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all-that-jazz-93 · 4 years ago

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American Dragon Timeline

I’ve been trying for a while now to figure out the timeline of this show, because it makes no sense in the order that Disney Channel originally aired the episodes. It also makes no sense in the episode list on Jeff Goode’s website, which he claims to be the proper chronology of events.

I had to come up with a few convoluted headcanons to make this work, but I think I’ve finally pieced together a coherent timeline (note that for a lot of the filler episodes, it doesn’t actually matter that much when they take place, I was just trying to stick as close to Jeff Goode’s chronology as possible.)

September 2004

Old School Training

It’s implied in this episode that Jake got his dragon powers very recently. They don’t say how recently, but given how new the whole thing is to him, I’d say it’s probably only been about a week or two.

Here’s where we come up against our first issue with canon. In The Legend of Dragon Tooth, Jake says he got his dragon powers when he turned 13, and in Shapeshifter, he says he’s a Pisces, which means his birthday would be in late February, or March. There’s no way the timeline makes sense if that’s the case, so my headcanon is that Jake is just like…really bad at astrology, and he somehow confused Pisces with another star sign.

We also have the issue of how far behind he seems to be in school (he’s 14 in early season 2, but still in 7th grade). So, two more headcanons to explain that. Number one, Jake’s birthday is actually sometime in early September, so he missed the cutoff to go to kindergarten when he was 5, and had to wait until he was 6, placing him a year behind (some places don’t allow kids to start kindergarten if they turn 5 after September 1st. I knew a boy in my old youth group who was almost a year older than everyone else in our grade, because he had an October birthday). Number two, at some point in elementary school, Jake was held back a grade. So the first episode takes place shortly after Jake’s 13th birthday, at the beginning of his sixth grade year.

Since Trixie and Spud are supposed to be the same age as him, that would mean they must’ve both been held back at some point as well (that especially makes sense for Spud—anyone who’s purposely failed as many tests as he has would almost definitely have to repeat a grade).

This would also make Rose younger than them. She’s very bright, and she seems like a good student, so it’s unlikely she was ever held back. But we don’t want her to be too much younger than them, so I’ll headcanon that she also has a birthday in early September, making her a year younger than Jake. If that’s the case, she’d be 12 in season one, and 13/14 in season 2.

Adventures in Trollsitting/Fu Dog Takes a Walk

The dogcatcher says that it’s September.

September/October 2004

Shapeshifter Dragon Breath The Legend of Dragon Tooth The Talented Mr. Long Professor Rotwood’s Thesis Act 4, Scene 15 The Long Weekend Body Guard Duty Dragon Summit

This episode has to take place after Shapeshifter, Dragon Breath, and Professor Rotwood’s Thesis, since the Dragon Council makes references back to Jake’s actions in all of those episodes. It also has to take place before The Halloween Bash, which places it sometime in September or October.

October 2004

The Halloween Bash

Jeff Goode’s website lists this episode as taking place between Ski Trip and The Hunted, but there’s no way that’s possible, because Ski Trip takes place close to Valentine’s Day, and The Hunted takes place during the Equinox (they don’t specify which Equinox, but it would have to be the one in September; it’s the only way the timeline makes any sense, even with the generous liberties I’m taking with these headcanons). So The Halloween Bash has to take place before Ski Trip. No one in this episode makes any reference to knowing Rose’s identity, so it works out just fine.

February 2005

The Ski Trip

Valentine’s Day was actually on a Monday in 2005, so presumably this episode takes place the weekend of February 11-13.

March 2005

The Egg/The Heist

Easter was on March 27 in 2005. This is how I know The Hunted takes place during the Autumnal Equinox; Rose was still in the city during Easter weekend, a week after the Vernal Equinox.

Eye of the Beholder Ring Around the Dragon Jake Takes the Cake

May 2005

Fu and Tell/Flight of the Unicorn

Flight of the Unicorn takes place on Memorial Day, which was May 30th that year

May/June (or September) 2005

Keeping Shop

Hong Kong Nights

I know Jeff Goode’s website says this is the last episode of season one, but I absolutely cannot accept any episode besides The Hunted as the season finale, so I’m just gonna recognize that the council has made a decision, but elect to ignore it.

September 2005

The Hunted

The Autumnal Equinox in 2005 was on September 22

Late November/Early December 2005

Half Baked

Jake says it’s been three months since Rose left. It couldn’t be exactly three months, because that would place this episode in late December, and school would be out for the holidays. So presumably it’s late November or early December, and Jake is rounding up when he says three months.

The Academy

This one would pretty much have to take place very soon after Half Baked, like within a week or two.

Late December 2005

Breakout

This episode establishes that 88 and 89 are in the city working as apprentices to the Huntsman, so it has to take place before the Christmas episode, which they also appear in.

Hairy Christmas

January/February 2006

(Most of these don’t actually have to take place in January or February, aside from Dreamscape and Fool’s Gold. The rest could be pretty much any time during Jake’s 7th grade year. I’m just trying to stick to Jeff Goode’s chronology, and keep at least some of the episodes in the order he listed.)

Hero of the Hourglass Bring It On Family Business Something Fishy This Way Comes The Doppelganger Gang Dreamscape Fool's Gold

February 2006

The Love Cruise

They never explicitly say it’s Valentine’s Day, but the whole concept of the Love Cruise seems like something a school would do for Valentine’s Day. Also adds an extra layer of heartbreak, because it means Jake and Rose’s breakup happened on the one-year anniversary of Jake finding out Rose was Huntsgirl. Ouch. February has not been kind to Jake.

On the other hand, I’d prefer to headcanon that Jake and Rose got to spend the whole summer together before their breakup, going on dream dates every night and not having to set their alarms for school in the morning (can we just let them be happy for a little while? PLEASE?!?!?!?), so maybe the Love Cruise wasn’t on Valentine’s Day, and instead was just some random school event at the beginning of their 8th grade year.

May 2006

Feeding Frenzy

They spend three days visiting Jake’s family, so it’s either Memorial Day weekend, spring break, or summertime. Most likely Memorial Day or spring break, since Jake says in this episode that he’s been the American Dragon for a year and a half.

May/June 2006

A Befuddled Mind The Rotwood Files Haley Gone Wild Switcheroo

This one takes place after The Love Cruise, because Jake and Rose’s recent breakup is a minor plot point, so it only takes place at this point if we headcanon Love Cruise taking place in February.

Young At Heart

I know this is supposed to be a later episode, but going by this timeline, Jake would be 15 for most of his 8th grade year, and in this episode Jake, Trixie, and Spud talk about being 14, so it has to take place during 7th grade

Summer between 7th and 8th grade

A Ghost Story

Late September/Early October 2006

Homecoming

I never went to public school (I was unfortunately homeschooled), but it’s my understanding that middle schools don’t do Homecoming. So my headcanon is that it was actually just a junior high prom or something, but a few students on the planning committee approached Sun Park and begged her to let them model it after the Homecoming dances at their older siblings’ high schools. Sun was delighted by their enthusiasm, so of course she agreed.

Any time during their 8th grade year

Supernatural Tuesday Siren Says Shaggy Frog Nobody's Fu Game On Bite Father, Bite Son Magic Enemy #1

February 2007

Year of the Jake

Chinese New Year was on February 18th in 2007

March 2007

Furious Jealousy

Trixie and Spud put together a Daylight Savings themed school event, so this episode takes place either in October of 06 or March of 07. We’ll go with March because it’s closer to the end of the series.

June 2007

Being Human

Haley and Gramps both say in this episode that Jake is 14, but he would actually be 15 by this point (even if my whole timeline is wrong and he actually is a Pisces, he still would’ve had his 15th birthday already). Presumably the writers just weren’t paying close enough attention to their established timeline, but the in-universe explanation is…sometimes family members forget your age; my best friend keeps saying her youngest sister is 15, when in fact her sister is turning 17 this year. Sometimes you lose track.

Summer after 8th grade

The Hong Kong Longs

Presumably this episode takes place around July or August, which means Jake and his friends would be almost 16 by this point (and Rose would be almost 15, assuming my headcanon about her being a year younger than them is accurate).

#no i didn't spend three hours on this what are you talking about #american dragon: jake long #american dragon jake long #ad:jl #adjl #jake long #trixie carter #arthur spudinski #rose adjl #adjl rose #haley long #lao shi #sun park

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canary3d-obsessed · 4 years ago

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Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 07 part two

(Masterpost)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Lantern Lighting

Now we have the famous lantern scene, where everybody gets to express their character and have dates, ranging from disastrous to delightful, with the objects of their affection.

Wei Wuxian continues to be ridiculously good at drawing.

We’ve all seen Lan Wangji’s lovely first smile in the show a million times, so...let’s look at it again!

This scene is important not just because of the smile, but because there’s a distinct shift in the way they talk about their growing relationship. In the pond, it was “come visit me” and “never!” “I want to be your friend” “No need.” Basically Lan Wangji firmly saying no to Wei Wuxian’s offers of friendship.

This time, Wei Wuxian says “let’s do this together” and Lan Wangji says “I’m used to being alone,” which is not actually a No, just an explanation. And WWX says, you can change that. And then Lan Wangji DOES change it, sharing the lantern and the promise with Wei Wuxian.

Whoever painted this flower is even better than Wei Wuxian at plein air painting.

(more after the cut!)

Everybody’s wishes

Nie Huasang makes a practical wish. Wen Qing prays for her brother and Jiang Cheng notices how she’s like Yanli. Jiang Cheng isn’t very intense about Wen Qing, which could be a sign of his shyness but could also be a sign of his gayness or aceness. After all, later in life he’s an apparently wealthy clan leader who is hot as fuck, and needs an heir, since his nephew is a Jin. But he’s still not married, 16 years after breaking up with and uh, helping to kill and cremate, the girl he liked in summer school.

The Promise We Made Together

Wei Wuxian makes an ultra-idealistic wish/promise while Lan Wangji watches and falls the rest of the way in love with him, and silently makes the same pledge inside his head. Later they will each refer to this as a promise they made together, which is a really super high level of face-reading by Wei Wuxian, to understand that he really is speaking for both of them here. While making this promise, Lan Wangji brings out his Yin Iron Magic Bag and waves it around in front of everyone, but nobody notices.

Let’s take a moment to consider *why* this moment is so powerful for Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji is a boy whose emotions are always on the boil. He’s 100% upset all the time, at this age, and he keeps it clamped down all the time. His cultivation level is probably as high as it is partly because of all the work he does in emotion regulation. (note: if you haven’t read all the meta at @howpeacefulislwj , go read it; it’s awesome and hilarious)

Wei Wuxian doesn’t GAF about emotion regulation; he just expresses what he feels, all the damn time.

He is openly bored, lusty, playful, hungry, whiny. He straight up tells Lan Wangji “you’re boring and you have a stick up your ass” as part of saying he wants to be friends; no deference and also no falseness.

And he can see right through Lan Wangji’s reserve, barging into his loneliness and isolation without any regard for all of his wards. Wards are made to be broken.

(Unrelated note: Young Lan Wangji's rare moments of contentment seem to come from looking at something beautiful--the moon, falling petals, these lanterns, his mirror.)

But Wei Wuxian is also good. Lan Wangji desperately wants to be good. And here’s Wei Wuxian embodying this awful, amazing, tempting alternative path, in which all the interesting things in life get explored thoroughly, all the sweetness and beauty gets consumed unreservedly, all the pain and ugliness gets confronted and endured without hesitation.

In this moment, Wei Wuxian tells Lan Wangji “you can change,” and then offers up this prayer/promise that is just pure chivarly, speaking straight to Lan Wangji’s heart. Very simply, I want to spend my life doing right. Not 3500 rules; just one.

This infuriating boy, who breaks rules and who flirts indiscriminately and who pushes and pushes and pushes, reveals himself in this moment to be a hero at the beginning of his journey, and Lan Wangji sees it, and his heart goes right over the cliff.

The Girls’ Room

The girl cultivators all rush over to Yanli to get in her business about her betrothal, inspiring Jin Zixuan to act like a jerk to her and get even further onto Wei Wuxian’s bad side.

Talk Shit, Get Hit

Yanli’s wish was that Wei Wuxian would grow up and be good. He promptly launches his own personal Sunshot campaign, punching her fiancee so hard that the sun falls out of the sky and the previously well-lit scene transitions to full night.

So, in English, “don’t mention it again” is really mild, akin to “I don’t want to talk about it.” Wei Wuxian’s reaction makes it seem like Jin Zixuan said something really shitty, like “don’t you dare mention that woman to me!” So I’m assuming something is being lost in translation.

Lan Wangji tries to calm him down. He grabs Wei Wuxian’s sexy arm muscle and basically holds it until the Jiangs exit the scene.

Nie Huaisang has placed himself between the opposing factions, which is unusually direct of him. In the future he’ll stick to being an unindicted co-conspirator when Wei Wuxian starts trouble.

Ants in my Pants

Lan Wangji thinks kneeling can make Wei Wuxian cry, which is adorable of him.

He really relishes this opportunity to be a pedantic tool to his new boyfriend that annoying boy he hardly ever touches, and it really doesn’t work out for him, poor lamb.

Jiang Fengmian stops by to show exactly how deep his affection for Wei Wuxian runs, and to give him whiplash from constantly changing parental expectations. In a couple of hours he’ll be laughing over WWX & JC’s hijinks.

Wei Wuxian takes this opportunity to fantasize about bad things happening to the other boy in the fight, which is in no way foreshadowing of anything.

Douche Dads Conference

We now convene this meeting of the douchebag council. Jiang Cheng is also invited even though he’s a prick, not a douche. <--important distinction

This is our first time meeting Clan Leader Jin Guangshan. He's actually the most sensible and best parent in this scene, but his smug self-satisfaction hints at his true nature. This actor, Shen Xiaohai, has been active in cdramas for a long while now. I wonder what he looked like 15 years ago?

...Holy mother of god.

Jiang Fengmian is the worst dad and the worst husband here. His clan believes in letting children do what they want - uhh YOUR child wants to marry Jin Zixuan. “I wrote a letter to her mother, who arranged this marriage.” Uhhh she arranged for her sickly, low-cultivation-level, sweet and vulnerable child to marry the heir of a rich and powerful clan, with a powerful mother-in-law who’s looking forward to loving and protecting her. Basically she’s guaranteed her daughter’s safety and comfort, and even potential happiness, since her husband may learn to appreciate her (and in fact, does, thanks to soup and repeated beatings from WWX).

Mom worked hard and probably spent a fair amount of social capital to achieve this. And you’re going to toss that aside because the boy thinks he’s too good for her? What the everloving fuck, how are you a clan leader in the first place?

You can see that Jiang Cheng understands all of this and what a terrible choice his father is making here.

So do the other adults in the room.

Jin Guangshen: our wives are going to kill us

Lan Qiren: I'm looking at a couple of dead men

Jiang Fengmian pointedly won’t listen to Jiang Cheng or let him speak, showing that all his talk about being free is actually bullshit, that only applies to other people’s children.

Jiang Chang vaults off of the deck to tell Wei Wuxian about it. Hottt

Sorry Sis

Wei Wuxian goes to Jiang Yanli to sorta-apologize and sorta ask to be let off the hook for fucking up her engagement, which he absolutely did. He knows it, which is presumably why he bows to her in paperman form while hiding outside.

At no time has Jiang Yanli indicated to anyone that she doesn’t want to marry Jin Zixuan, as far as I can see, or said she wanted to be defended from insults with punching. Look how good SHE is at defending a person from insults, for comparison.

Yin Iron Blah Blah Blah

The senior Lans meet with Jiang Fengmian to talk about the Yawn Yin Iron. Yawn.

Jiang Fengmian addresses Lan Xichen as Lan Gongzi, which is adorable, since he is a big boy to everyone else. His family calls him Xichen and other people call him Zewu-Jun.

Farewell and Fuck You

The three Jiang kids come to say goodbye.

Lan Quiren says goodbye with a heap of criticism for Wei Wuxian and the horse he rode in on, and Jiang Fengmian basically says, yep, that’s what he’s like, all right.

Good thing Wei Ying gets so much verbal abuse at home he doesn’t take it very hard when he finds it in the field.

Wangji doesn’t say goodbye properly, which will be a recurring theme for the two of them.

I don’t know if this is because he has a problem with goodbyes, or is just being a jerk, or because he’s so bad at lying he doesn’t dare talk to Wei Wuxian lest he reveal his travel plans.

Indulgent Dad Continues to be the Worst

Jiang Cheng complains at Wei Wuxian for wanting to say goodbye to Lan Wangji, and WWX says he likes him because he is equal to WWX in fighting, whereas JC sucks. JC hits him tries to hit him--gosh, he DOES suck, comparatively.

Yanli, who has been keeping these boys in line all summer, sighs deeply at her Dad’s tolerance for their hijinks. OP has five brothers and this sibling-hijinks behavior is 100% accurate, except for the part where it is happening at someone else’s house in front of the hosts.

WWX pretending to be Lan Qiren where Lan Wangji can see him doing it, in front of Lan Qiren’s colleague and supposed friend, and just earning a laugh from the patriarch? Good lord. Dad Jiang tolerating this is shocking, particularly in the in-show culture where corporal punishment is as common as tea.

We’ve tried Nothing, and we’re all out of ideas!

Uggghh why are you like this?

Here in the real world, OP uses “positive discipline” with her child, and encourages other parents to consider it, particularly if your child is neuroatypical or asynchronous. That said, JF should be punishing the crap out of both boys for this behavior every time it happens, or should quit being a clan leader. He’s relying on Jiang Yanli to keep them in line while he gets to just be amused by them. And he’s letting Lan Qiren discipline Wei Wuxian instead of doing it himself. He suuuuuuucks.

Lan Wangji watches all of this. Lan Xichen reminds Lan Wangji that without Wei Wuxian, he’s completely fucking miserable. Lan Wangji still doesn’t plan to bring him along on his trip, though.

Time to return to our lives of crushing loneliness

Rabbits

At this same moment when Lan Wangji is staring down the barrel of future loneliness, Wei Wuxian is already deciding to leave the (forbidden) rabbits in Cloud Recesses “In case Lan Zhan gets lonely.” This small decision by Wei Wuxian - breaking the rules of Cloud Recesses for the millionth time - is kinder than he knows. Because what is the job of these rabbits? Let’s have a desaturated flashback.

Lan Zhan spent 3 years in the ice cave. The rabbits kept Lan Yi company in the ice cave. So...did the rabbits sneak in to keep Lan Wangji company in the ice cave as well? I’m going to say yes. By ep 43 they are following him to the gate of Cloud Recesses so they are very attached to him. Well done, Wei Ying.

Where my bitches at? Seriously, our warren needs bitches

(Is Watership Down still a thing people read? If not, just go ahead and assume all of OP’s rabbit jokes are about Watership Down because OP ain’t going to stop making them)

While Wei Wuxian annoys the bunny he has a flashback to the scene that happened 4 minutes earlier. The Untamed editors assume the viewership has the attention span of a goldfish, and I personally appreciate that they understand me so well.

Wei Wuxian figures out that Lan Wangji is going on the road alone, and tells the bunny immediately. The bunny is very concerned.

Writing Prompt: What do next-generation cultivators Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi wish for at lantern-lighting time?

#fytheuntamed #the untamed #wangxian #the untamed gifs #cdrama #chen qing ling #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #my gifs #the untamed spoilers

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shihalyfie · 4 years ago

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A meta and analysis on Hurricane Touchdown

Hurricane Touchdown sure is one of the Digimon entries that’s really difficult to describe. Often said to be “confusing” and “like an acid trip” (for pretty good reason, honestly), it somehow also manages to have a lot of hold in public memory, partially due to being one of the three movies that got widespread international distribution via Digimon: The Movie. Moreover, its relevance has started to re-emerge thanks to Kizuna, the director of which has stated Hurricane Touchdown to be his favorite movie (multiple times). Rather recently, there was even an editorial written by a journalist who had been covering Kizuna, professing that he had watched Hurricane Touchdown as a kid and hated it, only to rewatch it as an adult and appreciate it much better.

With all that, plus the fact that the movie recently got a new translation, it’s probably a good time to go back over the movie and analyze it! Despite what popular sentiment may have you believe, the plot of the movie isn’t that fundamentally incomprehensible, just buried under some rather unusual production and execution decisions. But there’s a lot to be said about the themes and story of the movie, so let’s dig in!

(All screenshots and quotations from the movie are based off the Hudie translation.)

