#creativity so much. more inconsistencies more incoherence

[samaspic31]

More ppl and characters with heavily fluctuating gender presentation in media I am not longer asking. where is representation for ppl who crossdress both ways depending on the day or even ppl putting wild amounts of effort on random days

[aeliussaionji]

Scattered thoughts on my relationship to media

I often muse "since criticism is subjective, how do we confidently asses a thing? Who decided what makes something 'good'?". hbomberguy's "RWBY is Disappointing" video is making me do just that.

Going in I expected him to reveal things I overlooked, as I can be pretty bad at noticing inconsistencies in media. But to the contrary, in the first half of the video, he focuses on talking about aspects of the show I don't care about, or even find endearing. The latter half(ish) focuses more on how the writers drop the ball in trying to tackle the subject of racism. In the rest of these scattered thoughts I am not referring to that- largely because I didn't watch it all at once, and much of my thoughts happened following my first intermission.

But first- something else entirely:

Some years ago, friends and I discussed our thoughts on the new star wars trilogy. The movie where Kylo and Rey team up for the fight in the throne room is easily my favorite of the three. The first entry was boring and the third one is a crime. But the second- it explores new ideas about the Force not being binary, has amazing visual scenes (some of which everyone hates for the lore implications), it has that friggin' amazing throne room fight where Light and Dark team up, after which there's a very compelling "we should join forces" moment. Given how much the movie had broken off traditional star wars thus far, I was genuinely uncertain what Rey would do, and in that moment I was more engaged than I had ever been with any star wars content before.

People who dislike that movie counter with "but why would the commander do X in scene Y? Makes no sense!" or "the whole sequence with the casino was bad". And to me that's… I literally don't remember those things exist until people complain about them. I am laser focused on what I enjoyed and tune out what didn't work for me. In the discussion I was having among friends, the primary complaint they had is how the second movie breaks continuity of the trilogy. As I see it, the first movie is unobjectionable and technically good, I never hear passionate criticism for that. It's also just a nothing burger. I've near forgotten the entire thing. Nothing happens in it to pique my interest. It seems that's true for others as well, given that any discussion of the trilogy I've heard very quickly becomes about what the second movie did wrong. Would the second movie be "better" if it were as unobjectionable as the first? Would the trilogy? Many seem to prefer simpler works with competent execution, which, I can get into as well! But when shards of creativity capture my attention, I find myself either forgiving flaws, forgetting them, or filling in blanks where no details were provided. So: I don't give a damn that the trilogy is now incoherent as a whole! I really, really, like certain scenes of the second movie and give zero thoughts to the rest.

To which my friend responds, "do that in a different story!" But does that mean they'd prefer something competently constructed and less creative, like the first movie was? After all, I see plenty of energy spent dressing down sloppy execution of the second movie, but hardly any energy is given to criticizing how creatively bankrupt the first movie is. In this dichotomy I've constructed, I feel I'm in the minority for preferring a creative mess.

(Also the reality of capitalism in Hollywood is that writers don't often have the freedom to just make new IPs; existing IPs are what's on the table and writers make due. That's how it's gonna be, might as well consider such stories to be standalone. Blame capitalism, not the writers.)

Back to RWBY: hbomberguy keeps complaining that RWBY's animation, writing, voice acting, songs, etc are all amateur. And, yeah man, it's literally a first work by amateurs. Halfway through his video, the point he keeps returning to is that the show has good ideas but the amateur efforts holds it back. And… yeah man, amateurs have good ideas sometimes? Ep1 pretty firmly establishes the level of quality the creators are bringing to the table, and I calibrated my expectations accordingly.

More than just calibrating my expectations, I can find the amateur aspect endearing, and I enjoy seeing the voice actors and animators and writers improve as the series goes along. It's like its own meta narrative- we the viewers get to witness the voice actors grow more confident over time. They come a long way from their early shy and clunky performances.

Now, I don't necessarily think that criticism should be "calibrated" to expectations, or that media should be graded on a curve. It's completely fair to judge what's on the table no matter who made it. I agree with basically all of hbomberguy's criticisms, I'm enjoying the detective work he has done to outline how and why the quality may have suffered, I'm laughing along with his jokes, and certainly his criticisms could help the team grow as creators. It's just that his delivery leaves me wondering if he's playing up his reactions for comedic effect, or if he genuinely can't engage with amateur efforts. This leads me to an introspective thought spiral- there are many examples of media I quite like where the execution is fumbled in some way. There are many examples of media with stellar execution, but I'm simply bored by the content. If I were to ever try and formally criticize something, what form should my criticism take in this framework? Should my criticism value execution over creativity? Excellent execution can be an art in of itself and I often do enjoy a job well done, but in general I don't derive much enjoyment from how technically well executed the art is. Should I, though? Are my media recommendations to friends worse off for my tendency to forget that which doesn't interest me? Should my critique spend time grading creators on form, even when the mistakes don't bother me personally, or is it enough to simply expand only on what I personally experience? Does loving content with poor execution mean I have mid taste in media?

There is another more personal layer to my thought spiral reaction. hbomberguy spends some time demonstrating that certain concepts in RWBY are not explained well and would be confusing to first time viewers. This leads me to think that I'm so accustomed to being out of the loop that I don't blink when something doesn't make sense, and in fact I might not even notice ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

There are many works which avoid directly stating authorial intent, instead (hopefully) leaving enough information for the audience to arrive at the conclusion themselves. This is often stated as "respecting the intelligence of the audience". Problem is, I may not have enough context to work it out, and I'm not always on my A-game while consuming media. Probably most of the time I am very much not! I think I've come to assume that when I encounter a point of confusion, the failing is mine.

Me, enjoying a show as much of the subtler meaning flies over my head:

[tsukumosanaappreciationblog]

Kokichi Ouma: How Not To Write A Sympathetic Villain

Kokichi has been a persistent fan favorite character in the Danganronpa fandom which to be fair on a surface level he has a lot of appeal but surface level appeal doesn’t make up for the fact that he’s a fundamentally broken character. I think he’s an absolute failure of character writing and is a perfect example of how not to create a sympathetic villain.

I think Kokichi's biggest mistake is having a deliberately inconsistent characterization which was a creative choice to reinforce his two faced nature however it was implemented very sloppily. The foreshadowing for Kokichi’s true motive is almost nonexistent and any actions that he takes that can be seen as him showing his true motivations can just as easily be read as him acting out of sheer boredom and malice. Let’s take a look at a scene that Kokichi fans see as him displaying genuine emotion of him crying at Gonta’s death. Ignoring  the hypocrisy for now despite the fact that it could be genuine emotion he outright states that it was a lie which is totally believable considering how much he lies and the fact that he was the one who killed Gonta in the first place. The Audience is supposed to fully buy into that because his good intentions were meant to be a shocking twist. It’s like a reverse crappy Disney twist villain where instead of a  good guy being comically evil for no reason a comically evil character becomes a good guy for no reason. It really doesn’t help that his worst actions are immediately before his only good actions. Which leads into another point is that Chapter 4’s reveal of Kokichis true nature was a lot more convincing and had better foreshadowing than Chapter five’s revealing of Kokichi’s true nature. Him being a sadist with no regard for human life like he says he is in Chapter 4 would actually line up with his actions a lot more than his Chapter 5 motivation because it actually had room to establish it. At the beginning of the game he is established as a harmless prankster but throughout the course of the game his action began to seem a lot more sinister like how willing he is to show everyone movies that would cause them to commit a murder or the fact that he says he murdered Angie which shows he’s all to comfortable mocking the dead and purposely interfering with the class trails words are one thing but if his action also line up with his façade then they do with there true motive then we start to have a problem with characterization. You could say these actions are to truly reinforce his façade but that leads into my next point. His actions are so extreme that  no rational person would think they would be okay under any circumstance and we don’t understand him as a person enough to understand his justification for his actions. Take a look at someone like Komaeda who we have a very clear  understanding of  his black and white views of hope and despair so we understand why he would commit such extreme measures now let's take a look at Kokichi’s reasons for committing his crimes. He hates murder so he wants to end the killing game which is literally the same motive as almost everyone in this game but they didn’t take such extreme measures to do so and we have no explanation for his past even in his Free Time Event’s which is the entire point of FTE’s most of the time. A rather subjective point on why I hate him is that I find to be insanely obnoxious which is a completely subjective reason for disliking him but I think I should at least make it a footnote. When it comes to positive I think his design is good and that's about it in terms of positives.

In conclusion Kokichi is nothing short of an incoherent clusterfuck of a character and I honestly couldn’t tell you why people like him.

[argentdandelion]

How Do Memory Tapes Work?

How it happened on the left. Simon's memory on the right.

How to Escape Memory Tapes

Hypothesis: Short of someone breaking the tape, one escapes the Memory Tape through acknowledgment of one’s trauma or turmoil, not necessarily the resolution of that trauma or turmoil, enlightenment, neutralizing of its harmful effects, or a return to functionality. After all, Tulip has a double-digit number (possibly 15) when she escapes, and Grace’s number is halfway up her elbow. Judging by Tulip, escaping the tape can require confronting the misapprehensions of one’s issues, distortions in memory, or outright denial of one’s misdeeds.

Tulip’s Troubles

Tulip's tape was modified to be happier than it really was. She remembers how the day at a theme park with trained dolphins, DolphWorld, was very fun. She remembers going downstairs at night, seeing a funny, peppy late-night infomercial starring her friends Atticus and One-One, and interacting with a couch that has a blanket on it. She remembers her parents gathering around the dinner table to celebrate her getting a scholarship for Vassar, a "college for creative people too smart for their own good", while wearing Family 4Ever shirts and being a happy family and slicing apart a cake (incoherently an onion cake, because she likes onions).

However, when she realizes her memories are wrong, she sees the real versions: DolphWorld was dull with few people, and she couldn't see it due to needing glasses, and her parents were bickering. The infomercial was actually boring and slightly unsettling, and she was interacting with the couch to comfort her father, who was crying on the couch. Her parents gathered around the dinner table to tell her of their separation, which she assumed would inevitably lead to divorce. She recalls how, in the real scene, she did not feel happy, but scared and angry and alone.

Grace’s Troubles

Grace’s issue is her deep-seated fears or insecurities: she is afraid of being wrong, disappointing others, not being enough, and being alone.

Due to her troubles, Grace was desperate for attention from her parents and her peers at a ballet class, but was rejected and ignored, to the point she told a slanderous lie to the ballet group just to sow discord and shoplifted from a jewelry store just to be noticed by her parents. Her deep-seated insecurities led her, as a 10-year-old, to make something up (or lie) to 10-year-old Simon about the purpose of numbers, though she really didn’t know. As the leader of the Apex, she had plenty of loose ties, and was near-constantly admired, even idolized (one member even copied Grace’s style).

She confronts her troubles within her unofficial memory tape in a much more direct way than Tulip. When Grace was trapped within her tape, a representation of Hazel showcases her mistreatment, her culpability for Tuba's death, her cowardice, and (to a lesser extent) how she blames Simon for Hazel's suffering, but herself gave him the idea to wheel denizens. Grace admits to all her fears, and how she did everything to avoid being alone, only to end up totally alone anyway. Although her number goes down rapidly when she admits her fears, she’s only launched out of the tape once she says Hazel deserved better and sadly waves goodbye to a representation of her. She probably comes to some closure (however sad) on the her time with Hazel in the process.

Other Aspects of Memory Tapes

Distortions

The tapes reflect how each memory was stored, and memories, of course, can be altered. For example, while viewing Amelia’s memories in her tape, Tulip, The Cat, and One-One can’t get closer to Amelia; The Cat explains Amelia kept some memories at a distance. In Grace’s memories, the servants/babysitters are only shown as their outfits, ever-changing with their names, and they speak in unison: obviously not as it actually happened.

The multi-wall recording of the "We won't tell Simon" scene subtly distorted how it actually looked. Grace is less expressive when stating her dialogue, and so seems less hesitant or conflicted. She looks less tense. Hazel looks more comforted. Interestingly, Hazel's snout is different, arguably more beast-like, rather than being shaped roughly like the jaws of a prehistoric human. The ridges of her upper jaw is also much more pronounced. There's no reason Grace would modify it like this; she's conflicted over hiding it from Simon, not joyfully sneaky, so it’s logically Simon’s memory. The memory of Grace encountering the Conductor in the Pumpkin Car changes when Grace realizes the memory is wrong. Either Grace has been encouraged to remember it differently because of her own memories of Simon's dramatized retellings, or Simon conflates his memory of how he imagined it happening with Grace's own memory.

Tulip gets out when she realizes her memories are wrong, and they're wrong because she changed them herself. Simon does not seem aware of how his memory of the "We won't tell Simon" scene is distorted, and how his understanding of the situation with Grace is incorrect.

What is the Static?

It’s unclear what the static represents. It could be misapprehensions, distortions, and denial, or fabrications of all kinds, good or bad. It could also represent fear and general turmoil. It’s possible it represents both kinds of things. It’s possible the static represents a “canvas” of negative emotions, over which other things can be pasted, such as various forms of untruths.

Supporting the idea it’s a “canvas” of negative emotions, the walls behind Simon become entirely static when he’s deeply distressed and says “Everyone lies to me!”. Tulip's static also goes over her head when the scene returns to the deeply exaggerated memory of how the divorce was spelled out to her, and when Grace denies her culpability in Tuba’s death by blaming Simon, the static on her body immediately rises. Furthermore, there is initially static on the TV in Tulip’s couch scene, and the static is replaced by something that isn't true—a cheerful, funny infomercial, with her friends as actors.

However, in Grace’s memories, there’s static depicting the world outside the scenes, such as views through windows. The static outside the scenes certainly doesn’t match misapprehensions, delusion, denial, or fabrications. It’s possible the ‘default’ pattern outside a scene represents the Passenger’s emotional state. During the scene where the window has static, Grace is experiencing some level of negative emotions (perhaps dread or anxiety). Oddly, a TV screen of sorts launches itself out of Grace’s chest when her body is mostly covered in static, and although it is not something real, it’s not an delusion, fabrication or other untruth.

