#i simply have not had the dedication 2 read an entire long fantasy series in idk how long….

[rollercoasterwords]

have you read babel? or poppy war trilogy? feel like you’d fw it

have not read babel but i did read the first poppy war book a while back! i went in expecting pretty straightforward fantasy novel so i was shocked by how dark it got but that made me like it 🤩 i didn’t read the rest of the series tho bc i was like eh i’m not in the mood for a long series…have thought abt returning to it & i do think i have babel on my reading list but i’m trying to prioritize reading books i already own this year 🤧

[utilitycaster]

@rowzeoli replied to your post “Do you think part of the D20 journalistic bias...”:

I rarely go on tumblr so sorry if you see me spamming your posts tonight, but I really enjoy your perspective and thoughts! I think I'm the journalist you're referencing in regards to the Fantasy High Junior Year article and unfortunately 1) journalists only get access to interview subjects at very specific junctions (usually press day before the series goes out or halfway through) 2) most publications are honestly Going Through It and cutting freelance rates and just not paying to cover AP

​So I'll be totally honest - I post on Tumblr because I assume it is far more unlikely to be seen and so I can vent freely (hence the fairly harsh tone of the criticism in the original post), but I guess this is a chance to clarify. I don't expect anything to change, nor do I expect you to respond; indeed, I wouldn't blame you if you block me after this. But if readership is down (and who knows? maybe it's not and I'm the outlier), this may be illuminating.

The issue with your specific article - which I brought up relatively tangential to the larger point of "at this point I think Polygon's AP/TTRPG coverage is a waste of time to read" isn't really that it's only an early look at the series; and because Fantasy High Junior Year is at this time ongoing, it's honestly entirely valid that there hasn't been a follow-up. It's, well, the "surface-level and factually wrong" issue.

Dimension 20 was by no means the pioneer of remote recording as you claim in your article; that had long been the default of smaller recorded AP shows well before pandemic lockdown for the simple reason that if you're not a media company the overhead is very low - no need to have a dedicated space or even cameras beyond decent laptops. Burrow's End's puppetry? Critical Role's Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Crystal Palace did shadow puppets in 2019. They had diagetic audio on the main campaign as early as 2016. I don't even like Kollok, but that's had complex set design since 2019. Meanwhile premise of the article is yet another rehash of Polygon's "Dimension 20 is CHANGING THE GAME" constant drumbeat, while your actual pull quotes from Brennan Lee Mulligan are him musing that this is simply an entry in an ancient tradition of storytelling and isn't, in fact, terribly novel. The interview fails utterly to back up your point and indeed contradicts it; I get that the timeline was probably tight but this is outright incorrect in multiple places and your argument isn't just unsupported; it's outright dismissed by the very person you claim is proving it. If the premise came before the interview, it needed to be reworked afterwards, and if it came after the interview…I'm not sure what to say, really.

This isn't your article, and I'm putting it here to illustrate that this has been a pattern for Polygon's AP coverage specifically. This article about Worlds Beyond Number is perhaps my favorite example of "this is not serious journalism:" Rusty Quill Gaming, The Adventure Zone, Friends at the Table, and NADDPod are all theater of the mind long-running podcasts (RQG's campaign lasted a whopping 7 years of real time) and that's just off the top of my head; the idea of a long-running edited audio podcast being novel is laughable. RQG and TAZ both started at level 1; I'm not personally familiar with Friends at the Table. I don't actually think starting at level 1 vs. 2 is terribly important in storytelling in the first place other than that a few D&D classes pick their subclass at L2 and that choice can be narratively relevant, which it was in TAZ; however, some classes pick a subclass at L3 so you can still achieve this with a level 2 start (as Critical Role's second campaign does). Both Emily Axford of NADDPod and Griffin McElroy of TAZ have long been composing their own music and RQG is heavily sound designed. These are not obscure pulls, either; these are some of the more well-known names in the space.

At this point, Polygon AP/TTRPG articles - by multiple different writers - simply feel like madlibs: "(actual play show) is groundbreaking in its (thing that other shows have been doing for 5+ years); I especially liked (visual effect) and (incorrect understanding of TTRPG mechanics)."

The people I allude to in the post you responded to as having egregiously uncharitable and sanctimonious takes on Daggerheart (within, again, hours of its publication) are a frequent Polygon contributor and a Rascal editor and they further my mistrust of those publications: There is this constant insistence that everything they like be "groundbreaking" and "innovating" and they will claim this even when it's demonstrably not the case, as the above examples note. As Mulligan says in your article "it’s important to keep new artists with new experiences and backgrounds flowing in," and yet by focusing intensely on high production values (difficult for smaller indie upstarts to have) and by incorrectly claiming that a well-established media company within the space like D20 invented a number of things it flat out did not, this journalism is actively, if unintentionally, working against that goal. As I put it elsewhere, Polygon's bizarre pedestaling of Dimension 20 and simultaneous putdowns of Critical Role (which turn into wild contortions when D20 mainstays like Mulligan or Aabria Iyengar collaborate with CR; for that matter others besides me have observed that Polygon acts like Spenser Starke is two different people, the genius who created Alice is Missing and the knuckle-dragging moron who put out Candela Obscura and Daggerheart) coupled with the obsession with production values over story has the whiff of claiming they're the champion of the little guy for sticking it to the 700 lb gorilla in the space and then focusing on 500 lb gorillas while making it impossible for smaller monkeys to compete because most brand new shows without the name recognition of someone like Mulligan involved can't exactly hire Rick Perry to do their models or Taylor Moore to do sound design.

I suppose a good way to put this, since I've run into this in many spaces, not just AP/TTRPG or even journalism, is that bias on its own in a subjective medium isn't inherently bad; but if something is so nakedly biased against something I love, I will, naturally, turn to it with a far more critical eye, and if its arguments are not ironclad I'm going to start noticing every structural issue in every argument and every tiny mistake. Sure, as a fan of Critical Role, and as someone who feels that Kollok was nigh-unwatchable and that Burrow's End was promising in parts but deeply flawed, I disagreed with Polygon's nonstop mud-slinging towards the former and glowing, verging on fawning reviews of the latter two. But that's not entirely damning on its own; I do get that not everyone will like Critical Role and that some people will love Kollok or Burrow's End for valid reasons. What's damning is the journalism itself is riddled with factual errors and the analysis is so weak that to call the arguments a flimsy house of cards would be generous. The opposite is also true; if Polygon's lead editor were out here repeatedly misspelling the name of one of the main characters in Worlds Beyond Number (note: this has since been corrected) but the articles had compelling arguments, even ones I disagreed with, I'd be far more forgiving, but as is? It's offering me absolutely nothing: it's poorly researched, it's poorly structured, it's poorly written, it's poorly copy-edited, and it shits on things I like seemingly just for clicks. I'm done giving clicks.

I am deeply sympathetic to the pressures facing digital journalism and media and the arts in general; as someone who is fortunate enough not to personally face those pressures and has the income to be a patron, I would love to help in my small way (and I do, at least, financially support a number of the AP shows I love). But the quality of some of this journalism is truly so bad that I can't bring myself to support the institutions putting it out; it's "dead dove do not eat" until such time as someone whose analysis and opinions I do trust cites them (or, perhaps, until there is a sea change of lead editorship). I know that this won't help the crunch, and may make it worse, but I just can't because the quality is so poor. I don't have a good solution to how to write about something that takes a lot of time to watch and process and about which the articles pay very little in return, but the current strategy of bouncing between uninformed provocateur and utter sycophant depending on the show and creators; of drooling over such surface features as shiny production and falsely claiming everything is "groundbreaking" while getting the most basic facts wrong has driven me away.

[softprincesso]

✨ HOW TO BECOME A WEALTHY MIDDLE AGED MAN✨

PT.2: Overview to understanding different saving/retirement methods, investments, and forms of income

Pt. 2.2 Overview of Investments

Welcome lovelies to (what I hope will be) a helpful series on gaining wealth and becoming financially literate and independent!

Disclaimer: Check other posts. It's too long to keep typing out.

Now comes (what I believe) is the fun part of money. Making it grow.

Investments are defined as “an asset or item acquired with the goal of generating income or appreciation.” Essentially, anything you purchase with the belief that in time it will be worth more. This includes the entire stock market, cryptocurrencies, art, real estate, jewelry, vintage coins, designer bags, etc. Of course, some of these take more time and each comes with some amount of risk. These variables change according to your strategy as an investor.

✨THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND✨

Begin as a Beginner

Do not overwhelm yourself during your financial literacy journey by trying to learn everything, all at once, while also trying it all out. The thing that creates the most confusion when learning is believing the lie that you can multitask well. Yes, start with a brief overview of the systems and institutions (what we are currently doing in the series) but literally all you need to start is definitions and a gist so that you can comprehend how they connect later on. Learning an entire world that has never been taught to you is going to take time, and I’m talking years. And then, when you think you have something down your going to mess up or read an article about how the stock you saw yesterday for $6 is now $1000 and you’re going to be frustrated (this happens a lot). But, If you want to learn about the stock market, focus on the stock market. Retirement still scares you, focus on that until you master it and have a plan. And for Christ’s (or whatever deity/person/universe you believe in) if you do not have a steady stream of income do not put your last pennies trying to get into crypto (or any investing truly). This is something to start after you have income, a savings, a retirement, and have paid off at least most debts.

Recommended sources to learn more:

Netflix has a great series called “Explained” where (you guessed it) they explain things. While I recommend every episode because you can never learn too much, there are ones specifically dedicated to the stock market, cryptocurrencies, and billionaires each that helps to uncomplicate the history and purpose of each of these things.

✨Let’s get started✨

The Stock Market

“Stock markets are real and electronic exchanges that enable the buying and selling of securities. The most popular include the NYSE, Nasdaq MarketSite, and Tokyo Stock Exchange.” Let me, let you, in on a little secret-the stock market is essentially fantasy football (sorry, my American is showing) but with companies. When you buy a security, you are betting that (in the long run or short run, depending on your strategy) that a certain company will perform well and gain profits, which in turn will gain you money on what you bet. There are two categories of players in the market which include the assets (the football players) and the investors (the betting public). Of the assets you can categorize further by what position they play on the field…

Stocks

Most well-known, but the riskiest. The “star” player that everyone hypes up and takes all the credit. Stocks are fractional pieces of publicly traded companies, and by buying a stock you own a relative size of that company. They are either “paying you” through growth (when their stock price rises) or through dividends (when they send you a piece of their profits directly).

Mutual Funds

Less known but a safer bet than single stocks. Popular among those in middle age. “Mutual funds are baskets of stocks or bonds. They come in all different shapes and sizes, from covering broad stock market indexes to focusing on specific sectors.” When you buy a mutual fund, you are saying that you believe on average that pile of stocks/bonds are going to do well, instead of betting on a single player. Usually they are actively managed by people who are trying to “beat” the market for you. Statistically good for the short term, long term are less effective than ETFs.

Index Funds: a subset of mutual funds that are passively managed and track indexes like an ETF but trade like a mutual fund (once at the end of the day and without reliance of supply and demand)

ETFs

Exchange traded funds. The up-and-coming underdog that’s gaining popularity. These are passively managed baskets of stocks and bonds that track over a specific index like the S&P 500. They work like stocks, being traded throughout the day, relying on supply and demand, while giving a lot of the advantages that mutual funds do. They also come with their own set of disadvantages but are still a great way to diversify a portfolio inexpensively.

Bonds

The reliable bench players you know you can put in to save a game. Great safe bets that can generate a steady income. Bonds work like a loan for a regular person, except for a company. You can loan your money to a company which will pay you a principal plus a fixed interest back every specified period. There are different types which come with different advantages and strategies, so make sure to read the fine print.

Commodities

Tangible goods that go into manufacturing-Gold, oil, metals, corn, soybeans, etc. A good defensive team to have in the game for a hedge against inflation or economic troubles. They trade in a commodity exchange. You can still access them through most brokers.

Source to look into for deeper understanding and questions: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/investment.asp

Easy way to get started quickly:

1. Create a brokerage account: There are lots of accounts to choose from, but I would go for accounts that have zero fees and no minimum, this is starting to become the norm but once upon a time you had to give a minimum investment of $5000 to get started. I personally use Charles Schwab and Robinhood. I love all of the tools and accounts Schwab has and Robinhood is just easy to use.

2. Sign up: this may take a day or two to finalize, especially with banks but it shouldn’t be a big deal

3. Connect a card or account to transfer funds

4. Buy your first security: I would start off with simply looking up beginner investments on google. I recommend either an ETF, index fund, or choose a company that you have an interest in because you will be more likely to keep up on their news

5. Tip: think long term as a beginner. Sure, once you start learning and understanding you can change your strategy to gain more in a shorter time, but this comes with much more risk. Do not be an idiot and sell all of your stock when you see your investment plummet nor sell as soon as you see it go up a little. The best advice for a beginner: Buy a stock and leave it alone (for YEARS)

Property/Real Estate

There are many ways to invest in real estate-you can buy a property, you can invest in a property fund, you can become a landlord,or you can flip a property. Again, depending on the strategy, will change the risk and reward you have taken on. All of these options are usually on the more cash heavy side but can reap a lot of rewards if done right.

Source to look into:

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/5-ways-to-invest-in-real-estate

Easy way to get started quickly:

1. Buy a real estate ETF or fund, you can just look this up on google or through your brokerage

2. OR you could look into buying a property near you and renting it out if you have that much cash (Make sure to do your research, this can get pretty complicated)

Art

Also considered property but until recently it was incredibly hard to invest in art without significant cash and contacts available. Now, there are platforms like Masterworks where you can buy a fraction of a piece like a stock of Monet and you get the rise in appreciation. However, it still is for those with money already available, I believe you have to invest a minimum of $2500 to get started on MW.

Sources to look into: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/fine-art.asp

Crypto

Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that are not backed by real or tangible assets or goods, but on the trust and value of the people that use them, and supply and demand. They can be traded like stocks on an exchange and are tracked with a digital ledger on the blockchain. The first cryptocurrency was Bitcoin and the rest that have followed are categorized as altcoins (alternative coins).

The stage of cryptocurrencies we are in is likened to the early 90s with the internet. Not a lot people truly understand the blockchain (the vast ledger space which contains every transaction made securely in encrypted “blocks” that are then “chained” together so that if one block is compromised the whole chain shuts it down.) It is decentralized and written simultaneously on thousands of super computers. The beauty of it is that if one ledger on one computer is somehow hacked or wrong the rest of the computers storing the ledger interrupt and either fix it or shut it down. A way to understand it is blockchain is to the internet as bitcoin is to a website, but the internet runs off people trusting the system, blockchain runs off trusting no one.

The currencies that run on blockchain can have a multitude of purposes, but bitcoin was really just the starting solution to fix the problem of trust on the internet. People wanted a secure, anonymous, untraceable way to spend money online, like cash is in the real world. And while for the most part it is just that, it isn’t completely anonymous. Like in the real world if you buy something from Mcd*nalds with cash that transaction is still recorded in their system and through a receipt. Your crypto transactions are recorded in the blockchain, but most people don’t even know how to access the ledger so for now any ill*cit purchases you make are pretty safe.

I HIGHLY recommend looking into a cryptocurrency course or training just because there is so much that goes into it and lots of details that can help you. This investment is incredibly risky and volatile! I only would suggest investing an amount you are completely comfortable to lose ALL of.

Sources to learn more:

https://www.investopedia.com/cryptocurrency-4427699

Easy to get started quickly (Please dear lord do your research first):

1. Sign up on a crypto exchange like Coinbase or Binance, some brokers (like Robinhood) also allow you to trade crypto but it’s a very limited selection

2. Do lots of research!! (I’m going to say it until you get it, and I don’t think you get it yet)

3. Think of it like stocks, if you read up on the coin and its purpose, and think that it’s going to be useful soon or in the future, then invest

4. Tip: the crypto market moves MUCH faster than the stock market and is much more sensitive. In just these last few days (literally hours) bitcoin was trading at $40,000+, the following day, for whatever reason (people got scared, people wanted to sell to get profits, etc.) it will barely hold $33,000. So, invest wisely!

This is very brief list of the main investments. There is still a lot of depth each of these goes into and especially with things like crypto, information changes 24/7. I hope you have learned by now that you should be continually learning as well. Instead of spending your morning looking at your Instagram feed of bum friends, dusty men, and “models” spend it reading the paper and catching up on the market. Follow investors and billionaires like you follow celebrities and see how much smarter you become. At the end of the day winners focus on winning, losers focus on winners.

With love,

O

[sirikenobi12]

This Capt' goes down with her Ship

I’m honestly amazed at how many messages I receive both here and on Twitter that ask me why I ship Obi-Wan with Siri Tachi over Satine Kryze. I guess I’m mostly amazed because I can’t believe people actually care enough to take the time to message me about my character preferences, that’s just really fascinating to me. 

But, since I’m getting tired of writing this out in individual messages I thought perhaps a blog would be a good idea so that way I can just reference/link them to it later - it’ll be much easier. So, bear with me while I get a little self indulgent (and Satine stans please don’t come at me, I will explain below how I really have nothing against Obitine). 

