#but also as she's put SO much time and effort into these liveblog posts

[lady-harrowhark]

So Luly and I were actually talking recently about how people seem to have varying definitions of what counts as a "spoiler." We were musing on what factors might impact what someone considers a spoiler or not - maybe there's a generational factor, perhaps it varies fandom to fandom, probably there's some degree of just personal preference, etc. No real conclusions here other than "it seems like not everyone has the same idea of what constitutes a spoiler.”

I do want to say, at least in regards to Luly's liveblogs, the times that anyone has said that approaches spoiler territory (that I've seen, at least), I don't think anyone has meant to be spoilery! I truly believe that all comments and tags have been meant with good intentions, with people meaning to be helpful by providing clarification or extra fun tidbits of information. I suspect that people say things with the perspective of what they would like in their own reading experience, which comes from a really generous place. One thing to remember though, is that not everyone has the same preferences with their experience, so it's worth taking a second to pause before saying anything.

Given that, I thought I'd talk a little more about what I personally consider a spoiler. To be clear, this isn't an official definition by any means, and nobody's beholden to this. However, it might give you a bit more to think about when making your own judgements of what's in the spoiler realm. Overall, I think a good rule of thumb is that if something hasn't come up or been explained in canon yet, don't mention it, even if it's context for something that person has gotten to. I'm pretty darn cautious in my approach, which is my default assumption for interacting with others - you can always give more information, but you can't unspoil something!

A non-exhaustive list of things that I consider spoilery includes anything that:

States that something does or does not happen

Implies that something does or does not happen

Provides context that isn't provided by the source material at the point that the viewer/reader is at

Hints at events or information that the viewer/reading hasn't gotten to yet, even in a joking manner

Nudges the viewer/reader to focus on certain information, particularly information of the foreshadowing or "Chekhov's gun" type

Comments that would lead someone to connect any dots that they haven't connected yet, or that they wouldn't based on what's been presented to them thus far in canon.

Some spoilers are pretty obvious.

"XYZ happens." "Don't worry, XYZ doesn't happen." "Later on, you'll find out that that's because of XYZ." These are all rather straight forward. One thing to keep in mind is that spoilers aren't ONLY saying what DOES happen; they can also be confirming that something DOESN'T happen. For example, I almost sent Luly some fanart the other day. She hasn't finished the series, but I thought to myself, "It's not canon, so it's fine." But my immediate second thought was that by telling her it's not canon, I've ruled that out as a possibility in canon, which is then a spoiler in my eyes (and hers lol).

Sometimes, though, even comments that don't contain any concrete spoiler content get into spoiler territory.

Examples of "vague" comments that have the potential to be spoilery:

Haha, yeah, your XYZ joke, wouldn't that be funny 👀

Hold onto that thought about XYZ, it'll come back later

You're gonna be sooo surprised when you find out what was ACTUALLY happening in that scene!

I'm so glad you picked up on XYZ!

You might want to brush up on what happens in XYZ previous scene, for no real reason 😏

Obviously, ymmv with some of those examples depending on context and who you're talking to. And you can't always predict what might be vaguely spoilery for a given person! Spoilers happen sometimes; that's the risk of engaging in fandom, and frankly, the risk of being online at all. I think there's a balance to be found with regard to being mindful of what you say and also not over-analyzing and nitpicking every word you say because it could potentially be spoilery to someone, somewhere.

The flip side of this is that if you're someone who is really adamant about avoiding spoilers of any kind, it's up to you to take steps to avoid them. That might be things like filtering tags and content, avoiding certain fandom spaces, and unfollowing or blocking people who don't tag thoroughly or who comment with spoilers. That last part isn't personal - you have the choice of whether to tag or not, and they have the choice to keep that in their online space or not.

Oh, and one last thing:

Your tags show up in OP's activity feed even if you don't reblog it directly from them. Spoilers in the tags are spoilers in OP's notes.

I know everyone's been loving Luly's liveblog posts, and she puts so much time and effort into making them so incredibly entertaining. I think doing our best to support her and avoid spoiling her is the least we can do to repay her 🥰

I am on my knees begging my mutuals to tag their Locked Tomb posts because if I see any more Locked Tomb stuff without tags I'm gonna have to start losing friends.

I am being tolerant with people's allergy to tag dungeon meshi because, for some reason, it seems to be highly common, but if I get spoiled of these intricate books I'm publicly going through with no small amount of attention, I'm gonna go absolutely feral.

[atamascolily]

Lily liveblogs: Thunderbolt Fantasy 4x02

In which a member of the Dong Li imperial family is a fanboy, Lang Wu Yao is really Going Through It, and the plot thickens.

Lin puts on his Mantis shell to go visit the Big Bad. Yi Piao Miao has resting bitch face, so his sneer is probably just the usual and not, you know, Lin's disdain for Locust, but I can't help reading it in anyway.

It's very rare for Lin to outright lie, so his statement that he killed one of Shang's comrades and took his form is striking. It's necessary for the con, and I guess it's true from a certain point of view (it's 100% what Piao Miao would have said), but it still feels a little weird because I'm so used to pointed half-truths from him and this is a bit beyond his usual spin.

"He didn't even suspect my real identity" is classic Lin Xue Ya double-talk, though--Shang certainly saw through Lin's illusion but he doesn't know Lin is playing both sides at the moment in an effort to troll Locust.

Even if Lin's descriptions of Shang are not 100% accurate (is he really drinking all day??), they're accurate in spirit; Shang is depressed and isolated, and Locust seeks to take advantage of that.

Lin is bluffing when he tells Locust he could take the Index immediately, but Locust doesn't call it, saying that he wants to avoid Xie Ying Luo's mistake. This suits Lin fine.

"Be careful what you wish for"--Locust, like Lin, is acutely aware Shang is ill-suited for remaining on the sidelines and seeks to wear him down through ennui. Never mind that Shang is probably a drunken master, given his skill set. But this hesitation is Locust's mistake, even if he doesn't realize it yet--either that, or he's caught on to Lin's true identity and is deliberately sidelining him.

Locust telling "Mantis" that he knows what he was up to with Jun Po is hilarious… too bad Lin has zero interest in actually doing his "job".

Once the Zoom meeting is over, Lin transforms back into his real self, correctly identifying that Locust has something else going on.

confirmation that Lin uses his sleeves for storage!!! yes!! (I mean, I was pretty sure he did, because I would store everything in my sleeves if I had his outfit, but it's nice to see it on screen)

Lin saunters off to give Shang a pep talk… his wording suggests he's going to tease him and also brew some sort of power-up to get him back into fighting form. Damn it, these two aren't even on screen together in this episode and their dynamic gets me every time. GIVE ME SOME COMEDIC HIJINKS, please, I need this in my life.

meanwhile, Dan Fei meets with the Dong Li emperor's younger brother, who is a huge Hu Yin Shi fanboy. He's basically Chao Feng's counterpart--flightly, vain, and preoccupied with his obsession--but more benign. I wonder if those two will end up getting hitched when Dong Li and Xi You are reunited.

he tells Dan Fei he'll organize a bishounen convention so she can recruit all the pretty people to join, hahahaha

unfortunately, our fanboy royal isn't interested in helping Dan Fei by taking her request for aid seriously, and his more level-headed advisor explains after he's gone that Xi You is sending spies for an invasion so there are no troops to spare (Huo Shi Ming Huang pondered as much in the S2 post-credits scene, so it isn't a surprise he's decided to go for it). War is brewing on multiple fronts; this is the calm before the storm.

love how Juan Can Yun skips when he sees his wife; those two are so cute. also love how Bo Yang Hou has now taken up residence there as the stern uncle.

Dan Fei decides they will go on a quest to retrieve… wait for it… a super-powerful legendary magical sword personally forged by Bai Lian himself (although not named directly) 200 years earlier. This was why Shang name-dropped this guy in the first episode, huh--it was a callback so we'd be primed for this beat.

(due to a linguistic quirk, the fansubbers translated "lotus" as "rosemallow", in case you're wondering why the sword's name seems so random)

anyway, new macguffin alert! love how no matter what the problem is in this show, it always involves a sword.

between Lin and Dan Fei, Shang's retirement isn't going to last, and that's probably a good thing if he's actually day drinking as much as Lin claimed to Locust. We all joke about letting him rest, but Shang's personality and temperament are ill-suited for just hanging around doing nothing… he's gotten what he wanted (sort of) but it's making him utterly miserable. Good things he has friends to drag him kicking and screaming back into the narrative… oh, wait, they won't even have to do that, all Juan Can Yun and Dan Fei have to do is tell him they're marching off into certain danger and he'll cave instantly because he's a huge softie and these are his kids now. Works every time.

in the demon realm, Lang Wu Yao is fighting the han jiao. Interestingly, Xing Hai wants to intervene; I guess even she has standards of fair play?? Instead of her whip, though, she pulls out her fulu (paper talismans) that she uses to control/paralyze people, which tells you a lot about how dangerous she considers the han jiao. (She did the same technique with Shang in S3 rather than fight him directly.)

Azibelpher continues to be a gloating dick, as usual, but we need him to deliver the necessary exposition.

the demons really love living weapons, huh… first the demon gods, now the han jiao, and only the Shen Hui Mo Xie can consistently stop either of them. Really makes you wonder what Azibelpher has planned for Lang, since he is clearly manuevering him towards some unknown end beyond merely becoming a demon…

I didn't notice this earlier, but the han jiao don't have back legs… they're just muscular worms with bat-like membranous wings (and we know from the opening credits they can fly). They're so cute it's hard for me to take them seriously as a threat. I also really want to know how they did the puppetry for them; it's incredible work.

love how Ling Ya can talk in sword form even though he doesn't have a mouth

Ultimately, Lang is right - the only way out for him is forward into the unknown… even if it means descending into his personal hell and forsaking his humanity. His pride and his rage and his pain won't allow him to back down, especially not after everything Azibelpher has done to him. Without Shang and Tian Ming, Lang is especially vulnerable to this kind of manipulation; Ling Ya tries, but he is all too easily overruled.

the moment where the triumphant music as Lang kills the monster abruptly cuts out and we have this awkward and grotesque segment of Lang taking out decades of frustration on its corpse, intercut with Azibelpher's triumphant gloating. ... it's so painful

further confirmation that Lang's powers are fueled by his emotions and that all of the suffering he's endured in his life are fuel for him now. (In other words, he might be half-demon by blood, but he's full demon now, as his hidden heritage awakens and overwhelms his human side.) Ling Ya is able to call him back to himself, but it's too late…

Lang Wu Yao's gasp as he realizes what he's done, staring down at his bloody hands… my heart… In that moment, he believes that everything bad he's ever thought about himself is true, that he truly is a monster… and that, more than anything else, is what triggers his transformation… that final piece of self-loathing and shame and disgust.

and he literally becomes the image of his father, who represents everything he hates about himself!!

meanwhile, Spider and Wasp arrive in the demon realm, and it's clear why their boss gave them magical weapons or else they'd be toast. Wasp is so happy to just kill things, I love that for her.

even with all the squabbling, these two are getting along better than I expected, honestly. Spider gets points for clever use of his chains, and Wasp is in heaven because she can slaughter everything in her path.

oh, and we meet a new demon, Ansarto, who is part deer, part spider, 100% nightmare fuel in the best possible way and I love him. In keeping with the "eyes" motif, he's covered them. I really want to know how they did his puppet; it's fantastic work.

because Might is Right and Wasp and Spider each killed a han jiao, they get special treatment, lol. Presto, instant banquet!

they re-used the dishes and cups from Seven Sins Tower for this scene, and either Mie Tian Hai imported his tableware from he demon realm or all of the TBF villains shop at the same Evil Wuxia Target, take your pick.

Spider is trying to play it cool and negotiate, but the question is who is really manipulating whom here? meanwhile, Ba Wang Yu just wants to kill people and doesn't give a shit about the details, so it's all the same to her. I love her so much. But I think this scene really demonstrates how, despite their differences, they arrive at the same conclusions--they're really not so different after all.

(also it's so refreshing to watch a female character just chow down with gusto on screen, even if demon food is a little heavy on the eyeballs)

of course Ansarto wants them to take down Azibelpher, which puts them squarely in the line of fire as plot threads converge. Either they're gonna get killed or Azi is going to convince them to join his side instead, and I honestly don't know which.

Oh, and the Murder Princess is going after Tian Ming in the next episode, so that should be interesting. does this mean a catfight over Lang hahaha

Preview shows a new character - a female demon with purple hair and armor - stomping on a han jiao corpse, a close-up of Demon Prince Lang, Juan Can Yun wearing some kind of mask (??), Shang looking nonplussed and Tian Ming playing her guzheng at sunset as soldiers arrive. Can't wait!!!

[feliciadraws]

So, my progress with my FFXIV watchthrough so far (spoilers under the cut, also forgive me for not keeping up with the liveblogging), also forgive me if I leave out a few parts or forgot some.

So, since my last post, the Warrior of Light was introduced to the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, led by the lovely Minfilia, who taught us about this freaky deeky psychic vision power that the WoL possesses, which she herself is also in possession of, called the Echo. We also learned that it was the echo that prevented the Warrior of Light from being 'tempered,' or made into a mind-controlled zealot by the primal Ifrit, worshipped by the Amalj'aa. We also learned of the primals, the Archons and of course met the other members of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, aside from Minfilia and Thancred, namely Y'shtola (love her already), Papalymo the the lalafell, Yda, and Urianger. The three city-states of Ul'Dah, Gridania and Limsa Lominsa held a remembrance ceremony to honour those who lost their lives in the Calamity, and during this time we met the elezen twins, Alphinaud and his sister Alisaie, who seemed to have rather...complicated feelings regarding the ceremonies and addresses given by Raubahn, Kan-E-Senna and Merlwyb, and the both of them going their separate ways following a heated discussion about what Alphinaud deemed as an almost dismissive attitude towards the Warriors of Light and how little was actually spoken of them.