Inconsistencies

In Episode 9 of Season 1, The Cat, Tulip, and One-One are in an area that’s mostly white; one wall becomes static, and The Cat and Tulip enter a memory through that wall.

The static representation theory makes sense, except for one thing: the Memory-Hazel Intervention scene. If static represents a canvas of negative emotions, the background would logically be static, but it’s not: it’s black walls and a white (or light grey) floor. As Grace breaks down sobbing, the walls and ceiling rapidly change from black to white, making it more like Tulip’s.

However, when Tulip enters Amelia’s memories, there’s briefly a similar background as One-One brings everyone up for a better view when chasing after Amelia. The background while above all of Amelia’s memories is gray and black, much as it was for Grace. It’s possible the background is black when set in a higher “elevation” of the mindscape, due to covering a greater depth or breadth of issues. Grace sobbing is the point when she acknowledges a broad swath of issues, and when it comes down to something smaller and more specific, of not being able to say goodbye to Hazel, the background turns white again.

Rips of static show up in the memory of Amelia hunkering down in her house, mourning Alrick, and the static quickly covers the whole scene. Static-rips in a scene might represent cycling through related negative memories or rumination.

Trauma from the Tape

It is possible going into one’s own memories on the tape could itself cause lasting trauma or turmoil: even conventional therapy can cause lasting psychological harm. The only way to escape the tapes is by confronting and acknowledging one’s trauma or turmoil, almost certainly alone, in a very direct, surreal, scary way, or be trapped forever or die of thirst or starvation. Indeed, it is possible what’s left of Grace’s number is related to her time in her tape. If numbers represent trauma levels or psychosocial maladjustment only in how they relate to the specific troubles that got people on the train, it’s possible getting into the tapes can be so traumatic that people can resolve one issue, get on the train, and then come back specifically to deal with the tape trauma. (Consider Jesse: his problem was something like “He’s a mirror to others”. Even after getting better, he came back because his new “entrance problem” was “M.T. is stuck on the train”.)

Intentions

It is possible Grace’s and Tulip’s tapes operated differently because one was an official tape, and one was not, and the motives for trapping people in their tapes were different. The Cat apparently wanted to trap Tulip in her happiest memories, which would surely affect which memories showed up, and how unhappy memories would be distorted. Simon’s motives were probably more aggressive, given how angry/upset he was when trapping Grace in her memories, and how he got even angrier later on.

[threewaysdivided]

Leaving Canon Behind

If you’ve seen this post and this post and this post you probably saw this coming:

I’m officially unmooring Young Justice: Deathly Weapons from canon beyond Season 1.

I used to have some patience for Season 2.  I like a few of the new characters and, while a lot were frustratingly underexecuted and wasted their potential, I did think some of the ongoing character developments could be interesting.

But the more I think about it - especially with the context from Outsiders - the more unhappy it makes me.  I’ve though about how you might fill in the seasons, what would have to happen to get them to that point and reconcile the character inconsistencies, and it just feels so depressing.

Season 1 gave us a team of teenagers who wanted to prove something and did.  They made mistakes and butted heads, had insecurities and kept secrets but ultimately they learned to trust each other and communicate, and found a place where they could be accepted for who they were and genuinely make a difference.

But then the timeskip happens and when we come back, they barely feel like friends anymore.  They haven’t learned from the lessons of past seasons, they rarely communicate before it escalates to a fight, they don’t trust each other even when they have no reason not to, they rarely spend time together and the new characters have such little development, screen-time and chemistry with the old cast that it doesn’t feel like they’ve forged any genuine relationships, let alone ones strong enough to replace the bonds they’ve lost.  (Tim Drake is Robin because he’s Tim Drake in the comics and no time is given to his character or relationship with Dick beyond that - and the same for Jason, Babs, Cassie, Steph, Raquel and 90% of the newer cast who you’ll only understand or care about if you already care about them from somewhere else).  Somewhere along the way they all just drifted apart, went through so many terrible things that they broke, forgot themselves, forgot their friendships, forgot what they’d learned, and instead of healing or growing or coming together they came back so much lonelier and unhealthier and unhappier as people.

And then Outsiders makes it all the worse.  They again haven’t learned the lessons of the mole plot, none of them meaningfully communicate outside of arguments, Conner and M’gann never properly resolve their relationship-breaking conflict from the first timeskip, what happened to Wally is completely timeskipped over except for Artemis and Dick who mourn in the most trite, generic, impersonal way possible with no care given to who he actually was or the details of the relationships they actually had.  They don’t respect each other, don’t trust each other, don’t even really seem to understand, take the time to reflect on or try to know each other anymore.

Dick, Bruce, Kaldur and M’gann are at this point liabilities to the League; willing to distort and subvert their positions, misuse their power for personal gain or as they see fit, lie to the people closest to them, manipulate younger heroes, reduce their colleagues’ autonomy and deny them the ability to give informed consent, and avoid accountability for their own actions.  And considering how little the lessons from prior seasons have stuck in the past there’s no reason to believe they won’t do so again.  I never thought I’d reach a point where it feels like the heroes would be better off without the original cast.

Meanwhile the villains’ long-term plans are contradictory, unclear and incoherent.  They don’t destroy the League in Season 1 because they apparenlty “need them”, but then they don’t do anything to capitalise on their disorientation or further their plans for 5 years (except for Klarion taking a short side trip to do some magic-tablet shopping so that a poorly-rendered videogame can happen and they can retcon-canonise Kaldur’s father and Tula’s death), because they’re supposedly waiting on some uncertain alien arrival that ends up endangering the world they want to rule, but then in Season 3 they want to regulate metahumans and we see Klarion knows how to activate meta-genes with magic so if they already know about that then why not use Starro to frame the League and get that ball rolling in Season 1?  Earth already has a galactic presence so why do they need to rely on random, incredibly hard-to-predict aliens?  How on any planet does the uncontrolled abject chaos of Outsiders benefit their supposed “evolved earth” in any way?  It’s impossible to figure out the stakes and tension of a win or loss when no-one has personal goals and the final prize is so unclear.

In the end, this is a show about hopeful, promising, collaborating teenagers who grow up to be miserable, isolated, irresponsible, emotionally immature adults whose complete failure and refusal to trust or communicate with others costs them the very team they worked to create.  About increasingly underdeveloped, inconsistent, narratively interchangeable and uninteresting characters who you’d barely know were friends if the story didn’t insist it was so. About a world that’s getting worse and more volatile, less worth saving with each season.  About villains whose plan doesn’t make sense and who have only not been stopped because the heroes are so apathetic and unmotivated that they’ve never tried to proactively uncover or counter their long-term strategy.

A story that ultimately goes nowhere and says nothing, dragged out at the hands of creators who openly don’t want to give it an actual ending at all.  All the problems with Dreamworks’ Voltron and BBC’s Sherlock and Tite Kubo’s Bleach rolled up into one great crescendo of cynical, uncaring, wasteful narrative tragedy.

As a fan-author, I can’t bring myself to do this to these characters.  

I’m upset because I can’t do anything to change the course of canon.  I’m not a shipper, I’m not a theorist, I don’t expect specific things to happen... I just wanted some quality, some answers, for any of it to mean something.  But I couldn't even get onto their horribly anti-consumer streaming service to support it officially back when I still hoped for a turnaround.  I can’t make Weisman or Vietti or their creative team or the DC executives care about narrative construction, this story, or make them respect their audience and characters.  And at this point even if I could the show’s just too broken to salvage.

All I can do is take the parts that had potential and try to make something different.

[raat-jaaga-paakhi]

In Bimonthly Discussions with Shaon Di’s @distapata​. - II

Responding to this post. 

Much like you, Shaon Di, it varies from project to project for me, as it probably should. I will mostly take what I call my master-fandom in consideration here, because it’s what I am focusing on currently and...well, haha, since the canon is in public domain, the master-WIP is as much fanfiction as it is an original work. ;P 

Considering there is this huge bunch of canon that I mostly need to stick to (like you), if only to take the skeleton (main events, plot - you know the drill) of the story and considering I have been fangirling over Mahabharata et al for some 6 years now, I can’t really say how much is enough for me to find it worthy to be written, to invest huge-ass hours and all. But well, in my messed-up head, nothing is ever enough for something as vast as this. I keep forming theories and I keep forming HCs about character motivations, about the politics and the society...heck, I even keep oscillating between what timeline I will put this in, since it decides how I see the culture in those days, and world-building is arguably fully dependent on the time period. So, yeah, there’s that, for one. 

Like you, I too am a passionate daydreamer (*cough* role-playing behind closed doors and getting caught and laughed at by family *cough*), and I think up this...rather audacious scenarios that I can never put into a “serious” project, lol. I am one of those damned people who lean towards not writing stuff which doesn’t sit within the soul of canon. I absolutely adore reading canon divergences (and in my “serious WIPs” I am even rather cruel to those canon stuff that doesn’t seem to flow with respect to the body of the text, the individual characters, and either cut them off, or tweak them as far as justifications can go), but writing AUs is not my cup of tea. I am the sad small bean, that can only daydream. *makes pitiful face* ;P 

The only time I am accepting of AUs in my own works is when an alternate scenario plays out in my character’s head, when they themselves think of what-ifs...and well, then it isn’t really an AU, is it? It is like a... teaser, of what could have been, for both the character within and the reader without. 

Rest of my process is rather frighteningly similar to Shaon Di’s linear method under “fanfiction”, as you can see in this post. Haha, thanks to you, I don’t have to try to sort out the mess in my head more, lol. ;D

I look at the master-fandom as I would at an original work, with harsh scrutiny, and since, er, what we call “canon” is rather full of inconsistencies itself, I gotta treat these people as original characters too. Also, there is the dearth of female characters overall, and I balk at things like “oh, the text doesn’t mention Satyabhama’s mother, so she is dead, yay”. Um, no. Literature is full of dead and dying women, and for the sake of what? So there is that - I have to weave in original dynamics between these “new” characters and the canon ones. And this is only one example of the original stuff I have to insert. There is a lot of reading between the lines, too, which I guess any serious fanfiction writer would do. Basically what Shaon Di herself said about filling all the holes. 

Also also, regarding the time period, if one has to do some dating, we will find the Mahabharata is most likely to fall in the transition from Bronze to Iron Age (at least in my mind), which is what one may call the “Vedic period”, which…kinda has a completely different organisational setting than what we see in the Mahabharata text? (Let’s not even speak of the TV adaptations.) For one, there is hardly any rigid, hierarchical “caste” structure (may I quickly say that Purusha Suktam is kinda misunderstood - they saw words like Brahmin-Shudra etc. and they just jumped “here’s the caste system, Rig Veda advocates casteism!”), or a repression of females (which one may still debate, yes). There is this famous hymn which seems to strongly advocate democracy. Basically, much different from the social structure as we see in Mahabharata. In a nutshell, I have a lot of extrapolations to do, since when a “story” is actually written down (and by whom) has a lot to do with the canon portrayals.

I will unashamedly quote Shaon Di here, because she gives this excellent, brilliant, Medha-has-no-words-except-incoherent-ahs-and-hms-and-yasss analogy of how she views a story (because I am not this eloquent by far, and I have only rambled in a very unorganized manner throughout this, lol) – 

Think of your story like a human body.

Skeleton is the theme. The concept.

Blood is the undercurrents, the 'vibe’.

Organs are the characters.

Veins and arteries are the relationships.

Flesh is your plot.

Skin is the sub plots and side plots.

 Ahahahahahahahahahahaha, look at this! (I am cutting out a lot of my shameless fangirling here, much to the displeasure of Shaon Di herself, because…eh, I can get far too excited about you freakishly intelligent, inspiring, creative people.) This is just so perfect! *chef’s kiss*

For me too, as long as I have got a nice grasp of the skeleton, organs, blood, veins and arteries, I have got it under control. Who are you duping, Medha, you are so out of it. I am not too concerned about flesh and skin because, eh, I believe in letting the organs, veins and arteries guide it. It is more...organic that way, I feel. Lol, this became kinda too biological; I can’t articulate like Shaon Di. 

What actually gets stuff into my to-write list is based (very broadly) on: (1) Can I pull this off? (2) Am I invested enough or Is this worth my time? (this is probably the hardest question to answer, and the most challenging for any project to get a “yes”) and (3) Will at least a few people like to read this shit? – If I get a yes for all, yep gal, you’re in. I mostly concentrate on the first two, personally. I can make stuff people-friendly after I have gotten it out of my system. ;P 

Thank you for hosting this, Didi; I had fun reading your posts and writing this! :D 

[lorem-text]

Reader Request: Top 5 Literature Fails

O Literature, Literature, wherefore art thou Literature?

Whether you’re a bookworm, a once in a blue moon reader, or exclusively read fanfiction of your favourite fictional world on your phone, chances are you’ve read something -be it a line, a paragraph, or an entire story- that made a part of you churn up and die. Don’t worry; we’ve felt it too.

So, from fanfiction to science fiction to smutty literature, here are our Top 5 Literature Fails for your entertainment!

Number 5:  The Social War (Simon Mohler Landis, 1872) 

Starting off with an oldie but baddie, ’The Social War’  is described on Wikipedia as ‘a commercially unsuccessful utopian science fiction novel’. Jess Nevins described it in io9 as "reprehensible trash, the most objectionable utopia of the 19th century, and the worst science fiction novel of that period"

Now, this one was suggested by Maria, and I’ve not read it personally to accurately give you a first-person account of how horrid it is.

But before you judge me for my lack of professionalism and dedication to my work, I should share the reason I haven’t read it:

A week ago, I forgot my copy of the book at the office. When I came back the next day, fully intending to read it in one sitting, I only found its charred remains in the trashcan with Maria and John standing over it, both holding lighters.

