#i think the basic crops will be just fine at 2 plots. 1 plot is already great. doing decent in contests 👍

[risingsunresistance]

the garden update absolutely is not making me any money bc of the way i'm playing it right now, focusing solely on upgrades and finishing requests, but Oh My God The Levels. i already leveled up again today. i'm halfway to lv45 now

[belovedwhore]

pretty boy pt 2

ethan landry x reader

warnings: little bit of plot, smut obv, fingering, “dry” humping, ethan lowkey sub

notes: here’s a part 2, it’s high key shit but imma post it anyways, this will prolly be a series of the reader basically hooking up with ethan since he’s all virgin and innocent etc so they’ll always be smut and sex eventually, just building up to it

as always lmk if you like it and if there’s anything else you’d like me to write abt ethan i am open to prompt suggestions

pt 1 , pt 2 , pt 3 , pt 4 , pt 5 , pt 6

————————————————————————

after successfully sneaking out of the room and rejoining the others you all left the party. strolling on the sidewalk alongside chad and mindy you realized that sam, tara’s sister, had joined our group during some point in the night and her and tara were screaming at each other at this moment. the argument got cut short as a group of girls walked by sam, one throwing her drink on her along with a string of rude, degrading remarks regarding her theorized part in the woodsboro murders. time to go fucking home you thought. after what felt like forever you guys arrived to the apartment where you all decided to sleep. mindy and anika were sleeping on the couch together and sam was gonna room with their roommate quinn, leaving you and tara in her bedroom and chad and ethan in sam’s. as the two of you went into the room to change into comfier clothes you filled her in our the events of your nights.

“wait you’re telling me the whole time you were gone you were hooking up with ethan,” tara asked truly shocked.

“yes i’m just as surprised as you are,” you laughed pulling on the sleeveless white crop top to go with your pink pajama shorts.

“and i also have a favor to ask t.”

“oh god what is it,” she answered curiously.

“will you share a bed with chad so i can share one with ethan please please pleaseeee,” you begged playfully on your knees, “cmon i know you’ve liked chad for a while now now’s your chance.”

“oh yea like this is about me and not your desperate desire for dick.”

“hey the heart wants what it wants,” you shrugged.

“fine. go over to sams room and send chad over and please try not to be loud,” she gave in.

“thank you thank you thank youuuuu,” you exclaimed pulling your friend into a hug.

“yea yea get outta here sex demon,” she playfully shoved you off.

you left tara’s room and crossed the hall, letting yourself into sam’s room as you flung the door open to find the two boys sitting on the bed together.

“bye chad you’re sleeping in tara’s room,” you smiled waving goodbye.

“huh” he questioned.

ethan simply looked at you dumbfounded.

“you heard me the first time now love you bye,” you chirped as you held out the door for him.

“yea fuck you,” he chirped back leaving while flicking you off.

after he left you closed the door, locked it, and jumped into bed alongside ethan who was already bright red blushing.

“hey pretty boy.”

“h-hi.”

he was still nervous around you as if you didn’t cum all over his fingers and he didn’t cum all over your stomach.

“you don’t have to be so shaky you know, i think we’re past all that after tonight,” you said, “are you like this everytime you hookup with someone?”

“I’ve never hooked up with anyone before” he whispered almost to hide the fact.

“no way, you’re ripped and hot and your fingers work pretty good for someone who doesn’t get with other girls,” you inquired.

“tonight was my first type of anything, i’ve never had a,” he says hushed, “handjob before.”

“huh no wonder you came so much,” you spoke aloud.

“shhhh they might hear you,” he pleaded.

you climbed slightly on his chest, bringing your face to his now red with shyness, “you’re cute when you’re embarrassed, of course there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. i liked tonight.”

you kissed him passionately, slow while your lips molded together and this time his tongue parted your lips to enter into your mouth. you moaned into the kiss, for someone who’s never hooked up with anyone he was good. you felt ethan’s hands travel to the curve of your ass, massaging the skin as you could feel his growing member underneath your body. you traced his abs with your hand, running through the ridges and toying with his waistband. you felt his hips buck under your touch and the size of his dick was so enticing but you didn’t want to have sex with him now you wanted to show him other things.

you broke away from the kiss, looking at his big brown eyes licking your lips, “i wanna try something with you.”

you turned over so you were facing the wall and you could practically hear ethan’s confusion, not hearing his side of the bed shift.

“ethan c’mere right up behind me i’m sure you know how to cuddle someone,” you teased.

“oh yeah yeah i knew that,” he rambled while shifting closer to you in the center of the bed.

you felt him getting closer the closer until he stopped still an inch of two away. you backed up until your back was flushed against his own. you turned back and kissed him at the slightly awkward angle. as your lips were intertwined you brought his arm over your body and into your panties. you squirmed at the feeling of his fingers near you cunt once again as he shuddered from the feeling of touching your cunt again. breaking the kiss you looked down at the two hands massaging your mound,

“look ethan,” you whispered, “you gotta look.”

he obeyed your command as you felt his head next to yours as he assumed the same view as you. you guided his hand through your pussy, gliding through the folds as you grew wetter and around your clit as it grew swollen. wanting to leave him on his own you withdrew your hand and asked him, “do you wanna play with my pussy or should we just go to sleep.”

your dirty words really took a toll on his composure. he groaned in your ear hearing you words nodding against your skin.

“you have to say it ethan,” you turned breathless as he was still massaging your clit, “can’t hear you.”

“wanna-,” he whispered, “play with your pussy.”

“good-,” you began to speak but were interrupted by a gasp as his fingers entered your cunt suddenly.

he fingered you rapidly, his knuckles hitting the base of your cunt with his fingers curling to repeatedly press on your bundle of nerves. with every pound into your cunt you felt ethan’s length pressed against your ass, moved to the same rhythm as his fingers trying to relieve some pressure.

“slo-slow down, just a minute” you cooed into his ear.

“i can feel your dick rubbing against my ass,” you teased as you grinded on his strained length.

he grunted at the pressured contact finding him continuing the movements while you grinded on him.

“there you go, now you speed up, i speed up ok, at your pace.”

you felt him nod behind you, his head against your back as you helped him relieve pressure in his cock. you felt him beginning to work his fingers inside you again, slowly building up speed, so you picked up speed grinding harder and faster onto his dick. the two of you moaned and panted as the other pleasured you, fingers ramming into your cunt and your ass working his clothed cock in his boxers. you slightly lifted your leg allowing for ethan to hit a whole nother angle, slamming into your pussy at an unfathomed speed you froze and gasped as your climax quickly approached.

“oh my- ethan fuck-,” and just as the words left your mouth your orgasm completely ripped through you, shooting your release onto his fingers and inside your panties as you clenched around his fingers inside of you. you were breathless unable to let out a string of profanities only saying ethan’s name as you came shamelessly.

you turned over quickly kissing him passionately as you climbed onto his lap sitting right in top of his length, still sensitive from your orgasm you began to move forward and backwards on his crotch. his dick sat in between your fabric covered lips but it was enough for him to shake under your touch. he moaned as you ran over the length of his cock with your cunt, squirming above him as you were reaching another high of your own. you placed his hands on your hips, using them to guide your pace,

“use me pretty boy,” you urged, removing your hands from atop his own.

you felt his grip tighten on your hips and he began using his hands on your hips, moving you forwards and backwards. he grunted and bucked his hips up as your pussy worked his cock. seeing you on top of him, moaning as you aided him in his release and got yourself off was enough to make him cum right then and there. he started to move you faster on his lap, approaching his own orgasm. you could feel his dick twitching under you, sure to spill out a load very soon,

“i’m so close,” he grunted, now moving your hips fast over his cock, “i’m gonna-“

“wait,” you interrupted, “i-i’m almost there hold it, for me please.”

“i don’t- i can’t ,” he strained, eyes screwed shut.

you leaned down and pressed a quick, lingering kiss to his lips and moaned, “cmon pretty boy, for me.”

sitting back up he viciously nodded under you, his dick straining by the second as you worked for your own release. he whimpered under you, feeling the effects of withholding his orgasm. lucky for him you finally got closer and closer as your movements sloppied and you became a moaning mess.

“i’m- oh fuck,” you told him as you felt your second orgasm hit you like a truck.

“fuck me,” ethan nearly shouted, letting out a grunt as he came hard under you.

you squirmed on his lap as he convulsed beneath you, gripping your hips and holding you in place, continuing applied pressure to his cock while he orgasmed. he shook beneath you, eyes closed, forehead sweaty. after settling down he opened his eyes finally, still panting heavily after his intense orgasm. you climbed off his lap and lay beside him watching as he calmed down.

“you’re amazing,” he told you breathlessly, “just amazing.”

“and you’re still so pretty when you cum,” you smiled.

“shhh,” he shushed.

“oh please,” you scoffed as you hit him with a throw pillow.

[milestonekestrel]

ok fantasy AU again!!

by popular demand (I wanted to do this immediately after I posted the other drawings lol) I will share my little rambles!!

Long post… lots of yapping under the cut

Below is what I wrote for the backstory of the AU!

Fantasy world…. Yay..

So I’m making most of this up as I type. Be prepared for changes and mildly bad plot summaries 👍👍👍

Anyway.. Suze and Caz Are newlyweds, they live on the outskirts of a village. They’ve got a farm out there, since it’s a decent ways away, and it’s right up against a little forested overlook. Caz goes hunting there, and eventually attracts the attention of everyone’s favorite bird guy.. 

Caz constantly catches Billy staring from the overlook. Or like. Skulking around outside the farm. And eventually he starts disturbing the livestock / crops and just being generally unsettling. And also he could soon be a danger to Caz, Suze, or the town. So he gets to work on making more bolts for the crossbow to kill it. You need silver for creatures like these. 

First time he tries to shoot it while it’s on the overlook. He hits it (guess where lol) but it gets away. He tries to ambush it the next day, thing’s gotta eat, right? Well, it works. He even gets the upper hand, he’s got the crossbow against Billy’s chest and his finger on the trigger. Only.. he doesn’t take the shot. Something about the eyes. Strikingly.. familiar? It feels like he’s seen them before. 

He misses his chance </3 Billy kicks him away and runs off. Which is weird, actually. Should’ve killed him. Suppose he got lucky?

Anyway, he brings Harpies up to the preacher, in the town. Same thing he’s been told all his life, that they’re violent, godless creatures. Pests, really. Trying and failing to mimic humans. Same way all creatures like them do. 

Well, doesn’t exactly line up with what he saw. And, at any rate, he needs those bolts back. So he goes back into the forest, this time with a peace offering. He hadn’t seen it around for a few days, with any luck, it’ll be hungry. 

It won’t come out until he leaves, but he’s a stubborn man, so he keeps coming back. Eventually, he catches it taking the food. 

He gets lucky, again, that it understands him. And considerably less lucky that it can’t return the bolts, seeing as they’re still stuck in its flesh. 

Caz feels oddly guilty, and he tries and fails to help Billy out. He’s never been very good with medical issues, and he has no thing but his crossbow and whatever’s in the forest. 

So hes kinda like “well… my wife would do this way better than me.” 

And hes lucky she 1. Is very open-minded and 2. Loves him, because bro is straight up just dragging a Harpy back to their house. 

Well, it all works out. Caz gets his bolts back, Billy can fly again uninhibited (though now considerably more clumsily), and they also get a new farmhand, basically. Billy keeps showing up, still cautious, at first. But eventually he is kind of adopted into the household, and he helps out. Extra hands are always welcome, to be honest. 

Unfortunately, things don’t stay this good </3

Barclay is the preacher, and also Suze’s father. He’s never really gotten over the fact that Suze and Caz married, and though he thinks Caz is a “fine man,” he does NOT respect him. Caz gets into a bit of an argument with him, and Barclay grabs him. He’s not in physical danger, not really (Barclay couldn’t do shit to him 😭 Caz would fold him in five seconds flat) but Mr. Eavesdropper Billy does not understand that. He swoops in and attacks Barclay. 

Caz is able to pull him off and berate him for it, but the damage is done. Barclay is sprinting back to the town, howling about the McLeary’s Harpy. 

They high tail it back home, and have to really frantically fill Suze in. They’re trying to pack things up so they can leave, but Wuh oh, the townspeople gather outside the house before they can. Organized by Barclay, who demands Caz snd Suze hand over “that thing” so they can kill it. Obviously they’re not fond of the idea, and they’re trying to devise a plan to sneak away without having to go head to head with the entire town when they smell it.

Uh oh, that’s smoke. That is the smell of their house being lit on fire. 

They get smoked out, only to see the fire has spread to the grass around the house, dried from the sumner heat. So like, basically the entire farm is burning down, and panic ensues. Most of the townspeople flee, except for Barclay and a few others, who are still fixated on Billy. In the chaos, they try to nab him. But with the power of Caz’s crossbow and Suze’s fists (ong she is absolutely BEATING these people up rn. You go girl 😁😁) and also Billy being kind of scary to these people, they manage to fight their way out and run into the forest. 

Well, they survived that, but now they’re kn an involuntary hike with no plan and not nearly enough provisions. They can hunt, but like.. they don’t even know where they’re going.

It’s a long few weeks, out there, but then they meet a guy named Roy! Suze and Billy hide while Caz talks with him. It seems to be going fine, Caz can’t really get a read on Roy, whether or not he’s an enemy. 

But it’s largely okay, until he hears struggling in the direction of where the others are. Unfortunately, Roy knocks him out before he can do anything </3

He wakes up in a little cellar, like 80% sure he’s going to die. He hears voices, but he doesn’t recognize them. It takes him a little bit to realize Suze is there with him, just a ways away, and still unconscious. He can’t find Billy, so he’s assuming they’ve killed him. 

Roy shows up, eventually, and wakes Suzs. He starts basically interrogating them, like absolutely grilling them on why they’re here. 

He seems to think they’re harpy hunters, and it’s like??? Bro we thought YOU were a harpy hunter. 

Turns out, no! Billy’s fine, doing better, actually. He’s finally getting real medical attention. Roy drops the bad cop personality and welcomes them to Beira, a little hideout town where people and creatures who don’t want to be killed come and shelter. Sometimes they stay, sometimes they move on. 

That’s basically where it ends, for now! Eveyrone from the crew is here, some are monsters and some are people. Either volunteers, loved ones, or just people who don’t agree with the whole killing monsters thing and would rather stay here than anywhere else. 

I’ll talk more about like. People and roles and stuff later… been writing for a while.

Oh, also!! A little note, Caz does still have the silver bolts. They didn’t find them. To be honest, Caz has completely forgotten they exist. I’m sure it’ll be fine, though! Like. 90% sure they won’t come back to bite him. 

and my extra thoughts here:

[theomnicode]

How I write metas? A meta about metas

If this deconstruction post is going to be useful for any aspiring meta writer on this OPM fandom that I currently follow, then be my guest. :D

Warning: Semi-long post.

Step 1: Inspiration

Nope, really can't get into my head all the time to write stuff as much as I would love to but when I do, it's because I get a good inspiration from something. It does not really matter at this point if it's short or long, just the subject matters. Then if I get inspired, I will usually stew on that idea for a while and think about the points in the manga that fit.

Unfortunately inspiration does not strike all the time so there's always that. I'm going with the route that "you can't force inspiration to come to you, you want the inspiration to become you" or something like that. Take that with grain of salt, I just made it up on the spot.

Step 2: Practice

I've personally been writing fanfics since I was...a teen I believe and meta is just a subsection of writing school essays, except it's actually fun. So writing something has been quite a lot of work put behind it, but nobody says one cannot start from scratch today and the meta doesn't need to be immediately impressive, we're just writing it for fun yanno? For other fandom peeps who maybe wanna hear our thoughts. Just gotta start from somewhere yanno? My earlier metas are prolly a fair bit different than my current metas.

Like they say, practice makes perfect.

Step 3: The creative process

Ok so to the nitty gritty of the meta making... PLOT NO JUTSU!

I oftentimes either discuss the meta on discord channels with likeminded peeps and then start gathering some images from the manga to use as my images to enhance my point and make my texts also visually interesting to look at and make some clarifying points. I tend to find some good relative image to use as my first image because it'll show up in archive search like so:

It'll be easier to search for my metas even without searching for my tags from my archives if they look similar.

Next, I keep a folder for all my meta images in a neat pile and I use paint ms to cut me nice images to post into my meta and I also have cubari , the one site which hosts all the chapters so far, open where I can just grab images whenever. Basically any kind of image tool you got from paint to gimp to photoshop can help you crop images you want to use if you want to use images in your meta.

My brain can sometimes be pretty hard to follow apparently, so I do try to parse a lot when I write my texts and keep it somewhat coherent. Parsing information via the canon timeline can help form a coherent timeline to follow in a meta.

In general, you want your writing progress to be seamless and disturbance free creative process, not unlike drawing. Sometimes ambient music on the background can help focus on the actual meta writing process (currently listening to Ardenweald from WoW), which can take me from 1 hour to all the way to 5 hours in a single sitting, which is quite long but remember, tumblr drafts saves your progress even if you save it nowhere else and it's entirely possible to finish the thinking process another day when you have more time.

Sometimes I include links to either my own metas or some outside source, which I then briefly quote on my text, like in the Saitama mental health meta where I citate depression effects on memory recollection. The quote sources can also be stated at the very end like in a real essay, but to me personally I'm fine without the citations at the end, long as I state my sources and then put quotes into indented text.

