#but in terms of like themes and narratives and stuff there's just something about it that's so compelling

[laceratedlamiaceae]

Stede and Izzy watching the sun rise, drinking tea and discussing the plans for the day while Ed sleeps in.

Izzy and Ed watching the sun set, leaning back and reminiscing over old times while Stede tells the crew their bedtime story.

Ed and Stede stargazing, laying on the foretop and making up stories about the constellations while Izzy gets some well-deserved rest in their bed.

[inbarfink]

After all these years, ‘I Remember You’ is still one of the great highlights of Adventure Time Storytelling. And not just in the basic ‘what???? Silly children’s cartoon does something SAD??? HOLY SHIT MIND BLOWN’ way. But with the execution of that Something Sad. How it manages to pack so many Complex Emotions into just 11-minutes of television. And especially the way it utilizes the basic Adventure Time format for that purpose.

So Adventure Time is a Board-based show. Each episode has an outline pitched and written down by the writer’s room, and then this outline goes to a team of (usually) two Storyboard Artists who develop that simple outline into a full story. And with the show’s art-style deliberately eschewing staying perfectly ‘on-model’ in favor of having the animators take direct reference from how the different storyboarders draw the characters

And the show being generally extremely versatile in terms of themes and tone - AT has allowed a lot of their Storyboarders to really express themselves and their unique artistic vision as part of the Big Collaborative Narrative that is Adventure Time. 

Now, the Boarders who worked on ‘I Remember You’ are Cole Sanchez and Rebecca Sugar. These two were a Storyboarding Duo from the start of S4 and until Sugar left the AT Crew during S5, and they always struck me as a curious combination. I think really from all of the individual boarders working on AT during that time, these two really are the closest to having like… Totally Opposite Artistic Sensibilities as boarders. 

With Sugar favoring a style that is very loose and sketchy and also very rounded. Focusing on expressions and subtle body language and lighting. And being famous for going deep in depth into Big Moments of Emotional Catharsis

And Sanchez having a very clear art style that emphasizes strong silhouettes and clear lines that suggest flatness. Focusing more on major poses and the character’s positions in the space. And having just a really great eye for AT’s brand of silly humor.

Like, I almost kinda suspect these two were paired together so they can each cover for the other’s “weakspots” in writing ‘Adventure Time’. 

And there were a few episodes that did some really interesting stuff with this very contrasting pair - ‘Jake the Dog’ is another example. Giving most of the Farmworld scenes to Sugar and most of the Time Room scenes to Sanchez both plays to their personal strengths as storyboarders and helps to emphasize the strong emotional contrast between these two scenarios. 

And ‘I Remember You’ is actually kinda unique among Adventure Time episodes cause… Most episodes will have the two boarders alternate between working on the episode throughout it. Like you’d have Boarder A draw a bit and then Boarder B and then Boarder A again… But “I Remember You” is divided between Sanchez and Sugar… basically perfectly in the middle.

So the entirety of the first half of the episode was boarded by Sanchez

Until Ice King pushes Marceline and then leaves the room in shame.

And then, Sugar takes over.

And, like, even if you don’t know anything about the Behind the Scenes of Adventure Time or who Cole Sanchez and Rebecca Sugar even are - the Shift is noticeable. The shift in tone, in narrative focus, in the subtleties in which the characters are drawn. 

The entire first half of the episode has this thin veneer of just being a Silly Goofy Ice King Episode. Sanchez’s talent for Adventure Time’s brand of comedy is on full display… but there is also this underlying feeling that Something is Happening just under the surface. And these hints of the Big Emotions of ‘IRY’ expressed via Sanchez’s kinda goofy style really create this balance between putting the audience into a false sense of security that this is just a Very Normal Episode about two characters hanging out and the Tension constantly brewing in the subtext. 

And then it all comes to a blow.

And then the Shift happens. And now we are in Sugar’s court.

And this subtle shift in the artstyle and storytelling also coincide with Marceline finally openly expressing her feelings and the Reveal of Simon and Marcy's shared past. The episode changes focus from Ice King's silly antics to Marceline's feelings. Everything changes, everything in the first part of the episode gets recontextualized and... even on the most basic level, the episode is now Noticeably Different.

I would almost say that Sanchez’s half of the episode has Ice King define the tone, while Sugar’s half of the episode has Marceline define the tone. But more than anything it’s the catharsis. The reveal and release of those emotions that were building up so expertly through the Sanchez half of the episode. All of the Sugar-boarded scenes in this episode are really heartbreaking on their own, just through the tragedy of the story and Sugar’s expert knowledge of howto convey emotion in the visual medium - but it’s so enchanted by what came before it.

“I Remember You” is truly a great testament to how ‘Adventure Time’ could use every aspect of its medium to tell a great story in such a short time.

[venomous-qwille]

hi qwille!!! I got questions for u! you have lots of characters planned out, and that’s super cool! but how do u usually go about that process? like all your characters are very unique, and I wonder about the design process, as well as how you make their personality distinct! how do you make character dynamics/relationships? because all the scenes I’ve read so far make the characters feel really organic, and mesh really well together! (sorry for all the questions! I’m super curious ^w^)

Hiya! Here is an answer I wrote for this question on discord recently ^^

I will try answer this as thoroughly as possible!

There was a LOT of kill your darlings involved in making characters for gitm. Originally I had a very long list of character ideas that I cut down and down based on the kind of things and themes they would give me the opportunity to write about. I love long ensemble cast stories, thinking back to ones I particularly enjoyed and the ways those characters gelled together helped me a lot. The most important thing when selecting characters was making sure they would give me something interesting to write about! I was also very keen on ones that let me explore the fics main theme of Family from a different angle. I'm not sure how helpful this all is! But yeah, I try to be pretty strict with myself about what I include. The only reason I would include two characters who were very very similar would be to emphasize a difference/divergence between them later on. Characters have to justify themselves by bringing something unique to the table, even if that thing is just a 'very different outlook on life' to the rest of the cast. Over time a lot of those character ideas became more fleshed out in my brain, and characters that were cut from the original shortlist made their way back in. They still have to be able to narratively justify themselves in order to earn a channel in the discord though!

For the gitm guys, while I dont have a literal sheet I fill out I do make sure to answer a couple of basic character work questions: What lie do they believe about themselves/the world? How does it impact the way they interact with others? What central theme do they embody most? What do they want more than anything else? How do they feel about humans? Who are they at their best and who are they at their worst? I found that by answering these sort of questions it helped me discover more about them, which creates more questions- rinse and repeat. The more questions I answered the further away they would get from each other in terms of similarities. The thing that really helped with the gitm boys, especially because their origins are so similar, was leaning in to how different their experiences were post-fazco. They are different people because the world has made them that way. Messing around with foils has been useful too! Characters are no fun in a vacuum, it's how they interact with others that makes them interesting. I like to create ones that will bring out the best and the worst in each other. I think about opposites a lot and I really like narrative symmetry- what lessons can the characters learn from each other? I find that stuff super exciting to read so I really wanted to include it. Some examples of character foils in gitm: Fool & Noon, Sombra & Sunspot, Misuta & Sol

When it comes to finding character voice, I do a lot of test drabbles (a couple of them are on this server), which I use to just fuck around until I find something that feels right. For instance- Sol was very very easy to find the voice of, where as Misuta took weeks of rewrites. Sometimes things take time. Spending this time figuring out their voices at the start really helps fic consistence in the long run, I think. Because of all that prep, I don't really have to do anything to 'get into character' when writing their dialogue (it's fairly second nature now).

In regards to coming up with a character's arc, I look at them and their themes and ask 'what the fuck happened to you, dude?' and then 'how has that entrenched a faulty world view on you?' 'what could you be driven to do because of that world view/misunderstanding?' 'what would it take to fix this world view/misunderstanding?' (the last question is the most important one!). Then voila, you have a very loose framework of a (hopepunk) character arc.

In regards to the actual planning of the fic/character arcs, I have a very big miro board (pic attached) that I use for all this! Most of the major character beats are marked out separately to plot beats etc etc. There are still a bunch of bits that only reside in my brain, but I do try to add them to my plan as soon as they become any kind of concrete. All of the characters also have a background chapter (or rather, a series of chapters that form a short story) attached to their arc, that will recontextualise everything you have learned about them so far! I am so deeply looking forward to dropping these (I already have quite a lot written).