As they say, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’...

Number 4: Atlanta Nights (Travis Tea, 2005)

Unlike every other work on this list, "Atlanta Nights" was deliberately designed to be a bad book. 

Published by several authors under the name Travis Tea, the book was designed to be as terrible as possible to test the publishing company PublishAmerica for vanity publishing, essentially publishing books without reviewing them.

They released this awful work of fiction and surprisingly, the company approved to publish the book. The story's plot is nonsensical with characters and events changing in every single chapter. "Atlanta Nights" is written incredibly badly, with some creative writing courses using the book as a guideline for how not to write. 

Number 3: Katerina (James Frey, 2018)

If you’re in the market for bad (and not in a good way) smutty literature, you need not look further than the British magazine Literary Review.  Each year since 1993, Literary Review has presented the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award to the author it deems to have produced the worst description of a sex scene in a novel.

With exposition out of the way, today we’re looking at the winner of 2018′s Bad Sex Award; Katerina, by James Frey.

The story follows Jay, a young American would-be writer, as he drinks and bonks his way around Paris, particularly with a Norwegian model named Katerina. 

The award’s judges at the Literary Review said they had been swayed by several sex scenes in the novel, which include encounters in a car park and in the back of a taxi, but were especially convinced by an extended scene in a Paris bathroom between Jay and Katerina that features eight references to ejaculate.  According to the judges, “Frey prevailed against a strong all-male shortlist by virtue of the sheer number and length of dubious erotic passages in his book. The multiple scenes of sustained fantasy in Katerina could have won Frey the award many times over.” 

Fortunately, Frey took to winning the award humorously and seems to bear no animosity towards the magazine as responding to his win, the author said:  “I am deeply honoured and humbled to receive this prestigious award. Kudos to all my distinguished fellow finalists – you have all provided me with many hours of enjoyable reading over the last year.” 

Number 2: My Immortal: A Harry Potter Fanfiction ( XXXbloodyrists666XXX, 2006-2007)

With a reputation as the worst piece of fanfiction on the internet and its very own Wikipedia page, no bad literature list is complete without My Immortal.

Known for its incomprehensible narrative and constant digressions, the story centres on the vampire witch "Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way" and her relationships with the characters of the Harry Potter series, particularly her romantic relationship with Draco Malfoy. Ultimately, she is prompted by visions to travel back in time to try to defeat the main antagonist of the series, Lord Voldemort. 

Since the beginning of the work's publication, it has gained infamy for its awful writing, plot inconsistency and complete disregard for the original Harry Potter source material. Despite this, the series has also inspired multiple derivative works, including a YouTube web series, and is viewed with nostalgia for adolescent fan life. 

I have started this story many times and read it to the end twice and let me tell you, it’s one hell of an experience. 

The legitimacy of this work of fiction has been a subject of debate for many years now. However, regardless of whether it’s genuine or an attempt at satire, My Immortal is a great read for a fun night with your friends, if you can stomach it. Just remember not to take it seriously.

Number 1: Moon People (Dale M. Courtney, 2008)

Finally, we reach Number 1.

Moon People by Dale M. Courtney is by far the best book I have ever read. The entertainment provided by the innumerable mistakes, grammar clashes, story holes and demands for suspension of disbelief makes it one of the greatest published works of fiction. No one.... could intentionally write this.  Except, apparently, Dale M. Courtney.

The book chronicles the journey of David Brayner, a science teacher-turned-astronaut, in his relatively sudden interplanetary adventure as 1st Science Officer of Lunar Base 1, and from the very first page, it’s a wild ride of spelling mistakes, questionable grammar, and multiple passages you’ll skip through in an attempt to spare your brain cells the excruciating pain of being deep-fried in space lava.

Notorious for its incoherent prose and irrelevant digressions, this book is so bad, Huffington Post did an article chronicling just how awful it actually is. 

I...honestly can't say much more about this one; it's really so terrible that there's not one specific point to begin. In a twist of irony, the reviews for the book are delightfully sarcastic, highlighting the book's many shortcomings. 

The best part? It’s the first book in a trilogy, so if your brain cells haven’t turned into deep-fried onion rings after the first book’s 61 pages, you have a total of 238 pages of rivetting action-packed space adventures left to go!

Eliot Wilde, journalist and writer for Night Owl and host of Night Owl FM

[illustrious-rocket]

Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution 2: Anemone (review)

Score: * (out of 4)

Summary: A creatively bankrupt film that represents a new low for a beloved yet beleaguered franchise, Anemone is an epic misfire that begs comparisons to, of all things, The Room.

Long review (spoilers):

The story of the Eureka Seven franchise has been a long, and unfortunately, often troubled one. I have a separate post in development documenting its history through my eyes as someone who got into the series long after its original airing, so many of the matters relating to that subject will not be in this post. What this post is, however, is a breakdown of what makes this one film a failure.

Strap in, this is going to be a ride.

After several years in dormancy following the ill-received Eureka Seven AO, a new film trilogy titled Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution was announced. Immediately, this news begged comparisons to other cinematic reboots to well known franchises, two examples being the recent Code Geass reboot series and, more notably, Rebuild of Evangelion. I know when Hi-Evolution was announced, I was apprehensive. I dropped AO halfway through, and the installment of the franchise prior to it (Pocketful of Rainbows/Good Night, Sleep Tight, Young Lovers) was an average at best alternate universe. I was curious to see what the Hi-Evolution trilogy would do, but I had little faith that Tomoki Kyoda and Bones would produce something to redeem the series after AO.

The first film would later be promoted as finally telling an untold part of the story: the First Summer of Love, an incident in which main protagonist Renton’s father Adrock gained hero status for saving the world during an incident involving the alien Scub Coral. Unfortunately, this proved to be a bait and switch. The new animation depicting the First Summer of Love - which came about as the result of the military’s Operation Necrosis, a mission to use a weapon called Silver Box to destroy the Scub Coral and liberate Earth - comprises only a fraction of the film. The rest is made up, somehow, of footage recycled from the 2005 series with new audio dubbed over it to tell an altered story. As a result, the first film was mostly a failure.

Then the second film was announced to focus on Anemone, an immensely popular supporting character from the original series. Not only that, it would portray an angle of the Eureka Seven universe never seen before: for the first time, the story would take place in the ‘real’ world, being set in Tokyo. This represented a greater ambition on the part of the production, but also was a concept that could easily go wrong. Prior to the release of the film, I was expecting it to be another sort-of-retelling, this time focusing on the psychadelic nightmare depicted in the infamous original series episode “Acperience 1.”

If only that was what this film actually was.

I admit, when I saw this film, I had already been spoiled on its plot. I am glad I was, because had I not been, I would have found the movie incomprehensible. Tomoki Kyoda’s attitudes going into producing it have also been troubling, particularly remarks about “auteurism” in one interview. When the words “A Tomoki Kyoda Film” appeared on the screen at the beginning of this film, I gulped. I knew I was in for something.

The film opens with a flashback sequence introducing Anemone as a character and explaining some of the context of the movie’s story. Two problems immediately become apparent. One, this sequence - and all flashbacks to similar moments throughout the film - is rendered in full 3D CGI that looks extremely cheap. The colors and shading create the image of dull, flat figures created by a 3D printer moving around on CGI backgrounds. Worse, the mouth movements in these 3D CGI scenes do not match the dialogue. Viewing this movie, you will see mouth flaps regularly desync from the audio.

Worse yet, this movie is titled “Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution: Anemone” and was promoted as being an Anemone film, but Anemone is not in it. The “Anemone” in this film is, in fact, a new character named Fuuka who looks like her and has the nickname Anemone. She isn’t Anemone, though, because her character is completely different. It couldn’t be any more unlike the original Anemone’s. She’s an exact polar opposite of who Anemone actually was. The fact that this film is an even bigger bait and switch than the first one was is bad enough. But even if you roll with the idea of Anemone being a totally different character, it introduces problems that undermine the film internally. Let’s put a pin in that for now.

Anyway, the movie establishes Fuuka/Anemone’s backstory as a military brat whose father, Ken, was killed during an operation to fight an “Eureka,” one of several phenomena that destroyed the planet over time, eventually annihilating many nations and killing nearly three billion people. She is an inoffensive character, but does not have much at all of the spark the original Anemone had, instead sacrificing it for more typical tropes. Once the flashback concludes, the film jumps forward to the present day. Here, the first thing we see is a long battle sequence in which military forces battle “Eureka Seven” (the seventh Eureka), which attacks with a manifestation of the Nirvash. This sequence is drawn out and poorly plotted, making the action difficult to follow. That’s a problem throughout the film, in fact - we see cuts to similar battle scenes many times, and they always feel like incoherent sequences where things just explode to fill space.

Once this incoherent battle sequence ends, the true plot begins to kick in. Anemone consults “Dominic,” an app installed on her phone by Ken during the earlier flashback, for advice during the battle, and Dominic’s advice leads the military to decide to send Anemone “diving” into Eureka Seven using a special device. This device greatly resembles a virtual reality setup, but when activated, it sends Anemone into flashbacks to the original series. Here is where the recycled 2005 footage comes back in, but this time, it is executed better thanks to the context of it being in an “alternate world.” Anemone is sent to a moment where Nirvash and theEND battled in the original series and manages to destroy Nirvash, catching a glimpse of Eureka holding Renton’s clothing before being ejected from the dive. This causes a portion of Eureka Seven to be destroyed in the real world, which is humanity’s first victory against the phenomena.

There are several things we need to unpack here. First, the Dominic app. This is a bizarre reinvention of the character Dominic Sorel from the original series, who was a military officer that usually served as Anemone’s handler, often found himself on the receiving end of her abuse, and ultimately became her love interest. He had a story arc alongside Anemone where he came to doubt his role in the military and had his views evolve over time until he changed sides to join the heroes. Here, he is nothing but an annoying app with no real characterization. Worse, the avatar of his face rendered on the phone is depicted with CGI even worse than the flashbacks. Many of his sentences will begin with Dominic’s mouth moving, only for him to stop moving his mouth halfway through and yet continue to talk. It is a jarring sight to see every time it happens.

While the use of 2005 footage is better contextualized this time, and there is even some new footage animated in original 4:3 style, other things happen that bring down anything good that could come of this. Because all the leaps take Anemone to various battles between Nirvash and theEND, a plot hole is created: if Fuuka is the real Anemone, how was theEND there battling Nirvash before she leaped into it using the dive device? Worse, still, because of how different Fuuka and original Anemone’s personalities are, there is abrupt shifting back and forth in her character within the same scenes. Fuuka is, to put it mildly, an average anime girl who hits the usually expected tropes. Original Anemone was an ill-tempered, mentally damaged person with a violent streak and an addiction to drugs given to her by series antagonist Dewey Novak, who abused her and took advantage of her depression and need for validation to benefit himself. The problem comes in the fact that some of the recycled footage from 2005 includes showing Anemone piloting theEND in battle. Because Fuuka and original Anemone are so different, she suddenly becomes much more bloodthirsty and violent and then reverts back depending on when the individual moment was animated. It’s not consistent and takes the viewer out of the film. Another inconsistency in this same place comes with Dominic, who manifests as Dominic Sorel while inside Eureka Seven. He is present inside theEND’s cockpit while Anemone pilots, but even while new footage is animated for these sequences, Dominic is not present for the Anemone combat shots. He appears and disappears between individual shots.

Moving on. This basic setup drives much of the film. Anemone makes more dives into the world within the Eureka Seven, each time returning back to a battle between Nirvash and theEND that ends with a portion of Eureka Seven in the real world being destroyed. Because she is responsible for humanity turning the tide in the battle against the Eurekas, Anemone is turned into an idol by the military for propaganda purposes. This element is severely underplayed and has little real signficance in the plot. Her primary motivation is to come to terms with Ken’s fate battling the Eurekas, and thanks to this and intelligence gathered during the missions, the military decides to bring Anemone to meet a familiar face: Dewey Novak. Unlike the rest of the characters in the film sans Eureka herself, Dewey is the real one, having been ejected from another world heavily implied to be the world depicted in the first Hi-Evolution film. He was captured by the military outside Eureka Seven and placed in restraints that cover his eyes, while his legs are trapped in the other world and fade away to nothing.

Dewey’s presence in this film accomplishes little other than give tastes of what it could have been and provide sequel bait for a future installment. Many of his scenes are merely him saying mysterious and vaguely threatening things, none of which really make sense in the context of this movie alone. Further, because he is the Hi-Evolution 1 Dewey and Anemone is Fuuka, the reunion of the two ends up having no emotional resonance at all. In the original series, Anemone suffered terrible physical and mental abuse at Dewey’s hands, through his administering drugs to enhance her performance in battle and dispensing praise and attention in measured amounts to ensure her compliance. The idea that Anemone would be reunited with Dewey, who is now (apparently) a ragged, powerless old man at the mercy of his captors, could have been an opportunity for great mental catharsis as Anemone finally obtains closure for what Dewey did to her. But because neither one of them knows the other, this ends up being a false start. They merely speak about the mission against the Eurekas and therefore the dialogue could be between any two people. It is not something only Anemone and Dewey together could do, and feels wasted.

As her mission continues on, Anemone eventually destroys enough of Eureka Seven to expose its core. The core has a design that was clearly intended to be frightening, but instead is laughable; it is covered with small eyes and has one big one whose expression makes it look tired and unhappy about having to show up. Suddenly, Anemone gets trapped in “PLAY BACK” during her dive, a phenomenon that rewinds time back through the events in the earlier dives. She ends up being brought to a time just prior to Ken’s death, where she is confronted by Eureka.

The film was not good until this point. At this exact moment, it completely falls apart.

