#but something/someone on a more metatextual level might

[pochapal]

interesting to view this emotional dilemma as a kind of extended conflict between approaching this as a mystery story versus as a horror story. is this a story where you should piece together the clues and solve the mystery? or is it one where you should be afraid of things you cannot and never will comprehend? i wonder which one is the intended answer.

[ncfan-1]

Am I weird for thinking that the moment when Sol sealed his own fate wasn’t when he continued to make excuses for himself even to Osha, but at a much earlier moment in Episode 8? “You’re not even sisters.”

Sol’s attempt to convince Mae that she and Osha aren’t even sisters is, in context, the most heartlessly cruel thing anyone does this season. Mae has lost everything—in large part because of Sol. The only thing she has left is her bond and her kinship with her sister. Her bond with Osha is basically non-existent at that point in the episode—in part because of Mae’s own actions as a child, but due in larger part to the lie Sol has spent the last sixteen years hiding behind. Her kinship with her sister is all Mae has left, and now Sol wants to take this from her, too? To leave her with absolutely nothing at all? To say to her “You have no claim on her love. You’re not connected.”

It feels like… Sol very much regards both Osha and Mae as his, though only Osha is ever afforded the gentler, more positive parts of him, with Mae left to bear the brunt of his worst traits, especially at the end as he’s completely unraveling. And now he’s desperately trying to gain and regain complete control over both of them, and it feels like he’s hit on the idea, whether consciously or not, that it might be easier to control them if he breaks the final bond between them, if he plays divide and conquer and leaves the more unruly of his “children” with nothing at all she can hold dear.

And down on Brendok, after he’s seen the desolate ruin he left Mae to struggle to survive in all by herself, Sol could have had a turnaround, Sol could have relented and actually taken accountability for what he did when confronted with the place and possibly having some memories jarred loose of the way things actually were, but he doesn’t. He just doubles down. He has the absolute gall to tell Mae that she and Osha aren’t even sisters again.

Thankfully, Mae seems to regard this argument with all the contempt it deserves, but that doesn’t make it better. How do you look a woman whose life you destroyed when she was just a little girl dead in the eye, not once, but twice, and even in the ruins of her home standing in the exact spot where you killed her mother right in front of her, try to take the only thing she has left away from her and grind it into dust?

…Because you’re so deep in denial that you genuinely have no conception of how vile what you’re saying to her actually is.

Not that that this makes it better. If anything, it makes it worse. Sol has one moment of something approaching clarity—the way he struggles to say aloud that yes, he did kill Osha and Mae’s mother, the way his denial breaks into self-loathing, the way this is the only moment in the whole episode where he looks at Mae like she’s anything other than a problem to be gotten under control. But it’s not enough to save him. Really taking accountability could maybe have saved him, but it’s only a moment, and the moment he realizes Osha was in earshot, he sinks right back down into denial.

But he still tries to deny Osha and Mae’s sisterhood. And that is something so heartlessly cruel that I think it is what seals his fate. Because you don’t come back from that. Particularly not if you are so deep in denial that you refuse to even acknowledge how cruel it is. If you never admit that what you’re doing is wrong, you can never feel proper remorse. If you don’t feel proper remorse, you can’t tell that you’re digging your grave. You just seal your own fate without even realizing what you’re doing.

For more than one reason. On a metatextual level, Osha and Mae are the main characters of this show. Their relationship and their past is the crux of this show. Sol seals his own fate by trying to deny Osha and Mae’s sisterhood because, well, they are the main characters. The story is hurtling towards their reunion and reconciliation when Osha learns the truth. And he has positioned himself as someone trying to keep them apart and break the bond between them even at the very last. In a story where the goal is for the sisters to finally understand each other and properly love each other again, a man who is trying to keep them apart and trying to deny that they even are sisters… has just made himself into the final boss. He’s made himself into something that has to be vanquished for Osha and Mae to have any resolution.

And you want him to be vanquished. Because by the time Mae was out of the restraints and shocking Sol with Pip, I was hissing something pretty familiar at my screen: Stop talking.

[lightning-witch-jenny]

My stupid metatextual analysis of Pokemon's Teal Mask DLC

I MIGHT BE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING I SAY HERE THESE ARE DERANGED AND INSANE RAMBLES. if you have anything to add or reason to think I'm flat out wrong please tell me!

You know it, I know it, the Teal Mask DLC is based on the story of Momotaro. For those who don't know what the hell a Momotaro is, here's a video that explains it because I don't want to have to explain what it is!

I'm going to assume you already know the story or watched the video and now know the story. If otherwise what the hell are you doing here

SO ANYWAY it seems to me that The Teal Mask is an anti-nationalist message. The story of Momotaro represented Japan taking down the west and getting fat loot at their expense. The Teal Mask takes that story and flips it on its head and says the Oni was good and Momotaro's crew were bad. Follow this train of logic and the story takes on a new meaning.

Ogerpon, as with the Oni in the tale, represents the west, or at the very least a foreigner from the west. Take into account "Ogre" is an english word which Oni is often translated as, and yet even in japanese her name is still OGERpon, and she is still referred to as "an Ogre," even though she is clearly based on the Oni from Momotaro. Almost like there's a reason they'd want to use a western term for Ogerpon's name. And considering its implied she and her friend were from the future and sent back to ancient Kitakami (Japan) that checks out. If we examine it from this angle the story has a new layer. Suddenly the backstory of Ogerpon is about how she and her friend were rejected for their cultural differences. They were an outsider in a land so different to them, they couldn't be accepted this way. Them wearing the masks is probably representative of them as foreigners trying to fit in with the new culture they find themselves in and finding acceptance in their conformity.

And In Come The Loyal Three (I will not be discussing "Dokutaro." I will take the story as is currently presented)

I don't think the Loyal Three literally represent all of Japan's people, I think rather, they represent Japanese nationalists. Their name of "The Loyal Three" might represent how on a meta level they represent loyalty to their home and culture. So in a literal story sense they steal the masks and kill Ogerpon's friend because they want that Fat Loot, but I think what this represents is nationalists refusing to accept foreigners into their culture and taking back what is "theirs." They are reclaiming their culture from someone they think does not deserve to be a part in it, even though they have been living there for some time. The Loyal Three KILL this man over it!

I uh... I don't know what Ogerpon killing The Loyal Three in retribution is meant to map to. Or if it represents anything deeper. And YEAH you can say "oh it represents how the usa dropped the bombs on japan which is why ivy cudgel is busted!" but you're WRONG and STUPID. So far the plot seems to suggest something more small scale. Ogerpon seems to represent an immigrant to japan, and The Loyal Three represent nationalists. You can't then turn around and say that in this specific point in the backstory they default to the roles they have in Momotaro where Ogerpon is the whole USA and The Loyal Three are all of Japan.

That out of the way it's easy to see in this reading why the people believe Ogerpon to be the villain, a foreigner just killed three native people. In-game it's just "they got confused and thought the Loyal Three had just defeated the vile ogre" but with this reading their reactions make more sense

And then of course the actual events of the game. Your two rivals are one Kitakami native who hates outsiders and wants them to stay away and seems to respect the Loyal Three, and one who to the contrary is obsessed with Ogerpon and you, the player, a foreign westerner

Now it's important to note at this point in the story, The Loyal Three and Ogerpon are not active players, they are ideas clouded by lies. So I think IN THIS CASE, The Loyal Three and Ogerpon represent Japan and the west. Specifically in the context of Carmine and Kieran's opinions of them. Considering Carmine is distrustful of you on the grounds that you are a foreigner and Kieran is fascinated by you (and very quickly becomes obsessed to a toxic degree)

Over the course of the story as the truth is revealed, Carmine learns that foreigners deserve a fair chance, while Kieran downward spirals. I believe this is meant to represent how one should be accepting of foreign cultures but not obsessed with a culture that they aren't a part of.

And of course, while Ogerpon gets its masks back, it ends the story being allowed to visit the village without them. This probably is meant to symbolize that Ogerpon is now free to partake in the culture it was shunned from, but she does not have to conform to that culture and can still be herself.

There are probably a lot of things I missed, and I feel both as if this is a reach AND a surface level reading. But overall it really comes across to be as if The Teal Mask is an anti-nationalist allegory, flipping the tale of Momotaro on its head to show such thinking is wrong, and rather than see foreigners as enemies to defeat, one should respect them and welcome them.

[dotthings]

And now, a bit of screaming about the spn UNIVERSE

It basically feels in my head like...hm...think of any cinematic moment that has the same feel as "there's a lot more of us." It's like that, only for the narrative potentials of the spn universe. And I love the og series dearly, I've always thought that timeline alone should be able to burst out into infinite stories. However going multiverse is not surprising and doesn't mean it won't also expand along the timeline of spn prime world too.

I had one hesitancy on if TW turned out to be an AU world timeline. However in execution, I'm getting a story value trade. Let me explain: What’s lost is unreliable narrators and how family histories get told and how trauma and grief impacts that to explain discrepancies. There are variations between TW and the mothership that seemed due to lack of having the full story, and context, a few things that seemed like trivialities, at no point did I think CMP creatives actually screwed up. Those things were all there on purpose. They perfectly well know spn mothership canon. While I’m sorry to lose that layer about unreliable narrators, same thing is true, they know spn mothership canon.

I’ve also maintained right along that the TW timeline is protected. Turns out it is. Not because it’s actually THE timeline leading to the spn mothership events. TW is still not going to be undone. It is not going to be wiped out, it's now been set free running on a more hopeful track that it would have been on if Dean hadn't meddled. These new characters, this series, linked to the spn mothership, has its own life.

That’s the trade. Put something in the portal, get something back. I still feel like going multiverse as explanation is more simplistic that I hoped for, there's so much complex narrative stuff going on I don't want to dwell on that.

It’s also still very much a rumination and reflection on spn prime, a reply to it, a loving tribute to it, and even a criticism of it. There’s a whole complex dialogue going on between TW and SPN for those who want to listen.

The stories of Carlos, and Lata, and Ada, and Millie, and that John and Mary, have their own journey and are worth loving on their own. It’s too late to go back, I love them for them, not just how TW was a delivery system on Dean’s story and that’s the dual role TW S1 was meant to have.

Oh and btw ROBBIE CONFIRMED CARLOS MENTIONED ON SPN IS THE SPN PRIME VERSION OF THIS ALT CARLOS THEY ARE THE SAME CHARACTER DIFFERENT WORLDS. I'm gonna cry again, Sam and Dean had a Carlos, we don't know that version. Yet.

And there’s also just something about the fact that DEAN HIMSELF CREATED THIS STORY.

This timeline in this alternate earth, this kinder rumination on trauma, and contemplation on the mothership, this inclusive spn world show. Getting into the metatextual level, Dean is the avatar for Jensen, Robbie, everyone at CMP. In story, look what Dean gave birth to.

