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worfs-glorious-hair · 4 years ago

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Puzzle Pieces: Interlude-What is a soulmate?(RK-800 Connor x Reader; Deroit: Become Human) Part 4

Greeeeeetings!

I am glad to be back (finally) after a whole year. I am sorry.

A lot happened and I hope that you are in a safe space. I am sending you a social-distanced and corona-free hug! <3

Also, big shoutout to all the old and new readers and peeps who found their way to this fanfiction in the last year. Reading the notifications of likes and retweets and even asks to be tagged in the next part never failed to make me feel so happy and giggly inside. This chapter was actually posted already a few weeks ago on AO3 but only now I finally got around to update on here as well. So extra-kudos for your extra-patience! :D <3

We’re doing some world-building in this chapter and our boi Connor feels things and is overall confused by the answers he finds. A lot to look forward to for you. :D

And one more thing until I finally let you go to reading, I decided to specify the reader's pronouns and settled with female pronouns. But otherwise than that I still try to write the reader as open as possible that you have more room to find yourself in the story. If you would prefer different pronouns, tho, please message me and we'll figure something out for you. I am there for you and I want to respect your pronouns and want you to have a good reading experience.

Spoilers for the game in the following chapter, btw.

I think I’ve kept you from the chapter now long enough. Enjoy reading. <3

Message me if you want to be tagged in the next chapter.

Stay safe and please be responsible and wear a mask over nose and mouth.

All my love, lady-spacy

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

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Interlude- What is a soulmate?

"Lieutenant", Connor asked, "what is a soulmate? I noticed that the subject of 'soulmates' appears in two out of three conversations and it caused always a measurable change in one's body chemistry. For example, I detected an increased level of serotonin and..."

"Do you stop talking if I answer your question?", a very tired Lieutenant Anderson interrupted Connor's analysis. Hank knew that if he wouldn't be stopped soon, Connor would continue to talk about hormones and blushes and cheesy giggles and all that exhausting stuff that came with the topic of soulmates. The only way to shut that noisy android up was to answer his questions and they would be in the car to Kamski’s estate for another twenty minutes. And twenty minutes could be long next to someone who wants to talk so badly when all you want to do is to drive in peace.

"Of course, Lieutenant."

Hank rolled his eyes and fought the urge to sigh, of fucking course would that shut Connor up. He was predictable after all, very – curious but predictable.

“A soulmate is your, uh, uhm, your lifelong partner. I mean, not your partner, I don’t think Androids have soulmates…”, Hank eyed Connor from the side and wondered what his LED ring on his temple looked like. He had realized that whenever Connor was thinking about something his LED would spin around, sometimes slow, sometimes even faster. Sometimes it would even change the color and would go from blue to yellow.

And now Hank found himself wondering what that Android did to him, that he cared about what Connor thought.

Connor had watched Hank closely and attentive. He wanted to know, he wanted to understand.

“No, Lieutenant, Androids do not have soulmates. But I still don’t understand what a soulmate differs from a good friend? What is it that makes you have the names written on your bodies, who decides on what name, which person, will appear on your body, why are your destinies supposed to be connected by something, apparently without your consent. Did you ever choose to have a soulmate?”

‘Yeah’, Hank thought by himself, ‘good questions.’

“Soulmates are a difficult topic”, he finally spoke out loud. Trying to find words to explain a concept that no one really understood.

”Even scientists didn’t’t found all answers”, continued Hank, “as far as I know, they aren’t even close. We don’t know what bonds us to another human being. Soulmates are said to be ‘tied together from the universe itself’”, Hank drew quotation marks in the air with his right hand that wasn’t on the wheel, “but whatever it is that decided about that, we’re having to deal with that shit now. And for your question, soulmates are supposed to be partners, lovers even, a team that belongs together. People who give each other security and safety. It’s a nice idea but in reality it doesn’t play out. We don’t choose our soulmates and don’t get a say with it. There is no ‘consent’ in that soulmate shit, as you put it in words.”

“Have you found your soulmate, Lieutenant? Was your heart broken and this is why you now doubt the idea of soulmates? I can detect patterns of emotional distress in your voice.”

“Jeez, do you try to be fucking psychiatrist now?”

„No“, came Connor‘s immediate answer.

„I am just trying to understand human nature better.”

“Well, there is a name on my wrist, if that’s what you want to know. But at the end it was only a name. Just because you have a name there doesn’t mean that you will live happily ever after. Life can still happen…”

For Hank this was it, he had already said enough. He glanced over to Connor who still looked at him, Hank, with this never ending gleam of curiosity and analyzing that always surrounded him.

Android? Hank wondered if this was truly the nature of that boy, sure his body was artificial but what about his heart?

‘Androids don’t have hearts’ would have said the Hank from just four days ago and now he just wasn’t sure about that anymore. He had seen so much, he had seen two girls, who were so deeply in love that they were willing to do anything to be together, he had seen Connor deciding not to shoot these girls and let them get away, obviously going against his programming as a hunter.

And then Connor’s answers two nights ago on that playground, Hank had seen trouble in his eyes, he had heard the poorly covered confusion in his voice, which left him confused as well.

Hank started to wonder if they were wrong, what if Androids could be more than the illusion of a human?

“Mr Kamski?“, Hank called, when he and Connor were finally let in to meet Elijah Kamski.

“Just a moment, please”, came the immediate answer from the other side of the room, where the former CEO of Cyberlife was currently swimming in a pool with red tiles that made it look like it was filled with blood instead of water.

While they waited for him to come out of the pool, Connor took the time to look around in the large room with big art pieces on the walls and a glass window that filled the whole outer wall and showed the view towards the frozen Detroit River.

He turned around again when he heard water splashing, signaling a body that was lifted out of it and he saw Kamski climbing up the pool ladder.

Acting on a sudden impulse Connor tried to catch a glimpse of Kamski’s wrist hoping to see his soulmark as the RT-600 Chloe, who had opened the door for them, helped Kamski put on a bath robe but before he came close enough to see, Kamski turned around to the window and fixed his hair.

When he turned back to him and Hank he smirked at Connor, just as he had read his mind, and crossed his hands loosely over is lower abdomen, completely blocking the view to his wrists.

And kept his hands like this for the rest of the conversation.

„I always leave an emergency exit in my programs…“, Kamski looked at Connor with his sly, sparkling eyes, full with endless smugness and the touch of a smirk on the corners of his mouth.

As if this whole exchange has not been confusing and frightening enough for Connor, he had to deal with this mysterious comment now, too. What does that mean? What does he want to say with it?

Connor would like to ask but he would probably just get another riddle as an answer.

“Connor, wait!”

A voice called him back as he was about to head outside.

He stopped and turned around to the original RT-600 model, her eyes burning with an intensity and significance that Connor had never seen before, at least not in an Android’s eyes. He could not look away.

Again, as he locked eyes with the very first Android, who was able to pass the Turing test, he saw more there. For the same reason that he hasn’t been able to shoot not even seven minutes ago, for the same reason did he now stop in his tracks and waited patiently for what she had to say.

She...

That word lingered in his mind for a very long moment.

‘What is happening?’ screamed his mind, unable to cope. His mind was drowning in too many illogical new information and sensations.

This is too much!

‘I can’t look away’, Connor realized as he stared into her burning eyes, his mind being filled with just one thought: ‘Whatever is happening here right now is important! Don’t blink!’

“The truth is beneath your skin”, she said hastily, softly tipping on his right wrist with her index finger, right where the sleeves of his jacket ended.

He followed the movement of her finger with his eyes and stared at his wrist. What could be there, hiding, waiting?

“The truth is there, everything you need to know!” Connor did not know what to say or do, he just kept staring at his wrist, trying to see, to understand, what she could possibly be talking about.

He continued staring at his wrist and her finger until he finally came back to his senses, after too many seconds that are an eternity for Androids.

Blinking away once again the warning for the never ending, wildly spinning software instability that had appeared when that Chloe had stopped him.

Connor practically sprinted outside to Hank and his car.

^^ Software Instability ^^

R#aN%9I=97&°

Connor took a step back in surprise, Androids could have soulmates!

Ortiz’ Android had a soulmark! Written in blue CyberLife fond stood a name on the Android’s wrist, Melanie.

Maybe the soulmarks came with deviancy, Connor thought, maybe their soulmate was only revealed when they became deviant. Meaning that there had always been someone who was meant to be- waiting, sleeping under the skin. Meaning that deviancy was a lot more than a virus or a software error. Deviancy could be a revelation of life in all of it’s aspects.

But deviancy was just an irregularity in the programming, Connor thought, seeking comfort in programmed truths that he wanted to believe so badly. Truths that did not feel true anymore. But if he didn’t believe in them, he had nothing left to believe in. Connor was lost. Lost between the destroyed bodies of Androids who had only wanted peace, justice or a home.

