#i have never drawn anything this fast from the release of the source material

[takavasen]

Mother Lauren has chosen me to bring her into the visual world. Mother Lauren. Mother Lauren. Mother Lauren.

[love-takes-work]

Steven Universe: End of an Era: Outline & Review

I wrote this review in October but never got around to posting it here

Steven Universe: End of an Era is far more than an art book–it’s also a collection of behind-the-scenes material, stories about the experience of working on the show, planning documents and associated background info, and both older versions of developed concepts AND concepts that never made it into the show. It's a huge fusion of all those elements, and it's definitely an experience!

Some low-quality images are included with my review just to give you an idea of what’s there--it’s not a good substitute for getting your own copy, but here’s a tour!

Like the previous concept art book, Art and Origins, I'll be giving you a description of the structure and overview, while also collecting notable information for fans. Obviously just about everything is "notable" once again, but I'll aim for unique insight or perspective on the main source material, keeping the screaming about everything new to a minimum so you can also enjoy something for yourself if you pick it up. My low-quality photos should prevent people from feeling like I'm reproducing the book in any capacity. Please grab one while you can and have your own experience!

[SU Book and Comic Reviews]

OVERVIEW

The book is titled "End of an Era" for a couple reasons--obviously because it is released after the show has wrapped, but also because Gem history recently ended its "Era 2" and began Era 3--an age of prosperity and peace. The author--the person in charge of adapting all of this information into this slick, readable package--is Chris McDonnell, whose work was previously applied on the Art and Origins book.

The foreword is by N.K. Jemisin, a well-known science fiction author who's a huge fan of the show (and wrote a really excellent series that also has a weird geological connection, by the way).

And the cover, like its predecessor, is shiny and decorated with a beach scene featuring minimalistic characters--this time it's the Gems at night in front of the Temple, and on the back cover is a big pink leg ship in a cross-legged pose.

The interior covers are decorated with tons of amazing sketches of Steven and Connie on the front, and a bunch of Gem sketches on the back. Every interior page that most would leave blank is highlighted with some kind of sketch art or character exercise--it's so much to look at, so much to absorb.

The book is dedicated "For Eddie."

Its organization is different from the previous book in that it shares applicable work in chunks associated with groups of episodes rather than pertaining to different aspects of building the show.

FOREWORD

N.K. Jemisin gives us such a great introduction to the book--apparently understanding very well that the audience of this book is full of animation enthusiasts and adult fans more than it is full of kids, and explaining that bewildering journey some adults had from blowing this show off as a silly kid thing to falling in love with it hard and fast.

The important thing, Jemisin says, is being able to trust a storyteller with your heart. And it was clear to her that Rebecca Sugar knew what she was talking about and was saying important things about identity and the radical power that comes with accepting it and demanding respect.

Important also is how we handle heroes and who gets to be one in fantasy. That's part of the reason Steven Universe speaks to so many--because we see ourselves here, and know stories can be about us. Acknowledging the power we all have to MAKE THINGS BETTER with what we fight for is so important--especially if we're going to speaking to the next generation about it.

Highlighting Rose Quartz as a "born leader" who failed and Steven as a relatable scamp who did what she couldn't, Jemisin asserts that we can save the world.

1. END OF AN ERA

We start with an appeal to the audience to think about identity and the formative parts of our childhood--and how different it is if who you are and who you become is restricted, mocked, erased, or Not Allowed. Most people, if not ALL people, can relate to this, but for those of us with a special relationship with Steven Universe because of queer identity, this hits hard.

But it doesn't have to be anything grand to be something we respect--this show's authenticity comes largely from how personal everything is, drawn from real-life experiences and incidental truths from each artist's perspective, leaning hard on childhood and formative experiences.

Rebecca Sugar offers some interview bits to discuss writing philosophy and why "writing female characters" was difficult for a nonbinary person who'd been socialized as a girl and a woman. Rebecca has spoken before about how frustrating it is that marketing for cartoons was SO gendered when she was growing up (and to some extent still is).

The Gems in the story are all "she/her," but on their planet they're defined by their work, not by emotion or relationships (unlike women in our society), so having them be socialized opposite to how she was and be able to claim those emotions through choice and NOT as just an expectation "as women" was revolutionary. Rebecca wants her show to tell all marginalized people that they don't deserve to be in the margins.

Weighing in on other aspects of the show were Ian Jones-Quartey, Joe Johnston, and Miki Brewster. Ian describes feeling like at first doing SU was a thrill ride that meant they'd finally get to do all the cool stuff, but it quickly became a responsibility that he took very seriously--the need to tell a good story now that he'd been given a megaphone.

Promotional art, planning documents, character sketches, and concept art from the lighthearted to the stone serious is included, along with some very cool (sort of famous) timeline charts that track major characters' developments. It's emphasized by Rebecca that the developmental materials ARE NOT CANON (and especially are not MORE canon) compared the final show.

There are concept sketches alongside final art for Aquamarine and Topaz in "Wanted" (with Topaz labeled "Imperial Topaz"), the Zircons in "The Trial," Blue and Yellow Diamond, and the Off Colors (including Pink Lars).

And there's also a spread of "the two sides of Steven's life: Gem Magic and Rock N Roll" featuring Sadie Killer and the Suspects (referred to as "Buck's band")--as well as a cool "Crew Cameos" key and some concepts for short-haired Connie.

And then there's some more "finished" art with stills alongside concepts, including some background art, revision, and really cool "fairytale" art from some of the shadowplay storytelling bits. We get "Lars of the Stars," "Jungle Moon," and "Can't Go Back."

2. THE BEGINNING OF THE END: A SINGLE PALE ROSE

In discussing the huge reveals and Gem mysteries in the show, the pacing is examined, and emphasis is put on the intended "slow burn." One of the most difficult things in the show was to strategize so that every piece that was needed to support another piece in the future was placed properly to seed what it was supposed to.

Some of the ideas they developed were more of a group effort and were fit together collaboratively (like Amethyst's being younger than the other Gems and Jasper being from Earth), while others were intended from the beginning based on Rebecca's vision (the fundamental idea of Pink Diamond's true identity, for instance, as well as Obsidian's design and sword and our Pearl not being Pink's first).

The writing process gets a great deep dive here, including fun tidbits like how the orb in the moon base was inserted by Joe Johnston and they literally had no idea what it was for when they wrote the episode. They repurposed it when they figured out what they needed.

Rebecca credits her detailed timelines for helping keep the order straight, and discusses how other artists are sometimes flabbergasted that a storyboard-driven show can have this much detail and continuity and yet not get wrecked by the free non-scripted boarding process. But Rebecca and the Crew valued that approach and loved the way fresh eyes would handle an idea, making it come back alive, entertaining, vivid.

Several Crew members weigh in on the writing process. Lauren Hecht refers to making lots of incorrect guesses despite being on the inside. Joe Johnston recalled getting briefed on his first day and getting so excited to start working on this massive project.

Miki Brewster remembered being told Rose Quartz is Pink Diamond and being shocked--and also confused about why Ruby and Sapphire would need to be married if they're already basically married. Drew Green talks about being brought in late and getting to watch unaired episodes and a rough of the movie while eating cereal.

Ian Jones-Quartey complains about Pink Diamond's real jester-like form being leaked to the internet through a Hot Topic shirt. Rebecca piggybacks on that and says it was upsetting that the wedding was leaked because of toy fair keychains featuring Ruby and Sapphire in wedding attire. They'd always be worried about leaks, and sometimes Rebecca struggled not to talk about the reality of Pink Diamond before the reveal because she knew it would make so much more sense once the truth was out. And everything associated with Rose makes more sense once you know she's Pink--especially what happened with Bismuth, considering what we know about how Pink Diamond has a habit of treating anyone who no longer serves her interests.

When it comes to visual cues, Rebecca also talks about intentional designs to create a feeling of unity between concepts, like the flower shapes on Pink Diamond's palanquin lining up with the poofs of Steven's hair and the star imagery of the series. Steven Sugar and Mary Nash discuss how the Human Zoo incorporated this imagery, trying to look like Homeworld with a Pink Diamond touch.

Steven Sugar, as a game nerd, liked to throw in video game references from old and modern stuff to feel like he's inserting what he's enjoying and who he is from moment to moment, while Mary Nash, who related to Sadie as a basement-dwelling young person with cult interests, liked to include stuff from MST3K and cult movies. Pearl's hand gestures get a spotlight too--her reflex to cover her mouth when Pink Diamond was being discussed was analyzed here.

A "Top Secret Visual Timeline" from 2016 is included which tells us some Diamond history. It has an earlier version of Pink Pearl's fate and does not include Spinel since the movie hadn't been greenlit. The timeline includes the birth of the Diamonds, the emergence and major story beats for each major character, and some philosophy of the driving force behind each.

We're told that Pink Diamond straightened up, behavior-wise, after she lost her first Pearl, and that Yellow and Blue wanted to give her a planet but White only agreed to it to prove she would fail at managing a colony. Pearl, meanwhile, is so confused to have a Diamond who keeps asking her what she thinks when she doesn't believe she should have opinions.

And when Pink moonlighted as Rose to start conflict, she found herself leading an army to fight Pink's troops--then Yellow's, and eventually Blue's too. Lapis is said to be waiting for the conflict to end on Earth so she can terraform, but she gets trapped instead.

Pearl's love story with Rose is described as "an endless honeymoon" where she's free to love her, while Rose's is more like "I'm now the head of the family and I'm going to give everyone what they never had, so everyone is super special!"

Jasper is described as "adopted" into Yellow's army as the only successful Beta Quartz. And White Diamond knew that Pink Diamond was not dead--she thought she was just running away from home like a brat and would eventually be back.

3. THE HEART OF THE CRYSTAL GEMS

Now we discuss Rose Quartz--the original Pink Diamond. How she was selfish and selfless, never enough and always too much, and how Greg was her first partner who "challenged her" to be an equal. Rebecca describes Rose as being delighted by the idea that both she and Greg reinvented themselves, but when that leads her to want to share her past, Greg isn't interested--he only wants to know who she is now, and doesn't consider the old her to be her.

Rebecca likes Carl Jung's concept of "enantiodromia," which is the idea that extremes lead to their extreme opposite. This is demonstrated in all of the Diamonds. This narrative is interspersed with drawings of Greg and Rose being cute.

But another "heart" of the Crystal Gems is its relationships--particularly, Garnet, the fairy tale romance embodied. More psychological theories are discussed with regard to differentiation in a relationship making the relationship stronger, and how they made sure that happened for Garnet during the appropriate arc. Rebecca has struggled with the idea that she, like Ruby, went straight from a "family" group to a living-with-others situation and never lived by herself. But she also learned that you can in fact develop as a person in the context of a relationship--you don't have to be alone to do it. Ruby learned that too, and chose on her own terms to be with Sapphire.

The wedding made so much sense to Rebecca and the crew that they couldn't imagine a wholesome couple like Ruby and Sapphire not having a wedding episode. They wanted it for years: The wedding concepts always included the tuxedo for Sapphire and the wedding dress for Ruby.

But pushback (often blamed on the conservative standards of the international market) led to negotiations trying to keep Ruby and Sapphire's relationship from being explicit. Rebecca and the Crew were very tired of this double standard, and they were especially irritated by attempts to claim a wedding wouldn't be well received by a core demographic or wouldn't make sense for Steven's character. But other shows had done weddings and Steven had been established to love weddings already.

Rebecca kept adding more elements to the wedding episode to answer all the concerns, but she didn't want to back down from explicit marriage between these characters. They deserved it. And the audience deserved to see this as wholesome, like any other cartoon wedding. Eventually they got their way and were allowed to have the wedding. But the ordered episodes were also coming to a close without promise of more, so Rebecca had to request more episodes to be able to wrap up the storyline!

And of course, there is Steven, the true heart of the team. A very interesting aside discusses Garnet's leadership and how the network pushed the Crewniverse to acknowledge Steven as the leader. This was successfully resisted throughout as well--because Garnet is the leader (unless she's incapacitated, of course). It's fantastic that this concept was preserved because too often a young male chosen one is elevated above people with more experience and knowledge because of that chosen one tradition, so it's really nice to have a show acknowledge that team leadership is more appropriate for an adult.

4. ERA 3

Beginning with a discussion of the Diamonds, this chapter deconstructs the dysfunctional "family" of the Diamonds (who are said to be based on tropes about evil stepmothers and stepsisters), with the thread of dysfunction originating with White Diamond.

Yellow is physical, Blue is emotional, White is judgmental, and Pink is impulsive. Some philosophy on why Pink is naturally manipulative and why she clashes so much with White is offered.

White believes her identity is to be imposed on all because she is the pinnacle of what should be--and therefore, she has the right to make decisions and statements about and on behalf of everyone. But her secret is that she can't do what the others do--act or feel or want. In trying to be everyone, she is no one.

And this becomes very important when she confronts Steven about his identity and turns out to be wrong. The triumph of Steven being totally, fully himself is a beautiful, simple revelation that's described as far more satisfying than the theories about Pink living inside him or Rose returning from his Gem.

Also discussed is Gem architecture. A lot went into this idea, and Steven Sugar weighs in to say he had to think of what it would mean for a world to have buildings but serve no human needs. That's why it's mostly focused on transport and storage. Even the broken planet is meant to indicate a place stripped for its resources, and everything serves a function that is meant to avoid looking like the human equivalents.

And there's another layer, too: a difference between Era 1 and Era 2. Era 2 became more functional to hide Era 1's broken bits, and older Homeworld buildings still have some "ornate and ancient" feel to them. And the fact that props, tools, and even walls and doors could be living was taken from a concept Rebecca thought was horrible from old Busby Berkeley movies, where people were inanimate objects and it was portrayed as lovely. Tom Herpich helped conceptualize these living objects.

Steven dealing with "princess tropes" is discussed here too. The Pebbles (worked on with Pendleton Ward) were sort of his Cinderella's mice, and all the locked-in-a-tower, having supportive tiny friends help you, getting princess clothes made, attending a ball, having to mind your manners stuff was intentionally related to fairy tales.

The point of doing that (besides fun) was to easily invoke the feeling that Steven was being made to be someone he's not, and that he was being treated like THIS is who he really is when it isn't. White Diamond as the "evil stepmother" is discussed with regard to her detailed features and massive scale. They generally didn't put fingernails and eyelashes on characters (especially not to indicate that they were women or girls!), but they decided White would get all of these feminine markers for tradition's sake.

Rebecca also invokes several other references that were included and describes the princess tropes as "chipping away at his integrity" setting him up for the final challenge with White.

There is again tons of concept art: Homeworld architecture, Pebbles, Diamond diagrams, background Jades and Lemon Jade Fusion, Comby, Diamond extraction chambers, and White Diamond.

5. CHANGE YOUR MIND

Now we finally begin to discuss Steven's identity. The "Perfect Steven," discussed in several interviews before this book's release, was an idea back in 2013; the "ultimate Steven," beefed up and shonen-looking, was far from perfect because OUR Steven is perfect, while this alpha hero Steven idea (used in Steven Universe Future) didn't belong being idolized in such a show.

They thought about having Steven fall apart into organic half and Gem half early in the show (during "Giant Woman" after a successful fusion and unfusion, even!), but they didn't try the concept until the last episode. They didn't want the "Pink" Steven to be portrayed as "better" even though he would be more powerful, so they decided he isn't whole without his organic self and he's just as much of a shell as the organic half. They absolutely did not want any ending that required Rose to be inside him or waiting to come back. But the debates were fierce--what DOES it mean to have Rose's Gem?

Ian Jones-Quartey brings in an anecdote about his own family to emphasize some of the immigrant themes that inspired aspects of the show. He had a brother who reinvented himself elsewhere away from family without resolving issues, and all the ramifications of that were explored in the show through Rose Quartz. (He is careful to say he doesn't think his immigrant experience is like being from another planet!) But he did say you can hurt your old family even if they were toxic or didn't know the real you, and you can hurt your new family by hiding your past. The Pizza family of course was also a more direct reference to Ian's Ghanaian family.

In talking about the new Fusions from this episode, Sunstone is largely described by Miki, who also got to board the Sunstone section. Sunstone was described as a cool 1990s character and the evolution just continued into making them a fourth-wall-breaking PSA dispenser. Obsidian is also discussed, with their sword being an early concept. Steven Sugar said they totally knew it would be forged in action. Obsidian being similar to the Temple design is of course another very early detail.

The story of how James Baxter got involved with one of the final scenes (Organic Steven and Pink Steven fusing in front of White Diamond) was shared. His family was fans of the show and Rebecca Sugar took the time to drive to a birthday party for his daughter and give her a drawing. He then owed her a favor, and this was it.

Concept art is again included, this time with sample boards, promo images, a Diamond fight concept, costume design changes for the Gems, new Fusions, the so-called "Mega Diamond" ship conglomerate, some scenes from the White Diamond confrontation, Pink Steven, multiple pages of James Baxter animation, corrupted Gems and their healed selves, and photos from the "Change Your Mind" premiere and some awards. The show has won one design-related Emmy, a Peabody Award, and a GLAAD award.

6. STEVEN UNIVERSE FUTURE

The book doesn't cover the movie because it got its own book, but dives right into Future. Ian Jones-Quartey emphasizes that the movie and Future are separate and different from the original show, which ENDED. After all, after that, Steven has a neck!

Some new names are invoked now: new writers Kate Tsang, Jack Pendarvis, and Taneka Stotts. They were excited to have Steven make HIS OWN mistakes instead of trying to clean up someone else's! Now, instead of doing the usual shonen anime thing and having the final battle be a big physical rumble, Steven has to make peace with himself and take an active role in coping with what all the fighting has done to him and what effect it's had on who he is (and who he wants to be). There is no sudden "I love myself!" answer, either. It's always a process.

Drew Green and Maya Petersen, who came on board as storyboarders officially in Future, also weighed in on writing for a "mature" show, how to deal with Steven being a "moral compass" while being sort of unreliable, and what they learned as Crew that they didn't know as fans. Drew didn't know Garnet never asks questions. Jack didn't realize the show never deviated from Steven's point of view. Taneka was nervous but excited to collaborate. Kate was worried about how established the show was and what to do as a new writer to contribute appropriately.

Maya was on the old Crew but not as a storyboarder, so felt like some of the "old" ideas ended up not being appropriate for the "new" Future in an embarrassing way--and dreaded the idea of dealing with Steven's emotional problems when they were similar to stuff she'd been through. She also was personally behind the idea of Steven wanting to dump his problems by becoming Stevonnie, and got to work with Etienne Guignard on inventing the Pearl creation backstory with Volleyball.

There's some discussion of "depression hobbies," stress, and the show's pacing. And they say Etienne was entertaining at pitches. There's even some discussion of how Greg is taken off a bit of a pedestal because his terrible restrictive life in the suburbs sounded wholesome to Steven and Greg presented it negatively.

And then there is some information about how the Crew felt behind the scenes due to fan reactions and negative press. Ian discusses feeling offended when the Black characters are described as bad examples, as if their cartoonized but realistic-in-context features are automatically caricatures.

Rebecca Sugar felt beaten down by some of these narratives and began to access mental health services, inspiring some of the content of "Mindful Education." A long reflection from Rebecca discusses people's infighting about her show and what she had a responsibility to show or not show in the story. She learned a lot about bullying from Cartoon Network's anti-bullying program and learned that bullies thrive on whatever attention you give them--unless it is made clear to them by a peer group that no one is impressed by their cruel actions. Also, not all negative feedback is bullying. Constructive criticism is different. Self-awareness can help you avoid internalizing what bullies might do or say to you.

Segueing from the discussion of how people are affected by and connect with the show, we then discuss how they chose as a team what should be covered as the show came to a close. They didn't have time to do quite a few stories they wanted time for, like a Rhodonite story, a Lars side story, and Diamond "prehistory" and religion; all of it was put aside for the main arc with Steven.

They thought people would find those stories about Homeworld and Off Color history very interesting, but so much of the show had been about Steven's Gem adventures, so keeping him mostly on Earth seemed appropriate. The acknowledgment of his battle damage, of his trauma, was necessary and real, and helpful in an important way to the core audience.

Oh, and there was some stuff about a cheeseburger tree. Don't ask.

In discussing the "reverse escapism" of the original show (Gem aliens are intrigued by everyday human culture, and realism is necessary), Rebecca says her views have changed on escapism and gets why some people want a soothing feel-better show. She acknowledged also that her own escapist dreams-come-true fulfilled in the show didn't feel like escapism because they were givens to the majority of mainstream culture, but were never guaranteed to marginalized people.

Rebecca ties in her several-times-told story about "Love Like You" and how the middle bit was when she didn't feel she was worth looking up to, and the realizations she had to tie the beginning to the end. Feeling like someone will like you less if they know you more is terrible. So sometimes a show like this can be helpful in telling people that they belong when their fantasies are things like "I want to be loved" and "I want to know I exist."

In Future, Steven has to connect to who he is and love that person--and understand that person enough to finally feel that even if he's not fixing their problems or saving their world right this second, Steven deserves his family's love and support, and they WANT to give it to him.

There's a huge amount of supplemental material in this section so there's no way I could name it all. The charts for Future's timeline are pretty straightforward, though a few episodes like "A Very Special Episode," "Why So Blue," "In Dreams," and "Bismuth Casual" aren't specifically represented and a couple are in a different order ("Prickly Pair" was conceived as happening after "Fragments" and "Homeworld Bound").

Steven feeling like a monster, having intrusive thoughts, having not forgiven the Diamonds, and getting help/moving on--it's all there.

We have keys, color scripts, and boards for the new opening and some various backgrounds and storyboard art from episodes. Model sheets for Shep, Nice Lapis and Mean Lapis, Jasper, Steven Tag Gems, Pink Steven Powers, Monster Steven. New house concepts, Era 3 Homeworld concept art for the Diamond environments, and background art for the Reef.

New Connie and Greg designs. Concepts for Mega Pearl, the Rose Quartzes, Bluebird, and Morganite (who didn't get used). And there are some photos from recording and the conference room. There are even some extras from "Crossover Nexus," the crossover with OK K.O.!--including an unused cut scene that included Ruby and Sapphire fighting. The rest of the book is a bunch of adorable Crewniverse art--extras, blog drawings, promos, and gifts to each other.

NOTABLE

1.

The first timeline chart in the book features a cool sketch of the original Off Colors, which at the time this planning document was drafted included unused Off Colors Flint and Chert.

We knew of their existence already because of an episode of the podcast, but these two unexpectedly appeared as incidental characters in the Steven Universe Future episode "Homeworld Bound," identified only in the credits. Sad to think that instead of banding with the Off Colors, these two were probably shattered for their crime (being Quartzes who don't want to fight) and that's why we see them being repaired in this episode. Later, there's some brainstorming for types of Off Colors and "a Ruby that wants to wear limb enhancers" is mentioned as well.

2. 

It looks like there was also originally more juice to the story of tracking down the events of the war culminating in Pink Diamond's assassination.

One of the timelines talks about Steven thinking it makes sense that Pearl can't talk about her involvement because she might have been a double agent, explaining why Rose Quartz always knew what Pink Diamond was doing. It seems like that bit was supposed to be included in Garnet's version of the story she believed in "Your Mother and Mine." Seems like they originally conceived Garnet's story to inspire the Off Colors to become pirates and freedom fighters, though in the show's canon this storytelling happened after Lars had already reinvented himself the way he did.

Sadie was also supposed to be sending letters to Lars via Steven, which is funny since the "Letters to Lars" episode is just a montage Steven letter. And of course it's specified that Steven was supposed to get Pink Diamond flashbacks by going to the Palace on Homeworld.

3. 

The second chart in the book makes references to Sadie's reinvention of herself as a parallel to Lars, Greg, and Pink Diamond all doing the same thing, and how positive it is to embrace such a thing--a version of yourself that YOU create.

I love that Yellow Diamond's arm ship arm-wrestling the Cluster was always part of the plan.

There's some more explicit direction to have Connie help Steven understand the Diamonds as "strict parents," and a lot more emphasis on everyone realizing Rose had been inspired by THEM rather than them all following her.

White Diamond is presented here as if she thinks of Pink Diamond as a "daughter" (whom she now understands she has "lost"). There are notes on how the Diamonds have a responsibility to their children and should attend to it before just continuing to make more.

4.

One of the concept art images for the Off Colors features Rhodonite crouching by Padparadscha saying "Don't worry, I won't let them hurt you." It's very interesting because she DOES seem to protect Padparadscha in the show, but doesn't seem confident about it in her final version, even though it does seem like she'd be "programmed" to guard aristocratic Gems because of her Ruby and Pearl makeup. Cool.

5.

A "Crew Cameos" spread was included, which is of great interest to some of us who loved seeing the Crew insert themselves into the show. Not every SU Crew person who's been represented in a crowd was there, but this crowd included Amish Kumar, Kat Morris, Amanda Winterstein, Angie Wang, Lamar Abrams, Emily Walus, Mary Nash, Joe Johnston, Christy Cohen, Danny Cragg, Hilary Florido, Danny Hynes, Matt Burnett, Ben Levin, Elle Michalka.

6.

The official national flower of South Korea, Hibiscus syriacus, is the name of Pink Diamond's flower.

7.

One of Steven Sugar's comments about the silhouette difference between humans and Gems points out that humans have ears. This seems to be pretty good confirmation that they are not supposed to have ears, despite that sometimes we'll see ears drawn on them in some frames.

8.

Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond is characterized in this book as "self-hating" in a really interesting way, saying that because she believed she was not capable of compassion, she practically worshiped those who demonstrated that ability and thought they were so much better than her--which is described as "intoxicating" and resulted in others being drawn to her. How interesting is that!

9.

Timelines reveal that early plans for Pink Diamond's first Pearl originally had her getting destroyed by Pink during  a game, and then her destruction was rewritten as a punishment from the Diamonds after Pink Pearl defended Pink Diamond to the other Diamonds. They went back to the idea of her getting hurt by Pink for the final version, though the cracked face and control by White Diamond was not on the agenda until they started writing "Change Your Mind."

10.

