#i stopped liveblogging so it's just one big thought dump at the end

[oodlyenough]

oblig dual destinies post

i finished the base game of dual destinies today, as in, everything but the dlc case. but the dlc case i assume is kind of a, er, side adventure that won't change much about my opinion of the main narrative, so here we go. spoilers for the first 5 cases

well that wasn't very good was it

things i did like

number one top spot MVP honourable mention goes to aura blackquill. aura is a great character, extremely my type of character, and her story was pretty interesting. every time aura was on screen i was having a good time. i cannot believe they hid the best, canon ace attorney toxic yuri in its worst game (that i've played so far). obviously wish we saw more of aura, more of aurametis, and more of aura with athena, but what we did get was honestly pretty good and much, much more explicit than i ever expected this franchise to get. i am a dog being tricked into taking a pill because it was hidden in a spoon of peanut butter.

i also liked athena. i was predisposed to like her because all the major female characters in this franchise start with a buff for me, but i did think her over the top exuberant competitive go-getter attitude coupled with the PTSD flashback sprites were a pretty good combo. i think she was unequivocally the star of this game, and i think we should have played her for a lot more of it. her power is goofy as all hell and mood matrix isn't a great minigame, but, well, uh, it's dual destinies i have to adjust my expectations somewhere.

i like that phoenix got his badge back. i can critique all the ways it played out, because you can critique just about everything in this game to the moon(rock) and back, but like. fundamentally. i like this choice and i'm glad it happened. i also like that we got to see edgeworth and pearl and got a letter from maya. it seems obvious this is the franchise trying to course correct after a rough reception to aa4, but frankly i don't really care, because i do think aa4 fucked up there. i liked aa4 and i think it was a better game than this; i also think it's quite a bummer of a game and in many places a middle finger to fans of the trilogy, so, i'll take the olive branches DD is offering me. 🤷🏼‍♀️

fullbright started off annoying to me but i did warm to him. there's one bit in case 3 where he and athena just cheer "in justice we trust!!!" back and forth that made me laugh. i thought the idea of the big bad being the friendly cop was pretty good. more on that later.

turnabout academy was dumb as hell (affectionate) and i liked it and the npcs were mostly really fun and/or funny. i love you aa5 klavier you hot washed up mess. somehow dual destinies made me more invested in klavier than aa4 did.

things i did not like

where do i start

jk, actually, the first place to start is Why The Hell Can't I Play This Game. writing and characterization and everything aside, this game is SO disinterested in being a game. i can't click stuff. characters autonomously solve puzzles on my behalf without even giving me a second to think of them. the minigames are reduced. investigation days are dull because i can't click anything. it weakens the characterization of the player and the companion character because you don't get their inane chatter. characters don't react to evidence being presented in interesting ways.

the attention to detail and love that went in to so many facets of the trilogy that made it so beloved are just not present here. i don't know what the issue was, rushed dev time or what was going on, but the wrong corners were cut. i made a separate post aout this example because it's so galling: in 1-4 if you try to present the photo of gregory's body to edgeworth, you get custom dialogue where maya intervenes and tells phoenix off for trying to show miles his dead dad. in 5-5 if you present photos of aura's murder to athena she reacts with the same generic disinterest dialogue she gives every other piece of evidence.

the characterization of the returning characters, ie not the ones new to dual destinies like athena and co, is at best watered down and one-note, and at worst out of character. i said i was happy to see edgeworth, and i stand by that overall; but his behaviour in the trial in 5-5 is like madlib edgeworth dialogue, half-hearted fanfic rather than anything to convince you it's a character who lived through the trilogy. phoenix is dumbed down and it's particularly noticeable coming off of aa4, where NPC phoenix was a fucking galaxybrained 5D chess puppeteer who was always one step ahead of everyone, and now he's like, incapable of making basic deductions. all dual destinies phoenix knows is eat hot chip be bisexual and bluff. boring, weak writing. he barely even reacts to trucy being kidnapped. perhaps because trucy is no longer a character and instead is just one extended "teen girl says the word panties" joke.

apollo... lmao... i hate to say it but i don't think apollo should've been in this game. i think his fans would be right to say that he deserved a sequel and that was what was set up by aa4, but all he does in this game is compete for the spotlight with athena, and lose. athena's story is the main story of this game and it is hindered by the detours DD has to take to include apollo; apollo, meanwhile, doesn't even really get anything of substance. we see him mourn a friend we never met and go off on a sidequest we don't partake in. the rift between the WAA would be really interesting if they... wrote it better, or let it sit longer, or let any character react to it for longer than ten seconds.

which gets to the most frustrating thing about this game: there are a lot of pretty good ideas here, hidden under layers of uninteractive "gameplay" and clunky writing that misses its emotional beats. the dark age of the law is a hilarious term but the justice system in AA IS super mega fucked up and that's a fine subject for the game to tackle, until they start pretending it's somehow *new* and that for some reason a prosecutor being convicted of murder was the final straw (ignore all the OTHER prosecutors who were convicted of murder in the golden age). the finale case you can practically FEEL capcom breathing down its shoulder, desperate to right the ship of the IP, scrambling to put together pieces that worked in the past.

but despite athena's backstory being probably the most compelling part of the game, it's hard to shake the feeling that we're getting a remix of turnabout goodbyes, except, well, worse. and that feeling is exacerbated by phoenix and edgeworth, who lived that case, never having or expressing any feelings to suggest they ... lived that case. on paper, edgeworth prosecuting a child who killed a parent by mistake is really interesting! but DD doesn't do anything with it. i actually really like fullbright being the phantom, and if i hadn't been spoiled by fandom, i think i would've been surprised. but that twist is undermined by the reveal that actually the character we knew was ... um... an amorphous shapeshifting blob with no independent identity, there's no sense of real betrayal between him and blackquill bc he's not a real person and blackquill was lying about trusting him so like ... who cares...

in conclusion

i see a lot of the shared DNA with investigations 1, and i have a lot of the same complaints. fun new characters, albeit underwritten; disappointing characterization from returning characters; in aai i found the puzzles frustrating, whereas here they felt nonexistent. at least aai1 had really cute pixel art and let me click stuff, though. shrek meme they don't even have investigating.

i am saying aai1, because i haven't played aai2 yet, and fandom swears up and down it's way better. but i have to be honest. what are the odds that of the four ace attorney games this guy wrote, three of them suck and one is a banger... i guess i'll find out in september when the port comes out :P or maybe when i play SOJ next i'll love it too. stay tuned

[turtlesocksv2]

Liveblogging DFF episode 9

last time we checked in, Non was having just the Worst Time Possible, everyone was trying to cover their asses and Phi was entering into Murder/Detective Mode.

i know i've said it before but god the opening credits are SO GOOD. i don't think we appreciate them enough.

We're back in the present day! it's been so long! Tan is fucking brave to fight Fluke for the gun.

IT'S WHITE WITH THE STEEL CHAIR TRIPOD! BAH GOD THAT MAN HAD A FAMILY! love you white you're doing amazing sweetie.

...there was just a water bottle there at the shrine? and it looked opened? are you actually going to drink that? at least you smelled it first??? Ahhhh but notice Phi doesn't drink it! he lets Jin drink it but doesn't do it himself! my sus king.

"Why are you being so nice to me" i mean, dude is at least nominally your friend and you dislocated your shoulder or whatever and there's a killer out there after you guys? i think that'd be cause enough for Phi to be nice lmao. I get it though, Jin, i get it.

Aha, so we've got some timeline stuff. PhiJin absolutely happened POST PhiNon, which i had seen some intriguing theories that maybe PhiJin was actually first but this is confirmation otherwise. also that Jin very much had feelings for Phi but Phi was the one pushing the friends agenda, which we mostly knew.

Jin on that "you like Tan!" shit again, no wonder Phi didn't want to be in a relationship with your insecure self lmao. Tan is just his Bestie who helps with his Plucky Girl Detectiving, no big deal.

Once again, Jin sees things that Phi doesn't. shortly after the water. Hallucinogen maybe? guilty conscience definitely.

well that's one way to snap him out of the panic

slight detour inspired by the blood splatter everywhere in this shrine is that if the Janta Cult isn't real/doesn't play a part in this somehow, I'm going to be so upset. why bring up perfectly good murder cults if you're not going to give us the payoff? BOC? Dr Sammon I just have questions! (that said, the theory that the mafia is using the cult rumors as a front for a body dumping ground is intriguing.)

Oh ho, Phi's gonna confess everything to Jin! but will it really be everything? 👀

poor Phi is so conflicted. he's hurt, but he loves Non but he doesn't want to see him but he doesn't want to end up like his divorced parents, he can't stop thinking about it, he regrets what he said, but he still so hurt.

Non's dad got transferred. interesting.

Ooooh Phi found the picture! and the real script!

Non's mom knows Phi. I wonder if she knew they were boyfriends of if she thought they were just friends. lmao at her Ring The Doorbell You Shady Shit, Were You Raised In A Barn?

New contacting Phi as the news breaks...the drama. i love it.

Tan is New confirmed!

OOOF. major oof. "aren't you sad i'm going to England?" "Whether you're here or not doesn't make a difference" just ouch.

He may have been a Not Great brother in your life, Non, but in your death New/Tan is going to Get Answers and Get Justice! giving up a scholarship in England, lying to his parents about it...Tan is going to Fuck Shit Up.

Jin, get your 'there's a cute boy around!!!!" face under control.

Tan just dives right in to asking questions and these bitches are so fucking sus from the word 'go'. yeah, they clearly have something to do with Non disappearing.

lmao Jin does not stand a fucking chance against Phi's seduction.

i am dying at Tan's "You didn't study, dumbass" on his ankle. Top's face is Too Funny.

Aww, White waiting for Tee after school and the group roasting them is really cute.

Phi how dare you take Jin to your and Non's spot! so rude! can't trust men at all, the second you disappear he's taking another man to the place you became boyfriends.😂 Jin awkwardly trying to figure out of this means Phi likes him back is cute.

Why Jin, how bold! asking Phi to stay the night!

oh damn this is full on full on, okay. Ta's ass just out there bare. "don't worry, i won't be too harsh i don't want to dislocate your shoulder" "who fucks so hard they dislocate a shoulder?" somewhere else in Bangkok VegasPete's ears are burning. Anyway, Phi was like 'don't test me, i'm being gentle for YOUR sake.' and that's the Minor Family Theerapanyakul in Ta. i was absolutely waiting for that astronaut dog figurine to fall lmao.

Tan going for the kill with that Did You Cheat On My Brother. Tan i'm sorry but not only is your brother most likely dead but Phi and Non are actually very broken upright now, no matter how much Phi wishes neither of those were true. Phi is in the clear here re: Cheating. He is not in the clear for manipulating Jin into sleeping with him, but like, Jin's into it so whatever for now.

"Fuck him however much you want but don't fall in love. He's with those assholes so he's also an asshole" i mean! He's not wrong! Jin is a good looking nice boy he could absolutely find other friends. the fact that he stays with these fuckheads......

poor Non's parents.

these teenage boys have better skincare routines than I do and I'm

Jin just pass Phi a note in class: Do U Like Me Check Yes Or No

Ah, Jin has such bad timing. Everything about this is brutal. but lol this makes the 2nd boy in a row that Jin likes that doesn't like him back.

Tan doing chemistry shit. he's gonna be drugging everyone i just know it. also, never ever have your cellphone out in a lab and never answer it with your gloves on! Lab Safety 101!!!!

damn, Tan, you could have at least made up a part time job in england or something so that your parents didn't have to sell their house. this entire family's been ripped apart by all this shit.

and now Tan is alone. all he has is his investigation into Non and Phi his sort of brother-in-law.

oh shit, was it Tan's cigarette smoke that was causing hallucinations???! or are they the antidote to whatever Tan drugged the others with or both?

confirmation that Tan was drugging everyone!

lol Tan's face at he very end as he takes in the chaos

[rueitae]

Season 2, Episode 8: the Stockholm Syndrome Caper

Liveblog for @csweekly

I’m so normal about this episode.

WE MADE IT TO THE ANGST. My serotonin is on full blast right now. I apologize right off the bat I might be so taken with this episode that I may not pull together all of my thoughts. This is the episode that made me go from “oh this is a fun iteration of CS!” To me sitting up wide eyed and going “the French Connection Caper was not a one off you have my full undivided attention CS 2019”

Since we are on my favorite episode, I want to stop at the title sequence for a moment and point out one of my favorite things I forgot to mention in week 1. It’s so neat that on the title card with the silhouette of Carmen with her voice actor credit, that she literally tips her hat to Player when they show his credits. Bestie moment, and homage to all of the players that came before this one.

Maelstrom is Done 24/7. He just wants to be evil and they have to make such mundane decisions such as MOVING and blowing up their current home 😕 I love how fierce Brunt and Cleo are about staying they are the definition of stubborn in the looks on their faces. Bellum doesn’t care she’s got a state of the art facility in the Himalayas.

Okay but Bellum is right about relocation being invigorating. After a change of scenery I’m always reinvigorated to write fic.

“Only a matter of time before invading forces come rowing to our shore” knowing what Devineaux is about to do makes this so funny.

Look at Julia being assertive at the beginning here! The Fashionista caper really gave her the confidence she needed after what happened at the end of s1. It…stings knowing how quickly it’s about to go down the drain.

Love that Chief’s obsession with catching VILE is her early downfall. Her single mindedness prevents her from patience and seeing the whole picture as Julia suggests. It’s her undoing in the s2 finale.

The way Carmen shows up at the perfect time. And she is NOT pleased.

“Those suits” the way Ivy is so smug about leading ACME on when she literally joins them at the very end. May you and Zack never change.

Okay, so Zack says that this is Carmen’s actual coat? This means that Zack and Ivy have their own haha. And I really love how Ivy responds “little tight in the shoulders, but powerful” please the way Ivy looks up to Carmen literally slays me.

Zack: does a bad imitation of Player info dumping

Player: laughs dryly, rolls his eyes, and then proceeds to do said info dump

Me: this will never get old

Honestly, it’s stated so many times that Player chats with the sibs during capers almost as much as Carmen. If this conversation is any indication, I’d have loved more. Just to hear how they fill the time. Talking about software and hardware updates for red drone maybe? Where are the forbidden video game nights?

“That’s a ton of bridges for trolls to hide under!” The best troll comes in s3.

Also good time to point out that the geography brief in every episode foreshadows future events and dialogue in the episode.

Lol Carmen has the pen. Also! She learns Chief’s name!

I love Julia this entire scene. She’s trying to be SO coy, playing to what she remembers of Carmen, that is a confident and witty thief, with her own wit and lighthearted banter. It’s the first time she’s had an opportunity to speak with Carmen sorta on her own terms with enough information. But Carmen for once isn’t having it because of the nature of this particular caper. It’s like, one of the few times Carmen is not excited about a caper. For good reason considering they’re NUCLEAR LAUNCH CODES. This screams Dr Bellum, though I see Maelstrom enjoying the psychological power play that he could work with, once again coming in clutch for heists that endanger literally everyone on the planet. Go big or go home.

And then Chief spoils everything. Again. And it’s literally right after Julia says trust me. I think she and Devineaux both have bad luck, but in different ways. Neither can catch a break when it comes to Carmen. The difference is that Julia can’t control hers where Chase’s is one of his own making.

The move Carmen pulls off the wall and over the agent and the agent knocks themselves out with their own gas. One of my favorites.

Zari right at the top, coolly giving Carmen a dose. *chefs kiss* revenge for Milan. Zari as an agent character is so cool.

It begins it begins it begins IT BEGINS. Carmen is drowsy and Cornered at the top of the bell tower. The PERSPECTIVE from Carmen, showing how heavy her eyes are, jumping from scene to scene as she takes each desperate step. That’s the kind of imagery writers dream of.

PLAYER’S MUDDLED and INCREASINGLY concerned voice from Carmen’s perspective. She can’t concentrate on anything.

Whump/Angst Tally:

Carmen: 2 (gassed/falling unconscious and chased/“betrayed”)

Player: 1

The way Ivy invites trouble by staying in character is delightful. Do it again.

Moose Boy and Otter Man are such underrated VILE operatives. TASER

Whump/Angst Tally:

Carmen: 2

Player: 1

Ivy: 2 (tased and kidnapped)

MORE ANGRY JULIA. You tell her.

Carmen unconscious in the snow.

THE SCENE

Quite possibly my favorite scene in the whole show.

“But if Carm’s MIA, too, who do I support?”

***Anguished silence***

“Go get your sister, Red knows how to fend for herself in a pickle”

This scene kills me so much. Player speaks with confidence and sureness but that brief silence and anguish on his face tells us all we need to know about his feelings. He lost his best friend for a whole semester while she was Black Sheep having to retake her classes. And now he’s faced with potentially losing her for good. He knows how serious the situation is. He knows she’s probably unconscious in the cold and he’s sitting at home in his room in front of the computer instead of being there physically. He could have told Zack to go after Carmen, but he knows he can’t. Ivy is the most important person in the world to Zack. And of the two, Carmen has the better chance of rescuing herself. He knows what decision he needs to make, but he can be sad about it. He takes the guilt and gives Zack his marching orders quickly and confidently, so that he can’t question Player’s pause or true feelings. Player, who has been ultra protective of Carmen since she left VILE island, is faced with the prospect that he might have failed her.

Whump/Angst Tally:

Carmen: 3

Player: 2

Ivy: 2

Zack: 1

The shot of Carmen banged up and lying in the snow unconscious. Super dangerous. Super amazing shot. The pen is intact but the communicator that was in her ear isn’t. So. Possible head injury/concussion then if she landed head first.

First thing she does is reach out to Player for help. 😭 “it isn’t getting any warmer” disconnected from her friends, cold, injured.

Whump/Angst Tally:

Carmen: 6

Player: 2

Ivy: 2

Zack: 1

This entire scene with Ivy is great. She really comes in clutch despite her situation. She’s cold and tied up and found out exactly what VILE is about to sell. And she is rightfully terrified.

She’s so clever though to figure out exactly how to manipulate Moose Boy and Otter Man both! And tease them! Either these two are fresh from VILE academy or they never hung out in the commons. This scene is simultaneously a comedy and so serious. Otter Man thinks he’s so smart but Ivy has him completely fooled. Where Moose Boy simply takes orders he’s willing to take Ivy at face value. It’s amazing to watch.

Also Ottoman LOL nicely done Ivy. "Sweden's coolest resort” idk Ivy, you kinda SOUND like Carmen. And very quick thinking to ask for the coat! Ivy knows the tools are there she made (assumingly) all of them.

Whump/Angst Tally:

Carmen: 6

Player: 2

Ivy: 4

Zack: 1

Carmen. Almost makes it to the top. : D and falls! :D immaculate. Counting that as two because not only is there the angst of almost making it, she adds to her injuries with the fall.

Whump/Angst Tally:

Carmen: 8

Player: 2

Ivy: 4

Zack: 1

And the geography brief comes in handy. Ivy uses the knowledge that Player gave her to earn rapport with Moose Boy. The great part about Otter Man is that he’s so focused on stopping Moose Boy from spilling the means, that he doesn’t realize that he can use that as his advantage. He’s basically confirming everything right now. But what if he were to give Ivy a lie? Then she’d be wondering which is true. It’s a great VILE character flaw. Otter Man does not see Moose Boy as a partner, just a lackey. They’d be terrifying otherwise.

Carmen realizing her choices are get arrrested or die. “Either way, VILE wins”. Absolutely screaming I love this stuff.

The horror on Ivy’s face when she finds out what the data crystal holds. Excellent dramatic effect.

LOL the chair does NOTHING

Literally ivy through the show:

Ivy: Carmen would do this.

