#anyways no one is doing it like the greater Oz canon

[allalrightagain]

Went looking for an extremely specific character name for a Wicked fic I'm writing and far be it from me to say there's such a thing as too much whimsy in a political commentary (or vice versa) but boy does this franchise have both in spades.

[wawamouse]

Nodding to much of what you said, although I won’t address everything little thing here for time’s sake :P

(maybe it’ll come up at a different point, anyhow) (sorry in advance for typos... I just noticed some in my original post, too OTL)

That’s an interesting detail about who Cannavale based Torquemada on. I’d always assumed that the character was written into the show (with the club backdrop, that is) based on Michael Alig… It seemed likely to me that Fontana would’ve remembered it from the news in the 90s and thrown it in. But that’s more me thinking about creator’s inspiration. I think I also think of Torquemada more as the wannabe mogul type, so the actor definitely brought that energy, haha.

As far as Torquemada’s backstory goes, I have a vivid picture of a young Alonzo for some reason... Maybe for the reason above, to be honest. I think he would’ve been a deceptively petty and vicious boy. Maybe his queerness would’ve become more apparent in his teen years, but at the same time, I think he would have known how to use a kind of social charm to protect himself—surrounding himself with the right people and all that. He strikes me as the kind of guy who from a young age decides that they’re going to be someone and do something. Definitely always hustling one way or another and wanting to be the center of attention in the beginning—throwing ragers, hosting, making a name as a guy to know. Running a nightclub would’ve been a way to meet people and boost his own celebrity. I kind of headcanon him as perhaps being on the cusp of wanting to move on from nightclubs to something bigger and better and then shifting into selling drugs as a way to enrich himself further before figuring out what that next step should’ve been… but resentment toward associates ultimately takes him down and he arrives at Oz instead…. Lol, to answer your question, I highly doubt it was Torquemada’s intent to land in Oz; I think he literally couldn’t refuse his impulse to throw acid in the other person’s face. That kind of goes to my headcanon for the hypothetical post-canon/s7. I think like many of the characters in Oz, one of Torquemada’s biggest weaknesses is that he can’t control himself. Hubris.

Personally, I don't see him as being particularly prone to severe depression, but I imagine his depression would be the irritable type. I think he would lash out. In a way, he is already a little bit delusional on his own—I think he has to be, to have his ambitions as well as his strengths. So yeah, I think he would just go sort of a self-destructive Ortolani route, in some ways, on his own terms, trying to take back control but burning out fast (no pun intended).

Anyway, I agree that Torquemada’s aggressive approach that we see in the show would have only worked for so long, which is why I’m personally not so sure about the idea of him having storylines as early as season 3 or 4 (I think there was a misunderstanding lol—I meant EPISODE 3 or 4 of season 6 in my original post, haha). Unless he was suuuuper quiet as he built his standing—seems improbable/a completely different character at that point, possibly—I don’t think he could’ve rode the wave that long in the greater landscape of the show. Would've probably ended up butting heads with someone else trying to make moves, like O'Reily, perhaps. Unless he crashed and burned and then disappeared for a couple seasons like Schibetta, I think Alonzo's queerness would have meant that his end is The End for him… He’d get either killed or permanently moved away to PC, transferred, etc.

As far as Chico ODing, I will address it because uhhhh look at my blog, but: also, honestly I still don’t know how he managed to do that, because surely the guy can handle his drugs??? One would assume?? I’ve scattered my theories across several replies under other posts so I’ll just put some of my thoughts here, as they relate to Torquemada’s plans anyway, or a potential reading:

Theory 1: ACCIDENT - Chico just overestimated his tolerance or underestimated the strength of Destiny: idk, maybe he’d been clean for a while, etc, accidental ODs happen obviously. When Miguel refused the tab, he may have unthinkingly ingested it thinking it’d be fine

Theory 2: SABATOGE! The Destiny Torquemada gave Chico was laced / Torquemada told Chico the incorrect dosage to intentionally make him overdose

My main reason for thinking this is the idea that Alonzo wanted to work with Miguel. With Morales out of the picture around the time that Alonzo arrives, there’s a power vacuum in El Norte leadership. For reasons that are hilariously absurd if you stop to think about it, Chico originally tries to nominate Miguel as leader in 6x06 but Miguel isn’t interested in leading due to his parole. It’s unclear what happens next but given Chico’s always been 2IC, it serves to assume that he is once again acting as at least the temporary leader—until he can convince Miguel to step up or someone else with a reputation like El Cid comes in and takes over instead.

Side note, I also headcanon that when Torquemada says in the computer lab “I hear you’re the man to know”, it was Chico who told him this as a ploy to force Miguel into leadership again (Miguel says “Whoever told you that was an idiot” lol). Mostly I think this had to have been so because it doesn’t super make sense for any of El Norte or, frankly, anyone else to have given Torquemada this patently false information, unless something changed and Miguel is at least the reluctant leader**. And while Torquemada *is* attracted to Miguel, I don’t think he would’ve tried to have some business meeting unless he truly thought Miguel had something to offer in that regard (otherwise he probably would’ve just gone inside to leer, right?). **I suppose it’s possible that Miguel has gone on after 6x06 to at least be leader in name due to the fact that Chico told Pancamo he is. In the case that Chico is playing serious hot potato with the leader role, then maybe Miguel has been saddled with the title without doing the job.

Regardless, in the laundry room scene, Chico’s got a boombox given to him by Alonzo and it’s clear that he’s had a chat with the guy about bringing in Destiny; this is supported by him telling Miguel that Torquemada even said they’d be giving Destiny to the hacks [insert howl and jumping spin]. After Chico is taken to the hospital ward and the unit is shaken down, we see Alonzo fixating on Miguel, who shakes his head in disbelief/disapproval/etc.

On a different day (different clothes), Torquemada approaches Miguel talking about a new shipment of D-tabs. Alonzo describes Guerra overdosing at going whacky and wants Miguel’s help with the increased hack scrutiny since he’s tight with McManus. I feel like if Alonzo was aware that Miguel was reluctant to actually be leader, then it makes sense that he could have possibly guaranteed Chico overdosing to get him fully out of the way and make sure that now Miguel actually has to be leader as there are no strong alternatives to him in El Norte and he has already been talked around as leader. Now head of El Norte, by conventional practices in Oz, he should have to be Alonzo’s business partner if he knows what's good for him... Also, El Norte are still in business with the Sicilians who are already going into business with Torquemada, so pulling in the Latinos is what the other members would probably want anyhow. Why would Alonzo do all this? We don’t really see how he views El Norte or Chico otherwise, but as we’ve established, Alonzo has a vested interest in Miguel, so I don’t think it’s a stretch that if he came in being told Miguel would work with him and then got rejected, after he read the situation more carefully and realised Miguel wasn’t truly the leader or not the leader yet, he might have a reason to make the moves and get what it was he wanted (Miguel), while also taking some glee in arranging the situation, trying to change Miguel’s mind, etc.

Separately, there is the fact that directly before the laundry room scene, there is an interaction between Torquemada and Miguel where the former talks shop with Pancamo with Miguel in hearing distance and later comes over to quip about how easy the expansion of Destiny is. I feel like this scene could support several readings and still fit into any of what I said above; if Chico is El Norte’s leader, then perhaps Torquemada is simply using the moment to interact with Miguel; maybe it goes back to the possibility that Miguel is leader of El Norte in name at this point; maybe Torquemada would prefer Miguel to be leader and is reminding him how easy it would be to be in business with him, that is, planting that idea before he goes on to guarantee Chico is incapacitated.

Re: theory that Gays work with the Latinos: Another headcanon I’ve had that I’ve scattered in all corners of my blog, but basically, I believe this to be the case beginning with Morales’s leadership. We see the Gays helping the Sicilians when it comes to killing Nappa, and we also see background shots of Tony and another unnamed gay from Season 1 braiding the Homeboys’ hair (Jefferson Keane and Poet, anyhow). We can reason that the Gays likely sell out various services in order to protect themselves as well as for a form of additional income. Given the fact that there is constant worldbuilding going on with the background actors that we don’t know about but inform what they do in the scenes (according to cast interviews), I think it’s no coincidence that over the course of season 4 into season 6, we often see El Norte and the Gays sitting at the same cafeteria table right next to each other or at neighboring tables in the unit. I believe that Morales, who is more neutrally business-minded, would have been more open to utilising the man power of the Gays than El Cid. The fact that they seem more aligned than the Gays with any other group suggests to me that they have some kind of longer term deal between them.

Some examples of interaction:

Tony & other gays (not pictured) sitting in on whatever discussion El Norte is having in this background moment of 4x13.

Tony passing Chico an unknown object through the bars of the Cage in 4x15

Same lunch table... 4x10 & 5x04: We see Kiki and Tony (not in frame) sitting beside Jorge and Morales, respectively. In the season 5 moment, we also see Tony, Fiona, sitting with El Norte. The guy in gray between Fiona and Chico is probably another gay, as there is a brown haired man with a gray shirt seated with the gays in another scene in 5x04.

Tbh there are many more instances in s4-6 but these screencaps only ones I have on hand—my computer is being slow rn so I don't want to go scrubbing for more, but just trust me. I watch the lunch tables a lot lol...

( @heffer-wen I was going to write a reply but got lazy about breaking up this word vomit into parts, so… new post!)

(Also… yeah, ace is probably what I was thinking last night (lmao… “business minded” 🤣) I think I do see him as some shade of asexual when it comes down to it)

More thoughts on Torquemada (aka Here’s How We Could Have Had It All)

I feel like I recall seeing some interview at one point where Fontana admitted that he didn’t have much of Oz thought out beyond s1 and a bit of s2, and for sure the later seasons get wacky but there’s still Something there with most of the little bits that end up in the show, imo. It’s mostly the execution that leaves something to be desired, like Fontana and the other writers (I'm not sure to what degree who writes what) didn't really have time to think out the story beats of the seasons or else didn't have time to come up with something better/do some editing. I said a while back (idr where/what post tho), but I think if Alonzo had been brought in earlier, a lot of the same s6 plotlines could have still been achieved while giving us more time to know him and make his appearance worthwhile. Like, first couple episodes after he’s introduced could’ve just been those in-betweener scenes where we see him settling into Oz and putting out feelers:

Interacting with the other Gays (more screen time for them at last??) and getting the lowdown on Oz; I have my other headcanon (based on the crowd scenes) that the Gays sometimes help the Latinos move tits, so maybe…

This would bring him toe to toe with Morales or at least have a chance to with him briefly while the former is on his way out; maybe Torquemada wants to bring his own expertise to the game and tries to talk business to Morales, who’s got other things on his mind and blows Alonzo off, or else puts Alonzo to task with finding out what’s going on with Redding, etc. I think Alonzo could handle himself here, as Redding is no threat at this point, but maybe the real question is whether or not he wants to try to conform and fit in under Morales’ control, which I think the answer would be no, meaning...

Seeing Alonzo ultimately decide to forge his own path to the top and take his sweet deal with Destiny to the Italians

Miguel’s + the other Latinos’ storylines could’ve been largely unchanged meanwhile. Obviously some shit from s6 would have to be sacrificed to accommodate expanding Torquemada's storyline but lbr, s6 had a lot of going-nowhere plotlines as well as storylines that couldve afforded to be much shorter, so there’s honestly plenty of fat to choose from when it comes to what to cut. And introducing Alonzo like this would’ve helped bring the Italians more into play in s6 (could've simultaneously explored a little bit of the post-Schibetta world of the Italians, or at least shown more fall out), as well as the gays. Canonically Alonzo comes in episode 7, and what I’m thinking is basically to bring him in on episode 3 or 4 (right after Said dies) (get rid of the ridiculous Idzik shit). With the 1 hour episodes, that would be plenty of time to start showing his rise to power. He could occasionally cross paths with other characters and get on their radar while creating small moments to plant the payoff of the canon e7 & e8.

I just feel like the pieces would fall into place in a much more satisfying way if we saw earlier on how Torquemada was quietly moving things in his own direction and being either underestimated or ignored due to characters being wrapped up in their own stories. He’d have been there the ~whole times~ and the show could’ve ended with his move to the top feeling more earned, with a little bit more of his potential as a kingpin explored and hinted at with the season finale. Again, it would also have been a good opportunity to explore the Gays in Oz and see how they fit in. Like I mentioned in my tags of the other post, I do think Torquemada would throw some of them under the bus/not care what happens to them once he gets his lmao.

