#if only she were a real character and not fridged for his traumatic backstory

[goldenspringmornings]

controversial opinion I’m sure someone’s mentioned before but I don’t believe rhys actually loved his mother, I think he loves the idea of her and what she represents to him but if she’d lived I don’t think he’d be able to reconcile her love of Illyria and her love for him simply from how he talks about Illyria and his heritage as something horrifically Other about him. he sees being Illyrian as something he has to work past, something that’s handicapping him and not an intrinsic part of him. and I don’t think his mother would jive with that very well cause iirc it’s mentioned that she did love her people, and the way rhys, cassian and azriel treat the Illyrians on page would probably be very upsetting for her!

[max--phillips]

Not a thot, but I do love how often people drag T*m in TF fics /o/r just completely write him out to begin with - maybe casting Affleck in the role was a good idea given how much an unsavory person I’ve heard he is lmao.

LITERALLY TOM SUCKS SO BAD (as he's written, anyway?)

(hang on am I really about to defend Tom? Yes and no, I guess. He still sucks and the movie probably would've gone better if he wasn't there, and I gotta hand it to Ben Affleck bc I have no idea why I don't like him but he plays shitty people VERY well)

The way the movie paints him is basically "shitty dad who loses his shit in 0.03 seconds after tasting blood for the first time in a few years." I'm gonna give the writers the benefit of the doubt here and say that's probably not what they were going for. Throughout the movie you pick up on the fact that Frankie, Pope, Will, and Benny are all deeply traumatized in a litany of ways. Will is introduced talking about how he put a guy in a headlock because he wouldn't move out of his way in a grocery store; he was unable to "turn off" the special forces part of him. Pope just... he's clearly going through some shit at the beginning, sees a bunch of guys get killed, and he talks about his knees being shot and his neck affecting his quality of life. Benny is still stuck in a "live to fight" mindset and takes this out with his. Well. Fights. Frankie's dealing with whatever he's gone through with drugs, and blames himself for all the lives lost at the village they crashed in.

We don't really learn what Tom went through, but he's been shot several times, and whatever he went through ruined his relationship with his wife, and the last time we see his daughter, she tells him she misses him. My guess is, they wanted to paint Tom as a man who was irreparably broken by the horrors of war, and was unable keep what he experienced out of his family's life. Nonetheless, he's trying to keep his family afloat despite whatever he did to harm those relationships; he's doing real estate. When he and Pope pick up Tom's daughter, there are unpaid bills hanging on the fridge, so clearly he's not doing a great job at making ends meet. But he is trying. And while he didn't want to get involved with Pope's job at first because he didn't want to revisit the very thing that caused so much strain in his relationships with his family, he sees it as an opportunity to not only make those ends meet, but maybe even fix things, get things back on track. But, because he's still broken and has a boatload of unresolved trauma, he's immediately blinded by greed when he sees much more money than to just "get things back on track." To me, he seems to try to soldier his way through fixing his relationships with his family, effectively flipping the script on how things had been for him up to that point. This, of course, leads to his downfall. In the movie his downfall is rightfully earned, because to the viewer (who hasn't seen the movie 80 times and hasn't analyzed every last frame of the thing slkdjfgsdfg) he seems like a greedy, bossy asshole who got in over his head. But he could've been a very interesting, very complex, very tragic character. Obviously he was important to the other men in the movie, especially Benny if his reaction is any indication. (My guess? Will and Tom probably joined the military around the same time, and were probably close friends. Benny likely saw Tom as somewhat of a second older brother.)

Point here being, yes, Tom sucks, but only because I think the movie didn't do him any justice. The movie needed to either make him a dad trying his best to repair his relationship with his wife and daughters, making a mistake in the process, or truly make him a damaged former soldier who was motivated purely by greed. But, I have a lot of narrative issues with that movie to be entirely fair. We hardly get any backstory for these characters, which is a shame because it's clear to me that the writers had a Vision for this story. There's more to these characters we didn't get to see.

[aion-rsa]

The Dark Knight Trilogy: Horrifying Scenes That Still Make Us Cringe

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Later this month, Zack Snyder’s Justice League is hitting HBO Max. Despite the anticipation and a near-guaranteed positive reception from the vocal #ReleaseTheSnyderCut fan contingent, this will likely be Snyder’s last foray in the DC Universe. Indeed, one of the studio’s chief complaints with Snyder’s vision, which they believe impacted box office receipts, was his darker tone when compared with the quippier MCU. However, Snyder’s approach only mirrored many of DC’s most popular storylines, from Frank Miller’s violent The Dark Knight Returns to the on-screen The Dark Knight Trilogy from director Christopher Nolan. Snyder can hardly be blamed for expanding on what audiences were already responding to when it came to DC characters on film.

Less than a decade ago, Warner Brothers was hot off of the success of Nolan’s trio of films that no one would describe as light-hearted or quippy. The Batman of Nolan’s films was not inspired by the kid-friendly or campy iterations of the character found in the Batman TV series from the ‘60s or Joel Schumacher’s films, but by Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One, and Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Batman: The Long Halloween. That is to say Nolan and Christian Bale’s Batman sought to be a street-level, gritty, interpretation of the character that emphasized noir and a grounded reality.

Snyder didn’t make Batman too dark for film audiences, that was already done by Nolan. Below are just a few examples of the darkest, most horrific moments from The Dark Knight Trilogy.

“Swear to me!” – Batman Begins

Audiences knew they were in for a different type of Batman from the moment they heard Bale’s gravelly voice while he was in the suit. Whether Bale goes too far with his growly tenor and into comedic territory is up for debate, but the choice is certainly memorable.

Bale really gets to rough up his vocal cords during a specific scene in Batman Begins where the Dark Knight confronts crooked cop Arnold Flass about Dr. Jonathan Crane’s mysterious drug shipments. After failing to strike fear in Flass, Batman hangs the portly man upside down from a building. When Flass swears to God that he doesn’t know anything, Batman replies, “Swear to me!” his face tremoring with rage. This is the opposite of one of George Clooney’s one-liners during his time under the cowl. Bale’s Batman establishes himself as something to be scared of and as an all-seeing force to be reckoned with.

The Demon Bat – Batman Begins

While horror has seeped its way into Batman comics many times, particularly during Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s recent run with the character, there hasn’t been a ton of nightmarish imagery present in the film adaptations of the character. However, the hands down scariest portrayal of the Caped Crusader on screen comes in Batman Begins. When Bruce Wayne said he wanted to strike fear in the hearts of criminals, this must have been what he was talking about.

In the climax of the film, when Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow attempts to poison Gotham City’s water supply with his fear toxin, the good doctor is confronted by Batman and given a taste of his own medicine. The fear toxin takes effect and Crane begins to see Batman as a demonic, literal interpretation of the Batman, with black goo dripping from his mouth and jet-black eyes. This monster version of the Bat was certainly a step in the right direction for comic fans hoping the Batman films would get the terror element of the character right.

Bruce Attempts to Kill Joe Chill – Batman Begins

This scene from the first film in Nolan’s trilogy is the darkest because of how real it feels for the main characters. The moment happens not when Bruce Wayne is masquerading as a vigilante dressed as a bat, but when he’s a young man still trying to come to grips with the murder of his parents. Bruce learns that Joe Chill has been paroled so that he can testify against Gotham crime boss Carmine Falcone. Bruce waits outside of the courtroom with a gun, intending to kill Chill after his testimony. But when Chill arrives at the public lobby, one of Falcone’s goons beats Bruce to the punch, shooting Chill dead.

Bruce’s childhood friend Rachel Dawes discovers Bruce’s intentions and slaps him across the face. She berates Bruce and tells him that his father would be ashamed of him, something that undoubtedly must be hard to hear for the angry, grieving young Bruce. This moment serves as a sort of rock bottom for the character before he decides to leave Gotham behind and travel the globe, immersing himself in the criminal underworld, a journey that would inevitably lead to him becoming… the Batman.

Joker’s Pencil Trick – The Dark Knight

No one needs to spill more ink about how brilliant Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Clown Prince of Crime, the Joker, was in The Dark Knight. It’s an iconic performance that has forever shaded the public’s perception of Batman’s greatest nemesis. He’s simultaneously funny and scary, brutal and sniveling, chaotic and cunning. He can make you smile then suddenly want to shield your eyes.

