#definitely had some tonal problems

[pastamansta]

While I have had my issues with "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic" (2010-2019) since we restarted the series, and while I have already begun to realize that the show will never be as good as the peak that was achieved in Seasons 2 and 3, as Ginger and I have reached the end of Season 6, I realize that, from this point forward, finishing this show is now something of a chore, or at least a "quest."

There have been issues in the past, no doubt; (1) "bothsidesism" and indigenous peoples stereotyping in a fantasy setting, via the conduit of buffaloes, (2) a portrayal of toxic masculinity as inherent to men, via the conduit of dragons, (3) using autism-coded characters irresponsibly, to make points about "friends who annoy you," via the conduit of both Pinkie Pie and Maud Pie, (4) doing BOTH, via the conduit of Discord, (5) anti-Semitic stereotyping in a fantasy setting, via the conduit of griffins, (6) xenophobic stereotyping in a fantasy setting, via the conduit of yaks, (7) irresponsibly vague and tonally un-sound depictions of self-harm, via the conduit of S05E13 "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?", (8) inserting support of the military-industrial complex into a show for children, via the conduit of The Wonderbolts, and (9) portraying a character with a severe level of anxiety as someone who is not in need of change, via the conduit of Fluttershy. These issues, however, are, by and large, excusable. Many of these issues are contained to individual episodes, and the show's primary demographic, those from ages FOUR to SEVEN, would have to really be paying attention to notice any of these, though some stick out more than others.

Season 6 is where not only do these issues still manage to present themselves, but they also manage to get worse.

The Wonderbolts have gone from a minor annoyance as part of Rainbow Dash's character, to one of the few reasons she appears on-screen, while further and further pushing a pro-military agenda down the throats of children, with one stand-out episode this season going so far as to apologize, if not encourage, military hazing?

The "toxic masculinity as inherent to men" issue evolves into a larger, more racial issue, ironically done by no longer portraying the dragons as all-male. A new fantasy race, originally introduced as little more than hissing bugs in Season 2, is now just as bad as the dragons, though perhaps not as offensive as the buffaloes, yaks, or griffins. This new fantasy race, the "Changlings," bear a striking resemblance to the real-life conspiracies on "draconian shapeshifters," which has been historically used to demonize Jewish peoples, as well as other marginalized communities.

And as if all of that wasn't bad enough, suddenly the show feels the need to comment on real-world xenophobic attitudes toward Indian cuisine? And their idea on how to do this is to make Rarity biased? By making her worship the words of a critic? Offensive stereotyping, with no "fantasy race" excuse to fall back on, and character assassination in the same fell swoop? "Spice Up Your Life" has to be one of the most embarrassing episodes of the series.

All of this in exchange for... what, exactly? A thinly-veiled, if not entertaining for a FAR older demographic, advertisement for parent-company-owned "Dungeons & Dragons?" A cutesy musical rendition of "A Christmas Carol?" A "what if" episode about a griffin who finally answers, definitively, if non-pony characters can receive a cutie mark? Enjoyable? Sure. Worth the problematic elements and ever-decreasing enjoyability of stock plots and subpar characters writing? Not at all.

As Ginger mentioned in one of her prior posts on the subject, we rank the episodes, every season, from best to worst, and then cut that list into three categories; "Good," "Mid," and "Bad." We have an extra column for "Problem" that, as of this season, was more full than ever. This season, we added a fifth section; "Ironic," as the show has gotten so generally terrible that it is becoming hard to decide between which episodes we had a good time with on their terms... or on ours.

"Flutter Brutter," "Stranger Than Fan Fiction," and "The Cart Before the Ponies" are some of the most fun I've had all season, due to how downright, laughably bad they all are. "Hey, seven-year-old! Did you know that Fluttershy's brother is a massive fuck-up who looks and talks like Matthew McConaughey?" "Yo, pre-teen! Do you have a hot take on the Star Wars Prequels?" "What's up, little dude?! Wanna just... watch your favorite characters ignore their siblings for twenty minutes?!" I was truly in stitches, almost as much as I was during Season 5's "Hearthbreakers," where Pinkie Pie's family eats rocks for Christmas, and the Apple family is told that they HAVE to enjoy it! If you've got a craving for watching twenty-minute chunks of horse cartoons that feel far too much like "Freddy Got Fingered" (2001), this is DEFINITELY the season for you.

If you only like, you know, the show that this used to be? Stop earlier than I'm going to, because Ginger and I are in this for the long haul.

[bloopitynoot]

3 Shadowgast fics that made me ugly cry

Okay so I read a LOT of shadowgast fanfics and I wanted to share some of the ones that made me absolutely weep. (I was going to wait until tomorrow but I got too excited to share).

All of these have some intense emotional distress, but I promise you all they may be angsty but they absolutely have happy endings.

They are all set in very different AU's, are hefty completed fics, and have similar feels!

1. the breathe before the phrase

(171513 words) by @kmackatie Chapters: 20/20 Rating: Explicit Summary: The ringing note of a concert A is played by the oboe, echoing on its own in the space. It’s picked up by the wind section, followed rapidly by the brass, and the familiar feeling of an orchestra calibrating takes over Caleb. The tonal adjustments as each person brings their instrument into alignment sinks into him and something inside Caleb shifts in recognition as Essek leads the strings into their own tuning. It’s like something is waking up, like something unfurling and firing across long-unused paths of memory. His hands shake slightly, as he raises his bow and joins them, fingers fumbling against the pegs and fine tuners that give him control over his instrument. ---- Essek Thelyss is a leading violinist, his spot as Shadowhand of the Rosohna Philharmonic Orchestra has been uncontested for over a decade. Caleb Widogast is a recent arrival to the city, convinced by his friends to audition for one of the vacant violinist positions. After starting off on the wrong foot, Caleb and Essek get to slowly know each other, discover what brings them joy, create while defying expectations, and find out that what they can produce together may just be better than anything they can do separately.

Why I cried: The amount of pressure put on Essek made my heart absolutely shatter. That plus the pinning between Caleb and Essek had me weeping. The hurt/comfort energy. The bad parent Dierta and of course past Caleb Ickythong trauma healing. Other than the story itself Katie has put so much energy into explaining the music, the playlist is stunning, and the inspiration for the played pieces in the fic are grounded in actual compositions. No spoilers, but the ending is gorgeous <3

2.Till Human Voices Wake us

(66080 words) by @ariadne-mouse Chapters: 23/23 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Additional Tags: Merman!Caleb, no Mighty Nein but otherwise canon setting/events, Neutral evil Essek, Essek-typical anxiety and fatalism, Loneliness, Hurt/Comfort, spooky gothic vibes, some horror and disturbing imagery, the ocean as a threat/love language, Illustrations, drowning themes Summary: Essek Thelyss, lonely and ambitious prodigy, comes to Nicodranas to make a risky gamble with the Assembly. At the water’s edge, he finds himself swept up in another dangerous entanglement he can't seem to escape — and as time goes on, he's less and less sure he wants to. Will his treasonous alliance or the sea itself devour him first? (Or, the one where Caleb is a merman.)

Why I cried: okay so look, this story was so fucking sad I can't even begin to describe it. The love and longing between the two, the tragic backstory for Caleb. Treason = death for Essek (it's a happy ending though so do not worry, but I definitely worried so you don't have to LOL). It also has some stunning art in it!!!

3. what luminous worlds await

what luminous worlds await (178674 words) by @essektheylyss Rating: Mature Additional Tags: Champion of the Luxon AU, Alternate Universe - Future, Space Opera, Religious Conflict, religious trauma, Violence, Minor Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Dreams vs. Reality, Demisexual Essek Thelyss, Past Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Angst, Fictional Religion & Theology, Implied/Referenced Sex, Mention of Using Sex as Self-Harm, several immortals grapple with loss while trying to save the world, so so many liberties taken with consecution, this wouldn't be a problem if you'd EXPLAIN matthew mercer, and/or if a certain drow would give literally any straight answers, (I mean he can't give straight answers when he's not straight), Background Fjorester (Past), Post-Canon, …very post-canon Summary: “You seek my nature. It is a lonely endeavor. Would you like to join me on this path?” “Yes.” — After a thousand years, a divine champion awakes in a lightless cave above Port Damali with little memory to speak of and a beacon in his hands. Even as he struggles to piece the past together and process what he has lost while he slept, the future demands he answer for the crimes of his elders. It offers little in return, but perhaps there are fragments of possibility awaiting him.

Why I cried: Omg oh boy, this one made me BIG cry- honestly one of my favourite fics I have read so far. A true space opera, a story of love, in many forms, over time, space, and multiple lives. I sobbed from chapter one literally until the end. Though I think you will need an A03 account to read this one, but it is worth the wait to set one up. My partner watched me cry so much while I read this. I totally did download and save this fic to send to pals so they can cry with me. It is worth the agony for this happy ending. I might still be crying LOL

[welovetesvkaidan]

OPINIONS ON KAIDAN EE/IF???

My honest reaction:

in all seriousness, if you wanna hear me yap about it, more under the cut

warning like, genuinely a ginormous yap, like a HUMUNGOUS, sleep-deprived yap,,, im cursed to be obsessed with skyrim + modded followers instead of touching grass

I think a lot of this is probably gonna be the same thing other people have said, so im sorry

if you feel i'm gonna be bringing up redundant points and get mad at me😓dont read

I haven't experienced and thus won't talk about the versions of EE and IF that are now separate mods from each other. I don't know anything about that.

if they're better now yayyy but this is about pre-separation

I should preface this with the fact that I've played through Skyrim 3 times with different stages of Kaidan EE/IF:

The initial Dawnguard + fixes/miscs mod

Kaidan EE/IF versions before extensive faction/NPC dialogue for Kaidan

EE/IF w/ NPC Dialogue (AKA Fratpack)

I was also part of the two different discords that were purged and created during these intervals. i don't even know if there is a discord currently?

anyway, that is to say that I have experienced the mod and it's behind-the-scenes progress, extensively so I have a pretty good idea of what I liked and didn't like

That being said, I will introduce probably my biggest problems with it: Tonal whiplash

Okay, well the most common complaint is ofc that a lot of the writing is out of character - and I agree. But it's not just ooc on paper, it's his voice too. I swear, it is very jarring hearing hushed, mild og Kaidan 2 voicelines, and then being deafened by EE Kaidan SCREAMING in my ear ALL.THE.TIME. (like... why are you yelling at me rn jeez)

Seriously. I'm not sure why they didn't just re-record everything from the original mod instead of adding more and more contradicting lines on top of the originals. It definitely could have been a standalone mod, and sometimes it almost feels like it is - because he is just so different.

My most infamous moment in my last playthrough with him happened after we defeated the dragon at Kynesgrove. His og Kaidan 2 dialogue played first, in it he shows interest and is cordial about Delphine ("I wouldn't mind prodding her mind" or whatver dialogue), THEN immediately after his Kaidan EE/IF dialogue will play, in which he walks up to Delphine and STARTS YELLING AT HER AND INSULTING HER - like they argue for quite a bit wtf. And it's like, listen, I have my thoughts about Delphine, but whether or not it was okay to yell at her isn't the problem. It would be fine - IF he hadn't just calmly told me he thought she was okay.

It is sooo confusing how he contradicts himself :(

I mean, yeah, fragments of who he is are still there, I can tell it's Kaidan, but he's warped to fit a different character. Like a con-artist Kaidan.