This is going to be really long, and I’m not expecting anyone to actually read this, but here we go! 

I’ll begin by answering questions that are sitting in my inbox:

1. Who the hell is Siri Tachi?? For those who don’t know the character of Siri Tachi, she was a female Jedi who was two years younger than Obi-Wan. She was originally from the Legends young reader book series Jedi Apprentice and Jedi Quest (written by Jude Watson). She was in many of the same Padawan classes as Obi-Wan even though she was two years his junior because of her advanced skills. She could hold her own against him in a lightsaber duel even as they grew up. She was chosen as an apprentice to Jedi Council Member Adi Gallia at age 11 which was very impressive given how young she was and the fact that a Council Member chose her.

(I don’t know why she looks like Brittany Spears in this drawing, not my fave)

She did have a hard time fitting in with her peers when she was younger though because she was so focused on her career as a Jedi which didn’t always make her the friendliest person to be around (it was really her masking her insecurities) and it was only after she was paired on several missions with Obi-Wan that they even became friends. 

She and Obi-Wan over the years grew very close and eventually discovered their feelings had crossed the line from friends to something more while on a mission when they were older Padawans (Obi was 18). They had been separated from their masters and nearly died while on that mission. So, before they “died” they each confessed their love to the other, but when it turned out they didn’t actually die they decided they’d wait and figure out what their relationship actually meant once the mission was over - putting duty above their feelings. But Qui-Gon and Yoda intervene before the two of them could have the conversation and the Masters reminded Obi-Wan of his dedication to the Jedi Order. Obi-Wan argued that he and Siri would be able to find a way to be together while still being active Jedi, that maybe they could be an exception to the rule or even change the rule entirely. Both he and Siri did end up choosing their commitment to the Jedi over their relationship in the end, because each of them realized they’d regret not being Jedi more than anything, but it did put a strain on their friendship for many years. 

At 23 Siri was secretly knighted and her first solo mission was sent undercover to infiltrate and take down a huge pirate slaver operation and she spent 4 years on that mission, all on her own with limited communication with the Council.

In order to do this she had to pretend to have a falling out with her Master and “leave” the Order entirely, everyone thought she had fallen to the dark side. Obi-Wan was devastated, and he spent several months looking for her because he refused to believe she’d actually fall. It was also clear that he was heartbroken that she left, especially knowing what they had given up in order to be Jedi. Upon ending the mission she returned to the Jedi and was then often sent on other undercover missions throughout the rest of her career (including one where she and Obi-Wan had to play a royal married couple which was super cute). Her actually being a Jedi Shadow is not official and is a fanfiction creation - but, it’s one that I 100% headcanon because it just makes sense. 

Siri was very different when she returned from her long undercover mission, she had lived as a pirate for 4 years and so she was not as uptight and rule bound as she had been in her youth. She began to wear tight unisuits/flight suits instead of the traditional Jedi tunics and she had grown to be a bit more irreverent - even showing up late to Jedi Council summons.  Obi-Wan didn’t seem to mind the change and the two became a formidable pair as Knights and they were sent together (with their Padawans who hated one another) on several missions.

Obi-Wan and Siri were always written as being equals, never one more powerful than the other. They often shared flirtatious banter (nothing new for Obi-Wan) and they seemed very much in sync on missions that it was clear they shared some kind of bond. They never seemed to let their failed romance stand between them and their duty, and only brought it up once more as adults to admit that they still loved each other, but were content to just be friends because it would be selfish of them to turn their backs on the Jedi simply for their love. Then upon Siri’s untimely death (she of course died in his arms) she told him that she’d always be with him. And he nearly fell to the dark side due to his anger, but stopped himself from killing the man who was responsible for Siri’s death because he knew she’d not want him to fall because of her. 

In canon there isn’t much about her (yet), except that Siri is said to be the girl Obi-Wan would hold hands with under the table during mid-day meals which suggests that they had a bit of a secret affair/flirtation for many years.

2. Why don’t you like Satine? This is a bit of a loaded question because even though I tend to write fics centered more on Obi-Wan and Siri’s relationship doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy the character of Satine or that I don’t swoon over their relationship from time to time thanks to some very well written fics ( @mahizli​ I’m looking your way). I just tend to write Siri more than Satine because I can relate to Siri more as a character, but in truth I also feel Siri and Obi-Wan’s relationship is a bit more well rounded than his and Satine’s 

*ducks to avoid things being thrown at her*. 

Satine and Obi-Wan have a beautiful love story, don’t get me wrong. But for me personally I am a little sick of the Romeo & Juliette/star crossed lovers angle. And that’s totally what they are - She’s a Mandalorian, He’s a Jedi, it’s a forbidden love not just because of his code, but because their “families” were mortal enemies. And I guess I’m just not super inspired by it. Not to mention that they met as children (apparently only 15 years old according to canon), confessed their undying love for one another after a year of knowing one another in a life or death situation and then pined for each other for the next 20 years until they were reunited...I just have a very hard time finding this story relatable (and hate to say it, plausible). Not that they couldn’t have felt love for one another as teenagers (especially in that situation), but that they still felt that same level of love 20 years later without ever seeing one another...at least with Siri they still had to interact with one another on a regular basis so it would be harder to push those feelings aside. 

The other reason I have a hard time writing Satine and Obi-Wan is because the romantic love they seem to have in TCW is written to be very one sided in my opinion. While Obi-Wan clearly cares for her, and admits to having feelings for her at one time it’s only ever Satine who actually seems to want something with him in the current sense. Which honestly makes their relationship feels a bit cringy to me, it doesn’t feel like it’s on equal footing - and makes it seem like Satine is a bit obsessive (I don’t blame her, it is Obi-Wan after all). This is a similar argument I have about Padme’s character, I feel like we’re presented with these incredibly strong women characters who for whatever reason still fall apart when it comes to love...I think it’s a reflection of men trying to write women and it ends up being a bit of a fantasy (the sexy/badass woman who secretly needs a man to save her). So, to sum up - I really do  love Satine’s character outside of her relationship with Obi-Wan. 

Again, this is just MY interpretation of Satine and Obi-Wan’s relationship...I get other people tend to feel very differently and that’s wonderful!! 

I will say, the thing I do like about Obi-Wan and Satine’s relationship and very much appreciate is how it is an opposite parallel to Anakin and Padme’s relationship. And it shows what a Jedi should’ve done - how you can’t have both a commitment to the Jedi Order and a marriage, but you can still care deeply about another person. I do very much appreciate that aspect of their relationship and it’s very well done from that perspective.

3. So, why SiriWan after all these years? Well, I’m drawn to Obi-Wan and Siri’s relationship for several reasons, but mostly because they are written as equals/partners (as I had mentioned above), both have moments where you can see the love they hold for one another - their feelings are very much shared and not one sided, but above all it’s not the main defining factor of their relationship. They are Jedi and friends before anything else, and I love that! It may not be as flashy or maybe even as passionate as say Satine or Cody but to me it’s more full and well rounded. I can also see their relationship growing and changing over the years, they aren’t stuck in one place or in the past.  

I also tend to find the Jedi culture more fascinating than the Mandalorians. I know, I know, I’m a heretic. That’s not to say, again that I don’t think Satine on her own isn’t fascinating, I just am a little tired of Mandalore’s importance in virtually every aspect of Star Wars these days and I feel like there is only so much you can do with Obi-Wan having feelings for a Mandalorian, where as him navigating a relationship with another Jedi is more interesting. The Jedi are allowed to be intimate with people, contrary to popular belief they are allowed to love, they just can’t become possessive/attached - I feel like two Jedi would have an easier time navigating that than someone who wasn’t raised with that same code. I think Siri and Obi-Wan have more opportunities to have a more realistic and adult relationship and I like writing/exploring that. 

The other thing I like about Siri and Obi-Wan specifically is the fact that neither ever really considered leaving the Order for the other. They knew how important being a Jedi was to the other, and I think having a love interest that Obi-Wan didn’t consider leaving for is an important distinction. 

Instead he thought they would be able to change the rules/code because he assumed it would be obvious that their love was pure and not an attachment. Now, obviously they both realized later that it was just foolish/young love talking (because I’m sure teenagers have to be extra careful of forming attachments), but what I really adore the concept that Obi-Wan “by the code” Kenobi had loved Siri so much that he’d even remotely consider the idea that he’d want the rules to change for her/them (and Siri “by the code” Tachi felt the same about him). There is something incredibly romantic about that - naïve, but romantic. 

I also believe that romantic love doesn’t automatically equal “true love”. I personally feel that Obi-Wan and Siri have a love that is on such a deep level that their relationship doesn’t always have to be romantic. They simply just love one another, in whatever form that takes at any given period in time throughout their lives, sometimes it takes the form of just friends, sometimes lovers, sometimes romantic. And I wish we saw more relationships like that in various media. But I get why we don’t, they are harder to write and less overtly sexy/dramatic.

Also, when someone says the phrase:

“Forgive me if I still think I know you better than anyone.” (Siri)

And it’s followed immediately with:

“You do”  (Obi-Wan)

My heart just melts, because that to me is love!!

4. So, you actually think Obi-Wan loved both Siri & Satine? Yes, I do...100%. I think they all loved other people at different points in their lives. I personally feel that most of Obi-Wan’s various ships (with exceptions of Master/Padawan ships...sorry, just not my bag) actually happened. I could see a young Obi-Wan having a fling with Quinlan Vos (I doubt they could handle more than that), I could definitely see him have an attraction/affection towards Cody (I don’t think given the power dynamic Obi-Wan would ever allow anything to actually happen between them though), I even believe he and Ventress had a rather confusing and passionate night together (maybe even more than one), I can see him easily having a relationship at one point with Taria Damsin (to which Siri would give him endless crap about because he seems to have a thing for Jedi Shadows). I’m sure he even had a relationship with Annileen on Tatooine to help find some comfort during his exile. To me all of that makes so much more sense than him (and Satine) pining away for one another for 20+ years. 

Allowing Obi-Wan to have multiple loves in his life also helps showcase the idea of non-attachment. It’s not that Jedi promote promiscuity - though they won’t judge anyone for it (I see the Jedi very much in the mindset of: it’s your body/your choice) it’s that the idea of attachment means possessing someone, thinking you own someone and also putting that person’s value over others. The idea that Obi-Wan could find love and value in a multitude of lovers to me shows him capable of loving without attachment - He is able to let these people go when the relationship has run its course...it’s very healthy. 

Not to mention that realistically people tend to have multiple relationships and loves throughout their lives. To only ever love one person is incredibly unrealistic, unhealthy and frankly screams attachment to me *cough Anakin, cough*.

In conclusion: If you’re still reading this (did you not have anything better to do with your time???) I do hope you have a bit more of an understanding why I personally like to write Obi-Wan and Siri’s relationship instead of his and Satine’s. Though if you read my fics (thank you if you do) I hope you realize that I try to not make the stories all about their relationship - yes, it pops up here and there, but I try not to make it the focal point. I believe both Obi-Wan and Siri are so much more than just a romance and that’s what I really love writing. 

But I raise a glass and toast all of those who prefer to ship Obitine or CodyWan or Ventrobi (or whatever Obi-Wan and Quilan’s ship name is) - I love reading your take on those relationships and I hope you don’t mind if an old SiriWan shipper joins the fun!

Phew, rant over...man, does anyone else have to defend their OTP preferences to strangers?? It’s just so odd to me! 

Thanks for reading, and if you’re a Siri, Obi-Wan or SiriWan fan drop me a line - I can seriously talk about them for hours! 

[into-the-afterlife]

Why I Ship Johnny/Female V Part 3: V, and You, and Me

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]

I’ve spent a lot of time in this essay series so far focusing on one half of the pairing. Johnny is fascinating, but he’s only one half of the dynamic. So what about V is interesting? Why does she stand out as a character, in the context of this pairing?

Across different ships, I’ve noticed a consistent pattern. There tends to be one character that the fandom focuses in on to thirst over and one that the fandom imagines themselves being. In this ship, the thirst-character tends to be Johnny, while the self-insert character tends to be V. And that’s not surprising, considering that V is essentially our self-insert into the world of Cyberpunk 2077. It’s also worth noting that people who engage in shipping and transformative fandom tend to be predominantly AFAB, myself included, and it makes sense that when writing sexual stories we’d want a self-insert who has our anatomy.

But fans being AFAB doesn’t usually impact what ships are popular. Shipping is infamously dominated by M/M couples who are, ninety percent of the time, cis. Usually, that impulse to self-insert results in an exaggeration of top-bottom dynamics rather than genderswaps or increased focus on M/F couples.

And the thing about V is, she isn’t just a self-insert. In fandoms focused on open-world RPGs, there tends to be some focus on the player character. However, that focus tends to be limited to the Tumblr-ish, transformative end of fandom. One of my other favourite video game fandoms is The Elder Scrolls. There, people avidly draw and discuss their versions of the protagonists on Tumblr and AO3. But on Reddit and Facebook meme pages, the focus is much more on the other characters, the lore, the worldbuilding.

In this fandom, though? I’ve seen more Vs on Reddit than I have on Tumblr. On Reddit, you’re bombarded with beautiful screenshots of V after V. On Tumblr, there’s tons of new names for V, lovingly thought out backstories and more. And when I see V being shipped with Johnny, V is almost always depicted as female, despite there being an option for a male V and despite the norms of shipping favouring a male V.

So it’s clear that female V inspires more affection than most RPG protagonists. Part of that is to do with Cherami Leigh’s voice acting that I covered in Part 1. But I also think there’s a lot in V’s writing that influences things this way.

CD Projekt Red’s writers are known for focusing on character and plot over worldbuilding in their writing. There’s no, ‘I used to be an adventurer like you...’ in their games, no blank-slate hero or awkward, generic background dialogue. Instead, their other protagonist, Geralt, reacts to chasing after goats and weird children and ancient beings as his own person. The world he inhabits is similarly richly drawn, with even the most bland of background guards discussing gimps and birthdays.

There’s also no black-and-white morality. Even in The Witcher games, their fantasy series, the morality leans much closer to Game of Thrones than The Lord of the Rings. This means that their characters are always three-dimensional. Their first true RPG is actually Cyberpunk 2077. Oh, sure, they’ve done games with rich worlds and lots of sidequests, with skill-trees and moral options, but they’ve always had an authored character, with his own slants and biases. Even when Geralt picks the moral option, he’s likely to be cynical about it, and he always leans towards being a grizzled libertarian who’s Done With This Shit at heart.

Despite their provision of a relatively blank-slate character in this game, this influence lingers on in Cyberpunk 2077. One of the big critiques of the game at launch was that the much-hyped lifepath system felt clunky and didn’t have much of an influence on later gameplay. It’s true that the backstory sacrifices some smoothness of plot and introduction to the world.

But what it gets rid of in those aspects, it makes up for in characterisation. No matter what path you choose, V is never an anonymous prisoner, a mysterious courier or a long-forgotten colonist. She has a clearly defined context, and real roots in the world around her. Even after you move past the prologue, V has the network of people around her you’d expect for someone already embedded in the world. After you’re shot, you don’t just go to some random ripperdoc; you go to Vik, her regular ripperdoc and friend. You don’t get the tarot sidequest from reading an anonymous shard; you get it from Misty. Jackie dating Misty suggests that he introduced V to Misty and Vik. V getting to know them through Jackie feels natural, and just like the kinds of close communal networks that spring up in large cities. Meanwhile, the unique dialogue options for each lifepath keep reminding you that V had a life before you met her.

And that’s true even for the other dialogue options. Here’s a minor, early-game set of dialogue choices from Cyberpunk 2077:

And here’s a similarly minor, early-game set of dialogue choices from a recent RPG that shares a lot of tonal and thematic similarities with Cyberpunk – The Outer Worlds:

Notice the difference in attitudes allowed by each set of dialogue options. The player character of The Outer Worlds has the opportunity to respond compassionately, snarkily or lie for their own advantage. Deception is specifically highlighted and controlled by a skill tree, and each dialogue choice has its own tone and flavour. Meanwhile, all of V’s dialogue choices can be interpreted as some kind of attempt at deception. They’re also all written in the same voice. While The Outer Worlds offers matter-of-fact kindness, brevity and colourful imagery, V’s dialogue choices all share sentence fragments, spunkiness, bluntness and emotional volatility. No matter what choices you make, V’s attitude and voice always stays the same.

The way dialogue choices are controlled is also worth examining. There seem to be more choices on the surface in Cyberpunk, but a full half of them are controlled by skill trees. Level V up differently to this YouTuber, and they may not even be available. The skills themselves also betray a lack of choice here. While speech is split into five different skills in The Outer Worlds, and the skill used here is directly named ‘Lie’, in Cyberpunk 2077 the skills are simply named ‘Reflexes’ and ‘Cool’. That’s partially due to differences in RPG mechanics, which is beyond the scope of this essay. But look at the names themselves. While The Outer Worlds singles out deception, and bluntly names it for what it is, Cyberpunk 2077 frames quick thinking and bluffing as simply part of the reactions and social attitudes required to survive in Night City. Even the very names of the game mechanics are coloured by V’s attitudes.