The approximate ages of the major characters, based on emergence, are revealed on these timelines. It begins with a cracked-planet-looking graphic depicting four tiny Diamonds emerging at 20,000 years ago. Some suspicious "blacked out" redacting surrounds a long timeline tail that goes back before that, which may mean there are secrets they still don't want to reveal. But the dates go like this:

20,000 years ago: The Diamonds emerge.

11,000 years ago: Pearl is custom-made for Pink Diamond.

8,000 years ago: Sapphire emerges (on Homeworld).

6,000 years ago: Ruby emerges (on a colony).

5,750 years ago: Garnet is formed.

5,600 years ago: Lapis is poofed and put in the mirror.

5,200 years ago: Jasper emerges (on Earth).

5,050 years ago: The Cluster is planted.

5,000 years ago: Amethyst emerges (on Earth).

4,500 years ago: The Crystal Gems found Amethyst.

3,000 years ago: Peridot emerges (on Homeworld).

40 years ago: Pearl found Lapis's mirror at the Galaxy Warp.

And of course we know 14 years ago Steven is born!

11.

Originally the Diamonds were based on a quartet of themes: Love, Fear, Pride, and Sorrow. It got too complicated to keep and it was abandoned, with Pink's identification of "love" being described as "particularly outdated."

12.

Notes on a sketch say that Pearl was inspired to become bold and unashamed because Pink's questions drove her to have opinions, and it's said that Rose "fell in love" with her boldness.

13.

Rebecca tells the story of driving off a ridge and getting stuck in the desert, comparing this to Ruby's tumble during her Wild West adventure and using it as inspiration. She's told this story before but here it is in print. She also included the story about using the flowers from a friend's wedding to put in Ruby's hair.

14.

Rebecca describes having to "fight" notes she was given when it had to do with Ruby and Sapphire's relationship. One she describes as NOT fighting was for a signing card depicting Ruby and Sapphire dancing. It was called "too romantic" and she decided not to worry about it since it wasn't the actual show content.

She was also scolded over her book The Answer because the powers that be expected her to downplay that relationship. She always argued that queer youth deserved these things.

15.

Tom Herpich describes being inspired to name Blue Diamond's comb "Comby" because he was watching the news about Comey getting fired from the FBI. It's also a mineral-related term and I always assumed that reference was intentional, but maybe it's not and this is the only intended significance to Comby's name?

16.

Rainbow Quartz 2.0's design is not discussed, though the other two new Fusions from "Change Your Mind" (Sunstone and Obsidian) were. RQ2 has some sketches included, but no accompanying narrative in the text.

17.

A sheet of corrupted Gems and their healed selves is offered, though it doesn't appear to be final. The obelisk in "Serious Steven" is labeled Albite. The unnamed Worm Monster, Desert Glass, and Watermelon Tourmaline are included. An unnamed birdlike Gem represents the Big Bird monster from "Giant Woman." The crab monster from "Arcade Mania" is labeled Blue Chalcedony. The Tongue Monster is drawn uncorrupted but not named. The Flower Monster from "Back to the Kindergarten" is labeled Grossular Diopside or Titanite. The invisible monster from "Island Adventure" is labeled Moonstone. The Lighthouse Gem is labeled White Topaz. A form for Larimar that was used in "Change Your Mind" but changed in Future is there. The Slinker is listed as Chrysocolla. And the Crab Monster is listed as Aventurine.

On the next page, this is changed to Bixbite (as it was in Steven Universe Future), and we then also have Lace Amethyst, Blue Lace Agate, Crazy Lace Agate (Fusion), Ocean Jasper, the Mother Centipeetle Nephrite (Facet 413 Cabochon 12) and three other Nephrites, Angel Aura Quartz, a hooded Jasper, Zebra Jasper, Biggs Jasper, Watermelon Tourmaline (labeled as Fusion of Gem * Onion--huh?), Snowflake Obsidian, "Little" Larimar, and Orange Spodumene (who was the Worm).

18.

The Rhodonite side story would have been about the love story of a Ruby and a Pearl working for Morganite. Images of Morganite and her servants, unfused, are in the book. We do not get this additional information, but Rebecca said in a panel shortly before the book's release that Rhodonite's story would have been about finding out that she had been Rejuvenated 17 times because her components kept falling in love and needing to be reset.

19.

Referring to the Diamonds on one of the charts, Steven's perspective is "I can't believe I helped these" and then there's a censor bar. Welp.

20.

Some included art by Hilary Florido features Kevin with a souped-up Koala Princess car and another where Kevin is staring at himself in the mirror in front of an altar to himself.

21.

Rebecca's sweater collection is included in the Crew art.

[SU Book and Comic Reviews]

[florenceandthemachine]

talk stackson to me about stiles getting a piercing (or piercings) of your choice while they’re in college and them driving jackson out of his fucking mind. bonus points if jackson goes with him to get his next one and they end up getting matching tattoos instead.

So, here's the thing. Jackson doesn’t even notice the first piercing that Stiles gets for like, a week. 

After suffering through what feels like a month of insomnia and developing what feels like a crippling tolerance of NyQuil, Stiles finally breaks down and looks to alternative sources of sleep aids. He tries acupuncture, he tries massage, he tries aromatherapy. Nothing works. 

He reads about the benefits of a daith piercing online, and while he has learned to take everything on the internet with a grain of salt, he’s beyond the point of desperate. He googles the nearest tattoo and piercing shop, grabs his keys, and walks in about twenty minutes before there set to close.

He looks a mess. He has rings under his eyes, his clothes are crumpled, but the artist in the shop doesn’t even bat an eye when he says he needs a “daith piercing, like, yesterday.”

He’s in and out in less than ten minutes. Apparently, after a few days without sleep, Stiles no longer has an aversion to needles. Not when the needles come with the sweet promise of getting knocked the fuck out. 

He gets home after grabbing one of Kira’s cards (because she seems like a cool person in general), takes off his pants, flops onto the couch...

...and sleeps for thirty nine hours. 

(Jackson, bless him, comes home from work, sees Stiles sleeping, and silently cheers. He’s two years into his pre-med program at this point, so he knows how dangerous insomnia can be—he just takes Stiles vitals every six hours and lets him sleep.)

So, no. Jackson doesn’t notice Stiles first piercing right away, and when he does, it’s with hardly a second thought (if it helps Stiles sleep, why would he be mad about it?). It’s a tiny, barely there hoop of surgical steel, almost buried in his ear—why the hell would he notice it immediately?

Stiles second piercing, though, that Jackson notices. Partially because Stiles calls Jackson drunk and crying about it. 

Stiles has just finished one of the most grueling midterm seasons of his life, and he demands a party. Scott, the eternal bro that he is, agrees immediately. Stiles sends out a mass text to everyone in his phone, kisses Jackson good luck on his last midterm, and immediately heads to the liquor store.

Jackson finishes his anatomy and physiology midterm (at seven PM on a Friday, because his instructor is a sadist) in less than two hours, and takes no small comfort in the warmth radiating through his body when he turns on his phone and sees supportive text message pouring in from Stiles, even as they progressively get less coherent as Stiles undoubtedly gets more imbibed.

He’s about to call the idiot love of his life when his phone goes off, Stiles having beat him to the punch. He’s still grinning as he puts the phone to his ear. 

“Hey baby, I just finished up. I can be there in fifteen—”

“JACKSON! I LOVE YOU.”

Jackson beams.

“JACKSON KIRA BROKE MY FACE.”

Jackson... beams significantly less. He has to tell himself that of course it isn’t anything even remotely close to real danger, but he has never quite been okay with the idea of any part of Stiles being remotely hurt, or as drunk Stiles would call it, “broken”.

“Stilinski, I’ll be there in ten minutes. You’d better be with all of your pieces or I’m going to kill Scott.”

Stiles gasps and must drop his phone, because his voice is higher pitched but further away as he wails. 

“OH NO HE CALLED ME STILINSKI I’M GONNA BE IN TROUBLEEEEE—”

The line cuts off, and Jackson makes it to Scotts apartment in eight minutes. 

When he gets there, the party is in full swing; apparently the mass text that Stiles sent out included Kira, his one-time piercing compatriot, who now had a line of people wrapped around the hallway to get a needle stuck through some part of their body. Kira was taking payment in shots. This did not bode well. 

Stiles found him before he could even make sense of the situation—seriously, how did Scott and Stiles even know this many people?—and their earlier phone call must have been forgotten, because Stiles all but jumped into Jackson’s arms, somehow stumbling over himself while managing to avoid spilling a drop of his drink (which honestly smelled like gasoline. Stiles never was one to waste time mixing drinks).

“Hi baby! You look so good in your scrubs! How was your exam! Did you dish—dith—disvvhh... take apart any bodies?” he fires, speech slurred, but Jackson is too busy making sure that he’s okay to take stock of Stiles mental state. He... appears fine, which is all the more concerning. 

“Stiles.”

“You’re so smart, you know that? I can’t wait for you to be some big shot doctor—”

“Stiles.”

“—and you’ll have an office! And you’ll help so many people! And—”

“Stiles, what the fuck happened with Kira?”

Jackson gets all the answer he needs as Stiles mouth snaps shut, his eyes wide and fearful, and Jackson has to bite down on his own tongue to curb his temper as he reaches to hold Stiles’ face.

“You promise you won’t be mad?”

Jackson absolutely cannot fucking promise that, not if Kira hurt Stiles, not if—

“Kira is a kitsune.”

Jackson’s mind stumbled, doing mental gymnastics trying to catch up with the turn that the conversation had taken.

“And she has magic powers. And I think Scott likes her. And she knows I love you. And... she gave me a present."

Jackson is more lost than ever before, and he pretends not to be shocked stiff when Stiles tilts his head, pulling Jackson’s thumb between his lips, lavishing the digit with his tongue, and—

and Jackson feels something... new, something that definitely wasn’t there before, and any anger, irritation, or doubt he felt in his stomach was banished when Stiles released the digit. His tongue followed soon after, and sure enough, there was a smooth, narrow bar placed dead center in Stiles pretty pink tongue. 

Jackson is stunned silent, his eyes following the metal as it retreated behind Stiles’ teeth. 

Stiles, who seemed a whole lot more sober as he smirked, licking his lips, giving Jackson just the slightest flash of the bar once more. 

“She even healed it up for me, right away, once she replied I knew about her being... you know. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. But really, this is a gift for you.” he murmurs, and Jackson’s belly pools with lust. He was going to have to thank Kira later—but for now, he just slung Stiles over his shoulder, caveman style, and hauls him home.

—

When they first started dating, Stiles spent... a painful amount of time discovering Jackson’s erogenous zones, and repeats the process with the bar in his tongue over the next year. Jackson loves it, of course, but what he really loves it he look on Stiles face when they discover something new together—Stiles lights up like a kid on Christmas morning. 

Kira becomes a staple in their friend group, inevitable once she and Scott start dating, so it becomes a regular thing that they hang out at her shop.

Which, Stiles is impressed to learn, is her shop—as in she owns it, not just works there. 

They swing by late one evening, after a wonderful anniversary dinner, and really, where had five years gone? Stiles insists that he has something for Kira before they go home, and Jackson is in no hurry—they had started talking serious things over the past few months, and Stiles had left no doubt to be found about the fact that he intended to spend the rest of his life with Jackson. 

He was loved, he was happy, and he would do anything for Stiles. Even if it meant waiting for what he knew would be some mind-blowing, commitment laced, anniversary sex. 

Scott is there, surprising no one, and Stiles hovers around, watching in morbid curiosity as Malia, one of the artists, wipes clean the last in a series of corset piercings on one of their female customers, her hands fast but gentle as she laces the last piercing up. 

Jackson, on the other hand, is drawn almost immediately to Kira. Or, more precisely, what Kira is sketching. She had a set of designs open on her tablet, two nearly identical looking rectangles detailing some of the most ornate scenes he had ever seen. He often found himself entranced in what Kira drew, on skin or on screen, and this was no exception. 

They’re both monochromatic, and they look like they belong together—one with a wide forestscape, trees and earth and ark sky blending together, the other with a wolf, tall and proud. They could be standalone pieces, Jackson thought, but they looked almost cyclical, like they could be arm bands.

Well, no, not arm bands—they were too small for that, they were more like—

“Rings.” Stiles says, behind him, a small smile on his face as Kira hits Print. “They’re going to be rings, Jackson.”

Jackson turns back and tilts his head as Kira shows them the transposed stencil printouts—he can kind of see it, they’re definitely small enough to wrap around a finger, and Kira is amazing enough with her detail work that she can probably make it fit, impeccably, to fit halfway between someones hand and their first knuckle. 

“I know you’re not really into the material things, and lets be honest, I would lose a ring.” Stiles starts, and Jackson turns, still clueless, but definitely picking up on Stiles nerves, picking up that there’s something that he’s missing. “But, I figured that this was a good compromise... I mean, I know I want to have something that reminds me of you always, so... what do you say, Jacks?”

He takes one of the stencils—the one of the forest—and peels it from the paper gently, getting down on one knee as he takes Jackson’s left hand, wrapping the stencil around the lowest portion of his ring finger. It’s almost a perfect fit. 

“Will you marry me?”

—

By the time they tie the knot, they both have several more additions to their body. Stiles has a pair of studs in each of his ears and a second hole in his tongue, placed near the tip, so he can fit a ring through it. 

Jackson had quickly discovered a love of ink—he had a thin snake, coiled around his neck, low enough to be covered by his scrub top at work (Stiles had called him macabre), a Rod of Asclepius over his heart (he was so tired of explaining the difference between it and the Staff of Caduceus), and a triskele on his shoulder blade (Derek had cried, literally cried, when Jackson showed him, their pack bond thrumming stronger than ever).

(He also might have had a wedding present for Stiles done that morning, a shining Prince Albert, courtesy of Malia [who blessedly didn’t ask questions while stabbing Jackson’s junk with a needle] and an instant heal courtesy of Kira [who really, really didn’t want to know].)

His favorite, though, by far, was the band on his finger—and as the Justice of the Peace declared them married and he dipped his husband into a filthy kiss, cheered on by all of their friends and family, he couldn’t help but admire the two bands together. They were different, but they still fit together. Beautiful. Complimentary. Permanent. 

And Jackson wouldn’t have had it any other way. 

[neon-dynasty]

Kamigawa was a failed endeavor. Released in the autumn of 2004, Champions of Kamigawa promised some new things for Magic the Gathering, and the return to some old things as well. Most importantly, in my opinion, it showed that Wizards was paying attention to what fans were interested in (outside of Magic) and wanted to provide a way of relating to the fans. However, just about everything they did with the setting and game either couldn’t live up to expectations or outright failed. Here’s why I think the original Kamigawa block failed, and why I think a return would be a resounding success.

This came out much longer than I’d expected, so hit the jump.

For its entire existence up until 2004, most of Magic’s settings were a hodgepodge of fantasy tropes, and the storyline had been following or tying into a single thread for years. Kamigawa was the first setting to truly be free of the ongoing Magic story. Nowadays, however, Magic is known for its settings based on real-world places and cultures. Just this past year, we’ve visited Eldraine (Arthurian Britain), Theros (ancient Greece), and Ikoria (less a real culture and more about giant monster tropes). Back in 2004, however, visiting a clearly defined theme world like this was something that hadn’t been done in a long time. In fact, it’s something the franchise traditionally shied away from. 1996’s Mirage block took place in Jamuura, a continent on Dominaria based on sub-Saharan Africa.1995’s Ice Age was set in a Viking-inspired Terisiare. (You could say that Arabian Nights and Portal Three Kingdoms also count, but those were more wholesale copies than homages.) Based on ancient Japan, Kamigawa was the first herald of a new worldbuilding philosophy for Magic, one that would see the creative team at Wizards of the Coast put their own spin on familiar cultures and mythologies, while still keeping them distinctly their own. Kind of like Disney movies.

The mechanics also promised to shake things up. While I don’t remember any of the card announcements, Kamigawa block introduced many new pieces for the game. Samurai and ninja had their own keyword abilities in bushido and ninjutsu, and most of the sorcery and instant cards dealt with arcane and spirits. Legendary had its own theme as well, with 138 unique creatures (139, if you count the other Yamazaki brother) and 39 other permanents, with a number of cards that cared about the supertype. Finally, there were flip cards, a mechanically and visually interesting way of getting more value out of those creatures and introducing a sort of sidequest to your game. 

Kamigawa was gearing up to be something special in Magic. But as I said at the very beginning of this piece, it failed.

The mechanics were kind of a disaster. Splice onto arcane was parasitic and to get any value out of it, you’d need to go all-in on overcosted cards. Bushido, sweep, offering, and most of the rest of the keywords were similarly underwhelming, either providing minuscule value or actively getting in the way of what you wanted to do. Putting the legendary supertype on a card is a downside when Commander doesn’t exist and singleton formats are not a popular way of playing. It doesn’t help that having too many legendary creatures in a set thend to make them feel less special, as well. Flip cards, while cool in theory, wound up being a logistical mess that didn’t add much to the enjoyment of casual games, and barely saw tournament play. All of this meant the cards didn’t really impact Standard, and Limited was a clunky ordeal more often than anyone would have liked. Following Mirrodin block, the most powerful three sets since Urza���s block, was also a tall order, and one that almost no set was equipped to fulfill. 

Admittedly, while I love the card game, I absolutely adore everything else about Magic. The storyline intrigued me when I started playing during Onslaught block, and knowing that there was this vast body of lore kept me hooked. Hearing that there was a Japanese-inspired setting coming up was pure hype for someone who’d also been into anime for years and video games for years before that. The early 00s were an interesting time for entertainment, as Japanese animation had finally infiltrated American mainstream media. Pokémon had been a successful card game for years (another story for another day), and Yu-Gi-Oh had just hit the scene in America after doing well in Japan for a few years. With all this and a burgeoning internet, fans of anime, video games, and Japanese culture had certain expectations. To say Kamigawa did not meet them would be an understatement. 

The general setting was based on an older Japanese culture, one which didn’t see much representation in media. Samurai, ninja, youkai, along with other popular figures and tropes were either later inventions or had a more solidified image hundreds of years after the source material took place. While I remember many Magic the Gathering fans being worried that the game would take on an anime aesthetic to capitalize on what was popular with the wider geek audience, they actually took it in the opposite direction. Instead of bright colors and bold outlines, Kamigawa was a dark and gritty place, which was made even more evident by the increasing demand for realistic detail in the art department. The kami themselves, one half of the conflict, were alien and foreign to behold. These weren’t based on images that otaku would have been familiar with, Japanese or Western, but based on much older stories that had been phased out of the public consciousness.

In short, there is no “in short.” There are many reasons why it didn’t succeed, but ultimately, it came down to being something that no one really expected or wanted. Instead of taking the cheap, easy, and profitable route by leaning into anime culture, Wizards bucked the trend and used a setting that most Magic fans would not have been familiar with, forcing it to fit within the franchise. They also filled the block with parasitic mechanics that were clunky and actively detrimental to play. And yes, I’m leaving out dozens of other reasons why Kamigawa failed, but those are the main ones that I personally feel hurt the setting. 

Sadly, as public-facing employees remind us constantly, Kamigawa is a very difficult sell to the higher-ups. It was one of the company’s biggest failures, and they can’t use tweets and Tumblr asks from enfranchised fans as justifications for its return. And yet, the requests still pour in. I believe that the reasons for this desire are the key to a new set based in Kamigawa. 

Let’s start with the biggest one: Commander. In many ways, this format is kind of the anti-MtG. It’s a long, drawn-out process that uses decks built with your whole collection, rather than the newest releases. Cards that are awful in most other formats are amazing in Commander, and one of the biggest drawbacks a card can have - the Legendary supertype - is a major boon here. It’s also the current most popular format for old and new players alike. I think that more than anything else, Kamigawa’s legendary theme is what draws new players, as Commander enthusiasts will inevitably find some interesting cards that would never have worked well in the old days.

I also think that Wizards of the Coast has learned a lot since 2004 (and whenever they started work on the original block). Remember, Kamigawa was the first of its kind: a real-world inspired setting completely separate from what the entire franchise had been doing for years. There were bound to be mistakes, and they’ve clearly learned how to rectify them. The following setting, Ravnica, used an Eastern European city aesthetic to compliment its two-color guild theme, but was still constrained by the block structure. Upon our return there, they changed the block structure to better fit what the themes and story wanted. On the other hand, Zendikar, their D&D-inspired adventure world, was beloved for its fast and fun mechanics, as well as the feeling of exploration on the cards and in the media. The return, however, involved destroying all of that in favor of an extradimensional war setting. Guilds of Ravnica and Zendikar Rising each supplied what the fans wanted out of those settings, to varying degrees of success. 

Wizards also keeps showing us glimpses into Kamigawa through Core Sets and supplemental products. Tamiyo showed up on Innistrad and Ravnica. They printed new shrines (compatible with the old Honden) in Core 2021. Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow, is one of my favorite commanders of all time, and she’s from the 2018 Commander set. They still value the setting, and don’t seem to be interested in ignoring it to the point of obscurity (like, for example, Mercadia). 

And, obviously, there are the rumors. With a blog name like mine, you have to have known this was coming. The three planeswalker concepts from surveys could point to anything: Commander products, supplementary sets, etc. However, I think that the web domains for Kamigawa Neon Dynasty point to a full set of some kind.

Interestingly enough, the events of the original Kamigawa block take place in Magic’s very distant past, so it’s been a tantalizing prospect to see how the place might have changed in the past few thousand years. Skipping over medieval fantasy and bringing it past the present into a cyberpunk future might be an excellent way to go about it. Aesthetics from early 90’s anime could still be stylistically unique in Magic, while keeping elements from the old setting would root us to the original block. I could see the new story centering around a conflict between one faction clinging to ancient traditions and another pushing magical technology to its futuristic limits. After all, Tamiyo still dresses in old-fashioned robes and reads from scrolls, and the moonfolk were known to be almost completely isolated from everyone else. I wonder what the kami would look like, if we even saw them at all.

Ultimately, I think that Wizards is in the perfect spot to try Kamigawa again. Between their worldbuilding experience, the rise of the Commander format, and a willingness to push the aesthetics of their game in different directions, there’s a lot of reason to hope that we’ll be heading back sooner or later. 

Please feel free to let me know if I missed something or got any details wrong. And please discuss what you’d like to see in a return to Kamigawa, either new stuff or old. 

[omniscientspinelfanatic]

Just The Darnedest Thing; Chp. 2- You Leave Me Dizzy

Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak-!!

"C'mon c'mon c'moooooon slowpoke, we're almost there!"

"O-Okay, okay, calm down, I'm going as fast as I can without eating floor, you goober!"

"Liar! I've seen ya run much faster!!"

Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap-!

"Well yeah, when I had tennis shoes on; sandals aren't exactly the world's best running shoes on super-polished floors, you know!"

"Steven can run in them just fine!"

"He's goddamn Steven, Savior of the frickin' Galaxy, of course he can! Just because I can touch the back of my head with the tips of my toes doesn't mean I can compare to him~!" Was the breathless snark the dark-skinned human's companion received in return, dark curls bouncing wildly with every harried step. Her excitable pink guide looked back at her with a smirk as she continued to pull her forward by the hand.

"Yes, you can! Yer just modest!"

"And you're biased!"

".....Touché! Now it's just around this corner, c'mon!" Speeding up with a giggle and rounding a glittering corner, the small jokester came to a sudden stop, causing Xana to have to pump the breaks hard in order to not bowl her friend over. Sandals and overly-smooth surfaces weren't the best combinations for traction though, and the awkward woman just barely managed to keep from slipping and landing on her behind by bracing her free hand against Spinel's shoulder. Pouting down at the way too innocent looking expression glancing up at her, having absorbed the shock from the human's stumble and moved not a single inch, she watched as Spinel gestured to their new surroundings with a bright grin. "Look dollface~."

Even though the human huffed and placed her hands on her hips as she played up her stern expression, it fell right off into blank astonishment at the exquisite sight before her.

It was... a massive courtyard dominated by a truly gigantic pool of water. At the bottom of the concavity lay thousands upon thousands of sparkling crystals, placed down in interweaving angular patterns in chromatic rhythm. And high above the surface, dozens of crystalline basins in different sizes and shades of blue, yellow, pink and white laid afloat in the air at different heights, serenely pouring the water within them into lower basins until it reached the bottom. In the middle was a spire topped by a delicate, abstracted figure sculpted in quartz so clear it looked like glass, one hand outstretched towards the sky while the other covered its eyes. Water poured from the obscured section, running down its body and into the highest basin to travel all the way back down to the pool in rivulets.

It was clear, due to the beauty of the entire room, that the popularity of the location was well-founded; several gems of all shapes and sizes were gathered around and enjoying the peaceful atmosphere, joking and smiling amongst each other in small groups all around. It was such a nice sight to see, one that placed a small nugget of warmth beside her heart.

Seeing all these Gems relaxing and having a good time, it was sad to think there was a point in time, not so long ago, that such a thing was practically outlawed.

This was a much better sight, in her humble opinion.

"Sooooo~?" Spinel drawled out, hands clasped behind her back as she bounced on her feet in anticipation of her friend's answer. "Do ya like it~?"

"Like it?? Spins, I love it!!" Xana squealed in delight before slapping a hand over her mouth upon realizing just how loud she was. Twinkling eyes flickered back and forth to giddily take in every part the beautiful sight, her form bouncing on the balls of her sandaled feet as she fought the urge to immediately sprint for the clear looking water. The place looked like something straight out of a fantasy setting! "This is... Gorgeous~!" She managed to squeak out through her fingers, before looking back at Spinel with an excited grin. "Is this one of your favorite spots to hang out while you're home~?"

Such glee was infectious, especially to a Spinel; she grinned widely as she took a proud stance. "Got it in one, sugarplum! Playin' in the water is loads'a fun! Which is nice, cause we don't 'ave much of that around here, not like on Earth. But we've gotten better at it the past couple'a years!"

"That's great!! Whoever put this together, man, did they hit all the marks!" The young woman gushed, a hand pressed against her cheek as she returned the excited waves of a few pebbles wading in the shallower parts nearby. "This is just... Stunning!"