Also I cannot believe that here I’ve been rewatching Fringe and lacing a bit of that into my TW meta and pointing out TW has a producer who worked on Fringe S1 and somehow??? I really thought????? TW WASN’T GOING MULTIVERSE. If I start thinking metas on Dean and Peter Bishop and Walter Bishop my head just might implode and it’s already imploding

ALSO?? WORLD BETWEEN WORLDS??? THEY JUST STAR WARS REBELS AT ME ON MAIN WTF.

So, this kind of multiverse, just blew the spn universe wide open. Beyond opening up Dean’s story, it opened up the spn universe. I’m used to this from DC and Marvel (and being a Fringe fan). There are pitfalls to that kind of opening up. Robbie’s written for Marvel and DC, he knows how this works and what he’s doing.

I read Robbie’s EW interview. They've broken the spn universe open in every direction on potential canvases for stories.

1.13 in execution and the implications of what this could lead to is incredibly exciting to me as someone who wanted an expanded spn universe.

[beggars-opera]

how do I use tags correctly? like, whats the propper tag etiquette? I'm pretty new here and don't wanna screw this up haha

Tags serve three main purposes: they help others find your posts, they help you find your posts at a later date, and they serve as a way to add metatextual commentary to a post.

So, at a base level, if you want other people to find your post, or want a way to find the post more easily yourself at a later date, you would add purely descriptive tags like on any other social media site so people looking in those tags will see your post. For example, a post of someone baking bread might have #food #baking #cottagecore etc. Fandom tags often utilize abbreviations (tagging #OFMD instead of #OurFlagMeansDeath for example) and these are best found by searching around yourself and seeing which tags are the most active.

A few pointers here:

Don't tag hate. It's fine if you dislike something, but going on a rant about how much you hate a thing and then tagging it so that everyone who loves the thing will have to look at it is considered aggressive and rude.

People will often tag for common triggers like gore and rape as a courtesy to those using extensions to erase posts containing those tags from their dash. The exact format of these tags has never been formalized, but most use the #cwtrigger, #twtrigger, or just #trigger format.

Tags on original posts mean that post will show up when you search for that tag. Tags on reblogs do not make it show up in the tag page a second time and are only useful for internal blog searching.

You can also choose to use tags that are just for you, like #mythoughts or #myart, which allows you to search your own blog more easily. If you are an artist of any sort, using a tag denoting what is an original work is highly recommended.

Some people also use a tag specifically for posts that are in their queue, to let people know that the post is automatic and that they are not necessarily online at that particular moment. Getting creative with puns gets you brownie points. #scoobydoobyqueue

Tags specifically go into the tag section at the bottom of the post editor. Adding hashtags to the body of a post does absolutely nothing. You can, however, @ another user in the body of the post.

Tags are also often used for commentary purposes. They are sort of like whispering under your breath after you've publicly stated whatever is in your post. This can include musings, jokes, and other information that didn't quite seem important enough to put in the main body of the post. Every post of a beautiful woman does not need five hundred people writing "as I lesbian I am looking respectfully *googly eyes emoji*" in the post but you can 100% put that in the tags.

Pointers with this:

Eventually everyone gets the hang of what thoughts are important enough to put in the body of a post or reblog and what should be relegated to the tags. You can ask yourself "is this adding something useful to the conversation, or is it just me rambling or keysmashing?"

If your tags are witty enough, other users may deem them worthy of being included in the main post, screenshot them, and put the screenshot in their reblog. We consider this a peer review process of sorts and it is a badge of honor.

Again, being kind is a common courtesy. When you add tag commentary, the original poster and person you reblogged from are notified, and everyone can see it. So if you write in the tags that the post is stupid and that the OP is a cunt, congrats, you've just made the OP cry and you should probably not be on the internet.

Tags are comma delineated so if you are typing a thought in the tag long enough to need a comma, use a semicolon instead, otherwise the tag will be split in two. Likewise, quotation marks will not show up in a tag.

I hope this helps!

[sir-adamus]

Across the Spider-Verse is doing something interesting with its challenging of destiny or ‘the way things are supposed to be’

Miguel is insistent on these ‘canon events’ being immutable constants in the multiverse, but also these ‘events’ are portrayed in an incredibly vague way so they can be applicable to every Spider (and even then, Maguire Spidey never had a connection with a captain or a meaningful relationship with Gwen Stacy) and it seems like the fear of losing is what has been used to browbeat the Spider Society into following his mindset - but that’s the thing, the fear of the apparently inevitable is what made it inevitable (and as we saw in the ‘verses visited in this film, ‘canon’ events can be disrupted and the universes won’t collapse - Miles’s has been going for over a year after him becoming Spider-Man, Pavitr’s universe doesn’t collapse in on itself after Miles saves Inspector Singh, a building just falls into a rift that was already consuming it because the Spot made that rift by activating the collider. and Gwen’s dad quits being a cop, thereby saving his life and yet, Earth-65 still spins on. hell, Earth-42 never got its Spider-Man and is still going, even if it is a dark edgy dystopia. hell, Miles’s influence is outright stated to be the reason Mayday was even born and yet Miguel doesn’t treat her like an anomaly despite the fact that she by definition has to be a disruption of Peter B’s canon)

Miguel’s mindset is inherently flawed (if there’s a way things are supposed to be, then nothing would ever happen in a way it shouldn’t - Ohnn should never have been able to yoink the spider out of Earth-42 into 1610 for it to bite Miles in the first place) and is likely a result of him projecting, he’s trying to conflate replacing a dead alternate version of himself and inserting himself into that alternate version’s life and family (on a metatextual level, trying to stick himself in a position where his story can’t continue because he’s happy and fulfilled, by stealing someone else's happy ending, which is also really fucked up) and that reality then collapsing, with anyone trying to deviate from what he sees as the set ‘path’ (because if he can frame it as an undeniable fact of reality then the only thing he’s guilty of is ignorance - it’s not entirely his fault that that universe collapsed, it’s just the way reality works)

and then he creates a society of Spider-people who he convinces that these ‘canon’ events are inevitable, undeniable and have to happen - they’re railroaded on a set path and are too scared of what might happen, what else they might lose, to challenge it, but what you end up with is an angry authoritarian control freak at the top of the ladder deciding who lives and who dies, imprisoning people for challenging him, and forcing everyone to live by the rules he’s arbitrated (as a result of a sunk cost fallacy he outright admits to right before he meets Miles "I've come too far"). which all presents a couple themes:

1) ‘you can’t save everyone’ - true, they’re not gods. but just because they can’t doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try. they’re supposed to be heroes, they’re supposed to be the good guys - if they’re not trying to save everyone then why are they even wearing the mask? what’s the point of being Spider-Man if they’re not trying? they shouldn’t get to pick and choose who to save, especially when someone’s telling them to. Spider-Man is supposed to be the friendly neighborhood hero who protects the people, not an arbitrator of the status quo for the multiverse at large

Miles was embodying Spider-Man more than anyone else in the Spider Society when he ran away to try and get back to 1610 and save his dad, and his constant challenging of Miguel’s mindset is what leads to the others - Gwen and Peter B especially - questioning what they’re doing and some eventually defecting

2) ‘X is supposed to die’ is a really big slippery slope. that mentality devolves into ‘we only save the ‘right’ people’ - again, they’re not supposed to be making the call on who lives and dies. and Hobie clearly saw that before anybody else did (and was trying to stealthily teach the younger Spiders that), which is why he shows exactly zero respect to Miguel’s authority and quits

there's a reason Miles' entry to the Spider Society has him riding the ascending elevator upside down - mirroring his rising in the first film, here he's descending into hell itself. and the place looks like a supervillain lair after the fight and the veneer has come off. Hobie was just the first to see it, but no one took him seriously

"We're supposed to be the good guys."

but back on the destiny thing - Miles refuses to resign himself to the seeming inevitable, challenging both Miguel’s mindset and the Spiders who have bought into it, and on a meta level, the idea that every adaptation of Spider-Man has to follow the same general story beats note for note, and is instead determined to do his own thing, tell his own story, and the film has laid the foundations (retroactively from even ITSV) to show that Miles is right; all the things he’s blamed for by Miguel are the result of the actions of others (Ohnn and Octavius), with the only actual impact Miles has had on the multiverse at large has been a net positive overall (Gwen would’ve likely stayed closed off forever until her dad died, Peter B would’ve never reconciled with MJ and had Mayday, and Miles’ defiance of Miguel causes the formation of a group of Spiders that are determined to do the right thing - Miles makes the lives he touches better) while also shaking the foundations of the ‘canon’ Miguel ascribes to because there is no predestined order of things

the fact that any of this has happened at all is proof of that

[butterfly-ribbon]

i think about this so much in the context of mizuki's gender being listed as "unknown" and how trans ppl often cannot talk about their gender even if they wish to? even if a trans woman wants to be properly recognized as a type of woman, the world isn't really a safe space that she can comfortably be like "i'm a woman" bc if she were to do this she might either be accused of lying or being male. this reality is precisely why mizuki always avoids making definitive statements like this so she opts to saying things like "i'm just me" or "i just like cute things" bc she can't assert her identity without any pushback and she doesn't want anyone else to decide her self for her (there's also a lot to say about this in the context of transmisogynistic caricatures/stereotypes in anime & manga and how they're often subjected to "humor" that draws attention to their "maleness" and how mizuki as a fan of anime, films, etc. uses her genre awareness to navigate the world but that's a different topic).

i also think ppl often don't go up to others and say "i'm a girl! i'm a woman." bc that just isn't how ppl tend to talk? literally no girl in this game introduces or talks about herself in that way. the idea that mizuki has to use that kind of language to be legitimized in the first place is inherently disrespectful to her as a person especially as someone who's tired of having to explain herself or feel like she constantly has to prove something to ppl who don't even care enough to listen. she also doesn't think "why don't ppl see me as a girl" and instead she's thinking "why can't ppl accept me for who i am" bc it isn't just about Being a Girl, it's about how being transfem affects that perception. it's about how even when someone sees her as a girl, there's that asterisk. she doesn't know how to reach point of feeling like she's truly accepted bc of this and the closest she's gotten is niigo seeing her as a cis girl, which isn't even subtext, it's just implicit to the entire premise of her narrative.

so even if mizuki doesn't directly say "bc i'm a girl" or "accept me as a girl" when her classmates ask her why she does the things she does, it's a huge mistake to assume that she doesn't wish to be recognized as one bc this ignores wider context abt transmisogynistic hypersurveillance and objectification of transfemininity as a form of erasure of personhood and dehumanization? mizuki is someone who strives to assert her positionality as a woman as is both an assertion of how the standards of womanhood affect her and how she wishes to navigate the world as a woman in spite of this. this is made even more interesting by the parallels with mafuyu whose character arc is largely about how womanhood as a coercive state is pushed upon her by her mother and society, but it's also equally pushed upon mizuki as a trans girl very violently and is an aspect of transmisogyny, and trans women inherently fail to attain the standard of womanhood while being policed for this, so mizuki's position as a woman is against the imposition of womanhood (mizuki even when being "cute" is still not the ideal girl, bc her idea of fashion is lolita, and we know how lolita exists within so much of broader culture being for non-conformity and reclaiming femininity). there are always ppl trying to argue that mizuki can't be trans or that ppl are "boiling her down to her gender" (which is just pressure to stop calling her a girl) bc mizuki never explicitly said that she wanted to be recognized as a girl, she said that he just wanted to be herself, and she said that she likes cute things, so she is not trans, right? this is obviously transmisogyny, but such interpretations are interesting on the metatextual level to me bc they're the same form of transmisogyny that mizuki is subjected to within the story in that they're all saying "it would be a pain to be a girl, so you should just be content with being a 'boy' [Abnormal girl, nonperson, thing] who just likes cute things or some other ambiguous existence." bc these ppl refuse to engage with how the primary groups who know mizuki never draw attention to these things bc they see her as a girl and the thing about day to day life is that we all have to make assumptions to some degree about ppl we don't know or aren't close to based on their external presentation. however, we also have an understanding of mizuki's internal world.

mizuki makes such a good study of how fandom parses/engages with gender and the nuances of ambiguity around womanhood especially when transfemininity is involved.