While V’s status as an independent character is coloured by CD Projekt Red’s previous experience, it’s definitely not an accident. They had an entire trailer dedicated to answering the question of who V is. For the question of whether V keeps her own personality to be compelling, V has to have a personality in the first place. And in the Temperance ending, the emotional impact of seeing V as an NPC in cyberspace, as well as the final, long shot of V’s face on the bus, depends on you having built up a relationship with her as a separate character. She’s a fascinating mix of self-insert and defined character, and purely from a writing perspective, breaks a lot of new ground for RPG protagonists.

But back to the subject at hand: shipping. She’s just self-insert enough for you to imagine yourself as part of a heightened reality, as someone blisteringly witty, quick-thinking and intelligent. And feeling competent and confident, whether in the real world or in-game, brings you back into your body and makes you feel confident enough to pursue what brings you pleasure. But V’s also just enough of her own person that you can care for her and want her to be happy. That combination of affection and wish fulfilment is what the best ships are made of.

Another huge part of V’s popularity in the Cyberpunk fandom comes from the way gender, or the lack of it, interacts with her characterisation. Of course, you can make her look and dress however you want; that’s one of the beautiful things about RPG protagonists. But her lines and interactions with other characters, thanks to them having to be voiced by male V as well, are refreshingly gender-neutral. To understand this further, let’s take a look at some concrete examples.

Cyberpunk 2077, particularly during the prologue and Act 1, takes a lot of inspiration from Grand Theft Auto. Fast cars, exciting crimes, the obligatory strippers and prostitutes; they’re all there.

These kinds of gritty, sexualised game worlds have attracted criticism from feminist media analysts for normalising violence against women and normalising extreme violence as the default and desirable way of responding to the world. What I think about these takes would take its own essay to get into. But the part of these critiques I do agree with is this. By having protagonists in these worlds always be hypermasculine cis male protagonists, and by having victims of crimes and sexualised characters always be cis women, these worlds repeatedly and unnecessarily sideline anyone who’s not a cis man from imagining themselves having power and agency.

However, where Cyberpunk 2077 differentiates itself from other examples of these game worlds is its lack of gendered differentiation for its protagonist. Ninety-nine percent of the time throughout the game, male and female V voice exactly the same lines. This means that if you choose to play as female V, female V is characterised exactly the same way as male V.

Let’s take a look at some concrete examples of this. The biggest is V’s relationship with Jackie. It’s rarely that you see a male-female friendship that stays as platonic as this one does in media, and I welcome it. The quest called ‘The Ripperdoc’ demonstrates this, in the conversation when Jackie and V drive to see Vik:

Jackie [with relish]: ...I got a date - me and Misty.

V: You don’t say...

Jackie [confidentially]: She’s soooo sweet. Really gets me, y’know?

Jackie describes his relationship with Misty in respectful terms, and isn’t afraid to detail the emotional aspects of his and Misty’s connection. But he doesn’t hold back on the macho bragging either. In these lines, and especially in the pleased, suggestive tone of the first line, it’s clear he’s proud to be the kind of guy who could date someone like Misty. The presence of both of these attitudes together shows that Jackie both trusts V and considers V a part of his traditional-masculinity-valuing world. It’s less ‘not like other girls’ and more ‘not like other mercs’.

Similarly, while V’s first interactions with Johnny do draw from highly gendered relationship dynamics, the actual content of V’s responses undercut any feminising this would give her. Here’s one exchange from ‘Playing For Time’:

Johnny: The fuck kinda joytoy are you supposed to be?

V: Fuckin’ ghost off!

Johnny calls V a whore. Before and after, he physically hurts her in ways that, in my opinion, have a highly sexual undertone. But the crucial bit is how V responds here. She neither responds in a helpless, damsel-in-distress sort of way, nor in a defiant, sassy heroine way, where she might take the gendered insults and own them or prove them wrong via physical prowess. In fact, she doesn’t react to the gendered aspect of Johnny’s comment at all. Where a game with a Strong Female Character (TM) would use gendered jabs to refocus attention on said character, Cyberpunk blows them off to focus on the reality of this particular character’s situation.

Outside of V’s closest relationships, this gender neutrality can also be seen in the wider world of Night City. Dexter DeShawn is one of the most tropey, Grand Theft Auto-esque characters you meet in the game. As such, he’s one of the best barometers for how gender interacts with the ‘usual’ state of the world. And how does he react to a female V?

The answer is, not at all. He addresses her as ‘Ms V’, but that comes across as less about her and more about him being high up enough in the world that he can afford affectations. Her gender simply isn’t relevant. While this is increasingly common in pop culture, it’s still rare in worldbuilding like this, where gender is all too frequently used as a lens through which to explore violent, chaotic worlds. In a type of world and tone where gender roles are traditionally emphasised , V slips past those roles and is allowed to exist beyond them.

But why does gender neutrality make V more appealing to ship? To answer that fully, it needs to be combined with my next point.

V is also compelling to ship because her characterisation gives a safe platform from which to imagine her being vulnerable. What I mean by that is this. The main aspect of V’s characterisation in canon is her status as a merc. How you experience her life, through gameplay and through the situations she gets into, is through her skills at hacking, sneaking and killing. You don’t just witness her competence, daring and toughness; you share in it.

When writing fiction that focuses on romantic relationships, one of the toughest balances to get right is that of competency and vulnerability. Any good romantic arc involves watching a character’s barriers come down, seeing how they react to the other person when they lay aside their protective pretences. But this can’t happen too soon, or too much, for either the protagonist or the love interest. Competency and assuredness are huge parts of what makes someone attractive, and they’re also huge parts of feeling like you can come out and play, sexually speaking. Even for the biggest submissive on the planet, the submission has to be a deliberate choice to be hot.

Taken together, V’s canonical characterisation and the possibilities and conventions of fandom provide the perfect balance of those two qualities. Canon makes it clear that V is capable and strong. When you or I imagine our Vs with Johnny, that buildup of ‘competence capital’ makes it feel safe enough to imagine V vulnerable.

And that safety is vital when shipping any character with a character like Johnny. This is where the gender neutrality I talked about earlier comes into play. Imagining V vulnerable feels safe. So does imagining V in a dynamic with a guy who’s a tropey bad boy. Because V is written in such a gender-neutral way, it lets the player enjoy all the deliciously dangerous aspects of her relationship with Johnny without the distractions that may come from feeling disempowered. It also refreshes all the clichés of Dangerous Guys, making their impact feel fresh and new again. Her ability to walk the line between wish fulfilment and independent characterisation inspires simultaneous identification with her, affection for her and boosts in confidence for the player.

This is why she’s compelling to ship. Johnny brings in the familiar emotional arcs of classic tropes, while V makes them new. So what happens when you put these two characters together? Just what about the way they bounce off each other has inspired the majority of fic and art in this fandom?

That’s what I’ll talk about next time.

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]

[cherry3point14]

Stranger Than Fanfiction: Ch 3

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Dean x Reader Warnings: Meta baby. Pure meta. Word count: 2,100. Chapter Summary: Your google search turns up something unexpected. A/N: No author in this one for... reasons. Also this one is kind of short and lame. A means to an end if you will, but trust me, Ch 4 is a doozy. P.S it’s nearly 3am so Chapter 4 will be up when I wake up, ya dig.

Ao3 if you prefer

It’s almost funny how dramatic the voice in your head wants to be about those suited criminals and yet it doesn’t care to elaborate on anything important. Like, say, your imminent death. The mention of it was so casual, calm, but a couple of weirdos want to pretend to be insurance adjusters and suddenly it’s all pretty prose and run-on sentences. Flowery language about broad-shouldered men in roaring muscle cars that are going to change your life. She’d kept going while you’d interviewed Maggie Hall. She’d harped on and on about how you couldn’t stop thinking about them.

Of course, you couldn’t stop thinking about them, she wouldn’t shut up about them.

After an entire monologue about the way the paper felt in your hands and could never be replaced by computers—purists are the worst—you finally get to leave. That's when you get some respite. You’re walking out into the late afternoon sun and thanking Maggie for her time and it's bliss. Maggie's story sounds a little off, after years doing this you have this gut instinct for when you should investigate further. Funnily enough, you have drama in your life that you’ll submit a valid claim anyway. Just so you can get this cursed case out of your hair. You might even hurry it through the system before the thing has the chance to kill you.

You’re still not sure how a case could kill you. You’re a pencil pusher at best and the interview with Maggie is an excellent example of the majority of your fieldwork, obviously excluding the criminals at the start. Unless your demise is death by papercut.

For now, you’ve given up trying to fathom out the voice you’re hearing, especially since she's chosen to once again go radio silent. If she won’t say anything useful, like say how not to die, then you were going to have to figure out how to skip ahead on your own. Since she kept talking about the imposters you’d met that day, they seemed to be an excellent place to start.

CNK 80Q3. Ohio plates. That's as much as you know without google.

That evening you set yourself up in the same way you would to work from home. There's a desk in the corner of your dining room with a chair that offers enough lumbar support for the longest of research sessions. Although it’s your personal laptop and there’s not normally a large glass of wine sitting next to you when work.

After it powers on you’re assaulted by the usual pop-ups; windows you forgot to close last time and your emails. Procrastinating is not a new routine, and you’re on a mission, so they all get minimized instead of closed completely. Then you open a new browser window and a stark google homepage stares back at you. A hopeful new beginning.

CNK 80Q3. You’re genuinely surprised that she hasn’t started talking again to describe the change in the air as you type in the plate number. Or some drivel about the way your fingers emphasize each letter and number. It’s all there happening anyway, making the moment foreboding, but your narrator doesn’t seem care.

The first row of results are images. Weirdly its images of the license plate itself. That doesn't strike you as odd at first glance and then you think about it a little more. Why are there so many pictures of this particular license plate? Who is running around taking these pictures? You're pretty sure if you typed in your own plate number there would be no pictures of it. And then you see some shopping results where you can actually buy the plate. While the online shops might explain the images, it only really poses more questions. Why are so many people buying that license plate? What’s so special about it?

You take a sip of your wine before you scroll further, savoring the taste as well as the way it relaxes your shoulders. You don't own any 'fun' novelty coasters that say it but you're inclined to agree with the statement you've heard before. Wine really does make everything better.

You’re not yet into the murky depths of page 2 but you’re far enough down the page now to make it past the sponsored results. These links come thick and fast from websites that all seem to have one word in common. Supernatural.

Then you see your salvation. A page called Supernaturalwiki—the link is simply titled: Impala—and you stop scrolling, a grateful sound slipping past your lips as you do. Wiki, you know that word. Like Wikipedia. Wikipedia has references and moderators', clear and concise explanations. This was the easy way out you were looking for.

That’s what you hope as you click on the link anyway. Your naivety lasts all of twenty seconds before the page loads. With its stock image of a 1967 Chevrolet Impala, and a quote about it being the most important object in the universe.

Or it's the most important object in some books at least.

Further clicking and longer sips of wine reveal it’s a series of books called Supernatural—with the title of the wiki you should have seen that coming. These were story after story of ghosts and demons and angels? There are pages that describe monsters, urban legends, and two men. Sam and Dean Winchester. They each have dedicated pages with their whole lives mapped out.

Sam and Dean are fictional brothers and apparently the heroes. Each of their respective profiles begins with an illustrated image from book covers, and then a series of quotes that contradict those pictures. Then their lives are intricately detailed, or should you say they are chronologically recorded according to each book. You would read their histories in full if it wasn't for how tiny the scroll bar is, indicating that these profile pages are ridiculously long.

You sit back in your chair and take a deep breath in the hopes of it being soothing. Or answering all your questions. It does neither. You have no answers and more stress.

This went beyond two men pretending to do your job now. Those guys were driving around in a car with fictional license plates. What was this? Some weirdly immersive cosplay? Was that something Sam and Dean did in the books?

Even so, those two guys weren’t roleplaying at comic con, they were actually in that woman's home. If you hadn't arrived they could have done anything. They could be doing anything now.

There's a ding from the kitchen which means the frozen meal you’d thrown in the oven is ready. Not that you stop thinking about this while you go and grab it because the more you think the less sense everything makes. Like why is a narrator who, until now, was obsessed with those guys, so very silent all of a sudden?

Back at your desk with hot food, you head back to google to see if you can buy these books anywhere because knowledge is power. Unfortunately, not even Amazon has copies. It’s only when you add the term “ebook” to your search do you find a Tumblr blog with links to download all the files, split into two categories. Published and unpublished. There are a lot of Supernatural books and from the looks of it there’s an equal amount of drama over how the unpublished ones got out.

You start downloading them without consciously making a decision to read them. Downloading kind of happens because your macaroni cheese is too hot for your mouth to handle yet, and your hands still need something to do. Besides you didn’t necessarily need to read all of them, if they were truly terrible you’d delete the files. No harm, no foul. But if this was the only way to get answers then you and your kindle were going to be pretty busy this weekend.

“Morning Laura.” Nobody likes Mondays, yet you have a little bounce in your step having made your usual green tea, got dressed, and driven to work in complete and utter silence. In fact, you’d heard nothing all weekend. The caveat was that, yes, you’d spent all weekend reading those books.

You liked reading and without discrimination. Trashy romance novels at the airport? You betcha. Fantasy books thicker than your mattress? Sure thing, order a pizza. But a mystery? Well, those were your favorite. Of course, the detective needed some sort of sketchy backstory and there had to be a fishy amount of red herrings. Most importantly there had to be something to solve. It was an elevation of your day to day life and you always get sucked in. In your job, you try to solve the most benign mysteries; people faking insurance claims. More often than not there isn’t even a mystery to solve, someone really did slip and break something. So, a mystery that grabs you out of nowhere is like a promotion for you, a challenge.

That had been how those Supernatural books had dragged you in. Ghosts and ghouls you could take or leave, you might have stopped reading if that’s all there was. Then this Carver Edlund went and put in that damn side plot about their missing father. It was too enticing, addicting. From the cryptic disappearance to the indecipherable journal of clues. John Winchester would be the death of you.

Or case 24-01 would be. The jury was still out on that.

And now it’s Monday. You’ve heard nothing more from the voice in your head—it may have been a low-level case of carbon monoxide poisoning—and the boys are so close to figuring everything out you can taste it. Technically they know John is alive by now, you finished Shadow some point yesterday afternoon and felt yourself choke up at the emotional goodbye with a father they just got back. But they still have no clue what he's up to, which is a hideous funhouse mirror reflection of your own life. Hopefully, by the time they figure out John’s game plan, you'll have your life figured out too. And fingers crossed figuring everything out will involve staying alive as well.

“You look like you’re feeling better this morning.” Laura is her perky self, always a little too happy for this side of 9am.

Oh right, you went home sick on Friday. You should remember things like that. “I think it was a bug or something I ate maybe.”

“Sure, sure. One of those convenient Friday bugs.” She winks at you.

If she accused you of that say, last week, you’d have laughed it off given that's a thing everyone has in common; trying to skip out on work. So, that's what you try to do this side of the weekend. You push out something that hopefully resembles a regular person's laugh like you’re in on the joke. You have to fake it because you’re still thinking about Providence. The book you’d finished that morning instead of watching the news. You’re still wondering if Sam is starting to move on after Jessica. 

Needless to say, you understand now. The many fan blogs and the artwork you’d glanced at before you started reading. All those things that you’d disregarded as an unhealthy fascination for a bunch of books. Now you’re one of them, obsessed. Walking into the office with your kindle tucked in your bag and Salvation just begging to be read.

This goes beyond finding John. That plot got its hooks in you but you’ve known John was alive since Home and you’re still reading. You could also blame this on your general love of reading except it goes beyond that too. Honestly, it’s hard to pick one thing. They’re really great books. Sam and Dean have such turbulent lives but they still have each other. They’re snarky, lost, angry, and caring. They’re both so different but the sibling relationship is so real. And the stories go beyond a new monster every book, there are these huge interesting story arcs that you couldn't stop reading if you tried. John Winchester had been the first example of these addictive plot points, but not the only one.

“Y/N?”

You snap your head up, “sorry, sorry.”

“I was only saying you’re going to be here all day then, lunch?”

Even though Laura must see the decision on your face she still pretends to hope until you start speaking. “Actually I have a lot to catch up on so I’ll probably be working through. Tomorrow?”

She smiles brightly and nods, “sure thing.”

As bad as you feel about lying to Laura she has presented you an opportunity. Everyone thinks you were sick on Friday. They even think you're behind on your work and they don’t know you’ve already conducted the initial interview. Which makes your decision to sit at your desk and prop your kindle up next to your screen even easier. Nobody would notice the difference between you concentrating or reading. If you skip lunch you might be able to get to Bloodlust out of the way too.

Continue to Chapter 4.