It’s all right there from his first real introduction in the film when he struts into a meeting between Gotham’s crime lords and offers his services in killing the Batman. Nailing the core components of the character, his penchant for showmanship, his violent tendencies, and his twisted sense of humor, the Joker pulls off a “magic trick” by slamming a gangster’s head through a pencil that was stuck upright on a desk. Not exactly the kind of party trick that you’ll see Ant-Man performing in the MCU!

The Death of Rachel Dawes – The Dark Knight

While the Joker hatches many unsettling schemes in The Dark Knight, like televising himself murdering Batman imposters, threatening to blow up hospitals, and the game theory ferry experiment, his most despicable crime is also his most personal one. After being taken into custody, the Joker reveals that he has set up a no-win trap for Batman, forcing him to choose between Rachel, his love, and Gotham’s White Knight, district attorney Harvey Dent. The Joker has them tied up in different locations, rigged to explode on the same timer, and Batman only has time to save one of them. Joker gives the hero their addresses, but in a cruel twist, switches who is where. Bruce believes that he’s saving Rachel but saves Harvey instead. Meanwhile, the GCPD tried to rescue Harvey, but arrives just in time to watch the building holding Rachel burst into flames.

While Rachel may have been an underserved character, only really used as a victim and love interest until her ultimate fridging, her death was still a shock and a dark turn that other superhero movies, barring the otherwise forgettable The Amazing Spider-Man 2, have always refused to make. Rachel served somewhat as Bruce’s moral compass, and her death left the vigilante adrift and prone to his darkest impulses.

The Transformation of Harvey Dent – The Dark Knight

The flipside to the above is that Batman’s last-minute rescue of Harvey Dent leaves him scarred, traumatized, angry, and fundamentally changed. It’s not just that Harvey loses half of his face and becomes a grotesque victim; it’s that the minute Rachel dies, all of his idealism and motivation to be a force for good and change dies with her. With one act, the Joker takes away the hero that Gotham really needs to end corruption and injustice.

It’s not just that Dent falls; he falls hard. He murders police officers (corrupt though they may be), kidnaps children, and introduces as much anarchy into Gotham as the Joker. Ultimately, he’s stopped by Batman, but his death and fall from grace is a demoralizing moment, and the decision to lie and prop up Dent as the hero he was rather than the monster he became is a necessary but deeply troubling withholding of the truth. Don’t let the triumphant score and imagery at the end of The Dark Knight fool you; this is a supremely downbeat ending.

Bane Breaks the Bat’s Back – The Dark Knight Rises

Batman is a badass who is rarely bested on screen. Even in Zack Snyder’s interpretation of the character, he’s able to subdue a figurative god in Superman. However, in Nolan’s third and final Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, Batman finally meets his match, and it’s not pretty. After being lured into the sewers by Selina Kyle, Batman walks right into a trap and fight with Bane, the jacked terrorist who was excommunicated from the League of Shadows, and is every bit as badass as Batman. After eight years sitting on the shelf and a career of crime fighting that has left him battered, Batman is absolutely demolished by Bane, who pummels Bruce before finally picking the hero up over his head and snapping his back over his knee. Heroes occasionally lose on screen, but not like this.

Alfred’s Arc – The Dark Knight Rises

Alfred Pennyworth is a crucial character in the Batman mythos, and he’s typically portrayed as a compliant, if slightly disapproving, enabler. However, that’s not so in The Dark Knight Rises. Portrayed by Michael Caine, Alfred breaks hearts by revealing to Bruce that Rachel intended on marrying Harvey Dent and sternly telling his surrogate son that his war with Bane will eventually lead to his death and that he “won’t bury” another member of the Wayne family.

It’s one of the most emotional moments of the film. Alfred basically abandons Bruce, a decision that heightens Bruce’s isolation and hero’s journey. Alfred only returns toward the end of the film for Bruce’s funeral where he tearfully confesses to the late Waynes’ gravestones that he “failed” them. While Alfred’s story ends on a hopeful note, with him spotting Bruce alive and well in Italy, it’s still quite the breakup between Master Bruce and his most loyal advisor.

The Story of Talia al Ghul and Bane – The Dark Knight Rises

While the best villains typically have sympathetic backstories, few have as a traumatic and scarring one as The Dark Knight Rises’ villains, Talia al Ghul and Bane. Toward the end of the film, it’s revealed that Talia grew up in the same place that Bruce found himself in after Bane broke his back. Born in a primitive prison known as the Pit, Talia watched as her mother was assaulted and killed by the other prisoners. The pair were placed in the Pit in exchange for Ra’s al Ghul, with Talia’s mother agreeing to take his place in exchange for his freedom. Talia only survived through the protection of Bane, who eventually helps Talia escape the prison, but he’s badly beaten and disfigured in the process.

Following Talia’s escape, she locates her father and he returned with the League of Shadows to exact revenge on the prisoners that killed his wife and the men who put her there. Afterward, Ra’s and the League saw to the treatment of Bane, but were unable to stop the continual pain he experienced. Eventually, Bane is recruited into the League, wherein he is given a mask which supplies him with analgesic gas to curb the constant pain from the injuries he sustained while protecting Talia. If you thought Bruce had a traumatizing backstory, you must have merely adopted the dark.

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[truthbeetoldmedia]

Wynonna Earp 3x03 "Colder Weather" Review

Hello friends, my TV shows have been trying to kill me with sadness this last week or so (if any of you dear readers also watch The 100, you know what I’m talking about). Episode 3x02 of Wynonna Earp left us all reeling with the shocking and VERY unexpected death of our beloved Deputy Marshal Xavier Dolls.

We were not prepared, but I dare say the showrunner and writers were; this episode, aptly named “Colder Weather”, is a beautiful bleeding love letter to a character that sadly we didn’t know well enough before his demise, but we still loved without measure. I wish all TV shows that killed off beloved or lead characters were this good at finding ways to explore our characters as they navigate a very fresh wound while also giving the newly passed on character closure and a final bow.

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" - Matthew 5:4

We open to a close up of Wynonna's eye with a giant tear sliding down her lashes, swigging a bottle of whiskey drunkenly in the snowy woods, yelling at a demon to literally come out and fight her...grief is not going well in Purgatory for our hero(es). Of course, a concerned Waverly and Nicole are nearby with guns, letting Wynonna purge her pain the only way she seems to know how.

A demon does show up to fight, but not the one she wants, not Bulshar. She exchanges some barbs with the revenant before dispatching him, but Wynonna is far too numb to even enjoy his demise. This is the cold open to a somber episode.

Next thing you know, Waverly and Nicole are picking out Dolls’ casket. We actually get a light moment here with Nicole telling Waves of her desire at death, to be eaten by the birds of the air and then “dispatched” over the land she loves vs being buried. Someone needs to give Nicole the 411 on what is and ISN’T bittersweet romantic topics.

Wynonna, unable to even accept that Dolls is truly gone forever, removes herself from the house for some nice healthy target practice whilst imagining Bulshar’s head in the place of the tin cans, I would assume.

This leads to one of my favorite moments of the episode: Wynonna and Doc having a heart to heart in the cold, gloomy snow. This moment isn’t a shipping moment (although I do LOVE these two together in any form), it’s just Wynonna taking a moment to be vulnerable, to bury her face into the shoulder of a friend. “I’ve been through all of this before, with Daddy, and Shorty and WIlla” and I’m sure in a way she and Doc were also thinking about Baby Alice; even though she is very alive it must still feel like a death to them. Doc just offers her deep love and comfort with no strings attached, telling her Dolls died a hero saving them all, just trying to squeeze all the pain out of her and himself, his last words to Dolls still haunting him.

They talk about what Dolls would want; Doc tells the story of how back in his day a man that “died with his boots on” got buried in a special location (Boot Hill, HA! super original name) and was buried with a bottle of the finest whiskey money could buy (which he then confessed he would steal). Wynonna gives us a detail we didn’t know before: Dolls was from Arizona! But she states that they were his chosen family and he would want to be buried and mourned by them.

"When the tears come streaming down your face, when you lose something you can’t replace" - Coldplay

Speaking of mourning, I love how this episode gives each character a “grief arc” and all their reactions just feel so, so real.