[utilitycaster]

I want to expand on the role of Brevyn, because I think Madeleine Roux had a really tough task, to humanize Lucien without compromising him as, well, the campaign BBEG who betrayed every last alliance in the pursuit of power, as well as drawing parallels to Molly (and even setting groundwork for Kingsley), and I think she did it wonderfully. I also want to talk about how Brevyn parallels Molly both within the canon and externally, which I honestly don't know is deliberate (the external part; the in-canon part I assume is on purpose but I have to imagine Roux stayed out of fandom things in order to avoid being unwittingly influenced by fanon).

I assume if you're reading this you've read the book but in case you're not, Brevyn is a friend and lover of Lucien's from Shadycreek Run. She's his oldest friend other than Cree, and notably, whereas Cree is always a follower of Lucien, Brevyn is someone Lucien follows. She's why he ends up going to the Claret Orders - she gets kicked out of her mother's house, where Lucien and Cree also often stay, so they all go to the Claret Orders. When the Claret Orders find themselves lacking in contracts, Brevyn is the one who branches out and ultimately builds a working relationship with Vess, and along with Lucien is the one who brings together the original Tombtakers (she and Jurrell die before we meet them in Campaign 2). She ultimately dies trying to retrieve the Somnovem journal for him, of her own accord.

As a result, Brevyn serves something as a lost Lenore, and as the tether that snapped at just the right time. It underscores why Lucien's response to Vess is so particularly brutal, why he became so tied up in the Somnovem in the first place, and because while Brevyn's death, like those of all of the Tombtakers, ultimately is because of the Somnovem, she's the only one who dies purely of her own free will. Lucien forces the rest to follow him, in the end, and lets them die one by one. He neglects his sister in favor of ambition, and then is devastated that she decided to build her own life in his absence and won't leave for a long-lost brother. But Brevyn dies as herself. She's that one last shred of humanity that was not present in what we saw of him in the show. And the shard of Molly latches on to that, understandably, as the one good thing Lucien had, because in the end Lucien is someone we know from Campaign 2 will ultimately leave even Cree, his oldest companion, to die, in order to buy himself a little bit of time. We need one relationship he actually cared about; and that one is Brevyn, with whom he stayed as she died.

Now, the fun thing for me is that the book is written in a third person limited viewpoint. The opinions presented are Lucien's, for the most part, so we see Brevyn through his eyes. She, understandably, becomes idealized to him even though it's clear she's got plenty of flaws (willing to make some sketchy deals with the Assembly, impulsive to the point of adrenaline junkie levels, rather too trusting, ruled heavily by emotion over logic) because, well, he has feelings for her. And then, of course, after she dies, he idealizes her within the narrative, because how could he be anything but loving and generous with the woman who gave her life so he could continue to live?

It's remarkably close to how the fandom and the Mighty Nein themselves responded to Molly's death, with his worst traits, the condescension and fickleness and manipulation, all washed away because he did, in the end, die for them. And this is a pretty common trope, to come up with a far more perfect version of someone after they've died, particularly if they died in a way where it feels like you owe them something, so again, the way it parallels the fandom lionization of Molly might be a happy accident - but it's a really fun metatextual reflection here nonetheless.

[fantroll-purgatory]

This is her picture! I made it with that farragofiction troll maker. Can I please get a redesign/design help?

…Fuck it if MCR can drop their first new song in nearly a decade on a Thursday night with zero preamble I can get back into reviewing fantrolls after a two-year break with similar aplomb.

World: Alternia

Name: Luvdaa Dorset (I honestly forgot what Luvdaa meant, and whether it was scrambled or not, but I do remember that a Dorset is a type of sheep-)

T b h I like it anyway. Luvdaa sounds like something I would’ve called a doll when I was younger it tracks. Also it sounds a little like baa.

Age: Flipping between 5 sweeps and 5.54 (first one would make her technically 10 in human years, the latter would make her 12)

Whelp it’s been 2 years since I last did a review for this blog so she’s five and a half now.

Theme/Story: Luvdaa is sort of supposed to be a childish/doll-themed as well as sheep themed character? I hate to water her down, but the angle I was going for was ‘naive and overall sweet’ child to sort of go against the common attitude for Purple Bloods (murderous, scheming, etc…) and make something genuinely good (until I mess it up, because I plan on writing a story with her and a few other of my fantrolls) She’s supposed to be that light in the darkness for my other characters, basically! 

I also like the idea of using a sheep as a way to define a person’s relationship to their religion, since you mentioned in a later ask that she follows the purpleblood religion with a more positive bent. In a lot of cultures, sheep are seen as valuable, even holy, because of what they provide a community. Not to mention the idea of a religious figure being a shepherd and their followers a flock, indicating that as thanks for their following they will guard them from harm.

Review Goals: I’d love a review of everything, please! But if you don’t have the time, just some design help/personality help would be alright! 

Strife Specibus: I honestly have no idea what to put here. I was originally thinking of a toy theme, something like hoop/ringtype (hula hoops-) or needletype (to go with her love for making dolls-) 

Needlekind appeals to me as well, especially since we can also tie back to the sheep theme with knitting needles and wool!

Fetch Modus: A shapes puzzle!

Hmm. I want to tie in to something you said a little later, in that Luvdaa follows the juggalo religion but with little understanding of its true intent. I want to tie this in to her childish nature and give her a Clap-O-Meter Modus that ejects items if she shows sufficient enthusiasm for receiving it. Clap your hands in excitement! Clap if you believe!

…of course, most clap-o-meters are a sham. There is someone manually adjusting the knob depending on what they perceive as the response. Similarly, the modus isn’t actually ejecting captcha cards based on her reaction, but based on whether she thinks she was hype enough. This is also a good modus for a hope-based character, which Luvdaa appears to be.

Blood Color: Purple

Lunar Sway: Prospit!Luvdaa is optimistic and goes with the flow- although, it’s probably a lot easier to do that when she’s so high on the spectrum. She doesn’t struggle against the hard parts of living on Alternia, she adapts and looks for a happy conclusion, or a happy little lie. 

I think it also makes sense for someone so dedicated to a religion like the juggalo cult; within the text of Pesterchum it’s pretty clear that it has ties to the flow of a story on a metatextual level, and while a more seasoned member may recognize this influence to be one worth learning to manipulate, a follower like Luvdaa may be simply along for the ride.

Title: I was thinking of Witch Of Hope or Maid Of Hope. Witch seems to be more active than Maid, and Luvdaa’s going to be creating a lot of hope, but she could also manipulate it? I’m pretty stuck here.

I actually wonder…if a Mage of Hope might be more appropriate here? Someone who is optimistic because they see, so clearly, what there is to be optimistic about, and in doing so clues others in to the possibilities while altering or dismissing others’ doubts when they don’t fit into the path she sees.

Symbol and Meaning: Caprinius, The Credulous!

Handle: candiedCadaver 

Quirk: !!she types wike this!! Replaces most Ls with Ws, puts double exclamation points at the end and beginning of her sentences (unless unhappy, when she’ll turn to putting double periods at the beginnings and ends) And uses two As (!!This is baad! Reawwy baad!!)

Special Abilities: If applicable. Take into mind your Troll’s Blood Color.

Huh. What if she can animate her dolls ones they’re done? Not with any degree of precision, but playing house with your dolls becomes so much easier when you can move a bunch around at once. You mention later in the bio that she uses troll bones to make her dolls, so maybe they retain some aspect of the “donor's” personality?

Lusus/Guardian: A typical Sheep/Baabeast, although her sheep can unhinge it’s jaw and is an omnivore opposed to being a herbivore like most sheep- Named Hlopka (bell)

We’ve seen that Gamzee’s lusus is water-based and that purplebloods’ lusii at least need to be near the ocean, so how do you feel about a jellysheep? Top half sheep, bottom half jellyfish, billowing about like a doll’s skirt. Still keeps the name relevant, too!

Interests: Doll-making, Exploring the world outside her Hive, Trying myriads of new things everyday, Playing pretend/playing with dolls, Bone collecting

Ah. If I had kept her as a Witch she would be a bone-stealing witch. Pity I missed the opportunity.

Appearance: The sprites there, i just wanted to say that I was thinking of having Luvdaa wear a little collar with a bell on it? Going along with her sheep theme, but also, the term ‘putting a bell on someone’ because she’s so spacey and won’t stay in one place, so you’ll have to hear her tell-tale bell jingles to find her

Personality: Luvdaa’s a bubbly, overly friendly, and energetic sort, seemingly never running out of energy or things to say and do. She’s the typical child-archetype, added that she’s sort of air-headed and more mature than she lets on, as well as prone to being over-violent for the sake of protecting her companions, jumping into action the moment they’re in trouble, even if they don’t ask. It’s true that she seems content to live her life floating along like a little butterfly (or grazing along like a little lamb, I should say-) but it’s somewhat of a cover up- she covers her eyes and refuses to take in the ugly parts of the world she lives in, and honestly might throw a tantrum if you try to rip her out of her little bubble. Her peppy and ‘we can do it if we keep hoping!!“ attitude might get annoying after awhile, but Luvdaa truly just wants to live a happy life.

EDIT: Oh my goodness, i forgot to add something to Luvdaa’s personality/bio, sorry about that! I know it’s not a requirement, but Luvdaa does follow the typical Purpleblood religion (but is very, VERY misguided in what it actually is and entails, thinking that it’s about hope and togetherness, praying for the exact opposite of what those who worship that religion want- how she came to conclude this is a different story that i havent thought of yet, though-)

I think hope and togetherness can still fall under the eaves of the juggalo religion if taken in a certain way! After all, every purpleblood is united in servitude to the same master, and all will meet the same inevitable end. How wonderful to have such certainty of the future, so you may have the space to play in the present!