Following that, there lurked another threat on the horizon, namely more primals, such as the primal Titan, worshipped by the kobolds, but in the lead up to that, we befriended the adorable sylphs, and rescued their elder from an abandoned dungeon, and learned more about the creepy masked mages that are following the Warrior of Light; the Ascians, led by the masked mage Lahabrea. Disaster struck after the battle with the primal Titan, as the Scions were horribly attacked by the Garlean forces, who have been following the Warrior of Light and are planning something big and nefarious, and it looks like Minfilia has been captured, along with a few others (this part frickin BROKE me btw). Y'shtola also learned of Lahabrea and his Ascians working with the Garleans, but for what purpose we're not yet sure (both Y'shtola and the player, or in my case the watcher), but it can't be good. In the wake of that, the Warrior of Light headed to Thanalan to seek shelter in the Church of Adama Landama, where we met the amnesiac Marques, who turned out to actually be the renowned engineer named Cid Garlond, with Alphinaud showing up at the church as well, saying he wishes to revive the Scions and encouraging Cid to come to the aid of Eorzea. Alphinaud warned of the threat of the Ixal-summoned primal Garuda, who is meaner, more powerful and more destructive than both Ifrit and Titan combined, which, with Cid getting back in the proverbial saddle, led us to Coerthas and Ishgard in the search for Cid's missing airship, the Enterprise. And of course, this search for the Enterprise is what brought us to my previous liveblogging post, wherein we met the lovely Haurchefant Greystone, who I am absolutely insanely in love with and down bad for, like I love him so freaking much. The search for the Enterprise and Haurchefant's own efforts led to a conspiracy within the noble houses of Ishgard to frame Lord Francel, one of the heads of the noble houses, for heresy, led by this shady dude named Inquisitor Guillame, who was actually an imposter who killed the real inquisitor and took his place so as to frame Francel and spread the conspiracy from within, and would have succeeded if not for Haurchefant and the Warrior of Light uncovering it and putting a stop to it.

After that, we recovered the Enterprise and fixed it up, heading back to New Gridania to search for an ice-aspected aether crystal to enhance the Enterprise and aid in the fight against Garuda, and that brings us to where I'm up to now in my watchthrough! Also, I dunno what I was expecting, especially since his holologe was stated to be Garlean technology, but-

Cid himself is a Garlean...? Hmmm this is gonna get interesting from here...

[luthwhore]

Lena was a prominent figure in the comic, Superwoman. I think Lana was Superwoman in it. I was wondering if you’ve read it and what was your thoughts on it? Specifically the character, Lena

The few things I know about her is she’s a wheelchair user and one of the few people Lex Luther calls his equal, True Equal (not really sure about this one fact). It would also be appreciated if u could refer to a post talking about her in the lens of a disabled person, I’m (kinda?) sure there was one and i didn’t reblog it

Sure! So, I referenced by dislike for the Superwoman (2016) comic in my Lex comic rec list, but I haven't really gone into it on its own before, mostly because at the time I was reading it I was still getting into comics and hadn't really started doing a lot of liveblogging or commentary at the time.

I also want to preface my feelings on the ableism around Lena, both in this comic and in general, by saying that I am not physically disabled myself. I have several close friends who are, including a roommate who is an ambulatory wheelchair user, so disability representation is something that I try to be very aware of, but I am not of any kind an authority on disability issues.

Also, I'm talking about this arc mostly from a Doyleist perspective -- i.e., focusing less on the culpability of the individual characters and whether I think their choices are understandable or justified and more on the choices made by the real people writing the arcs. This is not a condemnation of Lena's actions; this is a criticism of the writing choices made around her.

Putting this under a cut because I realized this is getting very long.

For a bit of backstory, Lena had been ill as a child -- with what, it's never specified, but the implication is that it was something chronic -- and that in an effort to "cure" her when he was a teenager, Lex had inadvertently paralyzed her.

This is actually something that was introduced by Geoff Johns' during Forever Evil, and other than the kind of dehumanizing language of calling her an "invalid" (which will be a recurring thing), I don't hate it. Lex does clearly see his inability to cure her as a failure, but it presents him coming to terms with it and realizing that he wants to rekindle his relationship with Lena, presumably for the first time in many, many years.

I don't have a major issue with this writing choice, because prior to Forever Evil, n52 hadn't really broken much with the unambiguously evil version of Lex that had been presented since Crisis on Infinite Earths, so the idea that he had neglected Lena out of shame that he couldn't "cure" her doesn't seem terribly out of place, and it presents a nice moment of character growth for him.

Justice League (2012), also written by Geoff Johns, is the first time we actually see Lena. When we see her here, she's shown in a wheelchair, and sees to be working for Lexcorp.

You get the sense that in spite of genuinely loving Lena, Lex has a tendency to be far too over-protective of her, often keeping her in the dark about things, which is a dimension to their relationship I really like! Geoff Johns is known for taking inspiration from Smallville in a lot of his Superman comics -- there are a LOT of nods to the show when he writes Kon -- and this, to me, feels very much like Smallville-inspired characterization.

One thing that DC does, that tracks across Geoff Johns, Dan Jurgens, and Phil Jimenez's writing of Lex and Lena, is really, really focus on "curing" Lena. In spite of what he says to her at the end of Forever Evil, he still ultimately sees her disability as his fault, and therefore, sees her as something to be fixed.

You can definitely put this off as a character flaw of Lex's, and I'm definitely not arguing that it's not in character for Lex to want to do so -- but it IS worth noting that this arc was happening at the same time that DC was leaning hard into erasing Barbara Gordon's disability as well, so this not an isolated incident of DC treating disabled characters like they need to be "cured".

For context: Barbara Gordon was the first Batgirl, and after being paralyzed by the Joker, then took on the identity of Oracle and ran The Birds of Prey. However, after around two decades of her acting as Oracle and being established as a hero completely separate from Batman, DC aged her down, erased her disability, and relaunched her as Batgirl with the start of the n52. (Recent years have tried to walk this back a little, but there was almost a decade of her being written as having miraculously healed from her disability.)

(It also does make me think a little of the "Lexmas" episode of Smallville, where Lionel is willing to put Lex through a surgical with a very low survival rate rather than accept the prospect of his losing the use of his legs. This isn't relevant per se, but I do think it's an interesting similarity.)

Toward the end of Justice League (2012), there is a scene in which Lena, while in possession of a Motherbox, pulls a gun on Lex and tries to kill him, and it's left unclear whether she was being influenced by the Motherbox or acting of her own accord. This is technically the start of the arc that gets picked up in Superwoman (2016).

Afterward, she ends up in a coma from her use of the Motherbox, with Lex once again swearing to find a way to heal her.

We also get a really touching scene of Lex talking to Lena at her bedside and admitting that part of the reason he has decided to be a hero now is that he wants to make her proud, and he knows she wouldn't approve of his past actions. This feels in line with the characterization established in Forever Evil; Lena is Lex's only family, and she's the only person in his life he can earnestly say he loves.

So, this is where we are at the start of Superwoman (2016). Lex and Lena have recently reconnected, and Lex is trying to be a better person in large part because of his love for Lena. Lena tried to kill him, which Lex believes was due to the influence of the Motherbox, and Lena is put into a coma.

It does seem like Geoff Johns was setting up Lena to become a villain during Justice League, or at least the potential for it, which I have... kind of mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I do think there is an interesting tension there, because Lex kind of expects to just pick up his relationship with Lena where they left off, and I think using her as an antagonist for him could have been interesting. On the other hand, with how the previous several arcs had set up Lena as the entire reason for Lex's redemption arc, it seems like an odd choice?

However... that's not quite what they do. While getting revenge on her brother is clearly a priority for her in Superwoman, she also... just kind of wants to take over/destroy Metropolis? For reasons?

In Superwoman (2016), we find out that Lex had tried to heal her by experimenting on her, and that when the experiment didn't immediately work, Lex abandoned her. (I personally find that really out of character, given what we were shown about their relationship prior.)

And we are once again treated to a character in a wheelchair being cured of her disability. This time, specifically as part of a villain arc. Which is... a choice, I guess. If they were going to use her as an antagonist, I really wish they would have done so without erasing her disability, but that's DC for you.

I also feel like a lot of her emotional complexity is stripped out in favor of making her like... a #girlboss villain, which is pretty par for the course for something that came out in 2016. The characterization here just... doesn't feel congruous with the Lena we were shown before.

I personally think, whether they wanted to use Lena as a hero or an antagonist, it would have made for a much more empowering arc not to heal her of her physical disability and instead have her seek to prove to Lex that her disability isn't something that needs to be "fixed" and that she's still fully capable of operating on his level with or without the use of her legs.

I also think the choice to use her as a villain who just wants to take over Metropolis (ig as a way to prove that she's better than Lex? by succeeding at something he failed at?) was a mistake, because one of the core conflicts with Lex and Lena in Justice League (2012) was that... Lena disapproved of a lot of Lex's actions?

The message in the comic re: Lena's disability also just feels. Really muddled? Like. It almost says something important here -- the "I knew my body meant nothing to you if it wasn't a perfect reflection of your fantasies of what it should be, but it was mine" line is good!

I think in better hands, it could have been a really powerful story about Lena's bodily autonomy, and how no matter Lex's intentions, he was still ultimately making choices that should have been hers, to make, but it just got buried in the mess of her being a generic scenery chewing supervillain, and I think that message would have hit a lot harder if they hadn't "healed" her, and if they had focused more on giving Lex and Lena and emotional arc instead of just... having her do a bunch of villain monologuing before having Lex defeat her.

Anyway I hope the "Ultrawoman" arc gets retconned out at some point because this really felt like a waste of potential for Lena and I think she deserved better than just getting turned into a supervillain before being written out of the canon.

[kyogre-blue]

SS continues. It's kind of bad!

Done with the bridge, Gronder is skipped, and done with Merceus also, so all that's left is two maps of Edelgard, Shambhala and I guess evil Rhea or whatever.

I have to say that I did not initially appreciate just HOW MUCH of the post-skip is copy-pasted. I also checked the chapter list for AM, and it's pretty much entirely the same. We take the same freaking bridge in Alliance territory for some god-forsaken reason, apparently? Even though an Arianrhod map exists? That's going to be interesting in like six months when I get to it.

But while Claude making us do VW by proxy was kind of funny in a stupid way, Gronder is a disaster. I am in genuine awe of how poorly handled that was.

So Gronder takes place off screen. We don't go there AND, get this, the entire month when it would take place is just erased from the calendar. There's no April! They did not even pretend to be putting in some effort here. They just excised the entire month along with the map.

And just thinking about Gronder gives me a headache. What was Claude even doing there? Leicester is specifically a hot mess, and I can't see us killing Lorenz at the bridge improving the situation much. And yet Claude goes off to Gronder and uuuh "disappears." At this point, I'm going to assume that he sent Judith's troops and dumped all that on us because he had already decided to peace out and he went to Gronder purely for the purposes of faking his death. That makes about as much sense as anything else.

Dimitri ghost is also funny. My dude, I still don't know anything about you... please go haunt someone who cares.

Anyway, liveblogging notes:

Catherine says that Alliance nobles are weird but in a good way. You won't find "such big-hearted nobles" elsewhere. This is in reference to Judith (and Claude by extension) helping us.

Shamir considers Judith's spy network to be impressive, given that she had people able to spot Rhea being taken away by the Imperial Army in the chaos of the invasion five years ago.

It's mentioned that aside from Count Gloucester being supposedly devout (doubt), the commoners also support the Knights of Seiros. (Update: this is very funny given that he sends his son to die on our swords for uuuh no particular reason.)

Lord Gwendal's daughter fell in love with Sylvain once lol (Update: Ingrid's version of this is that, at fifteen, Sylvain sought "relentlessly" to involve himself with her.)

The two territories on either side of the Great Bridge of Myrddin are Acheron to the north (the one in Lorenz's paralogue) and Bergliez to the south. That's Caspar's dad, and he's been getting on swimmingly in Edelgard's new regime.

The dark merchant looks like one of the Agarthan mages lol, but the quest to get them to appear gives you a Morfis battalion, so I suppose that's where they're actually from?

Seteth says alcohol has little effect on him.

It's specified that Rhea had disabled the Phantoms and Altered Golems in the Holy Tomb in order to allow the ceremony (of throne-sitting) to take place. It seems that she also didn't create those defenses but rather they came pre-built with the Tomb...? Or maybe Seteth means Seiros (not "Rhea") created them back in the day, who can even tell.

Alois is pretty nice to use. Shamir is consistently useful. Seteth is fine. Hanneman is annoying as hell and had gotten killed way too many times. And Manuela not having physic is a bad joke.

The great bridge is a bit of hilarious mess. We get ambushed by warp reinforcements from Acheron, then Lorenz and his goons show up too. Bye, Lorenz. It's your own fault for dying.

Seteth comments on how some imperial troops were willing to lay down their lives to hold the bridge (Edelgard's crazy fangirl Ladislava), but eh.

Suddenly, Gilbert. He's still alive? He says he's serving Dimitri, who was hiding in Fraldarius territory. We didn't find this out until Gronder in VW. This time, the Kingdom rebels reach out in order to ally with the Church. I wanted to ally, but Seteth wouldn't let me. :(((( Seteth, let me live!!! Enough already! Anyway, instead, we just let them use our new bridge. Which all has some funny implications, since apparently Claude is too shady to ally with but also how did Dimitri's super mysterious force get to Gronder in VW?

Anyway, I guess that's why we don't go to Gronder. But I'm uuuuh confused about why Claude was even there, per the off-screen recap? He didn't ask to use our bridge, so how did he even get to Gronder? And WHY? The Alliance was still massively divided last we checked with them. Sure, we killed Lorenz, but I can't see that making things any less chaotic. Judith gave her forces to us, and even between the church and the alliance, it was always emphasized in VW how outnumbered we were. Why would Claude even go to Gronder? How did he get there......... And now he's uh missing (sus man).

Seriously, did he send us those troops because he decided he wanted to dump the war on us and secretly peace out? Or??

Anyway, Dimitri fucked up Edelgard but also got killed. Bye, we hardly knew ya. We still have a vision of his... ghost?? OK, sure.

Take your pick which is funnier, this or Hilda just kinda seeing him die off screen somewhere, after we beat his ass.

Location card for the ghost scene is "outer city" iirc.

April is just GONE. It doesn't exist! Like, we just don't even get a calendar for it?? What the actual fuck?!

Felix switches between thinking Dimitri was dead all along and thinking he was "alive all this time." Whatever.

Alois says we disguised ourselves as enemy soldiers to sneak in..... Where?? When did this happen? We didn't sneak onto the bridge, and if this is about the strategy for Merceus, we haven't discussed it yet.

Yeah, this is apparently a plan that we just haven't been shown yet, because Shamir says we gave the order to dress all our troops in Imperial armor. News to me!

Update: We can even ask "Disguises?" when we're already on the Merceus approach. Is Seteth claiming his strategy was an order from Byleth while handling everything behind the scenes? And then gaslights by saying it was your idea (that you forgot about)?

For a knight, we pick up Lavandula grass, an herb with tiny purple flowers. Its calming scent relieves stress. You make tea out of it.

