#did the protagonist find a more meaningful way to live?

[maybe-boys-do-love]

A Tale of a Thousand Stars answers the age-old question: What if Hallmark movies were good?

[12amphantasm]

People always meet you with reverence, “Father Andrew!”, they greet when you walk past, admiration heavy in their voices. They love you for how pious you are, friendly and loving, your patience and generosity.

And you love them, too. Just like the place you have stayed in for nearly twenty years, the huge complex composed of a humble yet luxurious church, the boarding school for troubled youths, the small but very warm house for the elderly, and the nearby university of theology - together known as The Hillset Private Conservatory.

God loves it all, every flower, every human, and whatever it might be that’s walking through these halls. __

The game is 18+ and meant for an adult audience.

Although the romance is strictly MxM, sexuality is relevant only for the romantic routes and the game can be played without engaging in intimate relationships, but at the expense of background information the player won’t be able to get in other ways. __

The game will be uploaded in parts, starting at least with 10k words. Planed release: Late April/early May 2024 ___

Written by a gay man, the romance is MxM only and stays true to reality, portraying genuine gay relationships, without stereotypes and harmful tropes.

“We Are God’s Most Beloved” is an old-school text-heavy interactive fiction novel and recommended to those who love reading.

Choices are meaningful instead of flavour and used only when they have an actual impact, this means there are long passages of text, which requires the reader to keep track of the story – just like they would with a novel. There is a lot to explore, attentive readers might find more game in this interactive fiction than one would expect.

The main genre is horror, even if nothing is outrageously explicit and often handled with a focus on the absurd, it contains horror-typical themes and tropes such as blood, body horror, surreal imaginary, and other commonly used elements.

In addition, mental illness, dysfunctional familial relationships, and physical assault play an important role depending on which route is chosen.

Hillset Private Conservatory, build in 1802, despite its long history, is a name few people know or have ever heard, and if one is aware of its existence, it’s rarely for good reasons.

Rumours have it that the owner was a paranoid man and the gigantic complex created solely to have a spacious cage for his family, namely his eight children, only for all of them to find an untimely death on this very property.

"It's haunted!", some say. "It's evil!", some claim.

Of course, nothing of that is true, the many teachers, counsellors, nuns, and priest can attest to that, and so would many of their students. At least a good portion of them. Maybe some, at least.

Now summer vacation has ended, and a new batch of fosterlings is about to arrive; frightened, misguided, and troubled teens in need of loving care, education, and a new chance at life.

Father Andrew, the only acting priest, will do his best, like always, to show them God’s brilliance and create a warm home out of these century old walls.

No railroading, no hand-holding

Life is full of choices, you have to make your own and live with them, ultimately missing out on certain things, or ending up utterly regretting what you did. There is no right or wrong, no road I, more or less sneakily, force you to take, choices are all equally valid and accounted for. ___

A fixed protagonist

Father Andrew is a fixed character, with his own likes, dislikes, appearance, and convictions. But how he navigates the world, how he reacts, who he becomes fond of or rather avoids, his interactions and how he lives his life, and, of course, what you learn about him, is up to you. ___

One end to rule them all

There are no bad endings or early finishes, all choices lead to the same endpoint, but how it looks like… is on you alone. ___

No stats

“We Are God’s Most Beloved” doesn’t require you to master stats, the story changes based on your choices, how you interact with the world and characters determines the options you will have, who likes or hates you, and how the story will play out. ___

Explicit - Yes or No?

You can choose to either read explicit sexual interactions or go for fade-to-black. ___

Romance

Three romantic interests are waiting to meet you, but you can play the whole story without romancing anyone, at the expense of sexual moments, additional plot-points centred around these characters, and potentially interesting background information.

No indicators are used, you have to find your own way, going by what you know about a character, evaluating the current situation, and acting accordingly.

Use the relationship stats to figure out what you did right or wrong, you have successfully entered a romantic route with a RO when the percentage reaches 50% and will deepen, or lessen, the relationship from then on.

There are no poly routes, entering one will lock you out of the others, and while you can’t lose a route once entered, how the couple ends up is based on your actions.

Keep in mind that “love” comes in many forms and players might find it worthwhile to forge bonds with other characters.

Profiles - Here

Father Andrew

Thirty-three years old, he was admitted to Hillset boarding school for troubled youths at the tender age of fourteen and hasn’t left the complex since. He’s very out of touch with the outside, basing his worldview, manners and morals on the old nuns and priests that raised him, often colliding with the new students’ modern ways. Friendly, polite and helpful, he’s easy to get along with on first glance but hard to truly get to know, which leaves him without friends and often rather lonely. __

Sister Lucia

Thirty-five years old, she’s one of the younger nuns but the strictness with which she loves doesn’t pale in comparison. She’s very fond of Father Andrew, who is her inspiration and has warped the image of how a priest should be until it became unrecognisable. Her hobbies are flower-arrangements, cooking things no one who loves their life should eat, taking care of the children in their school, and writing in her journal. __

Ẻ̶̛̬̲̀͋͑v̷̟̫̌̄͂ẻ̵͙̆̎͐l̸̨̙̠̻̜̐͌̓̂ͅͅy̵̡̲̼̔̑̾̀̀͐n��̻̰̬͛͂͊̏̕͜͠

They might or might not be human. --

Moby

They definitely aren’t human, but God loves them anyway.

The love interests

Ryan Harris

Twenty-four years old and a student of Theology, he’s a graduate from the boarding school for troubled youths. While not overly intelligent, he’s diligent, curious, and not afraid of hardships. Father Andrew’s liturgy is his favourite part of the week and helping out something he takes pride in, as he does in his paintings that are full of creative flair and appreciated only by those with strong artistic sense. __

Connor Price

Thirty-one years old, he has been teaching English for eight years at a famous school and will do so from now on at Hillset - even if only because other schools refused to take him. He doesn’t like the enormous complex, dated appearance, long, dark halls, how everyone is just too nice, and Father Andrew, who somehow gives him the creeps. Connor spends his time reading, avoiding coworkers, and having long talks with the elderly in their care. __

?

You have to find that out on your own.

[crossdressingdeath]

Thinking about it having taken some time away, a revenge plot like Karlach's was I think one of the worst possible choices for a BG3 companion quest even before we get into what a half-assed fake drama story it is (why isn't her quest finding a damn Wish scroll, Larian, that would actually be fun and wouldn't cut into Wyll's quest or demand the player choose her ending if they want her to live, there are multiple spells that could fix this and we're given exactly zero explanation for why we aren't even trying to get one, you even brought Wish into the plot as a non-standard game over and then didn't bring it up here when it would be an ideal solution), because it really brings the massive double standard the game's got going on into stark relief. It's most obvious in contrast with Astarion. Like, think about it: the Gur's desire for revenge against Astarion is every bit as justified as Karlach's desire for revenge against Gortash; actually it's more so, given they have a real (though faint) reason to hope that they can actually accomplish something outside of his death, namely getting their kids back. But giving him to the Gur kills him and costs you a companion; it's a failure as far as his character arc goes, and in fact happens so early on he doesn't really get a character arc. All of that potential development is cut short and you have to see his corpse in the ritual and it is in general treated as a bad thing. The much better way of handling the Gur situation is to talk to them in act 3 and drag Astarion into atoning for what he did by trying to deal with Cazador and rescue the kids. This is good! Blind revenge solves nothing, having people pay for what they did by atoning and having to help the people they hurt as best they can is a much better solution! We love to see it!

Now you'd think the equivalent to that would be to dissuade Karlach from her revenge and instead get Gortash to fix the heart (either with his knowledge of the tech involved or—my personal favourite—his power and influence being used to acquire the use of one of the spells that could repair it or replace it with a normal heart because again there's more than one of those and it's stupid that none of them are even brought up as potential solutions), but... nope! Revenge is only bad when those outsiders do it, when it's a companion it's the only real solution! Like, yeah, she's got that thing where she complains that it didn't help at all but... we knew killing Gortash wouldn't help from the start. I don't remember if Karlach herself ever brings it up, but it's hard to miss that killing Gortash will not solve anything Karlach's got going on. And if you don't kill him you don't even get that much acknowledgement that revenge isn't a great solution. And also that's the most basic revenge plot outline, "revenge feels empty" is so fucking common as an ending. But it's just a moment that makes it so clear that Larian wasn't really interested in exploring the themes of the cycle of abuse and how aggressors can also be victims and all that with... anyone except the companions (and even then not always; see their complete unwillingness to ever engage with pre-amnesia Durge as anything but a heartless, crazy murderer despite the game itself including plenty of implications that that wasn't the case). It makes it seem less like a discussion on the cycle of abuse and more like good old-fashioned protagonist-centric morality, where the bad things the heroes do are forgivable because they had a hard life but anyone who hurts them is irredeemable no matter how hard their lives were. And it could've been avoided so easily (in a way that also gave Karlach's quest a more satisfying ending) by having a better ending to her quest that focused less on revenge and more on restitution. But no, heaven forbid we be allowed to engage with the act 3 antagonists in any meaningful way outside of killing them or acknowledge that the main thing separating them from the less moral companions is that no one helped them...