Wynonna is still denying she won’t talk to him again, saying things like “He’s not cutting him up, no way!” when she finds out Jeremy is doing the autopsy on Dolls’ body. Her rage at Bulshar, her inability to accept what she knows is TRUE and very much real. It’s truly heartbreaking and Melanie Scrofano destroys your heart with palpable grief in every scene; every season she just sets the performance bar higher.

Waverly reminds me of myself in grief or sadness, she must do all the things! Pick the casket! Go to Dolls’ place for his funeral clothes! Make 15 different types of sandwiches! Take care of Wynonna! It also makes her think about her own mortality, and how finite her young life is. She is even more bubbly than usual and it’s even bothering her because she keeps giggling. (Fact: I am like this, the more uncomfortable or upset I am the more I fight to be the opposite.)

Doc is the opposite, sullen, angry (mostly at himself), his last words to Dolls’ haunting him. He lashes out in a way that feels all too real when Waverly accuses him of having “no feelings”; he, without flinching, sends his entire glass of whiskey shattering against the wall, saying, “Is that feeling enough for you?!” Wynonna, Waverly and Nicole look shocked, and Waverly looks a little scared; no doubt it triggered old memories of her dad's explosive and abusive ways. You can tell as Doc exits the Earp home he feels terrible about it; he is not in a place to deal with it yet (thankfully he and Waverly do get to talk later), but in the moment the tension is thick.

Nicole, as it turns out, had a very strong and “professional” friendship with Dolls — she even had a key to his apartment! Which they use to find him funeral clothes, and they also find a letter to Wynonna he left amongst his things. Nicole fills Waverly in on how he was tracking down old files on the cult of Bulshar massacre she survived as a kid for her! They both checked in on each other because they were both “officers in the line of duty.” They just got each other. Dolls confided in her; “He had a traumatic past, so he thought he could help me with mine” she tells a rather taken aback Waverly, who is still processing that her normal girlfriend is not as normal as she thought. Nicole breaks down, “but I couldn’t save Dolls, he was trying to help me and now he’s dead,” her grief mingled with guilt much like Doc’s.

The moment is interrupted by a shadow outside of Dolls window, which is three floors up. It’s vampire Kate, who steals Waverly’s bag and is gone in a flash. What is her exact motive? It remains to be unseen. Waverly had of course put the letter from Dolls in her bag.

Jeremy may have the shortest end of the grief stick as he knew Dolls was going to die — but Dolls had made him swear not to tell anyone, leaving him with a huge burden. The drugs killed Dolls but a grief-stricken Wynonna sees Jeremy as the thing to blame in the moment. “I will never forgive you for this” she whispers through hot tears. Jeremy retorts, “I get it, it’s easier to blame me than the dead dragon.” His angry reply hits Wynonna in the face like ice water, and she informs Jeremy to pack up his stuff and get out of Purgatory.

Everyone is just so raw and sad and angry; it gives such realness to these fictional people that you feel all the barbs and tears.

Lastly, the griever no one was expecting or asked for is Dolls’ former Black Badge colleague Ramon Quinn — who shows up in Shorty's bar looking for a drink and info on Dolls, startling an irate Doc who’s just discovered the bar has been broken into and trashed, but all that seems to be missing is the “banana liqueur.” (Revenants actually stole all of Dolls’ drugs Jeremy had made and stored in the fridge, but we will get to that.)

Quinn fills her in on some backstory: he and Dolls were part of the same Black Badge squad and Quinn explains that Dolls’ squad would place coded messages in ads in magazines to signal to each other so they could attend each other’s funerals without Black Badge knowing.

He also fills Wynonna in on some of Dolls’ past, most of it sad — making me feel even worse about him losing his life so young. Quinn wears the dog tags of all his fallen Black Badge squad who are all dead besides him, as a result of the experiments, because the injections always fail eventually. Quinn didn’t have the right blood type to be experimented on, so instead he was the one tasked with having to catch escapees from the Black Badge facility, a place Dolls escaped seven times. (I have issues with the idea of writing this particular storyline, where a white officer of sorts chased and captured a black man being held against his will over and over again, even though he was also technically a prisoner of sorts, but I digress.)

"They can have a terrible power over you...the power of grief, and loss, and of regret." - Babylon 5, Episode 3x11

All of the character moments and plot threads of this episode seem to lead up to the wake Waverly has planned at Shorty’s — the very thing Wynonna seems hellbent on avoiding. She instead gets drunk with Quinn, which probably didn’t pan out the way she was hoping. He asks her “who had Dolls’ back?”, insinuating that she and the gang dropped the ball. He also sets off her internal alarm when he says he doesn’t think Black Badge is really gone and they might come for Dolls’ body, since all the other “BB experiments” were buried in unmarked graves to prevent theft of their bodies. Something he wants Wynonna to think about. She of course goes to the morgue to check on Dolls’ body, where ever faithful Sheriff Nedley sits guarding it. Even he gets a small moment of reflection on Dolls some of the losses he has also recently experienced.

Wynonna heads back to Shorty’s to honor her friend, where she finds everyone is toasting Dolls and eating Waverly’s many sandwiches. Doc finally approaches Waverly to apologize for his behaviour and confides in her his last words to Dolls and his fear of going back to hell one day. She is of course ready and willing to forgive him, but she needs him to help her get her purse and Wynonna’s letter back from Kate, the mention of her name painting Doc’s face with annoyance. But he will do anything for the Earp girls, so they sneak out of the wake to confront Kate.

Nicole finds Jeremy hanging out in the cellar of the bar; he feels like his presence would not be welcome. They finally discover that all of Dolls’ drugs are missing! (I told ya I’d get back to this.) And just like any perfectly timed TV show, the revenants — jacked up on Dolls’ drugs — come barreling in, crashing Dolls’ wake. Wynonna, Nicole, Ramon, and Jeremy fight them all with all the rage you would expect. Wynonna calls Doc’s phone for backup only to have Waverly answer; they are still on a mission to save the letter from vampire Kate.

Waverly finally asks Doc the question we’ve all been wanting to know: “Who is she?”

Doc is to the point and honest: “She’s my wife.” Dun dun dun! I am sure if you’re like me you already had your sneaking suspicions, but Waverlys response is pure GOLD. “Does anyone around here NOT have a secret wife?” Only time will tell, Waves. Kate seems to just be jealous and wanting attention from Doc, usings the Earp sisters to lure him. She sure does seem to know what makes Doc tick.

Waverly confronting her with all her riled up feelings is priceless; she goes to flip Kate’s tarot table “Jesus in the temple style”, but when that doesn’t work she threatens to get a stake. Do not get on this little bb’s bad side, guys!

Kate seems to think Doc is so loyal because “the fiery little Earp reminds you of Wyatt” to which he gives the best side eye while responding “Waverly ain’t even an Earp” and exits smoothly like the southern gentleman he is. Kate picks up her fallen tarot cards and must see “something” spooky, stating, “She’s SOMETHING alright.” I think we all know that we are gonna find that out this season, and I hope it happens soon.

Back at the bar Nicole busts out some tough love for Wynonna after trying to cut her off from drinking. Wynonna’s response of “a man I l….someone I love is dead” may have made my heart crack right down the middle.

“You’re not the only one who lost him. You don’t get the monopoly on the grief we all feel.” That line drives home the theme of this whole episode. They all hurt and the pain is different for each of them, but you can’t tell someone your pain is more important than theirs.

Wynonna is on her way to apologize to Jeremy when she discovers Quinn torturing him for Dolls drugs. He wants to use them and storm Black Badge and get revenge. Here is when he confesses to being a “good soldier” to Black Badge and bringing Dolls and the other squad members back to captivity when they escaped. “Even when he begged me not to.” This realization bookends Dolls life with a tragic start and a tragic end — but he did have a hopeful middle, filled with people that loved him and he whom he loved back.

Of course Wynonna talks him down and asks him to do some digging see if Black Badge is still really out there. She also gives Quinn Dolls’ dog tags that she had been holding onto.

"He was footprints in the snow. Not all loves are meant to last, some are meant to grace you briefly." - Jacqueline Simon Gunn

The burial is a bittersweet and moving scene in the snowy shadows of the Earp homestead. (They decided to cremate him so “his body could never be used as currency again.” What a profound statement, if you think about it.)