Step 4: The writing itself

Paraphrasing helps make your text look coherent and easier to read to just about anybody, so avoid pure walls of texts. I usually write longer texts, but that is up to the writer to decide how short, long or how abridged they can/wanna make their work, which frankly is not one of my best skillsets lmao. Just gotta make sure to put that warning in the front if it's long post.

Nowdays, I also include chapter names and numbers about the relevant information I'm writing meta about in between () marks and itallics to further separate it from plain text, which might be helpful to people if they search for that specific plot point from the manga itself. Then if it's a particularly long meta, a tl;dr at the bottom if I can form a proper tldr.

Sometimes I also get struck by random thought and I just have to write it out haha. Sometimes I ask for aid and opinions on discord channels.

Any long metas should definitely have that "readmore" cutoff in the beginning, else entirety of tumblr or wherever you'll post the meta will hate you.

Step 5: Revision & Tagging

You can hold on from posting the meta the very same day and just keep it revised for a bit longer if you want to correct spelling mistakes or if you think you can maybe adds some more to it. Revision is just as important in writing meta as in writing something like fanfiction and I personally do a fair bit of both.

When tagging, I just use "opm meta" for all my opm related metas and then tag in fandom and characters that apply to the current meta and then some other related subjects like "mental health, character study" etc. I prolly haven't tagged my earlier metas that properly but eh... if you write on another platform and then copypaste it to tumblr, make sure that the plain text shows properly and doesn't create any weirdness.

Closing thoughts...that's about it folks, that's how I write meta and how I wrote this piece as well. Which took me roughtly 1hr 45mins to write down at my current writing speed but I've been thinking about this since yesterday haha.

Tl;dr: Inspiration, practice, creative process by saving images and thoughts as they go, writing and paraphrasing, revision and tagging properly.

[mallowstep]

Since they’re feral cats, they should be dying more than they do. So, what percentage (or any form of ratio) of kits do you think should actually make it to adulthood? And how many would die as kits vs dying as apprentices?

fsdjkl let's fucking go.

(i'm going to talk about this in more detail in this answer, but i have talked about this before in the inaugural post for wbcd)

warriors but cats die

this whole thing is going to be long so...cut.

so before i get too far into this, i should say, i don't have any kind of data to back up my decisions. i based this off my memory of the first arc and bluestar's prophecy, and i have spreadsheets that walked through it. i'm not sure if i'm going to share any of those, i just want to say that i've walked through this and i know it checks out.

anyway, we're focusing on kits and apprentices here, odds that were significantly less impacted by narrative strength. (e.g., deputies get age immunity, because they're supposed to die at around 3/series, which means that how old they are and how many warriors need to die doesn't really apply to them.)

so! one thing to keep in mind is...okay, how do i put this.

in tpb, a lot of kits were born. like, a lot. there's frostfur's litter, goldenflower's two litters, speckletail's litter, brindleface's litter, ferncloud's litter, and honestly probably more?

like, basically, the nursery is, "oh hey we need to give some apprentices for plot purposes" and fireheart sticks his head in for the first time in 3 months and finds out that there are like twelve new kits yeah.

anyway, there are basically 0 kits in tnp, which makes sense, and then a metric fuckton of kits in po3, which also makes sense. seriously, i believe we have berrypaw, hazelpaw, mousepaw, cinderpaw, molepaw, poppypaw, honeypaw, lionpaw, hollypaw, and jaypaw, with foxkit and icekit being apprenticed not long after bhm's warrior ceremonies, and possibly before.

that's 12 kits within like. nine months? it's so many kits.

anyway, oots doesn't count because the allegiances are copy-pasted and poppyfrost spends like two years in the nursery or something, i don't remember anything in avos except violetshine, and tbc is. weird.

but! you can directly blame thunderclan's overpopulation on po3. because basically all of those cats live to have kits. no, seriously. poppyfrost, cinderheart, and icecloud all have litters. that's three, i know, but it's, like, a lot? when you consider that ivy and blossom also have litters later, and older cats have litters (brightheart go retire already, but i do adore ambermoon's name), and then you get grandkits (ivypool's litter, sparkpelt's kits), you get the idea.

basically, we needed to kill of a bunch of the cats in po3 and we wouldn't have so many cats now.

but back on topic, what's my point? well, in order to keep high ratios of child death, we need high number of births. trust me, the numbers i'm going to lay out stabilize around about 20 warriors, which is appropriate, i feel, for warriors. that's enough to have a good number die in a battle dramatically, but not so many you don't know who they are. and you can tweak this as you desire.

so.

we look to average four kits per season. two of those kits will become apprentices, and 1.5 of those apprentices become warriors.

or, annually, 16 kits are born, 8 are apprenticed, and 6 become warriors. i worked in numbers, not ratios, because i knew how many new cats i needed.

i knew i wanted 2 of the leaf-fall/leaf-bare kits to become warriors, and 4 of the new-leaf/green-leaf kits to become warriors, and i wanted an average of one new litter per season.

working backwards, well, you see what i have.

(as a note, that means you see 2 new warriors per season in the colder months, and 1 new warrior in the warmer months.)

anyway.

these are still just averages.

for example, lion, jay, holly, fox, and ice make up a crop of leaf-fall/leaf-bare kits. that means only two of them should become warriors.

and let's be honest, you can kill foxleap and icecloud without changing anything. they're fine. it's fine.

isn't that so much better than having them just hang around to have more kids and perpetuate the problem?

so the kits → warriors numbers are definitely from that perspective.

the kits -> apprentices and apprentices -> warriors numbers become a narrative thing.

i know i want the lf/lb litters to have less survival rates, but i've given everyone equal kithood survival chances. yes, i could tweak it, but i don't want to redo the math. i'm bad at numbers.

also! apprentice deaths have way more weight. so even though it doesn't really make sense, there you have it: more apprentices die during new-leaf/green-leaf.

but! this is a narrative tool, so you can shove the deaths in wherever works.

so yeah, those are my numbers.

like i said, i've actually like, done a bunch of calculations and stuff to make sure this works out. i think i'm going to be redoing my "who lives who dies" stuff soon, because i'm not happy with how it went the first time, so if that's something people would be interested in seeing, let me know? and i'll share it.

<3

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales Lena Retrospective: The Other Bin of Scrooge McDuck! or Why Does Lena’s Darkest Hour Have a WACKKKYY Bigfoot Subplot?

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to Shadow Into Light, my look back the LIfe and Times of Lena Sabrewing. And we’re almost at the end of season 1. Woo-Ooo!. While i’ll have more season 1 episodes to cover for it’s sister arc, this is the last episode in this arc before the finale.. and i’m happy to repeat that next week will be DUCK WEEK as a result, finsihing up this arc and the Della arcs, as well as dipping into season 2 a bit for Lena’s return to celebrate the finale of this wonderful show. Full disclosure: I didn’t PLAN for it this way, I assumed the show would be ending in April, but sometimes serendipity just works out for you. So pitter pat er, let’s get at er.

 When we last left off Webby went on a wild duck chase for her grandma in England and 87!Webby befriended that version of Magica’s niece and told off a grown woman masquerading as a child because her husband likes being called “Daddy”. When we last left the plot proper though, we learned Lena just wanted to be free, and was willing to do whatever it took, and Magica was getting more abusive and more impatient. And if you thought the end to Jaw$! was pretty sad and dark.... strap in and steel yourself as we take a look at one of the darkest episodes in the series.

The opening sets the stage perfectly as we’re in Scrooge’s Room in the middle of the night, when Lena comes in.. with a knife. 

Naturally she dosen’t have baked goods, but instead is trying to cut the knife from around his neck while Magica won’t shut up while she works and keeps distracting her and BLAMING her for getting distracted. As for the knife it’s glowing and mystic because naturally, Scrooge doesn’t trust just ANY string but a magically woven one to hold his dime. Unlucky for her her girlfriend walks in at the exact moment she’s standing over her idol holding a mystical knife. I don’t think hallmark makes a card for “Sorry I was lying to you for months for my abusive aunt to earn my freedom and then looked like I was about to slit your uncle’s throat. I love you though. “ Yet. 

Scrooge starts to stir so Webby pulls Lena out of there and back to her room... and flashes a lamp on her to interrogate her. Lena is able to bounce back, asking “what were you doing there”. Which NORMALLY wouldn’t last more than two minutes.. but since Webby was there to get Drool samples, maybe she wants to clone him I mean she does know a guy I think the why is something we’d rather not know about, Webby herself was a bit suspcious and Lena uses her starkerish ways to say she’d also gotten into being a Scrooge fangirl. This also allows her to ask about the dime.. but since Scrooge never takes it off, that means they have no access and both Lena and Magica are stuck watching Webby’s long presentation on Scrooge’s life story. I mean personally i’d love to see this in it’s full probably 8 hour glory but I’m not trying to earn my freedom or stuck as a shadow monster. 

It was then when watching the episode this morning.. I was reminded it had a subplot. And the instant I saw Dewey folding Louie’s shirts... I started to piece together it was the bigfoot one. 

As you can tell i’m not a fan of this subplot. It has a good core idea, riffing on “kid takes home sasquatch films” like Cry Wilderness, Big and Harry and of course the one that started it all, Harry and the Hendersons. 

It’s just bogged down by one really obnoxious trait that trips it up and is in the wrong episode entirely. We’ll get to that first scene and the plot as a whole in a moment we just need the setup in the a-story first: Scrooge privately conferring with Beakly, which Magica snoops on. While Lena didn’t get far at all in cutting the rope of his dime, she still left a knick and the fact someone got into his house, let alone his bedroom and got THAT far, means SOMETHING bad is afoot. So while he looks for it he’s putting the dime in the Other Bin for safekeeping. We’ll find out what that is in moment. For now 

Let’s Get This Stupid Sasquatch Plot Over With

We open with Louie having conned Dewey into folding his stuff for the “world laundry folding record”. I mean.. it’s greasy but I gotta respect game here. And it’s not actively harming anyone. Though we do find out from an irate Huey he’s done far worse, if in a hilarious way with Louie’s Kids, his obviously fake charity he uses to get money out of Donald. And so far into it, as Huey hid something he had in the closet and offered to Fix Louie’s stretched out hoodie, the reason he was mad at Dewey, I didn’t get why I hated it before. I wondered why I was so annoyed. Same when Huey while carrying Louie’s hoodies hears his uncle looking for something in the mansion. 

Turns out he’s got a bigfoot hiding in their closet, that he found injured int he woods and brought back and all that good kid finding a mythical creature stuff. Dewey of course loves him on first sight and both want to keep him. But unlike most of these sorts of things where the creature’s damage to the room and what not is played off or the sibling doesn’t know, Louie does see it and isn’t happy about it and only agrees to hide the furry bastard because his brothers blackmail him with his schemes, and refuse to feel sorry for him as the creatures antics continue, including drinking Louie’s special pep and eating his snacks. 

And this is where one of the plots two major issues crops up: The way Dewey and Huey act. Both just ignore any damage wooly foot does, any discomfort to Louie and any obvious downsides of this. Now Dewey being clinginly attached to a majestic creature he found and wanting to keep it? Fits perfectly, and him being mean to louie fits because louie tricked him. Huey however.. is horribly out of character, as while I could see him being charmed at first and not wanting his uncle to hunt his new friend.. he’s not an impractical boy. He’d of tried to get his new friend to the woods first thing because it’s where he’s safest from scrooge and his foot has healed. He’s also a Woodchuck and I can’t imagine the JWG says it’s okay to keep a wild animal person as a pet basically. None of it fits him and makes him into a moron for an episode solely for the plot to work. This still could’ve worked but just have Huey and Louie BOTH get suspicious, Huey later, and find out Tenderfoot is actually Gavin, whose sapient, has a phone and simply is taking advantage of them. it would’ve gone the same way: if they told Dewey , Gavin would kill them, as he threatened to do if louie told his brothers. The Gavin part though is brilliant and a really nice twist I didn’t see coming when I first saw this.  

And it would’ve made the already great climax more interesting as Huey would’ve been forced to use the methods of Louie’s he’d derided to beat a far worse scammer. Instead it’s just Louie but he doesn’t take Gavin’s threats lying down.. and comes up with a clever way to use his scam against him. He shaves Gavin, hides the razor then claims to his brother that not being in the woods means he’s dying or some such thing. So our two idiots and our hero drag them out and while they run into scrooge, Louie still saves the idiots life by manipulating him with a schmaltzy speech and they let him go despite his best attempts to stay, with Louie getting a nice “I win in there”. Overall a bit of a mess with some good ideas, but Huey suddenly taking dum dum juice really drags it down.

So in any other episode this would’ve been fine whatever just mildly obnoxious. What makes it really,  unintentionally obnoxious.. is it’s in the middle of a tense, dark, horror story that dives into the depths of Lena’s soul and ends on a really horrifying note. Case in point Louie shaves a bigfoot and gets his victory over his nemesis.. after an utterly spellbindingly horrific nightmare by Lena, easily the most terrifying moment in the entire show. Followed up with a shaved bigfoot. 

Now I could buy Disney simply forced them to do this to keep things light... except Frank’s been pretty upfront about the production process, how Disney has treated him, what they’ve said no on. So if it had been something they were forced to do, he would’ve said it. No this is just not reading the room and not thinking things through and an otherwise stellar episode suffers for it.They could’ve waited till season 2 for it, they didn’t, and this was the result. It dosen’t ruin the rest of the episode it’s too good for it, but damn if it dosen’t create mood whiplash so severe I need a neckbrace. 

The Good Part

So back at the plot anyone actually cares about, we found out what the “other bin” is when Lena asks Webby: While the Money bin is for well, money and precious keepsakes, the other bin is the stuff too dangerous to keep out in the world. And this is the guy who kept a mystical gold eating dragon, a pirate ghost, and a medusa gauntlet in his garage, and we’ll learn after this ep also keeps a giant golden aztec golem in there. NONE of that was deemed dangerous enough to put in the other bin. So Webby is understandably hesitant.. and it gets a bit unsettling when Lena manipulates her into it. While she has in the past.. she usually just nudged Webby into something she’d do anyway at worst, or showed her an r-rated movie or something harmless. While she did use her as an in she clearly cares.. so it shows how horrifically desperate she’s got she’s willing to pressure her into going into Scrooge’s most dangerous and secure location, pointing out this may be her only chance to see the Dime. 

So she reluctantly agrees, and the two head into the garage. Turns out Scrooge keeps all his junk here for more reason than just shoving it wherever it’d go, as the entrance to the other bin is hidden here. The statue that gave Manny his head is actually a clue towards the painting hiding the second bin, which itself requires one of those things used to hold up ropes and such like you’d see at a movie theater... god I miss movie theaters.. I mean watching stuff in the comfort of home is very nice, but it was nice getting out, making a day of it. I mean their around, but I really don’t want to go till one till more vaccinations have happened and it’s a lot safer to go. Wait what were we talking about? Oh right gay ducks going into a horrifying nightmare vault. But yeah the theater thingy is the key, it unlocks the entrance and our heroines head inside. 

In contrast to the modern, buisnessy welcoming bin, the other bin is basically one giant vault/prison, with everything in it securely locked inside identical doored rooms. It’s genius as it is simple: Only 6 people have likely ever had access to this place: Scrooge, Beakly, Gyro, Duckworth and MAYBE the twins. Even Della and Donald being allowed down here is an unknown. The non-scrooge people are only because someone besides him needs to maintain it, keep any creatures fed, that sort of thing and he’d only trust his butler and his housekeeper, who are also both extraordinarily badass, to do so. Gyro is because someone needed to design the cells. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Quackfaster was a 7th since season 3 casts her as Scrooge’s magic expert and he’d likely need specific runes for specific cells. He’d want as few people down here as possible, and even fewer knowing. I’m sure Bradford knew, and i’m also certain it’s the one thing he never quibbled about the expense as while he hates what Scrooge stands for and tried to curb his “chaos” as much as possible.. this is doing exactly what Bradford likes: locking it away where it can’t hurt anybody. Plus quibbling about it might make Scrooge want to show it off to him and that’s.. that's’ a whole lotta nope in a 2 pound bag. 

So for once Webby is very hesitant and very cautious, though naturally Magica points out a door.. and Lena stupidly follows her advice as she knows her “aunt” is impulsive and has no regards for her safety. What did she think was going to happen? They instead find a unicorn.. or rather it’s angry murderous cousin the Sword Horse, which naturally tries goring them. I’d go with Spear Horse, but semantics. Point is Webby is soon tackled by the thing and Magica just wants to let her die. As seen before the tension between Magica and Lena has hit a breaking point: Magica is fed up with Lena’s clear feelings for webby and caring more about her than the mission.. while Lena is fed up with Magica not listening to her, respecting her as sentient being and dismissing her out of hand instead of listening to her often very valid criticism. So Lena naturally ignores her and throws her the knife, which Webby uses to get the Sword Horse back in it’s pen. And then wonders why her girlfriend has  glowing painstakingly crafted magic knife. Whoops. Webby also wants to leave but Lena convinces her to keep going. but it’s also very clear that Webby’s getting more and more reluctant and i’ts very hard to watch. You can’t blame Lena for wanting to be free of Magica: she dosen’t see her as a person, and dosen’t value her life. But it’s still hard to watc her have to manipulate the only person that loves her and do so so.. effectively. It’s easy to imagine Lena’s done this dozens of times to other people.. but not to someone she actually CARES about. 

