#but if some of the creators involved in the show were deliberately hinting that's kind of nice

[arianeemorythethird]

Been rewatching SW Rebels and uh I've got to say... Sabine and Ketsu in Blood Sisters sure do have a vibe, huh... I genuinely don't know how else we're meant to interpret them...

Like, that scene at the end where Ezra is trying to talk to Sabine and she has to explicitly tell him to please go away and give her and Ketsu some privacy?? That's an old joke and the punchline is 'Harold, they're lesbians'... like genuinely what is the point of that scene if not to point out lol Ezra's crush is hopeless she's into someone else...

[phynali]

more spn discussions, just skip this post y’all

 @queerbluebird​ thanks so much for engaging with my post/reply! i really enjoyed reading your response and i have a long reply here.

i’m responding to your post/reply here rather than reblogging it because honestly that thread is - so long. so very long. 

so first - 

i agree there is a difference between entitlement and what i would call, not promise, but instead “narrative follow-through”. A story that completely lacks narrative follow-through does end up feeling disappointing, or frustrating, or rage-inducing, depending on what’s happened. to me there’s a fundamental difference between critiquing a story based on follow-through and bad storytelling (which your post aims to do), versus say, creating hashtag campaigns about a character being silenced because and spreading conspiracy theories about a bad dub (among other things honestly).

and also - queerbaiting totally sucks, we definitely do agree on that.

where we disagree, i think are these two core points:

i do not see the narrative build-up that demands a follow-through. i do not see supernatural as having built up to the story that many destiel shippers seem to think was there, and no one has ever been able to point out to me any actual textual reasons that do craft that narrative build-up  

i fundamentally do not believe that destiel was ever a queerbait. queerbait involves active intent on the part of creators to tease a ship or queer representation in order to draw in $ from queer audiences without ever making it canon, so as not to alienate straight audiences. so, refering to point 1., i do not see the canon text as having laid the groundwork for a queerbait and those romantic tropes, at least not at any point in the past 7 years. and beyond the canon, the writers and producers and jensen ackles all indicated dean was straight, and that they were not writing a romance. if anyone queerbaited the fans, it was misha collins who kept teasing the possibility, and personally i would argue that was irresponsible of him. but that’s a different discussion altogether and tends to piss people off when it’s framed as such, because misha means a lot to them and it hurts to see the man who validated their feelings get criticized for the manner in which he validated them. so i’m gonna leave that aside.

beyond that, I want to engage with some of your specific quotes:

Supernatural loves to say “wait for it.” And I don’t think it’s entitled to feel betrayed if an author uses their story to say “wait for it” in order to convince you to stick with their story and then delivers the opposite after you do.

May i ask, where was the “wait for it” with destiel? this ties in directly to the queerbaiting. i indicated in my post/reply that while i see it from cas, there’s been little to no hint of any reciprocation of feelings from dean, and if anything the past 7 or so years have driven the point home that it isn’t happening. i personally am not able to see the “Wait for it” and that was the point of my question. without the “Wait for it”, i also can’t see the queerbait. 

I asked for specifics and while i totally get not having the spoons, you provided a few:

(off the top of my head for Dean though, the mixtape, his response to Cas’ death at the end of 12, subsequent grief arc, and reaction to Cas’ return in the front half of 13 rank highly. His reaction to Lucifer’s prank call in 15x19 might rate, but maybe just because it’s so recent.)

not trying to be unkind here, but i quite genuinely don’t see any of these examples as framing cas and dean in a romantic light, or as hinting at a “what if”. the mixtape is like.... okay, maybe. i had read that as being symbolic of something else, but i can see wanting to read it from a shipping lens. (i don’t however think i’d read it as baiting or “what if” - it was quite textually not framed that way. shipping, 100%, but canon build-up, not for me).

for the other examples -- grieving for someone you consider family? and being happy when they come back? that’s not shippy to me. i mean - contrast the grief he showed over cas’s death compared to his grief over, say, mary? or, less extreme, charlie? and nothing compared to how off the rails he goes when sam is dead or he thinks sam is. so i -- i just can’t see those as creating a narrative that demands a follow-through. and when your friend who is dead calls your phone? of course you hop to the door - i don’t know what is romantic about that. sam would’ve hopped just as quick if “cass” had called his phone instead.

and look - i see what is fun to ship about all that. if i shipped it, i’d be happily collecting these moments with a smile and grinning to myself about how cute they are and much they mean. but shipping it vs. it being romantically framed in the canon are two fundamentally different things. shipping doesn’t imply narrative buy-in or deliberation from the creator.

moving on, you also spoke at length about 15x18:

15x18 made the sort of statement that drew back even people who did exactly what OP said they should do, turning off the TV years ago. It wasn’t a quiet “if you’re still watching, keep waiting,” so much as a shouted “hey we’re gonna do this thing, watch this!”

i guess destiel fans vs. those of us who don’t ship it really see this as fundamentally different. because you discuss that moment as one which requires follow-through, and say that if this were heteronormative m/f love declaration, there would be that expectation of follow-through. not necessarily reciprocity, but more - more conversation, more acknowledgment, more something.

(i mean - if there was more, but that more was “hey i love you too but only platonically, sorry man” would that be better?)

but no - i actually just... disagree with your point on that front. i can see why you feel the way you do and i acknowledge that it can be read as the start of a conversation. to me though -- and clearly, now that the finale is out, how the writers saw it -- that was actually the end of a conversation. the end of, like you pointed out, 12 years. a 12-year conversation that ends in a gorgeous declaration of love, and specifically how love isn’t about being together, it’s simply about being - it’s about the fact that you love someone, and that feeling alone is the most beautiful thing in existence.

to me, that declaration can only be written and interpreted as an ending.  a sacrifice, a declaration, and a goodbye. so - while i kind of expected seeing more people in episode 20 and realize that didn’t happen largely due to covid - i’m not disappointed we didn’t see cas, because that culmination of his narrative (and then knowing he was with jack, after, rebuilding the heaven that he rebelled against and finally completing his narrative circle by fixing all the problems with it alongside the good god he sought to find all along) is kind of perfect. 

and i genuinely don’t think if cas was in a female vessel this entire time that that would change. maybe some audience members would feel differently, but i think many of us would see it for the end it was nonetheless. there’s plenty of stories with m/f ships that are one-sided and that character sacrifices themselves for the person they love, so i don’t see why this would be any different (except the bury your gays issue, but that’s a whole other and very real conversation about media tropes).

moving on to the series finale.

As many people have pointed out in praise of 15x20, Sam is the absolute most important thing in Dean’s life, his priority above anything and everything… And yet there, at the actual end of the world, Dean ignores Sam’s call and instead cries over the loss of Castiel. Dean’s loss of Castiel plays in tandem with the loss of literally the whole world. But we’re not to take that as a promise that Castiel means more to this story, or to Dean, than a couple seconds of wistfulness after the dust settles?

I... yeah. i don’t see what this even is arguing. that dean taking a minute to himself to grieve his best friend, who just died in part because dean decided to go hunt down billie (who was literally dying anyway). he’s hurting. there’s nothing about this that’s a promise - it’s an end. it’s grief. it’s the horror of losing someone you care about, and the silence that comes after. it’s fundamentally human in it’s pain. and we, the audience, are invited to grieve with dean.

so I mean - of course cas means more to this story. of course he’s meant more than a few seconds of grief, after 12 years. but just because that’s the last time we see him on screen doesn’t mean we don’t value his story, and celebrate how it too came full circle.

You mention cas as a sort of avatar for a different potential ending for the brothers, and highlight him representing:

An ending where higher powers stop yanking them around and they get to actually live in the life they’ve built for themselves.

So while i never considered cas an avatar for that, i do think we all wanted the brothers to have their freedom. “finally free.” so we can agree on wanting that end. but we disagree on whether it was delivered, i guess? because i feel it was.

you also talk about what you and many other fans conceivably wanted a happier ending to look like. can i -- i’m going to be totally honest. i have not seen a single person who’s critiquing the end saying “i just wanted sam and dean to grow old hunting together with their dog until they retire together and die of old age.”

would that be satisfying to those who are mad about the end? i personally don’t think so, but maybe my opinion is being coloured by the most vitriolic fans i’ve seen. if sam and dean got to have the life they wanted free of chuck, and dean didn’t die, and they kept going (or retired and opened a bar together!). maybe sam still had a kid, but again because romance wasn’t the point, the wife wasn’t important and they left her blurry still so we could interpret ourselves if she was a wife or a co-parent or a surrogate or what. maybe dean has a kid too, with a similar question-mark-wife. maybe we get a few images of them having a holiday with jodie and the girls. and then getting to heaven together in old age, greeting bobby with a beer, and going for a drive.

would that be an end that wouldn’t cause fandom uproar? i would enjoy it, soft an slightly discordant as it would be to me. i prefer the ending we got, bittersweet and heartbreaking though it was, but i wouldn’t be taking to social media to yell about it if we got a softer epilogue, so to speak.

on the other hand... would that still not be enough, at least not for so many of the angry fans? i’m genuinely unsure. it seems to me that so much of the ire is about destiel itself, even if people are pretending it’s about more and other things than that. not everyone, but like, a big portion of them. which leads me to believe that nothing short of dean and cas at least interpretable as together is what they wanted. if every other single thing about the existing finale was the same except that cas was the one to greet dean instead of bobby, and even with the same basic dialogue, without discussing the confession, but they have a lingering smile, and dean leaves to drive and wait for sam with the promise he’ll see cas later - 

if everything else stayed the same except who greeted dean, i genuinely don’t believe i’d be seeing almost any critique of the finale on my dash. maybe i’m cynical, but that’s where i’m at.

which is part of why i really struggle to believe that people are engaging in good faith when they critique the finale. because i feel like if it offered them either a) everything they’re purportedly asking for but still no cas and zero hint of destiel, vs. b) every other thing they claim to hate stays the same except there’s a wink and nod to destiel - i believe they would take the wink and nod. 

   On to some other things you raised:

But how can you know to walk away from a tragedy if the tragedy says “the end won’t be a tragedy, keep watching” right up until it ends in tragedy?

Oh i Get this. I hate thinking i’m consuming fun media only for it to rip my heart out at the end. i’ve literally - well, i’ve had a very unpleasant and distressing experience of this, actually. so i get it. also the opposite: i sometimes feel disappointed when i’m consuming media that is gripping and intense and painful, but then the end is too easy, too soft and happy?

BUT - supernatural never pretended it would have a happy end? the end was so. much. happier. than i ever expected. the Swan Song end was going to have Sam in hell being tortured by lucifer for eternity. according to something i read which i am fundamentally too lazy to link because who knows if it would have turned out this way but -- kripke was apparently going to have Dean jump in the cage with him at that end, if the series ended on S5? the ‘horror’ ending. completely devastating sacrifice for mankind (sam), and completely devastating sacrifice for his brother (dean). just -- oof. even if that wasn’t the plan and the series would’ve ended as the episode did - sam was still in the cage and cas was off waging war in heaven and dean was living every day knowing he was alive and his brother was being tortured.

i’m sorry if you thought you were watching a happier show. i know how much that hurts. that doesn’t mean the story was actually that happy though. sometimes, it’s on us as consumers to acknowledge we were misreading the media. i’ve had to do this. it’s hard, it hurts, but it helps you consume things healthier. i’ve had to do this growing recently, and i’m better off for it.

regarding the specific manner of dean’s death - that’s really not what my post was about and i’m not gonna address it here. i’ve talked about it elsewhere and so have others, and @lovetincture‘s original post spelled it out beautifully, in how human it was. i have feelings on how and why i loved dean’s death, and why it was the absolute opposite of what Chuck’s ending was and what he wanted (no blaze of glory), but i’ll leave those for another time.

