#especially one that right at the end had two characters' backstories come to the forefront

[river-muse]

The most recent session of the Starfinder campaign I've been in broke me so bad I had to go horizontal for a bit and then get the very last scene drawn <3 Tai really isn't allowed to keep anything good in his life.

After so many years they reunited at last in the worst way possible- and all this time neither of them have been able to let the other go in some fucked up co-dependency.

This arc was gonna be fun, they said. It's a Battle of The Bands event at Songbird Station for charity, they said. The team's Captain didn't sign up for his finally rebuilding confidence/mental health to shatter at Ikoma coming back into his life. Especially because it's unknown how much longer that Ikoma will even be alive for or if he'll even stay the rest of that time.

[wordsnstuff]

Guide to Drafting

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Planning v. Discovery

The first thing you must decide when you embark on the journey of drafting a story is how you’re going to get it done. Typically, there are two groups you can fit into, though most writers are somewhere in between. There are writers who plan meticulously before they begin writing to create a very clean first draft, or there are discovery writers (otherwise known as “pantsers”) who find more success in choosing a premise and then using a zero draft to explore the idea before gluing down any details. You are most likely someone who falls between those two methods. Some initial planning to feel familiar with your idea before you do some of the planning through the writing itself. Having some semblance of a method will help you narrow down your own process, which is immensely important if you want to get any substantial project near completion.

Consistency

Drafting is a difficult process because it’s either the revisitation of ideas you’ve already had, or the generations of ideas in quick succession. If you want to have a draft in a reasonable amount of time, you must develop a consistency in your writing. I won’t say that it must be a strict routine because time management can be a luxury, but you must make the consistent effort to write, and keep it in the forefront of your mind. Even if you don’t write every day, it should be something you try to make time for every day.

Know What You’re Trying to Accomplish

To get a draft done, you need to set expectations for yourself and they must be realistic. That doesn’t mean they have to be easy, or an amount of work you’ve been able to accomplish in the past. Considering how much time you dedicate to writing and your skillset, it should be a goal within reality. In addition, you must accept that you cannot create a masterpiece in one draft. For each version of your story that you write, you must have a focused goal, such as maintaining consistent characterization, making the plot concise and engaging, or making the prose more fluid and efficient. If you have a specific and attainable goal that you can accomplish in a reasonable amount of time with a fair amount of precision, each draft will be better than the last.  

Designate Work to Phases

As mentioned in the last section, it maximizes your time and effort to have specific and attainable goals for each draft. This doesn’t mean that you rewrite the draft each time (though that is very common amongst writers), but that you designate tasks to draft versions. I find it very helpful in clearing my mind and soothing my perfectionist anxiety to make a “schedule”, outlining what I’ll accomplish in each version following the zero draft. For example, my draft schedules usually end up something like this:

Zero Draft: Main plot line, basic characterization, key world building

First Draft: Finalize Timeline, research for world building, structure

Second Draft: (Rewrite) Plot Development Fine Tuning

Subplot development

Foreshadowing

Build up to climaxes

Tone & Pace

Third Draft: (Intermittent Rewrites) Character Development Fine Tuning

Backstory

Subtextual Development

Making sure motivations are clear

Relationships between characters

Reinforcing character arcs

Checking dialogue

Fourth Draft: (Give to Beta Readers) World Building & Prose

Descriptions & Flow

Finalize settings

Checking grammar & punctuation

Reader Immersion

Fifth Draft: Incorporate Beta Reader Feedback

Write for Yourself First

In what some call the “zero-draft”, there are no rules. This draft is purely for your eyes. It’s you telling yourself the story for the first time. So, you don’t have to write in chronological order, or know the right word you’re looking for, or take a break every time you run into a problem. The purpose of the zero draft is to get a rough idea of as much of the story as you can and avoid getting snagged on minor details. This part is important. A lot of writers like to outline meticulously before they begin drafting and if that works for you, that’s great, but the majority of writers who attempt that get stuck in the planning phase, or burnt out on their story before a word of it exists. The easiest way to avoid those two situations is to do a zero draft, which can be as long or short as you want if it provides a skeleton for you to add meat to later.

Common Struggles

~ How do you estimate the number of words/chapters?... That depends on the genre, mostly. However, that’s usually something you decide in the second draft and beyond, and it can vary because of factors you haven’t got locked down until the plot and character arcs are firm or final. This is also something you’ll probably do a lot of tinkering with, and receive feedback on, especially from beta-readers, who can advise you on where natural breaks could occur from their perspective.

~ Why, after planning everything out, do I always struggle to write the draft?... 99% of the time, it’s because you’ve either burned yourself out, or accumulated too much pressure. When you put that much effort and time into a story, you can either slip into a headspace where you feel little excitement about it because you’ve already done all of the problem solving and had all of the revelations. It’s usually beneficial at this stage to take a step back (even if you’re not burnt out) and give your story some space, so that once you come back to it, you’re enthusiastic enough to fully realize your vision. If instead you’re struggling to write because you feel a lot of pressure to do justice for a story you’ve put so much love into already, take a step back, remember that the first draft is just for you, and work on letting go of the idea that the zero draft is meant to serve any purpose beside simply existing. 

~ How do I come up with the necessary scenes to move the story forward between major plot points?... Most writing problems can be solved by asking yourself the right questions. When you’re trying to figure out what your reader needs to see next in order to effectively set up the next major event, ask yourself “What would happen between event A and event B that would add context or make event B more impactful?”. Treat it like a real situation and try to map out all of the tiny, notable moments that would take place between the major plot points, and then assess those moments on the basis of how impactful they would be to the coming scenes, and whether they can add context, set the tone, or aide in the rising action.

~ How do I balance sticking to the draft and following my own creative instinct in the moment?... This is a judgement call. Sometimes you’ll realize that maybe you should have just stuck to the outline, but remember that you can always go back, rewrite, test things out, etc. Always save every version of every scene, just in case, and go wild. Don’t be afraid to take detours just to explore. The writing process is anything but linear. 

~ How do I maintain momentum in my writing progress when I constantly have distractions or other responsibilities that take priority?... Work at it. There’s no magic trick or piece of advice I could say that gets rid of your personal responsibilities. Write when you can, don’t make excuses on top of the reasons you have no control over, and remember that you create your own deadlines and expectations. Be kind to yourself, do what you can, and don’t spend potential writing time punishing yourself because there isn’t as much as you’d like. 

~ How should I designate space (words/pages) to specific scenes/description/conversations, etc?... Trust your instinct and remember you can always cut/add later. In the earlier drafts, I’d advise you try to create as much material as possible to work with, and in the later drafts, be ruthless when determining what is necessary and adds value, and what doesn’t.

~ How do I finish a draft if I regularly lose motivation or interest in my projects?... Accept the fact that motivation is fickle, and that no writer in history has ever maintained “inspiration” for any project from the beginning to the end. There are going to be days where you’re like “ugh this is not what I want to do right now”, probably more than there are days where you’re stoked to work on your project, but that’s reality. If your goal is to finish a draft, you must recognize that writing is work, and nobody wants to work all the time. Try to supplement the lack of motivation by setting a positive and enjoyable routine so that, even when you’re not particularly motivated, you still know that your writing time will be peaceful and comfortable. 

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Masterlist | WIP Blog

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[karatam]

Read recently (May - early July 2022)

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine. Honestly better than the first one, because Memory had a LOT of world setup to do, while this one can really jump into the plot while also expanding our understanding of the Empire. Picks up 3 months after Memory, when an new, violent, incomprehensible alien species shows up. More POVs this time, which I liked. Gosh I hope there are more books in this series in the future, because I love them.

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse. A really good fantasy novel set in pre-colombian Americas. First in a planned series, I already have the next one on hold at the library. Super interesting world-building, lots of queer characters, shifting political landscapes, and reawakening gods.

She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan. Set in 14th century China, a starving orphan girl takes the identity of her dead older brother in order to save herself and steal his prophesized greatness. Super engrossing book, just a dash of the supernatural, one kind of baffling sex scene, lots of interesting politics, and once you're done, I'd recommend doing a little reading on the emperors of China in that time period... Definitely looking forward to more by this author. (be aware that there is a lot of internal dialogue about gender, some by characters with a lot of self-hatred, please take care while reading)

Crier's War by Nina Varela. Set in a fantasy world where an uprising of automatons ousted the humans and now rule as a monarchy. Two girls, one a human servant and one an automaton princess, meet and start to realize that more is going on than they realize. I liked it and the gays were cute, though ngl I kind of want to just read a book about that automaton uprising, rather than this world set 50 years later lmao. I have the sequel lined up to read next.

Locklands by Robert Jackson Bennett. The conclusion of the Founders Trilogy, this starts after an 8 year timejump. We get a lot more backstory of what exactly started this whole cataclysm, and a lot more introspection on what makes a person human. This book was written during the pandemic and you can feel it, in the way the author really puts community and banding together and love right at the forefront, in a way he hadn't in the previous books (he actually talks about that in the afterword). I cried at the end, in a bittersweet way, because I do love this series and I especially loved Sancia, Berenice, and Clef, and I'm sad to leave them behind.

A Study in Brimstone by G.S. Denning. What if Sherlock Holmes was a mostly-competent warlock and kind of incompetent detective, Moriarty was a demon trapped in his head, Lestrade was a vampire, and John Watson was a very normal person who stumbled upon this whole situation? Written very much in the style of SH stories, where this book is a series of mostly unconnected cases, but with an overarching throughline that comes to a head at the very end. Quite an entertaining read.

[ladyloveandjustice]

Spring 2021 anime overview: Quick Takes

Now for my Spring 2021 anime thoughts! I’ve decided from now on if a season’s like, 20- to-24 episodes I’m just going to wait ‘til it’s done to review it unless I feels super passionately, so though I watched To Your Eternity (it’s good!) and MHA (eh), I’ll comment on them next time. Also, for the record, I watched the first eight eps of Joran: Princess and Snow of Blood but I dropped it because it had clearly crossed the line from entertainingly dumb to boring dumb. 

I will probably give Supercub and some other stuff a shot later, this was a stacked season! May give updates on all that later, but this is what I have for now.

ODDTAXI

Quick Summary: A mild mannered middle-aged walrus taxi driver is drawn into a case involving a missing girl, yakuza, Youtube clout-chasers, manzai comedians and idols with big secrets.

It’s rare to walk away from media and be like “that is a singular experience I will definitely never see repeated again” but ODDTAXI is definitely one of those. A tense noir thriller murder mystery starring cartoon animals that spends an entire episode detailing the one (cat)man’s very fall into darkness triggered by addiction to gacha games and an online auction for a novelty eraser? Also there’s a porcupine Yakuza who speaks entirely in rap? Also there’s tons of meandering conversations about stuff like manzai comedy and the struggle to go viral on Twitter?

Admittedly, I had a hard time getting into the first episode, the dry meandering humor not being enough to hold my attention while I was sitting still, but once I watched this while I was working out at the end of the season, I found it an easy binge. A ton of characters with dark secrets or dangerous ambitions, each with their own part to play in a tableau of intersecting events- and it all actually comes together really well.(As for the female characters, it’s a pretty dude driven story, but they do get nuanced characterization and even some good heroic moments from one of them.)

 It’s a great example of a carefully planned narrative paying off, with all the twists appropriately seeded and foreshadowed to reward viewers who paid attention. Even when it ended on a perfect “OH SHIT” moment and denied me closure, I couldn’t help but respect it. If you that all sounds interesting to you, definitely check out the first couple episodes and see if you like it- you’re likely to have a memorable, satisfying experience!

Shadows House

Quick Summary: Emilyko is a ‘living doll’ who’s told she was created to act as the ‘face’ of her shadow master, Kate. The shadows and their ‘dolls’ all reside on the mansion and are required to pass a ‘debut’ to prove they’re a good pairing. If they don’t pass, they might be disposed of. And so the mystery of the Shadow mansion grows...

This slice of gothic intrigue was my favorite of the season, tied with ODDTAXI. With an interesting premise, slightly tense undertones and a strong focus on character building and relationships, it kept me hooked the whole way through. And for any squeamish fans put off by the hype about it, don’t worry, while there are some suspenseful elements, I wouldn’t qualify it as horror. I thought the relationship between Kate and Emilyko might end up being a completely sinister one, but it’s thankfully a lot more complex than that and it’s really interesting to follow how both their characters and relationship grow. The focus of the show is, unsurprisingly, on the “dolls” slowly discovering their autonomy and personhood as they struggle under the rigid system imposed on them by the mysterious elders of this weird Victorian mansion. Can they develop a more equitable relationship with their shadow “masters” (who are also shown to suffer under this system)? There’s a lot to dig into there, and the show has the characters develop through learning to understand and appreciate each other, which is pretty heartwarming. Our hero, Emilyko, is the typical plucky ball of sunshine (they even nickname her sunshine), but she’s also shown to be clever in her own off-the-wall way and she bounces off the far more subdued and cynical Kate well, not to mention the other ‘dolls’ she ends up befriending. 

What’s more, the show spends plenty of time to developing several other character pairings and combinations, and they all have their own interesting dynamic that makes you want to see more of them. Same-gender bonds are at the forefront of this show, and many of them are ripe for queer readings (I definitely appreciated the healthy helping of ladies carrying ladies), but even outside that it’s nice to see a show where a strong, complex bond between girls is at the forefront. My only real complaints about the show are the anime original ending is noticeably a bit rushed (though it’s not too bad, and leaves room for a season 2) and I wish the animation used the whole “shadow” theme more strikingly (like the opening and endings do)- instead the colors are a bit washed out which makes the shadows blend into the background sometimes. The “debut” arc also drags a bit in places, but it makes up for it by having a lot of good character integration.

I hope to check out the (full color)! manga soon and see more of this quirky, shadowy story. There’s some physical abuse depicted, sad things happening to characters and naturally the whole “oppressive familial system” thing, but otherwise not much I can think of to warn about. I give this one a big rec, especially If you’re a fan of gothic fairytales and stories of self discovery.  