[neurosiscocktail]

Finale Spoilers ahead-

Processing a lot of emotions about the season finale, and I unfortunately just didn’t like a lot of aspects about it. A lot of which is about Izzy’s death, but some of it is about Ed and Stede, and some of it is about the lack of resolution.

Izzy’s death really felt like the “we ‘redeemed’ the antagonist and now we don’t know what to do with his character so we give him a gut wrenching death” troupe. That may not have been the intent, because the writers of this show are great, and because they’re great I really expected someone to say “hey does this feel like we’re writing a troupe that hasn’t been meaningful since 1980” and no one did.

I really don’t feel like Izzy’s death was necessary or even necessarily meaningful. That being said, I’m not really that upset that he died beyond he was my favorite character and that is a bummer and a half. It has more to do with the situation-

1) why do muppet rules apply to everyone but Izzy? Like, yeah the “he’s the only real human in a show full of muppets” joke is funny, but Ed got bludgeoned with a cannonball and he is completely fine. Several members of the crew have survived and recovered from cartoonish injuries, but a gunshot wound takes out Izzy?

2) There was plenty of time in that scene for Izzy to get out of the way. Or take out the prince with him. I don’t really like the take that he didn’t because he was resigned or wanted to die. I feel like it takes away from the episodes we just had of him finding his place in the crew. Maybe that’s what the writers were going for, but it doesn’t sit right with me.

3) his death speech didn’t add much for me. There’s a saying that funerals are for the living, not the dead and in media I think death speeches often reflect that. They’re not usually about the person dying, but instead it’s about giving something to the protagonist. I don’t really think it did that. It felt like Izzy continued to take accountability for both his and Ed’s actions, which doesn’t actually help Ed grow from what happened. The speech pulled at my heart strings and I think I’m a lot of ways that had more to do with Con and Taika being phenomenal actors than it did with the writing itself.

4) his death speech kind of was rendered meaningless and doesn’t really add anything to the story. He uses his dying words to tell Ed that he can move on because he has a new family that loves him and then Ed and Stede stay on shore totally alone, so either Ed didn’t hear him, or what he said doesn’t have any relevance to protagonist decision and again, not my favorite writing choice.

5) Some people have brought up a very good point that if you stick with a popular interpretation of season 1, that Izzy was a representation of Ed’s old life and that the first season was about Ed needing to choose between the relative safety of Izzy- brutal, emotionally devastating Blackbeard or the unknown that is Stede- the chance for love, trying something new, etc, then it makes sense that Izzy had to die for that to happen. For Ed to really move on. However, and don’t get me wrong, I love my toxic codependent pirates, burying Izzy on land and then living on that land doesn’t really feel like letting go to me. It feels like an extension of their codependency

6) budget cuts meant less episodes. Which is a bummer and not the writers fault. However, it kind of felt like instead of cutting things they wanted to include, they tried to speed run a 10 episode season into 8 and the pacing felt very off.

7) I am including what I personally disliked here. Everything above was sort of issues I had with narration and writing, and this point is just kind of complaining about stuff I personally don’t like in writing. I am so tired of watching shows where they kill off queer characters who have a difficult time with self acceptance and opening themself up to love. I see it so often and find it exhausting. The death was painful and on purpose to be painful. His arc didn’t have to end with him dying. No one else’s , except arguably Buttons, did. And that doesn’t mean he NEEDED to live either, but it felt less like “this is what is best for Izzy’s arc” and more like “this will hurt the audience immensely and we want the finale to pack a big emotional punch” and to me that’s just… not a good enough reason. I know a lot of people don’t feel that way, and arguably the point of writing is to make your audience feel something, but it felt like it was there specifically to garner an emotional response, rather than any real necessity to the story. And I think I feel more strongly about it because again, whether intentional or not, I hate the killing your redeemed antagonists troupe. I guess they did succeed in making me feel something, so if the writers view that as the point of writing, they did what they meant to do and that’s a well written ending. To me, while Izzy’s death didn’t make a bad story out of his arc, I would argue it prevented it from being a great one and that’s kind of a bummer. I also think I unintentionally set the bar higher for the OFMD writers because they have shown better, and that may not be fair.

All that being said, I overall really enjoyed this season, and will watch season 3 if they get a third season. My opinions might change on my third, fourth, or fifth watch when I’m not feeling a lot of emotions about it. I think everyone should be kind to each other, the writers, and the actors in the show. I think sometimes we forget that when something like a season finale is polarizing.

[ivory-lamps]

A16: The Lost Brother

Characters: Toi, Netaro, Nagi, Yodaka & Daniel Location: Hakodate Summary: The protagonist and co. arrive in Hakodate via plane. The others are intent on going their separate ways for their own sightseeing agendas, but the protagonist reminds them of their goals for the trip. It seems Toi has made flyers to aid in the search for his brother… Proofreader: Shay

ㅤ

Translator’s Notes ☽.‎˖

Goryōkaku (五稜郭, lit. 'five-point fort') is a star fort in the Japanese city of Hakodate on the island of Hokkaido.

Toi: Ah…!

Haa, haa…

…I’m on a plane.

I’m drenched in sweat…

Netaro: Toi~ Are you awake?

Toi: ! Netaro-san. Sorry, I fell asleep…

Netaro: You should���ve slept some more!

Toi: (Netaro-san is looking at me with sparkles in his eyes. Did something happen…? Ah!)

(Don’t tell me…!)

Netaro-san, um, did I say something weird in my sleep?

Netaro: Something weird… The definition of weird is very ambiguous and subjective to each person but…

Nope. You didn’t say anything weird!

Toi: I see… Thank goodness. …Stuff happens to me when I’m asleep.

Netaro: Stuff??

Toi: Oh, sorry. It’s nothing.

(I don’t want to cause trouble for everyone, so I should be careful I don’t accidentally doze off… but…)

Netaro (on the side): You did say things like, “O Great Me” or “foolish humans” but…

Toi: (Why do I get so sleepy when I’m on planes? I wonder if it’s because it feels nice flying in the air…)

Netaro (on the side): It’s not weird at all.

Toi: (Ani-sama also took a plane to Hakodate, didn’t he? I wonder if he also got sleepy on his flight…)

(I… want to see you soon… Ani-sama!)

Oh… I can see the city!

Netaro: That’s Hokkaido!? Are there cows there? It was a trend to take them home ages ago…

Toi: (Wait for me…! I’ll come find you right away…!)

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ📍 Location: Hakodate – Red Brick Warehouse

Nagi: …… *Breathes in… breathes out…*

……

Nagi: …… *Breathes in… breathes out…*

……………

Momiji / Kaede: Nagi-kun, what’ve you been doing?

Nagi: Taking deep breaths.

Momiji / Kaede: I see. Hakodate is also a port city, but it feels completely different from HAMA, doesn’t it?

Nagi: Yeah. The air is crisp and clear… It's like an entirely different world.

Momiji / Kaede: (Nagi-kun is so moved he has sparkles in his eyes…)

Nagi: Also, I’ve never left Kanto.

Netaro: Strato? The stratosphere? I have.

Yodaka: He said Kanto, as in the Kanto region.

Daniel: You’re an odd one despite having a big motorcycle. You don’t go out on long rides or anythin’?

Nagi: I do go around HAMA. But not anywhere far… I’m scared of the trouble I might run into.

Daniel: That so? What a waste.

Toi: Me, too… The only trips I’ve been on are the school ones, so I feel a bit emotional right now…

Momiji / Kaede: I see. I hope this trip will be a good opportunity for you guys to venture out of your comfort zones and to try new things in your personal lives!

Yodaka: Alright… we’ve safely arrived in Hakodate. I have a few historic sites and seafood restaurants I’d like to visit, so I’ll excuse myself here.

Netaro: You there, that rickshaw! You’ll take me to [*]Goryokaku and we’ll pretend we’re launching an attack on it!

Daniel: Ah, I wanna visit the beer houses. See ya.

Momiji / Kaede: Hey! Please wait! Why are you all doing whatever you want like it’s the most natural thing in the world!?

Yodaka: Well, we’re not children who will easily get lost. I think it would be more meaningful to visit the places we want to go to on our own. We can meet up together later.

Netaro: I don’t wanna go to the places I’m not interested in – it’s just gonna be annoying.

Momiji / Kaede: Hmm…

Daniel: People can tag along if they’re heading to the same place. As for me, Hakodate beer calls.

Yodaka: Unfortunately, it seems the one calling me is Tojikata Toshizo and fresh scallops.

Netaro: Ugh~ Such bad choices~ If a fortress is a no-go, then clay figurines are nice, too, you know? Don’t you understand that?

Momiji / Kaede: …Alright. You’re all adults and I suppose there isn’t a reason to force everyone to go together!

But our goals for this trip are to observe the tourism in Hakodate and to find Toi-kun’s brother. You can enjoy yourselves but be sure to keep those goals in mind.

Toi: Thank you for helping in the search…! Um, I also made posters…!

Yodaka: Let’s see… “I’m searching for my big brother. His name is Ryui and he’s 21 years old”... It’s a wonderful poster.

Daniel: …It looks like a poster for a missing pet.

Momiji / Kaede: (He’s right about that…)

Nagi: …You made so many.