5eva tags: @divadinag @darthdeziewok @fluentinfiction @witch-of-letters @supernatural-teamfreewillpage @magnitude101999 @alexwinchester23  Dean babes: @thewinchesterchronicles @akshi8278​ @bloodydaydreamer StrangerThanFiction tags: @jaylarkson

[catgirlxox]

Re: Ben 10′s Harem - Concerning the way part of this fandom sees shipping dynamics...

The only thing that has been stopping me from writing this until now is that it may offend some people. Not in the sense that it is discussing an extremely sensitive topic, just that I don’t mean to sound as if I am blaming people. 

As anyone who has read my essays knows, I’m very passionate about defending my favourite character and setting the record straight about how his characterization is interpreted. And, the “bad boyfriend/long list of love interests“ debate (a hot topic in this fandom) is something which relates to this and something which I have already written about extensively as well.  

I have a theory.

There are some of us in this fandom who enjoy shipping Ben with certain female characters. Even if I personally may not agree that every pairing is that great, I can’t physically stop them from shipping whoever they want. They’re entitled to that, I guess. The same goes for shipping Ben with a harem/multiple girls.

There is this one essay I wrote quite some time ago which has gotten some attention from those who do support the harem concept involving Ben. And in that essay, my main point was that, as presented in canon, namely the literal harem episode “The Most Dangerous Game Show”, Ben does not seem too fond of the idea of having a harem, therefore he should not be blamed for the reckless and immature nature of those female characters who have been paired with him in the series. 

I also outlined some of the good qualities, skills, and personality traits Ben possesses, which have led him to become who he is today, and explain why anyone who has been shown having any kind of feelings for him have tried to pursue him since they recognize his value and potential as a partner. 

If you take a moment to look over the page, you might notice that those who comment and like the post seem to be under the impression that they “agree” with me. Forgive me if I did not make myself clear enough in what I had stated in that essay, but I do not think that they really understood what I was saying. 

I appreciate any support my writing may get, regardless of what you ship. However, I’d argue it is quite hypocritical to support an argument when you actively support the opposing argument as well.

If Ben is seen as a valuable partner to many of the girls who were paired with him in the canon series, but they often times gave him mixed signals or red flags of not being a great partner towards him, and because of this, he did not show much of an interest in continuing to pursue any of them, why would you continue to make him look bad by portraying him as some kind of philanderer, womanizer, or player who wishes to posses all these women at once?

I assume if you hold this character dear then you would understand what his life entails, correct?

In Ultimate Alien’s “Fused”, it was shown that he doesn’t get enough sleep and often pulls multiple all nighters in a row, due to alien criminal disturbances and nightmares. Not to mention this is happening during his very demanding full time job.

Gwen: “How many all nighters did you say you pulled in a row?”

Ben: “Two? Okay, three. Maybe four. Anyway, I’m good for another one.” 

In Omniverse’s “The More things Change”, it was shown that he didn't even have a chance to eat something until the every end of part 2, implying, again, that his job is very demanding. 

And, in Omniverse’s “It’s a Mad Ben World”, he stated that it was his “first afternoon off in weeks” and all he wanted to do was play a video game and take a break. 

During all this, he is also blamed for being a terrible boyfriend. He couldn't even be the guy his ex girlfriend wanted him to be because he had very little time to be with her like she expected. 

He let her have her space and pursue what made her happy instead of complaining that tennis took up all of her time and that she was away from him for so long because he probably felt like it wasn't his place to demand such a thing. 

The boy apparently doesn’t even have much time to thoroughly take care of himself because he has dedicated so much of his time to protecting the whole entire universe, and you think that he apparently has the time to pursue a relationship with every female person or alien he comes in contact with.

The sad thing about this is that, instead of realizing the facts of Ben’s reality that I have just outlined, many people who consume fan made media depicting harems or shipping Ben with various female characters end up with the impression that he is “sexist” and “objectifies women” instead. Then they spread around that idea without realizing that it was implied from a work of fan fiction, not canon source material. 

Observe:

(The source for the comment above is a rather NSFW work of fan art depicting Omniverse Ben and two female characters.)

What hurts me the most is the implication that this conclusion can be drawn from the idea that if someone draws a certain character acting a certain way, then that mirrors the way they have been portrayed in canon. But that kind of thinking ignores the fact that people can misunderstand or misinterpret other peoples’ ideas or intentions, and then, as I stated previously, spread around false claims without re-evaluating their clouded judgement.

Or, perhaps more simply, just voluntarily use him as a self insert puppet and chose to portray Ben however fits their specific fantasy best, stripping him of his character development, characterization, and moral values, because, let’s not forget, he was written to be a superhero. 

Again, I did not chose to write this in order to blame people for the flaws of the Ben 10 fandom. I only want to bring this possibility to light since it is hard to believe that the writers of a children’s television series had the intention of creating a protagonist which showcases all these bad traits rather than one who can inspire and connect with his audience on a personal level. 

[theyoungkleinwriter]

Writing Blind#10: My Eight favourite things about fantasy

So I’ve finally made it to the double digits of my little blog, hurrah! Didn't think I would have the perseverance or the stamina to make it this far. Yet here I am. I struggled to decide what I was to do today in regards to the blog and I thought to commemorate this little occasion I would do a small post about my favourite reasons as to why I love fantasy. Although I must mention that I love almost everything fantasy as those who have read my work can clearly tell.

1.Mythical creatures

To me mythical creatures are an essential part of fantasy that just help to make a world completely alive and have that almost alien vibe that we all so cherish from fantasy. Personally I know the best creatures are not just the one adapted from traditional folklore bit also the ones that are completely created from the mind of the author. Maybe that's why I love the idea of The Witcher books and why things like the Boggart in Harry Potter are always really entertaining to me. Fantasy beasts are just the best and there’s not much else I can fault them for; its a fascination that I think all lovers of fantasy can relate to.

2.Kings/Queens

The idea of power and rulership has always been an entertaining part of fantasy. I love just the complex relationships and ideas that can surround rulers, particularly as in every fantasy story I've ever read the rulers always have something wrong with them. The best are rulers who are broken in some way either mentally or physically as they make for some interesting stories. This is perhaps why I love Fire and Blood by G.R.R.Martin so much as the range of different rulers and how each of them had their own turmoil's really helps to craft such a great story. Plus I’ve always been a sucker for the complex history of kings and queens with their often sprawling dynasties.

3.Courtly drama

Now this is something I live for in fantasy. Whilst it isn't necessary I can always enjoy a good book with a bit of courtly drama whether that be romantic, political or even social. There's always some entertainment to be had. My personal favourite is drama that overlaps, like when social and romantic drama happen to overlap with political drama. To me that's why I love fantasy novels that revolve around a single court or even focus across multiple courts as it shows different ways of doing things. Some people get put off by the political complexities that feature with courtly drama but to me in particular it always has a strange allure. This is probably just because I’ve spent too much time studying medieval history.

4.Questing

One of my lesser loves but still one I’ve always enjoyed is the simple but effective quest narrative. I don't know why but this has always drawn me in but it is only with certain stories that I've found this so interesting. I think its because you get really good group dynamics usually that bring out both the best and worst in people. But I must say that as much as I love quests unless there’s some real stakes and consequences other than a magical McGuffin then I do feel a little cheated. For me the best quests come from one where there is a real cost, not just in the journey but also the destination. In the end I’m more a fan of the journey as opposed to the end result. 

5.Funny side characters

When I say funny what I really mean is interesting or quirky. I’ve already got around a dozen quirky side characters that each are unique in their own way. But the one thing that makes them the greatest in my opinion is their relationships to the main characters. To me this can apply to any story but in fantasy the side characters have the potential to be truly special. For instance in His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman we get some interesting side characters, arguably main, in the form of  animal familiars. Its unique things like this that just help to make fantasy farm ore interesting compared to other genres for me.

6.Reluctant rulers/leaders

Now I don't know why but one of my favourite things in a fantasy story features ruler/leaders/heroes who are reluctant. Now they don't have to feel that way throughout the entire novel but there needs to be a good deal of time where they don't want the power and responsibility that they are given. The best comes from when they eventually take their given power or become comfortable with it. It plays with the idea that power should go to those who don't seek it which I just love. Like it’s just such a wholesome message that you shouldn't simply seek power for powers sake. In the end this makes for such a great fantasy trope and yet it could easily apply to other genres.

7.Worldbuilding

when it comes to fantasy I feel half of the fun and process comes from the intense creation that goes behind so many fantasy worlds. This ranges greatly from the intricate magic systems to simply creating a long and complex lineage of kings that dates back hundreds of years. It’s probably because Iove to read a lot of the greater worldbuilding of a fantasy novel. I have spent hours just pouring over the intricately drawn maps in books, trying to take in every detail because to me its does more than add to a story. It is a dedication of love by an author showing just how much they care for their work. As a fantasy writer I understand that which is probably why I love it so much.

8.DRAGONS

Now this is why I first got into fantasy writing. Dragons. I don't think it needs any further explanation other than that. But I'm going to give one anyway. I just love dragons, their is so much that can be explored and done with them. I think its just the fact that they are these huge beasts with immense power and intelligence. Both frightening and beautiful. I think with certainty that my love of dragons in fantasy was born not of Smaug as many would guess, but rather of a more humble series by Cressida Cowell that needs no introduction. It was this that both made me fall in love with fantasy and with the very idea of dragons. No surprise that I too have written and put my own spin the these glorious beasts.

In the end I cannot state just how much fantasy means to me and thus I have chosen to list these eight key things that have helped me fall in love with the genre. Why only eight?

Well, because as a wise man once said; always leave them wanting more.

This has been TheYoungKlein and I am writing blind. 

[feijuan]

Fist of the Blue Sky: Regenesis, Am I Right?

This review contains a lot of spoilers -- I do not know how much of the anime is congruent with the manga, and as such there may be manga spoilers in this review as well. 

Click here to read on Wordpress!

On one hand, as we all ought to know very well,  

But on the other hand, I think I liked season 2 of Fist of the North Star: Regenesis more than the first, somehow. I also hate to admit there were parts of season 2 I liked completely unironically, as ridiculous and contrived as most of it was. Such is often my experience with every Fist of the North Star anime, game, etc, that I watch -- though I expected it much less from this, on account of it being maligned by pretty much everyone I know who knows anything about Fist of the North Star, for

Being made entirely in CGI (though I still think it’s the designs that are awful, and not necessarily the fact that it’s CGI, but to each their own I suppose when it comes to visuals)

Apparently not following canon much at all, but that doesn’t matter to me because I don’t know anything about Fist of the Blue Sky canon anyway, which makes my viewing experience… interesting… because I just had to accept whatever nutso bonkers lunacy I saw on the screen as truth.

I berated the first season quite a lot, not just for issues in adaptation, but for issues that are almost certainly in the source material as well. I thought the setting was a ridiculously contrary backdrop for the kind of martial arts antics happening on screen, in a literary and in a visual sense. The martial arts themselves, while always ludicrous in the franchise as a whole, were especially so in Fist of the Blue Sky - and in Regenesis their visual presentation was frankly awful, managing to be both tacky beyond imagining and super underwhelming. The writing had serious problems that required -- I'm not kidding and wish I was -- a Magical Jewel That Showed The Antagonist The Truth to resolve the finale, and the backstory we saw through this Plot Orb was complete and utter nonsense, the likes of which I haven't quite seen in a very long time. This really doesn't even cover all of the issues in the first season of Fist of the Blue Sky: Regenesis alone, because the majority of the characters aren't great either, including the protagonist whose value largely seems reliant on being an allusion to the already beloved Kenshiro, and the abundance of small contrivances throughout to fuel completely unnecessary conflicts.

As objectively bad as Regenesis was though, there were some things I enjoyed about it, namely a few of the characters. I loved Fei Yan and Erika, and as much as I hated Yasaka at first, he grew on me – though that was born from the absurdity of his redemption that made it impossible for me to take any of his crimes seriously. On that line of thought though, what I often enjoyed about season 1 was the spectacle of it, and I think that’s pretty clearly evidenced by my liveblog where I was either losing my mind and frantically posting screencaps to try and even begin to understand what I was looking at and how it was possible, or posting about Fei Yan Being Great. And sometimes complaining when I had the energy to think about the awful writing, instead of laugh it off…

So that was season 1. But what did season 2 have to offer, and could it redeem the anime, even a little bit? Well, short answers: A bit more, and not particularly. So let's get to the list making:

Things I decidedly didn’t like at all about Season 2

Need I even say anything about how the CG model proportions are still awful... looking Yu Ling's model makes me ache all over. But not only are the models in general still grotesque, but there were a few too many instances of flashbacks where characters were supposed to be teens, but they either had a kid model, or an adult model. There's no inbetween.  It's extremely weird and jarring when in one flashback Simeon looks like a 12 year old with similarly young looking Himuka, and then "a few years later" Simeon still has the 12 year old boy model, while Himuka has evolved into a 30 year old buff martial artist.

Fei Yan is Still Dead and Yasaka is good but he's not that good. This is admittedly a petty complaint but try to understand... Fei Yan was really good. And I miss him. Thank you for listening.

Fei He was wildly under-utilized, under-developed, and usually just a woman for male characters to make fun of or infantalize -- which is a crying shame (and unfortunately par the course for the franchise, ahem) because she was a link back to Fei Yan and his legacy. Having been partially brought up by him and idolizing him in her youth, she arrives near the end of season 1 to track down Kasumi, who she is pointlessly misled into believing killed Fei Yan for a few episodes. Later in season 2 when she does discover it was Yasaka who killed Fei Yan, nothing… happens, because by that time she has already come to respect Kasumi, so it’s trivially easy for Kasumi to convince her to forgive Yasaka just like he did. Once her initial motivation is snuffed out, she just becomes a detached ally of our secondary protagonist group, which consists of Yu Ling, minor members of the Green Gang, and the worst characters of the entire show!

The comedy duo. Far and away the worst aspect of both seasons of the whole show. The CG? The ugly art style in general? The casual misogyny? The non-canon mismatched cult planning world domination with nuclear weapons? That all pales in comparison to the damage these freaks wreck on every episode they are in.

Their horrendous “bits” are where like 80% of the misogyny this show displays actually occurs. Their boorish fantasies are used as vehicles for the only fanservice scenes in the entire run, and they make up ridiculous plans for Fei He to carry out that degrade her and make her a joke.Their bits are tone-shatteringly out of place and usually shoehorned into every episode since their introduction in the middle of season 1 at the worst time possible. I’m still seething about their prolonged scene in the finale where Yu Ling inexplicably rubs the metal-haired one’s head while her fiancee fights for his doomed life, and he pretty much c*ms and his metal wig falls off to reveal a single disgusting hair on his head -- we literally cut away from the final fight in the whole series so we can see THAT. LIKE WHAT? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

This show is already so far-fetched and often unintentionally hilarious that it doesn’t benefit in any way from having gag characters in the first place. It’s a net loss in entertainment value, really, because all the gag characters did was ruin serious scenes and interrupt outrageous scenes that were actually funny.

Fei Yan died, Yasaka died, Kasumi died, but THESE CHUCKLEFUCKS LIVED? #JUSTICEFORFEIYAN #GOTHRIGHTS

The whole thing with the vampire cyborg mad scientist soldier making pseudo-zombies. That was a lot even for Fist of the Blue Sky: Regenesis.

Oh, and another quick note about Fei He being poorly utilized: I also didn't like at all how she is revealed to have fallen in love with Kasumi in the finale... like c'mon. Was that necessary? They barely ever spoke! A woman can care about a man dying without being A Thing, Fist of the North Star...

Things I unexpectedly didn’t hate and even sort of liked to varying degrees about Season 2

Speaking of Kasumi, he was a lot more likable in this season and I don't know if it's because we naturally got to know him better as we spent more time with him, or if it's because he just Did More Good Stuff than before, but I'm leaning towards the latter. I really liked his tender moments with Erika going up to the finale and his fight with Himuka was leagues above any of his fights previously in terms of giving us some actual meaningful insight into his personality and beliefs. It's a shame these moments happened in the last two episodes of the series... But I am willing to concede that they were fairly successful in making me like him just in time for him to honourably wander off into the desert and die. Thanks.

As much as I heckled the literally religious cult composed of men in black, mysterious worshippers with pointed hoods sitting around a table plotting world domination, mad scientist soldiers, and assorted martial artists, I ended up kind of liking where the story went with it and the themes that were developed in the last stretch. The second arc had a very on the nose stance on war and weapons of mass destruction as the worst of humanity's creations, and we see it in a lot of places in the story. The narrative unfolding at a time when World War II was on the horizon, the nuclear bomb schematics that had been causing all of the strife in the story being erased from Erika's (a little Jewish girl, as well) mind in the end, and how Himuka was driven to villainy by war and became convinced the only way to create a future without it, was to hit the Hard Reset Button on the earth's population. For all its shortcomings with dealing with the -isms, Fist of the North Star has at least always had anti-war themes, but I especially liked how they were more focused and rooted in history in this season of Regenesis.

I actually... liked?! The villains?!