They cast aside all the relationships they’ve built. [...] They lost/walked away from the life and home they built in the bunker. Dean got a season 1 death. Sam got a season 1 life.

I feel that there is a very huge difference between regression and progression when it comes to cyclical storytelling. And that difference seems to be missing from the ongoing discussions i’ve seen about this in fandom.

Coming full circle to season 1 does not at all mean that the development is ‘undone’ or that the story has regressed or that anything has been lost or destroyed. It can mean that, if the storyteller doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing, but in this case i don’t (personally) feel it’s a fair critique.

Dean’s death might parallel his s1 not-quite death from Faith, but the s15 result of that death is night and day. Dean is no longer alone. Dean does not go up to a lonely heaven filled with bittersweet memories, where even his canonical soulmate and him have wide gulfs between the memories they fill their shared heaven with. Dean dies a hunter, but he dies a hunter who literally saved earth and changed heaven and gets to spend eternity with his brother, side-by-side and together without all the pain and miscommunication, and he gets to see his family and loved ones too. he died having literally made the world so much better.

even without that though?

his story comes full circle, but dean’s character development isn’t about his death, it’s about the fact that in the first several seasons dean could hardly admit he cared without acting like his teeth were being pulled. he was too afraid of abandonment to ask for someone to be by his side. he was too afraid of rejection to let anyone in. and in the end? he asks sam to stay. he tells him that he loves him. he pours his heart out and says all the things that 15 years ago were stoppered in his throat, words trying and failing to claw their way free but his hurt and fears were too deep.

dean is free.

the point of dean’s story coming full circle to season 1 parallels was specifically to highlight this incredible development, not to undermine it. he is different. he is free. 

god it makes me tear up just thinking about how happy i am for him despite how gutted i was by that scene??

(i could write a similar analysis for sam, about how he left for stanford to escape his life and how his finale life montage bits were the opposite of that, but honestly this post is long enough already).

Destiel is loosely a part of that promise in the sense that Castiel is a part of that promise. The symbol of free will

You make a super interesting argument about Cas being a symbol of free will. I don’t have much to say about it, because I’m gonna mull it over, because I think it’s kinda cool and I’ve never thought about it.

That’s - all i’ve got. thanks again for engaging. i’m happy to continue the convo if you have questions or want to reblog/reply 

(though my followers might hate me omg, i’ve been spamming long spn meta posts for weeks now, it’s just been so confronting to see the ongoing fan reaction on twitter and how divided it is...)

[bladekindeyewear]

Bloggin’ bout HS^2 Commentary from start to Mid-Jan-2020

Sigh.  Time to pay the piper.  Someone’s gotta extract whatever plot-important and plothole mentions get mentioned in this commentary, even though reading behind-the-scenes stuff about Homestuck makes me even more nervous than reading frontend stuff ever could so I don’t really want to.  FYI, that’s what you’re going to get out of my posts on these -- anything regarding plot stuff and plotholes, things we would’ve misinterpreted or missed otherwise, not any of the other paid content such as sketches or full quotes from them about things.

TWENTY FUCKING DOLLARS A MONTH!???!??  Is Andrew even seeing any of this cash?  --no, not much of it I guess, he would want to make sure the WP folks get paid enough after the--

Yeah I’m not gonna even think about that.

Fuck it.  I’m ponying up.

Alright, first commentary post on the Patreon, commentary and bonus sketches for Ghostflusters... whoa, this is long and extensive.  Is it going panel by panel??

I guess I’ll give you a small quote just for a taste of how this starts...

Page 33:  Not sure what any of this shit means. It’s pretty deep though. We were going for an echo of the beginning of the epilogue when John is dreaming in anime. Except here it’s Jake, and nobody is dreaming, at least not yet. Also an anime dream wouldn’t be a nightmare for Jake, since Jake likes anime. Or he used to. Now anime probably just reminds him of Dirk.

Good thing we’re never gonna hear from that guy ever again.

...because this commentary is sort of stylized.  They’re kind of riffing on what they’re doing, and I get that -- when you have to write commentary you’re asking people to PAY for you can easily feel like you have to be entertaining.  But they are describing the rationale for the shot choices they made and such.  They’re also going for a sort of Andrew-recap sort of attitude, and I don’t blame them for that choice, either.

[Candy] Jade is...well, you’ll see.

GOD DAMNIT.  Don’t remind me that Dave vanished on her forever while they were doing pro-revolutionary work and she’s probably going to be in a bit of a state!  Stupid knowing author future allusions...

Then again, that’s exactly why I’m here blogging about the commentary for you guys -- for me to relay Authorial Intent on Stuff That Happened That Seemed Plotholey and Hints About What’s Going To Be Relevant.

I just, uh... didn’t expect there to be that MUCH of it.  And that casual phrasing for that Candy Jade Is Going To Be Seen And Or Relevant hint is... kinda indicating to me that there’s gonna be a LOT more of that here than I wanted.  :|

Continuing... there’s talk of why they started with Jake here, being unused to writing for middle-aged characters in Homestuck terms, et cetera, but again, I’m only here to relay anything with plot impact or SERIOUS perspective on how we should / the authors are viewing this.  The rest stays behind the paywall for whichever of you all think it’s worth $20, I don’t really have a choice.  At least now I know why there was no one to tell me what details were actually BEHIND the paywall.  Seriously, that’s steep.

Speaking of how stylized the commentary is here, I can get why some might read it and view the authors as slightly callous -- I’m giving them PLENTY of benefit of the doubt, though.  Andrew was FAR from callous and he hurt us worse out of love of artistic intent with the Epilogues than the HS^2 folks could EVER hurt us.  Real Dirk-like, actually.  Dirk is practically half of a self-insert, as we well know.  No wonder Andrew thought the right thing to do was to take his hands off the story, what with Dirk’s villainous action being putting his own hands ON the story.

We like to make fun of Jake English as much as the next guy, but he probably is actually pretty good at “doing things” if the need arises. 

Mhmm; there are some jibes at how screwed up Jake has made his life, but I don’t believe these authors actually disrespect Jake at all.  He was dealt a bad hand by the story leading up to this point (quite INTENTIONALLY by Dirk’s narrative control in the Epilogues, too) and HS^2 and its bonuses so far have been exploring the heap of merits and potential he’s still got in him.

It’s kind of sweet how he wants to clean out his ecto-son’s house, even if most of that is to prevent the slow creep of mounting existential dread and narrative relevance. 

Huh.  So they think Jake can sort of feel that narrative relevance is seeping in around him, to him?  That’s not out of the question at all.

Continuing... they’re going on a bit about the same sort of things I mentioned about their choices in detail or detail-less-ness when depicting people in this new format, considering ages and the paired text descriptions and such.  That’s the sort of thing you’d traditionally want to pony up for commentary for, so rest assured that all that IS in their commentary posts if you want to do that.  I’m kind of extracting the plot stuff out of the paywall just on principle.

A lot of making this comic--and every other comic ever--is trying to convey as much information with as little space as possible.

Quite so.

From this conversation we find out a couple things. 1) that Brain Ghost Dirk knows about Ultimate Dirk, and he thinks he’s a dickhead. 2) Brain Ghost Dirk knows who Jeff Bezos is, and Jake doesn’t. This could be a sign of a couple things, all of which are probably stupid. 

This is ALSO what I came here for:  Legitimate “don’t worry about it” handwaves about stuff that shouldn’t matter to us.  I never ascribed the slightest bit of relevance or inference to BGDirk making a Jeff Bezos reference, and I’m glad I was completely justified in ignoring it.  So far I agree with this probably-plural-but-acting-like-a-singular author’s train of thought.

Come to think of it, it’s maybe strange that in this Cool Future Earth where all of our characters are rich as hell, none of them have bothered to have any sort of corrective eye surgery. Jane, Jake, John, and Jade all still wear glasses. I guess they do have “signature looks” to maintain in regards to their brand. 

I had to include this, I was legitimately curious.  Understood it was probably an artistic decision to stay on-brand a fair bit -- and losing glasses even temporarily has a lot of thematic significance whenever it happens in Homestuck Proper -- but it’s nice to have some confirmation that this was the understandable rationale behind the choice.

Here we find out what Dirk thinks about Jake’s behavior of the last few years. In other words, we find out what Jake thinks about Jake’s behavior over the last few years. [...]

[Brain Ghost] Dirk is manipulating Jake here, but he isn’t actually saying anything demonstrably untrue. 

Again, most of this was obvious at the time, but it’s nice to have authorial confirmation on what was being brought across as per the strange divide between Brain Ghost Dirk’s independent will and his mostly-part-of-Jake status.

Seriously though, shoutout to the conceit that god tiers can just fly endlessly, with no visible effort. It’s a really excellent form of narrative shortcut that fits perfectly into the bonkers vibe of earth c as a whole. Oh there goes one of the Creators, just flying over the Wal-Mart like an asshole. 

You know... who IS doing the commentary here?  One of the authors, all of them?  One of the artists??  This really is a COLLABORATIVE effort between the authors and artists involved here, I think, and it shows in their clear surprise and appreciation for each others’ work that only settles into a full understanding instead of just knowing what one intended off the bat.

It calls into question exactly how much of the Condesce’s mind control was actually mind control at all, and how much was just a lowering of inhibitions. 

Right, right.

We see Jane greeting Jake here with open arms, which makes you wonder exactly what is going on here. If you’ll remember from Candy, Jane has already served Jake divorce papers. A mystery in need of solving, for sure. 

HERE we go!  This is the potential plothole we were concerned about that got me alerted that the commentary had something to add in the first place.  John mentioned toward the trail-end of the Candy epilogues that divorce papers had shown up for Jake.  (And we also saw an HS^2 update ago or so that Jane hadn’t actually KNOWN Tavros was “awol” at all until he was literally a part of this whole clowncorpse logistics business.)  So in light of what this post continues to say:

It could be that Jane has put aside the nasty business of their divorce in order to have a strong chest to cry on. Can’t really say I blame her. Jake English has many flaws but he does seem like a good person to drape yourself across and really let loose on. And without Gamzee there, Jane needs another punching bag. 

...it all finally fits as pretty logically consistent, although the author is being deliberately coy in a way that leaves it open for more to be revealed later about exactly how this is happening.  Good!  No obvious plotholes in HS^2 (yet).  That’s an honest relief.  The more often they have something in mind where I’d previously worried they’d screwed up, the more often I can give them credit and speculate properly on those gaps in story-logic expecting something there, like we so often got to with Andrew before the retconsplit made even THAT kinda fucky.

If you’ve ever had a friend or family member go evil, you’ll know that one of the hardest parts is there’s always still elements of them that you like.

I can definitely say that from nearly personal experience.

Also, at this point in the story there is no lingering doubt that Jake and Dirk have had a sexual relationship. There’s a familiarity there that wasn’t around when they were teens. 

I assumed so, but I guess I never thought ABOUT how I assumed so.  Huh.

Do any of the creators have a moral leg to stand on if all they’re doing is curling up into a ball and hoping the world gets better without them? Actually, does anyone have a moral leg to stand on if they do that? 

Almost Riddley, there.