Toi: I did! I’d appreciate any clues, so I made 800 copies to hand out to people!

Netaro: This is what Ryui looks like? He looks like one of the ikemen characters from the “romance game” you lent me.

Toi: He doesn’t like having photos taken of him, so I had to draw his portrait instead. Sorry, I don’t have the skills to bring out his charms…

Please think of him as someone who’s a hundred-times better looking in real life when you look for him!

Momiji / Kaede: I’ll split the posters up between everyone, so I’d appreciate it if you can first get some information on him.

We don’t have a lot of clues, so it’ll be a steady search on foot, but let’s do our best!

Daniel: ‘Kay. …Alrighty, I’m heading in that direction.

Yodaka: I'll search the other way, then. See you later.

Momiji / Kaede: (The breweries are that way and the other way is the Hakodate Memorial Site… Well, it should be fine as long as they actually search…)

Netaro: Yaaay, a rickshaw~!

Momiji / Kaede: Netaro-kun! Don’t go too far! You got that!?

Netaro: Okaaay~!

*Netaro speeds off in the rickshaw*

Momiji / Kaede: Sighs.

Toi: …Ah, I…

Nagi: Uh… I’m…

Momiji / Kaede: You guys can stay with me.

You two haven’t travelled much, so walking around and gathering information on your own would still be pretty difficult, right?

Toi: Yes…!

Nagi: Yeah.

Momiji / Kaede: Alright. Then first, we can walk around and I’ll tell you about Hakodate!

Momiji / Kaede: The city of Hakodate was a thriving port in the past and acted as the gateway to Hokkaido. Matthew C. Perry later came with black ships and wanted to open the port to foreign vessels and trade.

Just like HAMA, they have big red brick warehouses and they’ve become a landmark for the bay area.

Toi: I’d love to visit if there’s time… Maybe Ani-sama stopped by to see it.

Nagi: Yeah.

Momiji / Kaede: You’ll find English, Russian and French churches along the hill roads leading to Mt. Hakodate. It’s definitely a rare sight in this world!

Hokkaido is big and most people would think it’s difficult to get around without a car, but one of the highlights about Hakodate is that many of its tourist spots are all within walking distance.

On top of that, you can visit the nearby Goryukaku fortress by tram or bus… It’s a rare tourist destination in Hokkaido that doesn’t require you to have a car.

And…

Momiji / Kaede: Hakodate has lots of gourmet food! This is their local burger!

Toi: Whaa~!

Nagi: Wow. So this is what a professional tour guide is like.

Momiji / Kaede: Thanks for your lovely words! It’s almost time for lunch, too.

I figured we could have some burgers and think about where we want to go next.

Nagi: Where to go next…

Momiji / Kaede: Yeah. Let me know if there’s a place you two want to visit.

Nagi: ……

You don’t have to worry about me. …Toi, is there anywhere you want to go?

Toi: Huh…? Um… not… really.

Nagi: You don’t have to be so reserved.

Toi: It’s not that… Usually, someone from my family or my brother would decide, so… um…

I can’t think of a place off the top of my head… I’m sorry.

Nagi: …I see.

Toi: …Yes.

Nagi: I… can’t think of someplace right away, either.

Toi: Oh, I see…

Nagi: Yeah. ……

Momiji / Kaede: (It looks like they’ve both stopped thinking. I guess we can order our burgers in the meantime…)

Okay, is there a certain burger or combo you two want to get? 

Toi: Oh, right… um…

Wow…! There are so many kinds of burgers.

Nagi: This is overwhelming…

Toi: I don't know what to pick…

Nagi: …Let’s see…

Toi: ……

Nagi: ……

Momiji / Kaede: (Looks like they’re having a tough time with the menu, too…)

Oh! How about this?

It’s their most popular burger: the Chinese Chicken Burger!

Nagi & Toi: ……!

Nagi: It looks delicious – no wonder it’s the most popular.

Toi: Yeah. I’ll have one of those.

Nagi: I think… I’ll have that too.

Momiji / Kaede: (Looks like they were able to decide on something after I gave them a little push on the back… Thank goodness.)

Toi: Their slogan is apparently “Good food is the key to happiness”. It’s a wonderful slogan.

Nagi: The key to happiness…

Toi: No one can have too much happiness, right?

Nagi: ……

Toi: We’ll take this burger, then…

Netaro: Toi, you have a sort of divining power, don’t you?

Toi: Wha! …You gave me a fright. Netaro: I think you should use your divination powers to decide what burger to eat and where to go!

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[sepublic]

            During the Phantom Alliance/Entrobrai arc, there’s this subplot of just a regular human named Emily Walker, who wants to attend a school of some type of creative art, maybe music. But for all of her bright passion and talent, she finds herself belittled and just not good enough thanks to an abusive and condescending teacher, think something like that prick from Whiplash. It leads to an inferiority complex that only causes Emily to become self-sabotaging, as students compete with one another; All of the wonder of their craft has been taken out, just a desire to be better than others, but for what end? Some dick’s approval?

            Enter a respected figure of vague importance; Someone who helps fund the school. Her name is Jasmine, and upon seeing a lesson, she’s finally had enough; She comes to Emily’s defense, berating the teacher as an insecure idiot whose methods have proven far more detrimental than they have been effective.

            He’s ruined the craft, the art for its sake, and the expression of the individual; He’s bastardized the collective spirit of these bright folk, and sabotaged their potential, rather than the students sabotaging his potential by not living up to his vision. Anyone can make plans, it takes someone special to make those plans work and happen.

            The teacher is fired; Stunned, intimidated, he knows his place and leaves. Jasmine smiles at Emily, and vice-versa; She feels a bit better. Jasmine appoints a new, better teacher, and leaves.

            Jasmine and Emily eventually run into one another, start to have conversations; It’s finally addressed that Emily feels grateful, and Jasmine tells her not to, Jasmine only did what was expected of her, and what everyone should do. Everyone wants to be the best, but nobody wants to cultivate the best; Whether that’s themselves or others, is incidental.

            They have a meaningful, genuinely supportive mentor-mentee relationship, with Jasmine encouraging Emily and seeing great potential, helping her recover her passion and from the abuse. There’s a moment where Jasmine tells Emily not to subscribe to some false ideal of being ‘tough’ by doing something the hard way, because she tells her not to waste her effort on mundanities; Save it for things that actually matter, that are interesting.

            Jasmine resonates with Emily on being autistic and not getting people. But there are some red flags here and there, Jasmine casually admitting to a callous worldview about how only a select few matter, those with the vision of leaders but the performance of workers who make things happen. Jasmine of course softens these statements afterwards, and some seem innocuous enough at a glance. Emily looks right past it, she’s still a young kid just entering adulthood.

            All the while, the main conflict between our protagonists and the Phantom Alliance occurs; There’s the enigmatic, masked figure of Maerco, and her desire to control death. She has some motives and observations that seem a bit suspiciously similar… She mentions a ‘collective spirit’ which could be literal given the Spirit Currents are just that, as well as Preeminent devouring a bunch of souls and using them to power themselves.

            Jasmine makes Emily an offer as she continues to succeed, explaining to her student that she has a vision, and has and continues to make things work. And she needs others like her, others like Emily, to make that work. People like them need to rise up, and Jasmine encourages Emily to cut off other ties deemed ‘distractions’, and even projects a little bitterness. She’s nudging Emily into this elitist, hierarchical mindset where people like them must devote and even destroy themselves for a greater good, except it’s not one concerned with everyone else, just a certain abstract idea.

            As our protagonists in the conventional storyline learn more about Maerco, they learn her full, true name… And at the same time, Jasmine finally admits to Emily, going mask-off, her full name; Jasmine Maerco. She becomes upfront of what and who she really is; Maybe Emily is already connected to our protagonists, so Maerco is explaining the Phantom Alliance because she needs Emily’s help.

            Emily is horrified; She isn’t doing this! She snaps out of the delusions that Maerco has put into her, about being devoted to a greater good. Maerco tries to get Emily to calm down, insinuates she’s getting emotional, explaining that the ‘common masses’ still have a place, and even those who are ineffective but sympathetic and trying, will be regarded well and appreciated by the Phantom Alliance; They can be used for other things!

            And Emily isn’t like those common masses, nor the ones who understand; She understands and is better than them! And even if she isn’t, well, she just needs to get over herself for the sake of those better; Maerco would do the same, and she actually means it. But it doesn’t make this any less horrible and evil.

            Who cares if it’s horrible and evil? So are many things, Maerco argues. If you just step back and do nothing, horrible things will happen, wars will inflict mass death. Even if you try, it happens; Misfortune and death are inevitable facets of life. So why not make it happen anyway, but in a way people like them can take advantage of, to make it meaningful? Make it matter, make senseless loss into a noble sacrifice, an investment.

            And eventually, they can invest enough power to smash the laws of nature itself, and put an end to things like that; The Phantom Alliance’s methods mean their destruction will be limited. Not doing anything means destruction will be infinite. There’s an obvious calculus here, and if it’ll happen anyway, someone has to bite the bullet and be the evildoer, for the greater good.