Simeon had a motivation that was irrational and pathetic, but made sense because of his background. Instead of the story trying to redeem or sympathize with him, he is simply pitied by Himuka who usurps him and puts him out of his misery, which is very rare for Fist of the North Star as a whole. It shouldn't be as rare as it is.

While I liked the anti-war themes, Himuka's motivation felt a lot less organic than Simeon's in my opinion and required a whole episode to be dedicated to explaining it to us, which I'm not a huge fan of unless it's really compelling -- and I don't think it was. Nevertheless I did enjoy his final fight with Kasumi and the philosophy of it, which made it harder than usual not to bend to the narrative's will and mourn him.

They weren’t glorified misogynists or cartoonishly evil goons! 👍

Himuka betraying Simeon and becoming The Real Big Bad was also rather fresh for Fist of the North Star, and it's a shame that it was spoiled in the opening, because if it wasn't I think I might have been surprised. Regardless, shifting gears like that was a good move in my opinion -- even though, yeah, The Villain Is Your Brother, Again.

When Kasumi wins his final battle against Himuka, and Himuka says "I have always been a vessel of nothingness. There is nothing to spill from inside of me" and he like, turns to stone in the rising sun, instead of dying from his wounds? Did it make any sense? No. Was it was raw as fuck and did I love it? Yes.

Erika... her arc in season 2 is very bittersweet, but it is undeniable that I was relieved when Kasumi erased her memories. It's probably not kosher, but when I was watching it I agreed with the narrative's claim that her only way to be free of her immense suffering and live like a little girl should was to clean the slate, and months later when I think back to it, I'm still okay with it. A little girl watching her parents die and being burdened with knowledge that can destroy the world, and everything that happens to her and her guardians because of wicked men trying to get that knowledge from her... I can't really fault the idea of taking that away from her and letting her finally rest. Go play in a sandbox dearest Erika... run along...

Every episode felt like 5 minutes long!

So that's the final impressions of Fist of the Blue Sky: Regenesis -- I ended up having more to say about it than I thought I would, considering how I was speechless most of the time I was watching it... with a list of Positive Points that long, you might be tricked into thinking it's unexpectedly good; but despite everything I liked about it, I can say with confidence that Fist of the Blue Sky: Regenesis is not good. All of the issues from the first season do carry over into this one -- the contrived story-telling and egregious tonal dissonance, lackluster characterization and poor handling of character drama, and just plain absurdity of most things happening on the screen remain intact. Had it not been for a small hand full of likable characters and some good themes trying to pierce through the hideous hide of this story, it would be thoroughly unremarkable, perhaps not even worth touting as a hilarious spectacle of out of context screenshots.

I can't be too sour though, because then I would be dishonest. It's clear as day that while understanding why it is so maligned, I enjoyed many parts of it far more than expected, and the experience of watching it with my partner was fun and at times even emotional. And as much as I can say with confidence that Fist of the Blue Sky: Regensis isn't a good anime, I can also say with confidence, that Fist of the Blue Sky: Regenesis was not even remotely the Worst Anime Of 2018. I think it's very telling that in the anime community, being completely mediocre with bad aesthetics and bad story adaptation are worse sins than that of, say, The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar and Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody which are both "escapism" series that aired in 2018 and were rampant with pedophilia and slave fetishization that were popular on Crunchyroll when they were airing. Front Page Popular.

Needless to say, watching lots of airing anime every season gives me a sense of perspective and I use it, and so I am content with admitting that I happily watched Fist of the Blue Sky: Regenesis every Monday that it aired and often had a great time, oftentimes because it was an absolute riot to see, and sometimes because despite everything, it could be... decent!

[Happy very belated New Years everyone! I finally finished writing something, so hopefully this bodes well for my productivity in 2019! Enjoy and thanks for sticking with the blog!]

[thedogsled]

Hi guys. I’m going to cautiously title this ‘About Zimbio, Destiel, my personal struggle with the idea of wlw vs. mlm, and why what we achieved in the vote today says a lot about our magnificent fandom’. 

This is a reminder in advance that I make generalizations but I don’t mean any harm by them. I’m happy to discuss this topic and capitulate on some things, because my experience of shows is extremely limited right now (unless I want to watch them in French). Just like Dean I say ‘we’ a lot but please assume sometimes I mean ‘I’, I by no means make any claim to speak for all of the following groups at any point: bisexuals, mlm shippers, wlw shippers, television executives, social media marketers, the mainstream audience, destiel shippers--etc, etc, you get the drift.) If any of the following upsets you, please let me know, it’s not my intent to cause any harm, only reassure my friends that they did a good job.

I promised I was going to write a post on this, because I’ve seen just a little mumbling and unhappiness that Destiel didn’t make it through in the semis. I get it, it’s only natural that it’s going to lead to some hurt feelings, but I wanted to really put across to you all why I say I was proud of us for our semi-final performance, rather than you just take it for granted.

We are an old fandom. Thirteen years is a long time; it makes Supernatural the longest single run fantasy/sci fi series on American TV (and I mean I think it’s unfair to compare it to non American shows like Doctor Who anyway just on pure numbers, especially since Who has gone through thirteen fourteen? fifteen? are we counting radio drama? actors in the lead role; it’s like a different show every time.) So. It’s had a superb run. Fantasy/sci fi shows are typically considered to be niche, not massive hits (comparatively speaking; SPN isn’t Grey’s Anatomy or NCIS I’ll grant). But what networks are finally waking up to is the power of the fandom of those ‘niche’ shows, dedicated viewing power which can grow a network’s brand, particularly online, and networks are eager to wrangle that.

This modern era of television is fandom’s era of television. Netflix are promoting gamification of television watching (even for kids) as well as choose your own adventure style TV. Binging and rewatching box sets is a whole thing now, not just the domain of the “geek”, and shows which can convince people to stick around and watch something instead of moving on when they run out of material--they’re the ones gaining success, while traditional shows slip further and further as they fail to capture new demographics. We’re making strong social media contracts with the creators and actors of our shows, and making it clear to them - in a way that is increasingly being recognized for the opportunity it represents - that there must be give and take with modern audiences, especially if you seek gratification through social media. (I read a great article I reblogged that called it the ‘Brandom’ effect.)

It’s wonderful, and it’s terrifying, because both fans and creators don’t know what to do with it. They can give fans too much power and the show goes off the rails, or deny it to them entirely, and earn only vitriol. Some shows rub their power right in the face of their fans and increasingly they pay for it. Some showrunners are outright incapable of talking to their fans at all without being respectful (I’m looking at you The 100), and some fans are ghastly, aggressive and outright disrespectful in pursuing what they want (it is a different thing showing joy over your ship as it is to dox actors and send their wives hate mail). Some showrunners, instead, are more embracing of their fans, like the Earpers, and if you want an idea of how actors should be engaging with fans, check out David Haydn Jones’ twitter. That man is a saint. It’s a delicate game of mutual respect, and occasional drama, and intent is the name of the game: do you have good intent, is it honest? People crave honesty on the internet where everything and everyone is fake--and that honestly is a tough thing to achieve when studios are too heavily concentrating on their bottom line.

So, this is a changing landscape, like I said, and people are struggling with new marketing techniques, trying to find their place in the world, running into walls when they realize that in fact they don’t understand their queer audience members. When something works, shows are very quick to jump right into it, almost relieved to have evidence that if they do X thing, their fans won’t all jump ship in horror, but here’s the thing, networks are in a lot of ways far slower to respond than shows. If you want to do something, you have to prove to the person holding the purse strings that it’s a profitable endeavor. Producers are set in their ways, especially old school producers, not realizing how quickly the landscape is changing, and writers are fighting against that all the time, because they’re often a lot more in touch with the creative fandoms they’re trying to inspire. Many have come from fandoms themselves. Queer writers should mean more queer storylines, right? But it means fighting money men to make it happen. Oftentimes that leads to the whole ‘one queer ship is enough’ standpoint, and when it comes down to it, those money men are more likely to put stock in safe investments, in proven investments. Consequently, wlw is flourishing because it draws in audiences without losing them. It’s arguably less risky to make Alex Danvers gay than Castiel. It’s more PC, accepted by wider audiences, groundwork laid by Dark Angel and Buffy in my own recent memory. When good results come from featuring those kinds of ships, they appear increasingly on TV, and it’s AWESOME. There were 16 wlw ships in Zimbio March Madness, and 11 of them got through all the way to 8vs8. There were only 2 mlm ships in 8vs8, and 3 het ships. Internet fandom, passionate and social and dedicated? It speaks, and it says ‘More LGBT rep please’.

We’re in a transitional period. Changes are coming, but when you look at the big mlm ships of the last few years, you can see the uphill climb that’s still ahead of us. I spoke with our Hannigram and Johnlock friends last year about what their experience with this was like. (I haven’t spoken to Sterek folks, but I know there’s disappointment from that front too). Johnlock shippers are largely furious about how explicitly the finale no-homoed their ship when there was absolutely no reason to. Having watched the finale myself, I feel like they really went hard against shippers explicitly. Hannigram suffered too. I haven’t finished S3 even now, but what I recall of the conversation went like this: they’re together, but there was a kiss that didn’t make it to air, and then the show was cancelled. In any case, what I’m saying right here is that this is part of a pattern, a theme I’m struggling with, where mlm fans are dispirited and disappointed and feeling disrespected by the very mainstream shows they’re watching.

(Which isn’t, I’ll quickly note, that I’m saying the same isn’t true of wlw audiences. The last two ships in Zimbio this year are non canon ships, and the fans of both have been hurt by the shows they watch, but they still keep coming back and watching the show. Swanqueen is ending, but the pair have been consistently mirrored - dark and light - with the emotional journey of the show largely being made over the shared custody? I don’t know, they changed it every week while I was watching it of Emma’s son. Supercorp is clearly full of eye sex thanks to the actress’ chemistry (and McGrath is so gorgeous she’d have chemistry with a brick wall) and yet has been outright mocked by the show’s cast. If that sounds familiar to Destiel fans, I almost want to say that Supercorp have it worse; just as with Swanqueen, they’re often told simply to shut up because there's already wlw rep on the show.)

But where shows are willing to go there now, diminished risk is the key, especially as resale value of shows reflects multiple, competitive platforms constantly needing to purchase content to fill their airspace. Naked women, women kissing and women having sex - bisexual women who are explicitly still available to men - that sells, but as far as I can tell networks are struggling to sell the same narrative about mlm. Maybe that’s my perspective only, maybe that’s me watching the wrong shows (and not at all because I don’t enjoy looking at women’s bodies, I do, but variety is the spice of life) Look at the outright surprise last year when GOT gave us a beautiful, pus covered, full screen dick. GOT, of course, which is insulated because it is a Number One performer. I present to you, in terms of dicks on screen, American Gods, then. Neil Gaiman is my hero, selling the network on the premise that they could have his great stories if only they were willing to gleefully integrate peen on every episode. Or so I’m told. There’s a lot on my ‘to watch’ list that I haven’t got around to yet. I will tell you, of course, that mlm is out there, Evak were voted out against Supercorp in the quarter finals) but on a big show like Supernatural that risk is exceptional. That’s why when we talk about Destiel ‘going canon’, we make the shockingly ambitious request of them HOLDING HANDS, or mutually saying ‘I love you’, and sometimes feel like expecting anything more, like a kiss, or god forbid a sex scene, is too much to ask. Why? When lesbians and bisexual women are presented on TV, kisses and sex scenes are a matter of course. In Alex’ coming out, in Thirteen’s coming out in House, Angela’s coming out in Bones - huge ensemble shows where main characters, all women, have come out and kissed (and returned to male partners in the case of the later two). (I should point out I am talking about genre “mainstream” shows in general, not for example Queer as Folk, where the primary aim is to explore sexuality, not fight dragons or solve crimes)

Now in addition to this problem, an issue that I’ve seen for years is that from inside the fandom world we are made to feel as though we are somehow obscene or inferior for shipping mlm ships, a projection that comes from the way mainstream folks will react to you if they happen to discover you drawing dudes together. Sometimes we hide our online selves from the real world out of shame that has only built over the years, where it’s considered that supporting mlm ships instead of wlw ships makes you fetishistic, or objectifying of gay men. I’ve seen it in fanfiction spaces and in rp spaces on dw and lj that shipping wlw has been raised to a point of being considered ‘more pure’. If you ‘claim’, they say, to be a queer woman, you should wholly be supporting wlw ships. When I started hearing this dialogue I was THIRTEEN. This was before Willow/Tara. There were just less wlw ships on tv, and there were less female characters whose autonomy didn’t depend on men, or portray them as being fragile, the weakness of their gender or whatever. There were standout female characters in my youth, absolutely, but they were all independent (mostly) straight women: Kathyrn Janeway, Sam Carter, Clarice Starling, Dana Scully. They kicked out against the system, the world they lived in, intelligent and defiant ladies I still idolize. Nowadays, though those wlw ships are available, and populated by so many beautiful, powerful, progressive female characters - and yes miraculously even strong female characters who still embrace their own womanhood. In contrast  mlm ships are not keeping up because, in some way, I think that the ‘impurity’ of shipping mlm has stuck. I struggle to think of even straight non toxic male role models, nevermind male role models who are in engaging, romantic relationships with the same sex. This stagnation of masculinity (apart from the rise of the geek hero which often, as in the case of TBBT, doesn’t break away from inbuilt misogyny) troubles me immensely. (I’m not saying all male characters are awful, incidentally, but it’s not a positive message to outright expose the flaws of toxic masculinity without offering understanding, lessons, and growth. But that’s another essay.)

Trust me, I’m not saying everyone feels that TV is being stacked against mlm, but as a bisexual I really feel fractured by the whole thing. I feel like I’m supposed to loathe myself for shipping mlm, particularly when that mlm ship is ‘two white guys’. The fact that I as a woman enjoy male and female bodies is irrelevant, because one desire is pure, and one desire is fetishism. There is no balance. I’m allowed to be titilated by members of my own gender kissing each other and only that and heterosexuality. As a bisexual who is currently leaning toward wlw myself (sexuality existing on a sliding scale imo), it is the power imbalance in heterosexual couples which puts me off. It’s painfully true to life. I have a particular loathing for Booth and Brennan from Bones, for example, where his toxic masculinity is unilaterally forgiven because it’s true love, while Bones, once independent and stubborn herself, is increasingly nudged further out of character in order to forgive him his trespasses. But when I ship mlm, or write fanfic of my favorite couples, any power I give them is not based on their gender. The same I imagine is true of wlw. (An unfortunate consequence of this is people project it onto real life, where power inequality and abuse can exist regardless of make believe ‘purity’, and consequently people end up believing that something is wrong with them rather than their relationship, similar issues as people face when they imagine marriage is the goal, and everything else is happily ever after, because Disney told them so. In which case I advise you to rewatch Mary Poppins.)

During voting, I was reticent to address why voting for Destiel over the other ships was important to me. It was personal. (Of course anyone could have sent me an ask if they were curious). But why I was voting didn’t matter. It was enough that I was voting for the couple I love, whose relationship my blog is devoted to, and whose love story I hope is resolved. But there is more to it than that. What’s important, I guess, is how I feel about Dean. My reading of him is of a bisexual, still in the closet - perhaps even to himself - in his thirties. He made it out of high school, but that’s it, because he dropped out of higher education for family commitments. He likes rock music and classic cars. He loves pie, and dumb medical TV dramas, and cowboy hats, and riding rodeo bulls and chatting to strangers. He struggles with voicing his true self with people who know him, and might judge him in a way he will never come back from. Dean is basically me. I am all those things. And in this case, he’s in love with a genderfluid (has been both male and female) guardian angel whose love for Dean explicitly and singularly, has been described as a profound bond, and the greatest love story ever told. Castiel’s love for Dean, his willingness to do anything for him, is all I think any of us want from a romantic partner. And yes, we all find different things in our ships, and presumably other people connect with Destiel for reasons that aren’t the same as my own, but that’s okay. My reasons are my reasons.

And yet I am still thrown into that emotional disconnect: that because this couple is an mlm couple I’m wrong to ship it, that I would be better putting my energy into watching shows I don’t necessarily enjoy as much so I can find my representation in more respectable (or potentially less queerbaity) fandoms. That Supernatural isn’t good enough because I’ve been repeatedly told by people inside and outside the fandom that it isn’t good enough. I’ve got to tell you I agree that it struggles with being progressive. While season 3 of Grey’s Anatomy was showing the struggles of a pre-op mtf woman and her wife in an ep that made me actually cry for the dysphoria represented, on the other channel SPN had just got done killing a token ‘woman with an off screen girlfriend’ character. By season 11, we’ve had two gay male couples, both holding hands and leaning into each other to express their relationship. SPN is slow. Nobody in the world would deny that. 