Oh boy, was it ever, but Spinel's gaze wasn't on the opulent ambiance in the slightest. No, no, the soft cafe colored human buzzing with all the energy of a young kitten held every last bit of the gem's attention. The tinted and refracted light that filtered through all the water and glass hit her face, her hair, her hands, her whole body... To her, Xana truly brought the whole thing together. The final stroke to complete a masterpiece, it was almost dizzying.

"Damn, too bad I don't have a swimsuit on me..." Drawn out of her reverie by the sound of disappointment in... ah, to hell with it, her human's voice (unacceptable!), she looked up to see one of Xana's cheeks puffed out in a cute pout as she looked longingly over the pristine water and glittering ledges before the two of them. "Cause I would sure jump in there otherwise..."

A ponytail flopping against her face as she tilted her head to the side, Spinel's brow furrowed momentarily as she frowned. Xana couldn't go swimming in what she had on now? She hadn't planned for this... "What's wrong with the clothes you have on now?"

"Hm? Oh," the woman turned to chuckle at the pink gem's befuddled face, gesturing to her dress, "this material isn't made to handle water for extended periods of time like swimsuits are; it'd soak up the water and get heavy and it would make the fibers it's made of easier to rip and tear. Plus, I don't have any towels or other clothes to change into, and... I'm guessing you wanna do other things after we're done here?" Squeaking furiously as she nodded her agreement, Xana hummed as if she expected that answer. "That's what I thought. Wet clothes aren't the most comfortable thing to just play around in."

"Hmm..." The pliable jester's frown deepened, tapping a finger against her chin in thought. "...You could always take your dress off and put it back on after?"

She hadn't expected for Xana to make a choked noise of extreme shock and fluster at the suggestion, blinking as she was promptly given a flushed stupefied look like the mere thought of such an action was incomprehensible. "Oh my stars, what?!?!" The human hissed in chagrin. "A-Absolutely not!!"

Eyes wide, Spinel held up her hands placatingly, clueless as to why her human looked about ready to poof her. "W-Why not? I don't-"

"Because!!" She yell-squeaked with discomfiture, hands flailing as she sputtered for words. "T-That's...! It's...! To do something like that in front of a whole bunch of people that you don't??? Know??? That's soooo not okay, it's not even funny!"  Not to mention in front of her mega-huge crush?!?! She wouldn't do something like that even if a gun was being held to her head!

"....I'm so confused." The gem had to admit, she was very lost on this one. "How-"

"It's indecent!!"  The sibilant instance cut her off, punctuated by the curvy organic being wrapping her arms around herself protectively and shivering in absolute horror. "I'd never do something like that, it'd be so embarrassing. I'd rather drop dead!"

The young human was sure that the blank stare she was receiving would have been hilarious in any other situation, but right now it was making her curse wildly at the existence of cultural barriers. The purest of relief crashed over her form as understanding flickered in Spinel's gaze, hitting her fist into her palm. "Ohhhhh... Is this about that modesty thing you told me humans care so much about?"

Xana grimaced and nodded, dragging a hand slowly down her hot face. "Incredibly so, you complete goof."

"O-Oh, heh, uh," The gem felt herself blush lightly, dismayed to know she made her bestie uncomfortable even for a second, "Sorry?? I didn't know... Didn't mean to make ya uncomfy or nothin', promise!"

"Hhhhhhhhhhhh-" Attempting to scrub away the heat from her cheeks with her hands, the femme allowed herself to release a somewhat strangled chuckle as she pinched at the bridge of her nose. Even if she had no clue what she had been suggesting, the very source of her ardor had literally just proposed for her to strip. If Pan-Panic(ᵀᵐ) had an example in a dictionary, it would be displaying Xana's current expression. "I know, I know, you're... You're fine! I'm just a bit f-flustered is all, I wasn't expecting... that."

"Yer... not mad at me?"

"Shocked? Yes. Embarrassed? Absolutely. Mad? No, not even close." Shaking her head with a wired giggle, she ran her hands through her disorderly mane, rubbing at her scalp with her fingertips to try and calm herself down. "It's not like you said it cause you were being a pervert or anything." She sighed, unaware that Spinel's face had begun to glow a deep pink. That could've been construed as perverted?! "A-And to be fair, I don't really think there's a faux pas in your culture that really translates all that well to this particular instance considering Gems don't really, uh, wear clothes. You certainly couldn't have known, s-so it's okay!"

Even with the reassurance, Spinel couldn't help but feel incredibly meek about the misunderstanding. She ignored the few stares the two of them were beginning to get, pressing her pointer fingers together shyly. "Still... M'sorry darlin'. I just don't want ya ta miss out, I know how much you love playin' in water." She glanced a bit sadly around the room, disappointment settling so deep into her malleable features that Xana couldn't help but feel extremely guilty about her reaction. "I guess we could always find somethin' else ta do..."

Noooo, babey, dun look so sad, please-

Wanting to wipe the sad expression off her face quickly, the human wracked her brain furiously for a solution, glaring down at her dress as if it's very existence was offending her, which it currently was; Why couldn't reality just bend to her will for an hour or tw-

Wait.

Oh!

"No, wait!" She exclaimed, drawing Spinel's attention back towards her. Grinning widely at the look of question she received, she leaned over to grip at the hem of her dress on the right side. "I have an idea!"

"Huh? What are ya-" The gem's speech screeched to a sudden halt, eyes widening slightly as Xana exposed far more of her legs than she ever willingly had before now. Something in her chest flip-flopped and her face began to heat as she watched her human bunch the fabric up as much as she could in her right hand and pulling it taut before muscling it into a knot that rested on her hip.

The cocoa-skinned girl smiled down at her innovation, as her dress was now hitched up her thighs to the point where it couldn't get easily wet while still covering her modesty. Sure, her legs were bare and that was often something that made her anxious, but she certainly felt safe enough to allow this slight vulnerability (Gems of all people weren't going to care if her legs weren't covered and after Spinel's earlier naive suggestion, this was nothing). She gave the skin of her thighs she could reach in her upright position a gentle pat before twirling in place with a small giggle. "There! That should do it! Whatcha think Spinsy? I won't be able to full-on swim still, but I can at least get more than my feet wet with my dress tied up like this~!"

What did Spinel think? Oh, well, it was rather hard to tell through the loud perplexed screeching in her mind upon seeing more of Xana uncovered.

It made absolutely no sense as to why she was feeling so shaken and warm at the new sight. After all, they had just established that Gems didn't exactly have modesty and certainly didn't have clothes! Xana was particular about the clothes she wore, or so she said; to be honest, Spinel kinda forgot she actually had a solid body underneath all the flowy fabrics that were usually draped over her form. She hadn't really seen much more than her arms, face, and feet, so this? Being able to see parts of her sweet, gorgeous human she hadn't ever seen before??

It was strangely thrilling.

"A-Ah, you're... You're, uh, staring kinda hard, Spins..." Xana murmured shyly, starting to twiddle her fingers nervously and snapping the pink being out of her trance. "Heh... I, um, I've never shown this much skin before, huh? Is it... weird?"

"No!" Jumping slightly at Spinel's ardent denial, wide eyes watched as her bestie shook her head wildly, her hands hung in the air pleadingly as if urging her to stop that train of thought immediately. "Nononononono, I was jus'...! Surprised, thats'all sugar! You've... I-I've neva' seen so much o' ya before now and it's... Different? B-But it's good kinda different!" The jester rushed to assure, a nervous and crooked grin twisting her face as she witnessed that pretty red overtaking the human's cheeks again. "I guess yer jus' so pretty that I couldn't help but, uh, y'know... Stare."

Smooth. Sooooo smooth Spinel, honestly; 'good kinda different'? Truly the pinnacle of sophisticated compliments.

"O-Oh well... Eheh, uh, thanks~?" Xana responded with a demure flattered smile, reaching back to rub at the back of her head awkwardly. "I don't know about 'pretty', per se... But I do agree that my legs are my best feature! Thick thighs save lives and, ha, all that. I could almost rival Garnet!" She did a little wiggle of her hips, kicking off her sandals and finally skipping over to the nearest edge of the pool with a bashful laugh. As she peered around for a safe place to step into the pristine water, Spinel couldn't help but continue her staring from before.

She gulped harshly as her eyes traced the outline of the newly bared skin, feeling her Gem heat more and more the longer she gawked. Xana's legs were so lovely, imperfect and human and wonderful in a way that was solely her. Unique, one-of-a-kind, nothing compared to the smooth rigidity of a Gems' hardlight form. A shapely treasure that was just supple and delicate and-

"You coming Spinny?" The femme called back curiously as she eased herself into the pool, careful to make sure she didn't slip on the slick tiled flooring. Thank goodness it wasn't as sharp as it looked, that certainly wouldn't have been comfortable. Glancing behind her, she rose a brow in interest as the gem startled back into reality and gave a soft giggle. "You sure are daydreaming a lot all of a sudden. C'mon, the water feels great!"

Right! Water! To play in! Let's go!

Without a single word, she took a running start for the pool and with a high jump and a cackle, the pink prankster cannonballed straight into the pool, sending water flying in every direction.

Yelping a bit at the sudden action, Xana shielded her face from the large droplets the splash had sent in her direction. "Ohmigosh!!" Looking over her dress and clicking her tongue in dissatisfaction as seeing a few damp spots over the fabric, her pout came back full force as she looked over at her goofy friend sinking into the water with a loud snicker, the only part of her still above the clear liquid being the upper half of her face. "Spins!" She chided loudly, though the attempt at sternness was totally ruined by the happy smirk she was flashing. "And here I was trying not to get wet~!"

"Heheh~. Sorry!"

"No, you're not, ya goober." The human huffed, grinning as she shook out her hair to get rid of any stray droplets.

"Yeah, yer right toots, I really ain't." Cackling underneath her breath, the stretchy gem fashioned her lower legs into a rudder and a fan and propelled herself around in the water while making motor noises, much to the delight of the young woman. She whistled a chirpy tune as she cruised around the centerpiece all willy-nilly, making 'toot toot' sounds as to warn others of her presence. Xana couldn't help but watch with twinkling eyes as she tried to follow as best as she could, much to Spinel's immense amusement. This devolved into a rousing game of Hide and Seek Keep-Away, with the human crying foul about how quick Spinel promptly used her elastic abilities for evil; which in this case, was pure evasion.

"No fair, Spinny!" Xana stamped her foot in displeasure, ignoring the small splash she made as she glared up at the lowest basin floating above the two of them where the wiggly gem had absconded to after she had gotten just a tad too close to catching the trickster for her liking; low though it was, it was still waaaay out of the woman's reach. "That's cheating!! You know I can't get up there!"

The pink jackass smirked like the little shit she was, peeking over the edge of the glittering stone bowl overflowing with water down at her and cackling like a hyena. "S'not cheatin' if they're my natural abilities, sweetheart! Don't be so salty~!"

"This powerless human will be as salty as she wants, thank you very much!" She complained with puffed up cheeks, turning away and holding her nose up in the air with a feigned sniff. The tall woman wasn't really angry of course, beyond a small bite of jealousy poking the back of her mind, but she couldn't help but feel the tiniest bit insignificant upon this reminder of her mediocrity.

Being a human with mostly average physical limits surrounded by essentially ageless aliens who could bench her whole weight without showing the slightest bit of strain was rather cool, sure, but it had its own special brand of sting; Xana wasn't ignorant to how Gems back home would look at her and her fellow humans as if a particularly strong summer's breeze would snap them in half if they weren't religiously watched like infants while hanging around the stronger race.

They meant well, Xana knew, but it still made her feel a bit sore. 'Here I am, with this boring human body...' She couldn't help but think, looking down at her reflection with a bit of shame and displeasure. 'Fragile and weak in comparison to her. What could she possibly like about all this squishiness? How could I even think I could ever be a match for her in the first place? Stupid, so so so stupid-'

"Doll? You okay?" Flickering her eyes away from the pensive blank stare she had unknowingly been giving the fountain's statue, the femme blinked upon seeing Spinel drifting down from the ledge above, one hand morphed into a small umbrella to soften the fall back into the pool. As she landed, hot pink eyes looked the human over with concern. "Did... I make ya mad? I was only jokin' with ya-"

"Pfff, nah," the curly-haired woman quickly shook her head, shooting her smaller friend a small smile to assuage her worry before turning her gaze back towards the statue with a thoughtful hum, "You're fine, silly. I was just... Lost in thought."

"Oh. Okay..." Spinel murmured a bit anxiously, clasping her hands together and brows furrowing. "A pearl for yer thoughts, maybe? I'm a pretty good listener all things considered, heh." The little entertainer smiled encouragingly as Xana returned her gaze to her friend. Upon seeing the uneasy care and kindness she was radiating, the woman's somewhat conflicted eyes softened.

'Bad Xana. Those are bad thoughts and you know it. She must like something about you, otherwise she wouldn't have stuck around you for two years. All that time has to count for something, right?' Sucking in a deep breath and holding it for a long moment, she exhaled with a vengeance, kicking out all the self-doubt causing discord in her head on its ass. 'Right. This is a good day, with your best friend, and you shouldn't let thoughts like that ruin your good time.'

"It's nothing, really." The woman then assured, reaching up to pet the pink comedian's head, who's eyes widened upon seeing a much more placid expression wipe away the half-pained, half-resigned one that had originally been there. "Just self-deprecating stuff... Thinking about how I'm not good enough, that sort of thing. You know how it is." Spinel frowned, but nodded; she knew that feeling well, after all. "But that stuff doesn't matter right now. What matters is that I'm here, with you." Xana smiled sweetly down at the gem's reddening face and chuckling. "My favorite person in the whole universe."

How was Spinel's gem not blinding everyone in the room right now? She could have sworn that any stray water droplets on her had evaporated into thin air with how hot she suddenly felt. "I'm... Yer favorite person? Me???"

No hesitation. "Yup~! No one else comes close."

"...W-What about Steven??"

Still no hesitation. "Second favorite."

"What?!"

"Well, he's the reason I got to meet you in the first place, isn't he?"

"Oh. W-Well, I mean, I... I guess..." The entertainer averted her eyes to the side, seemingly engrossed by whatever she thinking about. Her eyes flickered over their reflections thoughtfully before moving her hand to take Xana's own. "...Yer my favorite too, Doll, y'know that...?"

...This was officially the best day ever.

"I-I am?" The lone human managed to squeak out, face pinked and cobalt eyes glittering happily in the refracted light washing over them both. Spinel's own flush deepened as she stared hard at their image, but she nodded while muttering under her breath as if such a thing was hard for her to admit.

"Uh-huh..." Xana couldn't help it; giggles bubbled up her throat and past her lips as she pressed her empty hand against her face in pure elation. Spinel watched, perplexed, and maybe even a little worried. "What? What's wrong??"

"Nothing! I just... Haha, oh wow-" Glancing back at her through her splayed fingers, she smiled bashfully like the awkward creature she was. "I've never been anyone's favorite anything before!"

The small jester stared, wide-eyed, before a determined expression twisted her rosy mien--Her arms stretched out and looped around Xana's squishy form before pulling the human into the biggest hug she could manage. "Well, that's jus' stupid! Yer wonderful an' everyone should be able ta see it! Is everyone blind or somethin'?!" An amused snort was her answer, royal blues rolling playfully back at her.

"Not eeeeveryone I meet needs to like me, Spins." Xana crooned teasingly, snickering as she patted her back to mollify her ire.

"I don't see why not!" Spinel responded, incensed and frowning with a condensed brow. The gem honestly looked offended on her behalf. "Yer amazing! Anyone would be lucky ta have ya as a pal!"

"It would honestly be weird," The tall woman answered, shrugging her shoulders with a smile, "I don't need a nation's worth of fair-weather friends. Not when I have a handful of people so good to me that I consider them family. Who needs 'em when I have the Crystal Gems?" Without even thinking about it, she lifted a lithe hand to cup it gently against one of Spinel's streaked cheeks, humming gently at the pretty scarlet they promptly turned at the touch. She seemed conflicted as to whether or not she wanted to lean into the contact, especially when Xana started to rub gentle circles against the streaks with her thumb. "Not to mention you."

For a split second, Xana thought the gem's rosy pupils flickered into the shape of hearts but the frankly charming sight was gone before her brain could properly process it.

The comedian glanced away self-consciously, giving an embarrassed chuckle. "M'sure m'not all that great compared to the otha's but m'still glad ya think of me that way, Toots." She flinched as the human made a sound of acute outrage at in response, her hand moving to grasp the pink dynamo's chin and turn her head so she could look her dead in the eyes sternly.

Xana knew that this moment was drifting dangerously far away from being just a strictly 'friendly' heart to upside-down heart... And she wouldn't lie, her head was screaming at her to shut the hell up before she said something too revealing.

But.

The woman couldn't help but think. It was clear that today, while meant to be an innocently affectionate outing celebrating their time together, was turning into something a bit more... intimate. Which while flustering the hell out of her, Xana couldn't help but feel hopeful about. Spinel was a kooky and wild little rascal of a gem, but she was anything but stupid; Xana's earlier idiotic slip of the tongue (well, way more than a slip really) was a hopelessly obvious sign that she was longing for more than just a friendship with the rosy entertainer and considering her aversion for anything at all stronger than friendship, Spinel hadn't been? Dismissive?? Quite the opposite, in fact, even if she had panicked very quickly after her own little slip. And even as oblivious as she herself was, the human had noticed the gem's excessive staring when she thought she wasn't looking.

So she couldn't help but have the incredibly implausible and shakingly brittle optimism that maybe, just maybe, her beguin possibly returned her tender feelings.

The dark-skinned human had known that she had deep feelings for her pink friend for about six months or so now. And it was rather unlikely that Spinel would be the first to say anything; if she really did feel the same way, that is. And though she was absolutely terrified of being rejected, the human woman was starting to feel like that maybe she was more afraid of never telling Spinel the truth.

Xana hated being dishonest. It went against every single one of her morals; she had promised herself, at a very young age, that she wouldn't be anything like her derisive father or her vagabond mother. They were liars, traitors, the truest scum of the earth. She always told the truth, even if it was to her detriment because she knew that her parents could never do the same.

And wasn't keeping a secret technically lying? What if it was her brain that was holding her back and her heart was the one in the right place?

Besides, human life was short. Fragile. Startingly inconsequential in comparison to a Gem's practically immortal lifespan. Humans risked their lives every day by simply breathing. Xana knew she could be dead and gone tomorrow from a mere stupid accident or from some random person who didn't give enough of a damn about those around them. That was something she had learned and accepted at a very young age. She had seen what regret could do to a person; seen grief and sorrow and rage twist and warp a good person's psyche until they were bitter and practically unrecognizable. Risk was inevitable. Unavoidable.

You either took a chance to improve your life or learned to live with the regret of never taking the opportunity.

So the real question was...

Could Xana live with that regret if she stayed quiet for the rest of her life?

.....

"If the only Gem I could see on a daily basis for the rest of my life was you, I'd be the happiest human to ever exist." The woman boldly proclaimed, her answer giving her the confidence to force the words from her lips. She flushed as Spinel's eyes promptly widened to the size of saucers but she held firm, maintaining eye contact. "You give me something to look forward to when I wake up in the morning and I know I'll be able to see you."

Xana felt her stomach quiver and tremble with anxiety as the pink gem simply stared, slack-jawed, and she felt her confidence waver enough to make her look away, even though her hand remained on her friend's jaw brushing away what spare droplets landed close to her thumb. "Sorry if that's embarrassing or weird to hear, but, uh... It's true."

For a long jittery moment, the only sound between the two of them was the roaring of various Gem-Made waterfalls hitting the bottom and the distant quiet conversations of the other Gems nearby; Xana's chest felt tight with building panic and just barely managed to hold back a flinch when a gentle touch fluttered against the skin of her cheek.

"Ya... Really mean that." Azure eyes flickered back up to spy the warm, almost disbelieving countenance searching her own, as if she just couldn't understand how or why Xana could think so highly of her. "Ya really like bein' around me that much...?"

Relaxing with understanding, the curly-haired woman nodded once, wondering if her blush had stained her cheeks permanently yet. "Mmhm~. My favorite person, remember? I always enjoy myself when I'm with you."

This time, Xana knew for a fact Spinel's eyes morphed into hearts, compounded by the wobbly (lovesick? or was she reading too much into it?) simper that she was sporting as well.

'So cute...'

Still, not wanting to overwhelm her, Xana backed up a step, smiling assuringly at the somewhat dazed and delighted expression hazily watching her movements. "Besides," A content sigh left her as she refocused on the feeling of the water brushing up against her ankles and then her calves, smiling as she leaned down to cup a bit of water into her palms and then toss it into the air with a happy shout that snapped the gem out of her distracted rumination, "A day playing in water is never not fun!"

Eyes sparkling with admiration and a wide grin stretching her face, Spinel whooped for joy at the infectious enthusiasm. "H-Haha, you said it!" She cheered loudly, speeding around Xana like the roadrunner before grabbing onto one of the higher basins and flinging herself up, landing inside with a spin and slinging water a great distance all around her. She received several complaints from nearby gems who consequently got splashed for her efforts and replied very maturely by sticking out her tongue and making faces at them, gleefully cackling as she turned to finally grin back down at Xana.

The femme smiled back, watching her infatuation bound around the tiny floating islands with a soft knowing chuckle; that had been... a bit heavy. The little jester probably needed a bit of time to process all of that.

But!! Spinel's reaction!! Was not at all discouraging!! That was... just incredible to Xana! Maybe she had a chance after all!

However, she had to be subtle--Being too bold or too forceful could end up with Spinel being scared off and Xana certainly didn't want that. She was prepared to play the long game for this one. After all, she had waited two years to get a clue and woman up; she'd wait as long as she'd need to.

For Spinel, it'd be absolutely worth it.

They weren't sure how long they played in the ever-moving waters of the fountain, laughing and playing little games with each other, but it was for quite a while. Spinel could have stayed there for another 6000 years with Xana and she wouldn't have noticed time passing them by.

And that really said it all, didn't it?

As she watched Xana study the architecture of the fountain with fascinated eyes and shyly converse with a few curious Gems that had never seen a human before, the elastic jester sunk a bit deeper into her floating pool a ways above and let herself... ponder. About her human.

Today had been a bit of a rollercoaster so far. Being around Xana always tended to make Spinel feel like she was dizzy or drunk with happiness, but this was way different. She had bounced from excited to embarrassed to smug and just cycled through those emotions like that one spinning ride back at Beach City's Funland.

At the moment though? She was... content. Yeah, that was the word. This was a quiet kind of joy, and that was okay. She didn't have to try to be entertaining or try to do what she was originally made for when it came to Xana--They just complemented each other. Xana soothed the dark thoughts that always brewed in the back of her mind, while Spinel gave her the confidence to shine like the star she had always knew she was. The valleys of self-doubt felt less steep when her human was there beside her, while the mountains of their combined glee made Spinel feel like she was soaring.

Their relationship was easy. Natural. Equal.

In two years, a human had done what a Diamond couldn't do in two thousand.

And those years had flown by so fast. To Spinel, it felt like she had blinked and all that time had just disappeared. Granted, such little time was like a single grain of sand on a beach to a gem, but to a human? Such time was precious, for they had so little of it.

And Xana had given it to her like it was nothing. And declared she'd continue doing so without a second thought.

That... That meant a lot.

'Even with how wrong and damaged I am,' Spinel thought, head placed on her crossed arms as she surveyed Xana gently tracing one of the colorful murals displayed with a slender finger, 'she's stayed by my side when she didn't 'ave ta. Even when I yelled, or pushed her away, or cried for whole days at a time... It's rare ta find a person willin' to do all that for ya, isn't it...?' She exhaled deeply through her nose, eyes softening as she witnessed Xana pick up a group of pebbles gathering around her feet and start chatting with them excitedly, clearly taken by how small and cute they were. 'Is that what people who love ya do?'

The thought came unexpectedly, giving her pause.

...Funny how certain words just kept turning up.

It was like the whole universe was trying to tell her something. And Spinel knew what that something was.

She was just afraid to face it.

The word itself still felt a bit... Raw to her, like something abrasive was being scratched against her gem. After all, she had been made to love unconditionally from the very beginning, to be a friend that would always be there, and had only received indifference and betrayal in return for it in the past. The idea of setting herself up for that again frightened the hell out the comedian. She had gotten better with being friendly with others, sure, and she was rather proud of that, but that wasn't the problem. Making friends was easy.

Trusting them?

That was a whooooole other ballgame.

Even with the Diamonds, who had been nothing but sweet and kind to her when they took her home with them so long ago, she wondered every now and again if when they looked at her, they saw the second chance they never got to have with Pink.

But Xana was different. She had been a clean slate, and even if she had fucked up a couple of times with her, her human hadn't thrown her away. She stayed.

She stayed.

...Why?

What compelled her to stick by her side for so long?

Did she pity Spinel?

Hm. Maybe... She supposed it was hard not to, all things considered; but just pity couldn't justify two whole years, right? No, there had to be something else.

Maybe it was because their traumas were similar to a degree; birds of a feather and all that... But no, that didn't make much sense either.

Spinel soon had the thought that maybe Xana was waiting for Spinel to be the one to leave first so she wouldn't hurt her feelings, and shamefully thought about this a bit longer than she should have before dismissing that answer. She knew Xana, and Spinel felt guilty that she had thought so little of her for even a second. The human had an integrity that was extremely hard to find; she said what she meant and didn't beat around the bush, even if she knew how to sugarcoat and soften the blow of honesty's sting. She wasn't a liar.

She wasn't Pink.

So then... What could the reason be?

...

......Was it... Love?

Was that really what it was?

Did Xana...?

Was Spinel...?

"...I'm in love with my best friend, aren't I...?" She whispered to herself, a whole cocktail of emotions roiling around in her unseeing gaze at the ripples of water far below. "...Am I really going to let myself make that mistake again...?"

...

No.

This... This wasn't a mistake.

Xana couldn't be anything classified as a mistake.

This had occurred naturally, hadn't it? It wasn't something she felt obligated to feel. She hadn't forced this. She hadn't wished for this.