Hurricane Touchdown in meta franchise terms

The full title of the movie isn’t technically Hurricane Touchdown by itself, but rather “Digimon Hurricane Touchdown!!/Transcendent Evolution!! The Golden Digimentals”. (The Japanese fanbase tends to shorten it to “Digimon Hurricane”, or, for even more shortening, “dejihari”.) The double-titling there is because of how it was originally screened; it was the 02 “summer movie”, screening in July (between the airings of 02 episodes 14 and 15). Functionally, the franchise has thereafter treated it like a single movie, but at the time, the fact it was technically “two” movies gave it the longest running time of any Digimon theatrical movie, clocking in at a little over an hour. (The tri. movies are officially considered OVAs and not theatrical movies due to their limited-screening nature, so as of this writing Kizuna, at 95 minutes, is the only theatrical movie to break this record.)

The movie itself has a pretty fascinating development history – for one, Akiyama Ryou was originally planned to be the starring character instead of Wallace. It’s also the first Digimon movie to be in “questionable canonicity” territory – this is very normal for Toei tie-in movies, since development for these kinds of movies usually starts at the same time or even before the TV series itself, making it hard to reconcile canon, but unusual at the time for Adventure, which had both its first and second movies be plot-relevant to Adventure and 02 respectively. It is generally understood that the movie takes place in “summer” – possibly between episodes 14 and 15, at the same position it screened in real-life – but, interestingly, the Western and Japanese fanbases’ opinions on why it’s questionably canon tend to differ: in the West it’s usually based on the appearance of Tailmon and Patamon’s higher-level evolutionary forms (which shouldn’t be possible as per 02 episode 27), but in the Japanese fanbase it’s based on Wallace’s existence posing a timeline contradiction (according to Adventure episode 45, there shouldn’t be any Chosen Children before 1995, but the movie states that Wallace had been one before then). Add to that The Door to Summer, which seemingly contradicts the ending of the movie (in which Wallace and Gumimon find what’s implied to be Chocomon’s egg, whereas The Door to Summer has the line “Chocomon isn’t here anymore”), and everything is just a tangled mess.

Despite that, it’s pretty remarkable how lasting the movie has been in public memory. Even with all of the factors working against it – the fact it’s often accused of being confusing (or, by many a Japanese kid, boring and slow) or an acid trip – Wallace is a very popular character, more so than you’d expect for a “guest” character in a one-off movie, especially one so controversial. 02 fans often even consider him an honorary seventh member of the 02 group. His article on the Pixiv dictionary wiki is pretty surprisingly thorough, at that. Questionable canonicity aside, the fact The Door to Summer even exists is pretty significant – how many one-off questionably canon movies have you seen getting an actual sequel?

As an aside, Hurricane Touchdown has a bit of an interesting relationship with Ojamajo Doremi, which is in some sense classic Digimon’s sister series (it aired at around the same time as Adventure through Frontier, and was also headed by their producer, Seki Hiromi). Wallace was voiced by Miyahara Nami, a voice actress who grew up in an international school in Austria and thus speaks fluent German and English, thus often putting her in roles that require speaking one of those. (If you listen to Wallace’s Japanese speech through the movie, it has a very heavy accent, which is deliberately affected on Miyahara’s part.) A year later, Miyahara would be cast as major character Momoko in Motto! Ojamajo Doremi, and The Door to Summer would prominently feature Nat-chan, a girl voiced by Shishido Rumi, who voiced Ojamajo’s Onpu (who is generally agreed to be Doremi’s most popular character, and Shishido’s most famous role). Coincidence? Opportunistic casting? Who knows.

The movie itself

But that’s enough beating around the bush. Let’s get to the movie itself!

I’m not going to dwell on this too much because I’m going to be going more in detail about it below, but our story starts off in Wallace’s hometown of Summer Memory, a fictional rural village in Colorado, in 1995. (As mentioned earlier, this is a bit of a timeline contradiction; Adventure episode 45 establishes that “the one who wishes for stability” and the Agents didn’t get the idea of human Chosen Children until 1995, whereas the events of Hurricane Touchdown imply he’d been one before then.) Chocomon suddenly vanishes, and a gust of wind is left behind, implying that he must have been kidnapped. It’s not exactly said by what he was taken by (Digimon: The Movie ties it into Our War Game! by having both be traced to a “virus”, but no mention of such is made in the original Japanese version).

The mystery of what it is that took Chocomon away is never fully elaborated in the course of the movie, but as it goes on, it becomes increasingly apparent that it doesn’t actually matter. Why? Well, stay tuned.

So, timeskip to 2002!

As Takeru and Hikari are visiting Mimi in New York, Hikari, who is known to have a bit of an empathic connection to Digimon, senses that there’s a “crying Digimon” (this will be important later), and Mimi suddenly vanishes – as do the other Chosen Children.

I think part of the reason this movie is often pinned as feeling like an acid trip is that the demeanor and attitude the 02 kids express in this movie feels a little too laid-back for the very urgent situation of their seniors having suddenly up and vanished (which is also not helped by the movie’s overall soundtrack being a lot more laid-back than the events on screen should suggest). This is especially odd because it’s absolutely not like the kids aren’t worried about their seniors at all! Rather to the contrary; “getting Taichi and the others back” is the major motive driving the whole group for the rest of it, and it’s constantly brought up as their goal in dialogue, shaping their actions throughout the rest of the movie. The execution of the dialogue and the overall direction create a bit of a tonal mismatch, but on its face, the actual storytelling checks.

Shortly after, Chocomon – now evolved and corrupted into something – appears, and Wallace and Gumimon confront him.

The fact that Wallace refers to his partners by their Baby-level names (Chocomon and Gumimon) even after they’ve clearly evolved brings up a lot of interesting implications. One is that, not having been privy to any great adventure in the Digital World before, Wallace doesn’t have a lot of awareness of names changing after evolution the same way his Japanese peers do. But another important thing that comes out here is that, through the course of this movie, Wallace primarily sees his partners the same way he did as a young child. A lot of this movie’s story centers around Wallace’s difficulty in moving on from the past and accepting that things aren’t the same way that they are anymore – and so, just like how he has a hard time swallowing that the circumstances have changed, he has difficulty seeing his own partners as having changed, and calls them by the same names despite everything.

Takeru and Hikari catch on, and Hikari’s psychic sense catches on that something’s happened to her brother, too.

Oh, and incidentally, said seniors aren’t in a pleasant place to be in at all.

The fact that the older kids are clearly Not Having a Good Time in the realm they’ve been kidnapped to – it’s depicted as cold, lonely, full of negative emotions, and eating away at their ability to even bodily function – is very heavily connected to what we later learn about what’s been going on with Chocomon through the last seven years. Moreover, the one truly coherent thing Taichi and Yamato can spit out at this stage is concern for their siblings – i.e., love. Keep that in mind for later!

Wallace drops a line to his family (”Amy” presumably being his sister) saying that he’s going to head to Summer Memory, and skips town. Repeat: Summer Memory is in Colorado – he’s doing something as drastic as going out of state to follow Chocomon, which naturally does not amuse his mom very much (as we find out later in the movie). Patamon eavesdrops on the conversation and relays the information to Takeru and Hikari, who contact Daisuke in turn.

So the remaining three kids nyoom all the way to the US using frequent flyer miles (which makes you really wonder whose those are, or what on earth they told their parents to allow three elementary school kids go around unassisted in another country) to go save their seniors, which apparently doesn’t fund their trip all the way to Colorado, forcing them to hitchhike from New York.

(We also get a quick scene implying that Daisuke has better proficiency in English than Iori and Miyako, as he translates some of the statements for the guy they take a ride from. This is pretty surprising, given that Daisuke hasn’t really been portrayed as particularly book smart…but then again, language skills sometimes just happen to come naturally to some people regardless of skill in books, and hey, it might just come in useful for his future ramen chef career in New York…)

We get our first major scene of dialogue between Gumimon and Wallace, and we learn quite a bit about their characters in the process. Gumimon has a similar laid-back attitude to the more prominent Terriermon in Tamers, but beyond that (and a shared voice actress), it’s important to note that they have very different personalities otherwise. In this scene, Wallace and Gumimon get in an argument over how to handle Chocomon, with Wallace insisting that they shouldn’t have attacked him and that they should have just “talked” about it – even though, as Gumimon correctly points out, he was pretty obviously trying to physically attack Wallace.

In fact, at this part of the story, Wallace is being extremely irrational and in denial. You don’t even have to watch the rest of the movie to see that Gumimon’s very practical stance on the matter is reasonable – Chocomon was very much trying to attack Wallace, and getting caught in the fight was pretty much all he could do for Wallace’s safety. But Wallace, still stuck in the past, can’t accept that at this point in the movie, and, honestly, is being a bit of a brat about it too – he’s engaging in progressively more self-destructive behavior over the course of the movie (ditching his family to set off by himself in order to hitchhike to Colorado, for one). We later find out that Wallace is specifically obsessed with going back to the flower field where he lost Chocomon, having independently come up with the idea that this would somehow let everything go back to what it was before – even though there was really no sign this would actually fix anything.

The Adventure universe generally runs on a concept that a Digimon partner is representative of part of the self, and so, tying that into Wallace and his two partners, it can be taken that Gumimon and Chocomon reflect the duality of Wallace as a character – Chocomon representing his desire to latch onto the past and hope that everything can be the same that it was before, and Gumimon as Wallace’s sense of reason, advising him about the reality of the situation and how to practically get through it (and, thus, to move on). In fact, Gumimon is the one constantly advising him about said self-destructive behavior (reminding him that his mom is probably worried about him, but also berating him for just ditching the train as a result instead of thinking about how that’d leave them without reliable transportation for the rest of it).

The symbolism is driven in even further when the only thing Gumimon has to say, in response to Wallace clinging further onto the idea that going to the flower field will fix things…is a cryptic statement that Chocomon didn’t like the heat, then suddenly offering to be a hat to provide Wallace shade. Because right now, Wallace and Chocomon are the same: clinging hopelessly to shards of the past.

The other 02 kids make their way to meet up in Colorado, but run into some snags when Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori end up missing the exit to Denver (Takeru is not amused), and Hikari and Takeru’s train ends up stranded thanks to Chocomon’s interference…

…and, making things worse, Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori try to take a plane back to Denver, only to overshoot it again. (Sorry, Taichi…your juniors are idiots.)

Fortunately, they get lucky by running into the very same boy they’re indirectly looking for on their way to hitchhiking. We learn that Wallace has never had exposure to other Chosen Children before to the extent of knowing there were any Digimon in Japan, nor has he ever been to the Digital World, so for all intents and purposes, his experiences with Chocomon and Gumimon are all he knows (i.e. he has no awareness of large-scale Digital World affairs). He also apparently speaks Japanese, which is convenient for this movie so that they don’t have to have a language barrier, but, amusingly, Wallace claims that it’s because he “had a Japanese girlfriend once”. (Gumimon, who is much more reliable of a source, says that he’d apparently put an honest effort into studying, so an interpretation that Wallace really likes anime or something is not out of the question.)

It’s also interesting to see how the others react to him, especially considering that it’s becoming increasingly apparent that he’s involved with the disappearance of their seniors. Miyako is as openly friendly as she generally always is, Iori presses him very calmly about questions relevant to the disappearances and Chocomon without even batting an eyelid (future lawyer in training here), and Daisuke is suspicious from the get-go…which is exacerbated when Wallace starts flirting with Miyako. The running gag of Daisuke getting angry about Wallace flirting with Miyako has a lot to unpack here – the most obvious standby is the shipping interpretation (or, at least, that Daisuke may be as protective of Miyako as he is Hikari), but there are other points to observe as well. Firstly, Daisuke is a rather abruptly straightforward and overly honest person, and it makes sense that he’d play badly with people who seem dishonest – after all, his suspicions of Wallace started even before he started flirting, and he also shows similar hostility around Takeru (also not a very straightforward person) when he suspects he’s being made fun of. But also, the Pixiv dictionary entry takes the interpretation that Wallace’s personality had gotten a bit “warped” by his experiences – or, in other words, he’d developed this penchant for acting like a flirt, wandering off on his own, and altogether being incredibly wishy-washy because of the trauma of losing Chocomon and his inability to get over it.

And as much as Daisuke’s being a prick about it (to the point that mocking Wallace for it gets him left there stranded with him), he’s absolutely right about the contradiction Wallace’s posing – he’s acting all high and mighty about trying to become an “adult” (meaning that going off on his own and flirting with girls presumably are part of his perception of what Mature Guys do), yet he’s being a total mama’s boy by constantly dropping everything to call her repeatedly through his trip. (It’s even worse than the subs here suggest; he calls her “mama”, the kind of super-affectionate language used by Mimi and Ken.) As Gumimon says, Wallace thinks he’s actually right, but he doesn’t actually have it together at all.

Another interesting thing to note here is that at this point of the movie, Wallace calls Daisuke “Daisuke-kun” (with honorific attached, slight distance). Remember this for later.

Chocomon appears to confront them again, but he seems to not properly recognize Wallace – because, as we later find out, he doesn’t see the current Wallace as “Wallace”, and will accept nothing less than a younger Wallace from exactly the way he was when they were separated. (It is later stated in the movie that this is why he kidnapped the seniors and turned them younger; since he can’t recognize “Wallace” the way he is now, he’s taking anyone he can find with a Digivice and de-aging them in the hopes that he’ll find “Wallace” among them.) Gumimon recognizes that Chocomon is beyond recognition, and tells Wallace to not see him as Chocomon, but Wallace refuses to accept this and continues to intervene in the fight, telling Chocomon that they’ll meet again in the flower field. Again, Wallace’s mentality isn’t that different from Chocomon’s at this point – he may not be delusional to the point he wants to literally turn back time, but he still thinks that reproducing the conditions of seven years prior will fix everything and make it all better again.

During this whole time, the older(?) kids are getting progressively younger, and it’s turning out to impact not only their physical bodies but also their mentalities. At this point, they’re starting to lose awareness of what’s happening to them, as they become more and more connected to Chocomon’s emotions.

Daisuke is smart enough to catch on that Wallace definitely knows what’s going on, and starts to interrogate him. Recall that Daisuke is completely within his rights to do so at this point – Wallace is not only acting incredibly shady, he’s also being dismissive and refusing to give Daisuke any concrete answers about something that most certainly involves him at this point. As the 02 kids keep reiterating, their seniors have been kidnapped, and it’s pretty clear to anyone that Wallace knows something about this, but he continues to blow them off.

Wallace also doesn’t seem to be very happy about the fact Gumimon had evolved during the battle – remember, Wallace is very resistant to changes in his status quo, and especially when it involves Gumimon evolving in a similar way to Chocomon.

Daisuke continues to pry into what’s going on with Wallace and Chocomon, and Gumimon, who understands that there’s no use in denying that this is a problem, tries to be straightforward about it – but Wallace, still stubbornly refusing to open up about it, won’t even let Gumimon tell Daisuke about the truth.

Daisuke realizes that they’re not going to make any territory as it is, so he decides to have Lighdramon take them to Summer Memory for the time being, bonding a bit more with Wallace in the process.

Once they reach Summer Memory, the kids learn about Takeru and Hikari getting stalled by Chocomon on the train, and the fact everyone else on it had disappeared – meaning that the responsibility that Wallace is carrying for not taking care of this problem begins to weigh further on him. Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori continue to interrogate him about what he knows.

But Wallace, still stubbornly, refuses to talk, and being in Summer Memory only drowns him in further memories of his past with Chocomon and Gumimon. We learn a bit more about Gumimon’s past, too – apparently, he was quite the crybaby…

And when Gumimon finally begins to spill the details of what’s going on – that Chocomon wants to see the younger Wallace and is kidnapping kids with his Digivice and turning them younger as a result – Wallace still continues to double down on his denial. Notice his wording – his specific insistence that things will go back to “how they used to be,” because it’s not just about getting Chocomon back, but also a fixation on recreating that happy childhood he had with him.

(There’s also a bit of a cute moment around here where Daisuke asks Wallace if he needs to call his mom – after having teased him for being a mama’s boy earlier, Daisuke really is starting to care about his welfare. It’s also amusingly mentioned that Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori are broke out of money until they meet up with Takeru and Hikari again…)

That night, Wallace tries to go off by himself to the flower field, not even bringing Gumimon with him – as he implies later, he doesn’t even want to get Gumimon involved with this because he was the closest to Chocomon – but Daisuke, having finally caught on to his suspicion that Chocomon is not only relevant to Wallace but also Wallace’s partner, confronts him about it. Wallace thus finally spills the details – that Gumimon and Chocomon were born from the same egg, that Wallace kept them from his mother and stuck with them during childhood, and that, seven years prior, Chocomon suddenly vanished while they were playing at the flower field.

Wallace: I’ve never been able to forget about Chocomon since then. Not even after moving to New York, not even once. We were such good friends…So why did Chocomon have to end up like that? Does he hate me for not being able to save him? Daisuke: So the enemy we’re fighting is actually your Digimon? Your most important friend?! Daisuke: Of course you’d never be okay with that…

Daisuke is in shock, even though he’d already started to suspect this.

I said, earlier, that Wallace is being extremely irrational and in denial. I did not say that his feelings aren’t valid. Wallace’s situation sucks, and Daisuke recognizes why this hurts for him so much, especially after putting himself in Wallace’s shoes (and in fact it’s even worse for Wallace; Daisuke’s only known V-mon for less than half a year, whereas Wallace is talking about his formative childhood friend).

Daisuke: I’d never be able to do it. If V-mon were to turn into something completely different…Even if he went on a horrible rampage…There’s no way I’d ever be able to bring V-mon down. Wallace: Daisuke… Daisuke: So then, what are we supposed to do? Wallace: It’s not something you need to be crying over. Daisuke: But…

This entire scene is an interesting one for many reasons, especially because of the position in which it aired – this was in the middle of the arc in 02 when everyone was getting their second Digimentals. Daisuke had, only a few episodes prior, expressed trepidation over “friendly fire” – fighting any friend who had become controlled by the Digimon Kaiser. This is consistent with that (and the 02 kids’ general bleeding hearts and difficulty with fighting friends), and it’s even worse – unlike before, when we were talking about evil mind control, Chocomon is pretty obviously a victim of his own madness. And although Wallace continues to insist that this isn’t Daisuke’s problem, Daisuke, for all he’s rough around the edges, is a genuinely kind person who thinks of others to the point he breaks down in genuine tears over the problem, and it’s consistent with not only his prior characterization of thinking about others’ feelings in 02 episode 8, but also how this eventually ties into his indignation over seeing others being hurt (episode 20) or their feelings being trampled on (episode 49).

Another interesting thing here is that at no point in the movie is “killing” ever brought up, but rather the word used is taosu, which literally means “defeat”. In 02 proper, its use is somewhat euphemistic – most famously, it was used in episode 44, when Miyako and Hawkmon have a crisis over killing LadyDevimon (so in short, there’s no illusions about the fact killing is in play here). But in this context, it’s not even really about killing. Wallace doesn’t even want to fight in the first place. The sheer action of physically beating up a beloved friend is painful, with killing as the ultimate unwanted outcome. Everything about this sucks. But Daisuke correctly points out that Taichi and the others’ welfare is on the line here, and everything feels like the wrong thing to do. “What are we supposed to do?”, indeed.

So that’s why Daisuke momentarily indulges in Wallace’s denial-induced pattern of thought, because it really does seem like the only out here. (Especially because, from Daisuke’s perspective, Wallace seems to understands this situation better than he does – even if he doesn’t actually.) If they go to the flower field, they won’t have to fight and everyone will be saved and it’ll be fine! Wallace is irrational and in denial, but you can’t blame him and Daisuke for really, really wanting to believe this.

And Daisuke drops this zinger of a line, too:

Daisuke: So don’t say you’re gonna go alone.

Daisuke’s characterization really is important here, because, again, this movie came out during the first arc of the series, before episode 21 and the second half that centered around Ichijouji Ken’s redemption. At this point in the series, Daisuke was still being extremely deferential to others, especially his seniors, in almost all cases, and although episode 8 was a momentary glimpse into the kind of resolve Daisuke could have when it involved something he really cared about, this movie is really the first major sneak peek into how supportive of a person Daisuke is going to develop into, especially when it comes to Ken.

And Gumimon reaffirms that he’s going to stick by Wallace no matter what – filling the traditional role of a partner that Chocomon won’t anymore.

So they go to the flower field, and everything…fails spectacularly.