Zombie Land Saga Revenge

Quickest summary: In this sequel season, everyone’s favorite zombie idol group must claw their way back into prominence after a disastrous show- the fate of the Saga prefecture LITERALLY depends on it!

This was a fun follow-up to the first season- if you liked the first zombie-girl romp, you’ll probably enjoy this one. In fact, there were a couple areas it improved on- namely, Kotaro failed, ate crow and embarrassed himself a lot more this season, which made him more likeable (as did the fact the girls gained a lot of independence from him). This season also shed more light on what the ‘goal’ of this zombie raising project is and what kind of shit Kotaro got involved with to make this happen, and it’s appropriately off-the-wall and ridiculous. We finally got some backstory for Yugiri too! I wish it had focused on more of her interiority, but she got to be a badass in it, and it was a treat to see this zombie idol show turn into a period piece for a couple episodes (also her song ruled).

 Tae also got a cute focus episode and there was a particular SMASHING performance early on! Also That revelation last season that had the potential to turn creepy hasn’t yet, and hopefully never will. The finale was heartwarming with big hints of more drama to come- I’m definitely down for more zombie hijinks!

Vivy: Flourite Eye’s Song

Quickest Summary: A songstress AI named DIVA (nicknamed Vivy) is approached by another AI named Matsumoto, who says he’s from the future and they must work together to prevent AI exterminating all of humankind 100 years from now.

This show is absolutely gorgeous visually with some really nice action scenes, but when it comes to the story my feelings basically amount to a shrug. It’s fine! I guess! Vivy starts out as an interesting layered character- and I guess still is by the end- with her stoic but stubborn determination bouncing off her fast-talking bossy partner Matsumoto well. She never listens to him, which is delightful. The way the show took place over the course of 100 years was an interesting conceit as well. However, it bought up a lot of themes and then sort of... dropped them. For instance, Vivy interprets her mission (PRIME DIRECTIVE if you will) as protecting humans at all costs, no matter how destructive said humans are or what their fate is supposed to be, and is perfectly willing to murder her fellow androids to do this, showing she inherently thinks of androids (herself and her own people!) as less worthy. Which is a little alarming! There’s a very dramatic point in the show where they bring this up as a potential conflict for her character but then it’s sort of...dropped. Pretty much.

Actually, despite the premise, the show doesn’t dip into the “AI rights” as much as you think it would with the main theme being more about Vivy’s search to find her own creativity and discover what it means to ‘pour your heart into something’. Vivy herself doesn’t actually care if she has rights or anything. Which is in some ways fine, because ‘AI as an oppressed class’ has been done to death, but IT’S ALSO KIND OF IN THE PREMISE, so that means that the show just shrugs really hard at a lot of the questions it brings up  basically just going “humans and AI should work together probably” and that’s it. There’s a lot that feels underexplored. The antagonists in the show also either have motivations that don’t really make sense or have boring hackneyed motivations. In the finale in particular, it feels like a lot of things happen “just because” and it falls a little flat.

I also have to warn that one of the arcs focus on a robot ‘pairing’ where the dude-coded robots actions toward his partner are straight up awful and rob her of her autonomy, but it’s played like a tragic love story. I suppose you could read it differently too, but it definitely made me go ‘ew’ the story seemed to want me to sympathize with this robo dude,

Overall, I wouldn’t anti-recommend this show, it’s an all right little sci-fic romp (and definitely SUPER pretty). My favorite element was definitely the episodes where Vivy develops an entirely new (an loveable) personality, because it played with the idea of of an AI getting “rebooted” really well and interplay between her two “selves” was done really well. But there are a lot of other parts of the show that just feel...a little underexplored and empty, making me have an ‘eh’ feeling on the show overall. It’s definitely an ambitious project, and while it didn’t quite stick the landing, there’s something to be said for a show that shoots for the stars and falls short over a show that just languishes in mediocrity.

Fruits Basket The Final

Quick summary: The final season of that dramatic drama about that weird family with a zodiac curse and the girl who loves them.

It’s very weird that after not cutting a lot out, they kinda sped through some material for, you know, the finale. I guess they thought they couldn’t stretch this final arc to 26 episodes? Or weren’t cleared for another double cour? However, though there were a couple places that felt awkward, despite being a bit condensed it mostly held together pretty well for a D R A M A T I C and ultimately heartwarming conclusion. I was really disappointed they kept the part where Ritsu cut their hair for the ‘happy ending’, I thought  their intro episode not showing them in men’s clothes meant the anime had decided their presentation didn’t need to be “fixed” but WELL I GUESS NOT. That was the only big upset for me though, otherwise the adaptation went about how I expected, sticking to the source material. Furuba has a lot of bumps, from weird age gap stuff to ...gender, but it also has a lot of important feels and great character arcs. It was a gateway shoujo for many and has its important place in animanga history, so I’m glad it finally got a shiny, full adaptation.

[galladerocksgamer]

Okay so I love the Paranormal Liberation War arc, it does so much fantastic stuff, dang near perfect across the board. But I think it’s pretty widely felt that the pacing got a bit off the rails near the end, we had big reveals and character moments stacking up and half of them barely even felt relevant. And me being the person who just thinks about things in depth and for long periods, I’ve still been dwelling on it for months. And now as the manga has continued, I’m finally seeing how some of the aforementioned War moments could have been better executed in different situations, because honestly this latest arc seems like it would have been tailor-made to address them all. So lemme take a closer look at three different components here: Mirio/Eri, Bakugo, and Hawks.

1. Mirio and Eri

Probably the most random moment from the war’s climax, don’t think anyone was predicting the sudden return of Mirio to battle. I love Mirio, he’s one of my favorite characters, but it was a pretty anticlimactic way to bring him back into the fold. He doesn’t even really bring anything special to the battle, nothing uniquely Mirio. His role is just backing up Best Jeanist against the Nomu, and anyone could have done that. Burnin could’ve arrived sooner, or Manual and Rock Lock could’ve come back after getting the injured heroes to safety. Heck, if you still wanted the Nighteye agency to be involved, then Bubble Girl and Centipeder could’ve been the cavalry to help Jeanist. But instead Mirio returns unexpectedly and none too remarkably.

And on top of that, we’re basically just told “oh by the way Eri has some control of her power now.” Something that the series had been building up toward for awhile just … occurs off-screen with no forewarning. Really feels like a disservice to Eri and her development to not give that intense moment any real spotlight.

It felt extremely weird for me at the time, but I also kinda wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the coming arcs just couldn’t afford to place focus on Eri and Mirio, so their respective developments were tied together to lend an extra surprise to the war’s final bout. But instead this most recent arc has gone the opposite route … through the return of Chisaki.

The man once known as Overhaul, now thoroughly broken and wanting nothing more than to fix his one great regret. With Nagant’s defeat, he winds up back in custody, but having now once again met with Midoriya and made his wish known. So indeed, the opportunity arises for Eri and Mirio to be brought back to the forefront. I don’t doubt that we will indeed have at least a brief glimpse at Eri healing Chisaki’s boss as Midoriya promised, but the potential for that scene could really have been through the roof if it was the impetus for Eri to willingly use her power on a person for the first time.

Imagine Midoriya coming to Eri with that heavy request, of Eri deciding to offer this kindness toward Chisaki of all people, using her power to heal before the man who always told her that she could only destroy. Because really, I don’t think there’d be a question of that, we know the kind of kid Eri is, and she won’t let anyone suffer if there’s any way she could prevent it. Even if Chisaki was the person asking, there might be hesitation and fear, but is there any doubt she’d offer what aid she could in the end? And for Pops to be the first person she helps, to undo the harm carelessly inflicted by Chisaki … well, it’d certainly be poetic.

As for Mirio in this scenario, that could go a couple ways. Route 1: Eri is hesitant to help Chisaki with Pops because she would rather help Mirio get his Quirk back, and we know that her power seems to have a bit of a limit on it via the energy stored in her horn. So what if it did work, but she ran out of juice healing Pops and then made Mirio wait even longer? Well, of course that’s exactly what he’d insist on, he wouldn’t let himself take priority over another person in need of Eri’s help. And he’d take it all in good spirits as always. Or Route 2, if there was concern that Eri’s power could run wild while trying to help Pops, then they could go the complete opposite direction and have Mirio offer to go first, to be the guinea pig for Eri in case of emergency. But of course, he’d have full faith in her all along and coax her through, ensuring her of just how helpful and brave she always is.

So yes, can see how Eri and Mirio’s development could have taken a more satisfying route, and cap us off with some good ole Chisaki angst to boot (though at least we’ve still got a decent serving of that). Now moving on …

2. Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight

So Bakugo’s long and arduous journey of personal growth reached a new peak during the battle with Shigaraki, where his body moved without thinking and he underwent his true heroic awakening to protect Midoriya. Such a sacrifice seems like a perfect cap for his development for the War arc … and then a couple chapters later he forces himself right back into action to back up Best Jeanist, and as promised he reveals his over-the-top hero name to his mentor. In this case I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with the reveal, but in light of his preceding big heroic action, it really feels like a hat on a hat.

It’s not like Bakugo’s hero name heralded some major turning point for the battle; Jeanist’s arrival (and subsequently Mirio’s) had already assured that. And like Mirio, there wasn’t any real special reason for Bakugo to rejoin the fight with the Nomu, especially with Iida and Hado on the scene. After getting skewered by Shigaraki, it would have been pretty simple for Bakugo to just spend the rest of the fight bleeding unconscious on the ground, rather than complicating matters by shoving him back into the fray. And ultimately, the moment feels a bit anticlimactic. All the suspense waiting for Bakugo’s hero name, and then it’s revealed at a time where he barely even has the spotlight.

Of course, such a bombastic name as “Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight” doesn’t particularly lend itself to a quiet or emotional scene, so it wouldn’t be thematically fitting to move that revelation to Bakugo’s hospital bed or his somber apology to Midoriya. That said, given his decision to announce the name first to Jeanist, there would at least be precedent for him to have a “Dabi says secrets in a black speech bubble” moment in the hospital in which he talks to Jeanist but leaves the readers in the dark, before coming back to the actual audience reveal later on.

And there must certainly be other opportunities to present the name appropriately. Bakugo is a master of making an explosive entrance, after all. And when Class 1-A finally catches up to Midoriya, if Bakugo really wanted to make a big impact on his friend/rival before getting into the sentimental stuff, then it would be a prime chance to reveal his hero name in grandiose fashion, both to Midoriya and the audience.

Or if his hero name had been Kacchan, then that reveal would have fit right in with his apology to Midoriya, but that’s neither here nor there

This could be one scenario, of course, but it hardly feels like that would’ve been the only option. And compared to the crammed-in reveal in the final fight with the League, it’s easy to say that there could have been plenty of smoother roads to take.  But setting that aside, moving onto the final touch:

3. Hawks

The long-awaited Hawks backstory doesn’t really disappoint. Admittedly, there weren’t really a lot of holes necessary to fill in there; we’d had enough bits and pieces provided before this point to pretty much put together the whole picture of his crummy childhood. But even without any really surprising turns, the flashback is welcome and hits some good emotional beats. But really, the glaring issue in this area is the timing.

We’re presented this backstory at an instance where Hawks is hardly the most relevant character. Shigaraki is undergoing a personal crisis as All For One seizes the reigns of his own body, Endeavor’s dark history has been exposed and the Todoroki family is in turmoil, escapees from Tartarus roam the streets, and Midoriya consults internally with the vestiges of One For All ... and the narrative decides to take a chapter to look at Hawks. Practically nothing from his flashback directly relates to present events, serving only to further emphasize his already well-established devotion to Endeavor and his (misguided) understanding of Twice’s feelings. The timing is just kind of baffling, especially with some other more appropriate places being readily apparent.

For instance, only a dozen chapters later, we’re properly introduced to Lady Nagant. As Hawks’s predecessor within the Hero Commission, the two have a lot in common, and the similarities and differences between the two could set up some interesting comparisons if Hawks’s backstory was saved to follow up Nagant’s. Two idealistic young children, handpicked by the Commission and groomed into assassins, yet whose outlooks in the present day are starkly opposed? Nagant's guilt driving her to turn on the Commission, while Hawks holds few regrets despite the blood on his hands, longing for freedom from the Commission’s grasp? That kind of parallel could really have built a more solid foundation for Hawks’s past to be laid upon.

That could be an effective setup, but there’s another approach I’d actually much rather have seen, one that brings Hawks’s backstory not later, but earlier: during the dramatic confrontation between Hawks and Dabi. The instant that Dabi reveals he knows Hawks’s real name, the story opens itself up perfectly to dive into his past. And the timing would be superb, showing Hawks at his worst as he murders Twice, then turning back the clock to look at the innocent child who just wants to save people. A little boy whose feathers tingle with the need to rescue those in need, superimposed against the man whose same feathers are used to deliver the killing blow to a victim of hero society’s ills. You want angst? Now that’s how you do angst. Placing the backstory there would play up the tragedy of both Hawks and Twice simultaneously: a “hero” raised by the Commission to cut threats to their control short at the root, and a “villain” who could have been a kindred spirit but instead suffers for their would-be friendship.

And that’s not even the icing on the cake. The real matter of interest here comes in Hawks’s view of Endeavor. By the time we get to Hawks’s backstory, all of Japan has already learned of Endeavor’s history from Dabi, and the result of the timing feels a smidge tone-deaf, and fails to realize the full potential resonance of the situation. The flashback to young Hawks as a victim of child abuse, who is rescued (unwittingly) when Endeavor arrests his father, is presented to us as the moment when Hawks realized that heroes are real, not merely a fantasy. We see why he developed such an ideal view of heroes, and why he is so specifically loyal to Endeavor ... so just imagine if all that was presented during his showdown with Dabi. Imagine if all that came before the tragic revelation of Toya Todoroki. The true terrible irony, that Hawks was rescued from his abusive father by someone secretly guilty of the same crimes, that Hawks’s whole epiphany of “real heroism” was founded upon one of the most corrupt enforcers of all.

