#but like. yeah. something about opening scenes setting the tone in stories with similar themes here

[brionysea]

i started reading the witcher books shortly after watching arcane and the immediate difference in how these worldbuilding-heavy, high fantasy (??) stories treats women, is ridiculous. maybe i'm just ace but opening with your broody male protag sleeping with this random woman (not even his LI, i thought it was yennefer flash-forward style but it's not) before we get into the monster hunting and moral pontificating and politics and bla bla bla vs vi and powder's tragic orphaning via war, and then the prologue leading up to their SECOND tragic orphaning (also kinda sorta via war)... like it just doesn't compare

[ficforce]

Blind Spot Part 1

Obi x Reader Stalker trigger

Obi stopped mid-lift as he heard the sound of three women getting angry all at once, it could only mean that Y/N had come back from her date and that it hadn’t gone well. He grabbed a towel and wiped at his face before opening the door and heading toward the break room; Iris looked mildly scandalised whilst Tamaki and Maki looked ready to commit murder, Y/N stood in front of them looking a little disappointed. “So he just grabbed your butt and expected you to go home with him? What a pervert!” “You have the worst luck with that dating company, why can’t you find your prince charming already?” Maki looked close to tears and sat down as if defeated. Y/N pat her on the shoulder and then she realised Obi was stood in the doorway, he looked a little sweaty but she recognised the bright look in his eyes, he always got a good feeling after working out, “You called it, Captain. Another loser crossed off the list.” “Did you update your dating profile?” He wasn’t going to gloat, he hadn’t liked the guy’s profile when she showed him and he felt worse about it if the guy had touched her without her wanting him to, “What did you put in for your ideal match?” She sat down beside Maki and began counting off the points on her fingers, “Tall, fit, kind, fun. Adventurous, looking for a long term commitment, preferably someone in a similar line of work.” Sister Iris shook her head a little and exhaled, “Why don’t you just put in a picture of Captain Obi in that section?” Tamaki covered her mouth so she wouldn’t laugh out loud and Maki looked at the two hopefully. It wasn’t the first time someone had told Y/N that she and Obi would be a great match.

“Tall, check” Maki ticked off an imaginary box, “No ones more fitness mad than Captain, check.” Iris joined in then, getting up her own imaginary checklist, “Kind and fun, check. Adventurous… let’s just check that.” Tamaki pretended to grab Iris’ list, “Pretty sure Captain Obi said he’d only date for keeps, check. And he’s in the same line of work. Check, check and check!” The three of them looked at them excitedly, Obi rubbed the back of his head and fumbled with his words for a moment, eventually coming up with some excuse, “We’ve been friends for nearly ten years, I think if there was anything between us it would have happened by now, right, Y/N?” “And you’re my boss now,” she gave a shrug to the girls and sat down at the end of the table, still disappointed by the evening’s date. Y/N had always dreamed of a prince charging into her life one day, sweeping her off her feet and loving her until the end of time, she felt like she was running out of time now, she was nearly thirty and still hadn’t had a long, meaningful relationship. She wondered if Mr Right would ever find her… Feeling a warm hand on her shoulder she looked up at Obi and he gave her a soft smile, “You’ll find a guy who ticks all the boxes, you just need to relax a little more. How about I set you up with Hinawa?” “Great idea!” Y/N cheered, “Then I can borrow his gun to shoot you with!” Obi snorted and headed out to hit the showers, oblivious to Y/N watching him as he left, her eyes lingering on his muscled back until she heard giggling from the side, “What?!” The women couldn’t believe how oblivious the two were of their feelings. The next two dates were just as disastrous and put the usually cheery woman in a bad mood. She was almost grateful for the difficulty of their mission as it let her work out some frustration, Obi pulled her up out of the elevator shaft they had used to escape a collapse lower down and she made sure to adjust his hood when she noticed it coming loose - neither of them had fire abilities and made sure to check the other’s equipment. It was something they had done even when they were regular firefighters, they had been in some difficult firefights and they always tried to find something to laugh about at the end; it kept them sane. They had gotten separated from everyone else when two Infernals had flanked the team, “The floor’s weak here, watch your step, Ak- Obi.” Y/N still wasn’t used to calling him Captain or Obi after years of casual friendship calling each other by first names. They made their way through the building until they found the stairs, the fires were blazing hot and they rushed down the stairs to where they could hear fighting, a screech of metal made Y/N scream as the stairs sunk dangerously under their feet, she balanced herself in time but she saw Obi go over the side of the broken rail. “Akitaru!” She launched herself toward him and barely caught his wrist before he vanished - he was so heavy it was hard not to be pulled over too, “Come on, little help here…” Obi caught the edge of the stairs with his other hand and began to pull himself back up, the woman gripping his coat and belt to help him all the way, “Thanks…” he gave her shoulder a grateful squeeze, “Let’s keep going, stay alert.” The Captain took her hand without thinking and they made their way through the inferno together, it was early dawn by the time they had finished putting the Infernals to rest and Y/N’s head drooped as she fought off sleep, eventually her head dropped onto Obi’s shoulder and he opened one of his eyes to look down at her, a smile flitted over his lips as she let out a mumble. He closed his eye again and relaxed a little, there was still some driving to do before they got back to the station so he would have to enjoy this as much as he could. They’d been friends for as long as he could remember and part of him regretted that he wasn’t her prince charming… they had never even had a moment where he thought he could kiss her and she would respond favourably - perhaps he was a coward? He had told the girls what he

honestly thought, ‘if there was anything between them it would have happened by now.’ It ached every time she described her ideal man but overlooked him. Obi wanted her to be happy and if that meant helping her out before every date she had with a stranger then he would take it on the chin. — - “I give up!” Y/N announced and tossed her jacket over Vulcan’s workbench, “Vul, I need something to hit - gimme a job to do.” She pulled him out from under the matchbox, not too surprised by his animal-themed goggles but they made her laugh, “You’re so cute…” “I’m a star-nosed mole.” The redhead pointed over to a different bench, “The hubcap got a little banged up, wanna hammer it back into shape?” She passed him a bottle of water and the young man pulled his goggles off, he saw Y/N like a kind of mother but even he had to admit she looked good in her date outfit, “Didn’t it go well?” She shook her head, “It was fine at first but then he started talking about himself and it was way different than his profile, then he kept changing his story and I just got this… feeling about him. He was hot as hell but I started to really go off him by dessert.” Y/N took a breath, “You know how you said Dr Giovanni made even your bones feel creeped out - he was like that.” A little time passed with the two working away and then they were interrupted by Hinawa, the Lieutenant’s wide eyes landed on Y/N and she flinched, “…Um?” “Your date called the station, he wanted to know if you got home safe.” He would have gone on to lecture her on the proper use of the work phone but the ex-soldier paused when he saw her expression change, it was obvious the news wasn’t welcome. “Y/N?” “I didn’t tell him where I worked… I said I was in Emergency Services and there’s nothing on me to indicate I work here.” Her skin prickled and she glanced out of the garage door as if someone might be lurking there, “What did you say, Lieutenant?” Hinawa walked past her and pulled the door shut before tossing her her coat, “I told him that Company 8 only deals with Infernals in this district and hung up.” He told Vulcan to make sure he locked up when he was done and led her toward the kitchen. The kitchen with Hinawa always meant a heart to heart, Hinawa began preparing tea and she gave a sigh as she waited for him to say whatever it was he needed. “Tell me about the guy you went out with tonight? Description, occupation… concerns.” “Tall, dark hair and eyes, he was pretty broad.” He passed her a cup and she held it close as she leaned on the counter, “He said he was police force but then he kinda changed his story, I caught a glimpse of a tattoo on his arm when he took his coat off and it looked military.” She watched Hinawa nod slowly and then he gestured for the door, having her follow him to the equipment lock-up, “Hinawa?” “I didn’t like his tone, Y/N, I don’t like what you’re telling me.” He pulled open his gun draw and picked out a handgun, checking it over before holding it out to her, “I’m lending this to you, I know you can use it so I’m not too worried about gun safety.” “Hinawa?” She took it from him hesitantly, “I’m… I think you’re overreacting.” “You looked terrified when I said you got a call… It takes some doing to rattle you, Y/N. Cancel your dating subscription, it’s embarrassing that you even signed up. You’re an attractive woman but you need to get your head out of fairytales and start looking in the real world.” Y/N kept the gun Hinawa had given her in a holster under her clothes, she figured he was being overprotective and the thought made her feel better about the whole thing, Company 8 were her family and they looked out for her, maybe Hinawa was right and she needed to relax a little. It was a full week since her date and everything was just like normal, at least she had thought it was. It was Arthur that pointed out a reoccurring figure at the scenes they went out to, the blonde pointed past her shoulder and she turned along with Shinra, “He’s here again.” Shinra squinted into the crowd and agreed, “Yeah, he was here last time and the

time before. Do you know him, Y/N?” The figure was already walking away when she tried to get a better look, she felt a chill all over and stepped backwards nervously - straight into Obi. His hands rested on her shoulders and he searched the crowd too, “Y/N… you’re shaking.” Obi had heard about the stranger in the crowd and he had been told by Hinawa that there was a problem with her last date, the Captain guided her back to the matchbox and searched the crowd one more time before ordering Vulcan to drive them home. They all kept an eye out from then on, the figure didn’t appear again but someone kept calling the station and hanging up, Vulcan noticed that the lock on the garage had been tampered with and one morning they found a bouquet of flowers left at the doorstep. It had gotten to a point where Y/N couldn’t go anywhere without an escort. — - “Maki, could you go tell Y/N it’s her turn to do the dishes?” The woman gave her Captain a nod and headed down to the garage where Y/N said she was going to grab a screwdriver to fix something in her room. She looked around and saw only Vulcan’s feet under the matchbox and Licht trying to convince him to help with modifications. They both seemed confused as Y/N hadn’t been there in the last half an hour, the three of them started a search throughout the large building and then there was a mass panic when no one could find her. Obi had been the last person to leave the station, calling ahead to Company 5 to see if they could spare some extra feet on the ground and then he would search the local area. The phone rang and he prayed it wasn’t an Infernal, “Company 8, Captain Obi speaking… Y/N! Where the hell are you?!” “I was taking out the trash and… I didn’t see him…” Obi pressed the phone closer to his ear, she sounded so faint, “Akitaru, I… I’ve been shot.” His blood ran cold as that sunk in.

[sepublic]

Musical Car!

           What’s interesting is that the musical has a sign advertising Jesse’s name; Did he stop by the Musical Car at some point and inspire the denizens there with a speech about empathy, and how differences are okay? We know that had to have taken place prior to him, Lake, and Alan Dracula entering the Carnival Car, meeting The Cat, etc. Either way, I’m not at all surprised that someone as open and friendly as him would say such things, especially with an unconventional friend like Lake; And obviously he stuck by his words in the end, didn’t he?

           Lemme tell you though… I was legit disturbed by that raid, as well as seeing those poor denizens get legitimately hurt and injured for no reason at all, and that ONE decapitated dude almost getting wheeled, only to be converted into Simon’s thing; Like, screw you Apex. That’s what makes Simon and Grace interesting; I’ve always imagined the concept of more problematic protagonists for this series, so it’s not much of a surprise to see Book 3 dive into this! Given how much more, well… WORSE Simon and Grace are, pehaps it’s not all-too surprise that their arc was confined to HBO Max, given the even more mature tone set by them and their actions!

           Honestly, those two rapidly switch and range from terrible, nasty jerks I want to punch, to misfits with banter and chemistry, and plenty of comradery; Especially for people they DO care about! It really drives the point home that not every bad person is PURE evil, like they don’t spend every waking moment plotting how terrible they can be, and most don’t even consider themselves as bad! It’s disconcerting, but a good look into their mindset; With Grace genuinely trying to be nice and caring to the kids and not hurting their feelings, but also repeating Amelia’s lies about the train denizens being there for the passengers’ benefit, and… More on that later.

           Also- Glad to see Grace make fun of Simon’s fashion sense and acknowledge it, but at the same time… Either he was ten when he began to wear socks with sandals, AND/OR he was ten when he first met Grace; Presumably on the Infinity Train, although the idea of two individuals knowing one another PRIOR to boarding it is also fascinating! Especially given how Book 2 discussed the idea of fate and pre-determination in one’s paths and all…

           It’s interesting to see that not all Apex kids are against the denizens, like some DO want to make friends with them (albeit in a very invasive manner), but Grace and Simon just shut them down. I have to wonder if they themselves also had a similar moment with Amelia, only to be brutally shut down; And Amelia is objectively worse than those two considering how much higher her number is, and how SHE was the one who started this dumb ideology in the first place (instead of just being taught it at a vulnerable moment in her life like everybody else)!

           What’s worth noting is that Simon has a device that can detect the presence of other passengers, which is both VERY cool and VERY useful; I have to wonder if it’ll detect Hazel in the Jungle Car however. Given the speculation of her being a train denizen, it’d serve as neat, subtle foreshadowing as to her true nature, and I can see the show touching upon this! Also, the aesthetics of that device reminds me of what The Cat would own; Given how she’ll make a return this Book and has had a run-in with at least Grace in the past, I can easily see it being something she’d own. She IS a collector of useful things, after all… And I have to wonder if maybe The Cat was even a companion of Simon or Grace; Or maybe even Amelia! Perhaps the Passenger-Detector was a ‘gift’ from Amelia…

           (I mean, they HAVE to bring her back in Book 3, given how her ideology and actions are a direct consequence of everything that happens, and would fit nicely into her eventual redemption arc. Not to mention it’d give a fascinating insight as to what was going on in her mind when she indoctrinated the Apex.)

           Neat detail seeing the Unfinished Car with those corgi diplomats, and nice joke with that one turtle talking to what’s later revealed to be a phone with a line that’s already cut anyway! Grace breaking her Harpoon Pack makes sense; She wasn’t seen with one in the trailer and posters, and I guess it’d help ‘balance’ things if only one protagonist had a Harpoon Pack; So they can’t just skip over cars on their way back!

           Speaking of a way back; We have a set number of cars leading back to the Mall Car, so in other words we have a way of keeping track of the journey’s progress! It IS worth noting that the cars could always rearrange… It’s interesting to learn that cars apparently don’t move when passengers are inside; I always assumed that sometimes they might’ve and a passenger wouldn’t notice because all the cars look identical from the outside, and also being inside a pocket-dimension kind of skews around with the sensation of what’s going on outside. It’s possible that Simon and Grace actually felt the movement because of the Unfinished Car’s unusual nature…

           Regardless, after that disturbing opening scene it makes sense that One-One is stepping in! Given how he values the passengers more than the denizens (as seen with his second and final interaction with Lake), it makes me wonder how much he actually CARES; Or if he can’t afford to have people ‘breaking equipment’, and/or is mostly doing this to lean the Apex towards becoming better people by confronting them over their actions! At this point, they may end up pushing One-One too much and he’ll have to send in his Steward…

           Getting onto some existential crisis, the cruel thing about Simon and Grace saying that the denizens are made for them is… They’re actually kind of right? NOT that this justifies at all their wanton, senseless cruelty towards the train denizens… But it ties back to Lake’s existential crisis in Book 2, the realization and likelihood that she (and maybe even the Mirror World) was made purely for the character development of people like Tulip and Jesse! One-One himself outright says in the Book 2 Finale that, YEAH; Train Denizens are supposed to stay on the train because their entire purpose, their entire means of creation was just to fulfill what the passengers need!

           …Obviously, using them for raids ISN’T what One-One (and/or whoever made the Infinity Train/the Infinity Train itself) intended… But the disturbing realization still stands that the denizens’ purpose and creation in life is for the betterment of passengers, to accompany them, aid them… In the past, I’ve speculated how some Cars and their inhabitants don’t seem to have much of a personality beyond being a basic caricature to fulfill the ‘theme’ of a car, as well as aiding in passengers’ journeys! And obviously they’re all PEOPLE, but again this ties back into just how real the pasts and worlds of denizens were, as discussed by Mace; The idea that entire histories and cultures have been fabricated, and pre-programmed into the memories of denizens.

           Needless to say, it’s very disturbing… And if Simon and Grace ever change their stance on denizens and even start vouching for them, it’d be a brilliant reversal of their beginning attitudes to have them call out One-One for making sapient people for the sole purpose of serving others; Which could be a dilemma for him given how HE may have been made for the purpose of others! Given how Amelia taught the Apex her ideals, and she was Conductor for a time and thus had rather intimate knowledge of the Infinity Train… perhaps what she says about the denizens being just ‘toys’, made for the passengers, isn’t too far a stretch from the truth; Obviously a dark, twisted, and selfish distortion. But it’s emblematic, reflecting a deeper, underlying issue that could lie with the Infinity Train itself.

           (Especially since Owen Dennis said that One-One and the Infinity Train can be wrong…)

           Given how Amelia made cars with denizens that only ‘turned on’ once a car was considered ‘complete’ (or close to it), it suggests that she knows all about the artificial, pre-programmed nature of denizens because she’s made a few ones; Which when coupled with how she probably tried to make a Fake Alrick, and ultimately realized that a replica would never be the same… Eerily, it lends to the idea that part of what made Amelia realize this at the end of Book 1, was her mindset that denizens are just follow, fake copies of pre-existing things and aren’t even real to begin with.

           THAT is a cruel twist; That the very ideas that founded the Apex and caused our issues in Book 3, were low-key what helped Amelia wake up from her fantasy and realize that she needed to confront her issues! Given how high her number is, it only makes sense that while she’s making progress, she STILL has some more fundamental problems to tackle; Specifically the idea that while denizens aren’t the same or ‘real’ as the original, they’re still people and whatnot!

           All in all, a VERY fascinating watch! Just eleven minutes, but I’m hooked in; Sure this does tie a lot back to previously-established concepts, but what story-driven show doesn’t? It really recontextualizes and makes you think back about what WAS discussed already and how it changes with the more we learn and explore!