Well, before that, we get a glimpse of how the older kids are doing (they’re barely even conscious now), and we finally get to see Chocomon “in his element” and not as a rampaging monster. Things really, really aren’t going great for Chocomon either. He desperately and sadly jumps among the kids, trying to find Wallace among them, and what he really, really wants is just to be with his partner again. But they’re all “wrong”…

At first it seems like Wallace is making headway – for a second, Chocomon even recognizes him as Wallace! – but he continues to insist that he wants Wallace to come “with him”, to where it’s “cold and lonely and no one is there”. The way he starts chanting that he wants to go back is represented by the young Chocomon’s voice getting progressively lost in the monster’s voice, and Wallace, starting to grasp how futile Chocomon’s clinging to the past is, makes his first statement of the movie’s core theme: you can’t go back to the past, the only thing you can do is look forward and think about what you can do from there.

So after witnessing very clearly, in front of his eyes, how Chocomon is not going to listen to reason and will accept nothing less than something he can’t have, to the point of evolving and distorting everything around him, Wallace’s denial finally hits its limits, and he accepts that fighting him will be the only option out. (Again, note the use of “defeat” here – it’s not really about beelining straight to euthanizing him as much as Wallace has finally gotten over his refusal to fight Chocomon at all.) And considering that the situation is clearly rapidly escalating, and that Chocomon himself is clearly not in sound mind and having a terrible time himself, it doesn’t take much to see why the bleeding-heart Daisuke would also end up conceding so quickly. There’s a limit to how much you can hold out with pacifism when that just happened right in front of you!

(Also, Wallace no longer uses the honorific on Daisuke. Friendship level up!)

Chocomon evolves further and further, and his personality starts to actually take a turn for the cruel as he starts toying with the Digimon. In fact, it’s made pretty apparent that they’re no match for him from the get-go – he keeps toying with reality and forcing the Digimon back and forth between forms. He ends up “altering the world” into something reflective of his own heart, and it’s repeatedly pointed out that it’s “cold and lonely” – in short, Chocomon is subjecting the world to feel the same pain and loneliness that he felt, the pain that was enough to drive him mad.

And Wallace finally has this to say:

Wallace: Like Daisuke said, I’m a big baby. But you’re not Chocomon anymore. No, you’re the one who did this to Chocomon…Chocomon was all by himself and lonely, and in that loneliness, he tried so hard…But you took his heart and locked it away somewhere! I’m going to fight. If I defeat you…If that means I can free Chocomon from you…Then I want to fight, too! I need strength…

Firstly, Wallace acknowledges that he’s been a brat – that he’s been philandering around and acting spoiled and stringing everyone around (character development!!). And secondly, Wallace finally acknowledges the truth of Chocomon no longer being recognizable anymore. The ending quarter of this movie focuses heavily on the idea that Chocomon has now become so distorted that he can no longer even be considered the same thing anymore – it’s ambiguous as to whether that “you” that Wallace refers to having taken Chocomon away is actually a separate supernatural entity, or whether Chocomon was drowning in his own loneliness to the point those negative feelings became their own entity and consumed him.

In actuality, though – it doesn’t really matter! 02 as a series would also go on to blur the boundaries between external interference and internal forces – Ken having the Dark Seed as an influence but also being personally responsible for his own emotions driving him over the edge, and having to take responsibility regardless, and Oikawa technically being possessed by Vamdemon but still being goaded on by his own fixation with the past (in fact, notice how all three of these cases have to do with a fixation on things that can’t be brought back). Right now, the only thing that matters is that Chocomon is no longer recognizable, the thing in front of Wallace is no longer the same friend he knew, and even being able to bring back Chocomon’s sense of self is something Wallace wants.

(Daisuke also throws in a more charitable interpretation of Wallace’s actions even when he’s being hard on himself, pointing out that he can’t really be called a “baby” when he also did have genuine determination to come all the way there to find Chocomon despite his age.)

Hikari and Takeru arrive on the scene, and after Daisuke loses his marbles a bit over his happiness at seeing Hikari-chan there, Hikari points out the same thing: “You’re not the Digimon that was crying.”

Chocomon starts turning the 02 kids younger too – and remember, it was established earlier that he was using the Digivice as a guide. That meant it made sense for him to target the older kids, since they had the same model of Digivice Wallace did. But Daisuke and the others have D-3s, and there’s no way to really mistake them for Wallace – so in other words, Chocomon has devolved to inflicting cruelty for no good reason, with the original motive having completely vanished.

In increasing desperation, Angewomon and Angemon decide to evolve, and…look, I don’t have an explanation either, but I have to admit I’m somewhat amused by the fact that even they don’t really seem to have an explanation beyond “well, we’re desperate and hopefully it’ll do something!”

So they evolve, and Chocomon oneshots them. But that’s okay, because they released some golden Digimentals for Daisuke and Wallace to use! So V-mon and Gumimon get shiny new golden forms –

– and Chocomon pretty much oneshots them, too. More specifically, he eats them…and within his body, Magnamon and Gumimon’s consciousness gets eaten apart to the point they start forgetting their partners. Wow, this situation just got worse.

Yeah, so, despite the movie being named after the golden Digimentals, the actual point being here is that power means absolutely nothing in this situation. Remember, I pointed out that even from the beginning Chocomon was straight-out warping reality – they really didn’t have a chance.

So basically, everything devolves into complete chaos. Everyone’s being turned into little kids, with the mentality to match. All the Digimon are being oneshotted and being tossed around like tissues. But the one constant through all of this is that the kids are constantly running after their partners.

Remember how, back when the older kids were first getting sucked into Chocomon’s world, the one thing that seemed to remain intact at first was “love”? That “love” is what reaches out to Magnamon and Gumimon inside Chocomon, and makes them remember their partners again.

And, more importantly, that “love” is what awakens Chocomon – the real Chocomon – inside his consciousness, and he wordlessly makes a gesture begging Magnamon and Gumimon to kill him. And so they do – with understanding and consent from all three involved.

So in the end, the most extreme conclusion was reached. Chocomon died, at the hands of Daisuke and Wallace’s partners. But in that moment before he died, Chocomon’s pain was relieved, and he was himself again – Gumimon says that “Chocomon was smiling”, even in spite of his usual personality being that of a crybaby. They may have failed in their struggle to prevent the inevitable conclusion of having to kill Chocomon, but they did, to some degree, “save” him – so all of it did mean something in the end. And Daisuke promises that this still doesn’t mean the end of everything – they may have not been able to bring back Chocomon, and especially not in the exact way that would make things “the way they were before”, but the future is still there for him to return someday.

So, we clean up loose ends. Taichi and the others are returned safely, and in the end, Wallace decides to still be a vagrant for a bit longer – and to flirt with Hikari and Miyako a bit before he leaves. In the end, Wallace still has a long way to go if he wants to really grow as a person. But as Miyako points out, he’s gotten a bit bolder than he was before – and he’s greeted with an egg in the end, as if opening up new possibilities.

The Door to Summer contradicts the finding of this egg, or at least opens up the possibility that this wasn’t actually Chocomon’s, so it’s ambiguous as to whether the frame of Terriermon and Lopmon at the end of the credits is meant to be taken literally, or if it’s just symbolic. But even in the case of the latter, Chocomon is seen as Lopmon, a form he never got to have in Wallace’s childhood – so, in the end, it’s about different possibilities opening up in the future, rather than replicating that of the past.

All right, let’s recap this movie for those doing a tl;dr! Or, more specifically, let’s recap the events in chronological order:

Sometime before 1995, an egg emerges from Wallace’s mother’s computer, and hatches into twin Digimon, Chocomon and Gumimon.

In 1995, while playing in a flower field in Summer Memory with Wallace and Gumimon, Chocomon disappears for unknown reasons.

For the next seven years, Chocomon is trapped in delirium, full of loneliness and pain from being unable to see Wallace, and starts to become obsessed with the idea of reuniting with him, but, in his madness, accepts only a version of that reunion that involves him being the same young child he was when they parted, as if nothing had changed since.

Wallace, likewise, develops a fixation with getting Chocomon back so that things can be like “the way they were before”, even after moving to New York.

In 2002, Chocomon begins to kidnap kids with the same model of Digivice that Wallace has, and starts to forcibly turn them younger and send them into delirium like his own, hoping that this will bring the “Wallace” he wants back. Wallace starts to chase after him and decides that returning to the flower field in Summer Memory will allow him to communicate with Chocomon and make him go back to the way he was before.

Takeru and Hikari, hoping to find a lead on their seniors’ disappearance, drop a line to Daisuke, Miyako, and Iori, who head to the United States, also hoping to find a lead in Summer Memory. On the way, they run into Wallace, who is evasive about his connection to Chocomon and the kidnapping incidents.

At Summer Memory, Daisuke confronts Wallace and learns about his story, emphasizing deeply with the difficulty in killing an important friend, and agreeing that they should reach out to Chocomon at the flower field.

Chocomon continues to fall deeper into madness at the flower field, and Wallace and the others realize that they have no choice but to fight him. As Chocomon becomes so distorted he’s no longer recognizable, Wallace declares an intent to at least save his consciousness.

As the fight carries on, the kids are de-aged by Chocomon in his madness, and Magnamon (V-mon) and Gumimon are swallowed by Chocomon. However, the kids’ love for their partners awakens Chocomon’s consciousness again, and he asks Magnamon and Gumimon to end his pain.

With everything settled, Wallace and Gumimon are able to face forward into the future in the hopes of meeting Chocomon again and starting anew from scratch.

The Door to Summer

Actually, there’s not much to really be said about Hurricane Touchdown’s spiritual sequel The Door to Summer, except that it revisits similar territory to the movie, observing it more in Daisuke’s context than it does Wallace’s. (The story is very much more Daisuke’s than it is Wallace or Mimi’s.) The short synopsis is that Daisuke, having had a pretty bad time recently, finds himself in contact with a mysterious “winter” (in the middle of summer!) that seems to reflect his own heart…and a mysterious amnesiac girl whom Mimi names Onpu “Nat-chan”, who immediately latches onto Daisuke. In the end, “Nat-chan” turns out to be “a Digimon who’s taken in a lot of evil data,” who goes on a rampage and forces the others to fight and eventually kill her.

Although the reason for Nat-chan going on a rampage is more concrete than what was given in Hurricane Touchdown (it’s portrayed as “data chips” that seem like fireflies), The Door to Summer also makes it very clear that it wasn’t just supernatural influence, but also Nat-chan’s loneliness, desire for a human partner, and jealousy of Daisuke and V-mon’s relationship. Daisuke, while showing immense hesitation about fighting her when she had befriended them, still manages to “save” her in some way, to the point she actually verbally thanks him as she dies. And in the end, Daisuke and the others decide to take her egg and find a partner for her – even if she can’t be Daisuke’s partner like she wanted, she can still start anew with someone else.

Wallace in Kizuna

Warning: The rest of this post contains spoilers for Kizuna.

As said before, Hurricane Touchdown has been said to be the favorite Digimon movie of the director of Kizuna – and certainly, while Kizuna references all four Adventure-series theatrical movies, Hurricane Touchdown’s references are the least subtle, with the plot point of de-aging kids lifted directly from it. (Except, in this case, it’s in the context of trapping oneself in blissful memories rather than being portrayed as the upfront listless torture it is in Hurricane Touchdown.) Moreover, the theme of warning against being fixated on the past is just as present in Kizuna as it was in Hurricane Touchdown, especially when Kizuna’s main antagonist (Menoa) also falls victim to something that’s part supernatural influence and part getting swallowed by her own negative feelings…so it’s only fitting that Wallace himself makes a cameo in the movie. Two cameos, in fact.

The fact that Wallace is established as canonically existing within the Adventure main timeline has thrown a lot of people for a loop, especially since recent franchise events have made it questionable as to how it’s possible for canon to even make sense anymore because consistency has just gone out the window, but the Pixiv dictionary’s chosen rationalization for this is that, at the very least, “(some version of) Wallace exists in the timeline of the main story”. I’m inclined to agree with this evaluation; the fact that people around the globe can agree that the movie is questionably canonical but can’t even agree on how, and the fact that certain franchise entries considered canon (Tag Tamers) have their own contradictions, plus the fact that it’s not like Hurricane Touchdown takes a complete knife to timeline and lore common sense and more that it has some contradictory minutiae that are really easy to sidestep, it’s not actually that hard to say that some timeline of events that reasonably resembled Hurricane Touchdown (with maybe only some minor timeline or evolution differences) happened during the summer of 2002, and thus that Wallace exists.

Assuming that the story of our canonical Wallace is mostly the same or similar to that of the story presented in Hurricane Touchdown, Kizuna provides us with quite a bit of interesting information. We’re treated to two shots relevant to him: one in the form of his name at the top of Koushirou’s list of kidnapping victims, and one where he appears in person at the very end. It’s hard to miss him; he’s wearing similar colors to the clothes he wore in Hurricane Touchdown so you can identify him even at a distance, and he’s also the only loser around here with two partners. That’s right, two! Two!! Chocomon is back – and as Lopmon, exactly like the end credits card of Hurricane Touchdown depicted him!

So it looks like that, one way or another (after Hurricane Touchdown, after The Door to Summer, whatever, make up your own story), Wallace did manage to reunite with Chocomon and start a new life with him. It looks like not all of his habits have died – he’s depicted in a place with palm trees, meaning he’s definitely not in New York or Colorado, so either he’s moved again, is still maintaining the vagrant lifestyle, or just happens to be on vacation.

The other interesting thing here is that Wallace is depicted as one of the Eosmon kidnapping victims. According to Menoa, kidnapping victims were ones who were entertaining thoughts of wanting to go back to the past and remain a child forever – something that should intuitively be against everything Wallace learned in Hurricane Touchdown. But it’s important to point out that Eosmon’s lure is depicted as working on a subconscious level – certainly, if the kidnapping victims in Kizuna were to be outright asked if they wanted to be kidnapped and de-aged and trapped in their childhoods forever, most of them would probably say “no!”, and Wallace is likely no exception! But even if he’s starting his life anew with Chocomon now, it’s not hard to believe that there would still be lingering subconscious regrets about everything he’d lost with Chocomon and the childhood they could never spend together, ones that Eosmon’s allure would end up connecting with, even if the events of Hurricane Touchdown had consciously taught him better. Alas, being a human is hard.

#digimon #digimon adventure 02 #hurricane touchdown #shihameta #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #kizuna spoilers

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goblinconceivable · 4 years ago

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some more feels

A few more bullety-points I’ve been pondering, and mostly me pushing my mind into a happier place, even if for a few minutes. More like buckshot really.

Two Person Costume

So laying it out, Jeff, who picks costumes based on what women will find hot, asks Annie to pair up. And does so rather vaguely and behind text, which makes it look like he’s being overly casual about it, like he hasn’t given it much thought and he can pretend she just shows up perfectly matched. But he’s basing the entire theme on his father’s old gloves. And he has his father’s phone number with him. I’m sorry but there is no conclusion other than he wanted to talk to Annie about his father and tried to set up this whole intricate situation to give him an opening.

I have headcannon that Annie knew what he meant by “ring girl” but refused to play along when he refused to be direct. And a headcannon headcannon where she’s got the ring girl costume on underneath.

Handshake in RV Repair

After some replaying and frame-by-frame examination, my conclusion: Annie probably initiated the handshake (hands are closer to him) but then she’s trying to pull her hand back and he doesn’t let go for a split second. Despite the fact that Jeff’s looked away by then and that’s usually when you let go. Am I trying too hard? Probably, but this is what happens when “handshake in RV” has to count as a “moment of interest” because of general dearth. Anyway, frantic-2am-essay-writing self says this symbolizes how Jeff is not reaching out this season, but also can’t say no/ can’t let go of Annie when she puts herself within reach. Highlighted by Abed’s hand metaphor (coincidence? I argue no.)

Also because they don’t really shake hands? They hug. In seasons 1-3. I’m trying to think after that and I don’t know. That one needs research.

Season 5 finale:

Does Jeff look at Annie even once between getting “engaged” and when they’re physically in the lab? Except maybe right when she, Abed, and Dean walk in because they’re acting like suprise freaks. But otherwise I don’t think so. Even when she’s specifically trying to catch his eye. Whenever she talks, he’s looking elsewhere (usually Britta) or turning away. Even when she’s standing next to Abed, who’s talking, Jeff looks over to the side. Camera cuts emphasize this: whenever he *might* be looking, they catch him turning away or maybe starting to turn towards.

And thus it is cute that right before the gavel ending the episode he looks at her. Closing frames ftw! Awww.

Garrett’s Wedding ep

Why is this episode so regressive? I do appreciate using one of the final moments of the show as a global reflection of the group. But what’s up with the Annie/Frankie talk about Jeff scene? I don’t think Annie’s character has been in a place where she’d stop in the middle of a conversation to sigh and dreamily think about how messed up Jeff is for at least 2 years, possibly ever. I think Frankie’s (repeated) codependency judgment is extremely valid, but it’s shoehorned in unnaturally. “Get you away from Jeff” would have been very interesting in season 4, but by this point Annie has been doing her own thing all year, the most interaction was during the commercial bruhaha, where Annie showed dominance and Jeff figured out how to do what she wanted. So... From where is Frankie deriving the conclusion that Jeff is a bad influence?

This episode just made no sense to me. My brain is filing it as a standalone.

Or: the setup for the ep felt natural. Jeff staring into his glass with an Abed-noticed strange face fits with his married-fantasy in the finale. So it’s an implausible but Hail Mary theory that the rest of the episode is in Jeff’s head.

Off topic, but I have some trouble with face recognition, changes in hair really doesn’t help, nor does bulking up, so I pretty much believe Jeff was played by 3-4 different actors. Hence issues grasping on to character continuity.

Objecification

Something always niggling at me is Annie’s objectification of Jeff’s body. Not that I disagree with her or find it unreasonable. It’s just that Jeff literally built his body so people would like him and his personality to gain respect. Which is his wall as well. And for the first years at least, that was a basis of Annie’s crush.

Yes, I believe they became actual friends as well, but here’s the thing: attraction remains at the core of why Annie (initially) tried so hard. There’s an inherent muddle between her idealizing him, and knowing and liking him as a person. And I think Jeff knows this and feels it, and it colours his approach and response to their relationship.

This whole Political Science episode is about Jeff blustering. Starting at the table, where Annie comes back at his needle with a comment on his hair and abs. He’s wearing leather and amping his condescension and god-like demeanor up to 11 even before she disses him*, at which point he moves to a 15. He literally suits up to win. All his defense mechanisms are out, because he’s hurt. And Annie slices right through him, ruthlessly.

I like the storeroom scene for several reasons (duh), but look at his face when she says she dropped out of the race. It’s one thing for her to feel bad and apologize - he’s already taken the blame on himself, because he understands going to any length. But she gave up something she wanted because she hurt him, which is validation of her real affection. Subsequently, they have a bonding moment, hug, and his smile fades, indicating more complex emotions than the mere resolution of conflict. Then near kiss, all of which I argue is linked to a feeling of emotional intimacy - she wasn’t impressed by his bluster at all this episode, and she still likes him.

Bonus: when he reciprocates and admits that everything he pulled out was down to wanting her to think well of him. Which in his mind is the physical and personality facade. But Annie throws all that aside when she talks to him.

“That’s why this happened.” He doesn’t say “why I did this”. Almost like he doesn’t have control, doesn’t know another way to react...

*Maybe he’s having an off day and needed validation, and she’s often an easy mark because she is easily impressed by him?

ACB

Really out in left field on this one, but as per Conspiracy Theories, Annie and Jeff are well matched on the deception front. Quick timeline: Annie tries to recruit Jeff, he declines. Troy gets cracked. Jeff joins in. Annie tries to drop it, Jeff refuses. What if at some point during this Jeff figures out that Annie is the one behind it? And he runs with it because he does enjoy the excuse to hang out.

And his call back in the finale was thus about them going to lengths to be together.

s6 Finale:

In Jeff’s marriage dream it’s when he says “I love you” that Annie turns away. And it’s not being turned down at the revelation, in the context of his imagination he says it as a comfortable fact, something he’s said more than once. Dunno where to go with this, just poking at how he avoids saying “I love you” - appropriately, but still.

#community #jeff x annie #meta

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a-mandala-rose · 4 years ago

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You Spin Me Right Round...

I’ve never written a meta post about an episode before, so with only three episodes left, I figured this is the perfect time to start. It typically takes me a few days to process and gather my thoughts, because much like Dean this season, I’m rather slow on the uptake. By the time I have something to say, it usually feels like the moment has passed. But what the hell. We’re three episodes from the end and I have FEELINGS.