I would say that- for your question on character relationships- the answer does come down to being really specific about what you include. Make sure characters are meaningfully different from eachother, give them goals and experiences that clash and then force them to live/work together in the same space. If you have put time into building your characters before that, then you just need to create opportunities for them to get into conflict and bring out the best/worst in eachother. I really do believe that characters are quite boring in a vacuum- which is why I put so much emphasis on including narrative foils ^^ Tyvm for the ask <3

[vaguely-concerned]

I have seen people question whether dios apate minor really needed to happen the way it did. it's the 'this could have been an email' of htn. 'augustine this did not have to be a threesome', I hear people saying. and boy do I have an obnoxious amount of things to say to protest this perfectly sensible assertion so here we go haha

1) yes it absolutely had to be like that. It says so on this piece of paper *hands you a piece of paper that says "because I said so and also it's narratively and thematically Sexy"* in my half-legible handwriting. seeing tamsyn muir describe harrow the ninth as a book about being a kid and realizing your parents probably had sex has given me such validation, I am unstoppable now. (to be serious for a moment, harrow the ninth is essentially a bildungsroman, and the threesome scene does a whole lot of thematic heavy lifting around harrow glimpsing elements of adulthood, relationships, and sexuality she clearly finds at the same time repulsive, bewildering and fascinating, and around opening her and especially our eyes to how much john is just a man with human longings still, under the god stuff. dios apate is crucial plot- and character-wise too -- it's a loadbearing threesome in terms of delivering the clues you need to piece together the mystery plot of the book, which is simply delightful -- but even more so thematically. and then the scene at the end where they confront john gives gideon some of that same opportunity to peek into adulthood and go '...well shit I guess', as a sort of mirror, just without the french kissing that time and more murder. the things magnus and abigail model for the girls about love and adulthood? mercy and augustine are providing the opposite-day batshit insane version of that fhdskjfa, you know, for contrast and spice)

2) listen... it gets lonely out there in deep space with your 'legendary unamorous' brother, two infant pathetic baby kitten sisters who you'll probably have to kill one day when you take another stab at god if they don't manage to get themselves killed along the way on their own, and the two people you've spent the last ten thousand years having separate yet connected married & divorced arcs with and also btw one of them is god... honestly a threesome over the dinner table is probably The most well-adjusted reaction one might hope for under those circumstances

3) on a characterization level I think Augustine is actually doing something incredibly deliberate with it: he's presenting John with yet another chance to admit what he did. which is notable especially since the deal he and mercy agree on as a condition for the threesome to happen at all seems to be that they're going to give the ol' godslaying another game try sooner rather than later. (I get the sense that it's not so much that he disagrees with her ultimate goal so much as that he thinks she's being dangerously indiscreet and hasty going about it, before. “though I think it will be the death of us,” huh.)

notice how he's structuring the whole thing: he's invoking the intimacy and love in their strange little threeway relationship and how long it's been by truly playing along with john's 'we're a happy family really when we're at home! :)' delusion (helped along by lowered inhibitions via enormous amounts of alcohol and what I've previously described as a joint mercy/augustine leyendecker themed thirst trap. ah, a classic). he brings up alecto and what happened to her -- or rather, he is clever enough to make john bring up alecto and how she is totally dead, right?? by seeming to make a careless statement that leads there and then acting contrite about it after. he (helped along by mercy, who I think realizes exactly what he's doing -- this is very much a two-man con) brings up how much they all loved their cavaliers, and wow funny how that's been haunting us for ten thousand years now huh :) wow, a lot of our other lyctor friends slash family sure are super dead in the name of some unknowable greater reason neither of us quite grasp and that you won't fucking tell us, aren't they. these are all the main grievances he and mercy confront john about at the end of the book, but put forth much more subtly and not phrased as an accusation -- he's baring his and mercy's vulnerabilities as bait, essentially. if john had, say, a conscience where his conscience should be instead of a black hole, it probably should have stirred something in him.

(also let me just say... the way augustine just takes a pneumatic drill to the TWO tender spots g1deon seems to have and then has the audacity to be like 'oh dear. did that upset him. ooof my bad *loooong dead-eyed slurp of his wine*' is just sooo... he's such a bitch!!! he's the only person who could ever have held their own in a ten-thousand-year bitch-off with mercy and I love him so much. well even if it wasn't all to get g1deon into murder range for harrow I think he wouldn't enjoy sticking around for the 'getting our tongues on god' part of the evening so maybe it's a kindness, really, and totally not pent-up aggression from the last twenty years or so breaking through)

he is all but shaking john by the lapels begging him to just... come clean about it already, to stop thinking he's still kidding everyone else along with himself. it's clear throughout the book that augustine knows exactly what john is at this point -- and all of the most cynical things he does say about it turn out to be distressingly right. john is always less sentimental than you'd think. john wouldn't forgive mercy, he will abandon in a heartbeat anything that isn’t necessary to him anymore, whether emotionally or in some other way. and still he seems to hold out some desperate absurd hope that the man he wants, the man he thought was there, is in there, somewhere deep deep down, if he just gives him the chance to show himself.

(mercy definitely has her own side of this whole thing, I'm just focusing more on augustine because this evening was like. his idea in the first place and I feel like we can Read Some Things into that fact lol. now that we have both ntn and htn to go from I sort of have this sense that the things augustine wants from john are more... personal? more interpersonal? they both love him equally, but mercy's love seems tinged slightly more towards the religious (augustine accuses her of knowing 'only worship without adoration', which like... also the eight house's entire Vibe lol) -- mercy at the end of that book is totally a person breaking up with GOD, not just with john -- while augustine's vibe is more like a man in the last not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper days of a marriage that sort of felt like it could have been something real and good once but all your illusions about it have since been taken from you and trampled underfoot into the mud and you've had the divorce papers signed and ready in a drawer for over a year now, hell, as it turns out, is other people etc. lmao)

having a threesome over the dinner table with god is one thing, having a threesome over the dinner table centered on the one man and god who has yet again let you down in a way so fundamental it can barely fit into words and who you both still love in a way anyway, miserably, and also just reaffirmed your joint resolution to murder (all under the pretense that it gives your baby sisters the chance to murder your brother of ten thousand years yeah that's why this is happening no other underlying aching emotional motivations here haha)... listen mercy and augustine are simply on a different level, theologically. they've added horny shrimp colours to the religious spectrum. who else does it like them

[19burstraat]

queering futurity in crooked kingdom

if I had any real time for this (I do not) I'd be tempted to write a real essay about it, but I have a dissertation and two other real essays for my actual degree, so let's do a bad tunglr bullet point analysis. I'm... largely generalising and paraphrasing here, and I suspect this has a billion things to iron out or that I forgot about, but I hope this might be a bit interesting regardless of how much you may or may not know abt queer literary theory lmao.

in extreme short, there is a subset of queer theory around what is, in essence, queer time. there is a heteronormative future/'futurity', and it is marriage, children, a good job, a nice house, and dying at a good age after a fulfilling life. queer* and trans people both reject and often cannot access this: plenty couldn't/cannot get married or have children, or had to surpass lots of obstacles to do so, many queer and trans people were or are killed young, or died prematurely in the aids crisis. and so we get queer temporality; a resistance to the heteronormative future that is refused or inaccessible, and to reproductive futurism; the concept that people value the future over the present... and this manifests in kicking back against things like the symbolic 'child' as a representative of futurity. not real children, but empty platitudes like think of the children! think of the future for your children! there can also be a development of a death drive, which is sometimes literal and sometimes metaphorical, which is, again, basically a rejection of 'the future'.

while the grishaverse doesn't have homophobia as such, you can still do queer readings, bc it is ofc influenced by our world, by virtue of being Written By A Person From Our World. and especially in kerch, there's still stuff like patrilineal inheritance... buuuut reproductive futurity & friends are very deliberately destroyed by the end of crooked kingdom. mostly by the usual culprit (taps sign that says IT'S KAZ AGAIN LOL) but by the narrative and the other characters as well. walk w me! I don't think this is a real analysis more just a lot of Thoughts but... nvm

*used here as an umbrella term since the theory I'm pulling from is the field of queer theory

the two men (van eck and rollins) who are most concerned with reproductive futurism (having heirs and a legacy, 'building something that will outlast them'), are promptly buried under the rubble of their building efforts by our usual culprit. kaz uses the mentality of legacy and lineage against them both; he kidnaps van eck's pregnant wife to use as a bargaining chip, and he uses rollins's son and heir against him, because he knows what's most important to these men is their line, their work being handed down. he deduces that rollins has a son through rollins' vanity around building something to 'last', and his naming of the kaelish prince. rollins is literally themed around monarchy and descent; the king of the barrel, the kaelish prince, the emerald palace. kaz, for his part, is the bastard of the barrel. the illegitimate son, not produced by any conventional family structure, ketterdam his mother and profit his father... and therefore he is the perfect person to blow up this imagined monarchy

wylan is rejected by van eck for his disability, for being supposedly incapable of continuing his father's legacy; and so we gather that the actual child doesn't matter to van eck, it's what The Child represented to him, which was the future of the van eck company. the illegitimate kaz restores van eck's disowned son to the succession through sheer trickery, and jan van eck's trading empire is succeeded by his son he attempted to reject, and his farm-boy barrel-tough boyfriend. they bring home the first wife that van eck had committed, for failing to produce the 'perfect' heir. no perfect heteronormative future here!