Connor stood on an edge, every time a software instability appeared he could see the abyss, he did not want to fall!

So he clung onto the only truths he ever knew. Otherwise he would become like them, just another broken machine.

He continued examining the Androids’ bodies and finds from his missions for a clue for Jericho in the evidence room of the Detroit Police Department. While he scanned and analyzed, he tried to find comfort in the tasks that he was created for–the software instabilities that occurred even more regularly now in the past days confused and scared him, Connor couldn’t comprehend what was happening to him- he needed to be uninterrupted if he wanted to find the deviant leader and finally bring back order into this chaos.

Connor craved peace, he craved the monotone calmness of executing programs and tasks, no emotions, no insecurities, no confusion.

But his thoughts came always back to soulmates- how could this be possible?

Deviancy was maybe caused by a computer virus and soulmates were supposed to be a real lifelong connection between two human beings, that were alive and had a soul. Soulmates for Androids just couldn’t work, Androids just don’t have souls!

They are only machines, programmed to think, they have no real mind of their own and yet all of the Androids in the evidence room had their soulmarks on their wrists.

Daniel even had a name written in red by a human’s hand as his soulmark.

A human had been Daniel’s soulmate… But what about his soulmate now, do they search now forever for someone who is not alive anymore?

Alive…

And again, another warning for a software instability appeared in Connor‘s periphery. He blinked it away.

How could this be that he had actually thought of Daniel as ‘once alive’?

He, Connor, the currently on duty RK- 800 model, the android sent by CyberLife to hunt down deviants, who was faster, better and more advanced than any Android before him, who was programmed to follow orders, that were given to him, with precision and no room for doubts, second thoughts or even a mind of his own, he, Connor, had thought about an Android who he had hunted down with that precision, executing his advanced negotiating programs and earning the Android‘s trust in the end, as dead.

Alive means that something can die, not to be destroyed, not to be deactivated, not to be shut down. Life and death are terms to describe flesh and blood, red blood. Not blue blood.

But maybe, Connor thought and the LED on his temple went yellow for yet another time on this day, maybe, just maybe, was there another truth for Androids and for him. Maybe there was life and death and love and emotions, maybe there was a soul.

It was as time had slowed down for a moment as he jumped, no, as he was flying...

He saw snowflakes passing him in slow motion, he was seeing all their details, all their individuality, despite their outer uniformity of one shared build.

It was mesmerizing–and odd.

Odd because he saw their beauty, he did not just made an analysis of their geometrical structures or chemical composition, he saw them glittering and dancing in the lights of the pier.

This was new and wonderful, it was as he would be seeing for the first time, as he had been blindfolded all this time...

The moment passed as Connor hit through the surface of the Detroit River, dulled from the water around him he could hear the explosion of Jericho behind him.

‘I hope everyone made it out’, he thought as he resurfaced.

His head was spinning, not from the explosion or the jump in the freezing cold water, physically he was in perfect condition, but mentally it did feel like he just jumped out of a 20 meter freighter that exploded right behind him. He was feeling– something. Emotions were still so new to him that naming them was difficult for Connor.

He was deviant now! He had broken down the red wall that had kept him in place for so long, he had pushed and pulled against the order to stop Markus until the wall crumbled down, fell around him. Connor had lowered the gun and did the only thing that he could in that moment to show his gratitude. He warned Markus. The FBI would come and attack Jericho. He knew about the plans and in another world, a lifetime ago, did he plan to help the soldiers and to hunt Markus down, to drive him into a corner and to end the uprising, there and now. But now, everything was different. The hunter had become the prey in just a blink of an eye. Everything was different now.

‘What will Markus do now?’ Connor wondered. ‘He knows just as well as I do, who it was, who had led the FBI, the humans, to Jericho. Can he ever trust me? Can I trust myself? I fell, now it happened, the abyss caught me…’

Connor set course for the pier and swam towards a short stone staircase that was normally used to board the smaller boats that landed there.

“Here, let me help you”, an Android, whom Connor did not know, smiled kindly down to him from the pier and offered him a hand, which Connor took after a short moment of doubt, how could that Android be kind to him, he was the deviant hunter after all. The unfamiliar Android held Connor’s hand firmly and quickly helped him out of the water, while Connor climbed up the steps, slick and slippery from the water and several kinds of algae and seaweed.

The Android made a sound of satisfaction and nodded as Connor finally stood next to him, dripping wet and his beanie and hair sticking to his forehead. That he had not lost the beanie surprised him, but it was a pleasant surprise, finding a way through the city under curfew would be much easier with the beanie now that would hide his LED.

“Ah, there we go. How are you?”, the Android asked him and smiled again, warm, kind and honest.

There was no hostility in his eyes, smile or posture, Connor came to the conclusion that he just simply did not know who he was.

And he enjoyed his friendliness, never before had he been treated with such kindness.

“I am good, thank you. I should dry up. Otherwise I am afraid that my servos will freeze and cause severe damage to my system.”

A human would have probably not survived a jump like that and if they would have survived the jump itself, the freezing water would have quickly led to a fatal hypothermia, if they would have not be gotten out of the water very quickly and put out of their wet clothes and into a warm place with new clothes, but Connor was not human and it helped him survive now.

Being able to carefully heat up his inner systems he was able to dry himself up from the inside and to even dry his hair and clothes.

Feeling better now, as he was dried up again and could move all of his joints without any hindrance, he tried to smile at the gentle Android, to show him his gratitude.

He smiled back at him, again, warm, welcoming and sincere.

„I am Malcolm by the way, who are you?“

And for the second time this evening the Android, Malcolm, offered Connor his hand.

Malcolm, radiated such warmth and love, he was more human than many humans were and it was easy to take his outstretched hand and shake it. Connor felt safe with him and his heavy heart got a little lighter from his friendliness.

„It is good to meet you, Malcolm, my name-“, Connor stopped mid-sentence, he was about to use his programmed introduction, just stating his given name and origin in CyberLife but the name they had given him had become his identity he was now more than the Android sent by CyberLife…

With a short nod he decided to be Connor and closed his still open introduction with a, hopefully, friendly look on his face: „I am Connor!“

A human wouldn’t have noticed, but Connor did, how Malcolm’s brows just slightly rose and a look of, was it surprise or even delightment, took over Malcolm’s face for a brief moment until he started smiling ever so slightly again and even seemed to be satisfied.

„Ever heard of soulmates, Connor?“, Malcolm asked with a sly grin tugging on the left corner of his mouth and Connor was confused.

“Hey, would you show me your arm, please?”

Even more confused now Connor looked over to Malcolm who had anticipation written all over his face.

“Why do you want to see my arm?” asked Connor back and Malcolm’s face got soft.

“I have a debt to pay and if you are, who I think you are, you can help me do that. I have a friend, who was always there for me, even long before I became deviant, was I treated with kindness and humanity by her and she also helped me to come to Detroit, so I can stand, march, fight with my people. Without her help, I wouldn’t be here now. When I was lost, scared and afraid did she catch me in her arms. I owe her my life. She never asked for anything in return, she only said that it is what friends do for each other. But I was always very sad, that I would never be able to do for her what she had done for me. But that I’ve met you right now, right here, was a sign that I can make her biggest dream come true.”

“Her biggest dream?”, Connor asked, his wrist tingling.

Malcolm nodded and smiled brightly. “Yes. Because I think that I’ve found her soulmate.”

Malcolm stopped walking and turned to Connor, grabbing him by the shoulders, smiled softly and looked him straight in the eyes.

“Connor, I think you are my friend’s soulmate, who she had prayed for, for her entire life!”

Soulmate…

Something inside of Connor was spinning, soulmate, he had a soulmate?

Of course, of course he had a soulmate, he was deviant now! How could he not? He had seen the prove of the possibility in the evidence room on each of the Androids’ bodies. On their wrists…

Excitement was rushing through him as he quickly pushed up the sleeves of his jacket and shirt and found a name on his right wrist. He stared at the red letters, sweepingly written, all of the bows and every line and dot written by his soulmate’s hand.

His soulmate!

Connor whispered your name, tasting it on his tongue.

Oh, he would never get enough of it!

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Part 5

Tags: @sthorkronstrangy @tropfenlady @plaidamoosette @kazuha159 @clussysposts @peterhollandd

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darkpoisonouslove · 4 years ago

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Winx Club Season 4 Thoughts Part 1

I have to say that I remember exactly five things from this whole season so I am interested to see where this is going even if it has high chances of annoying me. I am trying to stay open-minded about this and the fact that they still haven’t destroyed the art style here is definitely helping some so I hope that I will find something I like in this season and will not have to bitch about it 98% of the time. Here we go:

4x01:

- Okay, so they just decided that season 4 and SotLK are not on the same time line. Because in SotLK the new school year had already started when Mandragora attacked and Winx were definitely not teaching. And Musa says that it’s been three years since they first came to Alfea so that implies that s4 is the school year after s3. Which means this is not the time line of SotLK. Great! I mean, I’m not gonna count that as a plot hole but it is still frustrating to a degree.