Also Ivy: I am terrified

Also also Ivy: it’s the right thing to do *does the thing*

I love her for it so much.

The cool thing about Ivy’s part here is that she does it all her way. She took notes from Carmen but she ultimately succeeded because she’s herself!

Cool donning the red montage. Immediately slips and falls. Ivy ily

Whump/Angst Tally:

Carmen: 8

Player: 2

Ivy: 5

Zack: 1

Dgfggg the resigned and heartbroken look on Carmen’s face as she activates the pen. And she’s back in character as soon as Chief pops up.

Interesting to note that Chief must have reflected on Julia’s anger, because she is far softer on Carmen here than i expected the first time I watched this episode. Yes she’s professional, but she attempts a half hearted apology, which eventually devolves into genuine worry. Maybe it’s the cynic in me, but I wonder how much of that is caring about Carmen as a young person in trouble, or Chief’s ticket to finally catching VILE.

On Carmen’s side. It is interesting that she doesn’t trust ACME can take on VILE. I wonder how much of that is knowing Roundabout exists and just plain not trusting them to do it right after all the attempts to capture her. And then of course how much of it is Carmen putting it on her shoulders as her personal responsibility. Because it is telling that Carmen gives Chief the NASTIEST look when she points out that it need not be Carmen’s burden alone. She’s not even as angry at being chased that Chief is actually apologizing for.

In any case, Carmen waits until the last possible moment to contact Chief. Not only does it show her stubbornness and how much she values her freedom, but just how aware of her own body she is. She has just enough time to get information from Chief about how close they are to finding her…and then she can’t anymore. As soon as she knows they are coming, she gives out. Carmen plays her intel close, knowing now that’s her bargaining chip to stay alive, even if it’s in prison.

VULNERABILITY. : D in front of a not-ally (yet) Carmen can’t hold on she drops to the snow. And again it’s a bit hard to tell if Chief is legitimately concerned about Carmen or just the intel she has, but staying with her, talking to her, until help arrives most likely saved her life.

Whump/Angst Tally:

Carmen: 10

Ivy: 4

Player: 2

Zack: 1

That bartender is totally watching Ivy fall and not reacting at all like it’s a daily occurrence for guests to do that.

IVY DUBBING THE SALE PLEASE YOU ARE ALREADY PERFECT IVY you DID NOT have to go so hard so EASILY

LOL the lady just scoots away as Ivy crashes into the back of the chair 😂😂😂😂

SHE MISSED. And Carmen would be proud she covers it up.

Ivy has such a keen eye! She finds that data crystal so quickly. I think it’s because she’s used to working on small parts, like Carmen’s gadgets, and also the literal car she built from scratch.

Ivy: I need to summon courage

Ivy: SCREAMS as she does the thing

Moose is so great. The second Otter needs him he stops struggling and is like “okay I’ll just take the infrastructure with me”

“This is not what Carmen would do!” You’re right. It’s not. And for all you know, that’s why the caper succeeded. Because Ivy did it Ivy’s way.

And because Player told Zack to get his sister, he’s right there to pick her up and get away so she isn’t recaptured.

THE SIBLING HUG. One of the greatest scenes ever. Zack’s hopefulness and Ivy’s joy.

Ahhh and Zack is so focused he’s ready to go after Carmen. Look at Ivy’s increasingly horrified face. She had nO idea that Carmen was missing. The GUILT as she’s about to find out is so delicious

Angst/Whump Tally:

Carmen: 10

Player: 2

Ivy: 6

Zack: 1

Fhghcb Carmen’s resigned and peaceful face as the helicopter finds her.😭

And you think the siblings get there just in time but no.

It takes 44 minutes to drive from the airport in the northern end of Stockholm to the forested area to the south with water on both sides. Carmen is probably fortunate she didn’t glide long enough to get to the ocean. So, from picking up Ivy, estimate 45 minutes to get to Carmen. Add in half that time for Zack to get from the city center to north Stockholm. That’s the fastest, not counting traffic. Carmen was unconscious and alone in the cold for perhaps a little over an hour, as the sun is going down. That is PLENTY of time to get severe frostbite not wearing appropriate clothing for the weather, as she does.

Zari please she’s down 😭

Carmen can barely speak let alone put on any defensive airs. She tries to sound angry but she’s clearly not well it doesn’t work. She’s steeling herself to never be happy again. And at this point, it’s very possible Roundabout can pull the strings and get her to VILE. Gets my hurt/comfort loving blood boiling.

And things turn for the better. That’s a lovely last look that Carmen has as she looks Julia’s way. It’s not hateful or angry, it’s very reflective. As if Carmen is realizing ‘okay, Julia was actually trying to help. There is some merit here. I understood why she did what she did. This was not her fault��� after Chief offers to let her go. It’s a far more peaceful look than Carmen had just a bit before.

Ivy wraps Carmen up in her coat and holds her to keep her warm and talk to her I’m emotional here’s the comfort part! She and Zack are so worried for her I’m eating it up.

“What, by who?”

Ivy’s tears and smile as she says “Carmen Sandiego who else”

Carmen does nothing this caper. She successfully leads ACME off of VILE I guess so that Ivy can work but that was NoT the plan. This episode is all character development for Carmen. Slowly opening her eyes that she CAN trust more people. Ivy and Zack (building off of their two parter), Julia, and maybe Chief. And this trend continues in s3 and s4. There are even more civilians of the day, and Carmen leans on their help more than in s1 and s2.

And Ivy is so sweet. She’s letting Carmen know that even if she wasn’t there, her team completed the caper. “What would Carmen do” was Ivy’s single motivation. And it saw her through. Carmen wasn’t on screen at the caper but her presence was felt. That’s my takeaway anyway. It’s building on the ‘anyone can be Carmen Sandiego’ message that the finale comes to.

Whump/Angst Tally:

Carmen: 12

Player: 2

Ivy: 6

Zack: 2

These are completely arbitrary numbers I’d love to see how you all scored it.

And the end with VILE announcing their decision. It’s a good thing they decided to burn the Academy, I don’t think Le Chevre would be comfortable in burning the goat lol. I love the lightning effects though! A good thunderstorm always makes the mood.

Such a good episode. Excited to follow up on the comfort part next episode.

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Liveblog Chapters 25-27

This is the first leg of the “D” arc.   I had originally planned on trying to do the whole thing in one post, but it’s pretty long and meanders in places, so instead I’m going to break it up, starting with the part that wraps up volume 4 of the collected editions.

Much of these first three chapters just showcases Millennium preparing to depart their secret headquarters in Brazil.  They have three blimps, maybe more.   We already saw the Graf Zeppelin III, but there’s also a Graf Zeppelin II and a Hindenberg II.   Also, the Major refers to all of this as “Operation Sea Lion 2″.  The original “Operation Sea Lion” was Nazi Germany’s plan to invade the U.K. during World War II.   It was never enacted, however, because the Germans couldn’t establish air and naval superiority over the British.  Basically, the Major is declaring that he has finally achieved what Hilter could not, thanks to his “Last Battalion” of 1000 vampire soldiers.

The bridge of his flagship (flagblimp) has this big comfy chair on a robot arm, and a panoramic world map.   The arrows on the map point in all sorts of nutty directions, including the United States and other European nations.   I could have sworn I had heard some mention in Hellsing Ultimate of Millennium sending forces to the U.S., but the international angle was never mentioned again, and I assumed that I must have imagined it.  In any event, the Major made it clear that his target is Alucard specifically, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to invade places where Alucard is not.

The Major prepares to take his seat only to find Warrant Officer Schrödinger sitting in his chair.   Remember, Schrödinger inexplicably teleported himself to London to address Hellsing and Iscariot, and then he got shot and killed for his trouble.   But now he’s back, alive and well.   He mocks the Major for being to slow, and the Doctor scolds him for his insolence, but the Major orders Doc to back off.   This is a running gag throughout the rest of the series.  The Doctor keeps trying to chastise Schrödinger, but the Major lets him do whatever the boy wants, almost like he’s some favorite pet.  

Meanwhile, an unidentified helicopter tries to land on a British carrier, the H.M.S. Eagle.   The Captain orders his crew to open fire, but the first officer suddenly does this:

So yeah, the first officer is a vampire now, and he’s sold out Queen and Country for Millennium.  He and a handful of vampire crewmen kill the rest of the crew and turn them all into ghouls, allowing the helicopter to land, making way for...

This lady, Lieutenant Rip Van Winkle.  I should point out that in the pages leading up to her boarding the Eagle, she was singing Engelandlied, a German war anthem from World War I.   She’s nutty, is the idea.

So, I’m gonna go ahead and put forth my fan theory that all the bad guys we dealt with prior to Rip were just patsies for Millennium, and not actual members in their own right.   This includes Tubalcain “Dandyman” Alahambra, because, for all his powers, no one ever said his rank, leading me to think he didn’t have one.   Same with the Valentine Brothers and any of the vampires Alucard and Seras were sent to fight during the first dozen or so chapters of this manga.   Millennium may have turned them into vampires, and in some cases they even let them in on Millennium’s inner workings, but they were never more than cannon fodder.   Jan seemed to understand this, although Luke and Dandyman seemed to believe they were genuinely created to represent the new pinnacle of vampiric power.   Even the Doctor thought Dandyman had a strong chance of beating Alucard, but in the end they were just experiments meant to test Alucard’s mettle.

And, really, the rest of Millennium is not much different, except Rip and the others actually know why they’re being sacrificed, even if they don’t necessarily understand how or when.

Meanwhile, Seras still won’t drink blood, and she keeps trying to eat regular food instead, even though she struggles to swallow every bite.   I’ve never been very clear on whether vampires in Hellsing can eat non-blood food or not.  Seras is doing it, albeit painfully, but I don’t think she really gains anything from it, except whatever coping mechanism this is supposed to serve.   

So in walks Sir Integra, who dumps a bag of medical blood on her table.  Seras never really answers Integra’s question, but she already told Walter, and it’s not much of an answer.   The heart of the matter is this: Seras really doesn’t want to be a vampire.   Or, maybe, more accurately, she doesn’t want to stop being human.   The trouble is that she already lost that battle way back in Chapter 1. 

In many ways, Seras has accepted her fate.   She works for Hellsing, recognizes Alucard as her vampire master, and so on.  I think she understands that this is the only life she can have now, and her will to live is strong enough that she appreciates what Alucard and Integra have done for her.    At her core, Seras is a public servant, and fighting monsters for Hellsing is not so different from fighting crime as a policewoman.  I think she sees her current condition as a means to that end.   She doesn’t crave power like the evil vampires we’ve seen thus far.    Seras views her abilities as a means to an end.   Alucard biting her gave her a way to stay alive and continue fighting the good fight.

However, she doesn’t want the baggage that goes along with that.   She wants to retain as much of her humanity as she can, and drinking blood is the one thing that she has some control over, or so she believes.

But Integra’s far too practical for that dilemma.   Alucard was willing to respect Seras’ relucatance, but she needs her troops on their toes and ready for action.  So she takes a knife and cuts open her finger, and then orders Seras to lick the blood off.    This is... disturbingly sexual, and one of a number of scenes that reminds me that Hirano Kouta had done a lot of, er, adult comics before Hellsing.   I think he did a lot of uniform fetishy stuff too, which is why Seras and Schrödinger’s uniforms look so similar to each other.   Both are meant to resemble German WWII gear.   I’m willing to grant some leeway here, because there’s probably only so many ways to do a finger-licking scene like this without sexualizing it a little, but the last bit with the saliva trail is just revolting. 

So, what’s bugged me for a long time was that if Seras drank (a little) of Integra’s blood here, why did this subplot not get paid off until much later in the story?  She drank blood, didn’t she?   Well, yeah, but Integra ordered her to do it, so it doesn’t count.   This came up a couple of times earlier in the story, when Walter and Al mentioned that she wouldn’t drink blood willingly.  It’s not just an ethical issue for Seras, or she’d simply chow down on the medical blood.  I guess Integra could force feed her every night, but that wouldn’t solve anything.   This is about Seras accepting her transformation as a fait accompli.   I think this is why she very nearly drank Alucard’s blood back in Northern Ireland, when it sure looked like there was no other way for her to survive.  But if she’s just sitting there with no one making her do it, and no urgent need to do it, she’ll refuse every time.  

I think Hellsing uses the premise that a vampire has to do more than just bite a human to turn them into a vampire.  That is, Alucard had to put his own blood in Seras’ body to complete that transformation.   I think that’s how it worked in the Dracula novel, and Seras herself mentions it in the Gonzoverse anime.   But that wouldn’t count either, because it’s part of the change itself.  The idea is for the new vampire to partake in blood-drinking by choice, and until that happens, they won’t get all the cool powers.   

One other thing, Integra takes this opportunity to mention that she’s a virgin, which is a weird flex for this situation, but okay.  In Hellsing, that means Integra could become a vampire herself, but not if Seras bites her, because it has to be a vampire of the opposite sex.   In any case, Tegs warns Seras not to bite down during this creepy finger-licking KFC-hentai thing.   

Back in the damn ocean, Lt. Rip van Winkle is welcomed aboard by the traitorous crew of the Eagle.   She asks them how it feels to be a vampire, and causally reminds them of their treachery.   Then she gives them new orders, which are to die by her magic gun, which fires a bullet that can turn around in midair.

And so the First Officer and his lackeys learn the same lesson as the Brazillians working for the Dandyman, and the Dandyman himself, and the Valentine Brothers and whoever else.  Millennium might turn you into a vampire, but that hardly means that you’ll live forever.   Millennium always demands treason as payment for their help, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that they might betray you sooner or later.

Besides, Rip doesn’t need the British crew, because she has her own henchman on board her chopper.   While she waits for them to wake up, she paints a swastika on the deck, just to make it clear that they’ve taken control of the Eagle, which she renames the Adler.  That’s German for “Eagle”, you see.

Back on his blimp, the Major cuts this twenty-minute promo which basically amounts to “I love war, we have no particular agenda except to wage endless war for the fun of it.”   Back in England, Alucard is eagerly awaiting their arrival.  

[arinlangdon]

reactions again. i have a lot to say and there’s nowhere better to dump it all than my online blog which i treat as a stream-of-consciousness public diary/liveblog of my love affair with this fictional character.

episode 7

ah yes, the memory headaches are back, sooner than ever. i hope this means FMC will be regaining her memories sooner in this route too. i think it would be more interesting to see her navigate a route while remembering everything about her life from before, for multiple reasons. after all, every route ended with that, so far, and we didn’t explore much about what that means. the route that centers on 2/3 of the triad seems like the perfect opportunity to do so.

so Arin used to have panic attacks, confirmed? precious anxiety baby

love the Humpty Dumpty bit

i love how they reference giving her the moon again. “I gave it to you, and it’ll ground you” and it’s a secret between her and them how they did it. augh, too romantic. (also, blush count for this set: 1)

“Yikes, do you even sleep?” i ask myself this every day, Jackie. does Arin ever use that plush-looking bed? a mystery for the ages. she’s right though, Arin is far too busy for their own good. they know everything except for the meaning of the word “relaxation”

i see we’re speaking in code now. i love Ever After Academy, the series where frogs are really head librarians and rabbits are actually cat-dog-rabbit-dragon-things, and men named Wolf aren’t actually werewolves

“Arin constantly skips meals due to being too busy” headcanon regretfully confirmed. Arin nO

“FMC is always trying weird new flavors of desserts” headcanon also confirmed lol. this girl, always so adventurous. but also, “better than getting the same thing every time”? it’s true, novelty is necessary. a woman after my own heart.

oh yes, now i can check “heart scene where you help Arin relax and have fun” off my wish list. right above that is “pluck the coffee right out of their hands, march them straight to bed and tuck them in, and maybe cuddle a bit”, and right below it is “plan a special date where you block off a full 24 hours of free time for Arin so you can spend the whole day together”. (Voltage, i have great ideas, hire me now)

Arin blush count: 2. oh look at these two shy idiots who can only dance around their feelings. surely they have to have some clue that their feelings are mutual? they keep trying to stop themselves from kissing the other. it’s driving me nuts. these fools! i push them together like a child pretending to make their dolls kiss.

episode 8

i’m sure they wrote in the explanation for the terrarium as it’s a holdover from Ezra’s route, but i think it’s funny to think that the siblings kept the terrarium all these years and Arin never knew about it. Arin ur not the only one with secrets

again, i do like how Arin keeps referencing the moon. moon rabbit. moon rabbit!!

oh here comes the angst from Arin keeping secrets from FMC for good reasons but not even being able to tell her the reasons. we all saw this coming from a mile away, but it still hurts. :(

wow i cannot wait to find out all of Arin’s secrets :D including their personal ones. (does that make me sound creepy? oops)

more dragon lore, and a debate between Nora and Lucas about dragons? yes please.

as an aside: i can’t believe it’s taken me this long to mention it, but i’m peeved at how the writing in this route keeps referring to Arin as “themselves” when they’re singular. “themself” may not be a familiar word, but it feels the most correct when referring to an individual. “herselves” and “himselves” isn’t a thing.

“Arin is a terrible singer” headcanon confirmed. Arin has a lovely voice but is a rubbish singer, i love it. keep the doors coming, Charlie, i’m on a roll today.

oh god, more embarrassing Arin stories, i am living for this. Arin blush count: 3, maybe 4. what exactly did they wind up on top of, FMC? do tell.

i cannot believe Arin has early 2000s boy band music on their phone. is this the real life? lmao this is probably the most surprising fact i’ve learned about them in this entire set, if not the whole route so far. Arin’s dignity: dropping like a stone. this is hilarious, i love it. god. seriously though, which song was it—

episode 9

can’t help but try to read ulterior motives into Jackie’s every move, and failing because we don’t know enough yet. trying to book a tutoring session with Arin, peeping into FMC’s house’s window, tipping off FMC about Darla’s scheming, being overly invested in the fairytale friends’ well-being? she’s the prime suspect for being the Big Bad of this route, and possibly the Queen of Hearts from the Alice duology, yet she hasn’t done anything outright villainous yet. she’s actually been fairly friendly and helpful. Jackie, what is your deal

Arin blush count: 5. wow careful Arin, your face will get stuck like that and you’ll pass out from lack of blood flow to the rest of your body

it’s still hard getting used to the knowledge that Arin is and was FMC’s best friend. it boggles my mind.

but also i want to imagine them as kiddos hanging out in her room and having fun. adorable. teen flashbacks when :’(

“you’re special to me” wow surefire arrow to my heart oof. Arin blush count: 6.

oh no, again with the holding back, you clods. you lovestruck idiots. you silly dumdums. being a 20-something and having feelings for your best friend is hard. it’s hard and nobody understands. :( when are they going to talk about this? when are they going to come out and say something?? normally FMC is much more straightforward than this, but i guess when it comes to a friendship you’ve cultivated for years, even the bravest people hesitate to rock the boat. but it’ll be all the more satisfying when they actually reach that point.

watching Arin put up the walls again, i can just hear them thinking “conceal, don’t feel”. “remove all magic, but leave the fun” ahahaha alright that’s enough

it’s nice to see FMC seeking out the company and advice of the fairytale trio in this route, especially Nora. those girls, always so close. she really is the only female friend FMC has, until Darla becomes her friend.

so much for hiding magic from MMC! cat’s out the bag sooner than i thought, and Arin’s not going to be happy about it. now they’re going to be pulling double duty trying to keep both siblings from a-sploding their heads by accident. poor Arin

did FMC explain the plan for making things right (whatever “things” are) and restoring their memories? or did she just leave them to wait it out indefinitely? oh no

[thebibliomancer]

Song of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 21

Song of the Dark Crystal by J.M. Lee because after that big shocking reveal last time I don’t really need another because!