To start, I’m going to back up a moment and talk about 15X16 (see “slow on the uptake,” above). Lots of fans, myself included, found themselves frustrated with watching what at first glance seems to be your run of the mill MOTW episode. A *good* MOTW, for sure, but still, with only four episodes left to go, it felt like we should be past this by now. In fact, “aren’t we past this?” seemed to be the theme of the entire episode and that alone should have clued us in that despite appearances, this episode was anything but just another MOTW. If that was too subtle, Billie’s pointed “you’re working a case? Now?” should have been a dead give away that we needed to look deeper. And many tried, but the most a lot of us could come up with was the brothers’ big emotional argument at the end and even that was a giant moment of “been there, done that.” Why at what should be a pivotal point in the series are we rehashing the same arguments we’ve been watching for the past 15 years?

Jumping ahead to 15X17 for a moment, we see Dean absolutely breaking down. He’s losing it. Imploding. Leaving aside all of the problematic comments about and to Jack (we’ll come back to that), Dean lays out the crux of the problem when he and Jack are talking in the Impala: he doesn’t know what’s real. Like he’s been saying all season, he’s lost the perspective to be able to tell what about his life has been his choice and what has been Chuck’s machinations. He’s stuck in Chuck’s hamster wheel. Going ‘round and ‘round. Repeating the same scenes, lines, hunts, and arguments on a loop. Wait…why does that ring a bell?

Back to 15X16 and NOW it makes sense. Why are we stuck in yet another MOTW episode? Why is Dean lying to Sam again? Why is he once again sacrificing someone he loves, leading them “into the meat grinder?” Why is he backsliding on all that great emotional growth we saw last season? Why is he repeating the same destructive patterns that thanks to Kaitlyn, we know he’s been stuck in since childhood? IT’S THE HAMSTER WHEEL. Round and round we go…but whose hamster wheel is it?

Back to 15X17, LOTS going on in this episode and I’m not going to touch on all of it. But some highlights [and these are in no particular order because 1) I’m scatterbrained as hell and 2) the fuck does it matter anyways, because as we’ve established, we’re just going around in a big ass circle here]:

We see some absolutely masterful manipulation by Chuck. Manipulating Dean in order to manipulate Amara because he knows thanks to their “bond,” she’ll never turn on Dean…unless he betrays her first…which brings us to two of the biggest points in this episode. First off, we learn that Chuck didn’t write the Dean/Amara bond, which, as many more brilliant meta minds have pointed out before me, mirrors Dean and Cas’ profound bond, which we learn at the end of the episode was also NOT written by Chuck (and in fact pisses him off quite a bit, to put it mildly.) This reminds us that though he claims to be omniscient, Chuck is definitely NOT omnipotent and while he may be able to control space and time, one thing he can’t control is human emotional bonds and relationships. And this friends, this is important. In fact, it’s everything.

Right before Chuck confesses that Castiel is, as Cas fans have long insisted, the very embodiment of free will (more on that later), Sam references Eileen, which, yes, is very sweet, but also...also, is a call back to their relationship, specifically, to Eileen’s fears that her feelings for Sam weren’t genuine. She wonders what about her and Sam’s relationship was real and what was Chuck, which we knew at the time was a mirror to Dean’s “What about all this is real?” The answer, of course? “We are.” And now we have confirmation: emotional bonds/relationships are REAL. They might be manipulated by Chuck, but they aren’t created by him and clearly, he can’t understand them. That’s illustrated several times in this episode. His reaction to Dean’s “icky” bond with Amara. His inability to "feel the love" of the angels she took him to see. His cold manipulation of his sister. The throwback to the way he threw Adam and Eve, his first human children, out of the Garden and then used their sons to further his own plans. His consternation with Castiel for not doing as he was told after he raised Dean from perdition.

Chuck doesn’t understand and didn’t create emotions. Which seems obvious wen you think about the fact that his first sentient children didn’t have them. Emotions are a specifically HUMAN creation and that is what makes humans so frustrating and incomprehensible to Chuck. It’s why he hates them. Not only are a few of them very disobedient pets, as a whole they've created something he cannot. What a blow to the ego that must be.

The second thing referenced by Amara and Chuck’s conversations about Dean is his betrayal of her. Chuck’s telling Amara that Dean is sending her to the “meat grinder” is not a coincidence. That language is a deliberate mirror to Dean accusing his alternate future self of sending Cas to the meat grinder in The End (That’s only one of several parallels Unity makes with The End. For a much more thorough accounting, check out castielslostwings’ Twitter thread.), which, as I referenced above, also parallels Dean’s willingness to send Jack on a suicide mission. What do these things all have in common? Each time, Dean is ignoring his own instincts, his own “moral compass,” in favor of a plan. In The End, he regrets his choice to say no to Michael…to veer from Michael’s, aka God’s, aka Chuck’s plan and is trying to recreate it by killing Lucifer/Sam. Now he’s following Billie’s plan, even though it clearly feels wrong to him. We can see that in the way he tries to distance himself from Jack. The way he tries to convince himself that Jack isn’t family. That he’s different from Sam and from Cas, even though he’s told Jack before that he IS family. Even though when he was angriest with Jack and distraught with grief over Mary, he still told Belphegor that Jack was “our kid.” We can see it too in the way he reacts equally defensively when Sam brings up how they’re about to betray Amara in 15X15 and again in 15X17 when we can see Dean flinch when she tells him they’ll always help one another. This feels wrong to him, but he’s doing it anyways because he thinks he has no choice.

Looking back over seasons’ past, the two ever-present themes in Supernatural have been free will (obviously) and found family. They’ve always been intertwined. We’ve watched time and time again as Sam, Dean, and Cas choose one another. But now we have those two themes coalescing more than ever before. Every time any of them chooses “the plan” over their family, shit goes sideways. And now we know it’s because, as Chuck has made pretty damn clear in his manipulation of Billie’s plan, he’s omniscient and he controls all time and space. All plans are HIS plan.

But what doesn’t he control? Emotions. And the bonds they create between people. It’s in choosing one another that Team Free Will has always thwarted Chuck’s plan. Dean refusing to go down the path laid out for him in The End. Cas refusing to "hurt Dean Winchester." Sam refusing to reap MoC Dean. Dean refusing to shoot Jack in that cemetery. The boys refusing to hurt one another, again and again and again. The boys choosing one another again and again and again. And I think that's what Chuck really wants to break. Why he's so obsessed with getting his ending. This is what Becky was getting at in her critique of his story. Chuck doesn't understand his characters, because he doesn’t understand feelings. He hates this creation of humanity that has become more important to them and more defining of them than anything else, including him. So, he wants to conquer it. He wants to manipulate the situation to make his characters choose something of his divining over their emotional bonds to one another. Those bonds he didn't create and that he, in all of his omniscience and power, cannot sever.

15X17 confirms that free will is real. Cas chose to disobey. That wasn’t written by Chuck. And speaking of Cas, let’s look at our biggest two parallels of the season: Dean and Cas. (Sorry Sam. Sit this one out.) Cas, who Chuck has just identified as the epitome of free will. Cas who, once a mindless soldier, abandoned heaven’s plan. Who found his new purpose when he chose to become a father. Who follows his instincts over the plan because “something went wrong” and “the plan changed.” Versus Dean. Dean who has spent this entire season feeling trapped. Who keeps choosing “the plan” over his family and finds his cage getting smaller by the minute.

Back to 15X16. I asked before whose hamster wheel is Dean on? Dean says it’s Chuck’s, but that assumed that free will was a lie. Now we know it’s not. Free will is real and Chuck never even had to take it away from Dean. Dean gave it up as soon as he started following someone else’s plan instead of his own. Dean’s hamster wheel is of his own making.

There are so many more things I could say about 15X17. For starters, those chapter titles…are they referencing Chuck’s story? Or are they chapters in his death book, the one we saw in this episode and Chuck himself referenced? After all, Billie’s read that book, so she must have known “her” plan would fail. But she went down that path anyways…And speaking of Billie, I haven’t even touched on her or the Empty. The Empty says Billie wants “everything back where it belongs” with angels in heaven and demons in hell. Wait. That sounds familiar. Oh yes! My new favorite demon, Zack, said that in our other most recent “just a MOTW” episode. It seems Rowena wants something similar. Isn’t that interesting? And speaking of Rowena, if there’s one thing this show loves, it’s duality. Parallels. They’re everywhere…except, it seems, when it comes to the queen of Hell. Who will mirror Rowena? How interesting that we visited that empty throne room in Heaven last week…

BUT…the main thing here is this: Unity. This episode was about unity and now we have a unified Chuck and Amara. We’re going to need a unified TFW in order to defeat them. Because that is the key to defeating Chuck. Choosing one another…choosing our found family, the ones we’ve created those bonds with…again and again and again.

#supernatural #meta #Mandaladoesmeta #Season 15 #spn 15X16 #spn 15X17

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signofwolf · 3 years ago

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Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas – book review

Series: Throne of Glass #7 Genre: YA, Fantasy Theme: Fae, magic users, war Warnings: mentions of torture, imprisonment Star rating: 0,5/10

Why did I pick this up?: I wanted to end this horrible series once and for all.

[Heavy spoilers ahead]

To make myself clear, before this book I quite liked this series. It wouldn’t place in my top 100 books, not even close, but it was a pleasant pageturner to listen to in audiobooks when working.

Language

Let’s start slow. I lack the words to express how much I hate the words ‘male’, ‘female’ and ‘mate’ after this series. Not even gonna try to express my trauma. But these 3 gems aside, Sarah J. Maas needs a dictionary. Or compress her work to a manageable size. Everything sang, Everyone melted, Every man roared, Every woman trembled, Everyone was unleashing themselves at least once a chapter (number of chapters: 122) ). And now I know definitely too much about Yrene’s ‘womb’. I know so much…

Dynamism

I thought that was a book about a war with heavy action content. Oh boy, I was wrong. This 984-pages monstrosity has maybe 5 pages of action. If you squint.

Every sequence, where by design action should take place was followed by one of two scripts:

Few sentences of action and then a few pages long internal monologue. Often repeated with the same character after the next few sentences of action, or with the next character and then the next (sometimes the first character made a second appearance and then everything would go all over again). And the word ‘character’ used in these sentences is not because I’m rambling. This book is written that way!

Few sentences of action and then action stops, and we are graced by a few pages long conversation. In the middle of a battle. Or spying. Or in Erawan’s chambers, when his castle is going down, and he is running up the stairs...

Time

Leaving alone the fact that apparently all series took less than a year (till this book I estimated the plot for about 3 years, Wiki told me it was 2, but Maas knows best), because that is a can of worms in itself. Time in this one? I honestly have no idea. There were many ‘few weeks of travel’ parts with two main groups of POVs. Personally my only time indicator was ‘Orynth won’t fall till Aelin gets here’. But nothing just fit. And I saw Lost Song when in the last episode we as the audience realized that our two POVs parallel storylines are in reality millennia apart. Lost Song made sense.

Emotional loading

… there wasn’t any. Really, it was like reading a milk label. Every time the scene was potentially emotionally impactful, Maas went ahead to overexplaining EVERY. GOD. DAMMED. THING. And it was abso-fucking-lutely everything. ‘Emotional dilemma? Let’s current POV explain it! 2 pages should be enough… Damn maybe it wasn’t enough. I know! I’ll switch POVs and explain it through the other character!’ <= My impression of Maas’ thought process. I’m fairly sure that the record was 7 POVs explaining the same thing in the row, but I was blacking out a little, so I cannot be sure.

And if that wasn’t enough, this book had a second way to defuse tension: random-plastic-repetitive-badly_written-smut. Really badly written and really repetitive. How could you not feel the spicy bits, when Manon (cruel, self assured 100+years old witch-queen) reacts the same in bed as Elide (20years old, virgin, ex-slave). And the rest of them were the same, there weren’t ANY distinctions.Just copy-paste.

The next point in current case: Someone died, it was impactful, I really liked the character, so I got sad. But then 2 of our characters came out of the room with a body, and after a paragraph of grieving they started making out, and then I was regaled with 2-pages-long description of melting cores. That was the place then this book stopped being badly written, and started being distasteful.

Characters

Remember when I was writing about switching POVs (which is 15(!!!) In the whole book. Oh and an omniscient narrator in places when our current POV was grieving too much to overthink something, but Maas still wanted to inform us about something)? They were all savagely murdered in the worst way: character mutilation. Somewhere between books our maybe-not-that-original but colorful and interesting characters became carbon copies of each other. I have no idea how many times I didn’t realise there was a POV switch. The only indicator was a change of pronoun, or when Maas was telling us the name of a current narrator. These were the only ways. And if you can't distinguish if you are in Dorian’s head or in Manon’s, that is the sign of a really BAD writing.

Romance

…there wasn't any. In all this book there wasn't any naturally progressing romantic scene. There were Maas’ endgame pairings which were sexing or pinning. As the author Maas loves to write about soulmates. And it’s not a bad thing itself. When I want some fluffy story I often tag ‘soulmates’ in AO3 and voila, +10 to good mood. But God above, it is not cute when every pair you write about are ‘true mates’ just BECAUSE. It is the only way Maas sees a relationship, as a fated pairing, written in the wake of the universe by the God himself. There is no choice, nor the work to put in it. They are the author's OTP and that means that they are perfect and they should have children right now. Point in case:

Guy was treating a girl like a shit on his sole, including throwing her naked out of tent, on a snow, with their friends present, all the while abusing her verbally in a worst way. But it’s okay, because when she almost died he realised his mistakes and apologised. Two scenes later, he was forgiven, because... fated mates?

The pathos

I know that many people don't like this type of scenes, but it's not my case. I’m reading by picturing images and not repeating words. I like sequences that I can imagine to be grand and glorious, even if they are a little corny. That said, the pathos scenes were the most disappointing ones for me. Maas likes to write parts that are more picturesquely exalted than logically possible [point in case: meeting of 5 armies/forces in the random patch of sand in Empire of Storms, and it being painted as ‘an Aelin’s great plan’. I laughed myself silly at that. But not taking logic and all the plot holes into consideration that was a nicely looking scene. In Kingdom of Ash that wasn’t the case. I would say that the author wanted to paint us a renaissance painting every 20 pages or so. In my opinion, every time she failed miserably. Each and every of those scenes was or to farfetched to be even remotely realistic, and evidently written only for a sake of the picture, or just plainly stupid.

Example, and it’s so priceless a scene, that I just need to share it: Battle of Orynth, 25th day or so (time in this book doesn’t exist), the 13. sacrificed themselves (like thousands before them but hush). And then, time stops: grieving Manon is going through the city, they open the gates for her (yes, the siege is still on), she goes to the place where they died, after her come out all of our main heroes, and half the city itself with ‘flowers, rocks and precious possessions’ and they lay it there in a tribute to these brave (evil till 2 months ago) witches. I honestly can’t remember when was the last time I saw such an abstract scene. It’s a material for an essay in itself. No, I could not take it seriously.

Additionally, it's hard to make an impact as every damn sentence is grand and lofty. In the end it became truly pathetic, Aelin vs Maeve was unreadable.

Character deaths:

Let's make a quick count: main characters in a series at the start of KoA: 12 secondary characters in a series at the start of KoA: 20ish minor and total background: a lot more

Death count: main: 0 secondary: 3 minor: 2 (11 if we try very hard)

Resurrections: 1 (possibly 3, but not gonna analyze it)

Did you feel emotions of this impossible war against this all-encompassing, all-powerful, invincible, immortal, cunning Evil with armies from 3 continents and 2 worlds? No? Me neither.

Oh well, but there were a lot of deaths of ordinary soldiers. I’m quite certain that all of Terrasen’s army was at least twice brought back to life for them to die in these numbers.

Logic or lack thereof

Oh, and let’s not forget about the Deus ex machina army of unbeatable, magical elves on wolves, from legends, living for the past thousands of years in the unreachable lands of the north, because they managed to run from the surprise attack 10 years earlier. Did I mention that they came from portals, which the whole book was telling us were impossible to make in this scenario? After the previous saviour army was already fighting there for a day? And that Aelin didn’t know they would come for sure (how did she contact them again?)? Even though they were waiting in the full armours for these portals? Ah, and also: that army didn’t do anything. They just came and fought for maybe 4 minutes. And there were just so many things like that!

And if we’re on the topic of armies I present you: ‘My favourite absurd-list in the series: allied armies’.

(As a comparison, in A Song of Ice and Fire by J.R.R Martin, in 7 kingdoms of Westeros, at the peak of war there were 7 forces present, but not all were even engaged in a war.)

First the ones that made sense:

Armies of Terrasen’s Lords (counted as one, not gonna nitpick)

The Khaganate army (also counted as one)

Galan Ashryver’s armada

Whitethorn fraction

Rebel Ironteeth witches

…should Dorian be counted as an ‘army’?

And there were some that did not:

Ansel of Briarcliff’s army

The Silent Assassins

Mycenians

Wild Men of the Fangs

Army of magical elves on wolves

And the ‘I don’t even know’ category:

Crochan witches

Overpowering and overreaching

Section title tells it all. The stakes were too high. I was honestly waiting for Aelin to become Super Saiyan and start to throw planets at Maeve and Erawan. I won’t spoil if this happened.

In my opinion it could be a really great series, if our list of villains ended with Arobynn and King of Adarlan, and the list of Aelin titles with an assassin and a princess. We could have had two main fight plots: one emotional with Arobynn, when Aelin would have to face a damage he had done to her, and overcome it. And the second one, with freeing Terrasen from Adarlan’s rule. That’s it. There was an asshole, power hungry king, who feared magic and wanted to rule the East part of a continent. A lot of plot, but not so much that we stopped to care, or didn’t have time to cover everything. We could really get to know what Terrasen and his people were like and not JUST GET TOLD that it was ‘the greatest place in the world’ every damn 20 pages.

Plus…should Dorian be counted as an ‘army’? It's a REALLY valid question.

Climaxes

IIf I have to write a list of things that disappointed me in this book, this review would be thrice its current size, but one of the worst grievances I have is the complete lack of acknowledging the plotlines that had been started. This book series has overall 4 372 pages (not counting novellas) and 12 main characters (still not gonna address this). All of them had their storylines and arcs but if they weren't tied up in the previous instalments they wouldn’t be in this one. I get it, Maeve and Erawan got beaten (in an extremely unsatisfactory way) but they were only a background in this series' plots.

Aelin Well, Aelin was one of 3 people (+2 paragraf-long insertion from Nesryn and Chaol) who got their own POV’s after the battle (second was technically Rowan, who was ‘Aelin’s POV outside of Aelin’.The third Dorian, who got almost a full two pages). And from this we got that: she got crowned, Aedion got his bond and that Maas have no idea how the city looks after weeks of siege. In her case what angered me the most was ‘Terrasen is my home’ subplot. Only in this tome we read at least 3 times that Aelin will be okay with dying, if only she gets to see Terrasen one last time, or if she get to die on Terrassen soil. But you know what? Maas forgot to write the scene where Aelin actually ‘comes in’.

Mannon Didn't get her own POV after the battle, but here’s what we’ve got: She is going to the Wastes with Croachans and Ironteeth. Whait. What? Yes, that was the ending of this 500+ years of feud. They fought together and they decided to unite their two species, completely forgetting more than half a millenia of slaughter. I can only hope that there were at least some talks behind the scenes… NO! F*** NO! This isn’t how it works!

Rowan, Dorian, Chaol, Yrene, Lysandra, Aedion, Lorcan, Elide, Nesryn, Sartaq Lived happily ever after

Secondary minor and total background characters Survived (I acknowledge that they would be ignored in most books’ epilogues, but this abomination is almost 1000 pages of nothing!!).

Good Scenes

That saying, this book actually had 4 good scenes:

Crochan witches go to war - gathering-forces-to-fight trope, which is my *love-always trope* so I’m not even sure if it was relatively good, or if I’m just a slut for this trope. It was still only a paragraph long though.

[recurring] The children’s tale Aelin repeated to herself to remember who she is.

‘Lorcan Lochan’ - the only marginally funny scene in the whole book

I actually found Darrel making Evangeline his heir charming. Even if circumstances were far-fetched at least.

But the words crime of this book? It was agonisingly, mind-numbingly boring. If the overexplaining and repetitions were to be taken out I highly doubt that there would be 300 pages left.

For these 33 hours of audiobook I suffered through I give it half a star. Because Abraxos exist.

Please see my garishly accurate cover on my instagram! You can also like it there :D

instagram | goodreads

#book #book review #bookworm #review #signofwolf-book_review #opinion #throne of glass #throne of glass series #throne of glass spoilers #sarah j maas #kingdom of ash #aelin galythinius #mary sunderland #tog #fantasy #fandom

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onwardintolight · 5 years ago

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Han x Leia, ESB, Trip to Bespin, angst, hurt/comfort, fluff

Summary: ESB from Leia's POV. A journey from despair to hope, a blossoming, an opening to vulnerability and love.

Warnings: Deals with some heavy themes, incl. working through trauma, depression, self-harm, attempted sexual assault. Each chapter will be individually warned.