(also by virtue of wylan and jesper being a mlm couple, there is now way less emphasis that can be put on the idea of biological children 'continuing' the line, and it somewhat stops the expectation that ruined wylan's life from being passed down)

the two m/f couples are also very distant from this idealised reproductive futurity. matthias dies, ruining any idea of a 'conventional' future he could have had with nina, and while his death is generally more about the extremist brainwashing stuff explored w the drüskelle, it does blow to shreds that futurity even more, and nina's power is also a very literal HEY GUYS. LET'S THINK ABOUT DEATH... plus she leaves ketterdam to take matthias to be buried at the end of the book.

kaz and inej both do very dangerous jobs and separate for long periods of time. they may marry or they may not, they may have children or they may not, they may be physical with one another or they may not. it doesn't really matter; they'll try, but we don't get to find out how far they may or may not get, which honestly I kinda like. their future is open, the river running carrying inej to the sea. also, inej makes an explicit rejection of this kind of 'normal' future:

So he wasn’t fit for a normal life. Was she meant to find a kindhearted husband, have his children, then sharpen her knives after they’d gone to sleep? How would she explain the nightmares she still had from the Menagerie? Or the blood on her hands?

we don't really know whether or not kaz as a character is queer (I do not think kaz knows either lol) but it doesn't really matter, you can still read him as a queer figure both a) just if you want to! and b) in this sense of queer temporality, bc he's the crux of a lot of it. we already covered the bastard thing and his happy habit of kicking reproductive futurism when it's down, and as Edelman says: 'If the fate of the queer is to figure the fate that cuts the thread of futurity...' well, kaz 'build something new. watch it burn' 'he knew exactly what he was going to leave behind: damage' brekker is our man!

he does not give a single flying fuck about the future. he destroyed van eck and rollins' legacies, and he'll do that shit again. he doesn't have enough of an ego to consider a 'legacy' for himself besides destruction, which is a rejection of a legacy in itself. his plans for the future amount to fucking shit up and making a bunch of money to use to do more damage, until he gets shot/stabbed/hanged/drowned/whatever, which he constantly anticipates.

kaz also has a massive distrust and disdain for traditional family structures, because he's seen them crumble twice; his actual family are all dead, and the hertzoon con was built on creating a convincing family mode to lure them in. "my mother is ketterdam, she birthed me in the harbour; my father is profit, I honour him daily" is a sneer at paterfamilias type families where the mother is there to just give birth and the father is the head of the family, to be honoured and served, rather than loved. he also has zero sympathy for the 'think of the children!' thing, bc he knows it's disingenuous; who thought of him? no one. rollins was happy to con kids with the false promise of family and safety, and all the people he paid off were happy to turn the other way. was there no one to look after you? no, there wasn't. his mother is ketterdam: filthy, feral ketterdam. no nurturing mother has he!

So he threatens Alby and Hanna with no qualms, because while he doesn't actually ever intend to hurt children (...not physically anyway, apparently upsetting them is fair game FJJFJD), he knows the power of the threat— the idea of the child— is often more impactful than the actual act itself. ("Inej, I could only kill Pekka’s son once. He can imagine his death a thousand times.") it certainly works on rollins and van eck! he'll make you think of the damn children alright!

inej takes direct action to defend actual children, not just the idea of them, and then we hear in rule of wolves she's hated by the kerch government for it because she's fucking with their profits. (look also to how they flapped about searching for wylan, one rich man's kid, and are completely useless about hundreds of forced indentures. what a surprise...)

she reunites with her parents, but she worries persistently about whether or not they will accept her for who she has become, and we are never quite told whether or not they do. we like to think so, but we don't actually know. and although she gets to see her parents again, her future is on the wraith, not with them.

most people have dead or splintered families, actually. only inej has both parents, and for three - four years, they didn't have a daughter.

The general proximity to death in general is very potent; nina's power, kaz's whole backstory, the camping out in a graveyard. jesper's recklessness and love for fights, inej being ready to die rather than be a captiver again and kaz's response to that being 'not just yet', rather than not at all...

all following into the whole no mourners, no funerals thing!!! the fact that they know they won't be remembered or cared about if they die!!!

Edelman: 'Choosing to stand, as many of us do, outside the cycles of reproduction, choosing to stand, as we also do, by the side of those living and dying each day with the complications of AIDS, we know the deception of the societal lie that endlessly looks toward a future whose promise is always a day away.'

SOC:

Inej's mother and father might still shed tears for the daughter they'd lost, but if Inej died tonight, there would be no one to grieve for the girl she was now. 

“No mourners, no funerals. Another way of saying good luck. But it was something more. A dark wink to the fact that there would be no expensive burials for people like them, no marble markers to remember their names, no wreaths of myrtle and rose.”

pick up what I'm putting down guys please please I don't have time to tease this out properly but like. I think kaz and wylan are the linchpins here. (again)

[nyaagolor]

What are your thoughts on Apollo Justice (the character)?

OH BOY. OHHHHHH BOY. I have a fever and some free time lfg.

So honestly, I think part of the reason I love Apollo so much is because he runs parallel to Phoenix but also counter to him at the same time. I always saw Simon and Athena as the successors-- in terms of ideology and job and all that other stuff-- to the Phoenix-Edgeworth dynamic and status rather than Apollo and Klavier. Athena and Simon, to me, feel like extensions of the arcs of Phoenix and Edgeworth + the vibes of the original trilogy. Apollo and Klavier ( who I will not talk about bc we will be here all day)? They're the antithesis.

Apollo Justice The Game directly foils the original trilogy in so many ways, but I think even on a more base thematic level it runs counter to a lot of the ideas that we take for granted about the original trilogy, and because Apollo sits at the center of this, the things I love about the game are encapsulated in why I like him. There are a ton of themes in the ace attorney trilogy-- support networks, faith, trust, the truth-- and Apollo is defined by their limits, their failures, and their absence. He is let down, kicked around, defined by abandonment and betrayal and distrust. Apollo is defined by everything that Phoenix is not, and bc of how the timeline goes we don't really get any retribution for that, just a steady march forward, and I think that gives me a lot to think about with his character

Phoenix's arc right from Turnabout Sisters is about the building of a support network, and the ways that developing this support is integral for when things go wrong. We contrast Phoenix with Godot, Maya with Dahlia, and see how people left to stew in their resentment can chase vengeance to dark places (wow I wonder who also does this after the death of a dear friend leading to a crusade of misplaced revenge that almost leads someone they care about being killed.). With Apollo we get to stand on the precipice of resolution, but the important part is we don't get it. Apollo's life falls off the rails, and he's the one left to pick up the pieces.

We see through him how our trust can be betrayed by people of good and bad intentions, and the lingering consequences that has on one's ability to not only trust the people around them but themselves. And yeah!! That's why I adore him so much-- he's tested not by the possibility of failure like Phoenix often is, but climbing up from the reality of it. It's less "how do we make our way out of this mess before it goes nuclear" and more "things are already destroyed-- where do we go from here?". It has more of an element of recovery than prevention to me, and I think that's a fascinating avenue to explore in stories like these. Apollo pushes the envelope of the themes of the narrative and the characters-- he is the epitome of what it looks like when things fall apart, and it gives him and the trilogy characters something to reconcile

A lot of people have complained that Apollo barely feels like the protagonist in his own game, but that's honestly a huge part of the reason why I love him so much. He's defined by the spaces between, the limits and failures of things we had up to this point taken to be true, and left with a pretty limited degree of autonomy through it all. He's pushed around and puppeteered by people who mean well and those who don't, and I feel like a major theme of AA4 that I love but don't often see talked about is "what does it mean to have autonomy-- and by extension, control? What does it mean to take it back? What does it mean to lose it, and what does it mean when you'd do anything to keep it." Most of what I said is only partially resolved bc AA4 is... a game. A technically finished game. but!! Because it eviscerates our expectations of the franchise so thoroughly AND leaves open so many avenues, it makes Apollo and the rest of his crew some of my favorite characters because there's so much you can think about and do with them!!

also he's like. An insect to me. <3

[likeadevils]

most typical quintessential taylor song?

so the obvious answer is all too well. but i think the more interesting thing is what makes a song a quintessential taylor swift song? and in my head there’s two main contenders

fireflies: there’s this concept in my head that i call a “fireflies”, named after the owl city song, where basically everyone on earth privately goes through something, thinks they’re alone in it, and the down the line it’s revealed that the experience is universal. and taylor is fucking exceptional at catching fireflies— finding little hyper specific moments that are universal in their specificity. its not unique to her— it’s something all art strives for to some degree, and country music especially is built on building a scene out of small details— but man is she just. fucking good at it. the obvious example here is all too well, with him keeping her scarf, but the black dog and cornelia street are also amazing examples.

memories: its one of the most fascinating things to track in taylor’s career. there’s the obvious songs about her losing her relationships (all too well is another great example), and the songs about morning her childhood (the best day, seven, never grow up, would’ve could’ve should’ve to a lesser degree, etc), but i think the most interesting example is wildest dreams. in and of itself, it’s not a cliche in her work, but it is the end point of obsessing over building narratives out of your past: you end up seeing the present as your futures past. like. idk it’s just such a culmination of memory as a theme to beg someone who hasn’t even broken up with you to remember you fondly. it’s also what she started her career doing! just please think of me fondly when you hear my favorite song!!

there’s other mini-themes that pop up all the time— secrecy and public opinion, love as something reckless, love as knowledge of a person. and then there’s more structural stuff that’s peppered through her work— taking a common phrase and twisting it, taking the first line/early part of the song and bringing it back at the end of the song (another demonstration of memory, in a way). but in terms of what makes a taylor swift song A Taylor Swift Song, it’s fireflies and memories

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #28 – The Dead Take The A Train by Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey

Oh I wanted to love this book so very much. On paper it’s basically made for me – incredibly messy fuckup of a heroine, cosmic horror through the idiom of wall street corporate sharks, grimy and gory urban fantasy full of knifing people in back alleys, the works! For the first fifty pages or so, I thought I was in love – which just made the disappointment as the wheels came off all the more bitter.