(A s7/new post-canon tale of a subsequent downfall for Alonzo might concern itself mostly with hubris; burnt bridges and capricious impulses might leave no one in his corner if he did lose his footing and start to stumble… I think also him being queer and not just a ~fucker of men~ like Adebisi would motivate his enemies to unite to take him down more so than if he were anybody else.)

[takaraphoenix]

Buffy Season 8: Review

It’s bad. It’s just... really... bad. That’s the TL;DR of this review. There was one (1) good thing about this season and that was the return of Oz. So if you’re looking for something that hypes season 8? This is not it. If you are confused, angry or salty about season 8? Hi, yes, me too.

Starting at the beginning. At first, I was really happy that they introduced more characters of color, with Renee and Satsu. And when Renee was then even “promoted” to Xander’s love interest? Nice. The two were even cute.

But no. That was all just the set-up to fridge her. Which, I am so very tired of that trope. And that is what that was. That wasn’t just a slayer dying during a fight. The entire issue of her death focused on her and Xander, building up to their relationship, setting them up for their first date, having her be prominently featured, just to then kill her off and have Xander avenge her.

What made it feel even worse - worse than just the fridging - was that they really had to fridge one of their very few women of color. And, to top it off, spend the entire issue in which she dies having her subjected to racism. Just great. Really, you managed to make an already shitty trope even worse. That’s impressive.

The racism itself too. Dracula. They just decided to make Dracula totally racist now, huh? and it doesn’t get a pass just because Xander points out in the comic that he doesn’t remember Dracula being this racist. Because he wasn’t. This Dracula just throws around slurs left and right in a way that feels more like the writers just really wanted to use slurs. Because the character? He was suave, charming, heck he charmed the straight men and the lesbians too when he was on the show. He was a smooth talker. This Dracula? He just... He was just racist and rude in general. Why.

Moving on from the racism to the next failure in rep. The gays. At this point in time I am simply convinced that Joss Whedon is entirely unfamiliar with the concept of bisexuality.

I know I’ve already made a separate post complaining about this, but it needs mentioning in the review of the season too. Having Buffy hook up with a lesbian twice, but #NoHomo, just a straight girl in her “experimental phase”. That’s just cringey and also offensive. Just... make her... come out as a bisexual? It’s not like the writing in the show hadn’t already set her up with quite the bi vibes.

Instead, the narrative made it sound like the only options would be to be straight or to now suddenly turn “into” a lesbian. Which is also offensive on itself, because - as this very show had proven on screen - lesbians can come out later in life and genuinely, I adore Willow’s arc. For her narrative, it fit to have her come out as a lesbian, the circumstances and her life fit for that. I absolutely agree that it would have been weird for Buffy to have a sudden coming out as a lesbian at that point in her life and after everything, but referring to it as turning into a dyke was just not great.

And lesbian wasn’t the only option. Though, I’m unsure Whedon knows that, considering that 6/6 canon queer characters are homosexual and 4/4 wlw are lesbians. They just keep introducing more lesbians - which, as a lesbian I am always in favor of more lesbians. However, when you have a very small number (2) of queer characters, it figures you can not cover all the sexualities and it’s even fair that even with two, you still choose to have them both be the same sexuality. But... the more you add? The more questionable it becomes that you limit it to one sexuality only.

This arc would have so beautifully set up for Buffy to come out as bi. But no.

And while we’re on the wlw; one of the things I always loved about Buffy was that the lesbians weren’t just there for the male gaze, they weren’t oversexualized. They desired each other, they even had sex. But... in a normal frame work, to a normal amount, meaning equal to how the straights were handled. I always liked that, because especially in early days, lesbians were usually just there to look really hot and have hot sex that straight men could get off to. Well, consider me very unimpressed with the comics, because... man are lesbians sexualized now. Willow gets a hot constantly naked snake goddess girlfriend whom she can only contact by - and I am not making this up - having an orgasm. So we prelude the trip by her having sex with Kennedy, before waking up all nude in snake goddess’ realm and usually having am makeout session or sex with her too while doing whatever business she has with her. So much nakedness, so much oversexualization. Really... disappointing.

Staying on the romance but turning to the other Summers sister, I truly can’t believe they made Xander/Dawn canon. Like, I can not comprehend they decided to make that a canon ship.

Sure, Dawnie’s had a crush on Xander since the literal beginning of Dawn. And that was... cute, honestly. Fifteen year old girls have crushes on cute older guys who are nice to them. Figures. Adorable. But she kind of... grew out of that over the course of the show? Or so it seemed...

And Xander. One of the things I loved about Xander was that Dawn was always a total no go. She was Buffy’s sister, heck, she was kind of every Scoobie’s little sister. He had always had brotherly advise for her. Heck, in this comic he points out that it’s weird since he’s known her since she was little - and yeah it is. It’s not weird when two people were both little together, but when one was sixteen when the other was eleven and one has babysat the other? That’s weird.

Getting infinitely more disturbing by the fact that she... literally... just turned eighteen. If they had put this into a rather later season, or a bigger time skip, had Dawn been A WomanTM for a few years now and Xander had gotten around to separating the idea of kiddo!Dawnie from the woman she has become, but Dawn is only eighteen, she hasn’t become a woman yet. She just turned legal to bang and thus, a switch was flipped in Xander’s mind, putting her on his radar. And just... no. Why.

And even beyond this decision; Dawn spends the first third of this season being slut-shamed in ridiculous ways. Which is also tiresome. I am the last person to defend cheaters, but there’s a difference between “You cheated and are being held accountable for it” and “You cheated so now you are cursed to be a giant, a centaur and then a porcellain doll for weeks at a time, being publicly humiliated and having control over your body taken away from you”. That was... sure a choice.

Moving on to the actual main problem of this season. The plot.

Starting with the incomprehensibly dumb idea of “hey let’s retreat to Tibet, put a huge target on Oz’s new home and get rid of all of our magic. surely that will not come to bite us in the arse when the bad guys find us”. Naturally, it came back to bite them in their collective asses. This was just... No one objected or pointed out how dumb that plan was? Really? No one? Really?

Anyway, let’s talk villains. And work our way up there. The return of Amy and Warren. Once again, I ask why. I’m still salty about the 180° Amy did from sweet Wiccan to wicked bitch after her stint as a rat, but having her now... hook up with Warren, the second biggest misogynist on this show, who is also skinless. She used a spell to keep him alive but she couldn’t... give the spell a color? Anything? Anything to not make him look flayed? Because this was just unnecessarily gross body-horror.

Not to mention the... lack of reaction? Sure, some spoke grumpily against working with Warren. But... this is Warren. The guy who killed Tara when he was trying to kill Buffy. There really should have been more breather-scenes of the Scoobies talking about this, digesting the fact that the guy was still alive and more so when they worked with him.

But nevermind them, because they’re working for Angel. Because Angel’s the villain behind this season. I mean, he was manipulated into that by Twilight, but manipulated means he still chose to do it.

Now let me preface that I might not ship Angel/Buffy, but that really only factors marginally in here, because this plot would be bullshit even if it were my OTP.

We now retcon the creation of the Slayers as not just being something dirty old men did in a cave, it was now all the greater plan of the universe. Which. Might have worked had Slayers been... naturally occuring. And not created by men, forcing this upon a young woman. Sure, what people do can be seen as the greater plan of the universe too if you will, but that seems like a cop-out that absolves bad people of their bad choices and deeds.

Anyway. The universe created Slayers and vampires and the ““balance”“ between them (which is bullshit anyway because 1 Slayer vs thousands of vampires... not balanced at all), including the now supposedly destined romance between Angel and Buffy.

Both get rewarded with super-powers now so they can super-fuck and thus give birth to a new universe. That universe is called Twilight and manifests as a burning, winged, green lion who can talk (because that sure is how I always headcanoned Angel/Buffy’s children to look like /s) and who, through time-travel shenannigans, has been manipulating Angel into his own creation.

The magic pull between them is so strong that it overrides the “Angel just caused the death of over two-hundred Slayers” so Buffy fucks him.

At which point I just... this season was flat-out character assassination of Angel? He was manipulated by the bad guy. Not controlled, manipulated. He caused the death of hundreds. He threw everything he stood for and believed in out the window for the promise of a paradise where he could be with Buffy, when the real Angel has chosen other things, higher goals, over being with Buffy over and over again, because that’s what they do. That is their whole thing, they choose the good of the world over being together. They have always been a “will they/won’t they?” where the answer is they won’t, because they know they are needed elsewhere, by others. But now Angel just... doesn’t care about all that anymore, or heck about his own son and his friends, ready to abandon everything for this.

And then when Twilight is born and consequently abandoned by Buffy, who still prioritizes her friends, family and the world over being with Angel, Angel actually... needs convincing in the abandoning? Because, again, character assassination. Ultimately, Angel gets controlled by Twilight and used to kill Giles and try to kill Buffy.

But thanks to the Deus Ex Machina of Spike dropping in in the final arc, they know how to stop this. He hasn’t been in this season so far, because - truly in line with this season - he was off being the king of a race of alien bugs, traveling in their space-ship.

To stop this all, they go back to Sunnydale, where of course the “heart of the Earth” is located, the seed that contains all magic, and destroy it, and with it all magic. Also, the Master was apparently always just there to guard that seed. He is now back from the dead!

Let me summarize that once more, just for emphasis: The universe wanted Buffy and Angel to fuck so they can give birth to a new universe that personifies as a green, winged, burning lion but before it can destroy our universe, Spike, now king of an alien bug race, delivers the solution to go back to Sunnydale and destroy the seed of all magic that is being guarded by a resurrected Master.

How do you read that with a straight face? How do you pitch that? This is just so incomprehensibly stupid.

We end the comic with Buffy as a waitress, hated by many, Xander and Dawn now have an apartment and are playing house, Willow broke up with Kennedy because she realized she is in love with the snake goddess she will now never get to see again, Giles is dead, Faith somehow inherited everything from Giles and she is also the designated Angel-sitter now.

[saphira-approves]

What do you think of some the criticism the inheritance books have got (the ones all nicely collected and available on the wiki) my main thoughts reading through were wow did they stretch before saying that because yikes and I really wish I could get financial compensation from this because in uni I sat through (and enjoyed) a course all about intertextuality; the way things relate to each other like Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

I assume you’re talking about how many people accuse Paolini of “ripping off” Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and Dragonriders of Pern? 

So, it’s a touchy subject for a lot of people—not for me, I’m an English major, this is my bread and butter—of how “original” you have to be to be a “valid author.” The problem with the attitude of “you have to be PERFECTLY ORIGINAL” is that unless you’re writing your autobiography, nothing you create will EVER be perfectly original. And even with an autobiography, you’ll probably still have echoes of someone else’s writing style in your work.

This idea that you have to be “perfectly original” is a) impossible and b) a very modern idea. Just look at art history: Master painters, before they became masters, would first apprentice with another master painter, copying that master’s works, before ever making their own. In my art class last year, I did a research project on Artemesia Gentileschi, an incredibly skilled oil painter of the 1600s and apprentice of Caravaggio, who combined her talent, knowledge of anatomy and light, and her own experiences with sexual assault and general feminine anger to create beautiful, emotionally charged works of art, far greater (in my opinion) than those of her master.

On the right is Caravaggio’s original work, Judith Beheading Holofernes, with a waifish Judith and stiff expressions and not-quite-realistic-looking positions. It’s still a great work, but it lacks life.

Gentilechi’s Judith Beheading Holofernes, on the left, is completely different. Judith is brawny, holding Holofernes down while she cuts off his head, with a determined grimace. It’s a copy of Caravaggio’s work, but Gentileschi added her own knowledge and experience to create an entirely new piece. And this is how art was taught! By copying the masters!

Art and creation don’t happen in a vacuum. Even Star Wars and LotR and the Pern books wouldn’t have happened without other works being created first. For pity’s sake, the names of the entire cast of Tolkien’s Hobbit were ripped straight from the Poetic Edda! Star Wars was a culmination of George Lucas’ favorite space opera tropes! I’m not sure about Anne McCaffrey, but the fact that her stories are centered around dragons means she was inspired by dragons in media she herself consumed. Tolkien’s Smaug was probably one of them!

So what do I think of the criticism? I think it’s ridiculous. As someone who grew up on Star Wars and LotR, as someone who loves the Pern books I’ve gotten my hands on, as someone who aspires to be an author herself, and as someone for whom Paolini’s books were an inspiration, I think that criticizing him for what authors all over the world do—taking inspiration from things they love—is really stupid. 

Let me contextualize something for those of you not convinced. If you’re here, and you’re in other fandoms, you probably read or have read fanfiction. A common trope in fanfiction are AUs, or Alternate Universes, which can be as simple as a canon divergence, or as specific as a time, place, and setting completely outside canon. For the purpose of this metaphor, let’s take the example of Coffeeshop AUs. 