Webby DOES figure out how the rooms work though: each one is labeled by the year Scrooge caught it. So she assumes one room she fine is the dime.. and Lena of course runs in and slams the door shut... they’ve found it. So we then get to the most terrifying moment of the series. With victory in her grasp magica roars for Lena to claim the dime, filling the room and Lena with shadow with Lena seemingly disolving.. until Magica is restored or at least partially, still a shadow. Magica has just one thing for her.. and Lena’s reactoin is terrified.. and says oh so much in just one expression it’s VERY clear Lena fears she’s about to die... if she’s lucky. Magica’s been so verbally abusive, tearing her down constantly, manipulating her constantly.. why WOULD Lena expect anything good? Why would she expect anything other than pain or death? So a hug is a surprise.. as is Webby who assumes she’s being attacked... and is clearly heartbroken that’s not the case and runs for Scrooge when Magica admits the truth... only for Magica to seemingly kill her, turning her into a doll resembling the original Webby

Yeah at this point it’s obvious something’s up.. but before we can get to the natural reveal at the end of this horror show, Lena demands Magica change her back... only for a fight to naturally ensue with Magica rubbing the way Lena’s treated Webby in her face: How she manipualted her, lied to her and used her. Even if it was for more noble reasons.. she never told her any of this or tried to and is now directly responsible for her death. She’s a monster.. and then Lena’s amulet activates.. and seemingly finishes the job. 

Then Lena wakes up. This was simply one of SCrooge’s artifact, one Webby mentioned earlier off hand and Webby rescues her. It was all a nightmare.. easy to see given Webby was seemingly killed or turned into a doll at points.. but besides making Lena realize how while not as bad as her aunt, she ahsn’t been great.. it also gives us a painful look into her head and how she sees both Magica and Webby. With Magica.. it’s again VERY clear Magica verbally abuses her, depersons her and is in general a horrifiingly relastic depection of a domestic abuser. But it’s also telling Magica hugs her... while Lena didn’t expect it, this is all her subconcious mixed with a magical cursed artifact, it’s clear that deep down one of the things she wants most.. is for Magica to LOVE HER. 

That is just... it hurts so much.  She just wants a Mom.. and even then her subconcious can’t give her THAT because it knows the truth. Granted the nightmare thing might of had something to do with it, but still, the fact is deep down she knows Magica dosen’t care about her but she WANTS her to. As with Webby, she fears Magica is right, that all her gaslighting has had an effect and Webby would run away the second she found out. When as we’ll learn.. that’s not true at all. She’s deeply hurt... but she still belivies in her. But Lena can’t even see that. She’s been beaten down so much by someone constnatly telling her no one will ever love her she belivies it herself and all her mind and the dreamcatcher can do is pummel her over and over again with what she feels about herself, what she’s KNOWN about how she treats webby even if she had no way out otherwise, how wrong it’s felt. Just holy shit it’s a lot to take in. 

But all this trauma has made Lena realize she truly does love Webby and this isn’t worth it.. she’ll find some other way out or figure out something, for now their leaving. She’s not dying for this.. not for her. They happen to run into Scrooge who, due to the WACKY BIGFOOT SUBPLOT THAT HAPPENED RIGHT AFTER THE ABOVE SCENE, no I will not let that go even going back to Frank’s twitter asks he outright said it was their darkest plot paired with one of their most insane, he knew what he was doing. Turns out cleverly he kept the Dime in vault one. As he puts it “They never think to check the first one”. Smart. He also keeps his worry room down here. Just a note I wanted to mention. 

He does chide them, and Lena takes the full fall.. but suprisingly he dosen’t ban her from his home or anything, he just asks they be honest and would’ve gladly showed the dime off to them both if they’d just asked. Once Scrooge and Webby walk off far enough Magica berates her again..but Lena is done. She’s realized from her own horrifying nightmares that NO amount of freedom is worth what Magica will get out of this, that her own soul isn’t worth the death of the one person she cares about: Webby will fight her and she might not make it. She loves her more than she fears Magica. And even if it means loosing Webby.. she knows who can stop him. Unfortunately.. this is not a happy ending as Magica simply takes full control. And now has Scrooge’s full trust. 

Final Thoughts: This episode is one half a masterpiece. The parts with Lena are to this day, as we approach the very last episode, some of the show’s finest writing and Lena’s nightmare is easily the darkest scene in the series, and only not the most gutwrenching.. because we’re getting to that next week. It finishes the first leg of her character arc, with her selfishness all gone, and the only thing she wants is Webby’s hapiness. Granted that leads to a whole nother character arc over her season 2 episodes, but we’ll get there. Point is she’s realized her manipulations are wrong and not worth the cost, and that she’ll never get anything good out of Magica. Freedom.. will take just a bit longer. It’s eerie to watch, uncomfortable as Lena sinks to her lowest point before climbing out of it, and with a very tense atmosphere the whole time, the bin having a smothering uncomfortableness as we know there’s tons of horrible things here.. but we don’t know what. 

So on it’s own it’d be one of the series best episodes, and the plot itself is still one fo the series best.. but it’s weighed down by one of the series worst plots. Still tame compared to a lto of other series worst moments but being paired with something so dark and excellent really shows how fucking stupid this plot was and made it that much more grating. It just clashes badly. Thankfully the crew did learn from this fiasco to the point we got one of the series best episodes “Escape from the Impossibin!”. That one seemingly has two light enough plots, Scrooge, Louie and Della escaping from the bin and Webby stalking the boys, but in a comedic ic still messed up fashion.. but both take a sharp left at just the right time as to not clash: the full implications of what Webby’s doing and her physical fight with Bentina happen around the same time Scrooge breaks down and confesses he’s scared he can’t win this time. The episode gets really dark in the second half but it eases into it and slowly makes it’s way to it, building to it with some laughts to disarm it. But stuff like robo scrooge or the timeloop room, or the timeloop room, or the timeloop room, or the oh thank god i’ts broken. That stuff isn’t SO wacky or out of place that it detracts from the other plot. They compliment each other. Here it’s just two plots that don’t work together at all joined together for some reason.  So yeah overall a very mixed bag of an episode and if you do want to watch or rewatch it.. just skip the bigfoot subplot> it’s not worth it. 

Next Time on Shadow Into Light: It’s all come down to this. Magica finally ges what she wants. The Shadow War is Night.. but before I can tell you that story we have a bit of ground to cover so..

Next on this Blog: The family minus Beakly ends up in Greece. Dewey is forced to deal with his fears about his mom, Scrooge is forced to deal with his old rival Zeus, and Donald is forced to deal with an unwanted admirerer. Spanikopita!

If you liked this review, follow for more, feel free to contribute to my patreon, and feel free to commission a review of your own. Until the next rainbow, it’s been a pleasure. 

[overthinkingkdrama]

Jona’s 5 Worst Dramas of 2019

A couple words about this list. I’m making this for fun. If a drama you love ended up on this list, it doesn’t mean that I hate you or I think you’re stupid or have terrible taste. But these are dramas that inspired strong negative reactions in me for one reason or another, whether that be disappointment, rage or disgust.

I’ve only included dramas that finished airing in 2019 in my selection process. If you have some dramas that hated, feel free to share them in the replies or send me an ask. It’s fun to complain about things for some reason.

Also, I have included major SPOILERS in a couple of these. So read at your own peril.

Dishonorable Mention: Melting Me Softly

I sincerely tried to limit myself to only dramas that I--for whatever misguided reasons--finished in their entirety for this list. Mainly because I don’t think it’s fair to brand something as the “worst” of anything without actually giving the thing a fair shake. That’s the only reason Melting Me Softly isn’t higher on this list. But I felt that it wasn’t right to leave it off entirely, if for no other reason then out of respect for the fallen Ji Chang Wook stans out there who lost their lives trying to make it through this trash fire. Somebody needs to stand up for those brave soldiers, out their gifing trash dramas while people like me are safe and sound on our couches, watching the tag like it’s a train wreck.

I made it through only two episodes of this drama, and despite my goodwill toward the majority of the cast, they were two of the most bafflingly bad hours of television that I forced myself to sit through this year. From what I could tell while side-eyeing the drama on tumblr and twitter it didn’t improve much over the course of the run. There were a couple steamy kisses that I enjoyed in clip form, but I don’t think it would have been worth the brain cells lost to sit through any more than that.

Bottom Line: Painfully unfunny, overwhelmingly expositional with no character development, confusing pacing and sloppy editing. Two episodes was two too many.

5. When the Devil Calls Your Name

It pains me to put this on the list because it was just last year that a Jung Kyung Ho, Park Sung Woong collaboration (Life on Mars) ended up in my top 5. And giving credit where it’s due, the two male leads seem to have a great deal of fun working together and I believe that all the actors gave this drama everything they could and sincerely tried to make it work. That’s one of the things I like about Jung Kyung Ho, he picks unique, risky projects that either pay off in a big way or fall flat on their faces (like the amateurishly written and edited Missing 9) Unfortunately, this script just too messy and too bizarre to work. Ha Rip as has a deeply frustrating character arc. He’s such a self-centered jerk for the vast majority of the drama, which is fine for a Faust type story if it’s written with conviction, but every time you think he’s started to turn a corner or grown as a person he reverts back to his old ways. The writing and tone are whiplash inducing. Plus the vague “soul mates” relationship between Ha Rip and Kim Yi Kyung seemed to want to have it both ways, flipping between implied romantic potential and a father/daughter dynamic, which made me quite uncomfortable.

Bottom Line: This drama’s bizarre mythology and world building barely makes any sense at all, but at least they’re easier to follow than the character development. Attempted something unique, but couldn’t pull it off. The OST is super dope though.

4. Love in Sadness

When I watched the first teasers I got the distinct impression that this wasn’t going to be a good drama, or at best it was going to be a guilty pleasure, but at the time when I started it I was hungry for a melo and there wasn’t much airing to hold my attention so I started it on impulse. I think in this case I got what I deserved for continuing to watch something I didn’t think was very good.

The first few episodes were actually pretty gripping and intriguingly dark, but that petered of quickly and the drama became and infuriating wheel spinning exercise with barely any perceptible plot development from episode to episode. The protagonists in this are all so stupid that in the final few episodes the female lead gets kidnapped not once, but multiple times because she keeps meeting her unstable husband alone. Plus nobody in this drama seems to know how to call the police when a madman is waving around a gun. It probably wouldn’t have made me so very mad except that in the last few episodes the writer became unaccountably preoccupied with how sad the psychotic, wife-beating husband’s family life was and how lonely and pathetic his life was when he wasn’t allowed to stalk, assault, and psychologically terrorize his wife. Seriously, in the last leg of the drama the villain is the only character who gets any character development at all. The drama pulls out all the stops to try to make use feel sorry for him. It’s disgusting.

Bottom Line: When a drama about a woman trying to escape domestic violence becomes completely preoccupied with painting the abuser as tragically misunderstood, you’ve got some serious problems.

3. The Lies Within

If it wasn't for the last two episodes this drama would not be on this list, but that isn't because it was in any way an exceptional drama, or that it otherwise would have ended up on my best list. Without the last two episodes The Lies Within is a merely adequate thriller, somewhat heightened by the brutal nature of the premise. I picked this show up largely to fill the void that was left by WATCHER and it was more or less successful, plus it helped that I liked the cast. However even at the beginning this drama I felt like it had some pretty glaring tone problems. There were parts of the drama that were standard OCN dark and gritty thriller, and there were other parts that felt like a campy police sitcom. The humor, when it does crop up in this drama always feels super out of place. But then that last big twist happened and man...I can't remember the last time a drama made me that angry or cratered quite so hard with a twist.

[And this is where I spoil the HELL out of this drama...]

Before this drama decided to go all M. Night Shyamalan in it’s last two episodes, there seemed to be at least one, if not two really reasonable candidates for the kidnapper. Actually all the ground work they’d done up to that point would seem to have pointed to Young Min and if he had turned out to be the perpetrator, I would have completely bought it. Instead they decided to blow everyone’s mind by making the kidnapped husband complicit in his own kidnapping and dismemberment. Which might seem like a shocking twist until you think about it for even half a second.

What it winds up doing on a narrative level it makes everything the characters have done to investigate this series of crimes up to this point feel pointless, resulting in a huge anticlimax. It makes the ambiguous figure of Seo Hui’s husband not only hopelessly stupid, but also cruel and unsympathetic. Because he thought somehow simply sharing the information with her would put her in more danger than threatening and psychologically terrorizing her into investigating the very people he was theoretically trying to protect her from. The explanation that he was already terminally ill doesn’t to anything to mitigate the stupidity of his plan for me. Seriously, you couldn’t think of any solution aside from cutting bits off yourself and sending them to your wife in the mail? I could rant about this ending at length, but I’m going to try to stop here.

Bottom Line: As far as I’m concerned, if you choose to sacrifice the emotional and narrative coherence of your story for a cheap and dirty twist to surprise the audience, you deserve every ranty review you get.

2. Love Affairs in the Afternoon

I’m really not sure what possessed me to watch this drama to begin with. That I continued to watch it is on me. The fact that I watched it despite hating the shallow characters, the thin story and the abortive message at the core of the drama is simply a lapse of judgement for which I shouldn’t be forgiven. Why did I do it despite not having a single nice thing to say about this show? Well, there are two reasons. I was curious to see if they would do anything compelling with one or two of the characters, (specifically the serial adulteress housewife an the broody artist) and I was surreptitiously watching this drama at work and it was really easy to follow the plot while only actually keeping my eyes on the screen about half the time. I watched the last episode before the subs were available and had no trouble understanding what was going. Which could be a sign that my Korean is improving, but is more likely a sign that the writing was so predictable and simplistic that you could follow it if you didn’t speak the language at all.

[Spoilers beyond this point.]

It’s my understanding that in the Jdrama that this is based on all of the characters basically wreck their lives and end up miserable, pointing toward the emptiness of the lives of these people who try to find fulfillment through extra-marital affairs. If that’s how this drama had ended, I still wouldn’t have enjoyed the execution but I could have respected the intent. But in this watered down Kdrama-fied version all the couples’ issues are resolved in the whitewash of a last episode time skip that makes the suffering and bullshit that led up to it feel completely pointless.

Bottom Line: Maybe this level of trashy, uninspired tripe would be somewhat justified if the chemistry between the leads had been better, but somehow they even managed to screw that up. The leads are just bad, vacuous people, a fact which is rendered all the more unforgivable by them being utterly bland. Everybody needed to divorce, nobody deserved to end up happy. Please be wiser than me and avoid this one.

1. Memories of the Alhambra

Initially, I was on the fence about even producing a “Worst List” this year, because in the past few years I’ve tried to be better about dropping dramas the moment they start to disappoint me, rather than hanging on to them and winding up burning myself out. I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough material to write this list, or at least not enough material to make it worth reading. Then I remembered that Memories of the Alhambra finished airing in January of this year (2019 was impossibly long, wasn’t it?) and I thought, “Aha, I can make this work.” I knew at once this drama was going to be the shitty tinfoil star atop my Christmas tree of suck.

I’ve already written a full review of this drama, where I got about as mean as I felt I could reasonably be. You can go read that if you like, I’m not going to retread all my many complaints here. What I will say is that Memories of the Alhambra took my mixed-to-favorable opinion of the writer, Song Jae Jung, and turned it to a negative one. She’s someone who clearly has a lot of interesting high concept ideas, but the execution is just not there. You can hook an audience with a concept, but you have to keep them with craft and structure. 

Maybe the industry can be blamed for that. Maybe she just has a hard time ending her stories, or maybe writing on a deadline doesn’t agree with her. Whatever the reason, I can no longer trust her to deliver a satisfying story. And that’s deeply saddening to me, because Queen In Hyun’s Man is in my top 10 favorite dramas.

To be front-to-back terrible is one thing. The joke’s at least half on me for bothering. But to have potential, to have an interesting hook, a budget, a cast, but then to be either unwilling or unable to live up to that potential feels like a con. That’s how I felt about his drama, like I had been willfully deceived by special effects and flashy editing, all orchestrated to disguise a narratively bankrupt, unsatisfying drama.

Bottom Line:  Is Memories of the Alhambra objectively the worst drama on this list? No, it’s not. Is it the most disappointing? Absolutely, it is. And that’s the more heinous crime, in my opinion.  And that’s why it’s my worst drama of 2019.

[imaginaryelle]

Okay, @tonyglowheart , here is that promised response:

@three--rings  already brought up some points I was going to mention so I’ll skip over going into detail on those and just say that I agree with the use of caution and thoughtfulness in approaching works produced by other cultures (of whatever language), and I, too, love a mash-up of MDZS and CQL for ideal storytelling. Accepting genre tropes in general is really important as well. I once showed my grandfather a piece of my writing based on pulp adventure stories like Indiana Jones and his main reaction was “All these secret chambers and codes and gadgets, isn’t that all very convenient?” and I just had to shrug and say, that’s the genre, it’s part of what makes it fun to read. Also, based on reading about various medicinal histories I’ve been exploring, I can say that the coughing up blood thing is a trope based in Ancient China’s traditional medicine. Lots of pre-understanding-of-blood-circulation societies thought expelling old or stale blood was important for the body (possibly based on how menses works and reflected in Western medicine’s several-century-long obsession with bloodletting), and I recently read that having it caught in your chest and needing to cough it up was part of China’s take on things. I’m still not sure about all the other face bleeding, but if it’s not actually based in something historical it seems like a reasonable extension for the genre.