These posts are certainly interesting!  Steeply priced for what they are, but interesting.  Moving on to the second of four so far... this one’s about Catnapped Part 1.

Taking over Earth C's business world certainly would have required rubbing shoulders with the already-powerful on the planet.

--yep, which I never doubted even when brought up in the Epilogues is a large part of her supply-side government views.

Ah, looks like the bonus commentary is a good deal shorter!  But that bonus section was a good deal shorter than the story section covered earlier too, so.

On to the next one, for Clown Logistics.

Page 58: If you love Vriskas, i hope you enjoy more Vriska content. If you hate Vriskas, well. Here is another one that is kind of different. Feel free to contemplate nature vs nurture and how best to apply this dichotomy toward emoting about the vriskas of your choice how you see fit.

I’m starting to really enjoy this author commentary.

Tavros being named Tavros sure was a decision. Go back and reread the commentary for panel 58 but stop before the nature/nurture thing, since they are not clones, or even the same species. They just have the same name, which, in this universe, means you at least type kind of the same.

Hmhmm.

Page 65:  Sometimes you try and come up with something to say about a page, and you cannot, and so you wait 8 hours, and go see Knives Out, and then you have 2 white russians, and then you still can’t come up with anything to say, but oh well! Commentary needs writing. Tavros is experiencing an emotion here.

Now THAT’s a mood.  I gotta go see Knives Out sometime soon.

...Alright, I can see why some people think MAAAAYBE this author might be being a little disrespectful to the audience, but if they’re going based on THIS, I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.  This comment could have come from Andrew’s fingertips any day of the week!!!  I honestly wouldn’t WANT replacement authors who couldn’ comment like this in there for a page in paid commentary, especially in a lighter section of the story that doesn't need too much said about it.

And I paid $20 for this shit.

...Continuing, I’m loving all this commentary on Harry Anderson.  Representative excerpt:

Again, direct your eyes toward the boy. What a fucking asshole. 

...these commentaries are honestly improving my mood!  I didn’t expect that, really.

Ah, I didn’t even notice that the flying cars appear to be self-driving.  I think maybe the back of my mind MIGHT have noticed but only a bit.

Referring to the corpse-carry crew:

Page 82: Pokedex entry for Magneton in Pokemon Sun: When three Magnemite link together, their brains also become one. They do not become three times more intelligent.

Ain’t THAT a mood.

(...I just had an internal “Wait, am I using that right, it being a “mood”?  Isn’t that the hip new term, how do I have any right to latch onto that however much I feel it?  Ohhh gosh I’m so fucking old” moment.)

It’s clear from the commentator’s complaints that the crew never viewed this commentary ALONE as worth upping the pledge to $20, but that’s... not quite a bad thing?  I think it’d have been more disrespectful to think that they COULD make the commentary worth that.  I doubt there’s a single person on their team who feels quite right about the business model (besides the artists they have plenty of context to know how deserving they are of a living goddamn wage), but it’s what they have to live with and go with, here.  I feel weird for honestly understanding ‘em, and more than slightly pitying for how many people will look at all this and read “these assholes don’t care about us”.  I really can’t think that’s anywhere CLOSE to true from this without more context.  (And I really DON’T want more context, don’t send me any.  I’ve got to read HS^2 and I’m enjoying reading it so far so let me keep enjoying it please.  Background drama details make me nauseous, DON’T give me any if there is any (which I wouldn’t know about in the first place beyond an opinionated friend or two dropping hints in a bad mood).)

Did you know there are people who I’ve seen honestly believing “Undertale is pretty good but the creator is an arrogant asshole”?????

Because they saw his tweet about the game score passing Kojima’s MGSV on metacritic briefly and misinterpreted his wide-eyed disbelief, disbelief honed to nervous laughter to maintain sanity by Toby’s insecurity about his unprofessional work and work product???  They thought he was SERIOUS without any of the context of the usual insincere little dog persona they should’ve read into the game of his they played??

Awh man.  That just ticks me off.

Anyway where were we.

Page 91: This is a flashback so I didn’t write this one, which means I thankfully don’t have to say anything about it. 

Wait.  What?

Are they trading off writers between chapters, or...?  Hm.

Whatever they’re doing, it fits together pretty darn well SO far.

Alright, that finishes that off, time for the last commentary post on the second bonus update.

I don't know if you noticed, but everything is terrible right now. And I don't mean just in Homestuck's dumb fake earth. I mean in our dumb real earth.

Now that’s a mood.

I've been playing a lot of Death Stranding recently. Basically any media that you're making in 2019 has to either address what's going on around us or come off sanitized, sterilized, with its head in the sand. Kojima offers a simple power fantasy: Through Norman Reedus's sweaty, urine-filled labor, the things that divide us can be banished. America can be unified again.

Now THAT is a god damned MOOD.

The author(?) goes in about why this is happening, why Jane is being confronted this way, why she IS this way, et cetera.

Privilege, safety, and inherited wealth do funny things to the brain. People justify to themselves why they have what they have. If you have enough for long enough, you start to convince yourself you deserve it.

That’s one of the biggest goddamn reasons for the inequality and political landscape we have today IRL, yeah.

She saw a new world and chose, simply, to replicate the power structures of the 21st-century America she was raised in. Boardrooms, power pantsuits, formality and professionalism.

Jane's favorite comic, a noir-detective drama steeped in the pop-cultural trappings of pulp Americana, reflects this mindset.

So, our catgirl Seer of Light takes us through the looking glass, and we get to see an old friend.

Hm!

Nothing really to say, I just had to share this fitting context the author is giving.  How things fit together even better than they seemed to, and this was all far from random.

I feel warmly ensconced in the womb of nostalgia, gently cradled on Norman Reedus's chest.

Pffffffff

Yep, more of what we already surmised and appreciated, how Swifer and Cliper were giving us some much needed perspective... the commentary post even has little traditional-Homestuck sprites for ‘em.

And... that’s it for the commentary so far!  Again, I enjoyed all that more than I expected.  $20 doesn’t sting for me as much as it does for others in general, but it stung a lot less after I was through reading all that honestly somewhat-entertaining stuff confirming a lot of the insights I’d thought the plot was having.

I’ll probably wait to check for further commentary posts until like... after bonus updates come out, in the future, and then just blog about whatever I’m not caught up on.  Sound fair?  I’m going to blog as often as a real or bonus upd8 comes out, but I’m not going to pop in more often than that for my own sanity’s sake.  Have a good MLK weekend, y’all.  :)

[him-e]

Ships and “Endgame” in the ST

I’m curious about are how the narrative treats Rey and Kylo’s interactions in TLJ and how Rey interacts with Finn: I just wanted to hear a counter-argument on why F/innRey wouldn’t be endgame and/or Rey/Kylo would be endgame. They’re not connected necessarily: both can’t be endgame at the same time because I don’t expect Lucasfilm to depict a poly relationship any time soon, but arguing against Reylo being endgame doesn’t mean f/nnrey must be canon or vice versa. Please don’t think I’m writing this in bad faith, I’m genuinely curious about these points and I don’t mean to disrespect anyone who ships Reylo. 

Rey and Finn’s interactions in TFA and TLJ are framed very positively. The lines of dialogue between them like “Cute boyfriend?” and “You looked at me like no one ever had,” definitely point to romantic interest to me: I don’t see why the creators would include lines like that without indicating some romantic interest was there. Finn is the first person to ever “come back” for Rey, and their experiences with each other are “firsts” that are incredibly important. They care deeply about each other.

In TLJ, they are separated for the majority of it, but you could say that separation is always part of the romantic arc, and Rey is constantly thinking about him, while Finn is constantly thinking about her. Before she heads off to save Kylo, she gives Chewie an important message to Finn. (Which could have been something like “I love you” but I don’t want to assume.) When they see each other and embrace at the end of the movie, it’s the first time Rey looks *happy* in TLJ. She looks so happy when they hug, and there’s a long hold both on their embrace and at Rey’s heartbroken expression as Finn tucks  in Rose.

In contrast, the Rey and Kylo scenes could be interpreted as Rey learning her lesson about how important Kylo is to saving the galaxy: not a “Don’t Trust Your Sexuality” lesson, which I do find a misogynistic angle to take on this particular issue, but a lesson about thinking she needs Ben Solo to save the galaxy, a lesson that she doesn’t need him. Additionally, although most of their Force bonds are weighed with attraction, she never seems to be very happy with him, and at the end, he says deeply cruel things to her (The Throne Room scene) and attempts to have her killed on Crait. 

The last Force bond tells me Rey is not budging, and, per the novelization, has no compassion for him: it would be a long, long road to have her forgive him at all, let alone build some sort of romantic dynamic even though they will probably be enemies for a significant portion of IX. (Noting here that yes, they were enemies in TLJ too, but IX can’t spend a large portion of its running time devoted to intimate conversations like TLJ did: it’s the final act of this Trilogy and the Skywalker Saga, things need to start wrapping up.)

I do think that Kylo Ren’s redemption is somewhat necessary to keep the story of the Skywalker family from seeming like a complete tragedy: it would be a pessimistic ending, in my view, if the takeaway from the ST was “Sometimes, your loved one can’t be saved, and so other people must rise to the occasion,” for the Skywalker family. But, even if I think redemption is incoming, I’m still not convinced that Kylo could be with Rey. There’s audience reaction to consider (cue the cries of people asking just how this villain is worthy of the hero), but also the narrative beforehand: although Rey seemed willing to forgive Kylo completely for a part of TLJ, the audience still remembers scenes like the interrogation (a violation of Rey and something that robs her of agency, even though she does defeat Kylo), the Snow Fight, the Throne Room, and Crait. They did tone down some of his actions in the interrogation, like touching her, supposedly, but I still feel like Kylo is an unambiguous villain in those scenes, his treatment of Rey is awful (and this is just about his behavior, not whether Rey fights him off) and then, after showing us some of his humanity in TLJ, he snaps back to being a villain, and hurting Rey, intentional or not.

In TFA, Kylo is very much an aggressor/pursuer of Rey and her triumph is in fighting him off; in TLJ, he seems like more of a tempter figure, and Rey’s triumph is not giving into his offer and finding value in herself. She doesn’t ever seem happy with him, and the narrative never shows us a scene of complete fulfillment when she’s with Kylo: he never gives her anything she didn’t have, where Finn does in TFA by going back for her. (The scene where they touch hands, especially considering the music and the fact that Luke Skywalker is the one walking in on them, could also be read as an ominous one where Rey is getting too close to the dark.)

I don’t deny that Reylo was extremely “shippy” in TLJ. But Rian Johnson, in the same interview when he said that Kylo’s perspective in the throne room was a “naked, emotional appeal” also said: “It was important to me that it wasn’t a chess game, it wasn’t just a manipulation. It’s unhealthy, and there’s much that is awful about the way that he is manipulative. From his point of view, it’s a very naked, open, emotional appeal.” So he does acknowledge that Kylo is being unhealthy and manipulative, and that’s the writer’s intent. Rey’s arc in TLJ is very much fit to a naive hero’s arc, where she trusts the wrong person and sees the error of her ways. It doesn’t mean that Kylo is irredeemable and can never be trusted again, but TLJ also doesn’t mean that Kylo and Rey should be together, and includes quite a few scenes that could be read as red flags on his end, signals to the audience that this is a bad man who doesn’t have Rey’s best interests at heart.