The end result would be the same, I’m sure. After all, this is certainly the same thought process Hawks was going through all along, and his decision to maintain his faith in Endeavor’s personal growth would presumably remain unchanged. But presenting Hawks’s backstory before Dabi’s would have opened up a lot more room for us as the audience to actually see Hawks’s views be challenged. If there’s one real complaint I’ve got about Hawks’s character, it’s that we don’t really tend to see him questioning himself or his actions; whatever happens, he rolls with it and presses on, no matter how his ideals are brought into question. But this simple matter of timing could go a long ways to remedying that, granting the audience the chance to watch Hawks grapple with his personal image of and approach to heroism, and his relationship with Endeavor, rather than allowing most of that to pass unseen in the wake of the war’s end. Even if he would ultimately come to the same conclusion, at least such a narrative structure would provide a much more satisfying presentation of his struggle up to that point.

So, I’m not great at endings, but that brings us to the conclusion of my rambling though process here. To recap, the more I’ve thought about it, the more obvious it is that the backloaded War arc could be remedied, and the following arc only made that more obvious. Why force Mirio’s return so soon when he could be tied in later with Eri mastering her powers and the desperate pleas of Chisaki? Why shove in Bakugo’s hero name when the boy has already made a tremendous impact on the arc, and will be more open to further focus during the conflict with Deku in the next? And why throw in Hawks’s backstory as a standalone chapter at a time when it’s largely irrelevant, when there was such great potential to emotionally contrast him with the backstory of Nagant or Dabi? These are the kinds of things I think about. Little things, really, and honestly the whole reason they stand out to me is just that the rest of the arc around them is so dang fantastic. So … yes. This is the testament to my love for this manga, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk, byeeeeee

[shihalyfie]

Menoa Bellucci, and her relation to Adventure and 02′s antagonists

I mentioned in an earlier meta that Kizuna has a particularly deep relationship to 02 on a thematic level, with a lot of that being because its primary antagonist, Menoa, has heavy parallels to its two main antagonists (the Digimon Kaiser and Oikawa Yukio). I felt like I should make another post talking about Menoa in particular, and how the themes of both Adventure and 02 relate to her.

Do note that naturally, this will contain heavy spoilers for the movie (although I guess I’ve technically already spoiled it in this post’s premise...).

Before we begin, I’m going to start off with...well, look, I don’t really like starting off with what’s probably going to sound like an indictment, but I’m pretty sure so much of the potential audience for this post is going to be thinking about it that I inevitably need to address it. It’s the part where a lot of people have generally accused Menoa of being a rehash of tri.’s Himekawa Maki. Honestly, I don’t blame anyone for jumping to that connection, because of how similar the surface details are -- she’s a young woman who was a Chosen Child, who lost her partner and did morally questionable things as a result. That, and tri. was only a few years ago, so Himekawa is still recent in memory, and it’s logical to think that maybe the most recent work would be pulling from the second most recent work.

...But that’s also exactly where the similarities stop. Beyond that surface level, there’s not much connection on a thematic level. Mainly: after losing her partner, Himekawa’s main goal was to get said partner back, even if it meant dismantling the same Digital World she’d been originally meant to protect -- she was willing to destroy everything for the sake of that goal (i.e. she was knowingly acting selfishly). Not only that, she’s not even the primary antagonist, because the whole thing ties into her being used as a pawn by Yggdrasil -- so we’re not even sure how much agency she had in this entire arrangement. Meanwhile, Menoa’s motives were definitely very based on her desire to get said partner back, but the whole point was that she thought it was impossible -- she’d certainly tried, but because nothing was bearing fruit, she determined that the only thing she could do would be to prevent everyone else from going through the same thing. So in other words, she was convinced her actions were actually selfless, and her failure in getting her partner back was what motivated her -- all based on her own personal choices and motivations, directed entirely by her. Other than the backstory part being somewhat similar, the way they react to it is completely different.

If Menoa is meant to be relevant to Himekawa, then that can only really be said in the sense that Menoa is a response to and deconstruction of the plot point Himekawa introduced. This is especially because part of Kizuna’s creation involved being a direct response to tri.’s inadequate portrayal of Digimon partnerships, which, unfortunately, Himekawa is...kind of a major symptom of -- we’re never given any serious depiction on what emotional connection Himekawa and her partner had, we’re only supposed to glean this by projecting the old Adventure/02 definition and depiction of partnerships, and everything else we learn about Himekawa’s desperation is after the fact. And...well, I’ll be honest, it’s still kind of hard to even rationalize how Himekawa’s “character arc” makes much sense (especially the part where we’re supposed to figure out how she apparently studied the reboot since university but had no contingency plan for Bakumon not remembering her, to the point where this apparently drove her completely insane...?). So as a result, she’s just killed off unceremoniously, because there’s no real natural conclusion to this arc, nor any underlying logic as to what relationship Himekawa and Bakumon supposedly had.

So it is true that Menoa starts off with a similar base concept, but because Kizuna is dedicated to “defining what it means to have a partner”, it takes a proper step-by-step approach: firstly, what did Morphomon actually mean to Menoa? We’re given tons and tons of depictions of how Morphomon was integrated into her daily life, and was her closest confidant for years. What exactly does it mean to lose a partner? The depictions and descriptions in Kizuna don’t hold back at all; Menoa even says that it feels “like a part of your body has been ripped away”. What is a Digimon partner in the first place, and what does it mean to have one or to not have one? In line with Adventure/02′s portrayal of Digimon partners, a Digimon is portrayed as a part of the inner self whose presence or absence depends on the human’s state of mind, which means that getting a partner back also depends on said human -- and thus, even Menoa is provided an opportunity for salvation at the end, because everyone has the potential to grow again. In that sense, it’s hard to really call Menoa a parallel or a rehash, when, if anything, it’s more like she’s taking that concept and readjusting it to what it should have been more like when under the original Adventure/02 concept of partnerships.

Anyway...

Back to Adventure and 02. On its face, Kizuna does seem to have more pertinence to 02 than it does Adventure when it comes to themes -- after all, Kizuna styles itself as something that’s supposed to be relatable and personal to the modern millennial adult, meaning that it focuses moreso on human drama and introspection more so than it does Digital World and Digimon mechanics. In doing so, it was probably inevitable that it aligns itself more with 02 (which was significantly more about human drama and interpersonal relationships than it was Adventure’s Digital World and Digimon lore) by default.

Still, there is a lot of pertinence in the sense that Adventure was always intended to be “a story of humanity’s evolution” -- recalling that the 02 epilogue was actually the originally intended ending for Adventure, and the result of “everyone in the world having a Digimon partner” being the “evolution” of humanity by having a visible form of their own soul -- and thus, the core of each enemy in Adventure was tied to it in some form. This is made especially clear in the third Adventure novel:

At the beginning of the world, when the Digital world was still in chaos, the Digital world chose the idea of “evolution.” By deciding that this process would involve the Digital world itself “evolving,” it created Homeostasis for that necessity...

...Apocalymon must have sent its thoughts through the “Wall of Fire” into the Digital world. It planted the idea into the Dark Masters’ minds to unconsciously reject “evolution.” The Dark Masters’ plan would permanently destroy the function of the Village of Beginnings. It was possible that, to the very end, they had been unaware of it. In other words, the construction of Spiral Mountain took “evolution” away from the Digital World.

When the kids finally meet Apocalymon in the penultimate episode of Adventure, he has the following complaints:

Apocalymon: We are the Digimon who have disappeared through the evolution process...The resultant build-up of thoughts that have cursed our sad and hateful fates! Sora: You were created from the dark hearts of the Digimon who disappeared? Apocalymon: Dear Chosen Children and your dear Digimon. We have been looking forward to meeting all of you. ... Apocalymon: Listen. While we lay buried under a deep darkness of utter coldness and sorrow, you were on the other side, enjoying yourselves and laughing happily in the warm light. WHY?! ... Apocalymon: What have we done to deserve this?! (tears at self) Why must we weep tears of grief while you enjoy cheerful laughter? Mimi: No, I don't want to see this! Apocalymon: We, too, have tears that flow from our eyes and feelings that flow from our hearts. Just who decided that we were to be deprived of this world and consigned to oblivion?! We wanted to live! We wanted to live and speak of friendship, justice, and love! We wanted to use this body to be helpful to this world! Are you saying that this world has no need for us? That we are meaningless?! ... Apocalymon: Then we shall rule this world! We shall make this place belong to us. All who get in our way will die! (laughs) May the light be forever cursed where it shines!

(Translation by Ryuu-Rogue.)

So, basically, Apocalymon is a “Legion” sort of Digimon, made up of the condensed regrets of Digimon who were unable to evolve, and lived so much in despair that they decided they would drag everyone else down with them, and reform the world into their own. So in other words, his main goal to “inhibit evolution” was in the sense of inhibiting the Digital World’s own evolution and development, while it was growing alongside the human world -- all of this villainous “destroying the world” and “taking over the world” is all tied to a root of “inhibiting evolution”. And this was all intended to be tied into 02 as well, along with even the theoretical third Adventure series that never happened -- an ongoing fight for humanity and the Digital World’s right to continue “evolving” against forces that were trying to block it.

How does this relate to Menoa?

“Evolution” in the context of Adventure and 02 has a lot of meanings, and of course one of the most prominent ones is in terms of the metaphor of “evolution = human growth and potential”. Kizuna brings it to the forefront in terms of explicitly saying that Digimon growth is tied to human potential, but that’s always been there from the beginning -- especially considering how high-level evolution is powered by human virtues, like Crests.

But by trapping everyone in Neverland, Menoa is keeping people from “evolving” -- not just the Digimon from evolving, but humans from gaining any growth or potential, because they’ll be fixated in their childhood memories forever. The namesake of Neverland, the original Peter Pan, was very much about how staying a child forever would involve always being immature -- Peter was not a heroic figure in the end, as he was someone who was ultimately callous and irresponsible, at times even self-serving. No one will grow as people. Everyone will stay locked in the same mentality forever. The Digimon will never evolve. Robbed of Chosen Children to help protect the world, both the human world and Digital World will be left defenseless, and perhaps even be destroyed -- and that would be the end of “evolution” for all.

All because of Menoa’s own grief and projection.

Moving back to 02, this is of course where the parallels start getting really explicit. As I mentioned earlier, Menoa is effectively a combination of 02′s two most prominent antagonists -- the Digimon Kaiser, Ichijouji Ken, who was pressured into being recognized as a “genius” by society and lost a grip on his true self as a result, and Oikawa Yukio, who was cut off from the Digital World in childhood and spent his adulthood trying to grasp at shallow symbols of his past, projecting on others in the process.

Actually, let’s go over these characters in their stages of antagonism!

The Digimon Kaiser:

Was recognized by society as a “genius” and paraded around for those abilities; mentioned to be intelligent enough to skip grades into university (was only prevented from doing so like Menoa did because he lived in Japan, which didn’t have a system for this)

Tried to smash out the aspects of himself that didn’t fit the image he was aiming for, throwing away the “kindness” in his heart under the idea it was “weakness”, trying to become “better than others”

Started pushing away his own Digimon partner in the process, symbolizing a rejection of his own inner self

Ultimately, never got to have a proper childhood of having the freedom to do “meaningless things”, because he and his brother Osamu were “demanded to grow up fast”

Young Menoa:

Was recognized by society as a “genius” to the point she felt isolated from her peers, to the point she decided to skip grades into university because she felt like it would get her recognition and allow her to be productive to society

Stopped engaging in childhood hobbies (e.g. the swing she used to play with Morphomon at) and is implied to have pushed others away in her bid to be independent

Wasn’t even talking to Morphomon much anymore by the time of their separation, because she’d prioritized her studies in order to skip grades

Ultimately turned herself into an “adult” at the age of 14, far too young for anyone to become an adult

The surface details are a little different -- because Ken’s troubles manifested in a way that made him more “consciously reject” Wormmon rather than outright neglect him, and because his reaction to being “demanded to grow up fast” ultimately involved him trying to ditch everything into the Digital World instead of trying to become more mature, he was spared from the fate of having an outright partnership dissolution with Wormmon at the tender age of eleven. (Although he did still have a pretty traumatizing “loss” of Wormmon, so it’s not like he got off scot-free -- especially when getting said partner back involved a necessary epiphany about choosing to face what he did and moving forward with the consequences, something Menoa did not do during the events of the movie.) Either way, though, he managed to snap himself out of it and prevent himself from taking the same path Menoa did -- especially since the two of them are based off the same real-life origin story, the 9-year-old American boy whom Seki Hiromi read about in a newspaper, who skipped grades into Columbia University, causing her to conclude that he’d be unable to make friends his age.

Since Menoa ends up taking a different path and going “all the way”, once Morphomon is taken from her, she veers onto a path very similar to Oikawa’s.

Oikawa Yukio:

Was torn away from contact with the Digital World (and his future partner) by a well-meaning Hida Chikara, worried about him and Hiroki getting into “foolish talk”

Was isolated from the only friend he could relate to (via Hida Hiroki’s death)

Tried to make his own Digimon, implied to at least partially be inspired by trying to fill the void (see 02 episode 47), but only manages to create minions who do his bidding

Kidnapped a bunch of children under the premise that he was just giving them what they wanted; implanted Dark Seeds into them that on the surface gave them what they wanted but actually ate at their feelings

Blamed the fact he was a “tainted adult” for his inability to go to the Digital World without more forcible methods

Menoa:

Lost her partner after discarding her childhood hobbies in order to fit society’s standard of adulthood

Developed an obsession with becoming “independent”; ended up likely having no friends to connect with (states during the climax in Neverland that nobody understands how she feels)

Tried to use “scientific” computer methods to bring back her partner, but only managed to get hordes of soulless husks to do her bidding

Kidnapped a bunch of people (eventually including literal children) under the premise that she would be saving everyone; forced them to experience eternal loops of their childhood memories that prevented them from moving forward

Blamed the fact she’d “made that choice” and become an adult for her loss of her partner

Oikawa didn’t “lose” his partner in the sense of something permanent-sounding like Morphomon, but in terms of thematic parallels, Menoa basically ends up throwing herself into his path after continuing in the direction Ken ultimately chose to tear himself away from.