Land: I’m pretty much stuck here? I like the sound of “Land Of Fleece and Dollskin” kind of showcasing her more morbid side? (that I haven’t really gone into detail about, but she uh- she puts the bones of dead trolls into her dolls- I still haven’t thought of an explanation, but something needed to be messed up about her- maybe she should make some of her dolls out of corpses, now that I think about it…?)

I think you can still incorporate this into the character-theming you already have; she collects the bones of the deceased and puts them into dolls as a tribute to their lives, extending them through play. Sure, literally nobody asked her to do that, but that’s because they never thought to do so! She’s simply anticipating a need they didn’t know they had. Everyone wants to be immortal.

In terms of the Land name itself, what about String and Bridges? The Land could have a number of canyons and rivers to cross with enough wool/thread/string etc that you could repair a bridge, but you need to do the work to actually get places!

In the meantime I see you sent us a new sprite to review so redesign top to bottom let's go FIRST OFF, the original image you sent in was a JPEG so this is all reconstructed from the ground up. If y'all can, please send your images in as PNGs; it makes editing go twice as fast.

Hair – Edited from a fan-troll template. I wanted her to look sheepy and doll-like, and the combo of fluffy hair and headband felt like it hit that sweet spot.

Horns – I looked up Dorset sheep and they've got some pretty bonkers horns! Wouldn't wanna waste a design opportunity like that. These horns are edited from a naphal sprite sheet.

Face – First, the troll face paint covers up the eye bags, so you don't need both in one image! I wanted to give her doll-like “lashes” on the bottom as well as a cheek marking like an antique blushed doll. I also gave her a little lip definition for the same reason.

Dress – This is edited from fixingfubardfantrolls, which I think preserves the ruffly doll dress from your original while giving the skirt a more bell curve.

Symbol – I made it into a belt buckle, both to stand out against the dress and to give her that bit of glitz!

Shoes – Also from a fan-troll template.

I didn’t end up giving her the bell around her neck because the sprite is already pretty visually busy and I didn’t want to sacrifice coherence for it.

I hope this helped, late as it is!

- TR

[robin-josephette-biden]

A Statement Through Horror: BDG and YouTube

In his video announcing his departure from Polygon Bryan David Gilbert [BDG] stated, “I want to make things that one day people will make a show like unraveled about.” [Paraphrasing here]. Since that announcement he has made some of the most interesting and engaging comedy videos on the platform. On Bryan’s channel, there is a section called “bdg’s scaries” that contains three videos. The first how to make jorts was released April 27, 2019 and will not be part of this analysis, as we are focused on the other two videos. These two videos are Earn $20K EVERY MONTH by being your own boss which was released on October 25, 2020 (two months before his final Unraveled video and departure from Polygon) and Teaching Jake about the Camcorder, Jan '97 which was posted March 3, 2021. If you have not seen these videos yet you should stop reading immediately and go watch them both (honestly everything on his channel is amazing, especially the surprisingly compelling and personal Dances Moving! series) before continuing to read this as I will be spoiling both of them. The position of YouTube celebrity has been the source of a good bit of commentary as short form online media has become more and more central in our culture. Bryan has created two videos that I feel do an excellent job of exploring the relationship between youtuber and audience. I should also point out that this is merely my interpretation of these videos and is in no way BDG’s intended message. I’ll start by going over the first video. Earn $20K EVERY MONTH by being your own boss opens with BDG outside an apartment building, standing in front of a black car. BDG points up at one of the windows and says, “Three years ago I was living in that apartment right there. Third floor, leaky windows, cockroaches, the worst.” I do not know if the real life BDG actually lived in that building, but the 3 years timeframe does line up neatly with his beginning to work at Polygon. BDG continues to bad mouth his old apartment and mentions how he has turned it all around stating, “But just last week I paid off my very first Subaru Impreza. And I own my own house in Nebraska.” This radical change in life-style he credits to, “. . . [working] from home, [making] my own hours, and [being] my own boss. And you can do it too.” I think that it is interesting that BDG’s career up to that point mirrors that of his character, going from newly graduated content creator making small videos in his apartment to one of the most popular creators on Polygon. And all that being accomplished through work that many (rightly or wrongly) would not see as fitting into the mold of the traditional 9 to 5. The idea of making millions working from home, at your own pace, and with no boss is intrinsically tied to the mystique of the YouTube celebrity. Moving into BDG’s office he explains that he makes $20k a month working on spreadsheets. A massive spreadsheet appears behind him that is dated, 01.12.88 (nothing of note happened on January 12, 1988 and the only thing that happened on December 1, 1988 is a large cyclone that struck Bangladesh, January 12, 1888 is the day of the Schoolhouse Blizzard which struck the midwestern US and killed 235 people (remember this for later)) and is filled, seemingly randomly, with garbled nonsense symbols. Many of the cells are the same as other cells and there are empty cells scattered haphazardly throughout the spreadsheet. BDG explains that he got this strategy from Dorian Smiles. In exchange for working on these spreadsheets BDG receives $10k - $20k a month (an amount that lines up pretty damn well with the amount he should be getting through his Patreon page currently, I don’t know if this was true when the video was made though) from Dorian. Wanting to know where the money is coming from BDG asks his bank and they explain that he is wiring the money to himself from another account he has. He grows confused as to the nature of this work and the disproportionately large amount of money it brings in, explicitly mentioning his confusion as to how the money is coming from someone with, “. . . my name and my voice.” and sets about to find and confront Dorian Smiles. BDG sets off for Center Nebraska, which is close to where Dorian lives (a small town in the northeast corner of Nebraska). He states that Dorian’s address hasn’t existed since 1888 (that’s a familiar year isn’t it?) when it was supposedly condemned during an enormous blizzard and is, “. . . just woods now.” The video then transitions to BDG walking through dark woods while his narration talking up the Dorian Smiles program continues becoming increasingly broken. He comes across a figure sitting in the woods that is convulsing strangely, when he calls out to it the figure turns and is him (heretofore named Dorian). Dorian slowly puts his hands over his nose and mouth while staring at BDG at which point the narration cuts out. BDG copies Dorian and when Dorian removes his hands in a flourish, BDG does the same to reveal that he no longer has a mouth. The video quickly cuts back to BDG in his office talking about the program, he asks the viewer, “Why don’t you join me?” and then sits back and smiles while that line repeats without him moving his mouth. The most pressing mystery is who Dorian Smiles is. I think the most likely answer (and one I know I am not the progenitor of) is that Dorian is a reference to The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde, the story of a young man that has a portrait that ages and takes on the ravages of the debauched life its subject lives while Dorian himself does not. BDG would therefore be the unwitting recipient of that blessing, reaping massive rewards while his double, Dorian, lives in poverty and solitude. I like this explanation for Dorian, but I find it to be far more mechanical than thematic. On a metatextual level you could read that Dorian represents the character of BDG. The person that is in all of BDG’s videos, and the one with whom so much of the audience forms a parasocial relationship. In this lens the parallels with BDG’s own life make more sense. By this point in BDG’s career it is not difficult to imagine him feeling stifled creatively at work (I feel comfortable saying this given how soon after this video came out that he departed Polygon). His character had grown too large, potentially becoming alien to him, no longer reflecting the art he wanted to make and so he made a video about a distorted version of himself stealing his voice. In this way the video becomes a statement on his artistic integrity and his desire to test new boundaries and go in different directions. In hindsight, with the knowledge of his departure and then success after leaving Polygon, the video becomes almost heartwarming (if it weren’t terrifying) in the same way that a before and after picture of someone improving themselves can be. We will return to the Dorian Smiles system, but now we must move to the second video, Teaching Jake about the Camcorder, Jan '97. I’ll save you the blow by blow breakdown and aim for a quick summary instead. This video is a simple stationary shot of an old CRT tv. A VHS tape is inserted and a video of a man teaching his, evidently young, son how to use a camcorder plays. It is relatively wholesome and corny in that way that all home movies are and when it ends the tape rewinds and the segment plays again, this time with a few deviations. Over replays the father becomes aware of what is happening and begins trying to reason with Jake through the camcorder begging him to stop watching the tape and move on. The father is menaced by a large shadowy figure that does not speak or move when confronted. Eventually the father resorts to simply taking the camera and recording his own screams of pain. On the final rewind the father simply says, “Attaboy.” before calmly walking out the room and into the dark hallway, a doorway opens at the other end, filled with orange light, and the father walks through and down stairs. The final shot of the video is of the television, showing the hallway, as orange light begins to flicker in the background of the left side of the TV. The sound of the father descending the stairs transitions from the TV to diegetic and a shadow appears briefly in the light. On one level the video is clearly a statement about loss and about trauma. Jake is losing himself by watching these videos on repeat, trying in vain to relive a happier time. In that desperate desire to regain what was lost he is distorting it, making it into something it isn’t, hurting it. At the beginning the father says, “Never ever press the rewind button, otherwise you might record over a precious memory. We always keep the recording going forward . . .“ I think there is an additional, and more personal for BDG, reading however. The father is the modern character of BDG, and we, the audience, are Jake. He is pleading with us to leave the past behind and move on. This was only his 3rd video that he posted after leaving Polygon. It is a plea from him to leave the old character behind and stop trying to make one into the other. To stop obsessively comparing the new videos to the old. To let the future be the future and let the past be the past. He is telling us that his new work will not be like the old, that he has progressed past that and that now his viewers need to as well. The detachment and confusion of Earn $20K EVERY MONTH by being your own boss has transformed into a desire to move forward. But he needed to ensure that his audience was ready to come with him, and so he made a video about loss and the dangers of sinking too far into it. I know that there are some of you that feel I am reading too much of what I assume to be BDG’s thoughts and emotions into these interpretations, and I am the first to admit that I might be. In no way am I trying to say these are the only interpretations of these videos or even that they are correct. I think there is so much more of an artist that they put into their work than they realise. I do not know the mind of BDG, only he does, but these videos made me feel that I had a glimpse into the feelings of a man whose work I admire. These videos are either longer or a drastically different tone to the material he has put on his own channel and as such they stood out to me. They felt different, and they seemed to ask for a different level of scrutiny. On some level maybe BDGs videos can not be divorced from the story of BDG as a content creator, the same as any modern internet semi-celebrity, or indeed any artist. I guess there was also a part of me that wanted to answer the call to action I heard when BDG left Polygon, to unravel his work. I hope in some small way I’ve been able to do that.

[pluckyredhead]

What's the top 10 worst things about HiC

Oh god, it took me FOREVER to narrow this down. There are so many bad things about it!!!