And then there’s the next film, which is more opinion/conjecture on my part, but I don’t think JJ Abrams is the kind of storyteller who’s interested in depicting a big epic romance as the finale of the Skywalker Trilogy, or interested in involving Rey in the Skywalker Redemption question. Han and Leia care about Ben in TFA, Rey only views him as an enemy; and when she does try redeeming him in TLJ, the answer to her attempt is a solid “No.” JJ is a Better Trevorrow to me, in some ways, where he’s good at spectacle and big, bombastic movies, and although he isn’t openly misogynistic, his movies do have some sexist pitfalls. The “Reylo” arc is on a knife’s edge as it is, and already perceived as abusive and glorifying of a villain who hurts the heroine by many people: how would he be able to execute it in such a way that the audience wouldn’t be outraged at the injustice of Kylo Ren not only getting redeemed, but “getting the girl” so to speak? (I totally think the idea of Rey as a prize is repulsive, but unfortunately the majority of people do still perceive heroines or love interests who are female this way.)

Rey not needing Kylo, and being able to ascend to heroism without him, was the end point of TLJ, and I think it would undermine that ending if in IX she did turn out to need him after all and they had to work together or she had to forgive him. The movies so far have explicitly showed that while they’re attracted to each other, he’s a toxic person who isn’t good for her. And if it is going to be romantic going forward, why would it have an “endgame” type ending? And then there’s the option of Rey being alone romantically, but still surrounded by friends, allies, and people who care about her.

And on a separate note, I just feel like there are far too many “romance” cues for F/innRey for that to not have been planned from the beginning. In TFA, those “boyfriend” lines weren’t essential, they could have been taken out without affecting the friendly-rapport feeling in their relationship. In TLJ, they didn’t have to juxtapose Rey being in tears facing Kylo to happily embracing Finn upon being reunited with him. And while there is the factor of Rose kissing Finn, they never entered into a deliberate romantic relationship or showed that the feelings were mutual: I feel like FinnRose isn’t essential to the next movie if they dismissed it, since so much of Finn and Rose’s arc could be read as them being friends or compatriots. There’s really no cues of romance until she kisses him.

I’m sorry this is much longer than I anticipated, but these are the things that have been nagging me for the past few months. I did really enjoy TLJ, and I do like Reylo and apologize if my comments came off like I was trashing the ship for no reason, but this is my honest reading of the text. I have a lot of respect for your meta and wanted to bring up these points: if you don’t want to respond to this, I’m sorry for depicting a negative opinion and wasting your time.

Don’t worry, I don’t think you wrote this in bad faith! That’s one hell of an essay, and I want to thank you for taking the time to write it and submit it to my blog. The two main arguments you’re making are a) that reylo is real but is depicted negatively and so it’s unlikely to be endgame, and b) that f/nnrey can still happen and be endgame because the romantic hints dropped in TFA must go somewhere and it makes Rey happy (forgive me for the simplification). I’ll try to address some key points.

The movies so far have explicitly showed that while they’re attracted to each other, he’s a toxic person who isn’t good for her

I don’t think that’s what the movies showed. He’s not a toxic person to Rey (Daisy Ridley has gone on record saying Kylo “nurtured” Rey in a way that even Luke couldn’t do)—he’s someone whose political affiliation and morals and ideologies can’t be reconciled with Rey’s, and THAT’S why Rey dumps him. Because he doesn’t stop firing on the Resistance fleet and instead asks her to essentially become a villainess at his side, because he’s still hellbent on being the leader of a despotic military organization, that’s why the narrative separated them at the end of TLJ, not because he’s “toxic” or “abusive”.

even if I think redemption is incoming, I’m still not convinced that Kylo could be with Rey. There’s audience reaction to consider (cue the cries of people asking just how this villain is worthy of the hero), but also the narrative beforehand: although Rey seemed willing to forgive Kylo completely for a part of TLJ, the audience still remembers scenes like the interrogation (a violation of Rey and something that robs her of agency, even though she does defeat Kylo), the Snow Fight, the Throne Room, and Crait. They did tone down some of his actions in the interrogation, like touching her, supposedly, but I still feel like Kylo is an unambiguous villain in those scenes, his treatment of Rey is awful (and this is just about his behavior, not whether Rey fights him off) and then, after showing us some of his humanity in TLJ, he snaps back to being a villain, and hurting Rey, intentional or not. 

So it actually all boils down to the audience’s reaction, doesn’t it? He’s too much of a villain so let’s not make reylo happen or the audience won’t accept it. But what the narrative is depicting—intentionally—is a hero/villain romance. The villain being a villain and yes, doing villain things including trying to hurt the hero (and viceversa, the hero doing hero things and trying to stop, violently, the villain) is exactly what defines this sort of pairings. Part of the audience will love it, part won’t, but a narrative that is afraid of pissing off a part of the audience isn’t a strong narrative.

I’m also not sure what would be the point of redeeming Kylo but still having him portrayed as a toxic individual whom the heroine should stay the fuck away from. Does this sound like an epic closure to a trilogy of trilogies whose thematic pillars have always been hope and redemption? To me it just sounds like a moralistic tale trying to half assedly appeal to tumblr discourse.

The “Reylo” arc is on a knife’s edge as it is, and already perceived as abusive and glorifying of a villain who hurts the heroine by many people: how would he be able to execute it in such a way that the audience wouldn’t be outraged at the injustice of Kylo Ren not only getting redeemed, but “getting the girl” so to speak? (I totally think the idea of Rey as a prize is repulsive, but unfortunately the majority of people do still perceive heroines or love interests who are female this way.)

You’re talking as if the audience is a hivemind and universally agrees with the intra-fandom, white-feminist, tumblr-specific “Reylo is abusive” wank. But the majority of the audience is actually moderately fine with Reylo, and most of them will be overwhelmingly okay with it if IX has something that tops the praetorian guard fight in terms of iconic jedi/sith marriage alliance. A good 80% of the general target audience for SW is people who don’t engage with fandom the way we do, they couldn’t care less about reylo or f/nnrey or any other ships for that matter, they just want to see a good story and be entertained for three hours and pew pew space battles. The people who will be “outraged” if Kylo “gets the girl” are only a tiny niche if you consider the star wars audience as a whole.

Also, it isn’t Kylo getting the girl. It’s Rey getting the boy. TLJ made sure to put her perspective front and center—it’s she who pursues Kylo, she who catches him in a state of undress, she who gets the eye candy, she who ruminates on his backstory while also delving deep into her own. It’s her point of view, her feelings, her attraction, her choices, while Kylo remains relatively passive for most of the time, waiting for her (to show up in a force connection, to come to the Supremacy, to take his hand). 

The scene where they touch hands, especially considering the music and the fact that Luke Skywalker is the one walking in on them, could also be read as an ominous one where Rey is getting too close to the dark

oh, no. No, no, no. :)) The Force theme plays during the hand touch. (the /ominous/ music you hear before is actually some notes from Kylo’s theme, iirc). And the point of Luke’s arc in TLJ was that he was wrong about Ben, wrong about trying to murder him, and especially wrong about going into exile for years, and after this scene he finally decides to face his demons. He’s not the wise mentor whose perspective can be trusted. His perspective is as flawed as everyone else’s. And he is actually the one who is depicted in an ominous way in that scene (barging in, hand raised to destroy the hut in a gesture that reminds intentionally of what Ben did the night he destroyed the jedi academy).

And at no point Rey got too close to the dark. She only got close to Kylo. She was never tempted by power, or knowledge, or violence, or any of the traditional pitfalls of the dark side. Her only instinct was to help, and save someone from himself. If compassion and love are a path to the dark side, then we should rewrite the Sith code, lol. No, Luke was wrong, he learned his lesson, and by the end of the movie he went to face Kylo Ren fully knowing that he wouldn’t be the one who’d turn the monster back into a man this time, but that someone else could.

Rey not needing Kylo, and being able to ascend to heroism without him, was the end point of TLJ, and I think it would undermine that ending if in IX she did turn out to need him after all and they had to work together or she had to forgive him.

It’s not about “needing”, or “having to”. It’s about wanting. Rey not needing Kylo (and likewise Kylo not needing Rey) is something I’m thankful TLJ established, because it actually lays the basis for the healthiest kind of relationship, the one where you love someone without depending (materially or emotionally) on them. This puts all the emphasis on personal choice, rather than necessity, and I think fits extremely well with the main themes of this trilogy. Rey realizing that she doesn’t need Kylo was beautiful and I’m sure the narrative won’t backtrack on it, but I still think she’s going to be with him in the end, not because she “has to”, or “can’t live without him”, but because she wants to.

And I think this doesn’t undermine Rey’s agency at all, on the contrary, it elevates it.

Re: the proposal speech being manipulative but also genuine according to Rian, please refer to this and this. 

Re: Rey being “unhappy” with him, uhm. I see this argument tossed around all the time and it annoys me big time. Right, she was SO unhappy that she ditched Luke to run to Kylo and try to save him as soon as she got a Force flashforward of his being at her side. What an ugly vision she must have seen, right? Careful not to confuse “raw emotions for an enemy whose pain resonates deeply with mine, as I’m also fighting a war” with “unhappiness”. Rey wasn’t unhappy in TLJ anymore than she was in TFA—she just stopped pretending to be fine, as she met someone who made her dig under the surface of her plucky heroine facade and confront her own demons and feelings of abandonment, and who brought his own demons and feelings of abandonment to the table, which Rey felt intensely for.

Happiness, conversely, isn’t always a sign and guarantee of romantic love, and the idea that love always makes you feel happy is generalizing and shallow, especially when it’s more about looking happy than anything. “She looks so happy when they hug”. Uh. So? I have a best friend who is truly the only person in the world who can put a smile on my face when I’m feeling down and who I can be completely myself with, and I would even say she’s the MOST important person in my world aside from my own family, and YET, I’m not in love with her. Nor should I try to be in order to stop suffering or be generically “happy”. Friendship is friendship, and love is love: both are equally important but they’re not the same, and they fulfill different needs. (mind, this is not me dissing friends-to-lovers tropes, which I like a lot, or saying that friendship can never evolve into romantic love, just that the kind of comfort and happiness true friendship offers isn’t necessarily the best basis for a romance, especially when there aren’t any obvious signs of romantic/sexual attraction.)

Speaking of which, and moving to the pro-f/rey part of your submission… I think most of the confusion re: f/nnrey being “obviously” romantic in TFA comes from the assumption that an “endgame” relationship needs to be portrayed as unambiguously positive since the start. Yes, Finn and Rey’s interactions in TFA were overwhelmingly positive—almost too positive, which in mainstream fiction doesn’t bode well for romance. Central romances, especially of the “epic” kind, are generally bumpy (or downright antagonistic) at first. And by “at first” I don’t mean the first five minutes of interactions, as in f/nnrey’s case: I mean at least the first act of the story. Translated into the context of a movie trilogy—it amounts to the first movie, give or take.