Ultimately, there are still differences in execution and life circumstances between all three characters -- and that’s how it ought to be, given that it would be inappropriate for Kizuna to be a complete rehash of 02. But considering that 02 was heavily built on the themes of “not drowning in regret and learning to move forward” and “embracing the inner child and not caving to societal expectations”, it makes sense that Kizuna, which is built on “not drowning in nostalgia and learning to face the future” and “not losing touch with childhood memories and experiences nor the childish self to the pressures of becoming an adult”, the parallels between the main antagonists driving the story are going to be very similar.

Although, given the events of Kizuna and how they played out...one wonders if Ken has any idea how lucky he is...

[holderofthebowl]

Chapter Ten: If You Had But Asked

- Chapter One: In the Service of the Queen - Chapter Two: Peace Offerings - Chapter Three: Salve for the Soul - Chapter Four: Kings Guard - Chapter Five: Not a Door, but a Window - Chapter Six: Typical Æsir Arrogance - Chapter Seven: For Odin’s Sons Are We - Chapter Eight: A Demonstration - Chapter Nine: What the Gods have Joined, Let None Put Asunder -

Summary: The start of a multi chapter origin story for Loki x Sigyn in the Marvel Movie Verse which will incorporate both mythological elements and elements from her comic backstory. This takes place between the Avengers and Thor 2 during his imprisonment.

Author: holderofthebowl

Which Tom/Character: Loki

Authors Note: Well it’s been almost 5 years... hahaha sorry about deserting you all, in the middle of the climax and everything. Med school and then the first few years of being a real grownup with a big kid job, moving back to the states and 1000 other things in life and such. Anyhow, if you are new to this fic start at chapter 1 or you are gonna be real confused. Sorry if I’m a little rusty, but an update 5 years later is better than nothing :) Anyhow ‘So I made you some content, daddy made you your favorite open wide’ I hope you enjoy. 

Rating: PG, A slow burn but we’re finally there. A whole kiss in this chapter and everything. 

Sigyn’s slippers clicked with purpose as she marched down the marble steps toward the dungeon. She angrily whipped both her cheeks with her palms. Her tears had changed from mortified embarrassment to red hot anger. The long train of her heavily embroidered and laced wedding dress draped along the steps behind her. 

She turned the corner toward Loki’s cell. The scene there did not surprise her. Four Crimson Hawks were upon him. Two of them pointed their weapons at her dark haired bride groom’s back. The other two, were pinning him to the bed, one was clamping manacles to his wrists, the other leaned an elbow across the back of his neck, holding him in a kneeling position with the side of his face to the mattress. No doubt trying to pull from him the location of their missing comrade.

“Where is he?” Sigyn spat at her now husband, with a level of venom that startled Odin’s soldiers slightly from their own interrogation, as they all turned to meet her gaze. 

Loki beamed at her, speaking as though there weren't soldiers leaning on his neck. “Sigyn, what a fine ceremony that was, beautiful, I especially loved the floral arrangements. So very sorry I wasn’t able to stay till the end. By any chance, would you be willing to tell me how it went?” 

Sigyn ignored his question. “Where is he Loki. Did you kill him? Is he dead?” She moved closer to the force field in front of her, her hands clenched at her sides, her nails digging into her palms. 

Loki chuckled “ I mean, one can only hope.” he said shrugging, The man above Loki snarled and increased the pressure on Loki’s neck causing him to wince. Sigyn pursed her lips before addressing the Odin’s men. 

“I demand to speak to my husband. Alone! Asgardian law gives me that right!”  Everyone in the cell froze. None had been there for the conclusion of the ceremony and for a single moment, the entire cell of men was shocked, including Loki. It was he that cut through the silence. A deep full laugh that reverberated down the stone hall, only slightly muffled with half his face pressed into his linen sheets.

Slowly the soldiers withdrew, undoing the manacles, letting Loki push himself into a standing position. He dusted himself off with dramatic flare, his face beaming. The Hawks lowered the barrier allowing Sigyn to enter. They shot her looks as if she had grown a second head, too shocked to be upset about the betrayal of their brother in arms. She walked past them trying not to notice. She doubted this would be the end of looks and side glances she’d receive, likely for the rest of her days on Asgard. 

Loki approached her arms out, as though he thought to embrace her. The sound of the slap reverberated across the cell. Loki took a step back, and rubbed his cheek, but his smile didn’t dissipate. “Where is Theoric?” Sigyn demanded crossing her arms. 

Loki let a noise of irritation slip from between his lips and rolled his eyes. He threw a hand up in a gesture of dismissal. “That’s not important right now. What’s important is...”

“It’s important to me Loki.” she cut him off. Loki ignored her plea 

“And Odin really let the marriage stand? Ha! I can’t believe it worked. I can just imagine the row that caused. Was my brother there? I didn’t see him in the crowd beforehand.” Sygin watched him start to pace, he was having a difficult time keeping the energy of a successful scheme contained. 

Her shoulders slumped slightly and she sighed. This was not working. She was going to have to find a different tactic. Why she thought insisting Loki do anything directly would work in the first place was beyond her. Threats and orders were not in the prince’s nature to obey. She thought a moment. “Well, I guess there is one benefit to him being dead..”

This comment stopped Loki cold, and he turned to her. “What benefit?” he asked. Good, he was confused. He hadn’t expected that. He didn’t like being confused. 

“I mean at least I won’t have to tell him.” she said shaking her head. Loki lifted a single sculpted black eyebrow. “You know, I won’t have to tell him how you tricked him into missing his own wedding day. How it caused a huge scene, humiliating him in front of the All Father and the entire court of the Æsir. And then, how in front of his family, and his friends, at his own wedding, I married that man instead.” She paused for effect, allowing Loki to contemplate that a moment. “You’re right, I’d rather not have to break that news to him. Can you even imagine how humiliating that will be?”

Loki was still for a moment, and then the corner of his mouth began to drift upward. “Oh, no my dear. You are right, that’s much better.” He turned and strode away to her toward the corner of the cell, addressing the Crimson Hawks who had been standing back, eavesdropping no doubt. “Tell Heimdall to cast his eye toward Svartalfheim. He should find your man there. If he didn’t die falling through the portal, or succumb to something on the planet.” Loki chuckled to himself. The guards left to find their fallen comrade. And they were left alone.

“Thank you” said Sigyn, some of the tightness dissipating from her chest. 

“Are you happy now?’ Loki asked.

Sigyn narrowed her eyes and stepped towards him “Am I happy now?” she parroted back her hand balling back into a fist. All her previous rage flooding to the forefront. Loki instinctually took a step back, his eyes flicking toward the hand that had slapped him with earlier. “You humiliated me, that was mortifying. That was possibly the worst thing anyone has ever done to me.”

Loki face contorted suddenly into confusion. “But, you said yes? You still married me?” 

“Of course I married you. If you had just spoken to me, but once, anytime during the months we’d spent together, before I ended up in front of the All Father. If you had given me any indication that...” the words were getting stuck in her throat now, fresh tears on her cheeks.  “If you had said anything, anything at all about how you fel...” she cleared her throat to choke back a sob. “But no, talking to me like a peer, a person would have been too difficult. Instead you come up with some grand scheme to get your way. Consequences to others be damned. You arrogant emotionally stunted child!”

“You wouldn’t have married him. If I had but asked you not to?” his voice was quiet. An innocent honesty to it as he searched her face, so profoundly uncharacteristic and sincere. 

Sigyn felt the angry leave her body, she let it go with a breath. “I wouldn't have married him.” her reply was simple. 

It was all she needed to say. He closed the distance between then so quickly Sigyn barely noticed and then his lips were on hers. He pulled her in tightly, arms warping around her back. She leaned into him, her hands finding his dark hair and kissed him back, just as hard.   

[some-lists]

Reasons I Hated the Hulk-Black Widow Relationship.

As I mentioned in my previous list, I am 100% against Bruce and Natasha. Here is my list of reasons why, and what I think should’ve happened instead.

1. It was forced.

Marvel took its time to introduce and develop each film and hero, steadily building and interweaving its stories. Especially when you look at other couples, like Star-Lord and Gamora or Wanda and Vision. We watched those relationships develop onscreen throughout several movies. Tony and Pepper, Steve and Peggy, T’Challa and Nakia all got together in their first film, but it took the entire film for them to come together and we watched it happen. But this romance is suddenly, without any build up or foreshadowing, thrust upon audiences. Having Bruce and Natasha fall in love off-screen behind our backs does not feel right. It’s disrespectful to fans and it also feels like a lazy, last minute decision on the writers’ part. It doesn’t make any sense and feels completely out of place.

2. There was no chemistry.

Scarlett Johansson and Mark Ruffalo have absolutely no chemistry together. To make it worse, we had just seen wonderful chemistry between Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner in The Avengers, and even better chemistry between her and Chris Evans in The Winter Soldier. It was even implied that there was a romantic connection between Black Widow and Hawkeye in The Avengers, so that’s what fans believed. Having Bruce and Natasha suddenly head over heels for each other felt like the rug was pulled out from under us. With such terrible chemistry between the two actors, it just wasn’t believable.

3. It was a cliche.

In my opinion, the only reason these two were paired together was because Joss Whedon wanted to chase a “beauty and the beast” cliche. The whole “only a beauty could tame a beast” thing. But like all cliches, it was cheesy, obvious, boring, predictable, and completely unnecessary.

4. It diminished the Black Widow character.

This is the worst one of all. The only active female member of the Avengers had been turned into a girlfriend. It continues this problem that female characters can only exist in connection to a male character. I was excited to see a female character who was defined by her skills and contributions rather than who she was in love with. On top of that, they included a backstory of Natasha being sterilized and then telling Bruce, “You’re not the only monster around here.” I don’t even want to go into how terrible that is. For all the bragging Joss Whedon did about being a feminist, he sure proved himself wrong with this one.

5. It made things awkward.

The writers of future movies had to include awkward reminders and explanations for their relationship (or lack of relationship) when no one bought it, or even wanted it, in the first place. And it ultimately went nowhere.

6. It erased Betty Ross.

Betty Ross was Bruce’s one true love. Their romance had already been introduced and was at the forefront of The Incredible Hulk. It seemed the plan was to pretend that movie never happened, but then they brought back Betty’s father, General Ross, for multiple movies afterwards. So where’s Betty?

What I think should’ve happened

As you can tell from this, I’m a Hulk & Betty person. It’s true to the comics, and I don’t like the inconsistency the Black Widow relationship created in the MCU.

In my opinion, if Joss Whedon really wanted that “beauty and the beast” cliche, he should have brought Betty back for Age of Ultron. Instead of introducing a token Asian scientist (with no real introduction, btw) just to be killed off, they could’ve used Betty. She’s already a talented scientist herself. If they wanted to do away with her character, Ultron could’ve killed her off the way he did the Asian woman. It would’ve been horribly tragic (and I think Betty deserves better than that), but it would’ve added more emotion and upped the stakes. It would’ve tied up that loose end and at least it would’ve made more sense.

As for Black Widow, if Marvel wanted to pair her with someone, it should’ve been Hawkeye, as suggested in The Avengers. Just stay consistent. It would’ve also made the sacrifice in Endgame way more impactful. If they wanted to add a dramatic surprise, reveal a Winter Soldier romance. They have similar backgrounds, complexities, and it’s canon. Plus, a common history had already been mentioned in The Winter Soldier and then again in Civil War.

As tempting as a Cap-Widow romance is, I’m glad they remained good friends. Seeing a respectable, platonic friendship between the two was far sweeter.

But really, I don’t think Black Widow needs a boyfriend at all. Really. Not every woman needs a boyfriend or a husband. She doesn’t need one. She’s badass on her own. End of story.

[pebblysand]

of tyres that blow (extended author’s note of chapter v. of castles)

- - TO READ THE CHAPTER ITSELF, CLICK HERE. - -

Oh, what a month it has been. Well, a month and two days - I’m a bit late updating. I’ve had two good things happen, writing wise. 1) I got my first original short story published (!!!!) (you can read it here) and 2) I put out a little one-shot about Fleur Delacour that I’m super happy about and gave me an idea about a new series (more on that later this week, I hope. I might need help with prompts!). Regardless, this latest Irish lockdown is fucking endless and I sometimes wonder if this fic isn’t just an outlet for my feelings of lockdown-induced loneliness, apathy, but also a constant argument that I have with myself thinking: for the love of god, just pull yourself up, will you? You’re a Gryffindor, goddamn it. I certainly wish my fucked up sleeping patterns on no one, although I may or may have Mary-Sued that onto Harry, lol. (Spoiler alert: he’s scheduled to get some real sleep in next chapter. All bets are off regarding whether I will.)

This chapter was surprisingly easy to write (I basically vomited out chapters iv, v, and vi over the span of a week in December) but incredibly difficult to edit. For days, I just couldn’t concentrate, wrote and re-wrote and felt like everything was shite. Then, I realised it’d become this 19,000-words long monster so I had to cut a lot of shit out. We ended up with 15,898 words which I suppose is better? 

I do wonder: do people mind long chapters? Like, I know as fanfic reader, I personally prefer longer formats and rarely gravitate towards works that are less than 3,000 words. I love just getting buried into a story, into plots rather than single scenes. This being said, every time I write something that I deem too long (i.e. above 10k) I have these excruciating struggles where I wonder: should I cut it in half? should I leave it as is? I decided to split the last one. Then, I decided not to split this one because (you may notice this or not, I’m not sure) it’s kind of built a certain way, geared towards basically getting to the last two paragraphs. Like, when you get there, it’s a bit of an ah-ha moment, but I couldn’t get to that ah-ha moment without all the build up before it. It’s the accumulation of all of these little details that feel like they don’t matter. And as Harry says in the end, they don’t, in the grand scheme of things, but also they do. Like, everyday life doesn’t matter until you lose it. Then, it does, if that makes sense.