The book follows Julie, ‘barbed wire magician’ (it’s at least as unpleasant as it sounds), professional monster hunter, and all-around personal disaster. Her life takes a turn for the even messier when a) her best friend/comically oversized unresolved crush shows up at her door begging for help running from her abusive husband and b) unrelatededly but more or less simultaneously, her ex-partner-and-also-boyfriend, looking up to clean up embarrassing loose ends on his rise up the elldritch corporate ladder, baits her into trying to summon a guardian angel from a sabotaged tome and ends up releasing a metaphysical parasite that starts murdering its way through the city’s occult underground. From there things just get messier.

Drilling down as much as I can, my issues with this can be summed up as it feels like a first draft. There’s stuff there on the page – character arcs, relationships, bits of scenery and action setpieces, even themes! - but it’s all just..there. Exaggerated line sketches no one ever went back and turned into full illustrations. It’s most painful with the characters – every one of them is a caricature, precisely and exactly what they first appear to be with the same beats hit again and again every single time they appear on screen. Which more or less for the quirky supporting cast but like – we get multiple chapters from the perspective of the aforementioned abusive husband, and something like a fifth of the book is from the POV of the sleazy corporate striver ex. At no point does either one get the slightest bit of nuance or pathos – Tyler’s chapters in particular end up reading like bad SCP field reports, with so much self-destructive instituional backstabbing and betrayal it all ends up being slapstick.

Sarah the love interest gets a special anti-shout-out here. Like, I know I’m just picky about and have a low tolerance for romances, but I swear – the single most important dynamic in the book in terms of both wordcount and narrative signposting is her and Julie’s romance, and it is just So. Bad. Every single scene she’s in is dedicated to rubbing your face in how fragile and traumatized and selfless and adorable and good-hearted and damaged she is, and the entirety of the romance is essentially one of those jokes about how lesbians will spend six years living with each other awkwardly waiting for the other to ask them out but stretched across 400 pages. I spent half the book patiently waiting for any hint of hidden depths or surprising twists to her character, but nope! Just a perfect domestic angel.

The setting actually has something of a similar issue. It feels like an exaggerated pastiche of urban fantasy, assuming the reader is already familiar with all the tropes and conceits and making only the most perfunctory possible gestures towards exploring or justifying them. This can absolutely work, but if you’re doing it you kind of need to use the genre as the background or setup for something else that the book is actually about – deconstruction or satire or character study or Wacky Hijinks or something. When what’s gruesome action and drama is supposed to be the star attraction, the grounding and verisimilitude of the world is actually pretty key.

A really tight, tense plot could have absolutely redeemed the whole but, well, nope. The literal entire plot hinges on Tyler, in the course of one conversation several drinks in at a crowded bar, baiting Julie into looking for a particular type of tome from a particular store so she’ll try the ritual he had swapped out with one to curse her – but then also that he didn’t know what the ritual he swapped in actually did. The big evil wall street law firm has a corporate culture that should have collapsed about 48 hours after it was founded, and absolutely nothing about it makes sense for a place with lasting institutional power. Everyone’s morality and perceptiveness changes as the plot requires. The pacing feels like they had to pull a happy ending out of their asses at the 2/3 mark and shove the rest of the book into a sequel. It’s just, it’s bad!

Also the prose starts at fun and evocative and keeps pushing into Lovecraftian levels of adjective-addiction, and neither the A-Train nor the dead are actually at all important to the story.

Just, argh. This could have been good! The first 40 pages were a really fun schlocky monster-of-the-week story! The first ritual summoning the Proctor was basically perfect! I wanted to love this!

[aotopmha]

Being too exhausted to play has made me think about the Dawntrail story again.

I wanted to take a break, but it occupies my brain too much, turns out and I engaged with takes on the internet again.

(Some of it is really dumb and a negativity void with zero substance, which is, in fact, unfun and exhausting, as it is designed to be, so it probably is better to not engage with, but I also do very much enjoy discussing what I love and it offers fantastic springboards for that.)

Spoilers for the Dawntrail story!

You know the complaint that it's "not as good as Shadowbringers or Endwalker"?

Well, I think a lot of people have actually echoed this, but I really like that Dawntrail is not trying to one-up them.

It's really good that it's not only pulling back the scale, but also lightening up the tone.

In particular, there was a complaint I saw that said HW, ShB and EW were these "deep and dark" stories and had issues with DT not being that kind of narrative and I think a story being Endwalker all of the time would become boring in its own right.

If all you see is positivity, eventually it means nothing, but this is also true in the opposite sense.

If all you see is misery all of the time, at one point, it doesn't mean anything anymore.

Eventhough I myself mostly enjoyed it, I can see the argument that it went too far in the other direction and handled some ideas too simplistically, but I think the general idea to do this is a really good, refreshing move.

It's similar thematically (which is actually my biggest issue), but I really like that it mostly focused on new stories with new characters.

I also like that the Scions are taking a backseat.

I saw an opinion that "you can't have your cake and eat it, too" in regards of the Scions being minor roles and you should either write them out completely or entirely focus the story on them, but personally I don't see any issue with this.

They were set up to be support and behaved as such. I don't understand the take that they were "teased" too much when the setup was that it was not their story to begin with.

Now, I do think the friendly rivalry aspect was underutilised. I feel like getting to fight Thancred and Urianger in good fun would've been great, for example.

I love the vibe of adventure we haven't really had for such a long time, and I really think the mystery of the City of Gold might be one of the best ones in the entire narrative because many of the mysteries so far at least have some aspect of retconning to them.

The gate and everything with it is entirely new and didn't need any retconning to fit within the current concepts of the story, whereas you could always tell they had to slightly tweak everything with the Ascians once in a while.

I think the fact that most of the characters that people do like from this expansion are entirely new or characters we knew fairly little about before Dawntrail says it all.

People actually do want new stuff. I think the mostly positive response towards the actual gameplay content says this, too.

So I hope they don't give up on what they've built here despite some of the really loud negative voices.

Don't start trying to do Endwalker or Shadowbringers again before building a new bigger picture.

We've talked about legacy and memory and loss a bunch of times already; evolve from this and do something *entirely* new with new characters and ALSO entirely new theming.

Don't give up on making content just a little more engaging.

That's my worry in light of these very loud complaints.

And the thing is, during the Endwalker patch cycle and even before, these are things so many people wanted.

People wanted a break from the Scions. People wanted the story to reset and relax after Endwalker because it had been within that dark tone for so long.

People wanted us to go back to being an adventurer.

People were tired of the increasingly same-y encounter design (and lack of stuff to do during patch downtime, which you can also see improved in terms of certain rewards; thing is what I've seen is people loving the new content so much they just like playing it and I feel the same way, so it isn't always even more grinds or rewards people actually want).

And that's exactly what they gave us.

Again, I don't know the overlap between audience groups here, but in terms of sentiment, that's the craziest part to me.

They kind of gave us exactly what we asked for.

And I really hope they stick to their guns and get braver from here because new is fun and even if it doesn't always succeed, you can look at what people like and don't like and go from there in a more nuanced way, rather than leaning on overcorrective decisions as they have in terms of certain aspects of the game. It just stops the game from stagnating and getting boring in all aspects.

[allbluemin]

Results and responses from the survey on the divergent opinions regarding the human/ape ship of the Planet of the Apes franchise.

🔍How old are you?

🔍Do you consume monster/human content?

🔍Fiction is a term that designates imaginary and unreal narratives, which is why many people tend to defend their works using this term. They state that everything is nothing more than fiction, so, as in the case in question, the ape/human relationship should not be problematized as it should not be compared to the real world. Do you agree with this statement?

🔍Leave a comment delving deeper into your previous answer.