Eureka is no longer the naive but well-meaning girl from the original series, or even the mother who would go to any lengths for her children from AO. In fact, those Eurekas never existed at all. The “true” Eureka is a psychopath who became this way after accidentally killing Renton when her powers were awakened by her exposure to Silver Box (thus implying the event took place in the Hi-Evolution 1 world.) Since then, she has been using Silver Box’s power to rewind time and try to create new worlds where she can have her happy ending with Renton, but they all go wrong, forcing her to “PLAY BACK” and start over again. These actions were responsible for creating every other part of the franchise - the original series, manga, light novels, Pocketful of Rainbows, AO, all of them were nothing but dreams made real through Eureka’s use of Silver Box’s power, in the process releasing the Eurekas in the real world and killing billions of people.

Needless to say, this twist is appalling and fails in more ways than one. First of all, it renders the entire plot of this movie and the trilogy dependant upon knowing the events from the previous installments. If you don’t know anything about what took place in the previous installments, this twist is meaningless to you. It only lands if you have an attachment to the events now revealed to be false worlds. But if you have this attachment, the movie then steps squarely into the same mistake AO made by revealing that what you liked in the past didn’t end up the way you thought it did and wasn’t real. Worse, though, it makes it hard to care about any form of the franchise anymore, because at this point, it becomes apparent that every character can be whatever the demands of the plot dictate. When no character has an actual consistent personality that won’t change on a dime depending on the whims of the plot, there is no reason to get invested in them. Eureka is now essentially Monika from Doki Doki Literature Club, killing innocents and erasing entire worlds out of an overwhelming selfishness to get her own happy ending. It’s a complete betrayal of the central character. This twist also disrupts the logic of the timeline even further - because Anemone was leaping into battles between Nirvash and theEND, theEND already had to be there, but since Anemone didn’t meet Eureka until this point, how could she have created a world where Anemone was her enemy prior to meeting her?

Eureka offers to create a world in which Ken survived, but Anemone refuses, and after Anemone leaves, this happens.

There is little to say about this image, as it is the downfall of this franchise encapsulated in a single picture. The scene itself is even worse, rendered in the CGI and as awful to look at in action as it is in a still image. Worse still, Eureka’s dialogue in this scene has her saying that she is willing to become “the devil itself” to get her happy ending, which just butchers her character even further.

When Eureka Seven is destroyed and Eureka falls into despair over being unable to reach Renton, a new monster appears and goes on a rampage. At this point, Dewey suddenly reveals he has superpowers by breaking out of his restraints, manifesting his legs and showing that his eyes at least temporarily turn black. He telekinetically escapes from the prison, displaying powers similar to those of Truth, the main antagonist of AO. I strongly suspect he will be treated as a Dewey/Truth amalgamation in the final film of this trilogy.

With nothing left she can do, Anemone calls out an unheard phrase Ken once told her to call when she needs him. This causes Dominic to reappear, and he summons a new form of theEND that resembles Gulliver, her pet badger, into the real world. Together, they resolve to enter the monster so Anemone can try to save Eureka, and engage it in battle. This sequence is the only truly good portion of the film, offering a stunning example of what an Eureka Seven movie could have been and finally truly recapturing its magic. Contrary to the previous battle sequences, this one is well choreographed, exciting, and is enhanced by the presence of Ballet Mechanique during it. Unfortunately, this dizzying high is fleeting. When she reaches the inside of the monster and dives into its world, Anemone finds Eureka at the apartment complex from Fuuka’s childhood. This means we’re back into the awful CGI again. Eureka confesses her actions and motivations to Anemone, but Anemone refuses to give up on her and honor her request to kill her now that she no longer can use Silver Box’s power to make more worlds. This being Fuuka instead of original Anemone, and the alterations to the timeline, end up leaving no relationship between Eureka and Anemone in the “real” timeline. Like the interactions between Dewey and Anemone, there is little emotional resonance. Anemone manages to convince Eureka to leave, but before they can escape, the most stupefying event yet begins.

Millions of giant Gullivers begin pouring out of the apartment building and eating the entire world, forcing Eureka and Anemone to escape from them. If this sounds like a dumb visual, it is. The Gullivers also have the voice of Larva Nirvash from Pocketful of Rainbows for some reason. Yet this scene is treated completely seriously, with heroic music and everything, creating an embarrassing sequence that is impossible not to cringe during.

Eureka and Anemone escape, destroying the monster and causing it to drop a giant egg. Everything that happens after this point feels like a post credits scene placed in the wrong point of the film. Somehow, the Gekkostate members, Dominic Sorel, a giant Gulliver, and Charles and Ray Beams all appear in the real world despite their worlds being false. Dewey, having gotten to the surface, says more mysterious comments to set up the sequel. Anemone and Eureka talk, and Anemone says she thinks Renton may still be alive after all. Suddenly, the egg cracks open to reveal a new Nirvash model, whose drive displays Eureka’s name inside of it. Eureka realizes someone is searching for her, and the final shot of the film reveals Renton on another planet, using his Compac Drive to call out to Eureka.

Now that the plot is fully picked apart, I feel like I have to finally sit and really address one of the major elephants in the room when it comes to this film. In both broad strokes and smaller, more specific instances that would not be notable if the context of the more blatant examples didn’t exist, this film heavily copies things from the various installations of the Evangelion franchise. I don’t mean this as a reference to mere inspiration from Evangelion, which is widespread. This film is blatant, Darling in the FRANXX Episode 19-levels of copying things from it.

One doesn’t even need to actually view a single second of the film to see this, either. The teaser poster sets a trend the rest of the movie follows by brazenly copying the imagery of the Evangelion 2.22 poster.

Needless to say, this image sets the stage for what you see within the film itself. Within just the first 10 minutes, it becomes immediately apparent that Anemone lifts stylistic choices and imagery wholesale from Evangelion. Throughout the film, but most plainly in the early scenes, the scenery and composition of camera shots are directly lifted; when I first watched it, it was mere minutes into the film that I stopped and said “oh my God, this is ripping off Eva.” Smash cuts into title cards and scene transitions abound at the beginning (the first thing that made me notice the copying) and the first battle sequence is not just ‘inspired’ but flat out stolen from the well known battle sequence featured at the beginning of Evangelion. It steals the imagery of tanks and battleships engaging the enemy wholesale, and the story’s lead character (Anemone/Shinji) is being driven through the battle to an important location by a female character in a position of authority (Mischa and her crew/Misato), where the main character is coerced into piloting a weapon (the dive system/Eva Unit-01) against the enemy (Nirvash & Eureka Seven/the Angel) that nobody else can defeat.

Things don’t really improve for this topic after getting through the first battle. The unit “ASSID” that Anemone enlists and serves in is more or less a copy of NERV, both being paramilitary units ostensibly under affiliation with the United Nations to battle the enemy creatures. This might not be a big deal on its own, but in the context of the more obvious copying elsewhere in the movie, it is an example of something that is made worse by the rest of the film. We reach another shamelessly stolen point a little while later, when Anemone goes to visit Dewey. First of all, Dewey is held in a complex whose design - from the vast open spaces to the elevator to Dewey’s cell deep underground - is blatantly ‘inspired’ by Terminal Dogma, a chamber of similar design concept deep underneath the NERV base where the Angel Lilith is restrained on a cross. Accordingly, Dewey’s personal state is seemingly copied from Lilith’s. For no reason, Dewey has his arms pulled back onto a cross-like structure on the back of his wheelchair, giving him the appearance of being crucified sitting down; meanwhile, his eyes are covered with a blindfold, in context seemingly mirroring Lilith’s mask. Most notably, however, is one of the oddest things about Dewey’s appearance in this film: his legs fading away into another world. Lilith’s legs are also significantly malformed, barely forming stumps before splitting into dozens of tiny human-like legs. Both having such a specific, unusual similarity is hard not to notice. He even regains his legs after an important event related to him - the defeat of Eureka Seven and emergence of the Eureka monster - takes place, much like how Lilith regrows her legs in the original Evangelion series after the Spear of Longinus is removed from her body.

Also notably, the way Nirvash is suspended in the real world as it fights the military forces clearly mirrors the way Evangelion units are transported by air, save for the blatant crucifixion imagery being removed. This is depicted on the poster for Anemone I posted above. There are other smaller, more nitpicky examples of the specific cribbing from Evangelion I am excluding from this review to more highlight the significant ones.

Next let’s move on to something you’ve likely been waiting to see if you’re reading this review: the comparison to The Room. I’m sure that will likely cause some controversy, but I feel it’s on solid footing. As I mentioned, Kyoda remarked about having reached a point of “auteurism” with this film. That comment implies a certain mentality on his part that he absolutely failed to live up to, and it is hard to not see shades of Tommy Wiseau and his fanatical belief in The Room in Kyoda’s belief in his film’s quality. There is one point where they diverge that is troubling, though - Tommy Wiseau, after releasing The Room and seeing its reception, realized how people saw it and decided to roll with the reputation The Room acquired even though it wasn’t what he intended. Kyoda, on the other hand, seems to believe that his movie is the masterpiece he thought it to be and everyone else is wrong about it. To me, this represents a self-fulfilling prophecy in which Kyoda doubles down on previous mistakes in each new installment because they were poorly received the first time, as if he believes doing so will eventually force people to “get” what he’s doing. You can see in Anemone a doubling down on three of the worst aspects of AO: time travel/dimension hopping, butchering Eureka/past characters, and the inclusion of boring and irrelevant “real world” politics. It is like if Tommy Wiseau, instead of becoming self-aware after The Room was treated as a joke, decided to teach the public why his filmmaking style was right by getting the rights to make an adaptation of War and Peace with his style in it.

The continual doubling down on mistakes is something that can be traced through the franchise all the way back to the very first followup, the 2009 film Pocketful of Rainbows. As someone who only got into the Eureka Seven franchise many years later, my relationship to that film is different from that of people who were fans during that era, so I sought out opinions from a friend who was an original-era Eureka Seven fan. As it turned out, topics I was already honing in one turned out to have been controversial or poorly received back then, too. While Pocketful of Rainbows was ostensibly set on real-world Earth, it continued to feature the fantasy political structure from the original series, so that problem was at least partially dodged. One big flaw of Pocketful of Rainbows we did agree upon was its extensive use of recycled footage, with my friend pointing out that it also had an ugly gray filter applied to it, giving the film a “darker” look. Comparisons to what was released in 2018 are almost painfully obvious, and arguably even uglier than the filtered footage in 2009 was because of the fact the recycled footage is now 4:3 in a 16:9 film. Pocketful of Rainbows also drastically changes its characters, turning Gekkostate into the villains, Anemone into an elderly priestess/prophet of the Scubs, Dominic into a bit character who appears briefly as Renton and Eureka’s mentor before dying ten minutes into the film and popping up again later very briefly, the Scubs themselves becoming the “robotic” “EIZO,” and most notoriously, derailing Eureka in a fashion to which I will simply quote my friend:

For example, Eureka was made into this tsundere childhood friend of Renton, which felt cliche and unnatural. Not only that, but Eureka was completely helpless for much of the film. She didn't do any fighting and was just a broken bird for Renton to save. Some people took it as an insult to her character, a huge step down from the capable girl she was in the original.It's a common theme in these other entries, really. Eureka is consistently disrespected and derailed as a character to just fit the narrative. 

Another point about Pocketful of Rainbows that comes back in AO and Hi-Evolution is its use of alternate realities. While the original did establish such a concept existed, the followups have increasingly abused the idea of alternate universes to retcon previous installments, retcon themselves, and ultimately in Hi-Evolution 2, completely delete the entire franchise from existence.

As someone who came into the series late, I have always felt that Pocketful of Rainbows is an average, watchable film that fails to live up to its excellent predecessor, but I can easily understand why fans in the original era would not have liked it. It is not a good Eureka Seven film, but unlike AO and Hi-Evolution, it still feels like Eureka Seven. In my opinion, it includes enough of the spirit of the original in its fairytale-esque story (including the use of one, singular parallel universe) to still capture the whimsical tone that distinguishes the original series. That is where Tomoki Kyoda’s constant insistence on doubling down on the same mistakes over and over and over has destroyed the franchise since then, and the Hi-Evolution Anemone film is the pinnacle of that collapse. It tops all its predecessors in terms of alternate universe abuse, character derailment, and boring and irrelevant politics, choking out the soul of the franchise. As I said earlier, the Ballet Mechanique sequence is the only moment in this film that truly feels like Eureka Seven. That may be because at the core of Kyoda’s discernable vision, it would appear he wants Eureka Seven to be a darker story with a much more bittersweet ending. The problem comes with the fact that even if it was childishly naive, the unambiguously happy ending of the original series was a big part of its unique identity landing so effectively. I have mused before that what made Eureka Seven stand out was the fact that it combined a mecha anime with themes from 1960s counterculture, which effectively worked hand-in-hand with the fairytale tone of the story to create something unique. Even as childishly naive as it may have been, it was always at its heart about fighting for the right thing and for love, no matter what the odds or the forces opposing you. This wasn’t what Kyoda planned for it to be, it is what the series evolved into once other minds placed input into it. Now don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of respect to be had for a creator who sticks to their vision, but Kyoda has doubled down on the same ideas so many times now while remaining stubbornly closed-minded to the merits of the original’s evolution that any goodwill has burned away. Pocketful of Rainbows still felt like Eureka Seven because it still captured that idea of fighting for the right thing no matter what, but it did have a bittersweet ending. People criticized that movie, and Kyoda followed up by creating the grim, depressing Eureka Seven AO that retroactively inflicted damage on the original, as if it wanted to retcon what he was unhappy with. AO was rejected by fans, so he takes the same ideas and makes them even worse, flat out retconning the entire franchise out of existence with a film that barely has any identity of its own beyond undoing Kyoda’s dissatisfaction with his past work.