Okay, so the thing I want to respond to most is the translation bit, because I… okay. I understand that people are going to find works in translation less accessible than works written in a language they can read, and especially works written in their native language and of their own culture. Because obviously there are a ton of underlying ideas that inform word choice and symbolism and character arcs that most people just don’t really think about until they make a serious study of writing or literature (or they travel and learn more about other languages and literature traditions). On a linguistic studies level, language literally shapes the way humans in different cultures think, and what they pick out as important (an academic article that compares English and Chinese specifically can be found here). Even the distinctions between British English and American English, on a word choice and theme or syntax level, can have an impact. I have seen it turn kids off a book, because there are just too many elements they don’t get (this is, for example, why there are two English versions of Harry Potter). Same thing with different decades even. I’m talking about kidlit and YA here because that’s a lot of what I work with, but in that realm, the way we approach stories today is just incredibly different from how they were approached even 50 years ago, even in the same language and the same country. Think Judy Blume or The Dark is Rising vs Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Percy Jackson. And I’m fascinated by those changes, and by the effects of culture and bias on translations (I am extremely hyped to read Emily Wilson’s Odyssey translation, for example), so I tend to approach them as puzzles, where I’m reading the work, but also looking for clues that will tell me more about both the translator and the author to hang in balance. I enjoy that part, and I enjoy figuring out aspects of the two languages that can contribute to how a translation evolves.

I’m a language and literature nerd, and I know not everyone is going to take the approach I do.  I’m not going to fault anyone for saying they don’t enjoy or can’t get into a translation. That’s a perfectly valid opinion. Reducing a work to its translation and judging it only on that impression of it, however, seems pretty shortsighted to me. Here are some things that I think are important to keep in mind when reading a Chinese work in translation, just based on my own extremely limited knowledge:

1. In Chinese storytelling it’s an established practice to reference idioms, poetry, folklore and historic events as a sort of shorthand for evoking the proper tone. Chinese writing tends to be extremely allusive, and much more understated than what we’re used to in English-language storytelling. We can see hints of this in some of the MDZS translator notes, and it’s likely that this difference feeds into a lot of dissatisfaction with the translation. Either the allusions are not translated in a way that adds meaning for an English-speaking reader, or the standards for detail are different. Indirectness and subtly are huge parts of Chinese literature, and so different words or scenes will have very different connotations for Chinese vs. English speaking audiences. And this isn’t even touching on the use of rhyme and rhythm in Chinese writing, which are all but impossible to translate a lot of the time, or the often extremely different approaches to “style” and “genre” between the languages (an interesting article on comparative literature is here at the University of Connecticut website). Given this knowledge, it’s entirely possible that, for example, the smut scenes are more effective in Chinese than in the English translation. In fact, I find it difficult to believe it would be popular enough to get multiple adaptations and a professional publishing run if they weren’t. In translation, smut is a lot like humor: every culture approaches it a little differently. Unless a translator is familiar with both writing traditions and the relevant genres (or they have editors or sensitivity readers who can offer advice), something is going to get lost in the process. And sometimes that something is what at least one of the involved cultures would consider to be the most important part. It’s unfortunate, but it happens.

2. Chinese grammar is slightly different from English grammar (and I’m focusing on Mandarin as the common written language here. For anyone interested, a very basic rundown of major differences is available here). Verb tenses and concepts of time work differently. Emphasis is marked differently – in English we tend to put the most importance on the start of a sentence, while in Chinese it’s often at the end. Sentences are also often shorter in Chinese than in English, and English tends to get more specific in our longer sentences. From what I understand, it’s also a little more acceptable to just drop subjects out of a sentence, and that is more likely to happen if someone is attempting to be succinct. I’ve been told that it’s especially common in contentious situations, as part of an effort to distill objections or arguments down to an essential meaning (if I’m wrong about this or there’s more nuance to it, I’m happy to learn more). As one example of how this affects translation, let’s take that and look at Lan Wangji’s dialogue. I’m willing to bet that most of his words are direct translations, or as direct as the translator could manage. But his words don’t work the same way in English that they do in Chinese. If you continuously drop subjects and articles (Chinese doesn’t have articles) out of a character’s speech in English, they start to sound like they have issues articulating themselves, and I see that idea reflected in fic a lot. The idea that Lan Wangji just isn’t comfortable talking or can’t say the words he means is all over the place, but I don’t think the audience was intended to take away the idea that Lan Wangji speaks quite as stiltedly as he comes off in the English translation. He’s terse, yes. But I at least got the impression that it’s more about choosing when and how to speak for the best effectiveness than anything else, because so many of his actual observations are quite insightful and pointed, or fit just fine syntactically within the conversation he’s part of.

3. Chinese is both more metaphorical and more concrete than English in some ways. In English we use a lot of abstract words to represent complex ideas, and you just have to learn what they mean. In Chinese, the overlap of language and philosophy in the culture results in four-character phrases of what English would generally call idioms. Some examples I found: “perfect harmony” (水乳交融) can be literally translated as ���mixing well like milk and water” and “eagerly” (如饥似渴) is read as “like hunger and thirst.” If these set phrases are translated to single word concepts in English, we can lose the entire tone of a sentence and it’ll feel much more flat and... basic, or uninspired. The English reader will be left wondering where the detailed descriptive phrase is that adds emotion and connotation to a sentence, when in the actual Chinese those things were already implied. 

As translations go, MDZS in particular is an incredibly frustrating mixed bag for me, partially because of the non-professional fan translation, and partially because my knowledge of Chinese literature and especially Cultivation novels is so minimal as to be nearly non-existent. But I have enough exposure to translations in general and Chinese language and literature in particular that I could tell there were things I was missing. The framework of the plot and scenes was too complete for me to ever be able to say that any particular frustration I had was due to the author, not the translator. There’s a big grey area in there that’s difficult to navigate without knowing both languages and the norms of the genre extremely well. At one point I was actually able to find multiple translation for a few of the chapters and I loved that. It was really cool to see what changed, and what remained essentially the same, and I was actually really surprised to find that rant you mention, because to me, more translations is always better. I think it was probably about wanting to corral an audience, and possibly also about reducing arguments from the audience about whether a translation was “wrong” or “right.” And that is an issue that’s going to crop up more in online spaces than it has traditionally. Professional translators don’t have to potentially argue with every single reader about their word choice. But then, professional translators also tend to have a better grasp of both the cultures they’re working with as well, and be writers of some variety in their own right, and while I can’t know how fluent (linguistically or culturally) the ExR translator was at the time, the translator’s notes lead me to believe that at minimum their understanding of figurative language use was incomplete. So I can’t fault people for not enjoying the translated novel as much as CQL, for example, because it can be quite choppy and much of the English wording feels like a sketch of a scene rather than something fleshed out fully, but I don’t think it’s fair to apply that impression to MXTX herself or the novel as a whole in Chinese.

More about ExR: I also got the sense that they have a strong bl and yaoi bias as you mentioned, mostly from the translator’s notes. And in general, okay, that’s fine, they’re working with a particular market of fans and I’m just not as much a part of that market. I knew going in that I wasn’t the target audience. I’m okay with that. What I was less okay with was getting to the end and reading the actual author’s notes in translation and finding that the author herself expressed a much more nuanced, considerate, and balanced approach to the story and her writing process than I had been led to believe by the translation and the translator’s notes. And so when people want to criticize the author for things that happen in the translation…. I just think it’s very important to remember that the translator is also a factor, as is the influence of the cultivation genre, and the nature of web novels, and the original intended audience. As you said, white western LGBT people were never the intended recipients of this work. It comes from a totally different context. But I think it’s also important to remember that, again as you noted, it wasn’t first written as a professional work. It was literally a daily-updated webnovel, which works a lot more like a fanfic than a book in terms of approach. And on top of that, it was the author’s second novel (if I’m reading things correctly) and one that they experimented with a lot of new elements in. Those elements earn a lot of forgiveness and benefit of a doubt from me.

About MXTX herself: Most of the posts or references to posts that I’ve seen that judge or dismiss her have to do with the stated sexuality of characters who are not Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. And it just kinda baffles me, because this is fandom. Most of us spend our time writing about characters who are stated to be straight all the time. Why is anyone getting up in arms about this? How can anyone in fandom just summarily dismiss an author for producing original work that centers around a gay relationship when that’s… literally what most of us write, to some extent or another? Again, I’m not saying there’s aren’t aspects that can be criticized in her stories, but the hypocrisy is kind of amazing. I think that fandom, as a culture overall, has issues with treating gay men and their relationships as toys rather than people, and individuals can address their own behavior on that as they learn and grow. That doesn’t mean that every work about gay men having sex is fetishistic, and honestly I’d say that the translator demonstrates more of that attitude than the actual story ever does. The smut is such an incredibly tiny part of the world, plots and character arcs in MDZS that it could be taken out without significantly changing the main narrative very easily. That’s… not fetishistic. That’s smut as part of an overarching romance plot.

Which leads me to the tropes discussion. Yes, obviously there are tropes in MDZS. There are tropes in every story. It’s not a failing, it’s part of writing. Are some of those tropes BL or Yaoi tropes? Sure. Wei Wuxian denying his own sexuality for much of the novel and his tendency toward submission and rape fantasy are some of the very first tropes mentioned in relation to the genre. That Wei Wuxian just sort of seamlessly moves from “pff, I’m NOT a cutsleeve, I’m just acting like one” to shouting “Lan Zhan, I really want you to fuck me” in front of friends, enemies and family without much of a process for dealing with the culture of homophobia around him also seems to be characteristic of the genre. But I think that’s about where it ends. You and @three--rings both made some good points about the nature of the actual relationship, which I agree with: There’s not much of a power play element, or an assigned gender roles element. They’re both virgins who only partially know what they’re doing from looking at illustrations of porn, and they do enthusiastically want to have sex with each other. They’re just bad at negotiating their kinks clearly and could use a decent sex ed manual. The trope I actually have the most issue with is the use of alcohol. I personally despise the trope of “I’ll get someone drunk on purpose for reasons that benefit me personally,” due to my own real life experiences. But it’s an exceedingly common trope in Western media (Idk about Chinese media, but my guess would be it exists there too), and it’s not exclusive to mlm smut scenarios. It’s pretty much everywhere. And, thankfully, Wei Wuxian does seem to eventually realize that he’s fucking things up by using it. That said, despite knowing what happens to him when he drinks, La Wangji keeps doing it. So they’re both contributing to that mess, no matter how much I dislike that it exists, and the narrative doesn’t actually condone it. No one says “Oh, Wei Wuxian, that’s such a good idea, that’s definitely something you should keep doing.” He is consistently warring with himself over it but unable to resist. It’s still dubcon and manipulation, and I certainly understand people not wanting to read it. I just also think that reducing the entire relationship down to “bad, terrible, fetishistic BL tropes” requires the reader to ignore large parts of the story and pretty evident intent on the parts of both the characters and the author.

On purity culture: Yeah, that’s obviously been cropping up all over the place the past several years (I have indeed been in marvel for ages :P). It does seem like there are places in fandom (to some degree any fandom), where “I don’t like how this idea was executed in this context” gets conflated with “This entire work is terrible,” which is a disservice to everyone involved. I agree that there are many things that can be legitimately criticized in MDZS, but I also just… really don’t understand where this attitude comes from that because something is not perfect, it’s trash. Wasn’t fandom essentially invented out of the desire to respond to canon? To make it more your own? Isn’t picking out the parts you like and ignoring the bits you don’t (or writing around the bits you hate until you can fit them in a shape you like better) pretty much what all fic is about? Aren’t those holes people are sticking their fingers into and complaining about opportunities for more fan content?  But even more than “purity culture” I would term it “entitlement culture,” because a lot of it seems to be about the idea that media should fit into and support a certain set of beliefs at all times. A lot of fandoms are no longer an atmosphere of “I don’t like the way this is presented so I’m going to create my on version that works for me.” Instead there’s a growing element of “I don’t like the way this is presented so that means it’s wrong and bad and the original creator should admit that it’s wrong and bad and fix it to satisfy me.” And honestly? That’s just sad to me. More and more, we’re not having a conversation with canon, or even with each other. We’re not building what we want to see we’re just… tearing other people down. I really don’t understand what anyone finds fun in that, and I’m going to do my best to keep creating the things I actually do want to see instead.

[diepower]

THE MEGA RP PLOTTING SHEET / MEME.

First and foremost, recall that no one is perfect, we all had witnessed some plotting once which did not went too well, be it because of us or our partner. So here have this, which may help for future plotting. It’s a lot! Yes, but perhaps give your partners some insight? Anyway BOLD what fully applies, italicize if only somewhat.

MUN NAME: Kaiman     AGE: 27       CONTACT: IM, ask, discord

CHARACTER(S): Meninas McAllon, Orihime Inoue, Retsu Unohana, Mashiro Kuna, Tier Harribel, Charlotte Chuuhlhourne

CURRENT FANDOM(S): That I write in? It’s gonna be Bleach, OVW (super selectively im just here for one person), ASOIAF (barely- literally when the mood strikes and that one is private also). I have a lot of current interests in general though.

BLEACH FANDOM(S) YOU HAVE AN AU FOR: While I don’t have anything fully established... I’ve been working with an ASOIAF au (for Harribel & Unohana specifically, though I’m considering it with other characters too), A Dorohedoro AU (for Unohana and Orihime), as well as a Persona AU (more specifically 2&3) for Orihime. I’ve also got a number of post-canon AUs or continuities for all my characters as well!

MY LANGUAGE(S): English, super basic Spanish, barest ASL, fairly good French

THEMES I’M INTERESTED IN FOR RP: FANTASY / SCIENCE FICTION / HORROR / WESTERN / ROMANCE / THRILLER / MYSTERY / DYSTOPIA / ADVENTURE / MODERN / EROTIC / CRIME / MYTHOLOGY / CLASSIC / HISTORY / RENAISSANCE / MEDIEVAL / ANCIENT / WAR / FAMILY / POLITICS / RELIGION / SCHOOL / ADULTHOOD / CHILDHOOD / APOCALYPTIC / GODS / SPORT / MUSIC / SCIENCE / FIGHTS / ANGST / SMUT / DRAMA

PREFERRED THREAD LENGTH: ONE-LINER / 1 PARA / 2 PARA / 3+ / NOVELLA (2para is a sweet spot but it really doesn’t matter to me)

ASKS CAN BE SEND BY: MUTUALS / NON-MUTUALS / PERSONALS / ANONS.

CAN ASKS BE CONTINUED?:   YES / NO    ONLY BY MUTUALS?:  YES / NO

PREFERRED THREAD TYPE: CRACK / CASUAL NOTHING TOO DEEP / SERIOUS / DEEP AS HECK.

IS REALISM / RESEARCH IMPORTANT FOR YOU IN CERTAIN THEMES?:   YES / NO.

ARE YOU ATM OPEN FOR NEW PLOTS?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS.

DO YOU HANDLE YOUR DRAFT / ASK - COUNT WELL?:  YES / NO / SOMEWHAT. (i let them build up too often but some of yall are too quick to reply jkglfjdgsd)

HOW LONG DO YOU USUALLY TAKE TO REPLY?: 24H / 1 WEEK / 2 WEEKS / 3+ / MONTHS / YEARS / DEPENDS ON MOOD AND INSPIRATION, AND IF I’M BUSY

I’M OKAY WITH INTERACTING: ORIGINAL CHARACTERS / A RELATIVE OF MY CHARACTER (AN OC) / DUPLICATES / MY FANDOM / CROSSOVERS / MULTI-MUSES / SELF-INSERTS / PEOPLE WITH NO AU VERSE FOR MY FANDOM / CANON-DIVERGENT PORTRAYALS / AU-VERSIONS (italicized are okay, but under really specific circumstances)

DO YOU POST MORE IC OR OOC?: IC / OOC.

ARE YOU SELECTIVE WITH FOLLOWING OTHERS?: YES / NO / DEPENDS  

BEST WAYS TO APPROACH YOU FOR RP/PLOTTING:  I’m pretty anal about plotting in that I often refuse to RP unless it’s been plotted or I liked a starter call. And in the case of the latter, I’ll still hop into DMs to plot further depending on where the thread takes us. That said, the best way to reach me is through IMs or Discord (available on request). The only time I turn down plots is if I feel like it would put my character in an OOC situation, and I especially dislike my character being one-sidedly used as a tool to further another character’s development without anything being reciprocated (this happens often especially wrt my healer characters)

WHAT EXPECTATIONS DO YOU HOLD TOWARDS YOUR PLOTTING PARTNER: Communication is really important to me, especially with regards to comfort regarding certain plot elements, and approaching other in-character situations that might have multiple different solutions. I think it’s important that both characters involved get the same amount of development out of writing a thread, and I really hate the idea of being imbalanced as far as that goes (more on that below). That said, I’m always perfectly down to spitball plot ideas and tweak/refine other concepts because I really do enjoy plotting, it’s just super important to me that things are communicated clearly. I get extremely distressed and frustrated IRL if people just kinda throw stuff at me, and it often kills my muse.