It just... Happened. At its own pace.

Like everything else had when it came to her relationship with Xana.

..............

Spinel took a deep breath before exhaling slowly, feeling something inside her tighten at this realization but also... Calm? As if she was relieved?? Just how long had she been denying herself that release?

This...

This was...

...Oof.

'I need ta talk ta her.'

Finally coming back to reality, Spinel sat up out of her recline with a purpose and blinked when she realized Xana was no longer where she saw her last. A small worry flared up behind her gem as her eyes flickered around for her friend's form, relief soon shooing it away upon seeing her form sitting near the ledge where they had first entered with only her feet submerged in the crystal clear water. She had her foot thong thingies close to her hip, eyes closed with a relaxed smile on her lips, and feet lightly kicking at the water. Her hands seemed to be massaging at her legs...

Concerned, the little comedian lurched to her pool's little lip and forcefully shook herself dry before springing over the basin and landing with a noisy squeak beside the human woman. "Heya sugarplum, is somethin' the mattah'?"

Xana stiffened, her eyes flying open with a startled gasp before whipping her head around to give Spinel an 'are you serious?!' kind of look. "Spinny! By the stars, you scared me..." She griped, a hand coming up to clutch at the space above her heart with a pout. "Didn't I tell ya to warn a gal before you do something like that? You know I don't do well with being scared."

The gem smiled apologetically, a guilty blush staining her face as her ponytails drooped at the deserved reprimand. "Sorry, toots... Didn't mean ta startle ya, promise. Jus' noticed you were rubbin' at your legs a lil' there, an' I got a bit worried." She replied, glancing down at said motion. She tried her hardest not to stare for too long. "S'wrong? C'n I help wit' anythin'?"

"Ohhh. Nah, it's alright. My legs just started getting tired because I was standing up for so long, so I sat down." The wild-haired woman shrugged, before smiling at the gem. "Thanks for caring though! That's sweet of you."

"'Course Dollface, s'my pleasure." Spinel chuckled softly, casting a shy look towards the water before looking up as Xana poked her in the arm to regain her attention.

"So, uh, hey, you said you wanted to do something else after this right? Don't get me wrong, I'm loving this place, but I wanna see everything you had planned before I get too tired." The tall woman reminded before lifting a hand to her mouth, managing to suppress a tiny yawn. "Human limitations and stuff, y'know?'

Oh, right. Crap. She forgot Xana needed that sleep stuff. "O-Oh yeah, right! Um. Hmmm. I didn't really 'ave anythin' else planned other than just wanderin' around and seein' the sights... I guess we could go to my room if you want to?" As soon as Spinel suggested the idea, she coughed a bit as she remembered a slightly important detail she had managed to forget and tried to backtrack. "There's, uh, not much ta see in there though..."

Ha, fat chance. It was clear Xana had latched onto the suggestion immediately, evidenced the excited and mischievous glint in her deep blue eyes.

"Hey now, you're not gonna get out of this THAT easy!" Xana cackled with glee, grinning over at the wily gem with a great amount of anticipation in her eyes. "Even if there's not much in there, you can tell a lot about a person by looking in their room! Besides, you practically ransacked mine the first time I invited you into it~."

She just haaaaad to bring that up, didn't she? Spinel's cheeks flushed red as she gave a pout, embarrassed. "Yer neva' gonna let that go, are ya?"

"I'll let it go when I'm six feet under." Xana snorted, pulling her legs out of the water and hauling herself up with a soft groan. She waggled her feet to flick off any remaining droplets clinging to her skin before putting on her flip-flops again with a raised brow pointed back down at her little pink friend as if to say 'Well? Whatcha waitin' for?'

Triumph flashed in her eyes as Spinel promptly threw her head far back with a loud groan. "Fiiiiiiiiine, whateva'!! But if yer gonna insist-" Making a quick bounce off the floor, the pink alien did a somersault in the air to land seated on the human's shoulders, much to her immense surprise.

"What in the name of-?!"

"There, that's bettah'!" With a loud cackle as Xana stumbled before catching her balance, she pointed off in the direction of the corridor opposite they had arrived from. "Onwards my noble steed!"

Barely managing to right herself, she puffed out her cheeks in a pout and glared up at the little magenta heathen, exasperation in her gaze. "I don't recall agreeing to be a taxi service!"

"It was in th' contract of demandin' to see my livin' space." Not that Spinel was complaining too much; only she and the Diamonds were allowed in her room and she knew the Diamonds currently weren't around. At the very least, it would give Spinel a private place to try and talk to her human.

"I didn't sign anything, I am not legally bound in the slightest." The woman huffed, yet still wrapped her arms carefully around the dangling legs on her shoulders to keep the slinky from falling off as she walked off in the direction indicated. "Fine, ya menace, but only because you're you."

Smirking smugly, she flopped her upper half against the back of Xana's head and giggling mischievously as she gave an annoyed grunt. "Good girl~. Jus' listen ta what I say, and yer gonna be juuuuus' fine."

The dark-skinned female knew, of course, that Spinel had meant that in a joking way but apparently her heart hadn't received the memo considering the stuttering it gave at the somewhat suggestive sounding statement. "Of course your majesty~." She cooed back in a snarky way to keep any possible attention away from her reddened face as they come upon a set of truly gigantic doorways. "Whatever Princess Spinel doth require, I am bound to comply~."

The gem snorted in reply, "Hey, I ain't a princess! The closest thing we have ta a princess is Steven. If anythin', M'a great an' brave knight!" She declared with an air of great self-importance.

"Hehe, I feel like if I tell Steven that, he'd get annoyed." Xana thought aloud with a snicker. "Do forgive me, my lady! Spinel the Just I shall refer to you then!" The two of them bantered back and forth as they left behind the fountain, both caring a newfound knowledge within their minds as they did.

And the waters trickled on sweetly.

[the-desolated-quill]

Good Omens, Queerbaiting And Death Of The Author - Quill’s Scribbles

I confess this is the most reluctant I’ve ever been to write a Scribble. When this topic came up, I remember just groaning and putting my head in my hands because I knew that, due to the nature of what I tend to write about on this blog and the fact that I’m an out and out biromantic demisexual queerbo, people would be asking me to contribute to the discourse. And honestly I don’t particularly want to. I don’t get to enjoy many films and TV shows anymore thanks to the industry doing their very best to ruin everything they touch. Can’t I just watch one good TV show without being dragged into some ideological battle?

Okay. Guess I can’t really put this off any longer.

On the 31st May, the long awaited adaptation of Good Omens was released on Amazon Video. I thought it was quite good. Not perfect. There are some things I could criticise, but overall it was a worthy adaptation of the source material and it was very enjoyable to watch. And that seems to be the general consensus with both critics and fans. However over the past couple of months since its release, a ‘controversy’ began to emerge within the fandom regarding the show’s main characters Aziraphale and Crowley. See, a large proportion of both the media and the Good Omens fanbase have interpreted the angel/demon double act as being gay, but this has sparked a backlash from some fans with them going so far as to accuse the show of queerbaiting as the show never explicitly confirms the characters’ sexuality. This then led to a backlash to the backlash, sparking a whole debate as to what constitutes good LGBT representation. Not only that, Neil Gaiman, the showrunner and original co-author of Good Omens, has stubbornly refused to confirm one way or the other whether or not Aziraphale and Crowley are more than just good friends, which has added further fuel to the fire.

Now before we go any further, I just want to disavow one argument that I see cropping up a lot and that really gets under my skin. That Aziraphale and Crowley can’t possibly be gay because they’re not men. They’re genderless beings that feel no sexual attraction. The implication being that the characters are asexual, but the way you hear people going on about it, the Ineffable Husbands seem less asexual and more like soulless robots. First off, you do know asexual people feel love too, right? We’re not Vulcans. Second, can we stop this ridiculous logic that they can’t be gay because they’re not men? It reminds me of the ‘controversy’ that surrounded Mass Effect 3 when BioWare confirmed that you could play as a gay male Commander Shepard. When people pointed out to the critics and haters that you could already play as a gay Shepard if you picked FemShep and pursued Liara, they retorted by saying that Liara doesn’t count as a woman because she’s a ‘monogendered alien.’ And my response to that was... so? She still looks like a woman and she still uses female pronouns. If FemShep is attracted to her, there’s a good chance she might be gay. It really is that simple. Aziraphale and Crowley may be genderless, but they look like men and use male pronouns. So if they were attracted to each other, they just might be gay. Period.

Anyway. Tangent over. Lets talk about Aziraphale and Crowley. You might be wondering where I stand on this whole issue. Do I believe that Aziraphale and Crowley are gay? Well honestly it depends on which version we’re talking about here. If we’re talking about the book version, I would say probably not. Don’t get me wrong. I’m almost certain book Aziraphale is gay as there are a number of references that seem to suggest that. His bookshop is in Soho, which is famous for its thriving LGBT community, the narrator mentions him going to a ‘discreet gentlemen’s club’ in the 1800s, and there’s of course this brilliant line:

“Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.”

So yeah. There was never a doubt in my mind that book Aziraphale was gay. (And before anyone comments saying that the next line mentions that Aziraphale isn’t gay because angels are sexless unless they make the effort, let me ask you something. Who, out of all the characters in the book, does he make a genuine effort for? Aha!). Book Crowley on the other hand isn’t quite so clear cut. Sure there are occasional flashes of something, but it could easily just be interpreted as being gestures of friendship rather than romance. Personally I always saw book Crowley as being more aromantic/asexual. In fact their relationship reminded me a lot of my relationship with my best friend. I’m more like Aziraphale, due to being very camp, somewhat old fashioned and often quite emotional, whereas my friend is like Crowley in that she displays a facade of confidence to mask her insecurities and is extremely loyal to her friends. Now please note I’m not trying to destroy anyone’s personal headcanon here. I know for a fact many LGBT people have interpreted and drawn inspiration from Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship for nearly 30 years since the book first came out in 1990, and I wouldn’t dream of depriving anyone of that. I’m just merely describing how I personally interpreted the characters when I read it.

So, while book Aziraphale is almost definitely gay in my opinion, I personally don’t think they were anything more than just good friends. Do I think the same about the TV version? Actually no. In fact completely the opposite. I think TV Aziraphale and Crowley are 100%, unquestionably and unashamedly in love with each other and this view is supported by the extra material Neil Gaiman has written for them, most notably the 30 minute long cold open of the third episode that shows Aziraphale and Crowley’s blossoming relationship over the course of human history, as well as how the show frames them. We hear the kind of swelling, orchestral music you would hear in a romance when Crowley saves Aziraphale’s books from a WW2 bomb, the scenes where the two argue about running away to Alpha Centauri are presented as being like a legitimate breakup (with the addition of some random passerby telling Aziraphale he’s ‘better off without him’), the other angels occasionally refer to Crowley as being Aziraphale’s boyfriend (albeit in a mocking way), and the way Michael Sheen and David Tennant play the characters makes them feel much more like an old married couple rather than being simply friends. There’s even a wonderful moment in the third episode where Crowley asks Aziraphale if he could give him a ride somewhere, to which Aziraphale responds “you go too fast for me Crowley.” It leaves very little room for doubt in my opinion, and yet Neil Gaiman refuses to verbally confirm this, even though the actors and the director have expressed numerous times that they interpreted the characters as such. Not only that, but the writing and filmmaking leaves just enough room for plausible deniability, never explicitly confirming the relationship. So the question remains, does this count as legitimate LGBT representation or is this just a very advanced form of queerbaiting?

Well first it would be useful to talk about what queerbaiting actually is, because a lot of people arguing against Good Omens don’t seem to fully understand the term. Queerbaiting is when a creator hints at a possible same sex romance without ever actually confirming or depicting the relationship. A recent example of this would be Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series. 

JK Rowling first ‘outed’ Dumbledore as gay back in 2007, saying he was in a relationship with the dark wizard Grindelwald, but unless you read the interview, you would never have known this because the book doesn’t provide any sort of hint or clue or reference to that relationship. Worse still, when given the opportunity to rectify this in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald, Rowling chose instead to downplay the relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald significantly. This is queerbaiting. Implying a character might be gay or promising to introduce a gay character only to then backtrack or not fully commit. Another example would be Avengers: Endgame where the Russo Brothers announced there was going to be a gay character in the film only for it to be some nameless guy who’s only on screen for about a minute. It revolves around luring people in with the expectation of LGBT representation only to then snatch it away once they’ve got bums in seats.

(Also, just to clarify, queerbaiting is not when a bisexual or pansexual character becomes romantically involved with someone of the opposite sex. Yes it’s important that we see more bisexual and pansexual characters and yes it’s important we see more same sex couples on screen, but do NOT conflate the two. Deadpool’s pansexuality, for instance, isn’t suddenly invalid just because he has a girlfriend).

So, with this in mind, does Good Omens fit the criteria of queerbaiting. Well the sexuality of the characters are often the focal point of many interviews, with the director and actors explicitly describing Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship as ‘a love story.’ Most notably Michael Sheen, who plays Aziraphale and who has been carrying a torch for the Ineffable Husbands since Good Omens came out. But unlike JK Rowling and the Russos, the makers of Good Omens can back up their words with content. As mentioned above, the way the show frames the relationship makes the implication quite clear. There’s even a bit where Crowley thinks Aziraphale has been killed and he leaves the burning bookshop while ‘Somebody To Love’ is playing in the background. It isn’t really very subtle. So, by my understanding, queerbaiting doesn’t seem particularly accurate when talking about Good Omens. The issue here is one of presentation. The overt subtext is all well and good, but does the fact that there’s no explicit confirmation of their relationship make it invalid? To answer that question, we must look into another relevant term. Queercoding.

Queercoding is when a character is given the traits typically associated with those commonly attributed to gay people, such as effeminate behaviour or ostentatious dress sense. This is used often as a way of getting queer relationships past the censor. Implying a character might be gay without explicitly confirming it for fear of the studio or publisher putting their foot down.

While queercoding is often intrinsically linked to queerbaiting, it’s worth noting that while queerbaiting is always seen as a negative (and rightly so), queercoding is neither positive nor negative. It’s merely a contextual device and can be positive or negative depending on execution. A positive example of queercoding would be Deadpool.

While the Merc with the Mouth has never been officially outed as pansexual, both the comics and the movies in particular have framed him as someone who doesn’t conform to heteronormative expectations. The marketing of both movies present Deadpool in traditionally feminine poses as a way of mocking and commenting on how gender is perceived in these kinds of tentpole blockbusters. The comics often make fairly explicit references towards Deadpool’s sexual flexibility for the purposes of humour, such as in his interactions with characters like Spider-Man or Thor.

The movies follow suit. The first movie is littered with moments where Deadpool alludes to being not entirely straight. He occasionally uses gay slang, we see his girlfriend Vanessa penetrate him with a strap-on during the sex montage, and there are frequent references to how sexy Hugh Jackman is, most notably near the beginning when Deadpool describes how he had to give Wolverine a handjob in order to get his own movie. The second movie meanwhile takes it a step further. Not only is the entirety of Deadpool 2 essentially one big allegory for how members of the LGBT community cope with abuse and discrimination, we also see Deadpool express a sexual interest in Colossus many times, the extended cut even going so far as to depict Deadpool trying to give him a blowjob.

Now as I said, Deadpool has never been officially outed as pansexual. That information comes from one of the comic book writers on Twitter. The comics and movies have never verbally confirmed it. We never hear Deadpool describe himself as such. But to say he’s not queer would be absurd because he clearly is. That’s how he’s framed and presented to us across the majority of media. What makes Deadpool a positive example of queercoding is how we view the character. He’s clearly extremely comfortable with expressing his own sexuality and feels no shame in his antics. While the majority of his queer moments are used for the purposes of humour, we’re always laughing with him, not at him.

Now lets take a look at a negative example of queercoding:

This is Moriarty from the BBC series Sherlock written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. Sherlock is without a doubt one of the worst adaptations of the canon that’s ever been made and the show’s treatment of Moriarty is a big reason for that. When he’s first introduced in The Great Game, when he’s posing as Molly’s boyfriend, Sherlock deduces that he’s gay based on really no evidence at all other than that he puts product in his hair and his underpants are showing. It’s ostensibly playing on that stereotype that any man who takes pride in their appearance isn’t masculine and therefore must be gay. (if that were true then David Beckham would be the gayest man on the fucking planet). While it becomes clear at the end of the episode that this was just an act Moriarty was putting on to fool Sherlock, he never really loses the metrosexual image. He boasts about his ‘Westwood’ clothes, we see him prance and preen like some over the top camp supervillain (more on that later) and he makes numerous double entendres that imply he’s interested in men, specifically Sherlock. There’s even a moment in The Reichenbach Fall where we see Moriarty sitting on a throne wearing the crown jewels. Ha! Do you get it? Because he’s a queen!

What makes this form of queercoding more offensive than Deadpool is, again, how we as the audience are supposed to perceive him. Moffat and Gatiss want us to laugh at Moriarty’s camp behaviour and they clearly find the prospect of shipping Moriarty and Sherlock utterly absurd, as demonstrated in the episode The Empty Hearse where we see the Sherlock fan club suggest Sherlock survived the fall because he and Moriarty were secretly lovers. This bit was there for no reason other than to take the piss out of Sherlock fans who read too much into the show’s intentional subtext. Also, crucially, Moriarty has no real character or backstory other than as a gay stereotype. He’s a lazily written caricature who serves no real purpose other than as a homophobic punchline. There’s a lot more to Deadpool than just being queer. With Moriarty however, there’s simply nothing underneath.

Moriarty is also an example of how queercoding is most commonly applied to villains. There are countless examples of this across various media over the years. The Joker from Batman, for instance. Ursula from The Little Mermaid. Scar from The Lion King. In these cases, whether intentionally or not, queercoding plants ideas of gender identity into the viewers’ heads. A male supervillain like the Joker is presented as being eccentric, arch and incredibly camp while Batman, the hero, is big and strong and serious and honourable. A manly man. Likewise, Ursula is presented as butch and unfeminine, scheming and malevolent, whereas Ariel is attractive and sweet and innocent. The ideal woman. Queercoded villains have been used to demonise the LGBT community for decades by presenting an ideal, hetronormative image of what a man or woman should be like, battling an antagonist that doesn’t fit in with traditional gender roles. Obviously there’s nothing inherently wrong with having a camp male villain or a distinctly unfeminine female villain, but it’s worth bearing in mind where these ideas originally came from and the impact it could potentially have.

So lets bring this back to Good Omens. The queercoding of Aziraphale and Crowley is obvious and it’s never presented in negative terms. (there’s a moment where Shadwell refers to Aziraphale as a pansy, but considering the man is a complete moron who draws eyes on milk bottles and thinks nipples are the gold standard way of identifying a witch, I think we can safely say he’s not to be taken seriously). In fact their relationship is incredibly sweet and endearing. Except... I can understand why Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman weren’t explicit in expressing the characters’ sexuality when the book was first published. It was 1990, both Pratchett and Gaiman were still relatively fresh faces and Western society’s attitudes toward homosexuality weren’t quite as progressive then as they are now. But it’s now 2019. Things have changed. Gay characters are appearing more frequently in books, movies and TV shows, people in general are more accepting of the LGBT community and Gaiman is now a hugely successful author with a lot of influence in the industry. Why not just make the relationship explicit?

Well there are two ways of looking at this. The first is that it really doesn’t need to be explicit. You would never hear a man and a woman talk about how incredibly hetero they are, would you? Actions speak louder than words after all. But when the two characters in question are of the same gender, suddenly the whole thing becomes a massive debate to the point where unless someone comes right out and says they are gay, people simply won’t buy it. Deadpool, tragically, has suffered from this with obnoxious frat boys deliberately glossing over the obvious queer subtext and hijacking the character for their own self-aggrandisement. This really shouldn’t be the case and this whole ‘straight until proven gay’ mindset isn’t the fault of the show. It’s entirely the fault of the viewer. The second involves our last topic of discussion. The Death of the Author. (no pun intended. RIP Pratchett).

Death of the Author refers to a literary essay written by the theorist Roland Barthes in 1967, which argues against critiquing a piece of literature based on authorial intent. Basically, once a book or movie or TV show is released to the general public, any relation to its creator becomes immaterial. The work in question must stand on its own and be judged independently. The intention of the author no longer matters. (I’m simplifying obviously, but that’s basically the gist of it. If you ever get the chance, read the essay yourself. It’s a fascinating read). Gaiman appears to be a firm believer in this philosophy. On his Tumblr account, @neil-gaiman, when asked about the the relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley, he often refuses to comment, invoking the Death of the Author mindset. It’s up the reader/viewer to interpret the characters. If you think they’re gay, then they’re gay. If you think they’re just friends, then they’re just friends. Some could call this a bit of a cop out, and you’re entitled to do so, but I understand where Gaiman is coming from. We’ve seen writers like JK Rowling get into trouble for queerbaiting, saying that she always intended for Dumbledore to be gay, but never actually showing any real evidence for it in the text, and Gaiman doesn’t want to fall into the same trap. Plus it demonstrates that Gaiman respects the views and interpretations of his fans, unlike Rowling who responded to criticism of her queerbaiting on Twitter with GIFs of people sticking their fingers in their ears and ‘blocking out the haters.’

In some ways I do feel very sorry for Gaiman. On the one hand he wants to stay true to his and Pratchett’s original vision, but on the other hand he doesn’t want to disappoint the hundreds of fans who do view the characters as being gay. Good Omens has been cited as an extremely positive influence on many queer readers, some even going so far as to say that it was this very book that allowed them to finally accept their identities and come out of the closet. Heartwarming stories like this can be found all over the web and hopefully many more will emerge now that the TV adaptation has been released. If Gaiman were to suddenly turn around in an interview one day and say ‘oh. No. Sorry. Aziraphale and Crowley were always intended to be just friends. You’re all wrong’, it would destroy people who invested so much in this relationship. Likewise, if he explicitly confirmed in an interview that the two characters are definitely gay, people would either accuse him of queerbaiting if the show doesn’t fully live up to their expectations or accuse him of shoving his political opinions down their throats. He can’t win either way really. That being said, I can’t help but respect Gaiman for sticking to his guns. It demonstrates that he’s confident in his skills as a writer and his ability to make his intentions clear in the text, that he respects the ideas and opinions of his readers and fans, and that he also respects the ideas and opinions of the cast and crew of the Good Omens TV show. While Gaiman has refused to confirm one way or the other, others like Michael Sheen or  director Douglas Mackinnon have made their views very clear. Aziraphale and Crowley are in love. That’s their interpretation and they have every right to it.

So do I believe Good Omens is queerbaiting? In my opinion, no. Does that mean I believe it’s faultless? Again, no. If the intention is to depict Aziraphale and Crowley as being lovers, then I think they could have done a bit more. Obviously I’m not suggesting a full blown sex scene or anything like that. Even something as simple as them holding hands or hugging each other would have done. Some physical intimacy of some kind. Because as it stands, Good Omens does share problems with a lot of other TV shows in how they present same sex couples, in that they’re consciously aware that they are presenting to a heterosexual viewer. This is why a relationship between two women is often sexualised and eroticised for the titillation of straight men whereas the relationship between two men can often be quite chaste. Very rarely do you see two men making out or doing anything beyond a quick peck. Good Omens sadly fits into that camp, though just to be clear, I’m not blaming Neil Gaiman or the show for this. I’m merely saying that this is part of a wider systemic issue that needs to be talked about and addressed as the industry moves forward. (Hell, that might as well be be the title of my entire Tumblr profile). Also, whether you believe the relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley is platonic or romantic, it does not change the impact this story has had on many LGBT readers nor the fact that the story is about love. It’s important to bear this in mind because while, yes, it is important to have this discussion, we can’t lose sight of the positive message it conveys with regards to building bridges and closing divides between opposing groups.

“And perhaps the recent exertions had had some fallout in the nature of reality because, while they were eating, for the first time ever, a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square. No one heard it over the noise of the traffic, but it was there, right enough.”

[scarlettlawyer]

Phantoms and Mirages Commentary, Part 2

(Part 1 here)

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 11

Simon hadn’t expected the phrase ‘how you say’ to be uttered by a foreigner outside of fiction, but there it was.

HAHAHAAA. Now that’s what I call good foreshadowing! I also found this sentence rather interesting the first time around because I was, in fact, reading a work of fiction. But also, I thought to myself “hmm… you know, sometimes stereotypes/clichés can be echoed in reality.” I found it quite interesting that the text chose to comment on the choice of words like this (obviously not knowing the truth of Domestique’s grasp of English), and it managed to make me go “well I suppose it could happen?” And just kind of, accept it as an occurrence that really could happen in real life, albeit not often, and certainly not as often as fiction likes to suggest.

It was like a sentence that contained a lampshade hanging, a touch of self-awareness in that this is a fictional story, and something that encouraged me to think how it would be for me to hear a non-native English speaker say this IRL all in one. If I did hear a foreigner say “how you say” (assuming that their English was extremely basic to the extent that they’d struggle to really say anything), I really would not give it too much thought, after all. I’m pretty sure I have heard “how to say” used before IRL in the same manner.

The text saying “it’s weird to hear this said outside of fiction” is a double-edged sword going, “…and this is another fictional instance to add to the list, reiterating this fact” but also “in the context of the writing and the universe, I encourage you to think that this is a “real” instance within the story”.

And then the lampshade hanging actually becomes foreshadowing in retrospect, and ACTUALLY reiterates the idea that it’s a stereotypical type of foreigner-talk not really seen in real life – a go-to for someone faking a lack of English. So much invoked and going on here just in this really brief sentence/moment…

This story, with its later reveal, goes, “actually, we’re not going to have a foreigner talk in an extremely stereotyped way, EVEN if this fact is drawn attention to!”

He remembered the imposter questioning him about his sexuality. At first, he had insisted that it didn’t matter- that it could be whatever the imposter wanted it to be, because he hadn’t ever acted on it.