I just feel like there are far too many “romance” cues for F/innRey for that to not have been planned from the beginning. In TFA, those “boyfriend” lines weren’t essential, they could have been taken out without affecting the friendly-rapport feeling in their relationship. In TLJ, they didn’t have to juxtapose Rey being in tears facing Kylo to happily embracing Finn upon being reunited with him. And while there is the factor of Rose kissing Finn, they never entered into a deliberate romantic relationship or showed that the feelings were mutual: I feel like FinnRose isn’t essential to the next movie if they dismissed it, since so much of Finn and Rose’s arc could be read as them being friends or compatriots. There’s really no cues of romance until she kisses him.

funny how you’re saying that f/nnrey had “too many” romance cues not to have been planned from the get go in the same breath as you also argue that finnrose isn’t irrevocably romantic and could be easily dismissed in IX. Finn and Rose have a complete romantic arc in TLJ. Complete with a kiss. Whereas Finn and Rey only have a “boyfriend” line (which could be very well foreshadowing of Rey getting a “boyfriend” in TLJ, which she did, lol) and everything else is about deeply caring for each other and being each other’s first real friend (she looked at him like no one ever had, he came back for her when nobody would). Friendship tropes, I’ll concede, can sometimes be confused with romantic tropes, but why do the tropes used in TFA f/nnrey speak of romance more clearly than what Finn and Rose had in TLJ?

My opinion: they don’t. And if it seems to you like they do, it’s probably because you want them to see that way. Which is okay, as long as you’re aware of your bias. What really tips the scale from “could be romantic” to “oh no it’s definitely romantic” is the usage of textual, unequivocal romantic tropes and situations like Rose kissing Finn on the lips against a beautiful beaming ray of light or, well, Rey accidentally walking on a half naked Kylo and being very confused. 

Those are facts, not hints.

And this isn’t Game of Thrones with its three hundred parallel storylines and red herrings or a 14 seasons-long CW teen drama, it’s a three-movie space opera that needs to be as closely knit and narratively solid as possible, it can’t afford doing a back and forth between romantic storylines, which at this point (following your logic) would be THREE, and two of them should be dismissed or ended badly in the last movie for the third to be endgame.

The main couples of this trilogy as established by TLJ are Finnrose and Reylo. F/nnrey having any sort of romantic development at this point would only confuse the audience and unnecessarily complicate the narrative, which is already complex enough as it is. 

In TLJ, [Finn and Rey] are separated for the majority of it, but you could say that separation is always part of the romantic arc

Not for the entire second act of a trilogy, the one where (statistically in the SW movies) the pairing makes the leap from platonic (or antagonistic) to romantic. 

and Rey is constantly thinking about him, while Finn is constantly thinking about her. 

…were they? I mean, they probably were and it’s fine to headcanon it that way, but we weren’t actually shown any of it on screen (it was just handwaved at, with Rey trying to make contact with Finn, and Finn trying to leave to find Rey in the beginning) and this is important, storywise. It means that their dynamic is already established; the narrative trusts the audience to remember that they’re friends, they care about each other, they have an unbreakable sibling-like bond à la Luke and Leia, and there’s no need to remind us that they care about each other or introduce new developments in their relationship, which was fully formed by the end of TFA already.

Before she heads off to save Kylo, she gives Chewie an important message to Finn. (Which could have been something like “I love you” but I don’t want to assume.)

Again, it’s fine if you want to headcanon it that way, but one half of the pairing having the revelation that she loves the other offscreen (and no payoff for that at the end of the movie) is a really bizarre way to establish an endgame romantic pairing, if you ask me.

Re: the residual “romantic” cues in finn/rey—I think, if there were any (which in itself is debatable, but still), it’s probably because the finnreylo dynamic was originally conceived (by JJ) as some sort of lowkey love triangle, and then scrapped (still by JJ) in favor of a completely platonic bond on the f/nnrey side. Thankfully, Rian threw any possibility of a wacky love triangle out of the window by introducing Rose and letting Finn have his OWN romantic storyline rather than being reduced to a third wheel or cannon fodder to some stupid romantic conflict for reylo (which has no shortage of conflict on its own anyway, lol).

You also make it sound it deceptively easy to dismiss Finnrose as some sort of failed experiment or brief but ultimately irrelevant digression in the path that leads to the f/rey romance. It’s not. Rose is an important character, whose feelings matter, and she’s EXPLICITLY, textually in love with Finn. There’s no way to work around this fact or pretend it didn’t happen or argue that they’ll magically turn into platonic coworkers or *compatriots* (?). Finn’s feelings might be less clear but that’s why we still have a whole movie to go. But they already kissed, which as I said is far more definitive storywise than a line about a cute boyfriend or a kiss on the forehead.

Finally,

it would be a long, long road to have [Rey] forgive [Kylo] at all, let alone build some sort of romantic dynamic even though they will probably be enemies for a significant portion of IX. 

It wouldn’t be a long, long road to have her forgive him, it would be a very short and simple road, because TLJ already did the bulk of the work in this sense, and made Rey deeply care for Kylo and, even more importantly, understand where his rage and hurt come from. The romantic dynamic is already established, it only needs to come to fruition, which is incredibly easy to make it happen since (to your admission too) they’re doing Bendeption anyway. To be frank, Kylo only needs to choose to ditch the First Order and maybe make ONE selfless act to redeem himself, even in Rey’s eyes, especially in Rey’s eyes. Nothing he did on Crait was worse than what he did on Starkiller (his body count is even shorter!), and it took Rey approximately 5 days to believe in his inherent goodness. I don’t think she’s changed her mind on that. I think she knows he isn’t in the right place to change his views yet, and is fully ready to fight him if need come, but she also doesn’t hate him, as the novelization also confirms (whereas, post tfa, she thought she did).

yes, they were enemies in TLJ too, but IX can’t spend a large portion of its running time devoted to intimate conversations like TLJ did: it’s the final act of this Trilogy and the Skywalker Saga, things need to start wrapping up.

Actually, it can. TLJ did it and managed to have TWO other full fledged storylines (including another romantic arc) running parallel to the reylo one, an identity/redemption arc for Luke AND an epic climatic battle in the end. 2 hours and 45 minutes are a LONG time to develop a dynamic to its fulfillment. And what other loose ends or main conflicts does this trilogy have to resolve yet, other than Ben’s relationship with Rey (and reconciliation with Leia, hopefully)? The only reason you think IX can’t spend time on reylo is because you don’t see it as a crucial part of this trilogy. But it is.

TL;DR; in my opinion f/rey doesn’t have enough set up to be the endgame romance (not even considering TFA alone), and with Rose’s introduction they kind of sealed the deal. Having Finn and Rey be involved in romantic threads with two other main characters only to undo those threads and put them together in the end actually requires more work (narrative-wise) than letting their respective romantic storylines evolve to their natural conclusion in IX. Pre-TLJ I said that both f/rey and reylo can be “canon”, and both are, the former as a friendship (the most important one in this trilogy) and the latter as a romance. I just don’t think they’ll be both romantic in the end. There’s potential in that to explore in fanfiction (just like there was potential in, say, Luke/Leia or Obi Wan/Padmé or even O/bikin), but it’s an extremely unlikely (and messy) direction to go for the canon story.

Hope this clarifies my opinion on the issues you raised, and that I didn’t sound too dismissive of your points. If so I apologize in advance.

[dascarecrow]

The Ace Files- Cartoon Network Invaded

A radio is turned on and begins tuning before a broadcast begins. “This just in. An incredible tale as told by numerous witnesses. This past week several citizens of our fair city have reported what can only be called UFOs in the skies. Photo and video of these supposed sightings have proven inconclusive but we are left asking the perennial question. Are we alone in the universe?” 

S clicked off the radio, shaking his head. “I tell you things never change. One lone nutjob sees what they think is a UFO and everyone thinks it’s War of the Worlds. Been that way since the turn of the century. Heck I remember a time years ago when all the folks in CN City thought that there strange visitors from other worlds lurking around. Boy was that a silly month to be certain. 

“Buongiorno my adoring audience and welcome to another installment of the ACE Files. Today I thought we would cover one of the more unique crossover endeavors that was done by Cartoon Network.” In  Spring of 2007 Cartoon Network began airing some of very unusual bumpers, centering around aliens attempting to take over the Cartoon Network studios. Said aliens had original character models and their bumpers had that iconic Cartoon Network spin on them, hinting that these invaders had some kind of evil plan they were working towards but may not be the brightest. This was all meant to build up to a special 5 part event that would air in May. One where Cartoon Network would be invaded.  Across five different Cartoon Network shows we would see aliens attempting to achieve their abominable ambitions. Or at least that was the impression that the marketing was going for. 

Cartoon Network marketed the heck out of this event by the way. They had the bumpers airing, they had something set up on their website for it, they created special promo art for the shows involved, you get the idea. The promotion hinted that we would be seeing something like an old b-movie, sci-fi horror at minimum with maybe a touch of thriller but the actual episode were largely the same as the always were when they aired with just a hint of the elements that the marketing promised. I don’t know if that was deliberate or if there was a change in direction during production but the promos hinted that this was always the plan. 

And speaking of plans let’s go into why Cartoon Network was even doing this. From what I’ve found Kraft approached the network about sponsoring the event but pulled out at the last minute for unclear reasons, which is why I suspect there was some behind the scenes issues behind the production. Also the creators of the shows apparently weren’t that excited about the whole thing, which may have impacted things as well. It’s kind of sad to be honest, Cartoon Network was wrapped up in a deal where the sponsor got cold feet and the writers were stuck with something that was mostly a corporate mandate they weren’t too enthused about. Finding out that what was supposed to be this big exciting crossover event was essentially the network trying to get something out of a deal gone bad is just a bit disheartening. But CN took it like champs and tried their best to make something great. 

As for the actual event it was pretty fun and you could see that Cartoon Network put in a bit of effort to make it special. I’ll cover the actual episodes in other posts but I will go over the parts that tie the event together. You see Invaded was a cross through, a type of crossover where there’s a connecting element that appears in each title of the event but the actual titles themselves don’t interact with each other. Well until the last part for Invaded but we’ll cover that when we get there. 

To start with are the actual shows that are part of the event. These were Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends 

Ed, Edd n Eddy

My Gym Partner’s a Monkey 

Camp Lazlo 

and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy 

I can’t complain too much about the selection. Barring Grim Adventures the shows weren’t really the kind you would expect alien invasion stories for given their tones, so seeing how that would play out was honestly intriguing. There was also how the episodes were written in the context of being crossover episodes. In a bit of foresight the writers set the episodes up so they could be pure standalones for the series in reruns but it was still clear that there was an overarching story. And that brings us to how exactly this cross through was woven together. 

As already mentioned this event was based around aliens invading the shows that were part of the event and credit to the creators for how they implemented that. The designs of the aliens and their ship were uniform across each show, simply altered to fit with the art style of the episode they appeared in. There were some differences with how the aliens appeared within each part but I’ll cover those when we get there. One unifying aspect about the aliens was a fixation on cheese, owing to this initially being something Kraft meant to sponsor. Beyond that there isn’t much I can say about the aliens that wouldn’t be better covered in the episode reviews. 

There was also one more bit of connective tissue for the event. Each episode had a special opening rather than the typical one for the series. It was a UFO flying down over CN City and shooting down a tractor beam that would show snippets from the episode. It was very different and sold the idea that this was a special event where things would be a bit different. Of course these were replaced with title cards when the episodes would air in normal rotation but every so often you could see the original Invaded event openings for them. 

Now you’re probably expecting me to go into each episode of this event or give my opinion on how it went overall. And you would be right. Now it’s time for us to start covering what exactly happened in Cartoon Network Invaded, beginning with Chapter 1 which was... 

A ring tone started playing, which was the Wing Cap theme from Super Mario 64, cutting off S. “Scuse me a second everyone.” He answered his phone. “What is it? I’m busy.” Some chatter happened on the other end. “Get someone else it’s a day off.” There was more chatter. “I don’t care if the Milky Way just disappeared. Get someone else.” And more chatter again. “Ugh. Fine I’ll be right over. But don’t surprised if someone gets blasted.” S hung up the phone. “Sorry folks, looks like we have to cut it short today.” S walked off to deal with whatever emergency cropped up. “I swear these idiots are going to blow themselves up someday.” 