[devilsskettle]

can i ask u to elaborate on ur feelings/notes about swallow? i rly liked it and i would love to hear another person’s thoughts!!

yes! i’m so glad you asked, i was just writing about it actually! 

the main two things i think this movie has going for it are the visual appeal and the strength of the acting. every shot in this movie seemed intentional and considered thoroughly, none of them seemed unnecessary or even boring to look at. everything from the set and costume design to the camera work was well done. i think that’s really impressive! most films don’t have that kind of intentionality. it felt kind of like “wes anderson does a psychological thriller” lol but not in a way that felt distracting to me. also the actress who plays hunter, haley bennett, did such a good job of conveying her as a character, and with so much nuance to her emotions. i also think it’s thematically interesting, the way it explores ideas about health, bodily autonomy, financial inequality (this is another “rich people suck” movie), gender, i could go on but you get the idea. it’s very gothic in a lot of ways, discussing the confinement of and violence towards women in the domestic sphere, especially the entitlement to their bodies and ideas about motherhood. i’ve also rarely seen stories about pika but i think here it’s framed in a sympathetic and respectful light that points out its seriousness but doesn’t place the blame on the person who struggles with it, which is a good way to handle any mental health issue in stories imo. i also think it’s rare to have abortion portrayed as a neutral choice that is right in certain circumstances so i think it did that well enough (there have been several movies/tv series in recent years that also discuss abortion without bias so it’s hardly revolutionary but i still like the way they went about it). however, i didn’t love the direction the movie went, i was hoping for more horror than that, in fact the only reason i think it’s labeled a psychological thriller is because people aren’t used to seeing pika portrayed and while it’s a scary problem to have, i don’t think the movie as a whole feels like a thriller. it feels more like a drama about marriage and mental health, if maybe a little bit more intense for that genre. like you can tell it’s intended to be a thriller based on the tone and everything, but the story itself doesn’t back that up. also it only really gets at surface level issues, and gives you a clear reason and solution for her problem (reason: guilt about the method of her conception + problems with her home life + pregnancy. result: pika. solution: confront father + leave husband + abortion. i wish it hadn’t been that simple)

which brings me to: the things i would’ve changed about it or liked to see more:

1. they opened the movie with several close up shots of food and i thought that would be a motif that they carried through the movie, which it was with the items that hunter ate, but not with actual food. like i thought in the birthday party scene, they would have a close up shot of the tray of sandwiches she was carrying, for example. i would’ve liked to see that and how by treating both the food and the objects the same way visually it would blur the line between the two, also i just think it would be visually appealing 

2. i’m uncomfortable with the way they portrayed getting mental health help, with the therapist breaking confidentiality and the family of her husband coercing her into checking into an inpatient facility, even though imo that’s exactly where she needed to be (she almost died! she should’ve been in more intensive treatment). i don’t mind the therapist thing as much because it shows how money can open any door and how alone hunter was, but there’s nothing wrong with having to go to a psych ward even if it feels like an extreme step so it kind of felt bad to me but maybe i’m just hypersensitive about that kind of thing 

3. again, i wanted it to go darker. i wanted for her to snap at the end and do something fucked up to her husband or his family. honestly i didn’t mind the ending, i thought the bathroom scene under the credits was a very strong final shot, but the narrative after she leaves the hotel feels like it diverts into soap opera melodrama territory. in some ways i like the ending but i wished it had something else to it

4. i wish we got to see more of hunter’s real personality but i think that’s difficult when she’s so isolated. maybe in some of the therapy scenes she could open up more and we’d see more past the facade (besides when she’s having a breakdown, which is also not indicative of her “real” personality) 

5. the fact that we get to hear from her father and very little from her mother - none of which is positive - is a little bit questionable to me given that he raped her and we see him humanized and her - maybe not dehumanized, but she’s framed as not being a very good mother, at least to hunter, despite what she says about it. but it’s also surprising and moving in unexpected ways to see her confront the real person face to face instead of literally carrying around the image that she has of him and never really dealing with it, and it also shows that what he did and who he was when he did it was truly pathetic and entitled and massively harmful to both hunter and her mother and potentially to the family he has now, and also there’s not some magical line that separates “normal” people from people who do terrible things to other people, they’re also just people, which isn’t to say “we should forgive them and give them another chance! they’re only human,” more like “you are a person who is capable of hurting others so think about your actions and hold yourself accountable for them.” so i don’t know if it works or if it doesn’t work for me, i maybe have to sit with that one a little longer

6. while i think this movie is better, it does feel like it’s potentially getting into promising young women territory with the pastel aesthetic, focus on women, and shallowness of the storytelling (everything in either of these movies stays very surface level imo). i think it’s a much better movie but still there were parts that felt pretty meh in the same ways

that having been said, it’s a movie i think is going to stick with me and i definitely think it’s worth a watch for anyone curious, but if you’re not already curious, i don’t think you’re missing out so terribly much if you skip it

if you enjoyed this movie (or even were just interested in its themes) here’s some things i would recommend checking out: the yellow wallpaper by charlotte perkins gilman (a woman experiences a mental breakdown after being shut away in her room to recover from “hysteria” while suffering from postpartum depression), white is for witching by helen oyeyemi (also deals with pika as well as horror in domestic spaces), the invisible man 2020 (i feel like these movies have a lot of overlap - isolated glass houses on a cliffside, abusive/possessive men that they have to escape both of whom threaten to - or actually do - hunt them down, a woman experiencing a serious problem that no one takes seriously and is threatened with - or actually experience - institutionalization, commentary on wealth and autonomy), wide sargasso sea by jean rhys (after reading jane eyre of course! follows the character of bertha from jane eyre during her childhood, the early days of her relationship with rochester, and the breakdown of that relationship - similar in relationship with her husband, etc)

anyway yeah that’s all i have to say about it for now but i’d love to hear what you think about it!

[ryqoshay]

Happy Life: Cat Café

Primary Pairing: YohaRiko Words: ~2.7k Rating: G AU: Angelic? Time Frame: Early February of Riko’s 2nd year and Yoshiko’s 1st year of high school Story Arc: Stand Alone

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Author’s Note: 2020 was a bit of a blur for me, so I’m not sure why I decided to start writing this scene well after Valentine’s and after I had already posted a YohaRiko Vday scene earlier in the year. And yet, despite confirming on Sukutomo that the cards that inspired this scene were released in 2020, it feels like I’ve been writing this since 2019. Probably doesn’t help that 2019 was also a blur for me as well...

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“Welcome, Aqours!” The café owner greeted with arms open wide.

“Thank you for having us.” Dia replied with a bow.

“Th-Thank you…” Ruby also bowed next to her sister.

“Please take care of us.” You followed suit.

Chika, Kanan and Riko were about to offer greetings of their own when they were interrupted.

“Mirai, zura!” Hanamaru marveled, eyes wide as she took in the scene before her.

“<Shiny!>” Mari exclaimed, grabbing a themed cat toy with a sparkling pink heart near the end. Immediately, she began dangling it in front of a cat on a nearby platform.

“Ku ku ku” Yoshiko chuckled. “The fallen angel Yohane needs not such trinkets to attract a new familiar!” She pointed to a cat with leopard spots. “Tepēyōllōtl! Yohane summons thee to her side!”

For its part, the cat continued on its way past the group with nary a glance toward the blue-haired first-year.

“Cait Sidhe!” She tried again with a white bellied black cat. “Thou shall make a fine familiar for Yohane!”

To her credit, at least this time, the feline in question turned its head at the call but made no move to approach.

“Tepe-whatsit?” Hanamaru inquired. “Kite Shee? What kind of strange names are you trying to give them?”

“No stranger than Laelaps…” Riko murmured under her breath.

“Sorry for that.” Dia apologized to the owner.

“Don’t worry about it.” The owner chuckled at the continuing antics. “Many of the cats here actually don’t have names yet.” She explained. “If you girls can get them to respond to some you might come up with, we will certainly consider them.”

Several of the gathered school idols gave their affirmations.

“So, if you’ll follow me” the owner continued “we’ve set up a changing area in one of our private rooms. The photography company has already placed your outfits in each section.”

And yet another Valentine’s Day theme. Riko thought to herself as she followed her fellow second years to the mentioned room. There, she found her area as designated by a small handwritten sign. She pushed back the sheet to enter and found a pair of costumes.

So we’re doing idolized versions as well this time. She continued to muse to herself as she changed into the one that seemed more appropriate of a normal café employee, the one not decked out with lace and ribbons and extra accessories. Despite this not being for the idol magazine…

In fact, though they were utilizing the same publishing company to take the pictures and assist with costuming, this photoshoot was instead being sponsored by the café itself. The pictures were to be used for advertising and celebrating their grand opening. So, in that light, perhaps it wasn’t just another Valentine’s set. And the outfits were quite cute.

“Alright,” The head photographer said as the girls began to exit their changing booths “if I could have Kunikida-san, Kurosawa-san and Tsushima-san follow me to the kitchen.”

“You mean me, right?” Ruby asked, pointing to herself.

The woman checked her list. “Ah yes, that’s right, sorry for not being clear.”

“The kitchen?” Yoshiko inquired. “Are we not taking pictures with the kitties?” There was no mistaking the disappointment in her voice.

“We want to get a few pictures of everyone performing duties of the café as well.” The photographer explained.

“Yoshiko-chan just wants to play with the cats.” Hanamaru teased.

“Of course!” Yoshiko rebuked as she reluctantly followed the others. “They’re all so adorable and deserve all of the attention and affection we can give them. And I intend to do my fair share.”

“Probably more than your fair share.”

Whatever Yoshiko said in reply was cut off by the door closing behind the group heading to the kitchen.

Riko felt a small smile turn her lips as she realized that the younger girl cared far more about the animals than the photoshoot. Not that this came as any surprise to her, based on the behavior she had observed with Anko, but she couldn’t deny that she saw an endearing quality to it all.

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The grey cat sniffed the collar in Riko’s hand once before stepping closer. Gently, Riko slid the faux leather band around the cat’s neck and secured it. She then leaned back to admire the accessory and decided she’d made the right choice. Pink worked well with grey.

Riko smiled as the cat climbed up into her lap then giggled as she continued to climb and stretch up to lick her cheek.

“Perfect.” The photographer spoke up. “I think that might be the shot.” Though saying as much, he continued to snap more pictures in case an even better one presented itself.

Suddenly the cat’s ears perked up and her head snapped around to the side. Riko followed her gaze and after a moment was barely able to pick up a tiny, plaintive mewl.

“Sorry, sorry, Bastet!” Yoshiko’s voice followed. “I didn’t mean to sca-kyaa!”

Riko flinched as a thump sounded and the whole structure of a nearby tower bumped up, disturbing the half dozen cats perched upon it. Due to the commotion caused by the younger girl, Riko barely noticed that the grey cat had leaped out of her lap and made a beeline for where Yoshiko was now backing out from under the structure.

“I’ll leave this here for you for when you decide to come out, alright?” Yoshiko said gently before pulling herself out completely. “Hear that, Kankyo, Nunogire?” She directed her attention to the two cats who had not fled the tower. “That treat is for Bastet. But you can have… oh, hey there.” Her gaze shifted once again, this time to the grey cat who had arrived at her side and seemed to be staring daggers at her.

“Seems you met the shiest of our new arrivals.” A nearby staff member commented. “And earned the ire of another.”

“Who, her?” Yoshiko questioned as she let the grey cat sniff her finger before petting her. “Seems Anhur is just a little protective of the little baby, nothing to wrong with that.”

Anhur? Riko’s knowledge of the Egyptian pantheon was not the greatest, but she was fairly certain Anhur was the brother of Bastet, not her sister.

“They’re both quite protective of her.”

“Both?” Yoshiko asked.

The young woman glanced around for a moment before saying, “Oh, here he comes.” Sure enough, a golden chinchilla cat came trotting around the corner. “We took all three in at the same time and they bonded almost immediately.”

“Such a good big brother, Horus.” Yoshiko grinned as she reached over to introduce herself to the newly arrived cat. “Sorry I scared your little Bastet, I was actually just trying to follow Kankyo.”

“You’re still trying to give them names?” Riko inquired, moving over to the grey cat she had been working with earlier.

“They’re all too cute to not have equally cute names to refer to them with.” Yoshiko replied in a tone similar to the one Riko remembered her using when fawning over Nocturne. “Isn’t that right, Anhur?” She scratched under the grey cat’s chin before giggling as the golden cat refused to be left out and began petting himself on her free hand.

Did naming cats after Egyptian gods count as cute? Well, Bastet made sense as she was feline in nature, but the others…

“Cute collar, by the way.” Yoshiko commented, offering a treat to the grey cat… Anhur, apparently.

“I thought it would look good on her.”

“You have good taste.”

Riko was about to thank the other girl for the praise when she noticed something. “Say, those don’t look like the treats we were given, where did you get them?”

“Oh…” Yoshiko chuckled a bit abashedly. “Yeah, I ran out a while ago, and even went through a second bag they gave me… so I bought more.”

“You’re on your third bag already?”

“I can’t help it!” Yoshiko admitted. “They’re all such good kitties! And even Tepe and Sidhe wouldn’t ignore me when there were tasty treats to be had. And head pats, of course. And lots of scratchies and belly rubs.” She seemed rather proud of the last part.

Riko smiled. The younger girl certainly was enjoying herself. And was displaying a rather rare side of her personality; her grandiose entrance and continued use of strange names notwithstanding, Yoshiko seemed to have all but forgotten her fallen angel persona. She hadn’t even used her strange nickname for Riko, despite Riko deciding to allow it just the other day, for the time being, at least. Yoshiko may have still used Hanamaru’s nickname though, at some point.

“Well, if you run through that bag, I’ll let you use some of mine.” Riko offered after a moment.

“Thanks, but those are yours.” Yoshiko shook her head. “Far be it for me to deprive you of your own bonding experience with these adorable purr boxes.”

“You seem to be bonding quite well with them.”

“The treats help.”

I believe it’s more than just the food. Riko thought to herself as the other girl turned to offer a few niblets to another cat.

Riko looked up to see some of the other girls heading back to the changing room. “I think it’s time for the second round.” She said to Yoshiko.

“Alright,” Yoshiko nodded as she inspected her stash of treats. “I’ll join you guys in a minute.” She upended the bag into her palm and started distributing the remaining pieces among the cats gathered around her.

----------

“We should probably get a few shots of your iconic poses.” The photographer said. “Your fans always comment on them when we put them to print.”

“Very well.” Yoshiko nodded. “If that is what my little demons demand, Yohane shall accommodate.”

Riko glanced over from where she was posing for her own shots. Was that the first time Yoshiko had mentioned her fallen angel name since the group had arrived? And she hadn’t even dropped her voice to do so? Strange.

“Good, that will… oh?” Despite expressing her surprise, the woman’s fingers did not stop pressing the shutter button and continued to capture the scene in front of her.

“Eh?” Yoshiko glanced down. “Bastet?”

So that was the kitten Yoshiko had been so intent on befriending earlier. Riko watched with amusement as the small cat jumped and batted at the large ribbon streaming from the back of Yoshiko’s outfit. Of course Yoshiko would pursue a black cat.

“I think that’s the best one yet.” The photographer commented, checking the screen on her device. “I’ll let you two be.” She added before turning away.

Yoshiko laughed merrily and pulled at the ribbon to move it more for the cat playing with it. “But of course!” She replied, not seeming to notice the photographer was already leaving. “Any shot with a kitty as cute as Bastet in it is going to be the best.” She knelt to pet the cat who rolled onto her back to paw at the hand rubbing her belly.

“I must say, I’m impressed.” A staff member said as he paused to watch. “I’ve never seen that one out of hiding, especially without the other two nearby.”

“She just wanted to play.” Yoshiko barely looked up at the young man. “Although, you’re right.” She glanced around for a moment. “Ne, Bastet, shall we go find Anhur and Horus?”

As if understanding the question, Bastet jumped up towards her. Yoshiko didn’t appear to have been ready, but managed to catch the cat anyway, throwing herself off balance in the process. She quickly righted herself and laughed while cradling the kitten in her arms.

“Sakurauchi-san, if you could pose something like this?” The young woman working with Riko held her arms up with hands mimicking cat paws.

“Eh?” Riko turned her attention back to her own photo session. “Sorry, urhm…” that pose is kind of embarrassing… “will this do?”

“Perfect.”

----------

“Oh, is that the time?” You asked, looking at her phone. “Geez, I really need to head out.”

“I’ll go with you, You-chan.” Chika said. “You coming too, Riko-chan?”

“Uhm, one moment.” The redhead surveyed those around her. “Do we have everyone?”

The photoshoot had come to an end and the crew had already packed up and left. The girls had changed back into their street clothes before accepting an invitation to stay for a light snack provided by the café. But now things were winding down and everyone was looking to head home for dinner or to study or whatever other plans they had for the evening.

“We’re missing Yoshiko-chan.” Ruby pointed out.

“I don’t think she left our table.” Hanamaru chimed in.

Sure enough, as Riko scanned the area they had left a few minutes ago, there remained a blue-haired girl still lounging on the booth bench. Riko sighed and made her way back.

“We’re all heading out, Yoshiko-chan.” She said as she approached.

“This place is surely heaven on earth.” Yoshiko sighed contently as she closed her eyes and leaned back.

Wait for it… … What? That was it? Nothing about angels or demons or…?

Yoshiko’s smile grew as Bastet wrapped her front paws around her arm and nuzzled into the crook of her elbow. Anhur, Horus, Sidhe, Tepe, Kankyo, Nunogire and several others Riko couldn’t remember, but likely had received strange names, surrounded Yoshiko; on her lap, at her side and even across the top of the bench behind her head. Their combined purring could be heard from halfway across the room.

“I think this place broke Yoshiko-chan…” Hanamaru mused as she caught up.

Or fixed her, Riko thought to herself, this is the most at ease I’ve ever seen her. And she looks pretty cute sitting there, surrounded by cats and apparently about to fall asleep. She may very well have found her heaven here on Earth.

“I think…” Riko started “I might stay for a little while longer as well.”

“You sure?” Chika asked. “We could just wake her up.”

Riko shook her head. “I think we should let her rest. She had a busy afternoon.”

“Yoshiko-chan did have the most fun today, I think.” Ruby pointed out.

“Anyway,” Riko continued “I don’t want her to wake up and think we all abandoned her. And I don’t have anything in particular planned tonight anyway.”

“Oh, alright.” Chika shrugged. “You-chan, wait up!” She scurried away to chase the departing ash-haired girl.

As the rest of the girls said their goodbyes, Riko took a seat on the bench next to Yoshiko. Or, at least as next to her as allowed by the gathered cats.

“Care to order anything while you wait for your friend to wake up?” A menu entered Riko’s field of vision. “You girls worked hard today, so feel free to pick out whatever you want.”

Riko looked up to see the smiling face of the café owner. “Thank you, but you already gave us a snack a little while ago.”

“True, but I have a feeling you two might be here a little while.” The woman nodded her chin towards Yoshiko.