In terms of next update... I’ve decided to get my law licence transferred to France and the EU (it’s a long story), which means that I need to bloody, fucking study. The exams are at the end of March so my current plan is: hardcore study until the end of february. Mix study/writing in early march and hopefully get chapter vi out mid-March, then hardcore study until the end of March. Please, if you see me posting then, tell me off in the comments cause god, I really need to pass. Now, I will go have my traditional i-ve-put-a-chapter-out shot of limoncello and let you read the below :).

...spoilers for castles, chap v. under the cut -

I’ve done a lot of thinking about what this chapter is meant to be about. Obviously (I hope), every chapter has a point, in this story. Chapter 1 is about time (the way it passes and blurs when your mind’s a complete mess), chapter 2 is about hope, chapter 3 is about inevitability and the consequences of trauma, chapter 4 is about becoming an adult and growing into your own skin, etc. I think this one is about fear. How you feel it, and how you overcome it. Like, Harry takes a decision to stand up, fight, do the interview, regardless of the fact that he is scared (for his life, for that of the people he loves), and finds buried inside him a lot of the courage that he (felt) he lost, after the war. He learns to control his fear of the world by figuring out how apprehend it, through the training Giulia gives him, through learning how to kill, too. 

But, it’s also about fear in society. How the attack on Robards sets everyone on edge and how they keep going regardless. I initially wrote this chapter with the idea that it was going to be about speaking out and being brave, but obviously, fear and fighting against it is a huge part of that, too. 

Then, there’s Mia. Obviously, this fic is Harry/Ginny endgame but I do like the idea of Harry (and possibly Ginny as well) dating at least one other person, before officially tying the knot. Like, yes, Ginny is obviously coming back next chapter. She’ll probably own the second half of next chapter, if I’m honest, considering they’re obviously going to the burrow for christmas. I love Ginny, I’ve missed her and honestly, I can’t wait to bring her back. This being said, to be fair, I’ve kind of realised that this fic may actually be the first I ever write that isn’t strictly “shippy.” Like, yes, their relationship is a huge part of it (it’s a huge part of his life) and it will and was always going to be a huge part of this story but I think this fic is larger than that. It’s a result of my years-long obsession over: but what happens next? Over what “all was well” really means, in a general sense. How do they get to “nineteen years later” and beyond. But yeah, I’ve missed Ginny and I’m glad she’s on her way back to us now. 

Now, obviously. Giulia. I’m sorry. This was always going to happen. Well, almost always. I remember when I first wrote her in, she was a bit of a filler character. At the time, the thing with Mia was supposed to happen in last chapter and I actually had (have) much more backstory around her, than around Giulia. She and Harry were going to have proper conversations (will they ever, who knows?), really get to know each other. But then, Giulia came first narratively and shone through the page. I started writing her and she had this personality and life of her own and I couldn’t bring myself to curtail her. 

Now, we all know how it is: fanfics can only tolerate so many OCs. So, I had to choose between putting Mia at the forefront, or Giulia. I chose Jules. 

Then, in chapter 4, I wrote this: 

Her first lesson is to teach him how to drive the patrol car. ‘I don’t know why we use them,’ she explains, honest, and Harry vaguely wonders if he should be taking notes. ‘Reckon the Ministry saw them being used by Muggles, had to prove they could do better. They like making noise, the Ministry, don’t they? Lots of sirens and shite.’

Politely, Harry hides a chuckle behind a cough. He clearly doesn’t know yet that he doesn’t need to, that Giulia’s sarcastic sense of humour is one of the things that he’ll come to appreciate the most in this world, over the next few months. That the sound of her voice is one he’ll try to never, ever forget. That in the speech that he’ll give when he makes Head Auror, over a decade later, he’ll think of her and say: ‘Okay, let’s try to not just be sirens and shite, all right?’

This kind of tumbled out without me really thinking about it until I really looked at it and thought: fuck, why is he talking about her past tense, like that. Like “the sound of her voice is one he’ll try to never, ever forget.” Why would he forget it, though? And so, just like that, came her death sentence. For that, I apologise. It killed me too, and I cried when I wrote it in (especially when I wrote next chapter, actually, first time I ever made myself cry writing, if I’m honest) but it just needed to happen. It’s how Ginny and he get back together (I mean, obviously - is that even a spoil) because he’s grieving but she’s grown stronger and steady and she’s able to be there in a way that she wasn’t last summer. It did occur to me that god, all his mentors/father figures come to die, don’t they? But honestly, I kind of thing that his real mentor will be Robards, at the end of the day. She was just the one who allowed him to get back on his feet. 

One last note: I’ve been meaning to put this into the fic for ages but have never found the right moment to write it in. In the meantime, I’ll just say it here, because I don’t know if this has frustrated some of yous - I know it might have driven me mad. There is a logic to the Muggle/Wizard swearing/exclamations in the fic. Obviously, this is an adult fic so they swear normally, like eighteen-year-olds would in this (I decided that very early on), but also there’s “God”-s and “Merlin”-s and things like that. 

Now, I think that throughout this fic, although Harry hasn’t mentioned it yet (cause it never fucking fits anywhere) Hermione’s been having a sort of Muggle reckoning. She - in conscience - decides to start swearing/exclaiming “like a Muggle” after the war. If you notice, she only ever says “god”, never “Merlin.” Harry uses both interchangeably although he tends to use Merlin more when he thinks about wizard stuff, but God when he thinks about Muggle stuff (like when he’s with Mia). Ron only swears in “wizard” but I think he might start using Muggle expletives as well in the later chapters because of Hermione rubbing off on him. 

The fact that I even think about all that stuff is pathetic and I need to get a life. But that’s for another post, altogether. 

Anyway, thanks for reading. I hope you liked it :). 

[kekeslider]

It’s been a while since I bothered to post an spop opinion that wasn’t related to Mermista in some way but since I never really said it, the final season was good overall but there were obvious flaws in the writing that I think stemmed from drawing out previous plot points for too long. I can’t find any believable argument that Catradora as an endgame ship was rushed, but Catra’s redemption was. They had done a really good job in the previous seasons making fans want to see catra get a redemption and happy ending, but they didn’t spend enough time actually showing that redemption take place. In my opinion that feeling of rushed redemption came from taking catra’s villainy too far in such a limited amount of time, something like the portal arc is really hard to believably come back from, especially since her villainy continued farther after that, and they needed to dedicate more time to catra pulling herself out of that hole and earning her redemption in the eyes of other characters, rather than just the viewers that have seen every side of her throughout the show. Adora’s undying love and forgiveness for catra makes sense, but every other character should be expected to have more reservations. Season 4 should have been the true start to catra’s redemption, even if the payoff (reuniting with Adora on better terms) didn’t come until the final season.

There were some big trade offs in the last season as well. Several princesses getting chipped and fighting their loved ones gives a nice little angsty B plot to what the best friends squad is up to, and the pay off of having their loved ones save them (because I love you dearest) is also highly enjoyable, but it also came at the cost of us having little actual time with some of our favorite supporting characters for the last time. As a whole series, there were some issues with juggling a large ensemble cast, while frequently introducing new characters that sometimes hog the spotlight (ex: huntara, double trouble), making it often a question of why bother including some characters at all vs a desire to see more of them

Horde prime as a final villain was more satisfying than Hordak after so much time spent giving Hordak’s backstory and the way it paralleled catra’s, but at the same time I personally think he would have been a more successful villain if the audience had been aware of him more from the start rather than a few seasons in, so hordak could be the villain we know personally, the one the heroes are aware of, while the audience, hordak, and possibly catra eventually, would know from the start that prime was the shadowy puppet master pulling the strings from behind the scenes. His fairly sudden entry into the forefront represents a paradigm shift that feels so sudden Mermista lampshades it at the end by questioning whether they’re all ok with hordak suddenly being a friend rather than their greatest foe

Whoever was responsible for a lot of entrapta’s writing in the last season was being a little weird overall, and there was some lack of consistency with explaining her motivations at several points, sometimes directly conflicting themselves

Spinnetossa kind of stole the show, which is a choice that makes a lot of sense as a decision if the crew didn’t get permission to be really explicit with including lgbt-centered plots until late in the game, but it still marks a weird shift in the focus of the show after those two characters had been more in the background for most of the series. I think the big take away from s5 spinnetossa and Catradora is that companies trying to censor or delay lgbt focused plots at the forefront of their shows leads to more flaws in the writing, viewers feeling that the finale was rushed, and stands in the way of really good, tight storytelling. I don’t think those perceived issues happened because of a lack of skill on the writing teams part, but because there were too many restrictions and obstacles for parts of the writing process. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Scorpia was allowed to have a fairly explicit crush on Catra when both of them were considered bad guys, but the writing had to tip toe around including the same on the side of the Rebellion until much later

Probably I had more opinions that I never bothered talking about because I was so caught up in the euphoria of Seamista, but that’s all I can think about right now, at 7am

[battlekidx2]

Kipo Season 3 Thoughts and Review

Okay so I just finished binge watching Kipo season 3 and wow that was a ride. They really did save the best for last. I thought the second season was an improvement on the first and I think the third season outdid the second. There was just so much to love. It didn’t fix every problem I had with the first few seasons but it did a really good job at covering as many as it could. The conclusions that the show reached for its world and the individual characters was almost all satisfying across the board. Honestly I feel everyone should watch it and form their own opinion. 

It is a bit cheesy and very optimistic, but I think it’s the kind everyone could use right now. Kipo is a show filled with wonder and possibility and it’s exactly what I needed and I feel a lot of people could use considering everything. It deserves the hype it gets. Now to get into spoilers. Since it just dropped they’ll be under the cut.

Kipo season 3 was fantastic. I know I just said that up above, but I feel like only saying it once is an injustice. I want to start off with the characters since they’re what kept me coming back to the show. Without further ado here we go.

Characters

I think I’ll start off with the titular character, Kipo. I will say she was the character I had the most problems with coming out of the first two seasons, but that’s mostly because of how pronounced her role is so the issues I had were more at the forefront than for anyone else. They didn’t really fix my problems, but I felt they did a fairly good job addressing them. I found her to be a much more compelling lead this season. There was a lot more internal struggle with what she should do than any other season and her optimism was mostly very endearing and needed within the show and with everything that’s been going on in life. They had Kipo become frustrated, make mistakes, almost give up hope, and it felt earned when she came to the conclusion to give everyone a shot. I will say her optimism felt a bit much when she was directing it at Emilia, especially after it was revealed that Emilia killed her own brother to prevent human and mute cohabitation. But her final decision to free Emilia from the mute body was understandable and wholly Kipo, so I liked it. 

Now I want to talk about a duo I really wanted to interact and have screen time this season and was so pleased that they did: Wolf and Scarlemagne. I love both of these characters and thought they would have such great chemistry because of the similarities of their backstories. Both were betrayed by those they thought of as family and left to survive on their own in the mute eat mute world that the surface was. Their interactions this season just proved that I was right to be excited for it. Scarlemagne and Wolf somehow brought out the best in each other (and the worst but that was only for a little bit). It was nice to see them nudge each other in the right direction towards the end and come to have faith in Kipo’s vision for a better future despite their troubled past. That final talk they had before returning to prahm reflecting on their lives and how Kipo changed them was really heartfelt and just the quiet moment before the storm I needed.  “Things could have been so different if I’d stopped hating all humans for the mistakes of a few” and Wolf did the exact same thing with mutes. This line summed up their arcs, individual tragedy, and point of understanding and connection between them. It made the conclusions to their individual arcs that much more powerful. Wolf ends up getting the family that she never thought she could have after the wolves and Scarlemagne sacrifices himself to save his sister, Kipo. His death scene was so heartbreaking. He died in Lio, Song, and Kipo’s arms having gotten the chance to have his family one last time. And finally truly becoming Hugo once again. I don’t know if the found family trope has ever hit me as hard as it did with these two characters (it may be I’m just emotional since I just finished the season less than an hour ago). (as a Scarlemagne stan I do wish he had been able to live out the rest of his life with the Oak family though)

Side note: the king hugo leitmotif playing when Hugo died was so sad and perfect. 

I have a lot of thoughts for Wolf and Scarlemagne after this season. I don’t know which is my favorite character; they are both pretty phenomenal. Wolf was the mvp of season 1 and Scarlemagne was the mvp of season 2. I don’t know if anyone was surprised that Scarlemagne got redeemed this season. I know I wasn’t, but I found how they went about his redemption to be really interesting. It felt like a progression. I wish more time had been spent on it, but I felt that with the screen time it did have they did a good job. I felt his change of heart and with that conversation with Wolf I really did think he had fully come to regret his actions, acknowledge his flaws and wrongdoings, and resolved to do better. With Wolf she has been holding onto the past for so long that she doesn’t know how to let it go. The pain of her first family betraying her hasn’t gone away because she got a new one and has come to (mostly) reconcile her prejudice against mutes. It just became more muted and easier to ignore. Having her confront the wolf, Margot, who’s betrayal hurt her the most, was the first step towards being able to fully let go. Her finally shedding the wolf skin was the final step for her to unburden herself with the past pain and prejudice and putting on the purple and silver cloak for prahm was her letting herself be the hopeful child she was on the inside that Kipo had brought out (albeit still keeping some of the gruffness that she had before). I just love these two characters.

Benson was great this season. I felt they knew what to do with him to a better degree than in the first and second seasons. The story of how he first met Dave was unexpectedly heartwarming and highlights their importance to the series which I felt was a bit too understated in the first two seasons. (Dave was actually useful this season!) I was shocked that the history of Dave and his eventual meeting with Benson was such a unique and great commentary on the idea that violence only begets more violence. That talking things out, like he and Benson did, was what ended the centuries long conflict and ensured that they survived instead of taking each other out like everyone else before them did. It shows the pointlessness and destruction of cyclical violence in a way that many shows have failed to capture. Even much more serious shows that you would think would have less censorship to work around and thus be able to explain better. So often in shows they try to preach that violence isn’t the answer but so many cartoons fail to back up that lesson within their story. Kipo does back it up and more in this last season.