Ashe mentions that Dedue is missing, and his death is not actually confirmed. But from what I've been told, his appearance in Enbarr was also cut from SS.

I just realized there's a huge globe in the library. I wonder if anyone's been able to get a good look at what's drawn on it. Seteth sure plays up how he totally does not recognize those ballistic missiles.

Come to think of it, how did Jeritza know that the missiles were coming?

Seteth spells out a plan we sure did not have before. I can't believe they have him both railroading you earlier and also playing up how you're totally such a cool and smart strategist...

[llycaons]

ep17: lots of crying in this one. including me

this one is sad but kind of slow and I was hungry the whole time so now my best liveblog perhaps. the end REALLY got me. ough

this memory is so sad...look how happy and inventive he was! only to see his home destroyed and his efforts shat upon. also this name rules I love you wei wuxian's naming ideas

I was mean to jc earlier today so I will say now: this was a truly horrific thing for him to go through and wwx clearly is very concerned and gentle for him right now

that may be a reason they don't go to the meishan yu sect

also this drug is called hundred days drink! who knew. hope it split wen chao's head open

and this granny...WHO IS SHE! she's clearly alarmed by wwx trying to bow to her, her clothes are not too finely made, and she speaks of the jiang parents with respect, so I assume she's a servant of some type or maybe a family friend of a lower rank? I doubt she's their biological grandma, but she obviously knows the kids and is familiar enough to call them a-cheng etc...she can't seem to offer them much more than a brief safe place to stay. and we don't see her again! mysteries

imagine being wq in this moment seeing your younger brother has brought home three fugitive refugees and one of them is looking dead and the other one is looking really fucked up and like he could stab you and you know their home has just been destroyed by your sect but if you betray your leader your family will be murdered like jesus I do not envy her this decision and I appreciate the few seconds they lingered on her clearly grappling with it before ending - as we know she does - on the side of her principles

this cloak rules so much. I assume he just had extra clothes in his pouch but the idea of him going clothes shopping while his brother is dying is really funny to me. it's all shimmery too god I love his taste

THERE'S THAT DEAD-EYED STARE

one of those things that's fine in the moment but then you think about it and it's like. oof buddy. but I'm not criticizing jc here I think he should have room to feel what he feels and that's alright because what he's been through is really awful and he's actually not even violent towards anyone this ep for it he's just miserable and probably suicidal

and it's really sad!!! because if not for jc's birth he wouldn't have to worry about this. he's not...a strong person. he wouldn't recover from this. and he's young, that's not a bad thing or a reason to dislike him. but because of this weakness, wwx put himself through hell. and he doesn't even blame jc, not once! and that's just how it is! jc would have been so much happier as a normal person without these pressures but unlike wwx he couldn't adapt, and that's just. it's sad. none of them should have been in this position

god I know this is sad but I love his sockies so much. we never see anyone's sockies

what a nice smile!! wq is proud of her brother and loves him!

messy boy....

there's the facial hair. if you squint

sweetheart I know you're trying to help but I feel like reminding him that he's failing yet again to be a proper jiang disciple is not the most helpful rn

I love jyl so deeply and she does her best but I don't think all of her comforts are useful? I think she tends to reinforce a lot of the issues jc and wwx both have (you were born with a smiling face comes to mind) and that's not all her fault it's just that she had to raise her brothers and she's like. 19 or 20 and she doesn't always know the right thing to say. which is okay! she's a person, not a human-shaped manifestation of therapy. as is lwj which is the point of many of my posts about him at this point...and yeah on the other hand what else is she supposed to say? it's not like there's much that can help at this point

wwx getting so excited about lwj here is so sad....interesting that since leaving CR in the first arc, he's really only had positive things to say about it. he'll say, the food was nourishing, it has a wonderful library, it's a safe place. CR may be the last place outside of his home that he has good memories, where he was (relatively) safe and innocent and free. all those rules and punishments pale in comparison to the actual war he's undergoing now

I love this scene a lot...wwx is so quiet and tentative in admitting this - he never would to anyone else. jyl is special, he trusts her and she's honestly the only person he feels comfortable being this vulnerable with. and jyl's response isn't quite as direct as 'it wasn't your fault' which...it may have helped, maybe not. idk if it would have changed his mind about the core exchange later on. but she expresses that she cares about him no matter what, and that she loves him and doesn't want to lose him, and maybe that's all you can ask from a very young woman who's just lost her entire world besides these two boys

and jc crying hearing his siblings cry....dude

this shot is so important to me. wwx crying in his sister's lap is like. very sad but he NEEDS that catharsis and that comfort and she does too! she does too

here's jc now with the mustache. it looks slightly fake to me but what do I know

hard to see here but wq's desk is so neat. and wwx brought her food earlier, and put a blanket on her 🥺

see I know chengqing fans who are obsessed with how similar they are don't know what they're talking about bc in what universe does jc sit down and commit to aiding someone helpless like this

I had to cut some other pics for this next sequence but it's all really important imo

I fucking love that we see an actual image of the transfer. it makes the world feel even more real and lived-in. take a HINT, crazy ex-girlfriend

and this sequences here...wwx is so excited to find something, almost tears is open, he's smiling so big and then it slowly fades as he realizes what it will cost. this may be a quick decision for him, even an easy one, but it's not painless

this is the shot that had me tearing up over this scene. wwx looking up at the trees, the sunlight, basking in the day before turning to wq and asking her to do this for him. he knows he could die, and even if he doesn't it's a slow fadeaway. he won't be able to fly on his sword anymore, or spar with the person he was so excited to call his equal. he'll barely be able to defend himself. and he's feeling the full weight of what he's giving up, and it really hurts. he's been cavalier about his own death before, but I think this is the first time it really sinks in for him

and wq, asking him 'what about you?", I love her for that. she's one of the few who knows about this, and she wants wwx to think about himself as well

I think the way this was set up and shot made it very clear what was going to happen. I assumed that wwx gave up his core for jc and we just didn't see it, and because everything I saw seemed to support that then I was pleasantly surprised when the reveal rolled out

but you know, as much as this hurt wwx, I can see that he found an equivalency in it. it sucks that he feels like the massacre was his fault, and that he has to die for jc. but I can't see any way that could ever have been repudiated for him, and this is a very firm and final way to repay what he perceives as a debt. and of course he didn't want to leave the jiangs, but I think in the long run this decision allowed him to do a lot with a clean conscience. and that counts for something

personal highlights: haven't done these in a while

Lotus Wind Wine

those sockies

wwx being able to admit his fear about LP being his fault and crying it out with jyl. it's healthy!

scroll with the gc transfer images!

that shot of wwx looking at the trees. so gorgeous and heartwrenching

[sparrownnax]

ok just finished rtc for the first time ama also some thoughts lol

- MISCHA OMGGGGGG ilysm

- some parts are really Not Great, like the one fat character being associated with food and being nice i know it's more complex than that i just dont got words rn, really everything about how ricky was treated although ig that was acknowledged? like in the actual performance it was a stated thing but also even on stage he was always in the back or on his own and yeah ppl really mistreated him, and like. ukranian alcoholic need i say more. also noel being implied to have catfished him? like idk if anyone else interpreted it that way but noel being so adamant that mischa not know what would have happened had him and talia met but also i feel like noel would have said something at some point about it? also he's absolutely just Like That so theres also a solid chance that he really just was looking out for mischa T_T man idk that probs could have been it's own bullet point anyway tldr gay man potentially catfishing or me looking into things 2 much again. idfk.

- again, noel and mischa should have been swapped re: the most romantic/angry ppl in town. ik i already said it in my clusterfuck of a liveblog but mischa just cares so much about the people around him and noel just has lust, both blood and regular. he absolutely would stab a bitch as a warning.

- noels lament awakened something in me

- Ocean is an interesting character tbh. like the ending absolutely could have been her trying to get the others to vote for her but it wasn't!!! she was just genuinely admitting things she did wrong!! we love some character development!! also shes definitely gay. theres no cishets in this musical i stg

- Constance just straight up punching Ocean id die for her. you go girl beat people up for being rude to you <333333 an icon. i love her.

- pennyyyyyyy 😭😭😭😭😭 also her song OH MY GOD????? THE??? THE FUCKING????? FLYING????? WHAT TH HELL???????

- cannot overstate how much i love mischa. the only one to put an effort into making ricky actually included oh my fuckign

- ricky is such a lad i care him. i do agree w one post i saw saying it sucked that he threw away his crutches bc 1. yeah that was. A Choice. 2. mannn that could have resulted in such badass choreography sequences :(((

[voicefromthecorner]

I can see where the narrative is going here, so I’m sure the game isn’t about to leave us on a downer note, but I have to appreciate this moment here where, much like Shiki earlier, Rindo is bracing himself for the possibility of disappointment - the possibility that he’ll never see Shoka again. In this moment, he’s just in mourning as he starts to accept that possibility. And you can see how much that breaks his heart. Especially the line “There’s so much I wanted to say.” Grief is, from that famous WandaVision line, love persevering, though I’ve also heard it defined as love unexpressed. It’s a bit of both, I guess and it’s always sad to see.

Real talk. This is a pretty serious and personal anecdote, so feel free to skip the rest of this post if you’re not here for that, but...

I had a friend on here, this very website, who disappeared off it some years back. She went through a few different usernames, even a couple of different blogs, I think, but she always kept in touch. She was probably the closest online friend I’ve ever had. We shared so many interests and often reacted to things together. We played ask games and confided some struggles in each other from time to time. I tried to encourage her every time she was down about things and I appreciated how much she would do the same for me. She was a talented writer, loved writing reviews. She was a kind friend who made such a great effort to be there for me when I needed someone to talk to. And she was so funny.

A little like Rindo and Shoka here, it turned out we were surprisingly local to each other. Our shared country is part of how we met but, while there was a concern about privacy, we noticed there was a slight overlap of our citygoing experiences. One of my biggest regrets was turning down an opportunity to go and see a play that she was in. I had to for a family thing, but looking back, I wish I hadn’t missed that opportunity. I actually “missed my chance to make a friend”. Though I hoped I would, I never got any other chances to meet her. Maybe things would be no different if I had, but I’ll never know.

We still chatted and got along as well as ever, but then one day she just stopped posting. I gave her space for a bit but then I started to get concerned and tried reaching out to check in with her, but she never replied. That was a long time ago now. She had a review blog outside of this website that I kept tabs on but one day, even that disappeared. I don’t know where she is or what she’s doing, but honestly, I don’t mind that part. I just wish I knew if she’s okay. I try not to dwell on it too much, but I still miss her and I always hope that she’s doing alright.

So sometimes I feel like Fret, missing somebody that I tried to be there for and not really knowing how to deal with the regret and sadness that comes with it, but mostly I feel like Rindo here. She may never come back and while I wish we could talk like we used to, there’s nothing I can do but keep going and pray that she’s alright. That she’s happy. I miss her and there’s a lot I’ll never get to say to her, but I’d trade all of it just to know that she’s in a good place.

Being on this website never felt the same when she was gone. For a long time, I came close to closing my account here, but I kept it open primarily to make sure she would still have a friend to talk to if she ever came back, if she wanted it. Some days, it was the only reason my account was still here. But then I started liveblogging TWEWY and now we’re here. I’m here.

So yeah, that’s kind of my story. Seeing Rindo here just reminded me of that feeling. I’ve considered posting about it a few times, since it was so tied to this blog and all, but it never felt like a good time. I’m glad, even if it’s here in the liveblog, that I’ve expressed it. I think I’ve needed to put in writing for a while, just to get it off my chest if nothing else.

To my friend, if you’re reading this, then I’m glad you’re okay. I do miss you, but I’m thankful for our friendship and I wish you nothing less than a bright future, whether or not I’m there for it. You’re the best and you always were.

[headphonemouse]

9/18/2021 drawing liveblog

CHROOOOOMEEEEE

I love looking for reference photos of him because this is always near the top of the search results.

I dont really plan on making anything for this, but I was thinking about family dynamics and how in a lot of modern aus, people make Suika either Senkuu's or Kohaku's little sister. Or if they have a mixed family then she's Kohaku's little sister and Senkuu's step-sister. However, I haven't seen anything about making her Chrome's little sister. To me, those two have the highest sibling energy. Kohaku dotes on her, Senkuu too but to a lesser extent, but Chrome, upon her introduction, scolds her for supposedly stealing his stuff. That's exactly what a bitchy older sibling would do. He treats her like an annoying kid sibling but also gets super excited whenever she does something cool. As Kohaku's little sister, she's really cute, but I feel like she gets boiled down as JUST being cute too much. I think her dynamic with Chrome would be more interesting. And in the current arc, they're being recognized almost as equals. They get along but not in a 'best buds' way. They're totally siblings

AOCJRNFUVH IM SO SORRY

Nice

I'm sorry this is supposed to be about art but I keep getting distracted

I just learned how to toggle the bucket setting to expand the edge of the thingy so that there's no thin layer of uncolored space at the edges. And that there's a "close gaps" setting so I don't have to worry about having perfect lineart before using the bucket. All thanks to a quick coloring tutorial from sabertooth walrus

"Include this area as a selection" makes it easy to recolor lineart. I found out about it the other day and just used it now. Makes clothing folds on dark clothes easy to see

"Oh wow how do you get your thin lines so smooth?" I simply do not breathe.

Done with one character out of three, on page 1 out of 3

It isn't a comic this time. It's a series of fake screenshots, though I'm not gonna try to replicate the dcst art style

Figured out how to add a reference window

Aha. I'm glad this is only a tiny part of the drawing. Surprisingly, I haven't gotten bored yet

My attitude towards making art has gotten so much healthier lately. My intro post says something about how my posts don't warrant the amount of effort I put in, and that's because I'd often think that whatever I was making was pointless. Now I dont really care about that, I'm throwing my all into making this thing because I wanna see what "my all" would be. It doesn't have to be meaningful or successful, I just had to remind myself that I'm doing this for fun. And it is a lot of fun

Done with Senkuu. Moving on

This. Is hard...