But to be quite honest, also, finding representation doesn’t have to mean ‘a ship’, it can just be a well written bisexual woman with a badge, and you aren’t restrained to just one rep either! In fact, the more the better. I find myself particularly starved for that rep, especially since - having been fetishized for my bisexuality irl before - I see painful reflections of that on television. That’s obviously going to be related to bad writing and TV’s particular way of objectifying women in general, too, but when a woman (say Angela Montenegro from Bones) has a two episodes storyline where she makes out with another insanely attractive actress, the music rising, lit with soft shades, the camera focused in on their mouth--before the plot is forgotten entirely, it is incredibly difficult not to see that as objectification and not bisexual solidarity. I want more mlm on TV because I want more bisexuals of both genders on TV, and because of the harmful insinuation in mainstream thought that a guy who comes out as bi late has somehow been lying to himself and was gay all along, while women who are bi are just exploring their sexuality and somehow more up for it. Those views need to be constantly, constantly challenged, because, honestly, people believe them. (Probably not me or you, but it’s out there).

(As an aside: mainstream is also harsh toward female writers who write mlm stories. There have understandably, as a result, been female writers who chose male pseudonyms to pen their gay romance novels. I first experienced this to a lesser extent back in Gundam Wing fandom, because if you were a ‘male’ author it legitimized you and people would read your stories in preference to those penned by girls. Back then it was a numbers game. The prejudice does remain. Audiences are sometimes outright cold to female authors who pen mlm stories! You need only look at the conversation about boycotting Love, Simon because it was written by a straight woman to appreciate just how deeply we’ve built this disconnect, as though to write something the author must always write from personal experience. If that’s the case, I feel terrible for Thomas Harris and Jeff Lindsay, and JK Rowling (who speaks about choosing her moniker because it was genderless) must certainly have had an exciting childhood, what with all the magic and dragons. 

As a result I think we (or at least I) have internalized some harmful things about who has the right to interpret themselves in stories told about men, or male protagonists. And in lashing back at girls who for years have been doing just that, considering it to be lesser if I find a role model in Dean instead of Angela, we have harmed the integrity of mlm fans themselves, who increasingly struggle under a burden of self imposed guilt. It is reflecting back poorly on mlm performances, even as wlw stories flourish. In this raising the pedestal of wlw purity, the ‘ethical’ alternative, we dismiss what people can learn about themselves from male role models too, something that we instead encourage if it’s a teenage boy finding a role model in Elsa. My closeted bi self loving Dean Winchester harms nobody, but I am still made to feel lesser for doing so, even if sometimes that feeling is ridiculously self imposed. Hell, maybe I’m alone in this feeling and the rest of this is bullshit, but that’s why I said ‘I vs we’ was definitely a part of this commentary.

In any case, this is what I think this means to the Zimbio vote: As wlw rep has been increasing, mlm has been facing a disappointing deficit. Those once big fandom movers ‘Superwholock’, the Hannigrams, the Sterek shippers--have fractured and splintered off. Destiel has come in waves but it’s still somehow here, without its original opponents from back in the day. It’s here, even with setbacks after season 8 and 10 that had fans breaking away from Supernatural entirely. Optimism now reflects optimism felt before, but let’s face it Castiel was killed permanently at one point, and Bob Singer said outright, even just a few years ago, that Destiel and social media stuff just didn’t come up in the writing room (pr is not showrunning, etc). People are hugely entitled to struggle with optimism for non canon mlm ships because history repeats itself. Add into that feelings like I described above, and the struggle is real. It can sometimes feel like you’re fandom’s three legged, one eyed donkey.

Add to that how old Destiel is. Every fandom coming into existence now, every ship built around, comes into contact with Destiel at some point. If you type ‘queerbaiting’ into Wikipedia, our ship is cited. In Google, we come up first. Thanks to antis (and some genuinely bad behavior from bad apple shippers over the years) we’ve earned a reputation, and it moves before us into every ship interaction we have. Because of that, we can appear both intimidating and as something to be avoided, because ‘what if you meet a crazy one’? You’d think seniority would be a good thing, but few people see us as a ship that’s been there and done that, as they do Swanqueen. We aren’t the ship that can perhaps offer advice on things going on in whippersnapper fandoms based on our experiences, as it would be in an ideal world. We’re not a ship to be aligned with, and because of this odd perception of wlw vs. mlm, there was simply never any potential that support for Supercorp wasn’t going to skyrocket. It was a fight against ‘That monolithic mlm ship that just won’t stop’, as it were, because here we still are hanging onto threads hoping our ship will go canon, and based on past evidence, the fall of other mlm ships, and only looking in from the outside, that seems like wishful thinking.

So we were unlikely to gain allies from heartbroken mlm fandoms. We were unlikely to find allies in wlw fandoms. It’s sad, of course, because for all the talk of representation in media, the desire to express a balance and cheerlead for mlm, imo an obvious representation underdog, simply doesn’t ever come up. Our friends and relatives roll our eyes at us if we talk about Destiel because we get that ridiculous light in our eyes when we do. Ultimately, that meant that Destiel was on its own. It had to unify. It had to pour its passion into voting and be a family again. It’s been knocked out in previous years - honestly based on what I’ve heard it’s been a disaster - but THIS YEAR we pulled out all the stops. That was all us. Despite antivoting, Destiel shippers - and only Destiel shippers - fought and fought - thousands of votes after thousands of votes, as we made small leads only to slip three times further. We didn’t stop. We were there and fighting right up until the end. And it may just have been a silly online poll, but I think it really goes to show what we can do when we put our hearts into it. We more than doubled the amount of votes cast in the previous round, over the exact same time scale, even though Supercorp fought back with everything they had, all the vibrancy of being a fresh, shunned ship determined to prove themselves, using social media strategy and unity to bring in votes from wherever they could get them. They fought well. They were wiley and smart, and so passionate; passionate like I thought I’d forgotten how to be.

And we kept fighting. We were in the semis, with twice as many votes more than Swanqueen, and we fought tooth and nail and almost got there, slipping just in the last half hour.

I have to believe that that’s because some people in the Destiel family have hope. I know we’ve drawn in a lot of new and returning shippers recently, I’ve seen you following me and starting out in meta writing yourselves, joining Destiel exchanges for the first time, sharing your first codas. The DCBB and Pinefest have had ENORMOUS turnouts. We are, despite all odds, growing as a ship again. 

I really hope that we can overcome the shame that has somehow been drummed into us for shipping mlm. I hope that we can all, whether we ship wlw, mlm, het or poly or whatever peeps are doing these days, make sure not to raise one as an ideal over the others, because it’s not in the spirit of family, of fandom. It is never ‘us against them’, it’s never a case of moral or ethical superiority, definitely not even in everyday parlance and least of all in a shipping popularity contest.

And maybe despite the risk, we’ll get an ‘I love you’, some hand holding. Hell, maybe even a kiss (Supernatural never even gave us a kiss between Jesse and Cesar, though, so I have my doubts.) But God if that wouldn’t pave the way for better deconstruction of toxic masculinity on genre TV, more presence of bisexual men and gay men on genre TV, and more men kissing and open expression of sexuality on genre TV. 

So here’s my final word. Maybe the bunnies will kiss. Maybe they’ll even do what bunnies do, who knows? And maybe next year we’ll win it.

I hope I didn’t step on any toes with this post. I felt like these words needed to come out of me, though, so here they are. Thank God there’s no more Zimbio until next year, right? Please refer back to my first paragraph for disclaimers. Thanks, though, if you read this far.

[sunlethscape]

The Wicked King Thoughts

this isn’t going to be an edited and professional review like my gaming reviews are lol. i just finished this at 2am last night and i legit DID NOT sleep well because i have so many emotions about this book...many of them that only got more negative as i talked about it with my best friend? which makes me sad because The Cruel Prince is my favorite fantasy book ever!!! maybe favorite book ever periodt!!!

so uhhhhhh here are my thoughts, i need to get them out and move on, especially since the wait for Queen of Nothing will be so long. ALL THE SPOILERS, OBVS so please don’t read if you haven’t read it yet and don’t want to be spoiled!

i think most of my issues stem from the fact that i think the book needed to be a lot longer. in a trilogy, the second book is the most important, in my opinion, because it serves as the bridge between the beginning and the end--there is no other bridge beside this book. and this book was really short and felt like it glossed over a lot? 

there is a 5 month time skip at the beginning, which doesn’t feel like the best move because seeing judge get acclimated to being cardan’s seneschal and all that entailed on a daily basis, both in terms of the physical stress and in terms of her feelings with cardan, would’ve been 1) great and 2) necessary for their relationship. 

jurdan is supposed to be this enemies to lovers trope, but the only way that this trope really works is if there is a significant amount of development in the relationship, or else the transition between enemies to lovers feels jarring and just doesn’t work. i didn’t see that transition here...they’re both very broken people, who have lacked the knowledge of what trust is for much of their life, but they do know it to some extent. i needed a lot more from them, a lot more development and also not what feels a retcon of what they learned of each other? like at least maybe cardan showing some hesitation or /something/ while sleeping with other people when he supposedly likes Jude, Really likes her enough to be unable to get her out of his head, enough to just scrawl her name on a note over and over again. they kind of do what they did in The Cruel Prince -- be mad at each other and have some sexual tension -- but just for the span of a book. it feels like there wasn’t any development, other than getting to know each other a bit more, having sex, getting close to becoming somewhat honest and then at the end that’s just obliterated. with cardan laughing a beat too late from the rest at the end, i know he has to have some plan set in motion, and it’s the only plan that will keep jude safe, but it’s still ?????? you got married literally the night before. which it wasn’t even a marriage “ceremony” that sat right because this is where they should’ve been honest about each other, at least to some noticeable degree. it would’ve made the betrayal at the end better, too! 

the betrayal/ending felt incredibly rushed. i remember checking the amount of pages left and being like...what’s going to happen in such few pages? and for an entire ending that leaves the reader shocked as well as an epilogue (which did nothing, really) to happen in such a short time felt very rushed.

there was also just /another/ time skip of another month. so we essentially skip over 6 months total in this book, and it feels...incomplete. i think the book needed to be double its length in order to carry the amount of development that it needed. it needed more build up toward all of its major plot points -- ghost betraying jude, taryn betraying jude, and prince cardan suddenly being in full control of his powers.

the last one, in particular, bothers me because we spend the entire book seeing him as a king that is more clever than he lets on but is ultimately still messy and rather naive. we get no build up toward him being more in tune with his powers -- it’s not something even jude knows at the beginning, and with being outcasted from the family his whole life, i doubt he received much training. it’s glossed over as him “learning scheming” well in the month that jude spent underwater but...again, that does nothing for the reader. it didn’t feel cheap, but it just wasn’t developed at all, so i was confused as to how he suddenly had perfect control. you need subtlety in books, but you also need to build up to certain things. 

locke explicitly trying to kill jude also felt ????? he’s always been extremely shady even from the beginning of the cruel prince, and jude does threaten him pretty explicitly here, but we’ve gotten no hint that he’s capable of murder before, as far as i remember. he’s been conniving and sneaky and trashy and unfaithful, but he hasn’t been shown to even think of murder as a valid option. taryn and him are annoying and this entire family thing should’ve been resolved, or reached a climax at least with all parties aware of everything, in this book. like...he can’t just have murdered jude and then he mostly disappears from jude’s mind and the general picture until the next book lol. 

i feel like holly black has created this amazing universe with such fascinating characters but isn’t letting them get the time to develop. we could’ve gotten so much more about nicasia, her mom, the blacksmith who is suddenly a really important player but that we see in two freaking scenes, about the court of shadows (especially ghost since????????????????? like yeah you served prince dain but bitch he’s dead now lmao WHAT you’re siding with what will destroy the land???? okay go off i guess), taryn, just...everyone. i’m puzzled as to why some scenes are in the book, like heather being turned into a cat or whatever and the scene with eldred’s past lover who just decides not to help jude even after opening up to her (which was a nice character building moment, yes, but he’s not even a major player in this and it wasn’t a necessity since he didn’t even help her and the scene doesn’t do anything meaningful for her)

trying to remove my bias as a shipper and lover of good romance, i find myself unabel to agree with people when they say romance isn’t at the forefront of this story. sure, political intrigue, war, scheming etc might all be at the forefront...but so is romance very much. the book’s synopsis touches on the romance. the book’s title is a reference to jude’s love interest. jude and cardan are the only two characters that get page time throughout the entire book (even if i wish there could’ve been more cardan, though i’m not sure if this is becuase i love him so dearly) and are the lead characters. the romance /is/ a very important part about this story, it’s why so many things (including the ending) happen. and i’m sad that what is the best enemies-to-lovers trope i’ve come across was just...nothing close to that at all in this book. it’s a messy relationship, they’re messy people, but i feel like we should be somewhere else with them if the next book is the last. the pacing was really not great here, at all. some people complained that the first book took too slow to start, which i found the pacing to be on the slow side but i was more than okay with it, but this was way too fast. if all these events spanned from the front to back of this book, then sure that’s fine but it needed to be a longer book. many things feel underdeveloped. 

i read it in one sitting so sure, it went fast for me. i’m a huge fan of the first book and this is the first book i’ve anticipated so strongly in a very long time. but i was hooked on the first book, as well, and not only did i not read that so fast but there was also proper development for everything so i was very satisfied at the end despite it being technically more of a cliffhanger than the end of this book.

i just...i’m sad to be disappointed because i’ve been thinking about this book nonstop for months? : ( i love this series and jude and cardan dearly so i’m sad to feel so disappointed. to bring up another author whose books I’ve enjoyed, Sarah J Maas tends to fluctuate in quality but she spends /so much time/ developing everything, from the world to her (arguably less interesting) characters. if this book incorporated that aspect of her writing, we would’ve learned more about the lower courts, especially the court of termites, learned more about this entire universe teeming with so many possibilities. A Court of Mist and Fury, the second book in the A Court of Thorns and Roses trilogy, is a stupendous book. it’s dedicated to some action and plenty of political intrigues, but it absolutely nailed developing every single main character in a pretty sizeable cast -- especially the main couple, which desperately needed the development since they were enemies in the first book. Heir of Fire is the middle book in the The Throne of Glass series, and that entire book is dedicated to developing the protagonist, her relationship to the world and to who becomes her real love interest. 

these two books in those series are really popular because they spent so much time just simply fleshing everything out...i feel like The Wicked King just jumps from event to action at a rapid pace, with some minimal character building in between. i loved seeing an even darker jude, but there’s something missing in her characterization that i can’t quite put my finger on, and while i loved cardan’s development, i feel he wasn’t around enough. maybe if the book was longer, i wouldn’t have these issues, because it’s the easiest way to fix them. idk. i’m usually not one for multiple POVs (i don’t mind or love them, whatever fits the story best is fine) but i think this book would’ve really benefitted from that here.

tl;dr i’m v sad that i’m disappointed in what was totally my most anticipated book...maybe ever? ;o; especially since a lot of people seem to have loved it, some even more than the cruel prince, and while i totally respect that and see where it comes from, i can’t count myself among those folks. idk. i’m sad and impatient for Queen of Nothing!! feel free to reply/cry with me if you’re disappointed with anything or just dealing with the nearly unbearable sadness and emptiness of finishing a book of a series that you care so much about. 

@ holly black 

[forochel]

The @snowflakechallenge is an annual event celebrating fans and fandom.

Day 1 - Day 2

Day 3: In your own space, post recs for at least three fanworks that you did not create. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

so I’ve dug into my old bookmarks and things, since I’ve somehow decided that this is going to be ... forochel: a fandom retrospective. 

this one’s a bit of a cheat, because it’s a series of fics written by Rosie_Rues for the old dogdaysofsummer and wellymuck seasonal challenges on LJ. The Rising Storm, by @rosierues it’s ... character study, relationship study -- touched with melancholy, because we as the readers know what’s going to happen (n.b. these were written roughly 05-06) inevitably to all these people: the Black family, whom I always enjoy explorations of, Remus, the Marauders, the Order ... *sighs* the last ficlet ends on a hopeful note, with my favouritest of HP tropes. I reread this from time to time, if I want to feel a little achey and wistful, and take a little trip down nostalgia lane. 

and the next one is meta from ... what seems ages ago but really ... uh, is. oops. Eowyn, female agency, blah blah by anna_wing I’ve had this bookmarked since 2010 -- don’t remember how I came across it, to be honest, but there you go. it’s short, succinct, and pre-dates the tumblr meta I’ve seen that explains why Eowyn’s choice to turn to Healing is not a cop-out, as well as very simply (and succinctly!) identifies what sets LOTR apart from later epic fantasies that attempt to follow in Tolkien’s vein. 

lastly, fic from someone whose writing makes me want to fling myself upon the uncaring shores of the universe’s indifference and wail because i have no words The Starless Road by @emilyenrose if you’re a Tolkien nerd, and if you’ve read the Silmarillion, you’ll probably think that one of the greatest romantic tragedies of that long and winding tale is the story of Maedhros and Fingon. Tolkien has never dedicated an entire lay to them, more’s the pity, but IT’S OK. HERE IT IS!!! THE FIX-IT FIC YOU’VE BEEN WANTING SINCE YOU WERE 15 AND HAVING TOO MANY FEELINGS OVER TRAGIC INCESTUOUS ELVEN COUSINS, WITH HOBBITS EX MACHINA.