To Be Continued 

[elizadoolittlethings]

Mark Gatiss: ‘The League of Gentlemen was a premonition of Brexit’

After a turn on stage as George III, the co-founder of the League is returning to horror to recreate Dracula for TV. What he finds ‘frightening and debilitating’ now, though, is leaving the EU 

by Arifa Akbar

Mark Gatiss is recalling an early memory, rocking back and forth on the sofa as he talks. It is an “extraordinarily vivid” moment from when he lived opposite a psychiatric hospital in County Durham. The institution was central to his childhood, a “colony” in which his mother and father worked, where he went to swim, to trampoline, to see films. Except, on this occasion, he was left on one of the wards with his brother to wait for his parents. “I must have been around five. There was a boy rocking on a bed. As I remember it, he had an empty eye socket. He had his thumb in it and he was just rocking – like this.”

Gatiss takes his thumb to his eye and rocks some more. It is a baroque vision, creepy enough to make you squeal, and befitting for one of the creators of the stage show and TV series The League of Gentlemen. As Gatiss says: “You can’t get more northern gothic, can you?”

It is clear he enjoys playing up the northern gothic. His Twitter tagline reads: “Actor. Writer. Strangler.” In person, there is no hint of gloom. He is sweet and sunny, an optimist by his own admission. Still, an unprosperous northern childhood and those years of observing mental illness – and the world’s responses to it – continue to serve him at the age of 52. He is currently in Nottingham, in rehearsals to play the titular lead in Alan Bennett’s 1991 play, The Madness of George III, at the Nottingham Playhouse. The play – which was adapted for a 1994 film, The Madness of King George, starring Helen Mirren and Nigel Hawthorne – dramatises the monarch’s mental illness.

“It was very interesting [to grow up opposite the hospital]. I have a lot experience to draw on for this play. And it’s interesting to think about mental health in the 18th century … It’s a challenge to chart the king in his ‘normal’ state, as it were, and then what happens to him. You have to make sure there’s a journey into his condition, so you have somewhere to go.”

Brexit is like slitting your own throat and going to bed saying: ‘I’ll see how I am in the morning’

Since the TV version of the League – which followed the tormented outcasts and oddballs of the fictional town of Royston Vasey – landed in 1999 and earned Gatiss and his co-stars a legion of fans, he has helped to create some of the most popular shows on TV. These include the revived Doctor Who (as a writer and an actor) and Sherlock, a reimagining of Sherlock Holmes as a 21st-century detective, which he co-created with Steven Moffat and in which he stars as Holmes’s brother, Mycroft. In between, he has worked on films and written books and plays. His stint in Nottingham follows a nationwide tour ofthe League, an Oscar-tipped film (The Favourite) and The Dead Room, a yet-to-be-aired Christmas ghost story starring Simon Callow, which he wrote and directed. After The Madness of George III, he will team up with Moffat again for a BBC/Netflix adaptation of the vampire classic Dracula. “I do work hard and I think that’s a good thing,” he says. “Work hard, be kind, that’s my motto.”

Filming for Dracula will start next year, but Gatiss does not plan to act in it. He will not be drawn on who will be cast as the vampire, but says he and Moffat thought carefully before deciding to set the series in its original period, the 19th century: “We said when we started Sherlock that we briefly got custodianship of the keys to Baker Street and we felt: ‘It’s our go.’ So, we wanted to have ‘our go’ at Dracula and with that we wanted to do all the treats – a big, spooky castle and the rest of it.”

Sherlock was set in the modern day for the opposite reason: “We felt it had become so swamped with Victoriana that people had lost sight of what it was – which is essentially a flat-share story of two unlikely friends, one of whom solves crimes. That was the really exciting thing, to just go back to basics.” While the series has been a runaway success, there have been criticisms: one Guardian article lamented that his Sherlock was morphing into James Bond; it vexed Gatiss so much that he sent the Guardian a rejoinder in rhyme, outlining the differences between his hero and Ian Fleming’s.

There have been other charges of “unfaithfulness” in Gatiss’s adaptations, but he is adamant about his right to play with an original story. “I feel very strongly about not just drearily reproducing the book. You are duty-bound to think: ‘Here’s an idea, why don’t we flip this round,’ especially if people know it well. It doesn’t spoil the original. No one burns the manuscript … the Tardis would never have left the junkyard in the 1960s if it wasn’t about change.”

And what greater change than a female doctor? The new series is the first with which Gatiss has not been involved since Doctor Who relaunched in 2005. How does he feel about Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor? “First, it’s lovely that I’m enjoying watching it on a Sunday night and not knowing anything about it. I have even tried to avoid the trailer for the next time. And I have said for a very long time that there should be female Doctors. As soon as you watch it, you say: ‘Of course, why not?’ All you need, ever, is for the right person to be playing the part. Jodie is instantly likable, funny, delightfully odd.”

If that is the case, can we – should we – stop at Doctor Who or extend a gender-blind, colour-blind policy to all period dramas? It depends how literal we want to be, Gatiss says, but he balks at the prospect of a female Bond. “Doctor Who is an alien with two hearts who lives in a dimensionally transcendental phone box and can periodically change his or her appearance. James Bond is a man. There’s no way out of that. It becomes a very reductive argument. If you want to create a really kickass new heroine or hero, then do something else.”

If you were to create a female Bond, he adds, would you then follow Fleming’s blueprint of making her a sexist lothario? “What is it about James Bond you want to change? Is it just the sex or is it everything else? In which case, you’ve got a different character anyway.”

Gatiss was not long out of studying theatre arts at Bretton Hall College in West Yorkshire when he co-wrote the League with Jeremy Dyson, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, whom he met there. It has been a long, loyal partnership, even though they went their separate ways – and thrived – before returning after 13 years to take the show back on the road. “We never fell out, we just stopped doing it,” Gatiss says. “We had been doing it virtually day in, day out for 11 years. So, we decided to do other stuff. The extraordinary thing about the tour was that it felt like no time had passed, which is what great friendships are about.”

The League began as a stage sketch show in 1994, when standup was more dominant in comedy. Gatiss and the others were enlisted to fill a slot at a fringe festival. “We did it for five nights and it went down really well. I remember a friend of mine saying: ‘You should do something with this.’” They did – and won the Perrier award at the Edinburgh fringe in 1997. “We did what made us laugh. All the things we loved ranged from proper horror to the horror of embarrassment; Alan Bennett, Victoria Wood, Mike Leigh. It was very much about our northern upbringings, too – we were identifying our own experiences of the world of the north. It was real anger and despair and oddness.”

Bennett turned out to be a huge fan of the League. “It’s how I came to meet Alan and it was just astonishing to think that he liked The League of Gentlemen. We have always said what a major influence he was for us. I remember so well the first thing I saw of his was a play called Our Winnie [from 1982]. I only watched it because Winnie was my mother’s name. It’s a half-hour drama where Elizabeth Spriggs takes her mentally disabled daughter to the crematorium on a Sunday. I just remember looking at it and thinking: ‘How does he know all this?’ It was just like my life! The way people spoke, the colloquialisms and the amazing sense of oppressive Sunday tedium.”

Two decades on, Royston Vasey’s turned-in world seems to resemble Britain more than it did when it was conceived, I suggest – the local shop for local people, the suspicion of the outsider taken to its freakish, inbred, comic extremity. “Yes, I look at it and think: ‘It’s a bit like a premonition,’” he says. “The idea that: ‘There’s nothing for you here, go away.’ That’s why we pushed it a bit in the specials last year. We were never satirical, but we found it irresistible and deliberately got [the character] Edward to say: ‘It’s time we took back control.’”

The tour took Gatiss to 47 venues around Britain. Did he sense a change, post-Brexit? “Yes. Some places are rust-belt Britain. They’ve been abandoned. I thought constantly of Disraeli and ‘two nations’ [“Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy”]. It made me think that some people must look at the events in Westminster as if they’re taking place on the moon. That’s why, when they were finally given the chance, they kicked back. And that’s why we’re in this fucking mess.”

It is not just the rising intolerance of the “immigrant” outsider that he fears, but also the erosion of other liberal, humanist values. As a gay man – he is married to the actor Ian Hallard – he has never felt personally threatened in London, where he lives, “but you go out of London and it’s very different. You go to certain parts of the country and you think: ‘I would modify my behaviour here.’”

The regions around his birthplace were the heartland for leave voters, but Gatiss is proud to have grown up in the north and in a working-class household: his father was the chief engineer at the psychiatric hospital and his mother was a carer and secretary. “I think my background did me an awful lot of good. There’s a very good line from Doctor Who: ‘Never lose sight of your horizons.’ There’s nothing wrong with coming from one place and moving to another place, but it’s good to know that and honour it. And also to acknowledge its flaws – it doesn’t have to be perfect.”

Brexit upsets him immensely. He speaks of it in irate exclamations and bloody analogies: “Brexit, to me, is like slitting your own throat and going to bed saying: ‘I’ll see how I am in the morning.’ I’m a sickeningly optimistic person and that’s what worries me about how depressed I am about it all. The temptation is to totally disengage because it’s so frightening and debilitating, but if you do that they’ve won.”

The Madness of George III is at Nottingham Playhouse until 24 November

[itsbenedict]

so, i’ve been thinking about Bullet Proof, reworking the cast and switching up the murders and culprits so the adventure won’t spoil the game. i hit on a pretty good setup for one of the trials- and it involved lesbian characters dying. and, at first, i figured, well, it’s Danganronpa, the majority of the cast dies and everyone knows that going in, so it’s not a big deal. but in the wake of recent discourse around A/tomic B/londe, wherein the “it’s not a big deal” side is saying “seriously? love interests almost always die in this genre” and the other side is loudly proclaiming who cares, you’ve still done the thing... i am of course less confident that such an excuse would fly.

not to beat around the bush: the backlash against the “bury your gays” trope initially struck me as kinda bizarre. like, characters in media dying isn’t the same as real people dying- unlike in real life, death in fiction is a role for a character in a story, and you can hit rewind and they’re alive again.

but then of course i saw lots of posts with lists and infographics and statistics explaining that lesbians die way more than other characters, and that this revealed something or other about what writers secretly think of LGBT people. one particular statistic i saw said that- out of shows featuring lesbian/bi characters- 35% of them had one or more of those lesbian/bi characters die. that number stuck with me. it seemed like a lot!

since then, i’ve remembered an important insight: that lists and infographics and statistics that go viral on social media are sensationalized and misleading upwards of 90% of the time.

backing up, i notice that the culture of backlash against the trope would exist whether or not it was grounded in a real phenomenon. we’re living in a world where lots of people are powerless, and want to believe that they’re somehow powerful, and so reframe the act of consuming media and tweeting about it as fighting for justice. they see their favorite characters die on TV, get sad or angry about it, feel like it shouldn’t have happened, and construct elaborate systems of media analysis to explain why their feelings are objectively correct. the creators of entertainment products are the real power behind the system, responsible for every bad thing that happens by using their godlike power to shape the culture. if a screenwriter makes a decision you don’t like, it’s not just something that bugs you in a movie- it’s an act of violence that is killing people. regardless of whether too many gay characters were dying, there would be some reason why killing off gay characters would be a morally blameworthy offense.