Theyre still treating the astronaut lineup like they don't know who's going up so what if Chrome and Suika are hauling ass trying to make the return vessel and they're really brushing up against the deadline when they reveal that Xeno and Stan are going up so Suika and Chrome are all "oh well I guess we don't really need to rush let's take our time with this and just help build another rocket for the rescue mission"

3/3 characters done. Now backgrounds and an extra set of hands

I should probably save the background for tomorrow. For now though, I have a passable meme! The characters are all fully drawn on the screenshot and the punchline is yknow. Within the single picture already. Except I went ahead and looked up where that line came from and came up with two extra screenshots to draw over so that'll take another day. I can PROBABLY finish by tomorrow? If I manage my time

Hmmmmm. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I feel like this isn't testing my skills, as much as it is testing my patience, which I have a lot of. Maybe if I made myself color it it'll be more challenging. Maybe if I didn't have a photo to copy from. Maybe if I drew the background differently, changed the scene. Hmmmmm. I wanna try drawing nature scenes sometime, and experiment in tone values. You can do so much with greytones, and I'm not using that to its full extent

[ieatmypizzawithaforkandknife]

MAG 021 - Freefall

Summary: Jonathan reads the statement of Moira Kelly, regarding “the disappearance of her son Robert.”

This was one of my least favorite episodes my first time through the season, which is kind of funny considering how much I loved it the second time around. (I didn’t hate it the first time around, for the record - I think it was just overshadowed by the plot-heavy two-parter right before it and by the one after it, and I just didn’t give it the consideration it deserved.)

That poor woman. Like Father Burroughs, as far as we know, Robert Kelly did nothing to “deserve” his fate, and his mother certainly didn’t deserve to see that happen to him. She only saw him a few times a year because of how busy he kept himself, and then he comes home unexpectedly and poof! Gone the next day forever.

The incident on his last skydive seems to have been abrupt and without warning: as far as we know, Robert doesn’t know anything is wrong prior to Simon saying those three words to him. Like so many of these stories, I’m left wondering: Why Robert? Why did Simon (apparently) choose him? Did something else happen that we don’t know about that would explain it, or was it just a wrong-place-wrong-time type thing? If Robert wasn’t targeted for a specific reason, then what was Simon’s motivation?

“Enjoy sky blue” intrigues me, not because of what it is but what it isn’t. I’ve come to expect that, when a character says something Grade A Creepy, we’re going to hear that creepy static/interference over their words. But here it’s conspicuously absent, and if it weren’t for the immediate dizziness and the endless sky Robert found himself in a moment later, the words wouldn’t have been much more than a blip on my radar. Was it an oversight when they were editing in the sound effects? I can’t imagine that they’d just forget to put something like that in, especially when it’s been pretty consistently sprinkled throughout the rest of the season so far. So it bugs me.

I really liked the apparent contrast (but really parallels) between this episode and episode 15, “Lost John’s Cave”. In this episode Robert’s mother says that he always enjoyed high-risk activities involving heights, that he “always climbed higher” and “always pushed further” than his friends. In episode 15 Laura says that caving was her only real hobby, partly because of the cost, but also because she loved the feeling of being deep down in the earth that much. And in the wrap-up for this episode, Jonathan says that “Open Skydiving” has never existed - or, more accurately, there was no trace of any of the licenses or permits that would be required for a skydiving business, though there were a few mentions of it in newspapers around the time; likewise, in episode 15, Jonathan notes that there is no trace of the permits Laura claims to have gotten for their caving trip. Lastly, there is the climactic event itself: a person’s unexplainable disappearance. In both cases, a person straight-up disappears under circumstances that don’t make any kind of sense for a person to disappear under. In both cases it’s either implied or said outright that nature itself swallows them. Laura doesn’t see the exact moment her sister Elena disappears forever, but several times during her statement it seems like the rock shifts around her, and in this episode Moira saw the sky twist and shift and, for lack of a better way to describe it, eat Robert.

Which brings me to my favorite part of the episode: Moira’s description of the sky when Robert disappeared. She says at the beginning that “it makes my head hurt awfully when I try to remember it well enough to describe”, and when she actually gets to that part of the story, she doesn’t describe what she saw so much as explains what she didn’t see: “He didn’t fall or fly or take off. There wasn’t anything in the sky that took him - it wasn’t a hand that reached out and grabbed him, it was the sky itself - the whole sky, as far as the horizon I could see, that twisted around and moved like…like the shifting of sand.” Like the pile of meat that “opened all its eyes” in episode 18, something happened right in front of our narrator that their mind just could not comprehend somehow. It’s incredibly cool to think about, but also absolutely terrifying.

I have to wonder what made Robert push her away from him at the very end. Did he see something, like the beginning of the shifting of the sky that Moira described? Or did he feel something, like the plummeting sensation of falling or the dizziness and confusion he felt during his last skydive?

I thought it was really cool that his last skydive was described as “bright, he kept saying, it was so bright”, and just last episode Father Burroughs described the church in his fever dream as “it was bright...so bright”. I don’t mean to imply there’s any kind of specific connection here - I just think back to what I was feeling and picturing at those moments in each episode and once again have to commend Jonny on his amazing writing and performance, because these two nearly identical lines felt so completely different.

But I am wondering if there’s a connection between what happens to Robert in this episode and Ex Altiora (the Leitner featured in episode 4). The book’s title alone would make me wonder, but more important is the contents of the book and its effect on those who read it. Dominic says it contains a series of illustrations: “a mountain or a cliff or in one picture what appeared to be an empty night sky. I felt an odd sensation when I looked at that image as though, simple as it was, I was about to fall into it, and my stomach gave an odd jolt”. Dominic lost time (about an hour) while looking at the book - the opposite of what happened to Robert, as it felt like he was falling for hours or even days when he only fell for an extra 15 minutes. Also the-same-but-opposite is the fact that the main Ex Altiora illustration featured in episode 4 was of a night sky, whereas Robert’s experience was with a day sky - “an endless sky blue nothing”, as Jonathan calls it.

I’d like to end with my favorite Jonathan quote of the episode, from the very beginning of the wrap-up at the end: “Before I address the central point of this statement, namely the question of [sigh] whether the sky can eat people”. ily Jonathan lmao please never change.

This post is part of a series where I write my thoughts about each episode and obsessively connect dots in an effort to figure out The Big Mysteries of the series. All posts in this series are tagged “is this liveblogging?” Comments and messages are welcome but I have only listened to season 1, so I ask that you not spoil me for anything beyond episode 40. In the words of Jonny Sims…thanks for listening!

[amillioninprizes]

An entirely too long post on how to fix Veronica Mars

So, anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time knows: 1) What a massive Veronica Mars fan I was and 2) how distraught I’ve been over the most recent season that debuted on Hulu in July. I’ve been pretty angry about it since it dropped, but the first month after I was pretty occupied with real life stuff. Now that I’m more settled, I’ve found myself getting sadder and angrier over time with just how terrible S4 was and what an obvious fuck you to longtime fans it was. It feels dumb to be so upset over a tv show, but this show got me through a lot over the past 8 years, and I feel like it’s been taken away from me.

 It’s anyone’s guess as to whether there will be a new season. Ideally it would end here with maybe an alternate ending filmed to avoid alienating fans further. On the one hand, the botched release, overwhelmingly negative response, and silence from the creators after initial interviews don’t look good for renewal chances. On the other hand, Hulu doesn’t have a lot of streaming hits, it probably did relatively decent numbers, and there are rumors floating around that its pickup chances look good. On a personal level, I hate the idea that this is where the legacy of Veronica Mars ends, while at the same time being extremely wary of what the creators have planned. I think a big part of the disappointment with S4 was that the movie and books set up what could have been some really interesting storylines and situations, all of which RT and co. squandered for cheap drama and to apparently turn the show into an entirely new vehicle; additionally I had hope that S4 would be a chance to rectify some problems the show has long had, but again, S4 exacerbated them. At this point I don’t expect anyone higher up in the creative process or at Hulu to give a fuck about the fans or making the show better as long as they hit streaming targets, but here are some suggestions:

Fire Rob Thomas

 While he created the show, it’s become clear that not only has he lost touch with the audience and the original spirit of the character, he doesn’t seem too keen on putting much effort into writing the show (as I will discuss below). Then you have his clear misogyny: his views that women in relationships can’t be interesting, that what makes Veronica interesting as a character is her trauma and how much she can endure, and the fact that basically every female character in the history of the show has a history of sexual victimization. He thought that making the Mexican cartel hitmen “philosophical” was subverting expectations (which says a lot of what his expectations of Latinx characters are). Then this is the way he essentially exploited his long term fan base to earn a new season of the show, only to turn around and tell us that we don’t matter. From a business perspective alone keeping him doesn’t make sense; selling a streaming platform on your loyal fanbase and then proceeding to purposefully piss ~80% of them off would be pretty questionable to me as someone in charge. The sheer cruelty with which he treated not only the fans who have supported him for 15 years (I fucking used to liveblog iZombie y’all. iZombie!), as well as how he callously dismissed long time cast members in favor of celebrity guest stars should not be rewarded. He’s admitted in interviews that he would be ok with younger writers doing a reboot many years in the future; why not just let him have a producer credit and then hand the show over to someone who’s invested in making it good?

Put a woman in charge and diversify the writing staff

A big problem with a) Veronica’s characterization in S4 b) RT’s ideas about what makes female characters interesting c) the show’s long history of problematic treatment of sexual assault is that it comes from a man’s conception of the female experience. The Veronica showcased in S4 and that RT wants to write in the future is very much a male fantasy: hates marriage and children, traumatized, DTF, and is too cool for other women. RT stated in interviews that he wanted to show Veronica at a “crossroads” this season in a way he claimed had been shown for men but not women; many female viewers found this depiction to ring false (few women are spending their time fretting about how committing to marriage after five years in an established relationship will bar us from strange sex going forward). In addition to having RT at the helm, most of the show’s writing staff for the majority of its run has been white dudes, which doesn’t bode well for telling the story of a female PI in a diverse community in today’s political climate. Putting a woman in charge would hopefully help rectify these issues to make the character feel more true to life and put a damper on the misogynistic storytelling. The show has a natural candidate in RT’s second-in-command Diane Ruggiero-Wright (despite her problematic history, never forget #KeisterEggGate), who has admitted to not being able to watch the last episode. Jennifer Graham, who wrote both of the books, would also be a worthy addition to the writing staff; while the books had a mixed reception, most fans agree that she got Veronica’s character right. And with the show’s problematic historical treatment of minority characters, adding more POC writers going forward is also necessary.

Bring back Logan (alive)

You don’t have to be a LoVe shipper to recognize just how integral Logan has been since the inception of the show, not just as Veronica’s partner but as a character is his own right. Logan’s journey in many ways parallels Veronica’s, and shows a contrast in how different characters respond to similar trauma. The most critical plot line in the show’s history, the mystery of who killed Lilly Kane, simply doesn’t work without Logan’s importance to Veronica. RT and his defenders like to claim that Logan was holding her back from true growth, which is frankly bizarre as he is the only character to consistently challenge her, like when he tells her that she obviously isn’t happy this season. Additionally, Logan’s scenes this season were the lone highlight of what was otherwise a painful slog of a season. Of the people who have said they would watch a potential S5, a good portion are only interested because they believe that the ambiguity of the last 10 minutes of the season means he’s not really dead (despite what RT has said in interviews). Then there’s what Logan’s death does to Veronica’s character, effectively cutting off what would have been an interesting character arc and stagnating her forever. No matter how much they try to shove Leo the pedo creep and other milquetoast RT self-insert love interests on us, no one else can possible measure up to Logan’s level in terms of being able to match Veronica as a character, intellectually or as a result of shared history.

Plus, the fact that we haven’t had a Weevil/Logan interaction since S3 is a goddamn travesty and should be rectified immediately.

Bring back Veronica

As sad as I am about Logan’s death, for me the most upsetting aspect of S4 was the assassination of Veronica’s character. For many viewers (including myself), the character we saw Kristen Bell portray in S4 wasn’t Veronica Mars but a different character with the same name. Between her abusive behavior towards Logan, her general indifference to her father’s medical condition, her dismissal of Wallace, and her racism towards Latinx characters (using a kid’s lawyer to threaten deportation: not a good look!), she was lacking the marshmallow-y center that always balanced out the pricklier aspects of her character and made her compelling. This change in characterization was especially jarring given that she was not this way when we last saw her in the books, where she mused about having children and sent her half-brother Hunter to summer camp (side note, but does he even exist anymore?). Many of us who had grown up with Veronica were hoping to see her grow with us as a character; instead we got an extreme regression lower than we’ve ever seen her. It would be one thing if they were trying to depict a PTSD storyline, which would make sense given her background, but since her change in behavior is never addressed by the narrative, it just makes her look like a cruel asshole and makes it impossible to root for her. This is exacerbated by the fact that RT has made it clear he has no interest in portraying her inner life, as shown by his wanting to avoid showing her grief over Logan’s death because it would be a real downer compared to the entertaining but ultimately hollow banter and quips he wants to focus on. Veronica this season was also just plain dumb: you mean to tell me that the girl who nearly got killed by Aaron Echolls in her back seat wouldn’t think to check her backseat every time she gets in a car?  (And let’s not even start with RT’s bizarre assertion in an interview that she apparently votes Republican). Not helping matters was Kristen Bell’s performance, which felt very flat for me this season compared to S1-3 and the movie; I don’t know if this was due to personal limitations or a reflection of the bad writing. Writers of future installments and KB herself would be wise to revisit S1, the movie, and the books to figure out what makes sense for Veronica’s character, leading me to my next point:

Get reacquainted with canon, develop a show bible, and hire a continuity director

This show has long had a problem with dropped plots, timelines, and continuity issues. Shelly Pomroy’s party has two happened either in the summer, or the fall. Then we have the movie paradox: Veronica graduated high school in 2006, which means her 10 year reunion should have taken place in 2016. The movie was released in 2014 and the books seem to keep to 2014 dates. Then S4 states that Keith’s movie accident took place in 2013, and mysteriously ages Veronica up to 35 when she should be 32 in 2019. Logan mentions an Aunt Naomi in S4--why didn’t she take care of him after Aaron was arrested (and what happened to Trina)? How the hell is Leo working as an FBI agent when he presided over the disappearance of the Lilly/Aaron tapes? Veronica is shown to be tentatively forgiving of Weevil taking the settlement from the sheriff’s department in Mr. Kiss and Tell, but is then shown to be extremely angry towards him for it in S4. This is just a small selection of the inconsistencies within the show. Plus there is the problem of repeated plot lines: Veronica rejects Leo in favor of Logan in S1, then rejects Leo in favor of Logan in Mr. Kiss and Tell, only for her to...reject Leo in favor of Logan in S4 (and RT says he wants to leave the high school plots behind). This sloppiness doesn’t bode well for a series that is supposed to be about mysteries, which require tight plotting. It would behove TPTB going forward to once and for all determine a timeline of Veronica’s life, keep a detailed record of past plot and character points, and have at least one person on staff who thinks to remember this stuff (RT notoriously has only a “solid, not spectacular” memory of the show, no matter what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says).