Note: I’m currently in the process of reposting the first nine chapters here in full, since when I first wrote this fic, I only shared links to the chapters on AO3 and FFN. I will try to post at least weekly. In the meantime, if you’d prefer to binge-read it, the entire fic is posted in full on AO3 and FFN.

Part: Masterlist | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | Epilogue

~~~

Puffy clouds of rose gold melted into orange, and violet striations marked the sky as if placed there by brushstroke. It was dawn, and the city in the clouds shone with reflected colors as the Falcon finally made its approach.

Leia’s breath would have caught at Bespin’s extraordinary beauty if it hadn’t already been shallow with worry.

Two small ships with twin pods, presumably from the Cloud City security force, flanked their side threateningly. A curt voice came over the comm.

“No, I don’t have a landing permit,” Han repeated. Annoyance filled his voice as he slowed down his enunciation in an effort to get the message across. “I’m trying to reach Lando Calrissian!”

Without warning, the Falcon jolted as the cloud cars fired on them. Leia sucked in a breath, alarmed at the unexpected escalation. Great, she thought.

“Wait a minute!” yelled Han into the comm. “Let me explain!”

“You will not deviate from your present course,” said the voice.

“Rather touchy, aren’t they?” remarked Threepio as he stood behind Chewie.

Leia glanced at Han. “I thought you knew this person.”

«You think he’s still angry at us for leaving him during that job on Socorro?» Chewie asked.

“Well, that was a long time ago; I’m sure he’s forgotten about that,” Han muttered.

Leia was not comforted. She glared at Han, biting her tongue to avoid saying something she would regret.

“Permission granted to land on Platform Three-Two-Seven,” one of their escorts said.

“Thank you!” Han growled. He paused, sensing Leia’s spiraling unease. “There’s nothing to worry about,” he insisted. “We go way back, Lando and me.”

“Who’s worried?” Leia replied dryly.

Following the cloud cars, they wove through the orange twilight into the still-shadowed city. Lights gleamed out of a hundred towers. Cloud City’s people were awakening and beginning their day; she could see their silhouettes in the windows as they passed, moving here and there. Homing in on the landing platform they were being directed towards, Han and Chewie began the landing cycle, and soon, for the first time in three weeks, they were on the ground. The sigh of the ship as it came to rest had a certain air of finality to it.

Wordlessly, the four of them rose and headed towards the boarding ramp, strapping on their weapons as they went. Han stopped her on the way, taking hold of her shoulders. “It’ll be all right,” he murmured. “I promise.” He gave her a quick kiss; she suspected it was as much to reassure himself as it was her. She wanted to believe his words, but every sense was on edge, the warning klaxons in her head growing steadily louder. This was not helped by the fact that when they descended the boarding ramp, they found only shut doors and an eerie silence.

“Oh! No one to meet us,” Threepio exclaimed.

Leia shook her head, stopping at the bottom of the ramp. “I don’t like this.”

“Well, what would you like?” Han turned around to face her, exasperation finally getting the better of him.

“They did let us land,” the droid commented.

“Look, don’t worry,” Han said, reaching out a hand to pacify her. “Everything’s going to be fine; trust me.”

Leia set her lips in a straight line. Before she could reply, however, they heard the unmistakable sound of a door sliding open. Turning to look down the length of the platform, they saw two people—one of whom wore a cape—consulting with each other in the doorway before walking out onto the platform, followed by a cadre of guards.

“See? My friend,” Han said. Taking two steps forward, he paused by Chewie. “Keep your eyes open, huh?” he muttered to the Wookiee before striding out to meet the approaching party. “Hey!” he called, spreading out his arms in welcome.

The caped man, leading the group, did not do the same. “Why, you slimy, double-crossing, no-good swindler!” he said coldly. “You’ve got a lot of guts coming here, after what you pulled.”

«Uh-oh,» growled Chewie.

The man approached Han. Without warning, he lunged—except it turned into a hug instead. He started laughing. “How’re you doing, you old pirate? So good to see you!” His tone had completely changed. “I never thought I’d get to see you again! Where’ve you been?” At a signal from his aide, who appeared to be a cyborg, the guards left.

«Just like old times!» Chewie remarked cheerfully.

“He seems very friendly!” said Threepio.

“Yes,” grumbled Leia. “Very friendly.” She followed the other two as they went to to join Han in the middle of the platform.

“What are you doing here?” Lando was still quizzing Han.

“Repairs. I thought you could help me out.”

Lando frowned. “What have you done to my ship?”  

“Your ship? Hey, remember you lost her to me fair and square.”

“And how are you doing, Chewbacca?” Lando turned to greet the Wookiee. “You still hangin’ around with this loser?”

«Better than hanging around with you!» Chewie teased, though Leia didn’t think Lando could understand him.

All of a sudden, Lando’s attention was entirely on her. “Hello, what have we here?” he crooned.

Leia bit back her anger at being called a “what.” Just… give him a chance, she told herself. Maybe he’s not so different from Han.

“Welcome! I’m Lando Calrissian, the administrator of this facility. And who might you be?”

“Leia.” She forced a smile, and the once-scoundrel bent down to kiss her hand. Her eyes met Han’s; she saw a flash of jealousy there, which made her feel rather gratified.

“All right, all right,” Han said good-naturedly, grabbing Leia’s hand as he moved between them and escorted her towards the door. “You old smoothie!” She smiled, the tension that had been building for days finally beginning to melt into the background. Whatever lay ahead, they would at least have a day or two together in this beautiful city. She intended to enjoy it to the fullest of her ability.

____

Lando led them through the elegant, curved white halls of Cloud City. There were picturesque plazas and beautiful works of art seemingly around every bend, and with a pang, Leia realized it reminded her of home.

There were no dark, foggy rooms in sight.

“How’s the gas mine?” Han was asking Lando. “Is it paying off for you?”

“Oh, not as well as I’d like,” he answered. “We’re a small outpost and not very self-sufficient. And I’ve had supply problems of every kind. I’ve had labor difficulties—what’s so funny?”

Han was laughing. “You! Listen to you. You sound like a businessman, a responsible leader. Who would have thought that, huh?”

Lando seemed pleased at the backhanded compliment. He stopped, turning to face his old friend. “You know, seeing you sure brings back a few things.”

“Yeah.” Han put a hand on his shoulder.

They shared a meaningful look, then Lando led them on. “Yeah, I’m responsible these days.”

Han glanced back, catching Leia’s eyes. She smiled at him and nodded her approval. There was something about Lando’s charm that made her uncomfortable, but setting that aside, he really did seem decent and respectable. See? she told herself. Han’s right. You need to stop worrying.

“…it’s the price you pay for being successful,” Lando continued, and he and Han shared a laugh.

Lando pointed out potential places of interest as they passed: restaurants, shops, entertainment. Han and Leia’s eyes slid towards each other again. Her mind wandered, imagining her hand in his as they enjoyed a dinner under the light of candledroids or attended a play in the Nabooian theater.

Their guest suite was at the top of a central tower, not far from the landing platform. It consisted of a circular lounging chamber from which other rooms branched off. On one side of the chamber was a great, long window with a spectacular view over the city; on the other side were several doors leading to a breakfast room, a refresher, a smaller second lounge, and a bedroom with its own private refresher.

Lando had taken his leave after showing them to their suite, but not before offering to provide them with anything that would make their stay more comfortable. Leia requested some fresh clothes, and soon several elegant and perfectly fitted gowns were brought up along with a hammock for Chewie, which he hung up in the second lounge.

After hanging up her clothes, Leia took a closer look at the bedroom. In the middle of the chamber was a very large bed with impossibly soft-looking pillows and silky sheets. When was the last time she had slept in a proper bed? She imagined curling up next to Han on it, drifting off to sleep.

Of course, there were… other possibilities such a bed could offer. Possibilities that were highly tempting. She swallowed hard. Suddenly, she felt much more uncertain about her decisions.

Hearing a sound behind her, she turned to find Han, staring at the bed with a similar expression. His eyes flickered up and found hers. For one long moment they gazed at each other in silence.

Leia bit her lip. “Han….” she trailed off.

He swallowed. Then blinking, he squared his shoulders. “Uh, Chewie ’n me are gonna go back and get our travel bags from the Falcon.”

  Leia nodded, shaking off her thoughts. She followed him back out into the main lounge and quickly began making a checklist of things for them to bring back from the ship.

After a moment, she stopped short, frowning. Something didn’t feel right. Her eyes darted around the room, a sinking feeling in her heart. “Where’s Threepio?”

#Han x Leia #HanLeia #Han x Leia fic #HanLeia fic #Star Wars fic #SW fic #Leia Organa #Han Solo #Threepio #Chewbacca #Star Wars #The Opening #my fic #thoughts #my writing

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randomfandomimagine · 5 years ago

Text

Contest entry :)

Thanks to @welcome-here-in-my-world for submitting something for the contest! It’s amazing that you took the time to write this! I’m not the biggest fan of Keith, but this is well written and I love the fact that the character is non-binary. Also that you got other characters involved and how the story progresses :)

Title: Pretty Enough

Fandom: Stranger Things

Time of events: 29th-31st of October 1984/first two episodes of season 2

Romantic ship: Keith the Arcade Guy x Alex Henderson (OC)

Categories: Henderson!sibling, non-binary!character, friends to lovers, strangers to friends

Word count: 5400

A/N: I genuinely wanted to make this fanfiction shorter, but the idea for it was growing in me for quite some time before with more and more tropes adding and I just couldn’t stop! There are some themes I technically could just omit, but they helped me get to the main point of the story and I feel it would a bit incomplete without them. I’m also still afraid that I got something wrong by alluding only to the fandom, not any fanfiction of yours. At first I meant to use your OC, Allison Henderson, since we’re both playing with the idea of Dustin having an older sister, but I feel like – aside from ships being different for our OCs – my idea for Alex is still quite different from yours for Allison and it was easier to fit her into my story. Trying to put someone’s ideas into the frame of my plans could be done, but also it would probably make my writing less enjoyable for me, and at some point this enjoyment became what I decided to seek primarily. In the end I didn’t fail to have fun while writing this and I hope that it won’t be too bad to read this as well. :)

People say that home is where your loved ones are, but Hawkins never really felt like home to me. I love my family and I could do anything for my mother and brother. I bonded with them even more after Mr. Henderson left us – I am only four years older, but I always felt responsible for little Dustin, trying to take over our father’s place, with a lot of help from our loving mother. Despite that, I didn’t grow roots in our house and I really wouldn’t mind if we lived anywhere else. The fact that I don’t have too many special people besides family doesn’t help. Dustin managed to find a group of good friends and I used to think I could do the same – well, I used to be wrong. I had a few attempts, but I never made any friends at school. I failed even at befriending Nancy Wheeler, my classmate and sister of my brother’s friend Mike. All the connections we have didn’t make her willing to hang out with me.

After Will Byers, Dustin’s friend, and then Barbara Holland, a friend of Nancy, disappeared last year, things changed for even worse. I didn’t take part in the events, but thanks to Dustin’s stories he once shared with me (involving creatures from another dimension and a girl named after a number – strange as it all seemed, I had no reason not to believe him) I have an idea about what happened at that time and I see its obvious effect on his group and on the entire town. Will’s revival and no return of Barb made people afraid and suspicious, relationships – tense. I was never comfortable with walking the streets of Hawkins, but the fall of 1983 made them even more unfriendly.

My only friendly, safe place is the arcade, where I’ve been working since I turned 15 two years ago. For a few previous years I’d been spending most of my afternoons there, and I took the chance to make a little money from something I would be doing anyway. Apart from being a place to escape, working at the arcade provided me with one more thing – having that one person by my side who’s not family but seems to get me and makes me feel okay. It’s my co-worker, Keith.

I see how for him it tends to be hard to get into relationships with people for him. He’s whole two years older than me and sometimes it can already be a huge obstacle, maybe it should be for people like us. But when we are together, it’s actually different. It might be our work that brought us together, but it was only a catalyst for something I like to call a friendship – or is it a good start for more? We talk and laugh a lot, and I feel that with me he’s not as arrogant as he can be with others, he rarely teases me about things. He’s just… normal, which makes me feel like I’m normal as well.

Two days before Halloween of 1984 we both work an afternoon shift. We are at the counter, leaning towards it, sharing a bag of Cheetos. We’ve spend half an hour watching a girl playing Dig Dug – neither of us likes the game, but it’s weirdly pleasing to watch others play.

“Do you know her?” Keith finally asks.

“Nope,” I answer. “You?”

“Me neither. But she seems around your brother’s age, they could go to school together. You might’ve heard about her from him.”

“Bold of you to assume I know about all of my brother’s schoolmates,” I respond mockingly. “We talk about it sometimes, but I don’t think he’s ever mentioned her. She may be new to town.”

“Who on Earth would pick Hawkins to be their new place?”

“Freaks, I guess. The area’s full of ‘em.”

“True… Maybe you could ask Dustin anyway? He still might know something.”

“He’s gonna be here today, you can ask him yourself if you really want. I don’t care that much.”

We watch the girl as she finishes playing and leaves. Out of curiosity, I go to the Dig Dug station and check the results board.

“Holy shit! She’s good!” I exclaim as I go back to the counter. “She’s beaten my brother’s score!”

“Wow,” Keith comments shortly. “Wanna take a chance to torment him? Honestly, I wouldn’t mind having to mention he’s not the best anymore.”

“I’ll pass this time. The floor is yours,” I say when we see Dustin with his party enter the arcade.

I don’t really care about my relationships with Dustin’s friends, but it flatters me that I earned a little of their respect by working at the arcade. All four of them nod their heads and smile when they see me. Keith and I allow them to go and play; we wait with approaching until they lose the game. We stand beside them soon enough to hear my brother say:

“Well, there are still other games I’m top at, like Dig Dug.”

“Are you sure about that?” says Keith, startling them.

“Sure about… what?”

They run towards other stations and, a little panicked, comment upon Dustin’s defeat.

“Who’s MadMax?” Dustin asks us.

“Better than you,” Keith mocks.

“Ugh! Is that one of you?”

“You know we despise Dig Dug,” I note.

“Just tell us, you two!” demands Lucas.

Keith looks at me, raising his eyebrows.

“Please, don’t stare like that. You know I don’t go too far with them,” I say quietly. “Handle it on your own.”

“I can tell you,” he turns to the kids and lays his eyes on Mike, “but I need something in return”.

I feel the sting of jealousy before he’s done talking. Of course he’s thinking about Nancy.

“You’re not getting a date with my sister!” Mike says loudly, also knowing what Keith means. “I’m not prostituting her!”

“Oh, come on! Just get him the date, only one! Don’t you want to know who got better than us?” Lucas teases him.

I’m getting done with their conversation, so I turn around and leave. I’m doing it at a good moment, as there’s a boy waiting at the counter. I put a fake smile on, ready to answer his questions. Keith joins me a few moments later.

“Well, now we know they don’t know her, guess they would’ve recognized the nickname. But why did you step aside? I weren’t done with them, I thought you wanted to listen.”

“I didn’t want to listen to you argue with Wheeler about his sister. It’s getting weird.”

“What’s weird about that? I’m just trying to get a date.”

“Okay, but why Nancy? Everybody is so obsessed with her, even my brother, and now you. She is a basic bitch, definitely not worth your time.”

I’m aware that I’m getting bitchy myself, since I don’t know Nancy too well and she probably isn’t that bad once you’re close to her, but when I talk to Keith knowing he thinks of her, I can’t stop.

“But she’s pretty,” he says with no hesitation. “And she looks nice in a dress.”

I try to swallow the clump of sadness growing in my throat. I should’ve known better that he would pay more attention to people like her when it comes to romantic interests. Having this thought in my head that the joke’s on me, I still can’t help jumping into an argument.“That’s what you care about? Pretty faces and pretty dresses?” I say with shaking voice.

“Yes, I think so.”

“But you have never even talked to her! You don’t know if you’d get along with her!”

“She’s pretty enough for me to take a risk,” he repeated.

It takes all my strength not to scream or punch him.

“You know what? I always thought you were worth something, but now I think I see you are like everyone else. And I need to go.”

Not waiting for his reaction, I grab my bag and step outside the arcade. The delayed sound of closing doors tells me someone’s following me. As I turn around, I say:

“I told you I don’t want to…”

I stop when I realise it’s not Keith, as I assumed, but my brother who left the arcade after me.

“Oh. That’s you…”

“Yes, that’s me.What happened? Keith pisses you off too?”

“As you can see, he does sometimes.”

“What’s that thing you don’t want to do?”

I respond with a short sigh. I can’t tell him it’s hearing about Nancy, I know he likes her quite much. He’s still my brother, I don’t want to hurt his feelings. It’s different than with Keith.

“Nevermind. It’s between me and him.”

“Okay. Don’t say if you don’t want to. But can you at least tell me who MadMax is?”

I smile at him as I decide to spill the tea.

“It’s a red-haired girl, probably around your age. I assume she’s new in the area, today’s the first time I saw her here.”

“Yeah, I also don’t think I know someone like that… But fair enough! Thanks! I’ll stay here a bit longer, so… see you at home?”

“Sure. See ya.”

Once he turns around and enters the building, I’m on my own. I can finally put my mask down. I let my smile fade away and first tears go down my cheeks.

I don’t manage to put myself together before reaching home and mother doesn’t fail to notice my state. It’s not exactly the first time when I come back sad from work, but for a first time I’ve been crying on my way back, which makes her approach me and ask:

“Hey, what happened, sweetie? Did somebody hurt you?”

Saying nothing, I burst into tears again and hug her. She hugs me back and then gently sits me on the couch, holding my hand.

“Alex, what is that?” she repeats. “You know you can tell me anything.”

“Mom, am I not pretty?” I whisper.

“How can you say that! Of course you are! Who made you think you’re not?”

“There’s this guy at the arcade that I work with… I really like him and sometimes I wish it was something more. But he only cares about that other girl. Today he said he could give her a chance just because she’s pretty. Why wouldn’t he give this chance to me, mom? Am I not pretty enough?”

“Oh, dear… Okay, let’s start with this. Do you think he at least likes you back?”

“I think so. We talk a lot and I feel he’s friendly to me.”

“That’s a good start! So, maybe you should tell him exactly how you feel? Or ask another friend for advice? I’m sure some girls at school will know how to deal with this.”

Right, ‘cause my mum assumes I have someone to talk to at school, even though she tries to keep up with my life and should know it’s not true. But… accidentally, she gave me an excellent idea.

Next day I’m not working and I don’t have to stand Keith’s presence, so I decide not to rush things. I wait until Halloween. That’s when in the school corridor I approach Nancy Wheeler.

“Hi, Nancy! How you doin’?”, I say.

“Hey… could be better, I guess”, she answers politely. “What do you want?”

“Um… advice. I want advice.”

“From me?”. She seems surprised.

“Yes. You know, there’s this thing…”

I stop when she starts staring over my shoulder. I turn my head and see Steve Harrington, her boyfriend, walking down the corridor.

“I don’t know what it is about, but I guess I can at least listen. Only not now. Meet me at 2 p.m. in the parking lot, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll be there.”

Nancy nods and approaches Steve, leaving me alone by the lockers. I meet her again a few hours later, when – as we promised – we both appear in the parking lot.

“So, what is my advice supposed to be about?” she asks with no further introduction.

“About relationships,” I explain a little shakingly, suddenly feeling how embarrassment takes over me. “There’s one guy I want to pick up but I have no idea how, and I know you’re good with boys”.

Nancy scoffs, turning her head away.

“I’m not good with boys. If you mean Steve, it’s him who talked to me first and that’s what started things. Also, it’s not going that well anymore…”

“Yeah, I see, but you had to catch his attention in the first place. You’ve got charm, people notice you. There’s a lot of them talking or thinking about you, I know that. I don’t have this and it sucks.”

“Okay, okay. I get it,” she says with a sigh. “I’ll try to help you. Let’s go to my place. I’m going to the Halloween party later, I’ll be getting ready as we talk.”

We soon reach Wheelers’ house and – after saying hello to Mrs. Wheeler – go straight to Nancy’s room. She starts to go through clothes in her wardrobe as she asks:

“You said you have trouble picking the guy up. What’s exactly the problem?”

“He doesn’t seem to notice me. I mean, we know each other, guess I can say we’re friends, but I want it to be more and I’m not sure how to get to that, especially that he likes someone else.”

“Okay… Do you by any chance know what he values in relationships?”

I manage to utter that one and only word:

“Pretty.”

“What?”

“He wants his girlfriend to be pretty.”

“Oh, I see your issue then. You wear those ugly clothes, military trousers and oversized hoodies. You’re hiding your pretty side, that’s why he doesn’t see you like that. You need to become more feminine, it’ll make things easier for you both.”

“Yeah, but… I don’t think I could become more feminine.”

“Why not? You’re a girl, right? It should be easy. You can wear all those nice sweaters and jeans, maybe a little make-up could help, or some jewelry?”

I sigh deeply. She touched upon things that make me extremely uncomfortable, that’s why no one, not even my family, knows about my feelings towards them. But if I really want her to help me…

“Nancy… can I be honest with you? Totally honest?”

She sits beside me on the bed and reaches for my hand, saying softly but with confidence:

“Yes. You can.”

“I know it’s sound weird, but… I don’t feel like I’m a girl. I mean, not always. Sometimes it feels okay so I accept it and I even think about becoming more girly, but at other times I wish I was a guy so some things would be easier. And finally sometimes I just wish for it all to fade away so I wouldn’t have to care about what’s girly and what’s boyish… I hang somewhere in-between and try not to care. All those clothes I wear, neutral short name that I use… this image makes things easier at times where I don’t feel like a girl. No one questions it anymore and I feel comfortable. But… I don’t know if it even makes sense.”