[otak-me]

C O N S T E L L A T I O N S (A LOKI X OC FANFIC)

CONSTELLATIONS INDEX

SUMMARY:

Exiled from Asgard, and stripped of his magic, Loki finds himself landed on Midgard.

Cast from his home, and thrust into a world he once attempted to conquer, his bitterness is

more than aggravated. Loki is furious, and yet as his anger is uncontained and wild, he

finds himself vulnerably laid into the palms of these mortals that he sees as so inferior.

The mortal that finds him, though, is much more intriguing (and less... Well, mortal) than

he thought Midgardians to be.

Enter Valentina Rossiére, a woman with fire that could sear into your soul burning in her

eyes and a tongue quick as a whip. Whilst at first she seems to be simply a strangely

behaving midguardian, she somehow manages to break through to Loki's broken mind,

and find a part of himself he had thought had been long destroyed. With a bit more than a

reluctant mind, and an empty heart, Loki finds himself not only forced into submission into

the mundane lifestyle of a human being, but into an unsuspected whirlwind of emotions

that he never knew existed.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

CHAPTER 1: A N D R O M E D A

COLD.

It encompassed her entire being.

Her muscles grew frigid and her bones grew tight.

She grit her teeth in frustration.

Her toes were going from white to grey by now, and her eyebrows knitted together in irritation.

"Fuck this!" She threw her hands in the air, hurling herself off the couch and paced to the thermostat, turning on the heater, her fingers twitching from being suddenly moved, "I'm just gonna have to call him, I can't go without heating for this long!"

Her lips were slowly regaining colour as the heaters blasted, and her teeth gnawed at the cracked skin in the left corner of her bottom lip.

Her silver eyes darted across the room to her black snake, Baphomet, that was happily lazing under the lamp, and she grumbled under her breath at him, "Lucky bastard, getting a constant heater and not needing to worry about electricity bills." His head tilted a tad towards her, and he seemed to smirk impishly at her.

She rolled her eyes, heading towards the kitchen and pulling out a mug.

It was getting into the colder months now, and it was slowly approaching the one year anniversary of 'The Battle of New York' or "The Time Iron Man Saved The Day By Shoving A Nuke Into A Giant Glowing Asshole Of Death" as Tony Stark so pompously preferred.

The electricity bills would be going up for Valentina these next few months. As much as she loved the winter, Valentina wholeheartedly loathed the expenses that came with it. More food, more electricity.

It was exhausting.

You would think that after living for so long, she would have accumulated a fair stash of money, and she had, but it was scattered all over the globe. She didn't want any suspicious links to her bills and life being up for grabs by any pesky organisations.

Valentina still had to work to keep her living expenses manageable, as she wasn't exactly living in a hovel.

Her 'humble' abode was located miles away from the closest store, buried within the forest of pine trees and high-reaching birch trees. It was a large brown and green house, similar to that of a cottage, but much larger.

It had two floors, the first floor containing the entrance, the kitchen, the loungeroom and the office, and the second floor containing the master bedroom, spare bedroom, bathroom and library.

Although there was a main room dedicated to books, the winding staircase that spiralled up from the first floor to the library area was walled with bookshelves too.

Most rooms withheld at least one bookshelf (minus the bathroom), the kitchen with cookbooks and whatnot, the loungeroom with Valentina's favourite series, the office with lots of technology, science, and mathematical textbooks, the staircase with historical and fantasy, her bedroom with 'currently reading' books, more of her favourite series, and her oldest, most precious books, the spare bedroom with the 'classics' with Shakespeare, Edgar Ellen Poe, J.R.R. Tolkien, George Orwell, F. Scott Fitzgerald etc.

In the loungeroom was a large flatscreen above the fireplace, Valentina's collection of movies on either side of the fireplace in drawers, above the drawers short bookshelves, and above the bookshelves hung a collection of animal skulls that she had scavenged in her walks through the forest.

The skulls were a constant reminder of how she must live her life; cherish the lives around you, and never let their memories fade.

Her snake, Baphomet, a beautiful black water moccasin Cottonmouth, was in a large tank behind the couches, lazing his life away like a no-good freeloader.

Valentina loved Baphomet, she had found him half-dead on the side of the road, attacked by some disgusting men with a shovel. She managed to stop the men from murdering the poor reptile, but he was still badly injured. One of his eyes was gouged out, and he had plenty of broken ribs. Valentina had been in tears as she commenced surgery on the poor creature, her tears mixed with the blood stained on her hands.

She stayed away from town for a while after that, as she couldn't stand to face anyone after seeing such a horrid sight.

Nobody really cared about Valentina, save for the old man Strickler, who had been quite close to her in his younger years. He stopped seeing her as often once he had met his wife and gotten married, though. Valentina still liked to visit him every once in a while, just to make sure he was still doing well. He always said that she was a sight to behold every time she visited, with her 5'8, petite stature, heart-shaped face, full, cupid's-bow-less, rosy lips, porcelain skin, silver eyes and long, silver hair.

She really did stand out.

It was back when she first started approaching the years of 80 that her hair started turning grey, along with the hair of her friends around her. It seemed to stay that way for the rest of her years.

The rest of her years being the last 358 years, of course.

The young skin certainly did look strange with the naturally silver hair, but lately it had become less questioned, due to hair dyeing becoming a more popular beauty fad.

Her frame never seemed to change, always lean, but toned, petite yet firm, pale and never-changing.

She was an anomaly amongst men, and had been for the most part of her life. She had long accepted this fact, and worked her lifestyle around it, preventing as much heartbreak as possible; getting close, but not too close, making friends, but never having attachments. She cherished the lives of others, but had accepted that the light would eventually fade from their eyes and leave her alone once more.

Alone, always alone.

Her life had become a haze of standing on the sidelines, watching people's lives streak past her in a daze of overflowing emotions, filling as much emotion as possible into each moment, cherishing each second before their inevitable cease of existence.

She watched as empires rose and fell, people came to power, were overthrown, then spoken about as if they were partial fantasy, when she had met those people when they were children, or traded goods and services with their mothers.

She was an anomaly among men, an anomaly that was barely teetering on the line of existence and living.

She was alone.

CHAPTER 2: ANTLIA

Word count: 1132

[robhainesauthor]

Pyreflies in the Tower

Warning: Contains spoilers for The Dark Tower, Final Fantasy X & Final Fantasy X-2

At the end of The Dark Tower, with Roland Deschain on the threshold of the tower itself, Stephen King takes a moment to address the reader directly. He explains that this is the end of his seven-book epic, that he wishes to tell you no more of Mid-World and all that lies beyond. He calls out those readers who demand specifics of what happens after, "the grim, goal-oriented ones" who must know what Roland finds at the end of his journey. After all, the contents of the tower are rarely the point of dark tower stories; it's the journey to arrive at that threshold which resonates so strongly with us all. He warns that should you read on, "you will surely be disappointed, perhaps even heartbroken".

Yet - after complaining that some readers will feel cheated if he doesn't give them a more fleshed-out ending - King then plunges into a final, divisive scene which tries (and arguably fails) to describe the interior of the Tower and what lies at its peak.

When I first read The Dark Tower, this apparent act of literary cowardice infuriated me. I agreed with King; I had enjoyed the journey, and I didn't need to know what lay inside the Tower. But if there was more to be read, after seven indulgently-long books how could I simply stop, and assume that whatever came after brought no further context, no sense of completion or conclusion that I would otherwise have missed. While there's a valid argument for me taking responsibility for my own enjoyment, that's a temptation I - and many other readers - will never be able to resist.

As a storyteller, I'm more sympathetic. There may be a Right Ending to a story, one thematically consistent with all that went before; often there is an ending the reader wants to see, a True Ending where their favourite characters get what they deserve, and which ties up all their loose ends. Sometimes these two do not coincide.

---

This all came to mind recently while replaying the inconsistently numbered Final Fantasy X & X-2. Despite water-breathing anime sportsboy Tidus being ostensibly the lead character of FFX, the plot revolves around the pilgrimage of the young summoner Yuna and her efforts to rid the world of Sin, an enormous prayer-powered space whale from a long-forgotten war. While travelling together Tidus and Yuna fall in love, yet even the revelation that Tidus is a dream of the ethereal Fayth - and that defeating Sin will cause him to cease to exist - does not deter Yuna from her path.

In a genre full of unsatisfying denouements, FFX's ending is a shining light, perfectly balancing the salvation of the world with the emotional stakes for the main characters. Faced with a choice between the lives of all the inhabitant of Spira and the continuing existence of her lover, Yuna makes the Right choice, the heroic choice, the one which every element of the storyline prior to this point foreshadows. She banishes Sin, then in her rush to embrace Tidus passes straight through his now-ethereal form. It's a singularly heartbreaking moment, and perfectly encapsulates the weight of her loss in her moment of greatest triumph.

The power and poignancy of the ending reverberated in the collective conversation of FFX's fans. Considering how irritating a character Tidus is for most of the game - a spoiled, oblivious man-child obsessed with being the centre of narrative attention - he is clearly changed by the end of his journey, and the bittersweet end to his relationship with Yuna spawned reams of fanfiction. When the Japan-only Final Fantasy X International edition included a bonus cut-scene teasing Yuna's discovery of a recording of an imprisoned man looking uncannily like Tidus, it seemed to point to an obvious conclusion: the first true Final Fantasy sequel had heard fandom's outcry, and somehow Tidus's continued unexistence would cease.

---

Of course, no JRPG plotline is ever that straightforward.

By comparison to FFX's strictly linear pilgrimage, Final Fantasy X-2 hops back and forth between locations from the prior game as Yuna and her friends explore the colossal shifts in culture and the balance of power instigated by their overthrow of Spira's theocracy. Similarly, the sequel's tone is a more mercurial affair, its weighty sociopolitical plotline balanced with frequent deviations into joyous flights of fancy - from impromptu pop concerts to anime-inspired farce - and against the odds it works. The Tidus-a-like turns out not to be our aqueous attention-seeker after all, but rather a thousand-year old ghost - named Shuyin - genocidally obsessed with avenging his lover, a summoner bearing more than a passing resemblence to Yuna.

Faced with Spira's destruction at Shuyin's hands - ably assisted by yet another improbably-named ancient weapon of mass destruction - Yuna has no choice but to bring low this ghost who wears her lover's face, and to banish him once more from the world. In a story preoccupied with themes of coming to terms with the consequences of your actions, of learning how to live again in a world set adrift from the status quo, Yuna's victory is in making peace with her choices and finally letting Tidus go.

I would argue this is the Right Ending. It's the ending the entire thematic thrust of FFX-2 builds towards, and also the ending Kazushige Nojima, the scenario writer for both games, had originally intended when he told Famitsu: "We had several ending patterns prepared, but when it came to ‘what about a happy ending?’ at the time, I thought ‘no, there can’t be one’." 

And yet it's not the True Ending, nor even the Good Ending. For those you must play this 80+ hour RPG again, in the exact order the developers intended the story to proceed, and meeting a number of very specific criteria along the way. Without adhering strictly to a guide, I would reckon the 100% completion True Ending to be nigh-on impossible.

For this display of dedication, an act of painstakingly stepping through FFX-2 again in almost ritualistic fashion, Tidus is mysteriously returned to life by the Fayth and tearfully reunites with Yuna. It's ostensibly a happy ending - Yuna gets what her heart desires, an outcome only made possible by her determination and persistence - yet simultaneously it unpicks the thesis which the bulk of FFX-2 seems to support: Yuna will always love Tidus, but she doesn't need him. The True and Good Endings may well be true and good, but are they the Right Ending for this particular story?

---

Yoko Taro, when talking about the writing process for Nier: Automata's euphoric Ending E, told Siliconera: "I started thinking about what would be the most fitting ending for all of those characters, and that resulted in the E ending. It’s not something that I desired, but I believe, in the world of writing, the characters move toward that ending themselves, and they directed me to write toward that end. In the end, it’s probably what the characters had hoped for – what they would have desired." 

Similarly, even though Nojima may not have intended FFX-2 to have a happy ending, he told Famitsu: "after the game was released and I was able to see the fan reaction to it, I changed my mind."

I spent tens of hours reading Stephen King's epic series. I spent hundreds of hours playing FFX and FFX-2. When readers and players live in someone else's world for so long, growing to care deeply for their favourite characters, is it a bad thing to give them the ending they long for, even if the story seeks a more fitting conclusion?

Unlike books, games have the luxury of multiple endings, and I've always felt the urge to follow a story to its very limits. It's only recently that I've begun to question whether the True Ending and the Right Ending are necessarily coexistent. 

Then again, perhaps there's an argument to be made for FFX-2's approach, gently gating fan-favourite endings through effort. I couldn't resist simply turning the page when the True Ending of The Dark Tower was offered to me, but when FFX-2 asked for another eighty hours to bring Tidus back from the watery depths, I hesitated. Did I care that much, or could I happily accept the ending I felt was Right, even if it wasn't the True Ending I knew existed out there for those dedicated enough to reach it?

After all, if I couldn't live without Tidus and Yuna's happy reunion, another eighty hours immersed in the minutiae of Spira might not seem like such a trial, but more of a painstaking ritual, a summoning of a beloved spirit back from beyond the Farplane. 

And who am I to deny the faithful their rituals?

Inspired by Critical Distance’s Blogs of the Round Table on the topic of Denouement. 

Big thanks also to J. B. Rockwell for digging out the text of the Dark Tower Coda for me when I realised I no longer owned the book, and was increasingly concerned my annoyance from years prior had corrupted my memories.

[theroguebadger]

Review: Final Fantasy XV

That’s it! I’ve come up with a new review! (No spoilers)

Following a game's development from the day of its initial announcement can be a difficult prospect. For many AAA games, that can mean two or three years of patience, with only a new trailer every few months to keep the fire of anticipation burning. In this sense, Final Fantasy XV is the most extreme of anomalies. It was first unveiled as Final Fantasy Versus XIII, a companion story with loose links to Final Fantasy XIII, at E3 in 2006, a whopping ten years before it would finally see the light of day. In the following years, updates and new information were so scarce that many feared that the game would never see release; even when it was officially rebranded as Final Fantasy XV at E3 2013, seven years after its first trailer aired, fans were subjected to a three-year wait before they could get their hands on it, though two demos and several trailers filled the gap. With a game like this, whose development history was so troubled and uncertain, it isn't enough to simply ask whether or not the finished product is a satisfactory one. Perhaps more importantly, we have to ask: was it worth the wait?

Final Fantasy XV picks and chooses aspects from earlier series instalments and takes them for itself, whilst occasionally throwing something new into the mix. Reminiscent of Final Fantasy III and X-2, your party is limited to a smaller group of people – four, in this case – all of which are present from the opening stages of the story. Noctis Lucis Caelum, prince of the kingdom of Lucis, departs the capital city of Insomnia in the opening scenes, accompanied by three close friends: Ignis, a sensible caretaker charged with keeping Noctis out of trouble; Gladiolus, a combat instructor responsible for training Noctis's combat skills; and Prompto, a close friend of the prince's from his school days, who brings a carefree enthusiasm and his photography skills to the team.

Together, they set off on a road trip to attend Noctis's own wedding to Lunafreya, princess of distant kingdom Tenebrae. It all quickly goes wrong, of course. Insomnia is invaded by an imperial army       moments after you leave; your father the king is assassinated, your fiancée disappears on a journey of her own and the kingdom's Crystal, a magical relic needed to keep the world safe, is pilfered by the empire. As with much of the story, this is all communicated in a very rushed, head-scratching sort of way. The impact of events is made underwhelming by how little time or focus is dedicated to them. The invasion of Insomnia is shown to be a battle on a catastrophic scale, but the seconds-long cutscene that reveals it hardly adds anything to the immensity of the event.

With their mission now changed – they need to find Lunafreya, bring down the empire and restore the Crystal to Lucis – Noctis and company's true journey begins. Here the first portion of Lucis's open world becomes available to you, with the other sections locked behind early story progression. When you're not travelling between story areas – your means of transport being the Regalia, on foot or, eventually, via chocobo – you can tackle some of FF15's innumerable hunting missions, help out troubled NPCs at the various outposts or gather useful materials. Food sources will provide you with ingredients to bolster Ignis's list of recipes, which when prepared at camp will give the party a time-limited boost to various stats. In many cases, the right meal can make all the difference in a tough fight, of which there are many outside of the mandatory story fights, and Ignis's own enthusiasm for the culinary arts makes the whole process quite charming to watch.

Alongside ingredients, you can also discover ore with which to customise your car, or sources of magic to craft spells for use in battle. Gone are the days of scrolling through your acquired spells to find the right one for the occasion. Final Fantasy XV has its own approach to magic, allowing you to mix and match your stock of each element to create stronger variants – the classic -aras and -agas – but the most crucial aspect is adding in items you've collected along your travels. These can do anything from increasing the uses of a particular spell (they're all finite and must be replenished) to adding extra effects such as healing Noctis or boosting the experience you earn from any battle in which they're cast. Fiddling around with different combinations is interesting enough at first, but after a while I couldn't help but wish they'd stuck with something more traditional. Having these usage-limited tools of devastation is a novel concept, but friendly fire means you're just as likely to set your team ablaze as you are to turn the tide of battle with a well-placed, triple-cast Firaga.