Make an effort (and do your fucking research) 

Moving on from continuity issues to more general problems with the laziness of RT’s writing. He has basically admitted that he doesn’t care much about facts or characterization when writing plots--he shoehorns details to fit the plot rather than have it evolve organically from the characters and prior canon. I know that when writing it’s often impossible to make every story detail 100% accurate, but the extent of RT’s sloppiness is alarming. This excellent Reddit thread details a lot of the problems with S4 in particular, but this has been a problem since S2. Did anyone ever understand exactly why the Fitzpatricks were invested in framing Logan for Felix’s death? In the movie, it makes no sense that if Cobb and co. wanted Carrie silenced, they would add the complication of framing Logan for her murder--given her history, it would have been a lot easier just to make it look like she had accidentally overdosed. Given his previous patterns of villain writing fans were able to guess the identity of the S4 bomber based on casting alone. The mysteries in both Mr. Kiss and Tell and S4 are both ripped from the headlines, which indicates that RT wants to turn VM into the next Law and Order. Meanwhile, he complained about how hard including Logan in the story in S4 was, while Logan arguably had the best lines and most interesting scenes this season--apparently when you put an effort into things, they work out! This laziness extends past storyline issues and into factual problems that detract from the quality of the plot. Longtime fandom pals are probably tired about hearing me go on and on about how there’s no way Aaron’s lawyers could have gotten Veronica’s medical records due to HIPAA laws. Logan’s career change from naval aviator to intelligence is highly unlikely (and unnecessary, given that they changed it only to fridge him at the end of the season). Meanwhile, I know fanfic writers who have spent hours on the phone with strangers in order to research what type of firearm would cause a specific type of bullet injury. It’s very puzzling to me that RT wants to take the show in the direction of being mystery-only when apart from that one time he is piss poor at writing mysteries and puts no effort into them. I shouldn’t have to tell television writers to, you know, do their job but this is what we’ve come to in 2019.

Know your audience

A majorly annoying thing about the promo for this season is how in every single interview Rob Thomas did he was always talking about how he wanted VM to be like other shows and movies: Fargo, True Detective, Game of Thrones, Chinatown (which is apparently the only noir movie he’s ever seen). The thing is, if I wanted to watch those shows, I would; I watched Veronica Mars specifically because I enjoyed its unique qualities, and I would say most fans agree. The general perception within the fandom is that with this season Rob Thomas seems to have been aiming to dump the old, majority female, CW fanbase in order to achieve what he perceives as a cooler prestigious male fanbase; the issue is, new people aren’t going to take up a show in its fourth season if they didn’t watch or didn’t like earlier seasons. Also, trying to write a prestigious show doesn’t make your show prestigious. Considering that based on anecdotal evidence most of the people who like S4 seem to be male, he may have succeeded in the first part of his aim. However, this majority female fanbase he was so willing to cast aside are the ones who have run fansites and rewatches during fallow times (i.e. between S3 and the movie and then between the books and S4), so drumming up interest among fans (and therefore streaming views) in the future may be a challenge. Plus, women are a better advertising demographic since they are more likely to be in charge of household purchasing decisions, so maintaining us as a fanbase makes business sense as well. He may have tricked enough people into watching S4 that S5 is given a go, but I wouldn’t be surprised if streams are weak beyond that. If the show is to succeed as a commercial endeavor, better to go with appealing to a known quantity than trying to make a generic show that very few people have expressed interest in watching.

Bring back the mystery of the week

This is a more minor thing I felt was missing from S4. I think after the criticism of S3 not having a season-long arc RT overcorrected in focusing on one mystery. However, the mystery of the week had the following benefits: 1) giving chances for the characters to interact and telling us more about them 2) helping to modulate the pace of the season-long arc. With better writing a season-long standalone mystery could maybe work, but in the case of S4 specifically the mystery was kind of dull and repetitive and could have stood to include a couple of diversions in the form of a smaller case here and there.

Re-evaluate the creators’ interpretation of the word “adult”

Much of the promo and reviews for this season noted the more “adult” content to be expected this season now that Veronica’s grown. Many fans hoped that meant seeing Veronica act like, you know, an adult with adult problems rather than a teenager less mature than the actual teenager she was. Unfortunately, the show’s interpretation of the word seems to be more in keeping with a television rating sense of the word--meaning sex, drugs, and gratuitous violence (But apparently not the word “fuck.”). Look, it was expected that as the show moved to a streaming service and given the overall dramatic scope that there would be an upgrade in some of this sort of content (and I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t looking forward to steamier LoVe moments, which were sorely overpromised), but the way it was included this season felt like RT and co. included this stuff just because they could and not to serve the storyline. For me, personally, the biggest example of this was Veronica’s drug use, which I know didn’t necessarily bother everyone. Given her history as the daughter of an alcoholic as well as someone who had been the victim of two roofie attacks, not to mention the fact that her character never seemed to be into partying, I found it very out of character (and book writer Jennifer Graham agrees). It felt like RT included this just bc they thought it would be funny to see Veronica on drugs without considering whether it made sense for her character. Also, were the beheadings strictly necessary? Plus there’s RT’s little temper tantrum over not being able to use curse words this season--they weren’t present in the original show, no one was going to miss them now, and the “cuss” thing was just annoying and reminiscent of The Good Place. 

Dealing with a parent who maybe has dementia--that’s an adult storyline. Too bad RT ended it with a dumb excuse about “mixing meds” (another factual error! Pharmacy software would have caught it!) rather than actually exploring what it would mean for Veronica to see her father in decline and take over the family business (and give Rico Colantoni the exit he appears to want). This is the kind of adult content I would hope to see in future seasons.

Adult is not a synonym for “unrelentingly bleak” either. The original show, while dark, always had an element of hope that was completely removed from S4 (no matter what KB might claim). And would it have killed the writers to show Veronica wearing disguises and going undercover like she used to? There was nothing fun about this season (and no, I don’t count the multiple partying scenes as fun, more like sad).

Kill your darlings

It’s cliche, but it’s true. Another issue the show has long had is the writers keeping around characters or inserting jokes and references for their own personal amusement rather than for the story. The most notable example of this is the continued presence of Dick, a highly problematic character considering he pushed Beaver into the room with Veronica the night of Shelly Pomroy’s party, among a whole host of other racist, sexist, and generally obnoxious actions over the years. But because Ryan Hansen is so widely beloved among the cast and crew, so he stays. Then there’s the matter of the infamous Keister egg in 3x08, which the writers and KB have all expressed love for, despite the fact that said Keister egg is an example of sexual assault--which, even if the victim is a douchey fraternity president, is never funny. 

Also the constant Big Lebowski references are tiring. Watch a new movie.

Improve Neptune’s gender ratio

Veronica Mars, despite having a female lead, has always been a male-dominated show; other than Veronica herself, the only consistent female character over the original show was Mac (and she didn’t even come back this season). This is unacceptable in 2019, for any show. The books introduced promising female characters in the form of Marcia Langdon and Petra Landros, but Marcia’s character was was watered down for S4 and Petra was nowhere to be found. Additionally, Veronica and Mac have always been written as “cool girls” who looked down on other women for their femininity, which isn’t a great message. Almost every other female character, even the innocuous Parker, is portrayed as somehow bad or incompetent. I would love nothing more than a season centered on the women of Neptune and their interactions with each other. While we’re at it, stop giving every woman on this show a background of sexual victimization.

Treat VM as an ensemble show, not a Kristen Bell vanity project 

A major complaint from Burnt Marshmallows and S4 defenders alike was how little time was given over to the original core cast this season. While Veronica may be the protagonist, a large part of how the show became so beloved was her relationships with the other characters. Yet RT has decided that going forward VM will be a KB solo project, with her traveling town to town quipping and sleeping with strangers. This seems strange, given Kristen’s recent interviews talking about how difficult it is to shoot VM and how she never wants to be first on a call sheet ever again, not to mention how she asked for less screen time all the way back in S2, which resulted in the Weevil-Logan storyline, which was way more interesting than Veronica’s storylines during the first half of that season. (The traveling detective thing also seems weird considering that KB is pretty insistent on shooting in LA to be near her family.) Additionally, if this is truly the last season of VM with all the original characters, then no one got a proper sendoff. 

I’m not sure how willing much of the cast will be to return for future iterations, given how uncomfortable many of them seemed during promo as well RT and KB’s treatment of them (insensitive at best, deliberately mean at worst) this season (shout out to Tina Majorino for recognizing what a shit show this was going to be), but bringing back all the original characters into the fold and giving them significant storylines would go a long way to mending fences with fans, improving the show from a character arc perspective, and would also give KB the break she apparently wants. 

Recourt the fanbase

What has VM always been renowned for above all else? It’s incredibly loyal fandom which not only got it renewed twice during its original run but also put up their own money to get the movie made--I know many people who donated when they really couldn’t afford to. RT basically owes the last 6 years of his career to VM fans--the success of the Kickstarter arguably got him the iZombie show running gig, and the fourth season likely wouldn’t have even happened if not for it. Thus, the blatant cruelty and disregard with which RT and KB have treated fans during the promotion of S4 has been incredibly insulting and hurtful; I still can’t fathom what in the world possessed RT to think that throwing away this 15-year relationship was a good idea. It’s not a good sign when the 2 fansites most active during the post-movie period (VMHQ and VM Confessions) cease operations in the wake of S4, and when at least 3 out of 8 board members of the oldest running fan group, Neptune Rising (who were dormant during the post-movie period but played a critical role during earlier fan campaigns and in the S4 promo) resign. A fandom this loyal that was betrayed will not stand idly by if the S5 RT wants to make goes ahead; given the number of tweets the official Hulu VM account has had to delete in the wake of S4 due to the overwhelmingly negative response as well as the controversy over editing out Logan from S4 promos, I imagine that S5 will be a PR nightmare. Even if future seasons are amazing the trust can probably never be fully repaired, but it would be helpful for RT (or fingers crossed, a new show runner) and KB (as star and EP) to go overboard in reaching out to fans and at least admitting they made a misstep with the entirety of S4. Back in the day, the old Mars Investigation fansite was invited to set to conduct interviews; maybe do that again. Also someone should get KB some sort of VM fandom-fluent media trainer because I don’t think she has conducted a single interview during her entire stint on the show that didn’t anger fans (it might help if she actually bothered to watch the show).

Map out an endgame

Look, this can’t go on forever. As long as RT keeps leaving every installment open ended with the hopes of maybe getting renewed again five years down the line, the story is going to keep running into the issues the movie and S4 faced with having to shoehorn the characters into nonsensical plot lines to reconcile those endings and deal with actor availability issues. Either plot another 2-3 seasons to wrap the show up with a satisfying conclusion, or map out a greater timeline of Veronica’s life with spots where a mini series or movie here and there could fit in.

[currycurrie]

Okay so my RQG liveblogging and listening has completely fallen to the wayside in recent weeks. With things the way they are my work load at my job has literally doubled, and it’s been hard to listen to podcasts in general as I work recently let alone take notes to liveblog with. And then also my phone broke on top of that which threw an extra wrench in things. (Also all my friends have been constantly pestering me to play TTRPGs because they have nothing to do so most of my free time has been spent rolling dice.) I haven’t even been able to check the RQG discord! But I’m doing my damndest! So here’s a massive post of basically all my thoughts on the Cairo arc!

Also oops it ended up being over 1000 words because I love to ramble so everything is under a cut! 

So I met Hamid’s family. Finally. Under terrible and tense circumstances, but I finally got a proper read on them nonetheless. Ever since Hamid’s rather extreme reaction to the fake “we’re proud of you!” note back in Paris, I have been just extremely suspicious of them. And after 0.02 seconds of experience their family dynamic it all made sense. Quiet but loving mother. Extremely capable sister doing her best to break away from the family business (and therefore the family dysfunction), extreme mess of an older brother who has way too much on his shoulders, the twins who are just kids trying to be kids. And then Hamid’s dad. Allergic to affection. No fun allowed. High expectations. And then also no one talks because classic rich people family. (Fuck Downton Abbey can we get an extended series on just the Al-Tehans?) More on them later. 

Finally met a Meritocrat. Face to face. And my instant gut reaction was EVIL AWFUL TERRIBLE DOWN WITH THE MERITOCRACY VIVA LA REVOLUTION! And that’s despite the fact that this Meritocrat was nothing but charming and warm. (Me? Have problems with authority? Never! Could you even imagine?)The whole thing just sent shivers down my spine. All the pomp and circumstance surrounding the meeting? The robes etc.? it felt very pseudo-religion. Obviously these dragony jerks aren’t literally outright saying “HELLO HUMANITY WE ARE YOUR GODS NOW.” but it doesn’t really need to be said does it? You know what their meddling with humanity feels like? It feels like the IRL effort of people to save the pandas. Here are these animals that are just dying out and seemingly refuse to save themselves so people have inserted themselves into the natural order of things and put pandas in captivity and also their captivity doubles as entertainment for people. (Disclaimer: this is a very negative seeming statement on the conservation of pandas and I am 100% behind the people trying to save them it is just the best metaphor I could come up with.) Anyway, eat the rich and also the Meritocrats.

Concerning the Cairo Meritocrat more specifically, am I the only one who got Zeus vibes? “Hi I’m Zeus and I will fuck anything that moves and meddle with the affairs of mortals constantly! It’s fine! I’m a god!” Of course I am making this rather strong assumption after one ten minute meeting with them. Just the whole “you wear your heritage well” statement gave me such the creeps! I didn’t like it! That and the whole keeping it quiet thing like. I don’t know. I just don’t like the whole thing. Bad vibes. 

In good news though, Sasha is better! (I literally burst into tears when she sneakily ran back to the cleric who healed her for a quick hug. She’s so good. Ugh.) But of course, it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t wax poetic about the world building implications of resurrections being illegal. It’s a very interesting concept, immortality just casually existing in a place. One detail that I disagree with is that people seem generally okay with not having resurrection, and that there isn’t really a black market for it. I don’t think most people would be cool with that and take it lying down so easily. Especially if they had access to it before which seems to be the implication. The Meritocrats seem very black or white in their rulings on things. It’s like they just said to a spoiled child “If you can’t share your toys then no one gets any toys at all!” There needs to be room for more nuance in the world. Interestingly, I kind of agree with their premise that humanity will never “move on” so to speak if everyone can live forever and so on, but there has to be some sort of happy medium here!