Last times on book: Kylan, Naia, Amri, and Tavra are finally on their way to Ha’rar after the disappointment of finding that the firca of Gyr the Song Teller was broken. When Kylan went ahead to ask Tavra if they could take a break, he discovered she wasn’t Tavra and was colluding with the Skeksis against them! He knows but she doesn’t knows he knows! How tense!

Chapter 21

Kylan is a sweet little blue berry

When Fake-Tavra and Kylan get back to the clearing, Naia immediately insists that no matter what Tavra thinks, they need to rest.

Fake-Tavra actually draws her sword although she stops short of being actually threatening with it. Still, GEEZ FAKE TAVRA!

Its only thanks to the improbability of an imposter situation that you’ve been getting away with impostering because you are terrible at pretending to be a reasonable individual!

Kylan, who has reason to worry about whether Fake-Tavra would actually use the sword knowing that her Skeksis master is getting impatient with her, steps in.

He’s stepped between Fake Tavra and Naia so many times that he’s basically an expert at this point.

“Tavra. Listen. Amri needs shoes, or soon we’ll have to carry him, which will surely slow us down further than if we stop for just a little while.”

“It’s not my fault he decided to come. If he needs shoes so badly, he can have mine.”

Tavra reached down and tore the sandals from her feet, tossing them at the Grottan boy, who flinched at the gesture.

“That’s really not necessary,” Amri began. “Naia cut some hide from her jerkin, so...”

Geez, poor Amri. He didn’t ask to be in the middle of this drama.

Kylan deflects again because he can sense that this is argument is gonna escalate and then Fake Tavra’s gonna kick their asses.

“I got a note from Rian. It came by swoothu, early this evening. His boat was damaged by a rock in the river, and he was waylaid. He’s close by and he said he’ll wait for us if we’re near. I already told him we would meet him tomorrow evening.”

Tavra snatches the note from Kylan, looks at it, and then dunks it into the fire.

Naia looks at Kylan skeptically but he hits her with the full force of puppy dog ‘please play along’ eyes.

“Oh,” she said in a normal tone, as if she had just remembered. “So that’s what you were doing out in the wood earlier. Why didn’t you tell us right away?”

Ain’t friends who’ll back up your random lies the best?

Kylan builds up on his lie by claiming that he didn’t mention it earlier because he was worried it was secretly a secret Skeksis scheme trap.

Fake Tavra confidently says its not a trap (because she is the trap and the Skeksis wouldn’t double book).

Kylan suggests that they wait until morning and then go meet him.

Tavra stared into the fire, free hand cupping her chin in thought. He hoped she was thinking what he wanted her to think - that this opportunity was too sweet to miss. Her master wanted Rian, and this was a way she could regain favor.

He was rewarded when she sheathed her sword.

“Yes. Fit those sandals to the Shadowling. We leave first thing in the dawn.”

And then Fake Tavra sits against a tree and falls asleep. Or pretends to fall asleep?

... Huh. Y’know. With all the emphasis on the Skeksis wanting to drink Naia and Gurjin, I forgot that the inciting incident of all this was them trying to catch Rian.

With that settled, Amri turns his attention to the sandals that Tavra threw at him because he doesn’t have context for all of this and his number one priority is his aching feet.

The sandals are pretty close to his own foot size but Fake Tavra broke the cords when she ripped them off.

Kylan tells Amri he’ll fix them but first fishes the fire-resistant parchment out of the fire and hands it to Amri.

Naia comes over to talk to Kylan while he fixes the sandals, which he’s really good at because it was one of the tasks Maudra Mera taught him when he was a child.

When Kylan whispers back, he whispers loud enough for Fake Tavra to overhear. Oh, Kylan, what scheme are you up to?

“I don’t trust Tavra.” He watched the Silverling when he spoke. She did not stir. “Something about her has been all wrong since we ran into her. You remember... with the blue mouth?”

Naia frowned. “Of course I remember the blue mouth.”

Kylan chose his words as carefully as if he were telling a song. This was the most important part of all.

“Good,” he said. “Because if you remember, then you’ll understand why I want to meet with Rian in private. Tonight. I don’t want Tavra to get her hands on him... I think she’s working for the Skeksis. So, tonight, when it’s quiet, I’m going to sneak out and meet him and tell him. I’m going to tell him to go on to Ha’rar without us, and tell the All-Maudra that her daughter is a traitor.”

Kylan watches from a reaction from Fake Tavra but all he notices is that earring of hers twinkling in the fire light and he thinks it moves on its own.

HMMMMMMMM.

Naia protests Kylan having to go alone but Kylan can’t explain it without giving the game away and dreamfasting would draw Fake Tavra’s attention. Especially since she’d mentioned to her Skeksis master that she could sense it. So he has to trust Naia to trust him and figure out what his plan is. THROUGH FRIENDSHIP and shared experiences.

“Remember the blue mouth?” Kylan asked. “It was good we weren’t alone then.”

Amri had been quiet, since he likely had no idea what the blue mouth was or what it had done. In the meantime, he had uncrumpled the scrap of paper Kylan had handed him, smoothing it on his lap. Kylan focused on mending the last of the broken cord, waiting for Amri’s reaction. It came shortly: a glance of confusion, then the flicker of understanding.

Hmmm.

I have to say, I love Amri just being completely baffled at these references and deciding ‘I guess I’ll read garbage.’

I’m not sure what would be on the note that would give the game away but that also wouldn’t clue Fake Tavra in... unless Fake Tavra can’t read?

It’s been mentioned a couple times that she’s shown no interest in all the writing everywhere.

Also, I forgot what the blue mouth was supposed to be and only just vaguely remembered that its the plant that tried to eat them. I don’t think they ever call it a blue mouth? I’ve flipped back and while it had a mouth it wasn’t described as blue. But the fruit are blue. And that makes me think I know what the reference means and what Naia is supposed to take from it.

Kylan takes first watch and waits and waits and waits until he can’t waits any more.

Kylan watched the fire die in quiet, holding his hands in his lap to keep from fidgeting. Though the night was the same as any other, knowing what would soon come made it seem as if he existed inside a dome of his own thoughts. His mind felt like Aughra’s observatory: constantly moving, full of things.

Stay focused, he told himself. Tell the song. It will work... it has to.

He takes off into the dark wood (not the Dark Wood although it reminds him of the night he spent then and how scared he was compared to how brave he is now and hopes if someone tells his story they remember his character development. You’re such a Song Teller, Kylan).

Since he’s listening carefully, he hears footsteps following behind him at a distance.

The follower (I mean, its Fake Tavra, there’s no ambiguity there) isn’t bothering too hard to hide.

It proved to him that she had meant it when she had called him weak, and for the first time, he smiled about it to himself.

Kylan leads Fake Tavra stalking him towards a perfect ambush zone. Just a great place with ledges and boulders and all kinds of lunging places.

And then Tavra ambushes him.

Kylan turned toward Tavra’s voice just as she shoved him against the cliffside with her forearm, pinning him with her body. In her other hand she held a short knife, but more wicked was the grin on her ghostly face. She did not look like Tavra. She did not look like a Gelfling at all.

She’s being a spooky.

She demands Kylan tell her where Rian is and when he stammers that Rian isn’t here yet, Fake Tavra declares that when Rian does arrive, he’ll find a dead Kylan.

That’s the worst welcoming gift!

ALSO yeah that little earring thing thats repeatedly had attention drawn to it in the text? Its moving? And it has eight legs?

SPIDER-TAVRA. I KNEW IT.

Oh but the real ambush is the ambush that ambushes the ambush.

Kylan ducks out of the way as a bunch of finger-vines are dumped all over Tavra. They leave Kylan alone but snare Tavra in an unbreakable grip.

Amri and Naia climb down from the ledge on the finger-vines. Ah ha! Naia’s ability to talk to plants!

“How dare you!” [Tavra] cried, but the vines near her face slithered across her mouth and silenced her. It seemed the plant did not like her, either.

Hah.

“You make quite a good little blue mouth berry,” Naia said.

Kylan chuckled.

“Sweet and small. We make the best bait.”

HAH.

Okay so the blue mouth plant with its tempting little blue fruits. And Kylan was the tempting little blue fruit in this context because he’s small and sweet. And also the one that Spider-Tavra perceived as weak and no threat.

It all comes together! Good way to draw the plot threads together, Kylan!

And good way to make that weird tree that tried to eat them woven into the narrative and not just a weird random encounter.

Much respect, J.M. Lee. You wordsmith.

The three Gelfling look on the trapped traitor.

“Now, tell us who you are and what you’ve done with Tavra,” said Naia.

YEAH.

I mean, I have a decent idea but I wouldn’t mind some exposition to fill in the gaps. We’re seventy some pages to the end and I don’t know where the rest of the plot is going! Somehow I feel that we’re not going to go to Ha’rar after all.

[kyrrahbird]

Ky’s 琅琊榜 Nirvana in Fire/Lang Ya Bang liveblog experience

EPISODE 3

OKAY EP 3 THE ONE YOU REALLY NEED TO STICK IT OUT TO

if u havent watched this show *please do*!! And maybe dont read this liveblog lmaoo

i forget entirely how much goes into each ep. but anyways to get this show on the road: this one starts with the child being beaten :( ...

Education in your serf class is bad obviously

I admire the gall of the eunuch to say “Prince Jing cant help you now” when Prince Jing is Right There

poetic justice

this is ALSO

dun dun

the first meeting of the DREAM TEAM 

!!

(Jingyan, Mei Changsu and Nihuang)

OOOH BOY THE UNDERCURRENTS

MCS goes straight to comforting the slave boy and i just feel,,, its sincere but there are,,, SO MANY layers of machinations going on here

like its manipulation of Every Person in this scene and i both hate and admire that cold blooded calculation

ESPECIALLY WHEN HE’S MEETING JINGYAN FOR THE FIRST TIME IN TWELVE YEARS ;A;

Just an update: this man is still Dead Inside™. And so distrustful i die too

Quick aside to the terrible princes:

I would also like to note, and its been said before but

Prince Yu is NOT SUBTLE in his aspirations. if i had to say who was the crown prince i might be confused??

and back-

Nihuang and MCS just pulled a mean pincer maneuver on Jingyan and hes being equally pointy back. Stop being mean to my prince :(((

i do wonder if nihuang is clued in, bc if she is, she puts a hell of a lot of trust in mcs. or maybe its all just subconscious, and they’re falling back into their old dynamic 

this scene KILLS ME

bc Prince Jing is trying so hard to protect tingsheng but he really has such limited power and he knows it

(i should read the book)

The first time i watched i did not realise HOW YOUNG mu qing is supposed to be. i love a protective younger bro ;;n;;

I also appreciate the flashbacks to relevant information. just so we know whats important to mcs

MENG DA-GE

-just saved that dude’s ass

Fei Liu was ready to wreck him

This didnt need to be so ominous but i appreciate their dedication to the Melodrama™

EVEN THE TALKING WHILE NOT LOOKING AT EACH OTHER

Nothing sus going on here. look they’re even facing different directions

MENG DA-GE LITERALLY SAID MOVE INTO MY HOUSE

bless

He’s worried!!! His mother hen tendencies are coming out!!

No he doesnt. No thoughts, only protecc

like a puppy

I also love the fact that despite all her fancy headdresses and pretty outfits, we never forget Nihuang is a martial general. Its the way she holds herself and moves i think

“This person is a mystery” > cut to sir su napping in a chair

Theres definitely comedy here. quite a lot of it!!! and i adore it

Never fear, Meng da-ge is here to join the “Force Mei Changsu to look after himself” gang

Side note - I kind of take it for granted as the kind of person Meng da-ge is, but i do think its symptomatic of the empire that one guy can just rock up and basically suborn the entire royal guard. like. your majesty. u done fucked.

70,000 is a staggering number of your own people to kill in one go. Like. I can’t actually wrap my head around it.

And all those people would have had families and friends and sure, they’re mostly just common but. most likely a bunch of the prominent families were killed too. im just wondering if there were like. riots? Or everyone just kept their head down and were like “guess it must be treachery”  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Consort Yue is so goddamn transparent in her manipulation but also like - there’s layers there

Because I feel like the emperor sees through the first layer (having an interest in who Nihuang marries) but is completely incapable of seeing beyond that

Or he doesnt want to. I mean the man does encourage competition in his court

Anyways we find out that he’s going to choose Sir Su to judge the written part of the challenge

This is great because it means Su-xiansheng is going to COURT :D

why do i keep changing how i refer to him? its whatever fits the vibe baby

Man’s got too many names anyways

gotta keep them in rotation

Oh we just found out Baili Qi might be top of the Langya list. good to know the system isnt infallible

I love everyones reactions like

what

the fuck

SOMEBODY FIX THIS

LMAO

Yujin is here to drop Jingrui’s badass backstory

And why he has the name and surname of a prince

I do wonder what its like, for jingrui. Like sure, hes son of two families... but heir of neither? He’s the oldest child but hes also known his whole life that he wont inherit the title. 

idk must be weird

hes incredibly good natured given all that shit

Lin Shu gege just humouring them by listening to a story that hes totally never head before /s

if only they had a dna test

Who’s My Daddy™ ancient fantasy china

ghufdghuisrgu Mu Qing u cant just SAY that

Update: Mu Qing has kidnapped sir Su

OMG

HES ENTERING THE ROYAL COURT

I REPEAT LIN SHU/MEI CHANGSU IS ENTERING THE COURT

i need to just-

the fkn music man

i die

Like i said the first time, i didnt know the full scope of the big deal but i KNEW. that this was it

These were the stakes. All the way up to the emperor

theres gon be some PARALLELS

“You no longer need to refer to yourself as a commoner”

oof

(i would like to say now that i love Liyang

like, A Lot

Second only to Nihuang)

LMAO mcs giving the crown prince a subtle head shake

His POWER

This ep ends on Baili Qi beating the absolute fuck out of Jingrui while Su-xiansheng just peels and eats an orange smirks like the absolute shit he is

like a beyblade

I’m going to stop putting links in these bc i know tumblr doesnt like them, but ill keep up the tagging. I might not get to one ep a day, but every couple of days or so seems doable! i just love dumping my train of thoughts into walls of text :D

TTFN

[killian-whump]

Storage 24 Audio Liveblog!

Okay! Here I am with another fun-filled liveblog for you guys! Well. Actually, I’m not sure how “fun-filled” it actually is. As it turns out, descriptive audio is a lot duller than I anticipated. They really only narrate the absolute bare minimum of what’s going on, so there’s not much to share.

This particular film is narrated by a very m-o-n-o-t-o-n-e woman with a British accent. I was curious when it began if she’d get more animated in her narration as the action picked up, but she didn’t. If you’ve always wanted to hear someone say things like, “The maintenance man’s chest and throat have been ripped open. Blood is pumping out.” as if they couldn’t be more bored by it... Well, this descriptive film might be right up your alley XD

There’s some other things I noticed whilst listening to this. I believe that they strip out all unnecessary sounds and music, which makes the dialogue stand out a lot more. It’s so much easier to listen to conversations, and I even think I caught some lines I’d missed during my other watchings of the movie. Or, for whatever reason, they just didn’t really stand out those times. The lack of extra noise also made Colin’s voice even more enjoyable to listen to <3

All of that said, there’s nothing very groundbreaking in here, but it might be interesting, nonetheless :) So here goes...

For some reason, I didn’t remember there being 10 whole minutes before Colin shows up in the movie. Then again, I probably fast-forwarded through those ten minutes every other time ;)

But here he is now: “The driver, Mark, pale with gingery stubble, shuts his eyes and grips the bridge of his nose with his right hand, looking exasperated.” Pale with gingery stubble is a funny way of saying “handsomest man ever” but I guess it’ll do XD

I don’t think I ever caught Mark’s joke in the parking lot, when Charlie’s blathering on about how he bought Shelley’s car for her. Implying the car is shitty, Mark half-laughs and says, “Maybe that’s why she dumped you.” XD Oh, Mark. You were an asshole right from the start, weren’t you?

Now, I will say that I am downright disappointed with the description of the scene where Charlie and Mark have a little tussle in the parking lot and they end up on the ground. For starters, the narrator doesn’t even SAY anything’s going on at first. You just hear the signs of a struggle and then Colin’s little “Uh, you’re on my... you know...” THEN the narrator says, “Pulling off a windscreen wiper, Charlie falls back on top of Mark.” And that’s it. No mention of Colin’s lovely pain face. No mention of his family jewels. I don’t think I have ever felt so bad for blind people before in my life. They deserve to know these wonders.

But at least we have this... “Mark, in a battered leather jacket, raises his eyebrows and bows his head, then follows [Charlie] down the corridor.” Thank the gods that blind people are still able to witness Colin’s strong eyebrow game.

“Mark looks lost.” Oh, lady, you have no idea how lost my son is.

LMAO The scene where Charlie says his phone’s at the bottom of the river is WAY funnier here. He just drops that bit of info, and then there is ABSOLUTE AND UTTER SILENCE for waaaaay too long, and then Colin’s “...Why?” breaks the silence and it’s hilarious. If there was such a thing as an audio reaction gif, I would absolutely make one of that moment.

Mark and Shelley are kissing now, and the lady’s monotone descriptions aren’t helping, lol. This lady’s bored-sounding play-by-play is just about the unsexiest thing ever. I’ve just decided that I never want to listen to a love scene in descriptive audio. Oh, great. I also downloaded Carrie Pilby like this.

So the alien’s put in an appearance now and chased after Chris, who has had his heart brutally ripped out of his chest and smooshed, and this monotone lady is like, “Charlie looks agitated.” Well, I should fucking hope so.

They’re in the air shafts now. Fortunately for me, I love hearing about men crawling... but this woman has somehow managed to make even that sound boring. “Mark crawls along behind [Charlie].” “Frowning, Mark crawls along a shaft.” “Mark crawls along, leaning on his elbows.” “Mark resumes crawling.” Can’t you be a little more... descriptive?

But, you know, it’s not ALL bad: “Charlie finds a pink dildo and hurls it down, looking disgusted. He sniffs his hand.” 

...and here we are at the big scene where Mark leaves Charlie. I was curious if the description of the scene would come right out and say he abandons him or just sort of gloss over it. As it turns out, they didn’t really make it sound like an abandonment. In fact, it almost seems less like abandonment without the visuals, because they go straight from the alien bursting through the metal and reaching for Charlie to Mark fleeing the scene - and it sounds totally justified, if anything. Interesting.

Now, this is one of those parts where I love the stripped down audio track, because Colin’s panicked and broken voice is flat out mesmerizing and I could listen to it forever and a day and never get bored. Damn, he is so good at emoting the things he’s emoting here. Terror. Despair. It’s just so... thick... and delicious and it’s truly hypnotizing.

Here’s a comical sound effect for you all - Mark hitting the floor after Charlie punches him seems ridiculously loud, like Andre the Giant hitting the mat in a cage match level of loud XD The accompanying description is every bit as dull as you’d expect it to be: “Mark tries to stop Charlie. Charlie fells him with a punch in the face. Mark holds his mouth. Charlie shakes his hand, as if in pain.”

Oh wow. “You think she came looking for you?” Wow. I don’t remember Mark saying that to Charlie the other times I watched this. What an asshole thing to do, implying that Charlie shouldn’t go after Shelley because she didn’t bother to go after him. Well, maybe she would’ve if you hadn’t told her “he’s gone; there was nothing I could do” as if he was completely fucking dead, you asshole XD

“Mark, open the door.” “Mark.” “Mark backs away from the door.” “Mark, what are you doing?” “Mark walks away from the door, looking distressed, then glances back.” Well, at least he’s distressed. I guess. “Charlie and the girls scream and hammer on the doors. Mark watches impassively.” Oh, nevermind. He’s apparently over it already XD

“Shelley slaps Mark’s face.” *slap* XD This is another comically loud special effect. Like, it sounds like The Slap Heard Around the World or something. Not that Mark doesn’t deserve it, of course. He does.