WHEN YOU NOTICE THE PLOTTING IS RATHER ONE-SIDED, WHAT DO YOU DO?: I make an active effort to come up with plots that are engaging and beneficial fairly equally to both parties. I mentioned this above, but especially in the case of writing my healer characters, I have a huge disdain for characters being used as tools to further development while getting nothing substantial in return. That said, I try to be very aware of this in terms of a potential writing partner being on the receiving end. IMO it feels like shit, but I definitely don’t want to make someone else feel that way either. That said, so long as stuff is plotted out clearly and me and the writer are both okay with it, then it’s fine. COMMUNICATION IS KEY, BASICALLY.

HOW DO YOU USUALLY PLOT WITH OTHERS, DO YOU GIVE INPUT OR LEAVE MOST WORK TOWARDS YOUR PARTNER?:  I kinda just like to throw spaghetti at the wall and whatever sticks, I’m down to fly with. I have a lot of ideas, but again, I like to give my partners the option of doing whatever they’re comfortable with, and h aving equal contribution opportunities.

WHEN A PARTNER DROPS THE THREAD, DO YOU WISH TO KNOW?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS.

- AND WHY?: Everyone has their own circumstances, I really don’t mind. If it’s one I’ve been especially looking forward to, I might be bummed, but it’s no skin off my nose really.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY LEAD YOU TO DROP A THREAD?: I don’t typically drop threads or abandon them during their writing. The only thing that would make me do so is offensive content, or huge plot elements being introduced that makes my character ooc and wasn’t previously discussed during plotting.

WILL YOU TELL YOUR PARTNER?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS.

IS COMMUNICATION IN THE RPC IMPORTANT TO YOU? YES / NO.

-AND WHY?: I already feel like I need to take a lot of extra steps to understand others and be understood, and that isn’t something often reciprocated. In my experience, just honest communication is the quickest solution to issues that crop up during writing. For those who HAVE actually had me reach out to them in this way, I really do try to be polite and respectful while being straightforward so the situation can be resolved without any hurt feelings.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH ABSOLUTE HONESTY, EVEN IF IT MAY MEANS HEARING SOMETHING NEGATIVE ABOUT YOU AND/OR PORTRAYAL?: As long as it’s constructive, and not merely negativity, I welcome it. After all, I can’t fix a huge flaw in my writing without having an alternative solution. I’m open to accepting feedback and critique, especially wrt Meninas since my portrayal is quite a large departure from popular fanon perception (from those who choose to pay attention to her, lol), but I also thrive on suggested remedies and solutions to issues in my writing.

DO YOU THINK YOU CAN HANDLE SUCH SITUATION IN A MATURE WAY? YES / NO.

WHY DO YOU RP AGAIN, IS THERE A GOAL?: I like to tell stories, and I like to tell narratives that take root in emotional expression and how those feelings can act as a vehicle to the storytelling. I want to move people through feeling, because it can be a powerful experience. I use a lot of inspiration from themes in my other favorite series, as well as inspiration from my own personal experiences as well. I tend to pick characters who have one or two traits in common with myself, whether those be negative or positive. I’m very excited to share all the things I have planned for Meninas, as she’s certainly my most ambitious project to date.

WISHLIST, BE IT PLOTS OR SCENARIOS:  For Meninas specifically, I want to interact with Squad 11 and Squad 9 during the CFYOW verse I have planned. Hisagi specifically would be interesting because of the clash of ideals, in addition to being the only other living person to be able to relate to the horror of being under Pepe’s thrall. I’d also like to steal Ikkaku’s bankai, and have more fight scenes. Lastly, Meninas doesn’t do much of anything in CFYOW, so more interactions with Mayuri and Squad 12 would be cool.

THEMES I WON’T EVER RP / EXPLORE: I don’t mind briefly referencing darker themes in my writing, especially wrt my own personal experiences, but I want to be very clear that I refuse to write at length or romanticize these themes. I refuse to write anything involving rape, homophobia, transphobia, racism, pedophilia, etc, with this in mind.

WHAT TYPE OF STARTERS DO YOU PREFER / DISLIKE, CAN’T WORK WITH?: Unless previously discussed, I struggle with starters that have a character pushing mine away. If the situation is super OOC for my character to be in, or frankly too mundane. In Meninas’ case, most domestic stuff is a snoozefest for me (but I LOVE this for other characters).

WHAT TYPE OF CHARACTERS CATCH YOUR INTEREST THE MOST?:  *saoirse ronan voice* Women. UHHH but no, for real... I like fleshing out female characters quite a bit. Personality types are varied, but I like characters who have some level of nuance to their emotional expression whether it’s an internal or external struggle. I like powerful women too, and the exploration of “strength” as a theme (esp at the intersection of the theme of “femininity” and its expressions) whether this is external strength or internal fortitude. I think I play a wide variety of characters who have vastly different thoughts, beliefs, and forms of expression, but I try to find something in common with who I portray to act as a touch stone. I also like characters who have themes of “justice” and nuanced morality.

WHAT TYPE OF CHARACTERS CATCH YOUR INTEREST THE LEAST?: 99% of male characters. And I also hate tsunderes gjklsdjfd

WHAT ARE YOUR STRONG ASPECTS AS RP PARTNER?: I really like my writing style especially wrt using emotion to set a cinematic scene and overall tone. I think I’m really strong with conveying emotion, especially with things that are often unspoken. I try to communicate with partners clearly and establish rapports. I love writing headcanons and have a TON of plot ideas as well.

WHAT ARE YOUR WEAK ASPECTS AS RP PARTNER?: Oh I’m the slowest replier on the planet and I’m apparently intimidating lol

DO YOU RP SMUT?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS.

DO YOU PREFER TO GO INTO DETAIL?: YES / NO / DEPENDS (i prefer to go into detail about sensations, rather than the actual acts as it comes off stifled and weirdly technical)

ARE YOU OKAY WITH BLACK CURTAIN?: YES / NO

- WHEN DO YOU RP SMUT? MORE OUT OF FUN OR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT?: Honestly I just do what Meninas tells me.

- ANYTHING YOU WOULD NOT WANT TO RP THERE?: Kink stuff is weird territory for me, absolutely gotta be discussed in private and comfort levels clearly established.

ARE SHIPS IMPORTANT TO YOU?: YES / NO. Relationships in general rule, and while I do have a romantic ship that plays a large part in Meninas’ plot, the romance comes secondary to the plot itself. I really enjoy writing and developing romances, but more than that I like establishing connections. I love the relationships I’ve got planned with Giselle, Candice, Liltotto, and Bambietta because there are going to be a LOT of drastically different things that inform my portrayal of Meninas coming from these relationships (both positive and negative, but ultimately places of growth).

WOULD YOU SAY YOUR BLOG IS SHIP-FOCUSED?: YES / NO. Like I said, plot comes first. And especially in the case of Meninas, she has a lot of self exploration and reflection to do before she can engage in a healthy relationship or address any feelings of romance. I do place a large focus on the formation of her relationships and how they shape the way she relates to other people and grows as a person, but I am extremely sensitive to making sure I’m not writing a female character who’s entire development is dependent on a romance with a male character- perish the thought lol.

DO YOU USE READ MORE?:  YES / NO / SOMETIMES WHEN I WRITE LONG STUFF.

ARE YOU:  MULTI-SHIP / SINGLE-SHIP / DUAL-SHIP  —  MULTIVERSE / Singleverse.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE TO EXPLORE THE MOST IN YOUR SHIPS?: For Meninas, it’s a matter of her acknowledging, understanding, and accepting that she can be worth more than how useful she is to others. She had a series of traumatizing and character defining experiences regarding love, romance, and personal worth that strongly shaped the way she perceives her relationships to others and her emotional expression. Trust is another huge factor for me, Meninas needs to be around someone she believes in. Strength is another aspect. She likes someone who challenges her, keeps her on her toes, and is sturdy like physically. Because she’ll break you. THAT SAID- Meninas tends to be open wrt her body, but closed off when it comes to her heart. Hate to see it, love to write it.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PRE-ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIPS?: YES / NO. As long as the premise makes sense. I like relationships to have some matter of significance and planning, especially because of how I’ve written the way Meninas picks and chooses who to get close to in Silbern depending on what suits her interests. Genuine friendship is a weird thing for Meninas, as most of her relationships are formed out of convenience. If you aren’t useful to Meninas’ schemeing, then she has no interest in dealing with you beyond platitudes and keeping up appearances and will interact with you as such.

► SECTION ABOUT YOUR MUSE.

- WHAT COULD POSSIBLY MAKE YOUR MUSE INTERESTING TOWARDS OTHERS, WHY SHOULD THEY RP WITH THIS PARTICULAR CHARACTER OF YOURS NOW, WHAT POSSIBLE PLOTS DO THEY OFFER?: WE LOVE DUPLICITOUS WOMEN! No, but at the core of my Meninas characterization, the sentiment is “Everything is not as it appears” even down to the relationships she has with others. Meninas’ entire personality is constructed as a survival tactic from an early age (in addition to being a way to make herself more useful as a tool to others, and thus seen as having more worth in general), and as a result, she hasn’t really allowed herself to live life as a fully realized person. Her plots generally offer silent rebellion, playing a role in regards to her self presentation, chaotic mean girl level bullshit, and cool fights/training. Also you get to interact with a big buff lady. That said about her personality, it depends on the verse. CFYOW Meninas will be more unhinged, while post-CFYOW Meninas will be more honest and rowdy.

- WITH WHAT TYPE OF MUSES DO YOU USUALLY STRUGGLE TO RP WITH?:  Muses who are standoffish or disengage right at the start. Meninas doesn’t interact with people without a certain purpose, so if they aren’t interested, she’s not going to be either.

- WHAT DO THEY DESIRE, IS THEIR GOAL?:  Revenge, strength, redefining what “power” means in terms of how the world works. She wants to see the Shinigami dead for their role in her parents deaths, and feels the same about Yhwach.

- WHAT CATCHES THEIR INTEREST FIRST WHEN MEETING SOMEONE NEW?:  Ability, potential threat, perceived strength, where loyalty lies; how potentially useful you can be to her.

- WHAT DO THEY VALUE IN A PERSON?:  Strength both in a physical sense, but also in belief and convictions. Honesty, and understanding the flaws of the world they live in.

- WHAT THEMES DO THEY LIKE TALKING ABOUT?:  Fighting, beauty, freedom, abolishing Quincy classism based on blood purity, music, fashion, blacksmithing.

- WHICH THEMES BORE THEM?: Blind loyalty to Yhwach, talking about the horrors of war as if it doesn’t concern them, Bambietta, Quincy supremacy,

- DID THEY EVER WENT THROUGH SOMETHING TRAUMATIC?:  Her parents were killed in the first Quincy war and she was left abandoned and grew up literally fighting for her life and living on the streets. She often likens fighting pits to the bowels of Hell (and I often play with the ironic theme of crawling out of hell to appear as an angel or something divine). She is consumed by a quest for revenge, and strongly believes her ends will justify the means taken to fulfill her ideal. As a direct result of these experiences, her emotional health and maturity is severely affected, and she doesn’t view herself as a person worthy or capable of feeling as much as a tool who, in the right hands, can be utilized to bring about the revenge she craves.

- WHAT COULD LEAD TO AN INSTANT KILL?:  (1) Men who feel non-consensually entitled to her body. That said, she’s done a fairly excellent job at maintaining control and an unassuming threatening nature despite the widely known understanding of her Schrift ability and how it augments. (2) Someone touching her Quincy cross, as it’s her most precious and private item. (3) Anyone who dares get in the way of her plans that can’t be manipulated in some other useful aspect.

- IS THERE SOMEONE /-THING THEY HATE?:  Meninas hates Yhwach, and the Shinigami most predominately, but she also harbors disgust for Hollows as an instinct. That said, her young life was spent detached from Quincy culture (in addition to being a Gemischt and the inherent isolation that comes with that status), so despite her early induction into the Wandenreich ranks, Meninas does not harbor the same Quincy nationalism and loyalty that others of her race do. They’re a means to an end, and just happen to help her become stronger.

IS YOUR MUSE EASY TO APPROACH?: YES / NO. - Best ways to approach them?: She comes off as easy to approach, but if you want genuine Meninas I’m sorry the number you’re trying to reach has been disconnected. Goodbye!

SOMETHING YOU MAY STILL WANT TO POINT OUT ABOUT YOUR MUSE?: Everything I’ve written about her is based in headcanon! I’ve got both a lengthy biography as well as headcanons gathered in the sidebar links on my blog.

CONGRATS!!! You managed it, now tag your mutuals! ♥

TAGGED BY: @bazzardburner​ TAGGING: i think this has made its rounds so steal it!

[calamity-bean]

Chambers (2019)

Anyone around here watched Chambers?

I binged it recently on a whim, knowing nothing about it, when I started, other than the basic premise: a horror series about a teenage girl who starts having strange experiences after receiving a heart transplant. Supernatural horror about transplant recipients is an established trope, so if you’re familiar with it, then I reckon you can imagine the major (heart)beats of where Chambers is going with it. But just because it may be familiar doesn’t mean it’s not an enjoyable ride!

And I did get pretty engrossed. The horror elements were not, to me, particularly scary, but they were well done. I grew attached to several characters quickly, especially the protagonist, Sasha, and her uncle/guardian, Big Frank. Characters almost always carry a story for me (more so than plot), and I liked getting to know the character dynamics here and watching the more domestic subplots unfold; Sasha’s actress (Sivan Alyra Rose) has to carry a lot of the tension and emotion based on her performance alone, and I think she did a great job. And I love the setting: the Arizona desert, which Chambers fills with vast expanses and roaring sandstorms and lightning that boils through the wide, wide sky. It’s a beautiful and effective backdrop, and I found the horror/mystery elements and the character work strong enough to rec Chambers to horror fans on the basis of those elements alone.

But I think what really makes Chambers stand out are its themes. Specifically, its critique of cultural appropriation, which underpins the setting as well as the narrative in many ways. It’s a story led by a Navajo protagonist that draws its horror from the idea of being taken over and used without permission by forces that are conspicuously ultramodern, performative, and white.

More explanation of what I mean by that below, but I’m going to get into spoilers to do so (some major), so... Short version, Chambers is worth a try if you’re interested in horror stories with female and/or Native American leads; for the long version, spoilers under the cut!

Cottonwood versus Crystal Valley

So. Like I said, Chambers is set primarily in Arizona, in two towns surrounded and separated by desert.

The first is Sasha’s hometown, Cottonwood. It’s smallish, working-class; money is a pressing concern for several characters there, and the high school Sasha attends is implied to be limited in its resources and academic opportunities. Notably, many of the residents we see are nonwhite. Sasha is Navajo, as are her uncle Frank and her boyfriend TJ, who is also half Pima. (Sasha, Frank, and TJ’s actors are all of varying Native American / First Nations backgrounds; I’ve seen articles saying Sivan Alyra Rose is the first Native actress to star in a Netflix series, and it’s certainly notable that this series has multiple Native leads.) Sasha’s best friend, Yvonne, is black, and we see plenty of other brown and black characters in supporting and background roles.

The other town, Crystal Valley, was home to Sasha’s heart donor. Becky was the same age as Sasha, and her sudden death under strange circumstances provides the mystery that drives much of the plot. The contrast between Cottonwood and Crystal Valley is... striking. Becky’s family and friends are all conspicuously wealthy and white-collar. Their school is extremely modern, in its facilities as well as in its sensibilities, and academically elite. And the vast majority of the students, Becky included, are white. Which makes it VERY intentional irony, of course, that Crystal Valley High’s mascot is...

...the Braves. YEAH.

I’ll say right up front that I’m (1) white and (2) not particularly well versed in Navajo culture (or the cultures of other Southwestern peoples) or in the specific issues relevant to them today. I’m sure there are people who could go into Chambers’s portrayal of Sasha, her community, and their concerns with much more nuance and depth than I can. But even a viewer with superficial knowledge can’t help but notice that cultural appropriation is very much a theme of this show, both in the details and in the grand scope of the narrative. Sasha feels like an outsider right away as (through the sponsorship of Becky’s family) she switches schools from Cottonwood to Crystal Valley, and the more time she spends there, the more the weirdness and isolation pile on.

One of the most conspicuously weird elements involves a New Age–esque group called the Annex Foundation, which Becky’s family has some sort of connection with. The Annex folks are very into crystals. They are very into energies and yoga, ayahuasca and equinox festivals, and burning sage. Their beliefs and behaviors are a grab-bag of practices loosely adapted/reinvented from all sorts of traditions, whereas the members themselves, as far as I can recall, are almost all white.

I’m not super well versed in the New Age movement either, but I have read that this exact sort of thing is something that the movement has been widely criticized for irl — its tendency to borrow beliefs and customs from various world religions and appropriate them to the movement’s own purposes, thus using them without permission and divorcing them from their original context. We see this idea echoed everywhere in the speech and accoutrements of the Annex Foundation members. We see it in the way Sasha is pressured into leaving Cottonwood and trying to assimilate into Crystal Valley. And we see it in the way that Sasha’s supernatural connection with Becky, whose memories and personality begin to seep into her, literally begins turning Sasha white. 