            Emily refuses, Maerco sighs; She’d hoped she would understand. But she won’t make Emily do it, because then Emily will have no real spirit, and in the end a talented yet forced one is inherently inferior even to one less capable but actually willing. Maerco takes control of Emily using a combination of magic and Preeminent’s power, and/or Emily gets rescued, I dunno.

            We all know it, Jasmine and Maerco are the same; It’s not about it being a twist to the audience, it’s about it being a twist to the characters, and in particular, exploring a side to Maerco more mundane, seemingly sympathetic. It’s a context in which Maerco can recruit others, and we see what goes on in the heads of those who join her, which is the same as what goes on in Maerco’s head.

            And Emily considers, for a bit; And shakes it off, nah. Maybe Maerco played her card too early, maybe because she had no choice. It might haunt Maerco, Emily’s wasted potential… but the same goes for many taken away too soon. That will be resolved by controlling the Spirit Currents anyway.

            The tragic irony is that Maerco seems nicer, and on a superficial, immediate level is; But for all her correct lecturing on that teacher, she turns out to be infinitely worse and so on some level, there’s a bit of technical hypocrisy on Maerco’s part. That teacher was just a mediocre prick going nowhere and dragging people down to his level, whereas Maerco is a delusional mass murderer helping others be that way too. And while she’s certainly more competent than the teacher she fired, that just makes her far more dangerous because she knows what she’s doing, and has delusions beyond that guy.

            It becomes obvious; Maerco was not really kind, she was not really caring for the students; Just in cultivating their potential. At the very least that compassion was deeply conditional on them being ‘worthwhile’ just as the teacher’s approval was. Her beef with the teacher had nothing to do with the nature of the methods, just them being ineffective; Being effective is all she cares about, regardless of the method, and her admonishing made students mistake Maerco for having other priorities.

            Looking better may have been part of it, her way to salvage a bad situation. But while the reality is that honey attracts flies more than vinegar, what if that were not the case? If being vicious and cruel worked, you could not imagine just how sadistic Maerco would be; Not so much for their general well-being but this abstract idea of ‘potential’ to live up to.

[canmom]

l'aventure de canmom à annecy - épisode deux - mercredi n+1 - Sand Land

bonjour encore mes amis!

no, there isn't a secret second annecy festival two weeks later. much as I might wish otherwise! I'm just getting back to writing about stuff I did and saw in Annecy.

to start with, let's roll back to Wednesday with Sand Land!

I went into this one knowing basically nothing about it except the thumbnail looked neat, but it turns out to be an adaptation of a manga by the late Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball fame. It portrays a dystopian (ish) setting in which an evil king controls the water supply; an ageing sheriff teams up with a demon prince to try to find an oasis in the desert, but their journey takes them into conflict with the king's army, and it turns out that our sheriff was actually a military commander who, duped by his evil commanders, participated in a genocide.

Ultimately, our protagonists defeat the evil general in a big battle and destroy the dam he's using to block up the water supply. The military is won over by the honourable ways of our sheriff, and there's a new era of peace between humans and demons. etc etc

What I liked about this movie? The visuals are solid. It's using a cel shaded cgi style, but it's done very well; the characters move in appealing, lively ways, and it allows them to stage big complex tank battle sequences very clearly. I'm not familiar with Toriyama's manga here, but comparing the pictures I can find online, they seem to have nailed the look. Cel-shaded CGI will never look exactly like 2D animation, but it doesn't need to. It's increasingly a solved problem to make a film that looks good in the style.

Sadly, the plot kind of lost me. It's a kids' movie, fundamentally; heroes and villains are archetypal and heavily telegraphed, and the heroes are too uniformly OP to ever feel like there's a lot of tension to the fights. The main dramatic conflict is over Rao's realising his complicity in a genocide, but the way this is presented lets him off the hook far too easily, with all the blame falling on the schemes of the evil general. We never have to confront the survivors in any meaningful capacity, and there's never any doubt about Rao in the present - he is the type of character to use supernatural combat skills to defeat enemies without killing them. It comes off as this rather strange strain of military apologia: despite being a dystopian setting enforced by military power, all the soldiers are basically decent guys when you get right down to it.

Beezlebub, the demon prince, is an entertaining but highly static character - his main change of heart is to think humans like Rao can be pretty all right actually. The final battle sees him pulling out a bunch of Dragon Ball-like powerups, and it's kind of whatever. His grouchy servant Thief is kind of fun, and the party banter over who gets to drive the car/tank etc is charming, and the weird desert gangs are a great chance for Toriyama to stretch his character design skills, but it was not enough to carry the larger story for me. I actually think it would work a lot better as a game, where the characters always winning feels like your success as a player, and the control of the party would get you invested.

That's OK, though! The fun of film festivals is taking a risk on things, and sometimes it turns out to be... not a dud exactly, this is a solid kids' movie, but not what I was hoping for.

The designs actually remind me a lot of Ankama's style (from the thumbnail alone I guessed this movie would be French), though I'm sure the influence goes the other way - Toriyama must have been popular in France, right? Anyway, overall, needed more weird guys, and less reassuring us that the military are actually good at heart.

[annies-scrapbook]

the story i'm writing right now started with me going through a bunch of my old things and writing down all the recurring motifs i saw in my art and writing from my childhood and teenage years. i read it over and realized how much i would still love to read a story with all of those things in it, and set about trying to write one. along the way it's turned into... almost a sort of inner child work, i guess one could say? i'm basically attempting to sit down with my childhood self and tell her a story. it's a fantasy adventure with a young trans girl as the protagonist, and i'm filling it with all the things tiny annie loved most, and all the things she most needed to hear and never did. it's turning into the coming-of-age story i so badly wish i'd had, and if i'm ever able to publish it i hope it'll be able to find its way to another young trans girl who needs it as much as i did.

so in the process of writing it, i've been returning to a lot of my old favorite media from when i was a kid, and trying to sort of take it apart and see what makes it tick, and why it appealed to me in the way that it did. and i'm finding that, while there's still a lot of things that i love about it, dear gods are there a lot of things about it that are unsettling as hell in retrospect. so much of the fantasy i loved, for instance, had plots revolving around bloodlines and restoring the """rightful""" heir to the throne. the pro-monarchy attitudes on display in these stories aren't just a background detail that can be handwaved away -- they're the core conceit of the entire plot. and i don't think any of the authors of these stories, if asked, would claim to support monarchy. even as a kid reading these, i knew that real-world monarchies weren't good to live under. it's just a fun fantasy, right? but why is that the fantasy we always turned to? why did we find it fun? why were our protagonists always fighting for a world that looked so much like our past, with all the oppressive systems still fully intact, but this time it's going to be ok because there's a good person at the top? could we really not imagine anything else? why did the imaginations that could conjure up so much magic fail us so badly here? looking at it as an adult, it feels so sinister now -- i'm just no longer capable of the sort of doublethink that it takes to fully enjoy a story like that.

the story i'm writing is still in conversation with those stories from my childhood, but it's gradually shaping itself into less of an uncomplicated tribute and more of a deconstruction, or even a refutation; not in a gritty or cynical way, but in a way that (i hope) points the way to other possibilities. the shape of the plot involves the heroine starting down the path of one of those once-and-future-king narratives and then gradually becoming more aware and agentive, realizing that the path she's on leads nowhere good, and breaking out of it to fight for something better. i didn't set out to write a political story, per se. i just wanted to write about a girl like me going on the sort of epic adventure i used to read about. but in order to write that in a way that feels honest and meaningful, i can't help but engage with the politics inherent in the setting. anything less would feel disrespectful to my audience. after all, if there was one thing little annie hated, it was adults talking down to her.

[imsailorpluto]

Call It Love (2023), Kang Min-yeong

This one makes me awfully sad. There are lots of things one can label as "wrong" and "immoral". Life isn't all black and white, no matter how hard we try to make it that way. As a woman, I tend to side with other women any chance I get, no matter if it turns out to be a big mistake.

Dong-jin, even if you're played by Kim Young-kwang, I can't let you off the hook, sorry.

Their break up makes me think it was a bit of everyone's fault. Sure, we could just oversimplify it and say they weren't compatible in the first place. We still have no idea what he did, but she cheated anyways, so this is where we should just shut up all together. Well, maybe they were both too young and inexperienced to deal with their parents' burdens. It's best to learn on other people's mistakes, but this time neither of them could escape their own selves.

Dong-jin's mother is one peculiar women nobody would ever want to meet in any kind of circumstance. Her son avoids her best way possible, but she always finds a way back into his life, destroying everything she touches. Min-yeong comes from a disgustingly wealthy family (I mean the woman drives a Maserati, that car scene alone made me weep), it's only natural her life is full of problems as well; her parents never approved of her relationship in the first place. For a girl who seems to be hurried into getting married, is there anything else that's left to expect besides a tragic ending? Dong-jin tried escaping his mother's influence, more or less, but same thing can't be said for Min-yeong. My guess is both were in great pain which they couldn't get rid off due to coming from such different worlds while neither of the two knew how to patch the void in between. Inexperience.