Each of our heroes get to say their goodbyes, Waverly kissing the stylish scarf Dolls seemed to be fond of (I will miss style icon Dolls!) and lays it to rest with his ashes.

Nicole adds his badge, and salutes her fallen brother in arms. Doc adds a bottle of his finest whiskey and kneels, making the sign of the cross — a moving gesture since his last words to Dolls were those of condemnation.

Jeremy adds Dolls’ beloved “X” coffee mug.

Wynonna doesn’t add anything of Dolls’ but instead removes her keepsake necklace from Greece, the first thing Dolls found in the woods in Episode 1x01. His comment that “we might be looking for a Greek goddess” is now a nice bit of foreshadowing, since the word on the key is Greek for Athena, fittingly the goddess of wisdom and war. He returned the necklace to her as well, so she is essentially leaving a piece of her with him which just makes me tear up all over again.

The Earp sisters chat around a bonfire, Waverly finally delivering the envelope Dolls left to Wynonna. Its contents: a group picture of the gang looking happy around a dinner table, taken by Dolls (she whispers “I remember this day!’); “Keep going, keep fighting,” a reminder of the words he spoke to her that day giving her a sense of hope, and maybe even peace; and a single snapshot taken of her, unaware. A final way for him to say “I always look out for you, Wynonna.” A silent way of saying I love you, without expectations. His final sacrifice was for her and their friends and he wouldn’t have it any other way.   

The final scene of the episode was a bit odd to me, Doc going back to confront Kate (Contessa, as he calls her). She tells him Wyatt never stopped looking for him. And that for years she believed him dead and when she heard he had “risen”, she came looking for him. Her hard work of trying to get him involved with her again pays off as the last scene is of them kissing.

I get the feeling that it will be a short lived happy reunion for this marriage, as I do not trust her motives of coming to Purgatory just to get back with Doc, but we shall see!

Final thoughts:

I loved the mournful acoustic version of the theme song they used for the episode

Will Quinn be back as a recurring character? I kinda hope not, but I guess as long as they don’t try and replace Dolls with him I’m okay with seeing him again

What the heck is Waverly, guys? I’m concerned

I think Kate (Contessa) is an interesting character but I don’t trust her motives with Doc

Jeremy’s mustache still needs to go

The way Doc says “banana liqueur” had me rolling

Doc hogtying Quinn with a strand of  Christmas lights is some high quality resourcefulness

Thank you all for going through this emotional roller coaster of an episode with me, until next time Earpers!

Wynonna Earp airs Fridays at 9/8c on Syfy.

Gina’s episode rating: 🐝🐝🐝🐝

[kuraiamore]

Gintama fic, Pay your workers fair wage or they’ll start a revolution!!

pairing: Gen

fandom: Gintama

rating: T

summary: Come experience a typical day in the Yorozuya office! Meet the team that makes the magic happen! Find out what it's like to be a member of a fantastic Odd Jobs team!

(In case of emergencies, please head to the Back Arrow button located on the top left-hand corner of your internet browser page.)

(This fanfiction takes no responsibility for any failed expectations on behalf of the reader. Terms and Conditions apply. See your local pro-fanfiction Tumblr post for details.)

notes: Very Very Very belated bday fic for @first-quarter-of-the-moon . This wonderful human being, whose friendship I’m so grateful to have stumbled across in this tiny fandom of shithead samurai, asked for a fic with a pun on the word “glasses”. I’ve no idea if I managed to pull it off, but nevertheless, here it is and I hope you enjoy it even if it is months late<3 <3 <3

ao3 or read below.

It's a quiet day in the Yorozuya office-cum-household-apartment; no jobs, no clients, no day-saving adventure to embark on for one to take pride in one’s life-and-career path as a Can-Do-All, NEET Samurai and Friends Pty Ltd., Odd Jobs™ business. The sort of day where face-planting on the desk for catnaps is considered high productivity and the walk from the couch to the fridge for a well earned snack after doing nothing for an hour is worthy of office-cum-household-apartment bragging rights.

So really, it's like every other day when they're not out disastrously, fantastically doing some combination of saving the world from mad aliens, accidentally joining forces with an assortment of oddball characters who really ought to get some life counselling, travelling through interdimensional planes of existence on ridiculously wacky adventures, or whatever have you, instead of actually, you know, making the required revenue to run a profitable business.

In other words: a standard Yorozuya working day.

At this current point in time, momentarily unaware of the literal office tour taking place for the convenience of this tired narrator, the self-made boss of the Yorozuya is seated at his desk, last week’s copy of Shounen Jump fanned out in a roof over the top of his head. His two young employees-in-training-slash-unofficially-adopted-children are lounging about the main room, one on each of the twin couches framing the apartment-cum-office’s only coffee table. The small, rickety thing has its worn, scratched-marked surface covered with evidence of the day’s work: magazines and dirty tea and coffee mugs. Advertisement catalogues, cooking magazines, idol pop magazines, sports magazines, cars, fashion, home real estate, and everything beyond and in between build up a veritable paper fortress blocking either couch camp from each other.

Odd Jobs™ business, you see; gotta be ready to deal with anything and everything.

As usual on these lazy working days, the trio that make up the Yorozuya spend more time making indulgent commentary on their reading material than actually reading the material itself. Then again, it could only be expected; none of trio have spent any considerable amount of time in school on account of their traumatic backstories which this tired narrator will ask both the beloved characters and readers to conveniently ignore for the sake for easy comedy, and so the expectation that any of them would seriously engage in any real, productive work is entirely preposterous, like seriously, what did you expect, we all know these characters are as dumb as bricks and—

“Hey, some people are trying to read here!” Kagura yells.

“Quiet, Kagura,” Gintoki say, an apathetic tone and expression in his voice and face reminiscent of old men working middle management roles that have no end-of-year bonuses or promotions to look forward to, “the boss is in the middle of important business and needs all his concentration.”

“A proper boss who has important work to do would be doing the work instead of wasting everyone’s time nagging at his employees,” Kagura bites back.

“Well you wouldn't know because you're not a boss, are you?”

“Miss Teen Idol says I am!” Tossing aside the magazine she's currently reading, Kagura tears through the paper fortress like a hurricane uprooting and scattering cities into the skies.

“Oieee!” Shinpachi yells, as his perfectly stacked tower of magazines with Otsuu’s name and face on the front cover, however big or small or scandalously associated, goes toppling over. “Don't worry, Otsuu-chan, I'll save you!”

The broken fortress becomes a battleground, hands and magazines flying as (thankfully empty) cups fall over. It's a battle of speed and precision, Kagura attacking with her rummage-glance-throw-away technique against Shinpachi’s valiant defence in protecting creases and wrinkles from Otsuu-chan’s face.

“Ah-ha!” Kagura crows later, after two minutes of constant barrage. Her arm swings wildly above her head in triumph, the magazine clutched in her hand waving like a banner of victory.

Gintoki yawns without bothering to cover his mouth. There's an empty cup of pudding on the side of his desk that he eyes mournfully. It had been the last one in the fridge, now serving as an ineffective paperweight to last month's overdue gas bill. He’ll have to go buy more soon, lest he suffer from sugar withdrawal. Maybe some of those new jelly-filled chocolate bites he saw at the convenience store too while he's at it.

But then again, a new ice cream parlour had opened two weeks ago, just twenty minutes away by foot from the Yorozuya office.

And he also dimly remembers a commercial from last night's re-run of My Pretty Kitty Takes Over The World, featuring some wildberry confectionery shaped into wearable cat ears.

Gintoki’s still daydreaming sugar-coated dreams when Kagura smacks her magazine onto his desk. The wave of air that comes fanning out from the two-page spread is so violent, it tickles his nose and sends his fringe billowing out around his face.

“Here!” Kagura points to the page she's opened up, revealing a blazing red title asking, ‘Are you Beauty, Brains, or Brawn? Find out your best attribute to win over the Man and Job of Your Dreams!’

Shinpachi joins them at the desk, scanning the heading with a frown. “Why is it ‘Man’ and ‘Job’?” he wonders aloud. “Since when did relationships and careers have anything to do with each other? They’re are totally different things.”