There are tons of other little details that flesh out this theme — far more than I can get into. I don’t think Chambers portrays all its white characters as evil or unsympathetic. But it’s absolutely grappling with race and with a specific racialized phenomenon, and I think supernatural horror is an interesting context in which to explore it. Sasha’s relationship with her own race and culture is also complicated. As a result of her upbringing, she hasn’t had much contact with her extended family, and she feels disconnected from and somewhat ignorant of the wider Navajo community. In contrast to much of the horror coming from appropriation, her efforts to reconnect with her own family and heritage become a source of inner strength.

There is one major aspect of the overall plot that’s connected to this theme and that... didn’t quite work for me. But it’s a plot point that crops up VERY late in the game, so major end-of-season spoilers in this next section...

Spoilers! Big Ones!!

It becomes clear pretty early on, imo, that the Annex Foundation is the villain of the whole piece. I’m fine with that; it’s what I expected, it makes sense, it’s coherent with the overall theme. It’s furthermore eventually revealed that Becky’s death was connected to the Foundation’s attempt to use her as the earthly vessel for a demon they summoned out of the desert. I’m... like... okay with that. I’ve mentioned in the past that I find horror about spooky masked/robed cults of demon worshipers to be... How can I put this? SUPER cheesy. So cheesy that it can ruin an entire story for me. That’s just a personal preference, though, and even I don’t know how to completely account for it. But whatever. It’s just one aspect of the overall story here, and it fits in with the broader themes well enough. I can deal.

But what bothered me, in this case, is that the demon in question is revealed, in the season’s final episode, to be... Lilith? For some reason?

There’s no mention of Lilith before the season finale. There’s nothing, before the finale, related to Jewish mythology, Adam and Eve, “the divine feminine,” or conflict between male and female — like I’ve said, the primary thematic tension is based on race, not gender, and I don’t think gender really plays a role in the show’s exploration of cultural appropriation, either. Yet suddenly these concepts are brought in during the season finale?

I guess the idea that the Annex Foundation would glom onto a random figure from a different world tradition fits in with the whole idea of cultural appropriation, but I don’t see how Lilith specifically fits in. I don’t see why she’s taken the form of a cloud of dust/smoke out in the Arizona desert. I see themes of complicated mother/daughter relationships in the earlier episodes, but nothing related to femininity as a force unto itself (which is what the Annex folks start going on about at the very end). On the one hand, I really appreciate that this series casts a white neoreligion as its ~strange, mysterious, dangerous supernatural force~ (as opposed to the many stories that use a white/outsider POV confronted with ~strange, mysterious, dangerous~ indigenous forces), but honestly, I had been thinking that perhaps the “demon” was some sort of spirit that was native to the desert and that the Annex Foundation had simply stumbled upon it, mistaken its nature/identity, and was trying to appropriate it for their own purposes. I think that would fit in with the appropriation theme and would also explain why the spirit was not a good fit for Becky’s body (ultimately leading to her death). Moreover, the very end of the season implies that Sasha does have some kind of harmony with the “demon” inside her and can utilize it and live with it in a way that Becky never could. If this “demon” were some sort of spirit that was native to her own land and that the Annex people had tried to appropriate, I think that would fit in with the theme of Sasha reconnecting with her own heritage and finding strength in it.

So... yeah. Still trying to figure out how I feel about that aspect, or whether I missed something somewhere along the way, idk. Maybe it’ll make more sense to me in season 2, if it gets renewed.

Overall...

Regardless, though, Chambers still has a lot going for it. It has a talented and diverse cast with many likable and/or interesting characters. It incorporates difficult, relevant themes into its narrative and utilizes its setting to great effect, both in terms of the cultures it explores and in terms of the landscape itself. I think the horror elements were done well, though in much the way I expected. If you’re already familiar with the “transplant recipient has supernatural connection with the donor” trope, then yeah, it's the “transplant recipient has supernatural connection with the donor” trope! And imo, the members of the Annex Foundation telegraph “EVIL CULT EVIL CULT” from pretty much their first appearance, so I wasn’t exactly shocked. But the acting, writing, themes, and setting are all strong, and I became invested in several of the characters very quickly. So if any of this sounds interesting to you, consider giving it a try!

[rantsaboutponies]

Season 9 Retrospective

One last ride.

If this final season proved anything, it’s that nothing matters anymore. I mean, it’s kind of been that way for the last few, but this one crystallized that. The final score (W-L-T) was 1-5-20; the sheer amount of “meh” episodes is staggering.

I wonder how this show will stand the test of time. If it had aired for just those first two seasons, it probably would have been a classic, “canceled too soon” series that maintained its small but passionate group of fans for decades to come. That’s not going to be the effect, though, if you keep a series going well after the point that it should have ended. If you continue out of momentum for six or seven years past its expiration date, you’re going to end up driving your fans away by creating an atmosphere of apathy, and indeed, that’s exactly what happened. Sure, diminishing returns are still returns, but you’re going to reach a point where the majority of people have dropped off, and that’s when not even your financial responsibilities will justify your existence anymore. It might ironically turn out that the longer the show runs, the less it will be remembered. For a recent example, look at what happened to the Transformers movies. From the fiscal side, you had what looked like a good thing going; it was just a whole bunch of people complaining that these movies sucked, which didn’t matter to you as long as you were still making money. And then the fifth film came out, and you lost $100 million. Everyone who was still continuing to give these movies a chance had officially run out of patience. (I guess continuing well past anyone giving a shit is something Hasbro has yet to learn from.)

Anyway, enough rambling. This final ranking is going to be tricky, since there were just so many Tie episodes that I really didn’t give a shit about, but #1 is going to be easy because there was only one Win in the entire season. That would be...

#1. “Student Counsel”: Once again, putting Starlight and Trixie in an episode together will basically guarantee hilarious dialogue. I don’t know why they’re not getting their own spin-off.

And it’s a pretty steep drop-off from there...

#2. “Between Dark and Dawn”: I guess seeing more of the sisterly relationship between Celestia and Luna was halfway interesting (even if it wasn’t that different from what we saw in “A Royal Problem”). The fact that they seemed to forget about the main storyline at the end was kind of dumb, though.

#3. “Twilight’s Seven”: You know what, at least it was different. A heist? Sure, why not?

#4. “The Last Laugh”: There’s something ironic about this show having an episode about how it’s bad to move from doing something creative (and that you love doing) to a mechanized, monotonous process of doing the same thing and losing the passion and interest you once had. I wonder if the writers were aware of what they were doing here.

#5. “The Summer Sun Setback”: When you get right down to it, this plot wasn’t too different from the finale. This one was just smaller and focused on a single event. Either way, at least Tirek and Cozy Glow had fun fucking with them a little.

#6. “A Horse Shoe-In”: Some of the teaching auditions were kind of fun, but this wasn’t a Starlight/Trixie episode that had a ton of humorous dialogue. Very disappointing.

#7. “The Point of No Return”: Twilight doesn’t freak out about minor stuff anymore! That’s why she’s going to rule Equestria very, very soon. If I lived in Equestria, I’d be terrified for my future.

#8. “Common Ground”: I kind of wish the moral here could have been, “It’s possible not to have the same interests as someone else and still have a healthy relationship with them,” but with this show, we’ll have to settle for, “If you look really, really hard, you’ll be able to find an aspect of their interest that you like enough to keep yourself entertained.”

#9. “Sweet and Smoky”: “If you’re useful, people will stop making fun of you.” The lesson of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, now in dragon form!

#10. “She’s All Yak”: “Tell me about it...stud!” I never got on board with the “Yona is best yak” train (I mostly just found her obnoxious), but I absolutely agree with the “Jesus Christ, please stop trying to kill her!” crowd.

#11. “The Big Mac Question”: This was probably the most in-one-ear-and-out-the-other episode this season. I don’t even remember what happened. Big Mac married Cheerilee, right?

#12. “Frenemies”: I’ll be honest, this is the episode that aired while I was at Everfree Northwest, and I wasn’t really paying attention. The only thing I remember about it is “Gregory’s Bell”. As far as I know, that was actually in the episode proper.

#13 & #14. “The Beginning of the End”: Weird that Sombra never came back. Nope, he’s totally super-duper for reals defeated this time.

#15 & #16. “The Ending of the End”: I’ve mentioned this before, but big, epic battles do absolutely nothing for me when there isn’t any substance to them. If some super-powerful being is fighting some other super-powerful being, it’s no different from a normal being fighting another normal being. Scaling it up doesn’t make it more interesting. The plan involving undermining everypony’s trust in each other was a good idea, but they forgot that every single background character in this show is dumb as a box of hammers and changes allegiance on a dime, so that was never really going to work. Plus, the fact that it was Discord the whole time was just...ugh.

#17. “Dragon Dropped”: Oh, really, Rarity? Now you care about Spike? Geez. We can’t end the show without Spike continuing to be a punching bag. (But he’s buff in the last episode, so it’s fine.)

#18. “The Last Crusade”: Given how a few of the later episodes on this list, I’m surprised it didn’t turn out that Scootaloo’s parents were secretly testing her the entire time. “We just wanted to make sure that you really meant it when you said you didn’t want to move!”

#19. “Uprooted”: After Sombra destroys the Tree of Harmony, the Student Six have to work together to...decide how best to memorialize it. I just wanted to remind everyone how moronic the premise of this episode was. That’s all.

#20. “The Last Problem”: God, this framing device sucked. Without it, this episode might have been higher on the list. As it was, it rendered the entire thing pointless.

#21. “Daring Doubt”: Wow, it turned out the villain wasn’t really the villain the whole time! Please ignore any contradictory information that may have cropped up in previous episodes.

Did you notice that there were three unrelated episodes this season whose titles began with “The Last...”? Talk about uncreative.

#22. “Going to Seed”: Children really don’t need more outlets encouraging them to believe adults who lie to them for their own gain and/or pleasure. There really needs to be a show that teaches, “There are people out there who profit from lying to you.”

#23. “2, 4, 6, Greaaat”: This and the next one on this list are the double-header of “It’s okay to trick and manipulate someone if you think it’ll teach them a lesson they need to learn!” episodes.

#24. “She Talks to Angel”: Notice in both of these cases (Rainbow Dash’s in the former, Fluttershy’s in the latter) that these were not, in fact, lessons that they needed to learn! Twilight and Zecora just got to be smug assholes and pat themselves on the back at the end. Yippee.

#25. “A Trivial Pursuit”: Remember, this was the episode immediately before Celestia told Twilight how qualified she was to run a country. This was a mere seven episodes before the finale. Character growth is super easy if you just say that it happened! Also, as a major trivia buff, this was just insulting on every level.

#26. “Growing Up Is Hard to Do”: This episode really brought back the name of my blog. After so many that I didn’t care about, it felt good to have a nice long rant again, and boy, did this one deserve it.

So...what will G5 bring? Different characters? Different stories? Different writers? At this point, who knows? Maybe I’ll be there to find out.

[pigletsbigmovie]

im gonna talk about good omens tv series

ok it was a fun time! it’s nice! it’s a rather faithful adaptation of the book!! but...... it also.. oddly felt emptier at the same time?? lol :’)

like the reason why i love good omens, it’s strong point, the thing that makes the story work, is it’s theme! free will vs determinism! it’s the core and the foundation of the story! how all the characters and their separate plots ultimately come together in the end to exemplify how the power of humanity is their ability to change and reject the idea of a predestined role!

thats like... the whole point of good omens?

and the show just felt rly lacking in that aspect? like there just wasnt enough effort/material put in to Build up the theme? it doesnt feel like the backbone of the story, instead it just feels scattered about

having read the book i was able to have fun with it! bc i know what it’s supposed to be! but i also couldnt turn my brain off to the fact that i dont think it stands as strongly on it’s own

i mean whatever it’s fine. like i said it’s fun! i didnt hate it and it wasnt like i had high expectations or anything! it’s just that it’s a very faithful (obviously) adaptation of the book so it’s odd that the show is thematically weak when it basically is just the book with a Small Tiny Bit of additions to it......

and i feel like it’s bc they cut these tiny lines/moments that seem small but are rly significant?

like one thing i cant stop thinking about, especially bc it’s the first of the issues to pop up, was how they changed the scene in which crowley revives the dove aziraphale accidentally killed to, instead, having aziraphale revive the dove himself?

i had to pause the episode at this point in order to process my grief

which is dramatic lmao but i was just so shocked? bc they were generally really following the book right down to the dialogue?? the dove scene specifically even has the same dialogue in the book! so it just blindsided me the fact that 1.) they actually kept this small scene and 2.) they kept this scene but decided to change something about it for some reason???

in the book: aziraphale, the angel, accidentally kills a dove and seems rather unconcerned about it but crowley, the demon, cares enough to take the dove and revive it

that reveals a lot about these 2 characters AND establishes the theme of the story in a 10 second or so scene.

but instead they decide to keep everything the same except aziraphale revives the dove? and so from a scene that informs the audience about character and theme, it now becomes a scene that serves literally Zero Purpose other than? to show the powers an angel possesses? 

and this is one of many tiny little cuts and changes. and i know it sounds nit-picky but im not mad that the show isnt exactly the same. like in this case i wouldve been fine with them just not having the dove scene at all rather than having the altered meaningless one.

i only mention these tiny things bc these scenes are actually still in the show! it just feels like theyre picking the wrong parts of those scene to keep in and cut out?? like literally just 1 kept line or 2 could change it for the better...

like they cut the line in the 1st episode about adam’s “potentiality” for both good and evil? which again! establishes the theme! like i know the drunken debate is funny but if they were strapped for time, it’s the potentiality lines that shouldve been kept rather than cut and it’s also why when aziraphale and crowley chime in with their ineffable vs great plan argument, it lacks the punch the book has? bc debate over and mentions of the ineffable plan repeatedly crop up in the book... especially as a way for aziraphale to defend heaven’s decision to allow the apocalypse to happen.... so that by the end of the book when aziraphale instead uses the ineffable plan as an argument against the apocalypse, it feels like the culmination of a character arc rather than a random reference to one line in episode 1 that happens to save the day in the last episode aNYWAY im gonna leave it at that there a some other examples of this but you get the idea im not gonna make this longer than it already is

[mad-hare]

ag question: any thoughts on how to make farming more sustainable in North American deserts?

This is … such a great question… and I will do my best to present a justifiable answer… Short answer: you need to mimic and work alongside nature.

First of all, the true North American deserts, honestly, probably shouldn’t be farmed. But, arid grasslands for sure have agricultural potential. And, thanks to desertification, we are losing good farmland to expanding desert. This is a huge problem in North America, but also in Africa. And I might know more about this in terms of looking at arid regions of Africa, but lets see how I talk my way through this problem.

Life, and agriculture, is all about water. And while most of us will think of this as precipitation levels, much of the farming we do relies on ground water. Aquifers are underground stores of clean, fresh, water, that slowly rise up to let life go on, even far from rivers and lakes. Aquifers naturally replenish themselves, often with spring snow melt seeping back down into them, but humans currently bring up water from them at a much faster rate than they can replenish. I’m sure most of us have heard about the great rivers of the west that have been dammed up so they no longer reach the ocean. Depletion of the aquifers is a much less known about crisis that threatens a huge area.

Below is a map showing major areas of aquifer depletion. Right in the middle of America, that dark red and red/yellow striped aquifer, called the high plains or Ogallala aquifer, probably the most famous one. Here is a link to a huge report on US groundwater depletion if you wish to learn more about this topic (map from the report).

How, has the white man done so much damage in such a short time being here? Well, this is probably why (image taken by NASA):

Probably not what you imagine when someone says crop circle (sorry), but that is crops being grown using giant sprinklers, that take up that sweet, sweet, Ogallala water. It’s sort of pretty, at least? In North America this is just, how the country has been set up to run, and it should be fine until the aquifers drain out completely. In Saudi Arabia, they actually do the same thing in their deserts– but they use desalinated sea water. It is a very wasteful practice (desalination is hard), but SA is a rich country, and they do it because countries generally like to be able to produce some of their own food, even if theoretically they don’t need to.

There are other causes of rapid desertification. Our landscapes were shaped by wildlife. Bison, wolves, and prairie dogs. Three heavily persecuted species. Bison used to move across the plains, trampling down and consuming grass. Wolves would follow the bison, and encourage them to stay tight in their herds. Without bison, grass gets tall, dries out, and decomposes very slowly (and catches fire more easily). There is a Navajo saying, “without the prairie dog, there will be no one to cry for rain.” Ignoring indigenous knowledge has caused harm in many parts of the world. These little critters are considered to be pests by farmers, and have been killed en masse in many areas. While they don’t exactly cry for rain, their complex, deep, tunnel homes passively bring up groundwater and can help to prevent droughts by keeping vegetation green!Read more: Eliminating prairie dogs can lead to desertification.

“Oh yea, my people make it rain. Please don’t kill us”

Okay, so reintroducing these animals is great for the environment, but they don’t really do much to feed us. Due to climate and precipitation in the areas in question, without artificial irrigation, these lands are very delicate. All of the crops we grow on a large scale, minus pasture and hay land, are annuals. They live, go to seed, and die within a year. Perennial plants (including pasture), shrubs, trees, all live for much longer, which gives them more time to establish complex root systems. These root systems stay alive throughout the winter, which is a very good thing. I’m going on for too long, but I could talk about this for pages. Basically, perennial roots support soil life and structure 365 days a year. Ecological succession is the process where, over time, nature naturally becomes a complex system.