i realize how that whole last paragraph comes off. like, pretty badly. sounds like some real craven anti-sjw shit. i’m not blind to what website this post is going up on.

but that paragraph wasn’t an argument for why the Bury Your Gays trope is not a real thing. it has nothing to do with that question. 

in fact, it’s obviously been a real thing for a while- until pretty recently, networks wouldn’t allow gays on TV at all, unless they were being killed off as some kind of moral lesson. that was the world we were living in. and it didn’t end overnight! there was no point where it was suddenly decided that gays could be on TV, and then all representation issues were fixed. it’s not some lie made up by euuuuh social justice warriors euuungh to stroke their heroic egos or whatever.

the question that paragraph is getting at is: how do we tell if we’ve won?

there’s clearly some point at which we’ve reached parity. where LGBT characters are at least as common in media as LGBT people are in reality- where they’re not dying any more often than non-LGBT characters. it’s not an endless unwinnable fight to correct for unconscious bigotry. there exists a point at which the campaigning has succeeded and that specific issue is, for the moment, solved.

but when we reach that point, there isn’t a chance in hell that anyone will notice. people are too invested in fighting the good fight! people score brownie points, social capital, by pointing out how problematic media is. it’s practically impossible to lose social capital by doing this incorrectly- when was the last time you saw someone in social justice circles make some shit up, say “this thing is bad for a new reason i just noticed” and then be roundly dismissed by other social justice people saying “no, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill”? that doesn’t happen. saying “no, things are fine, actually” is a great way to paint a target on your back- whereas if you make up some totally bullshit new outrage, the worst that happens is that after some long and bitter discourse, level heads conclude “this bullshit new outrage is definitely a serious concern we should watch for, but it shouldn’t prevent you from supporting this specific show because it does other things right.” 

the incentives line up to make it impossible to ever collectively notice that a problem has been solved. consequently, viral infographics will always claim that the injustice is still at large. when something behaves the same way no matter what’s actually true, it fails to function as evidence for discerning what the truth is.

all that junk said, it still seems intuitively pretty likely that we’re not totally past the issue in this specific case. quite probably, lesbians are still being killed off at a rate suspiciously higher than that of other types of characters. 

what i want to know- and what i actually want to know, as opposed to what i want to darkly hint at an answer to- is how we measure to what degree this is still a problem, and whether socially-conscious people need to be deliberately avoiding killing off gay characters no matter how important it is to the story, in order to balance the scales.

like, let’s take that statistic i heard earlier (or we could just make one up for the example, but that’s basically the same thing as recalling a statistic from a viral tumblr post i remember reading a while back.) let’s say 35% of lesbians on TV get killed off.

do 35% of non-lesbians on TV also get killed off?

do 35% of non-lesbians on shows featuring lesbians also get killed off?

how does this break down by genre? are some genres innocent where others are Dead Gays Georg?

are shows featuring lesbians more likely to be the kind of shows that kill characters off, since both killing characters and having lesbians are Bold Edgy Moves in today’s climate for some asinine reason? if this effect exists, how much of the difference does it account for?

how do we get these numbers? what’s our sample, how is it decided on? are we just counting TV shows? what about books? movies? video games with multiple endings where the deaths only happen in some of them? who are we paying to analyze all these works?

there are enough questions here to do a background study for a meaty thesis in Media Studies or whatever. in fact, probably someone’s already conducted such a study. probably a lot of people have conducted such studies. i’m not sure if enough people have conducted such studies to overcome the whole “most social science experimenters think the word “methodology” means that thing Walter White got his degree in” effect, though. a good chunk of those studies admit up front that they were deliberately constructed to prove their hypothesis, which is not how you science.

but maybe there is something good on the subject! if anyone knows any decent resources, i would really like to know one way or the other, so i can stop stressing over whether to scrap my really good plot.

[iesorno]

Martin Simpson – SKRAWL 1 cover

SKRAWL can be found on Kickstarter

  Anyone that’s followed zinelove or iesorno on any kind of social media knows I’m partial to a few creators including Phil Elliott and Nick Prolix who have both featured on the site and who I might have banged on about a bit…

When I saw Russel Mark Olson dropping hints about a magazine that would feature both, as well as his own work I was immediately interested, even more so when I saw the names of the others involved, many of them creators I was checking out on social media already. Then they blew through their Kickstarter goal on day one and added in Lucy Sullivan and Mark Stafford whilst also putting out a rallying cry dropping the names of some mighty UK anthologies that I love.

So, I thought I’d followed up with some questions to dig into it and flesh out their plans and ethos. You can see more details about the anthology and contributors at the end of the interview!

  Interview!!

ZL – You mentioned that the SKRAWLLORDZ formed after meeting up and chatting at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival and I was wandering what it was at that meeting that galvanised you as a group to get together and put out SKRAWL?

RMO – Away from the con, we were sharing an Airbnb. While individually, most of us knew each other, none of us knew everyone. But we all knew of each other’s work. I took my laptop and a microphone along in the hopes that at some point during the weekend-long convention we’d get a chance to all sit down together and talk comics. The Friday night before the con we recorded over an hour’s worth of discussion on topics ranging from individual process to the ins-and-outs of printing. From that conversation, and many more over the weekend, we bonded and formed the SKRAWLLORDZ. For the particulars, you’ll have to ask the group’s chronicler, Pete Taylor. We kept in touch and over the coming months the idea for a joint publication developed. Looking back, it was a pretty natural progression. Put a bunch of comic makers together in a room full of chimps on typewriters and eventually the chimps type out a note to the comic makers reading “Make a damned comic together, morons!”.

Escape Issue 5 Phil Elliott cover

Revolver cover by Shaky Kane

Pssst!

ZL – You’ve mentioned Escape, Revolver and Pssst! as inspirations, what is it you see in these that’s common to what you hope to achieve with SKRAWL?

RMO – Firstly, the magazine format allowed these great publications to stay nimble, agile. To bring in topical work that could address issues quickly and not get bogged down in exposition. The format allows for comics, journalism, prose, and the kitchen sink to sit side-by-side without being a jarring read. These magazines could capture a moment in comics and culture so quickly and effectively. We’d really like to be able to bottle that lightning.

Secondly, we loved the freedom to think about short form and long form comics. That’s the beauty of anthology mags. Ongoing stories and one-offs. If say, Nick Prolix hit on an idea that we wanted to run with, he could produce 5-8 pages every issue of a single thought or storyline while still being able to focus on his personal body of work. If say, he decided that he wanted to change tack for one issue, the melting pot magazine allows that. If he wanted to run with a political space thriller and dropped it into an issue of Slang Pictorial and had to elbow out the residents of Bouveray Town, readers might be a bit confused. The mag allows for that freedom of experimentation and for quick directional changes.

Tertiarily, collaboration. In future, we plan on doing much more of it. We’re all cartoonists, meaning we write and draw, and can letter, colour, do product design, the whole kit-and-kaboodle. We’re all confident with each other to send scripts around, share inking work, do colours here, or letter there. Many hands make light work.

Fourth, the opportunity to invite some incredible talent to add to the mags. To give both industry stalwarts and up-and-comers a chance to explore, or maybe dust-off stuff that’s been sitting around for years which has yet been able to find a home. At the moment, everyone is UK-based. But it’d be great to run with the international ethos of LICAF and bring Europeans, South Americans–hell, the world— to SKRAWL. Escape did that brilliantly. Something Pete said recently has really stuck with me. “I’m a fan of good comics. If it’s a good comic, we want it in SKRAWL.”

Lastly, they all had a bit of an edge. Hard to define, harder to capture. I suppose it boils down to risk. Risk in many forms. I think we’re all pretty comfortable with risk. Pssst!, Escape and Revolver were definitely happy taking risks.

Gustaffo Vargas – The Oak Tree from SKRAWL

ZL – As you’ve already blown through your first target and will definitely be putting out your first issue, what are your plans, if any, for the future?

RMO – The short answer: there will be more SKRAWL. The longer answer is a bit inchoate. We’re ironing out the details at the moment, but the things that we’re sure of, is that we have loved putting this together and want to do more. More contributors, more collaboration, wider reach. What we’re not sure of is output. Ideally, we’ll put out two a year. That might mean making the individual issues leaner, maybe 3 SKRAWLLORDZ per issue + guests, or the SKRAWLZ will do more collaborative pieces while guests can show off what they do best, or a combination of these things. We’re all involved in other projects, so we have to cut our cloth to measure, but we’re staying forward thinking. That’s not necessarily a hinderance. Ultimately, SKRAWL, as Pete said above, is about good comics. It wouldn’t surprise me if it naturally evolves. It probably will several times. But at its heart, we’ll do our best to take risks, explore, collaborate, and lift other voices.

  ZL – I’m always banging on about money, so I have to ask whether any of you will be making anything from this anthology and whether your future plans include paying contributors or using additional money to widen distribution or anything else you may have thought of?

RMO – Possibly not the soundest business model, but almost all of the money will be going to pay our guests and cover print costs. Anything that’s left over we’ll be using towards the magazine. That may mean figuring out distribution channels (we’d love for SKRAWL to act as an ambassador for the UK scene (even though we do plan on widening our net and bringing in international voices), so possibly translated editions), convention representation, promotional materials, marketing, or plugging back into guest rates for the next one. Ideally, we’d get to a place of self-sustainability. But print markets are increasingly tumultuous, new and established magazines bite the dust daily.  We might move towards a subscription model if we can get a few issues out on a trackable schedule, but these are all questions that we’ll be deliberating on once the first issue is in circulation. It’s exciting, wild stuff. Possibly a little mad. But no one stays in comics for the money.

Russell Mark Olson – Goldhorn from SKRAWL

ZL – Last question, I promise, what do you hope Skrawl will bring to the current marketplace for comics and the history of comics?

RMO – Maybe it’s just because we’re in the shadow of Covid-19, but this “feels” like one of those Moments in Comics. Distribution has been partially/temporarily disrupted. Books have been canned, pushed back, mothballed. Artists and writers are roaming the prairies, tasting the dust, listening to the ground for the tell-tale signs of buffalo, dipping their tin pans in streams new. Retailers have scrambled onto their rooftops, their eyes scanning the horizon for the arrival of the airlift helicopters. When we started planning SKRAWL, Covid had yet to hit the news, but by coincidence, we feel we’ve tapped into something, a moment, which is bigger than your average occurrences. How SKRAWL fits into that moment, we’ll have to wait and see. But there have been anthology periodicals which have managed to be more than just a genre vehicle, more than just a single-topical-issue-mag-of-the-hour. This is possibly–as were books like those mentioned above or RAW or Rubber Blanket–a time capsule of what was going on in the UK indie scene at this point in time.

RAW cover by Art Spiegelman

Rubber Blanket cover by David Mazzucchelli

Let me add a caveat to that. The UK indie scene is massive and has talent of which no single mag could possibly hold. The last thing we’d want to do is self-proclaim ourselves to be the keepers of the keys. Lemme tell you. Give us a set of keys and we will lose them faster than a hot minute. But our camaraderie, and our combined network means that all of those creators currently delivering gold are an email away from joining in on the fun. I guess we’re all at a point in our careers where we’ve been around long enough to have a decent grip on the ins and outs of book production but aren’t so swamped with phone calls from the big leagues that has allowed us to confidently produce something which we feel is a good and necessary addition to the indie market. How does that sound? Time will tell. Finger’s crossed in twenty years from now an aspiring UK cartoonist will find a bundle of SKRAWLS in her local Oxfam for a tenner, and she’ll take them home, read them, and then feel inspired to call her friends and say, hey, let’s make something special. That or “Christ, people didn’t know how to draw back then.” I’d be happy with either. Being remembered is being remembered, right?