Literally I’m not even going to address all the little talking heads therapy sessions and how thoroughly riddled with continuity errors and godawful characterization they are, because there’s so much else wrong with the book. Just trust that they’re a mess, even if King is trying to be Intellectual (TM) by putting them in a nine-panel grid. WE GET IT. YOU’VE READ WATCHMEN.

I’m also not putting “they killed Roy” on the list because it’s comics, characters die. The fact that this book was a slaughterhouse is a problem (see below, #2), but the fact that one of those deaths happened to be one of my favorite characters is a bummer but not necessarily evidence that the book is bad. (The book is so bad.)

But okay, so the rest of it, from least-worst to worst-worst:

10. That Poison Ivy cover: Clay Mann draws beautiful people but for some reason he decided that the cover to #7 should be a dead Poison Ivy on her stomach, cleavage pressed against the floor, her spine arched EVEN THOUGH SHE IS DEAD in order to lift her ass in the air so that the reader can see both T and A at once. This was leaked and then ultimately pulled before it hit stands and Tom King tweeted that he'd never liked it, but it’s very telling to me that either literally no one noticed how gross this cover fetishizing a dead woman was before the internet protested, or DC actively planned to use a sexy dead woman to sell comics. In their book that was supposed to be about trauma and mental health and recovery.

10b. Babs, a theoretical protagonist of this book, sexily peeling her pants down to show her bullet scars, which shouldn’t even look like that due to all the surgery she’s had: We get it, you’re only interested in women’s trauma if it’s sexy. She doesn’t even get to talk on this page.

10c. The full splash page of Lois in her underwear, saying “What do you want me to do?” like she’s inviting the reader to bone her in the middle of this story about death and trauma: Stop!!! Just stop!!!

9. The laziness of everything having to do with Booster: Okay yeah, I’m gonna be fannishly self-involved about another one of my faves here, but Booster is legitimately one of the main characters of the series, along with the Trinity, Harley, Babs, and Wally. And yet the “trauma” that places him at Sanctuary was part of a hastily shoehorned-in Batman arc directly before HiC that writes him deeply out of character (he carelessly changes the timeline when despite the fact that he’s spent 15 years protecting the timeline, including the Superman arc he starred in literally directly prior to the Batman one), instead of anything endemic to the character (because spoiler, Tom King doesn’t actually know anything about the character). The series then entirely fails to address it, hanging Booster’s emotional arc instead on his friendship with Ted...a friendship that explicitly does not exist in the Rebirth timeline. The Ted/Booster friendship/marriage is literally my favorite relationship in the entirety of the DCU, but you don’t get to rest a protagonist’s entire arc on a relationship that was retconned out of existence seven years prior and then retconned away again. Do the work. Don’t copy Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis’s papers from 31 years ago.

8. Interpretive hand jiving through the pain: You know how some people have to leave the room when characters do something very embarrassing on television? I’ve never been like that, just Jesus Christ I had to read this page between my fingers. Y i k e s :

7. Harley beating the Trinity in a fight: Come on. Harley couldn’t take a single one of them on her own, let alone all three. Don’t warp the characters to make your MC look more badass and keep the plot moving. (King also wrote Catwoman beating THREE SPEEDSTERS in his Batman run, which again: no. Absolutely not. Stop it.)

6. That Watchman reference: See above re: being so embarrassed for someone you have to read through your fingers. If you haven’t read Watchmen, the line “I did it 35 minutes ago” is extremely famous and absolutely a mic drop moment. It’s not a mic drop moment here. The characters are completely different and talking about completely different things. The only thing Heroes in Crisis has in common with Watchmen (besides copying the use of the nine-panel grid, like I said before) is that it’s about how heroes are fucked up, I guess? Which is hardly a bold statement in 2018; it’s actively cliche now, in fact. The only purpose referencing Watchmen serves here is to let the reader know that Tom King has read Watchmen, which is both pretentious because it is Art and ridiculous because it’s one of the bestselling comics of all time and millions of people have read it.

5. The abysmal “journalistic ethics” on display: There are so many characters literally and figuratively assassinated in this book that it’s easy to miss that Lois is one of them. But here’s a tip: when someone’s medical information is leaked to you, it is not in fact your obligation to share that with the world, no matter who they are. That is not information meant for public consumption, which we might assume Lois knows, since she doesn’t usually share the private business of her husband or her son or their cousin or any of their friends that she is also friends with. But suddenly she’s forgotten that because it’s on a zip drive? Not only does that show horrifying journalistic ethics from both Lois and Clark, who seems to think she had no other choice, it’s also ableist as hell - what, if someone has mental health problems or experienced trauma on the job they’re automatically a danger to the public? And despite the attempt to make this feel like a big twist, there’s actually zero point to it, because a) we never see civilians reacting to this information and b) there are literally zero consequences to publishing it in this or any subsequent comic. It’s never even mentioned again. If a tree publishes all of a superhero’s medical information and deep dark secrets in a forest and no one reacts to it in any way, shape, or form, does it make a sound?

4. The actual premise: I do sort of believe that Bruce would think “go to the middle of nowhere surrounded by robots wearing creepy robes and masks and tell your secrets to cameras which are then wiped and interact with no one” = therapy, although if that’s the case I don’t know why he keeps bothering to put people in Arkham, which at least allows them to talk to other humans. But under no circumstances do I think either Clark or Diana would go along with this horrible, horrible idea, that offers no genuine help to anyone. Not only does the fact that it’s implausible undercut literally everything that happens within the framework of Sanctuary’s existence, it’s just one of many examples of how almost everyone acts completely out of character all the time in order to keep the plot chugging along.

3. Bruce’s terrible detective skills: The World’s Greatest Detective spends like six issues seriously thinking that either Booster Gold or Harley Quinn is the killer. Booster or Harley! Booster has neither the temperament nor the ability to kill on that level and Harley would never hurt Ivy, plus neither of them are a match for Wally (who is believed to be dead at this point), and Bruce should know that. Again, weak characterization all around, but it’s especially egregious given that King wrote Batman for A HUNDRED ISSUES.

2. Wally’s character assassination: This is a three-parter:

2a. Logistical: It makes no fucking sense. Wally got his own corpse to the crime scene by traveling five days into the future and killing his future self. Everyone sees the corpse. Then Booster, Ted, Harley, and Babs talk him out of killing himself. But...he already did that and everyone saw the corpse, so now we have a paradox that’s never addressed.

2b. Moral: The comics have tried desperately to walk Wally’s actions back in the past two years, emphasizing that he didn’t mean to kill TWELVE PEOPLE, including one of his best friends. It was an accident! But he still framed Booster and Harley for literally no reason except to create a whodunnit, set them on each other which could have easily ended fatally for Booster, and then sent everyone’s private information to the media (which again, the comic frames as somehow noble and necessary, but which is actually deeply unethical). So you made this beloved 60-year-old hero into a villain...why, exactly? Just so it would be surprising? Cool, great work, Captain Edgelord.

2c. Metatextual: This comic spins out of Rebirth Special #1. The New 52 erased Wally from continuity and then brought him back as the younger, biracial Wally (and this isn’t the place to get into fandom’s response to that and DC’s response to fandom’s response so let’s just say they are both YIKES MCGIKES and leave it at that). Rebirth Special #1 brought him back, and the return of the “real” (white) Wally (again: yikes) heralded a new universe that was lighter and happier and contained way more fan favorites. It was literally branded as a gift to fans, embodied in Wally West.

In Heroes in Crisis, Wally is crushed by the weight of everyone being so happy he’s there and loving him so much while he’s struggling with grief and depression, and that’s why he snaps. It’s the metatextual equivalent of having Wally look at the reader and say “You’re happy I’m back and comics can be lighter now? Well, FUCK YOU, YOU RUINED EVERYTHING.” It essentially blames the reader for having Wally go evil, because the reader loves Wally too much.

King, what the fuck?

1. The overall message: Heroes in Crisis was sold as a thoughtful exploration of mental health and trauma, instead of just another bloodbath. Instead, it killed a dozen characters in its first issue and dicked around for another seven with an uninspired whodunnit before throwing a beloved hero in the garbage. But in the meantime, it manages to say:

Trauma is unavoidable.

But therapy doesn’t help.

Trying it does more harm than good.

If you’re struggling, you are a danger to others and don’t deserve privacy.

Good luck with that.

Therapy literally saved my life. This comic enrages me. This comic is harmful. Superhero comics as a whole have a lot to answer for when it comes to discussions of mental illness, but at least some random issue of Batman where Bruce thoughtlessly throws another “looney” into Arkham isn’t billed as a sympathetic take on PTSD. Our culture already discourages asking for help, and we don’t need a pretentious funnybook miniseries helping with that.

(If you made it all the way to the end of this post and you are struggling with trauma, depression, PTSD, whatever...please do look into therapy. I promise you it’s nothing like this comic.)

In conclusion, Heroes in Crisis is bad and it should feel bad.

THE END.

[aethylas]

For anonymous: a series of answers/clarifications/amendments on The Goldenrod Revisions! (I've answered these all in one post just to make it easier). Thank you so much for the asks, this helped me a) clarify my thoughts b) solve some canon continuity issues so I really appreciate them!

THANK U for agreeing to answer my questions! I'll have to ask them separately so they're not in 1 super-long impossible-to-read ask. I have 3 about 15x19, 1 about 15x20, 2 about 15x21, 2 about 15x22, and 2 about 15x23. quick disclaimer: i don't mean any offense at all by my question count! I didn't even notice these oddities the first time I read this; once I read it and accepted it as the true canon, I took a closer look and then noticed. but plz don't think these made your fic any less great!!

No worries anon! It is literally my pleasure to answer them and I am VERY very happy to find discrepancies with canon in the fic - then I can hopefully fix them and make the fic better :) Also I really appreciate the very systematic way you laid all these out, it really helped me reply, and also subsequently make a couple of edits to the fic!

For 15x19:

1. Why did Chuck trust Michael with the task of killing Jack? As God he should know Michael betrayed him in 15.08; did he expect Michael to disobey him again?

I think in this case we're/Chuck is relying on knowledge from the canon 15.19, i.e. Chuck would assume the outcome predicted by the show - that Michael WOULD betray the Winchesters/the world in order to please his father. So God assumed Michael would act the way he did in Inherit The Earth. But additionally, Chuck isn't actually very keyed-in to his own characters' motivations (esp. when love is involved) or very attached to certain results - he basically sends Michael and Lucifer to kill Jack because he figures it will entertain him no matter what happens - whether Michael and Lucifer kill each other, whether they kill the Winchesters/Jack, etc. - either Jack dies this way or Chuck will think of another way to do it.

2. How was Sam able to kill Lucifer? It was said only an archangel could kill another archangel with the archangel blade; was this a total lie or could Sam do it since he's Lucifer's true vessel? (plz don't change it to have Michael kill him; Sam being the one to do it was perfect, I just wanna understand how he could do it).