The way we grow crops, keeps land at a very low level of succession. The reason it is so hard to grow monocultures is because every bug, weed, that grows in a field, is nature’s attempt to move to a higher level of succession (more biodiversity keeps soil healthy and stable, you can see how the dark top soil grows deeper with increasing succession).

We can manage animals such as sheep and cattle (ruminant animals), in the way bison and wolves originally helped the land, on a smaller scale. This method is called Holistic Management and was invented by Allan Savory. Allan Savory on Climate Change- TED talk that changed my life. His work was done on wildlife reserves in Africa!

Some innovative farmers even follow cattle with pigs or chickens on smaller scales (mimics the way manure would get spread and scratched up even more). More complexity = more productivity.

These perennial areas build good stuff like soil carbon and organic matter fast. Land that is holistically managed is also drought and fire resistant. Like, big time. Farmers practicing holistic management with their cattle herds have seen their neighbours struggle with drought and flooding just across their own fencelines. Over time, holistic management helps build ecological succession and resiliency. Below is one of Allan’s plots in Zimbabwe, but much of North America is starting to look like this:

In addition to healthy cattle, this beautiful land helps support all native wildlife– even wolves. Since the cattle are carefully managed packed together more closely, wolf losses can be lower, making farmers more tolerant to wolves.

So how do we grow crops on this land? On a large scale, these plots could be tilled up and cropped for a few years, before being turned back to grassland. In organic agriculture, we often look at crop rotations that can last 7-10 years, as opposed to short 1-2 year rotations. The smaller these annual plots of our crops are, the more benefit from the surrounding pasture biodiversity they would get. Less water stress, less insect pressure, probably lower disease incidence. The annual crops would deplete soil organic matter and carbon, which naturally store water, over a few years before being turned back into grassland.

To do this, would require a paradigm shift in the way we manage most of our lands. There are innovative farmers doing a lot of what I talked about though, and slowly we are realizing the value of these long-term management styles. Even if things seem impossible today, there are farmers out there thinking ahead, taking risks, and getting results that can slowly lead to large scale changes like this..thank you for reading my post I hope this answered some questions.

[argylemikewheeler]

not adopted (mike & richie twins) - PART 4

Richie decides to take the bait and learn about where the hell he came from. Turns out he might have more than one parent in common with the Party back in Hawkins. Part 1 |Part 2 | Part 3

Richie was thankful Derry had a very forgiving nature when it came to suspicious behavior. He was able to go directly into three different hotels and ask point-blank the room numbers of guests, and no one asked any questions. He was able to find Will and Mike’s room within the hour he left Eddie’s house and was standing outside of it, hand raised to the door, running through every possible thing to say before even knocking.

He thought he had finally figured it all out when the door swung out from under his hand. Both he and Will jumped at the appearance of the other.

“What are you doing?” Will gasped, clutching his chest. “Jesus, Richie.”

“I was coming to talk to you guys… Hi.” Richie waved awkwardly at Will, like they needed a new introduction. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah. I guess.” Will said, stepping aside. “Mike? Your brother’s here.” The bed sheets began to move and a matted head of hair rolled towards them on the pillows.

“Richie?” He groaned, eyes squinted. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“I wanted to talk to you.” Richie said, stepping inside. He shut the door behind him. “I’m ready to listen. To all of it.”

“Are you sure?” Will said, looking at Mike. Mike sat up further in the bed and ran a hand through his hair. It was just as unruly and mad-scientist as Richie’s. It was strange seeing himself in someone else; he was used to staring at his parents and seeing straight, bleached hair.

“Yeah. Family shit aside.” Richie said. “What do you think it-- they-- need me for?” Richie wasn’t even sure who he was talking about. Was it even a who? He watched his own fear of disappearance manifest before his very own eyes; a few weird conversations were going to be nothing.

“A-Are we really the people to explain all of this?” Will said, Mike considering the question and chewing his lip. He groaned, the two of them sharing thoughts without words.

“Maybe we can call everyone in the morning, but I think we know enough.” Mike said. “I don’t want to wake El and ask her about it this late.”

“Is that Eleven?” Richie asked, remembering the name. A number was hard to forget. His brain bounced to the idea that having such a name could be pretty fucking metal, before he yanked himself back to the topic at hand. Focusing was even harder when he didn’t want to do it. “Who the fuck is that?”

“My sister.” Will said, pulling a chair out from the hotel desk and offering it to Richie. As Richie sat, he sat next to Mike on the bed. “Well, step-sister. But she’s not even related to her dad.”

Richie blinked at them. “How the hell does that work?”

“Kind of how you do.” Mike answered, rubbing the back of his neck. “But like, not really.”

“Oh. Adopted.” They weren’t even going to say the word.

“Stolen, actually.” Will said. “She was used for science experiments.”

“Oh shit.” Richie said. “That’s fucked man.” And not what Richie went through. Well, actually it would probably explain a lot--

“She’d probably agree with you.” Will laughed, although he ended with a heavy sigh. “She was basically forced to open the gate to the Upside Down. And then close it again.”

“So she’s… an alien?” Richie was trying to follow, but comic books could only make him so smart. “Or like, what?”

Will and Mike exchanged a look. “Uh, we’ll get back to you.” Mike said. “But, she’s one of the only ones we know that can go between here and the Upside Down.”

“Except for me. But that isn’t a power. That was a fluke, kind of.” Will shrugged.

“Possession. Not a fluke.” Mike corrected.

“Yeah, I guess--”

“I’m sorry. Rewind: possession?” Richie repeated. “Please don’t tell me we’ve got a whole goddamn Exorcist plot line in here too. Dude I fucking hated that movie.” Will sat silent, rolling his lips inward. “Oh fuck.”

“We figured it out though. We fixed it.” Mike insisted. “Will’s fine now.” He placed an arm around the boy and grinned. They leaned their heads together and Richie couldn’t help but want Eddie there with him. He wanted his own comfort, but he also knew bringing him along for this ride wasn’t fair to him. His mom already hated him and Richie together as it was. Going MIA for an undetermined amount of time wasn’t going to help anyone. Maybe Richie should have asked Bill; both their parents would have just shrugged at their children's empty beds.

Richie began to wring his wrists, fingers running over familiar protruding bones and scars. Richie never remembered any of them, but his parents--foster parents-- said he was a trouble child and his entire body was aching proof.

“Will and El are pretty much the only two people who know what it looks like. And then there’s you.” Mike explained. He grabbed Will’s hand and Richie never felt more alone, sitting and having to hold his own.

“And you.” Richie said. “I’ve never seen it before you. I’ve never seen any of that shit before in my entire life.”

“Not once?” Will asked, eyebrows furrowing. “Nothing with lights? Radios? Static?”

“What do I look like? A defective Radio Shack? No. My life has been relatively normal for the most part. Some weird things cropping up, but nothing like that.”

“Why can’t I see it?” Mike sounded deflated, like he was missing out. “That could have saved everyone.”

“Blame Mom and Dad.” Richie scoffed, crossing his legs on the chair. He placed his arms over his legs, still twisting his wrist between his thumb and forefinger. “Why did they do that, anyway?”

“They said you were sick. Taken to a foster family to be taken care of. I don’t remember anything from then, but the stories are all kind of vague. A lot of doctors and stuff. But by then, mom said you had passed.” Mike shrugged. “Or else I would have come looking for you.”

“I don’t remember any goddamn doctors.” Richie said. He remembered eye doctors, ones treating his broken arm when he was younger. He must’ve seen others for all his cuts and bruises, but not a single one stuck in his mind. Any memories was of white rooms, but that could really be anything. He assumed he just had a very boring daycare. “Not one.” He continued to twist his arms.

“I don’t want understand, Richie. I don’t know why they gave you to them if you weren’t sick. I don’t understand.” Mike sighed, shaking his head. His curls flopped around and Richie had to laugh; they were identical to his own. He could think of at least one person who had the same hands as him; he could pretend he was holding his brother since he technically couldn’t without transporting dimensions. “I can’t believe they did that.” He leaned his head on Will’s shoulder, and Will leaned back, but his eyes were focused on Richie’s arms resting on his lap.

“What happened to your arm?” Will asked, pointing at it bluntly. There was a lot to question.

“Uh, I don’t know.” Richie muttered. “They’ve been there so long I thought they were birthmarks as a kid.” Some were new and Richie remembered putting them there, but he was willing to lie. “Void Mom and Dad said I was a fucking tornado. Which I believe.”

“That... That looks like a burn, Richie.” Will said, leaning forward and touching the rough, red skin.

“Okay, Unsolved Mysteries, get back to answering the questions at hand.” Richie yanked his arm away like it burned but the skin had been numb for years. “I’ve had that since I was a kid. Mom said I burned it playing with matches.”

“Your arm? Not your hands.” Mike raised the question with a raised eyebrow. “Sounds like shit to me.” Richie glared and tucked his arm against his chest.

“You know,” Will said to Mike with a chuckle. “It reminds me of El’s new tattoo. Same place too. God, why didn’t we bring her?”

“Because this was a couple’s vacation?” Mike responded. “And I’m done dating your sister.”

“Wait. El has one just like this?” Richie pointed at his burn. First someone with the same face, now the same deformities?

“No. She has a tattoo-- a little butterfly. She won’t tell any of us what the hell it means, but she really loves it.” Mike grinned. “It’s covering her number. Her name.”

“Eleven.” Richie repeated. “It was tattooed on her?”

“There was obviously more than one.” Will said solemnly. “They kept track of each one.”

“What the fuck.” Richie breathed. “And she was made to... what? be a liaison for all this weird shit?”

“Listen, that whole lab is… it’s messed up.” Mike said roughly. “Stole her from her own mother.”

“Huh, know how that feels.” Richie was barely wrapping his head around the idea, but he already had the feeling he’d have a lot in common with that Eleven kid. Although it sounded like she had a better grip on her world than Richie did at the moment; he was too busy twisting his wrists to hold it correctly and with steady hands. Will was still staring. “Dude, would you fucking stop staring like that. You’re the strangers here-- I shouldn’t feel like this is freshman homeroom for fuck’s sake.”

“Sorry.” Will distracted himself by looking at the ceiling. “Sorry.”

“Can I ask a question now?” Richie said, crossing and then recrossing his legs. “What does The Upitty--”

“Upside Down.”

“Yeah. What does it do?” Richie asked. “Like. What does seeing it mean for me? What do I do with this fucking second pair of eyes?” Will and Mike looked at each other with half-finished sentences passing between the two of them. “That’s not comforting.”

“It’s just the opposite of this world. It’s dark and and controlling and vengeful. The fact you can see it from here has got to be a good thing.” Will offered, his eyes still trying to admire the room’s decor rather than that on Richie’s arms.

“A good thing?” Mike echoed, staring at him. “How can you say that? That’s my brother. I wouldn’t wish--” Brother. Already, Richie had been absorbed into Mike’s life, something he considered an extension of himself. He came to his defense. He didn’t even know Richie’s last name.

“It’s okay. I--I don’t mind.” Richie wasn’t sure what he was excusing, but the explosion of feelings seemed imminent on either end of the conversation and he was eager to reserve that for himself. “I can be a mutant with powers, I guess.”

“El will be able to explain things so much easier.” Mike said. “We’ll call her tomorrow. She can tell you her whole story beginning to end-- she can do that now.” He sounded proud. “She picked up curses from Hop so she tells the ‘Papa’ parts very well now.”

Richie grabbed his arms and felt himself become exposed, even under his clothes. His skin felt tight and itchy. “Papa.” The word had been hiding under Richie’s tongue for years, unfurling and flying from between his teeth involuntarily.

“Yeah.” Mike said. “Papa.” He looked at Richie with narrowing eyes. “Richie, you good?”

“Yeah.” Richie couldn’t tell from where that word had uncovered itself. He was on a first name basis only with his foster dad; Wentworth was just so much cooler sounding than Dad. “That just sounds really familiar... Guess I called Wentworth that before, well, Wentworth.”

“You call your dad by his first name?” Will asked.

“Yeah, I never felt like Dad worked, and he never corrected me.”

“Wentworth.” Mike echoed. “Sounds like a mad-scientist.”

“He’s a fucking dentist.” Richie laughed, wondering what his real dad did for a living. Fuck, what if his real dad was worse? “Although, after all the shit you were saying, growing up in a lab doesn’t sound half bad.” After so many doctor’s appointments, Richie kind of felt like he did. The two boys were obviously well-loved boys, blinking at Richie with concern. Richie shifted the conversation quickly, clearing his throat. “I can’t wait to meet El.”

“You’ll love her.” Will smiled, his excitement bubbling as he reached over and touched Richie’s knee. Mike reached over too, but placed his own hand on Will’s, careful of contact with his brother. “God, you’ll have so much in common.”

...

as requested:

@theres-no-going-home @byersoul @pigfartsranger394 @mayfernandar5@imadeanitblog @thescaryflower @rrichiettozier @babyblue-eddiespaghetti @enbybabyboy @elphiegoescraycray @trashmouthdiangelo @tobzier @welctothelosersclub @littledancersun @sarah-cat-and-the-doctor @christmaslightsandredballoons @purple-dinosaur-rex @lizzyleaves @nagggy@noahclapp-reddie @nutellalester @imnot-reddieforthis @tj-the-magical-ginger @tiny-bean-35

[mexcine]

Avengers: Infinity War (2019) review

Based on the box-office numbers, everyone in the world who wanted to see Avengers: Infinity War has already seen Avengers: Infinity War, so this review (a) won’t worry about spoilers, and (b) will selectively discuss a few points of interest rather than spending much space evaluating the film as a whole.  It’s a fine film technically, with such heavy reliance on CGI that it is more or less an animated movie; it’s long and necessarily episodic but is paced fairly well.

           1. In today’s world, series films are routine, and little or no time is spent making Movie B able to stand alone for new viewers who missed Movie A. You want to know what’s happening and why, and who these characters are? Go watch Movie A, which is undoubtedly available in many places and formats.  Avengers: Infinity War is just such a film. No backstory given, jumps right into the action.  And, like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it’s a culmination of a film series that has been (one assumes) split into two parts.  Because if the next Avengers movie doesn’t pick up where this one left off, then the decidedly open-ended and down-beat conclusion to Infinity War becomes even more of a downer.  In other words, if everyone who “dies” in Infinity War stays dead, and we’re just left with the survivors and any new characters who might crop up, that will be…weird.

           2. Speaking of the conclusion, in which Thanos eradicates half of the living things in the universe in a dramatic act of social engineering, I have a few questions.  Did Thanos just kill 50 percent of the sentient, humanoid creatures in the universe? Or did he kill 50 percent of all living creatures, right down to single-celled amoebae?  If you’re reducing the population by half to make better use of resources, seems like eliminating half of the food supply would be self-defeating. Or maybe Thanos is forcing the survivors to become vegans.  Also, did Thanos eliminate 50% of the Marvel Universe only? So the DC Universe is alright?  [Also: damn you, Thanos! Not Cobie Smulders!]

           3. Since matter can neither be created nor destroyed, the pile of ashes left over after each unlucky person is disintegrated doesn’t seem quite large enough. Maybe we are mostly water and air, after all. Also, why doesn’t everyone vanish at the same time?  [By the way, I like to call what happens at the end of Infinity War the “Anti-Rapture.”]

           4. The alliance of the Avengers and the Guardians of the Universe in Infinity War exacerbates the oft-discussed disparity between the powers and abilities of the super-heroes and super-villains in such movies.  The creators of Superman quickly realised that having an invulnerable hero removed most of the series’ suspense. Superman can’t be killed, so the comic book (and later, radio and film) stories had to concentrate on how he defeated the villains, and if he could do so in a timely fashion to minimise the damage to society. The writers then came up with Kryptonite and starting doing stories in which Superman was tricked or presented with an apparently unsolvable paradox: “you can save Lois Lane or these orphans trapped in a sinking ship, but not both!”  The same thing applies to villains: they have to have an Achilles’ heel, either physically literal or a figurative one (villain undone by hubris, etc.).  

Thanos--Infinity Gauntlet aside--is apparently virtually invulnerable, but the Avengers/Guardians persist in attacking him as if he could be physically overcome or destroyed.  Only towards the end do they focus on his weakness (the Gauntlet), only to fail because Starlord is an idiot. The other option is to prevent him from obtaining the Complete Set of Infinity Stones, which is essentially the plot of Infinity War (spoiler: they fail at this).  To compensate for these ultimately futile sequences, the film gives Thanos some underlings who actually can be defeated, but with little to no effect on the final outcome (except that some of the Avengers/Guardians are killed in action rather than being disintegrated in the anti-Rapture at the climax).

On the heroic side, the combined Avengers/Guardians are even more of a mis-matched group than each team was alone.  The Guardians of the Universe are to a certain extent just “normal” people [sic] with (at most) some enhanced abilities that allow them to defeat opponents at roughly their same level.  I can’t think of a single Guardian--with the possible exception of Teen Groot--who’d qualify as a Avenger, except…the Avengers also include people with no super-powers (the Black Widow, Hawkeye), people whose super-powers are entirely due to enhanced technology that could conceivably be used by anyone (most of the rest), several characters whose power is great but rather indefinable (Dr. Strange, Scarlet Witch), and a couple of legitimately Superman-ish heroes (Thor, and the Hulk…except the Hulk doesn’t appear in the film at all, relegating Bruce Banner to a mech-suit and thus pseudo-Iron Man status).