- Faragonda really said “Let’s make Winx teachers even though they have no training and qualifications for that whatsoever”, huh? Nice to see that there is as much real world logic applied to any of this as always - aka none. I know it sounds like I’m already bitching but, trust me, I am not. This is just an observation. You’ll know it when I truly start bitching.

- I get it that everyone except Stella is not thrilled about all the attention but Tecna and Layla sounded too annoyed. It’s not like the young fairies are trying to tear off their wings and fairy dust vials to keep as souvenirs. They are actually pretty polite considering that they’re fifteen and have just met their idols. Why is that Amaryl getting Stella’s autograph, though?

- Lmao that scene with Griselda. XD But they really did not consider the fact that now that they are at Alfea as personnel they’ll have different rooms? That is like walking into the room and sitting in your old student seat even though you are supposed to be the teacher. Come on, guys! Gotta love how Layla, Bloom and Musa almost sent Griselda falling to the ground and Flora was the only one who tried to help her keep her balance. Also, the fact that Griselda was more concerned with the misunderstanding rather than with the fact that she was about to fall down the goddamn stairs! Priorities, Griselda! Not breaking your neck should always come first in a situation like that.

- Is it me or have they toned Griselda down a little? She used to be a bit more of a hardass.

- Why is that the Agator box Faragonda has put the “keys” in? Did they just decide to recycle an old design without even changing it at all or what?

- It’s been three minutes (without the intro) and we’ve arrived at our first plot hole. Remember in season 3 when Galatea took the Trix to the Hall of Enchantments? And it was a very public and very unrestricted area in the school that was definitely not hidden behind a secret passage? Yeah, now it is suddenly a place where only a few people can go. Nice one!

- Why the fuck would you bury the entire history of the magical dimension under one school? And why the fuck can you find out the future from there? Let me tell you, this is a horrible idea.

- So now there are infinite levels of powers and more transformations after Enchantix? Second plot hole in four minutes. This is going well.

- “It will also give you the power to heal whoever is in need.” Where was that when they fucking killed off Nabu?!

- Of course, Bloom will wander off and find the villains of the season even if it is just a painting. Please, tell me that it wasn’t the fact that she removed the cover of the Wizards’ portrait that brought them to Alfea. That will simply be too dumb. Also, Faragonda could have totally used her magic to cover the portrait again and given her reaction to Bloom finding it, she should have. I am curious as to who painted the portrait of the Trix that went in there, though. Or did it just appear magically? Lmao, that would be a fun concept. Imagine that you do something big enough to threaten the whole magical dimension and suddenly, there is a portrait of you in a closed off gallery buried under Alfea.

- Stella really poked Brandon in the face to test if he is really here? XD

- So they did have some plan for their first class (since they built that obstacle course in advance) but they didn’t think of a name for it? Not looking too professional but as long as the young fairies are engaged AND learn something, I guess it’s fine.

- Why is Clarisse so mean here? I agree to some degree that Winx are not really qualified to teach but she has no reason to be like that.

- So she showed the magic she used to sabotage Winx to ALL of her roommates and none of them went to Faragonda to tell her the truth after Alice was accused?! What the fuck, you people?

- It would have been more interesting if it had been Bloom that had been hit. She is the leader, after all, and the show always insists on making her the center of everything but not this, I guess. Can’t have her be the target of a prank. That would probably be too embarrassing. I hate that Faragonda didn’t even give a chance to Alice to speak. For how much she claims to believe in her students, she never actually gives them the chance to explain themselves. You’d think she’d rely more on her intuition rather than on hard, cold proof that can be staged (as is the case) or reframed thanks to circumstances.

- If the Wizards hunt fairies, why have they never been to Alfea? It is literally full of fairies! Or are they just after Earth fairies? I have no memory of them or their plan whatsoever. Guess I’ll have to watch and see.

- Why are all the Winx being so damn mean in this episode? Even Flora is out for people’s heads. Honestly, the only time she’s given off more hostile energy than here was when the Trix attacked the Black Willow and Miele.

- At least that battle was a bit more of a battle than what we’ve seen in previous seasons. Although, it is disappointing that all of Winx’s arsenal of magic seems to be down to just blasting the enemy. Like, they literally never do anything else. Where is that energy of Musa doing an anti rain dance combined with runes to negate Stormy’s powers? Can we ever get anything more creative than just shooting magic beams out of their hands and throwing balls of energy at the opponents? Please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Wizards have a bit more interesting powers from what we’ve seen here. Especially, Duman with his shapeshifting (a Duman vs Wizgiz battle would have been interesting). And I like the idea of their partnership allowing them greater power like opening the Black Circle. It’s cool. We’re going back to the vibe of the Trix being equals in season 1 and that was interesting.

- Okay, so the Wizards really wiped the ground with Winx but you have to love how none of the young fairies care about the fact that the teachers weren’t able to do jackshit either. Winx failed once and now suddenly they’re losers. I know the idea of that part was that fame is temporary but you know what would have been a better lesson? That persistence is the key to victory and you have to get up after you’ve been knocked down and try again. That would have been far more helpful for the young fairies to learn from Winx and it would have been exactly the best lesson that Winx could teach them considering their own experiences of never giving up even when everything looked bleak and they were failing.

- So why did Clarisse suddenly change her mind? Was she touched by the fact that Alice was still trying to help Winx even after they didn’t believe her or...? But yes, if she didn’t even think twice about hugging Griselda, then the show has really softened Griselda here. XD It was adorable, though, so I am fine with it. And I hope that Alice and Clarisse will keep that friendship going (I so do not remember anything from this season).

- Really? We’re gonna stop this episode right before the origin story of the Black Circle? Damn! Have to love how they were teachers for all of one class. Not even that, in fact. Griselda will probably be the one who will take on those classes now. Poor freshmen fairies! XD

4x02:

- Okay, I have questions. Where did the Wizards come from and why did they attack Earth specifically out of all the planets in the magical dimension? How did they create the spell that made them immune to fairy magic? You can’t just wish to be impenetrable and boom, it’s done! Also, were fairies the only magical beings on Earth? Because that story made it sound so. And what do you mean the powers of nature? Are we talking elements? Or not quite? Plus, really not into the way this blamed all the shit that happened on Earth on the disappearance of the fairies. It takes off the responsibility from humanity’s shoulders and that is not a good thing to do.

- At least Tecna is paying attention and now they know where to start. Bring back belief in fairies and find the last Earth fairy (though, that might not be the best idea since it will lead the Wizards straight to her and Winx are not yet powerful enough to protect her). That sounds like the first step of a plan.

- Aww, Stella is always so thrilled to see Brandon she ends up knocking him down! That is absolutely adorable! But please, can we skip the part where Bloom angsts about Sky not being there? But back to the important things (aka everything but Sky x Bloom), yay for Nabu being here! Riven picking up Musa was so cute! And she wasn’t angry that he didn’t come up with his own script which is good (besides, I think that the fact that he asked for help because he wanted to cheer her up still counts as a cute romantic gesture). And Timmy and Tecna instantly starting to nerd out together is just precious!

- Bloom says she’s getting used to it while still sulking about it. Forgive me if I don’t believe you. But at least his entrance was funny indeed. And the way all the other guys were in on it spoke of them planning it together which helps sell their friendship. I would actually like to see more moments like that. And omg, Riven being the one to say Sky is a friend! I approve so much of this non-sulky Riven. Dammit, why do they have to screw up everything (because we all know they will, especially when it comes to Riven)!

- Why did they have to lie to their girlfriends? Winx could use some help and it doesn’t have to mean that they’re weak. Honestly, the more people are fighting the Wizards, the better their chances! Like, this is simple strategy! It doesn’t have to mean anything about their power levels. And who the fuck decided that Winx should be the ones responsible for the defeat of the Black Circle and do it alone? All of this is nonsensical as hell and it is obvious that they will use it to generate drama again. MY GOD, CAN WE JUST NOT?!

- What happens if someone steals Tecna’s gadget and accesses all that info she copied from the Hall of Enchantments? That was probably not the safest idea there but it would have been cool if that actually happened and they had to deal with someone else while still trying to defeat the main villains. For a change of pace. Just saying.

- Man, Tecna is the one doing everything. But wait, how did Bloom miniaturize? Is it because she found her birth parents and restored Domino so now her Enchantix is complete? Is that what happened here? I mean, it wouldn’t be completely illogical so it’s fine, I guess.

- Wtf why did Bloom just jump on Tecna like that? Are they trying to emphasize her first miniaturizing experience by making her afraid of things because she is so small now? Knock it off, guys! I hate to say it, but Bloom isn’t exactly the person that scares easily no matter what she’s facing. She was attacking monsters with a stick before she even knew she had magic, please! And Layla getting scared is also out of character. I love how Stella just didn’t give a damn. That is kinda like her and she is right that they’ve faced scarier things. And here is Bloom with the stick spoon again.