Now, for every fandom with 100+ fics on AO3 or FFN or Wattpad, there’s probably at least one—if not more than one—Coffeeshop AU. A lot of people write Coffeeshop AUs. A lot of people read Coffeeshop AUs. It’s a great medium for telling a story: it can be short and sweet, long and dramatic, happy and fluffy, angsty and sad, or any other combination thereof. No two Coffeeshop AUs are the same. We recognize that, obviously, a Coffeeshop AU written today is not an original idea, but it’s still something that a lot of people love to read and write.

Similarly, the tropes that Paolini uses—and they are tropes, used by many, many authors, and I highly doubt any of them were actually invented by Tolkien or Lucas or McCaffrey—have been used all across the world in hundreds (if not thousands) of stories. But the ones that he chose to use, and the way he put them together, tell a rich, beautiful story unique to Paolini. 

Sure, Eragon has some similarities to Luke Skywalker, but Eragon’s relationship with his family is different from Luke’s. Sure, the dragon and Rider bond of Alagaësia is very similar to that of Pern, but Saphira can’t teleport or time travel, and I haven’t seen any Pern dragon turn a burial mound to diamond. Paolini was inspired, yes, but he added his own unique spin to the stories that came before. Hell, I’ve joked about it before, but there are even similarities between the Cycle and The Wizard of Oz.

To reiterate, art and creation don’t happen in a vacuum!

So unless you’re going to criticize nearly every fanfic author ever for writing a Coffeeshop AU, or you’re going to criticize Tolkien for taking his names from the Poetic Edda, you should back off and let contemporary authors experiment and explore with the tropes and stories we grow up with.

And for those of you out there who are aspiring creators, some advice: take inspiration. Don’t just isolate yourself to your work and the impossible ideal of “perfect originality.” If you want to be an author, read more books. If you want to be a painter, look at art. If you want to be in the film industry, watch movies. You must first breathe in to breathe out.

Anyway, thanks for the ask anon! As you can see this is a topic I’m highly passionate about lol.

[comradesummers]

Faith vs Kendra Anya or Oz Buffy + Tara

Hi, thanks for asking. Sorry for taking so long to answer, insert obligatory excuse about college kicking my ass.

Faith vs. Kendra

So this one’s really hard, and my answer got way too long and pretentious, but I hope you’ll bear with me. 

In order to understand Kendra’s fighting style, I think it’s important to talk a little about the fight she has with Buffy in What’s My Line (Part 2). That episode illustrates the differences in Buffy and Kendra’s fighting style when Buffy does “the chick fight thing” and Kendra doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Basically, this move is sort of a physical demonstration of their differences. Kendra is the traditionalist, therefore she is highly skilled in technique but less good at improvising and thinking outside the box. Buffy, meanwhile, is less traditional and less technically skilled, but she’s better at improvising and using her emotions to her benefit. These ideas are shown in the initial fight between Buffy and Kendra, and then verbalized by Buffy later in the episode. 

Faith is on the other end of the spectrum. She has little to no formal training (she’s called after Kendra’s death in Becoming; in the few months between that episode and her arrival in Faith, Hope & Trick, her watcher is murdered; neither Giles nor Wesley put much effort into her training in season 3; and then she goes to prison for like 3 seasons). However, she’s clearly a skilled fighter, as evidenced by the fact that she can hold her own against a slayer as experienced as Buffy. Though it is never stated outright, it is reasonable to assume that her strengths lie in her ability to improvise and her emotionally driven fighting style. Basically, she’s a person who will use every tool in her arsenal to win, even if that means, for instance, throwing herself off a building so that her opponent doesn’t get what she wants.

By presenting Faith and Kendra as two extremes of this ideological debate, and then also showing that neither one of them is as successful at slayerdom as Buffy is, the show implies that Buffy’s balanced approach to fighting (and to like life in general) is the best. However, the nature of tradition is complicated by the later seasons. For one thing, the Watcher’s Council—the representatives of the traditional approach that Kendra follows—get blown the fuck up before they can do anything useful. This strongly suggests that the Council, and by externsion their tradition, is irrelevant. This idea is further underlined by Buffy’s ultimate decision to reject the Council’s tradition wholesale, and to create a new, Slayer-based tradition. It’s also reflected in her fighting style in the later seasons. Starting in season 5, Buffy begins to explore her slayerness in the context of the slayer line, and her training with Giles builds on that. It could be suggested that the tradition she is drawing upon in these seasons is that of the Slayers that came before her, not the watchers who tried to control them. This also serves as an in-universe explanation for why the fighting style from season 5 onwards looks so different (and so much worse) than what came before it. (Yes, I know there were new stunt doubles, but it works with my convoluted argument, so I’m going to pretend there’s some deeper meaning behind it.)

Anyway, my point in all of this is that while earlier seasons present the thesis that one should find a middle ground between tradition and innovation, later seasons suggest that embracing oppressive traditions is harmful. So while we should still draw upon tradition, we should always be critical of the kinds of traditions we draw upon. And Kendra, having been raised by watchers, relies solely on harmful and oppressive traditions, and is therefore at a serious disadvantage. Faith, meanwhile, isn’t hampered by the Council’s bullshit. While she doesn’t draw power from slayer-line mysticism like Buffy does, she still has the advantage of freedom from the Council and would therefore win in a fight.

However, this is a solely thematic view of things, and maybe proves less who would win in a fight and more who would win in like a philosophical debate. Also, Kendra was killed off before she could be developed further (insert my usual Kendra deserved better comment here). Of the three, she was the most victimized by the Council (because of course those colonizers would fuck over the black girl most of all). If she had been developed, and been allowed to process the fact that a bunch white people stole her from her parents and brainwashed her for the purposes of their personal gain, and that this didn’t happen to any of her white counterparts, I think she could have had a much greater understanding of the insidious nature of the Council than either Buffy of Faith. I also think that her interest in the slayer tradition would have surpassed Buffy’s. She is, after all, the traditionalist of the three, so I think she would be the most interested in finding a way to connect to the traditions of the past while separating that past from the oppression of the Council.

In other words, a Kendra that had been allowed to live past season 2 is quite possibly the most powerful slayer. But if we’re accepting the canonical versions of these characters (and not the headcanon that I just pulled out of my ass) I guess Faith would be the winner.

Anya or Oz

Oz is a great character and I totally get why people like him but Anya is more in line with my personal preferences when it comes to characters who are intially introduced as love interests, which are as follows:

Hot lady (I’m shallow, sue me)

Very funny (Oz is funny but Anya is the funniest character on the show and no one can convince me otherwise)

Is more than just a love interest

Now I feel like people might object to no. 3 in Anya’s case, because there’s no denying that Anya is criminally underdeveloped and is often relegated to the unfortunate position of Xander’s girlfriend. However, Anya has a Selfless and she has that scene in The Body, and she has clearly defined relationships with the other Scoobies (best demonstrated in episodes like Triangle). Oz doesn’t really have any of that. Like, he and Willow break up for like half a second in season 3, and in that time he’s just not on screen. That’s how irrelevant he is to anyone and anything outside of Willow. Also, the werewolf suit looks dumb, which I have to assume is why the writers did almost nothing with him being a werewolf until they had to write him out.

The point is, while both of these characters deserved more development, Anya still got more of it so I like her better. Also she’s a pretty girl, so I was probably going to choose her regardless (I may be shallow, but at least I’m honest about it).

Buffy + Tara

I am the no. 1 Buffy/Tara shipper because I like it when nice people are nice to each other. And yes, I recognize that these are two flawed, complicated characters, but I think that together, they have the potential to be one of the healthiest couples in the Buffyverse. This is mainly because their interactions with each other are always supportive and free of judgement. Buffy defends Tara against her dad and welcomes her into her family even after Tara puts everyone at risk. Meanwhile, Tara is pretty much the only character (except for Dawn, maybe) to immediately react with empathy and understanding to the revelation that Buffy is sleeping with Spike. I’m not saying that either one of these characters is always understanding and non-judgemental (okay, maybe Tara is, but Buffy definitely isn’t), but they’ve proven that with each other, they’re very good at communicating and empathizing, and just being what the other person needs, and I think that’s very sexy of them.

Also, they’d be really hot together, so I’m here for it.

[littlemisssquiggles]

For the longest time I’ve been saying the wizard and the maidens share some sort of bond. Even before penny got the powers I wanted Oscar to talk to the old maiden, as like the wise old witch giving advise to the young warlock After v7 I made a theory that Oscar and penny would practice and learn to use there new-found powers together I mean, there’s gotta be some sort connection between them right? They share the same power, a power the original wizard literally gave the original maidens

Hello Mia. As far as I’m aware given the context of the canon, despite a Wizard originally creating a Maiden, there is no real connection between a Wizard and Maiden at least from a relationship standpoint.

Despite the Hermit sharing a friendship with the original Four Maidens, this dynamic doesn’t seem to have carried over to his successors. I understand that you would like for Penny and Oscar to have a connection but, according to the canon, they don’t. As I was telling an anon-ninja who brought up this subject, outside of their shared bonds with Ruby Rose, Penny and Oscar share no direct relationship with each other. They are not even friends. Allies in arms who fight on the same side (for now anyways), sure. But nothing more than that.

Penny wouldn’t even have the maiden magic if she hadn’t “pilfered” it from Fria the former Winter Maiden, according the Ace Ops. Penny was never even supposed to become the Winter Maiden yet she received the powers by circumstance. As interesting as it is that Penny---a sentient lifeform--- did become a Maiden, I’ll admit that I’m personally not a fan of how the showrunners chose to portray the Polendina girl’s rise to maidenhood. Penny becoming a Maiden feels almost forced since unlike Winter Schnee, she never shared any ties to the original Winter Maiden.

I remember that following the V7 finale, other RWBY theorists began speculating that Fria was meant to represent the Blue Fairy in Penny’s Pinocchio story and while I quite liked that interpretation, it doesn’t help rationalize what was done in the show. At least in the Pinocchio fairytale, Pinocchio had a relationship with the Blue Fairy who watched over him and even came to his aid at certain points to help steer him on the right path to “being a good boy”.

If Penny was meant to be chosen as Fria’s successor then where was this kind of bond? The rule of thumb for the succession of the maiden powers was that maidens chose themselves. The only exception is when the power was forcibly taken away like in the case of both Cinder Fall and Raven Branwen. Penny had no real bond with Fria yet…she was made to be her successor over Winter Schnee who was actually shown to spend time with Fria and even grow to care for her. While I understand that Winter’s time with Fria was only done as an act of grooming and the General’s attempt at manipulating how the cycle worked. Nonetheless, I wish the show had done a better job at building up Penny becoming a Maiden.

Imagine if…as a means of doubling his chances at ensuring that the Maiden powers went to one of his own operatives, Ironwood had assigned both Winter and Penny to establish a relationship with Fria. However this info was left unknown to both girls until Winter discovered that her and Penny were being pit against one another as rivals for the Maiden power and rather than take her disdain of this method out on the General, instead Winter absolves what little friendship she had developed with Penny during their time working together and accepted her role as her rival which hurt Penny who genuinely saw Winter as a friend.

Imagine if…we had actually gotten moments of Penny bonding with Fria and having a stronger connection to her than Winter? Or perhaps Fria, who never got the chance to have children of her own as a Maiden, grew to care for both girls as her surrogate daughters leading to her being upset by how their rivalry was affecting them emotionally.

Instead of the “out of the blue” way the show had Fria just hand over the Maiden powers to Penny---an absolute stranger she had never met until the moment she died…it would’ve been better for them to have had a bond with a Maiden actually passing on the power to a person they grew to care about as a opposed to the powers being “stolen”---again!

Because although Penny didn’t take the Maiden power from Fria by force…she did technically kind of steal it from Winter which is sad since it follows this weird trend that the showrunners have done with the succession from old Maiden to the next.

The powers keep getting hijacked. With the Fall Maiden, Cinder killed the original and stole her magic. With the Spring Maiden, Raven killed the original maiden and stole her magic. With the Winter Maiden, while Penny didn’t kill Fria---at least this maiden died naturally due to old age, Penny still technically stole the powers since as I’ll reiterate, she was never supposed to be the Winter Maiden. That role was meant to be Winter’s and Penny took that from her. So it’s kinda like the same trend. At least, in my opinion.

“.....After v7 I made a theory that Oscar and penny would practice and learn to use there new-found powers together I mean, there’s gotta be some sort connection between them right? They share the same power, a power the original wizard literally gave the original maidens...”