In the end, all these problems, in my opinion, come back to Tomoki Kyoda and his stubborn, singleminded obsession with executing a vision and forcing it to be liked. The first screening of this film in the United States, at the recent Anime Expo, was a very telling moment for it. As per my friend (original post at this link https://historyman101.tumblr.com/post/186188741243/so-i-was-talking-with-my-friend-pantsunugerumon), the Anemone screening was attended by only enough people to 1/3 fill the hall, and the film was met with silence for almost its entire runtime, the only moment eliciting cheers being the appearance of Gekkostate, Renton and Charles and Ray at the end. When the credits rolled, there was more silence followed by polite applause when the audience realized it was over. Kaori Nazuka, Eureka’s seiyuu, was in attendance and made a comment during the Q&A section of the presentation that also did an excellent job encapsulating the reason Kyoda’s approach brought the film and the franchise down. Accoring to Nazuka (voice clip provided by my friend via his friend who attended AX https://historyman101.tumblr.com/post/186190292840/kaori-nazuka-strikes-me-as-someone-who-is-just), Kyoda told her not to worry about Eureka being so different in this film because as long as she provides Eureka’s voice, it will always be Eureka. While it is true that a voice is an important part of an iconic character, it demonstrates a mentality that characterization, development and logical progression doesn’t matter. Those are key factors for any work, but especially for a character-centric story like Eureka Seven that lives and dies on getting you to care about the characters and what they experience. If characters become completely fluid and change on a dime to suit the director’s whims, the entire backbone of the story collapses.

I could go on for ages about this film, but I’ll finally wrap this review up. Since I reviewed a film that was ruined by its director’s obsession with executing a specific vision, next time, I will review a movie whose director was able to carry out their vision with exactly the creative control Tomoki Kyoda wanted himself.

[abigailzimmer]

Top 2018 Reads

I am immensely grateful for writers this year and the weird and difficult and beautiful and eye-opening worlds they take us. 

I was delighted with the elegance of Ada Limon’s poems in The Carrying; and Megan Stielstra’s humor and optimism about creativity, community, and Chicago in The Wrong Way to Save Your Life; and the utter joy of language and love and owning who you are exuded throughout Jordy Rosenberg’s Confessions of the Fox; and the imagination of Octavia Butler, whose work I finally read (consumed? there is no one else like her! The Parable of the Sower had me in her world for weeks); and that’s basically one list of favorite reads. Here’s another:

1-2. I wish that Getting Dressed by Amy Lipman and Starfish by Sara Goodman were on every top list of 2018! I am biased, I suppose, knowing them and being/writing in community with them, but I truly believe that if you are craving that feeling of being welcomed into intimate moments via reading, these are books that will gift you this. Sara’s book takes you on a walk as she wanders Chicago in the winter and thinks about climate change and stars and woolly mammoths and queer identity. Amy’s book invites you into her home as she examines the relationships between objects, people, her patterns of thinking, shifting your own awareness of self: “The senses aren’t reliable / they’re flat until / someone walks in.” Both writers bring a sense of amazement and curiosity about their world that makes you see your environment differently. 

3. The best word to describe Wild Milk by Sabrina Orah Mark is delicious. I tried to savor this book story by story so it wasn’t read up too fast. There are particular writers whose voices feel like a blanket tucked tight around you or like stepping into your own skin or anything else that is warm and holding and feels like entering home, and Mark’s characters and whimsical dialogue and sentences that repeat over and over like they’re weaving a basket--another container to hold you--does that for me. I have too many metaphors going on. Here are Mark’s own sentences: “Mrs. Horowitz always refers to her husband as Mr. Horowitz should they ever one day become strangers to each other” and “‘Could Gloria come to you?’ ‘Her magnificence makes this impossible.’” If you like very short stories which slip into fabulism, humor, and poignancy without you fully understanding how you got anywhere, then you should read this book. And, lucky you who hasn’t read her first two collections, continue on to read her other work.

4. God Was Right by Diana Hamilton. I can’t remember in what journal I first came across a poem of Diana’s which led me to follow her on social media about the time she announced a forthcoming book of “arguments” from Ugly Duckling Presse which I immediately preordered (what a century we live in!). But thank goodness it happened, because these are delightful essays / poems / arguments about kissing and cats and being bi and teaching consent and reading books for the second time. She writes about the pleasure of the familiar and about freely contradicting herself (or rather evolving in thought) throughout the book, as poems allow us to do. So begins one argument:

It is stupid to imagine that cats, or really anything, are perfect. 

Sure, you are, and I am especially, occasionally stupid,

and it is right to be this kind of stupid when a cat is standing on your shoulders.

But when given the opportunity to reflect more calmly, in the absence of cats, it should be clear that there are ways cats could improve.

5. In The Word Pretty, Elisa Gabbert reflects on all the things we think about as readers and (for some of us) as writers but don’t articulate, such as how we picture descriptions or the point of titling work and how we interact with the front matter of a book or the ways in which the meaning of pretty has changed. Her short and funny(!!) essays remind me of grad school—not the rigorous work of academia itself (which isn’t to say there isn’t rigor in these essays, just that it flows effortlessly) but the late night musings between friends on what their favorite books are doing and how they do it. In reading this one book, you are immersed in dozens. 

6. An empty pet factory and moons orbiting dumplings in a restaurant and god inventing a more flexible forgiveness are just some of the worlds Matthea Harvey has created in Modern Life. She breaks up her playful prose poems like the one below with a running long poem, a kind of alliterative abecedarium, on love and war and healing that begs to be read aloud, read slowly.

7. Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli is great reading and background on the journey and challenges migrant children face when seeking refuge from violence in their home countries, told by a translator/interpreter in the US immigration court who is familiar with our limited system in providing refuge. I can't talk it up enough! It's a good place to start if you're wondering how we got here and what we can do, because as Luiselli states, it is “not some distant problem in a foreign country, but in fact a transnational problem that includes the United States."

8. Carmen Maria Machado’s debut of short stories, Her Body and Other Parties, is everywhere and for good reason. Women are sewn up in clothes, a plague moves through the United States while a narrator reflects on her past sexual encounters, and, In my favorite story, Law & Order episodes are retold with a cast of otherwordly victims which makes you question how much women are valued in our world.

9. Tommy Orange’s debut novel, There, There, is a story of several Indigenous people whose lives eventually intersect at a pow-wow in San Francisco. Orange’s characters are so vivid, real with their struggles of pain and addiction, and his writing retells the story of generations from the side of the oppressed. “This was the sound of pain forgetting itself in song,” writes Orange. I couldn’t put it down and wandered aimlessly after I finished it, wishing I was back in this world. 

10. I can’t recommend Rebecca Solnit’s work enough, and while she came out with a fantastic book this year on activism and recent political events, it was an older book, The Faraway Nearby, that I couldn’t stop thinking about. She writes about the stories we tell of ourselves and the legends that have shaped our communities, of caregiving and memory, the states of emergency and becoming. Her essays wander through ice and a mountain of apricots and the story of Frankenstein, somehow threaded together because "all stories are really just fragments of one story." If it had been my copy, there would have been underlined portions on every page. As it was the library's, I just wrote down passages such as this one: 

"Listen: you are not yourself, you are crowds of others, you are as leaky a vessel as was ever made, you have spent vast amounts of your life as someone else, as people who died long ago, as people who never lived, as strangers you never met. The usual 'I' we are given has all the tidy containment of the kind of character the realist novel specializes in and none of the porousness of our every waking moment, the loose threads, the strange dreams, the forgettings and misrememberings, the portions of a life lived through others' stories, the incoherence and inconsistency, the pantheon of dei ex machina and the companionability of ghosts. There are other ways of telling."

[dweemeister]

Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)

The Walt Disney Company is on a financial rampage. Its pending acquisition of 20th Century Fox will be just the latest of a long line of safe purchases by its chairman and CEO Bob Iger – perhaps the first step in erasing the glorious history of a rival, formative major Hollywood studio. In the midst of rapid change in how television and cinema is consumed and distributed, the Walt Disney Animation Studios remains the spiritual home of the corporate behemoth that has been banking hard on monetizing nostalgia to decrease its risks. Apart from (recent) Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel, and whatever else Disney has acquired, the Walt Disney Animation Studios can be proud of its history of artistic innovation and narrative timelessness. So it is dispiriting that Rich Moore and Phil Johnston’s Ralph Breaks the Internet will be the first of two of the Animation Studios’ sequels over the next two years (the other is 2019′s Frozen 2 – good riddance to John Lasseter). This sequel to Wreck-It Ralph (2012; which I enjoyed) drowns in its thematic incoherence about the Internet, muddles a well-intentioned center about the nature of friendship, and overdoses of my least favorite things about recent Disney movies – making hollow metatextual jokes about the Disney Company and previous Disney movies; the latter reveals a modern-day Disney ashamed of its past in all the wrong places.

For all that and more, Ralph Breaks the Internet – which, again, I enjoyed while watching it in a theater – is the worst Disney movie for at least a decade. It goes beyond Big Hero 6′s (2014) bombastic Marvel-sized corporatism and Zootopia’s (2016) ultra-contemporary character behavior. As a professed Disney fan cut by a different cloth, the passes that recent canonical Disney movies have received from other, noticeably hesitant-to-criticize fan-reviewers (apologies for all those hyphens) reveal a brand loyalty that yours truly does not possess. Animation history cannot be written without mentioning the works of Walt Disney Animation Studios. And thus they must be held to highest standards.

The film begins six years after the original, with Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly) and Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) the best of friends at Litwak’s Family Fun Center and Arcade. Vanellope is tiring of her game, Sugar Rush, and a contrived moment which will make you question whether the arcade characters have free will and which results in the destruction of the game’s steering wheel controller sees Sugar Rush being unplugged – leaving its characters homeless (if this makes no sense to you, you probably did not see the first movie). Soon after, Mr. Litwak has plugged in a new Wi-Fi router, connecting the arcade to the Internet. Ralph and Vanellope decide to travel to the Internet and purchase a replacement wheel as soon as they can. They head to eBay, and in their enthusiasm, overbid for the wheel. As a result, they must raise $27,001 – which looks like a decent final score in a game of Jeopardy! – as they navigate pop-up advertisers, the dark web, a Disney fansite that needs more Eeyore and Grumpy, a YouTube knockoff led by an algorithm named Yesss (Taraji P. Henson; no the character is not named “Yasss”), and a Grand Theft Auto-like online game called Slaughter Race.

In Slaughter Race, in conversation with charismatic racer Shank (Gal Gadot), Vanellope finds what she believes to be her virtual calling. Ralph, who has been monetizing videos on that YouTube knockoff by making an absolute fool of himself, overhears his best and only friend thinking about leaving Sugar Rush. He is despondent, and willing to do too much to keep Vanellope in Sugar Rush. All this inspires plotline (Vanellope, who is essentially a child, wants to live in what probably is an M-rated game? Do these concerns make me a game-phobic adult?) and universe logic questions that are too numerous to bring up in this review. For that alone, Phil Johnston (Zootopia) and Pamela Ribon’s (2016′s Moana, 2017′s Smurfs: The Lost Village) screenplay can be described, charitably, as calamitous.

Take a deep breath; that synopsis was a lot, I know. Now, do you like Fortnite references? What about Internet memes that allow this reviewer to approximate when this screenplay was finished within a three- to six-month window? Do you care for lazy product placement for Twitter, Google, YouTube, Facebook, eBay, Amazon, Instagram, Snapchat, and especially ©Disney and its ever-growing list of intellectual properties? If you said yes to each of these questions, then Ralph Breaks the Internet is probably going to be your favorite film in the Disney animated canon.

I am just grateful the film did not find the space for 4chan or InfoWars.

In a year where all these corporations and some of their most prolific, famous users have been under much-delayed scrutiny for their ethical misbehavior, Ralph Breaks the Internet seems to want to say something, at times, about their worst aspects. The comments section in the YouTube knockoff that Ralph attempts to monetize videos with has a comments section room, teeming with negativity and cruelty. Because this is a Disney film, you have to imagine casual racism and sexism must be buried in there, but Ralph – whose self-worth has become defined by his friendship with Vanellope – shrugs off his momentary disillusionment with how some on the Internet think of his videos. Most everyone who has engaged in social media and has received nasty comments from anonymous or known users online never pick themselves up that quickly. The film looks like it wants to make a statement here – whether subtle or as obvious as a clothed person at a nudist colony. But the plot must progress to the next frantic sequence or extremely contemporary joke that will date badly in a years’ time let alone fifty years’ time, as Ralph’s Power of Friendship with Vanellope is so unbreakable that the film cannot take a few minutes for the audience to reflect on why people (perhaps themselves) act like this online. Mind you, this paragraph is only on social media negativity, in the light of revelations that video-sharing site algorithms reward the vapid and the controversial.

Johnston and Ribon deserve credit for the film’s crux, however: that friendship, any worthwhile relationship of any kind, is not what a person provides you, but what you can do to foster that person’s growth into the best individual they can be. Ralph, understandably, given how ostracized he was for decades among those at Litwak’s Arcade, is terrified of losing his best friend. But that is no excuse for keeping a friend away from what they want most, especially if what they want the most will take them elsewhere – best intentions be damned because best intentions do not always yield behavior that is healing. Unfortunately, the film’s message contradicts those from Wreck-it Ralph if only because of the inconsistent universe rules established in the first installment. Vanellope’s final decision seems not to consider how much she is valued from the place where she has come from (Ralph has more to learn, yes, but so does Vanellope, and her bit of introspection is exclusively understanding what she, and she alone, wants). Ralph’s flaws are also portrayed far too literally – no spoilers here, but the animation in this over-literalization of Ralph’s clinginess is outstanding – and manifests itself in a fatiguing action/chase/rescue setpiece. And to further bury this integral part of Ralph Breaks the Internet, there is barely a reprieve – once Ralph and Vanellope have departed Litwak’s arcade for the Internet – from a comedic scene where Ralph suffers as a result. 