“What are you talking about, Shinpachi? Don’t you know that dealing with men is a full time job?”

“That's right,” Gintoki agrees, nodding along, “men are scum.”

“Yup, yup. They're a parasite on the industry of life. Oi, boss, you should give me a raise for all the effort and overtime I put in dealing with the scum in our workplace.”

“Sorry,” Gintoki says, “the agreement of the contract you signed stipulates that wage raises can only be considered after gaining a minimum of ten years’ experience in your working role.”

“Oh,” Kagura says, complete lack of understanding on her blank face. She shrugs. “Okay then.”

“Wait but we never signed a contract!” Shinpachi says, perplexed.

“What do you call that then?” Gintoki says, throwing his thumb out behind his shoulder.

Shinpachi follows the invisible line to a copy of one of their old advertisement flyers stuck on wall behind the desk. It's instantly recognisable, featuring three handprints and one paw print haphazardly framed around a picture of the Yorozuya team.

A prickly, tingly feeling rushes through his chest—it might be bad business manipulation at its best, but Shinpachi can’t find it in himself to argue against that. He clears his throat.

“In any case,” he says, “the quiz is clearly making the mistake of lumping the two together!”

“Now, now, Shinpachi,” Gintoki interrupts, back in that deliberately overemphasised, sagely, rather quite condescending tone, “it is merely your youth and inexperience with adult matters that make you think that way. You see, the office or workplace romance is the most intense and thrilling romantic experience the ordinary human will have in their measly lifetime. Therefore when a person takes on a job, they’re investing not just in their career and financial stability, but also in the promise of a lifetime partner. That’s what people mean when they talk about being married to work!”

“Gin-san, I don’t think that’s what that means at all, and anyway, you’ve never worked in an office or workplace with other people in your life!”

“You wound me, Patsuan. How do you think I got this far, CEO of my own business with one hundred percent employee loyalty at the prime young age of twenty-eight, if I didn’t have a lifetime of experience dealing with the intricacies of workplace liaisons, huh?”

“Gin-san, you have two underaged employees which I’m sure counts as child labour exploitation, and you never paid the registration fee for the business registration application. I’m pretty sure that the Yorozuya is technically an illegal operation.”

Immediately, Gintoki turns around and closes the window blinds. The room goes quiet as the possibly illegal boss and his two employees glance furtively around them to make sure they hadn't been overheard by any men in black suits who just happened to be creeping around for no reason other than the wacky slice-of-life genre specification.

“Oi, oi,” Gintoki says after a moment, with a shaky laugh, “don't joke about that, Shinpachi-kun. What kind of role model would we be to all our lovely viewers watching and reading us if they thought we were an illegal business? Sunrise would have our heads!”

“It's okay, Gin-chan,” Kagura goes to reassure him, “the only people watching this sketchy anime and reading its sketchy fanfiction are probably sketchy people themselves already.”

“That's right!” Shinpachi adds helpfully, though his neck still cranes around as if looking for hidden microphones and cameras. “Besides, even if we were illegal—which we're not!—then they would still know better than to waste their time coming after us. We're so poor, we wouldn't be able to pay the bail out money anyway! If anything, they should be targeting those multi mega corporations that do way more sketchy stuff! Like tax evasion!”

“And Amanto discrimination!” Kagura adds.

“And killing the environment!”

“And disrupting the view with their giant billboards!”

“And taking advantage of the working class to fuel their corrupt profits!” Shinpachi cries in heated passion, slapping his hand on the table.

“And increasing the price of pudding by ¥240 so Gin-san can only afford to have his sugar intake three times a week instead of four!” Gintoki joins.

“Um, Gin-san, that's not—"

“Down with capitalism!” Kagura cries, jumping back onto her couch and rising one fist into the air while her other hand still clutching the magazine waves it again like a great banner. “Come comrades! Let us take down the abominable bosses and factory managers who exploit the good-hearted working citizens!”

The magazine gets rolled up and becomes a baton which now points accusingly towards the Yorozuya boss. Gintoki looks to his left, and his right, and seeing no one on either side of him, points a finger to his own mug and mouths, “Who, me?”

“Rise up!” Kagura continues with her impassioned call, turning back to her audience of one. Shinpachi hears the call solemnly, eyes burning with the bright rage of workers’ rights. “Rise up and take down the evil corporations and greedy CEOs and business owners who use their money to hoard all the good things to themselves and never leave the sesame-flavoured subonku for the common folk!”

“Well if someone didn't spend all their money on monthly pork barbeque bun sales, they might have enough left over to buy sesame-flavoured subonku whenever the stores have them in stock!”

“But Gin-chan, two pork barbeque buns for the price of one!”

Shinpachi coughs delicately. “You have to admit, Gin-san, it is a very good deal.” Aside to himself, he mumbles, “they’ve saved me more times than I can count,” and hopes Tae never finds his stash of frozen pork barbeque buns he sneaks out at midnight when dark matter dinners prove too much for his stomach to handle.

“What are you two, video game characters who can only revive their health with pork barbeque buns?” Gintoki grouches, then leans back on his fake leather and plastic desk chair. “Ahhh, but really, society is scum. All those flashy, money-grabbing advertisements and media turning the free-thinking man into a mindless drone. Bah!”

“Well,” Shinpachi hedges, fidgeting with the Otsuu-chan NekoNeko double spread special open in front of him, “maybe it's not all so bad…”

“Eh? Don't tell me they've caught you already, Pachi-boy! Those sirens, always luring in the innocent cherry boys with their wily charms and pretty faces! Cover your ears, Shinpachi, before you drown!”

Shinpachi’s face turns bright red as it always does when reminded of his cherry-boy status, like soup that someone put beetroot in and left on the stove for too long so all the vegetables became a mushy red mess like a bloody murder scene like someone dropping a basket of actual ripe, red cherries.

“Like the bright flag of revolution!” Kagura adds to the overly extended and entirely nonsensical metaphor, waving her magazine again even though the front cover is yellow.

For all the embarrassing state of their being, the fantasies of cherry boys cannot be underestimated: in a split second, Shinpachi finds himself in the grip of a fervoured daydream where he's leading the pop idol revolution, Otsuu’s grateful, adoring eyes centred upon him from her Queen Idol throne made from glittery microphones and album awards, while he stands bearing her image and flag upon the conquered mountain of her rivals’ platinum albums and singles. Shaking himself free of this intoxicating dream takes truly the will of only the most stout-hearted and tenacious of samurai, but Shinpachi has always been deceptively strong, underestimated as he is by his otaku appearance.

“No, that's not what I meant!” he says vehemently, crossing his arms over his chest. “It has nothing to do with cherry boys, or rather, not only to do with cherry boys! Yes, the capitalist market may be a money-grabbing, exploitative, manipulative, marginalising machine"—he takes a deep breath here, having run out of air after his string of long, multisyllabic words—“but you can't deny that it's also given some people the chance to achieve their dreams, and in that way, helped inspire others too!” He gazes lovingly at his Otsuu spread, conveniently ignoring the headline to the side exclaiming, ‘Otsuu production company bankrupt?! Employee scandal!!’

“Ahhh,” Gintoki says in a bored, dry voice, “that was sure quick of you to swap sides there, Shinpachi. You went from glass half-empty to glass half-full in, what, less time than it takes for a teenage boy to hide his dirty magazines when his mum unexpectedly bursts through his bedroom door. What, you playing double glasses or something? Doubles G’s? Is that what you're into, Shinpachi?” Gintoki tuts, shaking his head. “Teenage boys are so greedy, always thinking more is better. No wonder they make such good prey for those dirty media companies. It's okay, Shinpachi, you'll learn, you'll learn.”

Shinpachi splutters, the thought of double G’s such a force against the foundations of his feeble cherry boy mind that he cannot pull out his defences. Taking advantage of the moment, Kagura jumps in with a question.

“What are you talking about, Gin-chan?” she says. “Shinpachi has always had two glasses. Like a pair of glasses! G. G.!”

She crooks her thumbs to her forefingers, touching the tips together so they make a pair of circles just the right size to peer out of, and presses them to her eyes. Somewhere in the distance, a group of broke university students break out into a flashmob, a chorus of ‘G’s and ‘baby’s rising up while a crowd of people just trying to reach the end of the street look on in confusion.