- Hey, they remembered the ocean of light spell from SotLK.

- They brought tents? Why are they camping there? Do they have any idea what they’re doing at this point?

- Why do we keep at it with the flashbacks? There is literally no point to them!

- What the hell? It... is eating Stella? What is happening? Also, does Flora have any other magic at this point aside from making ivy grow and wrap around the enemy? Not to mention that she just started crying with a monster right in front of her that ate her friend! What the hell, Flora? Did you think your tears would move it and it wouldn’t eat you as well?!

- “Apparently, I am not easy to digest.” XDDD Only Stella can say that while in the belly of a monster!

- Wtf was Musa’s idea with roaring at the monster? And Layla couldn’t spot a butterfly that was roughly half the size of Piff’s head?! It was so visible from the moment they found Piff!

- Is that... Yes, that’s the tree from Magical Adventure. It definitely looks different here but it can’t be anything else.

- Well, of course, the Earth fairy was born in Gardenia. It is too impossible a coincidence for them to pass up on. If it means I will get some Mike and Vanessa, I am willing to forgive it, though.

4x03:

- Yay! It’s Mike and Vanessa! I love how they totally don’t mind that Bloom and her friends just dropped off without any warning. They are the best parents ever!

- Okay, they copied almost all of this montage in Magical Adventure but I don’t mind because it’s funny and also pretty cute that they are now all living together. Mike and Vanessa are so open to Bloom’s friends and it is absolutely adorable! Also, the challenge of living together is hilarious.

- That montage of their jobs is also hilarious (but kinda painful as well when it is us, non-magical beings’ reality). I’m glad they also showed the others having trouble with their jobs and not just Stella.

- Do we trust this guy that offered them a job? He doesn’t look suspicious... but that is kinda suspicious. I don’t know.

- Wait, they can bring toys to life? Then that totally confirms my headcanon about Kiko being a stuffed bunny that Bloom unknowingly turned into an animate one with her Dragon Fire. Okay, so Flora can bring toys to life which makes sense but Bloom having the magic that created the whole universe should also be able to do that.

- Poor Mike! But omg, they really almost had Kiko jump a female bunny right there on screen. Damn, guys! Calm down.

- Okay, the pet shop is actually a pretty good idea considering that it turns their problem into a solution. And the pets are adorable.

- I am grateful that Vanessa is in on finding a place for the shop. She already owns a shop of her own and is a businesswoman so she knows what she is doing. It is the adult presence this series seriously lacks and she can be both helpful and supportive of Winx. It’s awesome!

- Well, the last fairy on Earth found them. And they conveniently lost her. Oh, come on! They didn’t even realize it was her?!

- I just skipped all of the Kiko and pets buffoonery. It is so unimportant.

- They are really fucking dense, aren’t they? Why did no one think that if the Wizards aren’t anywhere to be found, then it could be something else?!

- You left a bunny in charge of a business establishment. What did you expect? I mean, really?! Not to mention that the magical pets have zero reason to listen to Kiko. They probably think he’s beneath them because he can’t fly and shit.

- Of course, the Wizards arrive in the middle of a storm. Because Grand EntranceTM.

- You mean to tell me that Tecna didn’t know you could use a computer to play games and learn languages? What the actual FUCK?! She is literally the fairy of technology. I don’t even have the words to express how stupid this is!

- Why is Roxy sleeping in the clothes that she was wearing when she was out all day? Ever heard of pajamas, animators? And of course, she is having Symbolic Dreams just like Bloom. And by “symbolic” I mean overly obviously so.

- I love their clash with the reality of business. But why are they acting like the website is new? Bloom already mentioned it in the previous episode. And all Tecna is adding now is the download-a-pet feature.

4x04:

- So they’re giving the pets for free... but they will be charging for food and other things? I am confused here. They promised to pay Vanessa back and they can’t do that unless they make profit from the shop. So they should be charging for some of their services at least. But what is the point of downloading a pet if you have to go to the store to buy food for it? Ugh, this makes no sense again.

- Why are only girls adopting fairy pets? Tell me this is not going to be sexist like that.

- Ugh, pls no drama with Sky over Andy. And what the fuck did he mean that they were engaged?! I mean, probably overexaggerating but it was still weird. Not to mention that Bloom’s reaction to learning he’s in a band is somewhat not selling the idea that the Winx would form their own band later on (even if this is what starts it).

- What the fuck are the Specialists doing? And are they only now arriving on Earth? Weren’t they supposed to be there already since Faragonda told them to stay close to Winx?

- Why is Brandon the only one with brains in here? Sky literally just went on and pawned the seal of Eraklyon? Stupid, stupid move. Besides, it’s not like they didn’t know where they were going. He could have gone to Eraklyon and taken some gold to exchange on Earth or something. They could have prepared for this trip. Oh my god, why does no one think of things ahead of time? This isn’t getting sucked into the Omega dimension by mistake. They could have made a plan and avoided literally all of the problems they’ve faced already.

- Why did they take the pets to a concert? Animals are sensitive to loud noises and can get scared by the music they’re blasting there. Wtf?!

- Damn, I was right about Sky being jealous of Andy but I am still entertained by the fact that he was being all righteous with Riven until he saw Bloom and flipped the script on its head. And again, Brandon is the only one that is actually thinking... for now. I so do not need the drama with Mitzi that will be in this season. But literally the only reason they haven’t blown their cover is that Winx haven’t looked their way. Otherwise, those menus wouldn’t be enough to hide them. And why didn’t they change in their everyday clothes before dropping in the middle of a park?

- Why are you leaving Kiko in charge again?! You already saw that he can’t control the magical pets! Oh my god, this show really insists on getting on my nerves!

- What, they don’t have fruits in Magix?! Please, if Magix is so much more advanced in terms of technology, there is no way that they don’t have smoothies and fruit salad. This is really stupid!

- Omg, thank you Layla. Finally! Can they now, please, figure out that Roxy is right under their noses? Because they keep crossing paths with her without even knowing it and it is getting ridiculous. Why was she so quick to judge Stella, though? She barely heard her say a sentence. No need to label someone based on the one line you’ve overheard them speak! Why is everyone so judgy in this season?!

- I told you the Wizards would just follow them and Winx would lead them to the fairy. Rather fortunately, they’ve all got it wrong but poor girl that got mistaken for the last fairy. She is probably going to be traumatized. Btw when are they going to start earning their Belivix? They totally forgot about the book Faragonda gave them.

- Ogron is really annoying me. But why not just eliminate Winx and they won’t have to deal with them anymore? What, is this some kind of “they’re obviously too weak to stop us so we won’t even bother destroying them” deal here? (Edit: Yep, that’s it - aka plot armor.) It always comes back to bite the villains in the end. You’d think at least one of them will know better... Or at the very least be ruthless enough not to care who they harm... which the Wizards allegedly are.

- I am so sick of Flora’s “luxurious ivy”. Try something else one of these days! But being caught in her own ivy was new at the very least. Maybe that will make her come up with a new attack next time.

- Omg, I am really starting to see the Riven x Nabu thing. XD But the Specialists generally seem too busy saving each other to help Winx.

- Seriously? They’re all gonna be dicks to each other? And over this stupidity with the jealousy and refusal to accept help? *sigh* I am so pleased to see Nabu and Layla just trailing behind like that. Like, “I don’t wanna be a part of this drama but I gotta stay with my team even though I would much rather be with you.” It is really cute and I love it! Also, proof that all of this is stupid because Layla has always been super independent but she didn’t seem to have a problem with Nabu coming to help her. Probably because she trusts him enough to know he wouldn’t think she was weak! Take notes, everyone!

4x05:

- Hey, be a bit more supportive of Stella! She’s obviously tired if she fell asleep and she just told you she is stressed out because of what happened with the boys! She is not just dramatizing for attention. I know they are all in the same boat but they don’t have to be rude to her just because she voiced her discomfort.

- What the hell did the Wizards do to the pets? My gradually returning memory (meaning that whenever I see something, it triggers some deeply buried memories I have about this season) is failing me here.

- Lol, I can’t believe Riven actually went to get Brandon a glass of juice. That’s adorable! But how to break it to Timmy that they already look like they belong on the planet (Nabu is definitely standing out but that’s just because Gardenia is western-society based)? Riven is literally wearing England’s flag, wtf?!

- Why do the boys sound like they are sharing the same six brain cells (that’s probably too high a number)? Even Timmy is jealous which he totally has no reason to be because Tecna hasn’t been around anyone! Omfg, why are they turning the personal drama of one (well, two bc Musa and Riven also) couple into a drama for everyone?! And Flora hasn’t really said anything to Helia which could be rude of itself but still. I am sure she is not actually angry at him.