Dong-jin's biggest mistake was hiding his true face from his partner while insisting on keeping the relationship going. He hid his background, his childhood, his wounds, his identity. Is having a meaningful relationship even possible without taking the mask off at some point? Yet that's something he could never do but still, from his perspective it must have seemed as if he's doing fine as a partner. That's not how it works, relationship is almost like a living being, and putting up a wall is always noticeable, even when the other side turns a blind eye.

Certainly, him not letting her in on his painful past has a great affect on all that lead to their break up. While Min-yeong was looking for support in the one she loved the most, she was not getting any reassurance back and she probably blamed herself for him not opening up to her. That's something women usually do. And what do people do once they can't see a way out of a difficult situation? They become (self-)destructive. She could bend over backwards but she was just not the one he would move his emotional blocks for. From what we can see in the series, he didn't really want to discuss their future together and he kept pushing her away, presenting it as if she might be the one to push him away, some day, when she learns the truth about him (if she ever does).

From that perspective, their whole situation smells like trouble. Big, big trouble. She said herself her goal was getting married and having a family. I can't blame her for wanting those things. Is wanting something she subconsciously knows Dong-jin would never offer so wrong? Is loving a person deeply to the point of being irrational and practically dumb so wrong? Ah, but desperate measures are always wrong. Why don't we all collectively just bury this woman alive, why would we understand anything that she went through? It's not like something like that could ever happen in real life to any of us, right?

Honestly, the show presents Dong-jin as if he were an angel and not a man with severe mother/father issues. He's portrayed as a kind hearted protagonist with a high moral sense, who drowns his sorrow in alcohol while lying on the floor for days after Min-yeong's mom sent him the wedding invitation. I can't deal with kdrama mom thing at all now, they're a different kind of evil, I swear.

The audacity of "I won't let you in and I won't marry you, but I won't let you marry anyone else either" is something known for ages. That's probably why her mom sent the invitation in the first place. And all of that together makes me think he didn't treat her like a decent human being. Not because he chose that, but because he doesn't have the capacity for it. Not having the capacity, being somewhat aware of it and insisting on the relationship, because the other person displays so much affection and love, is as equally bad as cheating. That is actually also cheating. A person doesn't have to get involved with anyone else to be a cheater. It's enough to hide their wounds and not be honest about it. That alone makes me think the reason why he pretended not to notice she was out dating someone else hides behind his feeling of utter guilt. Guilt for not being capable of providing her what she needs, to compensate for building up walls and wasting her time all along.

Dating emotionally unavailable person, heck, living with one, is soul draining. It hurts like hell looking at a person and feeling as if you're staring at a blank wall. The pain of having to go through that daily is worse than your partner actually cheating on you once or falling for someone else and breaking up. At least that's how I see it; the pain it puts you through is not even comparable. The reason behind it might be in the fact that for cheating one doesn't need intelligence at all. To lure someone in your life, make them stay and to calculate how much of which part of yourself you'll give in each and every moment, well... In my eyes that's way worse form of betrayal. It takes a lot of brain. That's manipulation at it's finest. There's something very dark and vile about it; it can play with other person's mental health in the most brutal ways, where outcomes may be even fatal. And we have it right there on the screen. Min-yeong became an alcoholic. She let a man with mommy issues and extremely low self-esteem drag her down to the bottom, while he then carried on with his life as the main victim in everyone else's eyes. That's something men who hate their mothers do very often.

Her side was never shown (at least not yet), how much she must have waited for him to change, to open up at least a tiny bit, how much energy and effort she poured into their relationship. How many times she tried to get thru his walls. Sure, she made a huge mistake by contacting his mother first, but I can't blame her. Imagine how desperate she was in that moment; she went behind his back to check his phone and steal his mom's number. Even thinking of doing that is hitting rock bottom yet she went on and did it without being aware of what desperation looks like on her. As any relationship, theirs must have had a great start. Keeping his character in mind, he was most probably an amazing boyfriend at first. Once the honey moon phase ended, first problems emerged. He probably pushed it all under the rug. Min-yeong's mistake was falling a bit too hard and not breaking up with him sooner, probably thinking she could change him. Could be she wanted to prove her parents wrong as well, but for whatever reason, it hurts to watch her scenes and think about her psychological profile.

It's never one sided, that feeling when relationship reaches the breaking point. People don't want to be the bad one, breaking up first. It is a bit pathetic, not ending a relationship and enjoying the victim role saying "I've been dumped" any chance possible. Meanwhile, those same people treat their partner so poorly it's evidently there is no love left there. I'm not trying to use this drama, nor Min-yeong's character to justify cheating. Of course cheating is wrong. What I'm trying to point out is the following. Dong-jin's move - not ending the relationship and choosing to live off of his partner's energy until she turned into a wreck - is also just as wrong, if not worse than what his partner did. She obviously loved him more. What a textbook example; men with severe self-esteem (and what-not) issues pursue gorgeous smart amazing independent girls, only to ruin their psyche, changing them into something, someone unrecognisable operating on survival mode. Sounds a lot like a parasite causing a disease.

Min-yeong's left miserable in the end. She turned into an alcoholic who, even after all the hell she's been through, still thinks she might have a shot with this guy who never even truly accepted her. Oh the brain fog. Oh the twisted perception. All the excuses she must have made for him until she fell into a hole they both dig up. While he just used her for tending to his wounded inner child. She must have been so confused and so lost, how messed up her head must have been when she couldn't even get rid of him. How do you get rid of a parasite? Without an intervention, you don't.

I'm good at writing apology letters for others, so why not writing one for her? So let's wrap this one up. In all honesty, Dong-jin probably took best years of her life while she waited for him to open up. What, they're probably in their late twenties, early thirties now? Imagine yourself living in a conservative society, where certain norms are expected, are even obligatory. I get that his mom made him miserable but she is still his mother. There is no other woman out there who could fill that role. Being in a relationship for god knows how long without introducing your "future wife" to your only parent, who is clearly still around, for whatever ugly reason he should have been open about, is wrong on so many levels. Min-yeong obviously loved him deeply. All she wanted was to marry a guy she loved and start a family, and not wait for him for 10 years to finally make up his mind. He knew they were not compatible, despite all the love. She was blinded, he didn't want to hurt her so he didn't let her go even though he should have. She tried to move on, but couldn't, because she wanted him. She wanted the person she could never have. She was hooked badly.

No satisfied woman would ever cheat, especially if she wants to commit to a man till the end of her life. At this point her actions look like a desperate cry for help, but her example is just another one in a sea full of such cases, no one will care once you're incapable of getting up on your feet; however, everyone will point a finger and be the first to judge and even cheer on as they watch you drown.

[supremechancellorrex]

I honesty feel very disappointed in the Bad Batch Season 2 and its finale. It feels like none of the characters learned or did anything much this entire season. Nobody developed in a meaningful way, it's like none of the Bad Batch even have character arcs and are just passive 99 percent of the time, waiting for the plot to happen to them. And they only developed Tech as a neurodivergent person to get praise and then kill him off? Good to know only the likeable ones die.

Tech: "We don't leave one of our own behind."

Do the writers even watch their own show? They left Crosshair twice, but apparently we should forget that now and pretend that they didn't? Okay, well, I guess we're gonna. I find it hilarious that Tech promotes this mission to try to save Crosshair and other clones, then he dies on said mission to try to save Crosshair and clones, and Hunter thinks the way to honour Tech's sacrifice is to ditch Crosshair and said clones and hang out at Pabu. I was like 'oh, like you would have done regardless?'

In a story featuring slavery and human rights issues, our protagonists just don't care, as Hunter remains completely and grossly apathetic to the mistreatment of the clones by the Empire. The show treats it all as an afterthought, and Hunter has no interest in the plot until predictably Omega is taken. This is because Hunter is an awful person that doesn't care about fighting to free slaves or to end fascism unless it affects him. Ironically, even that one Imperial guy in the Imperial Summit meeting somehow gave more of a crap.

The Bad Batch are some of the worst protagonists I have ever seen in Star Wars, and that is saying something. I don't understand what Rex, Echo, Cut, Gregor and a number good normal clones see in them, especially when Hunter is never properly called out on telling Echo "When will it be enough?" as if he's collecting stamps and not saving people from enslavement, death, torture and medical experimentation. People who have their own value and worth, all individuals who deserve to live and be free. Even Crosshair shows more humanity than the Bad Batch. The fact Echo joins up back with the Bad Batch, who disregarded and dismissed his emotional, human and ethical needs to save his family from death and fates worse, is depressing.

But, they needed a new 'Tech' guy. How convenient one was lined up.

The decision to have the main protagonists continue to not care about fighting fascism and slavery until it affects them personally is disgusting. It's obvious the writers don't understand or care about the heavy topics they're writing about. There is no justification whatsoever for the Bad Batch's level of apathy, the 'bullying/isolation' excuse is weak and petty, disproven in their own show with how Rex, Cut, Howzer, Gregor, Cody, Mayday, their squads, the normal clones like Fireball working with unreg-looking Echo are all completely kind to them. 'The mean regular slaves are mean to the specials' was always a cheap, and borderline-offensive concept, especially when all the 'reg' clones liked Ninety-Nine, who was very different looking. Hunter says it's time the Bad Batch "stopped being soldiers" ignoring the fact they have no sense of duty, have no cause, have done nothing for the people who need them most, just 'natborn-like' mercs who'd rather do treasure hunts, racing and helping non-clone citizens over clone slaves.