“Well… it sure sounds confusing, but I can see your point. Being a girl is tough, I can feel that, even if it seems to be easy for me. I never wanted to abandon my womanhood, but it makes sense that you’re different from me and you wander to different places with those things.”

Her words bring me a relief. I tighten my fingers on her palm.

“Thanks, Nancy. I appreciate it.”

“It’s okay. Now I’m thinking… maybe you went so far into this not-feeling-like-a-girl thing that this guy doesn’t percieve you as one anymore? He might think you’re his mate or even see you more as a boy in a way. You work at the arcade, and those clothes again… It’s rare to find girls like that.”

“Yeah, this sounds logical… but if I don’t want to break with that image, how do I let him know I have feelings for him?”

“Just tell him the same things you told me.”

She’s not the first person to advise me talking to Keith openly, but I still can’t imagine that.

“If it only was so easy…” I sigh.

“Okay! Who is he?” Nancy asks, surprisingly elevated.

“Who?”

“This guy you’re so madly in love with! Who’s he?” she repeats, standing up.

“You know Keith, right? He works with me at the arcade, that’s where we met.”

She stares at me blankly for a moment.

“Sorry, but I don’t think I know him. Mike mentions the place sometimes and I could’ve seen him somewhere, but you know… no details to appear in my head.”

“How come?” I ask, also standing up. “He keeps asking your brother to set him on a date with you. Mike never told you that?”

“No… and you can’t be serious…”. I shrug my shoulders, saying nothing. “Oh, you’re serious?”. I nod my head in response. “So when you said he likes another girl, you meant me? And he wants his girlfriend to be pretty like me?”

“Something like that.”

“Well… it changes a lot. But I think this makes it easier for me to help you.”

“Wait, so you still want to help me? I mean, you just learned I came to you to talk about a guy that I want to pick up while he has feelings for you. Isn’t it weird?”

“I don’t think so… Maybe a little.”

“I also told him you’re a basic bitch in hope that he changes his mind about you,” I decide to tell her for some reason.

“Okay… that’s rude, I admit.”

“I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she calms me with a sigh. “I guess you were right in a sense. I was a bitch, for you. I remember you wanted to be friends with me once but I refused. I shouldn’t have. Now I see you’re a nice person… Why wouldn’t you be? You’re a Henderson, and I actually like your brother. And… even if it’s hard, I’m enjoying this talk.”

“Thanks… It feels good talking to you too. You’re fine when you don’t tell people to get lost.”

We get interrupted with the sound of the front door opening and closing, followed by Mike’s voice. Nancy gives me a sly smile and says:

“You know what? Screw that party. Steve has been making me sick lately, I suppose there are better ways to spend this day than partying with him. Come on!”

We quit her room and run down the stairs fast enough to catch Mike in the corridor, just before he steps on the stairs leading to the basement.

“Brother! Nice to see you!” Nancy exclaims. “Isn’t there anything you want to tell me?”

He looks at me and I know he realized that Nancy knows.

“You told her about Keith?” he asks anyway.

“I wouldn’t have to if you did.”

“Yeah, why didn’t you tell me someone was trying to get a date with me? Together we would handle it somehow,” adds Nancy.

Mike stutters for a moment before he manages to say:

“Because I didn’t want this to slip out of hand. Keith can get weird, but I kind of like him, I thought it would ruin things if I got you involved. Besides… I made a promise to Dustin.”

“Wait… what does Dustin have to do with it?” I ask, surprised.

“Don’t act like you don’t know! Everybody sees you have feelings for Keith. Those puppy eyes you make for him and how he made you mad and sad two days ago… Even MadMax noticed there could be something going on.”

“MadMax? So you know her after all?”

“She joined our class yesterday. But it doesn’t matter now. What matters is, Dustin really wants you to be happy, and if it means bringing you together with Keith, he’s fine with that, we both are. He once had this idea that if I keep on denying Keith’s requests so that he stays away from Nance, he might get bored and ask you about that date. It made sense to me, so I agreed.”

“But what about the rest of the group? Those two days ago Lucas encouraged you to get Keith the date. Doesn’t he know about the deal?”

“He and Will found out yesterday, when we talked to Max and she realised Dustin’s your brother. She asked outright if there’s something between you and Keith, so we explained everything. Earlier it stayed between me and Dustin, because it’s about you two, meaning our sisters.”

“You know what? I think it’s actually kind of sweet,” says Nancy as we exchange looks. “Dustin must really care about you.”

“Yeah, he’s a good brother…”, Mike agrees, strangely sad.

“Hey, you’re also a good brother! And a very good friend,” she ensures him, realising how her words sounded, and pats him on the shoulder. “Keeping me away, it makes sense to me too. You wanted things to work out well for everyone, that’s nice.”

“Thanks, sister. So… what’s the plan now?”

“I believe you have one so I’d like to know too,” I support his question.

“My plan is to go to the arcade with you, Alex, and confront Keith. My staying away doesn’t sound bad, but I think the case here is about what he imagines he could get from me. I’ll let him know he won’t get it and open his eyes to what he already got.”

“Sounds good! Let’s go!” I say cheerfully, even though deep down I’m actually terrified.

“Can I come with you?” asks Mike. “I could call out Dustin too.”

“But don’t you have some trick-or-treating to do with your party?” Nancy asks back. “I don’t know how long it’s gonna take us, and I don’t want you all to change or cancel your plans. Have fun!”

We remain silent most of our way to the arcade. The more we’re getting close, the more I’m nervous. Of course I want Keith to know about my feelings, but I have no idea how he’s going to react, and that’s why I never told him – I’d rather be just friends with him for the rest of my life than lose him because I wanted too much. When we’re almost there, I ask:

“Are you sure we’re doing the right thing? It all means too much, I think I’m gonna kill myself if something goes wrong.”

“Don’t worry, I got it under control. But if something goes wrong, remember it’s not the end of the world. I lost a friend last year, now I’m slowly losing my boyfriend, and I’m not killing myself.”

“I’m sorry… Sometimes I forget how much Barb’s case must hurt you. And it was that time of year, right?”

“Yes, it was November. But hopefully I’ll soon be able to move on… and survive. Because there’s more to this life, you know? I have my family to love, I admire Mike’s friends, and look how we are growing closer! I wouldn’t be able to abandon all this, just like you shouldn’t even think of leaving behind your mom and brother because of one boy who doesn’t love you back. They sure want you to stay, even if everyone else rejects you.”

“I guess you’re right…” I admit quietly as we reach the arcade. “Well, we’re here.”

“Yeah. So, how about I go in on my own and talk to him and then you join? You can give me about five minutes, I think it should be enough for me to explain what I need to explain.”

“Okay.” Before she steps in, I add: “Nancy… thanks for doing it for me.”

“No problem. Hendersons and Wheelers should stick together, don’t you think?”

I smile as she disappears inside. Having nothing better to do, I start counting. When I reach 300, I know about five minutes have passed, so I enter the arcade. Nancy and Keith stand together at the counter. It seems like they’re already waiting for me. When I join them, Nancy says:

“I think you should talk in private. I’ll try and take care of things here.”

I thank her once again and I go with Keith into the storage room where only the employers can go. It’s quiet there so we sit and chill there sometimes, although I can’t exactly recall the last time I stayed there for a longer while. When we are on our own behind closed doors after spending a moment in crowded and loud arcade, the silence is deafening.

“Now I know what you meant about me and Nancy not getting along,” he speaks first. “Talking to her felt weird.”

“Maybe it’s about your talk’s theme?” I suggest. “I don’t think it could be not akward.”

“No, it was more of a general feeling. But you’re right, the theme also was odd. I don’t get how you couldn’t just tell me I’m special to you not only as a friend.”

“I didn’t want to ruin what’s already between us. And I knew you wanted her. I thought that it would look funny if I tried to look like a competition.”

“I agree that you can’t really compare yourself to Nancy because it looks weird…”

“So I’m weird when I’m compared to her? Thanks!” I say angrily.

“Alex, please… Don’t do this to me now,” he begs, laying his hands on my arms. “Calm down. I don’t want to argue, not this time. I didn’t mean that you are weird, although I probably should remind you it’s you who said that Hawkins is full of freaks. I wanted to say that the comparison is weird because you’re completely different from her.”

“And that’s what I meant,” I say, trying to be calm. “You want her pretty face and her pretty dresses. I can’t give it to you. Because… there’s much more than that.”

“Nancy mentioned as well it’s not exactly just about those things. Could you please explain to me… how you are? How you work? I’m sorry, I can’t put it into words.”

“It’s okay.”

I explain the way I am in the same words I used when talking to Nancy. It makes him prove her assumptions true as he says:

“Now it makes sense why I never realised you have feelings for me, even when you tried to get Nancy out of my head. It’s so easy talking to you about everything, and you have this presentation… I kind of forgot you are a girl in the essence.”

“And in the essence, I will always be one,” I add. “It’s not something I desperately want to change. My state of mind shifts and I’m not too girly, but I’m still the opposite of you and I’m the same as Nancy. That’s why I’m Dustin’s sister, not brother, and it won’t change. Basing on all this and on the fact we get along well, I want you… I need you to see me as someone you could love. Even though I will never be a girlfriend in a full sense and I can’t give you what Nancy would.”

“Because you don’t wear dresses and your face is not the same as hers. But when I look at you now… guess it’s pretty enough.”

He hugs me tightly. It happens so suddenly I can’t help a quick shudder, but also standing there – with his arms around me and my cheek against his chest, not saying anything, after he admitted I’m pretty enough – feels so good that I want to make it last forever. After a moment I raise my head. We look each other in the eye and when I feel like our faces are getting closer and our lips are going to meet… we hear knocking at the door.

“Sorry to interupt, but there are some technical issues and I think you’re needed!” shouts Nancy.

I’m dissapointed that nothing happened in the end, but we can’t avoid our duties. We leave the room and see a man waiting at the counter.

“One of the machines broke,” he informs us.

Keith apologizes to Nancy and me and follows the man. Once they are out of my sight, six other people appear at the counter: it’s Dustin, Mike, Lucas and Will, accompanied by Will’s brother, Jonathan (one more thing I keep forgetting: his loving family cares about that boy at least twice as much since his dissapearance, that’s why he’s almost never alone) and a girl I’ve once seen, MadMax. Although she’s the only one in this weird collection I don’t really know (compared to her, even Jonathan feels like someone close), she’s the first one to immediately ask:

“Did you kiss him already? It could prove to him that you love him.”

“Whoa, hold up!” I say. “We don’t exactly know each other and you’re asking me about kisses? First of all, I’m Alex.”

“Max Mayfield,” she oficially introduces herself, shaking my hand. “When I saw you and him here two days ago, I was sure you were already a couple. And then I learned it’s never been like that. So, are you getting together or is it just some kind of weird game?”

“I think we’re finally getting together,” I admit. “But… how did you all even know? I mean, that something’s going on here right now.”

“I told them about everything,” Mike confesses. “Sorry…”

“Don’t be, it’s fine.”. Nancy smiles at him.

“No, it’s NOT fine!” exclaims Dustin. “You should’ve told me! You have no idea for how long I was your support. And now I don’t get to know something’s finally happening? I don’t get it!”

“What I don’t get is why you just don’t kiss him already,” Max interrupts him. “Do things really have to be so hard?”

“You know what? You’re right. It doesn’t have to be so hard.”

I notice Keith’s coming back; I step from behind the counter and approach him. As we meet halfway through, I climb to my toes, put my hands on his neck and kiss his lips. I can taste Cheetos he must’ve been eating before I came, but it’s good, it’s really good. And it’s good when he kisses me back, and it’s good when I hear the outburst of happiness behind my back.

Fall of 1983 changed a lot, but Halloween of 1984 starts the season that changes even more. Last year it was Nancy hanging out with Steve or Barb – now it’s Nancy with Jonathan and me. After welcoming Max Dustin’s party grows from four to five people, or from five to six, since Mike can’t forget this girl they crossed paths with a year before and believes she would fit with them. Another dimension – now I remember they call it the Upside Down – also doesn’t let anyone forget and forces people to fight itself, as the effect making citizens of Hawkins come closer together – well, at least some of them. Although it does a lot of harm, everything I go through with them helps me start calling some people “friends”… which finally makes Hawkins feel like home.

In all of this, one thing never changes. The arcade is still that friendly, safe place with that one person who understands me the best and always makes me feel better. It’s my boyfriend, Keith.

#submission #contest entry #6k contest #6k contest entry #welcome-here-in-my-world #welcome here in my world #fanfiction submission #stranger things #oneshot #stranger things oneshot #keith the arcade guy #keith the arcade guy oneshot

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naruhearts · 6 years ago

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OKAY SO I've just spent the best part of an hour scrolling through your blog and reading a bunch of your destiel meta and I HAD to message you... I was one of the many people who STRONGLY believed destiel had a chance of being canon after season 8 (more like season gr8 am i right), but throughout the years I slowly lost all hope. However, S14 has made me 110% invested in the show again and YOUR META IS GIVING ME HOPE FOR DESTIEL, which is TERRIFYING. Your writing is wonderful and I'm STRESSED.

Got back from Washington late last night!

Oh my gosh @alovelikecas, your message really made my day and I’m SO glad you enjoy my meta xox (even when most of my meta looks like, to me, sloppy-ass writing, haha! I’ll probably make an end-season meta post after 14x20 — if I have the time — that touches upon SPN’s current and repeating themes since Season New Beginnings S12/Dabb Era, not to mention I have, like, some more unfinished meta in my drafts >.>)

Yeah I mean, I didn’t join Destiel land until Summer 2016, and before that, I was late to the Season 11 party, so I basically had no narrative context for anything, and I’ll copy-paste what I said here:

Looking back, one significant thing I recall? S11 gave me a sense of Destiel’s true narrative validity (as not a ‘fanon’ ship but organically developed in the canon) when I perceived it as a season that was ‘missing something’. Keep in mind I had no idea about Destiel yet while watching S11 at the time.

I was literally asking myself — repeatedly — why Dean/Amara seemed to contain odd narrative holes, considering A. Dean explicitly said that the non-consensual attraction he felt for Amara was NOT love and “it scares him”, B. Amara told Dean that ‘something stops you - keeps you from having it all’, C. Djinn!Amara stated that she can: ‘feel the love [Dean] feels, except it’s cloaked in shame,’ and D. Mildred’s iconic ‘You’re pining for someone’ —> which did not logically correlate with A and C, meaning: since Dean doesn’t freely love Amara and thus isn’t possibly pining for her — with female love interests as currently non-existent (I remember crossing off the dead/gone girls on a piece of paper lol) — who the hell was he pining for, then?

Originally posted by elizabethrobertajones

Obviously, without writing long-ass paragraphs of meta about it again in this post, S11 made sense as soon as I watched it within the Destiel context (especially after I read up on some grandiose pieces of Destiel meta (@charlie-minion was the very first person who inspired me to write meta; I followed her once I joined the fandom Oh my god, here we go, holy crap this subtext – I’m invested in this godforsaken ship because they’re in love with each other and I’m not getting off any time soon. The rest is history.

I’m aware that I do come off as positive (and I’m still Destiel-positive; whatever happens in 14x20 this week may or may not change that), but I hope you don’t mind if I use your lovely ask as an additional opportunity to clarify my meta standpoint: no one’s saying Destiel WILL become text.

The general Destiel meta community (all subfactions: Destiel-positive, -negative, -neutral, and in-between) is not the Most Holy Canon Word, and we aren’t SPN writers, and again, we can’t actually speak to the veracity of Destiel as guaranteed-gonna-go-textual, but we — a diverse pool of critical thinkers from all walks of life: particularly those who have some degree of experience in literary academia/English literature studies (fun fact: I was actually pursuing a Minor’s in English until I changed my mind - my first love’s Health Science/Biology, which I stuck with, but here I am doing lit-crit analysis on the side *wink*) — can speak to the veracity of Destiel as a real, palpable, and ever-substantial long-running romance narrative aka the love story between Dean and Cas IS THERE. I see it. We all see it. We didn’t pluck it out of the random ether one day. It naturally evolved across the show’s overarching narrative like some vast spiderweb, linked together by numerous character arc amalgamations of Dean Winchester and Castiel as separate individuals who were then brought together — who brought themselves together, by the sheer force of free will and choice — and are now inherent parts of the other’s story (and respective character progression).

I say this too many times to count: the entire point of writing meta? Personally, it enables me to appreciate the literary gorgeousness of Dean and Cas’ relationship as, first and foremost, a tentative alliance offset by the very moment Cas raised Dean from perdition (it’s a poetic beginning). Their alliance then inevitably proliferated into a rocky — at times, necessarily turbulent — friendship, then a deep profound bond…one that crossed platonic boundaries since S7/8 and is, ultimately, indelibly rooted in romance. Together, Dean and Cas build up each other’s strengths, complement each other’s flaws, and narratively motivate the other to self-introspect — to become the best version of themselves that they were always meant to be: self-actualized entities who let go of their painful, horrifying, psychologically/emotionally destitute pasts.

These above reasons and more are why I think Destiel belongs right up there on the shelf of Ye Olde Classics, similar to epics by John Milton, Shakespearian tragic dramas, Homeric characteristic cruxes, and the great Odyssey journey: a legendary journey, fraught with circumstance, that finally ended with Odysseus (now an enlightened man) returning to Penelope, the love of his life.

Channeling the scope of Homer’s Odyssey, Destiel is an incredible storytelling feat of obstacles, both internal and external, romance tropes, mirroring, foreshadowing, and visual cadence/emotion, enhancing SPN’s already character-driven main plot in that Dean and Cas try to make it back to one another; like Penelope, their love holds true despite everything. If Destiel were an M/F couple, we all know their love story would be absolutely undeniable to the GA.

I do understand the bitterness S14’s fostered in some viewers, though. I do understand that Dean and Cas seem distant (and yeah, it’s a noticeable difference compared to S12/S13), but I believe the Destiel subtext is still heavy and holds steady.

Right now, at this point, there remains multiple personal issues for the characters to solve, you know? Dean and Cas aren’t talking properly; their love languages stay mistranslated, although we’re persistently shown that they still understand each other on a certain level that no one else can, and the visual narrative keeps framing them as on-the-nose solid counterparts: a domestic-spousal romantic unit independent of Sam.

Originally posted by incatastrophicmind

They want to be there for the other. They need to quash the final remnants of their respective internal loathing (Dean’s self-worthiness, Cas’ self-expendability) before they’re able to give the other 100% of their time, efforts, attention, and love (as flawed and complicated but compellingly beautiful as it can possibly be). During the times Dean and Cas do try to talk shit out, extraneous issues continue to get between them.

As other friends/meta pals discussed with me, S14 is like S10 in that it’s confusing the cast/audiences. And exactly: S8, besides S11/S12/early S13, also belongs in the close-to-canon serious Destiel narrative transition! I can discuss the showrunning/writer problem of SBL (Singer + Bucklemming; @occamshipper hits the nail on the head) that tugs subtext – especially subtext linked to Destiel – back and forth, sometimes in the weirdest nonsensical ways, but I won’t go too far into it here. I agree, however, with the recent idea that Jensen does seem a bit confused as to where he should bring Dean emotionally this season (don’t get me wrong, I do NOT believe Dean is OOC; OOC is a completely different concept vs expected character behaviour). And if Dean’s consistently romance-coded past interactions with Cas are any indication, Jensen would also — in the same vein as all of us — want Dean and Cas to start getting their shit together. Long-running fictional characters like Dean and Cas, conceived over 10 years, are so well-written to the point where you, the author, can predict what they’ll do even if you just plop both of them inside a room and give them no direction, and I personally feel that nowadays Jensen is prevented from achieving Dean’s further internal growth/unsure how to act in the moment because of some dumb SBL scripts saying one thing while his character’s heart says another. Wank aside—

Season 15 should hopefully convey a much more logical subtextual perspective e.g. unbelievably amazingly cohesive Season Destiel 11 that aired after choppy S10. Not all hope is lost!! I also want to clarify that I personally LOVED Season 14 in general. It’s been mostly Emotion-centric constant, with Yockey, Berens, Perez, and Dabb usually making my top-rank SPN writer list.

Currently the narrative’s still allowing pretty significant (imho) wiggle room for the lovers to fracture apart and get back together, where their miscommunication comes to a dramatic head. We just saw Dean and Cas argue over Jack’s well-being in 14x18 and 19. Dean — besides putting Cas at the top of his You’re-Dead-to-Me-Because-You-Lied-but-I-Still-Love-You-Goddammit hitlist (for clear spousal-coded reasons) and taking Cas’ actions to heart (he’s the person he trusted the most who lied to him) — no doubt blamed himself for what happened, and Sam was, like I said, the mouthpiece of truth. TFW were all culpable. They all failed Jack in some way, shape, or form.

I’m not expecting anything for 14x20, but I’m nervous either way! Thanks for sticking with my long answer

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mtvswatches · 6 years ago

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Crazy Ex Girlfriend 4x10 I Can Work With You

Stray thoughts

1) It’s amazing but the show actually accomplished it – I dig the new theme song. I’m actually singing along.

2) I repeat: Other Rebecca needs help.

3) Okay…

REBECCA: You're weird around her. It's like you can barely even look at her, because she reminds you of a very traumatic time in your life where you made some rash decisions and contributed to the existence of another person and maybe didn't fully think it through.