Oh wait! Here it is... We’re here!!! “The creature bursts through a window and grabs Mark. It covers his face with its clawed mouth parts, and consumes him.” Bye, Mark!

All things considered, this wasn’t anywhere near as interesting as I thought it would be, though I did enjoy the unexpected added humor in a couple of the scenes, and hearing a completely droll woman talk about a pink dildo was interesting. Other than that, hmmm. Well, I listened to it, so you don’t have to? You’re welcome ;)

[gascon-en-exil]

FE16 Black Eagles (Edelgard) Liveblogging

Chapters 17-18, minus the colossal amount of Dimitri/Dedue content in the first chapter which I covered at length here.

Altogether I’d consider Edelgard’s last two chapters to be easier than Dimitri’s, in large part to due to far less long range magic. That’s actually quite reasonable in terms of story; as the nation renowned for its magic users - and, by the last chapter of the Lions route, openly allied with the remnants of Those Who Slither - Adrestia would logically field more of them. The knights of Faerghus and the church and Rhea’s “dolls” (more like fantasy-flavored mechs, but that’s what they call them) don’t offer as big a challenge by comparison.

The other obstacles unique to Chapter 18 weren’t much either. The fire makes the map hard to traverse for non-fliers, but it slows down enemies too. Rhea as the Immaculate One has a much smaller attack range than Hegemon Edelgard and only gets one attack per turn, in addition to being a bigger target that’s easier to surround. It makes sense that the climax of this route wouldn’t be as difficult if they used the number of chapters for scaling. The Strike Force has had four fewer chapters to grow compared to the Lions.

I liked that the last chapter plays out on a heavily modified version of the Fhirdiad map used in the Lions route for the Cornelia fight, although this does mean that I only got to see two entirely new maps on this route: the Petra/Bernadetta paralogue and the Tailtean Plains of Chapter 17.

Kill list: other than Dimitri and Dedue’s gay high tragedy, Sylvain and Mercedes in 17, Ashe, Gilbert, Annette, Catherine, and Cyril in 18. Catherine was much easier to take down from range with the fires limiting her movement, whereas Cyril (I thought he died in Chapter 12? I guess not) was surprisingly strong as a wyvern lord packing a brave axe. Wyvern enemies continue to catch me off guard.

Oh, yeah. Rhea shows up on the field in a Seiros cosplay in Chapter 17, but Edelgard one-rounded her (at a weapon triangle disadvantage, no less) and then she and almost all of the reinforcements she spawned with left the map. With everything else going on in that map, the church contribution was quite underwhelming.

Story/Character observations

Let’s get the small stuff out of the way first. There’s a few last bits of monastery dialogue worth noting. Shamir gets in some more heavy subtext re: Catherine, only now they’re enemies and you could potentially have Shamir kill Catherine. Dedue is a bear. Fleche, the girl who tries to kill Dimitri on the Lions route but instead kills Rodrigue, shows up one last time to show how curiously well-adjusted she is on this route after her brother’s death a few chapters earlier. It was interesting to see those two and the NPC general Ladislava show up during exploration and comment on ongoing events. I wouldn’t say it humanizes them too much since the most you get is an NPC fawning over how awesome Ladislava is or more pathos and less torture in Randolph’s death, but it’s appropriate for the alternative perspective this route offers. 

I also need to call attention to a handy scholar NPC who appears in the library every chapter after the timeskip, dispensing info dumps that the books don’t cover and asking us to call into question the authorial intent of those books. Of course he’s obviously biased in favor of Edelgard and the Empire, but it’s a useful addition.

Onto supports. As a means of ensuring that I got the Hubert/Ferdinand paired ending I saved all their other A supports for the last minute, so that’s most of what I saw here. As per usual it’s Ferdinand who gets the more interesting stuff overall, with Hubert being more sedate and needing to be given practical reasons for marrying Dorothea or motivation to stop comparing Petra to Edelgard. Ferdinand’s high points come down even to something as mundane as what he’s drinking in various A supports - tea with Bernadetta, coffee (Hubert’s preferred drink) with Edelgard. Does Hubert/Ferdinand canonically happen before Edelgard/Ferdinand, and this is why the former’s paired ending has Edelgard jealous of them? Ferdinand’s A with Manuela is more theatre queen gushing, but his A with Dorothea walks a fine line between really sweet and really screwed up. Dorothea recalls bathing in a public fountain shortly after her singing talents were discovered and seeing a young Ferdinand staring at her and probably sporting his first erection. This is why she’s so hostile to him the whole time, and as said I don’t know how we’re meant to feel about that, or that this conversation resolves in romance. Or, rather, it would, if they didn’t then jump back to a confused simile about bees that’s now morphed into drones protecting a queen. From what little I know of insects male bees don’t have stingers and so can’t protect anything, so I do believe this metaphor subtly circles back around to lesbianism in the end. Everything with Dorothea inevitably does.

I’ve been neglecting it all this time, but I will say that Bernadetta improves slightly after the timeskip. She screams a lot less in her later supports, and in her dialogue in general she sounds more composed and less prone to immediately hiding herself away. Yay for actual emotional maturation.

I’m going to delicately sidestep the hotly-debated question of whether Edelgard’s goals justify her actions or whether this is in fact a bonafide villain route. The game itself wavers over this question at multiple points, not as shakily as Conquest does but still in ways that feel tonally off. The attempts at humanizing Edelgard by giving her a mundane fear of rats (that she acquired when she was being tortured as a child - totally normal circumstances!) and having her draw sketches of Byleth don’t land because they’re so disconnected from everything else, and her opinion of the religion of Seiros varies constantly. Sometimes she sees the value of spirituality in people’s lives and only takes issue with the corruption of the church, other times - including at the very end, when she’s about to cave Rhea’s head in - she’s declaring that humanity has no need for gods and will be better off without them. Having played her route it’s hard for me to call her a fantasy Protestant even in jest when she’s more of a dystheist (i.e. gods exist, but they are evil antagonistic forces) who will occasionally acknowledge that religion can have a positive impact on a strictly personal level. Even though she lays her plans out for Byleth early on, well before the timeskip, her ultimate aim remains unclear, not helped by the brevity of the epilogue which seems to be standard across all routes - just a short paragraph of text by the narrator over one of those stylized tapestries, cut to turn counts and character endings. Edelgard abolishes the nobility and the church after having conquered the other two nations by military force, and somehow we’re expected to believe that her regime will remain peaceful and stable and not collapse into anarchy in the space of a few years. Sure.

It does not help in the slightest that this route builds up Those Who Slither as a credible threat, only to shove them off onto an unseen postgame conflict. True, I theorized that allowing Claude and his various allies to live on the Lions route sets the stage for a massive Almyran invasion after the credits roll, but that’s more headcanon based on how FE doesn’t like to settle for unambiguously happy and resolved endings. Those Who Slither are the genuine antagonists of this route, and most of what Rhea has actually done is left unexplained. From a Doylist perspective I understand it, I really do: Those Who Slither take the focus for the Deer, and Rhea takes it for the church route, just as Dimitri’s revenge motivation only gets proper attention on the Lions route. However, these four stories are not all occurring simultaneously but are instead essentially AUs of one another, with Byleth choosing their starter Pokémon their house the catalyst for shaping all the events to follow. Looking at this route in isolation though it leaves Edelgard’s grand mission looking highly questionable.

One last thing, because I almost forgot about him: what happened to the Death Knight? He disappears from the game after the timeskip on this route. I assume you see him again if you recruit Mercedes and get her paralogue with Caspar, but it’s strange that one of Edelgard’s most loyal minions from Part 1 doesn’t even warrant a mention during her conquest of Fódlan.

Two routes down and two more to go - time to fear the Deer...’s lack of homoerotic content. Nothing makes me want to play something like knowing all the characters under my control are sexually uncreative prudes.

EDIT: Right, I remembered the DK but not the m!Byleth/Linhardt S rank. That should say something about how not particularly romantic it is. Really, the S rank with Gilbert and the one paired S rank with Alois where Byleth doesn’t marry someone else seem less offensive in light of how little there is to m!Byleth’s one “real” gay pairing. As always, you can get so much more out of conversations when both characters are allowed to speak and emote outside of irrelevant dialogue choices and stiff model gestures.

[keepyourpantsongohan]

Ayesha Liveblogs Free! S3

I will never get tired of Makoto offering Haru a hand out of the water

OMG I guess some things do change Makoto’s been dunked and I kinda love it

“I’m never gonna be a normal person” wow who is this this Goth Diet Haru

I love the phrase “hot minute” actually thank u for ur teen slang Asahi

Offering people his lecture notes and texting back right away will anyone ever be as good as Makoto? Trick question no

“I’m still young and innocent” “That’s a weird thing to say” I love that Haru’s meeting a bunch of people who aren’t used to his antics

This flashback seems to indicate that Haru felt Some Kinda Way about Ikuya which is weird because they look almost the same

“Don’t worry too much about the family” LMAO Sosuke has received a blessing from his cousin to follow Rin to Australia 

“Just inferior copies of Ikuya” that’d be more meaningful if Ikuya had done anything other than stare broodingly

It’s telling that the Iwatobi team is dressed like the Wiggles in this outro

All this outro really told me is that they aren’t really that good at differentiating main character design

“We have to try not to spoil them too much” I approve of Ikuya’s brother and his co-parenting buddy

“I’m not going to move ever again,” said Asahi, with the full confidence of a twelve-year-old boy who knows absolutely nothing about anything

Okay but for real Ikuya and Haru straight up look like siblings this weird rivalry energy on top of that fact is a little bit Much

[Rose and Rosie voice] It’ll never work out their hair is the same colour  

“Is Haru the guy who was all dressed up and riding a camel in the recruiting video we saw?” UNBELIEVABLE their Arabian Nights outro from S1 was actually their recruitment video Iwatobi do u take constructive criticism

“I’ll even be good enough to compete against you” how many rivals does one young man really need my god

Hey Trenchcoat Man maybe introduce yourself before telling these teens how to live their lives

Dude you’re so controlling trying to prevent Ikuya from seeing his friends

Ahhhhh I love Haru being in touch with his emotions and apologizing to Ikuya tbh I give Makoto and Rin a lot of the credit for his ability to communicate lmao 

“I’d prefer you didn’t keep him too long” listen I get where you might be coming from since Haru hurt Ikuya’s feelings but also stop that

“Thought I’d give you a wake-up call” I really don’t like the vibe of Hiyori

“Japanese guy! Friend of yours, maybe?” An accurate representation of what it’s like to hang out with white people lmao

There’s a different vibe from a teenager who giggles about swimmers’ muscles to an adult swim coach who is coaching swimming at a university giggling about swimmers’ muscles put that away Mikhail

Hiyori gives me the straight up heebie jeebies every time he opens his mouth

I can’t read Japanese but I have to assume Rin was gonna call Haru and reminisce about their bed sharing night lmao

Natsuya is some kinda Swimming Capitalist Nomad I’m not mad about it

“How many of these dreams do you have?” that’s valid lmao Rin has #calledout for being a rival slut

“His face told me that what matters most to him is not here” I can’t tell if this is a reference to Ikuya or to Natsuya’s white-haired rival-friend-boyfriend-probably

You know what, in the context of this show: Boyfriend 

“Hey, calm down. Listen, Archerfish--” HARU PLS

I don’t know Misae but the fact she calls her boyfriend Archerfish has already won me over

Hiyori would you fucking stop interfering this isn’t fair to Ikuya

“Ikuya’s too busy to waste his time reminiscing on childish things” well that should be Ikuya’s decision shouldn’t it like not 2 get 2 real but this is all the markers of an abusive relationship if someone does this to you please tell someone

God this stubbly weird man and his ominous advice STILL without any introduction 

“I’m getting sick of hearing you speak for Ikuya like you’re his damn boss” ME TOO ASAHI

YOU CANNOT DECIDE WHO IKUYA’S FRIENDS ARE HIYORI YOU ABSOLUTE SHITPRETZEL 

HA Ikuya knows you’ve been giving the boys the runaround fuckweasel

“If I swim with Tono, maybe it’ll help me understand him” Makoto coming after jerks with his best weapon: empathy <3

“People you swim with all seem to end up suffering, don’t they” LISTEN YOU ASSBANANA IT’S NOT HARU’S FAULT THAT PEOPLE GET OBSESSED WITH HIM HE’S JUST A GOOD SWIMMER

Omg I enjoy the drama of Sosuke interacting with the one (1) person in Japan who has seen Rin lately 

“I have to admit, I’m a little disappointed there isn’t a single pudgy person here” like I know this is probably gonna be a running gag for their opposite body preferences but it’s also a self-burn for the creators of this show only drawing different scales of one body type

I really do love that Rei is swim team captain now my boy has come so far

Oh Romio is there anyone in this swim universe that doesn’t have some kind of Traumatizing Swim Experience 

“Think about what your reason for jumping in is” Sosuke’s advice sounds like beautiful nonsense I don’t know how that’s supposed to help him concentrate on start times

Lmao I love this Overbearing Friend Gesture of Shizuru and Nagisa putting seaweed on Romio and Rei’s plates without asking kjhfkghfghfk

“Actually, if you don’t mind, we have a proposition” $500 says that Nagisa and Rei are about to propose a relay race

Update from 8 minutes later: Someone owes me $500

“Can you tell how proud I am?” Natsuya is such a good big brother <3

 Hahahaha “a guy he wants to swim with again some day” Natsuya is also a good wingman for Rin lmao

Based on his inner monologue Sosuke should also be a swimming coach except in the vein of Cryptic Trench Coat Stubble Man who just offers random unsolicited advice to any teenage swimmer he passes by in the street 

“I’m so proud of you” jgjhgjhg Shizuru I love you and your tears for Romio

What kind of child welfare laws are there in Japan that Hiyori’s parents were allowed to just leave him alone in the park

“When I saw [Haru] again, the weakness I thought I left behind came flooding back to me” the moral of this story is that competitive swimming makes you gay

Ikuya used to be fun and sweet lmao what made you so broody my dude

Lmao @ Hiyori being mad that Ikuya thinks of Haru as his Prince Eric instead of him 

Wow I love Nao being a guiding force for this group of nerds

“I’m not hearting anything for you” Asahi understands Stranger Danger

It took Ryuji a solid six eps to even get a name u’d expect him to have a more important character connection than Rin’s Swim Coach’s Rival

“Then you should start swimming other stuff” I Love Misaki, Adopted Child of Haru and Makoto 

Well this wistful playground vibe has taken a strange turn

“It’s none of your damn business okay!!” TONO JUST GOT DUMPED HA

KJGHKJGH THE RAGE IN HARU’S VOICE ABOUT THE MACKEREL

Ryuji: He can just buy me dinner or something. I’m not picky. As long as it’s not mackerel

Haru [through gritted teeth]: I’m ready when you are

AH I LOVE KISUMI AND ASAHI BABYSITTING TSUKUSHI

“After all we’ve been through, why does it have to be like this?” U MADE IT LIKE THIS HIYORI

HAHAHAHAH Makoto and Ryuji had a standoff of wills and Ryuji lost

“Maybe it’s time for you to approach things more seriously” Nao has declared it’s time to stop sowing your wild oats and settle down Natsuya

Kazuma only shows up to remind Sosuke he is free to run away to swim whenever

“Hope you’re well” “Hey relax I’m not your dad” [Natsuya immediately begins acting like their dad]

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHH GO HARU LEADING HIS CATEGORY

“I don’t think he’s all that bad of a guy” that’s Stockholm Syndrome Ikuya

I’m glad Ikuya is finally fucking having a meaningful conversation with his friends

“In the water I’m alone. No one’s gonna save me” Get therapy Ikuya!!!

Wow Haru joining a race purely to have an Emotional Confrontation with Ikuya is some kinda growth I’m just not sure what exactly

“That guy’s the only one anyone ever talks about” to be fair if your sample size is Iwatobi swimmers they are all a little in love with him

“That’s our BOYYYYYYYYYY” Aw Asahi <3 

Ghjkghk I love Makoto teasing Haru for being Ikuya’s hero

“Oh, you’re wise now?” AWWWW Ikuya is fun again good for him

 I know that Ikuya reaching out in friendship to Hiyori is supposed to be a sign of emotional security but I haven’t forgiven him for the way he’s manipulated Ikuya!!! Ur a seawitch not a Prince Eric!!! >:((((

I’m super thrown about them going straight from the qualifiers to the next race what will the last four episodes of this season be about

“I’ve been giving myself pep talks in the mirror. ‘I am a genius. I am a genius.’” HAHAHAHA I LIKE FUN IKUYA

“Looks like you beat me” “Just in free” Haru has released Ikuya into the universe for Hiyori and I don’t like it (for Ikuya’s sake) but that’s how it be I guess

How many siblings are there in the Mikoshiba family lmao there’s a new one every season 

“But gender doesn’t mean anything in a competition” I like u Lady Mikoshiba

“You mean you were Russian this whole time??” this is a lot to digest

I LOVE RIN’S PUDGY CAT STEVE LOL IS IT THE SAME IN JAPANESE

“The water likes you. I can tell” ALBERT PLS, Haru is already FULL-UP on homoerotic swim relationships

It’s killing me that they keep cutting to Makoto like Haru’s cheating on him though

Not to undermine the subplot of these last three episodes but hasn’t Haru... lost races before hgkjhgk

“I thought something soft and cute would help balance out that scary face of yours” omg STOP this cuteness 

Gghkhgk these flashbacks and Rin crying over Sosuke’s surgery are SO cute I never thought I would feel so proud of Rin way back in S1 he’s grown so much!!

Makoto being surrounded by ladybugs and butterflies like a wholeass Disney Prince

WHY are ALL of these swimming weirdos SOMEONE’S UNCLE

“You’re still as weird as ever, Haru’s the exact same way” I should start tracking how long in a conversation it takes characters to bring up Haru

Gnjghkjhg Makoto gets through to Haru in 0.5 seconds after two weeks of him ignoring his own coach. The power of fish metaphors and Love™

Kinda seems like they are setting it up like Makoto will also get to travel the world for swimming and let me say... I’m not mad about it

Update from like 2 minutes later: I WAS RIGHT

“That’s the evil king who wanted the magic lamp” the Arabian Nights references kill me every time 

Djkhdkjhd Ryuji labelling Mikhail in his phone as “Muscle Freak” that’s tru friendship

“You should say, ‘I’m totes hip with the kids, yo’” Ryuji pls 

“You’re so cute, you must be Iwatobi’s famous Kou” KHGKHGKJHKJ 3/3 MIKOSHIBA KNOCKOUT KOU

Awwwww Rei is so nervous for nationals my sweet baby boy

I ADORE that Rin and Haru are literally running across the city right before their most important meet bc they want to see their friends swim 

Rrgjhgr the one and only backstory in this show is former childhood friends and it applies to every single character

OMG Rei get his own flashback but with his boy Nagisa I love it

“I think he’d make a good rival for you actually” Makoto Tachibana: Rival Matchmaker

GOOD JOB BOYS U DID GOOD (ALSO TEAM PHOTO I WEEP)

“Try not to cry when I beat you” SOSUKEEEEEEEEEE

Wow this final episode is already clutching at my heart right out of the gate baby Haru 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Makoto letting four more boys pile into his one bedroom for the night bc he’s the Best Boy Alive

HJGHJKGH THIS EXCHANGE 

Mikhail: That’s what I call ‘totes hip with the kids’

Nearby youths: [Giggling]

Mikhail: [Soft indignant gasp] Ryuji!!