The moral that Bad Batch is teaching kids is: 'don't care about people or fighting corrupt systems, just protect your own.' Good to know how morally bankrupt we're getting that apathy and self-centredness are the real values to teach. Judging by how many people still defend the Bad Batch, looks like the message has been received.

Meanwhile, Ahsoka in TCW: "In my life, when you find people who need help, you help them no matter what."

[byneddiedingo]

Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick, 2015)

Cast: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Brian Dennehy, Antonio Banderas, Frieda Pinto, Wes Bentley, Isabel Lucas, Teresa Palmer, Imogen Poots, Ben Kingsley (voice). Screenplay: Terrence Malick. Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki. Production design: Jack Fisk. Film editing: A.J. Edwards, Keith Fraase, Geoffrey Richman, Mark Yoshikawa. Music: Hanan Townshend.

Two films kept coming to mind as I watched Terrence Malick's Knight of Cups: Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) and Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror (1975). Fellini's film because the journey of Malick's protagonist, Rick (Christian Bale), through the decadence of Hollywood and Las Vegas echoes that of Marcello's (Marcello Mastroianni) explorations of Rome. Tarkovsky's because Malick's exploration of Rick's life exhibits a similar steadfast refusal to adhere to a strict linear narrative. Most of us go to movies to have stories told to us. Our lives are a web of stories, told to us by history and religion and science and society, and most explicitly by art. We tend to prefer the old linear progression of storytelling: beginning, middle, end, or the familiar five-act structure of situation, complication, crisis, struggle, and resolution. But artists tend to get weary of the straightforward approach; they like to mix things up, to find new ways of storytelling. The modernist novelists like Joyce and Woolf and Faulkner eschewed linearity, and filmmakers have tried to take a similar course. They have the advantage of working with images as well as words. So Malick, like Tarkovsky and Fellini and others, experiments with editing and montage to meld images with language and gesture to probe the psychological depths of human character and experience. The problem with experimentation is that experiments fail more often than they succeed. Some think that Knight of Cups is a successful experiment, but most critics and much of the film's audience seem to disagree, to judge from, for example, a 5.6 rating on IMDb. Knight of Cups spent two years in post-production and there are four credited film editors, which suggests that Malick over-reached himself. For me, what was lost in the process of making the film was a clarity of vision. Granted, the lives of human beings are messy, loose-ended things, but what do we depend on artists to do but try to make sense of them. I think Malick lost sight of his protagonist, Rick, in trying to interpret his life and loves through the film's odd amalgamation of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and the Major Arcana of the tarot pack and then overlaying it with a collage of images provided by Emmanuel Lubezki's camera. We glimpse Rick through filters, grasping for moments that will resolve into something substantial about him, his problems with his family and with women. And for all the casting of fine actors like Bale and Cate Blanchett and Natalie Portman, the production negates their attempts to create characters. In fact, their starriness works against them: Instead of being drawn into the character of Rick or Nancy or Elizabeth, we're removed from them by the familiarity of the actor playing them. I understand what admirers of the film like Matt Zoller Seitz are saying when they proclaim, "The sheer freedom of it is intoxicating if you meet the film on its own level, and accept that it's unfinished, open-ended, by design, because it's at least partly concerned with the impossibility of imposing meaningful order on experience, whether through religion, occult symbolism, mass-produced images and stories, or family lore." But I wonder if that's enough to make an experiment successful. I came away from Knight of Cups knowing nothing more about its characters than I did before I met them.

[reviewsthatburn]

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

DNF 27% in.

I found myself struggling to get through THE WILL OF THE MANY, and I ultimately did not finish reading it. I enjoy doorstoppers and I like long books, the length is not the issue. I can like a slow burn story when I have an idea of what the slow burn is building to, but while I mostly understand why Ulciscor is doing what he's doing, I don't understand what Vis (the protagonist) is doing or what his goals are.

Full Review at Link.

[low-budget-korra]

Let's Talk about the Yellowjackets #2

Natalie Scartoccio

Her death while it was somewhat poetic, was also pointless. She ended s1 trying to kill herself and being saved at the last moment, all for what? For her to bond with that brainwashed hottie and die for her? In the end of the day, it was suicide. Again, kill any of the survivors, especially one that is with us since the very beginning is not something that should happen in a season 2 finale c'mon. Is the type of character end we see in series finale. We know she was broken even before plane crash but now that we know she was the Antlers Queen I wanted to see more of her in the present, dealing with all that or at least making her death more meaningful to the main plot.

Like I've said in the #1, i think the show will end with them In the wilderness again, so what if her death was the last sacrifice? yes, it could be any of the girls but since she scape death before and felt responsible for her father's,Javi's and Travis deaths, it would be meaningful for her to accept what should have happened in the first hunt. The only other person who could do this sacrifice is Misty since they weren't rescued because of her.

Also until the last moment I thought she was going to get a shoot , like, that brainwashed hottie would shoot Misty and Nat was be in the way to save the person that saved her before. That would be a better choice. Far better choice

I really hope her death isn't a shock value bullshit but damn it feels like one. Because Im so sure that brainwash hottie won't appear next season. So what Nat learn that she already didn't know? What she did this season? For what she sacrifice herself for? The "tell Natalie she was right" thing, that was it? I want all those answers to be solve next season and all the implications of her death, if not...yeah, that was just shock value.

Also. Why the hell she didn't saw Travis?

Lastly, I kinda of wish Natalie was the one and only Antlers Queen.

Ps: I've read that Juliette Lewis wasn't happy with the character so maybe she wanted to get out of the show so the writers needed to end her character but still. ..there's was better ways to do that.

Misty Quigley

Can you please stop murder your bff? Thank you. I find it ironic how she tries so bad to fix things and yet also make things worse. Kinda of Cersei Lannister, if she was smart as Misty.

I'm curious to see how she will react to Natalie's death since she truly cared about her and fought to keep her alive, also ironic, that's how she killed her, trying to save Nat to get shoot.

I'm glad that she has Walter, and he proved to be a real one like Jeff.

Shauna Shipman

She had a nice storyline this season, mostly continuing and finishing some arcs of s1. What I'm really interested for the next season is how she will be annoyed by the fact that she ain't the protagonist, that she was living on others Shadow just as much as she was living on Jackie's shadow. And her search of wanting to be appreciated, and with this she is just like Misty, just not as loud about it. Not much to say about her character, other than what I've already said

I know that we probably will have more than one Antler Queen and if this is the case, i believe Shauna never was one.

[mediaevalmusereads]

Future Home of the Living God. By Louise Erdrich. Harper, 2017.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Genre: science fiction/dystopia

Part of a Series? No

Summary: Twenty-six-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant. Though she wants to tell the adoptive parents who raised her from infancy, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, Mary Potts, an Ojibwe to understand both her and her baby’s origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity.

***Full review below.***

Content Warnings: mention of suicide, child death

Overview: I hadn’t read any Louise Erdrich recently, so I picked this novel up somewhat on a whim. Reproductive rights have been on my mind lately (for obvious reasons), so this seemed like an appropriate read. While there were some things I liked about this book, it ultimately didn’t really come together for me. I felt like the protagonist was a little too passive for my tastes, and the plot seemed a bit too misdirected to feel very meaningful. While I like Erdrich in general, this isn’t one of her stronger works, in my opinion, so for that reason, this book gets 3 stars from me.

Writing: This book is told in the first person, as if our protagonist, Cedar, is writing in a journal to her unborn baby. I do admit having a personal bias against first person narration (in that I think it feels unnatural), but even so, I felt like Erdrich spent a lot more time telling and explaining rather than showing. I guess on some level, it makes sense; Cedar is writing in a journal, after all. But I didn’t really get lost in the story as much as I would have liked, and there were definitely moments when I felt like Erdrich was simply dumping things onto the reader and moving on.

I also feel like Cedar’s Catholicism was woefully under-utilized and could have provided inspiration for some more creative prose. Cedar is a devout Catholic and frequently reads books from theologians as well as mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen. I would have loved to see more episodes where Cedar describes the events in a more “mystical” way, blurring reality with a supernatural vision in a way that builds on the themes in this novel. While there are some moments when it felt like Cedar was having something of a mystical experience, it wasn’t deliberate or sustained enough for my tastes.

Plot: The plot of this book follows Cedar, an indigenous Ojibwe woman adopted by white liberals, who finds herself pregnant during a reproductive crisis in America. All over the world, women have been unable to give birth to live babies (it’s hinted that this is due to something with climate change), so America establishes martial law in the attempt to control the situation. Not wanting to be taken to a governmental birthing prison, Cedar attempts to evade capture while also navigating her feelings towards her own families.

In my opinion, the plot of this book moves rather slow, and that’s probably due to the fact that Erdrich spends very little time focusing on external events. Cedar is very introspective and describes a lot of mundane things, which can work with something more literary, but ultimately didn’t feel appropriate for this novel. As a result, when something big did happen, it felt like it was over and done within a short span of time. This might have worked better if more time was devoted to exploring Cedar’s life as a pregnant woman in hiding or as a commentary on female reproductive rights; however, the worldbuilding in this book was so thin (in my opinion) that it made a lot of the bigger questions feel insignificant. For example, Erdrich hints that “evolution is going backwards,” but we never fully know what that means, nor is that idea connected to the one of society itself “devolving” (or, paradoxically, evolving?) under martial law. 