So glad you raised this because I honestly totally forgot! But now that you have, I have corrected that lore continuity with a line about biblical metaphors.

3. How is Rowena alive? She said she was dead in 15.08, so I initially assumed as a witch and the Queen of Hell she found a way to travel between Hell and Earth despite being dead. But then Sam says "Michael could've killed you" and then Chuck kills her twice in 15.21, both of which indicate she's alive here - does this mean Michael resurrected her when she summoned him?

God okay this is like - please call me out if this is incorrect or still confusing - but it's kind of like, based on the very inconsistent and confusing lore of the SPN afterlife that I assume Rowena is 'dead' but also 'alive' in the sense that Crowley was 'alive' and is now 'dead'. Does that make sense? She's not 'alive' as a human but rather as a demon (or something like it). So as Queen of Hell and a presumably demonic-adjacent entity, when she's 'killed' she gets sent to the Empty now vs. being 'killed' as a human and going to Heaven/Hell. (Based on when we see her in Hell, I assume she possesses her own body? Unclear. Just go with it. They've never been great with what it means to show vessels in Heaven/Hell etc.)

4. I thought asked all I wanted to know about Goldenrod but I just thought of 1 more thing: I don’t get why some dialogue implies Michael was dead? He mentions how he “found himself back on Earth” and tells the Empty it couldn’t stop Chuck from resurrecting him & Lucifer, but prior to 15.19 we last saw Michael leaving the bunker with Adam alive and well in 15.08, and it seemed like he was gonna stay on Earth for Adam’s sake. So what happened to him?

Oh that's a great point! I think that is actually just a confusing choice on my part that Chuck killed absolutely everyone including Michael/Adam in 15.18 Despair and THEN chose to resurrect Michael (but not Adam) alongside Lucifer when he was bored/wanting to kill Jack. I made some slight adjustments in-text to hopefully make it less confusing because I know that's different to the lore of canon 15.19 Inherit the Earth.

For 15x20:

1. How did the angels and demons in the Empty wake up? Did Michael use the last of his grace to wake everyone up? Were they already awake thanks to Jack blowing up in 15x18 or did they somehow sleep through that? (Not expanding on the Empty's claim that "you made it loud" is one of countless things I'll never forgive the actual show for, so THANK YOU for taking the show back to the Empty in the first place; I was just curious about this one element.)

So the Empty was already 'loud' according to canon, but since canon is vague on what exactly that means (thank you writers!...) I got the impression it meant the Empty wasn't 'peaceful' anymore but still powerful enough to suppress the beings inside, like the beings in there were awake and suffering but unable to rebel. Sort of what we see with Cas in this version of 15.20. Maybe like, additional suffering in sleep paralysis? Regardless, Michael does expend his grace to weaken the Empty enough that other beings wake up and/or are able to fight back and exist outside their own personal nightmare chamber. So whatever your impression of 'loud' is with regards to the other beings in there, assume Michael was able to free them from the Empty's control.

For 15x21:

1. Having Jack & Amara take out Hell & Purgatory was a BRILLIANT idea; I love that they ended all the places of suffering and changed the system. I just wonder - what happened to the souls and the demons still in Hell at that point, and the Leviathans and other monsters still in Purgatory? Were they just wiped out completely and sent to the Empty? Or did Jack turn them human and add them to the cycle? (I don't think the show clarified whether or not Leviathans have souls, so...)

No matter whether they were monster or demon or even angel, they would eventually be given human life. I broke it down to 'human enough souls' vs. 'not human enough souls'. Human-enough were immediately brought to life with memories and versions of their original bodies, and not-human-enough were sent to the Soul Queue to be born as infants. I assume Leviathan and most demons fall into 'not human enough', therefore, whatever tiny microbe of personality/soul they had was added to the cycle of rebirth and would be translated to a new human soul. Of course this might have a WILDLY different impact on the world depending on how many people go to hell in this system, how many people were 'human enough', etc.... But we're basically fudging those numbers a bit one way or another just to give certain characters the revival they deserve haha.

2. Did Cas drown and die after Chuck threw him in the lake and Jack left their limbo-dream world? If so, did he go through the same question-&-answer situation with Death that Sam & Dean did? Or was he with Jack & Amara when they rebuilt the world?

Cas was already dead/dying even when he was talking to Jack, he was sort of in a different version of the 'Veil' per se. VERY wishy-washy, but basically he and Jack were on a different dream-plane that they were jolted to in the chaos of the disorganised no-Death world.

I think Cas, Rowena, Lucifer, Michael, etc. as beings who were killed after the snap is a bit ambiguous. Rowena and Lucifer, I think, as entities who were demonic-dead or Empty-level-dead pre-Snap probably went through the reincarnation Yes/No Death questionnaire. Cas and Michael might not have since they were technically 'alive' and human before the Snap. Regardless, I think they probably wouldn't remember the interaction even if they had it.

The reason the question happened to the Winchesters AND that they remember it is Main Character Syndrome... they were the only people left alive when Jack and Amara did a hard reset, and that honestly Death took time to chill/exposition at them because he likes them. Really. Despite all appearances. Or respects them enough to let them know what's gone down, anyway.

Metatextually, it was really just to reaffirm to the audience that Dean (and Sam) want to live, in contrast to 15.20 Carry On 😅

3. Did all the snapped people (Eileen, Adam, the Waywards, etc.) also go through the Death question-&-answer process but not remember it, or did Jack & Amara just send them back?

Snapped people were reset automatically! Normally the new-humans also wouldn't remember their interactions with Death/reapers, just like in canon lore when someone like Dean has a near-death experience.

I realise this whole section and various other lore reformation parts of the fic aren't SUPER clear on specific logistics but on some occasions I'm like, I've done enough info-dumping, I don't want to overwrite exposition. But if you think it's worth clarifying certain points let me know and I can try to do so!

For 15x22:

1. The twenty something blonde guy in sunglasses getting hot tea, is that Belphegor? sure sounds like it but I wanted to confirm.

Yep!

2. Since Death mentioned that Jack only resurrected the angels, demons, and monsters from the Empty who had enough of a soul, and since all the human souls from the Veil went to Heaven as confirmed by Kevin's presence, how exactly are Anna's human parents and Bela alive now?

Great question - 1) I SOMEHOW FORGOT ANNA'S PARENTS DIED? Complete screw up on my part, I don't know how that happened. I fixed this so it's her grandparents now. 2) Bela was sent to Hell as part of her deal, so I was assuming she was a demon by this point in canon (since it would be... MANY Hell-years since she died.) Therefore she had a 'human' enough demon soul to be put back as a human.

3. Oh, and the tall woman with the flyer in 15.22; who is this supposed to be? Hannah I’m guessing?

To be honest I didn't have anyone in particular in mind for that scene; it was kind of a catch-all for missing characters like, it COULD be Hannah. It could be Raphael. Hell, it could be Abbadon. I didn't want to do a full shot of every single person missing from the cast who had died (esp since like - we wouldn't know who they were anyway! Their bodies would be different). So this one is literally just fill-in-the-blank. But if I had to assign a character there I'd say it would probably be one of the more arrogant angels like Raphael or Uriel.

For 15x23:

1. How is Bobby in the Roadhouse with the gang? 10x17 seemed to imply the angels were about to throw him in the dungeons to punish him for helping Cas; did Ash hack him out of prison, or was he never imprisoned at all? Also, is Jack not surprised to see another Bobby in Heaven because the boys already told him there was another Bobby besides the one he knows from Apocalypseverse? (I was half-expecting him to comment about that and confuse Bobby).

Oh that's a great point! I think that's another sort of fill in the blank since it's been five years since 10.17... even if he was in prison of some kind, I think it's likely either Ash helped him get out in the same way he helped everyone else, and since the angels were extremely short-staffed I doubt getting Bobby suitably imprisoned/punished was their top priority. But honestly I'm not super clear on how the angels intended to punish Bobby, I don't think canon is clear either... like, We Just Don't Know.

Finally I'd like to know, has Sam proposed to Eileen yet by the end of the final episode? The script doesn't mention a ring on her finger, and as Sam's fiancee, I'd assume she'd also have carved her name on the table. Sam mentions the innuendos Dean has said "in the past year," so it's been a while since Jack's prayer scene, yet Cas says Dean & Claire's argument was the last time they spoke, and it doesn't seem likely to me that Dean wouldn't call Claire in a year given how close they are...

Nope! I think Sam is saying 'I'm going to marry her' as a declaration of certainty of his feelings and faith in the future, not neccessarily as something that immediately happens. With regards to 'in the past year', that referred to the period when Eileen was alive during s15 as well! I assume Dean did teasing off-screen (and I mean, he did plenty on-screen too.)

I honestly think that Sam and Dean are just very very busy in the aftermath of the events of the 15.20 reset, like they have to deal with the new world AND try to wrangle all these hunters into this new system of collaboration. I didn't put Eileen on the table because she isn't there in the finale and because I do think the Sam/Dean/Cas/Jack family unit was a bit more central and important to the show, but maybe they add her (and any possible kids, if they have any) later on. God, imagine generations of hunters and/or Winchesters carving on that table. Sacred Artefact...

(1) Ok that's all the questions I have. Again, so sorry to blow up your inbox - I really appreciate your willingness to clarify these things! If there are some things you'd rather not explain and leave ambiguous, I totally get that. And in spite of these aforementioned confusing parts, I still ADORE your fic and will continue to read it whenever I feel like re-"watching" how Supernatural really ended! Thank you so much!! .... (2) I’m SO sorry to overload u! I know I asked a lot and I didn’t mean to sound like a hater saying “none of ur story makes sense”; that’s not what I meant at all! If this was a regular good ol fix it fic I wouldn’t have said anything but since u said u wanted it to wrap up the show as replacement canon, I thought maybe I should point out places that didn’t line up. But take as MUCH time as you need! Good for you working to meet your deadlines; I hope you succeeded!! And again I really appreciate you taking the time to answer whenever you have time—absolutely no rush!! Have a GREAT Memorial Day Weekend!!!

Anon thank you SO SO much for all these questions, as you can see it really helped me identify problems or straight up errors in my work wrt continuity and I'm so happy that means I can improve it. If any of the answers weren't clear or you think I should modify the fic to make certain things clearer than they are right now (other than the things I said I'd fix in-text for sure) let me know! It's really been a pleasure answering them too, I'm sorry it took me so long to get around to it, I actually went back and proofed/edited the whole fic as part of adding some of these corrections in (and that took like... three weeks...) and as you said, it's very important to me to get it as true to canon as possible so - yeah, just, once again, thank you!! You're wonderful! ♥♥♥

[ninthfeather]

Sorry, this should have probably been part of the last ask, but I only thought to say it after I hit send. I should clarify that on a metatextual level Billy's speech makes sense -- his conversation with Sumeragi is a nice socratic dialogue, and keeps reinforcing the whole idea of "we need to make the future ourselves". I just feel like other dialogues like this have come from a more motivated place internal to the show's logic as well.