Natsuya and Ikuya have the cutest sibling relationship gjkghk THEY

The theme of this season is people hugging each other and crying over the lanes and I LOVE THAT 4 THEM

Rin and Haru and Makoto........... are good boys

“What is this, some kind of teen drama” that is exactly it, Rin

“He won’t stop talking about stupid crap like friendship and bonds” I love three (3) boys

Bonus: Out of Order Liveblog of Free! Take Your Marks + S3E0

Haru dropping his pants in Makoto’s apartment without the immediate context of them being near water was the most high stakes moment in this entire anime I had no idea where that was going

Haru leaving his apartment hunting until the day before he moves: Mood

Sidenote: Makoto and Haru going apartment hunting is domestic as HELL I love it

“The two of you are inseparable, huh?” “We’re friends, deal with it.” Let people be gay Kisumi 

Lmao @ Nagisa and Rei’s yoga pose video Iwatobi is the cutest swim team in the world 

“Then one day even those tears will dry out in the Tokyo desert” who hurt you, Ms. Amakata 

“Allow me to welcome you to Tokyo, the city where love and lust intertwine” Free! Love and Lust could really be a subtitle of this anime lmao

“I’m talking about the whole bunkbed situation, you know, top and bottom” lmao shout-out to Sloane for that one art

I love the wordless communication between Makoto and Haru (and for that matter, Sosuke and Rin) I’m so glad they worked things out

I’m also happy Rin and Kou are cool now they used to have quite a gap

“Rin wasn’t that honest with himself” rjghg Rin and Haru miss each other

“This is the one,” said Haru, next to Makoto, His Completely Platonic Best Friend Who Dreams About Them Sharing An Apartment and Dropping Trou

I LOVE STEVE THE FAT CAT. AN ICON. A BEAUTY. CHUNKY BABY

“The treasure is inside the red shark’s mouth” there is DEFINITELY a Rin joke to be made here and the writers knew it

I don’t know what I love about this more that Aii and Momo are TERRIBLE at scheming or that that they are throwing Rin and Sosuke together on White Day lmao

This team vacation... Sosuke giggling bc he was tickled... !!!!!!! THANKS

I’m loving all these teams getting presents for each other jkhgkjg

Oh am I finally going to understand this Momo and Capybara backstory

Lol @ Natsuya pouring his heart abt Nao to Sosuke wholly unsolicited

“What were you about to ask” “Oh, not anything important (I’ll wait for you Sosuke)”

OHHHHHHHHHH THE CHARM BACKSTORY SOSUKEEEEEEEEEE

Oh Christ alive am I about to watch the Arabian Nights recruitment film

Hhhgjgjhg I gather the only reason Haru got his license was to compete with Rin

“I’m the evil king who is after the lamp for his own selfish reasons” I hate this... but also... I love this???

“I am a mysterious peddler. I travel carrying mysterious bundles. While riding atop of my mysterious partner Chappy the Camel” HARU STOP

OH MAKOTO HONEY U POOR SOUL JHGKHFKJGH 

“Makoto. When I’m nervous I think about mackerel” I am going to expire

“I think the three of you should implement your own version of it” Fhjkhgk Haru is telling them to exploit their bodies for school recruitment but also that’s not really anything new so fair enough

Nagisa: Rei is Perfect Killer Muscles Handsome in my heart!!!!!!

“Maybe I’m never going to understand him” Omg @ The Jilted Middle School Exes of Haru Club

“How David had to give up his love.... And then Veronica, knowing they couldn’t see each other anymore” call me crazy but I think Rin is projecting his own issues onto A Rat’s Life LMAO

Tjehjkhkje Sosuke needing to call Rin bc he got lost on his way to the bathroom... Useless Husband Energy

HAHAH Rin is so upset thinking Momo and Kou are dating

At least Rin recognizes that he doesn’t get to decide who Kou dates he can only express his approval or disapproval

“Momotaru Mikoshiba is a man who lives by passion” gjhgjhg stop this

“Rin would never lose to a persimmon, ever!” MAKOTO R U OK

“You are not less than a persimmon!” THESE BOYS. U R SO DUMB BUT ALSO GET U A FRIEND LIKE THE IWATOBI SWIM CLUB

“It’s cool if you need to cry” “If you stay in the pool no one will ever notice your tears” I LOVE SOSUKE AND HARU TEAMING UP TO TEASE RIN

I also deeply appreciate that even though I’ve never heard their Japanese voices I know exactly who is saying what line in this outro just by dialogue and tone of voice

+

“I have a crippling fear of mascot costumes” “Then why did you take this job” kjhgkjhgkjh if that isn’t a work mood 

Wait... if Makoto is going to be the substitute wrestler... WILL HARU BE THE SUBSTITUTE MASCOT AHHHHHHHH

WAIT NO I HAVE GRAVELY AND HILARIOUSLY MISUNDERSTOOD MAKOTO IS GOING TO BE BOTH MASCOT AND WRESTLER

“Iwa means ‘boulder’ and ‘tobi’ means ‘black kite’ so it’s a boulder-headed bird!!” Well that’s more of an explanation for the appearance of the Iwatobi mascot than I ever expected, Nagisa

“You don’t have a crippling fear of mascot costumes, do you?” No but I have feeling Makoto is about to develop one

Oh it’s THIS FUCKPUDDLE who asked u to be here Hiyori

“I don’t exactly hate it” high praise Ikuya lmao

Thkjhtkjh I love Natsuya’s long distance relationship it’s sweet 

HAHAHA is the beak thing supposed to be a ploy so people see Makoto’s face

“I cannot let Haru see me like this” “Hi Makoto” HAHAHAHAH I LOVE THIS WHOLE INTERACTION AND ALSO HOW HARU JUST GOES ALONG WITH ALL OF IT

Also I don’t know how Makoto was planning to hide his identity after he was addressed as “Mr. Tachibana”

LMAO @ MAKOTO BEING RECOGNIZED BY HIS LEG MUSCLES I’M SCREAMING

“Hey Makoto, use a backstroke!!” HARU PLEASE

“Well done, you’ll be a great mascot someday” “Thanks? I think?” This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen and I loved it

Oh my goooood Haru bringing Makoto presents for his siblings.... they have ascended to the college relationship levels of Natsuya and Nao

Man Ikuya could not radiate stronger “leave me alone” vibes 

“Wow you boys make a dashing pair” you said it Suit Lady not me 

[sleepymarmot]

COUNTER/Weight liveblog, part 3

Finale +post-mortem

Am I glad to return to the political big picture! It's such a relief that the finale is in this format! Hopefully it won't devolve into another “fighting a giant robot” scene.

Oh, so the Chime are leading the faction game now! Somehow I completely missed the point of the two previous scenes that indicated Aria becoming the new leader of the Righteous Vanguard – I was very surprised and then 10 minutes later went “Oh that's what it was, time to go back and relisten”

Pronoun update: Austin consistently uses “they”, Art consistently uses “he”. End my suffering…

The sheer comedic impact of seven Makos, Larry and Lazer Ted all in a room together has healed my soul immediately. Can we end on this image so nothing bad happens

I'm so proud of Orth!! “I'm sorry, which one are you?” lmao

Oooh the relationship drama~ But how come Jacqui didn't know Jill was alive? Actually, now that I think of it, back then it was clearly said that Jacqui knows Jillian is back and is sad because Jillian doesn't remember her. This show's retcons…

Look I know shit must hit the fan pretty soon but for now this finale is just. So relaxing. I'm having a lot of fun listening to these squabbles. (The only exception were Mako and Orth – boys, stop fighting, why!)

That Cass & Aria scene was cool but please don't give me world leader old friends sneaking away for secret stress relief sparring sessions when I'm not supposed to start shipping them

Oh hell yeah, I was hoping that since Jacqui went with Jillian, Aria would go with Ibex. (Not very relevant here, but Ibex is from Kesh like Maryland, right? If so, there must be fanart of young Ibex and Maryland in 19th century outfits?)

Stop cryptically saying oh Sokrates isn't here, oh they aren't using their candidate name, like what's up with them?! Are they doing well? I'm worried!

Oh Orth wants to dance with Ibex huh *eyes emoji* Rematch! Rematch!

“I'll take anything” “Anything?” My mind, of course, autocompletes “Then perish”

THIS WAS A LOT and I need to take a couple of minutes to start breathing normally again. Also there just has to be a lovingly drawn fanart adaptation of this entire scene (in, like, fukcing Leyendecker style), come on fandom please say someone has done it

Jacq/Jill continuing with the heartbreaking scenes, I see

Mako doesn't like dancing now…… holy shit this is the most upsetting ball ever… (The cynical part of me must say that it's only Austin who talks about this connection, Keith doesn't and still sounds way less emotional about the whole thing than the others assume Mako to be)

I amend my previous statement, I also need fanart with snapshots of every dance: Orth firmly taking Ibex's hand and receiving a surprised but approving look, Jillian throwing her head back in laughter and Jacqui watching with a pained smile, sullen Mako leaning on a wall cross-armed and looking for an opportunity to slip away, Cass dropping his one-liner with a completely dispassionate face.

Wow Ibex is really getting ready for death. Sounds as if he knows the exact date.

HOLY SHIT THE DIVINES' ORIGIN STORY!!! FINALLY!!! I'm surprised they were all created by the same person…

I'm relieved Mako and Orth are on good terms again!

I love the new Aria as this competent politician who does a lot of swordfighting and dealing with old flames

Have I mentioned I really love the game they're playing? It almost synthesizes the best parts of the game they played previously – as if it was written just for this finale. It's so great how this show and specifically this campaign go through so many games, showing the universe and the characters from different angles, instead of having them be defined by only one game system and its limitations and quirks.

That's some real good mech if it can function for 80,000 years, Divines' body or not!

Okay, I fucking knew Liberty and Discovery would split up at some point (which is what I meant above by my expectations for AuDy's fate), but why is Liberty attacking Ibex?

Mako's robots!!! :DDD Now that's the real finale shit!

I CAN'T BELIEVE Keith missed Tower's brief appearance of all things. It's like a fucking scene from the show on the level of dramatic irony. They were truly not meant to be, even the universe in real life is saying that. Do you ever get rejected so badly that the guy you like runs away from you at the prom, and then lets you fall into a deadly portal with the rest of your planet, and then you get brainwashed, and then you are killed by an ally of that guy, and the person playing him doesn't even witness that?!

I thought Orth was going to challenge Kobus about Liberty…

“I have Liberty contained” *winces*

Every time it is asked what is Mako wearing I just mentally pull out the popcorn

“I welcome anyone to tell Cass that AuDy is a non-person”

Let me restate how much I'm loving how the scenes that in any other show would be minor fluff or short summaries in an epilogue are a legit fully rendered part of the finale

Sokrates & Orth reunion please!!

Aw Ted! It never occured to me that this comic relief character has, in fact, lost his entire planet and almost everyone he knows.

…I think I like Apokine Cass more than Chime Cass

That's a big lore dump holy cow! I'm glad Apostolosians are ex-humans after all, but I wonder how they turned into fish people

So what happened to the idea of Mako hacking Grace?

They just… went and straight up murdered two Divines… If it had happened early in the show I'd probably cheer, and no tears were shed for Grace, but Liberty… Just take a third of another player character and drive it into a sun…

Of course. I knew Sokrates is the kind of character who dies nobly in a grand finale.

I've spent all this time wondering how the piece of Voice in Mako doesn't get infected by Rigor, and it seems to finally happen and Larry seems to die repairing it, but what about all other Makos, aren't they in danger too?

This is way too easy so far, just sacrifice NPCs one by one to win.

This whole time I was assuming Mako saved as many clones as he could, not just his own… If he gets another turn I bet it's submit or die :/

Hello I'm crying over Lazer Ted! Choices in the campaign sound futile now: who cares which guy Mako saved – they both died anyway! All named NPCs did!

Except for Jacqui. Congratulations, the NPC Who Lived! (I mistyped “loved” at first, which is also relevant. And yes, I cried here too.)

How the hell would falling into a sun kill Rigor if it was previously not killed by a bomb that destroys hundreds of suns?

Poor Cass… Not only sacrificing yourself in such a difficult way, but to have a final conversation only just to learn that your friend, a passionate revolutionary further empowered by Righteousness, has deserted… The sheer contempt and disappointment he pours in just three words “Ibex told you”...

Welp. Mako's fate was not tragic like I feared! Good news I guess, but it's still kind of sad. And I think the saddest part is that Mako himself doesn't realize. Because it can just sound like the natural continuation of his character growth – after he had to learn to be the responsible one first in contrast to Larry and then to the other Makos. But it's not that, or not just that, and it's kind of chilling to hear that he never knows it, and never knows peace.

Executive Joie, oh my… It's so strange and cool how Aria somehow continues the legacy of Jace and Ibex at once.

The race is over. It's so strange that now there are no consequences to fear or spoilers to avoid.

I didn't like the final battle as much as the rest of the finale – I hoped for a more clever solution than just throwing bodies at the enemy (but I guess the intro warned me lol…). Especially since these bodies had very unequal impact – I'm not going to care about Diego Rose or Chet Wise or Orth's newly-created lieutenants or as much as I care about Jacqui -- so it felt unfair towards players/characters who had more important or likeable chracters in their faction. I'm opposed on principle to making the big confrontation feel important and emotional just by killing off characters (hi, J. K. Rowling and Russo brothers), I think it's cheap and emotionally manipulative, but in this case the emotional manipulation doesn't even work so it’s doubly disappointing.

If someone's reading this, you can see that what I expected or wanted from the story was not what it gave me, and that was frustrating or disappointing at times. But nevertheless, it was a wild ride.

I've slept on it and it still fucks me up that out of the Chime only Aria gets a genuinely happy ending! Cass is fucking dead, Liberty is dead while AuDy becomes a ghost, and Mako loses everyone and is lonely for the rest of his life!

It's so strange to listen to the opening theme in the post-mortem and think that this is the second-to-last time. (Relistens don't count, it's not the same thing.) By the way, I love that theme – it sounds like a half song with the words on the tip of my tongue, like space, or like city at night. Really atmospheric.

I love how everyone continues to be into that moment where Aria has the opportunity to kill Cass lol (I am too)

Yeah, thanks for reminding me about that coin toss moment for Kobus in the finale, that was so sudden and shocking I was completely losing it for the long few seconds it lasted

I'm glad someone asked whether Jack knew the Big Spoiler in advance – he was so calm about it in the following episodes that I started wondering

Oh so it wasn't my imagination that the players needed the comic relief of the Lazer Ted episode no less than the characters

After a sad talk about Mako's dead friends, Andi, cheerfully: “I love to kill and I love to hurt and I never regretted anything I ever did! :D” which won the least surprising comment of the hour award lol. Honestly, after that one scene with Diego I started to get a bit nervous whenever Andi announced they had an idea… C/w was fun because I now realize the cinnamon roll Aubrey was actually them playing against type.

I love that someone asked about Mako's first kiss and/or Orth's fandom life!!

Keith's answer is sad, though… He “had literally never considered Mako even being capable of kissing someone, like it wasn't something on the table” and that was unexpected to me. I'd mentioned several times that he sounded reluctant to play up the romance, but I was assuming it was the player's preference, not an innate trait of the character whose attraction to someone was a part of his character creation. How do I interpret it? Mako is aro? Mako never had a chance to properly grow emotionally because his youth was fake and for the rest of his life, all emotional connections were sabotaged by Rigour's shadow, and also literally all his potential love interests died? Ugh, I just keep making myself more and more upset.

Holy shit I forgot about Art asking if there's an old Apostolosian mech on September by any chance lmao

Cene always knew?! Holy shit w h a t

It's nice to hear Ali talk about her growth in confidence as a player because she's definitely kind of an inspiration – for years I've thought tabletop roleplaying is too intense and I'll never do it, but when I finally tried out it was not so scary, so maybe there's hope for me too!

The concept that the real challenge of the final battle was that the easier it would be to defeat Rigor, the worse shape would the world be afterwards sounds much better than what that battle actually felt like to me. Instead of paying for victory with the health of society and their faction's political power, in the actual gameplay they paid with NPCs from their circle and that was it; the political consequences came later and sounded entirely unrelated. Maybe if they had to go against their faction's goals or sacrifice its assets – e.g. “use Minerva's Rigor-tech mechs in exchange for the promise to leave them alone afterwards” instead of “sacrifice all Mako clones”… Aria had something similar with Weight, but it was the price of Jacqui's life, not the price of a victorious battle against Rigour.

It's very cool to learn where the sound effects in the theme come from! And god, every line as its own take? My head hurts just imagining that…

Austin getting distracted by the idea of fucking Rigor was hilarious, but I never, ever want to hear the word “daddy” in this context! What's with these jokes this season, ew, please stop.

Excuse me, Ali wanted to kiss Ibex as who exactly, Jace or Aria? Both options are equally crazy!

See, “You wanna say ‘Oh he was just doing what was necessary, he was just doing the thing that's good in the end’, and yeah that's him working on you” is exactly why he reminds me of Dukat! Literally the same mind game on the viewers/listeners!

Why is the link broken, I want to see AuDy in Titanfall!

Listening to team “Fuck Ibex!” and team “Fuck Ibex ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)” yell at each other is very entertaining

“Nobody on the Kingdom Come is cishet” is a nice sentiment but I'm kind of confused by which definition of cis Cass is not. Have I missed something about them changing pronouns in-universe? Just because English doesn't have exact analogies for the Apostolosian pronouns doesn't mean everyone who uses them isn't following their own society's conventions. And now Austin also's saying “We never wanted to say these pronouns are equivalent to gender” which is, a, not true, and b, sends the whole problem back to square one – because if that's not the Apostolosian gender then what is? This! Is! A! Mess!

[obstinaterixatrix]

You often talk about Lance and it kind of makes me want to watch Voltron myself. However, you also talk about issues with the writing and that makes me curious. Could you describe these issues? It might help me decide whether I truly want to watch it or not.

ah. oh boy. 

I’ll just summarize a bit of my gripes and try to keep it short, but first, here are some caveats

personal bias-wise, I like character focused stuff over plot driven stuff

I get extremely into specific character dynamics/archetypes which is what makes me shackle myself to shows; in all honesty, if Lance wasn’t in there, I probably would’ve stopped watching by now

I really like the super sentai and kamen rider stuff I’ve seen, which voltron’s vaguely aligned with, but as a result those are some standards I’m comparing the writing to

I’m ornery about writing

You probably know my liveblog tag but if you, for whatever reason, want more thoughts, that’s where you’ll find them. there’s also, like, actual liveblog stuff which means some of it is more detailed, organized, and specific, but you’ll probably have to dig past all the. lance posts. 

so my general gripes,

tone

voltron definitely wants to be A Mature And Deep Show, but it gets kinda wacky because it’s also A Show For Kids; we get a few emotional notes every so often, but it kind of flops between Fun Cat-Stack Adventures and This Is A Story About War

I remember something that bugged me about season 2 was that Lance and Hunk and a Fun Water World Adventure! but one of the mermaids dies (in like. a heavily implied way.) and it’s never given any impact outside the moment she goes off to her death. she’s just there to bring the tone down right before we get into Goofy Antics again. so Voltron just has characters die but it usually doesn’t matter and we usually don’t see what impacts this has on the world or other characters. 

if characters aren’t allowed to mourn, it kind of impedes their potential

that’s not to say there can’t or shouldn’t be any lighthearted moments within the show - a good example of tonal balance is Crystal Venom, where there’s goofy stuff like Pidge and Hunk fighting food goo, but also some really grounded emotional focus on Allura

focus

like I said, I’m into character-focused stuff, and I like relationship dynamics. I kind of got into voltron expecting stuff to mostly focus on the team and individual character development, but the focus starts really honing in on politics

which wouldn’t be so bad if the politics weren’t so. tepid. 

like I don’t need things to be strictly realistic, I’m totally willing to accept a fun cartoon where five giant robot cats stack up into a giant robot made of cats, but they keep… putting a spotlight on details I can’t take seriously, except, trying to frame it in a serious way

and it’s always delivered in…. such a boring way……. there was one conversation between two galra folks that was like ‘hey. this is a major character we’re looking at. I’m going to tell you all about him, even though you should know this information by now.’ 

like… it only needs to be tweaked a little bit to shift it from ‘info-dumping at the audience’ to ‘an informative conversation between two characters’. but.  

also, I’m still hung up over the whole ‘ten thousand years’ thing. ten thousand years is too long. what are the lifespans of other species, huh? is everyone that long-lived? why didn’t you guys make it a thousand years? like, sure, alteans are long-lived, but assuming alteans have a lifespan ten times longer than humans,10,000 years is just too long? at least downsize it to 1,000, that’s still long but it’s not *unreasonably* long

in terms of timeskips & how to handle it, avatar: the last airbender had it more grounded - 100 years, and also, so much has changed in the world during that 100 years. 

one of my friends was joking about how voltron really likes END LAST EPISODE ON MAJOR REVELATION!! start next episode on cold open that never addresses it. 

lots of Big Game Changers are never, like….. shown. addressed. kind of happen off screen. or never at all. 