The way the narrative as a whole was constructed also left a lot to be desired. For me, it didn’t feel like events built on one other and created an overall shape; things would happen seemingly at random, and I did not feel like Erdrich was creating suspense.  As a result, I didn’t get the impression that this book was building towards anything, and even when “reveals” did happen towards the end, they felt rather flat and unexciting.

Lastly, without spoiling anything, I will say that the end was a bit of a downer that left me empty (and not in a good way). While I understand that there is a place for bleak, somber books about the future, this one felt so rushed and hollow that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Was I supposed to feel angry? Motivated to act? Was it a warning? None of those questions seemed to be answered, so I felt somewhat let down.

Characters: There are a number of characters in this book, so to avoid this review getting too long, I’ll focus on a handful: Cedar (the protagonist), the Potts family (Cedar’s birth family), the Songmakers (Cedar’s adoptive family), Phil (Cedar’s boyfriend/husband), and the general pool of antagonists.

Cedar, our protagonist, is a little hard to connect to because she feels emotionally distant from everyone in her life. While I really liked that she had complicated relationships with her birth family and her adoptive family, I ultimately had trouble feeling those emotions because Cedar seemed more interested in telling us about her feelings rather than showing us. She explains that she and her adoptive mom fight, but when we see it happen on page, we don’t really feel the angst or the way Cedar’s heart is torn in two directions. The same can also be said of her boyfriend/husband, Phil; we’re told that she loves him and she feels betrayed by him, but they had so little chemistry and deep affection that none of their interactions felt meaningful. Moreover, I also found Cedar to be a little too passive for my tastes; it seemed like things happened to her and she would simply react, but even when she reacted, she relied on other people to take the lead (her roommate decides to start weaving, her adoptive mother organizes an escape, etc). Most of her initiative comes at the beginning of the novel, when she reaches out to her birth family, but after that, she seems to be tossed along by the winds of fate and doesn’t attempt to control her own future.

The Potts and Songmaker families felt a little more interesting in that they took action when things started to get rough. I really enjoyed the warmth that the Potts family showed when Cedar showed up on their doorstep, and I liked how a lot of them exhibited a mixture of indigenous culture and more “Western” culture. It made the characters feel less like stereotypes and more like people just trying to exist in the world, and I loved that they embraced Cedar without question. Similarly, I liked how the Songmakers were obviously trying to do the right thing, yet were flawed in such a way that made them feel real. Cedar’s adoptive mom, for example, goes out of her way to help her adopted daughter, to the point of putting her own life on the line, but when it comes to her emotional well-being, she just doesn’t know how to connect. Both of these family dynamics made Cedar’s life feel a little richer, and I would have loved to see Erdrich explore their affective relationships more.

Phil, Cedar’s boyfriend (and later husband), felt incredibly flat. While I liked that he tries to take care of Cedar, I didn’t feel like the two had any sort of emotional connection (even though we’re told over and over again that Cedar thinks he’s an angel). I would have loved to see Cedar navigate more complicated emotions when it came to Phil; maybe she struggles with the nature of their relationship more and when she feels like they’ve finally made a connection, the rug gets pulled out from under her. Instead, Phil kind of slips in and out of the narrative so frequently that he didn’t really feel important.

Lastly, the antagonists of this book felt like a boogeyman that always lingered in the background but never fully materialized on the page. Cedar must contend with a number of people and militia groups that would like nothing more than to control her body; however, they never felt like a real threat because they just kind of pop up at random before disappearing, and their presence isn’t really felt in any sustained way.

TL;DR: Future Home of the Living God is a bit of a disappointment in that it lacks a strong protagonist, suspenseful plot, and compelling world-building. While I normally like Erdrich’s work, this first foray into science fiction feels more like an initial draft or idea than a finished novel, though it does have some redeeming qualities, like the complex family dynamics and the premises of reproductive autonomy and the concept of devolution.

[felicitymatima13]

Finding Connection: What The Perks of Being a Wallflower Taught Me About Mental Health

Mental health challenges often go unnoticed, but they shape how people live and interact with the world. In the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower, we see how trauma, loneliness, and the need to belong can deeply affect someone’s life. It shows us how important it is for those dealing with mental health struggles to find ways to connect with others and be part of life again. 

One of the key takeaways from the movie is how essential inclusivity and social support are to mental health recovery. At the beginning of the movie, Charlie, the protagonist, is isolated, struggling with the loss of his friend from suicide and past childhood abuse. These emotional wounds create occupational barriers that prevent him from fully engaging in life, his trauma keeps him from making meaningful connections with others in his new school and participating in daily activities. This mirrors the experience of my own client in prac who has persistent depressive disorder and her trauma and mental health condition has created obstacles to her engaging in meaningful occupations, like socializing, working, or studying.

Charlie’s transformation begins when he finds friends who accept him for who he is. This shift in his environment allows him to feel included and connected, which in turn helps him start participating in life. This lesson is particularly relevant for me as an OT student, as it highlights the importance of creating therapeutic environments that promote inclusion and social connection. Just as Charlie’s friends helped him feel safe, as a student OT I realised how important it is to foster spaces where clients feel understood, supported, and empowered to participate in their own lives.

This movie made me reflect on my own mental health struggles. Like Charlie, I’ve often found it hard to participate in social settings and group discussions, both in personal and professional spaces. His teacher’s advice to “participate” resonated with me, as I’ve also been told by my supervisor to speak up more during fieldwork, but it feels overwhelming due to my own battle with depression. This connection to Charlie’s journey helped me see that struggling with participation is something many people face, and it’s not an easy barrier to overcome.

I also reflected on how important friends have been in helping me cope. Just as Charlie found acceptance and comfort through his friends, I’ve realized how much my own friends have helped me feel more secure. Their understanding and acceptance have given me the courage to take small steps toward engaging more, even when it feels difficult. This personal growth has made me more aware of how important it is to create supportive spaces for those with mental health challenges, where they feel safe to take those first steps toward participation, just like Charlie did.

For me, as an OT student, this movie made me think about how we can help people not just by managing their symptoms, but by creating safe spaces where they feel included and supported, especially with my new patient that has so support system and is always feeling alone and that nobody understands her. Watching Charlie’s journey made me reflect on the role OTs play in helping people move from isolation to engagement, using participation as a key step toward healing.

Charlie’s trauma, particularly his experience with childhood abuse, impacts his ability to form healthy relationships and engage in meaningful activities. This reminded me of the importance of considering the whole person in OT, particularly their past experiences and how these might shape their current behaviors. Trauma-informed care is critical in OT, as it allows practitioners to approach clients with sensitivity and understanding, ensuring that interventions do not retraumatize but rather help clients feel safe and empowered. (S Grossman, 2021) 

I also realised that the themes in the movie connect strongly with the Model of Human Occupation which emphasizes the role of volition, habituation, and environment in shaping occupational engagement. (A Newell, 2023) In the movie, Charlie’s ability to participate in life is initially hindered by his emotional state, but once he finds supportive relationships, his volition—his motivation to engage—returns. This change shows the importance of a supportive environment in promoting occupational engagement, a concept central to OT practice.

As an OT student, this movie reinforced the idea that our role is not only to address symptoms but also to help clients reconnect with meaningful activities in supportive environments. Whether through group therapy or individualized interventions, the goal is to help clients find purpose and connection (OTHC, 2024) , much like Charlie did when he was included in his friend group.

This movie has reinforced my understanding of the value of trauma-informed care and the need to create inclusive spaces where clients can feel safe, connected, and empowered. Moving forward, I am committed to using these insights to foster environments that support mental health recovery and promote meaningful participation in life.

REFRENCES 

SparkNotes: The Perks of Being a Wallflower: Themes. (2019). Sparknotes.com. https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/the-perks-of-being-a-wallflower/themes/

 Grossman, S., Cooper, Z., Buxton, H., Hendrickson, S., Lewis-O’Connor, A., Stevens, J., Wong, L.-Y., & Bonne, S. (2021). Trauma-informed care: Recognizing and Resisting re-traumatization in Health Care. Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open, 6(1), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1136/tsaco-2021-000815

Model of Human Occupation (MOHO): Definition & Elements Video with Lesson Transcript | Study.com. (2019). Study.com. https://study.com/academy/lesson/model-of-human-occupation-moho-definition-elements.html

Children, O. T. H. (2023, September 11). Would My Child Benefit from Occupational therapy Groups? Exploring the Advantages of Individual and Group Therapy. Occupational Therapy Helping Children. https://www.occupationaltherapy.com.au/would-my-child-benefit-from-ot-groups/

[montyterrible]

“This is a (wo)man’s world”: The Excessorious Thinktation of Mr. Monty Terrible, re. Birds of Prey 2020

For a movie so focused on women, one of the most noticeable early design choices in the 2020 Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn ironically concerns a man: specifically Jared Leto’s Joker. The character is present here but in ways that deliberately omit the particulars. The animated Joker seen in the opening is more of a classically… clean-cut version of the character and not really recognizable as the Leto Joker. Ditto the image of his head Harley has as a bulls-eye on the wall of her apartment. The man himself is only seen from the back, in the couple of instances where he does “appear.”