“Right, uhm… do you mind if I get something for Yoshiko-chan as well?”

“Of course, if you see something she might like.”

Riko scanned the menu, easily settling on a sandwich that looked good. And something for… her eyes found chocolate covered strawberries. Perfect. She placed her order.

“Just a dessert for her?” The owner inquired.

“She can have half of my sandwich if she wants, in exchange for some of her strawberries.”

“Very well, we’ll bring that right out.”

“Thank you.”

Riko smiled as she glanced over at the sleeping girl beside her, surrounded by a purring mass of fur. There was no denying this side of Yoshiko was incredibly adorable.

Riko pulled her tablet out of her bag, set it up on the table and continued her work on the new song on which she and Chika were working. A few minutes later, a server came by to drop off the food she had ordered. Riko swapped half of each item onto the other plate and slid one closer to Yoshiko’s side.

Though the official holiday was still a little ways off, Riko couldn’t help saying, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Yoshiko-chan.” before returning to her work.

----------

Author’s Note Continued in Followup Post

[sinceileftyoublog]

Nashville Ambient Ensemble Interview: A Little Help From My Friends

BY JORDAN MAINZER

“I feel like Nashville his my home,” Michael Hix said. The experimental musician, who now leads the Nashville Ambient Ensemble, is fully immersed in the ambient country scene that’s logically emerged from the fingerpicked guitar renaissance of the early 2010s. But for him, it took coming back to Tennessee to get there.

Hix grew up in Southeast Tennessee in a rural town, the closest city Chattanooga, before going to college in Nashville and staying there for a few years after. Then, like many before him, he moved to New York, exploring the various experimental music scenes thriving in the nation’s biggest city. After he and his wife had a child, they realized they needed more space and moved back to Nashville two years ago. “It’s been great to be back,” Hix said. “The avant garde and experimental/music scene--there’s always been a space for that here, but I really noticed when I moved back two years ago, it’s really grown an amazing amount. There are a lot of new people in the scene I didn’t know previously.” 

Many of those new people would end up playing with Hix in Nashville Ambient Ensemble and on their debut album Cerulean, released last month via Centripetal Force. The group--Hix on synth and keys, venerable pedal steel player Luke Schneider, pianist Kim Rueger, baritone electric guitarist Jack Silverman, singer Deli Paloma-Sisk, guitar synth player Cynthia Cárdenas, and electric guitarist Timon Kaple--came together slowly as Hix would meet the various members at shows and parties. (He knew only Kaple and Schneider before moving back to Nashville.) Once he had a group and music that embraced improvisation more heavily than any of his solo material--he calls each song “a loose constant theme and a cycle of solos”--the band rehearsed a couple times and recorded over two sessions. Their chemistry is palpable, on the arpeggiated “Ingia”, the guitar-forward title track, and swaying “Coda”. And as it turns out, having a kid also influenced Hix’s ability to let go. “Part of this project was me realizing as a parent that I didn’t have the time anymore to sweat over my solo compositions where I’d have things ornately composed down to the smallest detail,” he said. “If I called on a little help with my friends and got an ensemble environment together and relied on improvisation, I could make more music with less content.”

Speaking with Hix earlier this year over the phone, I got the sense that not just collaboration, but taking in other types of art directly seep into his creative output just as much as anything. Hix is as likely to cite ambient legend William Basinski and director Andrei Tarkovsky as formative influences as he is instrumental or experimental country music; he trades music, book, and film recommendations with passion and curiosity. With an increasingly open approach to music making, you realize how Hix and Nashville Ambient Ensemble both lead and transcend the ambient country scene highlighted by artists like Schneider and Chuck Johnson. Laying the groundwork but providing space for expression, the Nashville Ambient Ensemble could switch out members and instruments and still retain the exploratory spirit of the group and the scene.

Below, read my conversation with Hix about moving back to Nashville, starting the Ensemble, making Cerulean, and what the future holds. 

Since I Left You: When you lived in New York, did you feel isolated from the Nashville scene?

Michael Hix: Yeah, I was kind of isolated from it. In fact, when I moved to New York, I honestly didn’t see myself ever moving back to Nashville. I was planning on just staying in New York. I wasn’t really keeping up with what was going on here. I was just totally invested in the kind of music I was doing in New York. I was really surprised when I came back here that there were so many new artists doing really great work, and a pretty good, sizable experimental music community. That’s been really cool to see. I’ve been able to meet a lot of new people.

I expected that I would get back in the groove in my old circle, but I’ve met so many new people.

SILY: Of the folks in the Nashville Ambient Ensemble, how many were in your old circle, and how many were new?

MH: The only person I really knew was Timon Kaple. We went to college together, and he was in my larger circle of friends. The only other person I knew was Luke Schneider. He was just an acquaintance of mine, and we had never hung out but ran into each other when I moved back. At the time, he was starting to record his own solo, ambient, new age kind of music. We just hit it off and started to exchange music. Those two guys were the only ones I knew, and the others I met when I moved back to Nashville.

SILY: When was this group formed, and when was this music written and recorded?

MH: This took off in a crazy way. I feel like I didn’t really have to think about it very much. It happened very organically and quickly. One of the things I was struck by when I moved back to Nashville was how unique it was in how music is made here, in a really collective manner. Even if you’re not getting into a project with someone, they want to jam with you. I played one show in January 2019, and just at that first show, I had 3 or 4 people ask me if I wanted to jam or if I collaborated. That’s really representative of Nashville. That first show that I played, Timon came up to me--we hadn’t made music before--and asked to get together some time. It’s the same night I met Jack Silverman. I also met Deli Paloma-Sisk that night. She played that show as well. After that, I got together with Timon once in 2019, and I had a couple more people in that period ask me if I made music, so I thought I’d just make a supergroup. 

I had been in a similar group ensemble thing before I left Nashville, back in 2011. I was really wanting to do that again. At a certain point, I just started asking people if they were interested in an ambient ensemble. I asked Jack if he wanted to be involved, Luke, he was on board. Deli joined. The other two, Kim and Cynthia, I met Cynthia at a party one night and Deli was telling her about the project, and Cynthia asked to be in the group, and I was like, “Yeah, sure!” She has this MIDI guitar synthesizer set up. That’s what she plays on the album--really amazing. Kim Rueger, who goes by the moniker Belly Full Of Stars, I was speaking to her at a show one night asking her if she knew any pianists, and she was like, “I play piano.” It came together super organically. We had two rehearsals January 2020. These people are all really talented. We booked two days at the Battle Tapes studio in Nashville and recorded everything live in the studio in two sessions. It was really quick.

SILY: That’s a lot of lead up to a short recording process!

MH: Organizing it together took some time, but once we got everyone on board, it was really quick. I sent around some demos, we rehearsed twice, and then we recorded the album.

SILY: The opening track, “Breve”, is effective because you can hear all the elements going on, and it’s a unique hybrid of styles, the electronics with the country western instrumentals. Why did you lead off with this track, and what’s the story behind it?

MH: The pieces came together really quickly. I wrote every piece except for “Cerulean”, which was written by Jack Silverman. All the tracks I wrote came together really quickly, and it just so happened I had two that were a lot shorter than the other three, and I had the idea of bookending the album with these short tracks that serve as a prologue and an epilogue, which is why I placed “Breve” first. Knowing it was gonna be the first track and an introduction, I wanted to showcase all of the sounds in a very concise, clear way. That was kind of my direction with the track.

SILY: It’s interesting the title track is the only one not written by you!

MH: [laughs] Right.

SILY: Why did you name the album after that track?

MH: I was speaking to my wife about this, and I had a couple other ideas for album titles. She said, “Read me the names of your tracks.” We both thought that Cerulean was a really great title that was evocative but not heavy. You didn’t really have to read into it very much. It provided a tone for the album. This project was honestly about trying to get myself out of the way. I really wanted the other players involved to really shine on the album. I really liked the idea of using someone else’s [song] for the album title.

SILY: The track “Inga” seems to me to be exemplary of the mix between structure and improvisation that’s on the record. Can you talk about balancing those two aspects of the music?

MH: “Inga” and “Conversion” are probably the two examples where we achieved what we were aiming towards the most. In “Inga”, I definitely provided, to use a metaphor, the structure of the house, but everyone else made it a home. Something that had beauty in it. All of the songs, we had a very loose structure, some charts with the chord changes, but the sheet music for the songs would be a list that was just the order of the solos. I think the reason “Inga” works so well along with "Conversion” is that everyone has a solo in that song. You have the extended experience of the piece cycling through solos for each of the soloists.

The way we recorded that one, we had a loose structure of these chord changes and some from my modular synth, but the primary structure of it was the order of the solos. In the studio when we were recording, I had a microphone and would just call out whose solo was coming up next.

SILY: Why did you release “Conversion” as the first single?

MH: I thought about “Inga” for the first track, but personally, “Conversion” is generally the strongest track on the album. At the same time, I think it’s the most representative of what I wanted to achieve with the project and the concept.

SILY: What’s the inspiration behind the cover art?

MH: The cover art is a painting by Wendy Walker Silverman, who is a really great Nashville artist who is also the wife of Jack Silverman, the guitarist in the band. The cover features her painting. It’s been kind of altered by the person who designed the album art [Alethea Hall], but that is her painting there.

SILY: Are there loose plans to perform any of these songs in a live stream or socially distant show?

MH: We would definitely like to play some shows. Due to the nature of the project and the fact that every person involved has their own music projects and other things going on, it would be hard for us, once touring is a thing that happens, to go on tour. But we would like to play an album release show in Nashville once that makes sense to do so. We’ll probably wait till we can have a good amount of people attend in terms of COVID restrictions. We’ll see what happens after that and what kind of opportunities arrive for performances.

SILY: What else is next for the Ensemble?

MH: I’ll see what kind of level of interest people have in it, both listening and enjoying as well as other artists and musicians in the community here, whether anyone expresses interest in being involved. I’ve definitely already started to think about a round two and have some ideas of people I’d love to ask to be involved. I’d like to change things up a bit and get some other people and instruments involved. We’ll see: I’m not exactly sure. It was a ton of work organizing the whole thing, being a big group, and getting the recordings done. I mixed the album, so having a regular job, being a parent, and trying to carry through a project like that is a lot of work. I definitely want to do it again.

SILY: What have you been listening to, reading, and watching lately?

MH: I love the new William Basinski album Lamentations. I really loved the new compilation from Music From Memory, Virtual Dreams: Ambient Explorations In The House & Techno Age, 1993​-​1997. I just listened to a reissue from Aguirre Records from Morgan Fisher and Lol Coxhill, called Slow Music. It’s one of those albums that really didn’t get a lot of attention back then but could be considered an essential or cornerstone album for a genre of music. Morgan Fisher is a really great composer--he has a few great albums--but this is the best one I’ve heard of his. It takes some tape recordings of Lol Coxhill playing I think soprano saxophone, and he cuts the tape up and makes a composition out of the various recordings. 

I watched the films of Bi Gan: Kaili Blues and Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Both are absolutely mind-blowing. I’m a big Andrei Tarkovsky fan, and he’s a big influence on me. Bi Gan definitely has some strong Tarkovsky vibes but definitely has his own language. Long Day’s Journey Into Night was in particular amazing.

SILY: Is there anything I didn’t ask about the record you want to say?

MH: One of the things I’m most satisfied about this album is I’m almost not on it. I didn’t anticipate it, but realized it when listening to the recordings. I’m always working on trying to remove my ego as much as possible from my music, which is hard when you’re making solo music. I think William Basinski achieves that in an amazing way, and I haven’t been that effective at it. But I think it happened in the Ensemble album. There’s my modular synth sound, and I play keys, but I didn’t do any solos on the album. It was really satisfying to know that though I organized the project and wrote the music, it was the other people who shined through.

The other thing I’m happy about is that it really does have a Nashville sound, in large part because of the pedal steel, but it’s there with the other players as well. To some extent, the music does give you a flavor of what Nashville is about and what’s unique about it. There are some really great artists doing some really progressive sounds.

Cerulean by Nashville Ambient Ensemble

[plays-the-thing]

The Mandalorian S2: Style Over Substance – A Companion Piece

This is a companion piece to this video where I examine the strengths and weaknesses of the first two seasons of The Mandalorian. It’s a collection of ideas and evidence that were cut for time or focus reasons from the main video. I’ve included both timestamps and quotes of what section of the video each idea refers to. Under a cut for length.

[1:48] Akira Kurosawa, whose movies would be very important in the western genre was very big on complete and realistic sets and effects because it helps the quality of an actors’ performance.

“The quality of the set influences the quality of the actors' performances. If the plan of a house and the design of the rooms are done properly, the actors can move about in them naturally. If I have to tell an actor, 'Don't think about where this room is in relation to the rest of the house,' that natural ease cannot be achieved. For this reason, I have the sets made exactly like the real thing. It restricts the shooting but encourages that feeling of authenticity." – Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography

 [2:27] Like the original trilogy, The Mandalorian has its fair share of humor. The sequel trilogy also had a lot of humor, and was criticized for it, but it wasn’t the humor itself that I think people had a problem with, it was how the humor was done. See, in the original trilogy humor never changed or undercut the overall tone of a scene. If a scene is tense humor might lighten or even break the tension but never undercut it. The original trilogy would never, ever, make fun of the plot, character, or scenes in its own movie. The Mandalorian follows this mold of lightening or breaking tension without undercutting the scene itself which also helps it feel like the OT.

Just Writes video on Bathos is a good expansion on this idea. Personally, I find that particular brand of humor, popularized by the Marvel movies, extremely off-putting because it just screams at me to not take the story seriously and that makes it pretty hard for me to stay immersed in it. My three favorite marvel movies are Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther, and Thor Ragnarok because Black Panther doesn’t really do that kind of humor and Guardians and Ragnarok manage to make it seem natural by genuinely being comedies.

 [7:18] This brings us to Episode 4. Last time I criticized this episode, but I wasn’t very specific, I just mentioned that we were starting to get away from showing and towards telling. Let’s take a closer look.

The first part of this scene, where the kid was being a nuisance, was actually really good. It kind of seemed like it was going to lead into some genuine frustration with him being a nuisance and therefore maybe some drama in their relationship. 

[9:51] Cowboy Bebop is another space western with a strong style and a mix of vignettes and episodes which advance a characters story. But every single episode builds up the themes of the overall story even if the plot has nothing to do with it.

To be fair, not every episode builds up *Spike’s* story and themes, but Cowboy Bebop has four main characters and every episode works towards at least one of the characters’ stories, characterization, or relationships.

[12:20] Mando’s mistrust of IG, when they really have quite a lot in common, speaks to something about his character.

What does it speak to exactly? Well, everyone might have their own opinion about that but here’s mine:

 IG-11 used to be a hunter, but now Queel has reprogrammed him. Mando still sees the droid as the hunter and is adamant that it can’t be trusted no matter how much Queel insists that Mando must trust his work reprogramming the droid as an extension of trusting Queel himself.

Now, why does Mando hate droids so much, and particularly this droid? Well, that’s an open question, but I have my theories. Part of it is the trauma he experienced when he was young, but I think it runs deeper than that. You know how sometimes the traits that really bother you the most in other people are the things that you don’t like about yourself? The IG-11 that Mando met is a lot like the part of Mando that I’ve been calling “The Professional.” IG is efficient and ruthless, just like Mando on a job. They are deaf to moral and personal appeals in the face of a contract. This is also the part of Mando that took the kid to the Imperials in the first place, the part that he conquered and redeemed by the end of the third episode.

But IG has been reprogrammed. Just like Mando, he has changed and now cares for the child over himself. IG even develops a personality, and at one point attempts to tell a joke. But because IG reminds Mando so much of that part of him he had to defeat, he can’t bring himself to trust him. The tension between them persists pretty much up until IG fully demonstrates to Mando that he is there both to care for the child, and for Mando. In this moment Mando begins to really see how similar they are.

This connection makes it hard for him to let IG make his sacrifice, and he even appeals to this by telling IG that he thought his old core functionality was gone. But by reactivating his old functionality as a part of his new core function, IG is also giving Mando a template to incorporate his Professional self into his new self. He shows Mando that those two halves of his self that came into conflict back in the beginning can be synthesized into one new whole. He doesn’t need to reject any part of his identity.

Then the newly synthesized Mando dons his jetpack, fulfilling his only stated desire in the entire season, and defeats a scenery chewing villain to win the day.

But that’s just my interpretation, and I’m willing to haggle over what exact interpretation the evidence best supports.

[15:29] Speaking of Luke, let’s talk about fanservice. Now to be clear, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with fanservice, what matters is what always matters: how you use it.

This also applies to the other two “Trademarked Star Wars Problems” I mentioned in the last video: repetitiveness and hamfisted merchandizing. These things are not necessarily bad. For example:

I would bet Baby Yoda is the most successfully merchandized product since the OT, but there’s nothing wrong with that because they’re part of the story being told. Baby Yoda doesn’t distract from the story, they are part of the story. On the other hand you have Ewoks, which were originally going to be Wookies. I would bet they went with Ewoks at least in part to sell more cute toys…but at least they still sort of work with the story. In TLJ the penguin things are there for no other reason than to be cute and sell toys. Same with the crystal dog. They have literally no purpose in the story, and their obvious and prominent inclusion only to sell toys distracts from my immersion.

Obviously repetition is part of stories. That’s why we have tropes, and the Hero’s journey, as tools for a writer to communicate information quickly. Just from his outfit we know a lot about Han before he ever opens his mouth, same with Obi-Wan. In RotJ, the heroes need to blow up the Death Star again. It’s kind of annoying that we’re literally doing the same thing we did two movies ago, but at least it’s a little different. In TFA Han Solo reassures us that the Starkiller Base isn’t that big of a deal by saying “don’t worry, there’s always a way to blow it up.” This is an example of a character reaching out from the script and telling the writer to change their story because the repetition is getting ridiculous.

[18:32] So…why is it here? Yeah, I know who Thrawn is. I don’t know why Ahsoka does, or why she cares, or why I should care. If the writer had cared about that they would have made her talk to Mando about it so she could give some sort of story or character-based explanation for why she cares, instead of just dramatically saying his name.

I mean I know the most likely reason it was here: to build hype for her solo show, but they could have done that without punching my immersion in the kidney.