Should've grouped this with the other two, probably, oh well!

Gundam 00 is usually very good about keeping everything in-character. Like, yes, the show has an agenda, but it's presented organically by characters with the viewpoints it wants to reinforce or interrogate, all of whom have reason to hold those opinions. Like I said, I think this particular speech by Billy comes more out of the A-Laws as an organization that Billy has allied himself with than from Billy himself. He's just spouting the party line, because it's easier than engaging emotionally with Sumeragi, or with anything she's saying.

Like, don't get me wrong, I love Sumeragi, but she messed with Billy's head in a pretty significant way and part of the reason he ends up so dedicated to the A-Laws is that he's very angry with CB's commander. Like, he still had a responsibility not to join up with totalitarian government forces, but Sumeragi is a tactical forecaster and she really should've seen the possibility that he'd do something drastic in response to her lying to him for years and then leaving right after she admitted the truth.

This is all coming, admittedly, from someone who likes Billy/Sumeragi in the sense that I like watching trainwrecks sometimes.

But yeah, I think Billy's speech isn't necessarily the truth, but he'd like it to be. If it was, things would be so much less emotionally taxing. As it is, he's caught between his uncle's convictions and the ex he now hates, who can't possibly be right because then he might have to consider the idea that she had reasons for treating him as she did. And he just is not ready for that.

[szintalikedthat]

Hello! I saw your post about playlists and I have a request for a vibe!

🎵 + When you're feeling really disconnected from yourself but also sort of angry at everything and then your cat comes and loves up to you and you're still angry and sad but you're also filled with so much love for this teeny tiny animal

Hell yes!!!!

What makes this ask so awesome, is that not only it is a really interesting vibe that I just felt in my heart on 6 different cosmic levels, but it comes with a full blown 5 act structure, which I will be more than happy to indulge... especially because telling a narrative arc with strategically ordered songs is my favourite thing about building a playlist.

When I was thinking about where to begin, I felt like the only genre that can truly encompass the range of emotions contained herein AND even the cuteness of a cat, was none other than emo. Am I right or am I right? But I have to confess, I'm not super familiar with the emo scene, cause when it happened, I went through a phase of listening to very little to no music. And like I said, I cannot accurately pinpoint musical genres because I just sort them in my head completely differently, so... this playlist has maybe like one or two songs that are actually emo, I think(?) and is not so much emo overall as much as "Songs that made me feel like what I thought emo should feel like". However I do know that some emo bands like to have one foot in metal and the other in electronic music, so this is what created the backbone of this playlist that holds it all together - an electronic and/or industrial metal streak. Fingers crossed that this will be up your alley.

I made a spotify compilation of it all but I also linked the individual songs thru youtube in case someone doesn’t use it.

Enjoy! 🎵

1. Dissociation Every Day is Exactly The Same - Elektrik People

I consider this kind of a blatant choice in my neck of the musical woods but if there has ever been a better song written about that very emotion that you were talking about, I haven't heard it. I offer it to you now like a special gift directly from the playlist of a very personal OC who himself has some issues and dissociative tendencies. Yes, I'm talking about my OCs I'm projecting onto of whom nobody fucking asked, because I don't want to make this too personal, what about it. Don't we all? And yes, this IS the Nine Inch Nails song, but I chose this version - and tbh I like this one better than the original, with all due respect to Mr. Reznor - because the soft, slightly slurring vocals and reverberating instruments really make it sound as if I myself were hearing it through a disconcerted haze.

2. Realization X - Hatari

I put this song in as a kind of segway between the previous song and the next; it's like a moment of coming-to, a realization of one's true pain that was blocked before, and includes all the disillusionment, hatred, and grief that it entails, but is also still kind of... catchy, in a way? If you will. Song translation

3. Fragmentation Buried Alive - Otep

And there we are, the true, unfiltered cacophony of negative emotions, spoken in their full and direct brutality. What really gets me about Otep every time, is that besides some of her lyrics just being genuinely great poetry, she can speak the most simple, emo, generic words with such incredible cadence that you quake as you feel the emotion in your veins right there where she's at.

4. Spiral Victimized- KoRn

Look, I might be a little bit biased, but when you're asking me for trauma induced, frothing dissociative rage, I'm definitely thinking of Jonathan Davis, because let's be honest, no one brings it to the table like he does. That's just objectively true. There is no shortage of such musical numbers in KoRn's repertoire but as opposed to some of their maddening, blunt and grunge-like earlier sounds, I decided to bring something from their newer catalog, which encases the madness in a cleanly yet jagged, cutting-edge electronic shell, and thus will fit in with this playlist very nicely.

5. Contact Teardrop - Massive Attack

So I asked myself, "Is there a song that makes me feel the emotion of touching extremely soft fur and would fit into this playlist" and I immediately knew that this song would be THE perfect answer. I wanted the shift to be as sudden as possible, but at the same time still a little bit organic, which is a high expectation but this song has an almost KoRn-like chord progression just in major instead of minor. I couldn't have invented a better one if I tried.

6. Decision Neon Gravestones - Twenty One Pilots

Okay, I'm not even going to make any jokes about this or anything. I think this song is a really brutal confrontation about a very heavy topic, and the biggest takeaway that I want you to have from it is that, I think, there is a point at the bottom of your hopelessness where you HAVE to make a conscious decision to move upward even if you don't feel like you can do it or whether it's even possible, before the healing can start. And sometimes it really be like that.

7. Clarity Bring Me The Horizon - Can You Feel My Heart

Note that after the Soft Cat neither of the songs are really as unhinged as we started, and that is for a reason. I think that this song must have been insanely popular at a time, sorry about that. I swear, I'm trying to make choices that are not too obvious but it felt like it would just hit the right emotional beat. I think you can read a lot into these rhetorical questions, in the song I mean, but the cord progressions always make me feel a certain opening up to hope through teary eyes.

8. Power Suffering You - 16 Volt

At the end of it all, by any means I wanted to end this playlist on a positive note, so here we are. There's just something about this song that gets me every time. It leans into its own early 2000s proto-emo roots with such a sweeping, unapologetic confidence. This song be like "You're goddamn right I'm a fucking whiney little bitch with my depression and unprocessed negative emotions, you wanna fight about it? You wanna take it outside?" What else could I have for it than respect? The rhythm is mercilessly pumping, the riffs are almost bizarrely catchy. I wouldn't necessarily call this song positive on a surface level, but it always makes me feel weirdly upbeat. Once you read into it a bit metatextually, this song is the pinnacle of depressed but reclaimed power, an almost fashionably earworm-like rallying cry of healthily channeled righteous anger. I actually almost put it at the beginning because I think playlists should begin strong - I like to make playlists that either sweep you or slap you on the face with the very first chord lol - and I think this song, almost literally slaps. However I immediately realized that no, this cannot happen, not this time. This song cannot be at the start because this is exactly the goal where I want you to mentally arrive at.

Okay, enough of the playlist infused therapy session. I hope you had some kind of positive takeaway and maybe even some songs you didn't know before. Now go and stick it to the man!

[woventhought]

On women in art history : “I felt it was also missing to my personal life. Art is also about transmission of our intimacies, and as women we haven’t been transmitted that at all. So of course it was about reconstitution and talking about the job of a woman artist at the time and the job of a woman artist at any time, actually, but it was also about transmitting the hearts and the desires and the bodies, giving back some presence and some present to these women. And doing the job of giving back, of transmitting what hasnt been transmitted.” (2:45)

On love and sorority : “We share their loneliness. There is no more the eye of the mother and they are out of the world. And cinema is the only art where you can share someone's loneliness, and thats why its important to look at these characters and share their intimacy. And so we leave the room to sorority and to actually represent sorority, give that experience that is not something you can go through if you're not out of the world actually. So this utopia is a thread in the love story because we also want to talk about friendship in the love story and how sorority actually abolishes social hierarchy and everything opens up in the movie at that moment. Even the actresses, you can definitely tell they are not acting in the same way, it was a milestone, a turning point in their acting where they opened up. Adele Haenel really considers this the moment where she unfroze.” (4:50) “It’s actually also the first time we get some smiles - it’s been an hour and ten minutes without seeing a woman smiling on the screen - which is something I really had to fight for [...] We are conditioned to actually act like that, like ‘they should smile’. And I didn’t want to do it, but it’s like, ‘yeah, but maybe you will need this in the editing room’. And, no! I don’t want this in my machine in the editing room! (laughs)” (6:53)

On the art of the portrait, in painting and cinema : “In this process, with the scene where she poses and the painting scenes, there was a whole workshop for me around shot and reverse-shot, which is something that I didn’t practice a lot in my previous films, there are very few. [...] There is also another reflexion going on that doesn’t belong exactly to the same level, that is actually before she begins to paint : the movie is asking itself, how do you create suspense around discovering a face? How do you look at someone wanting to create an image but while they are moving and escaping? Which is I think the question of a filmmaker more than of a painter. [...] We ask ourselves the questions of the painter, but we find the answers in cinema.” (10:10)

On the difficulty to motivate intimate two-shots : “Even in the process of shot reverse-shot, as the movie progresses, they finally meet. The painter goes into her own gaze, when she comes around. The movie is all about the painter first ignoring that she’s also being looked at and finally discovering that she might also be an object in the eye of her subject. So we’re being very playful.” (13:36)

On metatextuality in cinema : “We have the pleasure of living the ideas, and I always dream of the viewer as being somebody who discovers a language - the language is the film - and part of its pleasure, a big part of the pleasure I think, is getting the language, getting the ideas, and speaking the language of the film in the end. [...] And part of the pleasure is about the anticipation, and also the recognition of ideas, and the fact that now your brain is part of the brain of the film. It must look simple to do...” (15:31)

On the usage of music : “It’s a very early decision to make the film without music. It has to be because then you have to go through the process of writing acknowledging that and finding solutions - it’s not the same rhythm if there’s no music. [...] It’s not like when you’re writing with music, you’re leaving the room for music - but it’s just that you know that you will have to find the musicaltiy of the film elsewhere. So in the rhythm of the scenes, the bodies and the movements of the actors, and in sound.” (17:28) “And then in shooting, it’s about the groove. We communicate a lot around that with the actresses : like if they have to move to one another, I would give the number of steps, because that’s gonna be the rhythm of their approach. It’s not the same if it’s 5 or 6, if it’s pair or impair, it will be a totally different feeling, a different tension.” (18:40) “Thinking of making a love story without music was really frightening [...] Every love story has its own tune, you know, ‘that’s our song’. But it was a matter of reconstitution, as the movie is also talking about the connection with love and art, and how love makes you love art. I wanted the audience to be in the same position as the characters that are frustrated, because they don’t have access to beauty in general and to art in particular. So that was to put the viewer in the same physical condition and frustration regarding music, and so that when it occurs... it’s something.” (19:11)