I mean… look at Oz. Oz was the Wizard before Oscar and as far as we’re made aware, he never had a relationship with Amber (the Maiden for his respective vault) either. As the canon shows, despite a Wizard creating a Maiden, their successors don’t share in this relationship. The Wizards will probably watch over the Maidens to ensure that they aren’t attacked but…other than that, the wizards and maidens are free to live their own lives never truly needing to be involved in each other’s respective lives.

As a matter of fact, at first, I was of the opinion that the reason why a wizard doesn’t have a direct relationship with a maiden is due to the possibility of the maiden magic returning to the wizard in the event of a maiden’s death. However this theory was more or less debunked in the show since Amber was killed in front of Ozpin and instead of the remaining half of her magic going to him, it sought out its other half and went straight to Cinder Fall. Still makes me curious as to what would happen in the event of a maiden at full power dying in front of wizard. Oh well.

Going back to Oscar and Penny---since you’re like the fourth person to bring this topic to me, I have to say that I don’t quite understand what the sudden fixation is with Penny and Oscar having a connection in the canon. I understand that some fans might like this pair for their own reasons and might want them to have an actual friendship (which is fine) but…that’s not the case in the show.

This fact isn’t really helped either by the notion that Penny was never meant to be a Maiden in the first place and essentially did what all  the other succeeding Maidens before her did---which was take the Maiden powers for herself when it was meant to go to someone else. I know it’s sad to say this about Pen-Pen since she is a hero (and a likeable character) but…she did take the Winter Maiden powers from Winter and while for the greater good, that detail still remains true.

Point is, you cannot sell me on the concept of their needing to be some sort of connection or bond between Penny and Oscar, not even with the point that he’s a wizard and she’s a maiden since…admittedly, these two freckly-frecks have no relationship in the canon and their doesn’t seem to be a push for one either . Despite Penny becoming a Maiden, her relationship with Oscar is still the same as it was. Respectful but not close.

And he’s not the only wizard with this dynamic with a maiden either. As I mentioned before, Oz wasn’t close to Amber and she was the Maiden for his vault. So why should Oscar have to share a bond with Penny just because she’s a maiden. It doesn’t change the established relationship they already have which is as acquaintances who fight for the same side (for now).

Penny may be a maiden now but she’s not the “magical girl” who Oscar is meant to have a deep meaningful bond that transcends magic with. That deep connection appears to be going to Ruby. Oscar’s true rose.

And undoubtedly, this connection is much stronger than anything the show could’ve done with Penny and Oscar as a maiden and a wizard. Oscar and Ruby share many similarities too. Not only do they both share in the burden of being placed with great power and responsibility despite their age as the two youngest members of their respective teams but unlike a maiden who is the byproduct of a wizard’s magic, a wizard and a silver eyed warrior are the byproducts of a God created to aid humanity.

A Maiden is a wizard’s creation. However it was the God of Light who first created a wizard to be the champion for humanity to unite the world while also creating the silver eyed warriors to be the living antithesis to the soulless Creatures of Grimm.

As a Wizard of Light and a Silver Eyed Warrior respectively---Oscar and Ruby share a divine power as well---they are connected by the same light from the God of Light.

According to the Lost Fable, magic was a gift from the Gods and it was through the God of Light’s power that a wizard is able to retain his immortality and keep reincarnating. As for a Silver Eyed Warrior, according to Maria and Ruby’s brief conversation from RWBY V6CH8, the Silver Eyes originated from the God of Light who shared in the same unique ability.

That being said, while Penny may share in the maiden magic which was created by one of Oscar’s predecessors, Oscar shares the God of Light’s power with Ruby and unlike Penny, he actually has a genuine wholesome relationship with Ruby as she is seen as his closest companion at the moment (more so than Oz since Oscar seems to actually like Ruby which is the least I can say regarding his feelings toward Oz).

I’m not quite sure what kind of answer you were hoping from me, fam but that’s as much as this squiggle meister can say on this particular subject matter. I can’t say that there should be a connection between Oscar and Penny since…there is nothing of the sort established in the canon.

Oscar and Penny have no real relationship outside of being teammates fighting for the same cause and even if you bring up the fact that they are wizard and maiden, that detail has neither affected nor actively changed the dynamic they already have in canon. Which is…nothing or rather not much? Again, they are colleagues at best but not really friends at worst.

It’s kind of difficult to sell me on a product that doesn’t really exist, mate. As I’ll say again, I know some folks really want Oscar and Penny to have a connection and nothing against that. That’s cool. However…canonically---in the show, as it is right now as of this volume and recent episode--- it’s not there. No other way I can say it.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2020)

[thezomblr-blog1]

Monster Prom Verse ;

This is Brian's default, canon verse. A bunch of legal adult monster high schoolers doing their best at living their worst life. Crazy parties, drugs, crime, murder, and hormones are an every day part of life at Spooky High where everyone is trying to avoid the worst fate ever. Going to Monster Prom alone. But mostly it's a story about the rag-tag elites of the school taking immense pleasure in destroying the school, pranking each other and generally never attending class.

Brian is pretty good friends with the other main cast members (Other three PCs + 6 love interests) in spite of his own misgivings about getting close with people. Strangers he doesn’t tend to do too well with. Takes to them about as well as oil to water if his friends aren’t also around. When sending in asks - this is the default verse I answer for. If you want one of Brian’s other verses when it comes to interaction be sure to check out his verse page.

Main Verse Tag: HERE Main Ship Tag:  💀 Gross Ghouls ❌ Dirty Devils 😈

The Story So Far...

Five years ago Brian woke face up in the desert just outside Reno, Nevada. No name. No Memories. No Friends or Family to speak of. He spent more than a few long weeks aimlessly wandering the Death Valley basin before ultimately making his way to the monster realm.

Once getting there, Brian was actually able to take stock of his current situation and realize that several things were lacking. Not only did he have no memories of a before... he also learned that while most people assume he is a zombie or ghoul on sight... those descriptions did not seem to fit him physically. He has no idea who is. Or what he is. Furthermore... interacting with the world via touch seemed nearly impossible... or at the very least intermittent. At the moment Brian is VERY scared that eventually whatever force made him will reclaim him once again. So he keeps others out of his life as best he can to limit his feeling of loss when it does happen.

As such – Brian is intensely Private and never talks about himself. Hardly anyone knows he even has a pet Barghest (Ugly), or even where he lives. He recently, for the very first time let a friend come over and so far that is the extent of it.

Not much is known about what happened to Brian in the span of time before becoming a Freshmen at Monstopolis' Spooky High because Brian doesn't talk about it.

What is known is that he came to the school barely one step above a wild animal. A constant whirlwind of violence. Fighting nearly everyone that looked at him even remotely funny and then some. His one claim to fame is a particularly brutal fight with a werebear that he somehow managed to win through a combination of raw strength and cunning. He still wears the scars from the werebear's claws across his chest to this day.

In the midst of his Freshmen year, Vicky Schmidt (@lady-grey-vicky-blue​) decided for better or worse, she was going to make this boy her friend. Through sheer willpower and persistence – in spite of all the anger, hatred, and aggression Brian threw her way – Vicky succeeded. Much to the surprise of her large group of friends. Needless to say, she made sure Brian integrated with that friend group just fine. Brian is grateful to Vicky for opening up his life to include more than just aimless violence and they have a very close brother/sister relationship. It is a well-known fact that anyone who messes with Vicky gets treated to the absolute worst side of Brian.

He is fairly protective of the rest of his friend group as well. They all might mess with each other ceaselessly – however the moment anyone else outside the group attempts to do the same you'd better believe the perpetrator is in for a rough time.

Brian also enjoys a close bond with Oz (@loveyourfears​ /@shadow-of-fear-and-doubt​ ) of a platonic nature. One of the only people that Brian can actually stand moments of inactivity with. Whether it is staring up into the void and stars or sharing a weekly beer together at Oz's place. 

However nearly everyone at Spooky High knows that Damien LaVey (@hellrager​) and Brian (after an initial rough start most likely) have been partners in crime pretty much since they've met. They hit it off strong and have kept it going throughout highschool with no signs of stopping. Both have a thirst for violence and mayhem in the worst way. They regularly take great pleasure in destroying large portions of the school and terrorizing the other students. Damien has taken his place at the top of the school “food chain” with Brian as his loyal second. They've gone on to start taking on parts of the city and directly antagonizing the cops for greater challenges – when they aren't constantly challenging each other that is.

There's more than a few rumors however that the demon and the ghoul have more than just an intense bromance for the ages going on. Gossip, that the two of them vehemently deny, about them being romantically linked – or secretly lusting after each other. Brian fully blames (@loveyourfears​) for the spreading of these “baseless” rumors. The truth however, there is something more between them and literally everyone but the pair of idiots can see it. Each for their own reasons denying the thing they mutually want.

Recently they've hit a turning point in their relationship that's brought them even closer together than they were before. Which is a terrifying prospect for Brian... although he can no longer deny to himself that he is in love with the demon prince. Yet his own fears due to his circumstances prevent him from acting on anything .... much to the dismay of everyone around them. The implications scare him. Regardless – he knows what they have is special. Something real he wants to hold onto.  

Not that the situation with Damien was his only brush with romance...

By the end of first year Vicky had introduced Brian to Vera Oberlin (@a-poisonous-gamble​) and he begun working for her crime syndicate. This is no secret in spite of them trying to keep it mostly quiet. Most people just assume Brian is the muscle anyway – although in reality he quickly worked his way up the ranks to being one of her lieutenants and main confidants.

Some time along the way the pair of them developed a brief romantic and turbulent relationship that only a few of their mutual friends, if anyone, knows about. However it never seemed to affect their professional relationship. Brian realizes now that their relationship outside of work was mutually toxic and quite frankly a distraction from his love for Damien what he really wanted – although he's glad they have a more functional friendship than they did a romance. Although he still wonders sometimes if Vera is as over the past as he is...

During this time he got introduced to Vera's younger sister Valerie (@purpleshopkeep​) and got assigned by Vera to play body guard. A task he ended up taking more seriously as time went on and the more he got to know the young, mischievous catfolk. Naturally he was in a constant state of exasperation due to her antics and thirst for trouble – often keeping his hands full hauling her ass unwillingly out of trouble on his “nights off”. He's taken to watching out for her now like she was his own sister and he's taken on at times a bit of a fatherly role in her life.

They have recently had a falling out due to a prank that Damien and himself played on her in attempt to get her with a girl she liked. Something that's hilariously hypocritical considering the state of things between himself and Damien. Valerie having been hurt by these events is now no longer speaking to Brian. As such he has asked that someone else be assigned to watching Valerie for the sake of her comfort... although in spite of himself he finds that he's doing what he can for her from the shadows ...without getting paid for it. It appears though... that reconciliation might be around the corner....

Side Verse Tags Side Verses to my main verse are ship specific. Vera w/ @a-poisonous-gamble​: 🐍 love me cancerously like a salt sore soaked in the sea // vera/brian Verse where Brian and Vera never broke up permanently. They are that on again off again couple always seeming to be in some state of turbulence yet can’t stay away from each other.  

Liam w/ @lioncovrt​ : TBA

[utopianparadoxist]

Do you think that Rose and Kanaya were originally going to be moirails, and that their being girlfriends was OOC and detrimental to their characters? Generally, what do you think of rosemary?

Well, it’s @rosemarymonth and I’ve wanted to talk about Rosemary and why I think the canon gets WAY too little credit with regards to their execution for ages so I may as well do it now. 

Keep in mind, of course, that I am a dude and in no way want any wlw to feel I’m shutting down critiques of Homestuck’s flaws in this regard. I think that’s perfectly valid, this is just my reading. I’ll be interested in seeing what people have to say. 

I don’t get to talk about Rosemary enough anyway, so I’ll also take you up on it and go over why I love Rosemary and why I think readings that they were “meant to be moirails” and “go ooc” is straight up just misreading the text, because the comic is actually pretty clear in broadcasting its intent.

The thing to keep in mind is that Homestuck’s entire plot follows one consistent rule: The message of AURYN from The Neverending Story, “Do what you will.” 

The events in Homestuck that actually happen are by design the sum product of the wills of the entire cast, and how well characters express their wills on reality directly correlates to how “powerful” they are.

Caliborn is the villain because Lord English violates EVERYONE’s agency by confining them all to the plot of Homestuck/his Alpha Timeline. Within the confines of those prescribed paths, however, reality always defaults to fulfilling the wishes of all characters involved, or resolving the tension between them.