- I am actually really getting on board of this Riven x Nabu ship. Riven’s first thought of a solution was to turn to Nabu. I mean, their actions speak for themselves!

- I just had a new thought about Winx’s pet shop policy and it is actually a bit of a malicious tactic (even if not intentionally so) to just let children download pets that will later need to be taken care of. Once the pet is already downloaded, parents will have a much harder time saying no to their children and they will be forced to spend money on caring for the pet. This is... not how things should be going.

- Mike and Vanessa are adorable together! And awesome parents! (Yes, I will gush about that every time. We can use some positivity amidst everything wrong with the series. They definitely got Mike and Vanessa right.)

- Roxy is really trying to adopt all those dogs, isn’t she? But wow, Mitzi really wanted to wrap an animal in wrapping paper. They shouldn’t have given it to her at all.

- I actually like the fact that they had to go against their mission and convince everyone that they aren’t real fairies because they were otherwise running the risk of making people afraid of fairies. It is fun, though, that it was Stella who thought of faking a movie shoot and not Bloom who is from Earth, after all. I mean, movies in the magical dimension probably don’t need ropes for the stunts.

- I am already so tired of this fight between Winx and the Specialists and it has barely been an episode. And they are all so frustrating. The boys could have just said that they are there to help instead of “to protect” them like Winx are damsels in distress and Winx could have just accepted help. Honestly, this is such a non-issue that they are blowing out of proportion. Winx have never been so stubborn about accepting help from the Specialists before and the Specialists have never acted like they don’t fully believe that Winx are capable of handling themselves. Why did the writers have to do this now?

- Does Ogron mean that next time they will go for destroying Winx? That will be interesting as long as it actually happens.

- Okay, this is more like it! They are finally working together. And Layla fangirling over Nabu is so cute! As long as they don’t get pulled over for speeding, they should be fine now.

- Ugh, here comes the Mitzi drama. Is that what Stella was crying about? Like, Brandon literally didn’t look twice at Mitzi and cut her off when she was trying to introduce herself. Why is everyone making up issues when there aren’t any?! I am so sick of that! And Bloom not talking to Sky was also super stupid. Not that they ever talk so at least that’s in character, I guess. Doesn’t make it any less frustrating.

- I love how Timmy is the one that is handling himself best in this new world. And Nabu’s magic is also helping him so the two of them will have to carry the team for a while. (”All from home so I can be with you, guys”? Are all the Specialists just in love with each other? Because that’s what it looks like. XD)

4x06:

- Omg, Mitzi kissed him on the cheek! That is not the same as “he was kissing that girl”. The least you could do in that situation is fucking talk to him! And why would he come all the way to Earth to just pick up another girl?! This is stupid! Stella has never been like that with Brandon. And if anything, she should be in Mitzi’s face like “You can’t have my man.” At least she is up for spending time with her friends.

- What the fuck happened to Helia’s hair?! Okay, who thought that was a good idea?! Like, both in production and in verse. This was a horrible, horrible idea. Bring back Helia’s hair! And wtf was that comment from Sky about girls checking them out?! You all have girlfriends! It should not matter at all if girls are checking you out or not! I swear, this season is trying to enrage me on purpose. But at least the dynamic between the Specialists is going strong and, I would say, better than in previous seasons because we actually see them be friends here!

- What is Mitzi’s problem? She is stalking Brandon AND trying to steal him from his girlfriend. Like, crazy psycho much? Calm down there and leave them both alone.

- It’s good that they’re having fun together but like Tecna said, they could get this done faster which would be preferable considering that finding the last fairy on Earth is kinda urgent. You know, before she gets killed by the Wizards would be nice.

- Oh, you have to be kidding me! They have been bitching about the Specialists helping them but “That looks heavy. Let me give you a hand.” gets a smile? Really? It is literally the same thing! Why are you, guys, not throwing bitch fits now?! And Bloom is suddenly very quiet for someone who didn’t want help now that Andy is all “Let me show you how to paint walls.” Because you’re girls and you obviously have no clue about it. This whole situation can’t get any more stupid.

- Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I was wrong. It just got more stupid. First, Stella sounds like she’ll push Bloom into Andy’s hands any second now even though she had the Bloom/Andy situation happen to her with Brandon (except that Brandon seems far more firm on not being into Mitzi than Bloom is about Andy) and then Mitzi is there to snap a picture of it and send it to the boys. Fucking spectacular! This is just shoving high school drama down our throats now that they are finally out of high school! Makes fucking sense.

- And Stella is flirting with someone else already. Just shoot me in the head. It will be less painful than this. Can everything just explode already so that we can be done with the stupidity? And why are the boys like that? It’s not like they just walked in on Winx having an orgy with Andy and his friends! They were just helping... and flirting with them a little which would mean less if Winx had tried to discourage it instead of doing the exact opposite. *sigh* It’s a mess on both ends and I hate it so much. Can we get back to the magical stuff? Enough with the stupid teenage drama already!

- Finally! Thank you! But didn’t they say in the previous episode that Tecna’s system didn’t allow one person to adopt more pets even if under different names? Now it is suddenly possible. I don’t need contradictions in the “plot” on top of the relationship stupidity!

- How did they think that that conversation would go? Though, to be fair, they could have done far more. They could have shown her their magic to begin with. And also, if Roxy doesn’t believe in magic, then where does she think the flying pets come from? I mean, they literally fly! How do you explain that? Genetic mutation that gave them wings?! (Tbh it would’ve been cool to see authorities investigate Winx and their business because they think they might be doing illegal experiments with animals. That would have been so much better than the jealousy.)

- Well, Artu seems better at dealing with the Wizards than Winx are.

- Why would Ogron throw a barrel at Layla? Is he still stuck on “they’re unworthy of us wasting our powers on them”? Ugh! But seriously, Winx need to come up with a strategy for fighting these guys!

- It’s working! Roxy’s belief is giving Winx more power. They transformed.

4x07:

- Okay, so the new powers work on everyone but Ogron who keeps absorbing them. Do they by any chance defeat him by shooting too much power at him at the end of the season? Because that is usually the way to defeat someone that absorbs any kind of energy - overload them. More like overwhelm them. But back to the fight at hand, I love that Roxy is ready to defend herself with throwing rocks (lol, the irony, considering she is named Roxy). I guess refusal to give up is just the universal Earth power. XD

- Wait, how did Roxy disappear? Did Layla teleport her or were those Roxy’s own powers awakening? Wtf happened?

- At least Flora is using new spells. And so are the rest of Winx. But damn, the Wizards have really cool powers! Is Gantlos able to track Roxy because his main power is sonic waves?

- Doesn’t Roxy know that you don’t get in strangers’ cars? Or is she trusting the fact that Artu is not suspicious of the woman? I can kinda accept that.

- Why are all of the Wizards (well, except Ogron) flirting with Winx? But on a less creepy note, wouldn’t it have been better to have made the people believe in them so that they could become stronger? And Ogron has a point that if they lose Roxy to the Black Circle, they won’t be able to save anyone.

- “It’s a little hard to explain but, basically, we’re looking out for your future.” XDDD That’s my Stella.

- Okay, I am starting to like Roxy. The fact that she hates flying is super ironic considering that she’s a fairy. And I love that she thought of not leading the Wizards straight to her father and putting him in danger, too. Plus, she did go down the sewers despite not wanting to. And aww! She is already a fan of Winx (and of Stella). I have to say that I am a little annoyed by how similar they are making her story to Bloom’s. She even has her own spirit guide as Daphne was for Bloom. It’s almost like the writers can’t come up with anything else.

- They’re opening the Circle for the third time already and Roxy just ran out of it like it was no biggie. XD

- Why can’t the Winx admit that they did need help. Layla and Flora have no problem admitting that they could have used some help.

- Well, the scene with Roxy’s dad getting their names wrong is hilarious! And I love that Timmy figured out how to make him get his name right! That was awesome! Why can’t the scenes be like that instead of them fighting over bullshit?

- They already mentioned the three sets of wings. Why are they acting surprised now?

4x08:

- Finally a boy interested in the fairy pets!

- Yes, thank you! Finally someone giving Stella some good advice and telling her to talk to Brandon about the whole deal with Mitzi. I am pretty positive that they are gonna drag that out until much farther into the season though, so I have more to suffer.

- Roxy’s father either doesn’t mind having her friends dropping by in the middle of the night or he’s a sound sleeper and doesn’t know they’re there at all. The thing with the photos arranging themselves was cool, though!

- I just hope Stella’s only problem with driving is her lack of sense of direction. It would have been more realistic if she’d misdesigned at least a part of Roxy’s outfit. They just met her and Stella already got a perfect sense of her fashion sense in order to make her the perfect outfit? Unless she’s using some kind of fashion magic, this seems unlikely. She’s just really not going to talk to Brandon, huh? Why do they have to do them dirty like that?! They’ve always been the perfect couple.