“Bless you,” Gintoki says, while Kagura continues to blink owlishly out of her literally hand-made glasses.

“My glasses look nothing like that,” Shinpachi complains to Kagura, because that is far safer than remaining in the grips of a Double-G dream. (Already he has had to discreetly wipe away the trickle of blood from his nose while Kagura and Gintoki were busy fooling around.)

“Of course not,” Gintoki reassures, “your glasses look like those cheap, mass-produced products that break and fail you right when you need them.”

“Well maybe if you actually paid us a living wage, I could afford brand glasses if mine offend your sensibilities so much!”

“For someone who’s only just over legal working age, you sure have high expectations!”

“You're not even paying me minimum wage, I could report you, you know!”

“Oh yeah? Report me to who? The boss?” Gintoki snorts, waving a dismissive hand.

Shinpachi’s nostrils flare, eyebrows drawing together in an angry line.

“I'll report you to… to… to the industry union!”

Gintoki laughs an evil, corporate laugh. “What industry union? The Odd Jobs union? Ha! Good luck with that! Even if one existed, it would never get anything done because its members would be too busy looking for odd jobs to make their daily living!”

Kagura’s eyes flash. “Pachi-boy, let's start a union!” she says, though what a fourteen year old alien would know about industry unions, the never-ending battle for workers’ rights, petitions, rallies, strikes and other various union organisation stuffs remains an unanswered question. Still, one couldn't fault her enthusiasm.

Unexpectedly, in utter abandonment of his straight man role, Shinpachi jumps onto the idea.

“Yes!” he says. “We can invite all the other Odd Jobs teams from the anime crossovers we have! ‘Odd Jobs’ is such a well known and overused trope, I'm sure there will be plenty who will want to join us!”

“The Odd Jobs industry revolution!” Kagura bellows, arms spread out wide like she’s presenting a magic trick. “Led by the Yorozuya!”

“O-Oi!” Suddenly faced with a revolution and overzealous employees, Gintoki has no idea what to do.

Luckily for him, right at that moment, the phone rings. Its noisy call goes on for two ring cycles, cutting through and silencing all conversation in the room, before Gintoki wipes out a hand to pick up the receiver. Suddenly Kagura and Shinpachi are pressed right up against his side, intense looks on their faces as they eavesdrop on the call, union revolution promptly forgotten at the prospect of a new job.

“Hello, you've reached Yorozuya Gin-chan, how may I help you? Yes, a job? Right now? You're desperate? Of course, of course, that's what the Yorozuya are here for! What exactly…? Yes. Uh-huh. Uh-huh, of course, yes.” As he listens to the job details, Gintoki catches the gaze of his employees and does a fist pump in the air. Kagura and Shinpachi grin at him and return the gesture. “...Yes, just leave it to us! We'll be down there before you can blink!”

With that, he hangs up the phone, pushes back his chair and stands, grabbing his bokutou and slipping it into his belt with a smooth motion.

“Alright, people!” he says, turning around to look down at Kagura and Shinpachi. “We've been called and now we got a job to do. Tell me: Are the Yorozuya ready to put their all, to go beyond, plus ultra—"

Shinpachi sighs; of course they couldn't get away without referencing another anime. He hopes at least with fanfiction’s grey legality, they won't be sued or have to cop another lecture about copyright laws from Sunrise.

“—to deliver the best Odd Jobs service to our dear and valuable clientele?”

“Yes!” comes the enthusiastic response, Kagura and Shinpachi standing with straight backs bearing their pride and excitement as a true Yorozuya member.

Gintoki cups his hand over his ear, leaning forward. “I said, are you ready?!”

“Yes!”

A short, approving nod. “Alright. Yorozuya Gin-chan, move out!”

[oumakokichi]

I feel like Saihara won't be well-received in English fandom. For obvious reasons, but because he's, as you say, a character who's weak and needs to rely on others constantly. Needing help sometimes is okay, but a character who always needs other more competent people to help them and who never gives back can be frustrating. Thoughts?

I think Saihara will be slightly more popular with thewestern fanbase once the localization is out, but mainly due to the fact thatthere will be less misinformation going around. A lot of the reasons I’ve seenpeople have for hating Saihara stem from wrongful assumptions that he’s a “Naegi/Hinataclone” even when he’s… fairly dissimilar from both of them, really.

I do agree that Saihara will probably never be as popular inthe west as he is in Japan, though. Personally, I like Saihara quite a lot as aprotag. Out of all the protagonists, he’s my second-favorite, with only Hinataranking higher. But I think his popularity will always be somewhat stinted bythe bait-and-switch with Kaede, which left a lot of people with a negativeimpression from the start (even though the bait-and-switch was more the faultof Kodaka as a writer, rather than Saihara’s fault).

I also think the western fanbase by and large simply prefersthe shounen protagonist archetype more. Characters like Saihara, who are weak,anxious, and dependent, are often harshly seen as “annoying” or “pathetic.”Saihara is by no means a self-insert protagonist, and he’s not supposed to be—butmore often than not, people playing a visual novel (and Danganronpa is prettymuch a visual novel with extra gameplay elements, as Kodaka has said severaltimes himself) mistake anyprotagonist for a self-insert protagonist.

Playing as a weak, cowardly, or hesitant protagonist causesmany people to reflect on the weaker, worse characteristics of themselves, andusually means they have a harder time warming up to the character than if theyexhibited traits that are seen as universally positive, like bravery, charisma,extroversion, etc.

However, it’s precisely because of Saihara’s flaws as acharacter that I’ve come to love him. For me, personally, Saihara is arguablythe most relatable out of all the protagonists—because I too know what it’slike to struggle with issues of dependency and questioning my own judgment. Assalty as I still am about the bait-and-switch, and as much as I resent a femalecharacter being fridged off for a male character’s development so early intothe game, I simply can’t deny the fact that from a thematic standpoint, Saiharais the most fitting protagonist for agame like ndrv3.

Ndrv3 is a game that challenges not only the characterswithin it but even the player themselves to constantly reevaluate theirassumptions and worldview. Because of its inherent focus on truth vs. lies,where to draw the line between those two things, and which one of the two ismore “correct,” there’s a constant sense of uncertainty throughout the entiregame. The prologue is uncertain. The epilogue is uncertain. The validity ofeverything that was said in the final trial, of the characters’ memories andtalents and backstories, of our judgment as the player in past cases, is allcalled into question.

We, as players, are tasked with solving the mystery forourselves, going back over the game and picking up on the clues andforeshadowing that Kodaka left, and trying to come up with our own theories. Ndrv3is all about the mystery genre, not only from the perspective of individualmurder cases in each trial but with the entire state of the outside world, thekilling game show, and even the characters themselves.

Therefore, the protagonist being a detective makes perfectsense. Saihara is a detective whose job by definition is to find and expose thetruth, but whose past experiences have left him traumatized by that. More thananyone, Saihara understands that the truth is painful and can be used as aweapon; he feels that he singlehandedly ruined a man’s life all because hesolved a case by accident. And yet, as a detective, he still has a naturalcuriosity that causes him to subconsciously seek these things out. He’s afraidof repeating past mistakes, and yet he can’t quite let the truth go.

This is an intentional allusion to the role of a detectivein any mystery novel: more than once, it’s been lampshaded that “the detective issomeone who brings disaster with them wherever they go.” No matter where adetective goes, a case (usually a murder, specifically) is sure to follow. Thisrole is something we’ve seen Kirigiri embrace as an inherent part of who she isin dr1 after struggling to find her memories and her purpose, but with Saihara,it’s much, much harder for him to come to terms with it. A detective who isafraid of the truth already fails to meet the criteria of a “real detective”from the start, in his opinion—and it is fascinatingto see him struggle to trust in his own intuition and abilities despite hatinghimself so much.

Saihara is certainly weak and dependent—but I’m not really surewhere you got the “never gives back” part from. Even though Saihara doubtshimself often and feels as though he’s a subpar detective and hardly qualifiedfor the job, the rest of the characters constantlyrely on him. If anything, they become over-reliant on him as a detective, somuch so to the point where it’s actually lampshaded in-game and they’re calledout on not wanting to think for themselves.