Anyway, besides the contradictions, it also feels out of character because of his established backstory.

Let's go over it: He's an orphan, lost his only connection to his family(his guardian) to drugs, fell into substances himself, joined a violent cult, had to escape said cult, came clean from his addictions, has been traveling Tamriel bounty-hunting, got brutally attacked by the Thalmor, rescued by mere chance. Do you honestly mean to tell me this man would be yelling, pissing, drinking, lewding, and joking his ass off?? After all that???? NO - or maybe not these levels of extreme. (maybe some other dude might, but Kaidan's characterization insists he is a brooding, keeps-to-himself man, even though he never acts like it anymore)

That man should be tired, and he did feel like he was tired in the original. He was more brooding then than he is now, usually silent, but could still have an edge of comedy/wittiness, he was smart, he had been through a lot!

In that regard, EE/IF Kaidan felt like... we are experiencing Kaidan 10 years in the past - like a Kaidan in his early 20s when he was still a drunkard low-key terrible person. He is just so energetic, always yapping - GOD he talks a lot now. ugh but most of the time it wasn't about anything, it was either inside-jokes, meta jokes, and only occasionally did we get things that added to the experience.

For example, I think most of us who have played Kaidan 2 remember at least one specific line he has said while exploring. What comes to mind for me is either "Can you smell the magicka in the air too? Smells like a rainless thunderstorm." or "Watch for the mammoth with the carvings on their tusks, that's how the giants mark their herd." Alright, both pretty nice small talk for characterization (he IS smart) and worldbuilding.

Tbh i can't really remember any iconic lines from the additions of EE/IF Kaidan... the only two lines that stood out for me were: the "elevenses" line from the clip above (started bumping into him every time he was about to say this so he would stfu... total tonal dissonance), and one he said while I looted Lucky Lorenz ("poor sod wasn't as lucky as his namesake would have you believe!") kai HOW do you know this man, and his nickname, who told you that??? (idc about it that much but its like the only other added line i remember)

I thought that maybe his ooc-iness might have been caused due to the collaborative approach of the mod, I think the mod authors created their own perfect Kaidan - and that's good for them! It takes a shit ton of work (Ik cuz i was there!!) But I think the original essence was lost with each addition. It might have been lack of direction for the voice acting too, a lot of the lines might have hit better if they weren't borderline screamed.

Okay, at some point while playing I got so tired of his constant himbo chit-chatter that I tried tuning him out and bringing other npcs from vanilla skyrim as followers. Problem: even without kaidan on your party, everything starts being about kaidan. Because the extension made it so that Kaidan either has history with/character interactions and development with different NPCs from the base game.

The main poor sods that traveled with me:

Erik the Slayer: Apparently was Kaidan's childhood friend, got inspired by Kaidan to become an adventurer. Least egregious in my opinion, they say sweet things to each other. I swear, Kaidan yells more at me than he ever did at Erik.

The Companions: dumb, dumber, and dumbest basically.. This part of EE/IF was also known as "The Fratpack" and y e a h they pretty much had Vilkas, Kaidan, and Farkas acting like immature frat boys all the time. Just,, absulutely taking away all the maturity out of these GROWN ASS MEN. im sorry, i guess i dont get the appeal. I liked it when they didn't behave like teens (Aela im so sorry, you deserved better than being part of this)

Lydia: All she does is simp for him, ALL.THE.TIME. You think she's about to have a meaningful thing to say? nope, she's checking out Kaidan's ass. Think she'll have a deep convo with another npc about one another? nope! she wants them to tell her all about Kaidan. Both the Companions and Erik will either talk down to her or have to deal with her thirst for Kaidan. i had to start leaving her home.

They also suffered from the same tonal whiplash as Kaidan, unfortunately

additionally, the mod added an "early flirt switch" - you could basically toggle Kaidan to start showing romantic affection for the Dragonborn before the amulet of mara., the interactions were good on paper, but everytime he stammered and stumbled over his words it was written in such an unnatural way... pls people don't talk like fanfics lol !!!

I did like that he gave me flowers, my inventory got full of them - but then he noticed how many flowers I had in my inventory and judged me for "picking everything i see" ugh dude you gave them to me, but also even if you hadnt... mind your business lol

Another addition was a feature that basically made it so NPCs could potentially throw flirtatious comments at Kaidan and the Dragonborn (Bishop flashbacks😨)

You can't do anything to defend Kaidan from those comments, but he WILL take it upon himself to defend your honor infront of any men, women, jarls, or criminals that even so much as find you attractive (THIS INCLUDES FARKAS AND VILKAS BTW :( ) by being rude, forthcoming, AND violent. so yea, you can guess the target audience

speaking of which, he definitely comes on too strong on you once you start the romance, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I specifically picked the "go slow" option for the romance, and the next day or two it was him constantly complaining about having to go slow under his breath, how he wanted to do anything but slow rn... and like just, wow. :/ yikeees lmao

Maybe this is the result of "i can fix him" romance ideals? im sorry but I liked him when he was down to earth

Bonus? He comes with a campsite now, which has to be magic because its ginormous and he somehow lugs it around despite it also coming with a whole ass furnace (fine fine i'll hold my disbelief)

anyway I do like it, its basically a player house you can take anywhere (so long as kai is with you ig) also you can have a cat in there

I like that there is an MCM, I like that the MCM lets you get through the quest stages in case you get stuck

I like that he can guide you places, usually he gets stuck in a tree or rock but its the thought that counts

I think if the mod had continued in the vein as its original iteration when it was just audio/bug fixes and included these qol features it would have been better than it is now.

But it seems maybe i'm just not the target audience, and as a young woman I'm really confused as who the target audience is 😓

okay im srry rant over

if anyone else wants me to yap about other kaidan skyrim things also ask or join in cuz i like yapping about skyrim and kaidan to people!!!

[tmntkiseki]

I have finally watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (beware for OPINIONS)

And the tl;dr opinion: I am surprised by how much I liked it

Obviously, it wasn't as good as the first movie and I definitely have a few issues with it, the biggest one being that with the exception of Donatello, the turtles barely used their weapons. I know this was because people complained that the first movie was too violent, but C'MON, PEOPLE. If Leonardo has a pair of swords strapped to his back, he should be using them, damn it!

My other big issue is Casey being completely absent from the plot. I might have been forgiving towards this if they provided an explanation somewhere in the script (something like "His mother is not doing well and he needs to take care of her,") but he's just gone with no acknowledgement that he even exists and it is so jarring when he was such a prominent member of the cast in the first film. Subsequently, I'm extremely divided on Keno. I do really like him as a character, and I wouldn't mind if they brought him back in another iteration at some point, but he ultimately feels like a substitute for Casey that they didn't actually need.

But otherwise, most of my complaints range from minor nitpicks to stuff that I'm not necessarily sure is actually a problem. For instance, the turtle costumes don't look as good, but I feel like that's more to do with the brighter lighting rather than a genuine decline in the overall quality (the darker lighting of the first movie did a lot to hide the imperfections in the suits.) April being played by a different actress certainly is weird, but Paige Turco does a pretty acceptable job playing our intrepid reporter, even if I do still prefer Judith Hoag. The overuse of slapstick comedy is a little grating at times, but there were a lot of jokes that made me laugh so I can let it slide. You win some, you lose some.

The really interesting thing though is that unlike the final two seasons of the 2003 series, the tonal change didn't actually bother me all that much. I think it was because despite the tonal change, the turtles, for the most part, still felt very in character when compared to the first movie. In Fast Forward and Back to the Sewer, there were a number of lines that genuinely went into "He would not fucking say that" territory, but here? Yeah, it' still the same turtles from before, just a little bit goofier.

And now for a bulleted list of pretty much everything I liked or am at least accepting of.

Even if I'm sad that Leo, Raph, and Mikey barely use their weapons, the fight choreography for the movie was still fantastic.

I know that both Raphael and Donatello's voices were recast for this movie and in terms of Raphael, Laurie Faso does such a convincing impression of Josh Pais performance that you can barely tell that the actor was changed.

As for Donny, I actually like Adam Carl's voice for him better than Corey Feldman's (not sure if this is a controversial opinion or not, but that is how I feel)

Speaking of Donny, they did put more emphasis on him being the tech guy of the turtles. That was the only thing I found off about him in the first movie, so I'm glad about this.

Listen, I know Jordan Perry's character is basically a stand-in for Baxter Stockman and he might as well just have been Baxter Stockman, but there is something I just absolutely love about him and his dumb bow tie.

Tokka and Rahzar... not entirely sure how I feel about these two? I think I like their concept enough and for the sake of the movie's plot they were utilized reasonably well. I just wish they had more personality than "literal infants." (Also, I feel dumb. I've been pronouncing Rahzar's name as "Raah-zahr," but for most of the movie, it's pronounced like razor.)

Even though there aren't really any significant character arcs in this movie and thus very little character development for the turtles, I did really like the brief angst that Don and his brothers had after finding out their mutation was a complete accident.

Frikkin Super Shredder. His appearance was extremely brief, but I can understand why the concept has been revived so many times in the franchise since this movie because it is so cool.

Do genuinely love the movie's soundtrack. Who the hell is Vanilla Ice, though?

[chrysanthemumgames]

Hi, Jess! A little bit of maybe a bug a report or maybe just a question for you:

I followed Fields of Asphodel during its production. During those early demos and BIPs, the game had tonal markers for choices—like a star for a joking remark, an X for a rejection remark, or hearts for romance-coded choices.

I bought your game once it was officially published, and I noticed that the stars and Xes still exist throughout the work but not the hearts. Was there a reason you removed those and not the others, assuming it was done intentionally? Some of the statements that seem to flag some kind of romantic interest in some of the characters are not explicitly romantic statements to me, so those tonal markers were helpful and I admit I miss them.

And, assuming it was intentional to remove them and not a problem with the Android version showing special characters—I noticed there was at least one place where a heart was still present, and this was one of the options during the holiday outing with Hermes. (Sorry, I neglected to take a screenshot when I came across it.) Figured you'd like to know just in case you wanted to edit it later.

Fields of Asphodel has long been one of my favorite IFs. Congratulations on its release! I'm very much looking forward to the second book. Have a nice day!

These still exist! I just updated the game in a way that should fix most of the errors related to those appearing (or not appearing) in the wrong/right places. If you notice anything specific, please do feel free to screenshot and send, but I believe things should now look more like you're accustomed to (if you update the game, of course).

It was definitely not intentional to remove them, I promise. :)

[valkyrie-sdv]

another bundle done... but MORE IMPORTANTLY... finally got sam's three-heart event.

thinking a lot about sam's emotional intelligence and how he's had to navigate this complex situation with his dad and the threat of his being killed. having to be a stand-in for his father while being only just an adult himself. (i'd imagine late teens or early 20s? given jodi's comment on how sam's "basically a man" now) i feel like i see sam get a lot of flack for being irresponsible, and he definitely is in other areas of life, but emotionally... he's been dealing with a lot since he was pretty young. and helping his family keep things together while his dad is away... in some ways i wonder if his acting the way he does is a direct reaction to what he's had to deal with? being forced to grow up too young, but not wanting to relinquish that childishness and lack of responsibility...

plus also the way that he shirks authority? his comment about not caring about the governor during the luau, getting in trouble with mayor lewis... it's a dynamic that's really interesting especially when thinking about how his dad is a soldier, too. we don't know what kent's like before, but we at least know now that kent seems to be all about Structure and is struggling without it, and believes too much freedom to be a problem. (from his sunday heart level 4 line.)