Going back to Benson. They let him play off of a lot of new characters and made him feel a lot more like family within the group. This is best shown when he and Dave tag along with Wolf and Margot to look after Wolf. They aren’t the best bodyguards but they clearly deeply care about Wolf and want her to be happy and supported. His romance with Troy was sweet and I really liked his Prahmposal and when Lio gave him advice on how to prahmpose (I really like dad Lio this season). Benson is just such a fun character and I’m glad a lot of the things I said I would like the show to do with him ended up coming true.

Emilia made for a good obstacle for the main characters to overcome. She wasn’t that interesting of a character though. I liked what they were going for with her in their attempts, I believe, to show the intergenerational aspect of prejudice through her and her father. I did think some things felt off with her. I just didn’t buy that Kipo should try to give her so many chances. When Song revealed what she did to her brother that sealed the deal and made Kipo saying she has to believe Emilia could change ring hollow to me as a story beat. Her belief in others had mostly worked out in her favor so far in the show, but Emilia was given no moment or slight glimpse to give the audience any indication she could change which makes it hard to feel invested in this plot point. I liked that they made Emilia hold her ground and never change because you can’t change everyone’s minds and to change Emilia’s mind Emilia would have to accept that killing her brother, who she loved, was wrong and that just isn’t a step I think she could make. I also think it’s important to show that not everyone can change. In a perfect world that could happen but the world isn’t perfect. I think Emilia was the perfect villain to show that. I still wasn’t a big fan of her character but I think she served her purpose in the show well.

I will say I’m a bit conflicted about this because, while I would like to see more sympathetic villains who don’t get redeemed, I also think that with the racism angle that the show was going for making Emilia unsympathetic worked well. She’s just a xenophobic person who is adamant about staying set in her ways regardless of the reality before her. This does have basis in reality, unfortunately. So I do like it for that. I’m really glad they didn’t give her a mutes killed my brother/family tragic backstory to “justify” her racism. Her racism is at no point justified which I appreciate. 

Plot

The plot of the third season had a big task in front of it. It needed to wrap up the world’s conflict, 2 centuries of mute human conflict, in 10 episodes. Which I was very iffy on whether or not it would be capable of doing. This show had 2 great seasons but the amount of stuff it had to wrap up had me a bit nervous. Those nerves were unfounded though. The third season actually came to a very satisfying conclusion for the world and I bought that the characters we saw were able to bring the conflict to a peaceful end (or as peaceful as it could be). There were a few things I was a bit disappointed in. Two things to be exact, the lack of the use of Song after the episode “Song remix” and the complete disappearance of the vaccine plot point. 

Song and Lio were supposed to create a vaccine to the cure. They even stole all the pieces they needed to make it and then it was never brought up again. I would have been fine with even just a line saying they were still working on it near the end or that they found it wasn’t possible, but it just isn’t brought up after they steal the supplies. It didn’t negatively impact the finale to me, it just felt weird considering they made such a big deal about it earlier in the season. I felt Song deserved more of a role after “song remix” because she had missed so much of her daughter’s life and her daughter seems to have adopted two siblings. It felt like a missed opportunity for family bonding between the group especially since Benson and Wolf have never (to our knowledge) had a loving mom. I love this show’s use of the found family trope so I really wanted to see this. Though Wolf cheering with Kipo saying “Go mom” was a highlight and adorable.

Conclusion

I really loved this show. Dreamworks may be my favorite animation company. They’ve done such a good job with their cartoons as of late and they’ve had a good track record with their recent cartoons with sticking the landing. Not all but most. Kipo is a show I will definitely return to from time to time. It’s just so optimistic and sometimes I think everyone can use the optimism and wonder that Kipo brings to the table. I’m sad to see this show go, it came and went within the same year, but it went out spectacularly. It was strong from start to finish. I had some qualms here and there but they never once deterred me from enjoying the show. I really think this show deserves more attention and praise than it gets. I hope more people decide to watch it because it deserves it.

side note: I love how they finally incorporated the age of wonderbeasts part of the title in the finale.

[jeremys-blogs]

Aravos: A Better Sauron?

If a show is going to be given praise like "the next Avatar", then it's safe to say that it's got some lofty expectations to live up to. Thankfully, Netflix's Dragon Prince has thus far managed to impress with it's three seasons. Is it indeed as good as the epic Nickelodeon show? It's hard to say, but I am certainly enjoying what I've seen of it, and with rumours of further seasons coming I'm definitely looking forward to more of its world and, more importantly, its characters. And characters are exactly what I want to discuss here today. Or, to be more specific, one character in particular. Aravos, an Elf who, despite only making his appearance from the second season onwards, has slowly worked his way to becoming pretty much the main antagonist of the entire show. While not being much in terms of a physical presence, he has nevertheless made a massive impact on the events of the story, having served as a man-behind-the-man to the show's initial villain, Viren. And given how the show's third season ended, it's pretty clear that the creators of this wonderful story have a lot planned for this guy, so only time will tell exactly what we'll be seeing from him in future.

But as I was re-watching some episodes of the show, something occurred to me. Aravos, and the way he acts and makes his plans happen, are a perfect representation of how I always imagined the character of Sauron from Lord of the Rings to be. Now, a little context. In the years leading up to the famed LOTR trilogy by Peter Jackson, there was a wave of revived Tolkien appreciation here in the UK, and I, who was just about twelve at the time, was encouraged to seek out and read the original book trilogy. So I found them, read them in a couple of weeks, and absolutely feel in love with Tolkien's works, followed by me reading and loving any other Tolkien books I could find. When the films came out, I was as hyped as you could imagine, eager to see all of these characters I had come to adore so much. And like so many others, I felt that Jackson didn't disappoint. The films, to this day, remain some of my all-time favourites, and a rightly-regarded high point in the history of cinema. However, despite that praise, there was one point about the film that, to this day, I've never been entirely satisfied, and that was the portrayal of the story's main antagonist, the Dark Lord Sauron.

Now, don't take this to mean that I think that Jackson gave us a bad interpretation of this baddie, because that's far from the truth. After all, these films do a great job of selling us on the idea that terrible things will happen if this guy wins the day, and that look of his, both his awesome armour and the now-iconic fiery eye are now etched into pop culture forever for good reason. In terms of making a terrifying far-away evil overlord, Jackson and his team did a fantastic job. However, as someone who was virtually marinated in Tolkien stories by the time the movies came out, I couldn't help but be disappointed at seeing that they'd rather under-selled what was, to me, the most interesting aspects of his character. Namely, that this wasn't just someone who wielded great power and was an intimidating presence, but that he was also someone who possessed great cunning, intelligence and a terrifying ability to coerce people into doing bad things. He wasn't just a conqueror, he was a schemer, a tempter, a being who understood people and what they desired, offering them exactly what they wanted or what they wanted to hear in order to ultimately benefit himself above all. And while Jackson's interpretation was good, those aforementioned qualities never really stood out in the films.

Now, I realise that comparing a relative newcomer to fiction like Aravos to a famous literary villain like Sauron is no easy thing, and it's made all the harder when you consider that there's actually very little we know about the former so far. But what we have learned about him is quite telling. First and foremost, he is imprisoned for the entirety of Dragon Prince thus far, and is only able to interact with others either through a magic mirror or through ghostly images of himself. Where his prison is, we don't know, only that he was put there hundreds of years ago by Avizandum, the late King of the dragons. As for his crimes, again that's unknown, but the show has hinted that he might have some connection to humanity's first acquisition and practice of dark magic. And if that's true then it's especially damning as it was an act which ultimately led the Elves to see humans as dangerous, and was the inciting incident that caused the two races to be at odds with one another. He's also known to have little love for his own kind, as he not only helps humans to war against them, but in the few instances we've seen Elves become aware of him, they have been utterly terrified of him.

At this point, anyone who has ever gone deep into Tolkien's writings will likely know exactly where I'm going with this, as this admittedly-incomplete picture of Aravos is starting to sound remarkably similar to the official backstory of Sauron. He too was a being of great power whose actions led to him falling out of favour with a higher power, and he too has been reduced to a situation where he can no longer interact with others, having to rely on agents and underlings to see his will enacted. They both have a historic conflict with Elves and, both in the past and the present, have a career in manipulating humankind to go down dark and self-destructive paths. Granted, the details will certainly differ, but in the broad strokes their backstories are close to identical. Now, this is all with the understanding that Dragon Prince hasn't actually finished yet. There are still many questions surrounding Aravos and his motivations, so it's entirely possible that, when more light gets shed on him, all of this will be completely wrong on my part. But as things stand right now, with us knowing what we do, there can be no denying that both he and Sauron have a lot in common.

However, while they may have similarities, they are incredibly different in their execution, as my earlier words probably gave away. Sauron, and not just in Jackson's adaptations but in virtually all on-screen versions of him, has had a lot of his more manipulative tendencies tones down. Now, in all fairness, those traits were never at the forefront of his character at the time of the LOTR books, but even so, a massive reason why he has as many followers as he does is because of his role as a deceiver. We can of course assume here that he's lying and tricking people off-screen, but as in all things it's always better to show and not tell. We're told that he's out there doing bad things, but that will never be as effective as witnessing him doing it with our own eyes. However, by contrast, Aravos is very much doing his thing while we're seeing him. Every piece of advice or subtle nudge in this or that direction is something we're witnessing first-hand, and since these manipulations are something that has, as of the latest episodes, managed to effectively grant him an entire army to wreak havoc with, I'd say he's as good at his job as Sauron supposedly was. So, if nothing else, we at least now Aravos has successfully managed to be a more prominent presence in his respective fantasy story.

Once again, I must clarify that I do not feel that Jackson and the other people behind the LOTR films did a bad job of recreating what Sauron was said to be in the books. They set out to create an iconic and intimidating fantasy overlord and by God they made one. Their films have stood the test of time and are rightly remembered by millions across the world. But if I'm going to be bare-my-soul honest about this, when I look back, I was genuinely expecting this world-ending foe to be more of a presence, more of a direct hand in the events than he ultimately was. He's still a good villain, even a great one, but to this day I still hope to one day see a version of Sauron that's what I thought I'd get after I read the books all those years ago. And Aravos, to be perfectly blunt, is pretty much exactly what I was hoping for in terms of that type of enemy for our heroes to face. Dragon Prince, much like Avatar before it, has done wonderfully in creating a remarkable cast of characters, good and bad alike, and Aravos is certainly top tier when it comes to the latter category. Where they ultimately go with him and the story as a whole is anyone's guess, but for this moment I am thoroughly looking forward to seeing more of this mysterious shoulder-devil of an Elf.

[dungeons-and-divination]

BARBARIAN Path of the BERSERKER - Mountain DWARF - Failed merchant

Some characters just have a lot to talk about, others a lot less. This is one of those with a very full life even before they start adventuring! I hope you enjoy his very long life story… 

Name: Melbek “Donnybrook” Lutgehr (56yo)

TAROTS

Mind: Nine of wands (upright) I love when the first card I draw is such a positive start. It might not look like it, cause the Nine of wands does give off this battle weary vibe. Yet, it’s also a big card of courage and persistence, of learning from past mistakes. And I feel like it's the perfect card for how I pictured good old Donny from the get go. He’s obviously very tired because of some failures he’d endured in the past, but he’s also up to the challenges the future has in store for him. He’s sure that he can still turn it all around and have something good to talk about at the end of it.

Body: Nine of cups (upright) Yet again, finding success, fulfilling a dream. It really made me wonder if maybe he failed as a merchant because his heart wasn’t into it, if he just put his energies in the wrong dream. A self-confidence card for “body” for a character that I already knew would be a barbarian… I mean, if very on the nose, but also so perfect! Donny knows what he’s good at, probably wanted to embrace it for a lot of time. But there was something that made him try to fing the success he craved for in something else.

Spirit: Seven of swords (reversed) Oh, how wonderful! Running away from consequences AND a need of coming clean! This is just the cherry on top. So, this poor lad repressed what he wanted, probably cause of some kind of duty towards something or someone, then finally he tried to reach for his dream, and that’s when the guilt trip started! He can’t seem to win, he’s always turn between his dream and that sense of duty towards something. I still can’t stop but coming back to that capacity to learn from his mistakes though. I know Donny can find a solution to his conundrum! 

Past: Wheel of fortune (reversed) And look at that, once again the tarots point out how Donny’s life was going perfectly well, then they crumbled in front of him. And that mess made him feel so powerless, despite knowing it was kind of his fault since he never was a very good businessman. Yet, Donny sees that mess as an opportunity, he can finally move on and what he does best. Which is get mad and kick people in the nads. He just has to bear the weight of the responsabilties he’s leaving behind to everyone elses he loves. 

Present: Eight of swords (upright) While this card can be related to actual imprisonment, I feel like considering everything I already got from Donny’s read, this is more of a psychological issue for him. A deep denial of how he truly feel probably. This very brave man, facing every enemy without a care in the world, yet, when it comes to coming true to his family, he shies away from the discussion. Literally paralyzed by the fear of coming back home and finding out that they’ll never forgive him. Yeah, more that kind of prison of the mind.

Future: Two of pentacles (upright) Aw, I’m moved. That Donny got this card just confirms how much of a family man he is deep down. He’ll struggle deeply to keep that balance between adventuring, and staying with the family he loves so much. Like always, the future card is a suggestion on a general direction for this character development. I do see Donny really trying to make a decision between the two things, especially if he finally decides to apologize in person to his family for leaving. I can see him torn between the party and his family, before either his family or the party helps him finally make a decision. Or they help him realize that he doesn’t necessarily have to choose at all, if the party becomes family too.