Even though this is incredibly introspective and it makes sense, it wasn’t the explanation I was expecting to get from Rebecca. Accepting to be Daryl’s baby’s surrogate mother was a rash decision, yes. And even though it rubbed me the wrong way how she showed no interest in the baby, it made sense, it was consistent with her behavior. She made the decision to carry the baby without giving it much thought. Likewise, she wasn’t giving the baby much thought.

I actually chalked it up to Rebecca being a self-centered dick. She might be making improvements as regards her mental health and introspection, but she’s still utterly self-centered and a dick.

4) I loved the Jersey Shore reference!

REBECCA: Snooki has a baby. She has two babies.

DARRYL: And look at what a great job she's doing with Lorenzo and Giovanna.

Yes, I love Jersey Shore. Occasionally, I love crap.

5) Shouldn’t Greg and his dad be attending different help groups? It kind of defeats the whole “anonymous” purpose…

But I like how we got to see Greg’s sponsor again and see how seriously Greg takes his advice.

6) I keep relating to Paula so much…

PAULA: Second, that is how I wanted to celebrate my birthday With you and some room-temp California rolls. It was perfect. No one stared at me and no one sang "Happy Birthday," so it was a big win.

I loathe celebrating my birthday.

7) It’s kind of a shocker that Mrs H sucks at charades, isn’t it?

8) Me, everytime Josh speaks:

9) Also, me:

Replace “Beverly Hills” with any TV show I binge-watch.

10) I relate to Rebecca so much because I’m so not a baby person either. I had a very similar experience the first time babysitting one of my best friend’s babies. I just don’t know what to do with babies. They are so fragile and unpredictable, an enigma. Toddlers and kids, that’s a whole other thing. Once I can actually communicate with them, they love me.

11) Oh, the game night is Paula’s graduation party! I can understand her not wanting to make a big deal out of it. I didn’t celebrate my graduation either! But I agree with Paula’s husband, though. Rebecca would’ve totally gone to the game night if she had known it was Paula’s graduation party.

12) The game sounds boring af, though. I think they wasted a great opportunity to come up with a nonsensical game that only the characters in the show understand and whose rules are super vague for the audience, a la “True American” from New Girl.

13) I really love it when Nathaniel violently claims he’s nice.

14) Valencia is going to mop the floor with Hector, isn’t she? Will learn why she is so mean to him, though?

15) I laughed so hard at this…

JOSH: Um, what happened to Marvin Gaye?

PAULA: Oh, his dad murdered him. Anyway…

JOSH: As an adult?

NATHANIEL: No, Josh, as a baby. Marvin Gaye was murdered as a baby. All the music that he made that you love, he made as a baby.

JOSH: Whoa.

16) “You left West Covina just to get away from me.” Again, this is a bit self-centered. Yes, Rebecca definitely played a huge part in Greg deciding to leave West Covina, but he also did it for very personal reasons related to his own desires, ambitions and mental health. What’s more, I just don’t understand how Rebecca doesn’t realize that in spite of all the crazy shit she’s done, her coming to West Covina put in motion a chain of events that affected everyone’s lives in a positive way. All of the characters are at a better place than they were before Rebecca arrived in town, Greg included! So yeah, she might be a whirlwind who usually fucks things up, but she’s served as the catalyst for everyone’s self-improvement as well.

17) Ummmmmmmm

In the words of Joshua Felix Chan…

I did not see that coming. I was expecting the writers to rekindle this relationship, but I didn’t see them getting involved so soon after meeting again? Like, there’s so much stuff they still have to work through, plus they have to get reacquainted with one another? Both of them have changed so much! Are they into the actual person in front of them or are they holding onto the idea of the person they used to be who made them feel a certain way?

Let’s just hope this is going in an interesting direction… (but I don’t know if “Settle for Me” playing in the background right before they kissed is a good omen…)

18) I really enjoyed this number…

youtube

And I really loved how their parents were playing the instruments and looked bitterly disappointed once they finished hahaha!

19) GOOD. GOOD!

Yeah, something feels weird. So, listen. You know me I'm usually the first person to impulsively throw myself into any really romantic moment, but I think I got to just take a beat and deal with the fact that right before you so sweetly kissed me, I was in the middle of a shame spiral. Which isn't just a me thing. That's a thing that happens with my disorder, BPD. Um, and basically, it's what you saw. I can spiral out about things, in this case oh, my fear that everyone hates me and that I'm a contagious plague in the form of a woman, even though intellectually I know that I'm not.

I really like what they’ve been doing this season with Rebecca’s disorder and the way she handles it. The fact that she got a diagnosis and she’s being treated doesn’t mean that she’s magically cured, so she’s bound to make some mistakes again and to act out because of her disorder. The difference now is that she understands where those impulses and crises come from and she’s better equipped to deal with them properly instead of continuing spiraling.

20) Oh, they’re still going at it…

And this shot reminds me of “Oh My God I think I Like You.”

21) Let me just say that I’m so fucking happy that Paula finally got her dream that made her feel like she deserves a dream, okay?

22) Ha!

No one here is a mind reader, except maybe Valencia. She's into that occult stuff.

Jokes aside, he makes a great point. You can’t fault people for not acting the way you expect them to if you haven’t communicated it properly, you know?

23) I actually enjoyed their bonding? Yes, I am surprised.

24) I liked how Hector and Valencia were able to bury the hatchet, but honestly, I was hoping for Valencia’s reason to bully Hector to be a bit juicier than “I hate you because everyone likes you.”

25) Girl really has no boundaries, she just had sex on Darryl’s carpet while babysitting his daughter…

26) Oh damn, they cut that Greg and Rebecca song too short! I was super digging it!

27) Oh, Nathaniel, you’re a softie…

28) I stand corrected. NO ONE HAS ANY BOUNDARIES IN THIS FUCKING SHOW.

29) Oh, lord, they did a “Hello, nice to meet you” reprise with the baby and I DIED! It’s the sweetest thing ever!!!

Hello, nice to meet you, we share chromosomes

Hello, nice to meet you, you're kind of… me

So, since you're both the future and kind of a mirror

I'll tell you right now that life doesn't get clearer

All I can say is have fun in the gray

Well, anyway

It's nice to meet you.

Not gonna lie, I teared up a little…

30) What a wholesome moment…

31) Poor Nathaniel…

32) Oh, wow, for a second there, I was afraid Rebecca was going to say “Greg makes me feel like glitter was exploding inside of me”…

It feels different, Paula. It's different this time. Greg makes me feel like I'm… like I'm okay because he's so much more okay now, you know? And like maybe we could be the best versions of ourselves if we're together.

33) Oh, Nathaniel 💔💔💔

34) I think Rebecca might have jinxed it by saying that she enjoys the Beverly Hills drama... some drama is headed to West Covina...

35) Hope you enjoyed my recap, and, as usual, if you’ve got this far, thank you for reading! If you enjoy my recaps and my blog, please consider supporting it on ko-fi.Thanks!

#Crazy Ex Girlfriend #CEG #Rebecca Bunch #Greg Serrano #Rachel Bloom #CEG recap #CEG 4x10 #mine #MTVSwatches

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gascon-en-exil · 6 years ago

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I Liked Fates Before It Was Cool!: Revelation Part 2

Prologue

Opening Chapters

Revelation Part 1

Chapters 13-19, in which everyone’s going to Valla even though half of them suck.

Chapter 13

Hey look, Hoshidan scum!

Ok, meme comedy done. This is in my opinion the first really strong chapter of Revelation, with satisfying gameplay, escalation of the threat posed by Valla, and some good character development. It’s an utter tragedy that it takes place against the literal backdrop of Cyrkensia’s ruined opera house, but I can (mostly) live with the destruction of my favorite setting in Fates when it’s so effective at getting results. Azura still gets to sing here after a fashion, and although there’s no cutscene to go with it the results of this particular show do a good job of subtly foreshadowing that Azura and Mikoto use similar pacifying magic from the same source.

After Kaden and Keaton are done lampshading why the party always runs into shapeshifters in Cyrkensia, it’s time for Corrin to step between Xander and Ryoma as they left them back in Chapter 6 - at each other’s throats in a conflict ultimately engineered by Anankos. It’s a good demonstration of what the war between the two nations would look like without Corrin’s intervention, and the crown princes’ characters logically follow from their behavior as antagonists in the other routes. Xander is resolved that Corrin is a traitor and merits only death, whereas Ryoma is more hesitant to accept Corrin’s choice and, unlike in Conquest, willing to listen to their stated motivations when he’s not on the verge of death. Ryoma’s mellower outlook may be attributed, oddly enough, to the strong intimation that he’s got something going on with Scarlet, something I completely forgot about until I replayed this chapter. I don’t blame myself for doing so; in an Avatar free-for-all dating game romances between the other playable characters are naturally going to get short shrift in the story, and it doesn’t help that Birthright doesn’t suggest this relationship at all even though it’s the one route where both characters to survive to the end. And...yeah, there’s that part, but that’s for a bit later. It’s interesting to imagine how the different circumstances of Revelation could have encouraged Ryoma and Scarlet to grow closer in Revelation than they do in Birthright, though realistically it probably just boils down to Corrin not being there for most of their time together.

In any case, Ryoma shares what he knows about the Rainbow Sage - odd how the fourth person to visit the Sage is still Xander on this route when in the others it’s unsurprisingly the opposing older brother - and Corrin and co. are off to follow the path of Conquest 10 and 11. At least there’s no sequence-breaking teleport books this time.

Chapter 14

This time I’m not focusing on the cutaway to Garon and co., because his obvious gloating has reached such alarmingly stupid levels that I have nothing more to say about it. The payoff, such as it is, to that plot thread is still a few chapters away anyway...as is the appearance of Iago and Hans, who have yet to do much of anything on this route and yet get to appear as bosses at a plot-critical moment. Boo.

Let’s talk about unit balancing instead. Elise shows up with her she’s-legal-we-swear panty shot, and one look at the stats of her and her retainers showcases another glaring problem with the gameplay of Revelation. From this point onward, there’s really no point in training any of the numerous unpromoted units the game throws at you, because there’s no time to raise them up to par unless you do a lot of grinding. This is one instance where Revelation’s similarities to FE10 are more superficial than they first appear, because

1) when compared to just one route of Fates Radiant Dawn is a much longer game, and in fact at 43 chapters still holds the record for the longest individual story campaign in the series. Revelation’s pacing and design suffers terribly from the requirement that it cover the same number of chapters as the other routes.

2) Radiant Dawn also has a massive roster (second largest in the series behind New Mystery) with several units who come behind the level curve, but they’re spread across the course of the game rather than lumped into a span of a few chapters. Examples vary from earlygame recruits just a bit behind (Meg) to underwhelming midgame units (Kyza and Lyre) to a bonus run Est type in lategame (Pelleas).

3) and most notably, units in FE10 are divided into separate armies with different resource pools until lategame. While the balancing between those is infamously unequal, this setup almost requires that you train more units than you’ll ultimately be sending into endgame, giving even the lesser ones a small chance to shine.

I imagine that the design philosophy behind Revelation is that the player would be expected to spend a lot of time grinding on this route to get its numerous unique supports and raise a much larger army. It seems intended for a slower pace, particularly as this also helps with building up the castle base when you’ve got duplicates of most buildings to upgrade. I still don’t care for it though, because I don’t feel like taking that extra time to raise an oversized army and because some of the recruitments continue to be unexplained in story. Why would two border guards join in the invasion of a foreign port? Revelation doesn’t know or care, but it’ll make you run your new underleveled healer to both sides of this large map to recruit them regardless. At least Elise is mounted....

Chapter 15

Seriously, look at this. These two join in the same chapter, what the hell. This isn’t even mentioning that these are also some pretty random recruitments. Shura is awfully nonchalant on hearing that Corrin got his revenge for him, and Nyx has no more reason to be here than she did in Conquest 9. With her it really feels like the writers had a great (if highly fetishistic) concept for a character and came up with a plausible backstory only to find that there was no way to fit her into the plot, so...here she is. On a related note, Nyx is the only first generation character other than Gunter to outright not appear in one route, and at least there’s an explanation for Gunter’s absence in Birthright. Her presence really is just that random.

Before doing the write-up for this chapter I read back over what I’d written for the Sevenfold Sanctuary in the other routes. The gameplay of the Revelation iteration offers nothing really to speak of, lacking either Conquest’s class and skill-themed rooms or Birthright’s power jump. The Rainbow Sage uses an alternate old man sprite initially to make it less obvious that he’s repeating the same trick he pulled in Birthright, but his exposition at the end is worth the trolling for finally confirming that he is indeed a dragon and giving us the obligatory Fire Emblem name drop. Fates’s cosmology reveals itself to borrow mostly from Jugdral of all places, though I’ve never yet seen anyone try to piece together the scattered hints of worldbuilding to link the twelve dragons of the two settings. I’m certainly not going to attempt it, because even with divine weapons and draconic-blooded families in the mix there’s remarkably little to conclude definitively that the First Dragons of Fates are/were the dragons that appeared to Jugdral’s Crusaders. My pet theory aligns it a bit more with Tellius because of certain other observations about Fates’s setting and because something is going to have to connect the dragon laguz to the rest of the series’s lore eventually.

Chapter 16 + 17

I’ve been pretty down on Revelation thus far, and at first I was fully prepared to rip into these two chapters in similar fashion...and then I finished playing through them and changed my mind. If I had to pick one moment from FE14 to represent in miniature the beautiful mess that is this game, with all its inventive concepts and missed potential, its stirring emotional moments and lazy copouts, I would choose these chapters. In spite of everything they nail the very best of what Fates offers on an emotional level, and as a midgame climax they land almost as well as the Branch of Fate lands as an establishing moment.

And yet there’s so much wrong with them! Hans and Iago have never been flatter or more inconsequential antagonists; note that before this point in Revelation they’ve done nothing aside from knock Gunter off a bridge and use an illusion to piss off the Wind Tribe. The Ryoma/Scarlet angle is abruptly dialed back to the friend zone, presumably to make it okay for the Avatar to bone them, while Hinoka abruptly joins in the action after having been forgotten about for eleven(!) chapters bar one throwaway mention in Chapter 13. Xander and Leo’s apparent betrayal of Nohr has little bite to it even from Iago as Garon might as well not exist by this point, and their retainers fail so hard as backup I almost always just send them to a corner to wait out the battle. Speaking of which, the trend of underleveled units reaches its zenith, here where maybe four of the eleven units obtained in these chapters can reasonably be used without grinding after this point. It’s even worse than the torrent of garbage units the Archanea games throw at you, because at least those sometimes come with nice stuff in their inventories (hence the “Free Silvers” tier jokingly used on some of the DS tier lists back when those were popular). And to cap it all off the ticking timer that’s been running from Chapter 7 up until this moment, of the skies over Hoshido and Nohr switching as the moment that the portal to Valla will close, makes no sense either (meteoro)logically or narratively except to add unneeded urgency and entice a few of the characters to the Canyon. For that matter, since Revelation appears to take place in the same time frame as the other two routes it’s baffling that this bizarre bit of worldbuilding goes unmentioned in them. Wouldn’t it be kind of a big deal for Nohr to get a normal sky every few decades, and for Hoshido to get a bad one?

But somehow despite all that when the Nohrian brothers show up in Chapter 17 and the music switches to “A Dark Fall” (quick aside, but one thing I love about Fates as a whole is its soundtrack) I fully got what the developers were going for, and to see all the royals finally interacting with each other - something sorely missing from Chapter 6, if you recall - and calling a truce to face whatever awaits them in Valla together just sealed that feeling. The Hoshidan and Nohrian contrast to these two chapters followed by a scene of Corrin’s families united for the first time really sells the main draw of Revelation, even if for some of them the buildup to that moment was rushed (Takumi, Camilla) or just not there at all (Hinoka). Yeah, it comes with the distinct aroma of Avatar-centered plotting like everything else on this route - as Ryoma actually points out in Chapter 16, funnily enough - but even though some of the particulars are undercooked and most of the circumstances are downright silly I can completely get on board with this group of people in this moment banding together to, uh, jump off a bridge before an interdimensional portal closes because the sky is changing color and...ugh, never mind.

Chapter 18

I will say this for Valla: I really enjoy its visual style, a sort of supernaturally-ruined pastoral idyll that resembles nothing like the world above. It also helps that it’s not tied directly to any real-world cultures like Hoshido and Nohr are, and its nods to Middle Eastern, Indian, and exclusively in localization (I think?) Greek cultures come across in the series’s more typically understated fashion. Of course that otherworldly quality lends itself to more frustrating map mechanics, so it’s not entirely a positive. This one isn’t so bad provided you’re fielding a bunch of royals to activate all the Dragon Veins - and really, it’s not as though the player needs another excuse to use them to the exclusion of almost everyone else.

But of course the big moment of this chapter is Scarlet’s death. The bit with the flower is a painfully obvious hint to recall when it comes time for the reveal of her killer, but nevertheless the sequence does well despite that and some awkward staging with battle models. What doesn’t work quite as well is the reintroduction of the Ryoma/Scarlet angle just to add more punch to her death...completely ignoring the possibility that Corrin might be married to either of them (and Scarlet just undergone what had to have been one of the most hyper-accelerated pregnancies in all of fiction, if you want to be really sadistic). Because of their earlier buildup this may be the most egregious example of Fates needing to ignore its own support mechanics for the sake of the main plot. In any case, if Corrin didn’t shack up with one of them the scene after the chapter is pretty solid. I consider it comparable to Lilith’s death scenes on the other routes, since she also dies taking a hit for Corrin, but as the circumstances are less random and Scarlet actually gets most of her characterization outside DLC it’s much more effective overall.

Chapter 19

Enter the strange child with the oversized forehead. At least it’s not immediately obvious that’s he’s evil, I guess?

It’s interesting to note that the Valla chapters are structured almost as a route unto themselves, having to establish a new set of characters previously unseen in Revelation and not seen at all in the other routes. Although in terms of gameplay they function more like an extended endgame in the vein of Radiant Dawn’s Tower of Guidance, bizarre architecture and all. I’ll be talking more about Anthony and Arete and the others later on, but I wanted to note the setup for when I talk about it in the next post.

The intro to this chapter also delves into a bit more of Fates’s cosmology, specifically its deified dragons. Xander asks what only Iago thought to question in Conquest, namely why Garon would worship Anankos and not the Dusk Dragon, only to get the obvious but still technically necessary reveal of Garon’s true nature. I do like that the First Dragons are vague enough in their presentation that I could believe either that the Dawn and Dusk Dragons are just different interpretations of Anankos or that they’re all separate entities. As I recall however this is somewhat muted by the knowledge that the emotional payoff re: Garon is going to be rather muted when it finally happens, so this really is just more vague worldbuilding.

Oh, right, the chapter. It’s Conquest 15 with a bigger party and entirely too many items drops on the optional path. Why the developers think the player needed so many items thrown at them in a game with no durability and a route with no shortage of funds I’ll never know.

Next time: Revelation Chapter 20 - Endgame

#Fire Emblem #Fire Emblem Fates #Fire Emblem Revelation #FE14

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oceanwriter · 6 years ago

Text

WIP Prep (tag)

I was tagged by @paladin-andric -- thank you!!! I loved filling this out, and sorry for the delay!

Rules: Answer the questions, then tag as many people as there are questions (or as many as you can).

The Colors of War

FIRST LOOK

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences (elevator pitch)

Sent from London, England to Maine, USA by her guardian to escape The Blitz of World War II, Marjorie Borchert is left to navigate her young adult years in a tight-knit and foreign town. As the years progress, she learns war stretches far beyond the front lines.

2. How long do you plan for your novel to be? (Is it a novella, single book, book series, etc.)

A single book with possibly a collection of shorts from the other character’s lives.

3. What is your novel’s aesthetic?

Chilly mountains and moose.

4. What other stories inspire your novel?

Little bits from Number The Stars by Lois Lowry and the character of Emily Bennet from the Molly American Girl series.

5. Share 3+ images that give a feel for your novel

MAIN CHARACTER

6. Who is your protagonist?

Marjorie Borchert. She is in her mid-teens at the beginning of the story. Moody to say the least, but she has a big heart.

7. Who is their closest ally?

Daniel Reynard. Nikita Savas is a close second but Marjorie’s had a special bond with Daniel from the beginning.

8. Who is their enemy?

Kate, Beatrice, and Gina. Kate is the worst despite the fact Marjorie shares a room with Beatrice.

9. What do they want more than anything?

For things to be as they were before the war.

10. Why can’t they have it?

Her parents were both killed.

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

She believes nobody wants her -- which is understandable after being passed off to strangers by her guardian and, in a way, her brother.

12. Draw your protagonist! (Or share a description)

I’m not much of an artist and she’d look like a cartoon, do description it is.