🍎It should not be compared to the real world because anthropomorphized apes that talk and have human intelligence and characteristics are not real. We created them. A lot of fandom's arguments against a human/ape romance use real life morality, but they forget these are fictional humanized apes in a scifi/fantasy story. A story whose narrative and overall themes will inevitably force us to ask hard questions and explore weird ideas. And yes, that includes asking: "What would it mean for a human and ape in this story to get together?"🍎

🌼In general, I agree with the statement above, however, I think that any problem in literature can be considered as a possible problem in real life. Perhaps metaphorical or something else. So. I agree that it can be compared to real life, but I am against giving too much meaning to fictional reality. Literature is a way to speculate “what if?”, limiting this is stupid and harmful. It also indicates some problem or set of problems in real life and society.🌼

🌻Fiction shouldn't be trated with the same moral or ethical compass as reality. With this I don't mean fiction doesn't impact reality, but just that we can't treat them equally. Ficition impacts reality, but at the end of the day, apes like the ones in the movie aren't real, so there's not really a morally good or morally bad thing to want to fuck them (or not fuck them), and same with a ship involving apes.🌻

🍓Statement about that instance, yes but we can clearly see how fiction is affected by who its made of and how it in turn affects us. Women (characters) barely having roles in the past or having to fit into a certain mold and still doing so for example. Fiction does not exist in a vaccum.🍓

🍒I believe that while the kind of fiction that does affect reality, things such as racism and stereotypes, are a problem. Many works of fiction are simply fiction and do not affect reality in the way many assume it does.🍒

🍑Fiction is a great way to explore themes, metaphors, What Ifs, and a whole slew of situations. It doesn’t need to be good and pure—in fact, the really interesting stuff happens beyond that. Also, it’s just fun.🍑

🌷Literally nothing even close to resembling this ship could ever or will ever happen in real life. They’re literally not real. They don’t look like, talk like, think like real apes. How is it even problematic??🌷

🍁I don’t think that the statement “is just fiction” is legit everytime. But in this case i don’t see anythib wrong with that ship.🍁

🌾The apes aren't just regular apes like at a zoo, they have achieved sentience and have a whole society.🌾

🥑There are human ape kisses in the classic movies and nobody cared idk why people care now🥑

🥀Depends how unrealistic the ape is, too real ape is icky, king kong? perfectly fine🥀

🍇Apes are not fictional🍇

🔍Do you think the ape/human ship is different from a monster/human ship?

🔍Could you elaborate on an answer to the previous question?

🌼I think that the ape/human ship is xenophilia. I don't think the apes in the film can fit into the term "monster", so I refuse to consider this pairing as a monster/human. However, I come from a different cultural background than the typical American/English person, so I apologize if my opinion sounds offensive. In my circle, “xenophilia” refers to any craving for something unknown and alien, the term covers relationships with a wide variety of fictional intelligent beings (the spectrum is extremely wide) and is even sometimes (extremely rarely) used in the context of relationships between two people from very different cultures (for example a modern person or a person from a world with magic). Although it is still believed that one partner must NOT be a person in the classical sense.🌼

🍒The kind of apes, in both the old planet of the apes and the reboot, are in fact not like everyday apes. They've created cultures and languages and are closer to homo sapiens than those of apes now. Even their appearances are also changing. Some shapes to their faces, the way they stand, and even their eyes. They are fictional/mythical creatures that while having similarities to actual creatures the same could say about centaurs, etc.🍒

🥑The apes in the POTA franchise are evolved physically and mentally enough to be functionally alien. They’re not only sentient, they’re sapient. They’re capable of communication, love, care, connection. There’s nothing weird about it, just like there’s nothing weird about a story about a human romancing a big monster or a slimy alien. It’s all fair game. The original 1968 movie pitches the apes like they’re aliens anyway.🥑

🍑It’s a human with a “non-human sentient Other” and comes with similar baggage as your typical monster pairings (the differences, the fear, the awkwardness, the unexpected similarities). Just because the uncanny valley isn’t that deep (as it would be with, I don’t know, The Predator alien or an Uruk Hai) doesn’t mean it’s not a monster. Like, human/vampire counts, and that can be presented as barely nonhuman.🍑

🌻Apes like the ones in the movies are the same as monsters bc they are a different species and have special characteristics that makes them "monstruous" enough. An ape can be a monster as long as you consider "monsters" like vampires to be that.🌻

🌾They aren't just apes, they've been genetically modified. But they aren't full monsters either. It'd be like fucking Scooby-Doo, he's a dog but he's a sentient dog that isn't really a dog anymore. But is still a recognizable animal.🌾

🍓The apes in this universe are monsters. While I'm not one who indulges in this type of shipping, I don't think the apes are animals in this fiction verse so they fit in the category of monsters.🍓

🌷I guess you could call it that, but the monster fiction trope has developed into its own sub genre that I don’t think Noa and Mae fall into. It’s the two lead characters in a blockbuster movie.🌷

🍉In the context of the POTA films, I don't.🍉

🍇An animal is not a monster.🍇

🥀Again, depends on the ape🥀

🔍If you want to comment on something other than the previous questions and/or add more arguments to your opinion, feel free...

🌾Things written in fiction don't have to be morally okay in real life. That's one of the reasons we write fiction. You aren't a bad person for shipping an ape and a human as long as you can fully realize that a real life ape would never be a consenting safe partner for anyone but another ape. The idea that everything written should be morally okay is harmful for a lot of people. Fantasy has its place and should never be held up to reality's standards of ethics. That path leads to shame and repression that could seriously impact the mental health of generations.🌾

🍑I have been in this fandom on and off for literal decades and human/ape pairings have always been a thing. They have even been suggested in canon (kisses in both Tim Burton’s remake and in two of the original films: the first one and in Escape From…). This isn’t new, and it used to be embraced as part of the fandom. The vitriol and hatred in the current fandom is an unexpected switch for me, but sadly, the way fandom in general has been trending (“purity culture” where only morally good things are allowed), I can’t say I am too surprised.🍑

🌼I think the term "monsterfucking" is pretty fun and I have nothing against it, but I think for the sake of convenience a new, more inclusive term should be popularized. That is, is it possible to consider, for example, aliens as monsters and read pairings with them as a monster/human? What about a human/vampire? And so on and so forth. To my surprise, I see such discussions relatively often. Although perhaps I am biased and that is the only reason I see this as a problem.🌼

🍓I would like to add that the shipping here is fiction, yes, so I agree with that part of it but I also do not think fiction in general exists in a vacum. Sorry for any mistakes, English is not my first language either.🍓

🌷Free yourself from the thought police. Thinking is not a crime. Nothing about shipping two characters is a crime.🌷

🌻Almost anything fictional can be considered a monster if you think about it long enough.🌻

The results of the poll at the moment.

(I didn't know I wouldn't have access to the answers so I had to vote, sorry😭)

Thanks to everyone who participated! 🥰

[moonshynecybin]

literally marc and devotion topic of alllllll time... wld love to hear all ur thoughts...

Okay your post got me on this and it is beautiful!!!!!!! essential scholarship…

like marc has never liked anything or anyone casually in his LIFE!!! i am. constantly thinking about this lol i think its a load-bearing aspect of his personality. idk like professional sports is already such a chaotic whirlwind of travel and media barrage and commodification of your person that it means you really need those big pillars in your life to ground you… and marc chose a lot of those people from a pretty young age. i mean his best friend is his brother. he cried about leaving his team all weekend in valencia he looooooves them. only way he was remotely okay leaving that team even to win was if he was going to the garage next to alex lbr. and he still maintains he might come back. 

and one big theme from all the motogp journo’s podcast and stuff i listen to is how kind of removed from the rest of the paddock and weird marc is. very good at holding everyone at arms length. not reallyyyy good friends with the other drivers. withholds in a very deliberate way. please consider this hilarious photo of him hanging out with joan mir and ignoring his ass to talk to his brother. like for example fabio loves marc! but marc likes fabio. hes still nice! hes friendly! hes not. well forgive me he is not going to anyones house in the offseason. anymore. wonder why.

hes just… so selective with this devotion and so complete with it. its an exclusive little club but he would die for them all…. never lost anything he didnt leave clawmarks on. including racing! he just cant except a reality in which the things he loves are absent from him he finds it intolerable. which is a big part of why i dont really believe him when he says he’s over his and vale’s epic breakup. I think he wants everyone to BELIEVE he is over it bc itll lead to less questions about it and well. my man marc only likes being percieved on his own terms and the sepang incident was something decidedly not on his own terms. and he hates showing his soft little underbelly about it. I think his little docuseries are very much coming from a place of discomfort wrt to how the inability to define his own narrative happened with all that. and also so he can tell the world he is Over valentino Please Stop Asking. so.

[eightmandibles]

Mawaru Penguindrum Phrases Breakdown

I've written a big long post breaking down some of the repeated phrases of the show Mawaru Penguindrum because rewatching it a year ago gave me brainrot. Hope those who r interested enjoy.