[20:20] So it was no surprise that in the end the Expanded Universe’s greatest hit of all piloted his X-Wing into the show. But, I didn’t mind this. They had been seeding that a Jedi would be coming to collect Groghu for a while now, and if you had been running through the timeline in your head you were probably at least half expecting this. It’s foreshadowed well, it’s part of the story, and it triggers our emotional climax.

The reveal is quite well done too. First it’s an X-Wing, then we see a Jedi dressed in Luke’s RoTJ gear but it’s over the security cameras so there’s no color, then we see it’s a green lightsaber, then they clearly show that it’s Luke’s lightsaber hilt, then they finally have him peel his hood back. Each small reveal builds up the suspicion in your mind that it’s Luke until it’s confirmed.

That being said I would totally understand if someone thought it was obnoxious and hamfisted to shove Luke into another story, even though it did work for me.

[29:12] Parts of it even connect back to Mando’s story and character, though not in a new way because it’s mostly a redo of Mando’s relationship with IG last season.

I understand that Mando breaks his rules a little bit more here, but it’s still a riff on the same theme of: Mando has a conflict with a character, the he sees the similarities between between them, and then circumstances force Mando to take his helmet off in front of the character.

However if his arc with the other Mandalorians was functioning properly than this could work as a synthesis of a change in ideology and a reassertion of his willingness to bend the rules, but instead it just comes across as another redo of stuff in the last season. It’s still halfway functional because by this point it’s easy to forget that Mando had a character arc last season and it reminds us of that right before they pull the trigger on his and Groghu’s separation…but redoing the development from last season doesn’t count as a real character arc.

[31:08] There is so much more I could say about all of the bad writing, plotting, and characterization in this season. There are so many things that just don’t make sense, waste our time, or just plain don’t work.

I’m still confused over what the writer was trying to do with the snow planet. Like they crash land there and Mando decides to go to sleep inside his hull-breached freezing ship and the fish chick is like “Mando this is dumb you should fix your ship” and then he just fixes it. What was even the point of handing Mando the Idiot Ball there? Why not just have him fix the ship without trying to commit suicide by hypothermia first? Like…what?

[31:27] Why are you just listing off a bunch of names that mean nothing to us like she’s a video game character telling us where we need to go next?

I want to point out that even though I’m using this footage of Delphine as a reference she’s actually managing to tell you something about Malborn and why he is trustworthy, so it’s actually better than what Bo is doing. Though to be fair the tidbit about “the forest planet” is cute since it will be a deforested planet when we show up, that line needed some character connection to not sound so weird.

[33:13] That’s what the point of Show Don’t Tell *really* is, it’s not about how much dialogue you use or whether a character is explaining something. It’s about using exposition to tell us something about a character at the same time. It’s about putting the camera in a place that shows us something about the character or the action, not just what’s happening. It’s about packing as much of the story as possible into every choice you make.

In Avatar, the way that Zhao tells us about Zuko’s banishment tells us a lot about both Zhao and Zuko. The camera angle here emphasizes Katara standing encouragingly over Aang’s back as he stares dejectedly at the ground (contrasted with Toph’s angry stare) and tells us about the nature of Katara’s relationship to Aang as his teacher and friend as opposed to Toph’s. In the opening shot of A New Hope, the low angle of the camera implies dominance and the length of the Star Destroyer shows us the long reach of the Empire. Every single time Zuko is on screen it is worth paying attention to which side of his face is dominating the shot: scarred or unscarred. Exactly what each side represents is up for debate: I tend to think of it not as good Zuko vs. bad Zuko but more as Zuko’s feelings of obligation to his family and people and Zuko’s obligations to his own sense of what he believes is right and what he needs to self-actualize.

Show Don’t Tell is just a saying. It’s a saying to encourage writers, particularly new or inexperienced ones, to focus on the *art* of telling the story instead of focusing solely on the plot and facts. I am using it somewhat liberally here to say it’s about “using exposition to tell us something about a character at the same time” but since that is about the art of telling stories, and not just a recitation of facts, it does technically count.

[34:32] With television shows and the way they can go on forever, and with how much money there is in going on forever, it seems like they always become a sagging mess at some point. Some of them manage to bring the quality back, but some of them don’t. So to a certain extent, these problems with the Mandalorian are kind of normal for television shows.

I can’t remember exactly where I stopped watching How I Met Your Mother, the last thing I remember is Ted dating some crazy girl and swearing off relationships. I abandoned The Expanse midway through season 2 earlier this year…maybe I’ll go back but boy was I bored. I made it all the way through the Wire. Season 2 had its problems but eventually got back on the right foot midway through or so, but the problems came roaring back in season 5 which it took me almost a year to finish because it was so agonizing.

Avatar is probably the most controversial choice here of a show in which the quality slipped but I firmly believe that if they cut out the second half of season 2 and the first half of season 3 the show would have been much, much better. Most everything in Ba Sing Se is tonally weird and the whole idea of a city with too many rules and bureaucracy is way too complex an idea for this show to tackle. Avatar does tackle incredibly complicated and adult themes for a kids show but in my view this was one step too far. They get Zuko to a place where he’s ready to join the Aang Gang but then have him backslide temporarily. There’s this whole idea of an invasion on the Day of the Black Sun but it would be such a story cheat to allow Aang to beat the Firelord without actually mastering the four elements and so obviously isn’t going to work. All of these things together just make it feel like wheel spinning where the story and characters aren’t actually growing or developing but just being padded out.

Except for “The Tales of Ba Sing Se” and “Appa’s Lost Days” obviously, those are great.

It’s actually pretty funny because the episode before Aang is supposed to fight the Firelord the first time (the Black Sun time) he’s a nervous wreck and everyone is trying out different psychological techniques to try and make him feel better which is…I guess sort of valuable for kids to see that nervousness is normal. But when you compare it to the second time he’s going to fight the Firelord, for real, it’s *so obviously* for real this time because Aang is having a *character* based crisis about the conflict between his pacifism and his duty to stop the Firelord. The comparison of the two is telling in terms of what was going on in the story of each.

[35:03] Now they are spinning it out into not one, not two, not three, but FOUR different shows all based on the Mandalorian. It’s almost gross how hard they are milking this.

Okay apparently they fired Gina Carano so I guess it’s not four anymore. Or maybe it is who knows. Listen, the point is they *intended* to make four shows okay.

[35:06] Thanks for watching all the way through to the end. These videos take a ton of time and effort so that means a lot. Even though I’ve reset my subscriber count to zero now that I’ve criticized the Mandalorian, I will continue to work on the channel as much as I can, so subscribe if you want to see more videos like this.

I promise to always give you my honest opinion.

Also I know I was shooting for one video a month and, well, I still am but these videos are really time-consuming. I want to make sure I maintain a really high level of quality and so sometimes I get halfway through a video, realize it’s no good and have to start over with something else. Sometimes it takes months of rewrites to get it to a place where I’m happy with it. This one came out pretty quickly, it was about 6 weeks from when I started the script to when I uploaded. Hopefully I’ll only get better and more efficient at it as I get more practice.

[thisisthepartwhereyou]

BEASTARS MINI-STORY #5: “Everybody Play the Game pt. 2” by JCL

---

We're back on the sidewalk outside of Yanni's, where Haru and Legosi have just met up with the boys from 701. Haru watches them with a friendly smile.

HARU: (So these are Legosi's old roommates?)

Jack, Voss, Collot, Miguno and Durham all stare at her, all blown away by her cute appearance.

HARU: (All canines? Well I guess that figures.Though is a hyena really a canine? I don't remember...)

Then, to her and Legosi's great surprise, all of them crouch down and great Haru in loud unison (the exeptions being Jack, who doesn't cry out his greeting, and Voss, who is still on Collot's shoulder).

VOSS, COLLOT, MUGON & DURHAM: "HELLO HARU! NICE TO MEET YOU!"

Jack looks uncomfortable over the extravagant greeting.

JACK: (You guys are overdoing it...!)

Haru looks both weirded out and amused while Legosi just looks confused.

LEGOSI: "... Uh, okay."

HARU: (What is up with the synchronized greeting?)

The female rabbit then adopts an appreciative expression.

HARU: "Look, I know what you're doing, and while I appreciate the gesture, you don't have to crouch to make me feel more at ease. I wouldn't want your legs to go to sleep."

The boys from 701 look surprised by this.

HARU: "Besides..."

Haru claps Legosi leg sporting a wide grin.

HARU: "I'm used to big boys!"

Legosi smiles at this and blushes a little at this. The boys get up.

LEGOSI: "Heh, well... I guess I should introduce you guys."

Legosi walks over and puts a hand on Miguno's shoulder.

LEGOSI: "This is-"

Haru interrups though and points at the Miguno.

HARU: "Miguno right? You're the hyena who is part of a band, right?"

Both Legosi and Miguno look surprised about the fact that she already knows this.

MIGUNO: "Uh, yeah, I play the electric guitar."

HARU: "Cool! That must be a hard instrument to master, I couldn't even learn to play a regular guitar back in elementary school."

This prompts a shy expression from Miguno, who looks away and starts to mumble stuff like "aww shucks" or "I am not really that good." Legosi on the other hand look puzzled.

LEGOSI: "How did you know that Miguno was part of a band?"

HARU: "You talk about your friends every so often Legosi. It's not that hard to guess who you've been talking about."

Her eyes then turn to Durham.

HARU: "You gotta be Durham. I've heard a bit about you too."

He greets her with a curt nod.

DURHAM: "Only good things I hope."

HARU: "Legosi says that you like to complain a lot, and that's probably why you're in the debate club."

Durham's eyes widen at this. He then gives Legosi an annoyed look.

LEGOSI: "Um..."

HARU: "I think that's great!"

Durham looks back to Haru again. He sees that she is giving him a thumbs up.

HARU: "I like to complain too. Ain't nothing wrong with that. My mom says that complaining is just a way to show that you care."

Durham look surprised at the compliment and smiles while rubbing the back of his neck. Legosi then points at Jack, who bends down and extends his hand to Haru.  

LEGOSI: "You've already met Jack, right?"

Haru takes Jack's hand and shakes it.

HARU: "It's nice to see you again!"

JACK: "Ditto."

HARU: "Is it true that you're the smartest guy in school?"

Jack lets go of Haru's hand and adopts an appreciative yet insecure facial expression, recognizing that its a compliment, but still considers his high IQ as more of a burden than anything else.

JACK: "Oh I wouldn't know about that."

The rather bittersweet look and tone of voice doesn't escape Haru's attention, though before she can comment further on it, Collot interjects and extends his hand in a similar, friendly fashion.

COLLOT: "I am Collot the sheepdog!"

Haru answers the gesture; her tiny hand getting shaken by Collot's big one. However, because of his overwhelmingly positive energy and natural strength, the handshake actually makes Haru's whole body shake.

COLLOT: "I used to be part of the wrestling club. But then I kicked a guy, so they had to kick me out!"

Haru looks comically shocked as she moves up and down like the tip of a jack hammer. This makes Legosi look concerned.

LEGOSI: "Gently Collot! She's not a Shake Weight!"

Collot stops and lets go. He sweat drops and looks like he feels bad.

COLLOT: "Sorry...! When I get excited I sometimes can't control my strength."

Haru looks like she has gotten a little dizzy from the unexpected ride she just took.

HARU: "Don't worry about it... Wrestling club, huh? No wonder you're so strong... And you're almost as big as Legosi."

This prompts a big and goofy grin from Collot.

COLLOT: "Heh, that's actually pretty typical for a sheepdog!"

Voss, who is still on Collot's shoulder, clears his throat in an exaggerated fashion. Collot gets the picture and puts Voss down in front of Haru.

COLLOT: "This is Voss. He's cool, but crude."

Voss, who is even smaller than Haru, looks up at her with his hands on his hips.

VOSS: "Hello there."

Haru gives the fennec fox a kind (and kind of fascinated) look as he shakes his hand.

HARU: "Hello." (a carnivore who is smaller than me) "You must be Voss."

VOSS: "That's right."

Voss throws his ears back in a ridiculously fabulous fashion, like they were bangs or something.

VOSS: "But I am usually just called 'boss'."

This prompts a little laugh from Haru. The rest of the 701-boys and Legosi stare at Voss with skepticism.

DURHAM: "Try as you may Voss, nobody will ever call you that."

This makes a little blush appear on the fennec's face. He crosses his arms and looks over the shoulder at his roommates with a grumpy expression.

VOSS: "Oh yeah, well fu-"

He then turns to Haru, remembering that she is present. He puffs his cheeks and mumbles:

VOSS: "... get about it then."

Legosi then points at Yanni's.

LEGOSI: "Shall we go in then? It's getting a little chilly."

HARU: "Sounds good to me."

Haru walks up to the entrance of Yanni's. Standing in front of the door, Haru reaches for the doorknob... But it's located so high that she can't quite reach it. She has to jump in order to reach it, but apparently her weight is not enough to turn it. The boys of 701 stares at this whole scene. Legosi walks up to her and points to small, rectangular button located on the lower portion of the wall next to the door.

LEGOSI: "There's a button next to the door that opens it for smaller animals."

Haru looks down to her side, now noticing the button. She lets go of the doorknob and drops down, looking embarrassed for not spotting it earlier.

HARU: "Oh! Okay then."

Legosi proceeds to press the button, but to his great shock, it makes the door swing open with such force that it catapults Haru, spawns a comedic K.O. in the air between her and the door (Street Fighter-style) and makes her land on her back on the welcome mat.

Legosi and the 701s swiftly gather in a ring around Haru, making sure that she’s okay.

COLLOT: "Whoa, you just flew!"

LEGOSI: "Are you okay Haru?!"

VOSS: "You just got knocked the fu... rick down!"

Haru, still lying down with her back on the welcome mat, looks pissed off by this unexpected turn of events.

JACK: "Talk about an unwelcoming door..."

MIGUNO: "We should probably talk to the owner about this. I mean that's not safe!"

DURHAM: "Yeah, I mean who wants to get thwacked by the main entrance?!"

HARU: (Good grief...!) ---

Skipping ahead for just a little, everyone has now entered the establishment. We see that Haru is shaking her fist at the owner, YANNI (North American Porcupine, male, about 38, old game nerd who is technologically inept). He looks apologetic and sweat drops.

YANNI: "I am sorry, I'll have that door opener looked into...!"

After this, the whole gang walks across the interior of the café.

We see that the interior of Yanni's look like a rebuilt pub, with a high counter where you can order different kinds of coffee, tea and treats. There is a lot of round tables in the café fit for about eight people, some located within circular sofas against the walls (like the ones you see in diners). Further in there are smaller, square tables made for two-player games and beyond them an open space with a few beanbags in a circle. Past it and the furthest in, we see that the entire wall is covered by a shelf stuffed with board games and rule books. There is also one or two old arcade games, such as Whack-the-Weevil, a claw crane and a Butterfly*-themed pinball machine with a sign above it that says 'broken'.  

Going over to the game shelf, the gang begins to look over it's content with contemplative looks.

LEGOSI: "Huh, seems like they got a lot of new ones..."

Jack looks over a set of stacked up games and mumbles their titles to himself.

JACK: "Mecha-Sharks*, Blockula*, Aristides*..."

Durham then points at a little metal box with a rolled up cloth next to it.

DURHAM: "Hey look Miguno, they even have Magic & Wizards now!"

Miguno crosses his arms and looks annoyed.

MIGUNO: "Don't open old wounds now...! I was just going through a phase."

Collot wraps and arm around Miguno's shoulders and gives him a little noogie.

COLLOT: "Oh? You don't you think it's time to d-d-d-duel?"

The other boys laugh at this, while Haru looks at this with interest.

HARU: (So this is how boys hang out? I've never hung out with so many males before)

Haru then gets a comically self-conscious expression.

HARU: (Platonically and all at once I mean...!)

She returns to looking at the boys, who lightly tease and poke at an embarrassed-looking Miguno.

HARU: (It's not like with my friends at the university... These guys are kind of rough with each other, but all in good fun)

Jack then turns to Haru.

JACK: "Haru, would you like to choose the first game?"

Haru, awakened from her thoughts, meets Jack's look and blinks.

HARU: "Oh, I don't really know a lot of board games... I haven't really played much of them since elementary school."

Looking back and forth on the shelf, she then notices a large, white box with multi-colored dots on the cover. The sight of it makes her look excited. She walks over to it and begins to pull it out.

HARU: "But I do recall that this one was my favorite back in third grade."

Legosi gives her a curious look.

LEGOSI: "What is it?"

The box that Haru pulls out is almost too big for her to carry, but she still manages to hold it up for the boys to see. We see that it is a box of Fivelimbs: the cover showcasing a trio of cartoon animals stretching their arms, legs and tails across several colored dots which are positioned under them.

HARU: "Fivelimbs!"

Most of the guys look surprised by this, but Voss looks positively exstatic.

VOSS: "I CONCUR! Lets start with that one!"

Legosi looks a little uncertain though.

LEGOSI: "Can you really play with your tail?"

HARU: "Oh, I don't have to use my tail. Not with my miracle-ears."

Putting the heavy box down, Haru then snaps her fingers, at which her long, lagomorphic ears twirl themselves into a braid.

HARU: "See? I'll just use them as my fifth limb."

Legosi and the boys stare at this in awe.

JACK: "Cool!"

LEGOSI: "I had no idea you could do that!"

Haru looks proud over the fact that she managed to impress them.

HARU: "It takes both length and practice."

MIGUNO: "Are you comfortable with it though? Playing such a physical game with some carnivores you've just met...?"

The 701s look a little uncertain as they hear this, remembering what Jack told them in the last chapter:

FLASHBACK-JACK: "Herbivore's can experience an exaggerated sense of enclosure if the room is small and feels crowded with carnivores."

Haru blinks.

HARU: "It's a family game. As long as we don't play it naked, what could happen?"

The boys stare at her.

JACK, COLLOT, VOSS, DURHAM & MIGUNO: (This girl is... Not the least bit scared of us!)

Haru then looks like she suddenly realized something.

HARU: "Wait a minute, can't you just play four at a time in Fivelimbs?"

They all share a look. Voss raises his arms and cries out:

VOSS: "Rock, Paper, Scissors!"

Everyone instinctively gets in on this by gathering in one circle and raising one arm each.

COLLOT: "1, 2, 3!"

The first round passes, with Jack and Miguno not making it.

JACK: "Shoot."

MIGUNO: "Damn...!"

The remaining contestants raise their arms for the second round.

COLLOT: "1, 2, 3!"

The second round passes, with Legosi being the next one weeded out.

LEGOSI: "...!"