(as an aside, i really wonder what kent thinks of sam when he gets back, and how sam seems so much his opposite.)

i love how again the choice you get to make here is picking up on that division we see with sam? where with his brother it's ultimately about helping vincent hang on to his childhood for a little longer, or telling him the truth, like sam's aware of...

sunday choosing the "worse" option. sam's reaction is still interesting, though. it reminds me of how he also has this one line when he's married where he says: "I hope Vincent's not too lonely now that I'm gone… I kinda felt responsible for the little guy. But, life's all about change… right? Kids need to learn that, eventually… Or else adulthood will destroy them." digging through dialogue line code, you can see when some dialogue is a direct response to dialogue options you've picked before. this isn't one of them. so that this is something he thinks by default is interesting... sam feels like a happy-go-lucky guy in a lot of ways, but then when it comes to stuff like this, he feels really... almost pessimistic? it really feels like the result of having to deal with everything with his dad from a young age.

hey sam!! dude!!! the tonal whiplash here!!!!!! 😭 PLEASE

[moorishflower]

but what if pirate/siren dreamling

(TW for gore and very brief cannibalism mention (is it truly cannibalism if it's your deep sea predator lover taking a friendly nibble of an organ you aren't using))

The problem with having a lover who has multiple arms, Hob muses, is that when one does something foolish, that means there are that many more limbs with which they can hit you. He thinks this as a tentacle pelts him on the top of the head, not hard enough to sting, but definitely enough to bring him to attention.

"Hold still," Dream says, quite casually, in Hob's opinion, considering the fact that he is currently two hands and one tentacle deep in Hob's entrails, and has been rooting around down there for some time, and shows no signs of stopping. Hob has, within the last ten minutes, taken to staring fixedly over Dream's shoulder at the map mounted on the wall of his cabin. Hic sunt monstra, it says, at the very edge of the ocean, and Hob feels a half-drunk laugh bubble up out of him. Christ, if only that mapmaker had known.

"You're lucky my spine's what got hit," he says, "else I'd be screaming and you'd have to knock me out," and Dream hums softly. His voice, even above the water, has a tonal quality that Hob always has trouble defining in any meaningful way. It's like the cry of gulls at twilight, just before they settle into the darkness; it's like the hum of whales moving below the surface of the sea, their huge backs breaking the surf in plumes of silver and grey; it's like the creak of the masts and the beat of the sails when the wind is high and the sky is so clear it feels as though the ship might leave the water entirely.

A siren, Hob had thought, when he'd first found the man washed up upon the strand. One of those beautiful creatures of the deep, what tempted Odysseus and drew men to their dooms upon the rocks.

He's rather certain no siren has ever been depicted with tentacles, though.

Blood slicks Dream's pale arms up to the elbow as he pushes aside loops and coils of Hob's intestines, glistening grey-pink and pulsing faintly in the lamplight. The blood will not stop -- it drenches the bed, despite the oilskin tarp they've laid down, and pours in steady rivulets down onto the planks of the deck. Lucky that the men he's picked to crew his ship all have strong stomachs, for he's sure that some of his blood is going to drip down into the mess, and he is already dreading having to explain himself come morning. It's common knowledge that Captain Robert Gadling cannot die -- he's favored by luck, they say, the Lady herself, he's made a deal with the devil, he's drunk from the pure blood of Christ and now death cannot touch him.

There's a kernel of truth in every rumor, he thinks, as Dream finally reaches where one of the bullets has lodged itself. He knows Dream has found it, because he hears the gentle hum become a clacking of teeth, a chitter of excitement.

"Have you got it, my love?" he asks, and thinks himself wildly magnanimous when he does not try to bite the slender night-blue tentacle that pats vaguely at his cheek.

"You are very complicated inside," Dream says. "More so than fish."

"I'd hope so. How many did that cunt actually fire, anyways?"

"I have found…" There's a distressing squelching noise, and then Dream's hands emerge, gore dripping from his fingers and wrists, but, triumphantly, bearing several blood-drenched bullets. "Three. Including the one. In your spine."

"I didn't even feel you pull it out," Hob says wonderingly. Dream casually drops the bullets to the deck, where they roll, and scatter in several directions, trailing blood according to the whims of the listing ship.

"You would not. Your spine, as you said. Was what got hit."

"Nothing some good rest won't fix. Can you, ah. Pile me back inside, darling?" He looks pointedly down at his belly, still a gaping wound from Dream's careful, knifelike talons.

Dream, ever helpful, but without much of a grasp on human anatomy, slops his intestines loosely back into place, and then sits for a while, the tentacles of his lower half writhing, snuffing along the blood-soaked floor like eager hounds. He tastes it through his skin, Hob thinks -- or something to that effect. He tastes it with his mouth, also, fastidiously cleaning the scarlet from his hands and forearms with a tongue as pink and soft as dawning, and if Hob hadn't spent the past half-hour steadily bleeding out, reviving, and then bleeding out again, he thinks he would find the sight almost unbearably arousing.

You're fucked in the head, he thinks to himself, though not without a certain amount of wry affection. 'Fucked in the head' is one way to describe the man who cheated Death at cards. He blesses every century that passes that she was a good sport about it.

"Am I to your satisfaction?" he asks, beginning to feel woozy, again, the lightheaded feeling of bloodloss so close to drunkenness that it seems an old and faithful friend. Dream pauses with his tongue still partly out, and Hob wishes he were able to move, that he could lean forward and take it into his mouth, and suck the taste of iron from it until all that's left beneath is the iodine tang of the sea.

"Always," Dream says, and lowers his arms, and slinks closer, his upper half as still and calm as a tidal pool, and everything below that a roil of constant movement. He shapes himself legs when he must walk among men, but here, in the relative privacy of Hob's cabin, he rarely bothers. Hob should find that less attractive than he does, perhaps. But he has already established that cheating Death has, in some ways, rendered him insane.

"Then can you please start stitching me up," he says sweetly, with just an edge of gritted teeth. "I'm about to go out again. Good time to practice your. Your." Hob feels his eyes cross. Can feel his heart stuttering.

"Your needlework," he manages to get out, just before his vision blacks, and the last thing he sees is Dream peering closely at him, concern in his eyes, the fractal flare of luminescence sparking across his cheeks in a mimicry of the night sky. Stars, Hob thinks. Death had told him he would sail the stars if he only wanted it for long enough, though she'd expressed her doubts that he would last that long. You'll be asking for me within the century, she'd said. No human is meant to live much longer than that. Your minds aren't wired for it.

Yet here he is. Three hundred years later, and no signs of stopping. Other than the blood loss, of course, but as he feels his heart give a final, thready thump he feels reassured in the knowledge that Dream has, in fact, been practicing his sewing, and has been getting fairly good at it when he helps to repair the sails, and he's probably not going to try and sneak a bite of any of Hob's organs, because he loves him, and you don't eat the ones you love. Probably.

(If he wakes up missing a small chunk of his liver, well. His spine is still broken, and everything below his breastbone is a fuzzing numbness, and it's not like the organ won't grow back, eventually. These are the things he tells Dream, anyways, when he comes to at last, and finds his belly stitched neatly closed, and his otherworldly lover rubbing his gore-sodden mouth against Hob's neck in fitful ecstasy.

"My love," Dream is murmuring, and Hob cannot help but pull him close, and let all the many arms and limbs wind around him, a sweet parody of drowning. "My love, my love, inside you taste of the sea.")

[morimakesfanart]

Sindria's Prophet #41

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [Intermission] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40]

[AO3] [wattpad]

Sinbad x OC

*Mori goes to horny mecha *More sex ed things *Emotional/tonal whiplash ~POV Sinbad~ Mori couldn't keep their eyes off of him for days, but they turned away every time Sinbad returned their gaze. He was definitely getting under their skin. It was only a matter of time before they fully became his, but he wasn't certain he could make it happen before he left for the Kou Empire. It was only after he sat at his desk and couldn't seem to finish a single document that he couldn't deny Mori was under his skin too. Even the waves were pointing him away from his desk.

However, the King couldn't exactly leave when he had just started working -that was what Zepar was for. The bird circled the Black Libra Tower, and when it entered through an open window of Mori's office it wasn't his Beautiful Prophet inside. That was definitely Ja'far leaving the room holding a bunch of scrolls. And when he entered the court yard, the General was headed towards the White Capricorn Tower. Something told Sinbad that Ja'far was heading his way without the waves. He dropped control of the bird.

Sure enough, Ja'far entered his office with the scrolls and put them on his desk. "Sin, is what Mori wrote in these true?" Just glancing at the labels he knew, "I haven't read those ones yet, but I'm sure they are." "Read them now." Ja'far had not looked this upset with him in years. "I'll wait."

--- ~POV Sharrkan~ Mori was ranting and it was far worse than anything Yam had ever said. "Yeah, no! I don't care how pretty these are or how much of a tourist attraction they are! You have to stop selling and supplying quartz and wooden dildos!" The Prophet pointed one such facile at the group before her. "These materials are porous. They can't be properly sterilized, so they will eventually lead to infections no matter what orifice they're shoved into!" Sindria's best swordsman was stuck between covering his face or ears while Mori 'educated' him and the staff of the Red Light District. This was a mistake. 'Can the King just show up and kill me right now????' She sighed. "You can make a similar-ish affect to quartz with glass right? That's actually safe to use, easy to sterilize, and they can handle a wide range of temperatures so you can even use them for temperature play." The Prophet twirled the crystalline dick while talking. "I was surprised when I saw how advanced this country's glass is so there shouldn't be a problem making dildos out of safe materials with the glass work here." Sharrkan had thought she would just take notes or something and leave, not try to fix everything right then and there!!! What materials were safe, what practices were dangerous; 'didn't matter that she was also teaching them things they could do/use instead that would work better. Wasn't Mori supposed to be a huge virgin nerd like Yam??? Why did she know so much about all of this? There's no way this was just from her visions. The staff were the ones taking notes instead of the Prophet. 'At least they seem to be enjoying themselves.'

--- ~POV Sinbad~ Ja'far brought the remaining Fate scrolls Sinbad had yet to read, but only really wanted him to read parts of 2 of them for the conversation. The contents were telling, both in his mistakes of the past, and Ja'far's current glare. When his Beautiful Prophet first told him that he ran away from responsibility using 'Fate,' he thought he had found the true answer in the waves. But that was a contradiction. The waves were caused by people's decisions, so even if they guide people to opportunities it doesn't remove their agency. Without realizing it, Sinbad had fallen into another phantasm to protect himself from guilt. Some of the comments Mori made since they met had hinted at the real reason but it was clear she had no intention of telling him directly. All of the scrolls had signs of being edited here and there, but not these two. They were still in process. And so there was the truth written directly in the paragraphs after his release from slavery.

...He had long forgotten how to ask for emotional support ... Those feelings would fester every time he made another mistake until he was able to fully replace his guilt with the acceptance of 'Fate' as inevitable. He wouldn't be able to acknowledge his own potential for evil for another 15~ years...