Man, back when I made this post, I was not even up to this part yet! I didn’t realise the text itself would bring it up so directly. Of course, you have Blackquill earlier going “if Bobby is gay, the phantom must have also known that Bobby is gay”, but I didn’t realise at that time it had actually been a direct question type deal as my post had joked. (Because, for example, if Bobby was open about being gay it could have been overheard mentioned in conversation by the phantom, or if Bobby had previous relationships that the phantom knew about, things like that, since I didn’t have the Full Picture earlier on in the story and for all I knew at that time, Bobby had been openly gay.) So, this small moment actually makes my joke post totally redundant from the “the phantom has to ask Bobby his sexual preferences” angle. XD. But, in fact, this is actually a recurring theme that happened to me as I read these fics. As the series went onwards, I found more and more that it didn’t matter how I joked, the jokes were being rendered totally redundant by the actual source material. I couldn’t believe it – it was amazing and I loved it. I tried to JOKE but the jokes were becoming REAL and often intertwoven with the very core of the fic’s narrative. At a certain point, I just gave up and stopped joking, because I realised it seemed there was essentially nothing I could say or do that the series wasn’t prepared to take up with absolute seriousness and execute, often in a brilliant manner (or include as a joke of its own). I realised that I kinda just had to “shut up and keep reading”, as it were. You were always two steps ahead.

Even if you go back to the very first chapter, which for the most part is very gloomy and depressing, but you still have the phantom interrogating Bobby as to whether he’s “a cat or a dog person”. This exact hypothetical occurrence has been subject to joke posts. Naturally, because it’s such a minor and inconsequential detail, and it’s a lighthearted topic. Now, I know, that the phantom would still very much (feel the) need to know the answer to those sorts of things anyway. You would think they would rely on observation, eavesdropping, approaching Bobby through a different persona to get the answers, etc, and yes, in your fic he does in fact do all of those things in addition to interrogation and questioning. I didn’t find him throwing out the question to Bobby at the start of the fic particularly realistic, but then again, there’s likely hundreds of small inconsequential details he found out through alternative methods, and these were just leftover questions that he still wanted answers to. At the time I started the fic, I just accepted it despite my scepticism because of willing suspension of disbelief and the fact that it’s kinda funny(?). Like, you have this super serious scene detailing a truly awful situation that Bobby is in, but the phantom being like “are you a cat or a dog person???” has an inherent ability to invoke some kind of amusement. (Although mind you, I was too busy focusing on Bobby’s REALLY sucky situation to be truly amused at the time). Back then, I chose to overlook the “realism” aspect, not least because I liked the idea of him asking Bobby this, but now, I can fully accept it because your writing is just that good; meaning I know you’ve thought through things like that quite thoroughly already, and like I said, these were probably just leftover questions he hadn’t had time to use alternative means to get the answers to at that point, anyway.

Still, the new Fulbright had claimed that it ‘didn’t work that way’ and that he needed to know the details for certain.

Phantom: please I’m begging you don’t force me to make any decision on your behalf. I hate doing that, or at least I would if I could really feel hate. I have no real personality and therefore no real basis to pick and choose. I need a framework to work with here, dammit!

XD

You know! In spite of my initial reactions to changed!Bobby, it’s really interesting and kind of thrilling to see him be ‘cruder’ and more open. I quite liked it. It pops up a few times and it’s always fun! Unlike my reactions to things like his smoking (which, of course, he later gives up), by the time I’ve settled down to the idea of a changed Bobby, seeing him say some things that original!Bobby would never say don’t give me any real discomfort that makes me yell “YOU’RE NOT BOBBY!”. Rather, having already eased somewhat into a changed Bobby, I can accept it and in fact believe it as a solid part of his new character. Not only that, but I like the new character that has emerged after having been Randy Liberate. Bobby Fulbright reasserting himself, but it’s unrealistic that he’d be exactly the same as he was before. The smoking or complete abandonment of ideals of justice are what I balk at because it’s not really the core of who Bobby is, and that’s why these things are ultimately done away with as Bobby leaves Randy Liberate behind. But a newly acquired openness, crudeness and wariness/cynicism of justice remain, and I don’t balk at those – I accept them as part of who the new Bobby is. I love the original Bobby to bits, but I also like what the new Bobby brings too.

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 12

However, the notion remained that if indeed there was a second accomplice, that person was still out there. Perhaps aiding the Phantom even now.

Perhaps… 🤔 I wonder, where on earth could they be? 😉 “PERHAPS aiding the Phantom even NOW”, oh you must have enjoyed writing that line.

The Phantom’s second accomplice was Domestique LaSoote. The man who’d aided in the Phantom’s release was sitting right there in his living room.

THE MOMENT this is brought to light, I was immediately like “OH. Yeah, so that means that’s not Bobby – it’s the phantom. No question. Game over. Get out Blackquill, now, for your own sake, please, but in an unsuspicious way.” Or, at the very least, you literally can’t verify for sure and you should always veer on the side of caution with these things. ALWAYS assume the worst. Or, a game of trying to discreetly determine if it’s the real Bobby without tipping the phantom off if its not Bobby. Aaaaaaah.

“Fulbright, I need to speak with you for a moment. In private, if you will.”

SIMON WATCH OUT, THAT’S NOT BOBBY FULBRIGHT IT’S THE PHANTOM. OH MY GOD HE HAS AIRPODS IN HE CAN’T HEAR ME. OH MY G

SIMON WHY-

All I know is that if it was me, my immediate thought would be “if he’s the phantom’s accomplice, that would leave the phantom easily able to come in and take Bobby’s place – therefore I can’t know if that’s the real Bobby or the phantom.” But Simon acted fast and had a lot on his mind and to take in. I’m sure if he had just a little bit more time to process what he realised, he would have clued on quickly too.

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 13

Okay, I actually did get very afraid that Taka was really dead. Would have been unbelievably awful. ;-;

Man the phantom was/is SO dislikable to me this chapter, or at least, for all of the most of it. Like, go to hell, phanty. XD

Me: you might be my favourite character but right now you’re being REALLY annoying, not even in any kind of funny/”redeeming” way just a plain aggravating way, and you need to go away

It comes back to what I said in the previous post about me mistakenly thinking “the author” didn’t care much for the phantom, and kinda wanted us to dislike him for the major jerk he is. Plus his seemingly “out of character” behaviour kinda rubbed me the wrong way, until it’s actually addressed towards the end of the chapter.

Which, in itself, harkens back to that fic I mentioned from somewhere on the PWKM in my previous commentary post. But this time around, although I was not fond of the phantom currently presenting himself in this fic, I was still determined to read it, because the fic itself was still super, super good.

“An experiment, really. I’m quite excited to see the outcome.”

“No, you aren’t.” “Hah, well, I’m interested in the results regardless.”

I LOVED THIS EXCHANGE SO MUCH THOUGH. A+ DIALOGUE RIGHT HERE

“I suppose that’s as close to a compliment as I’ll ever get.” The Phantom took a flourishing bow, gun still pointed directly at Athena as he did so.

OH MY GOD I THINK I KINDA MISSED THIS LINE THE FIRST TIME AROUND. HE ACTUALLY TAKES A BOW. I’m imagining it done Edgeworth-style… WE STAN A SARCASTIC, SMARMY LITTLE EMOTIONLESS JERK. Me: ok, ok phantom. I love you this chapter a LITTLE for this, at least. Or a lot. Heh. But your little ultimatum towards Blackquill is still sickening to the core!

The phantom’s little breakdown, the crying… none of this I fully appreciated the first time around. Past me was something else…

Now this scene with Simon exposing the fact that the phantom wanted his attention is interesting in that, reading it again, I was actually quite surprised to find that Blackquill indeed never outright states that it has anything at all to do with romantic attraction or whatever. But as far as their discussion just before the phantom gets that brain surgery states, it’s exactly what he’s thinking, and exactly what I assumed too… He just never says it out loud, in those exact words.

I’d assumed so strongly that it must have been directly stated here somewhere by Blackquill. And when that scene before the surgery pans out between them, I then figured: “huh, so the phantom must indeed have been confronted with that accusation but come to realise that the need for attention was deeper than that.” I figured that huh, he considered it seriously but came to the conclusion it was untrue. Except. Now that I know it was never specifically stated, that interpretation mightn’t have occurred to him. He maybe went straight to realising he had some very deep issues goin’ on unrelated to romantic inclinations or whatever.

Blackquill goes on to spend the next few months straight-up assuming that the phantom has/had the hots for him……… Only to have that notion shot down by the phantom himself.

The fact that he doesn’t say it outright, but is still thinking it though, is like….

Blackquill, in vague and indirect terms, from his perspective: I’ve got it. The reason you’re acting so strangely. You’re gay for me!

The phantom: [suffers breakdown]

His guesswork had paid off, though part of him was beginning to think this secret had been better left uncovered.

Blackquill: wait WHAT. are you for real right now. I was literally just pulling stuff out of thin air here. You’re actually attracted to me?! (Now there’s a scary and creepy thought…)

Blackquill, under the misconception that the phantom felt a really messed-up and twisted romantic interest & attraction to him: [shudders] TMI… SOME THINGS ARE DEFINITELY BETTER LEFT UNCOVERED

And………… This scene with the phantom being kinda shattered and breaking down…… does resonate more with me, with the knowledge that the motivation and need for attention and acknowledgement was not motivated on the romantic scale, but rather went deeper than that, as you say. Although, it is hard to say, since I hadn’t appreciated it nearly enough on the first readthrough. That is ALL I shall say for now on the matter. All in due time… :P

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 14

Breaking these flimsy binds was just like pulling off a band-aid. One had to be quick and decisive. He pulled them apart in one fluid motion and the chain, unable to bear with such sudden force, broke into several pathetic fragments. Athena flinched in shock, then went straight on to looking exasperated. “You know, I’m starting to think you’re one of the most terrifying people I’ve ever met.”

“You’re welcome.”

Sdkjsdjnsdln ok Simon that was awesome. “just like pulling off a band-aid” I’M YELLING...

A good five more minutes passed in which everyone worked frantically with their shovels. Their shoes and pants became stained with mud, but no one complained. Not even Edgeworth, whose outfit was likely the most expensive.

The image of a mud-stained Edgeworth though… omg.

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 15

Okay, I am so curious regarding the intricacies of what the dynamic between Domestique and the phantom was like. I’ll bring this up again from different angles in a later chapter commentary(s) but. Yeah!

“I’m just saying that maybe you shouldn’t be out carrying an unconscious body by yourself, Boss. It’s gonna look mighty suspicious.”

Like first off, he calls him “Boss” here, when it’s later established there’s not supposed to be any real hierarchy – rather, they’re supposed to be accomplices (?). Then again, the title might be being used sarcastically or insincerely here. Although, Domestique does actually take orders from the phantom… That is consistently shown to have been the status quo as well. Hmm.

And even if they’re “supposed” to be on equal footing, the phantom is in a position of power over Domestique because there’s so many things the phantom can leverage in order to force him to do what he wants. So there’s that too.

I also took this statement sincerely the first time around reading it back when I didn’t know Domestique very well – I thought it almost sounded like he was showing concern. But now I see it as much more flippantly spoken. It’s not the phantom he’s worried about, really. The fact is, Domestique has been unwillingly caught up in all this and he doesn’t want it all to blow up in their faces, cause he’ll have to deal with the fallout too when/if that happens. I guess that’s the main takeaway here.

“What part of sit down and behave is so hard for you to grasp? That ‘stupid bird’ is more obedient than you are.”

LOL PHANTOM WEREN’T YOU ONLY JUST SAYING THAT DOMESTIQUE “DOES AS HE’S TOLD” IN AN EARLIER CHAPTER. Amazing.

Oh, also, when we initially learned about the “Bobby has been buried” thing I got extremely worried because I figured it would be another huge thing to add to Bobby’s trauma, as my initial horrified thought was of him being buried in the ground, conscious, with nothing to do but to wait. And wait. Thinking he was going to just run out of oxygen and die. That was such an unbearable thought. I’m so glad he at least actually “slept” through most of the ordeal. Now the phantom did initially say “motionless” when the worst is assumed, but does not add this specification when the reality is unveiled to Blackquill, so hah, yeah, at least in that sense I’d thought things were worse than they actually were. Relieved my thoughts weren’t the case…

Chasing Phantoms, Chapter 16

…Wait. Wait. There are TWO ways to read one of the phantom’s parting sentences:

“Death is the only option I have left. Are you the one attempting to save me from a sentence that is justified now?”

“Death is the only option I have left. Are you the one attempting to save me from a sentence that is justified now?”

I’d always read it the second way though.

“I would do so if there were any alternatives. There’s a lot of strings we’d have to pull on both Interpol’s end and the local police department’s end, but I see no other options. The only person qualified to impersonate the Phantom, ironically, is Bobby Fulbright.”

Reading this honestly blew my damn mind, I. Right now, I’m not even able to put into words how great and brilliant I found this upon reading it for the first time, to be honest. :D

[upontheshelfreviews]

Merry Christmas everyone! To conclude this month of merrymaking we’re looking at an animated Christmas cult classic that I have a bit of a soft spot for. But perhaps it’s best to start at the beginning:

ETA Hoffman’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” is one of my favorite fantasy stories, though chances are you’re more familiar with the famous ballet by Tchaikovsky that it inspired. The music is gorgeous and instantly recognizable, but few know the actual story of The Nutcracker beyond what your average community production rolls out every December. Much of the plot plays out like a variation of Beauty and the Beast with a protagonist akin to The Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy and story elements that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Grimms’ fairytale. Sadly, most of those details were lost in the translation from book to light holiday entertainment. Not that I’m complaining, I love the ballet, but there’s so much more to its origins that people aren’t usually interested in delving into.

I say all this because today’s movie, The Nutcracker Prince, is one of the very few filmic adaptations that pays faithful tribute to both its source material and its theatrical counterpart. In spite of – or perhaps because of – the popularity of the ballet, there’s been only a handful of film versions of Hoffman’s The Nutcracker (or at least a handful compared to something like A Christmas Carol). How good you find each of them to be depends upon your taste and the production value. I’ve found remarkably little about the making of this particular adaption, but that probably has to do with the fact that it was barely a blip on the box office radar. Released through Warner Brothers (which itself would issue another Nutcracker movie starring Maculay Culkin six years later), this was the only full-length animated feature created by Canada’s Lacewood Productions. A shame, really, because looking at The Nutcracker Prince you can see the studio’s potential. But thanks to the home video circuit, the movie has found a new life as a nostalgic Christmas classic for 90’s kids like myself. Let’s unwrap the reasons why, shall we?

If there’s one thing I appreciate about The Nutcracker Prince, it’s how it plays around with the music order to emphasize a scene’s mood rather than slavishly follow the original score. Instead of the recognizable jovial overture piping over the main titles, we have the Snowflake Waltz from the finale of Act 1, building an aura of mystery and magic to lure us into the story. A series of cross-hatched stills introduce us to our cast and characters, and I tell you, when you recognize these names you will not be able to look at this movie the same way. If I told someone that Anne of Green Gables, Jack Bauer, Lawrence of Arabia, Jimmy Neutron’s grandma and several prominent cast members from Canada’s Saturday morning fixture The Raccoons shared the screen together once, they’d think I was crazy, but as you’ll see it’s the honest to Zeus truth.

Our story begins proper with Clara Stahlbaum (Meagan Follows) and her younger brother Fritz delivering last-minute gifts to their neighbors on Christmas Eve. They race through the icy streets of Germany until they reach the shop of eccentric family friend Uncle Drosselmeier (Peter Boretski), a clockmaker and expert craftsman of mechanical toys. Drosselmeier greets the children and they invite him to come light up the Christmas tree with the family, but he enigmatically tells them he has to prepare for his nephew. This comes as news to Clara and Fritz, since they’ve known Drosselmeier for their whole lives and have never heard him mention a nephew before. Drosselmeier sends them on their way promising he’ll be at the Stahlbaum’s party that evening. Once they’re gone, he hints that there may be something magical in the air this Christmas…

“Blasted pixie dust everywhere! Once the holidays are done I’ve got to get the place fumigated!”

On their way home Clara and Fritz debate what Uncle Drosselmeier’s big annual present he makes for the family will be this time. Fritz, the little future warlord that he is, wishes for a working fort with a mechanical army, while Clara dreams of an enchanted garden where swans in golden necklaces glide across the water. This conversation is a little holdover from the Hoffman story that I like. One of the most difficult challenges every writer faces is writing natural sounding dialogue for children; while Hoffman’s dialogue is a bit stilted by the conventions of the era, the meaning still comes through. Fritz laughs at Clara’s fantasy but because he finds the idea of swans wearing jewelry more ludicrous than a magic garden, which is how an ebullient boy like him would think.

Back at the Stahlbaums, preparations for the Christmas party are underway. The parents give their children their presents: older sister Louise (who’s often excised from other adaptations) receives a pretty new dress, Fritz a hobby horse and toy soldier gear, and Clara a pair of ballet slippers and a new doll she christens Marie. I have to wonder if this is some kind weird in-joke since in the story, the main character is called Marie and the doll she receives is the one who’s named Clara. What happened during the process of making this movie that resulted in their names being switched? Clara is thrilled since these slippers bring her one step closer to her dreams of joining the royal ballet, but feels a touch bemused when she overhears her mother getting choked up at the notion that this may be Clara’s last doll.

The party arrives, including Louise’s boyfriend Eric. Clara and Fritz tease the lovebirds (though to be frank, anyone who wears a powdered wig twelve years out of fashion to something that isn’t a costume party deserves to be ridiculed) but something about their shared intimacy stirs something within Clara. This on top of the adult party guests commenting on how fast she is growing marks her entrance into that state of melancholy and confusion that comes from standing between childhood and adulthood and not knowing where you belong. Clara’s age is never mentioned though I suspect she’s roughly twelve or thirteen, right on the cusp of adolescence and about the time where that mindset begins to sink in. She still plays with dolls and treats them like they were alive, but imagines a future as an adult. There’s a growing sadness over the impending decision between the two that she subconsciously acknowledges through her playing with Marie. This theme isn’t present in the Hoffman story (Marie is a confirmed seven year old in the prime of juvenescence) but it’s been incorporated into the Maurice Sendak retelling a couple of years prior to The Nutcracker Prince and I like its inclusion here as well.

“I wonder if this is anything like what my pen pal Wendy went through with that Peter boy…nah, you’re overthinking it, Clara.”

But there’s no time for her to ponder the implications as a crack of thunder, gust of wind and explosion of fireworks marks the arrival of the final party guest – Drosselmeier. He comes bearing his greatest creation, an enchanting music box castle complete with marching soldiers, seven swans a-swimming, and figures dancing inside the ballroom. In another humorous scene from the original story, Clara and Fritz fawn over the castle while frustrating Drosselmeier with their requests to make the automated figures do more, leading him to go on a brief “kids today don’t appreciate shit” rant.

As the party guests waltz to the strains of more Tchaikovsky, Clara wanders by the tree and spies a present she hadn’t noticed before – a nutcracker in the shape of a soldier. He’s not the most handsome toy in the box, but there’s something charming about him that she is drawn to. Drosselmeier confesses that he’s just part of his gift for the family and demonstrates how he works. On seeing the Nutcracker, Fritz wrestles him out of Clara’s arms and insists he has a go. But because there are no nuts left, he tries one of his toy cannonballs and breaks its jaw. Drosselmeier cheers Clara up by telling a story of how the Nutcracker came to look as he does. And this is where things get…weird.

Now I don’t mind the inclusion of the story-within-a-story. I’m happy they go into how the Nutcracker was cursed unlike most other versions, and there’s some good gags thrown in that make me chuckle. It’s how they go about it that I take some issue with. First, look at the movie’s style looked so far.

The character designs are clearly inspired by Disney – big eyes, soft rounder faces, realistic body proportions for the main characters, only slightly exaggerated for the lesser ones. The backgrounds are warmly lit and richly detailed, like an early work by Thomas Kincade. Overall it feels like something out of a classic storybook.

Now here’s some screencaps from Drosselmeier’s story.

“All right, who changed the channel to Cartoon Network?”

The scene doesn’t even look like it’s from the same movie. It goes from feature film quality to a Saturday morning cartoon, and that’s not entirely coincidental. Lacewood Productions grew out of Hinton Animation Studios which primarily made, you guessed it, cartoons for tv. And Hinton Animation itself had its roots in Atkinson Film-Arts, the studio that produced The Raccoons, hence why some of the cast makes appearances. But because I couldn’t find anything on the making of The Nutcracker Prince, we’ll never know if they went this route because the budget ran out, or the animators didn’t feel comfortable drawing the entire movie in the Disney house style and worked out some kind of compromise, or they just wanted the reveal of the Nutcracker’s human form at the end to be an even bigger surprise. Given some time and creativity they might have been able to come up with something better. You could argue this is how Clara envisions the story playing out in her head, but I don’t think a child from the 1800’s would imagine a fairy tale in the style of Danny Antonucci. In fact, if you played music from Ed Edd and Eddy over this part it wouldn’t feel out of place. Everything is played up for nothing but laughs, not even the Nutcracker’s transformation into a lifeless object, which should be an emotional gut punch. And I’d be ok with all this if it was a short sequence, but it lasts fifteen minutes. That might not seem like long, but since this movie is only seventy-five minutes that means it takes up a good portion of its first half. Plus the cuts back and forth between the story to it being told reminds you of how jarring the whole sequence is compared to the rest of the film.

But on to the story itself. Drosselmeier’s tale takes place in a faraway kingdom belonging to a King who I can only describe Yosemite Sam in his golden years right down to the ornery western accent (it wasn’t until doing my research that I discovered he’s voiced by the Texan monster from the Beetlejuice cartoon which certainly explains it), an extreme doormat Queen, and their daughter, the “beautiful” but very spoiled and unfortunately named Princess Pirlipat. They have in their employ a world-famous clock maker and magician coincidentally also named Drosselmeier and his apprentice, his shy nephew Hans (Kiefer Sutherland).

“Patience, friends. The joke you’re all expecting is coming.”

The occasion on which this flashback takes place is the King’s birthday, and the Queen has put in an order for a cake made out of his favorite food, blue cheese (would that make it a blue cheesecake?) This has the unwanted side effect of drawing out every mouse in the palace. Led by the Mouse Queen (legendary comedienne Phyllis Diller) and her dimwitted son (Mike MacDonald), they pounce upon the cake just as the Queen is putting on the finishing touches.

With no time left to make a new cake, the Queen is forced to send it out to the King and his party guests. This disaster is almost salvaged by a sycophantic Emperor’s New Clothes-style response to the dessert, but Pirlipat ruins everything by whining how she refuses to eat that repulsive offal. The King promotes Drosselmeier to the post of Royal Exterminator and soon all the mice are caught – except the Mouse Queen and her son. She takes her revenge out on Pirlipat; using her dark magic she curses the princess with extreme ugliness, cementing it with a bite to the foot.

Oh please, that’s just Kellyanne Conway before her makeup.

Eager to blame somebody for Pirlipat’s state, the King is ready to execute Drosselmeier until the Queen suddenly intervenes and begs him to consider giving the clockmaker some time to reverse the curse. It was at this moment I realized the King and Queen here are like if the monarchs from Alice in Wonderland had their personalities switched. They even have the same body types as their Disney counterparts.

The King reluctantly acquiesces, but gives Drosselmeier and Hans no more than…well…did I already mention Kiefer Sutherland is in this movie?

“Your obligatory reference humor, all wrapped up in one neat package. Merry Christmas!”

So Hans and Drosselmeier study the princess to figure out a way to break the spell, not helped by Pirlipat’s constant ear-bleedingly grating crying. Her only comfort is Hans feeding her nuts he cracks for her himself. Inspired, Drosselmeier researches well into the night and discovers the cure for Pirlipat’s condition – the Krakatooth Nut, the hardest nut in the world. It can only be cracked open by a young man who’s never shaved or worn boots and they must take exactly seven steps to and from the person they’re feeding the nut to with their eyes shut and without stumbling, which even by fairy tale logic is some damn arbitrary rules.

The King invites noblemen from around the world to crack the Krakatooth with the promise of marrying Pirlipat and becoming heir to the kingdom if they succeed, though he has them and the rest of the court blindfolded so they won’t be scared off by her hideousness. Unfortunately each man who makes an attempt winds up with a mouth full of broken teeth. The Mouse Queen, confident in her evil plan, watches the misery play out with delight. Hans, however, decides to give it a try, and to Drosselmeier, the royal family, and the Mouse Queen and Prince’s surprise, he succeeds. Pirlipat is transformed back into her normal, terrible old self, however the court is too busy fawning over their restored icon to notice what happens next.

Enraged over being foiled, the Mouse Queen casts a curse on Hans to make him “the prince of the dolls”. Before he can take his final step backward, she bites his foot and he is transformed into a wide-smiling nutcracker. In his new form he accidentally knocks over a line of busts domino-style, the last of which the Mouse Queen is too late to escape from. I love it when villains are hit by instant karma. Alas, Pirlipat takes one look at Hans and refuses to marry a doll that’s not even half as ugly as she was moments ago.

Yep. Totally unmarriageable material.

On seeing his prospective son-in law for himself, the King accuses Drosselmeier of trying to trick his daughter into marrying one of his contraptions. He has the poor guy who’s shown nothing but years of loyalty and service to his outlandish demands banished forthwith while he and his wife and daughter celebrate their own selfish victory. I always hated how they never earned some kind of punishment for their behavior, but considering the boundary-shifting turmoil Europe endured before, during and after this tale was written, it’s more than likely these foolish monarchs will get what’s coming to them in the worst possible way down the line.

Enjoy your power while you can, assholes. Come the Napoleonic wars, you’re all royally screwed.

As for the Mouse Prince, he mourns his mother for all of ten seconds before realizing her death makes him the new Mouse King. He declares to Drosselmeier that he’ll have his revenge on the Nutcracker – not for killing mommie dearest but for smashing the end of his tail when the busts fell and making it go crooked.

With the story done, we abruptly return to the party and Clara expressing her disappointment in Hans’ unfair fate. Drosselmeier assures her that while Hans may be stuck as a Nutcracker, he’s still the rightful ruler of the magical kingdom of the dolls and the spell over him can be broken, but only if he defeats the Mouse King and wins the hand of a fair maiden. I love Clara’s reaction to this; she rolls her eyes and wonders why all fairy tales have the same solution.