Speaking of happy mediums, I have a bone to pick with our two local paladins. Inflexible morality just really grinds my gears! So much! But! I love love love that interparty conflict! We got a little taste of it with Hamid and Zolf, but the paladins turned the inflexibility up to 11 and broke the knob off. Things were left entirely unresolved, and there’s no way that whole conflict doesn’t absolutely explode at some point. It was so interesting listening to Grizzop struggle to justify his system of morality. He couldn’t really! But the thing is, the gods are real. Without a doubt they are real. There was a throw away line that never got addressed at all that was something along the lines of, “there are so many gods with so many differing morals, how do we know which one is right?” I REALLY hope this gets explored more. In all my world building for my homebrew setting I always paid extra attention to the dynamics between the gods and possible consequences of them. I love this shit so much. 

Also, hey, fuck Barrett. Like for real though. He’s just so goddamn awful. 

And while we’re at it, FUCK CARTER. GOOD GOLLY GOSH YALL. HOW CAN PEOPLE BE THIS AWFUL WITH NO SELF-AWARENESS???? Please tell me he never shows his face again. (Who am I kidding? I just said that now I bet he won’t go away.)

Ehem. Anyway. Hamid’s father. I was initially surprised by just how much he cares about his family. Willing to take the fall for them. For literal murder. Without a second thought. Without a question. But the more I thought about it, the more obvious it became that he really does care. It’s such a delicious example of grey morality and character nuance and just YES. Of course, just because he does in fact care does not excuse years of mistreatment and the actual disowning of Hamid. Fuck toxic masculinity yall. 

Also, Hamid finally spilled his beans! And everything about him makes so much more sense. I am holding out going into more depth on my thoughts about this because it’s 100% giving me Taako vibes. And I’m expecting the true culpability to be revealed later on. Also the twins are sorcerers too! And they have no idea how lucky they are to have Hamid as a guide. That moment where Hamid talked about tutors for them meant so much more than appeared on surface level and I definitely got so teary. 

Azu continues to be an absolute joy and a ray of sunshine in this shitty shitty world. I love her. I can’t wait to figure out more about her. May she never lose that enthusiasm. Please. Alex don’t break her too much. 

And now we’re in Damascus pretending to be factory inspectors! Back to our regularly scheduled much smaller liveblog posts! 

[moviestorian]

Queen on Fire - Live at the Bowl 1982 concert (Hot Space Tour) LIVEBLOGGGGGGGG

As promised! :) Initially I was supposed to go directly from Montreal to Wembley, but dear @his-majesty-king-mercury convinced me to do Live at the Bowl before, and I’m glad she did!

Background: The concert is dated at June 5, 1982. As I wrote in the title, it was part of the Hot Space tour and was initially supposed to be played at Arsenal Stadium in Highbury. A day before the gig Freddie had a nasty fight with his then-boyfriend who had bitten him between a thumb and forefinger.

Let’s begin! - ugh Hot Space - but hey, it's gonna be fun! It's Queen, and Queen always puts the bestest live shows! - oh wowzie, this is mah first liveblog since April, long time not seen right? - my pizza's ready, my coffee's ready, my dip is ready - I think I can start watching now - Ooo wow, this concert lasts an hour and 43 minutes? I would die if I had to play on stage for that long - I can already feel the enthusiasm!!! The ENERGYYYY - FLASH AAAAAAHHH AHHHH - they're leaving the plane and look so hella cuuute - oh hi Crystal! oh hi Phoebe! Great to see you all! - gotta say... Freddie's outfit is fabulous. - Brian: plays the guitar and jumps the Crowd: HELL YEAH - I'm only 3 minutes in and my current mood is: fuck the critics whoever trashed Queen and disrespected their music skills - WE WILL WE WILL ROCK YOU - I love the fast version, slaps 100 times harder than the studio version - Deaky looks awesome in blue, I mean I already noticed that when I watched Rock Montreal, but let me reiterate - It's only been 5 minutes but let me tell you...not enough zooms for Roger - Freddie's in a good shape and form... not that I'm surprised - ROGER - cute red little scarf on mah boi's neck - THE FIRST FREDDIE AND ROG INTERACTIONS, I LIVE, I'M HAPPY - "hello everybody" "hey hey hey" good time to miss Freddie - Action This Time... Anyone surprised that it sounds better live than on the album? - ROGER'S VOCALS HOTDAMN - Brian's hair is floofy as usual... why am I acting like it's an unusual thing - I really really miss hearing Freddie and Roger together... POWER DUO - the synths get introduced... I neither love nor hate it tbh - okay not Queen related but the pizza is not bad, for a frozen one - Freddie, you feeling too hot for that jacket? And you Deaky, too? Get undressed, babes, I certainly don't mind - Play the Game! I love this song... Also Freddie playing on a piano is a blessing to us all - He really puts his soul into this one... Bless this man - Brian's backing vocals always sound so soft... My tenor angel - THANK FRICKING GOD THE SYNTHS IN THE BACKGROUND ARE BARELY AUDIBLE - LOL FREDDIE - he put a towel on his head I'm XDDDD what a legend - this and the famous plastic bag is a thrilling saga - AAAAA YOOOO - LMAO at Freddie throwing his...water?beer? at the audience - *Hot Space apologist speech* :P - we're at the funky part, I guess... - Brian and John's synchronized movements :)))) - ah okay it's Staying Power... I forgot what the song sounds like - Roger in black... I'm swooning - Roger has a nice closeup view on Freddie's butt, I mean back :D - This is not bad, but I'm gonna bet that I'll forget what this song sounds like again in less than two hours - John's haircut is cute and adorbs :D - OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO - Somebody to Love!!!!!!!!!!!!! - The intro...sounds so sublime, soft, and raw at the same time - I love that it sounds slightly different, depending on the concert - This is really emotional... We shall see how it goes, but so far it surpasses even the god tier Montreal version! - Forgive me for not saying too much now... I'm fully sunk in the sheer beauty of this sincere performance - Love Roger's drumming and the crowd clapping to the beat! - "I like it" ME TOO FREDDIE - I wish we could hear Roger a tiny bit better! I love the crescendo part - That was beautiful :') - Now I'm Here!!!! asjgashasashjgas - I love it when they perform it at higher speed - The jumping crowd fairly represents what my brain cells currently look like - I hella love Roger's drumming in this song - well not just this song but y'know - Freddie...what was that??? WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THAT FINGER??? - hehe you can tell that Brian's very into it :D - Brian trying to get Roger's attention... Rog is, however, fully dedicated to his drums :D - Freddie lying down after the song is a post-exercise or post-dinner mood - "Let's play a game" YES SIR - yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah - "Go pretty boy, go" I'm SOFT - hear that bassline? YES ME TOO - (it's Dragon Attack if anyone's wondering) - Freddie Mercury: lead singer AND fitness instructor - wish I could make some screencaps, alas I'm watching this online so it would take too much effort so here we are - Fred, let BRIAN PLAYYYY nooo don't distract him! - out of context those cuts and shots look like John is jealous of Freddie and Roger XDDD this is gif and meme worthy (around 39 minute) - btw probably no one is interested because you came here for the Queen concert liveblog, but I got my period and I'm starting to feel it - IT SUCKS - ooooo Brian speaking! His voice is so soothing, I could listen to him all day and it would probably calm my nerves - acoustic guitar...I'm already in - WHY SO QUIET THOUGH - Love of My Life, I'm cry - Everyone's singing along from the very first line... this is beautiful - Everyone united by this song's pure beauty :))))) I'm not crying you are - Do you sometimes think about Brian playing the acords for this gorgeous track and there is no Freddie sitting beside him? - Yeah, I hate myself for that thought too - I might be a little bit emotional - No wonder it was this particular song was the one that finally convinced Bri's father to FINALLY accept his son's career - Brian's gentle smile I'm :') :') :') - *clap clap clap clap* SAME - We're at Save Me now... Are we doing a crying compilation or what? - This is almost as bad as the Queen Forever album I recently bought.. TOO EMOTIONAL - Don't get me wrong, I ADORE Save Me - But this is too much - Almost 50 minutes in and Freddie's voice is still STRONG AS A BELL - Remember what I said about the "fuck the critics" mood? Yeah the mood is back - Even the cute Roger/Freddie interaction almost makes me cry I'm agsahjhsAAAAAAAAA - I need a more lighthearted now BLEASE - I'm a tough cookie but when I have Queen feels very little can help! - Is this Back Chat? OH GOD - Please bring me back to the crying mode, I DIDN'T MEAN THIS - (I'm sorry Fidan and all the Back Chat fans over there, I'm not a huge fan of this song :-*) - We get a nice view on Roger's back, though *Lenny face* - The synths sound like a main theme for some mystery-drama tv show from the 1980s XDDD - I forgot how long this song is... - Get Down Make Love *insert Lenny face again* - Okay I gotta admit... lyrically this song is a mess and borderline cringey in the first verse, but I really like it musically - I GIVE YOU HEAT - I GIVE YOU MEAT *three Lenny faces* - Okay, let's just listen to the song and pretend we all forgot the English language, maybe? - That mid parts always makes me feel like I'm about to be abducted by aliens - Thank God I don't do drugs, I would start thinking I might be hallucinating - I assume that Brian's guitar solo starts now? - Nice intro! - And Roger gets time to breathe, the boy needs his oxygen - Actually, this may be one my favourite of Brian's guitar solos? - Brighton Rock :))))))))))))))) - Brian's hands are very pretty - oh noooooo - an error? - poor Bri - that disappointed guy who screamed "No" when the guitar stopped playing :D - thankfully he issue quickly got solved! - hi Roger, nice to see you back <3 - It's Roger's time to shine! - YEs, Under Pressure! - The Montreal version is gonna be hard to beat, though - Let's see - uu I like Fred's red jacket! - ...do you have any shirt underneath, though? Naughty boi - he does not LOL - "HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH" - let me tell you again...Roger's mic is definitely not turned loud enough - This is great but still, I prefer the Montreal one - That beer always amuses me XD - Freddie, you want us to slap your ass? - Oh no, he's just announcing Fat Bottomed Girls XDDDD - "I was just a skinny lad" the editing team: cuts to the camera angle which shows Brian first and Freddie after him - Roger's "oooh" is funny because he's really into it :D :D :D - Freddie is now a pole dancer, he changed profession - The crowd, always cheering when Freddie gets undressed :P - I sense Crazy Little Thing Called Love incoming! - yes it is Crazy Little Thing! - Freddie's joke about the three guitar cords XDDD - This song always slaps - "she drives me crazYY" - ReAdY fReDdIe - FREDDIE PLS STOP FCKING YOUR GUITAR - this is pretty - BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY YEAH - he sounds so soft :)))) - and now so raw - "Momma UwU" - can't unsee this fricking meme now ajsdhjgdhjds - My favourite guitar solo :')))) - they actually played the video??? - I miss spaniel haired Deaky tbh - *instense drumming* *fireworks* - Oh Brian is wearing this cool shirt he also wore in Montreal! - jumpy Deaky...too bad you can onnly see him from the distance - GONG - that was sexy - Roger hitting that gong in the black outfit is sexier than shirtless Rog hitting the gong, change my mind - TIEE YOUR MOTHER DOWN TIEE YOUR MOTHER DOWN - There's only some 15 minutes left... The time always passes so quickly when I'm watching a Queen concert - Another One Bites the Dust! I've been waiting for thiiiis - Deaky: happy jump - He knows it's his time to shine - wait a second, when did Roger change his shirt? - I need a good closeup - Freddie be like *imma slap my thigh now* - ooo I see Roger's Japanese shirt now! It's pretty cool! - Brian looks great too - Those flashing light are kinda migraine-inducing, thankfully I don't have an aura today - SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER heartattack - Looks like Freddie is flirting with Red Special :P - they're going absolutely crazy XD - WE WILL ROCK YOU DRUMLINE INTENSIFIES - LOL the sombrero on Freddie's head :P - ups mr editor dropped a frame - And now we're truly heading towards the end... I'm gonna start associating We Are the Champions with farewells soon - Well done, boys - I know I say it every single time - But you can't stress this enough - :)))) I'm glad I did this liveblog - They look exhausted but very satisfied :))) - Bye bye!

Next time I’ll be doing Wembley 1986, hopefully soon!

Tagging all the people who expressed their wish to read my ramblings. :) Enjoy!

@his-majesty-king-mercury, @x5vale, @radio-ha-ha, @mephisto92, @39-brian, @melisa-may-taylor72, @silapril, @kitty-rushes-in, @lydiannode, @an-abyss-called-life, @litsy-kalyptica, @importantmuggoophero, I hope I didn’t forget anyone! ^^ Comments are nicely welcome! :3

[fearfearer]

i have caught up with the magnus archives.

when i started listening, i started a text file to note down any thoughts/confusion/analysis/jokes i had as i listened. i isolated a few bits of it into standalone text posts that i already posted, but here is the whole thing, my long-form liveblog

thoughts on the magnus archive as i listen

jonny sims gives an impassioned performance of someone's statement-- a diegetic impassioned performance, as we witness it being interrupted and resuming-- and follows it up with his own judgement of merciless doubt. classic. why the impassioned performance? he's just a nerd. i dearly hope this is the fandom consensus

every episode ends at the perfect volume to which i have adjusted it, and then i start the next episode and it blares in my ears. i think the volume of the intro must be like 1.75x the volume of the rest

*makes a serious effort to listen to and remember the name and date at the beginning of the statement recording* *forgets completely within 2 minutes*

i saw a fanart of gerard keay and learned [1] that he must be a good guy after all, since they drew him lookin cute, and [2] that his name is not, in fact, jared key. what, am i supposed to be looking at the transcripts? understanding names properly? in my defense, jonny sims clearly articulates "Jared" when he says it. maybe i'm not as good at decoding british accents as i thought. [footnote added in later: ok good i'm not the only one who hears "Jared" and thinks "Jared" instead of "Gerard"]

when gerard keay was described as having numerous eye tattoos on his joints, obviously my first thought was, "including the ankle? so he's count olaf?" because that's definitely a way count olaf would disguise his eye tattoo: by tattooing eyes everywhere else too and becoming The Eye Tattoo Guy. anyway this is part of why i was not at first inclined to think favorably of gerard keay

"The first thing about this statement that makes me dubious is that it comes from a fellow academic." if you know shit fuck you

it has come to my attention that there are ships. makes sense... after all, everyone in every fandom is horny af*. i'm not in deep enough to ship yet but naturally i'm keeping an eye on it