Some of the film’s funniest, but simultaneously disheartening, sequences occur when Vanellope finds herself at the Disney fansite – a detour that the overstuffed screenplay does not need. The most discussed moment is when she meets the Disney Princesses (all voiced by their original voice actor if that voice actor is still alive – with the exception of Mary Costa for Aurora), from Snow White to Cinderella to Belle (1991′s Beauty and the Beast) to Moana. Yes, this is a light-hearted aside from the main plot. But what is bothersome is that every joke in these few minutes are based on online-generated criticisms or perceptions on each of the characters. To dig the hole deeper, the film appears to insist that these versions of the Disney Princesses are the actual Disney Princesses. Snow White is useless and has that high-pitched voice. Aurora (1959′s Sleeping Beauty) is a tad drowsy. Don’t get me started on Merida (2012’s Brave). The Walt Disney Studios that has operated after Walt’s death – aside from nephew Roy E. Disney’s tenure through the 1990s – bears little to no resemblance to Walt’s artistic vision. Likewise, the depictions in Ralph Breaks the Internet are not reflections of what made each of those princesses’ appeal to audiences worldwide – aesthetically (many of the features of the pre-2000s princesses have been poorly rendered) or characteristically.

Before getting to the point, though, I will note that “A Place Called Slaughter Race” – with music by Alan Menken (numerous Disney Renaissance films; if you do not know Menken’s name, you should) and lyrics by Phil Johnston and Tom MacDougall – is delightful, and elicited the most laughs out of me during the entire film. Anyways, back to the Disney Princess scene.

That scene, in addition to the interminable parade of live-action Disney remakes of their animated classics, is part of a worrying trend for the studio’s 2010s movies. In films like Tangled (2010), Frozen (2013), Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Moana, this film, and probably the foreseeable future given the history of the Walt Disney Animation Studios’ chief creative officer Jennifer Lee, Disney’s animated films cannot stop making self-referential jokes about Disney tropes and previous Disney movies. The live-action remakes and the animated films are both responding to contemporary criticisms of Disney classics (foxes aren’t always devious creatures, Zootopia trumpets deafeningly; if you wear a dress and have an animal sidekick, you are a princess, says Maui from Moana; etc.). For Ralph Breaks the Internet, the central criticism of these Disney princess movies is that none of these princesses – especially the earlier ones – were feminist “enough”. I acknowledge (and almost entirely agree) the points from anyone who says that some of the older Disney princess movies have serious problems in how they portray gender stereotypes. But Ralph Breaks the Internet is judging the princesses on a standard that has not withstood the unforgiving passage of time, unwittingly close to saying it is not worth anyone’s time to see Snow White. Intersectional feminism, from my understanding among its many facets (full disclosure: I’m a dude), seeks to understand the environment in which a work of art was produced. It critiques that art for the gendered inequalities within, but reserves praise for those works in what good they did for depictions of women in their time.

Ralph Breaks the Internet represents a concerning turn in the artistic direction of Walt Disney Animation Studios. Its impulses to become a studio of the likes of Illumination (of Despicable Me fame) are rooted in the early 2000s, when Disney’s then-Chairman/CEO Michael Eisner proceeded to destroy the hand-drawn animation department after the box office failure of Treasure Planet (2002) and the success of Shrek (2001) – I am not saying that a hand-drawn animated movie is necessarily better than a CGI movie, but have you noticed how poorly the referential, cynical humor in Shrek has dated? That transformation, noting the résumés of the people in charge at the key positions at Disney, is nearing completion. Will Disney’s past be prologue? This axiom proved itself true once before, but the appetite nor the groundwork seems to be apparent for a second sampling.

If nothing more, Ralph Breaks the Internet is the sort of movie I – if I was a parent or a babysitter – would put on the television (or tablet or phone... there are many reasons why you should never watch movies on a tablet or a phone if you cannot help it, but that rant is for another setting) to distract children with. The film is almost devoid of thoughtful discourse about how the Internet has changed human behavior for better and worse, preferring to occupy too steadfastly what is now, leaving others to write the future.

My rating: 5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[cafemizudashi]

The importance of cohesion

As described by the Oxford English Dictionary:

Cohesion, n. /kəʊˈhiːʒən/

The action or condition of cohering; cleaving or sticking together; spec. the force with which the molecules of a body or substance cleave together; cf. attraction n. of cohesion. (Oxford English Dictionary, 2020)

Cohesion can be a property of many different fields. Such could be the way a text is formatted, or perhaps how much sense makes subdomains of a webpage between them. And in terms of Game Design, it could be defined as how well different elements in a world connect. This can be both visually, with similar art styles and level of detail, or conceptually, if these elements make sense within the same universe. As such is one of the most important concepts behind Game Design and Art, for with it, comes believability. A good example of cohesion could be the game, Hollow Knight.

Within Hollow Knight, every sub-area has different colour palettes, but all of them fit together. The art style follows a set of rules that it does not break, maintaining a balance between cartoon and shaded elements. And most importantly, the world reacts to what happens. Elements such as grass, poles or platforms react with the player - and other characters - entering into contact.

Team Cherry (2020)

Why I chose this game as an example is because it has one of the strongest senses of cohesion I can think of. Although all these attributes previously mentioned help sell the feeling of being in this world, it is the little storytelling situations that make it shine. This could be just the interactions that happen offscreen, such as characters changing zones, or things happening to them while the user is currently elsewhere, but it can be taken further by details and small pieces of lore that are given by the surroundings.

Cohesion can seem easy and obvious. Building a world requires it. But at the same time, there is a great amount of effort that needs to be put for it to work. Incoherencies are difficult to solve, even more, when the development is way on its latest phase. So to keep an eye on your storytelling and how everything comes together is a must early on in the development. Then comes the problem that, if working on big teams, not everybody can be fully aware of how the rest of the world is set. It is very important to work with concepts and set a story in stone before starting working on the final project. Some space for manoeuvring has to exist, but then having everything set down could make it feel like there is no room for creativity. Then it becomes an issue of balancing and I think it is out of the scope of what this text aims to reflect on.

Having stated how important cohesion is, the next step was to analyse how I work and how Cohesive it is. In my work, I often aim for realism, so the style is checked. But the problem comes from consistency. I consider myself a sensitive person in terms of mood. How I feel affects the result of my work, and as mentioned in a previous post I try to use music to lean my mood towards the desired point. But then it results in different amounts of detail depending on the moment I did a certain prop or the time I had to create it. It is normal to a certain extent but I would like to work further into that aspect of myself. My guess right now is that I need to work on my technical abilities. Creating an object within my normal abilities is simpler. The final prop may not be of the highest quality but it is more often than not, good enough. But when I try to push myself, to achieve the amount of detail and realism needed for the industry, that is where my inconsistencies come.

This semester's project, a Bioshock Scene, is in danger of falling into that. Having some props more detailed than others. Suffering from incoherencies. So my objective is to keep a high level of coherence. To be able to look at this scene and say that everything fits. Telling a story with the surroundings that fit with other props and that feels in the same world.

Oxford English Dictionary (2020). Cohesion, n. [Online] Available at: https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/35943?redirectedFrom=cohesion#eid [Accessed: 04 December 2021]

Team Cherry (2020). Hollow Knight Press Kit. [Online] Available at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SPCRaalJJepKYOQ4fdxZEzqNukJiUQCo [Accessed: 04 December 2021]

[poipoi1912]

Barisi Update

What's that? You thought I was writing angst? Ha!

Been there, done that.

Instead, for my 19x08 Barisi episode tag, I'm writing what could almost be considered fluff.

I’m writing the Sonny that I know, the one who’s far from perfect but who is actually aware of that fact. The story is a Fix-It Fic in the sense that I'm writing what I believe Canon Sonny should have said and done (and also in that it “fixes” the Barisi aspect of the story lol), but it’s also canon compliant, in that I’m not actually altering the events of the episode. Just Sonny’s motivations. The episode left that completely open, and a few SVU writers on twitter offered varying and muddied interpretations of his actions, so if they can’t decide why he did what he did, there’s basically no “canon” to stick to, in this case. We all get to come up with Sonny’s motivations on our own, I suppose (which is classic SVU to be honest) and that’s exactly what I’m doing with this story.

Also, because I’m a masochist, I'm making yet another effort to fit the last 2 years of practically incoherent canon into the mold of the (very different) established characterization of Sonny and Barba which we got in their first few seasons. I’m explaining away pretty much every inconsistency. I'm sticking to canon, completely, in terms of the facts, but when it comes to the emotions, I use my creativity. So the result is Barisi, as always.

The story has some humor, a decent amount of fluff, a nice, long conversation which addresses everybody’s feelings, and also a lot of love and a smidgeon of angst of course. I already have over 7K of notes, so I’ll need some time to put it together and polish it, but rest assured that I will post it :D

(it always takes me forever to write these, but I’m glad to see many writers coming up with wonderful fix-it fics just hours after the episode! That way we all have something to read and I feel less guilty as I procrastinate take my sweet-ass time in writing my stories <3)

I won’t have much time for tumblr in the next few days, sadly, but I will be writing on my phone, and hopefully I’ll be able to tumble properly later in the week. I’ll just say I was very happy to see that my episode thoughts helped some of you process this week’s episode (my love to @booyahkendell, @rafealbarba, @of-salt-and-moon, @dreila03, @nukefamily, @callmebarisi, @alynk and @russetm and I hope I didn’t miss any other barisi shippers who commented lol!), and I hope my upcoming fic will help you even more (spoiler alert: it will :D)

I love all my Barisi friends, and I’m here for you ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[whydidireadthis]

All-New Wolverine (#19-30)

One of my hugest pet peeves with superhero comics is “male character, but with tits”. I hate it. I’ve always hated it, and I’ll always hate it. The invention of X-23 in X-Men Evolution was a painfully awkward inclusion following that same creative approach, and I despised it; it was, like so many others, taking a character and creating a female clone -- literally -- so that insecure straight boys could feel less insecure lusting directly after the character.

It’s happened plenty of other times in comics, most notably when Rose Wilson, who had her own identity and powers, had all of her character annihilated so she could become Ravager, Deathstroke with Tits. This numbers as one of the worst characters ever massacred into that role. It’s insulting; Rose had something distinct going on, and then idiot Geoff Johns came along and decided that he needed an x, with tits character.

The thing is, this stunt always ends up being insulting for both the character being imitated and the character either created to fill the role or forced into it. It’s even more insulting when they’re already established as being someone and something else, but they’re required to redefine themselves anyway, especially when they’re expected to be accepted as a replacement for the character they’re obviously meant to out-appeal because they can be openly lusted after by the imagined primary demographic.

Sibling Clonery

So the long and short of it here is that I’m saying I am not a fan of X-23, or Laura as she’s come to be known. Going into this, my expectations were rock-bottom. But I love Daken, and I always considered him a far more subversive and interesting necessary examination of the character of Wolverine and everything around him: the machismo, the insecurity of writers overcompensating through Logan’s often comedically excessive libido and attitude, and of course the overselling of the character. Daken is openly bisexual (and actually leans more gay, more often), comfortable with his sexuality, uses his mind at least as much as, if not more than, his claws, and in general undermines all of the bullshit that’s been built around Logan.

He dressed up in Logan’s old costume design and masqueraded in his superheroic identity, and in so doing forced readers to examine what really made Wolverine. It forced scrutiny on the concept of the identity, and who was behind the mask and the name.

Daken is a complex character, but he’s also easy enough to understand and is often surprisingly sympathetic, or at least identifiable. Even when he’s doing awful things, it’s not really because he’s a consummately bad person or has no reason for doing what he does. I don’t think all of his writing is great or even good, and he’s been wildly inconsistent for periods over the years, but he seems to have finally found a place where he can find some blessed consistency and appreciation.

Aside from that garbage Iceman series that will be gone and not missed very soon, which seemed not to get the memo that Daken couldn’t be a villain running the Hellfire Club while at the same time being kidnapped by a group of Laura’s foes, but whatever. Like I said, that series is gone and soon to be forgotten, and it’s good riddance to bad rubbish.

We’re looking at the good Daken appearances recently, and they just so happen to be in All-New Wolverine.

Marjorie Liu did some solid work with Daken, even if I didn’t agree with her direction at all times, and the crossover between him and X-23 called “Collision” was an interesting look at the characters. Liu’s run on the X-23 series, which is really in many ways a precursor to All-New Wolverine, gave her a lot more to work with than the typical runaround she’d been given in most of the other titles. Before Liu got to do things with Laura and develop her as a person (and at the time, also developing Gambit in a way that treated him like a person and not the embarrassing caricature people have exaggerated from foggy memories of the 90s X-Men cartoon), she really wasn’t much more than Wolverine, but with tits. That was it. She couldn’t really outrun her stigma, because she was just another piece of window dressing from Logan’s titles.

But it’s important to note that Daken, too, really didn’t flourish until he got out from the shadow, out from Logan’s titles, and did something else.

Not Wolverines, because god knows that was hot garbage that turned into a dumpster fire, and I’m pretty sure nobody had any idea what the hell was going on by the end. It was about enough to make me throw my hands up and walk away again.

But writer Tom Taylor wisely just handwaves Wolverines and tosses Daken into the story “Immune” as a spectacular and dramatic appearance, and that makes all the difference. What went before is addressed, touched upon, and then moved past, and we see that Daken is also has developed as a person since the frankly lackluster, incoherent writing of Wolverines.

I found myself actually caring about Laura as a person, more and more, because while there is a kind of naiveté in Taylor’s writing, it’s the kind that makes you want to believe in it. It’s the way things really should be, and the way I’d like them to be, as someone who has read superhero comics for far longer than is probably wise.

Full of Character

The characters are engaging and enjoyable, and I like the fact that they also have humor in their interactions. I’ve said it many times before: without at least some humor, things are not only unpleasant, but also unrealistic and difficult to believe. Utterly humorless events only tempt resistance from an audience, and speaking plainly, it’s just silly to have a genre so steeped in action and the outrageous take itself too seriously.