Rosie Packwood – Ascend from SKRAWL

ZL – I’m sure they will be inspired! On which note, tell us some more about the details of the anthology.

RMO – Continuing in the tradition of Escape, Pssst!, and Revolver , SKRAWL is a comic anthology magazine featuring cartoonists, artists, and writers primarily from the UK’s independent comic scene. The magazine was launched on Kickstarter on August 1st and met its goal in under 24 hours. With a long list of up-and-coming UK talent as well as established professionals, SKRAWL promises to be one of the most exciting comic anthologies of the year.

The core of SKRAWL are the SKRAWLLORDZ (Mark Hughes (Silverbeard), Russell Mark Olson (Gateway City; Tripwire Award Best New Talent 2018; Yancy Street Award Best UK artist 2018), Nick Prolix (Slang Pictorial), Martin Simpson (Needleman, Pipedream Comics Top 10 Indie Comics of the Year 2018), Pete Taylor (Silverbeard) and Gustaffo Vargas (Manu, Pipedream Comics Indie Comic of the Year winner, 2019)) who formed during last year’s LICAF. The magazine will also feature guest spots by their chums, including UK-indie royalty Phil Elliott (Tales from Gimbley), Rosie Packwood (Bun), Jessica Lucas (Yours, Yesterday), Matt Simmons (Bastard Galaxia), and the Cartoon Museum’s Artist-in-residence, Mark Stafford(The Bad Bad Place). To further accentuate the magazine-ness of the anthology, John Reppion (Conspiracy of Ravens) and Lucy Sullivan (Barking) will provide an illustrated short folk horror story.

The SKRAWL Kickstarter campaign offers backers the chance to get on board the publication either as a fully digital or print edition, with retailer tiers for comic shops and bookstores. The magazine will be US format, (a bit bigger and a lot wider than a US comic– at 280 x 210mm) perfect bound, and currently sitting at a page count of 84… but we’d like to expand outwards a bit through stretch goals.

The campaign can be found on Kickstarter. Funding began August 1st and ends on Thursday, August 20th at noon BST. Digital backers can get the full magazine for £5, while the physical magazine is £12 (plus shipping). Retailers in the UKand EU can take advantage of the retailer tier which offers 8 copies for £48 (plus shipping). For more information, please email skrawllordz@gmail.com.

Gallery of contributors

What The Actual Folk – Mark Hughes art

Gateway City – Russell Mark Olson

Issue 1 page 23

A Carnival for the Lost – Martin Simpson

Monster Kids Show & Yell – Pete Taylor

MANU – Gustaffo Vargas

Illegal Alien page – written by James Robinson

Blinker – Rosie Packwood

Jessica Lucas illustration

Bastard Galaxia art by Matt Simmons

Lip Hook art by Mark Stafford

  all art copyright and trademark it’s respective owners.

content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019

SKRAWLORD Russell Mark Olson talks SKRAWL to us @russell_m_olson @LucySullivanUK @johnreppion @marxtafford @SheriffFreak @pocketm0use @philselliott @jessicaonpaper @GustaffoVargas @SIMO_paints @nickprolix @theartofsok @thismanthispete SKRAWL can be found on Kickstarter Anyone that’s followed zinelove or iesorno on any kind of social media knows I’m partial to a few creators including…

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Game Review: Little Nightmares

Little Nightmares is a dark platform/adventure game out now on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Alan Stock dodges long, grasping fingers to bring you this review for ComiConverse.

Game Review: Little Nightmares

Little Nightmares, by Danish developers Tarsier Studios, is something of a rarity. It’s hard to think of side-scrolling games which convey horror or creepiness, but in Little Nightmares they’ve pulled it off. Interestingly, two other side-scrollers which also succeed at hitting that tricky balance have clearly influenced Little Nightmares. They are the critically acclaimed games Limbo and Inside.

The creators of those seminal titles, developers Playdead, are in Sweden – just across the pond from Tarsier Studios. In interviews though, Tarsier have said they haven’t set out to copy Playdead’s work. “I guess you could say we share similar interests – perhaps it’s a Nordic thing – but how we choose to realise them is very different”. Indeed, Little Nightmares has its own unique style, but anyone who’s played Limbo or Inside will immediately feel at home.

Little Nightmares Exploring the Maw

The three games share many things in common – on paper they sound almost exactly the same. In them all, you play as a lone, vulnerable child trying to escape a dark, hostile, side-scrolling environment. You complete platforming sections and solve puzzles to progress. Death is quick and brutal. Significant portions of the game are spent running or hiding from horrible monsters.

The atmosphere in these games is very strong, in each there’s a memorable art style, amazing lighting and immersive sound design. They all have no on-screen display, nothing to break the fourth wall. The stories are left deliberately ambiguous, with no text or dialogue to provide guidance – leaving you to draw your own conclusions and ponder over the symbolism and endings of the games. Playdead has used this formula to great effect. But although Little Nightmares might look and feel just like a Playdead game, fortunately Tarsier’s strong vision and story differentiate it enough from its Swedish brethren. This is more than just a copycat game.

  Credit: Tarsier Studios

You start Little Nightmares imprisoned in the bowels of what seems to be a huge ship. In a great touch, the whole environment slowly yaws from side to side throughout the game. You play as a very small child wearing a yellow raincoat – you are dwarfed by the oversized environment around you. Household objects like doors and chairs become obstacles in themselves, nooks and crannies offer hiding places. A trusty lighter and plenty of platforming help you to navigate this dark, atmospheric place.

Although at first glance, the graphical style looks like a family-friendly game (indeed Tarsier have worked on franchises like Little Big Planet and Tearaway), they’ve taken that flavour of art style and given it a morbid twist. This is a world of childhood storybook nightmares, immediately reminiscent of the twisted creations of Guillermo del Toro or Tim Burton. As you explore the vessel, known only as “the Maw” in the game’s promotional material, you’ll encounter a menagerie of horrible people and creatures. Most of these don’t take kindly to a child wandering their halls…

Credit: Tarsier Studios

The dark tone of Little Nightmares is spot on. Great lighting and graphics with the distinctive art style bring the dripping Maw to life, and its terrible denizens. The sound design is a triumph, everything in the game sounds real, from the patter of your footsteps and the squelching of leeches, to the wind echoing through the vast open spaces of the vessel’s hull. Music is subtle and only occasionally crops up, adding to the creepy vibe or stabs of terror at the just the right moments before fading away. Atmosphere is built through moody environments, attention to small details, good pacing of scares and ominous foreshadowing of horrors to come.

But it’s in the character design that Tarsier has excelled in creating something compellingly awful. The nightmarish people and creatures inhabiting the Maw are truly creepy, grotesque and disturbing. The way they look, move and sound is stomach-turning. Although I can’t call the game an outright horror experience, it definitely has its moments and frequently creeped me out. Instilling these kind of emotions in a game from a side-on perspective is quite an achievement. This kind of atmosphere usually only works in 1st and 3rd person games, because they make you feel like you are in the action – here you don’t need to be looking through the character’s eyes for it to chill your bones.

Credit: Tarsier Studios

As you navigate the hazards of the Maw you’ll often be avoiding the monsters’ horrible clutches, either by running away or hiding in small spaces. These are some of the best moments in Little Nightmares, inducing a real sense of panic as you try to escape. The game is full of imaginative and memorable scenes featuring the monstrosities that stalk you throughout the game. Unfortunately their effect is lessened if you repeatedly fail escape sequences, when horror gives way to irritation.

The rest of the gameplay is made up of fairly simple platforming and puzzles. Your character has a loose, floaty feel to control, which doesn’t help when combined with the forced perspective. Instead of being locked to one axis, you can move around in the 3D space of the world, yet the camera remains fixed looking at you side-on. This makes perception of depth difficult, which can be frustrating when trying to line up precise jumps. Many times I fell off the edge of ledges and stairs which should have been a doddle to climb, and platforming at the back of the screen is especially problematic.

Credit: Tarsier Studios

The lack of an on-screen display really helps to immerse you – no handholding is provided in Little Nightmares, you are left to figure out controls by yourself. Mechanics are introduced through experimentation, instead of on-screen tutorials. It’s a refreshing change from the norm. You have the ability to grab and climb almost anything with a suitable surface, and the game has good physics, which are used in a number of puzzles. Unfortunately though, this freedom can also lead to annoyance. It’s sometimes unclear whether you’re taking the wrong approach, or just failing to grasp the game’s loose mechanics and woolly movement. Perhaps, you think, you’re not climbing the right stack of books or shelves. Or maybe that big jump is really possible and you’re grabbing at the wrong moment. Or maybe you’re failing to throw a physics object in just the right way to hit a switch. The lack of in-game hints is welcome, but at times you wish there were more – when you’re scratching your head in an area, unsure whether it’s you or the game that’s really at fault.

Credit: Tarsier Studios

The penalty for failure – whether from falling, being caught by a monstrosity, or a myriad of other grisly fates – is instant death. That’s fine, it worked in Limbo and Inside, but in Little Nightmares design issues spoil the flow of the game and cause frustration. For a start, there are loading times between deaths, compared to the instant restarts of Playdead’s games. Secondly, checkpoints are inconsistent in their placement, sometimes forcing you to repeat annoying, long sections where the hardest part is right at the end. Frequently under time pressure (like being chased), it’s unclear what your objective is or you’ll have to solve a puzzle. These factors combine to make some parts of the game a patience-testing chore of trial and error – with every failure punished by death and having to repeat that section again and again.

Credit: Tarsier Studios

When you soldier past these and the game flows, Little Nightmares is great. Puzzles aren’t usually taxing, and aside from the aforementioned frustrations, it’s not too difficult overall. There are only minor secrets to find (which don’t seem to affect the story), but making your way through the linear environment is a dubious joy as you discover new areas and their resident horrors. The Maw’s interiors are intriguing, ever deepening the game’s constant mysteries about where you are, who you are, and just what is going on in this sinister place.

The gameplay is occasionally interrupted by story snippets which are very short but effective, raising even more questions. Little Nightmares wraps up with a brilliantly memorable series of events and set-pieces. The game’s not long, taking around 4-5 hours, but despite the hiccups I mentioned, I was enthralled throughout. Even though the gameplay isn’t too involved, I was driven ever onwards, through a sense of curiosity about what’s was coming next, and a desire to uncover more of the story. I ended up playing the whole game in just one day. Ultimately, I liked the open-to-interpretation story and it’s ending, although I know some people would have preferred a more concrete explanation of events.

Credit: Tarsier Studios

  I can forgive Little Nightmare’s flaws for its many stand-out moments and the level of imagination I found in the Maw’s depths. It’s a very well realised and polished artistic vision, albeit a really dark and twisted one. You won’t forget some of the encounters in this game – which are up there with the best moments of Inside. It’s a shame that the cleverness on show in these doesn’t extend to the puzzles and platforming, but as an immersive children’s nightmare it succeeds on every level. I heartily recommend you give it a try and “enjoy” the dripping, dank world of Little Nightmares. I’m looking forward to seeing what the dark minds of Tarsier Studios will produce in future, hopefully with more refined gameplay next time around.

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