Voss, climbing down from Collot and landing on the floor between the winners, claps his hands together and rub them in excited anticipation.

VOSS: "Okay then, let's get the games begin!" ---

We skip ahead for a bit and see that the game of Fivelimbs is at full go with Collot, Voss, Durham and Haru. Miguno serves as the referee, spinning the arrow that decides which limb will go where. The carpet with the spots, which are are of different sizes (to allow animals of various sizes to partake in the same game) is placed at the open space in the ring of beanbags.

In the meantime, Legosi and Jack are playing a game of chess*. Jack is clearly the one doing better at the game, as Legosi has lost the most pieces and always looks to his side in order to see how Haru is doing at her game.

MIGUNO: "Collot, right foot on green!"

Collot, who is in a sitting position in front of Haru, moves his large leg over her to reach the green spot next to her.

COLLOT: "Mind your head."

Haru ducks her head a little. Collot then places his massive foot on the green spot. Haru is now between Collot's legs. Looking up at Collot's face, she suddenly adopts a curious expression.

HARU: "Can you see through those bangs?"

Collot tilts his head.

COLLOT: "Yes. Why?"

HARU: "It's just that I've heard that sheepdogs have really sharp senses, so it doesn't really bother them that they can't see through them. Is that untrue?"

COLLOT: "Ah, well, it's a common misunderstanding. We sheepdogs don't really have much sharper senses than any other canine."

MIGUNO: "Durham, left hand on blue!"

In the background, Durham manages to place his hand on a blue spot. Both his arms and legs are now crossed. He looks like he's struggling.

COLLOT: "We can actually see well through our bangs. The hair is so thin and light; it's kind of like looking through a sheer pleated curtain."

HARU: "So it doesn't get in the way?"

COLLOT: "Only when it's foggy outside, then I have to hold it up with a hairband to see properly. Other than that it's mostly an advantage to have hair like this."

HARU: "How?"

Durham snickers.

DURHAM: "Well for one thing, nobody notices when you fall asleep in class until they hear you snore."

Collot scowls at Durham.

COLLOT: "That happened only once!"

Voss chimes in with his own observations.

VOSS: "Or when you stare at girls and their assets!"

Collot turns his head toward Voss with an embarrassed (though kind of guilty) expression.

COLLOT: "W-why I'd never!" (Heh, no, I totally do that)

MIGUNO: "Haru, tail on- I mean ears on red!"

---

Legosi points at a red spot behind Haru.

LEGOSI: "There is one behind you Haru!"

Jack sweat drops and proceeds to take Legosi's tower on the checkerboard.

JACK: "Legosi, you're going to lose if you can't focus on your own game."

---

Haru looks around for mentioned red spot, spotting one right behind her. She bends backward to have her ear-bun touch it, though doing this, she now lies back in fairly compromising position. This does not escape Collot's attention, whose eyes focus on a subject of debate from one week and two days ago.

COLLOT: (Bigger than steamed buns, but not big enough to reach the anpan-radius... Cinnamon rolls?)

As cinnamon rolls and brassieres dance around his head, he suddenly detects an air of menace, with a train of JoJo-esque kanji dancing into frame and burning the imaginary rolls and brassieres to cinders. He looks to his side and spots Legosi, who is giving him a dark look. He clearly knows what is on Collot's mind. Meanwhile, Jack takes one of Legosi's knights. Without looking up, he too seems aware of what Collot is thinking about.

JACK: "Keep your thoughts clean Collot."

Collot gives off a nervous little laughter at this.

MIGUNO: "Voss, tail on blue!"

Twisting his small body, Voss places his tail on a blue spot.

VOSS: "I got a good feeling about this one. This, will be the one I finally win!"

MIGUNO: "Durham, left hand on red!"

Durham looks amused by Voss ambition.

DURHAM: "Yeah right, and I'm an aardvarks uncle!"

Being distracted, Durham extends his hand without really looking, struggling with his balance. Because of this, he misses the spot he was aiming for and accidentally puts his hand where Haru's ears are, clamping them.

HARU: "OW!"

Haru gets a pained expression and her legs shoot out on reflex; her left foot kicking Voss right in Schnitzengruben! His eyes becomes briefly visible as they pop out through his bangs!

COLLOT: "OOF!"

Realizing what happened, Durham quickly pulls his away with a horrified expression. Sitting up on his knees, he gives Haru a look of concern and regret.

DURHAM: "Ah! I'm sorry!"

Durham rolls over to his side and holds his family heirloom while making whimpering noises. Haru on the other hand sits up and rubs her ears. Legosi stands up, moves his bishop on the board (shocking Jack, as he has suddenly been checkmated) and goes over to the Fivelimbs-mat to examine Haru's ears.

LEGOSI: "Are you alright?"

Voss, looking around with a stunned expression at his now defeated opponents, gets up and raises his arms in a victorious pose.

VOSS: "Victory is mine!"

TO BE CONTINUED ---

[sifeng]

Review: Bloody Romance

oh my god. I just finished this show and I’ve got a LOT of feels. Honestly, I hadn’t finished a drama since July 2019 and now I can finally add this to my list. A very underrated show that deserves more love.

Plot:

A story about a young woman who was exploited in the past, having gone through hell and back to become an assassin.

During the chaotic period towards the end of the Tang Dynasty, Qi Xue accidentally enters a mysterious city and was given the name Wan Mei. Tasked with dangerous missions, she puts herself in danger for each task but gains the protection of Chang An who is a man mysterious as a shadow. The two become embroiled in greater conspiracy involving a deadly struggle for power.

Characters:

Li Yitong (李一桐) as Wan Mei (晚媚)/Su Qixue (苏七雪)

Qu Chuxiao (屈楚萧) as Chang An (长安)/Xie Huan (谢欢)

My Opinions: 

Plot:

The plot and pacing of this drama was very good. I loved how we are introduced to Wan Mei when she is innocent, kind, and naive, and how we then follow her through thick and thin to understand why she becomes the way she is. I loved how we got to see through the perspective of an assassin, and how this show invited us to consider the morals involved in killing. Everything happens pretty fast at first so you are never bored. And even if you are annoyed by Wan Mei’s ignorance and inability to kill good people, you can enjoy the badasses Liu Guang and Yue Ying instead. 

Towards the end, the show gets kind of obsessed with political scenes, and I warn you, there are a bunch of them. However, usually they are rather interesting and easy to understand. This show also involves a good amount of melodrama and tragedy. It also ends in a tragic, but rather open way. 

One complaint I do have though, if how Chang An got so little scenes. He is the male lead for goodness sakes and yet I swear second-lead Gong ZI, or even villain Cha Luo has more scenes than him. In the last episode he literally got one scene. ONE SCENE. 

Acting: 

The actors here were really good. Like almost every character, including the minor ones, did extremely well with their role. Li Yitong was AMAZING. The scene were she was mute, disfigured (okay not like not really, she still looked beautiful), sick and feeling betrayed by Chang An was so powerful. I can’t believe she managed to do so well with no lines! Everything that needed to be said was conveyed through her eyes, her tears and her attempts to form words. The scenes where she uses the 13th skill of the sword skill (something like that), was amazing too. You can feel her desperation and depression at having to leave Chang An. I loved how she was able to portray the innocent Wan Mei and also portray the Wan Mei who had lost hope in life both wonderfully. Every scene she was in, you could feel her emotions, be they happy or sad. I

Qu Chuxiao was amazing as well. He always looked calm and cold on the outside and yet he told his emotions through her tiny movements. The little details make it all. Second-lead Wang Duo did good too. He did well with a role that is supposed to be cruel, cold and uncaring. He definitely did best in the scenes with Li Yitong.

I’ve got to give some love to one of my favorite characters in the show - Liu Guang and even more for her actress Guo Xuefu. She portrayed this charming and lovable badass killer so very well. Also her voice is so nice and fits the character perfectly. It has the tone of sass and confidence that perfectly matches Liu Guang. 

Characters:

I like Wan Mei’s character. Unpopular opinion, I know, but I do. I like how she wants to rule Gui Hua City not because she’s selfish, but because she wants to help others and save them from being corrupted. Yeah she’s a little too innocent, kind and trusting but the fact that she can maintain morals, ethics and the ability to forgive after going through hell shows that she’s a good person. And I also love how she has unwavering love for Chang An. No matter where he is, where she is, she will love and support him.

I love Chang An. His loyalty to Wan Mei is my favorite thing ever. He is willing to do anything to help Wan Mei, including sacrificing his life. He doesn’t require anything in return for his love, only for Wan Mei to be happy and safe. This kind of love is usually seen in a second lead (which causes second lead syndrome for me), and I’m so glad he was the lead. 

A lot of people love Gong Zi but like... I don’t? He’s okay of course I don’t hate him or anything but I don’t think of him as this godly presence that deserves the world, including Wan Mei. He is cruel, and treats people like chess pieces instead of human. I mean its good that he loved Wan Mei, but he kept on forcing her to love him back, and would consistently get annoyed when she preferred the selfless and kind Chang An over him. But he is very similar to the main leads of most dramas - proud, arrogant, cold, with a miserable backstory, but loves with a true heart. 

I LOVE LIU GUANG AND YUE YING! They are so badass and when Yue Ying fights, she looks like a literal goddess. She literally took on like a hundred soldiers all by herself and walked out without a single scar. Liu Guang is so charming and charismatic too, and I really wish we got to see more of her being badass.

The villains... I hated Cha Luo. I mean I pitied her for her backstory but her actions throughout the show just... she’s insane. Forcing Chang An and Wan Mei through so much pain just because the one she loves has to suffer pain too? Killing this innocent little girl just because.... because? Lashing out at the only person who loves her for having a humane idea? Insane. In comparison, her loved one, Xing Feng, I felt bad for him. He was clearly a good person who had gone through a lot of pain, and yet, unlike Cha Luo, he maintained some morals. He refused to put the “anti-sex” in Chang An because he knew how painful it was and did not want Chang An to become the next him. He begged Cha Luo to let Liu Guang die an honorable death and for her umbrella to be put in the hall because he knew Liu Guang only wanted the city to be better and her fellow assassins to be treated better. He was a good person, pity the person he loved was horrible and insane. 

The OTP:

Here I also have to talk about the chemistry! Ah! Even with no kissing scenes, the chemistry between our leads, Wan Mei and Chang An was amazing. You could see their love and their passion even when Wan Mei claimed she hated him or when Chang An left to become Liu Guang’s shadow. In every scene with them I just felt my heartstrings being tugged. The swing scene was TOO CUTE!

Music: The music was used wonderfully in this show. All the songs are beautiful and fit the show extremely well. The scene in which Chang An set fireworks as a parting gift to Wan Mei, the song played in the background, One (一), fit the tone wonderfully. Its soaring climax and powerful vocals matched the powerful emotions Wan Mei felt in that scene. The main theme, Waiting For You is also extremely beautiful and when it plays during Chang An and Wan Mei scenes it just adds another layer of tragedy. The version Qu Chuxiao sang is better honestly though. Li Yitong’s vocals in the closing theme are beautiful as well. 

Cinematography: This show is beautiful and Gong Zi’s house is probably the best of the best. Its green and calming walls are so lovely.

Costumes: Oh my god, Liu Guang’s purple dress is GORGEOUS! And Wan Mei’s dresses are beautiful as well. 

My Rating: A

Recommend For: People looking for a drama of empowered females struggling to survive. People who to see want a relationship of love and trust and don’t mind some melodrama. People who don’t mind following a lead as they mature. 

[bandsanitizer]

Here’s the essay.

(aka 3x16 Buddie theories under the cut) ((also spoiler warning))

Oliver Stark is excited for 3x16 “The One That Got Away” because of its content and Buck-centricity and the catharcism. From what we know of the synopsis, Buck encounters a firefighter with a lost love and then reencouters/gets back in touch with an old flame, though it doesn’t go as expected.

The phrase of “the one that got away” has two distinct interpretations:

Expression of sorrow and loss. The love you had but slipped through your fingertips after irrevocably changing you. This would be Buck’s recognition of the old flame and the firefighter’s tragic tale.

Call to action. Don’t let this person slip away. Don’t miss your chance. This would be the lesson of the firefighter’s story and WHY Buck chooses to do what he does.

This half of the season is marked by the theme of carpe diem, sieze the day. Characters have been encouraged to go out and do things because they have their opportunity to. Notably, we have the two guys that get together through a rushed confession after one of them runs into a pipe and the Madney scene with Eddie’s line about Shannon. (Inferred but who’s the fuck else would it be about???)

So what does that all mean for Buck? Well...

There’s rumors of Abby’s return. Abby is like the Buck love interest. It’s one of the only serious, long-term-ish relationships we see Buck in throughout the series. Their relationship thus has Abby fit the first understanding of “The One That Got Away”.

Plus Buck continuously credits his growth to Abby. Yet, it’s not like Buck lacked the capacity to be this different person without Abby and there’s an article that I can’t find, but Tim or Oliver has been quoted regarding 3B exploring how Buck credits Abby but who Buck’s become has always been inside of Buck.

Abby’s return for a few episodes would likely give much needed closure to their relationship and Abby’s character. This allows for healing and development on Buck’s end. Buck’s been struggling with internal conflict—his lack of self and fluctuating understanding of the family/support he has is pretty much the reason the whole lawsuit arc happened. Buck being able to recognize that he’s always been capable of being this person, it’s not something Abby taught him to be, allows him to change in a more permanent and deeper way.

Given the encounter is not supposed to go as expected, it likely closes the Abby door and lays solid foundation for Buck to pursue a new romantic relationship. Unlike his relationship with Ali, Buck will be more secure and able to be “Buck” without needing to be a firefighter, without needing to proove he’s worth the love and support he receives. If anything, Buck will either have a new drive to find his “person” or will be able to recognize a romance that could come of a relationship he already has.

Which leads into the second interpretation of “The One That Got Away”.

The call to action for Buck to not let something wonderful slips from his fingertips implies Buck’s got an opportunity. That there’s a potential, existing character out there for Buck to at least contemplate the notion of a romantic relationship with. But give the little episodes left in the season—too little to establish a new character and a relationship with Buck...

In canon we’ve seen Buck very upset about being so so so close to losing (3) people: Maddie, Christopher, and Eddie.

Season 2, Buck is anxious the entire time Maddie is missing and yells for her the moment he sees blood in the snow. Season 3A, in the same tone, Buck yells for Christopher the moment Christopher goes missing. In both scenarios, Buck stops at nothing to get to the people he loves.

Season 3B, in “Eddie Begins”, Buck yells for Eddie in the same tone, though is notably much less pushy about trying to get to Eddie. Circumstancially, there’s less he can do but his reaction is a bit different.

With Maddie and Christopher, Buck expresses some level of responsibility. There’s the guilt of he was supposed to take care of them, supposed to keep them safe. It’s not just losing them, but failing them, too.

With Eddie, it’s just losing Eddie. It’s the moment of loss that’s so out of Buck’s control, that it’s Eddie who cuts the rope and nature’s fault the drill/crane collapses and Eddie gets trapped. There’s nothing Buck could’ve done and even if there was, Buck was to late to do so.

The concept of “The One That Got Away” parallels this, as, often, the issue isn’t the actual loss, but the missed opportunity. It’s the universe pulling someone out of your life and realising you didn’t seize the moment to say what you want/need to say when you had the chance.

Buck comes so close to losing Eddie in such a similar matter. We’ve seen Buck be pretty open about his care for the people he’s come so close to losing... Except for Eddie. Yeah, we had some moments (The Kitchen Scene), but unlike the moments where other characters recognize Buck’s care for another (Buddie at the end of 3x03) or Buck explicitly states what another character means to him (Buck and Bobby in “The Christmas Spirit”), Buck and Eddie have never exactly had that moment.

We know what Buck and Eddie mean to each other, but it’s rarely, if ever, acknowledged explicitly in canon. So Buck almost losing Eddie? Followed by someone telling him about their “one that got away”? Coupled with development that who Buck is, post his relationship with Abby, is a Buck that he’s ALWAYS been capable of being? Along with the established consistency of Buck in Christopher and Eddie’s lives? And Buck’s love for Christopher?

It’s a perfect set-up to Buck realising there’s a potential for a relationship with Eddie. That him and Eddie have what Buck tells Chimney he’s looking for. There’s love and care that goes deeper than just filling an empty space. They have a family. They work well as a family. That, hey look! Buck’s this great and caring person who CAN commit to things and it isn’t because of Abby, isn’t because of anyone but himself and his growth.

And on Eddie’s side, the closure “Eddie Begins” gives to his relationship with Shannon, by establishing the bond he and Christopher has, is a great foundation for introducing a new love interest for Eddie.

Carpe Diem? The One That Got Away?

It’s about knowing who and what you’ve got and what they and that means to you. Buck going into an episode about losing people and not missing the opportunity to tell people what they mean BEFORE you lose them, right after him almost losing Eddie? Buddie is happening. Slowly, but surely.

[beetlemancy]

Rule: you can only repeat one artist and only one time, so we can all kind of spread new music to the people we tag. try to listen to at least one of the songs people rec here!

tagged/stolen from @itbepansam and @genderhawk and p much everyone else in the discord

1) one song you loved the first time you listened to and never got tired of?

Ghost Love Score - Nightwish, when Floor was the lead singer. Live at Wacken 2013. Floorgasms for days, folks. I could listen to this nonstop every day and be cool with it.

2) one song which makes you cry every time you listen to it or makes you emotional?

Far From Home (Raven) by Sam Tinnesz. Fuck you, Liam O’Brien, for adding this to Vax’s last playlist. (also this song hits different if you read Stephen King’s short story “The Jaunt” in Vax context)

3) one song that always makes you happy?

【MMD】Go home Homura, you are drunk by NicoNicoDouga. Its an oldie but a goodie and it makes me smile.

4) one song that you would dedicate to your best friend and/or your family?

Beehive - JayKode for my mom. She moves this fast and this is the song I put on when she’s cleaning the house cuz she’s so goddamned loud my autistic ass needs it to drown out and calm shit down.

5) one song with a production (the sounds, the beat, the mood) you love?

Nightwalker - Sentient Pulse. Chillstep dreamy. It’s like someone took all my favorite Pro Tools filters and masterfully art-ed ��em together. I used this song in a video I did for class where we were basically asked to make a fanvid but for concepts in film. Imagine this song set to the cool light effects you can get in 2D animation - specially stuff like Treasure Planet and Atlantis.