Starting with Chapter 2 and culminating perhaps with Chapters4 and 5, the characters, hell, even Monokuma, all assume that because Saiharais there “they don’t really have to solve the mystery for themselves.” This isa criticism I often see from mystery authors to their readers: the assumptionfrom people that all the answers are going to be handed out on a silver platterwithout any need to think or theorize or even try to solve the mysterythemselves first is often frustrating and discouraging to writers. And I suspectit was no accident that this sort of mindset gets deliberately addressed assomething negative throughout the course of ndrv3.

Momota and all the rest of the cast rely on Saihara to solvethe mysteries for them for most of the game, rather than attempting to dothings themselves. Rather than trusting Saihara himself, per se, it’s becausethey trust his talent, as a detective. They rely on his intuition and abilitiesso much that he actually begins becoming a little uncomfortable with ithimself.

And in Chapter 5, when at a loss for what to do because evenhe doesn’t know the answers to the case, Monokuma decides to rely exclusivelyon Saihara’s reasoning as a “SHSL Detective,” and even announces so point-blankduring the trial. When Momota attempts to keep carrying on Ouma’s bluff despitethe fact that Saihara did theorize the answer correctly, Monokuma says he’s notworried, because he’s sure that a SHSL Detective’s reasoning won’t lead himastray.

Saihara is, as Momota himself points out in the Chapter 5post-trial, “the one who was saving everyone’s asses.” More often than not, hewas one of the main figures in the group keeping everyone alive, working tosolve things when absolutely no one else was really putting much thought intothings—because they all assumed that Saihara would do it for them. To say thathe “never gives anything back” makes no sense, because in fact, it’s the factthat so much is expected from him and that he’s been thrust into such anunwanted leadership role that makes Saihara so uncomfortable and such ananxious wreck.

Certainly, having a protagonist who is weak, timid, anxious,and dependent on others can be frustrating—moreso if those things are neveraddressed within the narrative or characters constantly come to the protagonist’srescue without ever addressing the fact that they aren’t doing things forthemselves. But this isn’t the case with Saihara. Most, if not all the characters address Saihara’sweaknesses in one way or another. Many of them, like Kaede, Momota, and Ouma,work to help push Saihara out of his shell of hesitation and uncertainty.

In my opinion, having a character without any flaws at allwould be far more frustrating. A character with no flaws means there’s no roomfor development or improvement—which is, frankly… pretty boring. And there aremany, many stories in which the protagonist is often a reckless, headstrong,fun-loving person who relies on cooperation and the power of friendship tochange things (such as, most shounen stories). These archetypes can be well-written,but my point is that they’ve been done often.

It’s far rarer to see a protagonist like Saihara whose entirepoint is that he was deliberately made to be “weaker than anyone.” Tsumugi andTeam DR didn’t expect him to gradually come out of his shell, to make evensmall and timid attempts at being braver or more forthright; they expected hisfear of the truth to keep him immobilized forever, always weak, always unable tomove past his uncertainty.

But Saihara doesdevelop. He changes, he improves—and he, of course, messes up along the way. Hisimprovements don’t mean that his anxiety or depression or suicidal thoughts aremagically “cured”—and as someone who has struggled with anxiety and depressionmyself, I can appreciate that, because it’s realistic. Those things never justmagically go away or stop being a thing, but it’s important to know that it ispossible to keep going in life, to keep taking even one step forward even whenyou were already inclined to give up on life—and that’s a lesson Saihara andthe other survivors learn from Kiibo by the end of Chapter 6.

Expecting every protagonist to be extroverted, brave,self-sacrificing, or to have a positive, take-charge attitude is, in myopinion, fairly unrealistic. Stories remain diverse and interesting when theircharacters are equally diverse. And considering how many characters step into the literal protagonist role in ndrv3,including not only Kaede and Kiibo but also Himiko and Maki briefly during theChapter 6 trial, and arguably Momota too if you consider that he always callshimself “the protagonist,” I would say one of the underlying themes of ndrv3 isthat “everyone is the protagonist of their own story.”

There’s no reason at all why weaker characters can’t also bea protagonist. There’s no definition stating that a protagonist has to beself-reliant or strong. Having a protagonist who not only relies on others butneeds to do so because otherwise they would be inclined to give up is arefreshing change from the norm, in my opinion. Perhaps some people might thinkof it as frustrating, which I can understand—but to me it seems incrediblyhuman, and a reminder that characters don’t have to be the strongest or thebravest necessarily to still be interesting and compelling.

Saihara probably won’t be incredibly popular in the westernfanbase even after the English localization hits, as you said. But I do wishpeople would give him more of a fair chance in his own right. He’s flawed, butthose flaws are precisely the reason he’s able to reach a different sort ofanswer than the standard “hope vs. despair” dichotomy by the end of Chapter 6. Saihara isweak, it’s true, but he’s also thoughtful, generous, and deeply compassionate.The reason that he’s so afraid of exposing the truth is because he knows howmuch it can be used to hurt others—and that knowledge is an essential part ofwhy he comes to accept lies later on too.

The understanding that gentle lies are a kind of “magic” intheir own right, something used to cope with a harsh world in order to moveforward, is one of the most centralthemes in all of ndrv3. And Saihara is one of the few protagonists capable ofreaching that understanding because of how weak he is, not in spite of it.

This is my opinion on it, of course. I’ve written quite alot of meta on why I personally like Saihara as a character, so even if henever quite becomes popular in the western fanbase, I’m okay with that—I’llstill always love him quite a lot myself. I hope this answers your question,anon!

[myhahnestopinion]

The Night AN OVERCOMPENSATING, KARAOKE ROCK-AND-ROLL STAR Came Home: SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE II (1987)

Incompetent movies usually beget incompetent sequels. Did anyone really expect Silent Night, Deadly Night or Troll to spontaneously produce a masterpiece for their third franchise entry? But, while a zebra can’t change its spots and Michael Bay can’t make a good Transformers movie, sometimes a mildly entertaining slasher flick will spawn a sequel that not only is barely recognizable in tone, style, and concept as a continuation of the previous entry, but is barely recognizable as a film at all.

1982’s Slumber Party Massacre is a film more interesting for its backstory than its actual slashering. The film was written by Rita Mae Brown as a parody film, designed to provide a feminist critique of the slasher genre, and the film was in turn directed by a female director, as were the rest of the trilogy. However, in production, it was transformed into a straight-forward horror film centered on another group of teens being picked off one by one by an escaped mass murderer. This shift in focus left the film very uneven, with its most memorable bit being a gag about one teen eating some pizza, worrying it will get cold soon, after finding the delivery boy dead on the doorstep. This unevenness doesn’t even begin to compare to what happened to the sequel film though, released five years later. 1987’s Slumber Party Massacre II basically came about by throwing A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pepsi product placement, and 1980’s MTV into a blender, then having it mixed at the discretion of B-movie “Auteur” Roger Corman, the man behind that infamous unreleased $1 million Fantastic Four movie, made solely to keep the rights. Here, with $200,000 at his disposal, it goes about exactly as well as you expect.

If there’s one thing that can be said about Slumber Party Massacre II, it would be that the film excels at delivering the unexpected. For example, you may have many ideas about how a slasher film would begin: an early murder tease, a presentation of the villain’s origin, or something along those lines that sets the mood. Did you expect romantic music to swell and the camera to pan longingly over a woman’s body as she has a sexy dream about a hunky football player? Probably not.

This sexy dream is the dream of our protagonist, Courtney Bates, the younger sister of the protagonist from the last movie, Valerie, who now resides in a mental hospital. Despite being uninvolved in much of the last film’s events, Courtney’s sexy football dreams are interrupted by clips from the past movie’s bloody events. Yes, the film could have continued to follow the person whose life was upended by the brutal murder of several of her friends as she attempts to deal with this traumatic past… but instead it follows her younger sister, because desiring to have uninterrupted sex dreams about hunky football players is a way more involving motivation, I guess.

Courtney meets up with her friend Amy for a session of carpool karaoke that is about as interminable as… well, Carpool Karaoke. It does introduced the concept that Courtney, along with three of her friends, have a garage band together, one whose jam sessions are about as interminable as... well, your average garage band. And yes, we are about 10 minutes into this film, and there have already been two extended musical sequences.