He isn’t even seen breaking up with Harley. We’re just told about it. You can read this as meaningful if you like—Joker’s presence and his influence on Harley being this intangible, malignant thing, like a ghost, maybe, wholly separate from his physical body—though it’s also just blatantly an attempt to dodge using a version of the character that did not exactly win over audiences without outright rebooting him. The obvious brand rehabilitation happening here undermines the art a bit, such as it is: It’s more transparently a product in this way. While there may be artistic or logistical excuses, I don’t think any fully invalidate this point since it still feels like the movie is dodging even the established look of the character in a pretty telling way.

Whatever the exact ratio of intention to coincidence, the result is a message of separation, liberation—*emancipation*—for the Harley character, in-universe and as a valuable asset/property. The title might lead with “Birds of Prey,” but this is Harley’s movie: no Jokers allowed.

Not that the absent Joker is a “bad” thing. While I can find my way to liking other parts of the 2016 Suicide Squad, including Leto’s Joker, it’s inarguable that that film’s contribution to the modern DC universe of live-action films was mainly Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, as well as a certain garish sense of style that does persist here, arguably in a stronger sort of way than in even the proper Suicide Squad sequel that would come later. The impression that I come away with is that this movie’s temperament is more genuinely meatheaded in a 2016 Suicide Squad sort of way than it is crass-but-clever like the 2021 THE Suicide Squad. The fist bump the lady protagonists share at the end (over breakfast drinks and tacos) feels very much spiritually of a kind with the visual of two masculine hands gripping one another, muscles bulging from the camaraderie.

Maybe that is itself a notable feature given that this is a movie principally about women, written and directed by women, and with Robbie as a producer. It’s glittery, ridiculous, violent fun For The Ladies. It’s a movie with a breakup at its center, and we see Harley deal with that in some perhaps stereotypical ways, like giving herself a haircut and eating junk food while crying, but the whole movie kind of has a certain post-breakup anger, determination, and wildness behind it. It’s fast paced but not so much in a deft way and more like the proverbial bull in the china shop. Harley is the narrator, so her typically chaotic perspective is the excuse, in a sense, for the stylistic excess: bright colors, character introductions and sometimes vengeful motivations conveyed via on-screen text, a surreal performance of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” when she’s hit in the face by mob boss antagonist Roman Sionis/Black Mask at one point.

The overall vibe for the plot is “heist”-esque, with some interruptions and rewinding by narrator Harley to create excitement and a sense of fun and complication. It isn’t exactly wildly original or interesting in terms of the narrative or writing, however, and there are points where the movie seems to more or less acknowledge this: like Harley essentially admitting that Renee Montoya’s suspension (as a cop) is a trope or how Black Canary calls attention to Harley suddenly having rollerblades on for some reason in the funhouse fight sequence. Momentum is the focus here. The Fantabulous Emancipation is a lean sub-two hours, and that feels about right for this concept. The much-missed 90-minute runtime standard of old, which this movie still exceeds, was the exact right length for a disposable bit of entertainment with some highlights. You can practically feel the script (and Harley) trying to force the team together in time for the climax, but it generally does not feel like the story was mutilated to reach this runtime.

Roller derby feels like a good fit for this version of Harley aesthetically (and also jibes with the feminist theming), and it gets paid off with the skates at the funhouse brawl and afterward when chasing down Sionis’ car. Cassandra Cain has been taking things out of people’s pockets all movie long, and then she reverse-pickpockets a grenade onto Sionis to finally end him. Harley’s troubles really get started when she tries and fails to eat an egg sandwich, and then she finally gets to eat one at the end. There’s even a fun bit there where the narrator and on-screen Harleys sync up as the story concludes: “Call me a softy,” says the narration; “I dare ya,” says Harley in the car with Cass. It’s a cute, conclusive-feeling beat to end on.

The real treat here, in my opinion, are the fight scenes, especially a couple starring Harley in a police station where the music is reminiscent of a shriek of rage at times. There’s a moment where she’s hiding behind a palette of cocaine, which is then shot up by Sionis’ mercenaries, allowing Harley to inhale the dust and go a little extra berserk. The funhouse fight is visually pretty engaging thanks to the environment, which also creates opportunities for interesting fight choreography. I can’t compare this to every one of the live-action DC movies, but Fantabulous definitely has some of the crunchier action I’ve seen in these films, with a somewhat higher degree of visual credibility. This section is small, but even on rewatch, I would say that the fights are the main reason to see this movie. They’re at least noteworthy highlights.

The “emancipation” of the title definitely shows in the design and theming of the film in ways that I have to imagine made some people very angry—something something “shoved down our throats,” “childhood ruined,” woke, etc. The women aren’t sexualized in a leering way here, and the focus seems to have been on clothing them to give them a sense of style appropriate to their character versus creating something strictly “attractive” or honoring the designs from the comics. Black Canary gets somewhat more revealing attire, but in a considered way where there’s still more covered than not. Harley’s outfits take the Suicide Squad 2016 foundation and add like 200% more accessories and glitter. Cass is dressed like a kid, and Montoya looks like she’s a living, aging person and just very “normal” overall. Huntress might come closest to wearing something like a super suit consistently.

The theming is very straightforward empowerment stuff and very safe—or it would not be broadcast so aggressively like this—though that fact won’t stop the aforementioned, theoretical, angry viewers from thinking it’s some aberration and step too far. Too “political” and so forth.

It’s laid on very thick: When Harley blows up Ace Chemicals early on, Montoya immediately gets her intent (“She just publicly updated her relationship status”), while her partner (a man) is oblivious. Montoya is overlooked and overruled at work in favor of men; Black Canary is repeatedly referred to by Sionis as his “little bird.” Probably the most high-falutin’ it gets is with Harley telling Canary that “A harlequin’s role is to serve” and “You know, a harlequin’s nothing without a master.” And then Canary saves her from being some kind of kidnapped or trafficked in the back of a van after a man gets her drunk(er). Even Doc, the elderly man who owns the restaurant Harley lives above, sells her out. Some of the most squirmy violence in the film, to me, involves breaking a man’s legs with a baseball bat. It’s a movie that some might claim is misandrist, though, if anything, it feels pretty egalitarian with how hard the blows consistently land. The ladies strike one another and men and are struck by men with quite a bit of oomph.

“Friends, brothers, men of Gotham,” says Black Mask to his army, making what should be simple mercenary/goon work feel downright fraternal. Later, the final part of the final showdown happens on a pier lined with statues of the Gotham founders, most of which seem to be men. This is where Harley and Cass kill Sionis, who had risen to the top of the patriarchal heap in the modern day.

There’s maybe some self-awareness here since, earlier, Harley tells Cass to “blow something up” or “shoot someone” to get respect from boys.

While there are other men characters, two of the most prominent are Sionis and his right-hand man, Victor Zsasz, and the two of them have this very… interesting (read: gay) relationship. Like, Zsasz is incredibly visibly jealous of the attention Sionis gives Canary at one point, and Sionis has this sort of BDSM-adjacent thing going on, which would make sense with the “black” “mask,” in a way. He’s more often associated with gloves (and a fear of uncleanliness despite apparently also having a penchant for having Zsasz remove people’s faces) than with a mask in this movie, however. A fixture of his club’s stage are these two big black hands on either side, with eyes held between their middle two fingers. Which kind of suggests the gloves are the mask. Meanwhile, the mask itself is on a pedestal in a room with this sort of bondage-y art on the walls, and putting it on almost seems to be a last resort and feels like this particularly manic, strained moment for Sionis. There’s at least an association being made.

There’s part of me that appreciates how this could be an intentional assault on a certain contingent of the movie’s audience. “Aggressive” is a good word for it, as is “gay.” Neither of those things bothered me, though I did find Chris Messina’s (Zsasz) and Ewan McGregor’s (Black Mask) performances kind of grating at times. It’s funny that Leto’s Joker is persona non grata here, as both of these men are at points doing things with their mannerisms and voices that remind me a lot of that take on the Joker. You might even call some of the acting that they’re doing “bad,” in fact.

They both have their moments of genuine menace, though, that intersect with the themes and help redeem the oddball stuff—like this pretty tense and upsetting bit where Sionis thinks a woman in his club is laughing at him, so he forces her to dance on a table and her male companion to cut and then tear her dress off. Looking on, Canary sheds a tear of, we can assume, sisterhood. Zsasz similarly gets a bit creepy with Harley’s paralyzed body later in the movie and then tries to get Canary to cut open Cass to prove her loyalty and extract an all-important stolen diamond, and when he dies in this scene the women essentially take turns stabbing him in some form. It is not subtle!

Now, potentially associating male gayness (or at least some shade of queerness) with violence against women seems problematic. And while I can appreciate these versions of Sionis and Zsasz being some kind of cishet male comic fan repellant, and also just the weirdness of the take, it seems like making them more conventionally masculine and straight would have kept the theming tidier. There’s not room in here for too much nuance.