On the bonfire scene : it was written for the film to be trance-like, with very high BPM, no instruments, only voice and clapping in polyphony. Sciamma wrote the lyrics in latin, “fugere non possum”, adaptation of Nietzsche “The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.” Invoke imagery of witches, even if it’s just women gathering in friendship, exchanging knowledge, drinking around a warm fire. “There’s a lot of lines that are merging at that moment. There is this group of women, this big sorority that actually accompanies them in taking the leap of love. There’s also literally the incarnation of the film; it’s very literal. They are facing one another, there’s fire between them, and one of them is going to be on fire, for real. I’m not spoiling because it’s on the poster. It’s also the moment where the film shows how literal it is, and that we’re going to set fire to the characters. The mise-en-scène is totally assumée. There’s no special effects; everything is done practical. So it’s also this idea of cinema. Then the movie becomes something different after that.” (23:55)

On love : “I wanted to make this patient chronicle of the rise of desire - I also really wanted to film desire that becomes love, and to be very accurate and in the present of that. But I also wanted to talk about what’s left, the memory of a love story, the dynamic of a love story when it’s over. And also to bring new imagery to this and get out of eternal love and possession... There’s a sentence from this American poet who passed away last year named Mary Oliver, who says a broken heart is an open heart to the rest of the world. The dynamic of lost love as being a curation for new curiosity, new loves and also a love for the arts, and arts being a consolation but also making us better lovers. I wanted to look at this love as something possible and not something impossible, and get out of old conflicts and old negotiations and to have this new culture, like a counter-culture of a love story.” (35:15)

[pokkop15]

(Ok so I was a fool and had had a lot of this meta written up yesterday and instead of saving it as a draft while I watched critical role, I, like a fool, just left all the tabs open and then went to bed after the episode. Then firefox crashed in the night and everything was lost. Press F to pay respects I guess cause here I go again.)

First off, Aradia is best girl and I am so happy she's RELEVANT again. I had a whole preamble the last time I wrote this post, but I can't remember what it said other than mentioning that this is gonna be a long post beneath the cut and that I have other metas that will kind of overlap with what I'm saying in this one so I will try to keep my discussion of the narrative styles of the The Prince and The Muse to only what is relevant to this post and to what is RELEVANT. Also previous metas should be reblogged directly before I post this to make it easier to check them out before hand or to reference them more easily.

The main points of focus will be: The differences between how the two Time gods interact with The Muse and her narrative, as well as the general level of metatextual awareness of characters within Candy. | The juxtaposition of the Knight and the Maid. | The possible suppression of the Ultimate nature of The Knight, and by extension The Seer. | The Muse's unique state of power and presumed Awakening | I swear there was more but I flat out don't remember what they were.

One last thing. I am a rambly motherfucker so if you haven't read my previous metas, here's your warning to expect a very long and very chaotic mess of a post beneath the cut. Also for anyone confused anytime I emphasize someone as 'The Class' it's referring to their actions as a potential narrator and as an Ultimate Self. For example, the difference between The Muse and the Muse is that 'the Muse' would be for character moments like when the dead cherub possessing Jade's corpse in Candy is just talking with Davebot and Aradia, while 'The Muse' is for when talking about her influence over the narrative. (There's a lot of different ways I put emphasis on words or phrases, but “The Class” was the one I felt really might need clarification)

I find it interesting how Davebot acknowledges and shows distaste for The Muse interjecting her narration and thus inhibiting his ability to live in the moment. I find this interesting because as an Awakened god of Time, he is simultaneously living in every moment but as a Knight, and as The Knight, he is also intrinsically separate from those moments as he is the Ultimate One who Wields Time. Aradia on the other hand is the Maid of Time, who while almost assuredly having reached the pinnacle of her god tier after the hundreds of years we now know her to have lived, is not ascended to her Ultimate Self. As a Maid, Aradia literally embodies her aspect. As such she doesn't worry about living in the moment because she is the moment. Because of this Aradia is more prone to just accept, agree, and repeat the sentiments The Muse dictates in her constant exposition. However, despite acknowledging the narration, Davebot still ends up being incredibly passive in the face of it. Even though he has an Active class and is a dreamer of the Active moon, Dave himself has always come off as an incredibly passive character to me in a lot of ways. (Even the aspect of Time itself and its heroes are specifically denoted as incredibly Active in the {official and Canon} extended zodiac test [which means its contents are NECESSARY, RELEVANT, and TRUE]). Always acting under the direction of other characters, subject to The Lord's rule over Time, and constantly struggling with his seeming lack of control. Here, even after reaching his Ultimate Self, he still only makes passive-aggressive remarks instead leaving the flow of the story and the big decisions to others. (In my last post I went into deeper detail about the nature of, and relationship between Aradia and Dave's classes and how that affected their sessions, but I can't remember what the tie in was unfortunately so for now I'll leave it at this and move on)

Among the human players of sburb, the Strilondes have always been the most genre savvy and possessed the most awareness of the narrative and its' influence, (although Dave was never near the levels of Dirk and Rose). But up until this upd8, direct interactions with the narrative have been few and far between in Candy (at least as far as I can recall). I mentioned this in my previous meta as being a result of The Muse being the type to inspire characters to action whereas The Prince is far more heavy handed in is dictation and rarely attempts to hide his presence in the narration these days. But we see here once again, that not only is The Muse bad for the people under her influence, she's also just really not good at constructing a story. She relies too heavily on tropes and cliches, on plot contrivances; she tells too much and doesn't show enough, (something that should literally be her greatest strength as a Muse). Yet despite this, Davebot and Aradia are seen multiple times to interact with her dictations directly and Aradia even points out on page 284 that she is aware of The Muse “observing (their) every action and noting its relevance : )” (the emphasis on 'relevance' being mine). As such we can infer that it doesn't take an Ultimate Self to recognize The Muse's narration. But if not that, then what? If it was just pre-disposition of character that let them notice, then between her own abilities and self awareness, surely Candy!Rose would have by now, but she hasn't. Then is it proximity? Maybe The Muse is getting complacent and starting to unknowingly imitate The Prince and his methods? Or is it because both Davebot and Aradia are Heroes of Time? The aspect opposite The Muse's. After all, The Muse did express that the way (either Aradia specifically or that the both of them) experience time is “woefully unfamiliar” to her. Perhaps that makes it difficult for her to write a story that resonates with them fully. Whatever it may be, all the information up until this point doesn't come to a head so much as it is something that I believe to be RELEVANT.

With that, let us switch gears while keeping the previous information in mind. As I said before, in spite of all the active components of Davebot's Mythological Role, his character has often been passive. And the precise story beat I want to focus on right now is his Awakening to his Ultimate Self. Candy!Dave was out on patrol with a wife who he loved, but who also had very much always been the driving force of their dynamic. He was pulled to the ancient bunker by the narrative where a hologram of Obama expertly guided him through a conversation like a true politician, somehow knowing a lot about Dave while at the same time withholding “classified” information as if that word had any meaning without a country or government holding Obama accountable. (Unless of course Obama was still answering to someone... *Cough cough*the authors*cough cough*). Look, all of this is me saying that Obama was a leftover contrivance of The Prince that The Muse utilized for her own means. Dirk was a skilled programmer and engineer. He had a deep understanding of how to build AIs that could easily impersonate someone. He had an even deeper grasp of how to manipulate Dave. Dirk built the bots. The Bots. The bots that are supposedly NECESSARY for one to Awaken to their Ultimate Self and survive. And yet even if that is TRUE, it isn't true. The Prince claims he was a special case but his powers are of the soul, not the body. And it is the body that breaks down. And we know that Rose really was suffering in her path to Awakening, but I will remind you that her poor condition was first established through narration that we know was under the control of The Prince. Further more it happened prior to the Meat/Candy split, in which the Canon still possessed TRUTH, which is why it still remained RELEVANT in Candy (and it was obviously NECESSARY in Meat for reasons about to be discussed). Both Rose and Dave ultimately played a passive role in their Awakenings, guided to their Ultimate Self by another even though they are both Active players. I believe that The Prince established these rules about Ultimate Selves and built the robot bodies as a way to give him an upper hand against the two characters most likely to overtake him. Because to reinforce a point from a previous post, Rose is the only full on published author among the players and Dave himself has written comics and presumably screenplays for his films, making them the two people who might not only do a better job than The Prince or The Muse, but just do a flat out GOOD job. The Seer especially, which is why The Prince went through the extra effort to disrupt her sense of self as she was coming into her Ultimate Self. If these two had played an Active part in their own Awakening and without The Prince’s influence I think they both would’ve been quite capable of giving The Prince a run for his money. But the humans are not the only players in this game...

As I've already alluded to, Lord English (The Lord), was almost certainly his Ultimate Self. Awakened and Empowered by the treasure (a juju so powerful that it enabled John to retcon things in a way that overrides the timeline instead of splitting it, and it did so without even granting him its actual power). When The Knight awakened, The Muse described it has having all of Time flow through his consciousness, allowing him to experience every instance of his own self. Conversely Jade described that her Ultimate Self would be “like... one ultimate self distributed across multiple bodies. so in multiple places and states at once. every jade that exists is like a light being shined through a thousand cracks in the timeline.” (Hey remember those cracks in the universe that had light peaking through them? Idk, seems RELEVANT if you ask me.) So if we reasonably assume that ones aspect heavily affects how one's Ultimate Self first Awakens and how it operates than that means there will be similarities between those who share aspects. If Awakening for a Hero of Time is an experience of everything that ever has, is, or will happen to a version of themselves, and Lord English possessed a juju that allows one to retcon and not split, than the combination of those powers would make it so he could be the singular instance of himself while at the same time always be “Already Here” than there is truly no difference between Lord English and the theoretical Ultimate version of himself. And since the Muse consumed Lord English at the end of Candy, granting her the power to punch a wormhole in the black hole. This is also presumably where she gained the power to “...exist in several narrative structures at once” (pg 286) (also see the above explanation of Jade's Ultimate Self for why that is RELEVANT). Because of this, we can assume that The Muse is just as indistinguishable from her theoretical Ultimate Self as The Lord was. But these powers and this simultaneous existence is not without consequences because the Muse's collapse at the end of this chapter is almost assuredly a result of Meat!Jade's rebelling against The Muse in chapter 6 (specifically the action on page 167/168). And finally, to tie this back to the imposition of bodily destruction to those who Awaken their Ultimate Self, it is worth noting that The Muse does not possess a body of her own to be destroyed. Instead inhabiting the body of various Jades.

Alright, so once again sorry if you thought there would be some big culmination to this post, and hey, what pumpkin?