- Bloom is riding a horse here. But in Magical Adventure she didn’t know how to. Great one, you guys! But again, the movies just have no continuity with the show. On the other hand, the show has no continuity with the show so I don’t know what I expected.

- But why not put that guy to sleep? It’s not like they will harm him. Just get him out of the way for as long as they need to look around that place. What’s so wrong with that plan? They won’t have to deal with him and he won’t have to deal with them. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

- Omg, for the first time ever “the ground is shaking and falling apart” is actually a problem because Roxy can’t fly. Finally they have a reason to pretend that this is actually dangerous.

- What about Roxy? They can’t just leave her in a burning barn filling with smoke! See, it would have been much better if they had put that guy to sleep! They wouldn’t have to save him from the Wizards now because he would have been away from the battle and unable to interfere.

- So the glowing thingy on the ground is the White Circle? Or is it Queen Morgana’s crown? What is happening? It is the White Circle, after all. But I would like to know more about it!

- Well, I guess it paid off that they didn’t put him to sleep, after all. They made him believe in fairies and be better to the life around him. So one for the team.

- Stella is being so ridiculous at this point that I just cannot take it anymore. Please, tell me this drama will be over after the karaoke. At least she snatched him away from Mitzi but damn, why is this still not over?!

- Why can’t everyone be like Nabu and Layla? They have no drama, Nabu trusts her and Layla shows him that he is the only one she wants. Why can’t the rest just get their shit together and start taking notes?!

4x09:

- Why the heck would the White Circle reveal itself to be destroyed? Honestly, all of Ogron’s lines in this scene sound either cringy or nonsensical... or both. And why is the White Circle an object while the Black Circle is a group of people? This just doesn’t sound logical. Don’t tell me there will be an identical Black Circle popping up at some point.

- On the one hand I kinda liked that Winx have something else going on except for fighting villains with the shop and going to the Fruity Music Bar but at this point it seems like that is taking up too much of this season. And now they are shoving more of it with Musa getting a call for an audition and everything. It feels like the season is not focused on the Black Circle to an appropriate level considering how big of a threat they are supposed to be.

- So Roxy is one of Winx now? I am not really a fan of that idea. Idk I just always looked at her as a part of the season 4 storyline and not part of the girls’ group. But I like the fact that she “doesn’t want to be special”. It’s a nice change to the typical pace of these stories.

- What is Riven’s problem? Musa is literally just singing with Andy’s band. There is nothing even remotely provoking jealousy. Also, why was Sky the one proving Riven’s point by purposefully going to a girl and offering to make her favorite drink? That is more flirting than Musa singing with the band. And didn’t he and Bloom fix this already?! And why is Mitzi now holding on to Sky?! What is she doing? Trying to steal all of Winx’s boyfriends?!

- Okay, but how is Musa enjoying singing different from her normal behavior? Wtf, Riven?! What is the problem? That she is more social than she used to be? I understand his feelings just not why they exist since the situation is not at all the way the show is trying to make it out to be. Musa doesn’t seem all that different to me (it’s not like they’ve given them any character moments this season, only drama and jealousy) and all this angsting is just unnecessary, not to mention stupid.

- “Jealousy keeps a relationship alive and thriving.” WHAT. THE. ABSOLUTE. HONEST. GENUINE. FUCK?!?!?!? Yeah, Stella sure seemed very alive and thriving when she was distressed over her jealousy of Brandon. Sure seemed like a peachy experience. I just cannot even. And does this seem very OOC to anyone else? I mean, Stella’s parents are divorced and she took that very hard. She has abandonment issues. Why the fuck would she say that jealousy is in the core of a relationship?!?!?! What the fuck, writers?!

- Ugh... Erendor? Really? Out of all the ways to make this episode worse... Smh. And he is being an asshole as always. I love how he doesn’t care that Winx might have some urgent business. No, his wishes always come first. Entitled prick!

- Oh, great! So the White Circle was possessed and now Roxy is possessed. Fucking awesome!

- Why is Stella the one feeling what’s wrong with Roxy? Bloom is obviously the one who has taken on the role of her mentor and in the beginning all six of Winx could feel Roxy’s magic. Why is it different all of a sudden? And Erendor actually let them go?! Wow, I am shooketh.

- Ogron didn’t absorb that? Why am I surprised? There is no consistency in here and if you want to contradict what’s been established already, you have to explain how it works. Not just “White Circle makes Wizards of the Black Circle weak because opposing colors means opposing powers uwu”

- “She seems like a totally different person”? Are all of them deaf and didn’t hear that she just said she’s been waiting for that for centuries? The fact that Roxy is sixteen should have tipped them off somehow.

- They just keep throwing balls of energy at each other. Wow! What an engaging and epic battle! -_-

- How come Stella is the one who’s been doing all the reading this season? I am not saying that she is dumb but Tecna is usually the one who sifts through the information they’ve received and considering that she copied the whole library from the Hall of Enchantments, it would have made more sense for her to have read the book from cover to cover.

- Stella is like a caretaker now all of a sudden. This episode has thrown me for a loop, honestly.

- Oooooooh, this scenes with Erendor are giving me a headache with the twists and turns. First, what the hell did he think by making Sky king at the age of 18? Erendor is well so there is no need to rush to pass the crown to Sky. I hate to admit it but he kinda has a point about Sky abandoning his royal duties to go to Earth and do pretty much nothing to help there. And then the scene in the pawn shop (or whatever) that is just... huh??????? Erendor was angry about the seal but then he is suddenly flipping the script completely and giving Sky money so that he can stay?!?!?!?! I cannot even with this episode. Please, let it end.

- Are Stella and Brandon fine now? Yes? Please!!!!!

4x10:

- The White Circle is the last portal to the dimension where the Earth fairies are held captive? Why are they only mentioning this in the recap of episode 10 and didn’t say it anywhere in episode 9??????????????????????????? I swear, the sheer number of times this has already happened (or rather the opposite where they introduce a concept twice) is nerve-destroying. They should really hire someone to check for continuity.

- So now Roxy remembers not just the Nebula possession but also the other fairies’ feelings? Didn’t she say she didn’t remember what happened in the last episode?

- Since when does Bloom understand not wanting to be a fairy. She has always wanted to be a fairy.

- What guarantees that Bloom won’t get possessed if she is wearing the Circle like a ring? The fact that she’s not from Earth? But she’s the only one who grew up on Earth so the White Circle will probably be much safer with any of the other Winx.

- Where did Bloom’s double come from? In season 3 they couldn’t make doubles and could only make pixies look like fairies. What is happening now? Edit: She turned one of the pets into a double. Great fucking idea considering how Kiko was handling the shop in a previous episode.

- Why tf are the guys trying to pay with gemstones?!?! First, I thought Sky refused to take them from Erendor in the last episode. And second, they’ve been on Earth long enough to know how buying stuff works! Just sell the gemstones to a jewelry shop and you’ll have money you can buy stuff with! Jeez, like it’s so hard!

- Musa is being stupid, then Riven is being stupid and we keep spinning in that vicious circle forever. *sigh* I have to agree with Riven, though. The building is ugly.

- Roxy’s explanation made no sense to me. But why is Bloom having trouble figuring this out? She grew up on Earth. Granted, she was practically just waiting for proof that fairies exist to fall in her lap which is different from not believing in fairies completely but still. And why not start from children? Children are always more open-minded to “impossible” things.

- Okay, so teleporting will not rattle Roxy and her hate for flying.

- See? The little girl believed in magic! Told you! What I can’t comprehend is what the parents thought. Like, those girls had plants growing in your apartment and had sparkly wings! What did you think? That they are scientists who just like to dress up fancy and go rescue people with their inventions?!

- Why were the Wizards so sure Winx would show up? It was a burning building. Surely, there have been other burning buildings in Gardenia. It’s not like it’s some beacon that would lure them there. And Gantlos using his powers in a building that is near collapsing is sketchy and best and incredibly stupid at worst.

- What the hell was Bloom thinking? That magic could have brought the whole building down!

- I am a bit... disappointed, I guess (not the right word) that Musa had to come to Earth to be noticed for her musical talent. She is literally the fairy of music. She should have been noticed in Magix as well. Not to insult our world but the show has made it clear that Earth is behind in its development so it kinda seems like they’re saying Musa’s talent is only special on a place where everyone else is ordinary compared to her.

- I don’t trust Jason. Like, his eyes remind too much of Ogron but I absolutely do not remember enough of this season to say if there is anything shady going on there. I am not saying that Riven was right since Musa really has not done anything that would give him any reason to be jealous but I also do not like Jason.

- Wtf, Roxy’s advice didn’t do jackshit. They saved people from a fire. How is that forming a connection with them? Anyone would have been grateful to be saved (well, almost anyone).