I’m like. being sincere about this, sometimes it feels like voltron relies on fanfic to fill gaps it really should address in the actual show.

the start of s3 actually had the exact type of focus I’m into. a lot of adjustment as everyone somewhat clashes, a lot of banter between the characters, a lot of development as characters come together stronger, it was some nice stuff. the mirrorverse ended that tho because I hated the mirrorverse and it felt weirdly removed from continuity - last arc is ‘keith learns that he can’t just rush in because he wants to’, next episode is ‘allura rushes in’. kind of a weird rehash, except worse.

(full disclosure I’m unseasonably salty abt mirrorverse ep because it started out with extremely promising space horror but takes a nosedive into extremely boring ‘what if good guys….. were Bad’ type execution)

(& I want to say that a good execution of mirrorverse type situation is the Justice Lords arc in the Justice League cartoon - it makes sense, and it has a narrative you can extract some good messages from)

themes

I’m uncomfy w voltron writing because, consciously or not, they’re taking their anti-imperialism premise with an extremely weird militaristic slant

there’s one episode which revolves around team voltron going around putting on voltron stage shows to get people to join the voltron coalition, which is a fun goofy scenario with… *some* fun goofy moments, but the episode feels very…. propaganda good! don’t take weird alien brain drugs, but also, it works! 

obviously not everything has to have an afterschool special type of vibe, but it’s so… weird and thoughtless, especially with how *~serious~* voltron tries to take itself sometimes. like, listen, blah blah it’s just a show blah but also like, It’s Kind Of Weird. 

a trajectory that would make sense in the whole Space Friendship Show framework would be if the rest of team voltron realized something was wrong, and eventually fought against the shows - stuff like ‘are you ok? you’re acting… not yourself’ and ‘voltron isn’t a performance! we’re here to save people! the politics are supposed to be boring treaties and dinners and stuff!’ but instead it’s like. ‘oh! huh! that’s why you were acting weird! well, don’t take alien brain drugs again. but also, thanks, we got so much support because of you!’

plus there’s a lot of weird wording and stuff that goes under the radar - like, if it’s supposed to be foreshadowing that someone Is Actually Bad, it doesn’t work because nobody brings it up or ever questions it

e.g. stuff like ‘everyone we rescue is a potential soldier in the fight against galra’ (shouldn’t the focus be on saving people so they’re safe??), ‘we have new territories now’ (SHOULDN”T THOSE TERRITORIES BE… FREED… NOT YOURS…..), and every time a certain character gets pushed as A Good Guy After All it just sounds like…. Imperialism Isn’t Bad! It’s just that Zarkon was evil! If there’s a good guy in charge, an empire can *benevolently* colonize a planet!

That Makes Me Uncomfy  

you know how sometimes sci-fi/fantasy narratives try to pull an extremely weird fantasy racism thing? or they’ll mirror real world dynamics but without understanding them at all?

yeah, the majority of s2 is like…… a Not All Galra scenario….

they actually say Not All Galra

Not all galra are evil, allura!

you need to be more openminded, allura!

your entire planet got wiped out and everyone you knew and loved died aside from one other person, but you’re being so unreasonable about this!

you don’t get to be sympathized and you don’t get to work through your feelings at all, allura! no emotional support for you!

I dunno it just reminded me of

sorry I’m going to be crude for a second,

it just felt very ‘white liberal’s wetdream’ of “”””being accepted for being white””””” if that makes sense

and beyond that, it’s like…. this weird analogue for mixed race folks. I’m gonna leave it at that b/c it ain’t really my place. if anyone wants like, further details, I can ask a friend to weigh in with her perspective.

Voltron seems to play the martyrdom thing straight, which I don’t really like. I like deconstructions and criticisms of martyrdom. 

I wrote something about this a while ago, but it feels like voltron is weirdly separate from team voltron - voltron’s ‘he’ (also, why ‘he’??) when it should be ‘we’ because voltron should be about how they’re all stronger together. they’re literally. stronger together. but there’s a weird absence of like…. teamwork, if that makes sense. the characters are usually isolated, or ignored in favor of politics.

this is getting to long.

I’m done.

I mean, there’s a lot more I can say, but

I’m done.

[showyoumyfavoriteobsession]

Parliament of Owls (Masters of Sex 3x01) Liveblog post

I haven't done one of these in forever! Here we come season 3

Before starting: Libby's character development made a sharp turnaround in the back half of season 2 and now I'm so ready for her to dump Bill's sorry ass

Holy time skip, Batman! Okay, so we're... six years past the last episode? Jeez.

Their lab has gotten all fancy too

"I'm sure the lake will be very......................... relaxing." Bill is the master of the overly long pause and it cracks me up every time

Awww, I assume that means Lester and Barbara got married. Cute.

I love Betty... so much...

Bill has been a real asshole about Virginia's degree I'm glad she's calling him out

Holy... this is too much to process. Virginia's kids are teenagers, Bill and Libby have a third? Are they actually still together? This is part of the reason I'm not a big fan of time skips. It can be a good way to shake things up, but losing all the time in between with a hand-waved "and then time passed" often leaves me feeling like I don't know the characters anymore.

Hey it's the kid from It! Heh.

I know it's probably not how this arrangement actually works but they're kind of giving me thruple vibes which I'm totally down for

Oh noooooo Virginia

Grown-up Tessa looks a lot like Virginia

Come on Bill, father-son bonding! You can do this!

(No. No he can't.)

So they might be nominally still together, but Bill's gotten pretty obvious about staying away from Libby

I see Bill's kept his reading glasses for six years

That was actually an adorable scene with Bill and Tessa. Guess he's not hopeless with kids if they're not his own

Henry is... there's a lot happening here

"There is no universe where fear is a barrier worth preserving." Throughout this show I'm wondering if Masters and Johnson were really as forward-thinking and socially radical as they're portrayed, but even if they're not, I love the show for doing that for the characters.

Uggggh I had a bad feeling they were going to do this but I was really hoping they wouldn't

Well...................fuck. at least bill stopped himself but like... fuck.

Libby: *climbs into bed with Virginia and takes her hand* "I have thought a LOT about my marriage"

HANG ON I WROTE THAT AS A JOKE HOLY SHIT

(Okay they went further than I expected but. Nothing really happened.)

They put in a little note about their kids at the end! I know that Bill and Libby had two kids together irl and Virginia had two as well but I guess they're just making up all the details for the show.

A packed episode for sure. My hesitation about time skips still stands but I think they handled this one all right. This show's treatment of female characters has been one of the highlights throughout the first two seasons and I'm glad to see they're still going strong.

[journeysintowebcomics]

Worm Liveblog #21

UPDATE 21: The School vs Taylor and Danny Hebert

Last time Taylor had finally hit Emma in the face. The problem is that she did this in front of Emma’s father, her own father, the general public and Shadow Stalker. All in all, it could have gone better. The silver lining is that now she’s telling her father everything that’s going on at school, I think, so let’s continue!

Nnnnevermind, she’s not doing that. It seems it happened off-screen. Given that now Taylor and Dad Hebert are waiting to enter to the principal’s office, he reacted as I thought he would: taking this seriously and arranging a meeting with the principal. Nice! I don’t have much faith on this ending 100% well for Taylor, but who knows, maybe it’ll happen. Not long after we’d arrived, Emma and her dad had showed up, looking totally casual and unstressed, like it was a regular day. She isn’t even worried. Oh. If she isn’t worried then...okay, the meeting hasn’t started, maybe I’m jumping the gun a bit on this not having a satisfying resolution. I’ll keep hoping for the best.

Madison and her family have the decency to be worried, although Emma’s father seems to be trying to reassure them. Sophia arrives with someone who’s not her mother – adoptive mother, perhaps? – so it’s turn for Taylor and Dad Hebert to come in. Emma’s father is a lawyer, therefore he knows how to manipulate the system, or at least that’s what Dad Hebert says. After getting a phone call from my dad, Alan had been the one to call this meeting. ...okay, now I’m completely sure this won’t end well for Taylor. This has to be a trap. No wonder Emma is so calm! She must know what this all is about. I don’t know what kind of person this Alan man is, but I feel inclined to distrusting the purpose of this meeting. Give me a minute here to pick up my stress toy because maybe I’ll need it.

Everyone sits to the table and it’s rather telling that pretty much everyone except a teacher is sitting on the site opposite to Taylor and Dad Hebert. It’s them against the world, and we all know who has the advantage here. I was nervous.  I had told my dad that I’d missed classes.  I hadn’t told him how many, but I hadn’t wanted to repeat Bitch’s mistake and leave him totally in the dark. That’s a sensible move...at least he knows she has been skipping classes. What I wonder now is if he asked what she did during the time she was supposed to be at class. Hang around the library or something? It’s not like Taylor can see she was spending time with her friends instead of being with friends. Dad Hebert is quite understanding, but it’d be good to avoid saying anything that could point at the rest of the Undersiders being bad influences on Taylor.

Sophia is a troublesome person, who’d have guessed, right? So, Alan did arrange this meeting so this matters could be put to rest through the official channels. Taylor Hebert, time for your testimony. She’s encouraged to tell the major incidents, but instead she goes for every incident...because apparently she has been keeping track of that. Really? First time I hear of it. It’s a big paragraph, thick as a brick in comparison to the two-line and one-line things dialogue above it. And that’s just for one single day. Golly.

Taylor only gets to the middle of the second day when the principal interrupts her, saying they don’t have time to listen to every single incident. Really now? Well she’s not wrong, otherwise they’d be here for the rest of the day. That’s how much Taylor has been tormented.

Alan spoke, “I think we all grasp that it’s been unpleasant.  You’ve established that, and I thank you for the insight. But how many of those incidents can you prove?  Were those emails sent from school computers?”

Here comes the legal beaglery! Let me guess, she can’t. Hard to prove someone dumped pencil sharpener shavings on her head a few months ago. Taylor’s best chance is to appeal for the principal to believe her, but that’s quite difficult. This kind of stuff relies on evidence, and there’s very little decisive proof here. Not even printing the emails is enough, because they came from throwaway accounts. At least she can prove she’s being bullied, that much can’t be denied now. It’s not like she can fake stuff that has been happening for months!

Just like that, most of Taylor’s work has been dismissed as useless. Damn it, I hate when this happens! Thankfully, there’s one incident Taylor can prove, and it’s one we did see by ourselves here in the story.

“Two weeks ago, Mr. Gladly approached me,” I addressed the room, “He verified that some things had occurred in his class.  My desk had been vandalized with scribbles, juice, glue, trash and other stuff on different days.  Do you remember, Mr. Gladly?”

I really hope you won’t have the gall to deny something you said, Mr. Disney Movie Teacher. He doesn’t, he just kind of distorts what Taylor had said, sidestepping the part that he did see harassment in action.

“No,” the principal spoke, “But I think that when someone is being victimized, it’s possible to embellish events, or to see harassment when there is none.  We want to ensure that these three girls get fair treatment.” Nothing wrong with fair treatment for everyone, yeah, but implying Taylor is making up stuff to get them in more trouble is...well that’s not going to help. Taylor wasn’t wrong, this is a farce of a meeting. This is the kind of thing that’s difficult for me to read...because it’s the most plausible parts. Powers and all is fun, even if it gets to the gory and bleak parts, but this here is something that can happen to pretty much anyone. Maybe some of the readers of Worm even experienced it at some point. That’s why it’s harder to read this, because it can happen.

Shut up, Alan, you’re not helping. He doesn’t outright say Taylor is lying, but he’s really implying it – even daring to bring up Taylor’s mother’s death. Like father, like daughter, really. That’s playing dirty. No wonder Emma was so calm.

Since everyone has pretty much formed a wall around themselves and refused to do anything about Taylor, Alan goes for the jugular and asks what exactly Taylor and Dad Hebert want. “Transfer me to Arcadia High.” Really? Well I didn’t expect that! But now that the surprise is gone, I must say that’s quite a good answer. Better to get away from them and try to start anew in a new crowd. It’s not like Taylor has anything in this school she’s going to miss, so...yeah, I like this move! Nice. Looks like most here were expecting to hear she wanted them to be expelled from the school. I for one am hoping the principal will agree to transfer Taylor!

Giving them freedom through expulsion or suspension wouldn’t be good, since it’d be like a reward for those three – that’s Taylor’s opinion. I kinda agree to that. If it were up to her there’d be suspension in-school for two months, and that’d be quite a sizable punishment, but...yeah, I don’t see that happening. I hate to say it, but taking the easy route about transferring to another school is more likely to work.

Once again, shut up, Alan. This is no time for jokes about no punishment at all.

Since it’s extremely obvious there has been bullying but most of the incidents can’t be proven, the principal proposes a two week suspension. I sigh. Guess it’ll be no punishment for them, then. This is exactly what Taylor didn’t want.

She hadn’t mentioned the classes.  I wondered if she even knew. Taylor really is like invisible to everyone except the bullies, eh? Nobody here mentions Taylor has avoided her classes. Once another reason to transfer to Arcadia High, maybe there Taylor won’t be a non-entity. Since suspension is the one thing on the table here, Taylor gives up on that regard and accepts it, because otherwise it’d be like ramming her head against a brick wall.

Just transfer me to Arcadia.  Let me walk away from this.”

“That’s not really something I can do,” the principal said, “There’s jurisdictions-”

Hm. Alright, question time, dear readers. I’m not knowledgeable about the American educational system, but is there anything stopping Dad Hebert from pulling out Taylor from the actual school and transferring her to Arcadia High? Because that’s what’d be done around here where I live, one wouldn’t have to rely on the school to do something. The one obstacle I can think of is that there could be no space for a student in a classroom, but that’s usually solvable. Maybe I’m missing something about this American school system.

Wow, Taylor is seriously starting to lose her self-control, and I doubt it’s because of the concussion. She’s reaching her limit. Everyone’s lucky there’s not a swarm of bugs in the room right now. Taylor even threatens to bring a weapon to the school, and pretty much begs for her own expulsion. Damn...

Since it’s obvious nobody except Dad Hebert is on Taylor’s side, things get heated, with Dad Hebert threatening to get the media involved, and Alan threatening to press charges on Taylor for assault and threats. It’d lead to a drawn out legal battle that’d end only when a side runs out of money – and I can already guess which side it’d be.

I looked at my teachers.  At Mrs. Knott, who I’d even say was my favorite teacher, “Don’t you see how fucked up this is? He’s blackmailing us right in front of you, and you can’t understand that this manipulation has been going on from the beginning?”

I hate to say it, but I’m afraid Alan’s move, while dirty is...completely legal. Taylor did pretty much assault Emma. Charges may be pressed anytime, and there’s evidence to back them up. It’s not really blackmail. Not that it matters, because this sucks. I fully sympathize with Taylor on this. There she goes, pretty much kicking the door on her way out, and immediately calling Lisa.

“We’re gearing up for a raid on the ABB.  We didn’t bother you about it because you’re still recovering, and I knew you’d be busy with your meeting at school.  Want in?”

Want in? Right now she’d be more than willing to go for another bank robbery, I’d say! Yeah, let’s let out steam through some good old fighting! While Taylor was trying to straighten up her life, everyone else was arranging teams for an attack on the ABB. I wonder which group Taylor would be with? Let’s hope it’s not with Skidmark!

“Every team is splitting up, bit complicated to explain, but yeah.  Bitch would be going with one or two members of the Travelers, some of Faultline’s crew and probably some of Empire Eighty-Eight.  It would do a lot for our peace of mind if you went with. ‘specially with the tension between us and the Empire.”

...uh...alright, whose idea was to stick Heckpuppy with E88? I guess it’s fine as long as the owner of that dogfighting ring isn’t part of the team, or else this can’t end well. At least Taylor will be there. It’s a good chance as any to get scenes between Rachel and Taylor, maybe they’ll stop being cold to each other. Taylor already started trying to get closer to her, will Rachel accept it? I hope she does! That’s the end of the chapter.

I think I have time for one chapter more, so I’ll go ahead with it. The main course of this arc is coming now!

Yeah, they’re getting ready for their missions, dressing with their costumes. “The idea Coil proposed was that we would mix and match the members of the groups, so nobody can pull anything without their teammates being hostage to the other groups.” Good thinking, Coil. You can never trust a bunch of teams each with their own criminal goals and vendettas. I guess it also means it was unlikely for Heckpuppy not be in contact with someone from E88, yeah. There are arrangements for the Undersiders to check with each other, and codes in case there’s trouble and they need to be subtle. Think traffic lights.  Green for go, everything is okay.  Yellow for warning, if you aren’t sure about things.  Red for stop, need help. That’s...that can work. For a moment I had thought they had said to name the color, not an object of that color, I was already typing how obvious it was. Hah! Good thing I reread the lines, that’d have been embarrassing.

Tattletale’s going in the team that has Faultline. Hah! Of course she is. I bet that if Shadow Stalker was a villain and she was part of this plan too, she’d be in Grue’s group because Mr. Wildbow seems to be rather interested in putting rivals with rivals. Everyone ready? There are going to be daily attacks, these will be busy days! Hit hard, hit fast, get out of there.  If you aren’t making much of a dent, don’t sweat it. Perfect. This’ll also be a good chance for me to see what other villain factions can do in terms of power. This is likely to be good! Show me your best, Mr. Wildbow!

“Don’t show her any weakness, or she won’t let up on you.” At this point I’m completely sure Skitter has enough strength not to show weakness in front of Heckpuppy no matter what. She’ll be okay. Not that anyone’s happy with the arrangements, Heckpuppy spends the trip in the van just glaring daggers at Skitter. What a marvelous start for this mission, eh? Things are going to go just peachy in here.

Remembering my bugs, I took a few seconds to extend my powers outward and begin gathering them.  I was surprised at how far my reach was extending.  I generally measured things in city blocks – I’ve never been good at eyeballing distance – and I would say my range usually sat at around two blocks. Today I was reaching just shy of three and a half.

Hmmm...hey, what if Bakuda’s bomb is responsible for this? It affected Skitter’s brain or something, didn’t it? You know, to stun her and all. What if it accidentally gave a boost to Skitter’s powers? I really hope the concussion isn’t doing this, or else Skitter may lose such boost once she’s healed. Skitter wonders why she’s a bit more powerful and accidentally makes puns, then turns her attention to how Heckpuppy uses her power on the dogs. It was like seeing a sausage split its casing—ooooookay, that’s enough, Skitter, a bit too descriptive for me. Somehow, hearing about something bursting out of its skin when we’re talking about living beings is giving me the heebie-jeebies.