That last line held the answer. 'His own potential for evil.' That was the point Mori was really talking around all this time. In her visions he hadn't been able to accept that side of himself until it was too late. He knew he was capable of such things on a factual level considering how he viewed some of his Kingly actions as 'necessary evils,' but that wasn't the same as acknowledging that truth in his Heart. The reason he had longed for the ways of his youth was because back then he hadn't done anything that would haunt the rest his life; he had yet to gamble in desperation only to hurt those around him. But even that wasn't really the truth. When Sinbad had read about when he left home after capturing the Dungeon all he could think of was how that action damned everyone in his village just as was revealed in the scrolls in front of him. He had been making this mistake since the start. 'Just what have I been doing all this time?'

Ja'far's darkened stare waited until he got through the 2nd scroll. "This is so much worse than how you made it sound. This is more than some kid thinking he's the chosen one." A hand went to his head as he tried to wrap his mind around everything. "Sin, why do you think we all swore our lives to help you achieve your dream?"

Sinbad couldn't look away from the scrolls. Doing so would only mean seeing the disappointment in his friend's eyes. He had spent so long keeping what happened in Parthevia a secret. There was nothing he could do about it now.

"I know you don't like sharing your plans, but I thought... Did you ever trust us to help you?! What was the point of gathering all of us then??"

The King opened his mouth, and the realization that he couldn't say the 'right' answer and believe his own words hit him much harder than Ja'far's accusations. His heart started racing to match the flow of the waves. The General may have only read those 2 scrolls but Sinbad had read everything leading up to them, so more of his past was fresh in his mind. Sure, he reached out to people to teach him things periodically, but any time he ran into a real problem he always took on that burden alone. Sinbad had expected 'support' from his Household Members and citizens, but never 'help.'

Sinbad lost control over his expression. "That's part of why I decided to change this path I'm on. Mori made it clear that I will repeat the mistakes of my past if I don't start relying on you all even when I..." He was unable to find the right words to finish his sentence.

"Sin." Ja'far practically hissed his name. "If you don't fix this bad habit of yours then I'll kill you myself, just like I promised all those years ago, before you can cause the 2nd Calamity."

"I'll count on that." He would rather that than be the one that almost destroyed the world. Taking a deep breath didn't help nearly as much as he hoped. "I think we've humored Mori long enough. I need to know for sure how I'm connected to the 2nd Calamity." ---

~POV Mori~ To be honest, I wasn't expecting the management of the Red Light District to believe me right away. But apparently, being officially announced as the Prophet was really good PR because they were very excited to receive some of my 'prophecies for the betterment of Sindria.' The waves had grown dangerously high during my info dumping. If I didn't know how much of a change a sexual revolution could cause from reading history I might have been concerned. Instead, it made my heart swell with pride.

Returning to my room empty handed was a bit disappointing, but it did make it easier to sneak back without being noticed. It also gave me time to make a space the bunch of the new glass dildos I preordered. I was definitely looking forward to the future.

"Finally!" Sharrkan groaned as we exited the district. "If I knew you were going to take so long figuring out-" Both of us froze in the gold gilded doorway.

'Why is Sinbad entering the Red Light District in the middle of the day???' That thought was immediately counter when I noticed Ja'far standing next to him. That meant he was here for official business, not pleasure. 'Why am I only now realizing I could have waited for him to leave the country before attempting this????' At least I wasn't carrying a bag of dicks. That would have been the most damning evidence. --- ~POV Sinbad~ When the guards had revealed that Mori was escorted to the Red Light District by Sharrkan, Sinbad was unwilling to wait for their return. However, something wasn't quite adding up to his expectations. Mori was happily walking out of the Red Light District, and Sharrkan was drained and depressed besides her.

Before the King could say anything, Mori greeted them. "Hello, you're Majesty, Ja'far! I was originally going to tell you after writing up a report first, but since you're here I'll let you know now: I realized I could share medical information for reproductive health here." She gestured behind her, "I just finished my first trip to see what is the current common knowledge, so I could better understand how I can help."

'Does that means Sharrkan didn't drag Mori here?' Even so she was talking a bit too quickly. She was definitely nervous about something.

Ja'far responded before the King could gather his thoughts. "Mori. You do remember that you promised not to invent anything, don't you?" His smile was not the nice one.

"Yes," she admitted without skipping a beat. "However I don't need to invent anything that we aren't already working on to help here." Mori's smile was unwavering.

Sinbad sought direct confirmation. "You really came here to figure out ways to improve this place?" ---

~POV Mori~ "Of course! Who do you think I am?" I said, you know, like a liar. I placed one hand on my hip, and the other over my heart for added flare. "The whole reason I came here was because the rubber experiments are coming along, and the same material can be used to make comfortable condoms you can actually feel through. That way no one has an excuse to not use them." The King and estranged prince coughed at my words. Ja'far's eyes widened. I took his lack of comment as a sign to continue. "We are already working towards rubber gloves. And what are the fingers on gloves other than tubes? We can make condoms by just making bigger tubes." I gave a perfect customer service smile to the man in charge of finances. "From my visions, I know how much trouble 'people' get into when they can't deny their desires, so I thought I could at least help with this part of the problem." "Mx. Prophet," Ja'far took a few steps forward and grabbed my hands. "You should have told me sooner! Something like is invaluable with a King like Sinbad." 'Fish, meet hook.' I softened my expression to lean into this pity angle. "I understand. I know how many complaints you've had to deal with because of him."

((Blatant Rose of Versailles reference ;3)) --- ~POV Sinbad~ This was a dilemma. Even though Sinbad had stopped taking partners, his Beautiful Prophet was none the wiser. This was a good opportunity to enlightened her, but there was something else he had to take care of first. Ja'far might have disliked Mori when they first met, but ever since the rebellion in Balbadd was stopped things started to change. They had started having periodic moments like this when their thoughts aligned. Sin didn't like it. He gently separated their hands and received their attention at the same time. "Hey now, I stopped asking for call girls weeks ago." On one hand, if Mori wanted something, Sinbad wanted to make sure she got it -if that was the assistance of one of his Generals so be it. But on the other hand, he didn't want anyone else catching Mori's eye. When he had heard that Sharrkan brought her to the Red Light District he had thought that one of his Household Members had betrayed him. From the look of things it was starting to seem like, instead of Sharrkan, it was Ja'far he should have been worried about. Ja'far took a few steps back. His eyes and brow scrunched in great disappointment and complete lack of fucks for the topic. "I think we will all feel better with this added protection considering your track record." "Yes, well..." There was no denying that. Sinbad cleared his throat into a fist to buy time as he listed the facts in his head: '-Mori has already admitted to her feelings for me before so clearly she wants to be with me. '-Mori is also aware of my own feelings even though she hasn't fully accept it yet. '-Mori has started working on condoms that are comfortable. 'She is clearly working towards our future, so we can have a long honeymoon before growing our family!!' Mori's expression was only marginally better than Ja'far's. "Are.... you sick?" The Prophet still trusted her visions far more than anything he could say. "I'm fine. I promise." This was a failure of a conversation. Sharrkan's snickering rubbed salt in the wound. There was nothing the Womanizer of the Seven Seas could say to clear his name. "...Okay." She clearly didn't believe him. Mori lightly clapped their hands together with a smile. "Well, on that bombshell, we'll let you go do whatever you were gonna do in the Red Light District." Regret. Humiliation. Was how he spent his life really such a bad thing for a future spouse? Wouldn't his experience and expertise mean that he would be guaranteed to satisfy them? Ja'far brought the topic around to their true purpose. "Actually Mori, we came to get you. We have some questions about the future you saw in your visions."

--- ~POV Mori~ The room they brought me to was the same one that lead to the balcony where I had dinner with Sinbad more than a month ago. As soon as we entered, the King started taking off his rings. Confusion spiked my anxiety. Sinbad gave me a reassuring smile. "I noticed during our meetings about Fate that you keep looking at my rings. When I remembered you know my Djinn's abilities it was obvious what you were worried about." He took off his remaining metal vessels and placed them on a coffee table. "I know I'll never use any of these on you, but actions speak louder than words at times like these." Ja'far followed his King's example and placed his metal vessels on the the table as well. I knew I looked at Zepar's ring a few times when talking about Fate, but I thought I made it seem like my eyes were wandering. I couldn't respond. My brain was still catching up and accepting what was happening. 'This isn't going to be about his trip to the Kou Empire...' I had already explained what visions I had of that trip during a meeting about preparing for it, but it was still the most likely topic I could think of. It wasn't until they settled in amongst the plush seating that I realized I should sit down too. Sinbad's expression went serious but he didn't feel angry. After a moment's hesitation he looked me in the eye. "The person who causes the 2nd Calamity is me, isn't it?" . . . . . . 'How????' The thought was immediately followed by the realization that since I hadn't responded right away there was no way they would believe anything other than admittance. I couldn't even consider the option. ((So that emotional whiplash of a cliffhanger, amiright? The chapter took so long to come out because- Surprised! That eye infection I had came back and being on the medication this time really messed me up. It's a stronger antibiotic since the last apparently didn't fully knock it out of me. I couldn't go outside without catching on fire and passing out, and I had to hyper monitor my diet. The doctor said I'm past the next stage so the dosage was cut in half. I feel more like a person again :D I'll be on it for at least another month. Wish me luck!! This chapter was also delayed because I ended up deciding to do Artober daily this year. It was my first year making a piece every day since Jake Parker ruined Inktober by trademarking it and doing a plagiarism. Anyway, I really enjoyed the challenge :D Inspired me to work on more of my original work and things. On that note, the next chapter is going to be delayed because I want to get a lucid dream one shot out by December 7th. I definitely chose that date for no reason in particular. It absolutely has nothing to do with it being a Jujutsu Kaisen dream. Promise UwU I also have an original piece I'm nearly done writing, but I'll wait to finalize it until I have the next chapter of Sindria's Prophet posted :3 The world and this country is on fire but that doesn't mean it's the end. We have survived every day up to this one, we can survive another. We will preserve.))

[obsidianpen]

Hi, NG fan here! Ramble ahead.

I just wanted to say you do a really good job both explaining and transitioning Voldemort from being a pretty pure evil, 2-D villain coming straight out of book 7 into a more complex 3-D character as he literally gets soul!supplements from Harry. Obviously a lot of the stuff in the very beginning is reflective of the fact that Rowling likes her heroes and villains very cut-and-dry, which means that you can't build compelling character interactions with them without breaking at least *some* of her tonal choices, but that's not a bad thing and you do it in a way that feels very natural.

I think part of what makes the way you write your Voldemorts (counting Hauntingly) so compelling is the internal growth and desire for change. In both NG and Hauntingly, Harry is obviously the catalyst for a lot of this, but I think we do demonstrably see V improving over time (obviously by the end of Hauntingly, but I think in NG too). A lot of what he does is deeply evil, but we as the audience can be sympathetic because it comes partially from a place of ignorance (both regarding his own emotions/desires and his effect on those around him) and we see the evil waver as the ignorance fades.

Harry would sacrifice himself for a soggy corn chip, but beyond that I think that the acknowledgement of how ignorance feeds into remorse definitely contributes to his willingness to engage in intimacy -- emptional, spiritual, and sexual -- with Voldemort after the torture and rape. Voldemort seems to genuinely not have known that he was the kind of person who could rape someone to death, and now that he knows that he is he hates that about himself. It's a low bar to have, but it's a bar that V has never had before because it never occurred to him that he could do something so evil he regretted it. Obviously control is another huge theme in NG, and if the rampage of the most recent chapter is any evidence, it's clear that Voldemort has very little self-control and that will probably feed his remorse even more deeply.