6) one song with perfect, amazing, outstanding lyrics?

Cry For The Moon by Epica. As a preacher’s kid, both Epica and Within Temptation’s songs about the hidden grossness behind church walls was like a form of therapy for me.  “Indoctrinated minds so very often Contain sick thoughts And commit most of the evil they preach against Don't try to convince me with messages from God You accuse us of sins committed by yourselves It's easy to condemn without looking in the mirror Behind the scenes opens reality “ And here’s a link to WT’s song with similar themes. This song probably changed my life? It’s called The Truth Beneath The Rose.

7) one song that you would recommend to anyone?

Every song by Jungle, but particularly Busy Earnin’. Get into this band, yall, they are AMAZING.

8) one song you don’t understand why you like so much but you do anyway?

Oh Be Clever - River. I really... I dunno. This isn’t my usual type of vibes but I heard it like once and then I came back to it and now its on a playlist or two? WTF? I mean.. its good? Its’ just not ME. I’m not really a fan of the lyrics but something about the voice and the beat just get me I guess. The chorus is p baller tho.

9) one song that you think people in general wouldn’t like but you do?

This Hollow World by Johnny Hollow. Its not so much that I think people wouldn’t like it so much as Johnny Hollow didn’t get a whole lot of press, etc, they just aren’t quite as well known. But god I was so into them in high school. They used to have a website where you could play with like... these weird mechanical beetles and other insects and I’d spend hours on there.

10) one song people normally like and you don’t like/hate?

literally anything by taylor swift

11) one song you would call a masterpiece?

Somewhere - Within Temptation, Metropole Orchestra feat. Anneke van Giersbergen. Okay so first of all, Within Temptation is my favorite band. Always have been always will be. Sharon is not Human, she is an actual angel - but not in like the Precious Moments kind, I mean a full blown ethereal will-kill-you-if-you-looked-too-hard angel. Somewhere is a beautiful song regardless. But this duet, live, at their Black Symphony tour?? Holy shit? Anneke and Sharon’s voices meld and don’t meld so perfectly. The way the music is written is stunning as well! You can distinctly hear which of them is singing AND notice that they actually switch tones sometimes - flawlessly, I might add. 

12) one song you recently (last 30 days max) discovered and really liked it?

Yeah honestly I think I gotta go with Toss a Coin To Your Witcher as well, like the rest of the world. I mean, cmon.

13) one song you listen to to get pumped like you wanna tear down the fucking government or something?

Victorian Vigilante by Abney Park is one of them for sure. Plus, like, I’d feel weird if I didn’t put them on this list. I listen to them way too often and have for too long to leave off a music list.

Anyone can do this, we don’t tag people anymore as a culture I guess. :P 

[nadziejastar]

Did you finish reading that KH3: A Conclusion without a story article? If so, what did you think of it?

I loved reading it. It was a fantastic take on KH3. There was pretty much nothing that I disagreed with.

By the time you leave Olympus, Sora hasn’t learnt how to restore his powers; and the frustrating part is that he never explicitly does.

I completely agreed with this. Sora’s journey in KH3 should have been about learning the power of waking. But even in the scene where he finally does learn it, there’s no real reason why. He didn’t seem to learn anything on his journey.

Even the villains are given no progress – a subplot about Pete and Maleficent looking for a mysterious black box goes nowhere, and Organisation XIII (the primary antagonists) only put in a brief appearance, spouting their usual brand of vaguely ominous dialogue. To compound these issues, the protagonists are ultimately left not knowing where to go or what to do next. Only two hours into the game, and the plot has no sense of momentum or direction.  

Yep. The black box thing annoyed me so much. The Organization was also a huge letdown. We don’t get to learn the real reason why Marluxia, Larxene, Demyx, and Luxord joined until KH4!? Something went very, VERY wrong in the Dark Seeker Saga for that to happen. 

By comparison, Kingdom Hearts II’s opening was significantly slower paced – to the point that it was a detriment to some players. However, so much more was achieved in a similar space of time; II’s initial hours establish the game’s tone and major themes, as well as introduce a large cast of brand new characters (while simultaneously reintroducing old ones in new contexts).

Yep. I liked KH2′s opening, slow as it was. The prologue of KH2 felt like it had more plot than almost all of KH3.

And this is one of the core problems with Kingdom Hearts III; even if you look past a threadbare narrative for Sora and company while they adventure through the self-contained Disney worlds, there is nothing going on outside of that either. In Kingdom Hearts II, both Riku and Mickey were operating behind the scenes, aiding Sora from the shadows and setting key events in motion. In III, however, these same characters spend most of their time expositing plot points and passively waiting for the big battle at the end of the game – and that can be said for almost all of our heroes.

I also agree. This problem would have been mitigated if every character got their own time to shine using the power of waking. Riku and Mickey could have had a subplot together, showing how Riku got his new Keyblade. They should have saved each other from the darkness. 

If there’s a job to do, it’s up to Sora to do it. With a couple of key exceptions, every character apart from Sora, Donald, and Goofy is presented as almost comically useless – yet our protagonist remains the butt of every joke.

Yep. Everyone other than Sora was useless. Aqua needed to save Ven, but all she did was get knocked out in the battle with Vanitas. Ven needed to save Terra, but he didn’t really do anything. Sora did all the work. Lea needed to save Isa, but he did nothing in his fight. He got shoved to the side while Roxas and Xion took over. Kairi saving Sora should have gotten more focus. 

The villains reveal that the only way Sora can release Roxas is by giving into the darkness, and sacrificing his own heart. Self-sacrifice is nothing new for Sora (he did the same thing in Kingdom Hearts I to save his love interest Kairi), but this had the potential to be an interesting plot point, as it gives him a selfless reason to be tempted by, and potentially give into, the darkness. But it’s never brought up again. 

Yep. Early scenes in KH3 make it seem like the game did originally have an actual plot at one point. Xigbar was luring Sora into a trap, so he’d fall to darkness. But it’s never brought up again, LOL. It’s crazy.

In fact, ‘saving Roxas’ is scarcely discussed until the end of the game (King Mickey telling Sora to “let the rest of us worry about Roxas and Naminé for now”, essentially dropping the subject after only the second Disney world). Ultimately, Roxas’ heart just leaves Sora’s body of its own volition in the final act, making the player’s time here, once again, feel largely pointless.  

And yes, saving Roxas was handled very badly. This is because, IMO, saving Roxas and saving Ventus was supposed to be one and the same. There shouldn’t have been a separate “saving Roxas” subplot.

In interviews, Nomura discussed the struggle of dealing with so many characters – even citing the cast size as one of the main reasons that Final Fantasy cameos were omitted[2]. The real problem, though, is that nothing is done to mitigate this challenge.

Yes, exactly. And treating Roxas and Ventus as separate characters only exacerbated this problem.

Upon leaving Twilight Town, the player finally begins their true journey – travelling to various worlds based on Disney properties and beating back the forces of darkness. But there’s no real set up for this; no distinct reason *why* we’re visiting these worlds. 

Mm-hm. I think the issue was that we were supposed to learn more about Ansem the Wise’s data in KH0.5. That was supposed to give Sora a quest in KH3: search for the “Key to Return Hearts”. Once that game got cancelled, Nomura had no idea how to write KH3′s story any longer.

So around 3-4 hours into Kingdom Hearts III, the story still lacks a clear sense of direction and purpose, and hasn’t yet established any clear themes or deeper meaning.

Yeah, it’s sad because there was an underlying theme in the Disney worlds: the power of love and its ability to restore what was lost.

Kingdom Hearts III cleverly tries to frame its story through the lens of a chess match between two Keyblade Masters, Eraqus and Xehanort, when they were young. The game even opens on this scene, highlighting its importance. But chess has rules; logic; a clear sense of direction. Kingdom Hearts III’s narrative is akin to two people who don’t know how to play chess. They understand that they have to defeat their opponent’s king, but the rules of how to move their pieces, how to actually reach that coveted checkmate, are completely unknown to them. The characters in this game feel like pieces on a chess board with no rules; aimlessly moving back and forth across a limited space, until both players finally decide enough is enough and agree to bring their match to an end.

LOL. Yep. The fact that Xehanort had “reserve members” showed he had no idea what he was doing.

Stick to your guns – don’t be afraid to explore a good idea, or to develop the plot outside of your main protagonist. When so many previously proactive characters are in play, the story shouldn’t feel so static, or entirely dependent on the protagonist’s actions. The way your protagonist reacts to events and changing circumstances is just as important as the ones they play an active role in creating.

That’s why I liked the spin-offs. KH3 suffered from forcing you into only Sora’s perspective. Even Nomura said that the Keyblade Graveyard should have had everyone fighting their own battles.

Simply put, the Disney worlds in Kingdom Hearts III have no tangible impact on the game’s core narrative.

Sad, but true.

“In the end, although I had a hand in it as well, the flow of the dialogue and the stories of each world were largely handled by the level design team.” While I very much appreciate this standpoint of ‘gameplay first’, as well as the act of involving multiple teams in the execution of the story, these statements do prove my point. Set-pieces and events are one thing, but if there was a specific story to tell – with outlined themes to be explored, character conflicts to evolve, and goals to be achieved; all developed evenly throughout the entire game (Disney worlds included) - you would imagine the scenario would be built around balancing those narrative elements with the individual tales of each level.

Very interesting. The story in the Disney worlds was largely decided by the level design team? Wow.

Despite major villains such as Young Xehanort, Vanitas, and Marluxia making multiple appearances in their respective worlds, they generally just spout off trite exposition and then either disappear or summon a boss fight. Some villains don’t even know why they’re there, while others introduce plot points (such as the Black Box or the new Princesses of Heart) that are never utilised or expanded upon. As the game features at least thirteen main antagonists, these early appearances should have been integral in establishing their personalities, motivations, and the threat they pose to the player (as well as our heroes). In execution, though, they seem like little more than after-thoughts that offer hints of personality, but never go beyond the superficial – and certainly contribute nothing to the main narrative. This, I believe, is because Kingdom Hearts III doesn’t have a story to tell, but was instead content with treading water until its grand conclusion.

Yep. I had no idea why Marluxia, Larxene, and Luxord were running around in the worlds. Why are they back? Other characters, like Saix, were given flimsy “motivation”. All in all, the organization members were supposed to be vessels by the time you fight them in the KG. Hollowed out containers for Xehanort’s heart. Victims of mind control who you are supposed to have pity for. But they never felt like it.

Kingdom Hearts III’s meandering and vapid progression during ‘the Disney loop’ supports my argument that the game lacks a complete narrative and was merely concerned with reaching its final act. I believe this is most evident by the way in which the player is made to jump from world to world without any direction or purpose. Consequently, the majority of Kingdom Hearts III feels content to aimlessly ‘go through the motions’, setting a repetitive, humdrum pace and ultimately lacking the sense of narrative depth and genuine value that is integral to a great RPG.  

Yeah, I believe there was–at one point–an actual plot for KH3. But after BBSV2 was cancelled, a huge portion of KH3′s plot was pretty much scrapped along with it and rewritten.

Everyone’s heard of the three-act structure; a model that forms the foundation of popular culture’s favourite stories. Act 1 features the setup and exposition; an ‘inciting incident’ to get the narrative moving. Act 2 is the confrontation; a midpoint which challenges the protagonist, pushing them to their limits. And finally, Act 3 is the resolution; concluding the plot, along with any character arcs introduced in the previous acts. While this structure doesn’t necessarily need to be adhered to, I believe it possesses something that Kingdom Hearts III sorely lacked – a midpoint.

Yep. KH3 had no mid-point. Scala ad Caelum could have worked as the mid-point. And it could have been another hub world like Radiant Garden. KH3 probably originally had this, but it was scrapped.

This is especially a shame, as Aqua’s fall into darkness – resulting in a twisted form that externalises all of her loneliest thoughts – is one of the most dramatically compelling aspects of the game. And that’s despite lasting for all of 10 minutes (a decade of solitude and suffering are seemingly erased by a few whacks from Sora’s Keyblade).

This is true for all of the characters that needed to be saved. Nobody really used the power of waking on anyone. It’s was just whack, whack, okay you’re saved.

And this is ultimately the problem with the lack of a true Act 2 – the characters aren’t explored or challenged when they need to be. The narrative refuses to escalate until its final act, at which point it feels like going from zero to sixty in a matter of moments. But during the heat of battle – at such a late stage, and with so many heroes and villains in play (more than twenty) – it’s hard to develop your characters in a way that feels natural. Kingdom Hearts III’s solution is bizarre soliloquies that are completely disconnected from the events around them. Is Sora in the middle of a boss fight with three villains? Well, the other two will disappear while you spend several minutes casually chatting with the third. And while this is partly due to the challenge of giving such a large cast an appropriate send-off, it’s also a direct consequence of the lack of time given to exploring characters and their relationships in the previous 20-25 hours of playtime.

So true. So many characters who had so much development over the series. That’s why they needed another game before KH3. It was probably too much to ask for KH3 to be the epic conclusion as well as dive into everyone’s backstory.

On that note, having some sort of hub – a place, like Traverse Town or Hollow Bastion in the first two Kingdom Hearts games, that the player regularly returns to – can be an effective way to centre your story. It provides a home base, and a recurring cast of characters that can be revisited at any time. This kind of location helps players to feel a deeper and more personal attachment to your world.

Yeah, the game would have been so much better if you could visit RG and interact with the plot-important NPCs.

Put in Kingdom Hearts terms, we might say that the body and soul are here; it’s just missing its heart.

I’ve had the exact same thought.

This essay began with the assertion that Kingdom Hearts III is a conclusion in search of a story; a game without a tale of its own to tell. So far, we’ve examined the material impact; the effect this has on the game’s pacing, its sense of player progression, engagement, and character development. So in this topic, I want to consider the conceptual side of things; the motivations that drive our heroes and villains, the purpose of the events that take place, and finally the meaning intended to be conveyed by the story. Put simply, does the narrative of Kingdom Hearts III have something to say?

Sadly, no. I can tell it was supposed to, though. KH3′s story was supposed to be about the power of love. It was really that simple.

By the time of Kingdom Hearts III, Riku has overcome all of these challenges and been granted the title of Keyblade Master, so it was important to present him as a more mature, capable character, having regained his confidence and developed a clear identity. But ultimately, he just feels bland and stoic in this game. He has no new narrative arc, relatively few interactions with Sora, predominantly serves as a mouthpiece for exposition, and is more devoid of a distinct personality than ever. And for a game which serves as a conclusion to the story so far, it’s essential that our core group of characters, such as Riku and Kairi, reach a satisfying crescendo. The narrative should organically involve them in significant ways, and the challenges they face should provide natural opportunities for growth and exploration.

Sad, since Riku seemed like he did originally have a narrative arc. He got a new Keyblade! But the way he got it was laughably random and meaningless and contributed nothing to his overall growth or development.

As much as I’ve tried to understand it, I cannot summarise Master Xehanort’s motivation in that same, concise way. His initial speech in Kingdom Hearts III implies idle curiosity; he speculates that “If ruin brings about creation, what, then, would another Keyblade War bring?” followed by statements that he wants to re-enact the conflict and simply see what happens. He also wonders if they will “…be found worthy of the precious light the legend speaks of”, implying that his goal is to test humanity; or at least the current generation of Keyblade wielders. But that’s a pretty flimsy motivation, and it’s lacking any context or logic.

Yep. Xehanort was supposed to have another game to explore his motivations. When you get rid of that, his character just doesn’t work anymore.

And it’s not just the heroes that have this problem. During their death scenes, several of the Organisation’s members (Luxord, Marluxia, Larxene, Xigbar, Xion, Saix, and Ansem) either encourage Sora or imply that they didn’t care about the outcome; or didn’t even want to battle in the first place. Some have their reasons, but if even one of them had chosen not to fight, Xehanort’s re-enactment could have failed. Much like I described earlier, it doesn’t feel satisfying to overcome a foe who didn’t want to fight, and a war with the potential to destroy the universe should be motivated by much more powerful convictions.

I don’t disagree. But I honestly think this is because none of these characters actually wanted to fight in the Keyblade War. They were supposed to be possessed puppets. Mind-controlled vessels with no will of their own. 

Let’s use Saix as an example. What makes a more engaging battle? In canon, Saix had flimsy motivations to be fighting, anyways. He wanted to atone so he was acting as a double agent in order to procure some Replicas. And he wanted look for Subject X. That’s why he joined Xehanort. That’s all the reason he had to fight. 

Compare that to a potential backstory with him as a vessel, lacking free will. Isa was a human test subject who was possessed as a teen. His best friend Lea has to fight him unwillingly. Saix is berserk and nearly kills Lea without even being aware of it. But all Lea wants is to save his best friend. I know which one I find more engaging. 

Ever since that first game, I’ve been trying to identify what it is that unified these two styles of storytelling – the Disney fairytale with the SquareSoft RPG. And in writing this essay, I finally realised; the secret ingredient, the unifying thread that both franchises had in common, was love. Romance is at the core of almost every classic Disney film, and every Final Fantasy from IV to X was in some way a love story. Seemingly the developers of the original Kingdom Hearts realised this too.

I’m pretty neutral about the Sora/Kairi romance. I mainly wanted Kairi to not feel like a damsel-in-distress yet again. And KH3 definitely screwed that up.

In a way, my problem was the same as that of Kingdom Hearts III’s story. We both spent so much time looking to the horizon, imagining what the future may hold, that we missed out on what was already right in front of us. I will always love and support this series, and its creativity and charm will no doubt continue to inspire my own stories for the rest of my life. But despite not being the conclusion I hoped for, Kingdom Hearts III has freed me from my own obsession with the series’ future. I no longer feel like I’m waiting for something that may never come. Of course, I hope the series gets its story back on track, and rises to new heights greater than ever before! But it turns out that I already got my ending in 2006; and now that I’ve finally realised that, I can finally, honestly say that, as a Kingdom Hearts fan, I am satisfied.

It’s sad that KH2’s ending felt more satisfying. Because KH3 should have been even better than KH2′s ending. KH2 had a happy ending. But in KH3, everyone was there on the beach. Terra, Aqua, and Ven were saved. In KH2, Axel was dead. He had a sad ending. But in KH3, he was human again and even had his childhood best friend back, too. Even Hayner, Pence, and Olette were there. Sora should have been there, too. By all accounts, I should have liked KH3′s ending the best out of any game. But they ruined it with the horrible character development and the cheap cliffhanger.