What this means PRACTICALLY is that almost every event that happens in the story, no matter how ridiculous….

is, on some level, foreshadowed by the desires of the characters, just as Arquius’ heroic sacrifice and absorption into LE is foreshadowed by the desires of both him and Caliborn:

Oh, and speaking about Caliborn wanting to be bros with Dirk and allowing him to die as if going to sleep:

All this in mind, let’s focus on Rose and Kanaya. No, I don’t get the impression they were ever going to be moirails. I’m not sure when Hussie decided on Rosemary, but I get the impression it was early, at least by the time Kanaya was introduced.

Why? Let’s take stock of both girls’ desires and conflicts throughout Act 5.

Kanaya’s early characterization revolved around A) A tendency to gravitate and pacify take-charge, forward individuals, 

and B) A profound dissatisfaction with that role.

That’s what burned her out so hard when she was interested in Vriska. So I’m not sure why one would assume that actually, Kanaya’s True Destiny was to fall into… the exact same arrangement with Rose once again, despite expressly avoiding it. That doesn’t seem like good storytelling to me.

Especially since Rose is, from the very beginning, posited as an idealistic escape from that solitude for Kanaya. Kanaya is the receiver of Rose’s prophetic text—one of her earliest big contributions as a Seer of Light– and it makes a tremendous impact on her. 

That impact is partly manifested as an out and out romantic fantasy about Rose, who Kanaya idealizes as the legendary leader of her session. 

Kanaya’s fantasies about Rose in this regard play heavily into her attempted courtship through the Flighty Broads and their Snarky Horseshitometer sequence—and it is romantic courtship. 

Kanaya makes that clear in the mission-critical text document where she positions herself as an antagonistic suitor to John, and that document is first referenced in… oh, mid-Act 4.

So Kanaya’s romantic interest suffuses the narrative from pretty early on. What about Rose?

Let’s talk about romance aesthetics. Pretty much every endgame ship in Homestuck is couched in a distinctive brand of romantic connotation.  For example, Dave and Karkat are linked to anime romance cliches, with Dave as shonen hero and Karkat as heroine. 

Jade and Davepeta are linked by a mutual indulgence in furry identity. Vriska and Terezi get the “Home Sweet Home” connotation of The Wizard of Oz, and Dirk and Jake have the undying devotion and mutual passion implied by their link to The Princess Bride.

Rose is once described as a reserved girl “enamored by what dwelt in shadow”. This is a facet of her characterization that’s present from moment 1, what with her interest in the Horrorterrors.  Another obvious place to go is Mom, and by association Roxy–both of whom certainly “dwell in shadow” as Void players.

And then, of course, we have Kanaya:

Vampires are traditionally associated with hiding in darkness, away from the Light. And Kanaya describes her rainbow drinker fantasy in exactly those terms. So this aesthetic link between them is established pretty damn early, too.

Of course, Kanaya is not a traditional vampire. I’m far from the first to point out that Rainbow Drinkers most strongly resemble the hyper-romanticized, shine-in-the-light vampires of Twilight, one of the most popular romance series for teen girls of the 2000′s.

Taking that incredibly popular aesthetic and using it as a wrapper for the love story of two girls is instantly compelling. What’s genius is that this is a cocktail of imagery that has natural appeal for Rose as a person, because while it’s true that she’s interested in the darkness that surrounds her, it’s clear that Rose spends her narrative seeking the truth and the meaningful. 

In other words, even when she’s enmeshed in darkness, what Rose wants is…

The Light. She may not have taken an interest in Meyer’s prose or Edward’s surly patriarchal authority, but all else being equal? Rose was all but made for a story with imagery like Twilight’s. That in and of itself would be evocative and romantic enough, but it goes deeper. 

Because Rose’s relationship with Kanaya is deeply interwoven with her relationship to the reality of Homestuck, a conflict that Kanaya directly helps her solve.  Perhaps fittingly, given that Kanaya is a Sylph implied to be “Made of Space”, and so innately linked to the Setting of the story through her Aspect.

This conflict between Rose and the Setting of Homestuck is, in my view, nothing less than the main thrust of Rose’s character arc, so it’ll take a little bit to unpack. Let’s dig in.

Rose gets too little credit. She is the first of the main cast to really learn about Lord English, and the unfathomable, canon-defining threat he poses to the cast. 

But even before she learns about him in name, she spends pretty much her entire arc resisting and fighting against his machinations, subtly perceiving something deeply wrong in the story from its very beginning. 

In this, Rose strikes a compelling counterpoint to her partner TT, Dirk Strider. Because If Dirk’s character arc revolves around his belief that he himself is inherently evil, then it’s fair to say Rose’s main conflict is a belief that the world itself is inherently evil. 

Or at the very least, incomprehensible and meaningless. Random and empty of logic or reason. And borderline antagonistic to her and her friends, as though reality itself is an unfortunate occurence. 

In other words, Rose’s experience of reality is deeply colored by Void, the aspect of the unimportant, meaningless, irrelevant, and most importantly: incomprehensible. 

Just as Dave’s sense of self is broken by his abusive upbringing from a Prince of Heart, so too Rose’s sense of reality is shaped by her codependent relationship with her Mom, a guardian whose actions she can neither understand nor predict. 

As a Seer of Light, Rose is drawn towards trying to understand the truth, and in particular the inner truths and meanings behind the minds of others.  At the core of her being, Rose is a person who desperately desires to know and understand.

Consider how frustrating this must make Mom’s erratic and dysfunctional behavior to her–there’s no rhyme or reason behind her mother’s actions, influenced as they are by her depression, loneliness, and alcoholism. There’s just apparent randomness from the person who defines her entire life–in essence, the God of her household. 

Add in Roxy’s tendency toward passive-aggressive behavior–which Rose definitely perceives from her Mom, whether it was intentionally directed at her or not–and it’s unsurprising that Rose quickly begins to view reality as not just nonsensical and arbitrary, but outright antagonistic.

Rose’s inherently defiant worldview is only intensified by Sburb. Not only does Mom continue being aloof and indecipherable, but Rose discovers that fate has apparently already decreed that she and her friends are doomed to failure and death. To Rose this is more than unacceptable: It’s infuriating. 

Throughout Act 5, characters often comment on how Rose’s obsession with subverting Sburb leads her to becoming withdrawn, self-serious, and distant from her relationships. She also attempts to assume responsibility for herself and everyone around her, culminating in the suicide mission she tries to take on alone.

All of this is accompanied by her tearing her Land apart, as she foregoes its “childish” path in favor of something she perceives as more mature and adult. Most blatantly of all, Rose flirts with emulating her Mom in her most obviously adult activity: indulging alcohol. Rose is, in essence, trying to be an adult. Forcing herself to grow up too fast. 

By the way? Withdrawing emotions, carefully managing the feelings of others, attempting to assume outsize responsibility for their households and attempting to take care of their guardians are all behavioral hallmarks of kids who grow up in codependent households. 

Fast-forward to the aftermath of Cascade, when Rose achieves God Tier and comes face to face with Kanaya for the first time. It’s notable that achieving God Tier is the first moment that Rose is given any indication whatsoever that the plight she shared with her friends was not just random, pointless doom.

It is instead a lucky break. Or a suggestion of greater meaning. In essence, it’s the first time Rose is given really any reason to see reality as anything but the chaotic, nonsensical burden she’s experienced it as so far. 

The revelation is accompanied by Kanaya’s sudden phosphorescence, which Rose describes as “inexplicable”–a word usually associated with frustration for her. Here, however, it comes as a happy surprise. Here, Rose is seeing through the incomprehensible Void of her reality to perceive Light for the first time.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the moment is paired with Rose’s first romantic overture toward Kanaya. 

Especially since the trend continues. As Rose grows more confident reality not necessarily ALWAYS being a hellish, meaningless landscape of random and pointless suffering, she also grows more playful and willing to be sincere. She grows to trust the Light she was once so suspicious of, asks Kanaya out on dates, and comments on things she enjoys about her without insincerity. 

But she remains traumatized and conflicted about her relationship to both her Mom and the world, and takes up Mom’s alcoholism as a way to try to understand the former and ignore the latter.

This comes between her and Kanaya, since Kanaya relies on Rose to help her figure out HER role in the world, and to figure out how to achieve the revival of her species. 

It’s worth mentioning that alcohol abuse, for both Rose and Roxy, is extremely Void-coded. It leads Rose to prioritize the pointless, ridiculous, unimportant and non-existent.

Void is also deeply tied to all things physical, as opposed to Light’s link to ideas and the imaginary. And Rose’s lack of guidance is a factor in making Kanaya succumb to her own addiction to Blood. 

Here, Kanaya ends up valuing the desires of her physical form as a Rainbow Drinker over the more idealistic goal of the revival of her species, or even her relationship with Rose. As such, the two girls’ problems are marked as the same problem, even as they drive them further apart from one another. 

And we see where their disunity and lack of direction takes them Pre-Retcon: It renders both of them less effective, and thus less important to the plot. It also leads them to misfortune. Rose’s inability to connect with and help, or even be helped by Kanaya, leads directly to tragedy in her relationship to the world.

Good thing there’s a flip side. 

In the retcon timeline, Rose and Kanaya work stuff out. Rose gets past her alcohol addiction and directly credits Kanaya’s aid for it. Kanaya resists the pull of literal blood as she takes Karkat to Echidna and engages in an intellectual discussion about his relationship to his Aspect and the future of Troll-kind.

Rose reconciles with her Mom completely through Roxy, finding meaning where she could only speculate before. And with her increased ability to sort truth from lie, important from unimportant, and meaningful from irrelevant…

She resolves the tension between herself and the “demands” of Sburb, openly voicing her ambivalence to the very concept of her Personal Quest. In so doing, she illuminates an important truth to both the cast and the audience: that Sburb’s prescribed path to self-actualization is not particularly important, and certainly not strictly necessary. 

Inner truth, understanding, good fortune, foresight, and happiness–Rose never needed to comply with some videogame’s 12-step program for self-satisfaction to get any of that, and neither do we. Light can arise anywhere, as long as you have the patience to look for it and people who love you at your side.

Hope this helps you see what I see, anon. Rose and Kanaya’s story is one worth cherishing, and I haven’t even come close to saying all I think there is to say about it, if you can believe that! But its a start. 

Happy rosemary month, happy Halloween, and as always

Keep rising! ;)

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[earlywrites]

there’s no place like 127.0.0.1 commentary part I: ‘looking back’

Hey gang! Here’s part one of my commentary on my Angela & Robot fic there's no place like 127.0.0.1, a.k.a. A Weekend At Angela’s, a.k.a. Mr. Robot’s Day(s) Off. This will contain spoilers through Season 3 of Mr. Robot.

To start off, the title of the fic itself I got from a fun piece of set dressing in 3x05:

...which (and I'm probably stating the obvious here, but either way) is a play on 'there's no place like home' from the Wizard of Oz, as 127.0.0.1 is the 'localhost' of any given machine.

“Dolores… Haze?” she says, frowning [...]

I believe this is the codename Elliot would have Darlene stored under on his phone, since it’s a handle she’s used in other areas -- recently, as the name of the network she and Elliot used in the arcade during 3x09:

Somehow, he both feels like he’s been hit over the head with a truck, yet at the same time had the best sleep he’s ever experienced in the scattering of days where he’s been the one in charge. The sleeping pills on the side table aren’t a name he recognizes, and the instructional lettering is all in Chinese, but holy balls did they knock him the fuck out. Seems Angela wasn’t kidding when she said she was committed to keeping Elliot out at all costs.

I did a bunch of reading on DID and several people on the forums suggested sleeping pills as a method to prevent alters from switching over in one's sleep. Ambien and melatonin etc all seemed to also promote sleepwalking as a side effect, especially when combined with alcohol (and this is more relevant in part II), so I took artistic licence and made a fake drug that essentially knocks you out with zero (known) side effects, lol.

Residual self-image. Everyone has a face that only they can see, projected outwards into the mirror. A false idol of confidence, of ego, or a shell of dysmorphia and despair – either way, a lie repeated for so long it manifests into your own monster. Or maybe it’s something as little as a smaller nose or a slimmer waistline, look, ultimately, people like to reject reality and see what they want to see – for better or worse, ‘til death do us part, until every feature is stripped back and washed away, and that face in the mirror is just a skull the world has finally fucked. Technically, his own projection is long dead, but reanimated for a greater purpose – a divine one, even, according to Tyrell and his whole wackjob microreligion thing he’s got going on.