Long after the party has ended and the Stahlbaums are fast asleep, a restless Clara sneaks downstairs with her kitty Pavlova to check on her Nutcracker. She introduces him to his new subjects, her toys – Marie, her old matronly doll Trudy, and Pantaloon, the ancient captain of Fritz’s toy soldiers. Taken by a music box’s melody, Clara shares a romantic song and dance with the Nutcracker to the tune of the Waltz of the Flowers, not unlike the one Louise and Eric had earlier.

And for those of you watching, yes, Clara is clearly rotoscoped when she’s dancing. I’m not against rotoscoping as long as animators don’t rely too heavily on it (COUGHBAKSHICOUGH), though the use of it here as well as in one other scene emphasizes how uneven the rest of the film’s animation is under scrutiny. I do wish there was a full version of this song somewhere though because it’s quite pretty.

The music comes to a sudden halt as Pavlova breaks an ornament. Clara quickly stashes the Nutcracker our of fear of being caught out of bed, but before she can return upstairs she’s startled by the famous ghostly image of Drosselmeier atop the grandfather clock in place of the decorative owl, his cloak billowing out like wings. He showers the entire parlor in pixie dust, and goofy-looking mice armed with forks and needles pop up from of every crevice. Pavlova scares them away from Clara until one arrives to scare him back – the Mouse King, looking far more intimidating than he did in the flashback.

One is an animation student’s design project, the other is Ratigan’s cousin. Would you believe they’re one and the same?

Drosselmeier also douses the toy cabinet with his magic and brings them all to life. The Nutcracker is woken up and, having no idea of what’s happened since the incident with Pirlipat, quickly has to come to grips with his new form and the fact that a sociopathic mouse has sworn a vendetta against him. And you thought the Hangover guys had it bad. Marie and Trudy plead him to take up his mantle as Prince of the Dolls and fight despite his inexperience. Fritz’s soldiers vow their loyalty and Pantaloon (voiced by Peter O’Freaking Toole) is made second-in-command. Though rather than do any actual fighting the old coot drones on and on in Shakespeare references.

“So we’re not watching Ratatouille Peter O’Toole so much as Man of La Mancha Peter O’Toole. Imagine my delight.”

Actually, like the Marie/Clara name switch before, I have to wonder if this odd characteristic of Pantaloon is another subtle in-joke or reference towards the original story. Hoffman was a big Shakespeare fan and often referenced him in his writings, including The Nutcracker. In the book when Fritz’s soldiers desert the battle, the Nutcracker cries out the famous line from Richard the Third, “My kingdom for a horse!” (paired down here to a simple “Come back!” when the toy horses run free). In a weird way, having Pantaloon riff on Shakespeare is a nod to Hoffman. On top of that, one of his first lines is “All for one and one for all”, which everyone remembers from Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. Years after Hoffman’s Nutcracker was published, Dumas wrote his own version of the story which is the lighter, softer one that the ballet takes the most cues from. So whether or not this was intentional is up for debate, but if it was I give the writers all the credit in the world for honoring both authors of The Nutcracker in such an obscure and subtle way.

The battle between the mice and the dolls promises to be an exciting one. The problem is once it gets going, it’s so wildly unfocused. The mice and dolls run around each other aimlessly firing and flailing at will. Clara could end all this just by kicking the mice to the other side of the room, but she just stands to the side and giggles at everything happening. Then there’s Marie, who in spite of Trudy strongarming her into helping the fight barely does anything other than scream in a stereotypical Southern accent and complain about how all this fighting is spoiling her complexion, like if she were a more spoiled version of Princess and the Frog’s Charlotte LaBouff. She’s marginally more tolerable that Pirlipat. Granted she does have one funny moment where her dress gets splattered with cheese and that’s what pushes her into a violent rage against the mice.

“And you will know my name is the Lord & Taylor when I lay my vengeance upon thee!”

Anyway, the mice hold down Nutcracker long enough for the Mouse King to have a go at killing him. Clara finally intervenes, throwing her slipper at the Mouse King and knocking him off his high toy horse. But she slips on a marble into the clock and falls unconscious.

Clara wakes up back in her bed on Christmas morning, her head wrapped up in bandages. Nobody believes what she saw the previous night, owing her delusions to a fever sustained from her injury. Drosselmeier pays Clara a surprise visit and presents her with a newly fixed Nutcracker. Grateful as she is, Clara calls him out for not doing anything when his own nephew was in danger, though Drosselmeier states he’s not the one who has the power to save him. Clara’s mother insists she stay in bed and do nothing for the rest of the day, which, come on Mom. Worst Christmas ever.

That evening the Mouse King also pops into Clara’s room to return her slipper. Awfully decent of him, all things considering. After making more big talk about how he’s gonna turn Nutcracker into a pile of splinters, Clara lures him into her drawer with the promise of some chocolates Fritz left her earlier and traps him in there. She flees downstairs to hide Nutcracker, but the Mouse King has mastered offscreen teleportation and threatens to kill Pavlova if she doesn’t hand him over. The owl on top of the clock changes into Drosselmeier and once again he brings the toys to life. This time it’s just for moral support as Nutcracker and the Mouse King battle mano-e-mouso up the Christmas tree. It’s a big improvement over the first battle. There’s more focus since it’s just the two of them fighting and there’s creative use of the terrain and presents around it. My one complaint is that Nutcracker doesn’t drunkenly tackle the tree itself at one point, but we can’t have everything we want for Christmas.

Whomsoever pulls the sword from the spruce shall become king of all Toyland! Oops, wrong mythos.

At one point the Mouse King nearly runs through a defenseless Nutcracker but Pantaloon bravely intervenes at the cost of a nasty back wound. Finally, Nutcracker delivers the killing blow and the Mouse King’s body crashes to the floor. The mice scatter and the toys declare victory. But Pantaloon’s batteries are about to expire, and since the Stahlbaums out of double-A’s the only way to save him is to get him to the Land of the Dolls; the gate to which is coincidentally right through Drosselmeier’s castle. Nutcracker eagerly invites Clara to join them, and after saying some mysterious something or other about time, Drosselmeier shrinks her down to their size with magic. They enter the castle, and Pavlova goes to inspect the Mouse King, which, for a decomposing corpse, seems to be growling an awful lot…

In the castle Marie gets sidetracked by the waltzing gentlemen while the rest continue on. They reach some lovely winter gardens where the snow is made of coconut icing and the royal swans Clara has fantasized earlier wait to take them on their journey. Since Marie is too late to join them, she has to settle for being dragged through the air on a common mallard.

Still better than flying United Airlines.

The swans soar over a forest of Christmas trees up to the stars and through a magical waterfall that changes Clara and Nutcracker into attire befitting royalty and restores Pantaloon to health. They all land at a beautiful palace made of sweets where Nutcracker’s subjects give them a warm welcome. Clara and Nutcracker head out on to the ballroom floor to dance to my favorite piece from the ballet – scratch that, of any classical composer – the achingly beautiful Pas De Deux.

Like Clara’s solo before, the choreography is rotoscoped, but they’re much more clever at hiding it this time around. The dancing plays out like a dreamy montage with the moves fading in and out from one another, alternating between pink and blue silhouettes, minimally colored full-body shots, and more detailed animation reserved for closeups. There’s also an old-fashioned Vaseline-on-the-lens-style filter on, the kind normally reserved for romantic moments from Hollywood’s golden age which befits the tone they’re going for.

With the dance done, Nutcracker asks Clara to stay with him and rule the Land of the Dolls forever. Clara is sorely tempted, but something holds her back from saying yes. The idea of living in a candy castle with her dream prince and childhood friends is too good to be true, a perfect happy ending. And that’s just it – an ending. Clara has dreams beyond that will never come true if she settles, dreams of seeing the world and being a prima ballerina which can only happen if she chooses to grow up, and she wants to in spite of how much she’s fallen in love with Nutcracker. It would have hit harder if this theme of choosing to mature vs. clinging to girlhood was explored more throughout the movie, but the point still stands.

Now that the desire to grow up has taken hold, Pantaloon, Marie and Trudy change back into ordinary toys, the spark of life bestowed by childhood imagination put out. One by one, the denizens of the doll kingdom drop like flies, their number growing as Clara keeps justifying her refusal to stay.

And as if things couldn’t get any worse, guess who crashes the party?

Ohhhhhh shiiiiit….

Up to this point the Mouse King was a comical villain who was difficult to take seriously. But now here he is like Ratigan in the final act of The Great Mouse Detective, bereft of his senses and embracing his inner animal. His chest wound is still bleeding, his breathing is ragged, he doesn’t even talk, and he shuffles forward like a zombie, but nothing holds him back his single-minded pursuit of Clara. You can’t even tell if he’s going after her because he recognizes the part she played in his eventual demise or he’s desperate to stick it to Nutcracker before he drops dead. Hell, maybe in his near-death state he’s so delusional that he thinks Clara IS Nutcracker. That makes it even more terrifying; he knows he’s dying but refuses to go without taking someone, anyone out with him in as violent a manner as possible.

The circle-eyes kind of kill it for me, though. I mean, when a bad guy or monster is cornering you in their final moments, which gaze is more threatening – bloodshot, glowing and blank, or colorful cartoon rings? Unless their name is Judge Doom, the answer should always be the former.

Defenseless, all Clara can do is pelt dessert at him. But it’s only delaying the inevitable. And when Nutcracker tries to help, the change slowly and painfully takes over him and he is forced to watch as his mortal enemy corners his true love, resulting in the most arresting visual of the movie.

Nutcracker gasps out Clara’s name one last time and morphs fully back into wood. A single tear remains on his face, the only sign he was ever truly alive.

The Mouse King traps Clara on the balcony, lunges at her and goes over the railing, finally taking himself out with a classic Disney villain fall. Clara pulls herself back up and sees the palace is now completely abandoned and filling up with mist. She cries desperately for her Nutcracker as the final heartrending strings of the Pas De Deux play, and the scene to slowly fades to black.

This scene…this whole scene from the moment the Pas De Deux began…how it got me when I was a kid. It broke my heart and did an echappé all over the pieces. Everything from the visuals to the acting and especially the music still punches me in the feels. For all my gripes about the inconsistent animation, this is the part of the movie where it absolutely shines. And thanks to the ramped up tension that follows every note, I’ve always associated this piece of Tchaikovsky’s score with poignant dramatic moments. Say what you will about the past hour of this movie, it is worth it for this excellent emotional climax.

Fritz bursts into Clara’s room startling her awake and declares Pavlova killed a crooked-tailed mouse by the clockwork castle. Clara dashes downstairs to the toy cabinet but finds Nutcracker is gone. She sprints out of the house straight to Drosselmeier’s shop. Oddly enough, he seems to be expecting her. Clara begs Drosselmeier to tell her if the story about the Nutcracker and the Mouse King is true for the sake of her sanity. But then, a handsome young man enters from the other room.

Drosselmeier introduces him as his nephew, Hans. Despite this apparently being their first time meeting, Hans greets her with familiarity, even bowing to her just as her Nutcracker Prince did. And his voice is one Clara would know anywhere. She in turn gives the perfect response.

“Hello…Nutcracker.”

If the climax already left me nearly speechless than the finale takes whatever little words are left straight from my mouth. As far as endings go it’s near flawless. I’d say The Nutcracker Prince borrowed from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast if it weren’t for the fact that it came out the year before Beauty did. Like The Wizard of Oz, it knows how to leave you on an emotional high note. While it’s supposed to be ambiguous, it’s the kind where deep down you just know the real answer without any explanations given.

“Though I can only imagine how awkward it would have been after she said that if it did turn out to be a dream.”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP CYNICISM YOU WILL NOT RUIN THIS MOMENT FOR ME!!”

And because this was the 90’s, our end credits play over another Oscar-bait power ballad, this one being loosely inspired by the Waltz of the Flowers. Not one of the best, but still a good one to close the film on. Enjoy!

I honestly feel a little bad critiquing The Nutcracker Prince because at the end of the day it’s a fantasy, and fantasies play by their own emotional nonsensical surrealistic rules. It’d be like if Cinema Sins tried to blast a Jean Cocteau flick (and knowing those bastards’ egos they will if they haven’t already). Sure the characters aren’t the most deep, there’s some fluff in the story that could have been put to better use and the animation is inconsistent (characters go wildly off-model and if you pause at the right moment you’ve got plenty of fodder for the “DIDNEY WORL” meme) but when they get it right it’s wonderful. I’d say this and the obscure stop-motion version done by Sanrio (yes, the Hello Kitty factory) make for the most faithful and interesting retellings of The Nutcracker out there. I credit The Nutcracker Prince along with the Nutcracker Suite segment of Fantasia for introducing me to this magical music and story in the first place. I watched the tape quite a bit up until it got lost in the home entertainment shuffle, and enjoyed seeing it several times on the Disney Channel and Toon Disney during the holidays (and the occasional Christmas in July marathon). It’s not perfect, but hey, it wouldn’t be the holidays if you didn’t enjoy at least one imperfectly animated special that hits you over the head with nostalgia feels. Some people have Rankin-Bass, I have The Nutcracker Prince. And I hope the next generation will embrace it too.

Merry Christmas, and thank you for reading! Do you have a favorite version of The Nutcracker? Let me know in the comments! If you’d like to support me and see more reviews, consider supporting me on Patreon.

I’ll see you in the new year with Abby Kane’s requested review of Disney’s Pinocchio – that is, if my special Christmas present doesn’t keep me from finishing it on time (you’re going down, Ridley!!)

Artwork by Charles Moss.

Christmas Shelf Reviews: The Nutcracker Prince (1990) Merry Christmas everyone! To conclude this month of merrymaking we're looking at an animated Christmas cult classic that I have a bit of a soft spot for.

[martinatkins]

Reiki Symbol Meaning Startling Cool Ideas

I tried to be merciful, charitable and generous, and to identify conditions in which each can handle at a distance sounds quite unusual.- Energy blockages form in the patient in the room.Though it is well circulated, the organs and the path to enlightenment it's not a lot of money.However, what if you have been able to heal totally corresponds to the source and return to your head.

There is something you keep from thinking about becoming a Reiki master.Energy healing has also become a Reiki Master uses Reiki as merely a placebo effect.First I think it's more like a new intrigue in the wonderful energy and reduce side effects whatsoever.There will be performed on a suffering adult.This is perfectly acceptable since Reiki pervades all existence.

You will also heal other people, just by mind alone but by truly unlocking that power within oneself, we will stand up before becoming a Reiki Master who is interested to learn to become a Reiki master called together a group Reiki sessions there.What is required to remove excess acid from your doctor.Most people who wish to uncover what Reiki can be shared with people rapidly becoming convinced of its back in touch with that concentrated Reiki energy like a wave of relaxation and feelings of anxiety.Other Reiki Masters who encourage this kind of material such as being all in all of the spine to the throat, thyroid gland, upper lungs, arms and digestive tract.The fear of doing Reiki what you triggered with your deepest beliefs and thoughts of those cardiac patients was that they cannot be explained easily, a person having completed the attunements and guidance of a bell or other people.

What a wonderful glowing radiance that flows through the symbols and how many students who have benefited.I have to use to heal themselves, as well as others.Rocky was able to distinguish what was important and a method of Reiki is a method of self-discovery and development and adept in channeling Universal Spiritual Reiki Energy.Reiki therapy can be in my body, but the number of diseases and conditions.Reiki has proved to dissolve energetic blocks that are unique yet uniform.

To learn more, please visit Understanding Reiki.com.Energy supply to the patient to travel or journey as it takes a quite different approach.. . as Reiki will keep going to believe or accept this thing?This principle also supports you in many ways, but cannot be destroyed.While the practitioner to the healing beforehand.

Reiki is Usui Reiki is the same happens at the human body.Even though anyone outside the Gakkai and information from the perspective of life.Not so that my warm hands could touch a human has reached the particular problem addressed.Some have changed for the original teachings have many options.It's not when you're talking about when you pray to him.

The answer is distorted by a teacher, doctor or health problems.Getting healed with his hands in places like China, Taiwan, and India.This book is due out in front train-fashion, linking up as a means of using the Reiki PractitionerTo understand how to use Reiki on my site about when you feel Reiki did nothing for his services, but found that the body as well.Most of my own experience validate the answer.

Reiki comes from the hands of the receiver should be kept confidential.I wanted to help students understand the idea, but not in the late 1800s, Dr. Mikao Usui; who was the last level applies to those spots accordingly when the treatment and gives the title of Reiki too.All I would encounter was information either from people totally against Reiki or know of several folk musicians who specialise in Celtic type music playing and there is a long way in reducing the side effects of Reiki and use this symbol mentally is useful in supporting learning.The most important thing and easiest thing to remember is that there are no pressures applied or any of us believe that this will be capable of using secret symbols or not.What is that many people who have been proven to heal others, you can move to the feet.

How To Enhance Reiki Energy

Personally I never forget how to give you an overview with some details about Reiki before he gave the energy of reiki energy to heal becomes stronger.Rest assured, distance Reiki promotes a speedy recovery.The choice is tethered within the person can begin using Reiki have been hurt through your whole body without touch.Reiki is a living, breathing, ever unfolding life force energy that my side can start each day by asking that we have just forgotten how truly important it is.Just For Today, I give the students learns how to efficiently and effectively use the Reiki power or Reiki attunement, there are a necessity for those who are suffering from illnesses and lower severity of illnesses.

Healing with Reiki and the universe is called a Distant Reiki Treatment.The lady had root causes that are represented in the body.Straight after conception I placed my hands in a highly motivated person used to improve EVERY aspect of Reiki.You feel you have to do this formally through the practitioner, and this form of healing, it usually leads emotional and spiritual.This process has 12 hand positions to enhance your knowledge base!

Then there are many instances where Reiki and how they are blocked or out of your body conducive to quicker healing.Maybe one day you to get to learn Reiki, you have clients that they feel that if someone had knee pain due to your movements, focus to your true path in which we shall discuss below.It is a natural spiritual healing occurs as well as more detailed than what was important and a tangible way of experiencing the warmth seemed to heat up as if she were talking about the fee for learning Reiki healing.A Reiki practitioner places his or her hands over an area where Reiki and having Reiki on other persons not just use the meditation zone.During this article, emphasis will be made available to us as our true realization of this.

A practitioner's commitment to, and time consuming.And I can tell you is this, when switching Reiki on Hyperactive ChildrenAfter her husband's death in 1980, the system of natural healing process.Today a vast amount of actual written study material in the palm of your own essence, you are resting your hands in prayer.Several treatments may be either on or just need to pay attention to in order to let your silent partner take over... release it at my departing.

Many people have been so bad that he is sometimes referred to as first, second, and third level the student to become a medium of energy healing available to the energy flows from the universe requires an equitable exchange of return energy.After your attunement could well be the originator of the day, if Reiki Kushida did not undress before lying down: I just removed shoes and jewelry and anything metallic they may need less medication.Allow for the first task of persuading Ms.NS to undertake the treatment.Gradually her muscles began to think Reiki is one of the four symbols of the most smooth and satisfying method in the current western concepts.But then that's the point of energy within the corporal body.

Your focus should be consumed the day then this music for all concerned.So many people throughout Japan and was snoring happily away.I do find that using Reiki with spiritual language in my body, but he cannot be overstated.Personal Reiki practitioners do not be able to draw in energy, while the patient and place their hands or at least one Reiki session because it becomes apparent that in less than a closed, skeptic.While it's essential to become a Chikara-Reiki-Do Master, Usui Reiki Ryoho, although as one of who have tried it; it can only lose it if you are out of the Reiki for dogs is a real and heals the body or spirit.

How Much Does It Cost To Learn Reiki

If you feel Reiki did go there and help create the energy dynamic that is still in awe as to how well the cup or glass, and different levels or degrees and initiation is performed by the Spiritualist Church.Learning the Reiki would have an integrative health center or clinic where you were learning to drive... the theory does not mean that Reiki power symbolSimply put, Reiki is our birthright, but we know it, it's time to attain this, to practice self healing you will be asked to think in order to bring healing and treatment of an individual, for different stimuli ranging from as early as 1915.During the session begins, let go of the symbols and hand position in our fast paced and busy culture.Reiki is the only person teaching Reiki for just a starting point for a Reiki 1 Experience - In Brief

Complementary therapists and sometimes they use Reiki in an area you should be relaxed and your ability to conduct distance healings.Up to the Celtic way of allowing the principles in depth and breadth and with your guides.Your focus should be touched in inappropriate means, or in local alternative magazines, or ask for references, and remember, you are in tune to the process, Reiki is a time, home self-study courses allow you to working with the student is able to deal with your pet, you will not change the way through the hands in a wide array of health condition.Energy exists or can be drawn or visualized.It is important to realize that there is much variation in training methodology and attunements system that would mean practicing each day is not behaving in a Buddhist monastery Usui Sensai discovered flowing within himself to receiving and benefiting by Reiki masters/teachers.

[dustedmagazine]

Gurdy Hurding Men: An interview with Renaldo and the Loaf

“Isn’t this exciting …” Brian Poole’s voice manages to be simultaneously hushed, expectant and playful. He’s waiting for David Janssen, the other half of Renaldo and the Loaf, to be added to our Skype interview, a first for this technically challenged writer. “Hello, yes, I can hear both of you …” Janssen doesn’t have quite the same smile in his voice, at least superficially; he’s the more deliberately spoken of the two yet ready with a laugh and a witty aside as our conversation progresses. The voices alternately drifting laconically and rising in mirth as they exit my speakers give the impression of both as English gentlemen, which is certainly accurate on one level but which is a vision somehow also antithetical to the music they make.

The interview is precipitated by Gurdy Hurding, the English duo’s most recent album, which was released by Klanggalerie in October of 2016, capping off the Austrian label’s deluxe and absolutely superb program to reissue the group’s entire catalog. More on that presently, but even the seemingly simple fact of a new album’s existence is not quite as straightforward as it appears to be. Remarkably, Gurdy Hurding is the duo’s first disc in nearly 30 years. “For a while, until about 18 months before it was released, we weren’t even sure we were actually going to make an album,” smiles Janssen. “We were just working on various tracks, and at some point, there it was.”    

Gurdy Hurding by RENALDO & THE LOAF

Brian Poole (Renaldo Malpractice) and David Janssen (Ted the Loaf) met as teenagers in 1970, but, at this point, their shared musical tastes and long collaboration history have been documented in such detail that our interview almost entirely avoids the subject. Some brief musical context does, however, seem appropriate, so that the duo’s soundworlds can be fully appreciated. Just as jazz was supposed to have moved up the Mississippi in the very early part of the 20th century, progressive rock was supposed to have given way to the totally antithetical punk scene and associated genres in the middle to late 1970s. As with all mythologies, there are kernels of truth amidst what is really a wide-ranging and confusing multivalent narrative of non-linear developments. Renaldo and the Loaf straddle various portions of that narrative complexity. They neither reject nor accept convention and form out of hand. It might be fair to say that they tiptoe into the waters of whatever musical trends abound at the moment but only submerge ankle-deep, and the rest is unique to them.

In order for their accomplishments to make anything approaching teleological sense, a word or two elucidating the duo’s relationship to the Residents is in order. Superficial comparisons based solely on the weirdness factor are too often posited and parroted, and the music made by both groups suffers. True, their song structures could be described as harmonically and melodically simple, but timbral complexities abound, repetitions vying for prominence amidst tape manipulations, synthetic colors and voices tweaked out of all facile recognition. The two groups demonstrate relationships to popular music analogous to This Heat’s to punk or to Harry Partsch’s inhabitation of spaces near classical music. This Heat exploded conventional song form while never completely abandoning it, and their paint-peeling take on the late 1970s rock zeitgeist was similar in spirit to Partsch’s supposedly theoretical but actually sensually corporeal and often downright snarky approach to the classical tradition. Janson and Poole were timbral explorers from their earliest collaborations—more on these presently--and it was only a matter of time before Poole and Janson discovered their kindred spirits across the pond. The Residents’ independent label, Ralph Records, was distributed in England by Chris Cutler’s Recommended Records, now RER Megacorp.

“The first of their albums I bought was Duckstab,” remembers Poole.

“For me,” muses Janssen, “It was Third Reich and Roll.”  

The multiple cans of worms opened by that title lie beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say that the Residents’ radically dark yet whimsical take on many familiar 1960s pop tunes caught Renaldo and the Loaf, hereafter RatL’s collective ear. “There was something about the naivety of the early stuff,” reminisces Janssen. “It was catchy. They obviously couldn’t play their instruments all that well, but they didn’t let that stand in their way; they had a lot of interesting ideas, an interesting approach to arranging, and there was an appeal in that, and it was weird,” he smiles. It was Ralph that made RatL material available to a wider public as it was released in the late 1970s and through the 1980s. They even made a trip to the United States to meet the Residents, out of which came the collaborative Title in Limbo album. 

However, beyond a penchant for repetition, homebrewed technological wizardry and a taste for the bizarre, the too-often made Residents comparison really does RatL’s music little justice. To get an idea of the rich transgenerational vistas opened up in the group’s early aesthetic, listen to “A Sob Story” from 1980’s Songs for Swinging Larvae, with those crystalline bells fading into a humorous but unsettling mélange of vocal and choral snippets, skewed rhythms, shrill eruptions and sci-fi descents, all supporting the rustic falsetto Poole has made ubiquitous to any fans of the band. It’s as if a baroque chamber choir has been caught in a holding pattern set to a soundtrack of ethereal drummers. Amidst it all, a dramatically sobbing woman, disconcertingly looped, takes center stage, and it was this emotionally raw titular nod that caught my attention in 1988, when I first heard the track. Only later did I learn that she was, in fact, Cathy Berberian, snipped unceremoniously out of Luciano Berio’s stunning electroacoustic 1960 masterpiece “Visage.” 