[amazildoessomethingstupid]

Chapter 96: Unspoken Rule

Man I thought it would be a lot longer before I did another of these, but as it turns out I fucking hate in between pages.  Y’know, those pages between the actual good and interesting shit?  Y’know the parts that are in between the fun parts, but you have to have them to actually move characters to the good parts? The parts that are boring and filler?  Yeah as an artist/writer I hate those too and it took me most of the week to come up with a page to make it not boring as sin.  Sadly this means, ANOTHER RANT!  And this time we are taking a look at Unspoken Rule. But before we do, I’d like to share with you the bit of panic that set in and what kind of pressure I had on me when trying to force an update.  For a second I thought that this rant was going to be about…

And I was very, very, scared.

Thankfully a friend notified me that I don’t know how to count, so we’re talking about this chapter instead!  Boy what a relief that was, I thought.  But it seemed a bit disappointing.  I hadn’t heard anything of this page, seems like it’ll be a short rant.  That won’t do.  So I figured, “hey if there’s not much to say.  Fuck it, we’ll do a double feature with the carnival…”

Sadly, I have something to say.

And we start with a good lighthearted joke.  Although, that expression in the first panel throws it off a bit.  The dialogue on the initial read says snark and sassy, but the face says honest concern, but then we show it is snarky.  So the face is just, confusing.  Not worth kicking up a fuss about, but definitely a headscratcher.

Anyway, on to what’s actually happening.  Which is Mike is being nervous and back and forth about wanting to talk to Lucy and apologize.  And it’s so weird to me.  This is such a serious plot point, and major conflict in the story, yet this is played for laughs. And not even good laughs, just hollow jokes it feels almost tasteless.  But not as tasteless as this:

BIG OOF  

Alright guys, see this?

I am absolved of this being uncharacteristically brash and open.  If Taeshi can do that kind of rudeness, so can I.  Lucy is just so cold now, it feels bad.  Not out of character, not unrealistic, just…bad.

But moving from that, we get into these two.   And…

Awww…th-this is actually pretty sad. And engaging.

HEY! I SEE YOU REACHING FOR MY HEARTSTRINGS! YOU STAY THE FUCK AWAY!

But seriously, this a very nice scene. It’s kind of touching, and it’s a moment I wish we had more of.  

It’s…actually very nice. The characters are finally airing their grievances, and we’re getting somewhere. I…I actually like th-

OH YOU BACKSTABBING, HACK WRITING, BITCH! ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?!

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?! WHY ARE YOU STICKING YOUR DICK IN A GAS STATION MILKSHAKE?! BITCH,

ARE YOU FUCKING F’REAL SHAKES RIGHT NOW?!  WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU FEEL THE NEED TO ADD THAT?!  THIS JUST DESTROYS ALL IMMERSION, I ALMOST FELT SOMETHING THERE FOR A SECOND! BUT THEN YOU HAD TO DO SOMETHING SO DUMB!  THIS ISN’T EVEN ON THE CHARACTER, THIS IS A STRAIGHT UP WRITING ISSUE!  EVEN I WOULDN’T DO SOMETHING THIS DUMB!  IT’S SO OUT OF PLACE!  IT GIVES ME MENTAL WHIPLASH CAUSE I HAVE TO DO A DOUBLE TAKE TO MAKE SURE I’M NOT JUST FUCKING SEEING SHIT! AND YOU KNOW WHAT’S THE WORST PART ABOUT THIS FUCKING PANEL?!

IT’S IN THE PRINTED BOOK! Taeshi saw this, drew it, posted it, and got whatever feedback from it.  Then later came back, saw it, and edited a bunch of things for the book, and decided, “No that’s fine.  We’ll leave it there, that’s perfectly okay.”  And just left it there!  WHY?!  You had a good scene, an actual honest to god, good scene.  And you had to just make a dumb joke, and ruin the whole mood.  This is the sort of bad run and gun cheap gag sort of shtick that you’d expect to see from Volume 1!  Except, even Volume 1 knew when to take itself seriously, and maintain that serious tone!  I mean imagine if this happened in something like Zach’s talk with Lucy.

Any good graces this scene had, in setting up these two working out their problems and moving in a nice direction is thrown out the window now, and for what?!  What’s the purpose?  Why would yo-

Oh…Oh no…

Please, have mercy! You already stabbed my back, please don’t stab me in the heart! Please, not like this!

Aaaugh, no!  Not like this!  Poor Rachel!  It’s not fair I can’-

Wait….

I-is…Is that it?

Are you kidding me?

That’s it?  Two pages?  Really? That’s how you’re breaking it off?  This is how you’re going to stab me? Look, there’s like 3 more inches left in the knife, come on.  Push it deeper.  Twist it, I know you want to.  WHY ARE YOU HOLDING BACK? FUCKING WORK THIS SCENE AND MAKE ME CRY!  

NO FUCK YOU, WE’RE NOT MOVING PAST THIS!

YOU WROTE RACHEL’S BREAK UP. IN

TWO

FUCKING

PAGES!?

YOU WROTE OUT ONE OF THE MOST GROUNDED, HEALTHY, PRODUCTIVE RELATIONSHIPS IN YOUR COMIC IN TWO PAGES LIKE IT WAS NOTHING!  WITH A HORRIBLE ONE-SIDED DIALOGUE, WHERE RACHEL IS TALKING TO PAULO WHO HAS SUDDENLY INHERITED THE EMPATHY AND UNDERSTANDING OF A BRICK WALL!  HOW COULD YOU DO THAT AFTER EVERYTHING YOU DID IN BUILDING THIS CHARACTER’S ENTIRE ARC AND DEVELOPMENT!?  AFTER TRANSFORMING A CHARACTER WHO WAS PORTRAYED AS UNLIKABLE, BITCHY, ANNOYING, SLUTTY, AND DUMB.

To fleshing her out, to be deep, thoughtful, caring, and supportive.  Rachel is my favorite character, and it’s not because she’s a slut it’s because she represented something in this comic that had been absent.  

Natural character development.  That wasn’t brought on by some big event shaking their entire core, and changing them. In fact, one of the best things about Rachel is that despite how differently her character’s reception is from Volume 6 compared to Volume 1, her personality, her attitude, and her core is mostly unchanged.  

She’s still slutty, she’s overweight, she’s silly.  But a big part of why I love her as a character, and why I think many others do as well, is because never does it seem to be a negative to her.  We don’t see her get upset, or self-conscious about her weight, or her sexual behavior, because she’s confident in herself and accepts herself. Not only that, but she’s shown to take charge, stand up and not be afraid to call out what she sees is wrong. And outside of her character…

She was a role model for Paulo.  Unlike Jasmine whose relationship was more Paulo bending himself to fit her lifestyle, Rachel was a character who accepted and supported Paulo’s lifestyle, but at the same time helped steer him to do the right thing.  And in a comic where almost every fucking character is so intent on dancing around their issues and waiting until it blows up in their face, Rachel served as an example of someone who had it together.  A proactive person, who didn’t want to see these characters get worse.

I have ranted and gone off on a lot of decisions and actions that these characters have done, but not once did I ever scratch my head or think twice about something that Rachel did. Her character didn’t need a bunch of insight, and excuses about hormones or “they’re teenagers, lol!” to understand her.  She simply was who she was, and I respect that.

In short…

Despite everything that my history with this comic gave me, the feelings I developed from all the bullshit that has happened in this story, despite all of that.  It was this one character, what she brought to the table, and what she did for the comic and its characters, that gave me something I thought I’d long lost, and never thought I’d ever regain.

She gave me hope in this comic.  That it would finally have its characters be proactive, regain its humor, and bring itself out of the slump it made for itself.  With this character, and the writing behind her, I believed Taeshi was finally on the right track, and was setting up something great that would grow the characters and build upon them naturally.

But that’s not what we got. And the real bitch of it is, this could’ve been a real emotional moment. A well executed front-stab.  We knew it was coming, we saw the writing on the wall, but we still needed to face the music.  It was set up to be a wonderful tragedy, where both parties are well aware of the futility of their relationship.  They understand each other, and why it won’t work, but also don’t want to let go.  And I was going to make a comparison to Two Kinds, because they had a similar scenario with Trace’s wife and the whole idea of moving on is a recurring theme… But looking back I realized something.  I don’t need to bring a comparison to Two Kinds or someone else’s comic, and no I’m not even going to draw a comparison of what I would’ve done in this situation by drawing a comparison to False Idol’s future scene (although I was thinking about that).  No, we don’t need to look too far because you know what the real sad part about this is?

We’ve had this conversation before.

And just look at it. Look how heartbreaking this is.  This is how it should’ve been.  You see that Paulo understands what she’s saying, he knows what she means and how bittersweet their relationship is.  It is one of the best moments from the newer volumes, and their inevitable breakup should’ve been a turning point.  It should’ve marked a big life-changing moment for Paulo.  Where he is sad about how he’s making Rachel feel, but he’s unsure about his own feelings. Maybe Rachel makes the decision for him and breaks it off, and Paulo realizes how hurtful his behavior is, and that he can’t play games with people anymore, that it’s not fair.  It could be the moment Paulo turns a new leaf and becomes more mature, and in seeing that; Rachel can let go taking some solace in knowing that he is a better person now.

But instead we got this…

We’re not even halfway through this god damn chapter. Well where is it taking us now?

Huh…and it seems that the writing is not going to change pace either, I wonder where this is going.

Oh boy, everyone’s getting into teams!  And oh man, Lucy’s going up against Mike!  And boy is this contrived.  And what’s even worse, is that despite how much Taeshi has shunned Volume 1 and its stupid sense of humor, and how shoddy it was.  Volume 1 wasn’t THIS contrived, and when it was, it was pretty tongue in cheek about it.  In fact!

This sounds like something Volume 1 would MAKE FUN OF.  But let’s give the benefit of the doubt maybe it’s not that bad.  It might have something going on, an-

(It’s interesting, I think I have like 3 reaction pics of Sam trying to shoot herself, but this one just can not be matched.  And it’s not even meant for the rants.)

You know what?  I’m not even gonna bother going over this part. No one will be seated during the harrowing “Will they won’t they” inconsequential dodgeball fight. Although I will say,

Not gonna lie, that actually got a laugh out of me.  Good job. Anyway, Lucy catches the ball and wins the game who cares.  But then…

First of all

Look at those arms. Damn Lucy what happened?  You’re looking like two toothpicks in a marshmallow.   But more than that.  Did I read that right?

Yeah!  It’s not like you stopped practicing Martial Arts!  Why would you?  It’s not like you had some serious physical trauma happen to stop you-

OH WAIT!

RECOVERY PERIOD? PHYSICAL THERAPY?  PFFFT WHO THE FUCK NEEDS THAT?  YEAH SURE, YOU’RE TOTALLY FINE AND CAPABLE BEING A FUCKING BLACK BELT IN TAE KWON DO.  SURE!  NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT! WHAT THE FUCK ARE STITCHES AM I RIGHT?

But I’m just combing cotton here, this all just fluff.  There’s really only one thing left to talk about here.

And I’ll be honest.

This.

Is…

Pretty good.

This is honestly really well done.  There’s nothing I can say about this.  It’s a very serious moment, I can feel Taeshi reaching for my heartstrings but I…I’m okay with it.  This was the moment I wanted to see.  Finally these characters air out some of their grievances.  We get insight to how they feel, we are finally getting somewhere. It’s not nice, but it’s progress an-

…

THAT’S THE TH-….

*sigh*

Fuck you too, Taeshi.

Three times.

Three fucking times in one chapter, that you set up something good.  Had a good thing going, and then decided to fuck it up at the end. That’s a new record.  Even when I expected nothing out of this chapter, you manage to let me down.  You astound me with how much you disappoint me.  If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were doing it to intentionally troll me. But I’m not that vain.  Fuck you Taeshi, I’ve said this before but always with the tone of hyperbole, and a bit of optimistic cynicism.  But this time I really mean it.  I have no more faith in you as a writer.  Whatever you come up with, however this ride ends.  I don’t think you will pull it off anymore.  I don’t think you have the competence to tie this up in a proper way.  At one point you could’ve.  At one point, I think you had it in you with the mindset, the creativity, and the emotional drive to tell a well-crafted story.  But not anymore, and I despise what you’ve become.    Let’s get this stupid chapter over with.

What’s next?  What are we doing huh?  What are we getting at?

Oh…

I see.  This is where we’re going huh? That’s what all this was for?

ALRIGHT! Y’KNOW WHAT? FINE! I GUESS THIS IS WHAT WE’RE DOING BOYS!  THIS IS THE NEW DIRECTION FOR BCB!  LOOK! SHE CALLED PAULO CUTE! OMG THE SHIP IS SAILING, DON’T YOU GET IT?  IT’S JUST SHIPPING! THAT’S ALL THAT MATTERS! THAT’S HOW WE’RE DRIVING THE PLOT!

FUCK ALL THAT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, THIS IS WHY RACHEL GOT DROPPED!  IT WASN’T CAUSE OF CHARACTERS NATURALLY CONCLUDING RELATIONSHIPS, IT’S ALL BECAUSE LUCY’S HERE AND WE CAN’T HAVE PAULO’S RELATIONSHIP WITH RACHEL CLASH WITH THAT!  SHE’S OUTLIVED HER USEFULNESS! NOW IT’S ALL ABOUT PAULO X LUCY, OR PAULO X DAISY WHICH IS IT?  THIS IS THE REAL DRAMA YOU ALL ARE LOOKING FOR!  THIS IS HOW WE REALLY MOVE THE PLOT AND CHARACTERS!  CHOO CHOO BOYS!  ALL ABOARD THE SHIP!  LET’S JUST GO ALONG FOR THE RIDE WHERE WE GOING TAESHI?  I’M READY!  I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING LEFT TO FUCKING LOOK FORWARD TO OR LIVE FOR!  SO COME ON, WHERE ARE YOU SAILING US?

I give it a 2/10.  Until next time, guys. 

[angelkurenai]

hey so um if you don’t mind me asking, what advice would you give someone who is just starting writing on tumblr, like what not to do and how to get people to see my work..?.. thanks hun xx

Hello! I have a couple tips which is basically what I did when I started writing for this blog and things I still keep in mind when posting new stuff. There’s a lot and I hope that even some of them can be helpful enough!

1. Just post. Simple yeah but very very important, don’t hesitate. Don’t give it any second thoughts and don’t believe it’s crap and not worthy uploading (says the person that thinks this every time she uploads a story XD). Just do your thing, if you spent time writing a fic then that alone makes it worth uploading! And trust me, 99% of the time you will be surprised at the positive response. Most of the time, and I mean it, when I have second thought about a story and really don’t believe it’s that good it ends up being super popular, for my standards at least.

2.Tags. This is like a number one rule for me, especially when I got started with writing on tumblr, it’s to tag everything. Up to this day I really tag anything in my fics (characters, show, pairing). And usually with more than one ways as you can see if you check some fic’s tags, e.g. dean x reader, dean winchester x reader, dean imagine, dean winchester imagine, dean one shot, dean fanfiction etc etc and trust me it helped a looot during my first fics!

3. Don’t be afraid to submit your stories to some blog, I know there are blogs out there that post imagines and fics all coming from other fans/blogs and I would upload/submit lots of stories there myself because they have lots and lots of followers that can get to know your writing!

4.Have a theme that is easy on the eye. I am going to be changing mine soon and other than making it all dolled up, I keep in mind for my text posts to have as large letters as possible for people to read easily. I don’t know important this is to others, considering lots of people use their phones for tumblr, but I am usually on pc and it does matter.

5. Opening requests, if you have the time and willingness to do that, is something I would advice doing. It’s not only nice when you run out of ideas of things to write but also gives people a chance to know your writing. Keep your inbox open, with anon-option on, and lots of people will start talking to you.

6. It all needs patience. It takes time, trust me I didn’t just start my blog ne day and then woke up the next morning with 17k followers. I’ve been doing this for pretty long, so don’t be discouraged if at first you think there aren’t people out there that like your writing! Honestly, I didn’t even pay attention to the notes when I first posted, and I didn’t get any messages (like aaaany at all) at first but I kept posting and posting until more and more people saw my fics and send messages and everything! Ihonestly still remember the first message I got, and how my blog was back then, heck even the theme I had XD

When it comes to writing I could also add:

In the beginning it will be a little hard and as with everybody your writing is not going to be perfect. But as long as you got a nice and original plot then you are on the right way. You only need to keep writing and reading other stories to either get ideas and improve yourself. The more you write, even short stories, the better!

What’s more, if you want your stories to be long just like most people like them it would be a good advice to write a lot about how the characters feel. Getting to give the reader an insight of the characters thoughts and dilemas sometimes is very good! You can also get to describe a lot. What is happening and all. What I mean is that when you write for example: “Where’s my pie?” Dean said. it is of course good sometimes, keeping it simple, you can always add a few more things like “Where’s my pie?” Dean asked with a raised eyebrow and an almost accusing voice tone. This way you both get more words if you want it and it also makes your writing more interesting for others. Of course the most important thing is that you get to make the reader see as they read what you had in mind when you were writing the story. You get it? It enables you to create a whole scene that with enough detail could as well be filmed.

Furthermore, it is good sometimes to use a different word for one thing. Like instead of saying ‘said’ you can say ‘asked’ when it’s a question, or for example ‘came out of his lips’ and so on. It certainly makes the story more interesting and not boring even if the plot is very interesting itself.

Now, originality is a trait I believe. Even if you are a writer or not. You may think your stories are not original, like e.g. Sam confessing his feelings to insecure Reader, but it doesn’t matter. You write that. Immediately. Because even if like thousands of other writers have written it it still is original cause it’s writen from you and that means it still is something different. After all nobody’s writing is similar 100% to others’. So yeah just always go ahead and write whatever story ya want anytime you want!

Well, equally important is to check your writing before you upload it. Of course there might be times you don’t have the time to check them and it is absolutely fine. But most of the time it would be nice to check them to make sure there are not mistakes that will confuse the readers. Other mistakes like vocabulary or grammar as long as they are not confusing I don’t think matter that much- or well at least I know they don’t bother me.

What matters is a good and believable plot. Key word: Believable. No matter if it is an AU or set in our world or in the spn universe it always has to be believable. This actually matters a lot to me, which is why I end up writing very long stories sometimes. You can let yourself get carried away and you can keep going even if the story is already very long as long as you feel it is believavle. Like you can’t have e.g. Cas and reader fighting a second and then over two lines from each Cas apologizes and is all soft. Gotta make it more believable, show them slowly calm down until they both apologize. Like how you’d see an episode. It doesn’t last just 5 minutes.