All-New Wolverine, however, knows its audience. As seen here, there’s plenty of mixing it up and making things different from how they have been up to now, but there’s also a consistency that is comfortable. These aren’t the clunky female characters written clearly to pander, or to tempt people into arguments over genitalia or hormones or anything else. It probably happens, and I’m lucky not to have seen it, but the characters in All-New Wolverine have solid personalities and relate to each other like people. And nicely enough, even though there’s no such thing as black and white in Logan’s circles, the characters have redeeming qualities and make you want to like them.

And I’m not going to lie here, I think one of the best things about the title right now is the fact that “our” universe’s Logan is dead, dead, dead. The X-titles, Logan, and Charles Xavier all need a hard time out so that things can do a little soft resetting and they can slip back in and not be horrible, ruined characters impossible to like, as they are now. I think the “Death of Wolverine” thing they did around it was stupid and tacky, but I always think that of death events, and they should’ve learned this long ago: death is not an event, and killing off a character shouldn’t be made into one.

But that’s a conversation for another day.

All-New Wolverine’s “Immune” storyline places Laura at ground zero of a super-infectious alien disease and, through it, showcases really what defines the character under Taylor’s direction as a writer. It’s especially nice to see her show not a pandering sort of sensitivity, but instead emotion easy to identify with, which makes it easier to sympathize with her. It gives her more personality and character, as well as strength of character; her interactions with Daken and Gabby humanize her, which is something that has always been needed.

She spent too long coasting on nothing but the fact that she was Wolverine, but with tits. Even Liu’s stretch still relied at times on the fact that Laura wasn’t sure if she had a soul, which while engaging, is still a fairly done-to-death story. The clone who isn’t sure if she has a soul, the clone trying to determine her place in a world that also contains the person she was cloned from, the clone trying to figure out who she is when that person is suddenly gone -- they’re all potentially interesting starts, premises, beginnings, but they were most of the story for a long while. Too long.

Gabby is great, not to mention hilarious, and it really delighted me that they have a pet wolverine named Jonathan, who accompanies them on their adventures. Some might bristle at the thought of a team of Wolverine-themed characters having what amounts to a mascot, but it really makes them a lot easier to sympathize with, not to mention a lot more fun. A mascot, or even just a cute animal, is an appealing feature that, again, humanizes characters through their relations.

The especially nice thing is that, even though I came for Daken, I stayed for Daken’s interactions with Laura and Gabby. They form a great core to the team of similarly-themed characters, and there’s so much that is said between them that hasn’t been even mentioned before. It’s like nobody ever thought about half of the things Taylor does, with what he works into the dialogue. 

The title also isn’t afraid to show a bit of genre-awareness, but it knows moderation. This isn’t like the adventures of Deadpool or She-Hulk, which overtly show existential awareness and depend on (frequently absent) clever writing. All-New Wolverine is not a parody, but it can at times examine itself and shorthand that is rarely questioned and, by doing so, makes it easier to swallow.

It also doesn’t skimp on the Daken. And to be sure, Logan’s always been prone to nudity in his titles. There used to go hardly a month between seeing his hairy ass in something or other. So it’s nice to see it being used for something beautiful and even inspiring. I like the art a great deal, especially with the “Orphans of X” story, and what’s more, I respect them taking advantage of having Daken in the title to contribute a little heart-thumping eye candy.

But it’s not exploitation, it actually has a purpose and the art is really quite beautiful, like the sequence where he heals his arm back. It examines, in a way that only comics can, a zen meditative philosophy.

There’s unpleasant and violent stuff in All-New Wolverine, of course, but it’s not the tacky, gaudy, just plain nasty nonsense that seemed ubiquitous and overdone in the first decade of the 2000s. It has a purpose, and it has a role.

The Bad and the Good

It’s not all perfect, though. I will say that Taylor seriously needs to develop his pacing. Things take a long time to get moving, then reach a climax...and bunches of things happen between issues that would have been better dealt with at length instead of some of the things that were drawn out. He’s not the best at crafting a satisfying end to stories either, though it is important to note that his resolutions aren’t unsatisfying...they’re just not entirely satisfying either.

In “Hive”, which is basically the second leg of “Immune”, Laura goes into space with the Guardians of the Galaxy and fights the Brood. Things roll gradually in parts, then seem to pick up way too much speed. Events get a little confusing, and sometimes people seem not to say or do things because if they do, it will require the writer to develop those points. But in not doing them and not addressing some of them, it makes for a weaker story, with less impact.

I will totally admit, I laughed out loud at the resolution to “Hive”. It was the funniest thing I’d seen in a long time, and I’m probably a horrible person for that. It did actually give a fairly fulfilling ending, but it also failed to deal with several of the other issues brought up by the proceedings. The question was just never as simple as it’s often regarded by the story and its participating characters, and sometimes the unaddressed issues are the most glaring and most obvious when you’re reading it.

“Orphans of X” is exciting, thrilling, entertaining, and develops the characters significantly, every one of them. But it also has tacky turns and, in its extremely naive finale, seems to ignore the serious problems that it presented repeatedly before getting there. It’s too facile a resolution, and it’s one that is impossible to really accept; it can only be a temporary solution, because these people are not trustworthy or reliable, and they can’t be depended on. It makes Laura look a bit stupid for it, and it also damages the credibility of the proceedings somewhat.

But if you think about it in less of a “compare to real life” way and more of a “think of how superheroes are supposed to be” one, it’s a lot more agreeable. Honestly, it’s how things should go. People should be able to come together and make sense to each other. People who have been victimized by others should be able to unite against those others and be stronger for the experience, instead of fighting amongst themselves. Superheroes are supposed to inspire others to greatness; they are supposed to inspire bravery and courage, dignity and integrity, and all the majestic things that they show overtly, which we all must try to metaphorically exercise in things like strength of character and personal integrity, mercy, kindness, empathy, and a refusal to give up even when the odds are against us.

From Vat to Very Fond

So for the time being, I’ll just accept it that way. It’s not a perfect story, and neither is “Immune”/”Hive”, but they’re entertaining, the characters involved most all benefit from and are enriched by their inclusion, and I genuinely liked the comics. I enjoyed reading them.

I liked Laura. I’ve started to find her genuinely engaging and interesting as a character, for the first time since she came into being. Do I think she’s good to carry a title by herself? No! Not at all. But that’s also not the point of who she is. She’s not supposed to be alone. She functions better in a family, and the family dynamic is what makes her so much more interesting.

She’s fascinating in how she interacts with the others she is so close to, like Gabby and Daken. They all enrich each other, and they grow as characters in this mutually beneficial relationship.

I feel the same way about Batman, for example. There are plenty of characters who just aren’t really that compelling or interesting when they’re alone, or they’re fundamentally not likable. Batman needs a Bat-family, because he’s dull as a beige room when he doesn’t have anyone to interact with but his enemies.

Laura needs a Wolverine-family.

With Jonathan too, because he’s just too wonderful to leave out.

Many, even most, characters should not be in a title totally alone. There are remarkably few characters who can really carry a story solo, and a lot of those stories are just not interesting. Logan is one of those characters who has never been that interesting, but he’s been an extension of so much straight boy insecurity that he’s become indispensable to Marvel. In a similar manner, Batman has become so overblown and oversold that it’s a miracle when, in stories like The Hiketeia, he actually is dealt with realistically.

We do need an escape, and we need characters we can identify with, even vicariously live through. I’m not going to deny insecure people their escapes.

But I think the time has come, and I think it’s shown in the quality of the writing, the solidness of the art, and the sheer enjoyability of the whole product, that All-New Wolverine has at least a promising start of maybe bringing us something new and better in superheroes. It’s not perfect, but it’s the first title I’ve read in years that made me want to follow it and had me waiting eagerly, not dreading, the next issue.

I sincerely hope that Taylor can keep up his quality. He’s made me care about a character I despised for years and then felt neutral about for years more. He writes Daken beautifully and makes me fall in love with the character all over again. And of course, Gabby is a wonderful character rather than the annoying young character she could be, and Jonathan the wolverine is delightful.

In the words of RuPaul, Tom, don’t fuck this up!

Because you’ve made this jaded comic fan, who once upon a time was completely done with superhero comics, believe that good things are possible again. And you did it with the Wolverine title and X-23...two things that were among my least favorite in the world.

It’s worth checking out All-New Wolverine. Now if we can only have that kind of excellence in the X-titles so that people will actually give a fuck about the X-Men again, instead of being embarrassed they exist in the same universe at the moment.

But baby steps. Baby steps.

[anukite]

teen wolf texting headcanons

[very very light sterek/thiam. only 6b characters are included. LONG POST.]

- Stiles is a very fast typer, and besides a couple of typos, his texts are always legible and easily decipherable, much to the relief of his father. If he does mess up, he always catches it and makes the correction in a second text. All of his texts are completely lowercase, except when he’s texting his dad. His contacts never have their actual names, which is partly due to his father’s perpetual nosiness, but the sheriff could probably figure most of them out if he was so inclined. Jackson is saved as ‘hISSS,’ Derek as ‘broody mcbrooderson,’ Lydia as ‘she who must be obeyed,’ and the nicknames only get more creative from there. He never uses the emoji keyboard outside contact names, electing instead to use parentheses in increasingly creative expressions. He’s probably texted every single person in Beacon Hills at some point or another, except Peter Hale.

- Like Stiles, Lydia composes her texts at the speed of light. They’re always lowercase, but unlike Stiles’, they’re always perfectly punctuated and spelled. No emojis from Lydia; she has a reputation to uphold. Her contact library is extensive, but not as endless as Stiles’ is. Really, it’s not the texting Lydia finds enjoyable, but rather the accumulation of mild blackmail from the drunken texts of her fellow students.

- Derek Hale texts like a technically challenged old man. And, like his chosen manner of speaking, none of his texts are longer than three words, and never contain any pronouns. “I’m on my way,” for instance, becomes “On my way.” “Shut up.” usually appears somewhere, no matter who he’s talking to. Stiles, when texting him, usually elects to respond in an incoherent keyboard smash. (Derek only ever uses emoticons when he’s texting Stiles.)

- Scott relies on autocorrect too much for his texts to be completely readable 100% of the time, but at least it means that all of the capitals are in the right places, which is more than can be said for Liam. Scott LOVES emojis, and will use them wherever possible. (Melissa loves emojis too; it must run in the family.) Sometimes when Stiles asks him a question, he simply composes his answer out of reaction emojis. His contact list is Liam, Stiles, his mom, the Sheriff, Allison, Kira, and a bunch of unsaved numbers.

- Liam has the WORST texting etiquette. (This is partly because his autocorrect doesn’t actually work and he doesn’t want to bother his dad about it.) He abbreviates everything, everything he doesn’t incoherently shorten is spelled wrong, and his punctuation is incredibly inconsistent. It really annoys Theo (and if he eventually starts to find it endearing, he never admits it). Most of the time he only bothers correcting himself when people ask. 

- Malia doesn’t text. The only way to get ahold of her is basically just yelling her name and hoping she comes running.

- Theo is somewhere between Lydia and Derek. He’s a slower typer, but all of his texts are perfect and annoyingly well-written. “What the hell is that?” is usually his response whenever someone texts him an emoji--he knows what they are, of course, but messing with people (especially Liam) is just too fun. Constantly memes, but they’re usually so subtle or so outdated nobody notices.

- Mason is basically Stiles but slower, and all of his contacts are completely filled out and read like a bestiary--risky, but Mason likes knowing he has all the pieces to the puzzle. “Liam Dunbar. Email: ldunbar@bhhs.org. Home Phone: xxx-xxxxxxx. Occupation: Werewolf.” Doesn’t use the emoji keyboard, and half of his more inventive emojis are ones that Stiles texts him and he just reuses because he thinks they’re cool (and secretly because Stiles is basically his hero). Is very very careful with his phone; never lets anyone touch it, especially Liam. Has approximately 1209304 text threads.

- Corey prefers calling over texting, because it seems more real and because screens can hurt his eyes sometimes if he’s not thinking about how camouflaged he is (invisibility and bright things no son simpaticos). Corey doesn’t text anybody besides Mason and occasionally Liam. The only emoji he ever uses is the one with the sunglasses; sometimes he’ll make the equivalent with B). 

- Parrish won’t text anyone but his mother, who likes to send him photos of whatever she’s knitting at the moment. Calling is the way to go with Parrish.

- Noah Stilinski only ever texts his son, Melissa, and Chris Argent. He’s memorized the phone numbers of every supernatural in Beacon Hills, though, just in case. He thinks Stiles should probably spend less time texting people, but he’s got bigger things to worry about, honestly, and between the baby werewolves collectively losing their shit at him and his FBI internship there’s probably not much time for texting anyways.

- Chris Argent never adds periods at the ends of his texts, only in the middle of them: for instance, if he’s texting Melissa, he’ll say “Gerard’s on the move again. Stay safe” without the period at the end. Otherwise they’re very well-written. 

- Melissa only ever texts with emojis to Stiles and Scott, and maybe once or twice to the sheriff, and never to Chris since she’s a little nervous about coming on strong. She does love the damn things, though. 

[getoffthesoapbox]

VK Science II - Odds & Ends

So I thought about it, but I hope my straightforward answers don’t come across as condescending! Aside from being blunt, I try not to write too much, but I guess it’s not a problem now? ’(^_^) In any case, before I get to the next theory I want to respond to some of your points :)

Your answers didn’t come off as condescending at all, don’t worry! You just seemed like a typical science-oriented person wanting to make sure everything was accurate before proceeding, which I completely respect.  (I have a thick skin anyway, and I’m fairly blunt myself though without as lofty a reason, fufu. ;D) But yes, feel free to write to your heart’s content, as long posts are a speciality of my blog anyway!