The point of reunion for the team Heckpuppy and Skitter are part of is at the other side of a bridge destroyed by the ABB. Is everyone else over there? It’s a matter of passing through the rubble of the bridge until they reach that, not too difficult. The dogs are even having fun.

Wow, I’m surprised Heckpuppy is trying to make small talk, noting Skitter is angry. Trying to reach out to Skitter, perhaps? “Should hit ’em.  Teach them to fuck with you.” Good news, she did that. Bad news, it pretty much screwed her over. Good news, now Dad Hebert knows everything that’s going on. All in all, the only reward was momentary satisfaction, and that can be enough. Our detour had given the flying bugs time to catch up to me.  Wasps, moths, houseflies, no-see-ums, a few bees and a fair few cockroaches. The heck is a no-see-um. I googled it to find out, and I regret it. Take a lesson from me: photos of no-see-um bites or whatever are not pleasant to look at. You have a lot of courage, Taylor, stuffing so many bugs in the nooks and crannies of your costume.

All the other capes were already waiting. Hello, Kaiser, fancy meeting you again! He has his Valkyries with him. From Faultine’s crew there’s Newter and Labyrinth. I once received a comment asking why I hadn’t seemed surprised about Newter and...someone else. Honestly? I don’t remember who they are. I blame the introduction of a couple dozen characters at once. I wonder what kind of powers they have, though. I do note that Newter is orange, literally orange. What’s up with that, hmmmm...

The attack is scheduled to start in five minutes. Is that really enough time to decide the method of attack? There’s a lot of people here, it may be a tad difficult to coordinate everything in so little time. Not that there’s really any other option, it’s a necessary thing to do.

Oh, come on, don’t describe the body horror again, Skitter! Once was enough! I really didn’t want to hear about sprays of gore on people, but here you go and say that. It’s a surprise Kaiser stepped back, though. I didn’t think he’d be taken by surprise. I can’t blame him, though, what an unpleasant thing to see.

Everyone’s going in direction to the attack they’re going to do now. This is a good point to stop, I’m guessing next time the attack will happen. Great! Can’t wait for that. See you next time, everyone!

Next update: next time

[thebibliomancer]

Dark Crystal Age of Resistance ep 6 liveblog

"By Gelfling Hand...”

Huh. I fell off the watching wagon in September. Thats a long time. I’ve probably forgotten all the proper nouns.

Just a stream of thoughts.

So last time in Age of Resistance people finally dreamfast and the age of resisting finally starts. I can’t wait for the Gelfling Rey to show up and stop the one-note Kylan.

Rian has been captured, transferred from one Skeksis to another, and escapes after deciding that he’s not going to escape.

The All-Maudra is dead, long live All-Mauldra Seladon. 

Wonder what will happen now, me too.

Deet, Hup, and Brea are under arrest. And now the General wants to drink them.

“These Gelfling have just the vigor we’re looking for. Throw them in. And their little podling too.”

C’mon, Var. Geez. C’mon. Geez. He’s tall for his age.

The only good thing about Skeksis deciding to drink you is that the crystal is all the way back at the castle and they’re not going to want to hurt you or else lessen the vigor.

I’m looking at that jail cell wheel and the gaps are totally big enough for Brea to get out of if she just tries.

Oh hey, Lore senses Brea in need and is leaving his chamber by the magic of bending over to fit through the doorway.

And coincidentally, Rian, Gurjin, Naia, and probably Kylan are all here and saw Brea et al get captured so now they’re going to have an exciting chase scene to try to save them.

-Seladon looking at throne like ‘oh shit oh fuck what have i done-

Pfft she sits on the throne just when Lore decides he wants to leave his horribly hidden chamber and bursts through it like the Kool-Ade Man

OH YEAH

Seladon didn’t even get to enjoy the throne in a conflicted way for more than five seconds. That’s amazing.

Ritual Master: “VAR GEEZ C’MON WHY DID YOU KILL THAT GELFLING GEEZ VAR GEEZ”

General: “The Emperor is forgiving”

Ritual Master: -sass- “Of course! If there’s one quality our Emperor is known for, it’s mercy.”

I never thought that the Ritual Master would be the voice of reason among the Skeksis but hot damn, I’m loving his tone.

Rian standing in the middle of the road like some kind of badass.

But the Rian ruse is a distraction.

Rian: “I heard you were looking for me”

General: ‘this fucking guy’

Rian: ‘Why don’t you come out and say that to my face’

Oh the General is just going to run Rian over with the cart. You can’t accuse him of not being pragmatic.

Ritual Master: ‘I DON’T LIKE ANY OF THIS!’

The rest of the team can’t get the back of the wheel cage open but thankfully Lore out of nowhere.

Lore Out of Nowhere is going to be the name of my band that just turns exposition dumps into songs. Once I learn how to sing, play an instrument, songwrite, or organize groups.

The Skeksis don’t know what Lore is but they’re both appalled and disgusted.

Huh. There are other Gelfling in the wheel cage instead of just protagonists. The paladins that the Skeksis were gathering for the ‘war.’ One can only imagine what they’re making of this.

Lore: -rips the wheel cage door off-

General: -squeaking a little in dismay- “My carriage!”

Oh the paladins are escaping too. I don’t know that they know whats even going on.

Ritual Master: -pokes head at cart to shake his fist and tell the kids to get off his lawn-

Lore: -stomps towards menacingly-

General: “We should escape without delay!”

Ritual Master: -sass- “At long last, you’ve had a good idea!”

And they swerve around Rian instead of running him over because he’s still just standing in the middle of the road like an idiot. Mighty courteous of the Skeksis or the pillbugs to not vehicular gelflingslaughter him.

Brea gives Rian a hug so Deet gives him a longer, lingering hug.

Pls no love triangle. Pls.

Paladins still not know shit start hubbubbing about how Rian is a traitor and a murderer.

Brea: ‘Nuh uh!’

Rian: “Everything the Skeksis ever told us was a lie. But its hard to recognize the light when you’ve spent your whole life in the dark.”

So clearly you should all get- yup Rian is like lets do a huge dreamfast circle.

And hey, good idea! He says afterwards they should spread throughout Thra dreamfasting with all gelfling to share the truth. 

Paladin: “I will dreamfast with you!”

Another Paladin: “I will dreamfast with you!”

A third Paladin: “I’m Spartacus and so’s my wife!”

Oh, cool. Funeral for the Dead-Maudra. There’s a cool sounding tradition for the death of the All-Maudra. “The windsifters will deliver six pieces of her crown to six Maudras that they might come together to reassemble it and place it upon the brow of the new All-Maudra.”

That’s pretty neat. A ritual to restate the unity of the Gelfling clans and publicly endorse the new All-Maudra as legitimate.

I have a feeling that its not going to go to Seladon’s liking though.

Woo gelfling song. 

Oh the windsifters are like. Batbirds.

I had been thinking that they were like a type of gelfling job, like couriers or something.

More gelfling beastmastery is nice too though.

Seladon: “Gelfling need an All-Maudra who won’t be swayed from the path set for us by the Lords of the Crystal. A beacon of light in these dark times. I shall be that All-Maudra.”

The, uh, librarian guy says that they should get around to the burial rites and return the Dead-Maudra to Thra but Seladon is going Creon from Antigone and saying that her mom isn’t going to get burial rites because she was a traitor. She is going to be cremated instead.

This is sure to endear Seladon to the Gelfling people who thought the All-Maudra was neat despite all evidence.

Librarian guy: “FOR SHAME!”

Seladon: “For Thra.”

Oh shit the Chamberlain limps into the Stone-in-Wood village after surviving that carriage crash last time and yells at everyone to bring him water and good and just generally do stuff for him. But the Gelfling all just kind of awkwardly shut their doors and ignore him.

And also throw stuff at him.

-Gelfling closes door-

Chamberlain: “I see you! I SEE YOU!”

Chamberlain: “How could you? I protect you! YOU OWE ME!”

Aw shit again, news of the Skeksis drinking people has spread here already and the Gelflings have no patience for Skeksis anymore.

And since Chamberlain keeps hanging around screaming instead of leaving, they start throwing rocks and fruit and possibly poo until he runs away.

Hey remember how you let Rian get away, Chamberlain? You goofed. You done goofed.

Scroll-Keeper: “The General and the Ritual Master have returned. ...Without the promised volunteers.”

Ornamentalist: -laughing- “The Emperor won’t liiiiike that!”

Scroll-Keeper: -chuckling- “No.”

-both start cackling-

I love how shitty the Skeksis are to each other. 

Some of the promised volunteers that escaped somehow made it back to the castle BEFORE the General and Ritual Master and have been spreading the truth.

Oh, hm. So you can dreamfast with someone. But you can’t then dreamfast the memories you saw in a dreamfast. So the escaped tribute basically has to go ‘yeah but just trust me, I saw what I saw in the psychic vision with the guy who is supposedly has brain sick’

But a lot of things are added up. 

The death of Mira. The weird sudden calling for volunteers. The death of the All-Maudra. 

A guard: “Yes! Spread the word and gather arms. We take this castle this very night!”

I cherish your optimism, guy.

It’d be a huge blow against the Skeksis but it feels doomed to fail. Plus one of the guards wasn’t as enthusiastic about the idea as the others and is probably going to snitch.

Oh dang I was ready to say that none of the new landscapes really match up to the bubblegloop swamp from the movie but the sweeping view of the Crystal Desert was pretty beautiful, if not as lively.

Kylan, I think: “They say the sands never stop shifting. Crossing the desert on foot will be as easy as walking on water.”

That’s that good shit.

Naia: “Must you complain about everything?”

Gurjin: “Its not my fault that everything is terrible.”

I appreciate you, Gurjin.

Uh oh. It seems like everything has finally hit Brea and she’s having a melancholy moment.

Brea: “I keep thinking that if I turn my head fast enough, I’ll see my mother’s face. Or if I listen hard enough, I’ll hear her voice. .. But I won’t.”

Brea: “I should be there to bury her!” Ooooof. Bad news there, Brea.

Deet suggests that they do their own ceremony there and Brea says that would help.

Deet: “Thats what friends do. They help.”

Brea: -sad hug, sobs- “You’re a true friend!”

Aww.

(Support Conversation rank A. After the time skip, they will be married)

Archer Ur Ru carefully rolling up stuff in a leaf for eats.

Aughra: “LONG NECK THERE YOU ARE”

Archer: -spills his entire lunch, sighs-

So Aughra’s problem is that she understands the situation now and all the pieces on the board but not how everything is going to end. There are many possible outcomes and she’s got to try for the best one.

I’ll say that two gelflings left finally healing the crystal cannot have been the Golden Ending. Maybe try harder, Aughra.

Archer: -seeing where she’s going with this- “And where does my path lead?”

Aughra: “Into the sands to face the Hunter”

Archer: … -sighs- “I cannot defeat my dark half”

Aughra: “You will find a way. But not without sacrifice.”

Holy shit Aughra are you telling him to kill himself? That’s kinda dark.

I mean, Skeksis and Ur Ru are quantum linked or whatev. Archer could just. Injure himself to the point that the Hunter can’t leap and gambol about the treetops anymore. Or ask Aughra to.

Aughra: “Get a move on. You Mystics are not known for your swift speed.”

Geez, Aughra. You dump a task like this on a guy and then call him a slowpoke.

Archer: “Will we meet again?”

Aughra: -hesitates for like a minute- “Some things even Aughra cannot see.”

Archer: -sighs harder-

And then she’s off to Stone-in-the-Wood to prevent a terrible mistake apparently. Hope it wasn’t throwing produce at Chamberlain because ship sailed.

Rian: “Life and death are a circle… not a line. There is no end, no beginning. Today, our beloved All-Maudra has returned to Thra. Though we cannot be there to guide her essence home… we will sing her memory across the wind. I will bind your words into a dream-stitch. All those who find this seed will know her as you did. Speak for the dead. Share your best memory that we may all know her goodness.”

I don’t have snark. This is just a beautiful ritual.

Now Rian is having feelings about his dad.

Like I get he’s feeling like his father actually loved him because he died for him but. C’mon. I feel like we’re sweeping the bad parenting under the rug.

“I love you. Get out of bed.” Wow. The All-Maudra was something.

‘When I looked at her eyes as the light faded out of them I realized that ‘I love you’ actually meant ‘I love you’’

Hup is a good singer.

Rian, why are you and Deet staring at each other longingly across a funeral fire?

Seladon: “I loved you with all I had” -sets her mom’s body on fire- “I’m sorry it was not enough.”

Mm. This is some contrast. In rites.

Oh the dream-stitch is just like flying off into the sky. That’s neat. 

OH THE MUTINY IS NOT GOING WELL AT ALL

Gourmand: “I hope you taste better than you fight”

GOD DAMN

Okay the Stonewood Maudra Fara has shown up to Ha’ra. 

oh geeez

Maudra Fara revered the All-Maudra so hearing she was killed going against the Skeksis makes her go ‘cool imma avenge her’

Also, this: Maudra Fara: “Several of your paladins are travelling the land telling a different story.”

Seladon is handling this as a reasonable individual. 

Fara: “You speak madness”

Seladon: “I SPEAK… as the All-Maudra.”

Chamberlain comes home and finds the castle in shambles. And Skeksis freely peeing and farting on everything. 

Seems like they just go full slob when they don’t have to put on a good face for the Gelflings.

Chamberlain is pretty disgusted at how gross things have gotten since he’s been gone but he perks up when he thinks he’ll be able to curry favor with the Emperor.

But nope. The big wild party is still going on and the Skeksis are binging on essence and foods. So the Emperor is feeling pretty good.

Gourmand: “Don’t worry, we kept the podlings.”

Chamberlain has to be a buzzkill.

Chamberlain: “I bring terrible news! Cease all merrymaking!”

Emperor: “I see you standing there but no Rian. What do you have to say before I punish you for your continued FAILURE?”

Shouldn’t’ve interrupted his hedonism, Sil.

Chamberlain: -had fruits thrown at him-

Chamberlain: “I faced grave danger!”

Chamberlain tries to argue that hey the open and rising revolt by gelfling clans is a Bad Thing Actually but the Emperor is feeling too buzzed.

-everybody laughs in Chamberlain’s face-

Emperor: “The General set us free! Never again will the Skeksis have to bear the burden of pretending to care for these useless Gelfling.

But who will make your food or- oh right, they’re going to enslave the podlings.

General: ‘HEY I HAVE AN IDEA LETS DRINK ALL THE STONEWOOD’

Everyone: ‘WOO THE PARTY NEVER STOPS’

And then they make fun of how much the Chamberlain stinks because he had fruit thrown at him.

They’ve been peeing on the furnishing and they tell Chamberlain to go take a bath.

I’d feel bad for him but y’know.

OH SHIT TAVRA, THE COOL SISTER

OH SHIT SHE HASN’T HEARD ABOUT HER MOM

Tavra: “Then she died doing what she had to do. What she always did. Protecting Gelfling”

Ehhhhh, speak well of the dead I guess.

Ok so i guess the rest of the Maudra have shown up. Except Maudra of the Grot who just sent the piece of crown back. Its just too bright up there.

So the Grot, the Vapra, the Spriton, the Sifa, the Dousan all support Seladon’s inauguration but the Stonewood and Drenchen withhold. 

This has apparently never happened.

Fara: “The All-Maudra has not always been a Vapra”

Fara: “A war is coming and Seladon is not the one to lead us”

Yup thought something adjacent to this would happen.

Seladon: “It was my mother’s crown. It belongs to me!”

Fara: “I would have followed her into a nest of spitters, but not you!”

gasp 

Fara: “I challenge Seladon for the Living Crown”

Oh snap

“We cannot challenge the Skeksis!”

Fara: “They are few, we are many.”

The dramatic irony here is palpable. 

Seladon: “Maudra Fara has invoked a challenge. It is her right to choose the nature”

Fara: “Trial by air”

-gasps-

A Maudra: “Tests and trials are the Skeksis ways, not ours!”

Apparently Seleadon is a contender being smart and careful but Fara is pretty confident.

Fara: “I will take no pleasure in besting you…. Childling.”

Wow Fara gonna condescend on top of it all. 

And back to the desert. 

The Dousan! The desert gelfling! Apparently they barely leave the desert and are forbidden from being castle guards for some reason!

He seems fun.

Dousan Guy: “To the great All. May the dead become one with Thra again. May we feel their tears in the rain. And their warmth in the suns. Though they are gone, they remain with us still.”

Brea: “That was beautiful.”

Dousan Guy: “But a trifle compared to your emotion.”

Oh they got the dream-stitch thing. 

Ah. Reky’yr. Sandmaster. 

Rek’yr is a smooth guy. He’s giving Brea a bone protection charm and offering to carry the group across the desert.

He’s the most helpful Gelfling they’ve met so far.

Oh. Until they mention they’re going to a place considered a cursed ruin and then he gets cold feet.

But Brea shames him into it by calling him a coward.

Brea: “You don’t trust Rek’yr?”

Rian: “Well for starters. He’s a Dousan.” Wow. Ok. Racist. “They’re obsessed with death!”

Brea: “They’re not obsessed.”

Rian: “HE GAVE YOU BONES”

I really hope Rian is proven wrong in his kneejerk suspicion. 

And then Naia, Gurjin, and Kylan peace out to join the spreading the news group of the plot. They recognize that they’re secondary cast and there’s no room for them in this subplot.

BOLD GURJIN! THANK YOU RIAN YOU’VE DONE SOMETHING GOOD AND GIVEN HIM HIS ADJECTIVE!

Hunter: -spots the party on the flying thing- “So. The hunt continues.”

Okay so trial by air is like a flying race. And everyone telling Fara not to be afraid of Seladon because she’s just a child makes me think that its not going to be so easy.

And that Fara is going to be for a rude awakening.

Oh god. Seladon is late to the challenge because she’s been dressing Extra Extra. Like a Skeksis.

I really can’t overemphasize how Aesthetic Seladon has suddenly become. 

And then she’s like ‘hey fara take the crown i don’t even want it its nasty’

Fara: ‘u wot m8’

Seladon: ‘Its cool i made a cooler, gother crown. Its much cooler.’

Fara is mighty pissed at this but Seladon just grabs her and throws her across the room and breaks the Living Crown with her.

Seladon: “Gelfling turning on Gelfling. We stand on the brink of anarchy. Bow before me, Maudra Fara. And together we will prove our loyalty to the Skeksis and snuff this fire before it burns us all.”

Fara: “As you burned your own mother.”

Damn Fara is good at burning Seladon.

And Seladon can only go ‘yeah well gtfo my city’

You know I was wondering how the trial by air would be portrayed. Flying gelfling is well within the special effects that they’ve already shown but a race would be different. But Seladon decided ‘screw that actually’

Ah well.

And then Fara and the Drenchan Maudra peace out.

And the other Maudras are like ‘geez Seladon geez’

Seladon: “And what will you three choose. Order or chaos?”

A Maudra: “This is not the gelfling way!”

Seladon: “It. Is. Now.”

Oh you three are going to bow? You cowards.

This is the Age of Resistance, not the Age of Follow Seladon She Has Some Good Ideas.

Well I thought that the clans were in revolt but it seems mostly just the Drenchen and the Stonewood. And standing alone against the Skeksis and the other clans is not going to go well for them. 

In general, the feeling ‘oh we should definitely trust our autocratic overlords they know whats best’ has been panning out really bad.

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 11

Literally and metaphorically, everything is on fire. Also newsflash: I’m still not over Rhuidean.