Residual self-image is indeed a term from The Matrix, which Morpheus describes as the 'mental projection of your digital self'. Here, it's a literal way that Robot describes how he and other people see themselves, even if in reality it can be very different. The major theme of this fic was perception versus reality, in that both Robot and Angela are focussed so narrowly on their specific ideal outcomes of Stage 2 that they omit or ignore any signs that the plan will not go exactly their way. This is the first area where I start to address that, and basically continue to hold up a sign in big black lettering that goes HEY ISN'T THIS IRONIC THAT THEY'RE SAYING THIS GIVEN WHAT WE KNOW NOW for the rest of the fic.

Still, he only gets wrapped up in this metaphysical bullshit when he’s in the driver’s seat for an extended period of time, because situations tend to arise that take him on a stroll through Uncanny Valley. For example: he showers and then shaves, but no stubble leaves his jawline. He changes into fresh clothes that Angela has left him, but the label on his jacket still proudly proclaims Mr. Robot: Computer Repair with a Smile! (still not his name, no matter how much Elliot tries to pin it to him). Sometimes he can squint through the mirror, rearrange his focus a little bit, and see this analogue of Elliot staring back at him – eyes half-lidded, the pinched anxiety on his face smoothed out. This is what they all see, which really is a poor substitute for the damn good-looking guy he’s facing off with in the bathroom vanity this morning.

Like, I've always wondered about this. Elliot is always clean-shaven after Robot's been in control for longer stretches of time, so Robot must shave, but we know he always has stubble -- how does any of this work, really? Is the fact that we see Robot's face in the mirror just a product of Elliot's overarching control over what is depicted in the show, and Robot actually sees 'Elliot's face? Who the heck knows, Sam sure as hell probably isn't going to explain it, so I'm sticking to this interpretation for now. And, also, no, Robot's never actually referred to himself as Mr. Robot in the show, going so far as to laugh at the idea of Elliot calling him that name when Krista brings it up in 3x02, which is why I have him rejecting it in here.

He tries watching TV, for a bit, but nothing particularly engaging is on basic cable on a Saturday morning – crappy cartoons (they really don’t make them like they used to), some more bullshit presidential candidate Donald Trump (seriously. This, if anything, is why Stage Two is an absolute fucking necessity to get the world back on track) has regurgitated about taxes or something is being picked apart by no less than twelve ‘experts’ on CNN, and the hysteria continues on four other channels. Only one news channel is actually covering the upcoming UN vote, which is quintessential Americocentrism - like, holy shit, the UN is going to sell a fucking country to China, and all people give a shit about is some failed reality star who can't, apparently, do math beyond a grade-school level. The next channel he tries is airing a repeat episode of Teen Mom, which is about the point where he gives up and switches it off, tossing the remote somewhere down the couch.

I don't know what was on US basic cable on that September weekend in 2015, and neither do you, probably. I do know that, around this time, Trump unveiled his tax policy at a press conference. It wasn't on a Friday/Saturday, but then again, September 29th wasn't actually a Monday, so whatever, I'll take some wiggle room on that.

[...] Darlene doesn’t know about the arrangement between Angela and himself, all he needs is plausible deniability for the knock – sleeping pills on the side table, that’s it, that’s the play, if he bunks down on the couch she’ll believe he was so far under he didn’t hear any of it. Wake up, fidget a bit, Elliot-style – keep it vague, let her fill in the blanks—

I would've loved to have seen the Robot v Darlene route, where Robot plays as Elliot and finds out about Elliot's plan to have him followed, and how things might have played out differently from there, but, that would then diverge from the canon series of events I was trying to keep within. I guess we'll never know!

“I know, that’s why I set up a contingency, give me some fucking credit here,” he argues. “It’s a little self-destructive sequence, a ransomware mimic – forget to key the password into the dialog box that pops up every five minutes and you’ll get locked out, and all the files on this laptop will self-encrypt. Only I have the keys, so even if – if – he manages to resurface, he wouldn’t get far.”

I'm sure this is wildly inaccurate, since I know pretty much nothing about programming, lol. We can't all be Elliot, okay!!!

“Is it possible for you to not be an asshole for like, five minutes?” Angela mutters. “Fine. I’ll—wait, hold on.” She brings up the Netflix home page, typing ollie.p.parker@gmail.com into the email field. “Let’s see if he – nope, hasn’t changed it. Why am I not surprised.”

“This is your ex-boyfriend’s account,” he clarifies. Angela hums the affirmative as she scrolls through his recommended titles – fucking hell, there’s at least three different Adam Sandler flicks alone. “Well, good to know he’s still a fucking moron. You sure dodged a bullet there. Or,” he pivots, reconsidering the context, “I suppose, given how that all played out, got that bullet lodged in you removed before it was too late.”

Fuck Ollie, this is the least of what you deserve, you dickwagon. I had a further scene that I ended up cutting because it dragged down the pacing, where Robot convinced Angela to let him 'hijack' Ollie's Netflix account by changing the email address and password and then getting into his email account to verify the change and delete the notification emails. Anyway, he's probably suffering in the post-5/9 economy, so, suck it dude.

He wrinkles his nose. “Oh, that guy’s in this?”

“Who, Christian Slater?” Angela says, looking up over her phone as the monologue continues. She finishes her text and slides it back onto the coffee table. “Not a fan?”

“Of his works? No, I like them well enough, Heathers is great,” he says, tossing a piece of popcorn in the air. “There’s just something about his face that makes me hate him. You know, when you look at a guy, and he has a face that’s just asking for a fist? This guy. He always looks so smug.” He points an accusatory finger at the TV. “What have you got to be so smug about, huh? Besides the fact that you’re probably jerking off to that fat royalty check in the mail every month. I mean, we all know that’s what all the Hollywood schmucks are doing, tugging it to their stacks of cash, but you don’t have to wear it right there on your face so I’m reminded of the fact every time I see it. And it doesn’t help that he spends half the movie miming the act, it just makes it so stupidly meta, Christ, I need to build a fourth wall in my brain and kick over a bucket of bleach – also, by the way, what the fuck, I can’t believe you actually watched this as a child, you—”

This was probably the most self-indulgent thing I got to write. I love that Christian Slater exists in Robotverse, so that I can exercise the 'character played by actor, who also played a character in another thing, thinks this character sucks/is ugly' trope. If you missed it, here's Pump Up The Volume on VHS in Angela's childhood home in 3x06:

She’s silent, for a moment, and the movie plays on. “It helped, in a way. With my mom. There’s a line, that’s always stuck with me – ‘the terrible secret is that being young is sometimes less fun than being dead.’ See, they don’t approach death in a way that’s nice, and polite, and full of platitudes – it’s angry, and messy, and it’s okay to want to just—” She suddenly leans over to the laptop, clicking forwards a few times.

“I’m sick of being ashamed. I don't mind being dejected and rejected, but I'm not going to be ashamed about it.” She mouths along with him. “I mean, you look around, and you see nothing is real, but at least the pain is real. You know, even this show isn’t real? It’s just me, I’m using a voice disguiser, I’m a phony fuck just like my dad, just like anybody—”

If you haven't seen the movie, basically Slater's character is reacting to the news of a teen committing suicide, after they had stated the intention to do so on his show - you can watch this scene here. This is, of course, not a movie a young child should watch, but Angela has always talked about her anger regarding her mother's death, and I thought (aside from the self-indulgent aspect of Robot v Slater, lol) it would be interesting to explore how she might act out, a little, like kids sometimes do to cope with grief and pain, secretly watch a Movie Definitely Not For Kids, and within it find a helpful way to release the anger she bottled up. (Also -- she would've loved the lizard. What a cute little friend.)

Somehow, they keep this train chugging along until well into the night. His pick is next – he chooses Snakes On A Plane, just to fuck with her a bit, but it turns out she just loves snakes, because of course she does, so that backfired somewhat, aside from the fact that Snakes On A Plane is actually pretty fun if you really embrace the hammy acting and ridiculous plot. Angela parries, picking a recent release called Jupiter Ascending, a large proportion of which he spends loudly trying to work out at what point in time since The Matrix Trilogy were the Wachowskis secretly killed and replaced by doppelgänger hacks, as Angela sips her appletini and coos over werewolf-angel(?)-in-rollerskates Channing Tatum. He then counters with Sharknado 3, which is definitely a mistake, and then they have to both suffer through all excruciating ninety-five minutes of it because neither of them are willing to budge on their unspoken cinematic war. A victory for him, maybe, but a Pyrrhic one nonetheless.

Angela does canonically love snakes, so this wasn't intended to be a jab at her manipulation of Elliot this season, but, of course, interpret at as you will. This great piece of characterisation is from the Red Wheelbarrow tie-in book for Season 2 (which is an awesome read, definitely recommend):

Second, the 'cinematic war' is totally one-sided. In my mind, Angela actually enjoyed all the films they watched, while Robot basically fucked himself, lol. Look, Jupiter Ascending is a wonderful, whimsical film, that should be taken at face value for the work of art that it is. Space paperwork! Bee princesses! Eddie Redmayne whisper-screaming as he tries to marry his mother! It's an absolute cinematic treasure. I can't say the same for Sharknado 3, but, well, all in good fun.

“First off, the entire concept of monogamy is bullshit,” he replies, and yes, he is going to actually give her a serious answer. “It’s an archaic evolutionary tactic to boost survival rates among Neanderthals that has no place being the gold standard in 2015, in the same way that we don’t kill a mammoth and spend the rest of the year eating hairy elephant ass for every meal — newsflash, supermarkets exist now, there are like fifty different varieties of beans, literally just beans, so it makes zero sense to pledge your undying commitment to a can of Spam, I mean, shit, even if it’s something you actually enjoy, you’d get absolutely sick and tired of eating it and nothing else until you keel over and die. So, on that note, it’s pretty obvious why most of our parents spend the rest of their lives fucking hating each other if they’re not a part of the fifty percent who cut ties before it’s too late, because, yes, alongside the great lie of the picture perfect nuclear family, the modern factory-line industry of marriage is just a capitalist cash cow where everybody thinks they’re getting milk, but in reality? That sure ain’t a teat they’re sucking on.”

This also comes back to the Red Wheelbarrow tie-in book, and specifically, to this scene in it, where Robot rants to Leon about monogamy in the context of Mad About You:

This is probably my favourite scene from the book -- I love the idea of Leon and Robot having long-winded debates on media, and it's a pity we'll never get to see that acted out, lol.

[...] “Fuck Gosling, fuck Stone, kill Groban. Done.”

“Wow,” Angela replies, leaning back, one hand against her heart. “Wow. You’re such a dick. How can you kill Josh Groban?”

“Breaking news! What a scoop. Angela Moss, come and claim your Pulitzer,” he says. “And, to answer your question: very easily. Groban is clearly the least attractive of the three, and so by the metric of this game it condemns him to death.”

“The correct answer,” she says firmly, barreling over him as if he’d never spoken, “Is fuck Ryan, marry Josh, and, well, if I have to kill someone, I guess I have to kill Emma, but I’m sure she’s lovely. Actually, no, okay, if you get two fucks then I do to. Fuck Ryan, fuck Emma, marry Josh.”

I love Angela's love for Josh Groban nearly as much as getting to see Elliot in that 'Property of Josh Groban' sweater in 3x01. It's never been explicitly stated on the show, but my interpretation of Angela and Robot's sexualities is that they're both bi as fuck, so there you go.

“And, you know what? I don’t want to live in a world where everyone’s as cynical and jaded as you, old man. Because,” she hiccups, ending it in a giggle, “That’s what you sound like, you grumpy fuck, like you’re pushing eighty, not long until you start yelling at kids—” and at this, she cups her hands over her mouth, imitating a megaphone, “Get off my lawn, you capitalist piglets!”

“Okay,” he says, shaking his head, grinning in spite of himself as she yells out “you bourgeoisie microscum!” in a shitty imitation of an elderly man [...]

This is my favourite piece of dialogue in this entire thing. 'Bourgeoisie microscum' fucking kills me every time I read it. Originally I also had 'pushing fifty' as a sly wink at Christian Slater's real age, but no middle aged man has quite the curmudgeonly attitude to pull off 'bourgeoisie microscum'.

That's it for part one, folks! Thanks for reading, if indeed you still are. Click here for part II :D

[orionsangel86]

Part 2 - Episode Review of 12x15

Part 1 for 12x14 review

Of the past three episodes this one was my favourite, but of course it was, it had Cas in it - however small his part was. I think it was the best structured for the story as well though and for where it left us in terms of speculation and meta. Basically I have a lot to say.

Davy Perez returns for 12x15 and I think he had a lot of fun with this one. Lucille makes an appearance and I am sure that fans of the Walking Dead recoiled in horror watching Dean Winchester carry that horrid bat, I also enjoyed poor suffering Castiel dealing with the crazy “lizard people” man and the Queen making an appearance (much to Misha’s delight I’m sure).