I think that eventually they'll plateau in terms of improvement, because the problem with Harry sacrificing himself all the time is that it's -- shock and awe! -- not actually good for him, and if V keeps improving then eventually his desire to "do right" by Harry is going to outweigh his own selfishness as he becomes aware of just how much harm he's done and how much his presence continues to do. Harry is really good at drawing V back in, but he doesn't actually respect most of V's attempts at boundaries and it still isn't good for him even when he succeeds.

Anyway, thank you for all your work on this! Can't wait to see where it goes next.

’It's a low bar to have, but it's a bar that V has never had before because it never occurred to him that he could do something so evil he regretted it.’ - pretty much hit the nail on the head with this line. Lowest bar in the world but he’s literally never thought about it, and only something that horrible - being the near cause of the death of his last horcrux and tie to a full, pure soul - would make him do so.

[mr-payjay]

feel free to complain to me about the ii finale <3 i'm all ears

thank you ellie :)

fair warning for ii neg, especially on the latest episode.

prefacing this with saying: I LOVE INANIMATE INSANITY!!!!!! inanimate insanity is my favourite show in the world and every episode leaves me full of joy and excitement. i adore criticizing it not out of hatred but out of genuine love. i enjoy every single episode i watch.

however, i find that iii19 has been the worst episode so far. it has gotten me the least hyped out of any episode in the series, which is saying a lot because i bounce off the walls at every episode no matter how much i end up criticizing it later. there are. so many problems i have with it. im gonna try and organize them the best i can, though i'll probably(?) edit this post later to insert anything i missed or forgot to say.

starting off positively: oj!!!! personally i am so glad he didn't talk in this episode. i was terrified of the idea of him having a new va. the spin was adorable, i loved his signature thumbs ups, and every time i saw him i squealed with delight. him voting for balloon also made me really happy! despite the grudge he's had against him for so long, he still sticks with him on this part. even after laughing at his death the episode before that

in general all the seasonwunners voted for balloon!! which makes me happy!!! paintbrush, nickel, balloon, and oj have all been there for the very beginning of season 1, three of them being there for every season. i love the inherent connection the contestants from season 1 have with each other. they've been together since inanimate insanity began and they're there for the end of season 3 too. very sweet.

onto more negative stuff! I CANNOT FUCKING BELIEVE WHAT THEY DID WITH SILVER SPOON AND CANDLEEE they set up something crazy in the last episode and then did NOTHING with it!!! they had silver spoon beat candle unconscious the second she said something that wasn't coddling him like the manchild he is and she STILL voted for him. where even was she for half of the episode?? they just left her lifeless corpse on the ground in iii18 and then she eventually got up in this episode and just. went back to the competition??? dogshit writing

okay now i wanna talk about cabby. I Don't Like Cabby Anymore. so from the very beginning i have loved cabby. she was extremely similar to me in fact! i have really bad memory issues and i tend to keep files on people and on things that i might forget about, as well as just to organize my thoughts and ideas. i loved her confidence, obsession with knowledge, and analytical personality at the start. i was pretty upset when the characters (mostly test tube lmao) started relentlessly bullying her, and i HATE the whole thing in spring on the breakfast where they try to demonize her files. it was kind of annoying when they tried to remedy it really quickly after that because it was clearly because of the backlash, but i was glad they at least tried to fix it. however, over the course of the series, she just felt like she was... becoming sadder? pitiful, honestly? she went from an awesome smart character who loved taking notes on people's behaviour and using that information to get better at the game into some kind of Sad Little Bullied Victim. she doesn't even feel like a character anymore to me, just a mouthpiece for the creators to write dramatic "cathartic" speeches through to prove they're Definitely Not Ableist. also what was the deal with her parents lmao they never brought that up again

aaaand this episode was generally written really badly. super fucking corny for one. they literally had a little dance party at the end like people make jokes about for stereotypical Kids' Shows. but my issue is more with like... the weird super fast character development? and the way they wrapped everything up as quickly as possible? something that bothered me was the tonal whiplash between zuwie voicing springy super hysterically and dramatically and then springy being fully redeemed within like the next 5 minutes and dying for mephone. Why did they even die for mephone. like as a character why would he of all people die for mephone. thats so fucking stupid. the rest of the voice acting felt completely different from springy's as well so it just made the effect worse. everyone's lines were really corny and felt so manufactured, like they would pull characters to mephone's side (losing my mind over all the contestants rooting for mephone like cmon man that guy sucks i just know oj at least would want him dead) with a short Cathartic Speech and everything would be fixed and lovely and peachy keen. its just painful to watch. everything feels really weirdly disjointed and badly put together, the flow is awful, the "danger" doesn't feel like there's any suspense to it at all, and every character gets fully redeemed for no good reason. even walkie talkie chats casually with mephone at the end as if they're good friends after they were HYSTERICALLY INSISTING ON MURDERING HIM? AND MAKING HIM WATCH HIS OWN DEATH?? idk if this will get explained in s2 but we still don't know who walkie talkie is, what their motive is, WHY they got redeemed, etc. we know nothing about them. and even if it will be explained later, i think it's shitty writing that NOTHING was explained in this season.

some extra stuff

- SO FUCKING GLAD THEY DIDN'T BRING HOTEL OJ INTO THIS I WOULD'VE CRIED IF THEY PUT SEASON 3 CHARACTERS INTO HOTEL OJ OR MADE IT ALL SLEEK AND S3 STYLE

- the "you can do this" thing at the end was fucking stupid man that was so corny (btw corny isn't always bad but jesus christ... this episode was just awful with it)

- could not feel any emotion towards the Emotional Parts but laughter and secondhand embarrassment

- HOW DID THEY GET THE FUNDING FOR A LIBRARY? I THOUGHT THE PROBLEM WAS THAT MEPHONE DIDN'T HAVE ANYTHING FOR A PRIZE HOW DID HE PAY FOR AN ENTIRE LIBRARY

- speaking of, why isn't oj back at the hotel. doesn't he have to manage it. wasn't paper having a ton of trouble managing it. why are all of them still on that fuckass island. did the library take like 5 minutes to build what the fuck

- ALSO!!! Why did they build a library in the middle of a deserted island

- i liked the short nickloon scene because im a nicklooner

- glad yinyang and candle got to talk

- test tube saying nearly nothing at all the entire episode except for sitting on the ground in a really stupid pose and apologizing to cabby made me laugh

- weirded out by tt and fan not talking to each other at all? not as a ship thing but like they're best friends aren't they

- really fucking annoyed by the fantube family picture at the end i hate fantube family leave that grown ass adult (bot) alone

- glad they didn't canonize any ships i was so scared about silvercandle and fantube

- 4s scene and s1 flashback was cool i love s1 so i got excited

- aaaaand i think my misogyny thread is relevant again. i should update it sometime because ii has only gotten worse about it lmao

- didn't like them making clover stupid for some reason like "is he talking about me?" come on

- oj not talking in these last two episodes is so glaringly unusual because he's never been able to shut his fucking mouth for even a minute

[suzu-kun22]

no offence but it's pretty obvious that they had plans for a different plot from the start. the changes begin from episode 1 and a lot of elements are re arranged long before they deviate fully from the og fma. the issues were more to do with a full season being cut from the show and budget running out than the plot for the show being "made up as they went along".

You're right, it is very clear that they had plans to go with a different plot from the start. However, tbh, 2003 doesn't really feel like it suffers from an entire season being cut from the budget. It feels like it suffers from the second half having a different writer than the first half.

Like, yeah. Considering that the second half of the show is written by someone else, it is surprisingly coherent. However, the tone of the story is completely different in 03. Most of the goofy comedy stuff from the first half of the show disappears after episode 25 (which, even when stuff starts to get more serious, the manga and Brotherhood maintain the comedy throughout.) And the way certain characters' stories end feels completely different and almost unsatisfying to me. Sometimes.

I definitely believe that another season of the show (or at least some more episodes/movies) were cut because like, anime production budgets are often non-existent and despite how good I think it still looks, it's clear that 03 didn't have a very high one. But I don't think that's the reason for 03's problems. At the core, I think most of the tonal/coherency issues just come from the fact that two different people wrote the two halves of the show lmao.

The first half of the show is still absolutely stellar, though. Some (emphasis on SOME) of the anime original episodes are so fantastic. Specifically the Barry the Chopper episode. Fantastic.

Plus I do think the ending of 03 has some really interesting implications. Again, if only the sequel movie(s) had been allowed to actually explore that.

[joelletwo]

wrestling with the 4devas bitchslap again to convince myself its fine if graveyard wins the best ep tourney: it's not the other bloggers who are wrong, it's me

not a complete response to but definitely in conversation with and asking some of the same questions again as @reductionisms's 4devas essay, which tries to square gintoki's "life doesn't need to be fun, i just need you to live" being a series-sanctioned message he's given to villains as an arc-concluding moral continuously up until 4devas with it here being an incorrect worldview that needs to be (physically) corrected by shinpachi, the straightman tonal signpost of gintama

a conflict i have been perplexed by ever since i got to this line on my first watch a year or two ago, since i've seen this line before! all over fandom! as part of the general "dont [bottom text] kill yourself" motivational messaging of gintama that i love!

and, briefly, when i hit 4devas i was also in the middle of being really frustrated by the new arc pattern i was seeing crop up: i loved the villains-turned sympathetic-turned someone worth saving by gintoki tune of the first half of gintama, but it fell massively flat for me in Yoshiwara in Flames, where i was never convinced to be on housen's side but had to watch him get a heartwarming redemptive death at the side of the woman he abused anyways.

then shortly after i had the same exact experience in Red Spider with jiraia, and i thought, if this is what gintama is gonna do with its shitty dudes from now on im gonna quit the fucking show. and then shortly after that i met jirochou and saw him cut down otose the woman he loved (under a raining sky!!! the fucking sky motifs!!! the signpost im about to watch a dude be shittily violent to women and be expected to feel sorry for him about it) and saw too much red to really take in the rest of the arc level-headedly or care about anything in it lol.

so it was written off in my mind as the 'otose almost gets fridged' arc until i rewatched it this week. then i had to remember, oh yeah, there's a ton of political maneuvering fakeouts in this arc that i never actually squared back with how the plot presented itself prior to the reveals, so i'd still been thinking about the "fakeout" plot. then i read the manga version with all the "truths" in mind from the start, and finally i felt like i could understand what this arc is doing a little better.