Combat puts you solely in control of Noctis, with your allies only controllable through the activation of their own specific skills. Whilst your teammates are limited to two weapons of specific types – Gladiolus uses greatswords and shields, for example – Noctis can wield anything and everything, including the Royal Arms of the Lucis line. His unique, princely abilities allow him to teleport around the battlefield, instantly warping to a distant enemy and landing a fearsome blow that only grows stronger the further he warps. In bigger, more chaotic battles, the combat truly shines; at times, it feels as if Noctis's friends only fight with him to better enable his showy fighting style, and it works. Incapacitating a group of enemies with well-timed warp-strikes before following up with a combo attack – Gladiolus is capable of massive damage, whereas Ignis provides support and Prompto destabilises and hinders the enemy – is never unsatisfying.

The combat system only begins to exhibit major faults when you face off against certain screen-filling enemies, so large in size and scale that the camera doesn't know what to do or where to look. The hit-detection on these enemies is similarly inconsistent, meaning what you intended to be a critical blow with a warp-strike actually results in you sliding along the enemy's bulk before clipping through them and becoming lodged inside. These encounters are limited, however, and for the most part the fast-paced battles continue to be one of Final Fantasy XV's triumphs. It's a system where simplicity proves to be the a viable approach, though fans of Final Fantasy's turn-based roots might yearn for something more traditional. Summoning, a recurring feature of Final Fantasy combat, has also been overhauled – don't expect a designated summoner class in this game. The small but familiar selection of summons are a real spectacle to behold, towering high above the battlefield as they unleash a devastating ability. With their acquisition tied to story progression, however, there's no satisfaction or challenge in acquiring them, and their specific summon requirements – they're more likely to appear based on factors such as allies being knocked out or Noctis entering the danger state – make them awkward and fiddly at times, resulting in a mountain-sized, god-like creature appearing to end a battle against low-level enemies, or at the very end of a lengthy boss battle where their intervention would have been better appreciated early on.

Where Final Fantasy XV truly struggles is in telling its story. Its more recent predecessors had particular narrative issues – FF13's reliance on handing the player files to read in order to properly learn about the world, for instance – but never before have I felt that a Final Fantasy game's story is in dire need of fixing – until now. The problems start early and rarely abate, with one of FF15's rare, albeit beautiful, CGI cutscenes showing the king's death in mere seconds. The actual invasion of Insomnia, home to all four party members, is detailed mostly via radio transmissions heard by the group. After a little bit of moping, Noctis seemingly forgets his father has died at all; he doesn't move on from grieving so much as that particular plot thread is abandoned entirely. Later, another brief cutscene introduces you to the main group of antagonists, some of whom are never actually seen again. Whilst the open-world does a good enough job of showing the player a living, breathing Lucis, full of settlements big and small, their people engaging in conversations about anything from everyday minutia to whichever crisis is ongoing at that point in the game, the empire receives barely any development at all. Knowing your enemy is a major part of becoming invested in the experience, but I found myself unable to care about what little I knew of Noctis's foes.

By the end of the game, the imperial presence in FF15's world of Eos meant little more to me than the aircraft that would so routinely interrupt my travels to drop a group of Magitek Soldiers on my team. If you engage in optional activities to even the smallest extent, these altercations will be your main source of interaction with the antagonistic empire; what few officers and leaders they have disappear permanently not long after being introduced to you, and not necessarily because they were defeated. It's a baffling inadequacy in a game that took a decade to make. Final Fantasy has for years been a name synonymous with rich world-building and compelling stories, but Final Fantasy XV's decade-long development has produced an incoherent, muddled narrative that fails to match the scope and depth the developers no doubt intended for their world. Whilst the plot and its delivery do bring down the overall experience, there is a great deal of good to balance out the bad.

In some ways, Final Fantasy XV is both endearing and spectacular. Someone on the development team clearly understood how great an impact the little things can have, and it's in subtlety and nuance that FF15 is at its most charming. Although driving the Regalia is almost entirely an on-rails affair, it's made more enjoyable by the group's humourous exchanges and, best of all, the ability to listen to the soundtracks of previous Final Fantasy instalments, which can be purchased from vendors across Lucis. The track listings aren't complete, but there's something undeniably nostalgic about listening to FF10's Blitz Off or Blinded by Light from FF13, not to mention classic tracks from the series' earliest instalments. When you're done for the day and settle down at a camp or inn, you'll get to see the photographs Prompto has taken that day, and you can save any you like. Some are fairly typical – locations you've visited, people you've met – but the rest have real potential to amuse or delight. Alongside pictures of the group posing together by a landmark, I had photos of the four of them mid-battle with fearsome daemons – powerful enemies that only appear at night – or trekking across Lucis with a town visible in the distance and the sun just right in the sky beyond. Having Noctis and company settle down at night with a meal to pore over Prompto's handiwork always succeeds in strengthening your connection to them and the bond they so clearly share; it's just a shame that the rest of the cast wasn't treated so lovingly. From helpful mechanic Cindy, with her inexplicable accent and ridiculous attire, to fearsome warrior Aranea, anyone who isn't a part of Team Noctis will receive little in the way of character development, if they get anything at all. It's another jarring disappointment from a series that has in the past so consistently created compelling and likeable supporting casts.

It's often people like those who will be issuing your quests, but outside of a few generic lines of dialogue you'll learn almost nothing about them, and lesser NPCs are recycled with a consistency that would be impressive were it not so tedious. One man, a hunter named Dave of all things, pops up in settlements across Lucis, tasking the group with going to a nearby location and retrieving the dog tags of a fallen hunter. His dialogue rarely differs each time – “Fancy meeting you here. Mind collecting some dog tags for me?” – but he somehow has more of a presence than many of the game's more prominent characters. Rather than taking a copy-paste approach to side quests to the extent that they're almost MMO-esque in depth and variety, more time could have been taken to show us more of what we need and want to know. For all of the occasional chatter about her, Lunafreya has shockingly little to do in the game, which is worrying indeed given that as the Oracle she acts as a liaison between humans and the gods. By the end of the game, I could only find three aspects to her character: she and Noctis were in a long-distance relationship, she could communicate with the gods and she opposed the empire. Beyond that, there's little to learn. With so many excellent leading ladies to draw from in the series' history, it's a shame that Lunafreya contributes so little. Outside of Noctis's group, characters seem to exist only to push the heroes in a certain direction, lacking a real purpose or personality of their own.

That's the prevailing problem with Final Fantasy XV: it feels aimless. Winning battles and accomplishing certain feats awards you with experience points and AP with which to power up your party members, but it hardly feels rewarding. Most enemy encounters can be won with minimal effort, making the huge number of side missions and hunts feel completely unnecessary. The story will drag you from place to place on the whims of one person or another, but when the credits rolled I found myself with more questions than answers, and not for lack of paying attention. It's easy to get lost in the experience, to allow yourself to wander the wilds of Eos, undertaking hunts to eliminate powerful enemies before you seclude yourself at a nearby fishing spot, but the facade crumbles when you go anywhere near a main story mission. Final Fantasy has been erratic in quality post-FFX, but never before have the problems been so glaring, so detrimental to the overall experience. With ten years of development time, no matter how troubled those early years might have been, it shouldn't have been like this.

7/10

[thesteadydietofeverything]

Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is a welcome update to an overlooked series highlight

I played Final Fantasy XII, a bit, when it originally came out in 2006.  I wasn’t playing games much in general at the time - as a junior in high school, it was the start of several years that lasted probably up until I graduated college where my experiences playing video games were few and far between.  Still, the impact the Final Fantasy series had on me just a few years prior, when I put a thoroughly unhealthy amount of time into playing VII-X, roughly between the ages of 9 and 13, meant that I at least felt the need to check this new game out, as I have with every new single-player entry in the series.  At the time, my reaction to it was even less enthused than  my more recent reactions to XIII and XV, both of which I played for around 20 hours, essentially enjoying myself for that time, but being put off enough by their flaws to abandon them well before completion of a full playthrough.  I probably didn’t even get past the first five hours of this game before giving up on it to retire to my room and listen to Pavement records and read anarchist literature, or whatever it was I was doing at that age.

I don’t remember many specifics as to why I quit so early, but upon returning to it over ten years later with the newly released Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age for PS4, it’s not hard to imagine.  This game is a thorough departure from what the series had been so far - battle is no longer a random JRPG-style menu clicking affair, but a more streamlined approach not too unlike MMOs of the time.  Not only that, but the main way that battle is done is through the game’s innovative and weird Gambit system, which allows the player to essentially program characters to perform a number of actions in particular situations by assigning them simple if-then statements.  When your gambits are set up correctly, the game practically - as a number of critics at the time complained - “plays itself.”  Grinding through the overworld or a dungeon can sometimes literally be as simple as pointing your party leader in the right direction and letting your well-trained team take care of the rest.  At the time, such a system must have felt like a removal of many of the things that made Final Fantasy what it was to me; looking at it now, I can’t help but admire the daring deviation in a series that, for whatever flaws it undoubtedly has, has proven itself to be consistently unafraid of twisting its formula in unique and bizarre ways.

My newfound appreciation for this overlooked series entry, however, is not just a result of time and distance.  The Zodiac Age changes the way the game plays in a number of really quite significant ways.  One of these changes is with its License Boards - the means by which the player spends earned experience to learn new abilities, use new weapons and armor, gain significant amounts of HP and helpful skills buffs, etc.  Though I never played the original game enough to remember how these Boards originally looked, they’ve now been modified to lock each character into two “jobs” of the player’s choosing - one at the beginning of the game, and another a few hours into it.  Again, my lack of experience with the original prevents me from true comparison, but considering how open-ended and overwhelming these job-based Boards can be, I’m happy to not have to deal with the truly open approach of the original.

A much more clear and obvious difference in this new addition is the inclusion of a dedicated fast forward button.  Literally.  At any point while not engaged in dialogue or the menu, the player can simply tap R1 to make the game play either twice or four times as fast as its normal speed.  This seems like a bizarre option at first, one that I wasn’t particularly keen on utilizing in my first couple hours of gameplay: the characters move at a decidedly silly, Benny Hill-esque pace at these speeds, and when just getting acquainted with combat, actions happen at a rate too fast to properly comprehend.  But I soon came to realize that for large sections of the game, double time feels like a perfectly natural pace to move in, considering the size of some of the maps in the game and the rather laborious pace of the normal speed.  Some of the more labyrinthian sections of the game can take hours to fully explore - the final dungeon, for example, took me nearly five hours to get through at double speed, and while navigating my way through such a massive and rewarding space was possibly my favorite sequence of the game, I imagine that if it had taken me practically twice as long, it would have worn out its welcome long before I had finished it.

The Zodiac Age, of course, also sharpens and clarifies the graphics of the original in a pretty impressive way - it’s not that it doesn’t still essentially look like the PS2 game that it is so much that it accentuates the striking potential still being squeezed out of the aging console at the time of this game’s release, mere months before the launch of the PS3.  Additionally, the entire gorgeous score has been re-recorded.  Despite my initial misgivings about this game being the first FF I’m aware of to use a composer other than Nobuo Uematsu, Hitoshi Sakimoto wrote truly some of the most lovely and iconic video game music I’ve ever heard with this game, and to hear it expertly performed in high quality audio is something that never failed to propel me through the several dozen hours I spent with it.

Lastly, one of the more subtle, but very important additions of this new version is the inclusion of an autosave feature.  Again, sometimes I’d go an hour or two in double time between save crystals, and it wasn’t unusual to occasionally die in that time: the game contains these enemies called “Elementals,” eerie floating orbs that look not unlike something out of the new season of Twin Peaks and can utterly devastate your party in the early hours of the game.  With autosave, it was easy enough to simply start a couple minutes before I encountered said Elemental and do everything that I could to avoid it, but if I had been forced to go back an hour or more to the last save crystal, I likely would have set the controller down for good out of utter disgust for a game wasting my time like that in 2017.

All of this puts me in an interesting position, considering that the last review I wrote was for the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, in which I struggled to grasp the point of a remaster/remake deviating from its source in a way that fundamentally changes one’s experience of the game.  There are a few obvious differences here.  First of all, when it comes down to it, this is still technically the same game.  The N. Sane Trilogy was a bizarre exercise in attempting to completely remake a game from the ground up in a new engine, while attempting to give it as much fidelity to the original as possible.  In practice, though, lazy or insufficient design meant that the game just didn’t feel like the originals, despite its obvious visual similarities.  The Zodiac Age, on the other hand, is a more traditional remaster, but with a whole lot more: the additions and modifications may change the game in significant and meaningful ways, but the core game is exactly as it always has been.

Probably even more importantly, these changes actually improve the game.  Granted, my limited experience with the original means that any nostalgia or endearing feelings I have for it are mostly relegated to a general affinity for the series rather than specific memories of my first time playing it.  This is as opposed to, say, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, which I unequivocally played the shit out of as a kid.  Still, the changes seem to stick to objective improvements: the ability to control the speed of play and the autosave feature make this game immeasurably more accessible to modern players, including those who, like myself, don’t necessarily want to devote the 60-80 hours of gameplay the original demanded in order to experience what the game has to offer.  I imagine that even adventurous devotees of the original will be thrilled at an old favorite being given such a graphical and aural overhaul, not to mention the new play styles offered by the modified License Boards.

But all of these tweaks and improvements would mean little if, at the core, there weren’t already a great game worth revisiting here, and as a fan of this series, it’s a uniquely satisfying feeling to discover that this 11-year-old game is, indeed, great.  While not exactly exempt of typical JRPG bullshit, it’s the strange, fascinating, and (relatively) mature game one would want out of a collaboration between Hiroyuki Ito (director of my two other favorite games in the series, FFVI and FFIX) and Hiroshi Minagawa (director of two other classics of the genre whose complexity precluded my appreciation at the time they came out: Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story; maybe it’s about time I revisit those as well). 

It’s worth noting at the mention of Minagawa that this game’s setting of Ivalice puts it in the same world as his other games.  The story, for as indebted as it is to Star Wars (and, unless I’m projecting, Game of Thrones, which is at the least interesting to note, given the exceptional pop culture phenomena that series has become since the show debuted five years after the release of this game), is engaging in its political intrigue and subtle character dynamics, especially compared to the melodramatic bombast of most of its PS2 JRPG peers, including Final Fantasy X.  While all of these games, toward the end, are going to boil down to needing to save the world from some megalomaniacal evil and mystical jargon about crystals, and this game is no different, it at least boasts some of the best characters that have graced the series.  Of particular note is the relationship between Balthier - think a demonstrably more suave Han Solo - and his partner Fran, a Viera (yeah, the sexy rabbit ladies) who has a mysterious connection to the magical Mist of the world.  It’s hardly an original pairing - this game, as most games of its genre do, utilizes reductive archetypes - but through a combination of solid writing and particularly strong voice acting for the time, it just works.

What also works, and works shockingly well, is the aforementioned Gambit system.  Though conventional wisdom might suggest that reducing the actions needed to be taken by the player decreases the player’s engagement in the game, the opposite, as it turns out, seems to be be true in this case.  In other Final Fantasy games, typical combat transports you to a different game screen where the player, more often than not, continually taps the action button to attack until all enemies are dead, a marginally fun exercise that can become mind-numbingly tedious upon repetition - and if there’s one thing you can expect in a game like this, it’s repetition.  By keeping me on the map and allowing me to assign rote moves to characters to do themselves, the game actually kept me focus on the more fun aspects of these moments - the Diablo-esque satisfaction of filling out a map and collecting loot, the colorful character and enemy animations, and tweaking my Gambits to make sure that I really am doing all of this as efficiently as possible.  Very few games make grinding as gratifying of an experience as Final Fantasy XII.

Of course, as abnormally gratifying as that grinding is, there’s still a lot of it, and even with the fast-forward feature, the game still takes quite a while to get through - my final time was right around 45 hours.  This was with doing a good amount of the side content the game has to offer, including many of the optional monster hunts scattered throughout the world (while I declined to do several of the late-game hunts, I wholly admired this system, which drove me deeper into dungeons I had already explored, revealing whole levels that I never previously realized existed); still, I’d imagine a more straightforward playthrough would only shave that time off by a handful of hours.  

Even I, under different circumstances, would have likely gotten bored with this if I hadn’t played it at the time that I did.  This game happened to be released toward the beginning of the summer session at the school that I work at, where I’d typically work twelve-hour days throughout the week.  As it turned out, after coming home exhausted and yet oddly wired every night, putting a couple hours into running around this vast JRPG world was exactly the kind of meditative release I needed to relax me before going to bed and doing it all over again.  I can pretty definitively say this game helped me survive the most stressful time of my work year, and as a result, I’m all the more happy I never discovered this game’s idiosyncratic charms until now.  Now I do have a well of good memories associated with a particular time and place wrapped up in this game, and I have a new top-tier favorite in a series I will never be able to help but love.

8.5/10