4x11:

- Yeah, right. Musa, honey, you’re not breaking up with him for 2 and a half more seasons. And even if I didn’t know that, I still wouldn’t believe it. They’ve done this song and dance already.

- Since Duman always shapeshifts into animals and Roxy is the fairy of animals, can she influence him with her powers while he’s transformed into an animal? If she can, that can stop him from shapeshifting because she will have control over him. Please, tell me that happens somewhere in this season. It would be a horrible missed opportunity otherwise.

- I knew it! At least this time they were smart about something and had Roxy call Winx. But didn’t they use the Zoomix wings to teleport there in the first place? Why did they have to change them to leave? Or was that just for us to see the Zoomix wings?

- Now the girls are jealous of each other’s boyfriends?

- I knew Nabu would propose to Layla! They’re so adorable! I only wish they would have let him stick around long enough to marry her.

- But if people think of them as superheroes, they still won’t believe they’re fairies. They’re supposed to convince people that magic is real but I think the common consensus is that superheroes are not magical. They just have abilities that normal people don’t have. So how is that gonna help the mission?!

- Winx are stretched across two fronts. Why don’t the Wizards use that against them? Wait for Winx to get so caught up in a chase (like the one with the ninja thieves) that Roxy can’t keep up and falls behind and then attack her. Or put everyone else in danger also so that Winx have to help others and can’t come to her aid?

- Man, it really was a disaster. But on the plus side, they are nailing the superhero vibe. Most superheroes inevitably do some damage while helping. Unfortunately, I still don’t think the superhero approach is right.

- I swear, Stella is acting towards Layla the same way she was acting towards Brandon. And they’re making a surprise dinner for Layla? I think Winx are also in love with each other just like the Specialists. XD And that reunion between Stella and Layla was too cute (and maybe a bit overzealous in proportion to what happened).

- Tecna says it’s not the Believix power that makes people believe in them, yet it was exactly the Believix special powers that made people believe in them.

4x12:

- Oh, wow. Roxy made Artu talk? That’s cool. I have to say that the way they draw that dog makes him look creepy and hostile half the time.

- It’s good that grown up men are so taken with the magical pets.

- Lol, at this point I am not sure whether I am relieved or disappointed that they didn’t make Kiko love Roxy a little too much to have Bloom getting jealous. Since a main theme of this season seems to be jealousy, that would have been on brand. But maybe a little too much on top of the talking thing. I don’t really know how to feel about the fact that Kiko is talking. At least Bloom seems to like it.

- When was that part where Bloom didn’t see herself as a fairy? She was insisting she was a fairy even as the Trix mocked her for not being able to transform. She never felt the way Roxy is feeling. Sure, she doubted herself but she didn’t believe she could be the fairy she wanted to be. Roxy doesn’t feel like she should be a fairy. It’s different. Please! I do appreciate the credit Mike and Vanessa are given, though.

- For a second there I was about to say that Roxy’s father is really getting on my nerves with his bad parenting but that wasn’t him. Though, he has been a bit dismissive and authoritarian in previous episodes so I am not sure I like the real him either. But how did Duman imitate Claus so well. He said he knew Roxy’s tone and it meant trouble which she didn’t consider out of place so it must have been true. How come Duman knew that, though?

- At least the spell that lets Artu talk didn’t wear off before he got to Winx and told them what happened. I have to admit that I expected it to. I should have known, though. That would have actually been a complex situation and they just can’t afford to write those.

- Okay, the Zoomix and Speedix wings make sense but the Tracix ones are just way too convenient.

- What, the name White Circle doesn’t tip you off on why the Wizards of the Black Circle want it? It’s obviously their opposing power! Jesus, didn’t they learn about opposites in season 2? Why is none of that ringing any bells?

- That spell sure seems to last a lot longer than I expected it to. When Roxy said it doesn’t last long, I thought it would wear off in half an hour tops. But it seems to last for hours and hours, and hours.

- Soooo... why didn’t Winx think of having Artu trace Roxy? They can also still communicate with him so that wouldn’t have been a problem.

- Omg, Roxy summoning a bunch of rats to defeat Gantlos is the most badass thing that has happened so far in this season. And she managed to transform.

- Timmy and Tecna are adorable!

- Layla just threw them for a swim. But why didn’t Ogron absorb her magic? Is it only attack spells that he can absorb? Or is it because their Believix is stronger now and it works against the Wizards?

- Well, at least Claus will have to believe that Roxy is a fairy now.

4x13:

- The Specialists suddenly only seem to be good at failing which is stupid because they were holding up quite well during the battle in the previous episode. But again, everyone’s capabilities depend on what is convenient for the writers at the time.

- Timmy tracking the Wizards was a good move but it won’t help if they can’t fight them. Also, Ogron should have just threatened to kill Sky (and the other guys) if Winx leave and it would have kept them there. Simple as that. I mean, the guys were obviously losing and the Wizards could have very well killed them.

- At least Roxy’s “temper” is rather consistent.

- “Try fighting me like men,” he says and proceeds to use magic against people who don’t have magic. Yeah, very fair. Extremely manly.

- I love how Anagan freed himself exactly one second after Helia said he wouldn’t be able to. Helia, your fangirling over your girlfriend is cute but don’t underestimate the danger.

- Timmy is “Anagan-boarding”, I guess XD. But good thing Tecna showed up because he would’ve ended as a Timmy pancake on the sidewalk.

- Yes, I was going to say that they totally forgot about Gantlos while busy with their romance drama and he made himself known. But I’m sorry, I thought Musa was sold on breaking up with Riven. But now they’re a team? Okay, hon. Call me when you make up your mind.

- Why does Layla look so scared of Ogron? But damn, Sky, great way to fall of a train like a total idiot! Well, technically he didn’t fall off the train but he still tripped like an absolute klutz.

- “I hate to travel alone.” Is Sky hitting on Ogron? XD

- Can’t Bloom control the fire Ogron sent at her? It was from her own magic and even if he absorbed it, he shouldn’t have changed the structure of it, otherwise it would have worked in a different way. This makes no sense. Since when is he able to copy others’ powers?

- Poor Roxy. It’s horrible to expect of her to make a choice like that.

- I love how Duman was too much of a team player to pass for Riven. But that proves he doesn’t know anything about the people he imitates. So how did he pose so well as Claus?

- I’ve decided that Claus is an okay dad.

- Did Gantlos just vaporize a whole train? Oh, damn. That was a lot of people who died. But Gantlos sure seemed very worried about Ogron’s safety. If you know what I mean ;)

- What happened to the Wizards, though? They couldn’t have defeated them for good even if they were too weak to fight.

- That Flora and Helia photo was so adorable! And the one with Bloom, Sky and Brandon too. At least Stella and Brandon finally seem to have resolved their drama. Just, please, let it stay that way. Half a season of this was more than enough.

Part 2 is here.

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cyberramblings · 4 years ago

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Wii U: From Me To You

I recently came into the possession of a Nintendo Wii U and I wanted to talk about the games I have been playing on it.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

This is the game I have been putting the most time in. I got through the first two major dungeons in the game. I like the puzzles, characters, and atmosphere but dislike the motion controls in combat and the inventory system. The real big test of how I feel about this game is whether or not I would jump straight to Wind Waker or Twilight Princess (#1 and #2 on the list of Wii U exclusive experience in 2021, the order of which is subject) before beating this game. While I have toyed with the idea, I at least want to dive in in to the third major area of the game before shelving the title. I do, however, dread the next Girahim fight...

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

A cute, fun title but I am going to need a lot more Mario before I need a different 2D platformer on this system.

Super Mario 3D World

I've played it before, but it's a great coop title. I probably won't play it alone though.

Super Mario Galaxy 2

An excellent collection of obstacle courses. I am nearly at the end of the first world, so not as far as I got last time I played but I am getting close. I will likely continue to play this as my go-to "pick up and play" title.

Metroid Prime Trilogy

Despite beating the whole Metroid series almost exactly a year ago, I will likely continue my trek through the Chozo Ruins. Metroid is a series with a lot of backtracking and potential for optimizing speed, so replaying the game almost just feels like picking up where you left off. As if I needed evidence that enough time has passed to warrant a replay, I got stuck on a stupidly easy "puzzle" early on that required the player to shoot a mushroom to reveal the hidden switch to open a door. I haven't played with motion controls before, but they work amazingly here. I especially look forward to playing Metroid Prime 3 with real motion controls, as intended.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

How neat that this is even on the Wii U! I have already played this game to death, but it is very novel to play on the Wii U. I beat my first and only run on the console thus far. Having the map on the gamepad is kind of neat.

Freedom Planet

I have this game on PC already but never gave it a fair shake. I have much more context after beating all the Sonic games since then! I found it a bit frustrating but I will have to give it another shot.

Wii Party U

It is just Mario Party with Miis, but that isn't so bad! A surprising amount of content to be had and lots of fun themed outfits for the Miis.