*horny af for depictions of intimacy, sexual or otherwise, but mostly sexual

definitely feel like i need to be writing down every name i hear because they're never not cropping back up but for now i'll just let it all wash over me

so sasha has been replaced with not-sasha, huh? pretty sure. though i'm not good at distinguishing voices. but that sounded pretty different, and my listening comprehension wrt that table isn't that bad. <<as time passes i doubt myself more and more on this point but not enough to go back and listen again

"You believe me?" "Yes, I think I do." (smashes button labeled "CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT" and a loud buzzer sounds)

IT'S MICHAEL!!! i hope michael is a long-term good guy... he's not seeming like a good guy right now... he says he's mostly neutral. vaguely recall seeing a tumblr post about michael in the recent past but that didn't give me any hints and i don't remember it well anyway. michael's voice is good though. good laugh

i'm not good at visualizing characters based on descriptions, let alone based merely on their voices, so the only image i have in my head of jonathan is a furrowed brow

i'm on episode 49 and i don't like jonathan's distrust of his colleagues... i don't understand why his immediate suspicion was that gertrude's murder was an inside job. hasn't he just learned firsthand that the institute is not impenetrable? it's not inconceivable that someone could enter and shoot her and leave. especially when it took place in underground tunnels connected to unknown locations.

there's a good Old Lady Voice Combo on episode 62

so agnes montague was heavily cursed... that's my conclusion after episode 67

elias seems to tell jonathan to "get some sleep" a lot. though it IS generally good advice

episode 70, 9 minutes, 41 seconds: jonny sims's cell phone goes off in the background

small brain: ghost ship medium brain: ghost train galaxy brain: dirt train

i wanted to see if there was fanart of michael so i looked it up... i might as well have googled "blonde slenderman"

sweeney todd mentions tally: II

for some reason, hearing michael described this time as "a tall man with curly blonde hair and an unnerving laugh" puts an image in my head without my consent, and that image is chris fleming. now, he's not quite blonde, is he? but that doesn't change my casting decision, which is now set in stone. hope he does a good british accent

"YES i know what a meme is."

why is melanie the first/only one to notice that sasha is now not-sasha? is it because she is experienced in firsthand paranormal encounters (whereas the archivists are experienced in decidedly SECONDhand paranormal encounters, save for the worm debacle)? oh, my question was answered handily in the next episode. ok.

the replacer definitely limits its glamour to everyone except one person just so that it can be amused by the distress and confusion of the one person who can see the truth. that must also be the reason it chooses a completely different appearance. it surely COULD replace a person with their exact likeness; it just uses another face for fun, and to be satisfied that it can get away with it.

this table has appeared in like 10 episodes... Guess It's Crucial

jonny sims yelling while swinging an axe. jonny sims goes through michael's door (eyes emoji)

the idea of the replacer killing jonathan and not even replacing him brings to mind "AT LEAST RIDE IT YOU ASSHOLE"

wasn't expecting to hear from leitner at this point... he's dropping tons of lore here. too much lore. so much is happening. i have to say i kinda like it better when the stakes are not quite so high as this.

so at the end of season 2, tim and martin believe that jonny sims killed this guy, who they probably don't know is leitner... and we the audience believe that elias, now almost certainly a double murderer, has very quietly stabbed leitner to death. do i the audience believe it? i'll keep an open mind for now. things are not always as they seem. except when sasha was replaced with not-sasha, which was exactly as it seemed. [footnote added in later: looks like elias being a double murderer was exactly as it seemed.]

so jonathan sims is the name of the actual guy voicing jonathan sims. it's a cecil situation. so are they someday going to go back and retcon every episode to change his name, like with palmer/baldwin? or does jonathan sims just not mind being a character as well? as long as it doesn't devolve into RPS i guess it's fine. if there's fanart of jonmartin i hope it doesn't depict them as their actors bc that's too close for comfort to RPS

there's been a truly hellish c*ndy cr*sh ad that has played like 40 times between episodes and i'm pretty well convinced to never ever play that curséd game

elias has some serious blackmail for daisy, huh? that's heavy, having police characters in fiction who do extrajudicial killings. life imitates art imitates life

"i'm not on drugs or anything. ...what? i could be on drugs!"

he said "ample opportunity" but like "amplopportunity" with emphasis on the "plop"

it was obviously elias who delivered the statement to jonathan in hiding, because he knew he would record it despite not being at work... bc he's a nerd

so if gerard keay has eye tattoos, does that mean he also serves the uhh the observing or whatever? [verdict arrived at later: no he just has those because he's cool. or because his mom tattooed him. ok almost certainly the latter.]

"what do i feed it?" obviously you feed it filled up cassette tapes, jon... nothing has ever been more obvious

it's okay that jon very stupidly burned his hand to a crisp. you don't need even one hand to turn on a cassette recorder. you can do that with your nose

so if these people who are wax figures serve the desolation, and not-sasha was spending time at the wax museum, does that mean there is a connection between the replacer and desolation? i think that would make sense, since both seem to enjoy making people feel bad feelings. also i'm starting to think that agnes was not actually cursed, but that would mean she burned that guy on purpose after being nice to him... was she just really selfish in that way? using him to experience Dating and mutilating him when he crossed the line, so she punished him as a cruel goodbye? or just building up his hopes so they will be even more fun to burn down when the time comes?

"perhaps doing a bit of mindless filing will help distract you." honestly that is something i would like to do in real life... i do enjoy a good mindless task. though doing mostly mindless tasks 40 hours a week is not a fun time for me lately. but it would be better if i didn't have to listen to bad radio at the same time

what?! the friendly midnight acrobat described in episode 90 sounds totally non-threatening and i hope there's fanart of it. was that gym just jared the bone turner helping people live their twisted athletic fetishes?! [footnote added in later: YES! god i hope people draw these turn-boned creatures optimized for their gymnastic of choice. show me a person who remade their body specifically for the balance beam]

so the power endowed in the archivist by the viewening is that when you sit them down across from someone they want to interview, that someone will invariably spill SOME beans and think it was their idea. maybe? [footnote added in later: yes.]

ok so Michael "The Distortion" Michael, of fractals and golden ringlets, has specifically tormented this other michael, lichtenberg michael?

jon is clearly moved to ask questions by an external force because he's a sensible guy who would not try to ask questions when daisy is holding a gun on him

i think basira has precisely the same accent as estelle... or maybe just a similarly staccato way of speaking (or of line-reading)

[episode 93] elias: (holding jon's face between two pieces of bread) what are you? jon: (sigh) the archivist...

well, they did something i didn't expect them to do with this show: create a compelling in-universe reason for jon to read statements aloud. because obviously until now there was none.

jon did the cockney accents. (insert emoji for indescribable feeling)

here's the purpose of the pit: if we all climb in the muddy pit together at night, the earthquake will only jiggle us gently and no one will be inside collapsing buildings to be crushed. it's only logical

ok i was gonna say this before but why is jon still at georgie's house??? he's not on the run for murder anymore, right? he has an apartment with all his stuff in it, right? [footnote added in later: i still don't understand why it was like this.]

i will confess that usually once the credits start to roll i zip to the next episode, but this time i zoned out a bit and it's really funny that jonny sims reads out "Rate and Review Us Online" in his archivist voice

a third michael. this one is probably already dead though. unless distortion michael takes over this guy's body or something. oh, jon came in at the end of the episode to say precisely this.

was episode 100 mostly improvised? if so, that would be appropriate. but i wouldn't put it past them to write every stuttering bit of those four statements

MARTIN...................................................................................................................................................... (typed this as martin gave some of his own money to the lady who expected payment for a statement)

i'm skipping 100.1 through 100.5 for now... just for now.

ok so michael is michael but not lightning mike michael, and two of these michaels are dead, but one is something that has never been alive nor dead. got it

everyone's morality is much more gray than i at first anticipated. the only people who seem to be solidly and earnestly on the side of good, as much as possible, are jonathan and martin and basira and georgie and maybe tim?

so michael just died and was overtaken by pseudo-helen? neo-helen? ok. that's kinda too bad, as i enjoyed michael's terrible laugh and unpredictability. but the feeling of michael being revealed as having been michael shelley feels somewhat similarly disappointing (but a bit less staggeringly groan-inducing) to when the mysterious koro-sensei in assassination classroom was revealed to have been a twink in his past. because of course he was. (that's when i stopped reading that manga. too precipitously dumb to sustain my suspension of disbelief.) it's like, ok, you had an interestingly mysterious character going on, but having solved the mystery, what interestingness is left? not much. fortunately this was resolved by promptly ending the existence of this michael and instead introducing new and improved helen

ooh martin has the asky ability too huh? nice [footnote added in later: he only used it this one time, and i'm wondering if they did that and then forgot and decided that jon is actually the only one with asky ability.] [[another footnote added in much later: How did i manage to mistake jon’s voice for martin’s voice? How?]]

the way martin said "kumo ga tabeteiru" in episode 110... alexander j newall does not watch anime

"I'm a book." ~Gerard Keay, 2017

it was a few episodes ago now but i noticed that when jon clearly articulated "Jared" referring to gerard, elias was like "Jared? you mean Gerard Keay?" (pronouncing it like "Gerard.") there is definitely a disagreement between these two (actors) about how to pronounce that name

the eye, the spiral, the end, the stranger, the lonely, the desolation, the slaughter, the vast, the buried, the dark, the corruption, the web, the flesh, the hunt.

Q: why would anyone want one of these rituals to succeed? A: it's their fetish. it's their sexual fetish

ok time to make up names for each possible apocalypse. these are the real and true names according to me, who knows such things: the eye - the viewening the spiral - down the drain the end - the really end end the stranger - oh wait we know this one. it's the unknowing. the lonely - the alonening the desolation - Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Lightless Flame the slaughter - world war all the vast - the expansion the buried - the grand lahar (or the Smothering) the dark - the extinguishment the corruption - the Great Rot the web - the spidening the flesh - the smorgasbord (or the Eatening) the hunt - come and get it

gerry said there was no dark god of indigestion, but i can tell you from personal experience that there is. though it's true that there is also fear involved, so maybe no separate pantheon is necessary

i sense that there is a battle between people who say it like "gotta get myself oriented" and "i feel disoriented" (as feels correct/natural to me) and people who say "gotta get myself orienTATed" and "i feel disorienTATed," and this podcast falls SQUARELY on the latter team. they've said it like 20 times

idk why he has to be such a dick to helen. jeez

the guy who coded his mind into a computer, which of the 14 was that? the corruption? the stranger? gotta be the corruption, but that doesn't fit perfectly with its rot/bugs aesthetic...

speed -> speeding -> sped. heed -> heeding -> hed. thus i decree

in my dream i listened to a whole episode of this show, narrated by gertrude, and i was like "whoa this is cool" and i went to write it down but i was still in the dream and writing doesn't work in dreams :( also any successful writing in dreams doesn't transfer to real life paper :( the only snippet i remember: “...in his white mouth, which had known only bread...”

"I, uh..." Jonathan Sims, a thousand times, 20XX

martin's job is PLAINLY to distract elias and elias barges in like "martin. i see you're trying to distract me." and martin's like "maybe i am!"

o, jonny took a breath. that's good

he wasn't hooked up to an EKG or anything? you spend long enough with no heartbeat that they're just like "i guess we can turn this off"

this episode about philosophical zombies sounds a lot like that NPC meme from a year or two ago... and it makes me kind of uncomfortable, the way this person inspects others to determine whether they are True Minds or Impostors based on their emotional expressions, their eyes... because i don't always do the correct or appropriate expressions, and would someone judge me as being a non-person who is trying and failing to imitate human emotions?

i generally don't enjoy ships that have more-or-less explicit canon support, but i can't say jon/martin isn't good

melanie blaming jon isn't right... no one had a better plan to stop the unknowing, did they? (they didn't!) didn't all of them agree on the plan and understand that they might die? (they did!) she's just imposing survivor's guilt upon him because he survived for supernatural reasons. but it's not like he eagerly embraced his new supernaturalness, or even asked for it outright! i think she's being unreasonable. i didn't like her insistence on trying to kill elias either, even though elias is a huge dick. what's with her?

wait, peter lukas is the lonely? (meme where calculations and equations whiz past me)

jonathan baa'd

oh, see. the bullet is making melanie act without reason. i get it now. can't say i think they had the best approach to getting the bullet out, but all's well that ends well (???)

martin is being prohibited from talking to jon >:I martin is on a first-name basis with peter lukas >:I...

martin grumbles, "i don't like being manipulated..." while obviously and continuously allowing himself to be manipulated

jon is afraid of and uncomfortable with what he's becoming, at least to a degree, right? but he seems to be going about his duties (i.e. feeding the eye) with vigor and without reluctance. is he really that motivated by his own desire to know and understand? who is he doing this for? is the eye's influence on him so strong that "doing what the eye wants" seems to manifest as what HE wants to do?

"He'd place it over the one he wore already, and he would larf and larf and larf" (from breacon’s statement... just heard it like this for some reason)

deep water could be the domain of both the buried and the vast, because you could lose yourself in the vast ocean, but experience the physical effects of being buried under thousands of feet of water...

so tom han was an avatar of the flesh but he ultimately died after being tortured by the spiral... right?