Chapter 11: The Death of Adrin

Who’s Adrin?

The Maidens seem to think Rand needs to be beaten again, and Aviendha is carrying rocks. So everything’s off to a good start.

Aviendha doesn’t understand why clouds are a bad thing. Someone introduce this girl to the whole world of pathetic fallacy. She also doesn’t understand why wetlanders complain so much. Someone introduce this girl to London.

There had to be some hidden honour in it. Perhaps the wetlanders exposed their weaknesses to their companions as a means of offering friendship and trust. If your friends knew of your weaknesses, it would give them an advantage should you dance the spears with them. Or, perhaps, the complaining was a wetlander way of showing humility, much as the gai’shain showed honour by being subservient.

She had asked Elayne about her theories and had received only a fond laugh in return. Was it some aspect of wetlander society that she was forbidden to discuss with outsiders, then?

Ha. It seems a bit silly, sure, but it’s not all that unrealistic. Some elements of culture and behaviour are relatively easy to explain or understand. Some, though, can be entirely unnoticed by those within that culture, and appear completely and inexplicably bizzare to those outside, and it’s all but impossible to adequately explain. So you can actually end up with something like this – an ‘outsider’ like Aviendha coming up with very defined, neat theories…and the people she’s theorising about looking at her like ‘what are you even talking about’. Because to them, it’s not even a part of their ‘culture’ the way something like, I don’t know, how to celebrate certain holidays would be. It’s not something they’d think about, or consider as a defining attribute, much less as something that serves a particular purpose. So when an ‘outsider’ does try to posit an explanation – or even ask a question – it can seem ridiculous. And yet when you are the outsider, it’s anything but. Culture is fun like that.

I live in a place where complaining is absolutely an element of ordinary conversation. We’re known for it and it’s weird once you’re aware of it. And then we start complaining about the manner in which other cultures complain, because as it turns out there are specific formulas for how a complaint should look. Except no one can actually explain what those are, and would look at you very strangely if you were to ask, because what do you mean we complain in a specific way? Huh?

I also lived in a weird multicultural bubble for a few years and oh man some of the conversations about ‘why do you do X’ and the responding bewildered looks. Not to mention the awkward dances that happened every time two people tried to greet each other.

So anyway, I’ve always rather enjoyed watching Aviendha’s attempts to figure out wetlanders. It’s also a good way to implicitly reflect back on or convey information about the Aiel, and to add some variety to the other characters’ thoughts about how strange and incomprehensible the Aiel are.

She still can’t figure out what the Wise Ones want from her, though.

She was growing frustrated – not with the Wise Ones, but with herself.

Except, Aviendha, maybe you need to grow frustrated with the Wise Ones, and trust in yourself. I think that’s very probably the point.

The Wise Ones were angry at Aviendha for not “learning quickly enough.” And yet they didn’t teach her. They just asked those questions. Questions about what she thought of their situation, questions about Rand al’Thro or about the way Rhuarc had handled meeting with the Car’a’carn. 

Aviendha couldn’t help feeling that the questions were tests. Was she answering incorrectly? IF so, why didn’t they instruct her on the proper responses.

Because she isn’t answering incorrectly. It seems like they’re basically treating her as a Wise One – asking her questions a Wise One would be expected to answer or deal with – and she’s not seeing it, and that’s the problem. She can answer their questions and understand these situations, but she doesn’t…see herself as a Wise One? So she thinks she is being punished for some fault, when really she’s being punished because she’s allowing herself to be punished. They’re trying to get her to…see herself as a Wise One, I think. Is that the deal here? That seems to be the deal here.

Aviendha wished for her spears back so that she could stab something.

Fair.

“Adrin?” one door guard asked his companion. “Light, you don’t look well. Truly.”

Uh oh.

The man reached up suddenly, scratching at the skin of his temples.

Beetles?

His eyes rolled up in his head and his fingers tore gashes in his flesh. Only, instead of blood, the wounds spat out a black charcoal-like substance.

That might even be worse than beetles. Though I suppose from the perspective of the one dying, it probably makes very little difference. But if we’re trying to measure entropy here (shut up, I’m a scientist), this is definitely worse, because there isn’t even a form this time. No order, just chaos and black fire.

Or black boiling tar. That works too. Um…yikes?

Aviendha shrugged off her shock, immediately weaving Air in a simple pattern to pull the unaffected guard to safety.

I kind of love how Aviendha is so good in a crisis when it involves someone else, but when it involves her she opens a gateway into a snowstorm on another continent.

“We…we’re being attacked!” the man whispered. “Channelers!”

This is like the ‘bloody ashes’ thing: seeing ‘channelers’ used this way is disproportionately jarring. It’s a small thing really, just a slight shift in phrasing, but it stands out and throws me out of the story more than some other – arguably larger – changes have.

I certainly wouldn’t say it’s an unforgivable error – after all, I tend to use ‘channelers’ fairly frequently because it’s a convenient noun, and there’s no particular reason the characters wouldn’t – and I don’t actually have a problem with it. At least, not in the sense that it’s something I would criticise, were I to focus on examining the differences between the authors. But I also can’t help noticing it, and so it becomes an interesting look at how such very small changes in diction or phrasing can stand out so dramatically. Maybe it’s because they’re easier to quantify?

I do wonder, though, why certain little things like this weren’t flagged in the line- or copy-editing stages. Again, not because it’s actually a big deal, but because it would help smooth out the overall ‘feel’ of the transition. As is, this kind of minor-but-noticeable change could essentially prime readers to be more wary of and less sympathetic towards other changes.

And now the house is on fire.

Magic fire.

Aviendha tries to smother it, because of course her first instinct would not be to dump precious water all over it.

In the distance, she heard people – perhaps the guard among them – calling for buckets.

Buckets? Of course! In the Three-fold Land, water was far too valuable to use in fighting fires. Dirt or sand was used. But here, they would use water. Aviendha took several steps backward, searching out the curling river that ran beside the manor.

She deserves a lot of credit for this. Not everyone can take in, consider, and implement new information in the middle of a crisis. She’s just seen a man turn into a pile of black tar, and now she’s facing a fire and people inside are screaming, and she has the presence of mind not just to start dealing with the problem but to take in a suggestion as indirect as a distant call for buckets. They’re not even talking to her. And it’s not something she’s familiar with at all, this idea of using large amounts of water to fight fire. Many people would struggle even if they were directly told ‘use the river’, just because of the way panic usually works. It tends to narrow a person’s focus and ability to perceive – or rather, to analyse and interpret – information external to that narrowed focus, as well as causing people to either freeze or else fall back on familiar or instinctive patterns. So in the face of a burning building – and also, you know, creeptastic signs of the end of the world – the ability to hear a distant shout for buckets, make the connection from that to ‘oh, okay, people here would pour water on a fire rather than dirt and sand’, and then go ‘ah, yes, there’s a river nearby, I could use that’ and then to immediately start doing it is to be commended.

Aviendha wove a massive column of Air and Water, pulling a spout of crystalline liquid from the river and drawing it toward her. The column of water undulated in the air like the creature on Rand’s banner, a glassy serpentine dragon that slammed against the flames.

Of course, it helps that she is powerful enough to literally grab a river and throw it at the house.

Then there was a sudden explosion as another column of water burst from the river and slammed into the fire. […] The other column was being directed by weaves she could not see, but she did notice a figure standing in a window up on the second floor, hand forward, face concentrating intensely. Naeff, one of Rand’s Asha’man.

Cooperation! Unspoken cooperation, even. He saw what she was doing, and immediately joined in, and together they’ve put out the fire. An apt metaphor, all things considered.

Rand comes out of the now-damp mansion and goes full-on ‘old man yells at cloud’.

No, really.

He stared at the sky, shaking his fist. “I am the one you want! You will have yoru war soon enough! […] I will stop you” Rand roared, causing calls of fright from both servants and soldiers. “Do you hear me? I am coming for you! Don’t waste your power! You will need it against me!”

It keeps hurting those near him, and he is left…well, okay, I was going to say ‘unscathed’ but I think we can all agree that is patently false. Still… how many have to pay with me? Others always had to, even when he tried to pay alone. Or The whole world paid a price for his existence. He would die for it, but the whole world paid. Those thoughts have been with him for so long now, and it only gets worse. It’s a large part of why he’s so determined to turn himself to steel – not just so that he can do what needs to be done, but so that he can watch as others pay what he sees as the price of his existence.

And yet, the Dragon is one with the land and the land is one with the Dragon, and I have to wonder if these kinds of happenings are in some way worsened by the presence of a increasingly dark ta’veren.That would be beautifully and horribly ironic.

“Yes,” Aviendha said in response to the man’s question, “it happens often. More often around the Car’a’carn than other places, at least.”

Yeah. So. Feedback loop of tragic irony it is, then.

The Domani soldier is suddenly not so sure about his life choices.

And yet, through her bond with Rand, she felt no urgency. In fact…it seemed that he had gone back to rest! That man’s moods were becoming as erratic as Elayne’s during her pregnancy.

I’m not sure ‘erratic’ is quite the word I would use, though it’s not completely wrong. But this reminds me of when he killed the Asha’man in Far Madding and told Min about it and she was shocked and worried about how little she could feel through the bond. He has tried so hard to suppress his ability to feel. Added to that, this is his reality. He can’t let himself panic about things like this happening, because his entire focus is on Tarmon Gai’don. That’s all that matters.

Wow, Merise, condescending much?

“Your skill with weaves, it is impressive. If we had you in the White Tower, you’d have been an Aes Sedai by now. Your weaving, it has some roughness to it, but you’d learn to fix that quickly enough if taught by sisters.”

Listen, Merise, she just saved you all from a burning building; I might respectfully suggest shutting the fuck up.

It would seem Melaine shares my thoughts.

“To think, how we once regarded them!”

Oh, how things have changed. This is one I’m looking forward to seeing when I finally get to reread, because it’s a complete shift over the course of several books, but we don’t know the Aiel as well when it begins. Thinking back to how Moiraine was received, and how the Wise Ones were first characterised, and then to Dumai’s Wells and the resulting chaos, and then to everything after, there is a marked change. And it’s one that lies close to the centre of Aiel identity, in the sense that their earliest self-knowledge is as a group of people sworn to serve the Aes Sedai. That’s one of the few things that carried through while almost everyting else changed, even if it was muted and the reason for it was unknown to all but the Wise Ones and the clan chiefs. Now, that tie is broken as well, and it all felt so…natural as it was happening. Which is kind of the point.

“You have such great talent, child.”

Aviendha swelled with the praise; from Wise Ones, it was rare, but always sincere.

“But you refuse to learn,” Melaine continued. “There isn’t much time! Here, I have another question for you. What do you think of Rand al’Thor’s plan to kidnap these Domani merchant chiefs?”

There’s definitely a strong implication here of ‘we have nothing more to teach you’. The next step is one Aviendha must take on her own, and they’re pushing her to do it, but she still sees herself as an apprentice, as beneath them rather than their equal. So we get this pattern of compliment, question, praise, punishment. Telling her she’s ready, asking her questions that should allow her to prove to herself that she’s ready, and then punishing her for not realising it.

“I think the Car’a’carn should have spoken in terms of offering protection – forced protection – for the merchants. The chiefs would have responded better to being told they were protecting rather than kidnapping.”

“They would be doing the very same thing, no matter what you call it.”

“But what you call a thing is important,” Aviendha said. “It is not dishonest if both definitions are true.”

Never underestimate the power of semantics.

Also, this is a point on which Wise Ones and Aes Sedai would agree, though no doubt both would vehemently deny the similarity.

“Regardless, [Rand] needs to be reminded. Again and again. Rhuarc is a wise and patient man, but not all clan chiefs are so. I know that some of the others wonder if their decision to follow Rand al’Thor was an error.”

“True,” Melaine said. “But look at what happened to the Shaido.”

“I did not say they were right, Wise One. […] They are wrong to question the Car’a’carn, but they are speaking to one another. Rand al’Thor needs to realise that they will not accept offence after offence from him without end.”

Yeah. I have wondered where this was going to go.

The relationship between Rand and the Aiel is fascinating because in some ways it’s one of the most simple; he fulfilled their prophecies, and they declared themselves to him, and they will follow him to the ends of the earth, knowing he will destroy them. They’ve been arguably his most loyal followers and allies, dependable and competent and sure, asking nothing.

Except. They haven’t asked nothing. They just haven’t asked for anything in a standard ‘goods for services rendered’ kind of way. He didn’t buy their loyalty, he earned it through prophecy and effort and identity. But with that loyalty comes an understanding of reciprocity. They know that he will take you back, and he will destroy you, and instead of protection or riches or land, they want his acknowledgment and understanding. They want him to know them as his blood; they want him to understand what their loyalty to him means, and to understand the sacrifice they are making.

He understood, at the time, the importance of what he was doing. Not in its entirety and not in detail, certainly, but he knew ‘he needed people he could trust, people who followed from something besides fear of him, or greed for power’. He knew that would take something more than conquest, knew there was something different, something important, about this kind of loyalty. And as that progressed, he came to know them – not as well as they may have liked, perhaps – and thought about how he didn’t want to break them.  

Even later, after returning from Dumai’s Wells and facing the doubt of the clan chiefs, he knew the importance of maintaining this relationship, and understood some of the nuance of it: “Does it matter, so long as they obey?” “It matters,” Rand said. When the Maidens beat him, he understood why, even if it was difficult for him to actually accede to their demands. He did, for a time, and has acknowledged his obligation to them, as the only son of a Maiden any of them has known. And he has walked that line of balance and reciprocity.  

There has been a balance between loyalty and respect and duty and use, and it’s been a more complex dynamic than it appears on the surface, but it has never seemed truly in doubt.

But sometime between “the fifth, I give you” and “you are what I say you are,” Rand let that tenuous balance slip.

So much is fraying, and so much is held on the verge of falling apart, but this is something Rand cannot afford to lose. He cannot take the Aiel for granted, because as Aviendha says, they will not accept offence after offence. There is a breaking point somewhere, and he is dangerously close to finding it. But it has been too easy for him to slide into taking them for granted, precisely because they ‘followed him from something besides fear of him, or greed for power’. Others, he has to manipulate or command or threaten or coerce, as well as keep a close eye on. But the Aiel… they are there, and competent, and dependable. And fated to be his and to be destroyed. So, while he’s been hardening himself and withdrawing from feeling lest it break him, and trying to care about nothing except Tarmon Gai’don, it has been too easy to let his side of the obligation drop. Because his payment to them is made almost entirely of sentiment and understanding and empathy: things of which he is now barely capable.

I love how this is done, and how it’s timed, and how it plays into watching Rand spiral towards what seems to be a true low point on the horizon.

Did Rand al’Thor know how hard the Wise Ones worked behind his back to maintain Aiel loyalty? Probably not. He  saw them all as one homogenous group, sworn to him, to be used. That was one of Rand’s great weaknesses. He could not see that Aiel, like other people, did not like being used as tools.

Yes, though I’m not sure it’s that he can’t see it so much as he won’t let himself. In part it’s to protect himself: he can’t be hurt by destroying something if he doesn’t care about it. And he did start to care about the Aiel, and the individual clan chiefs, and various others, but he didn’t want to let himself because he has known from almost the beginning that it is fated to end in sorrow. It’s also iin part because he is using everyone and everything, including himself, and he has reached a point where he can’t…pull back from that single focus enough to show compassion.

It’s a mess.

The clans were far less tightly knit than he believed. Blood feuds had been put aside for him. Couldn’t he understand how incredible that was?

I really, really love this. Because she’s absolutely right – it is incredible. But also…he is not Aiel, in truth, and as such cannot truly understand. He knows what he’s done, but it isn’t quite the same. There was a moment, when he brought water to the Waste – not at Alcair Dal, or by accident in Rhuidean, but when he made Rhuidean’s fountains run, just before leaving the Three-fold Land. In that moment, there was the sense of a true understanding, even if he didn’t consciously acknowledge it as such.

He saw their history through the eyes of Aiel, in Rhuidean, and while it certainly had an impact on him, it was not the same impact it would have had on one born and raised Aiel. He knows he is the son of a Maiden, and knows his obligation to them, but it is a struggle for him to accept it. He knows he has ended blood feuds and brought the clans together for the first time in memory, but he doesn’t feel it the same way they do. He changes the Aiel, and has felt sorrow at the knowledge of what the prophecies say he will do to them, but the changes he as wrought are not centred on him, and on the core of his self and identity, the way they are for the Aiel. It’s like…loking at something directly and seeing it at an angle, or through a filter.

So no, he can’t exactly understand how incredible it is. The problem, though, is that he has stopped appreciating it. Stopped acknowledging it.

Melaine stared blindly at the broken building. “A remnant of a remnant,” she said, as if to herself. “And if he leaves us burned and broken, like those boards? What will become of the Aiel then? Do we limp back to the Three-fold Land and continue as we did before? Many will not want to leave. These lands offer too much.”

Aviendha blinked at the weight of those words. She had rarely given thought to what would happen after the Car’a’carn was finished with them. […] But a Wise One could not just think of the now or the tomorrow. She had to think of the years ahead and the times that would be brought upon the winds.

A remnant of a remnant. He had broken the Aiel as a people. What would become of them.

This is lovely.

I know I say this a lot, but the way the entire story of the Aiel is done, through past and present and now hinting at future, is beautiful. A nation in exile since the Breaking of the World, fine threads of immutable identity against a history of constant change and breaking and resilience and loss. A story that continues, as the Aiel are once more without a true home and without a concrete foundation, finding a new purpose and yet trying to hold to who they are.

He broke them by uniting them.  By fulfilling their prophecy and reminding them of who they once were. That alone is such a wonderfully bittersweet way to bring a story full-circle. Yet it doesn’t end there at all. It’s like the idea of cyclical time and a Wheel of Ages, but in microcosm, repetition and variation shown through the history of a nation.

Where do they go from there? What will become of the Aiel? But there are no beginnings or endings, and this is a question that has been asked before throughout their past and present. Where do they go, what do they become, who are they?

And they keep coming back to those questions even as they move forward, as they always have, changing and seeking a place. A place of safety, a place of belonging, a place of purpose – the nature of the place changes, but the sense of seeking remains.

So they become characterised by exile and change, and beneath that a single note of determined identity – “I am Aiel!”

Part of what I love about it, I think, is how it’s just off-centre in terms of the main focus of the story. It’s ongoing – and has been since at least the Breaking of the World – but most who are not Aiel do not even see it. It’s an epic story in the true sense of the word, and it’s so central to the lives of so many, but this story is not their story. Not theirs exclusively, though they play a crucial and integral role. So that adds to the bittersweet and almost...ironic...nature of their story: a story of identity, largely unseen. 

I also like how Aviendha is now privy to this much more direct conversation, and these deeper questions and worries. She is one of the Wise Ones now – or will be, soon – and these are now her issues to think about, rather than something to be discussed only by the Grown Ups. Not only that, but Aviendha’s unique place as liaison between cultures, and the way her own character growth and struggle with identity parallels that of her people, puts her in an excellent position to be the character to consider this.

One day, I will stop butchering sentence structure.

Another thought occurred to her as she pushed that one away – a treacherous one. A thought of Rand al’Thor, resting in his room. She could go to him… No! Not until she had her honour back. She would not go to him as a beggar. She would go to him as a woman of honour.

Which is entirely understandable, and even admirable. But also frustrating. You could…oh I don’t know…talk to him? “Hey, Rand, you know I love you and I want us to spend time together but there’s also some shit I need to figure out first.” And then they could talk candidly about the things they’re struggling with and help each other and eat chocolate cake with sparkly rainbow icing and sing happy songs. Right.

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