(way) tldr (4.4k words. sorry): do i love this arc? eh. do i still hate it? eh. but it's doing stuff!

first, i was able to see an echo in all the "actually i was planning to betray you the whole time" "actually i was working to help you the whole time" plot beats of what sorachi does with the larger edo/universe story further into the back half of the manga. if i ever sound like i didnt enjoy or wasnt convinced by the execution of these "reveals," it's because i didnt and wasnt, lol. but it's fun that he had fun with them i guess.

the arc starts with pirako ingratiating herself into yorozuya, then having a classic "bump into you and pretend to be injured to extort you" encounter w her dad's gang. to resolve this without escalating into violence, gintoki... does it back to them, which is really funny. but thus the tone is set for the arc of: DISHONEST APPROACHES TO CONFLICT.

pirako isnt honest about her overall intentions the, like, seven different times that she "admits her real ones." kada plays at peacekeeper in the devas while being the ultimate person scheming to get the upper hand over everyone else in the end. (she's also secretly harusame, evil amanto outsider who acts as a unifying force for the kabukicho fighting itself to band together against and expel: sorachi's favorite move! the problem was never internal, it's the shadowy REAL antagonists who infiltrated us)

jirochou and otose are ultimately doing a pantomime of conflict to try to keep temperatures down and escalations from breaking out, so no one they care about has to get hurt. gintoki doesn't know this until the end, but he follows in their footsteps after his encounter with them in the graveyard: he plays at having given up to the rest of yorozuya so they'll leave and escape the coming kabukicho war, the same thing otose was trying with him. it fails both times. i'm really not sure why gintoki and otose thought it would work, honestly. they should know their kids are stubborn as hell.

but gintoki is in a bind because of the things he needs to protect, and all of his actions are primarily in service of that, to the detriment of how he'd prefer to act if he were less restricted. he is unsurprised and unoffended to hear saigou is only willing to warn them, not help them, because her son is in danger if she acts directly. all four devas are, seemingly, being mutually restrained this way, holding back even when blatantly manipulated to do so. the other constant of this arc: everyone is dishonest, and no one wants to risk losing what they have.

gintoki understands that! of course! he's had to make that calculus before, after all :)

and this arc is just one big cliff scene echo: the entire graveyard scene pushing gintoki to emotional regression because he thinks he's losing another parent figure, one he's just seen the Gintoki Figure of the arc cut down, no less (takasugi stolen valor when he goes berserk against him and only ends up uselessly bleeding out on the ground about it, honestly). otose goes into this willingly so gintoki can live. he accepts this decision because he values protecting her values (her kids living on) and is briefly broken by it (the story says, before giving him shinpachi to "put him back on track"). prior to the bitchslap, after saying he just wants them to live, even if it has to be without him, he says:

i dont have a good understanding of when we start getting reveals of gintoki's backstory versus foreshadowing because i went into gintama already knowing most of it, but definitely by the recent red spider where we get our first real look at (or really, first listen to) shouyou. but here we actually get some of what gintoki felt about it, which he keeps closely guarded even when the whole truth comes out: he's done his best to survive having lost, but it was so unbearable he can't face losing again.

(also, honorable mention backstory echo, the person calling him a brother sets his home on fire to drive him and his parent figure out of town. as i liveblogged: this one would really hurt gintoki if gintoki cared about anything oboro ever did!)

but with the shinpachi story-rerouting, they get the good end, keep everyone (otose, yorozuya, all of kabukicho, even pirako and her dad - everyone but kada) safe without having to sacrifice a single thing, even keep gintoki hopeful for this outcome. so, as goose points out, we are left to understand that there could have been a good end on the cliff, that something is different here than there, and, skipping a lot of math, that that is the people around gintoki.

which i do find really funny to imagine as a slam on takasugi and katsura. sorry you kids suck too much, your teacher dies bc u were cringefail. but lets look at it.

everyone is dishonest, no one wants to risk what they have: gintoki rallies himself to keep fighting but is determined to do it alone. kagura and shinpachi fight him on this; they can't leave because they don't want to lose their home, they can't let him fight alone because they don't want to lose him. they're just as restricted by what they have to keep safe, but their only option is to act where everyone else's is inaction. shinpachi says:

if i may skip over the bitchslap itself for now, gintoki does consent to let his allies fight with him after it. yorozuya stands alone against saigou, who's heavily demoralized but resigned, strongarmed into fighting them by the threat to her son. but on seeing their resolve to keep protecting their own precious home and family she says:

and, to skip straight to my thought, i think this is what turns the tides back in their favor. there are more twists and turns to the fight. pirako equates what binds saigou, which she herself equates to what binds the yorozuya, to what binds her:

(with an intentional distinction that she's willing to actively destroy the others', as opposed to their purely self defensive fighting, which is echoed at some point in her distinguishing gintoki from jirochou in the same way, that jirochou not only lives to protect like gintoki but is willing to destroy in the process. i don't find that part as interesting, but it's more fuel to the power of having something to protect as a driving force as an arc theme.)

so now all three stand on the same ground, absolutely unwilling to give up what they hold dear, but all their cards are on the table. they aren't dealing in 12 dimensions of tricksy defensive pre-emptive moves anymore. they know it wouldnt work, anyways, since they all know their drives to protect are the same and no one will be talked into backing down. now they can directly duke it out and let the winner be determined that way, on strength of will. even before the actual circumstances change, the fight somehow feels freer seeing how inevitable it is. and with everything out in the open, yorozuya can now protect each other and saigou's son, taking out one side of the conflict.

(and with everything out in the open, the ultimate 4devas villain can become the single person who continues to betray the others, kada, whose further machinations - with everything out in the open! - saigou (and later yorozuya) can choose to protect pirako from. everyone wins! because everything was out in the open! do you see where i'm going)

and so we come back to the question: gintoki is corrected, the arc is rerailed to the better outcome. so is the correction justified?

what does the correction accomplish outside of its moment? most convincingly to me of goose's presented options, i also think it's done as a thematic shift, a, okay, just live was a strategy that worked before but now doesn't suffice, so we need something more.

as to why this is needed now and not earlier or later...tldr bad planning <3 but like.

we have, prior to this, a consistent thrust of arcs where gintoki teaches people to lose. as well, while we meet the harusame and we visit space and we get the barest glimpses of takasugi's weird shadowy background moves there, largely we're dealing with kabukicho characters and kabukicho stories. we see or only hear about the shogun for short comedic moments only. we've largely dropped the series intro focus on things like the shinsengumi or hasegawa acting as foreign diplomats. it's a local series, a hometown series, a kabukicho and not even an edo at large series, a personal story about gintoki making personal connections with his personal experience as a flawed person with a flawed approach to life that has let him, chronic slacker, get by on the bare minimum.

at this moment, chapter 300, we have a slow trickle of gintoki backstory starting to come out to us. we've recently expanded the story focus to include yoshiwara, which gets a callout in this arc by kada to keep it relevant. we have an arc of sorachi testing out plot beats that he'll use again for the endgame, in all the political maneuvering and alliancing and betraying and shadowy outsider space governmenting, where he's also doing a lot of echoing of that backstory that only becomes clear later. so it's possible he's thinking about shifting gears and setting up for the eventual endgame, which means getting out of the episodic cycle so things can stick.

and after this arc, to my opinion and memory, we stop getting the classic gintama flavor sympathizable'd antagonists. a lot of the bigger arcs don't even have clear Big Shot antagonists anymore, being more about the shouyoucore theme of characters fighting against themselves, or if there is one they're always explicitly part of the Shadow Government now, a unified and more daunting force than someone they can win over with an inspiring gintoki interaction.

so 4devas does act as a turning point at least in some way. and it's not possible to say this definitively, since all gintama arcs are ultimately never going to be about gintoki or his friends Actually losing something instead of beating the odds, but it does feel like theres a different flavor to, say, dekobokko with its direct look at how chars lives could be different and better and they will still choose to keep struggling as themselves. and Kintama arc definitely doesn't feel like an early days arc, like it can only resolve the way it does with a gintoki who is now able to face his past and the possibility of losing again and again and again (now with, natch, his faith that yorozuya will by his side when he does).

why now, after 300 chapters of letting it sit ignored in the back of his brain working out perfectly fine except when it doesn't (the very reminder of shouyou in a fight making him go Demon Mode, which is like regular gintoki but worse at fighting, bc he is so unprepared to think about shouyou)? well i personally am in big favor of the "take a decade off" strategy for facing problems. it worked for me too. realistically watsonianly its nice to let things percolate in the brain and do some of the processing behind the scenes until its less immediately painful. and he's made many bonds over these 300 chapters, shown in this arc when the whole town rallies behind him, that are there to support him when he needs it now and weren't there before.

realistically doylistly eh. bad planning.

and so we come back to the question: gintoki is corrected, the series as a result is rerailed to a writing space where things can start changing (leave the episodic, as you guys say, sazae-san format). it's useful in the future. so is the correction justified in terms of what comes before it? was the correction needed?

thinking about the bitchslap leads to thinking about the cliff scene leads to (sorry kagura and katsura, you guys arent really relevant here) pitting shinpachi and takasugi against each other in how they act with something on the line they can't bear to give up.

i don’t need the lesson of 4devas to apply logistically to the cliff scene. once they were set up on that chessboard, frozen in their assigned places as a backstory, it’s not like takasugi could’ve power of friendship’d his way out of being physically retrained if he decided he wanted to. it’s set up as a forced choice, it has to play out as a forced choice.

but we see that even before it’s asked of him, takasugi is willing, prepared, unbothered to give up his own life for shouyou’s. this is, goose lays out in the sequel, the cardinal sin in gintama - a teacher shouldn’t outlive their student. it would have been especially egregious to shouyou, whose whole desired life’s purpose is to raise students who can outlive him and outgrow him, take his lessons and go out into the world and do their own thing with them. takasugi doesn’t expect to do this and doesn’t seem to see a point in the possibility if shouyou isn’t back with them.

though we can also think of shouyou as a little too quickly willing to give up on the cliff - sorry, gintoki, the suicidal guy has thought about it for .02 seconds and decided the best outcome is for you to kill him even though he could get out of this no problem. maybe its no wonder gintoki gave up too. can we ask katsura what he would’ve done?

and is takasugi different from shinpachi there? he rejects the mentor’s attempt to exchange his own life for his. he’s not willing to consider a life without him.

but shinpachi is convinced no one is going to die. because they’ll be there together. incredibly naive - shinpachi and kagura, restricted to one option by what they need to protect like everyone is in 4devas, have acting as that one option because they are still free in a way gintoki and the other adults aren't. they’ve never actually experienced the impossible choice that forces you to give up, so they can act as if there isn’t one - what else would they do? why would they think to give up?

but gintoki is defined by having lived the impossible choice. its built into the foundation of him as a character and leaks out everywhere. he couldn’t have relied on his friends on the cliff because they were quite forcibly removed from the picture as an option, not by his or their choice. its written as an inevitability, logistics we find out later be damned.

if we refocus to 4devas, we can look at the Gintoki Figure for a different angle. jirochou, after he and gintoki resolve the arc conflict by being able to team up because they - say it with me - put everything out in the open, tells gintoki about his impetus for abandoning his family and coming back to his wayward life in kabukicho, the death of otose's husband.

it's, um, another now really obvious parallel to gintoki, lol. characters talk about how jirochou does everything he does in this arc to try to atone for his failure to both otose and tatsugorou, and i guess thats true bc he was written that way but he has an odd way of showing it, but anyways he resolves that, despite his guilt over this, all he can do now is keep living and keep protecting what they loved together. he's come to the usual gintama message all on his own, reinforcing that this is the correct way to live in this series. he had his own unavoidably shitty situation, and he came to terms with it.

so then where did jirochou go wrong, in the narrative's eyes (other than abandoning one woman and their child to deal drugs in the town of his other woman while ignoring her)? was there a point he could've changed how their trio's story played out? but he loved and trusted tatsugorou, and he was happy to step aside and let him be the one by their otose's side. i doubt he would have been happy stealing her away even if it were possible.