FULL BACKSTORY

Born in a brothel, Melbek is the son of Kettin, a sex worker. His father, unluckyly, was never in the picture, despite Kettin repeatedly telling him that he would have loved to be with them (apparently, Tordek, his father, had been captured by a bounty hunter just a couple of months before Melbek was born and Kettin, which at the time was planning on leaving her life as a sex worker with him, never saw or heard from him again). Melbek lived all of his childhood and teenage years with his mother and his two older half-sister, Gymres and Ingres, inside the rooming house where a lot of other sex workers lived with their own children. He considered all of them actual family, to the point that he called aunts and uncles the other sex workers and cousins their children. Some of those kids, he even considered brothers and sisters, mostly because in their early teens they got into trouble all together. His family still struggled a lot with money, so both his sisters and Melbek started to work as young as they could. The first job Melbek could find was as an errand boy for a brewery in town. He was known for getting into trouble, but also for not having an issue putting in his place people way bigger than he was with a well placed kick or punch. So, while he was allowed sometimes to help inside the brewery for the actual brewing (and he did develop a passion for the process), Melbek mostly delivered the product to the local seedy dive bars. It was during one of these deliveries to a bigger establishment that he stumbled in the middle of a brawl; nobody was actually trying to stop the fight, and the bartender, a very worried and way too young to be dealing with the situation girl, was about to have a mild panic attack because of it. Deciding he wanted to help, Melbek got into the fray and quickly stopped the fight, to the cheers of the other people and the gratitude of the poor girl. The following delivery to that establishment, came with a proposition from the owner itself, that was so impressed by the very glowing recommendation given by the bartender, that he wanted Melbek to be sort of a bouncer for him, since it wasn’t the first time that the place had been half-destroyed by things getting too heated up. In the following months, Melbek quickly gained himself a reputation and a nickname. Everyone started calling him either Donnybrook or Donny. Everyone but his family and the cute bartender, Maerma, which spent longer and longer talking to him, even when both of them were actually supposed to be working. Nobody was really surprised when they married just two years later. What came as a surprise was the inheritance from an old almost forgotten aunt of Maerna a couple of years after they married, when Maerna had just got pregnant with her first child. Apparently, Maerna was the only relative her aunt Gwenmyla had left, and while she used to visit her aunt a lot in her childhood, she hadn’t seen Gwenmyla since she was 7, when Maerna became an orphan and ended up in an orphanage. With the suddenly acquired money, the couple decided to buy a comfortable house for the family (which included not only the two of them and the baby that was about to be born, but, to Maerna’s insistence, even Kettin, Gymres and Ingres). The remaining money was put to a project that the couple had been talking about since the moment they met: opening their own bar, where they could have beer that they themselves brewed. So, they opened a new family business: the Brewer’s Den. For a long time their life seemed to be fantastic. Mearna and Donny became proud parents of two baby girls (Maeve and Marryn), Donny’s family was finally doing something that made them all happier… Yet, the bar never really seemed to completely succeed. They were always struggling, despite Donny’s efforts to brew fun and creative beers or liquors that could attract people to their establishment. After about twelve years from the opening, they were on the verge of bankruptcy. Well aware that he could do nothing for his business other than apparently make it go into even deeper debt, Donny tried to think of what else he could do to try and prevent his family from ending up on the streets. One night, while he was tending the bar on his own, a group of adventurers in very expensive looking garb, entered to find momentary shelter from a terrible rainstorm. Impressed by their wealth, he inquired about their way of life. And a forgotten dream, the dream of a child playing with his brothers and sisters in the seedy streets of the poorest neighborhood in town, quickly came once again to the forefront… Could he really gain so much wealth like them? Could he really make sure his family was happy once again? Before he knew it, he’d already decided… And left just a couple of days later, in the middle of the night, only a letter left behind, a heavy guilt inside his heart and a hope that he’d made the right choice this time.

SUGGESTION CORNER

Suggested features Ability scores: High Strength and Charisma, Low Intelligence Skill proficiencies: Nature, Intimidation Artisan’s tool proficiencies: cook’s utensils, brewer’s supplies Suggested Characteristics Trait: I love a good insult, even one directed at me. Ideal: Too many consider me a failure. I need to prove them wrong. Bond: My family means everything to me. I failed them before and I must not do so again. Flaw: I find that most people are trustworthy. Hey, where’s my belt pouch?

[madokasoratsugu]

im new to shokugeki and i dont care about spoilers, why is it bad?

a no joke answer bc u deserve this:

tl;dr Shokugeki sucks because it lost its direction halfway through the story, and when Tsukada (the author) realised that he’d bitten off more than he could chew with such a huge cast of characters.

long answer:

here’s the thing. Shokugeki started out good. 

it mostly played off the usual shounen tropes: a challenger would appear, but then they quickly joined the friendship circle, rinse and repeat. but with such a wide cast of characters with differing goals and personalities plus the high stakes of only the top 10% graduating, it made it easy to bank on the character interactions and friendships, which is what the first half of Shokugeki did, heavily so. and it worked ! 

it was a simple set up (protag aims to beat his dad in a cook off, goes to cooking school, meets friends and foes ! a tournament arc ! fun and shenanigans ! yay!), but Shokugeki did it good. it didn’t subvert any expectations, just did according to what it set out to do. nothing felt exaggerated beyond the typical manga stuff, and everything achieved was earned with hard work. with the occasional fluff and friends thrown in, it became a comfy mix for a good shounen manga.

if anything, id say that half the success came from the character’s relationships themselves - the plot wasn’t anything special, but the genuinity that the characters and their friendships and goals (shared or not) were treated with were wholesome and fun.

which is why it was so fucking jarring when it derailed by throwing aside half of its cast and completely stagnating all character development for the remaining half.

(insert infamous Central Arc expulsion joke here)

if you’ve started/are intending to start, id say its the most obvious after the Moon Banquet Festival Arc/beginning of Central Arc. the writing started getting sloppy, as did the handling of the characters. ive mentioned this before, and ill stress this again: i honestly believe that Central Arc is when Tsukada realised what a big miss steak he did in creating such a huge cast, and in the face of Shokugeki’s then success, made some poor authorial choices to keep the hype going (both plot and character wise).

for characters: half the cast was rid of via expulsion, including very competent chefs (which had no proper in canon explanation on how the fuck that happened) who happened to be fan favourites. i mean, Hayama Akira ? fuck, Nakiri Alice, anyone ? plus any poor remaining characters got shafted in lieu of Souma, hard. this became more prominent as the Arcs slowly go on, the ones of which took the worst brunt of it being Takumi and Megumi.

(what do u think is worse. your fav never getting a cameo or your fav being part of the forefront team but constantly getting fucked over because Souma didn’t get the spotlight of the chapter yet. vote now in the replies.)

for plot: higher and higher stakes were introduced that again, just didn’t make sense !! in Central Arc, Souma was expected to win against Eishi, the best chef in his entire school. when two arcs prior he just lost a cooking contest to two of his peers (placed third), and one arc prior struggled to beat Kuga in ticket sales (even then he didn’t win because his cooking was better, so. wasnt even a win on the cooking front). there was no build up ! NOT EVEN A TRAINING ARC. he just went straight from the bottom rung of the ladder to the fucking ceiling. super different from the first half of the series when everything would be shown in careful detail (best example i can think of off the top of my head being the Shokugeki against Mimasaka in the Autumn Election Arc).

also: in the midst of introducing Erina’s character arc and backstory, Tsukada seemed to completely forget (or maybe just didnt know how to link back?) that he’d already established an overarching plotline: Souma’s quest to best Jouichirou. so when Souma began overthrowing these foes that are his seniors said to be leagues ahead of him, the suspension of disbelief was stretching waaay thin. but hey ! its a shounen manga ! we can forgive this much (sarcasm). 

then Tsukada introduces Asahi. mother fucking Asahi. who is basically introduced by beating Jouichirou without breaking a sweat, but oh boy did he break the suspension of disbelief right then and there and completely toss the plot into the fucking fire. because there’s no end goal anymore ! the one thing that our main character has been working so hard for ? non existent. pointless. this no name (at that time) character has done it, pack your bags boys, let’s go home.

(might i note that at this point, Shokugeki was also uuhh nothing like the slice of life comedy it originally was. it became an action-psychological mix that just…doesnt work. and i mean. of course it wouldn’t. there was no foreshadowing, the villians can’t be taken seriously because 1) theyre also teenagers for fuck’s sake 2) Azami’s just a creep, plain and simple. he has no depth. no one cares about an antagonist who’s bad at just being bad.

the themes it began with was completely set aside for really badly written character backstories and angsty edgey bs that i still don’t understand why Tsukada thought would work in retaining hype. especially when considering how pure the premise was.

i honestly also think that its the Blue Arc + Dark Chefs Arc when Tsukada actually realised that his plot had gone haywire, since volume sales were dropping hard and fans clearly hated the direction the series had gone in. but instead of trying to reign it back in, he decided to just let it run buckwild because he just didn’t know how to fix it.)

to rub salt into the wound: so many promised resolutions are shoved into the background, done offscreen, or worse yet, forgotten ! scenes that fans have literally been waiting for. Souma VS Erina Shokugeki. Souma VS Takumi Shokugeki. Nakiri Alice coming back to the series and actually fucking cooking again.

(im sure that there’s more that lead to its downfall but like. shrugs. this is mainly to me why it sucks: it had A Lot going for it (im not ashamed to admit that at one point i actually genuinely believed it could be one of the next Big 3 on Shounen Jump), and it just didnt live up to any of it for no other reason other than Tsukada mixing elements of a story that didn’t work well together, tried to force them to work, and did nothing to fix it when it didn’t.)

so our plot is gone. so are our lovable characters. so is the slice of life comedy that drew most people in in the first place. the potential that it had is now dust. what does Shokugeki have left that makes it unique, that makes people love it ? here’s the answer !

nothing. 

that fact kicks you in the teeth every fucking time you remember how good the first half of the series was. 

then that fact dropkicks you when you realise that Shokugeki no Soma literally started on a 90degree drop into a dumpster fire when the series was at the apex of its popularity and plot buildup.

that’s why it sucks.

[queenmorgawse]

transmigration for dummies

chapter three. mdzs scum villain au. read on ao3 + end notes.  credit to @lee-luca, esp as another bit of the comic is mentioned here.  previous | first | next 

One hour, thirty minutes and two hundred rules into his punishment, Jingyi is as bored as he’s ever been in this life. To top it all off, the System isn’t responding to any of his pleas for company, only responding with oops ): something went wrong when he tries to ping it. Back home, this is about when he would have given up on homework and started scrolling through his Twitter feed instead, but there’s not much he can do without his phone.

Ugh, he’d kill for one of these crappy McDonalds games. Even a Kinder toy would make him happy right now. Instead, he doodles on his torn-up first drafts, on which the ink made blots from his clumsy first attempts to imitate the original text’s elegant calligraphy.

He silently adds bic pens to the ever-increasing list of modern appliances he misses.

When badly-drawn stickmen get boring as well, he starts to think about the original Lan Jingyi in his life. Maybe that’s how it works, after all. Mom sure would love someone who’d actually go to bed early when she tells him to. On the other hand, once he got over the initial shock of modern Jingyi’s life, he’d probably find it pretty dull. High school isn’t about to compare to flying swords and cultivation, that’s for sure.  

Opposite him, Sizhui is bent over his own stack of scrolls, poring over rows and rows of tiny characters and absent-mindedly running his fingers along the lines. From the way he hums to himself when he thinks Jingyi is too busy copying to care, he guesses they’re music sheets of some kind. Unlike Jingyi, he looks like he’s actually engrossed in what he’s doing.

Too bad. Jingyi’s reached that point of boredom at which he needs to talk to someone or else he’ll implode. ( Still, he promises himself he’ll stop if Sizhui shows even a hint of genuine annoyance. )

“Hey, Lan Sizhui ⎯ can I call you just Sizhui? Um, sorry I got you stuck here.”

To his relief, the other doesn’t look irritated, just surprised. “Sizhui is fine,” he ventures after a few seconds. A smile breaks out on his face. “That’s good. I was afraid you were still mad me, you’ve been so awkward all day...”

Wait, what? Who’s angry at you? Someone who kicks kittens for fun, probably.

Oh right, me. Maybe he’s the one whose brain needs a reboot. How does he explain that it’s not him who’s mad? Hell, he doesn’t even know what the original is supposed to be mad about. For some reason, it feels weird to ask, just because it seems important enough that admitting he forgot would be insulting.

“Anyway,” Sizhui continues after coughing into his sleeve, “it’s alright, you don’t have to apologize to me. I’ve got to go over these before tomorrow’s lesson anyway, I might as well do it here.”

“Inquiry?” Jingyi ventures, maybe-maybe-not because it’s the only title he clearly remembers from the ones canon mentioned.

“Oh, no. Asking very specific questions is still a bit out of my reach, but Fa...Hanguang-jun wrote down a list of phrases for me, so we’re going to try them tomorrow.” His face softens at the mention of Lan Wangji. If this was a fic, this would be when Jingyi keels over and presses his face into a pillow for a little while.   

The chat devolves into musical cultivation. Jingyi muddles his way through it the best he can, feeling like he’s bullshitting an essay out loud, but Sizhui doesn’t seem to find his vague answers all that off-putting. He still pointedly glances down at the stack of unfinished notes on the table from time to time, but since Jingyi’s calligraphy has been getting worse and worse the less attention he pays to it, maybe it’s for the better.   

When dinner time rolls around, they eat their bowls sitting on the steps leading up to the Library Pavilion, after Sizhui rightfully points out Lan Qiren would have their skins if they spilled even a drop of sauce on the sect’s precious texts. Gradually, Jingyi feels himself relax.

“So, are we chill?” he asks between two mouthfuls of rice.

Sizhui just stares at him.

Right. No slang. “...I mean, we’re doing good, right? We’re friends?”

Something complicated passes over Sizhui’s expression. It’s too fleeting for him to catch more than a glimpse of it, especially as it’s overridden by his usual calm smile before Jingyi can shove another rice ball into his mouth, but he could swear the other winced.

Well, ouch. It must show on his face, because Sizhui suddenly looks alarmed and adds : “Yes, yes, we are!” Another smile. This time, Jingyi can definitely see the strain. “We’re friends. You don’t have to doubt that.”