Pureblood Pregnancy: The reason why I can’t answer this is because Hino has full creative freedom to create whatever duration of pregnancy she would like for humans birthing Purebloods :/ Would you expect it to be longer? Probably. Honestly, though, I already don’t agree with her concept of Purebloods having a range of duration of pregnancy rather than a set time as most other organisms do (O_o)

Teething: This could be another reason why the Purebloods were scattered as I would think that this process would terrify their parents and even lead some to, sadly, label their children as “monsters,” abandon them, and leave them for death.

Well, of course Hino can do whatever she wants with the narrative elements; she could go off the rails (and has) if she wants and we’d be stuck having to try to pretend it makes sense. I honestly found her making the pregnancies 2-4 years to be just a ridiculous method to excuse Yuuki’s teen pregnancy and allow her to give birth in her twenties. I don’t think when Hino originally came up with VK that she ever intended the pregnancies to last longer than the human terms–it’s just that Hino needed to make the accident pregancy “acceptable” to shoujo audiences. This is just my personal theory, but for the sake of the story I’d say that the reason Pureblood pregnancies last longer is probably due to maladapted hormones of some kind that require the fetus to gestate longer in order to fully develop. Originally, before the Kaname magic pregnancy, Hino made it clear in arc 2 that Purebloods had a difficult time conceiving (hence why Haruka and Juri only had two kids despite living 3K+ years, and why the Pureblood numbers were shrinking despite them being immortal). That’s just my current thought from where we are, fufu. Really, though, I think it was just Hino trying to make Yuuki’s unacceptable teen pregnancy more palatable. =P

The Vmpr gene: In regards to your question… I’m not exactly sure since we’re not shown any examples. Not just that, but I intend to view human-turned-vampires (I always wonder if I word this write .-.) from a disease perspective. Based on my theory… I guess they would always code for humans since it’s a disease acquired later in life. In Zero’s case, I want to say that they would be human since the majority of Zero’s genes code for human and, again, I do not view the Level D’s as carrying the Vmpr gene, but… Well, maybe my next theory will help ’(^_^)

My thought was in line with yours that Zero (and any other Level Ds/Es) would code for human if paired with a human partner. Yuuki’s Pureblood would obviously be dominant, which would probably place Ren as a Level C or perhaps a Noble at best. 

Charisma: OHHH (O_O) Yeah, I just viewed those scenes as “hypnotism” rather than “charisma.” I see people’s willingness to listen to and follow Kaname as a result of charisma rather than Rido manipulating (hypnotizing) Aidou - they’re two completely different cases. As far as Yuuki’s charisma, I saw it as how she was primarily raised human and wasn’t sure how to act as a Pureblood princess (an authoritative position), so she lacked the same noble nature Kaname and even Sara exude that would attract others. In short, I think it comes down to how you define “charisma” in VK XD

Well Hino’s notorious for not directly explaining things and leaving things up for interpretation, but she makes a point of having the nobles fawn over Kaname in the first arc that he doesn’t use his charisma against the other vampires, implying that it’s an actual ability (if I remember right; it’s been a while since I’ve revisited arc 1). This would of course imply that his personal magnetism could be amplified to control his fellows (which he actually does when he murders the council). But this is assuming of course that charisma isn’t a social construct that the nobles have imagined due to their historical worship of the Purebloods. If it’s actually just in the nobles’ heads, then we’re just working with natural charm and Rido’s and Sara’s abilities are separate from the charisma. Either way, you’re spot on about Yuuki I think. Either she’s just deficient in charisma because she was turned back into Pureblood later in life, or because the Nobles saw her as human first, they can’t go into worship mode for her. Same results either way I suppose. XD

Mixed Children: …This is a weird title for this point considering how I am mixed LOL XD Technically, I can’t answer this, which goes back to why I was salty (=__=) In any case, I don’t think they would birth humans because vampirism is dominant. Due to the percentage of vampiric genes a Pureblood would be bringing in, it’s unlikely they would have a human child. The only evidence that kind of supports this is that it is implied (to my knowledge, at least) that the rise of the Aristocrats came from the Progenitors mixing with humans, which would follow the Night class’s explanation of the higher levels of “human blood” aka DNA as you go down the hierarchy…

Sorry, I couldn’t think of a better simple paraphrase to cover all the potential pairings. XD Hope I didn’t offend, lol. But okay, that makes sense that the vampiric gene would be dominant, so you wouldn’t have any human children cropping up unexpectedly (unless I guess there was another environmental shift that reversed things). 

NaCl: (  O_o) Ah… But are there Purebloods that have some human blood? Is that why the Kurans are powerful? …Because they have none? Wait… What? UGH that changes everything! This is why I gave up on figuring out the inheritance of genes! X( And in the first place, WHY would the Kurans be the only ones? Huh? Huh?! Did everyone else just “conveniently” die? And I’m not supposed to side-eye that? Yeah, ok, I see you Hino (  T_T) *diffuses in high concentrations of Na+*

Haha, oh no, I don’t think I meant to imply that Purebloods have any human blood, only to question whether or not it was possible for them to birth a human child if the recessive traits lined up right I think? Obviously they’d have no human blood in them as they’d be the purest expression of the vmpr gene, right? Sorry, I got wound up with speculating what the story would be like if two Purebloods accidentally had a recessive human child or if there was a character who was a more human expressing Pureblood/Noble (such as, say, a Noble who had all the traits except no powers manifest, or a Pureblood who had bloodlust but no fangs, or short lived Purebloods, etc.). That was more speculation about where Hino could have taken the story. ;D (See, and here’s where my narrative theory tangenting comes into play, so just smack me when I go overboard, fufu.) But no, I think your theories are right on and it’s not an inconsistency on Hino’s part; it was just me rambling incoherently. XD No need for you to become a pillar of salt over it, methinks. =P

Zero: I’m getting ready to review my theory before sending it in a little bit. Before that, since you’re curious about Zero and I’m sure a lot of your followers are, could you emphasize some special traits of his that are mentioned in the story, so I don’t miss any? I’m not sure I’ll be able to cover them since his hunter genes will play a factor. If I can, I might make it a separate submission. I want to point out that I know that you’ll probably point out Zero delaying his fall to bloodlust and descent to vampirism, but I intend to cover this for Level D vampires in general.

Oh sure! The big one of course is that he overcame the twin curse in the womb, allowing his twin to be born rather than devoured (as vampiric twins are and as hunter twins are due to the vampiric genes they carry). The second unique one is that he can overcome the Master/Servant bond (where a Master can hijack and control his actions). The third, and this is only sort of implied by Takuma during the last battle with Sara, is that he seems to have a sort of weird “Pureblood charisma” effect–where he’s basically to the Purebloods what they are to the Nobles. For some inexplicable reason, they’re all drawn to him/entranced by him despite him being about as low class a vampire as you can get. It’s implied that this is all due to his ability to overcome the Master/Servant bond, but if that was all there was, only Shizuka should be interested in him because she’s his Master. 

As for Zero delaying his bloodlust and his fall, I never saw that as particularly unique to him as Zero (but of course we never got to see a normal person get turned and fall, so we have no idea how long the process usually takes). But given how chill Kaien was about it, and that both Kaien and Kaname seemed to expect “when” it would happen, the process Zero went through in this just seemed to be normal Level D experience in my estimation. Happy to hear your thoughts on this of course, but I myself never saw this as part of Zero’s special characteristics. 

Hunters: I know I said I wasn’t going to address this point, but I did look up some things regarding the hunters. Since the first hunters drank the Hooded Woman’s blood, they didn’t just consume her red blood cells, which contain no DNA, but her white blood cells, which do… Although, someone can double check me on that since I had to look that up. As for what that would do and how that fits into my theory scientifically, I’m not sure, but we know what happens in VK, so meh; we’re already ignoring blood types, so why not? I still don’t understand the science and how it would genetically alter a whole group of people, so that’s all I got for this point.

I didn’t know white blood cells contained genetic info but red didn’t! That’s a fun fact. XD /random nerd 

Well we can just assume that what happened was the Hooded Woman ordered her genes to meld with the Hunters’ legacies so they can pass them on to their children (we know the Purebloods have control over their blood within other people, so we can easily allow for the Hooded Woman to have given the order here, or perhaps the cells just did what they do and took over). 

Thanks for continuing this discussion with me! I’ll send in my next theory soon! Until then :)

I should be thank you for hanging in there with me while I dropped out to play games! =) Will be looking out for your next theory!

[ahb-writes]

Book Review: ‘Hild’

Hild by Nicola Griffith My rating: 2 of 5 stars This is not a novel. This is a doctoral thesis of Middle Ages Britain polity, bearing all the greasepaint and false promise of warrior saints, kingdoms on the cusp of unity, an economy bespoke to the natural order, and an emerging and presumed grasp of regional geopolitics that is rooted more in conscientious and urbane side-taking than in whether distrustful cousins bend a knee and kiss a ring. It's a fine thesis, really. But as a novel, this is a considerable waste of energy. HILD huddles and adheres close to the microscopic and the minute — the patterns of falcons in springtime, the density of clouds in winter — but looses and cares not for the feverish goings-on of humanity that yield closer to the earth: entertaining the inevitability of war and generally doing anything but talk, talk, talk. This book documents the efforts of a young woman, Hild, and her efforts to keep a clever but impossibly suspicious king in power (and saving her own hide in the process). Readers must be forewarned, history, in most cases, is quite boring. The nature of historical fiction need not be so duty-bound and constrained by the author's feverish enrapture of the land and its people to inhibit the efforts of an otherwise temperamental story to make itself known. As for HILD, nothing of narrative consequence occurs in the first 80 pages of the book. And even then, when the young protagonist, deemed a seer and prophesier of future events, claims her home is under siege, she is given no agency to guide her omen through to its natural conclusion; instead, she's dumped in a port town for several years (and another 80 pages). She warned the king and ended up saving Bebbanburg. Good for her. So now readers must wander cow paddies, follow the rhythms of streams and learn how to count using slave trader's abacus until Hild has another "vision"? That's rough.

To much surprise, there is very little actual war/conflict in this book. And while scenes come alive when Hild takes up the blade to lead a band of war hounds to settle disputes with bandits or to protect the land from purveyors from the south, two brief but meaningful battle scenes in a Middle Ages tome of 530+ pages is quite paltry.

Much of the book's poor rendering of its own story dynamics — that is, manifesting the believable and engaging connective tissue that wills key events into a single pattern — is due to the title's unfathomably inarticulate and labyrinthine nest of political squabbling. The Saxons. The Angles. The Irish. The Frisians. The Yffings. The Idings. The Picts. Kings and lords and aeldermen and soldiers and slaves and priests and bishops.

The author spends so much time and energy attempting to convince readers of the authenticity of the web that binds together Britain, readers are drowned, chapter after chapter, in the muddy sophistry of characters whom readers shall never meet and of verdant hillocks they shall never traverse. So much time is dedicated to tossing around names and places and alliances with little or no context, it's easy if not preferable to glide beneath the thunder of details and wait for the rain to pass. To this end, little actually happens in HILD. There is no action. "The king's seer" makes a few competent deductions — the birth of a child, the alliance of an enemy, the harshness of winter — and the king's court pivots as needed. The book's more creative antagonists, aging men of the cloth seeking glory for their name, are slowly phased out of the narrative in favor of Hild's redundant musings on the viability of her uncle's kingdom. To much surprise, there is very little actual war/conflict in this book. And while scenes come alive when Hild takes up the blade to lead a band of war hounds to settle disputes with bandits or to protect the land from purveyors from the south, two brief but meaningful battle scenes in a Middle Ages tome of 530+ pages is quite paltry. Would HILD have been more engaging if the author had leaned far less on the rigid details native to bickering lords than had shown greater interest in the consequences of said bickering? It's difficult to argue otherwise. The book's writing, amusingly, whips about like the wind — sudden and vicious, at first, then pensive and purposeful, then quite forgetful of whence it came and to where and goes. In the first half of the title, the author layers details upon details and leaves readers with inordinately long sentences and writing that is rough around the edges. There are some paragraphs, numbering some 65 words or more, which are all but one sentence. Another, more potent example rests in the author's horribly inconsistent depiction of intimacy. These include incoherent prophecy fulfilling trysts with a stranger smelling of dead seals; vague encounters between nameless, godlike figures before a hearth; bisexual best friends; scenes of mutual masturbation; incest; and an on-again and off-again affection between a woman and her slave.

The narrative is impractical and dense. The story dynamics are absent a meaningful balance of inciting incidents. The characters are slippery. From the first page to the last, HILD does not read like a novel but a student dissertation of pastoral Britain.

Sex, in HILD is random, awkward and drolly unfulfilling. The most hilarious (and thereby worst) example of which concludes rather blandly:

"They were naked." All of which makes for hazardous reading. Physical intimacy means many things to many characters, surely, but the severity and clumsiness of its application, in HILD, deprives readers of the fun and peculiarity of its complexity and intrigue. Gwladus is Hild's servant and bodywoman. The young slave ingratiates herself to her mistress to further her bid for freedom. And yet, Gwladus grows so fond of her mistress that when she does obtain her freedom she declines an offer to leave. Regrettably, the book does not explore the woman's emotional fever to remain within herself beyond occasionally tempting Hild to suckle a nipple or bite her lip. Further, does Hild refuse Gwladus because the woman is (initially) viewed as property or because she fears becoming attached to another person? Readers never find out. And so it goes. The narrative is impractical and dense. The story dynamics are absent a meaningful balance of inciting incidents. The characters are slippery. From the first page to the last, HILD does not read like a novel but a student dissertation of pastoral Britain. The clever musings on wren nests in bushes, the colors of the underside of out-of-season mushrooms and the direction cows face when they chew grass would be distractions anywhere else. HILD is not a tale of curiosity and woe and of the impressions of bygone eras. It is literature best left to mumbling academics striding the moors at daybreak.