but if we look at the resolution tool of 4devas... he never put everything out in the open!!! everyone knows he loved otose, but in more of an open secret way. in classic romance plot, he never confessed for second male lead rejection closure. indeed, in the closest we ever get to a main character having a romantic plot in gintama, the very ending of the arc flirts with him doing just that now that he's made a little progress with the arc message, with the entire cast of the arc expecting him to (and interrupting before he can).

but if he had when they were young. if he had been honest with his friends. could it have opened up other options that weren't available on his own, that they didnt know to offer? i have a preferred one lol. but u can get creative with all sorts of life paths that avoid tatsugorou dying that way or, at the least, jirochou feeling chained to a shameful life (living in a town he doesn't go out in to protect a woman he doesnt talk to and feeling like he doesnt deserve the family he abandoned for this) because of it.

and then if we take this and rewind back to the cliff... we get to grind my favorite ax, "shouyou shouldve told literally anyone literally anything about his deal." if gintoki knew more about shouyou, they could've faced his horrors together, the whole time. he couldve known that shouyou was being literal calling himself a demon and not internalized his own identity as one for life just because shouyou bonded with him over it. i truly genuinely think the logical conclusion of all of gintama's big messages are that shouyou and gintoki should have been more open with each other.

but i don't think sorachi thinks that. and, you know, by 4devas rules, the unriskable precious things he was protecting by staying silent were his students' humanity, and secondarily his own fragilely newly hopeful heart that literally couldnt stand another 10 millionth round of rejection (killed himself and then went on a 12 year rampage over it. girl i would too).

and takasugi really isn't dishonest about what's going on in his head when he tells us he expects to die for shouyou. that's as cards on the table as i could ask. gintoki is, a little bit, by omission. he does what i'd want him to here - tells takasugi try just not dying - but doesn't give him a reason to, and doesn't tell him he has no plans of letting anyone die for shouyou.

so what goes wrong on the cliff - shouyou is happy, gintoki is happy, oboro's even kind of happy, katsura is irrelevant - is that takasugi is blindsided (whoops) by their silent agreement that betrays the one he thought he and gintoki had. and then ruins everyone's party about it and spends the next ten years doing so for good measure.

which is also, basically, what shinpachi is going through that prompts the bitchslap, too. he thought they were a team, that they had each others backs, not that gintoki is a one-way protector of them. he is blindsided by gintoki lying to and tricking them and hiding things from them. he is hurt by gintoki feeling hopeless all by himself when he could share that with them and be encouraged by their endless child optimism.

and would it need to have changed anything on the cliff? in the moment after the bitchslap, what contributes to gintoki changing his mindset is tama telling him, we trust that you're capable bc youve always shown us that, can you trust us this time? when, later in the arc, gintoki seems to regress by sending kagura and shinpachi away, he asks them to trust that he's still trusting them, relying on them to help shoulder his burden, and in return they know he's staying alive, not self sacrificing. maybe it would've helped just to feel on the same team and not shut out, to be able to trust gintoki like gintoki was trusting shouyou?

so. two paralleled instances of gintoki making a bad situation worse by keeping to himself and being too self sufficient. that feels clear cut that feels fine im okay with that as a takeaway. do i think its exactly what sorachi had in mind while writing this, as opposed to just a good series 'hey lean on your friends' moment to read cool and tug at the heartstrings? eh lol. i think theres definitely room to read takasugi into this arc (i still need to refind the takagin 4devas post...) but its not so baked in that i think he was a PRIORITY in the plotting.

but is the shinpachi SCOLDING necessary is the scolding justified... and yes its in response to life doesnt need to be fun i just want you to live. still a confusing framing i can't immediately square. but/and more immediately its directly responding. to gintoki opening up to them about his insecurities!!

which, as said, he doesnt do!! he doesnt talk about his failures! its basically like, here and to hijikata that one time and otherwise even when we know all the facts about what happened we still never hear gintoki himself talk about it. (so he really DOESNT learn the lesson here either. he stays dissociated and triggered every time utsuro comes up. he tries to solve the altana baby problem on his own. he doesnt talk to his new friends OR his old friends. bwah. gintoki. silver soul.)

so this is like. its just in the wrong order!! its just in a baffling order lol. if you want gintoki to share his burden do you need to punch him when he shares it. does it also need to sound like you're blaming him for not being capable of upholding his promise to protect anyone when thats the insecurity thats got him all discombobulated this arc in the first place (a whole set of notes i took on this that i didnt find a place for in this post)?? its so weeeeiiiiiirddd lol i dont liiikeee itttttt. theres plenty of things shinpachi can validly punch gintoki for but this is such a weird one.

so i guess. having a clearer understanding of this arc do i hate it less? YES honestly. i hate fakeout plots generally they irritate me but everything... more or less makes sense by gintama standards now that i have the whole plot in mind.

do i hate jirochou less SORT OF? i enjoy him. in his individual relationships. i like his shitty dad deal i love shitty dads. i like him pining for otose who genuinely likes him but also brings up her husband every sentence she says to him just to keep him down. i like his parallels with gintoki that they both explicitly acknowledge and find macho comfort in. hes still not theeeeeeeee most well-developed gintama antagonist but you know? i at least think otose and pirako would want to be around him after this.

do i feel like i have a clearer understanding of the bitchslap moment. NOT CONVINCED I DO. i feel like its going to be one of those things that slips in and out of my understanding like sand in cupped hands. i have a tentative understanding of it that i dont think sorachi actually had in mind. so i dont think ive solved it lol.

will i be cursed to think about 4devas forever? god i hope not. am i okay with it beating farewell shins in the polls. god i fucking hope it does. in the horrible timeline where i have to see 305 make it all the way and then lose i guess id rather it be to this one than to hijigin. consider this poll propaganda?

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

a list of things from my season 2 rewatch, in no particular order:

there's a mundane practicality to Nate that's kind of embarrassingly relatable. "I was going to buy a suit but it was really expensive so I borrowed one from my dad" in season 1; "he's going to use a lot of water" about Dani's breakdown in the showers in 2x01. This is... basically exactly how I would respond to both these situations

Very funny that the man Roy describes as "settling for fine" is almost exclusively shown telling stories about almost beating up elderly celebrities

"Do you believe the return of Jamie Tartt will impact that so called 'vibe'" I don't have a point I just love this line.

love everyone supporting Sam in the Dubai Air protest but I feel like researching the sponsorships is probably supposed to be someone's job? That being said they were already the sponsor in season 1 and Rupert probably wouldn't care that their parent company was polluting Nigeria, and I can see how re-doing all the due diligence on the established sponsorships wouldn't be high up in the line of priorities

start of some tonal problems — trying to reintegrate Jamie into the team by shouting and flipping tables comes off a bit weird as a comedy beat when the previous episode has Jamie openly discussing his abusive father

kind of hilarious that the kebab guy thinks Ted is Roy's dad when he's like. maybe 8 years older

the end of 2x05 is very clearly a reference to something (presumably a romcom) and I believe the fact that I don't know what it is makes it much funnier. I do feel kind of bad that Roy has to spend the entire match in a suit when it appears to be quite cold outside, though

"maybe there's a good reason she hasn't replied. maybe she got hit by a bus." (Isaac) "or a train?" (Dani) they are so good at comforting

I tend to need a fair bit of personal space myself so I absolutely understand where Keeley is coming from in 2x07, and the way Roy responds to learning that she feels smothered ("I feel like a fucking idiot," "you've been making out like I'm following you around like some creepy shadow" (paraphrased)) is obviously a product of his own insecurities and he doesn't initially seem to understand that alone time is a legitimate need that doesn't inherently reflect poorly on him,  but ultimately I think the problem itself is more a result of Keeley's difficulty expressing her own needs than of Roy failing to intuit them

The first time I heard Jamie say his thing about giving Richard space I thought he was trying to subliminal message Roy. He definitely wasn't but I was very impressed for a second there

The hug. The HUUUUUG. I am having a feeling

my controversial favourite episode is Beard After Hours — it feels like an episode of a different show, but TL is a bit of an outlier in terms of my tastes and 2x09 is closer to the norm. That being said I didn't start watching until after all of season 2 had come out and might feel differently if I'd been watching the episodes as they came out

the bit where they're singing at the funeral makes me want to crawl out of my skin with vicarious embarrassment. I have never managed to listen to this entire bit with the sound up.

Is sparkling water actually much more common in the UK than in the US? I'm Canadian and it's generally not the default kind of water to offer people, but it's also not as much of a novel concept as it seems to be to Ted.

[o-uncle-newt]

Cabin Pressure Advent Day 17: Qikiqtarjuaq

Or, if Arthur had his way, Quikiqutarjuaqu?

Q (because The Name is very annoying to type) is, as I said back in my Boston post, not one of my favorites. And I wish it were, because, like Ottery St Mary (which has its own divisive moments), it has SO many classic bits. The traveling lemon! Le bear polar! Farewell bear facts! From that perspective it's incredible.

But it has a weird tone problem, and to me, the whole thing comes back to Nancy Dean Liebhart.

Yes, yes, it's because she's American and Americans on British sitcoms are never great, fine. But I think in this case it goes beyond that, because a lot of the episode ends up circling around her and her reactions. Martin wants to impress her; Douglas seems to (though it's not explicit) want to piss her off, if it'll mean dinging Martin in the self esteem in the process; Carolyn wants to show her that she doesn't matter. (Arthur, of course, just wants to tell people bear facts. Lovely Arthur.)

To be clear- the Martin-Carolyn plotline would have happened regardless, because he's genuinely pissed about having to cancel a paying job. Their whole scene feels a little bit... almost too much? Like, Carolyn is actually pretty cruel to him in her response to his request, and Martin's rant back to her is almost too pathetic, if that makes sense. It's internally consistent from an emotional standpoint, but it feels out of sync tonally with the rest of the episode- which is one of the reasons why I felt genuine uncomfortable when Douglas wanted to continue the traveling lemon game and Carolyn was like "oh well maybe not"... because Carolyn had just had a serious come-to-Jesus moment with Martin and Douglas was still in his own stupid world about trying to be an asshole.

Because here's the thing. Douglas was SUPER unprofessional throughout. The episode knows this obviously, and acknowledges it outright in the end. There's a power struggle between Martin and Douglas about it, and we've seen that before. But the difference is... I don't think that this one was actually very funny. It just feels like Douglas being a jerk for the sake of it, and then when that ends up involving things like the Bear Polar and Captain du Creff, which are gut-bustingly hilarious, they just go together like chalk and cheese.

To get back to Nancy Dean Liebhart- it's all her fault, in my opinion. She's just not funny, and as I said about Hester Macaulay in Cremona (who I don't think was as bad as this...), she needs to either be really funny or really wrong in order for the hijinks of the plot to work, and she's neither. All of the above conflicts circling around her (entirely reasonable!) complaints, and her weirdly arbitrary decision to pick on Martin about them which of course ends up being the place where the plot starts... it's just uncomfortable because she's basically right but the episode treats her like she's ridiculous.