Alright this has been occupying my brain for so long it should've started paying rent so I've decided to finally write it all up. Some of these are my own thoughts, but a lot of these are pieces of interpretations that are floating out there on the web. I just didn’t find any one place that compiles them all and puts them together.

Mawaru Penguindrum is the first Ikuhara show I ever watched and something about it really changed my brain forever even though I didn’t really understand what I was watching the first time through (because I was in middle school). I love its surreality and the density of its visual metaphors that all feed into each other has me like an insane person complete with a red string conspiracy board (that will be a section later). It’s show that challenges the viewers to piece together concepts and leaves questions for them to answer on their own, some intended and some probably not as much. I admire the ambition and the commitment to exist in a space that's between trite judgements of black and white, good and evil, and to trust the viewer to really engage with the work.

In this blog post I’m going to break down some of the major catchphrases of the show because they exemplify how the visual/thematic density rewards viewers who spend the time to really engage with the material. It also personally fascinates me as someone who enjoys these puzzle box-type themes and narratives that have the answers staring you right in the face from the beginning, but you just didn’t have the tools to understand what you were being cryptically told.

MAWARU PENGUINDRUM

We gotta start from the beginning and break down the title first of course.

MAWARU: spinning, turning, rotating - which brings themes like revolution and cycles to mind

It’s probably also nod to Revolutionary Girl Utena (though both shows share a lot of themes in examining and trying to challenge or examine societal norms, structures, and cycles).

PENGUINDRUM:

First layer of understanding: the physical diary that the Kanba and Shoma must find (actually it’d be more accurate the say the first layer is just being like “this is a nonsense word” but I digress)

Let’s do another layer of breakdowns -

PENGUIN: Flightless birds that belong neither to the land or the sea - chosen to represent the idea of the “unchosen.” Those in Antarctica need to rely on their community to survive in their harsh environment, huddling and rotating (mawaru…) to keep everyone warm.

There’s a common rumor out there that Ikuhara said penguins were also chosen because it sounds like “pingguo” which is apple in Chinese. Honestly I believe it because he seems to be the kind of person to say stuff like that, but also I’ve never found a source on this.

DRUM: An instrument that keeps a steady beat…like a heartbeat…badum tss. The apple in the show always being red reinforces this association.

Second layer of understanding: When the diary is lost, what the “penguindrum” is exactly becomes more nebulous and we start operating in a metaphor-as-reality world. In terms of visual representation in the show, the “penguindrum” is the “apple” the siblings have been sharing among themselves.

The Penguindrum being represented by an apple means there’s a lot of associations tied into its image. In the show, apples are a visual metaphor for being "chosen". Classically, apples are also the fruit of original sin (like fate…not to jump ahead but remember this for later) - which ties into the concept of “punishment” that Himari's fate is framed as.

Because of the breakdown from earlier (and also all the chest puncturing imagery in the show lol), we can also understand the Penguindrum to be associated with the heart - often in turn associated with love, which is a very loaded concept to dig through, especially as presented in the show (romantic, platonic, and/or familial connections; sacrifice, community, etc.)

Taking these all together, a third layer of interpretation is that Mawaru Penguindrum refers to the cycle (Mawaru) of sharing bonds/fate/connection/love (Penguindrum) between the show’s characters.

SURVIVAL STRATEGY

This phrase is what signals the Princess of the Crystal's presence and initiates the transformation sequence that takes the brothers into a surreal world.

The common reading of this is again the reference of penguins needing to huddle together to survive the cold of Antarctica. They rotate who bears the cold wind of the outside circle in order for the whole flock to survive. Basically, we need the help and support of each other to survive the cold winds of an uncaring society.

While thinking on this phrase, I was struck by how every character’s drive in the show can be explained as “survival strategies” they learned as children. Perhaps it’s a bit of a stretch to apply it in the way this phrase is used in psychology, but I do think it at least refers to the ideology characters take on as children due to their traumatic childhood events or from flawed role models.

Ringo’s “survival strategy” is the most explicitly stated in the show: in episode 6, she believes her parents are on the verge of divorce because she is not Momoka - therefore to keep her family together she resolves to become Momoka. 

The origin of Kanba and Himari’s core approaches to life appear in the flashbacks of episodes 5 and 9 respectively. The Takakura parents each protect the two adopted children from injury by glass, a nod to their original unchosen fate. In doing so, they’re set up as the direct masculine and feminine role models that the two children learn from and model themselves on. I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that the lessons they internalize are strictly “wrong,” because I don’t think Penguindrum is interested in discussing characters like that, but they definitely are flawed.

Shoma deals with guilt from his family’s “sin” and grapples with the idea of taking responsibility for his parents’ actions.

Tabuki and Yuri still believe themselves to be “unloved children” and that’s why they keep pursuing Momoka or seeking revenge for her. They struggle to believe there’s a place in the world for them without their savior there.

Masako is a pretty clear one as well - she internalizes her grandfather’s habits and beliefs in order to try and fit in, even if it never earned her any respect in his eyes.

The childhood of the characters in the show informed how they viewed the society they grew up in, and what they needed to do or become in order to survive.

YOU WHO WILL NEVER AMOUNT TO ANYTHING, FIND THE PENGUINDRUM

Honestly I’m obsessed with the phrases that first sound like absolute nonsense, but cool absolute nonsense. This is the phrase that made me want to write this blog post in the first place.

The phrase is the call-to-action by the mysterious Princess of the Crystal. On first viewing, we can interpret so little of this sentence it’s really just a tool to sound cool and give us a snapshot of the Princess of the Crystal’s personality - haughty, cryptic, and generally unhelpful. It gives Kanba and Shoma a goal, even though neither us nor them understand what the hell it is.

YOU WHO WILL NEVER AMOUNT TO ANYTHING

As the show goes on, the themes and concepts around being a chosen or unchosen child arise. Those who are unchosen and unloved go to the Child Broiler to be turned into glass. This is semi-metaphorical and semi-literal (diegetic might be an appropriate word in a weird way) - metaphorically it can be interpreted as becoming a forgettable, blandly molded member of society, though being processed is acknowledged more like death in the show. In some ways that’s still accurate.

Each of the siblings started without an apple, literally-metaphorically starving of love and unchosen - originally they were fated to never amount to anything.

FIND THE PENGUINDRUM

Obviously this initially refers to the diary in the show, but as we broke down earlier PENGUINDRUM eventually takes on a more loaded meaning akin to love, bond, and connection.

So over the course of watching the show, the phrase transforms from a one-sided order and condemnation to a call to action. Put all together with a little more elaboration: You who were unchosen and unloved from the beginning, in order to survive in this harsh world you must find love and connection with people to share your life with, through good and bad.

I COME FROM THE DESTINATION OF YOUR FATE

Time to bust out the conspiracy red string board, literally-metaphorically.

The Red Line is the literal, metaphorical, and thematic spine of the show. There are two big starting categories for viewing The Red Line in the show, which then mix together to create new meanings as the show references it through imagery and dialogue.

First up, the Red Line refers to an actual train line that the entire show takes place upon, the Tokyo Metro Marunouchi line. The entire show is structured around the train line which starts with the Ogikubo Station and ends at Ikebukuro, with important locations being linked with the actual train stops. It was one of the train lines attacked in real life as part of the Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 which the Pingu group’s terrorist attack in the show is a very transparent reference to. This single point in time in 1995 is the origin of almost everything in Mawaru Penguindrum, and in fact almost half the cast is born on the exact day the Pingu group attacks, just to emphasize how closely their fates are tied to the attack.

Second, the Red Line can be seen as a representation of fate, as in the red string of fate. Fate and destiny are concepts brought up over and over again, with Shoma and Ringo having their own monologues about it in the first two episodes (and Kanba having his much later). The visualization of the red string of fate can also be seen in the ending animations.

Somewhere in between is the Red Line as the metaphor of a train to visualize fate. Fate is something that can’t be changed - just like how trains run on fixed tracks with fixed destinations. Of course this is challenged in the show - Momoka even uses the metaphor of changing train tracks to explain her ability.

Now, fate has its own set of associations, such as: destiny, love, connection, bond (hmm familiar), as well as superstitions like fated meetings, fated demises, divine determination.

These can start branching off into concepts like blessings, sins, retribution, and karma (cue the Fate monologues again). And now we start getting back into the idea of cycles: downward spirals of getting what one deserves for their actions, passing on one’s sins to those after you - or virtuous cycles of doing good deeds and passing love and care forward.

Often in discussions of fate, familiar questions arise. Does the beginning determine the end? Is the end fated from the beginning? And so the Red Line becomes the Red Circle, another visual device seen throughout the show. It’s all over the motion graphics of the show and appears around the train stations as well as around ‘95’, referencing the originating incident of it all - the beginning of the Takakura family that determined their end.