"we're not people, though, are we? not anymore." close enough, i'd say.

jonathan has deployed THREE "I, uh..."s in episode 131 alone and i want to smack him in real life. FOUR NOW. JON. JONATHAN SIMS THE REAL ACTOR. LISTEN... quit falling back on your "I, uh..."s. and if they're written into the script i'll punch whoever did that too. total of five in a single episode. never utter "I, uh..." again

i hope whoever's throat is okay after doing bone turner voice for a whole statement.

jonny sure needs saving quite often, doesn't he.

peter lukas being a slightly chipper advocate for becoming a follower of the lonely is very strange

neil lagorio and his whole cinematographic history is made up but they namedropped kevin costner, who is real

VERY, VERY GOOD laugh at 23:44 of episode 136

melanie getting her session recorded... i was doing audio transcription for a while and you'd definitely come across bits of therapy-type sessions that very much seemed like they should have been confidential.

i wonder if the eye ultimately turned its back on gertrude and allowed her to be killed. if jon could survive a collapsing building, could gertrude not have survived a couple of bullets? wouldn't the difference be the protection of the eye? [footnote added in later: of course now i see who turned their back on whom.]

i'm somewhat heartened to learn that agnes montague was, in fact, a heavily cursed individual, though she seemed to have embraced it to a degree... and she wasn't made of wax.

i like that jon now includes helen in his office politics briefing

basira's like "Edmund Halley" and jon's like "Halley's comet?" (like “Hale-ey”) and two minutes later jon's like "Edmund Hally" (not "Hale-y")

"What's this?" "OH... That's, uh... that's... my rib..." "Right." (tiny clunk of rib being set down)

so giving a statement puts a curse on you... or is it "having a statement extracted / being compelled" that puts a curse on you? and the resulting curse, the fear it reawakens, is that good for the eye, or is that good for the powers that initially caused the fear?

well, i heard a homestuck reference in one of the patreon names at the beginning of an episode, and who is surprised? of course, i'm not one to talk

episode 144- the english think their summer is bad... as a professional "hot weather is bad" person, i feel doubtful, because if the sky is grey, it is not as hot as it Could Be, and therefore one should quit one's bitching

first statement about the extinction... interesting. but hearing martin be a jerk to daisy makes me sad :(

the powers never tell avatars exactly what they need to be doing, but that's just concerning the means. the ends are always clear: the power gets fed. and all of the powers feed on fear. also jonny is horny for statements. i hope, but also doubt, that his harmful behavior is at least partially the spider's doing. oh, i see now that it's not. yeah.

jon wants to eat fresh and delicious statements produced just for him, instead of reconstituting the dusty old statements already in the archive

episode 148 - samson stiller gets a crush. but in all seriousness, is he becoming an avatar of the eye but like, not institute-related? is that a thing? i guess that would make sense, but still seems weird

episode 149 - considering ring -> rang -> rung, we seem to have stumbled upon spin -> span -> spun, and the compasses gently span around (9:40)

does martin have loneliness powers now? it's sad that he is getting lonely... as a lonely person, i know.

the lady on TV in episode 150 was just speaking simlish.

i really want jon to overcome his urge to forcefully take statements because i want to be able to root for him still

british podcasts really have a leg up over american podcasts, at least among american audiences, purely based on their interesting and varied accents

i can't say the gravedigger's envy doesn't make me myself feel like going to sleep in the cold dirt forever. but bad depression lately is also a factor, so

jonathan having to settle for reading already archived statements instead of harvesting fresh ones is exactly like a vampire (not the kind detailed in this series) who has to choose between hunting people to suck their blood or drinking bags of donated blood from a (near-endless) stockpile. there's an ethical choice with a clear right answer, but the urge is also understandable

jon following up gertrude's tape with just "fuck" was really good. now he's like "ok martin. let's run away together"

spent all day at work thinking about how i can't fuckin believe the first thing jon did when he heard how to escape the institute was to go tell martin like "there will be a great cost, but... we can elope now"

also if tim was still around jon would tell him the way out and he would do it right then and there, i'm 100% sure. like before jon was finished explaining tim would be like "the eyes? (grabs scissors) got it. (does the deed)"

earlier today i was just thinking that we would almost certainly hear gertrude's death on tape, especially given that we now understand tape recorders are wont to turn on autonomously whenever something important is happening. anyway then i came home and heard gertrude's death on tape

peter, as an avatar of the lonely, is easy to play like a cheap whistle because as someone who clearly hates spending time around other people, he is not keen to the symptoms of being played.

elias is like "you'll have to go into the lonely to get him" and jon's probably thinking "but then at least we'll be in the lonely... ~*~*~together~*~*~"

i think martin's whole thing for most of the series has been that he sounds a little doofy, for lack of a better word, and people constantly underestimate his intelligence. and now he has played peter lukas like a cheap whistle and forced me to realize that by taking for granted that he was being successfully manipulated by peter lukas, i too was underestimating martin... and his pure love for jon <:3c no but seriously i even remember explicitly making a mental note to remember that martin is smartin but it fell by the wayside as my emotions (of sadness that jon and martin seemed to be growing further apart) took precedent

i work a non-verbal job just doing mundane tasks and that gives me all the time in the world to think about things like "if they were to have jon and martin reunite in a tearful embrace, how would you convey the physical contact in an audio format? like, whap? soft thud?"

jon enters the lonely and voiceover peter comes in to try and factcheck the ship

i guess it makes sense that peter would try to do the ritual for the lonely all by himself

did he kill peter by asking him to death? or did peter just self-destruct rather than be forced to answer?

the way jon snapped martin out of the loneliness just by making him look at his face... that's powerful. as a lonely person, i know that the most cry-making thing you can realize when you feel alone is that another person is, in fact, there with you

martin went for a walk and now it's thunderstorming. i wonder if he came back as soon as it started raining and now he's standing nearby invisibly as jon reads the intimidating magnus statement. ...I GUESS NOT

i plan to read through the transcripts of all the episodes (as it’s faster than re-listening, though i might selectively re-listen) so that i may better understand some things and answer some questions in this post that i didn’t ultimately resolve. i can’t say i was paying 101% attention all the way through. also april is very far away

[missfinefeather]

DNGFQrow

Didn't she also comment on Weiss' legs in the White Trailer?

Double majoring and suffering

lemme check

Thanotos Omega

Not even joking you could make a religion out of Weiss's legs,

Double majoring and suffering

yeah she made a comment

https://missfinefeather.tumblr.com/post/185477478745/the-princess-fights-the-knight-also-is-it-wrong

not the perviest comment of that liveblog tbf

And yeah... https://missfinefeather.tumblr.com/post/185477558955/solidad-btw-all-of-the-shows-songs-are-made-by

Mistakefeather

I'm certain as soon as she's legally of age, she'll start wearing stockings.To spite me directly

Double majoring and suffering

Would the answer be a spoiler ?

Mistakefeather

Maybe? I dunno

Do all of you count it a spoiler?

Double majoring and suffering

I wouldn't

it's just leggings or the absence of them

Solarn

I mean, I wouldn't.

Nefronis

Yeah, I don't see it as a problem

Double majoring and suffering

yeah she doesn't get leggings

Solarn

Heck, I wouldn't even count contextless pictures of her in later seasons as spoilers, but I gather I'm a bit of an outlier in that respect.

Double majoring and suffering

so here you go Miss, you have that to look forwards to

DNGFQrow

Yeah lets not do that.

Solarn

No, I wouldn't do that, I just pointed out what my own view on spoilers is.

DNGFQrow

You guys are much more loose with spoilers than other liveblogs I've followed

Mistakefeather

Well, I do have a rep for spoiling myself, so maybe people are acclimated to it here?

Solar

TBF, most of the livebloggers in this generation are much stricter about spoilers than the previous one.

Double majoring and suffering

I think it might also be because this particular liveblog already had quite a few spoilers

we keep the big ones unspoiled

Solarn

I don't think any of the OG livebloggers had a zero tolerance policy, while these days it's pretty much standard.

Double majoring and suffering

It depends on the liveblogger

DNGFQrow

Main thing I'm thinking of is talking about a timeskip way in advance just to soothe her thirst.

Double majoring and sufferin

it's extremely strict over on Mack's liveblog

and yeah

we had a long conversation before that spoil

it was a group decision

Mistakefeather

Mackenzie:

Solarn

Didn't it turn out that the timeskip was something Miss actually got spoiled about before she even started liveblogging? Or am I thinking of another RWBY liveblogger?

Double majoring and suffering

Another one I believe

DNGFQrow

Don't think so.

Miss was spoiled on Pyrrha and Bees 

Double majoring and suffering

Miss freaked the fuck out, in a good way

it was hilarious

and for Mack, it's because our spoiler comity works very hard in routing out potential spoilers

she's one of the least spoiled HS liveblogger

so it was a big coordinated effort to keep it that way

Mistakefeather

Not to mention I saw Volume 1 before I liveblogged the series

Learning about Pyrrha actually made me drop my watch of the series initially

Think about me before I started doing liveblogs, most spoilers were welcome because I can look forward to things instead of letting my anxiety fear the unknown. I wanted to know if Pyrrha and Jaune ever got together because they were kinda cute together.Found a discussion about her death

Or more specifically, what her death means for the ship.

I was so heartbroken, I couldn't go on with the series at the time

Double majoring and suffering

Ah yes, Arkos memes got spicy the night after that episode

fun time to be in the fandom

DNGFQrow

Again, it was Valentine's Day. So mean

Double majoring and suffering

yeah

Mistakefeather

Learned about Bumblebee canonicity through lesbian blogs who literally posted screenshots of the two of them holding hands. And I heard RWBY gets a lesbian relationship down the line so, put two and two together

Double majoring and suffering

Pyrrah's death brought us so many good memes honestly, even if the ash jokes are getting pretty tired now

except the Dumb Rwby version of that joke

DNGFQrow

So many edits of "Shot through the heart"

Double majoring and suffering

that one is still just as funny

DNGFQrow

The V3 hiatus was all Pyrrha jokes and Yang "disarmed" jokes.

Double majoring and suffering

Mistakefeather

I still can't believe I stayed unspoiled on Yang losing her arm

Double majoring and suffering

you managed to post art of her without an arm

Mistakefeather

I know!

Double majoring and suffering

that art is still spoiler and it makes me mad

because I wanna show it to you

Mistakefeather

I could spoil myself just by reading my own liveblog...

Double majoring and suffering

yup

DNGFQrow

Where's that one fanart of Yang with a roboarm that has Penny in it for some reason? That would have been double spoilers.

Solarn

Wrong channel?

DNGFQrow

Nah. Loss of arm and Penny death

It was made in the V3 hiatus

[docholligay]

So I just found your Utena liveblog and I love how you talked about Shiori. Like, when I first watched Utena, I just loved her because a) I love horrible, manipulative characters who really need some therapy and to stop being abusive pieces of shit and b) I saw a lot of the fandom hating her and my spiteful ass immediately went “I’m going to love her”. The first few times I watched RGU, I shipped Juri/Shiori a lot because I really want Shiori and Juri to be happy and healthy (even though I know, intellectually, that them being in a romantic relationship would not be happy nor healthy).

But reading your analysis made me realize that I’m actually… really lucky? By lesbian standards? Like, my parents are super supportive, my school was an art school (and thus full of gays), and I’ve never actually gotten a crush on a straight girl. But reading your thoughts on Shiori and why you cant love her, or even love to hate her, made me think like, wow. I completely understand it now. I still believe that shiori is a closeted wlw of some kind, with feelings for Juri (that doesn’t excuse her abuse, of course, and she’s not a precious misunderstood baby), but I didn’t really think about how, unlike a lot of the other characters, Shiori and what she does is very *real*. People having incestuous feelings for their siblings, or sword fighting under an upside down castle, or getting a ring from a dude who looks kind of like your fiancee and your fiancee’s brother…those things don’t happen a lot in real life. But the situation that Juri is in, with Shiori and Ruka and that brown-haired boy, is very real. Lesbians being threatened with being outed by people they loved, being manipulated and hurt because you can’t let go of this one girl, and feeling so sad and depressed and lonely because you don’t think you can be loved by someone you love; those are all things that happen to wlw and do happen and will happen.

The other reason my spiteful ass didn’t like seeing people hate on Shiori was because so much of what I saw was “Shiori is horrible because she’s mean to precious Juri who’s never done anything wrong!” And I didn’t really like Juri throughout the show (I didn’t really like any of the characters except the female Black Rose duelists and Anthy), so seeing people treat Juri like a princess while Shiori was constantly shit on…I really didn’t like. Because newsflash! Juri isn’t nice either! She’s not quietly manipulative, but she’s capable of being cruel (she doesn’t see anything wrong with trying to force Ruka to date Shiori, even though he’s already been shown to be abusive to her and, really, no matter how shitty Ruka is, you can’t and shouldn’t force someone to date someone else; also, I have a lot to say about how Juri treats Shiori in the series). But that’s what I like about your liveblogs: you don’t hate Shiori because you love sweet, innocent Juri–you can admit that Juri isn’t the paragon of innocence. It doesn’t take away from the abuse Shiori causes Juri, but Juri isn’t making an effort to try and help herself or Shiori in a meaningful way.

The final reason I love your liveblogs (that I’m going to talk about here) is that you were able to put into words how i felt about Utena and Anthy’s relationship in the first two arcs. I could never articulate it, but I really got the feeling that, for all Utena was talking about being friends with Anthy (and Wakaba), it just made me so mad because she wasn’t! She wasn’t really Anthy’s friend, and she definitely wasn’t a good friend! She was an actor who used Anthy as a prop and couldn’t and wouldn’t see beyond the surface of what was happening (and that was even if she noticed the stuff on the surface)! I was so confused when first watching because I kept seeing all these tumblr posts and pictures about how Utena and Anthy were such a great couple and how much they loved each other and I was just like… where??? But now you’ve put into words my uneasy feelings about Anthy and Utenas relationship and my lesbian anime soul can finally be at peace. (JK, I’m still going to go hunting for more Utena meta because god, what doesn’t this show make into a metaphor?)

So yeah. I tried really hard to make sure I didn’t mention anything past your most recent liveblog, but if I missed anything I’m really sorry. The best thing about your liveblogs is watching you theorize and discover this stuff on your own, which I didn’t get to have (I envy your self-restraint. I end up spoiling myself on so much because I want to read up on as much as possible halfway through the story). All I really want to say is that I really love your analysis. It’s funny as shit (can you imagine the kinds of family reunions Michiru and Haruka would have? There’s Michiru and Saionji, Haruka and Tsuwabuki, and the Michiru/Haruka angsty lesbian daughters, Juri and Hotaru), but even more importantly, it actually made me rethink how I thought of Shiori, which is what the best analysis do. I still love her in the way I love manipulative, cunning characters (Kozue is one of my fave RGU characters as well and Anthy is my favorite character of all time), but I guess you could say that you “changed the window” through which i saw RGU. I can’t wait until your next liveblog!

I’ve read this multiple times since you sent it, and I hadn’t published yet because I feel so blushy about it. It was such a kind and amazing thing to say, and this made me feel so loved and interesting and I wish I was better at tagging so I could keep a tag of when I get this kind of stuff, because it means so much to me. 

And I’m so glad that my relative evenhandedness with the characters works for you! I do hate the fuck out of Shiori, but the idea that Juri is some innocent maiden makes me laugh into the distance forever. No one in Utena is good except perfect angel Wakaba, I think we all know. 

And yes! Utena and Anthy are def not the sweet couple I’ve seen a lotof fanart of, and it’s actually kind of interesting to me that it’s sprung up so much of that (PLEASE NO ONE SPOIL ME FOR THE END OF UTENA I ADMIT MY FEELINGS MAY CHANGE) And also has only cemented my belief that Anthy and Utena aren’t Haruka and Michiru at all. 

Anyway, thank you so so much for sending this. It made me feel so good.