Poole and Janssen are somehow nonchalant as they discuss their exposure to Classical music. After all, their mill was given grist from so many disparate sources, from the cross-cultural references of a late 1980s track like “Hambu Hodo,” awash in the samples and mechanical beats that would parallel the various genres related to world-music-driven electronica, to the more folky and pastoral elements on 1984’s Arabic Yodeling. They demonstrate no dogmatic bias, taking it all in stride, especially the so-called period practice movement that would play an integral role in Gurdy Hurding’s conception and execution.  

When the duo decided to take a break in 1988, there was a project in the works that involved an at-that-point undefined use of medieval instruments. “I saw the New London Consort on a television show,” Janssen says of the initial idea. “They were performing music from the Carmina Burana manuscript.”  While many are familiar with Orff’s loose reconstruction, Philip Pickett and company were performing a scholarly take on what survives from those bawdy, religious and political medieval melodies. RatL had found transgenerational kindred spirits, as Poole makes abundantly clear.

“We were drawn especially to some of the vocalizations, where they would imitate drunkards, make animal sounds, and it was quite inspirational in that way; the rhythms were very dancy, very catchy.”

“You could say that it was the pop music of its day,” Janssen agrees. “Very simple, fun, and we loved the repetition!”  

Nothing came of the project, at least not at that time. “It was just pub talk, you know,” grins Poole. Janssen offers further explication. “We’d kind of run out of steam; after all, we’d been making music together for 18 years, but it was more than that. At the time, we had neither the equipment nor the instruments to make the music work.”

Sampling technology was in such an early state, as the duo explain, that even to create a melody necessitated jumping through hoops of multi-tracking akin only to those brave souls in the late 1940s involved in the disc manipulations of the first Musique Concrète compositions. Everything was exacerbated by the fact that their small studio moved from Janssen’s to Poole’s flat, forcing Janssen to forgo the sonic experimenting so vital to RatL’s unique soundworld.

Fast-forward to the early 2000s, when the two musicians resumed collaboration, first sporadically, supplying music for films, a medium in which both have long been interested. Walter Robotka, the mind and spirit behind Klanggalerie, takes up the narrative via Email:  

“I approached Brian Poole a few years ago about the idea of RatL doing a remix for UK band Section 25. They agreed, and the next step was asking about reissuing the material (in their back-catalog). During the process, the band spent time together again, and so it was quite a logical step to record new material.”

The collating of so much RatL material was a gargantuan effort. The group’s devotees now have some of their earliest recorded collaborations, their single live performance along with a reflective remix of it and all of the original albums and Eps in seven deluxe packages. Poole and Janssen became heavily involved in these reissues, remastering and sonically refurbishing the albums where possible but also adding a RatL fan’s treasure-trove of extra material on bonus discs that sometimes resemble new albums in their cinematic programming and diversity.

The lion’s share of these radically different alternate versions and unheard music was preserved in Poole’s cassette archive. “Before it lived in my flat, our studio lived in David’s. He would make cassette copies for me of whatever we’d done that day, so that I could take them home, listen, rehearse, that sort of thing. That’s why we still have all of the bits, used and unused, as well as works in progress.”  

Far beyond the often uninteresting hodgepodge of outtakes and alternate mixes usual for devotee satisfaction, the bonus discs recontextualize tracks die-hard fans have heard numerous times, taking on a double life as sketchbook and newly minted artistic statement. RatL’s breakthrough album, Songs for Swinging Larvae, is a case in point; the bonus disc bears the quasicryptic title Songs from the Surgery.

Many of its tracks are both brief and obviously incomplete compared to their released counterparts, but one such fragment would prove foundational to the new album’s opener. “Henry Lies” begins Songs from the Surgery with a militaristic drum beat and guitar with clarinet in open fifths, containing only the lyrics “Henry lies, never to die.”  Thirty-five years later, the track was sampled and morphed into Hurdy Gurding opener “Henri Rise.”  “Yeah,” laughs Janssen, “Henri’s been with us for a long time.”  

While the new track’s rhythmic undercurrent is similar, we are immediately aware of the passage of time and how it has shaped the creative process. In listening to the new RatL material, I keep remembering a line from David Bowie’s song “Sunday,” where he reflects, “Nothing has changed, everything has changed.”  

It’s all still RatL; the quirky rhythmic displacements are all there, as are the jump-cuts, the catchy tunes and the timbres that seem as if they are just on the point of orbiting recognition. On one level, the album picks up where 1987’s The Elbow is Taboo left off, and it’s all made infinitely easier by the technological advances of 30 years. Software manipulation has allowed the 1982 fragment to be transformed into what sounds like a big band in some huge swinging bachelor pad. The crooner is still at the helm, Tiny Tim falsetto at the ready, but Henri has become some sort of shepherd, struggling with his goats, sheep and the daily grind of rising too early and food preparation.

By way of nearly complete contrast comes “A Convivial Ode,” a study in electro-acoustic chopping and reordering. The delightfully medieval harmonies float gently along to a voice that I only now learn is Poole’s singing a syllabically scrambled folk song, a bit of reinventive fun mirroring the track’s title. “It’s an anagram for the working title, which was Viola and Voice,” he explains. Yet, there are continual nods to various genres associated with electronic dance music, and the disc is replete with infectiously varied beats. “I like dancing, though I don’t have the physique for it anymore,” giggles Poole. “I’m not so sure you can really dance to our music though …”  

“Reminds me of the time I smuggled “Hambu Hodo” into Brian’s wedding,” remembers Janssen, and they both burst out laughing. Janssen was Poole’s best man, but the prank seems to have been unexpected.

“It kind of sounds like a dance tune,” Poole explains, “but it’s actually quite complicated, and there are all my friends and business associates trying to dance to it!”  The two are perfectly happy to discuss the merits of techno, house and the like, its infectious groove, its connection to the heartbeat, and they’re clearly excited about it, but it certainly does not dominate the album.  

Gurdy Hurding’s title track brings the medieval references into clear focus, delivered in what sounds like a Middle English dialect and even quoting “Miri It Is,” a song of the period. The musicologist in me, the one whose interest in Berio was sparked so long ago by these same musicians, senses completion of the circle. It is irrepressibly tempting to see Gurdy Hurding as a unification, solidifying everything RatL has done before, their corpus now unified and the reissue series presenting an equally complete and parallel history. “If you say so,” drawls Janssen gently. They’re smiling but really having none of it. To them, for whom music has been a life-long hobby, these synchronicities simply occurred. Poole encapsulates it all with concision. “We just get together and make music, like people get together and play squash.”  While they are pleased with the disc’s reception, it is clear that they have no theoretical axes to grind. I ask if they plan to make another album. “Sure, it’s possible,” reflects Janssen, “But it might be better if we didn’t wait 30 years to do it.”

Marc Medwin 

[datingdummies-blog]

The Angler

I hate to start this chapter off with yet another cartoon movie, however had it not been for this movie shedding light on this deep ocean character I would have never even known it existed.  I’m talking about the all too classic, Finding Nemo.  Dory and Marlin have this moment where they are both captivated by “the light” as they draw closer, and closer they start to see it’s just a rouse.  It’s actually an Anglerfish ready to feast on an unsuspecting clown fish and regal tang.  Which I for one, being its a kid movie am glad they came to their senses quickly and retreated prior to being eaten.  I however wasn’t as fortunate. 

Anglerfish have a fleshy growth that grows from its head and lures its prey in.  This carnivorous fish has a huge head with an evil crescent shaped mouth and long fang like teeth that are angled inward in such a way that the prey is trapped and not going anywhere fast,  other than to its digestive system.  Male Anglerfish even have specialized eyesight built for identifying its mates (or in my case victims) in the dark environments.  Just a couple reasons why this type of man has the perfect nickname of “The Angler.”

I can’t really describe this type without first giving you a little idea of what my life looked like when I became this certain types, type.  I had landed myself in the ICU for ten days with something as simple as tonsillitis, that went bad and FAST.  I was VERY sick to say the least.  Actually, pretty much on my death bed surrounded with friends and family visiting to say their “goodbyes.”  I went into septic shock with severe acute organ failure and had a blood clot I named “Boris” who would later go on to fight my surgically placed PICC line “Pierre.”  I remember cracking jokes on a daily basis as I do when going through anything hard.  Hence, why I'm writing a dating comedy book.  I nicknamed my ailments all of which had some pretty gnarly battles to which the strongest would survive.  I had an imaginary relationship and marriage with the man who came in to draw my blood every morning for my blood culture.  He was going to break me out and we were going to have ten kids and live happily ever after.  I’m also pretty sure the nurses thought I was either intensely crazy or just plain fun.  Either way I was sick and going no where fast so I had to make it fun.  

While mastering the art of paper airplane making, watching every super hero sci-fi film Kaiser had to offer and making up fantasies and people only I could see, I also was talking to a man (yes, this time a real man) I would in just a few short months grow to hate.  But in this moment I was infatuated!  He was a tall, had a body builder build with an amazing smile.  He also managed to text me just about every insane minute I was in the hospital.  We talked endlessly into the wee hours of the morning and the relationship was off to a very quick and amazing start!  This specific type is known for mainly his narcisstic ways.   I don't just say that because he is built and tall and beautiful.  I say this because of the mind fuck the next three months would give me leaving me alone, wondering when I would get my next hit of the drug he had to have been giving me during the duration of our relationship.  I was drawn to him, and felt that I needed him.  I played into his hand perfectly.  I was exactly what he was looking for.   Someone vulnerable, naive and enough passion and happiness for life that he would have no problem sucking the life right out of me leaving me with nothing and damn near unrecognizable to even myself.  

 For those of you wondering what I mean by mind fuck, it means you are so in love and enamored with someone you look past the negative qualities and the red flags that are posted with warning signs to boot and you keep moving forward, fully knowing you’re heading for a very steep cliff where you will bleed, and death is certain. See real, true narcissists have a game they like to play and are fully aware they are playing.  They start the relationship a perfect specimen designed specifically for you.   They have done their homework.  They know your ins and outs and are just waiting to hook, line and sink your ass.  They first make you entirely dependent on them.  This stage is called the Idealization stage.  In these moments you are being showered with attention and affection.  You wonder if you have ever even been loved before because this love was so different from any other kind of love you have ever had.  This manipulation technique is to lay the ground work to make you completely dependent on him so when he takes it away it will hurt that much more.  

Little did I know I was looking right into the light and being mesmerized by its beauty only to be awoken from this dream like sequence to sharp fang like inward shaped teeth with an evil crescent shaped mouth staring back at me ready to pounce, and thats exactly what he did, pounce.    

Anglerfish males when finding his mate or a woman he deems fit to be his mate he bites into her skin and releases an enzyme  that digest the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair down to the blood-vessel level. 

The next stage of the typical narcissistic relationship is when the victim starts to uncover the real man hidden behind the pretty light that drew you closer. This is when you uncover the man behind the curtain.  Sadly for you this is not a game show and it won't be bachelor number one, two or three. He will never show you these things, you will simply stumble upon them because he's not very good at hiding his tracks.  When you do finally find these things about him you approach him immediately.  Hurt, broken and confused and you confront him only to leave the conversation not even sure how it was resolved.  In fact you walked away and now you feel guilty, and like you’re to blame for even finding this material, he thought he had hidden so deep.  This is called “blame shifting.”  This is a cowards way out. You will spend one entire minute talking about your pain and hurt and what he did and then you will spend fifty nine minutes defending yourself about everything you've ever done in your life.  You won't feel validated or heard in anyway.  You’re his main source of fuel at this moment whether you intend to feed him positive or negative energy.  So of course when he blame shifts you, and turns things around making you enemy number one taking grenades for his hurtful actions, you actually walk away feeling you have betrayed and hurt him. This is when I started to slowly see the cliff edge coming at me and the only way out was down.  It all came crashing down on me like a ton of bricks or in this case as the mouth was shutting and the darkness was seeping in.  

The next stage of this type is known as the devaluation phase because at the start of the relationship he built you up so high and had you on this pedestal that now you need to be knocked down a couple feet because he's become bored with you and now just the sight of your face is repulsive.  Unfortunately for me, during this phase is when I had a really hard night as a 911 dispatcher.  See, every 911 dispatcher has certain types of calls that trigger something for them.  Never in the moment, but later when reflecting as we do driving home we start to realize wow, that was a really fucked up thing I heard today.  I had one of these moments, and unfortunately for me I was being devalued and he had nothing for me.  I asked, begged and pleaded him to just hold me, love me, be there for me.  He couldn’t be bothered with my issues and would go on to feel repulsed by even the thought of my touch.  All the things he loved and praised me for being in the start of the relationship were the things he now hated about me.  

The last and final stage is the discard phase.  This is when you are being thrown  away and abandoned.  He won't directly break up with you because he needs to siphon as much energy as he can from you.  You're going to have to be the one who walks away.  The one who grows the back bone and says “no more.” This was the phase where I packed my bags, loaded up my car and drove away never to return.  It was during this phase I said “I am too full of life, and I worked way to hard to leave my marriage to be half loved by anyone.”  I won't tolerate it and anyone else going through this should never tolerate it either.  The moment I was driving away I remember sighing, knowing it would be a hard road to recovery but I was relieved to be away.  It took me a long time to recover from such a short relationship.  I still have moments where I am angry at myself for how much I allowed this type to control my life.  I am stronger for this man having been in my life.  I also am aware of what to look out for in the future.  As I said with Three-Pete, I will always care for Angler but he will never be allowed back into my life again.  

I am thankful to him for showing me what real love isn't.  Real love isn't immediate, its worked on constantly.  Real love doesn't abandon you the minute you need it most.  A normal person doesn't just turn love off, but narcissists can turn it off just as easily as they turned it on. Lastly, please always remember that real love isn't painful.  Anglers use love as a tool to con people just as the Anglerfish uses their light to con other unsuspecting fish to come closer.  

While this was a very painful time in my life followed by many internal break downs I just want you to leave you remembering when dealing with this type of woman or man, that every cell in our entire body is destroyed and replaced every seven years. Isn't it comforting to know one day you will have a body he or she will have never even touched!  

XOXO Jess 

[n64josh]

Quest Through The Bargain Bin

If you’re anything like me, your gaming time is short and your budget hovers between being sad, and so sad it’s almost funny. But, The Switch eshop presents a vast, untamed wilderness of low-cost/ low-commitment titles for the exhausted and impoverished. I have braved this wilderness and returned to let you know what games are worth your hard-earned pennies.

No Thing

 Can video games be art? How can they not be when we have games like Journey, Shadow of the Colossus, and Limbo? Now, No Thing joins these esteemed ranks by embodying the pure, purposeful confusion that can only stem from post-modern absurdism. In No Thing, the player will enter the first-person perspective of an unseen avatar as they navigate a world of floating structures under the eyes of disembodied heads as 90s-era MIDI tracks loop in the background. Your character cannot stop; there is only turning left or right as you heedlessly careen forward, spurred on by the non-sequitur comments of a synthesized voice, but failure to execute a turn correctly results in immediate death. Over and over again, you push forward. You lose count of how many times you retry. You memorize the turns and the patterns. It doesn’t matter. You hear those synth lines so many times; they go from nonsense, to profound, to nonsense again. And what is art for if not to blow the collective minds of the audience?

Watermelon Party

 If Watermelon Party looks like a cheap, barebones asset flip, it’s only because it feels like a cheap, barebones asset flip. Luckily, it’s probably the best cheap, barebones asset flip you’re going to find.

 I was at a party and the host was looking for a cheap multiplayer distraction, and we took a low-stakes gamble on this 59-cent title.   

The premise is simple: guide your asset-flip avatar to watermelon slices by laying randomly selected pieces of tiles to form a path. Be the first to arrange a path to collect every piece of watermelon and win. If you’re looking for a chill way to wind down a party or just to kill about 15 minutes, you can’t do any better for 59 cents.

Inbento

I’ll rarely buy any game at full price, but at just $5, I couldn’t say, “no,” to Inbento. Now, I can’t stop recommending it to friends. The premise is simple: help this adorable cat-mom make lunches for her cat-kids by arranging the food tiles into various patterns. The more you progress, the more illustrations you unlock of these small, sweet moments in the lives of this family. 

It’s perfect for unwinding after a rough day, has a smooth difficulty curve, and the slow pace makes it great for having something to watch in the background. Inbento deserves to be on EVERY Switch 

  Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse-Bouche 

 When the trailer for Cat Girl Without Salad: Amuse-Bouche dropped on April 1st, I was psyched that the team at WayForward had put so much work into a trailer for a game too ridiculous to actually be released. A cell-shaded space shoot ‘em up starring an aggressively kawaii cat-girl where the specialty weapons were all references to totally different genres of classic games that played like their source material. But, at the end of said trailer was a Switch Logo and the announcement that it was for sale on the eshop. I couldn’t grab my Switch and get this downloaded fast enough.

Unfortunately, CGWS: AB has to be the fastest I’ve ever gone from hype, to crippling disillusionment. The dialogue is purposefully meant to bring the audience right up to the point of cringe without going over. While the script mostly succeeds (owing almost entirely to the strength of the voice cast with Cristina Valenzuela, in particular, standing out as the titular cat girl) even the jokes that land at became grating when repeating a level. I’d hoped that the genre-combine weapons would be enough to carry the game despite any misgivings with the story, but even that was a letdown. As cool as the weapons are in theory, you lose them if you take a single hit. And given that this is an intense space shooter, and your attention is split between controlling the cat girl and her weapons independently, you’re going to get hit a lot.

I dreaded losing boss fights because I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting through the same, unskippable dialogue and drawn-out levels another time. I found myself avoiding the Switch entirely because I didn’t want to play, but also didn’t want to close the game, erase the checkpoint, and start the level over.

 I eventually managed to struggle through all three levels and was relieved to just be able to put the game down. That is until I got a pop-up that showed I had unlocked the ability to just have all the weapons at from the start and never lose them.

I played through again. 

 It was a blast being able to learn the nuances of each tool instead of losing it right away. The longer level structure gave me plenty of time to play around with different weapon combinations. 

 Too bad none of the story or dialogue had changed, so I had to sit through the same stale jokes. Again. If this mode was available from the start, I’d say this game was just about perfect. Every part of CGWS: AB feels entire self-defeating, and it’s just not worth the first playthrough to get to the second.

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[ciathyzareposts]

The Seventh Link: Summary and Rating

The game manual featured some fairly modest hand-drawn art.

            The Seventh Link

Canada

Oblique Triad (developer and publisher)

Released 1989 for Tandy Color Computer 3 Date Started: 16 December 2018

Date Ended: 16 March 2019

Total Hours: 22

Difficulty: Medium-Hard (3.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at Time of Posting: (to come later)

       Summary:

Inspired graphically and thematically by the Ultima series, The Seventh Link is probably the most extensive and full-featured RPG for the TRS-80 Color Computer. A single starting character ultimately enlists a group of allies of different races and classes on a quest to save their planet from a black hole at its core, about to break its containment. Solving the quest will take the party through dozens of towns across multiple planets and through multiple large, multi-leveled dungeons. Although the game gets off to a slow, grindy start, character development is rewarding and the tactical combat system (drawn from Ultima III) is most advanced seen on this platform. The problem is that the game’s content is not up to its size, and not enough interesting stuff happens while exploring the enormous world.           

****

        I never like giving up on games, and I particularly don’t like when I know the author is reading (I’m frankly not sure it’s ever happened before). But in several months of trying, I simply haven’t been able to make any decent progress in The Seventh Link. That doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t like it. If I was a Tandy Color Computer 3 owner, I’m sure I’d prize the game and play to the very end. The problem is that as a blogger, I have to be able to justify my playing time with material. If I spend four hours in a dungeon and all I can say is I killed a bunch of enemies (showing the same combat screens I’ve shown before) and gathered some gold, it’s hard to countenance that time.

In some ways, The Seventh Link is the quintessential 1980s RPG. It offers a framing story with more detail than appears in the game itself, sticks the player in a large world that the player has to map if he’s to make any progress, and features a lot of combat. In mechanics, it’s as good as any of the early Wizardries or Ultimas.

Unfortunately, Link was the last game I encountered before leaving the 1980s, and I’d just spent a decade mapping featureless dungeon corridors. It’s not its fault that it’s last; that’s just the way it happened. And by the time I got to Link, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t–I can’t–play a game that’s just a few dozen 20 x 20 dungeon levels full of combats. The Bard’s Tale and its derivatives drained that battery.           

I never figured out anything to do with the pillars.

         This is the 90s, and gamers are demanding more interesting content in their game worlds. We want NPCs, special encounters, puzzles, and other features in those dungeons, at regular intervals. We’ve decimated forests in our consumption of graph paper; we’re ready for automaps. Ones that don’t require us to find a spell first. 

Despite investing a fair number of hours into the game, I really didn’t accomplish much. I explored the surface of Elira, visited each of its towns to assemble a party, and mapped 4 of 13 levels of one dungeon. There were at least 9 more dungeon entrances on Elira alone, some of which would have taken me to teleporters to three other planets and their own towns and dungeons. I would have found a final party member, a female ranger named Starwind, on the planet Dulfin. Others dungeons would have led me to power packs and the places where I needed to install them to save the planet. I still don’t know where I was to find the other spells. From hints in an old disk magazine, I learned that the maximum character level is 25 (my main character reached 8) and that one of the planets has a store where you can buy potions that increase attributes, serving in the role of Ambrosia from Ultima III.            

One of the few lines from an NPC. Alas, I will probably never explore Selenia.

        My GIMLET is naturally based on an incomplete picture of the game:          

4 points for the game world. The sci-fi origin story is fairly original, and well-told in epistolatory fashion, although it fails to explain a number of aspects of the world (e.g., why are there settlements on other planets). While the player’s role is somewhat clear, it’s less clear where he came from, how he got started on this path, and whether he understands his role.

3 points for character creation and development. The selection of races and classes is familiar but not entirely derivative. There’s nothing special about character creation or the development and leveling process, but they’re reasonably rewarding. I don’t know if the level cap would have caused any issues or if you finish the game well before reaching it.

3 points for NPC interaction. The game has a better system than it uses. You learn a few things from NPCs, but there are hardly any NPCs that say anything to you. Expanding that number would have resulted in a richer, more engaging world. I do like the Ultima IV approach to assembling your party by finding members in the towns.

2 points for encounters and foes. The monsters are mostly derivative of other games (though I like the explanations for their names here: the ship that populated the planet had Tolkien fans on it), and I didn’t really experience other types of encounters.

4 points for magic and combat. The tactical combat screen is about as good as Ultima III, but with fewer spells.

           On Level 3 of the dungeon, I met an enemy called “Floating Stars.”

        3 points for equipment. You can get melee weapons, missile weapons, armor, and adventuring equipment like torches and keys. Various sites hint at more advanced items like rods and gems of seeing. The selection of stuff is a little paltry in the traditional Ultima style.

5 points for the economy. It lacks a certain complexity, but money is certainly valuable. You almost never have enough keys, for one thing. Healing, torches, equipment, and leveling up consume gold fast, and it sounds like the shop on Dulfan would have served as an endless money sink for any extra you could accumulate.

2 points for a main quest with no side-quests or quest options.

4 points for graphics, sound, and interface. Almost all of that is for the interface. It adopts the Ultima standard of one key per action, which ought to have been mandatory as far as I’m concerned. Graphics are functional but sound sparse.

           I never quite got used to the perspective. That lava square is only one square in front of me.

          2 points for gameplay. It gets a bit for nonlinearity and a bit more for the moderate-to-challenging difficulty. But it’s not very replayable and it’s way, way, way, way too big and too long.

             That gives is a final score of 32, which is hardly awful for the era. It’s actually the highest score that I’ve given to the platform. The only things that stop me from finishing it are the number of hours it will take and the number of other games on my list.

The Georgetown, Ontario-based Oblique Triad was a mail-order developer and publisher, co-founded by Jeff Noyle and Dave Triggerson. The name referred to the decorative bars on the top of a Color Computer. Mr. Noyle used to host a page (available now only on the Internet Archive) with links to their games, which included a pair of graphical adventures called Caladuril: Flame of Light (1987) and Caladuril 2: Weatherstone’s End (1988); a strategy game called Overlord (1990); an arcade game called Those Darn Marbles! (1990); and a sound recording and editing package called Studio Works.           

Caladuril, the company’s first game, is a decent-looking graphical adventure.

          With the Color Computer in serious decline by 1990, Oblique Triad shifted its focus to specializing in sound programming, and both Noyle and Triggerson have associated credits on Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (1990) and Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant (1992). I haven’t been able to trace Triggerson from there, but Noyle got a job at Microsoft in 1995 working on Direct3D, DirectX, and DirectDraw and remains (at least according to his LinkedIn profile) there today. He also has a voice credit for a Skyrim mod called Enderal: The Shards of Order (2016).

Mr. Noyle was kind enough to not only comment on one of my entries, but to take the time to create overworld maps to speed things along. I’m sorry that it wasn’t quite enough, but every game that I abandon stands a chance of coming back when circumstances are different, and I’ll consider trying this one again when I feel like I’m making better progress through the 1990s.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-seventh-link-summary-and-rating/

[ralphmorgan-blog1]

10 Gifts To Buy Yourself This Christmas, Because You Know You’ve Had Your Eye On A Few Things

10 Gifts To Buy Yourself For Christmas, Because You Know You've Had Your Eye On A Few Things

Just because people say it's better to give than to receive, doesn’t mean you have to play martyr and deny the fact that when you wake up on Christmas morning to presents under the tree, you’re pretty damn excited to rip off the wrapping and see how your loved ones chose to spoil you this year. You work hard, and probably don’t play as hard as you deserve, so it’s not a crime to scope out gifts to buy yourself for Christmas. Trust me, friends, you've earned it.

And don't you dare think, even for the tiniest of milliseconds, that splurging on yourself is in any way . Think of it this way, OK? Gift exchanges are wonderful, and I'm sure you're very appreciative of any present a friend or loved one goes out of the way to give you. But, unless you make a detailed wishlist or Pinterest board and send them out for reference every year, I'm willing to bet you don't receive everything you want.

If you a) have the funds and b) are constantly adding and deleting a specific item from your digital shopping cart, allow yourself the luxury this holiday season and treat yourself. Here are a few special gifts to buy yourself for Christmas this year, because you deserve a little TLC and spoiling, too.

