much as I did in junior high, but it’s still good. Levine also wrote Ella Enchanted, which is very good and more well-known than Ever.