I'm curious if any British listeners will disagree with me on this- I'm wondering if there's just a British trope of "naggy American woman" that makes this funny in the UK. Maybe some kind of Karen trope, but where it doesn't matter what the complaint is as long as the accent is (mostly) right? I don't know. Nancy is definitely somewhat Karen-y in how she comes across and how she talks to people, but her points are largely valid (and therefore not super funny) and that's fatal for a character like her. It forces us to pay more attention to Douglas's response and how he's being deliberately spiteful specifically to screw with Martin, and to the weirdly intense Martin-Carolyn subplot, and then contrasts it with the nutty Bear Polar subplot and Arthur and his bears, which are all super silly. And it leads to it just being... strange, tonally, and not in a way that I personally like.

Without her, I think a lot of the same things COULD have happened, but they'd have happened on their own terms. We could have seen Martin be annoyed at Douglas for the Hitchcock cabin address and seen that as "Martin being a stickler" rather than "the paying customer being annoyed," and it would have been more like other similar episodes where Martin is the safe pilot and Douglas is the good one. We'd have seen Martin be annoyed about not being paid and having his paying work sabotaged, and maybe even him taking that out on Douglas a bit. And I think it would have de-intensified certain things in a way that would have helped. Nancy Dean Liebhart just fucked with the rhythms of the show and wasn't even funny enough to justify it.

This whole rant makes it seem like I hate the episode, and... I don't, really. There are too many good moments. But I have to watch it with my finger on the "skip" button.

[felassan]

Some snippets of interest and insight from Mark Darrah, from an older Mark Darrah on Games YouTube video where he was livestreaming playing Dragon Age II some months ago -

Chat asked "Are you devs (former devs as well) hyped and excited about entire lore and world of DA like we are?''. Mark replied that the devs do get into the lore but that they actually often lean into the community to make sure that they aren't violating their own lore (because there's so much of it). "You guys have done a much better job of curating it than we have to be honest".

A comment in chat said "I think it's important to know that as DA4 ramps up, the fandom is going to change". Mark replied "for sure, definitely, as the marketing picks up for a game you draw in more people. Also, BioWare is carrying some Anthem people that picked up that never left, that have definitely changed the tenor of the fandom to some degree".

For dialogue, the reason why the paraphrase is different to what Hawke actually says is that they found in ME1 that if they just made them the same, it felt like everything you as the PC said was being repeated because you had already read it in your head and then it got said out loud. This does sometimes lead to disconnect as sometimes what Hawke ends up saying isn't really what was implied by the paraphase. Mark said "that's why we've been experimenting with different tonal stuff in different games, to give you hints as to more clarity as to what will actually be said".

Chat asked ''what is you opinion on the rewrite/corrections of a lot of the lore from DA2 in subsequent media?'. Mark replied "My opinion is that you should try to be respectful of everything that came before as much as possible. I don't like that some of the comics and things have enforced sort've standard canon so strongly. I recognize that, especially coming out of DA:O, there's not much choice, but I feel like we could have done a bit of a better job there".

[source]

He also talked more generally about DAII and the previous games in general. These bits are collected under a cut due to length:

The messages that appear at the bottom of the DAII start screen must be hard-coded as opposed to live updates received from online, as some of them still refer to long-past things

On Varric's embellished prologue scene, where Bethany's chest size is exaggerated, he mentioned that Varric was more of a pig in DAII than he is in DA:I. "Men writing men writing women"

First impressions have an impact on players' opinions of the companions. Mark mentioned that he thinks that might be one of the reasons why players tend to stick with the first 3 companions that they get in the game, because those are the ones they're used to and are forced to get a bit more context on because they're there with you for the duration of the prologue/introduction

One of the problems with DAII is that because the followers are so locked down in terms of their abilities, gameplay and roleplay are in conflict more than they are in DA:O and DA:I

Combat in DAII is essentially the combat of DA:O (the same systems underneath) if someone took the 'knobs' and cranked them in the opposite direction really far. So the same systems underneath, but just with very different numbers in them

In DA:I, lighting (what time of day it is) was created such that the best looking lighting/time of day for each area was chosen

In DAII Kirkwall, because it was essentially such a central character in the game, actually got a lot more attention than cities usually do in DA games

The design of Kirkwall's city map actually kind of discourages you from going out into the wilderness, which Mark doesn't think was the intention

He mentioned that accents are tricky and that you want replicable accents. This was a problem Mass Effect had, e.g. with Tali. Tali's accent was one her VA could do, but no-one else could do it, so they ended up with an un-replicable accent for this character

"I forgot how many redheads there are in DAII"

Adding in some of the 'this is physically impossible irl' moves and skills to warriors and rogues in DAII helped to better balance those classes with mages, which were sort've overpowered relatively speaking in DA:O

DAII tried really hard to establish an art direction. So for example, there was a strong effort to make elves not look like 'humans with pointy ears', hence they're very angular. They then backed away from this a bit in DA:I

Chat asked ''Do you guys prefer the strongest loot to be crafted or found?'". Mark replied that crafting is a dangerous thing because some players don't engage in it, so if you require crafting for the best loot you run into the problem of players who don't engage in crafting not being able to play the game. Usually the best loot is crafted, but you need to be able to play the game without using it

In DAII they were trying to control the game economy a bit better than it was done in DA:O, as especially in the first act you're supposed to be someone who has just fled the Blight, so it wouldn't make sense to have a sack of money

On the repeating cave environment in DAII, it was a very specific hole in the cave ceiling with a shaft of sunlight hitting the ground that was so identifiable/distinctive that was what showed that the cave was being reused. "That specific spot is the main reason there was backlash about and people noticing the reused cave". Chat asked whether Mark thought that a simple texture swap-out would have helped mitigate the repeating dungeons complaint and he replied that some texture swaps could have helped, but the reason why they didn't do more clever tricks to conceal it was lack of time

Another major thing that caused the noticeable repeating environments problem is that they had the same area map, as they didn't have the ability in the engine to have specialized area maps, "so what happens is you actually get lots of times where parts of the level look accessible when in fact it isn't" (blocked off doors and not making it look like that on the minimap), and that just draws even further attention to how repetitive it is. DA:O comparatively did better at disguising or effectively reusing content

Also, chat asked ''Development wise, was crunch much worse for DA: Exodus versus DA:O or DA:I since it had a year or two development period??'". Mark replied that "Crunch-wise, yeah, DAII was arguably the worst but because the game was short in terms of dev time it was less total time I guess. But it was kind've for the entire development process so that was not great. We decided to do it in December in 2009 and shipped in March of 2011, so total time from the day we decided to do it until the day it was on shelves was about 15 months." This is why the game relies so much on the followers, because they are faster to write, usually require less revisions and you can go with the first drafts a little bit more. "If Jason Schreier says it was 2 years dev time for DAII in his book Blood, Sweat and Pixels, he's incorrect". More development time for DAII would have helped but it would have needed to have been added to the timeline in just the right way. If it had been added at the end and the release date had shifted really late in development, that would have been the biggest way to help, "because you could take the game as it was and patched over the biggest shaky bits". If it had just started with a 2 year dev cycle "I think you would have ended up with weaknesses because you would have just filled up the bucket with more content and I think the solution would've been to not do that, to keep it super tight, keep the focus on the characters and then patch over the worse of the glaring things". Also, "I have slept under my desk, yes".

(pls note that in places there is a bit of paraphrasing of the info, the best source is always the primary source with full quotes in their original context. and also that this vid is from 11 months ago)

[source]

[presidenthades]

I am doing very minor revisions of Daemon’s Handbook (mostly formatting and continuity errors), and I wanted to do some behind-the-scenes commentary before too much time passes and I forget my original thoughts. Here’s Chapter 1!

DO NOT read these commentaries until you have finished reading the entire Handbook! There are many spoilers in each commentary for future chapters

(Note that these commentaries aren’t canon to the verse until/unless the author writes them into the series. I might change my mind on a few points later, but these are the thoughts I had while writing.)

Chapter titles are named for Daemon’s very bad parenting advice if he were writing an actual handbook.

The rumors that Rhaenyra’s kids are bastards started from a combination of a) black hair and b) Harwin still being unusually close/romancing Rhaenyra even if he isn’t the bio father. But when Jace grew old enough to look like a mini Rhaenys, most reasonable people gave it up.

JOFFRIDA. I was considering the name Jocelyn at first, but I wanted to lean into Laenor naming his third kid after Joffrey Lonmouth. There’s no obvious feminine version of Joffrey, though. Then I decided Laenor seems like the type to tack on a feminine suffix and call it a day. 😂

Daemon is convinced Aemond is a prude. We know how that turns out in Chapter 9.

Aegon starts out a bit afraid of Rhaenyra. He shows more backbone later (especially Chapter 9) but I like to think he’s always going to be a bit afraid of her.

“Oh well, not Daemon’s problem.” (Re: Hightower boys and how they grow up) 😂😂😂

Joff’s curse tablets are inspired by the ancient Roman curse scrolls wherein people wrote things like “Livia has done me great wrong. O gods of the Underworld, make her go bald and die a painful death. If you do this, I’ll sacrifice five goats to you.” Why doesn’t she use a curse tablet again in the story? I’ll flesh it out elsewhere in the series, but TLDR magic has a price and Joff learns this very early in her life.

Vaemond’s funeral eulogy in this verse doesn’t go so hard on “our blood runs true” (he knows the girls are legitimate) but maybe he makes some quips about women and motherhood and sacrifice. Nothing overtly terrible but he’s thinking about the future of Driftmark, which is currently slated to pass to a girl after Laenor, when he thinks it would be best for Driftmark to stay within the male line. So he uses the eulogy to subtly push his agenda. I’m not going to go into more detail here because I might write out his actual eulogy one day, but that’s the gist.

Daemon shies away from comforting his daughters in this chapter. He eventually grows out of this in Chapter 7 (with Baela) and Chapter 11 (late night discussion with Rhaenyra).

Driftmark Lite! I decided not to have Aemond lose his eye at Luce’s hand for several reasons. First, I thought it would be tonally inappropriate; this fic strongly leans toward comedy, and the canon fight would have been too heavy. Second, a lot of this fic is me exploring what would be different if Rhaenyra’s kids were girls, and I thought this would definitely change.

In the GOT/HOTD universe, highborn girls are way less likely than boys to carry blades. Girls like Baela and Arya are rare exceptions. Girls like Sansa are much more the norm. If we’re going by traditional gender norms, girls are probably encouraged to talk their problems out rather than fight it out, as boys might.

So the fight doesn’t escalate as badly because Jace is trying to be peacemaker, and instead of bastard insults, Aemond uses the playground taunt of “you’re a bunch of wussy girls wah wah” (which only provokes Baela).

But the fight DOES escalate to a degree when Aemond specifically insults Luce about things she’s very sensitive about, i.e. her reading struggles and little phobias like rats. Luce retaliates by kneeing him in the groin, which is a move a girl is far more likely to use than a boy on another boy.

Later, Alicent freaks out a bit because she’s in “overprotective mother” mode but once she takes a breather, she realizes it isn’t that huge a deal and lets it go (but this is yet another reason she doesn’t really like Luce).

Daemon 100% got hit in the groin before, and no one can convince me otherwise. Who did it? Dunno. Are they still alive? Probably not.

Laenor’s mysterious death!!! Was it Joff? Did she use her curse tablet? Did she do it because she hates her name? We’ll have to find out when I eventually write her POV.

Chapter 2 commentary here