[bigskydreaming]

Blech. I’ve pretty much officially finished writing, editing and revising this standalone epic fantasy novel I started years and years ago and only just recently got around to finishing. Which is good, for sure, but also....blech. LOL. Because now I have no more excuses for putting off making a decision about the cover.

Like I always intended to self-pub this particular novel for personal reasons, and I can make my own covers just fine. I’ve done epic fantasy covers before for other clients that turned out well, even working with stock art and photomanipulation, its totally possible to make something that hits all the genre expectations and sells the right tone and feel to readers who come across it. BUT I’ve always loved the illustrated covers of a lot of fantasy novels I grew up with, and always kinda wanted something similar for this particular work, even though I have other fantasy projects I wouldn’t care as much about that one way or the other.

And so years ago when I first started the book and was only about a third of the way in, but still had a solid sense of the world and story and where it was all going, I happened to stumble across a fantasy artist whose work was like...exactly the right tone and aesthetic I’d always been picturing for that novel’s setting and vibe. And he was a freelancer, and open to commissions at the time, and you never know with freelancers if they’ll still be taking commissions a year or two down the line or if they’ve gone to work for like, a video game company or studio or something like that by that point, so even though the book was nowhere near done I hopped on that and commissioned an illustration from him to be used for the cover at some future point when I was ready for it. I just needed the illustration, I was fine doing typography and all that myself when the time came.

And I mean, I’ve literally been on the other side of the author/artist interaction tons of times, lol, so like, I know from my own experiences where its helpful to give an artist or a designer room to breathe and exercise their own creativity, make use of their own particular skillset and interpret the story elements you tell them are most important to see conveyed in the final cover, in like...their own way, like what feels best to them, what they’re most inspired to do with the foundational info you give them to build off of. 

Like I mean, visual design is its own skillset, and often completely separate from the kind of visualization most authors do of their own work while writing it....and with self-pubbed authors especially, as artists or designers you often run into authors who get really hung up on relatively minor details that they feel really need to be on the cover in some capacity and in really specific ways. Which is often to the detriment of the cover in the long run because like....what looks right in your head as a writer, totally familiar with your own world and story and its every minutiae and the implications and context of every single element....is not always going to come across the same way to readers who happen across your cover while browsing. Because they literally have ZERO context for what they’re looking at, and thus it really needs to stand on its own two feet and sell itself, not....loop back around to some hidden significance that will really only resonate with readers who end up buying the book and only once they reach this one scene in chapter 27 or whatever, you know?

So I really didn’t want to do that with this artist. I was only commissioning him because I loved what I’d seen of his work and the style he seemed to default to naturally was the perfect fit for what I wanted, IMO, so I was more than willing to let him take the broader strokes of the setting/themes/storyline in whatever direction inspired him most, as long as he hit within the general framework I provided him.

BUT, that said, for all that I tried to give him as much creative freedom to work with as possible, there are of course always a FEW things that as the commissioning party, are really important to see in the final product, and so yeah, I did have a couple of areas/elements that I did stress were really important to strike the right tone with, or it could make or break the whole illustration.

Specifically, I was concerned that he hit the right feel with the main character. My protag for this novel is a woman, and the one area his portfolio samples didn’t have a ton of variety with and thus had me slightly worried about what visual tropes he might default to...was female characters. He had tons of gorgeous settings, fantasy creatures, architecture, knights and sorcerers and monsters, but not a ton of women in the samples I saw. He did have some, for sure, and like there was nothing super concerning about the way he’d drawn/painted them....there were some priestesses, sorceresses, that kinda thing, and their anatomy and wardrobes weren’t like....glaringly cheesecake-y or anything like a lot of fantasy artists’ portfolios....so I knew he COULD get the character right, the way I hoped he would, I just wasn’t SURE. Like, I wasn’t concerned about specific details, beyond like....not outrageously contradicting the character description and scenes I gave him to work off of, I wasn’t worried about nitpicking minutiae. But my protag is a warrior-magic user archetype, and warrior women is like, the one female archetype he didn’t have any samples of, and I was more concerned about him defaulting to like....the old fantasy standby’s of ridiculously impossible and unnatural poses for warrior women, not to mention totally impractical armor, that sort of thing. 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this was the ONE thing I stressed, lol. I didn’t really care about the finer details of her armor like in terms of decoration or filigree or even color schemes, I honestly could just adjust my own descriptions in the book to match what he came up with if need be. Stuff like that, so not a big deal to me. ALL I was concerned about was like....she not fall into those trope traps that ensnare so many women on fantasy covers, like....just make her look like she’s a fucking warrior who knows what the hell she’s doing, and I’ll be fine with everything else, you know? I even sent him some covers of published fantasy novels to use as comparison comps, like ‘this is the kind of feel or vibe I’d ideally like to see her capture, something like these women in these covers here’ as well as ‘this is what I really really DON”T want to see, like, I shouldn’t have a better sense of how good a contortionist she is than whether or not I believe she can swing a sword.’

Soooooo.....what happened?

Did he prioritize as I’d really really hoped he would and strongly expressed my desire for him to, and take care to at least avoid the more obvious problems, even if the end result was’t 100% what I was hoping for? Nooooooope. She might as well be mid-yoga pose. Sigh. Like, the guy has a damn near perfect grasp of anatomy and proportions on every other human figure I saw in the many samples I looked through before commissioning him, but somehow, despite this being of utmost importance to me and the ONLY thing about the entire project I stressed about and made sure to emphasize, lol, he ended up painting her in this weird bent at the waist position that throws her lower body proportions off entirely and like, her hip is angled or arched in this weird way that’s incredibly distracting and off, and like also, of course her armor is....pointless, in all the specific ways that happened to be the ONLY details about her armor I was concerned with. Y’know. Like. Its effectiveness. As armor.

And the absolutely obnoxious thing about it all, is that everything else about the illustration? Absolutely gorgeous. Everything I’d hoped for, even as I deliberately tried not to build up too specific an image in my mind ahead of time. Hell, BETTER than anything I’d have come up with on my own, and totally validating my impulse to have someone with different skillsets than my own do this instead of just making a cover out of stock art the way I usually do with my other projects. He absolutely captured the specific MOOD I was aiming for with the setting and general atmosphere, like, the very reason I’d been drawn to his style in the first place, he totally nailed that. Couldn’t have asked for a better fit to the general ambiance of the piece. The colors were just the right shade of otherworldly, a great mix of light and darkness that sold the gloom of the surrounding environs without drowning in dark palettes that make it hard to pick out individual details and differentiate between figures. So on and so on.

EVERY SINGLE OTHER THING ABOUT THE DAMN ILLUSTRATION IS PERFECT LOL.

Except for the only fucking part I was worried about in the first place, lmaaaaaaaaaao whyyyyyyy.

And I mean, because his style was a combo of illustration and painting, there was never gonna be a ton of room for revisions or tweaks to the final piece, I knew and understood that going in. He showed me what he had when he was done with the initial pencilwork, before he painted over it, but with the understanding that it could still change from that point, if he needed to shift things around because of the way the colors and lighting and shadows were all coming out once painted. And the pencil work lacked the finer details that he added into his painting in the final stages, so like, I did see a rough draft before he started painting, and could ask for tweaks or adjustments at that point...except at that point, I didn’t NEED to! LOL. In the rougher sketch, her general position was just shifted enough from what it ended up being that like, it wasn’t my ideal pose for her but nothing I’d say I actually had a problem with, like her upper body was elevated just enough and at just the right angle compared to what he ended up with that at that point, there was no unnatural hip thrust or any of that stuff, and there was only a rough sense of what would come to be the final armor. So I mean, TECHNICALLY I had an opportunity to pump the brakes and be like whoa wait dude, this isn’t what we discussed, can I get you to go back to the drawing board just in this one specific area right here and maybe even just take another look at those comps I sent you, see what I mean about what I’m trying to avoid and how that’s kinda sneaking in here anyway....except, I didn’t think I had to say anything at that point lol, because it all looked on track??

I mean, its not like I think he deliberately misled me with that initial draft or anything, nothing as dramatic as that. I’m fairly certain that like most artists and designers will tell you, in the process of like, the actual drawing/painting/designing, you have to make adjustments as you go to account for the little unforseen speedbumps where you were juuuuuust off enough in your prediction of how this would look when working in your ultimate medium, that you have to like...keep nudging your initial outline little by little as you go to account for the slight shift in direction...with gradually that adding up to a fairly significant departure in the end. Ultimately, I think we ended up with what we ended up with because he was good with focusing on my specific concerns when drafting in pencil and just mapping out a general intent, but the closer he got to finishing up his piece, the less and less focused he was on the stuff I prioritized rather than his own innate prioritizations and so he just kinda figured ‘is it really gonna be THAT big a deal?’ instead of sacrificing a direction or angle that played into what he thought was a more important design element. Stuff like that. Like, you know me, I’m def not saying that makes it A-Ok in my book, lol, I just mean to say I honestly don’t think it was...a willful, conscious effort on his part to leave me with something as far removed from what I was hoping for as what I got.

So again I say blech. Its just super frustrating and obnoxious and I’ve been trying to decide what to do with it for like, months now. Because again, EVERYTHING ELSE is perfect and gorgeous and like, yes, good, this is what I wanted, what I was hoping for. Like, I literally could not come up with a design using my own go-to mediums that would come anywhere close to capturing the general feel and tone and mood of the story and its setting better than the overall vibe of his piece.

Its just the protag, front and center, is absolutely driving me fucking nuts. And I keep going back and forth endlessly because I’m like is it really THAT bad and noticeable or am I hyper-fixating because I specifically tried to avoid this end result and ended up with at least a version of it anyway? And then I’m like psst, remember how much fucking money you spent on this, like yeah thats long gone and doesn’t change your current situation one way or another so it doesn’t really matter except oh yeah its totally gonna fucking haunt you if you don’t use this lol and all that money was spent for nothing lmfao you dumbass. And then I’m like, just to weigh my options, what would I design for this cover myself, if I ended up scrapping this and making my own from scratch, do I at least have anything in mind that’s for sure not any worse than my dissatisfaction with this? Except lol I literally can not seem to come up with ANYTHING, like, total blank, because again there’s just enough that I LIKE about the piece that its like, now that I’ve seen THOSE aspects of it, I’m not gonna be content with any cover that doesn’t contain them and I just literally have no way of replicating those effects via my own design medium.

Ugh. So its really annoying, and I keep going around and around and around in circles and making no progress on what to do about it and like...ugh. I hate being so anal about shit like this, especially when I am usually pretty good about dodging the hyper-fixation tendencies on this front specifically.....but I just got whammied but good by the way all of this unfolded and came together and now I feel stuck and lmao I’m really not fond of the fact that I’m really fucking proud of this book and how it came out in terms of the writing and story but like, covers ARE actually a pretty big deal as they’re literally a reader’s first impression, and I feel like no matter which route I go, a big part of me is gonna be doomed to be like NO YOU FUCKING IDIOT THAT WAS THE WRONG CHOICE, UGH WTF DUDE, TURN AROUND, UNDO, UNDO, U’LL REGRET THIIIIIIIS.

ANYWAY! That’s my much ado about nothing. I was kinda hoping that hashing it all out in a post and working my way through it as I wrote it all down would like....magically reveal the Right Decision to me and everything would click and be so obvious by the time I got to this point in the post, but alas.

Fix-It Machine broke. This accomplished nothing. UGH. RUDE.

[wahbegan]

Okay Non-Spoiler Review

So I am gonna put this under a cut because it might get a bit long but yeah i’ll keep it spoiler-free and if you’ve been following my liveblogging of it i am gonna just re-iterate bits of old text posts during this so ye

So The Haunting of Hill House was fucking amazing. Let’s get this out of the way first though: If you come in looking for an adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s novel or the ‘63 film, you’re going to be disappointed. Or the ‘99 film, but if you want an adaptation of that, you’re a monster and may God have mercy on your soul.

Characters share names, very famous scenes are referenced, the opening line of the book is quoted almost verbatim and re-visited at the end with a twist like the film (although not the same twist but i shan’t spoil), and it involves psychic characters in a haunted house. That’s about it, though.

This story focuses on the Crain family, who were the spooky background story family in the OG, and completely changes their mythos as well. So the characters are all related, they live there as kids and don’t actually go back as adults until just about the end, and it’s dealing with their grief and trauma and dysfunction that drives them, not any kind of experiment in the supernatural.

No, what this show has much more in common with is Oculus. I know I’ve said this repeatedly but I can’t stress it enough. The Haunting of Hill House literally has more in common with Oculus than it does with the novel it takes inspiration from. Similar cinematography, similar style ghosts, same flipping between past and present, similar eldritch abomination disguised as inanimate thing villain fucking with perceptions of time and reality...The Haunting of Hill House really is more a re-imagining of Oculus than a re-imagining of The Haunting of Hill House.

Now that’s all just to address people’s expectations, though. Once again, if I had expected a re-imagining of Oculus, I wouldn’t have said no, because Oculus was the big dog’s biscuit. For those not in the know, it’s about a brother and sister whose parents went crazy when they were kids, their dad killed their mom, and then the little brother had to kill the dad in self-defense. He’s spent years in a mental hospital and chalked everything up to mental illness and an evil father, while his older sister is convinced the mirror they had just purchased was evil and drove their parents to do what they did. Zombie ghosts with glowing white eyes and mind-fuckery ensue. If you’re reading this after starting or even finishing THOHH, you may perhaps notice that sounds awfully familiar. 

Oculus was actually an expansion of/improvement on a short film Mike Flanagan made, which you can find on youtube. I’d argue THOHH is an analogous expansion of/improvement on Oculus.

The thing with Oculus is it had problems. Because of the power of the mirror, basically from the moment they enter their old house until the end of the movie, the thing’s illusions are so strong that there is no way of knowing what’s really happening. Audiences complained that it’s hard to get invested in a plot when you’re not sure how much of the plot is actually happening or when it’s happening, in the past or present. Flashbacks and the present narrative blended together in very artistic and jarring ways, but some people found it too jarring, hard to keep track of, nonsensical. Additionally, things were a bit rushed, and there wasn’t enough room for Flanagan to really let some of his more complex concepts for the plot and the scares breathe. 

Thankfully, in THOHH, Flanagan seems to have really actually taken those critiques to heart. There are characters largely unaffected by what’s going on, and the sequence of events never truly gets cluster-fucked. It’s a much more coherent narrative. In Oculus, a big complaint was things were too muddled to tell if the rug was actually being pulled out from under you and where the rug was to begin with and whether there was a rug in the first place. There is no fucking question in Hill House. 

Additionally, the 10-episode set-up means that he can go absolutely wild with everything he wants to do, and it fucking shows.

In Oculus, one of the most disturbing scares was a brief flicker on the TV. A split instant that showed the adult sister, mouth open and dripping blood, dead and vacant stare in her eyes, for less than a second. On the TV the younger brother was watching as a child in the past. It was truly unnerving. Something similar happens when they pass the cameras at one point that they’re using to record the mirror, just showing creepy pictures of her face. But those are the only two really good easter egg background scares that could fit in that movie. There was much more right up in your face.

Not so in Hill House. Hidden ghosts and unsettling details are EVERYWHERE. Not even just the now-famous easter egg ghosts. There are also obvious ghosts in the background that seem like jump scares waiting to happen....that don’t. There are small details that change, people walking past in the background of a hallway silently, statues that turn their heads to face a character without anyone noticing it in-show. The tension is masterfully built. There are scenes that you don’t even fucking realize are scary until you see something later that completely re-contextualizes it.

It also expands on the driving concept behind Oculus, family trauma and the repeating cycle of mental illness, which wasn’t as well explored there as Flanagan clearly wanted to. But here? In all its 10 episode glory, with each child’s trauma and resulting psychological issues getting full spotlight for an hour? 

It hits you hard. Flanagan’s concepts are fully realized. You get to intimately see what their childhoods have done to these characters, how history repeats itself (sometimes literally), how the ghosts-if you’ll pardon the pun-of the past drag the living of the present down. Not only that, he expands the themes he worked with in Oculus to include some downright Pet Sematary-style shit about loss, grief, and what meaning can be gleaned from death. It’s oppressively heavy, and the scares and the sadness interweave in beautiful ways. The end of one episode, which sees a maimed, anguished, silently screaming ghost standing by her own corpse, completely invisible to the assembled mourners, is both an absolutely haunting visual and an existential punch to the gut. A lot of the show is like that.

Of course this wouldn’t work if you weren’t invested in the people, but they managed to hit another home run on the characterization front. Every single character of any importance in this show is sympathetic to some degree, and even if you don’t like them, you understand why they are the way that they are. The actors are mainly relative unknowns, but i’ll be god damned if they don’t breathe life into these people. There’s also Carla Gugino who....you know. Is Carla fucking Gugino.

You can tell love and care has been put into this show. Small details almost always become important, I’m sure if I went back through with a fine-toothed comb for a second viewing, I would find a downright Edgar Wright level of foreshadowing in the earlier episodes. 

There were some questions I think I still have, maybe they’d be cleared up with a second viewing, and I do want to watch this show again. I had some issues with the ending which I won’t get into here, and the show absolutely isn’t above a jump scare or six. They’re never cheap though, either coming at the end of a truly tense scene or so insanely unconventional and out-of-left-field (Anyone who’s seen Episode 8 knows what i’m talking about) that it’s noteworthy in and of itself.

Overall, it plays out like a very intense and emotionally effective family drama about trauma, grief, sickness, death, dysfunction, and love with heavy horror elements. You’ll go half an episode without any horror sometimes, making it all the more jarring when it does rear its zombified, dead-white eyed head again. This isn’t to say that the tone isn’t cohesive, like i said before, it absolutely makes it mesh together. 

And yes, I did say love up there. I want to pause for a moment to tell you that all hope is not lost in this show. There are genuine moments of humor, heartwarming, and love. Yes, most of them are at best bittersweet and at worst setting you up for a cold, black sucker-punch to the heart, but it’s not all darkness and fear and death. This show has heart.

I honestly can’t say enough good things about The Haunting of Hill House. The family dynamic was realistic as hell, the characters were complex, the scares and tension were masterfully executed, the themes were intelligent, the cinematography beautiful, I cannot recommend this show enough to anyone with even a passing interest in horror.