“Oh. Great!” Jingyi resists the urge to reach out and gently punch his shoulder. Who knows how it’d be perceived. “We’re gonna spend a lot of time together, if I’ve got to keep copying rules, so...I wanted to make sure.”

【OOC behavior detected : contradiction of backstory despite hints : -20 points. Current balance : 65 points. 】

Shut up! I want him to like me!

“We’re friends,” Sizhui repeats one last time, like he’s trying to convince himself. Then he reaches for Jingyi’s shoulder and gives his robes a tug. “We should get back in there. Two more hours before curfew, you can still get a few lines in. I won’t distract you.”

“Ugh.”

Jingyi makes a face. Sizhui laughs, and the tension from earlier dissolves. “Come on. The more you get done, the faster it’ll be over.”

-

It turns out they’re both severely underestimating the number of rules Jingyi can break without realizing, and therefore the amount of time they’ll be spending here.

Despite these setbacks, over the course of the next handful of weeks, Jingyi adapts to his new life the best he can. He finds out, with much relief, that even though he can’t access the original’s knowledge and memories, training since childhood pays off even after a body swap. He doesn’t have to think too hard about sparring, just keep a firm grip on his sword, and his muscles can apparently do the rest with minimal effort on his part.

It only works with the actual fighting, though. After going to bed feeling sore all over for a week straight, Jingyi gives up and gives the cold springs a shot. It freezes his limbs off, but the ache gets better after that. It even gets him about a dozen points, which he adds to the rest, gained through menial tasks across the Cloud Recesses and some well-timed mischief.

He also likes to think he gets some progress done with step one of his grand plan to survive this novel. There’s no undoing years of being a pain in everyone’s ass in a matter of weeks, but Jingyi still gives it his best shot - peppered with tasteful cursing at the System when it deducts points for actually following the rules or, you know, not being a dick to everyone he talks to. As a result, he goes from mostly being avoided by the other disciples to tolerated, even if no one but Sizhui goes out of their way to talk to him or invite him to join in on...whatever fun they have.

Jingyi doubts he’s missing out on much, at least where the Lans are concerned. But rumor has it some of the guest disciples snuck out into Caiyi to try some of the local wine, and he’s jealous of that, which is kind of irrational. He doesn’t even like the taste of wine that much, and besides, that may be too much of an infraction for a raised Lan, however prone to rule-breaking said Lan is supposed to be.

( He really can’t afford to slip up again. When he dared chop a solid forty centimeters off his hair after struggling to run a comb through it for the fifth time that week, the System’s alarm blared so loud he almost had an out of body experience. He’d felt the hundred points shaved off his score, though, even if he’d managed to negotiate half of them back. That was the spiritual equivalent of having a car zoom past right as you were about to cross the street, and Jingyi’s in no hurry to do it again...but with that said, it feels great not to have to deal with a bird’s nest every time he wakes up. )

-

Of course, he can’t just get comfortable with his new daily routine. Something has to happen. This time, said something takes the shape of a summon from Teacher Lan. Jingyi drags his feet over from the Library Pavilion and away from his sixth copy of Gusu Lan rules. His wrist is still complaining every time he bends it a little too far. Fuck corpse powder, it’s carpal tunnel that’s going to do him in.

Speaking of copies, maybe he shouldn’t slump this much. He’s fairly sure there’s a rule for that somewhere in the two thousand and nineties.

Given the circumstances, Jingyi fully expects another lecture from Lan Qiren the moment he sets foot in the communal hall, but quickly readjusts his expectations when he spots the small crowd of disciples gathered around their teacher. Most of them are familiar faces by now, except for the girls, who for some reason live in a completely different part of the Cloud Recesses. Still, he recognizes Lan Fan, the shimei who looks like she could bite your head off but actually gave him some pretty helpful tips on sword stances the other day, Tao Ming, the boy who’d seemed vaguely suspicious of him that first day, and of course, Sizhui in the forefront.

Lan Qiren narrows his eyes at him as he hastily joins the rest of the group. “Late again, Lan Jingyi.”

“Sorry, Teacher. This disciple was busy copying rules when he heard.”

A few of his companions snort, the noise quickly disguised as a sudden and collective bout of coughing. Jingyi can’t blame them ; if he’d heard the same words everyday for weeks on end, he’d be laughing too. Lan Qiren gives a long-suffering sigh, but whatever he’s about to tell them must take precedence, because Jingyi gets away with what might otherwise have been considered cheek.

“Madam Mo of Mo Village has sent us a request for assistance.” Given their teacher’s expression, he might as well said that she’d beaten down their door in the middle of the night and let a donkey loose in the courtyard. “From the servants’ description, it shouldn’t be anything more than a few walking corpses. Nothing a group of juniors cannot handle.”

Yeah, right. Despite knowing he’s supposed to let canon run its course, Jingyi still feels a twinge of apprehension. Why, you ask? He can answer that in two points.

Things Jingyi knows : mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

Things Jingyi doesn’t know : how to kill zombies with swords.

In theory, he did spend the last few weeks training, and he didn’t slack off either, thank you very much. Doesn’t mean he’s ever gone up against a corpse before. He’s a coward, okay? Horror movie night was hell, back in his own world. He’s in no hurry to experience it in real (?) life.

“Lan Sizhui will lead the group,” Lan Qiren continues. “I expect all of you to keep your behaviors appropriate and not bring shame onto our sect.” To no one’s surprise, Jingyi thinks, and throws the interested party a small smile. To his surprise, Sizhui blushes and looks down at his boots, looking both embarrassed and pleased. It’s an unfairly cute look on him, but again, most of his looks are.  

Right on cue, the System wheezes to life like it just crawled out of a computer from the nineties.【Beginning stage checkpoint mission assigned. Destination : Mo Village. Mission : ensure the protagonist, Wei Wuxian, makes it to Mount Dafan to meet love interest Lan Wangji. Please click to accept.】

Jingyi mentally slams the Accept button.

Ding!  【Mission successfully accepted. Please read the file carefully for mission details and make appropriate preparations. We wish you success. 】

OOC function, here he comes!

[zenosanalytic]

THE SACRED TEXTS!!! EPISODE 3

I just finished the 3rd season of Clone Wars(2008) and I have Thoughts!

s3 is typically where I’ve seen ppl saying Clone Wars gets gud but, for the first half of the season, I was pretty skeptical. Until ~ e11 the season’s dedicated to filling in holes from the earlier seasons which, frankly, didn’t really need to be filled? Like: I’m not really sure WHO, in the audience, would be sitting around wondering “gee, I wonder what’s going on with Mandalore’s trade-policy during all of this?”?? Or “was a Republic Army sent to help Ryloth when it was first invaded, and what happened to it?”??? And most of this not only felt pretty unnecessary, but was also pretty Meh (:T There were good bits! Like, I didnt ACTL mind the Ryloth ep, and it acts as a declaration of sorts that it’s now both open-season on Jedi(yeah, technically Kit Fisto’s ex-padawan Vebb died in Lair of Grievous, but he was very much An Outlier), and more broadly open-season on named&faced humanoid characters.

To give an example: not ONLY does Domino Squad from Rookies in s1 get a fleshing-out backstory(which is... very Pat and derivative and convenient, but the characterization is ok given they’ve only got one 22min ep to do it in. & I liked 99′s whole role as basically surrogate dad to all the other clones), but pretty much ALL of them, I think, end up getting killed off during the season? Like I said it’s a clear statement they want to break with the past while building on the “hey fans: CLONES ARE PEOPLE! THEIR SITUATION IN THIS WAR IS MONSTROUS!!” message the series has been soft-peddling from the beginning, but I feel like they didnt really commit to it enough. Like: IF they had stuck with the Domino survivors throughout the season, if we’d gotten to see them in episode after episode, gotten to know them better alongside the other members of Rex’s ARC battalion, gotten to see them face dangers and survive them, only to watch, agonized, as they, and the rest of the Battalion vets, slowly get picked off in the increasingly dangerous missions of the second half of the season, then that would have made the message MUCH more effective, AND made the Citadel and Padawan Lost arcs much more tense.

And really all of the impactful deaths of the season sort of feel like that. Like: we get one episode to know Mina Bonteri(a human, of course) and her family before she’s killed off(though i did Dig how unceremonious and unsentimental it was; that really got across the stakes involved and the sorts of scumbags Amidala, and the audience, are dealing with). We get even less time with the Jedi killed by Oppress; a few seconds at most(and btw it’s kind of HILARIOUS how he just... bulls in there and wrecks em like it’s nothing, after two seasons of ep after ep of uneventful cat-and-mouse. Of course that’s undermined by him&Ventriss, then, utterly failing to be successful against Dooku, purely because the plot demands it |:T) Same with Master Piell. Ziro we know much better, but he was also a fairly annoying caricature and his final eps went out of their way to use him to introduce EVEN MORE annoying caricatures so, while his getting gunned down is successful in showing violence and violent death as sudden, unsentimental, and pathetic rather than heroic and worthy, we dont really care. And that’s further undercut, pretty seriously, by his being a caricature; pathos is hard to pull off with an object of laughter/scorn as it risks just making their suffering funny to the audience(which... is the OPPOSITE of what you want to accomplish). This isnt helped by having the Jedi who find him basically shrugging at his death before racing into a Cool Fight. The “Force Wielders” in the Mortis arc suffer from the same problems(and also: Force Dualism&”The Chosen One” Talk: BLEAGH!). The only one of these they manage to get right, to me, is Kalifa’s death in Padawan Lost which, due to us getting more time to see her sitch and hear her&the other younglings talk about it, genuinely ends up having an emotional impact(if still feeling super-convenient and a bit improbable)((also I love the inclusion of a predator ep, even if they’re cheap dime-story predators)).

The same goes for all the non-death falls and endangerments. The corruption of the Mandalorian Prime Minister falls flat because we barely know him, and he’s never been portrayed as sympathetic or, for that matter, as anything other than a factotum. The only Pantoran we know in Sphere of Influence is Senator Chuchi, and more than half the episode is dedicated to the Prime Minister, his Son, and his(interchangeable) daughters(and we never see any of these characters again in the season); the ep comes off as nothing more than an excuse to reference Greedo(and Im annoyed by him speaking common all of a sudden. Who watching CW would have a problem with subtitles?).

BUT! They’re trying!! They’re moving in the right direction!!! I’m happy about this ^v^ And the later half of the season, while I have my problems with certain episodes, and the continued non-human stereotypes, and the convenient writing, and the not-great(tho getting better!) dialogue, is actually kind of entertaining, and attention-bearing. Arc Troopers, the 2nd ep of the season, is Solid! The Mortis arc is good, overall! The Citadel and Padawan Lost arcs are Compelling!! I like the Witches of Dathomiir, even if their Arc is “Meh” because the series IMMEDIATELY undercuts their cool concept(aside from the laser-bows which are LEGITIMATELY Stupid. I’m sorry; I will not argue over this they’re Dum) by having their plans, and all the implication towards deep plots&cunning manipulation, turn out to be empty and fruitless(ie, Dooku totally should have been terribly wounded by all this, which would have also been cool re: Sidious, as it’d imply THAT WAS HIS PLAN ALL ALONG! TO WEAKEN THE GROWING POWER OF HIS APPRENTICE AND DRAG THE WAR OUT EVEN LONGER!!) Also: the Witches, rather than being “magic users” drawing from the “unique power” of their ~evil planet~(a swamp, of course, following long-established Magic the Gathering tradition u_u) should have just totally been a non-Sith(possibly Pre-Jedi) sect of Dark Side Force Users. I really like the idea of Non-Jedi/Non-Sith(since they’re literally just two sides of the SAME tradition; the Sith are literally Jedi Heretics) Force Traditions being out there in the galaxy, and this was a good chance to build on that which I felt they didnt do enough with, and hope they WILL do more with in future(I especially like the ideas of force-attuned poison? Like what if they could “poison” or “curse” people THROUGH the Force? That would be sweet as hell :3).

Another improvement is in the action in this season. It’s not at a level I’d call “thrilling” or anything, but it feels much less like stiff, rote, weightless FLUFF than it has in the two previous seasons. Frankly I think a lot of this is just their engine and how ppls joints just sort of SNAP into position during fights, and also the excessive acrobatics of the prequel-style, both of which makes it feel unnatural, predetermined, and performative rather than deadly and vital(like excessively practiced and robotically acted choreography, basically). But, having said that, you see ppl make mistakes, you see consequences FOR those mistakes, and thus there is SOME sense of danger and weight to it that makes it more compelling than it has been in the past, and this should be praised uwu

And I like that the Politics are a lot clearer and more forefronted in this season than previously! While the Corruption Arc on Mandalore did feel rather hollow, rushed, and After-School-Specially(and, I DEEPLY resent its peddling of offensive and baseless anti-Ophidian tropes >:( ), it’s core message abt the dangers of profiteering and the corrupting influence of profit-seeking(ie Capitalism) on politics and society is a good one and clearly delivered. The Amidala episodes in this season Knock it out of the park consistently, and especially on their messaging ^v^ ^v^ Also, I DIDNT MIND the very fillery C3PO and R2 ep! Yes: it was essentially a waste of an episode since Bane was working for the Hutts to spring Ziro in s1′s Hostage Crisis & there’s basically NO WAY they wouldnt have been able to provide him with a set of plans for the Senate building(and the prison, for that matter), but WHATEVER: it was Kind Of Fun and I like seeing those two be an old bickering married couple and C3PO freak out over getting praised; IT WAS FINE!

So, while there werent any standout ep that I REALLY ENJOYED like Trespass in s1 and R2 Come Home in s2, and I very much didn’t like the 1st half of the season, I think I do have to concede that s3 is An Improvement, overall. I’m actually a bit excited over moving on to s4, given the upward trajectory this season ends on quality-wise owo

Oh: and the Ahsoka redesign? Neat uwu uwu(if untentionally Hilarious since they havent been changing her model over time so she just... grows three feet and bulks out in, like, a single night, presumably. Togruta Puberty must be HELL :p :p :p)