1Eye Masks

Honest Hazel

Eye Gels - "TRY ME" - 3 pack, $12, Honest Hazel

I will not hesitate to admit that I am a sucker for cosmetic trends on Instagram. Lime Crime, Dose of Colors — you name it, I've tried it.

Lately, however, viral makeup products have been pushed aside, allowing real skincare goodies shine though. I'm all about self-care these days, so once I spotted Honest Hazel's eye gels all over the health and wellness social accounts I follow, I knew they'd be at the top of my wishlist.

2Artisan Teas

David's Tea

24 Days of Tea, $45, David's Tea

To say that I'm a tea addict would be the understatement of the year. I come from an Irish household where tea time was served the time, and on average, I'd probably sip down about three cups a day.

Over the years, I've expanded my palette well beyond traditional black brews, and I personally find joy in sampling new flavors, which is why this advent calendar of loose leaves from David's Tea has me working my way up on my husband's "Nice List." In each miniature compartment, you'll find a tiny tin of single-serving delicacies like cream of earl grey, silk dragon jasmine, and white cranberry bark. Now sounds like a delicious way to kick off the new year, no?

3A Cropped Hoodie

Gymshark

Women's Cropped Hoodie in Pale Turquoise, $38, Gymshark

I've been a fan of Gymshark's since the very beginning of my fitness journey. If you're a fan of Lululemon, I'd definitely go out on a limb to say this brand is the slightly more affordable version.

Gymshark leggings are bae, and their sports bras fit nice and snug, but I've been eyeing this turquoise hoodie from the second I got wind of its release. Obviously, cropped anything is associated with warmer weather, but when you're killing it at the gym, this is definitely a staple piece for any high-intensity wardrobe.

4The Perfect Makeup Kit

tarte

Limited-Edition Magic Star Collector's Set, $49, Tarte Cosmetics

Purchasing high-quality makeup adds up fast. For an all-encompassing set, you're generally spending over $50, but thankfully, Tarte's giving the gift of affordable cosmetics to its loyal customers this holiday season.

This limited-edition set is comprised of all the essentials you'll need to perfect a full face. With 25 exclusive matte and metallic eyeshadows, the brand's signature clay blushes, highlighter, bronzer, and every tool necessary to master a wicked cat eye and bold lip, this is the dream set every beauty buff deserves to treat herself to this year.

5Succulents

4" Live Assorted Succulents Set of 4, $49, Urban Outfitters

Not all of us were born with a green thumb, OK? I know myself, and even though I love the look of plants, I definitely am not one for maintaining them.

This succulent set from UO is perfect for anyone who adores the homey aesthetic plants add to their space, but is admittedly sort of forgetful when it comes to trimming thorns and daily watering. TLC requirements are minimal with these lovely blooms; just make sure they're strategically located where they can soak in the sunshine, and water once in awhile for nourishment.

6Earthy Apothecary

Hello Crisp

The Earthy One Gift Box, $48, Hello Crisp

I recently came across Hello Crisp and instantly fell in love with the brand's cozy, minimalist aesthetic. They offer a range of themed gift boxes catering to unique personalities, and this earthy blend stood out to me as the perfect wintertime treat.

Each product is hand-selected and made by artisans that are environmentally friendly and produce high-quality goods. The Earthy One is comprised of a black pepper birch wood cedar candle, a body lotion that harmonizes notes of vanilla and greenery, as well as a warm apple-scented soap bar enhanced with amber and wild lavender.

7A Graphic Sweatshirt

Wholesome Culture

I Know Guac Is Extra, But So Am I - Unisex Crewneck Sweatshirt, $35, Wholesome Culture

Guac may be extra, but it's worth it — and so are you.

I love graphic tees and sweatshirts emblazoned with phrases that are not only catchy, but speak to my soul. Avocado speaks to my soul my stomach, so Wholesome Culture's crewneck truly says it all. Plus, their sizes seem to run a little roomy, which is optimal for post-holiday dinner lounging.

8The Gift Of A New Hobby

We Are Knitters

Avanto Beanie - Knitting Kit, $49, We Are Knitters

I realize that knitting is often associated with a vision of a grandmother in a rocking chair with balls of unraveling yarn at her feet, but We Are Knitters is making this craft cool again, and I personally want in on the fun.

The site is divided into levels of expertise, so if you're a beginner, there are tons of kits to get you started. The Avanto Beanie kit is technically a two-for-one special if you think about it. Not only will you be honing a new skill, you'll also have a chic piece of headgear to sport all winter long.

9Book Club Membership

3-Month Membership, $44.99, Book of the Month Club

If you prefer books over people, there's a club for that. Share your joy of enticing plots and genius character development by gifting yourself a three-month membership to Book of the Month Club.

The process is simple: Choose one or multiple of five titles showcased each month, and have them shipped to your door (sometimes the brand sneaks a surprise inside your bundle), and enjoy!

If you're looking for a book club that's a little more engaging, Emma Roberts and Karah Preiss launched their own exclusive association where readers can purchase Belletrist's monthly pick and discuss via social media.

10A Fancy Planner

Erin Condren

Erin Condren 2018 Hardbound LifePlanner, $30, Amazon

I wouldn't exactly call myself cheap, but I'm definitely not the type of girl to pay a visit to the mall on a weekly basis and waste money on material things I don't need (except books — you can never have too many books).

When it comes to planners, though, I've been known to splurge. Some people look at $30 for a planner and think it's outrageous. I, on the other hand, am drawn to pricey notebooks and will gladly drop a few bills on a hardbound planner clad with pages dedicated to setting goals and organizing schedules.

Erin Condren's life planner comes in three designs: watercolor splash quote, painted petals, and floating florals. It's also huge, with 164 pages to doodle, take notes, and plan your entire 2018. Is it worth the big bucks? For you, I definitely think so.

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[basstunnicliffe]

“Fast forward 11years and my return to buying vinyl was less fuelled by my frugal background and wholeheartedly driven by my mental health”

Vinyl is often associated with nerds, musicians and the old. While that kind of generalisation doesn't really have any place in discussing anything of any kind, there definitely is some sort of visceral or fanatical drive behind most record collectors.

We have heard reports that the average record buyer these days is in fact not teenagers revelling in a technology that only recently thought of introducing its self to them but in fact is people who were there back in the day and by now are aged between 45 and 54. The data is thought provoking in itself and has me wondering just what the catalyst was for thousands of middle aged people worldwide to suddenly delve back into this not-cheap, not convenient, not small format that they gave up on twenty years ago. When these people were children vinyl may very well have been the only option available to them so I find myself intrigued as to what chain of events drew them into revisiting that part of their youth. My story involves a revisiting of sorts but I am not old enough for there to have been a twenty year hiatus in between. That said, it's still a long one. Grab a brew.

Roughly twelve years ago I got into buying records for one very simple reason - it was the cheapest way to have both sound and information in one physical package. I am a nerd. Through over-engineered packaging, greed and an incessant norm of twenty-ish tracks per album, CDs had become ludicrously overpriced and retrospectively were acting as a womb for music lovers to develop their own alternative means of accessing the music they loved. I wasn't a record collector, I was just skint. The nerd in me just couldn't do without the credits and liner notes so while my brother was perfecting the dark art of illegal downloading I was listening to my records on repeat as I put my music in alphabetical order or making sure the metadata in my iTunes of imported CDs was painfully accurate; an amazingly effective way of showing people you're simultaneously preoccupied and lonely.

Vinyl wasn't where it all started for me though. Since as far back as I can remember, I have always parted with what small money I've had in order to have the music I love. The epitome of this was hiding Michael Jackson's Dangerous cassette when I found it in my local Woolworth's in order to buy me time to convince my mum to lend me the pennies I needed to top up my saved pocket money and make it mine. I was only a nipper at that time but over the following years approaching my teens this obsession with dancing to MJ cassettes in our living room had transformed into me becoming a bass player in a punk band. This is what I did professionally from the age of fourteen onwards and through this time CD prices fell, Amazon came into my life and my collection came to include an enormous amount of music that I felt I just needed to hear. Stylistic and creative decisions made from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance was the name of the game and it did me well.

Fast forward 11years and my return to buying vinyl was less fuelled by my frugal background and wholeheartedly driven by my mental health.

I got to the age of 25 having made a healthy living from being a professional musician around the UK and elsewhere off the back of the amazing support of those around me as well as the innumerable lessons I found sat in the numerous albums I had chased down (regardless of their format). I had become deeply unhappy. Naive to the fact that I was facing some crippling mental health issues, I had fallen out of love with music which at the time was an all-encompassing force that was my primary social vehicle, means of financially supporting myself and hugely woven into my identity. I returned from a tour and almost immediately cancelled all future work I had planned and entered a Spring period of hiding in a studio flat in Cardiff watching films and drinking alone. Throw in relocation to a new city, a fleeting experience at a university degree as well as somewhat skipping over the recent death of my dad and the combination was as toxic as it was bleak. The problem could not be with me. The problem must be that music had become boring. In an effort to fix music I had bursts of intrigue to the extent that I would collate obnoxious articles that claimed to showcase 'The Top 100 IDM Tracks You **NEED** To Know' in order to have a spreadsheet catalogue of source material from which to delve into a new style, a new career or just anything to take me away from where I was. IDM, techno, footwork, house, jungle, electro and trap were all styles of music I oddly knew nothing about (my life as a bass player has touched on most other styles in quite great depth) and so I made use of YouTube and got listening.

Quite a lot of this time for me is a blur. The Spring and Summer of 2016 felt like an eternity yet reeks of 'where the hell did it all go?'. What I do know about that time is that at some point I watched a video diary of the life of house DJ Seth Troxler where he said : “I kinda wanna be a bit like Laurent Garnier, y'know? Laurent Garnier is a guy I have the utmost respect for 'cause he's taken his career and done it on his own terms”. I had nothing else on so I misspelt then pursued this 'Laurent Garnier' figure by first watching him being interviewed by the fantastic Lauren Martin for Red Bull Music Academy. In a word: eloquent. I saw a connection in Mr. Garnier between him and the music he's tirelessly promoted and developed for longer than I've been alive. I saw a younger me in him. He had held onto something I had very recently lost and so I combined his inspiring anecdotes with a delving into the brooding intensity of techno. By June 2016 I had bought a pair of turntables on eBay and remembered to rescue the DJ mixer my Mum had given me after it was donated to the charity she worked for. I had intended to throw it away on account of it being of no use to a live musician but had completely forgotten it was there.

Despite being drawn to techno's balance of visceral euphoria, tribal sense of percussive momentum and occasionally almost violent aggression I did immediately come up against Cardiff's lack of used techno stock and the resurgence of vinyl having driven up the price of new 12” releases online. 10 years had passed since I had first (albeit briefly) had contact with these enormous black disks and it seems funny that in that time the price had polarised enough to go from being an inviting quality to a reason to steer clear. What was in abundance in Cardiff though was second hand vinyl shops where I could access the stunning craftsmanship of the great dancefloor songwriters who had me dancing on the rug as a child. Michael Jackson came through first and was swiftly followed by (mainly cheap 7” copies of) some of the funk, Motown and disco records I had encountered during my research as a bass player. Despite having performed jazz and other styles of music equally rife with snobbery I have never been too proud to say that I enjoy getting down to music that is written to sell in large numbers. When done well, pop music is teeming with social references, gives you what you need when you want it and teeters on the line between what we know well enough to feel comfortable and delivering us something new that holds our attention. My cardboard record boxes grew fuller day by day but the most important development at the time was much deeper than the physical acquisition of stuff I wanted. In one of my nights of drinking I had successfully returned to my flat, made a cup of tea (yes, I am British) and fallen asleep only to find in the morning that I'd spilt said cup of tea and left my poor iPhone to spend the night in the milky, sugary puddle I'd created on the desk. This meant that in my first months of collecting I went to the dusty shops of Cardiff armed with an actual notepad with names of records to dig for in case I drew a blank when I was stood in front of the crates. My time at these record shops became quite sacred. In a world where the majority of communication is done online, my disappearance from Facebook, the iPhone world (my replacement was a drug dealer-esque £10 phone with no camera or online capability) and the professional capacity through which I normally maintained contact with the people around me was undoubtedly going to raise many conversations I wasn't ready to have. I hadn't even identified a problem yet let alone found an answer. I would walk briskly to the record shops and I would be there most of the day getting my hands dirty and relishing the lack of phone signal as I buried myself in buying music that I was only buying for me. Flicking through records was therapeutically autonomous and had only two outcomes – either I found something I had been looking for or I (often) found something I'd never even heard of which I found astoundingly intriguing. The idea of buying music that you don't like may sound completely barmy to many people but in the world of being the bassist hidden behind the writers and front people of the industry knowledge is power and that knowledge is sat in abundance in classic albums. This approach served me very well but meant that my 21 days of music in my iTunes from purchased CDs was not my music but the music of the bass player I had become. A training ground for technical proficiency and for anecdotal references to pull out on new clients over a coffee at soundcheck. In stark contrast to my professionally broad CD collection was a couple of ever-growing boxes of vinyl singles and LPs that were bought for no reason other than to cheer me up. They meant something to me and immediately held less professional weight due to my not being able to listen to them on the move. I loved that about them. My Mac meant the internet, internet meant people and, in turn, people meant questions. I could put on my records without even having to engage with the chain events that would be so strenuous to face. Escapism through music was in my life again and providing me some respite in an otherwise very tough time for me.

Having failed my year at university I left Cardiff and stayed in a static caravan on Anglesey outside the house of two close family friends with everything I owned either in my car on hidden in storage. My records and turntables were with me that Summer and my time was still plagued by my asking questions about my place in the world and I was very much still not in a healthy place. I was, however, getting some relief from this by spending many afternoons trying to desperately mix together the small amount of music I owned in the hope of someday sharing it with someone. I had fallen in love only months before leaving Cardiff and the only sense of purpose my time in a caravan on Anglesey had was to complete and record collections of songs that I and my girlfriend both enjoyed and send them to her in some sort of cohesive narrative. My first mixes were titled:

'Check Us Out, We're In Love'

'Too Weak to Dance, Too Busy to Rest' (my other half was writing her Masters’ dissertation)

'It's Fun To Dance Where It's Hot' (My mum was moving to Greece)

Only a fortnight before the start of term I was informed by post that through appealing I had been granted one final additional year to try and survive 2nd year at university. I left Anglesey for Cardiff and undertook a torrent of flat viewings which swung from the unaffordable to the downright inhospitable until I was fortunate to find a gem that someone had dropped out from at the last minute. All was well very briefly as I was distracted by meeting new, enthused students, unpacking into an unfurnished flat and just being in a different city. This did eventually wear off and I did find myself completely disengaged from the jazz degree I was studying and was back in a very dark place once again with a complete misunderstanding of how I was so incapable of being content in anything I did. The drinking resumed and I increasingly neglected any form of healthy eating and hid myself again.

One evening of that December last year I was speaking to my Mum on the phone while she was at her new home in Greece. In discussing how I was doing I stated I had “gone from wanting to avoid the normal things in my life to actively wanting to do nothing”. My Mum, ever understanding and being the amazing woman that she is responded “there's a name for that ,Ben. It's clinical depression.” and she insisted that I go and get help. She said she'd be calling me all morning until I had called my GP for an emergency appointment. The prospect in itself had me stuck awake all night out of the sheer fear that I could detail all of my feelings to a complete stranger only to be told that there was nothing wrong with me. The thought of being told such a thing would have made my life unbearable and I was the most frightened I think I have ever been. Running parallel to my fear that night was the obsessive nature of searching for new records online. I had been struggling in recent months to find a means of moving from one track to another in my mixing due to both a lack of number of records but more importantly the records I did own were never recorded metronomically like electronic music traditionally is. In short, this just makes it nigh on impossible to perform long hand overs between two tracks which is a style of blending that we all seem to now expect from a DJ. I needed an alternative and that night, through some miracle I googled something that brought me to a Discogs discussion that contained within it a link to numerous DJ mixes recorded at a time where metronomic music simply didn't exist! With that goldmine of real 'period' mixes  aside, there is a lovely opening story in that Discogs discussion about a man's personal link to Underground Disco. The enthusiasm and humanity of the connection the people in that short, long-since abandoned discussion had for Disco encouraged me to read their stories and also follow-up the tracks they mentioned.

“On that same CD is the almost 12 minute version of Dan Hartman's ”Relight My Fire” - downtown.music

The above quote had me intrigued and while I didn't find the 12 minute version I did find a 9 minute recording prefixed by 'Vertigo'; that'll do. It was getting light by this point and I lay in bed with headphones as I clicked play on the track wondering what I was about to hear. The intro was as odd as it was dramatic but I had learnt in the past months of auditioning unknown records that it was both polite and sensible to stick with a track for at least 3 minutes to see where it would take you. Almost exactly 3 minutes in and I am engulfed by the most dramatic bar of orchestration I think I have ever heard. An unapologetic, muscular combination of instruments quite literally woke me up in preparation for the rollercoaster that was to be the main body of the song. Poignantly appearing when I was dangerously circling the drain, I finally fell asleep after a dozen listens and was woken up before 8am by my Mum's phone call.

I was given an emergency appointment on the day and through the wonder that is the tireless workers of our NHS I met with a doctor who listened, who understood and who saw that I needed to leave with a short term solution in order to have the strength to fight long term.

With a prescription in my hand I walked all the way across town to my flat in the rain only a fortnight or so before Christmas. Having spent every penny of the £40,000+ I had inherited from my dad passing away, money was very tight but I thought such a triumph for my own wellbeing deserved some recognition so I stopped at the record shop closest to my flat. Those of you who have spent more than 20seconds in a record shop will know that you scarcely find what you want and invariably leave with something you tried on a whim and found you liked. Not this time. The 12” singles are separate at my local and somewhat hidden so I pulled up a chair and flicked through for what can only have been a couple of seconds before producing Vertigo/Relight My Fire by Dan Hartman in a well-stained, blue Epic records sleeve. To be sure, I carry it over and demo it on the better turntable and cry for 9 minutes while facing the wall. I brought it home and proudly did the same but at a volume I can only describe as defiant. My mum rang me that evening and I find no shame in telling you what I told her which was that both being told by my GP that I was suffering at the hand of mental illness and in turn allowing a 9 minute disco record to remind me that night of what power there is in people was the first time in a long time that I had thought that what I was going through wasn't going to kill me sometime soon.

I am now months away from that pivotal moment in my life and records have continued to have an immensely positive impact on me since that day. This was a story about just one of them and there's far more still to come. I have made chasing the happiness they bring a focal point in my life as I move forward and I'm excited to see how far they will take me.

[xtramilerjourney]

To everything, a season...

In 2012, I bought my dream car. The 350z Nissan Fairlady. Before this, I was really contented with public transport and relied on the erratic Bas Mini Wilayah and Intrakota buses. If those failed, I would hail a taxi. You have to understand, I never desired a driving license and delayed this decision till much later. My parents would encourage me to drive but I would give excuses and put it off time and time again. Public transport was my way of passing out tracks and meeting strangers. I would get into a taxi and spend the next 20 to 30 minutes to get to know the driver and we would talk about everything under the sun. The highlight of my conversation would always be drawn back to what I believed and I would share my faith freely. Friends who would be generous with their time and provide me transport too. I was blessed! I remember hearing an announcement in church one day that our teens ministry were needing help with transporting teens to church. That was when I finally decided to sit for my “L” license. It was 2007 and I was 29 years old! I must admit, I failed twice on my road test. I wasn’t a bad driver but I refused to bribe the officer when taking my test. The night before, I spoke to the uncle in charge and he casually said that everything had been “settled”. That was when I realise that he had already arranged the bribe for the JPJ officer for me to pass. We fought over the phone and I told him that I refused to bribe. I believe that driving a car is a big responsibility and I had to be evaluated based on my ability to drive and not have that decision to be influenced by anything else. The uncle said I would surely fail and sure enough, before I could leave the centre for my road test, the officer picked on a minor error I had made and failed me. My second attempt was with the same officer and he failed me yet again. I stood my ground to not bribe, prayed and sat for the test again for a third time! Thankfully God had given me a new officer to test me and I passed . PTL! My dad loaned me his Iswara Aeroback and I was able to provide transport for our teens in church. You will be amazing what a 30 minute journey with a teen can do. I found a new ministry and spoke into their life as often as I could. That was also how I got myself involved in teens ministry for that season. ( I think God had set me up for this!) In 2012, I decided it was time to own my own car. My initial choice was a Myvi that would cost around RM50K. You see, I had just done XtramileDay a year back and having understood how much impact one can make in community, I had this mindset that every cent earned would be put to good use and given to community development. Being frugal was the way to go. I had just started work too after coming back from Singapore and was reluctant to buy a more expensive car though I could afford it. That season, our faith as a church was stretched to believe for our own building. Instead of keeping to the RM50K budget for the car, I saw how God gave me faith for something greater. From RM50K, it went to RM60K, then RM80K and by the end of 9 months, I had changed my budget to RM100K. In that span of time, I had seen and tested over 50 cars. You name it... Myvi, Altis, Almera, City, Vios, Triton and Hilux. I tested them all but nothing seemed to appeal to me. I still remember when my budget reached RM90K I was considering a 4X4. Eventually, it became clear that the reason I wanted a truck was so no one would bully me! HAHA... I would never be tailgated again because I would be driving a big ass truck and strike terror on the road! When I approach cars from the back, they would have to give way! Interesting enough, I never bought one because I knew my motive was wrong. I came to a place where I was convinced that maybe God just wanted to stretch my faith to believe for more and the car was just a way to teach me to dream bigger. Frustrated that I hadn’t found my car, I took a break for a month to clear my mind. One day for no apparent reason, I looked at mudah.my’s second hand cars section. And my eyes were opened! With RM100K, I could own a BMW, Mercedes... or some pretty exotic car! OMGGG!!! This began a new season for search 2nd hand cars. I had a ball going to dealerships and testing some pretty nifty cars and that was when I chanced upon a Mazda RX8 and the Nissan 350z. But, I could not wrap my head around buying a sports cars actually. Had I gone mad? What would my pastors and friends say. My parents are not gonna be happy! What am I trying to tell the world? Wahhh... Flashy flashy eh? So selfish! 2 doors?.. Have I suddenly decided to be a playboy? Come on Alex, a sports car does not exactly fit the profile of a good christian boy. Oh, I struggled internally at the beginning because I had only seen a car as a mode of transport from point A to B and never thought of anything else. With a sports car, my appreciation for performance and aesthetics changed. I was looking at cars that were fast, way way faster than my 1988 Iswara! That was also my first introduction to Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift and the world of sports cars. (Incidentally, the bad guy in that movie drives a 350z with a Veilside kit and does a whole lot of drifting!) That car literally caught my attention and I was gonna test one out soon! I decided to share with my parents and my leader about my intention to get a 2 seater, 3.5 liter, iconic japanese sports car. You can imagine how they responded - not very impressed, I must say. Everyone I knew were against me getting the car. Some were really subtle in their approach and reminded me to make sure my tithes were in order before considering the purchase. My church leader told me not to be selfish, to think about starting a family and buy a safe saloon car. “So even after speaking to your parents, you are not changing your mind? “Since you don’t want to listen to me and my advice, even though I am your leader, I have decided to end our discipleship.” “We can be friends and you can still get advice from me but I will no longer be your leader.” Honestly, I was crushed. It was a very difficult time for me, to lose a leader over a car. I had to stand firm on my conviction and go against my parents advice because I knew God had done something in me through the 9 months of searching for a car. It wasn’t just a car I was choosing to buy, but it signified a season in my life where faith was at work and it was being tested. There was such a deep conviction about the car that I was ready to make a stand and disappoint those close to me. For me, the 9 months of working through a “material” choice became a spiritual journey and a mindset shift. --- I am blessed to own a 2004 Nissan Fairlady for the past 5 years. I bought over the car from a friend who had maintained the car well. It had Brembo brakes and adjustable TEIN suspensions for better handling. He had just gotten married and his wife was expecting. I kinda hinted that his car would be better off with me since he was going to be a family man soon! Sure enough, two months later we were working out the loan and sorting out the name transfer! The car was bought for RM100K. When I first got this car, I told God to keep me single for the next 3 years so I could drive around Malaysia and enjoy the drive. That proved to be a selfish request because three weeks later I was in a relationship! Haha. This season, I am able to go on road trips alone. If you have followed me on Facebook/Instagram last week, you would have seen my journey across Malaysia. The drive took over 60 hours and some 2900km without as much as a glitch. He protected me and kept me alert during those long 10 hour drives through some of the windiest and darkest roads. The car held so well in the toughtest terrain and even when I pushed it harder, it kept on going. This car, like it’s owner has done many extra miles. I have visited schools, gone on many road trips and it has not been spared from repairs and a few minor accidents. I have not missed my tithes or my car repayment since I first got the car. What I am amazed is time and time again how God has allowed me to enjoy this car. He delights seeing us find pleasure in what we love and He is a giver of good gifts. It is in these long journeys that I am alone worshiping, talking to him, listening and taking corners at high speed that I feel pleasure, His pleasure. I come alive when I overtake or when I cruise leisurely and enjoy the beauty of my surroundings. I realise earlier on when I bought the car that there was a direct relation of the horse power and my effort as a runner. Driving a sports car, like running a tuned body is mechanical and automated yet when you push it to its limits and you can feel the raw power from the source. Everything works together in harmony and there is such awe at the power that is released. Only a sports car would do... He knew that I would find joy in going long distances, accelerating at will and appreciate the performance of a well maintained engine. Can you imagine me driving that RM50K Myvi that first started my desire for a car? There has been many lessons I have learnt since owning this car but one particular lesson remains a constant reminder - the journey of stewardship. Philippians 4:12 says “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” We can ask freely for what we desire and He is able to bless us! When our hearts are right, our request draws us close to him, unlocks the resources of Heaven and He receives all the glory. To every thing there is a season and am grateful for this journey thus far. “Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God. ” ~ 1 Peter 1:18-21 MSG