What I love about this use of the Red Line is that however you progress your understanding of the its importance to the show, it all helps you further understand any concept Mawaru Penguindrum is discussing. This coherence and repetition of visual metaphors is what allows the show to feel more texturally and thematically cohesive even when it starts getting loose in a plot sense.

(Going back to the initial phrase, I COME FROM THE DESTINATION OF YOUR FATE is said by the Princess of the Crystal in her introduction monologue. It likely lampshades the predetermined ending that the Takakura brothers are so desperately trying to avoid. But also, there is a much funnier, much more literal interpretation I enjoy - Ikebukuro, the last stop on the train line, is where the aquarium the siblings visit is. It’s also where the brothers bought the novelty penguin hat for Himari. So the Princess of the Crystal literally came from the destination (last stop) of your fate (the red line)!)

LET’S SHARE THE FRUIT OF FATE

This turns out to be the secret key phrase needed to activate the diary in order to change the tracks of fate, which Ringo uses at the end of the show in order to prevent another train attack from succeeding.

It’s probably not too hard to piece together what the fruit of fate is after all of this. In a sense, this phrase is just a repeat of Mawaru Penguindrum, just as an actual sentence with a bit more coherence.

I’ll bear your burdens and you’ll bear mine, and in doing so, let us forever be connected.

Wow, finally expunged these thoughts from my brain. Maybe somewhere in me there's still something left for a discussion on how the show uses repeated imagery and visual metaphor to communicate information and associations to the viewer that are vital to actually understanding what's going on because it's a narrative that half exists a non-literal thematic space but for now:

Thanks for reading!

[mychemicalraymance]

i’m really curious to see the connections between gerard and joan of arc that people make, because their interest seems twofold, but i see a lot of people only making the connection of like gender non conformity (which is there!!! and huge). but to me, a larger part of it is like.... the intermixing of contemporary reaction and myth (and like, martyrdom) with a modern context of what was probably “going on” with her. i also think it’s important to not dwell on christian symbols TOO much when making these connections, because while the root of this is a connection from mental illness to a certain sense of spirituality that comes from ideas within christian mythology, i don’t think any of the notions here are meant to be taken as fundamentally christian concepts, or that gerard necessarily believe joan’s crusade to be righteous in the fact that it’s christian. i think we can take the baby out of the bathwater here. 

Gerard is a spiritual person, and like,  seems to have a huge relationship with christianity (obviously, and a very catholic, righteous one at that). I think in that quote where he is describing joan of arc as “probably fucking crazy” and touched by the hand of god at the same time is really important. The connection he seems to make with his own mental illness and a sort of chosen-one narrative feels directly influenced from his understanding of stuff like this, of apostles and oracles, etc. We know he later on  connected Maya the Psychic with a personal experience of auditory hallucinations (though the major source i can find on this is the genius annotation with a link to a concert video where he doesn’t actually say what the annotation is claiming, so it’s up for debate?). It feels like you can make a much deeper connection between the two (gerard and joan) when considering the fact that he seems to be overlapping and mixing the idea of being a spiritual and religous martyr with being a mentally ill person who feels so strongly about something that they make themselves a target for what is right. i feel like gerard perhaps understands or understood himself as someone who in a previous era would be receiving visions and then being persecuted for it. that makes themes of like revenge and mortality also tie in nicely to the joan narrative but that’s probably less related. 

I think it’s not uncalled for also to draw out a discussion of gerard’s gender non conformity as a sort of “martyrdom” via the hands of the popular consensus. Like to me it really feels like gerard being so sort of flagrantly a target in the public understanding of mcr in order to be a figure for gay and/or fucked up teens is like. his noble cause that he was burned at the stake for. like literally a social martyr for the cause! i think he knew that the whole time. and if he wasnt doing that he didn’t want to do it anymore. 

so like to me joan is more of a philosophy than anything else to gerard, and there’s far more loops than just the fact that the two sort of overlap in terms of androgyny or gerard has an interest in her. and gerard HAS become a myth to us just like joan. gerard did sort of burn at the stake a little bit and you can honest to god see people understand gerard either as “Gerard” or like the person he actually is day to day. and “Gerard” is Joan of Arc. the gerard that isn’t aligned with the way we see him in terms of mcr isn’t “Gerard” to a lot of people, which is why you see people reacting to recent mcr so strongly, he’s “Gerard” to them again, and it’s like seeing a dead saint. 

[alpaca-clouds]

Some thoughts on Nocturne

Okay, we finally have a trailer and some actual information on the show, I think it is kinda fun to speculate, right? And just have some thoughts. No, scratch that: Actually I got a lot of thoughts. Even though barely anything is confirmed.

Firstly: Yeah, let's face it, it does not look like there is a ton of plot tonna survive from the two games inspiring it. Which undoubtedly will once again leave the game fans angry. But even though I enjoyed the heck out of Symphony of the Night (still gotta play Rondo full), I still think it is kinda a good thing. Because most Castlevania games are fairly light on story. Which - I said this before - is okay. It is totally okay for a videogame to be like: "Slay big monster." But if you want to translate it into a more narrative focused medium, you gotta change stuff.

I was originally kinda sceptical about the entire French Revolution thing for two reasons. 1) Well, technically I doubt that the French Revolution is still gonna happen after how the first series ended. But that might just be me. 2) Western Media, but American Media especially sucks when it comes to portrayels of the French Revolution as it usually goes back to the "There were good people on both sides!" kinda outlook, that does not really get the revolution and everything that was going on.

Funnily enough the thing that made me a bit more optimistic on this point is just them making Annette Black and from what I gather from that preview article released two days someone who has escaped slavery. I mean, game!Annette is just the usual passive kinda woman for the most part. And this is... definitely more interesting than that.

Especially given there is also another detail that nobody seems to acknowledge: Outside of showrunner Clive Bradley, all the episode writers (Temi Oh, Testament and Zodwa Nyoni) are Black. Which kinda seems like a very conscious choice. And given that the French Revolution does not get the credit it deserves as an abolition movement and something that definitely also helped to lead to the Haitain Revolution, I start to get my hopes up that they are gonna actually work with that aspect of the (hi)story.

One thing that is also interesting to me - though also kinda iffy - is the thing with Orlox and Richter's mother.

Iffy because it makes Richter join the ranks of Castlevania protagonists at least partly inspired by the death of a woman. What is it with this franchise and that fucking refrigirating warehouse filled with women?! I mean, Jesus, you people are aware that man can actually be inspired to do stuff for other reasons than a woman dying, right?!

But... We also know that Orlox does not seem to be the main antagonist, but apparently is someone who ends up making uneasy allies with Richter and Co., which kinda makes me hope that there is actually gonna be a bit more nuance to this than it appears at first glance.

Orlox says in the trailer that Richter's mom killed someone very dear to him (honestly, if this is gonna be another refrigerated woman, I am gonna flip a fucking table, though I guess I also do not want buried gays) and a part of me kinda hopes that it might go into the direction I brought up concerning my Belmont family headcanon with this discussing the idea of "killing all vampires is kinda bad, too".

Another thing about Orlox is, too, that he is not white. I read him as Black originally, but given that he is voiced by Zahn McClarnon, who is indigenous, I am gonna assume Orlox here is of Indigenous heritage. Which is gonna make for an interesting storybeat, given that in the series so far we had non-white vampires, yes, but... none of them had much in terms of story, let alone even voicelines.

Especially given another thing...

Given from what we see in the trailer, there definitely is gonna be a theme of "nobility = vampires" going on here. We can only guess about how much of it being like actual: "Oh, yeah, all nobles are vampires!" But there are definitely gonna be some vampires nobles opposed to the revolution. That seems to be pretty clear.

Aaaaaand... that makes me wonder, whether or not there is actually gonna be some commentary about the different ranks within vampire society.

Let me explain: All vampires with voicelines (or, heck, NAMES) within the original Castlevania series were nobles of some sort. It was what in other franchises would be called Vampire Lords. Well, with the exception of Ratko, that is, who explicitly is a soldier. Most of the vampire soldiers are just faceless characters with the same four designs repeating over and over. They are just the canon fodder who dies, when the heroes need their action scenes. But... That always made me wonder what vampire society actually looked like for these people.

And given the time this is now set in... and that Orlox is apparently indigenous... I kinda doubt that he is a vampire lord, given the times. If we have the vampire nobility being actual nobility... They gotta be racist, right?

Maybe I am just conjecturing too much here. But... That would actually make for an interesting idea.

Also, also... In the original show there is not a single Black or Arabian vampire. Which is also... interesting. Just saying.

We also know that the main antagonist seems to be Erzsebet Báthory (rather than Shaft or Dracula, though obviously this could also be the trailer trying to mislead us).

Fun Fact: Did you know that there is two vampires in the Castlevania games based on historical serial killers, who these days are both presumed to have been innocent? (Bathory and de Rais.)

This is something where I am super interested to see, where they are going to go with the character. Because there definitely is this historical assumption these days that she might have been innocent - and man would that make for a more interesting character than her being actually just a child murderer.