The band, which also includes Sheila and Sally, is heading up for the weekend to a condo recently purchased by Sheila’s family. Amy encourages Courtney to invite Matt, the hunky football player of her dreams, to come along, which she does. Yes, hunky football player is real, and boy is he… not nearly as dreamy in real life. I mean, not as much as a doofus as Matt from Troll 3, but better keep dreaming, Courtney. Though perhaps the reason why Matt seems so unnerving in real life is the film’s insistence on always shooting him from this weird close-up, head-on angle.

That night, Courtney dozes off for another sexy dream about hunky football player, but instead finds herself dreaming about being in the mental hospital with her sister, whose hiding, terrified, under her bed. “Don’t go all the way!” she shouts. Yes, the central conflict of the movie at this point is Courtney being c*ckblocked from her hunky football sex dreams by her sister. The film holds off on revealing it’s central villain for a good while, but it does give us a few brief teases to build anticipation. We see a few shots of his… dancing feet…and screech that… “Rock and roll never die,” so, uh, I don’t know guys. Our killer is… Michael Jackson or something. Read on.

The band arrives at the condo the next morning. “It looks like nobody lives here yet,” observes Amy, a line of dialogue that the movie uses as its excuse for not spending any of its precious $200,000 budget on furnishing this home. Amy’s observation isn’t entirely accurate though, as when the girls head upstairs, they find an inflatable sex doll on a bed upstairs. “Looks like my brother has been up here,” Shelia notes, and the girls all have a chuckle about this, because there’s nothing at all concerning about this grown man breaking-in his parents’ brand new condominium by having secret getaway weekends with his inflatable sex doll!

The girls kick off their weekend with a dance party, because if there was one thing this slasher film was missing at almost the halfway mark, it was another musical sequence, and not, like, a murder or something. During the dance party, the girls start a pillow fight, and then begin to undress. Why go forward with that whole feminist critique of the genre thing when you can have gratuitous nudity instead? There’s really just not enough of that in the genre!

At this moment, we are also introduced to two other male characters, T.J. and pencil-mustached Jeff, who sneak up on the girls. “You really should lock your back door,” Jeff says in creepy fashion. The girls find neither this remark nor the fact that these two were watching them strip at their dance party to be concerning.

The whole gang enjoy their weekend, filled with swimming, and snacking, and… car washing, because that’s a fun vacation activity. But, Courtney begins to be plagued by visions of strange events, each accompanied by an electric guitar riff. Bathtub water turns to blood. A… raw turkey attacks her when she opens the fridge…? And, she goes in for a bite of her hamburger, only to discover that there was a severed appendage between the buns. Now that’s what I call…. a HAND-BURGER! HA HA HA HA! AM I RIGHT, GUYS?!

Hey, give me a break. We’re far more than halfway through this movie, and there still hasn’t been a single death… or really any indication at all that this is a horror movie. But, hey, there is another musical sequence, where the band performs another track! That’s something!

Once again, Courtney dreams are filled with brief flashes of our main villain, but if you were looking for indication that this is a horror movie, then you’re still out of luck. In this further teases, we now know that our main villain is dressed toe-to-toe in a black leather cowboy outfit, with a face that suggest Ioan Grufford really hit rock bottom after those dreadful Fantastic Four movies.

Finally, after numerous tedious musical sequences and… whatever is happening with this villain… there is a death. Well, more or less. In the bathroom, Courtney watches, horrified, as a pimple on Sally’s face swells to grotesque proportions. Considering the low budget of the film, it’s actually a half-decent practical effect. 

Courtney runs downstairs, right into the arms of Matt, who’s arrival at the house is never seen. The group tries to calm Courtney, as Matt calls the cops. When two officers arrive to investigate, Sally walks through the door, the whole thing being another dream. “You just wasted $200 of taxpayer money,” the cop says sternly. It’s a valid point, but, well, I’m more upset about someone wasting 200 THOUSAND DOLLARS on this trash.

With Matt finally here, he and Courtney head upstairs in hopes of finally making those hunky football player sex dreams a reality. They begin to make out, when Courtney pauses. “I’ve never…” she starts, when our leather-cowboy rock and roll villain shows up. “Gone all the way?” he finishes, before drilling through Matt’s chest, killing him.

And so, 50 minutes into this 75 minute movie, we have both our first official kill, and our first clear glimpse of the villain. Beyond his gaudy outfit and personality that suggests Ferris Bueller started doing crack shortly after high school, we finally get a good look at his weapon.

Slasher villains often brandish an iconic weapon. Freddy has his glove. Jason, his machete. In one of the best bits of that film, the killer from the original Slumber Party Massacre had an electric drill. This choice of weapon was clearly make to invoke phallic imagery as it impaled through the first film’s victims, which is then turned around on the killer by the women at the end of the film, a reversal of power that was one of the few remaining elements of the film’s feminist roots. If that drill was indeed meant to carry such implications, well, then, the Driller Killer in this film is certainly compensating for something with his massive electric drill, mounted onto a large, elaborate guitar.

“He’s real,” Courtney shouts, as she stumbles downstairs to the others. And so, as if by Courtney’s command, the film does indeed finally commit to having an actual killer in this film, and crams an entire slasher film worth of kills into just a few minutes. While having any murder at all is a relief, the kills are fairly mundane. Rock-Star Man simply impales a few people with his spinning drill guitar, shredding their insides. Come on, man! You gotta switch it up now and then! Have you tried them on top and you on bottom?

After taking out a few members of the group, the killer turns to camera and announces, “Now it’s time for the good part.” Oh good, I’ve been waiting for an hour for this film to get to the good part!

And… it’s another musical sequences…  Yes, after dispatching a few people, some technicolor lights pop on, and the Driller Killer begins to dance and sing along to the song “Let’s Buzz” by the Paladins. It’s less frightening and more… utterly confusing… And even if I did understand it, it would probably be less frightening, and more utterly confusing.

This driller killer dude is played by the son of the founder of Little Caser’s by the way. That’s a real fact. It’s not really all that relevant, but neither is having a karaoke sequence in the climax of your slasher movie, so, well, here we are. So, the Driller Killer kills everyone but Amy and Courtney, but continues to dance and spout song lyrics as he chases them to an unfinished extension on the condo, where Amy is killed. Up on the roof, Courtney grabs a conveniently nearby flamethrower. The killer is engulfed in the fire, and falls off the building. Yes, like so many young rock stars, the Driller Killer short lived career ended up going down in flames.

So, after this dreamed-up rock star is defeated by a simple flamethrower, the film realizes it has no idea what this film was about either, and bumbles its way through an ending. First, Amy’s body is being carried away by cops, but her eyes open and the killer’s laugh comes out of her mouth. Then Courtney wakes up next to Matt, the whole thing being a dream. THE ENTIRE FREAKING MOVIE BEING A DREAM! BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! COURTNEY ROLLS OVER TO EMBRACE MATT, BUT MATT TURNS INTO THE DRILLER KILLER, AND COURTNEY WAKES UP AGAIN!!! IN THE MENTAL HOSPITAL!!! DREAM WITHIN A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM WITHIN A PATHETIC MUSIC VIDEO!

If someone were to ask me what Slumber Party Massacre II was about, what its character motivations and central conflicts are, well, my best attempt would be to explain that it is about a woman so scared of intimacy that she dreams up a meth-head cowboy rockstar who wants to have sex with her so much he kills her band, but also none of it was real, but also all it might have been real. Now, as to why anything in this movie happens, I have no clue. Does this film have anything to say about femininity, the rock-and-roll generation, the nature of reality, or even about the ethical use of inflatable sex dolls? No, it doesn’t seem like it. It seems more like producer Roger Corman and director Crystal Bernard decided to cash-in on a bunch of popular trends, without having either the money or talent to tackle any of it. There’s no conclusion here. There’s no sense of pacing. There’s no real plot of any kind. And there’s certainly no money on display here, despite the continuous very obvious Pepsi product placement. Truly the most baffling decision in a true cornucopia of nonsensical incompetence though is our villain, low-rent-Billy-Idol-cosplay Freddy Krueger. It’s not really surprising that the next film in the series return to a regular old guy with a drill. But, well, when you have a killer as cool as this, it can’t be long before he comes back in style.

Slumber Party Massacre II is available on Blu-ray and DVD.

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