Other smaller moments I liked – the overlapping conversations both Dean and Sam had to Cas and Mary respectively that led to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment where it was easy to mishear Dean saying “I love you too” to Castiel. In a Perez episode. When his last episode was 12x12. Which was the episode where Cas confessed his undying love? Yeah that ain’t a coincidence guys.

Also Gwen was a totally awesome character of the week who was twice able to fight off a hellhound that she couldn’t see. Please keep giving us these awesome female characters show. We are starved and scramble for this kind of stuff.

Final small point - Winchesters in glasses *drools*.

For the longer meta points however I’ll start with something that grinded my gears on first watch...

Dean Winchester – No longer a Germaphobe?

Yeah this bothered me.. When did DEAN “bathing in purell tonight” Winchester not care about showering after getting covered in monster goop? There is only ONE OTHER time in the whole series that that was the case… Purgatory. Perez sure loves his call backs to previous seasons. I didn’t pick up on it at first and basically huffed a “that’s out of character” at the screen. But I have since thought about this and re-watched the episode a couple of times and well, its clearly a purgatory callback now. I had to kick myself for getting grumpy at first.

So why are we calling back to Purgatory Dean? Where it “felt pure” and his mission was to “find the angel” at all costs? I know Davy Perez is new, but I can’t imagine him getting the characterisation so wrong here, especially after what he has given us so far. Dean is in purgatory mode. He is going from hunt to hunt unknowingly from the BMOL’s leads and thriving in the kill. Could this be because after twice being told “you’re a killer Dean Winchester” he’s decided to accept it? The last time he truly embraced that killer side of him was in purgatory after all (the mark of cain does not count since he fought against it with every fibre of his being). I think the nod to Lucille also kinda comes into this here. Dean with a distinctive weapon, being the thing that the monsters fear most, it’s some very strong imagery. We are being lead to believe that Dean truly IS the “killer”, the “American Ketch” if you like. So of course I fully expect him to defy the BMOL expectations and fight against that eventually. Dean is on a journey of self-acceptance after all. When he realises he is SO MUCH MORE than just a “killer” (no matter how pure he felt in purgatory) his journey will be complete.

Sam and Lying

I have already covered this briefly in part 1, but Dean is our token excellent liar in this show and yet right now he really is on an honesty kick. Sam however, is not. “Oh so we lie?”  “Yeah. A lot” The interesting thing about Sam’s lying is that when he does lie, he generally thinks it is for the best. This is the case with their lies to Gwen and it is also the case with his lies to Dean about the BMOL. He thinks it will give his brother “peace” to just keep it to himself for the time being. Then he has this conversation with Gwen where she says:

“If I’d just told him, why couldn’t I just tell him the truth”

“but I didn’t, I lied, I lied to make things easier”

This show does love its character parallels after all. This one was pretty obvious. Marcus is Dean getting ripped to shreds by the hellhound, Gwen is Sam lying to make things easier.

Now aside from the uncomfortable wincest implications of such a mirror this is a good point. Because as I said about 12x14, Sam chooses the objective path rather than the emotional path pretty much all the time, because it is easier for him. He may be emotionally intelligent in how he deals with difficult situations generally, but when it comes to his brother and potentially difficult differences of opinion, he would rather keep things quiet.

(I will talk more about Gwen and Marcus as mirrors a bit later)

It is pretty clear to the audience that this conversation with Gwen is what makes Sam decide to tell Dean the truth about working with the Brits. It is evident of how far the boys have come that we are no longer seeing such a  toxic relationship of lying and sacrifice etc etc so much anymore (since it was getting super old). Though he still hasn’t told Dean all the details, and whilst Dean warns that “the minute something feels off we bail” I can’t see Sam actually bailing now. For some reason I reckon Sam has picked his side and is determined to set things right. I expect to see his relationship with Mick develop into almost trust by season end and I ALSO expect that another wedge will be formed between Dean and Sam because of this.

Crowley – rubbing off on everyone

I’m sorry I couldn’t help but make a joke about that line. Which I will never get out of my head! Crowley was really the star of this episode (mainly because Cas only had a small part and even my extremely biased self couldn’t give this one to him and that hot angel dude who was manipulating him). Nope Crowley wins it. He was brilliant. Crowley is still desperately trying to pull his “I don’t care about the Winchesters” act. I’m glad to see that EVERYONE sees through this at this stage.

I was talking to @purplesummer91 after watching this episode (we watched it together with pizza) about how I was so infuriated with Bucklemming for writing Crowley so fucking dumb in 12x13. For choosing to put Lucifer into a purpose built vessel and chain him up in a way that was clearly not going to go well for Crowley. We were both super pissed off about it. Even all the painfully cringe worthy exposition couldn’t save Crowleys character in 12x13. Bucklemming probably had some stupid plan for Lucifer to get out and rape a few more people before finally doing something really stupid and out of character for Lucifer and move to LA to solve crimes… pfft…

Davy Perez however, is now the hero who has saved the script, and Crowley, from their slimy incompetent hands. What he managed to do in this episode was actually have Crowley’s plan make sense again. His “ten steps ahead” speech was really clever of Perez. Giving Crowley the upper hand and putting him right back where his character belongs – as the smartest character in the whole fucking show. Now, I get bored of generic suit wearing demons and angels as much as the next person, and the weakest part of this episode was those two idiots trying to barter with Lucifer and set him free (everyone in hell should really know by now that you stick with Crowley if you actually wanna live at least a little while longer) and whilst I am really bored of Lucifer (and don’t like the season 12 rendition of him at all) I enjoyed watching Crowley beat him down again. It felt like some spiteful revenge on Bucklemming and their idiocy – your next job Davy is to bring Charlie back and have her joke about how terribly stupid her supposed “death” was and how only an idiot would really believe her quick thinking glamour magic from Oz to put the Stines off her trail (if you haven’t noticed already, I’m still super bitter).

Let’s talk about Drowley for a moment though. Because as @purplesummer91 and I discussed after watching, we still can’t believe this is still a thing. I mean, okay, sure. They had their fun together in early season 10, but the fact that the writers continuously bring this back and shove it rather graphically in all of our faces is something else. Never let a hater tell you that Bi!Dean is all in your head, or that you only want it for your ship… because NO ONE ASKED FOR FUCKING DROWLEY. The show chose that. They chose to shove that down our throats and practically make it canon. The fact that it is so fucking obvious in canon is still unbelievable every time we get another Drowley joke.

“Maybe you rubbed off on me, maybe I rubbed off all over you”. Thanks Crowley for that mental image. Where is Sam so I can borrow his brain bleach?

If you are doubting the impact of this line from a shipping perspective, ask yourselves this:  would that line have had as much impact if he had said it to Sam?

Yes, Crowley talks in innuendos, and loves to be overly sexual with the boys, BUT since season 10 and Crowley and Dean’s “summer of love” his sexual jokes have been almost exclusively to Dean. Because Crowley, being the intelligent guy he is, knows that they would have far greater effect on Dean – Since they are fucking true and there is nothing Dean can do about that. Crowley has been Dean’s subtextual ex-boyfriend for two and a half seasons now. This is not something we as fangirls wanted or needed, but the show went there. I’m never getting over that. Ever.

The other important Crowley point to talk about is how he was actually validated this episode for the good he has done. Dean’s sincere thank you for saving Cas, even though Crowley tries to brush it off as wanting to spare himself from the man pain, it is obvious at this stage that he cares for Cas (we talked about this in 12x12 anyway so I won’t go into detail). Sam’s thank you was even more heartfelt, and genuine and sincere, and Crowley didn’t even come back with a snarky remark that time, nor did he brush off Gwen’s hug which was extremely heartwarming. Oh Crowley, you big softy. We all know you still just want to be loved.

Castiel – Angel of Earth – Hunter of Lizard People?

Why is it every time Cas graces our screens I grin like an idiot in love. I was a bit sad that Cas’s role in this episode was so small baring in mind we don’t get him for another three episodes (which I’m slightly pissy about FYI) and we didn’t get him for the last two either. But, Perez seems to be becoming the next Robbie Thompson for giving us a lot of info and meta content in a short space of time.

Cas was so freaking adorable in this episode. Who would have thought that it was canon that Cas is a Beyoncé fan to start with – enough that he knows the name of her sister and used it as his alias. Honestly I can see Dean rolling his eyes but still gazing at him with heaps of affection. The upside down FBI badge really has become a running joke. Cas just isn’t quite there yet in his hunter skills. (all this means for me is that I hope by the end of the series we will get an episode where Cas swoops in like a skilled hunter, flashes his badge in sync with Dean and is perfectly able to interview a witness without any issues whatsoever – AND give them a classic flirtatious wink at the end.)

His utter exasperation over the conspiracy theorists lizard people story was hilarious. As was Cas banging his head against the door. Cas was so done with this guy. But at least he got his Kelly Kline lead.

I think it is important to point out that at this stage, Cas is so disillusioned with his siblings that the moment he sees one he pulls out his blade to defend himself. It breaks my heart but the Dean Winchester in me wants to scream out “Damn right you defend yourself sweetheart. You stab that dick with wings!” As hot as Kelvin is I just don’t trust him one bit. Nor do I buy what he is selling here. What I LOVE is that we are getting MORE unanswered questions to Cas too add to the heap we already have.

“You ever miss it? Upstairs?”

“I love Earth, smells like hay, but it’s not home is it?”

“imagine it Castiel, for you to come and go as you please, be part of your family, your true family again”

Castiel doesn’t answer ANY of these questions, he diverts them. And this is so so interesting to see happening in a script written by the same writer who gave us “Knowing you has been the best part of my life, you’re my family, I love you, I love all of you”. We KNOW as an audience that Cas has chosen who his family, his home is, and it’s not heaven. But the fact that the angels don’t know this, that they STILL think they can manipulate Castiel with talk of acceptance and power… I can’t wait for him to turn to them and basically say “fuck you guys. I am going back to my boyfriend because HE LOVES ME.” And honestly this is where all the coming out/non accepting family of a queer kid metaphors come into play and I LOVE THEM.

In fact the ONLY part of Kelvins whole little speech there that perked Castiel’s interest was mentioning Joshua and this:

”the gardeners got a plan, all we ask is that you hear him out for the greater good.” And at that moment we know Cas is done for, because his second biggest weakness (next to a certain Mr Humanity) is doing the right thing – doing it for the “greater good”.

Cas isn’t going back to heaven for acceptance, to get his ‘home’ back, or for power. He is going back because Joshua has a plan that may help ‘the greater good’ and that is a pitch that Cas can’t say no to. His face when Kelvin asked him if he was ready at the end, again, no answer. He didn’t look ready at all, and I HATE seeing Cas in pain. Especially since apparently we ain’t gonna see him again until 12x19 which I am super pissed off about. Urgh.

But I just need to mention that final moment, Dean Winchester looks down at his phone after Cas hung up and says “he sound weird to you?” we don’t get an answer from Sam but I would bet money on that answer being “no?” because only Dean has that connection to Cas that means he can tell if something is wrong over a fucking PHONE CALL. They are such husbands OMG. Dean is gonna be so upset when he finds out Cas has gone back to heaven. This is gonna hurt to watch.

Gwen and Marcus – Parallels?

The last point I wanted to talk about was how Gwen and Marcus appear to be a mirror for Sam and Dean’s relationship in the show. This was obvious when Gwen spoke to Sam in the car and Sam clearly took her experience and advice and was inspired to tell Dean the truth. The show does this A LOT with various MOTW characters being some way mirrored with the boys in order for the boys to learn a lesson of some kind. There are often multiple parallels in place however and the other parallel here was Dean and Cas. Yes, there are both Wincest and Destiel readings in this doomed couple. Am I happy about this? Not really, but the interpretation is there.

Now, obviously the wincest parallel is easily disregarded as a legitimate romantic thing because the show is NEVER gonna go there. Don’t stress people. That’s not what I’m saying. If it was I’d quit watching in a heartbeat. *shudder*. The meaning of the mirror here is that our Sam character Gwen, kept lying to the Dean character Marcus, which ultimately lead to Marcus’s death. Gwen blames herself for his death because she lied about her feelings for him.