Consequently, Infinity War boils down to 2 basic types of sequences: the Avengers/Guardians hold their own against the minions of Thanos (oh, how I wish the Minions were in this film) and the Avengers/Guardians attack Thanos personally, and lose.  The climactic set-piece in Wakanda--extremely impressive and exciting as it is--pits various Avengers and the Wakanda self-defense force against hordes of mindless demon-dogs (roughly) commanded by a couple of Thanos hench-persons, as Wakandan scientists try to remove the final Infinity Stone from the Vision’s forehead. Make no mistake about it, this is pretty great, but up until Thor’s arrival it’s sort of a super-hero version of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift (except the African warriors are inside the encampment this time): the good guys (Captain America, Bucky, Black Widow, Black Panther, Mecha-Bruce, and the Wakandans) use relatively conventional weapons to mow down a numerically-superior but individually vulnerable enemy, but the tide slowly begins to turn against them…cue Thor and things go well…for a while.

This sequence is well-crafted, exciting and suspenseful--intercutting the “operation” on the Vision with the fighting outside--and you get the sense that either side could win, something not really present in the Thanos scenes (seriously, Spiderman against Thanos?).  

I’m not really advocating for a different approach--the piece-meal composition of the Avengers has existed since the comic book days.  In a way, having less-powerful team members adds something to the dynamic (Batman and Superman, an unequal team on the face of it, have done OK for more than 70 years), although trying to give Black Widow (and in earlier Avengers movies, Hawkeye) something “important” to do is always a stretch.

5. The previous points may seem to be nit-picking, but flaws in a film’s logic and even its basic premise don’t automatically mean it’s not an entertaining film, and Avengers: Infinity War is definitely entertaining.  However, I will take one true, subjective shot at the picture: I didn’t feel the attempts at humour, as minor as they are, meshed very well with the overall tone.  I might be wrong about this, since I can only recall one bit (Quill’s jealousy of Thor) that irritated me, while I can think of several good parts (Thor and Captain America’s reunion and Thor referring to Groot as his friend “Tree”) that made me smile.

I didn’t eagerly anticipate Avengers: Infinity War, but I’m glad I watched it.  This does mean, however, that I am now committed to seeing next year’s Avengers movie (which, by the way, apparently features several characters who were disintegrated in this one…surprise!).  

[popculturebuffet]

Amphibia Reviewcaps:  Scavenger Hunt/ The Plantars Check In

KEITH DAVID IS HERE! KEITH DAVID IS HERE AND NOT IN SHADOWY STINGER BITS BUT FULL CHARACTER! And okay other stuff happened I guess. Anne deals with her insecurity over her girlfriend being way more smart and acomplished than her, then the Plantars meet King Keith David, followed by Sprig reinacting the plot of Home Alone 2 mixed with a bit of Blank Check. You know that forgetable disney movie about the white dumbass who uses his computer skillz to get rich and has to deal with the mob.. I assume. I really have no idea exactly what blank check was about and neither do you. KEITH DAVID, under the cut. 

Scavenger Hunt

And with Marcy’s big intro out of the way we’re back to simplier problem of the week episodes, though this one does lead into the next which does have some solid plot progression, and the new setting and fresh injection of Marcy mean they do feel a bit newer after the road episodes. Like a good road trip after all that time you finally get to see the sights, enjoy the place and just relax. And also eat because your usally hungry when you first arrive, which is what the plantars and new addition Marcy are doing to start.  Marcy’s treating, because she’s friends iwth the king and as we learn next episode the king gives his friends acess to the royal treasury because he’s a seemingly nice dude. Again, more on that in a minute. While Hop Pop marvels at Marcy’s smarts and analytics, a messag efrom the king arrives.. and yes I too have “A MESSAGE FROM THE KING A MESSAGE FROM THE KING’ from hamilton in my head right now. 

Turns out the King likes to send Puzzle grams, basically sending marcy on scavenger hunts to tell her something because their both massive dorks. And it is taking ALL my willpower not to jump right ot the keith david of things, but for the sake of profesionalism I will stay here. So our party splits up: Marcy, Anne and Sprig go off to solve the puzzle and see the town while Hop Pop ends up staying because you can get free shit the more you eat, which yeah is a nice thing and all but is usually not worth what you spend. But it’s not his dime so fair enough. The king’s toilet’s are probably gold with gems and the softest seats in the land. I mean if I were king of the world I”d want the best toilet in the world. I’d also install free health care and other good stuff, but I’d expect a really nice crapper as one of the perks of the job. 

Anyway the hop pop plot really is just him eating a lot to get free stuff and showing up at the end , so i’ll focus ont he main plot which is pretty standard: Anne is insecure about how smart Marcy is, and TRIES to out marcy her in solving the puzzle, while befrending various people: Resucing a girl’s cat/caterpillar from a tree, befreinding an old lady and doing her nails, and then bonding with the gnatcho cart lady.. which made me want nachos bad, who enocourage a dispondent anne to be herself and try anyway. But yeah Marcy suceeds instead, Anne gets depressed, then Anne tries TOO Hard on the last clue when Marcy is stuck and ends up in the sewer with the alligators.. which unlike real life sewer gators, were put there on purpose by marcy to eat garbage when she redid the sewer system.. because of course she did she’s the best. It’s a really nice gag. They escape the gator when the various people Anne helped form a chain, along with an exasperated hop pop and Polly.  Then sprig blabs about Anne’s insecurity, and Marcy comforts her, pointing out that while she’s a genius and what not.. she dosen’t.. get people. Anne does, which.. I found a nice twist. The first thing she did,g etting the cat, made me think “oh their going to go with her physical skills”.. but instead in a nice twist that made me like this episode more, it’s her heart. And it’s not something they pulled out of thin air: While it hasn’t really come into play a lot this season, last season was all about Anne slowly connecting with the town and being suprisingly good with people.. she can be blunt, dosen’t think things through.. but she does have empathy, problem solving and a desire to genuinely help people who need it. It’s a hard trait to learn and it’s one she does with natural ease. It’s a nice bit of showing her character and what she’s good at. Also the message turns out to be “bring the plantars” which.. yeah the second the first clue was bring, even without next episodes description, I could’ve guessed. And they close the episode as all episodes should close.. feeding nachos to a  sewer gator. 

Final Thoughts I:  As you could tell by how easily I sped through it, the episode was...eh. It’s not bad, but no episode of the series has been truly terrible. It honestly, and this kind of complaint is overused, feels like filler. And granted I rarely watch anime, I know cartoons work different.. but this episode feels like it’s just there to provide more Marcy before we focus primarily on the Plantars again, and before the plot turns them against her.  Which isn’t a bad thing mind and she’s great as she was last week.  The problem is Anne. Her feeling down about herself, while a normal human emotion.. just dosen’t jibe with her normal brand of overconfidence. It’s not entirely out of the blue for her not ot feel as smart as marcy, it’s just set up poorly. We could’ve easily used a flashback or something to the human world to help make it feel like a more longstanding issue, than one that just crops up because Polly said a thing after a full episode of her being totally fine with Marcy being way smarter than her. Even the intro has her entirely fine with it. It would’ve flowed better if she played off she was fine, but secretly was trying to one up her and did feel dumber versus that being spelled out so early, as it woudl’ve fit more with the character. So yeah this one’s more just forgetable, a stop gap between two plot important episodes. And I don’t mind catching our breath after the last episode given it was a huge one what with introducing a new major character and a new setting and having a lot of action set pieces, I just know the show can do that BETTER, as seen with HandY Anne following up , if a year after, from the emotionally draining season 1 finale, they just.. didn’t this time and it just flopped a bit, but still had enough nice moments and good bits to make it still enjoyable. 

That’s something I do have to give the show credit on as I have been hard on it, as i’ve said reviwing more forgetable episodes is hard: Most shows don’t make it out of season 1 without at least one terrible episode. OK KO had “Let’s Not Be Skeletons”, Ducktales had “The Beagle Birthday Massacre” (And i’m a huge fan of Lena as a character, just to be clear, her debut episode was terrible for other reasons) , Steven Universe had Arcade Mania,  Adventure Time had “Freak City” and Legend of Korra had “The Spirit of Compettiton”.. and really the whole love triangle plot but that’s a story for another day.. all of these are really..e xcept arcade mania that one’s just dull and pointless. But i’m not: My point is it’s still a really good sign the show hasn’t really flopped over in the span of two seasons, with even the annoying quarallers pass still having some really good stuff to it. I may be critical, because as a critic that’s my job no one pays me for, but I do love this show and want to make it clear it’s still excellent. I’d rather watch this episode again than any episode of “Hoops”.. seriously I have no interest in that show and I question why Jake Johnston thought signing on for it was a good idea. Then again, Keith David was in this

And this

And BOTH of these

So I can’t blame Jake for wanting an easy paycheck when Screen Legend Keith David has done far worse for one. Speaking of Keith David....

The Plantars Check In 

IT’S TIME. 

We’ve had a sample of keith david with the omnoius end from last week but now we get the full package. And i’ve made no secret how much I absolutley love Keith David or how excited I was to see him joint he cast. The main is a voice acting and regular acting legend. Sure he usually does bit parts, but he does the hell out of them. 

The man also has a longer history in disney than I ever realized. While I knew he played Goliath and Dr. Facilier, I had no idea just how much minor voice work he’s done for disney over the decades, doing a LOT of minor roles during the 90′s and even vocing Mufasa in “House of Mouse”, subbing for James Earl Jones which.. yeah if anyone’s the next Jamers Earl Jones, it’s Keith. He’s the king of making a meal out of side rolls and on the ocasions he gets a big one he makes a damn buffet of it, as seen with Gargoyles and Community. 

So yeah, I love the guy and was excited for his first full apperance and pleasantly suprised.  We open at what looks like a comibation of the temple of time and Hyrule Castle for Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and I swear that’s what their going for with the background music here.  Anyways after Lady Oliva tries to keep things formal, and reveals King Andrias has been king for over a thousand years, which makes things even more interesting, he .. happily hops off the throne, gives the Plantars a friendly greeting and then a bear hug. I was expecting him to be stern yet nice, for now, but this is a nice change of pace and i’ts shown by the way Olvia acts towards this behavior, wishing he’d be proper because “Most unorthodox” and all that monocle popping nonsense, that this is normal for him. So it’s not ENTIRELY an act for their benefit. He is apparently nice to his immediate subjects, vistors and especially Marcy. It’s also lovely to see Keith David play such a diffrent character from his usual villian, stoic badass or hilarious grandpa rolls, instead playing a cheerful and boisterous king. He honestly reminds me a lot fo River from star vs the forces of evil. Which by the way I also love Alan Tuduk and regret not bringing him up in either review river’s been in so far. 

Anyway, we then get some more plot stuff as he meets anne, and we get a nice bit of him doing the “thumb of approval” and marveling at anne’s awkawrd fistbump in response. But it’s down to buisness, he wants to send his loyal knight and new friend he just met home, but needs the box. While anne reveals she don’t got it, with Hop Pop acting nervous as he realizes “oh shit, maybe lying to my surrogate grandaughter about something this important when we’re ont he way to a place where people will naturally want ot see the thing, and STILL not telling her after meeting Marcy and knowing sh’ed want to know about it too has started to backfire!” And yeah while he has sympathetic motives, and clearly knows SOMETHING about the box, and I supsect King Keith David does too but give me a second, his not telling Anne what he did at any time is only going to make it harder to trust him later, especially if Marcy ends up betraying them. He also notices something I actually failed to notice , as did Anne: The colorful stones on the calamity box are drained of color. So the King’s going to have to reserach this for a bit, with Marcy helping obviously and since Anne’s usless at research, the king instead happily treats the plantars to a vacation on him while they sort thigns out: A stay at the nicest hotel in the city, on his dime, and acess to his royal credit card, which given he’s king of everything means he just gave them the unlimited funds code. 

Before we move on, my thoughts on the king: He’s hard to read. I do think he’s genuinely that nice a person.. but he CLEARLY has a dark side, having subjugated the toads and the frogs, which had to have happened under him as he’s first in his line and both remember the status quo as only such. Hop Pop dosen’t even question the way things are or one god king ruling over all for over a thousand years. The question is did he do so because he didn’t know better, because he thought he had to, or because 

I do n’t know what that’s from but expect me to be using it a LOT from now on. My point is it’s hard to tell what his game is here. He could be a cruel asshole masquerading as a fun loving king on the service to sugarcoat his shadier actions.. or he could be a well intentioned extermist, doing awful things for what he sees as the greater good and possibly having lost the plot, or his empathy over thousands of years. Or he genunley could have no idea what he’s planning is bad and see no harm in it due to a different set of morals, again due to being immortal. There’s a LOT of intresting directions they can go with this character and i’m curious to see just what sort of vilian, or possibly good guy all along though I doubt it, he will be and given both grime, more recently i’ll admit but still, and sasha have been complex villians instead of one dimensional assholes, the show will no doubt give us something spectacular. HOpefully i’m not tempting fate but if I am, screw it, i’m rolling those dice. This is going to be godo and I can’t wait.  It’ll also be intresting to see if he genuinely values marcy or is putting on the good king act and puzzles and all that to manipulate her. After all we’ve seen with Sasha that she’s easily manipulated, as far as we can tell, and sees this all as a game.. it’d be easy enough to lead her along by playing int othe genre and her desires to get her to play his game the way he needs her to. Though it’s also a question of if Marcy will see it or back the wrong side... though she MIGHT. while she isn’t great with people, she does know games and half the time a benevolent ally will turn out to be a dick in sheeps clothing. Though i’m hoping that isn’t the case for Marcy. But we’ll see..

Anyways with the first third or so of the episode down, the Plantars Check in, TITLE DROP, and Polly, Anne and Hop Pop all put on comfy robes and relax, while Sprig being sprig wants to go exploring though hop pop refuses to leave him wiht the card because of course he does. And honestly having done a few road trips myself.. yeah usually when you get back to the hotel first you want to just relax and crash, maybe go out for dinner or something with your friends, which they already did ahead of time, and recharge before doing allt he fun vacation stuff. Though I also relate to sprig as I too have been in hotels with arcades and pools from time to time as a kid and a teen and wanted to go do the fun stuff while everyone’s tired. Thankfully I also liked to read or play my various game consoles, from the game boy advance up to the switch on my most recent vacations,so I understand his restlessness.  The rest of the episode goes about how you’d expect, with Sprig taking the card once hteir asleep and adventuring around and getting into various hilarious one off gags via montage, before loosing the card and fighting over it with a Bellhop Named Belle, played byt he always wonderful and always talented Krstien Schal.. about two episodes late for the gravity falls homage but never too late to do some voice acting. Sprig gets the card thanks to futurama caffine bullet time, saves paige and then saves her from firing by talking like a rich kid asshole to save paiges job before collapsing and being woken by everyone else wanting to go do fun shit. 

Final Thoughts 2: This one was better. While again I sped through the recap section this time.. it was funny> While the plot was a simple: kid sneaks out and does something he’s not supposed to yet and gets into trouble and ironic ending and all that, it’s funny enough to be enjoyable, Kristin is game as always, and the gag of Sprig using the card to wave off the snooty man at the counter is great. While most of the meat of hte episode is with the king at the start, the rst of it is still an enjoyable come down episode after the plot heavy first third of this one and marcy at the gates and does the job way better thant he previous episode. While it doen’t have a lot of tie to character or what not, it dosen’t WASTE any either. I didn’t realize till this episode that while sprig certainly hasn’t been unterutlized, he really hasn’t had his own episode this season, sharing Quaraller’s Pass with poly and only having subplots in “A Caravan Named Desire” and “Marcy at the Gates”. Here he gets a plot to himself and while it does nothing for his overal character, it’s entertaining enough, with some great gags like the caffine bullet time, the aformentioned rich people gag and the hair bit being the best “Now to put on my hat!”. It just lets the character loose to have a fun side story. See I can dog on an episode for WASTING a good opprotunity, even if I understand the stress of production and what not.. but I won’t dog one for just having fun and letting a character have the limelight if it’s still entertaining which this was. The problem with say “Scavenger Hunt”, “The Ballad of Hopidiah Plantar”, “A Caravan Named Desire” and “The Ballad of Hopidiah Plantar” is that while their not BAD episodes, they had far more potential. This one knows it’s basically home alone 2 meets blank check, but actually entertaining, and justh as fun with it. Is it hte best episode ever? Probably not. But was it fun and a nice change of pace, as well as relatable to me and thus giving me a bit of the warm fuzzies, especially in this hellscape of our lord 2020? Absolutley.  That does it for this week. if you liked this review i’ve reveiwed the rest of the season so far , just check the Disney tab on my blog, along with many other shows, and i’ll be covering the show weekly for the rest of the season, along with Ducktales when it comes back next month, so follow if you want more of that and random reblogs and such. You can also shoot me an ask if you have any things you want my opinon on, any episodes you want to request or you can direct message me to outright comission an episode of any aimated show for me to review for 5 bucks a review. Either way, till we meet again, bwahahahahaha.