We so far see too little of her to really speculate much. But I definitely find it interesting that they have chosen her as the antagonist.

Also... There is this whole thing of Vampire Messiah and all of that going on and blocking out the sun and what not. And I kinda do wonder if anyone is gonna go like: "Uhm, yeah, without a sun we cannot grow shit and everyone is gonna starve, including vampires!"

Other more short form thoughts:

We see this night creature apparently saving Annette from a vampire or other night creature. What's up with that? Or is it even a night creature? We definitely see night creatures in that big eclipse scene, but there issomething else that might be going on here. Because...

Admittedly, the one vampire I have trouble placing in my theory is this one. She does seem to be on the side of Bathory in this based on everything we see in the trailer. From all I can find, she does not have a name as far as I could find. But she does fight Annette and all of that. And she definitely is Black, making me wonder what her story is.

BUUUUUT... If you look at her full design in the scene where she is fighting Annette, she looks remarkably like the night creature saving Annette in the above screenshot. So...

We see those masked figures in the trailer, with the clear implication that they are vampires. And last night (well, European night that is) someone on one of the servers was like: "Hey, is the blond masked guy Alucard with short hair?" And I originally brushed it off. But... I also think now they might be right, because he has normal ears and not poity vampire ears. And that is only something we saw in Alucard so far (not that we see a ton of his ears - which made me to always assume for my fics he has pointy ears, but I crossreferenced the models and yeah, no, Alucard has normal ears). So, either this is Alucard... or some other dhampir. Probably not a full-blooded vampire though.

In this one shot of what seems to be Annette using her magic, we see that she has a Fleur-de-lis either painted, tattooed or branded on her right hand. And I gotta wonder what is up with that. Given that she is a freed/runaway slave, I do wonder whether she has some ties to the royal family in one way or another?

We do see Maria summon what clearly looks like Byakku. And I am wondering how they are gonna go about Maria's powerset. Because it is another thing were the games do not have a ton of story happening. She summons beasts that are strictly linked to East Asian mythology, even though she is not from East Asia because of... reasons. I certainly hope she is gotta get more of a reason to do so here. (Especially given her entire Ninja-thing in Symphony, that made about as much sense lol Please note: I love game!Maria. It is just kinda a hilarious "Japanese games will do this" thing to me.)

We do not see a ton of Tera using magic in the trailer. Buuuuut in this scene she uses ice magic and definitely uses the same hand sign for it Sypha uses. She also vaguely has the same color scheme (blue and black) as the speakers do. And the same blue eyes like Sypha. Is she related to the speakers somehow? (And given the role that the Romani people also kinda had in terms of the revolution: Will we just stick with the speakers taking over the roles of Sinti and Roma?)

What is going on in this scene?

I mean, we definitely see Richter using magic in the trailer (which still makes a ton of sense to me, given he is gonna be as much of a descendent of Sypha as he is of Trevor). But this... does kinda seem as if he might have something more than just normal magic going on there.

Also: I just adore that half of the trailer Richter is crying. Someone hug this poor boy.

Finally: I sure hope it will keep up the gay levels of the series so far xD

[blueskittlesart]

hi, correct me if i'm wrong but i seem to remember you saying that you're majoring in illustration! i'm currently in the process of applying to colleges and i plan on majoring in illustration as well, so i was wondering if you had any advice for portfolios. I could really use some tips on the presentation aspect specifically, bc I'm a little lost when it comes to stuff like the arrangement/organization of pieces, how I should crop my pictures, etc. any advice you can give me is greatly appreciated!!

hi yes i can totally help you out with this! i like to think my college portfolio was pretty good bc i got accepted to every school i sent it to lol :) the main pieces of advice that i was given when building it were this:

studies and pieces that show off your technical skill are great, but limit them to around a third of your portfolio at most. art schools DO want to see that you're technically skilled and can like, draw a charcoal still life or a self-portrait, because those ARE important skills to have, but ESPECIALLY if you're applying to a school that's more known for contemporary fields like animation or illustration, it's much more likely that they want to see your creative mind at work. the single best thing you can put in your portfolio is a BODY OF WORK, and specifically a body of work that shows off your own ideas and your own take on whatever you're producing. this means 3+ pieces that are interconnected or related to the same central theme. my portfoilo, for example, consisted of 2 or 3ish traditional, technical pieces which showed that I had a certain level of technical skill, and the ENTIRE rest of it was devoted to a series of original interconnected narrative comics I'd written and drawn. Every reviewer I met with told me that this was what made my portfolio stand out to them--it showed that I was not only technically skilled, but that i had something i wanted to DO with that skill, that I had direction and drive with my art and was able to produce work that reflected that. If you're maybe (definitely) not quite as ambitious as me, something like a series of 3-5 interconnected illustrations or a short comic if you're into that might do the same thing.

as a side note, if you DO have a body of work as the central focus of your portfolio, a lot of colleges will be interested in your process as well! for example with my comic portfolio, i used one slot to demonstrate my process, because I penciled every page traditionally before digitalizing it and i had extensive character and worldbuilding sketches. I wouldn't devote more than one slot to it, but if you have a body of work where the process is important to you it could be worth throwing in!

arrangement is tricky, but the advice I generally heard was "put your best stuff first." whatever you're most excited about, whatever is going to grab someone's attention the fastest, that's what you want to have in your first slot. (I actually don't think I followed this advice on my applications LOL but it's what i was TOLD to do and i think it's solid advice.)

in terms of editing, assuming we're talking about traditional pieces being photographed, you want to make sure your pieces are 1. well-lit, (DO NOT TAKE YOUR PHOTOS WITH OVERHEAD LIGHTING. wait for an overcast day and take them outside trust me) 2. legible, (no weird shadows obscuring parts of the piece, high-quality enough that no details are lost due to digital pixelation, etc) and 3. as color-accurate to real life as you can make them. most of this is just about getting a decent-quality camera (a newer iphone should be fine) and a good location. (outside and overcast, as previously mentioned) you may want to throw your pics into photoshop and play with the balance slightly, but I wouldn't do anything too drastic, try to get the most accurate photo possible without any editing. (if your pieces are small and flat, scanning them in may work better. most public and school libraries have scanners you can use for free.)

finally, cropping. the general rule that I was taught is to crop the piece, not the photograph. if you've got a piece on paper and you're not sure you like how the actual drawing is oriented on the paper, crop the PAPER down to size, and THEN photograph it. your photos should aim to show the ENTIRE piece from edge to edge (unless it's a detail shot obv) and I even like to include a little bit of extra "breathing room" around the piece so that it's clear exactly where the dimensions of it end. here's a piece I used for my college portfolios for reference:

i lowkey do not like this piece now but that's not the point. this is what i mean by breathing room--a few extra inches of space around the actual canvas so it's clear that this isn't a closeup and you can see where the canvas actually ends. the same is true for digital pieces. if it's a full bleed illustration (something with full color all the way to the edges of the canvas) just make sure you like the composition cropped the way it is and submit the full piece as-is. if it's a floating spot or something similar without hard edges, leave a bit of white or transparent breathing room around the edge of your image.

hope this helps! if you have any more specific questions lmk :)

[venomous-qwille]

Hi hello! I love how different and distinctive your characters are, so wanted to ask if you got any tips/helpful resources for how to write characters without blending them into something similar? Thank you for your work!

Ahh thankyou very much :) There was a LOT of kill your darlings involved in making characters for gitm. Originally I had a very long list of ideas that I cut down and down based on the kind of things and themes they would give me the opportunity to write about. I love long ensemble cast stories, thinking back to ones I particularly enjoyed and the ways those characters gelled together helped me a lot. For advice? That's kinda hard but for the gitm guys I made sure to answer a couple of character work questions: What lie do they believe about themselves/the world? How does it impact the way they interact with others? What central theme do they embody most? What do they want more than anything else? How do they feel about humans? Who are they at their best and who are they at their worst?

All basic character work stuff!

I found that by answering these sort of questions it helped me discover more about them, which creates more questions- rinse and repeat. The more questions I answered the further away they would get from each other in terms of similarities.

The thing that really helped with the gitm boys, especially because their origins are so similar, was leaning in to how different their experiences were post-fazco. They are different people because the world has made them that way.

Messing around with foils is useful too! Characters are no fun in a vacuum, it's how they interact with others that makes them interesting. Imo I like to create ones that will bring out the best and the worst in each other. I think about opposites a lot and I really like narrative symmetry- what lessons can the characters learn from each other? I find that stuff super exciting to read so I really wanted to include it. I'm not sure how helpful this all is! But yeah, I try to be pretty strict with myself about what I include. The only reason I would include two characters who were very very similar would be to emphasize a difference/divergence between them later on. Characters have to justify themselves by bringing something unique to the table imo, even if that thing is just a 'very different outlook on life' to the rest of the cast. <3