Tall, though not towering over everyone. She keeps her brown hair short or shoulder length until she’s older. She’s thin, possibly malnourished, when she first comes to America. She fills out a bit the longer she’s at the farm and eating three full meals a day. She’s pale, partly due to locations she’s lived. She had prominent German features, most notable, her accent which is mixed with a British tongue.

PLOT POINTS

13. What is the internal conflict?

There’s different stages I’ll say. In the beginning, it’s about Marjorie trying to find her place in this small and established community. Her biggest conflict being a target for the prejudiced Kate. Then it moves on to the progression of the war and her fears around America’s involvement. But she comes to see that war doesn’t just affect those fighting or being captured and bombed. She also sees how different people handle things differently. Priorities fall into place through this.

14. What is the external conflict?

Trying to get by and adapting to the changes the war is bringing to the community. Acceptance, too. Internal and external kind of work together.

15. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist?

Losing her brother for good and/or not being able to return to England.

16. What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story?

My only secret might not end up working. There would have to be a second book. Either way, I’m not going to reveal it. It might end up being one of things only me and a couple of my writing friends will ever know....

17. Do you know how it ends?

Yes, unless Marjorie decides to change her course of action.

BITS AND BOBS

18. What is the theme?

Acceptance and making the best of a bad situation.

19. What is a recurring symbol?

Change.

20. Where is the story set? (Share a description!)

Jackman, Maine, USA. A small town with a population under 1,000 a few miles from the border of Canada. It’s a heavily wooded area with beautiful mountain and lake views. Lots of wildlife, too. The town is small, running along a single street branching out into houses.

21. Do you have any images or scenes in your mind already?

So. Many.

22. What excited you about this story?

The time period. I’m a history buff and the 1940s has always been my favorite era.

23. Tell us about your usual writing method!

Procrastination. That’s really it. I do my best writing at five in the morning and knowing I have to pick my little cousin up from the bus in a few hours. I tag (if you’d like): @throughwordsiescape @silverscreenwriter and @rachelradner

#tag #wip #The Colors of War #WWII Story #my story #writing

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ais-n · 6 years ago

Note

Hi Ais! Sorry to bother you. I just need someone to talk to about this. I have been writing since i was like 15. My dream have always been to write a book. And i have started a lot of them but never finished anything. It’s like i get stuck at one point and feel my story is trash so i stop. Sometimes i find my plot boring and stupid and other times it’s my own inability to properly put it into words. I admire you and i wish i could write like you. I hope you never stop writing wonderful stories❤️

You’re so sweet, thank you!

I’m not sure if it would help to get a long ass rambling answer to this to encourage you to keep going based on my personal experience… but just in case it would, here goes:

It’s really hard to actually finish projects… starting them is so much easier. I get to a point where I’m like, “This is trash!” and/or I grow bored, and then I kind of peter out. I also have this unfortunate aspect of my personality where I figure I’m pretty unimportant and invisible, therefore what I have to say or write isn’t that particularly necessary for others to see, therefore it’s not that big of a deal if I just never post anything I did because I’d just be cluttering up the space where actual good writers or actual interesting people would be speaking instead.

Sometimes I just want to write a story to see where it goes, and then once I get to a point I can figure out how it will probably end, and if no one else is reading it or interested in it, I’m kind of like, well I know how it ends so I guess there’s no real point in writing the rest of it out or posting it because that’s just extra work for no reason. It was a combination of that thought process, and the feeling of “this is trash! Start over!” that had me writing and rewriting and dropping and restarting and editing and dropping and rewriting Incarnations since I was 12-14… I keep forgetting if I started at 12, 13, or 14 on that book. I think 14? But then maybe it was actually 13? idek.

Point being, that was a book that I started, stopped, started, stopped, dropped entirely, on and off for years. The idea would be really strong in my head but then sometimes I’d forget about it for years, then remember it for a while, then avoid it because I felt like a failure. What I know is when I first wrote it, I got 150 pages before I thought it was trash and totally stopped it. In the ensuing 15ish years, I would think of that world and want to do something in it but I just did not want to pick up where I had left off. So what I did was I kept starting new scenes, creating new characters, adding new aspects to the world, and each time I’d get a little ways into it and then go UGH THIS IS BORING or THIS IS TRASH and stop/drop it again, until the next time when I started something new again.

Around 2012, for Nanowrimo I tried starting it up again. I looked at the bits and pieces I’d written over the years, grabbed one of the scenes that seemed more interesting, started with that and ran with it. I met the requirements for nano, I liked the characters, I liked the new concept, but I still wasn’t sold on the book. I was kind of bored at the end of it because I didn’t fully know where I wanted to go with it… I was a little overwhelmed. It still didn’t really click with me to keep working on it again. I left it on the backburner for more years.

At one point, I created a Scrivener project for it, and then as the years passed and I’d get a brief idea for something, I’d go open it up and throw that info into a note, or add a new document exploring the idea, or whatever. Sometimes I’d write another short scene, other times I’d just do that and go.

Sometimes I tried to do other stuff related to it which was not writing the actual book… like I created some Sims to look like the characters, to see if I wanted to change anything in the description when I got an idea of it visually. Far more recently, I started making some of the key buildings in Sims so I could get inspired for more details on those. Are they accurate? Absolutely not. But they gave me ideas. Same as I tried to store the inspiration I’d get when watching tv shows or movies or whatever, and it would make me think of the characters or world or some other aspect. If I was inspired to write, I’d go write a note or scene right then, but if it was just a vague inspiration I would just try to focus on it when it was there, and really acknowledge the importance of feeling that inspiration, but then not actually do anything about it. But that would keep it in my mind.

Another thing I did when I really wanted to write was I would go to sleep thinking about an aspect of the story, to try to make myself dream something related, so I would wake up with inspiration.

I also tried to inspire myself by buying some physical organization materials – I got a bunch of whiteboards so I could figure things out by writing it out, and I got a huge roll of white butcher paper so I could hand draw massive timelines for the characters to lay out their events and see whose overlapped with whose; I got a corkboard and pinned index cards and sticky notes to it and then took different colored strings and connected them across the board according to various criteria. I got notebooks and wrote out ideas and notes on the magic system and all sorts of things. I had gotten to a point where I was glad to have all the digital information but sometimes I needed something physical to work on, something tangible, so I felt like I actually had accomplished something and it wasn’t just in my head. I also made a book cover for the book (digitally) to remind myself to keep working on it, and made a digital map of the world with the help of a friend who’s good with geology so I had a reference I could hang about my computer.

Every time I had a thought or idea, or I had this vague restlessness of wanting to work on something but not feeling like actually writing, I tried to do something else related to it in some form. Usually world building or character creation of some sort, but sometimes just thinking about things.

I tried a lot of things, but in all honesty I figured I would never, ever finish that story. But then one day, and I don’t even remember what the catalyst was to be honest, it just… clicked. I had an idea for something, and when I went to write down that idea or do whatever with it, I remembered other notes I’d left over the years, other scenes, and I started looking at the massive amount of information I had compiled - and I realized, holy shit, I know how to connect this all. I found a way to pull together a lot of stories I’d made which I thought were all totally disconnected, and bring them into one theme. And when I did that, all these questions I had for this or that aspect of this or that, suddenly had really interesting answers or ideas I could roll with.

I found a way to stop being bored. And now, when I find that I just really really don’t want to do the next thing, I try a few times to make myself do it if I’m just feeling like I’m being lazy, but if repeated attempts are unsuccessful then I throw myself a curveball in the story or plot or characters, and it becomes fun again to write and plot it out as I try to figure out how to integrate that. I do that until I run out of steam, and try the same things again.

Because of that, a couple of years ago, I finished the book, and I was really happy with it. I’m still proud of myself for finishing writing it, but now I’m on a two year slump of editing the damn thing.

When I think back to the original story I wrote when I was younger, versus the book it became now and the series it’s starting, they are VERY different despite the fact that have the same initial basis. In fact, the original heroine of the book is now technically sort of a villain. Her story is the same; I just flipped the perspective. The original book was very base; I mean, at the time, I felt it would be interesting to write because it was a young woman as the main character with all the power, at a time when almost all the main characters I found to read were young men.

But the thing is, it was otherwise a super basic concept. Young woman suddenly finds out she’s the chosen one, lots of cool magic, she goes through her whole storyline with how things affect the world around her, the end. The story might have worked and been interesting solely because I was like 14 when I wrote it; if it had been published then, people might have given me a bit of slack for some of the laziness just because I was young. But the story I have now, informed by decades of life and experience since then, is SO fucking much better than that book was originally. It’s way more complex, far more interesting, the worldbuilding is far beyond what I had before, the characters are more nuanced, the cast is more diverse, the prejudices are more tailored. I’m GLAD I put that book aside a million times. I’m GLAD I didn’t finish it any of the times I had it in my head I had to finish it by the time I was xyz age. I feel like the series it is now is going to be far beyond what it would have been if I’d run with the original idea.

You know what helped me A LOT in actually finishing it in the end? Aside from everything I said?

I asked some friends to beta read it for me. And the people who read it really liked it, and gave me ideas on how to improve it. Their interest renewed my own interest and gave me enthusiasm I sometimes lacked on my own. I care a hell of a lot more about actually finishing something if someone else cares if I finish it.

Someone once asked Neil Gaiman how to be a good writer and get published, and one of his biggest recommendations was to just finish writing a book. He also said not to conform; to write the story that you want to write, that is right for you. I feel the same way, which is nice because Neil Gaiman is super dope so I feel better that my feeling is reflected in an actual successful and great writer. I feel a little safer in having my weird ass view on things, which is that I don’t believe in genres, really, or rather I don’t really believe in writing a story specifically for the boxes checked off for a specific genre.

For me, anyway. It’s totally fine for others, if that’s their jam - there can be some great stories that way!

But for me, I literally just do not want to write a story at all if I have to make it fit someone else’s label. I lose all interest in it and give up completely. I think that’s probably because when I started writing, it was because I was a nerdy ass youngster who couldn’t find books that felt like they represented me exactly or what exactly I wanted to read, so I was kind of just like, “I guess I’ll write it, then.” There are tons of books out there that do fit the criteria of the genres, and they can be SUCH fun and good books to read… the people who write those books excel at that type of writing, and so if they tried doing anything else they would not be true to themselves.

We need those writers and we need those books. But we also need the writers and the books that just say fuck it to everything and do what they want. You may not be as popular, or you may find it difficult to go the traditional route; maybe you can’t become a full-time writer, if everything is stacked against you, I don’t know. But you can write what feels right for you, and there will always be readers out there who needed that book to feel right for them.

My hope for you is you don’t silence yourself and your stories like I tend to do. I hope you finish your books/stories, and I hope you share them. There is probably someone out there wishing your book existed, and until you write it, they won’t have that exact perspective and that exact story to read. Don’t get discouraged if it takes you a long time; and don’t downplay the value of walking away and not thinking about it for a while at a time. But I do think there’s definite value in always coming back.

So what I hope you do for yourself is find some easy way to compile all the different information you’ve formed for your book(s) over the years so that you make it really easy on yourself to add extra bits and pieces as you go. I hope that you do other things that aren’t specifically writing but still get your creativity going for the stories - whether that’s making Sims, drawing art, writing things out on paper or whiteboards, doing everything digitally, doing everything physically, whatever it may be. I hope you find ideally a few someones to read what you have so far, get their take on it, and I hope they are enthusiastic enough to help you keep it in the forefront of your mind.

I TOTALLY understand having wanted to be a writer since you were young… I have always wanted to be a writer, as far back as I can remember. (Of course, if you go back far enough, I also wanted to be a veterinarian or other things too).

My goal is still to someday be an actual author. I feel like I’m not, still, but maybe someday I will be.

I used to put a ton of pressure on myself to finish things by certain ages, and when I missed my goal I got depressed and thought I was the worst and why bother, no one wants to read it anyway, and etc etc etc. Also, for like 10 of those years I was working on ICoS and that really took my mental energy and creative interest as a focus so I didn’t really even want to work on my LGBTQIA+ fantasy books for a while. But as time passed, and objectively looking at the story I have now compared to the story it was before, I think it was far better that I didn’t force the story before I was ready to write it, but also that I didn’t let myself just put it off forever and never make myself work on it again.

There is no age limit to being a writer… first of all, you’re a writer if you write, so if you already wrote a bunch of books or parts of any stories - you are already a writer. You’ve already accomplished something awesome! But if your goal is to be a paid author/writer, then whether you are one now or one in 20 years or even 70, you still can be a writer. You still can fulfill that dream. Never give up on it, for yourself and for the diversity and complexity of the stories out there in the world, and for the readers who would want to see what you have to say.

Nanowrimo is next month… maybe you could start thinking about the stories you’ve worked on so far, see if any strike your fancy for exploring a bit further, or just take the general concept of one of the worlds and create a totally new set of characters and plotline on that world. Whether or not you end up liking that new plot, the new characters, it will still give you a more nuanced view of the world itself. It might spark an idea now or 20 years from now. It might, someday, be the key to finishing the story.

Don’t devalue the importance of those little bits and pieces, or the importance of taking your time but never giving up, or of even just talking the story out to others and seeing what they have to say. I constantly think what I write is boring and stupid, I constantly get suddenly bored with something and just cannot for the life of me write the next chapter no matter what because it sucks ass.

So I switch it up. I push aside for a moment what I thought I had to do next, and then I ask myself, “What can I add that would make me actually want to write this?” I’ve found that by doing that, you can get some super interesting new ideas that coordinate together out of nowhere later if you just keep going.

So maybe for nano, you can ask yourself, “What would I want to write in this world or this character’s life, etc, that would make me actually want to write it?” Completely forget about it fitting perfectly with what you have. Screw that. Just make it fun for you. I feel like it’s a very natural writer thing to do where even if you start with something that seems extremely disparate, as long as they’re following the same general world rules, eventually you’ll have an epiphany that ties it all together.

Also ask yourself, are you trying to make the characters conform to the plot, or letting the plot conform to the characters? If your world or characters want to veer totally off from what was planned, as long as it’s in character - follow them, not your plans. You wrote those plans when you had a limited understanding of the characters and world… the time you spent with them since then is valuable and shouldn’t be ignored. If they want to send you on a wild goose chase into the middle of nowhere when they’re supposed to be doing something else entirely, do it. Follow that goose. See where it leads you, and then see how fun it is trying to make your way back.

Maybe you can try that this nano (or just do a totally new story altogether if that’s your jam instead), and see where it takes you. Maybe you can find some people to read it, and maybe you can track all the info you put together, no matter how small and stupid it may seem. And maybe, someday, you’ll be able to look back years later like me, and thank your past self for never giving up and for keeping that information accessible so that one day, far down the line, you’d have everything you needed at your fingertips when a sudden idea inspires you to look at your story, characters, or world, from an angle you’d never considered before.

Also, fwiw, I like to always throw one thing in that’s a bit unexpected, if possible, into characters or plots. In all honesty, I do that in part because I get bored affffff very easily so I want to keep myself entertained. But it also makes for a lot more interest, I think, in the characters. Like, whatever the plot is, or the character is, think about what would be the easy next thing… think about what the stereotype of that would be. And then deliberately choose something either completely different or a little bit off in order to introduce intrigue.

ICoS, for example - Boyd was judged a lot for many things, and he wasn’t really good around people naturally. It would have been easy to say that because he was kind of socially distant/awkward he would suck at undercover, but to me that wasn’t interesting. Instead, he could go undercover and be very good at it when needed because, despite his natural reticence to trust others, he had spent his life watching other people trying to learn their behavior/mimic them to understand why people didn’t like him. So even though on his own he would hate going into a party or have no fucking clue what to say, if he was playing a character, he was very good at it because he had gathered that information for years. Instead of saying that because he was bullied he didn’t know how to deal with people, I said he knew how to deal with people because he was bullied.

Incarnations, for example - Vikenti is a magical cop who’s really grouchy, kind of rude, kind of a dick. He spends most of his time seemingly insulting everyone around him. It would have been easy to just make him be a dick cop who grumps on everyone and does nothing beyond the job. And yet, he’s taken under his wing a young woman who others see as a monster. A young woman who everyone who knows the story of their background would think he would have every reason to hate. And you also see him helping this random girl get a memento even though he easily could have ignored it because, ultimately, she had nothing to do with him. There’s also an Empath who’s a pretty good dude who has the biggest crush on him even though their sexual orientations don’t line up. Everyone wonders how this Empath can even like him when he’s such an asshole, but then you have to ask yourself, wouldn’t an Empath of all people know best who to trust and who not? There are scenes with Vikenti, who seems like a super straight and straight-laced dude who doesn’t know how to explore emotions beyond insulting people, where he is the one there who catches someone when they fall, or says just the right thing when it’s needed. Because he’s an asshole, but not an asshole. He cares but just doesn’t care.

So, if you’re bored with parts of your stories or characters, I also really encourage throwing dichotomy and contradictions in there. Take something solid on the story, and then think of something that seems to be at odds with that, and make that be a solid part of it too. Now you have something interesting to explore… how someone or something can be these two seemingly contradictory things in the same form. I find that can help me stay interested, too.

Anyway, I’ve rambled enough and am probably not very helpful, I’m sorry :( I just wanted you to know I totally know what you mean, and precisely because of that, I know without a doubt you can do this. You will finish the story or stories you need to finish. I 100% believe in you, and I hope you can get to a point where you 100% believe in yourself too.

Happy writing, my friend! You are going to finish your stories and they’re going to be fantastic! And if they aren’t fantastic the first draft, that’s the way it is for pretty much everyone - all you have to do is keep working on them until they are. You will absolutely get there, because it’s a journey you already started long ago. You’ve come this far and there’s a lot more waiting for you as you go forward. My writing voice is no better or worse than anyone else’s, it’s just what feels right for me. Your writing voice is yours and therefore inherently lovely. Which means, if you wish you could write like me, you absolutely can: by writing like yourself. I bet you already are, you just can’t see it because of how stressful it can be in the middle of the millionth project feeling like you got nowhere previously. But if you keep going, keep pushing, I know you won’t regret it later, and I know the story you end up finishing will be exactly the story you needed to write at that time, and somewhere out there in this world, someone will be incredibly grateful to you for having written and shared it.

(Oh btw the thing I was talking about is Incarnations - and the first 4 chapters are out free here if you want context on the stuff I mentioned, in case somehow it helps? I really need to edit it… I keep putting it off, but your message is making me want to start it up again, so thank you!

#ask ais #writing #incarnations #wildwood rising #I talk a little about icos but feel like I shouldn't tag that?#idk #anyway the tl;dr on this is you can totally do it!#i believe in you! :D #Anonymous

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