There are multiple layers to this reading. Marcus was clearly in love with Gwen, he wanted her by his side and dreaded her leaving him to go to college. (this all plays nicely with the Winchesters history and Sam leaving Dean to go to Stanford). The main point of takeaway here is that Gwen didn’t feel the same way about Marcus that he did about her. Gwen wanted something more in her life, she wanted to pursue a future that she didn’t feel she could have with Marcus by her side. Is this foreshadowing of the Winchesters going their separate ways? Dean always has been the clingier of the two, and I have been saying throughout this entire post that Dean is emotional whereas Sam is logical. The situation matches Gwen and Marcus. Marcus was holding on to a dream ruled by his feelings, whereas Gwen was far more logical and rational about their situation. Is Sam going to break away from Dean? If he doesn’t break away? Could this lead to Dean’s doom?

Ultimately I don’t think this season is gonna end well for Dean – call it a hunch, but with the way Ketch was eyeing him up and the differences between them I dunno, I can just see a clash in the future that I think will involve Cas somehow… but that is pure speculation. I also think that this could foreshadow Sam choosing to go to the UK to learn with the BMOL…

The other parallel is similar. In this episode Cas struggles with choosing to leaving earth and going back to heaven. Leaving Dean. The difference is that unlike Gwen, we KNOW that Cas loves Dean. His feelings have been laid out in the text. But poor self-hating Dean doesn’t know that. Will Cas keep the fact that he went back to heaven/is working with heaven again from Dean? How will that affect their relationship? We know that Dean loves Cas, but we have yet to have the moment where he admits to Cas that he loves him too (which I will put money on happening by season end). Dean could EASILY view Cas’s heartfelt confession as platonic familial love and therefore feel rejected, especially if Cas now leaves him for heaven once again. Dean’s main issue throughout pretty much ALL OF THE SERIES prior to Cas’s break up with heaven in season 11 was that Cas kept leaving him. Ironic since they are now paralleled by a couple where the Cas mirror NOT leaving him and telling him the truth lead the Dean mirror to his death.

Basically this is how I see it. If Cas and Sam chose to stay by Dean’s side and keep secrets from him, then Dean is likely to die. If they are honest with him, and leave him, then he will live. Could this be foreshadowing an ultimatum somewhere along the way? If you leave Earth, return to heaven and stay away from OUR territory, then we won’t kill the man you love.

OR, If you go to London with us, work with us there, then we won’t kill your brother?

This is pure speculation of course, but I liked the parallel, and how it foreshadows Dean ending this season very much alone and feeling like he was rejected by choice.

How very heartbreaking indeed.

[littlemisssquiggles]

Hello! Long time no see! I read your Cinder the Red Queen theory, and it's really cool! Cinder is one of my favorite characters (even if I don't watch RWBY anymore) and it would be really awesome to see Cinder play a really big role, besides "revenge on Ruby". Although, I am personally more of a Cinder Redemption Arc fan. So, hypothetically, if Cinder were to get one such redemption arc, how do you think it would play out?

Hiya Yellow! Yeah it has been a while. Sorry I took so long to get back to you. Slowly working through my backlog of posts inside my inbox. Anyways, how have you been fam? And in the literal immortal words of one Oscar Pine, wait…WHAT! When did you stop watching RWBY? ! D8

What happened? If you don’t mind me asking, how come you’re not watching anymore? Is it because you just fell out of love with the series as a whole after being disappointed with its current direction or did all the discourse surrounding the show (and by extension RT as well) drive you to stop?

Sad to hear you’re no longer in the FNDM man. But on a different note, allow me to say thank you! Knowing that you’re a Cinder fan, I’m happy to hear that you liked my Red Queen headcanon for her. Much appreciated.

And yes, I do remember you being an advocate for Cinder’s redemption as well. In response to writing a Cinder redemption arc, I’m gonna be frank. 

Given the way the canon has portrayed Cinder’s character, both in previous seasons and currently, redemption is still the last thing I can envision for your favourite Fall Maiden m’dude. I’ve never seen Cinder getting redeemed as a possibility since to me, the show hasn’t shown enough evidence of her being empathetic to anyone else other than herself to make me believe there’s a chance for her to change for the greater good.

The only way I can picture Cinder going is either she is given the Adam Taurus treatment---unceremoniously killed off despite the series keeping her relevant to the story for so long or…Cinder survives long enough to rise up and see herself becoming the all-powerful entity she desires to be---ultimately walking out of Salem’s shadow to overthrow her and replace her as the Red Queen and succeeding within a short time what Salem has failed to do for centuries---thrusting Remnant into utter anarchy in the form of a second Great  War sparked by one of the kingdoms (possibly Mistral) declaring war against the remaining three kingdoms hoping to conquer them all after learning that the great Atlas Kingdom has fallen along with the former Mantle.

One kingdom to rule them all and this was all done through Cinder puppeteering her pawns in the Mistral Council through her newly awakened abilities after finally succumbing to the Geist Grimm and becoming something more than human--- a Grimm with a soul and a conscience. A Grimm-human hybrid or Grimmoire as I’d like to say.

Instead of being redeemed, I more favour the idea Cinder becoming a bigger threat to Remnant than Salem who I peg would be defeated, purified of her darkness (courtesy of Ruby’s silver eyes) and stripped of any magic that she had, courtesy of Cinder betraying her.

Cinder’s whole “…Without you, I am nothing” statement from the trailer is just giving me huge red flags for her to eventually realize that she can probably do better than Salem without her holding her back. The student does eventually become the master, right? So why not expect Cinder to replace Salem as the main big antagonist of RWBY with her reign being the true threat of Remnant in a time of war?

I really, really like the idea of the main conflict of RWBY not being the war with Salem but the rise of Cinder Fall and the second Great War of Remnant. I think such a plotline would be cool especially looking back on the fact that Oz had told General Ironwood that he prayed that his students---the children whose futures and development were entrusted to him---would never have to face the pains and strife of war like his predecessor: King Phadrig of Vale, once did long ago.

It would actually be very compelling to watch our heroes attempting to survive a dire time when the world was divided with two of its founding kingdoms in shambles while one tried to conquer them all (Mistral) and another daring to defend them all (Vacuo). The first Great War lasted ten years. Imagine if…it were the same for the second with time fast-forwarding to another period ten years later when all of our young heroes were now grown adults. No longer naïve children enamoured by the huntsmen lifestyle but seasoned warriors doing what they could to help the people in a dark world where war raged, humanity pleaded for their salivation and the Grimm feasted.

That could’ve been nice. But…I’m getting ahead of myself here. I’m not sure if anything like that will actually happen in the show. Still it’s good to share the idea around.

Going back to Cinder, like I said---right now I can’t see a redemption arc for Cinder.

As I said, the core reason why I’ve never been for Cinder being a redeemable character is due to the fact that up until this point, the series has done very little to establish her having any positive qualities. Cinder has sadly been selfish through and through making it very clear multiple occasions that she’s only out for herself. For me to have pictured Cinder to be a redeemable character, the series would’ve need to introduce a sort of “buffer character”---for lack of a better term. Basically when I say a buffer character, I mean in terms of a character who could’ve acted as a sort of foil to Cinder---seeing through her power-hungry nature and faults and thus revealing to the audience a much more relatable, sympathetic and emotionally vulnerable side to her through her relationship with said buffer.

The best example of this type of dynamic for me in an animated media is the relationship between Prince Zuko and his Uncle Iroh from Avatar the Last Airbender. In that series, Iroh was Zuko’s buffer character---the one person who saw through Zuko’s acts of aggression and appealed to the side of him that was just a insecure young man lacking any real support in his life and wanting nothing more than to do his best to appease an abusive father just so that he can feel a sense of belonging in the world.

It was through his bond with his uncle that I, as a viewer, was able to believe in Zuko’s redemption arc since it was only with Iroh did we see a more open side to Zuko---the side that reminded us that outside of his status as Prince of the Fire Nation leading the charge to capture the Avatar---outside of that, Zuko was only a boy in need of guidance. Guidance that Iroh attempted to provide him on multiple occasions.

Going back to Cinder, this is what I would have needed to make her redeemable. Give her a character who is the only one to see her more vulnerable side. Using what we know about the series, I’d say Emerald Sustrai could’ve easily been Cinder’s buffer. In the show, RWBY already established Cinder as a sort of motherly/sister figure based on Emerald’s perception of her.

Through Emerald, the show could’ve used her close ties with Cinder to show a side to her that we often don’t see. A side that actually cares for Emerald or at least better fools Emerald (and by extension us as the audience) into thinking that she cares. Ironically enough, the show could’ve had Cinder mirror Salem in this regard.

The reason why I’m more of an advocate for Salem’s redemption over Cinder is because UNLIKE Cinder, the show has given me moments of Salem being genuinely kind and caring to others. We saw this with the way she loved Ozma and would’ve done anything to get him back before her self-interest and hatred toward the Brother Gods consumed her.

We saw this in the Lost Fable and to some degree, even though she is another pawn to her, I’d like to think that the way Salem treats Cinder is akin to a mother. My issue with Salem isn’t that she is incapable of caring about others, it’s that no matter what, she will never put them before herself. It will always be her first and others second. At least that’s what I interpreted and it for this reason while her curse will remain.

However at least the show has shown examples of Salem showing compassion towards other. This is something I have yet to see from Cinder Fall. To me, Cinder is lacking that side of her.

Salem is selfish but as strange as this for me to say, I don’t think she’s entirely heartless. It’s kind of complicated when it comes to Salem but this just adds onto why I find her character fascinating. This is what makes the difference for me between her and Cinder and separates the two.

Salem is selfish but is capable of empathy and a surprising amount of mercy in unexpected moments (like in the way she treats Cinder for example. Salem could’ve easily offed Cinder for her failures like how she ended Lionheart but instead she left her be. And judging from the V8 trailer, even as Cinder came grovelling back to her, Salem still seemed to mostly react to Cinder’s return with an air of a strict parent who isn’t angry at their child but more disappointed. And oddly enough she did the same thing with Tyrian back in V4)

Cinder, on the other hand, shares in Salem’s self-centred nature but lacks any kind of compassion. Cinder is heartless.

Sorry Yellow, picturing a redemption arc for Cinder Fall is tough for me, even hypothetically speaking. I mean, if the show had done something with Cinder akin to Zuko---having her gain the power and status she’s always wanted only to have it result in her losing the only good relationship she had in Emerald thus leading to her falling from grace again after realizing her mistakes---then I could see it.

Or…perhaps the show could’ve pulled an Azula type of redemption for Cinder. Have her gain the power she desired at the cost of her own humanity and she loses herself in the process, becoming a monster and realizing her mistakes too late. And in the end, despite everything she’s been through and in spite of all that she put her through, the only person to appear before Cinder in her time of death after falling from her mistakes is Emerald.

I like the irony of Emerald cradling a dying Cinder Fall, choosing even then not to hate her and remain with her until her last dying breathe as her way of finally paying her back for saving her from her former life of poverty; giving her a new sense purpose in life outside of being a street rat.

That could’ve worked, at least me. But again, this is only if the show had further developed Emerald and Cinder’s bond. I genuinely wished the show had explored more of Cinder’s ties to Emerald. This is why I wanted Emerald to be Cinder’s accomplice for Atlas instead of Neopolitan. We could’ve watched Emerald’s character grow further through her separating herself from Salem’s legion and devoting herself entirely to Cinder. We could’ve watched Cinder even entice Emerald with the prospect of her ruling beside Cinder in the new world she would’ve aided her to build for Salem.

At the end of the day, as Emerald implied back in V5, she doesn’t care that much for Salem. The only person of interest to Emerald Sustrai is Cinder so this makes me curious to see what their reunion would be like for V8. I highly doubt Salem just ups and left Emerald, Mercury and Hazel back in the Dark Domain. Unless they were sent off to Vacuo to retrieve the Sword of Destruction, they’re bound to be there with Salem inside of Grimm Monstro so I’m looking forward to seeing the look on Emerald’s face when she realizes to her dismay that in her absence, she had been replaced with Neo.

It would be interesting watching how Emerald deals with this development in addition to seeing where her story goes from here now that her beloved Cinder Fall is back with her but not really with HER, y’know what I’m saying? Perhaps this could lead to Emerald going out of her way to get back onto Cinder’s good side mirroring Cinder attempting to return to Salem’s.

“…Without you, I am NOTHING!” “…I don’t care about Salem but I owe Cinder for EVERYTHING!”

It’ll be a game of watching apprentices regain the faith of their masters as Emerald is Cinder’s apprentice while Cinder is Salem’s. This should be a fun development to observe for next season

…Sorry if I haven’t exactly answered your question Yellow. Truth be told, I don’t have much ideas for how Cinder could be redeemed. However I do stand by my points about Emerald being used to show a different side to Cinder. It’s a shame this wasn’t done much in the canon. But who knows? Maybe something might be done to change that for V8.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2020)