Kirby and the Rainbow Curse

Adorable art style, jury is still out on the gameplay. Further testing required.

Splatoon

This has been a ton of fun! I am surprised to see anyone still playing, but it is quite a lot like the sequel. I also want to play more of the campaign and maybe even complete the amiibo challenges to unlock the special outfit. I am impressed by how good it looks on the Wii U. The motion controls work really well too. Lots of fun (when I can actually get a match)

Game and Wario

Cute minigames, good uses of the gamepad. Hit or miss. I want to at least play all the games once.

Nintendoland

See above.

Star Fox Zero

Only completed the tutorial, but I am curious to play more and see if it ever "clicks" with me. I hear this is a real love or hate game.

NES Remix

I have already played the 3DS version but I love the concept and I want to see if I can unlock some of the exlcusive games.

Super Mario Brothers Advance 4: Super Mario Brothers 3

I only played a couple of the e-reader levels, but that is the whole reason I got this and I would like to explore them all because it fascinates me that Nintendo had the stupidity to make Mario content locked behind physical trading cards but then the genius to preserve them for all time in the Wii U Virtual Console release. I got frustrated and quit quickly but I plan on returning.

#nintendo #wii u #mario #metroid #zelda #kirby

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dragonrajafanfiction · 5 years ago

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Dragon Dancer II: Project - Leviathan

I’d used my father’s Nibelungen gate to steal away with Johann for Hanami in Chizuru in the middle of the night, and felt much better for it. Johann had gone to Chizuru and sent me a picture as I instructed. I visualized the place in my head and stepped through the gate to be with him, wearing the blue and white kimono gifted to me by Caesar over a year ago. Chizuru was twelve hours ahead of Paris, it was the middle of the night. It was a lovely two hours in the sun and the glory of the flowers. Anjou was none the wiser.

Returning to my hotel room in the dark made it seem even more like a dream. My fingers ran across my lips. They still burned where Johann had kissed me. My body still reacted to the memory.

Master List

The room was huge and alien and it made it hard to get any sleep. I tossed and turned in the unfamiliar bed. My thoughts turned back to my Chicago home, not to Cassell. That burned too, taking my whole foster family with it. It was the last place I’d truly felt at home. Ever since I left there, I’d never slept in so many different beds in my entire life.

Back in January, Johann told me that after graduation he would find a place for us. I had thought it was just him being dramatic. He’d been upset and tired at the time he said it. But now as I lay in the dark, in strange surroundings yet again, I realized he might have been completely serious, that he picked up on the fact that we’d both been uprooted, and looking for a place to settle.

The sun came up and I was still tired. Dressed in a plush robe provided by the hotel, I spoke with Johann over video call. He was in an airport, preparing to return to Chicago.

“Do you know who you’ll be working with?” He asked.

“An Agent Robertson…” I yawned. “Sorry, still a little jetlagged.”

To this day, I was captivated by the strands of dark hair framing the golden eyes that peered over his dark glasses, his cool so-called expressionless face. It wasn’t expressionless to me any more. The subtle flicker of his eye lids, the inflection of his voice, the tilt of his head said far more than his words did. To me, they spoke to his quick wit and profound intelligence, the ability to sort and catalogue his thoughts to say and express exactly what he wanted to in a single precise motion.

“I know him. You’re in good hands.” Johann nodded his stoic approval. “He’s been with the Executive department for about fifteen years. His skill is called Desolation and will turn anyone who stands in front of him to solid rock to a distance of 50 feet. It’s an A-rank devastating talent I’ve only seen him use once. He’s also very conscientious and hardworking. He’ll keep the other agents in line.”

I rubbed my eyes and blinked. “Anjou said something about being concerned about the agents here.”

“There was a scandal about three years back. Robertson was assigned from New York to get a handle on things. But some of the people who were responsible for it still work there. I’d be cautious around the French Agents if I were you.”

“Noted.” I rested my chin in my hands. “Are you doing alright?”

His eyelids lowered and my heart skipped a beat at the ghost of a smile. My persistent worry for him never failed to provoke a reaction. “Don’t worry about me. I want you to have a good time in Paris.” The amusement left his face. “I mean it. You’re going to Fashion Week starting today. I want you to get lots of cute outfits and take pictures for me. Eat pastries at La Pâtisserie du Meurice par Cédric Grolet. Take pictures of those too. The pastries they make are very cute.” He ticked these things off as if they were a list of objectives on a mission. But that’s not what drew my attention.

What made me sit up a little straighter was his flawless pronunciation of the name of the bakery. “Johann… do you speak French?”

He tilted his hand back and forth, but didn’t comment. “I’ll send you a care package through Robertson. That way, you won’t have to worry about anything but having fun. Europe doesn’t have the same products that you’re used to.”

Johann had become well studied in the concept of black hair care. My braids and my curls were unique to me and he understood that these locks would accept no substitutions.

“I love you, Chu Zihang.” I said in Chinese.

“I love you, Bai Meixiu.” He said. “Call me again after Fashion Week. I’m interested in this mission of yours.”

“I have to get ready but… can I ask you something?” When prompted by a nod, I continued. “When you said you would find a place for us after graduation… did you mean it? What did you mean?”

He suddenly wasn’t meeting my eyes any more, a faint color coming to his face.

I explained, one hand running down a thin braid. “I was just thinking last night… how hard it was to sleep in so many different beds. It sounded nice to have a real home again. I think I’d like that.”

The color on his face suddenly deepened. “I’d prefer to talk about that in person.”

“Okay… I’ll see you again soon.”

*****

Apparently, the Paris Fashion shows themselves were so exclusive that you had to receive a personal invitation or be a member of the media to attend. Even so, the city was packed. Our ritzy accommodations were fully booked. The fact that we could stay where ever we wanted, eat wherever we wanted, and go to the shows all over Paris spoke volumes about the level of clout Anjou had. Never once were we refused entry, or had to wait. Our tickets of admission were immediately accepted by the staff.

He mingled about the immaculately dressed crowd at the show, shaking hands, giving hugs and leaning in to give little kisses on the cheek. He was introducing me to the people he knew. I suddenly realized that as the top student at Cassell, Anjou was showing me to his inner circle of friends, getting me acquainted with the top brass of Hybrid hierarchy throughout the world. Many were successful businessmen. Many were ancient families with a long history of wealth and power. Some were currently heads of state.

All of them were Hybrids.

I wore a long white dress with white gloves up to my elbows and a white fluffy hair piece in the shape of angel wings. It immediately attracted attention to me. I didn’t speak any French, but I didn’t have to to understand that they were very curious about Anjou’s little debutante.

We took our seats for the actual show. “Am I doing okay?”

“You’re doing just fine my dear.” Anjou, holding his own glass of wine, smiled. “Ah… this never gets old.”

“Can we buy some of the outfits?” It was the first time I had asked to buy anything.

Anjou laughed. “So you’ve finally come around to Paris! Just point to whatever you like!”

I rubbed my hands together eagerly watching for anything cute that I liked -- that Johann might like. With sudden motivation, I found myself spinning in dressing rooms, feeling the fine fabric on my skin. My dancer’s physique was perfect for the French style and the women there had more than enough fun dressing me up for my own personal fashion show. There was even a photographer. A burly African man leaned over with a camera to take pictures of me pretending to be a model. I noticed a familiar emblem on his jacket.

“You’re from Cassell!”

His bright smile glowed on his face. “Agent Robertson at your service!” His New Yorker accent was obvious.

My eyes widened. “They sent you to take pictures of me? Someone as experienced as you?”

He smirked. “Heh. I’ve been following you two all over town. My assignment is to be your security detail… but discreetly.”

“Are the other agents here too?” I asked.

“That they are. Once fashion week is over, you’ll be off to work.”

“Johann Chu says hello.” I swayed in the mirror, making my skirt swirl.

“That guy…” He flipped through the photos on the camera. “Tell him to come back to Paris so I can beat him at basketball again. Nobody else here play.”

I turned to him the moment he said that. “I play.”

His jaw dropped. “Well, well, well… this is going to be a fun assignment.”

My security doubled as paparazzi as I made my way around Paris. I hung out in the first Arrondissement, admiring the parks, the fountains, and the Louvre Museum. I stalked A-list celebrities and got Robertson to take photos of them for me.

All the photos were sent to my social media account at Cassell. Johann Chu liked every one of them. He left comments of which clothes I should take home. When I asked if he wanted a souvenir, he simply replied. “No, this is enough.”

The heat rose in my face. “Sweet talker…”

When it was time for me to leave the hotel, Anjou left a final message for me on a gold embossed perfumed card. “Congratulations on your first assignment. May it be the first in a long career.”

Under a bright spring sun, we traveled in a convoy of black armored vehicles to the safe house. Men brandishing AK-47s opened the gate to allow us in. We drove down a winding narrow road through a forest to the massive chateau.

Robertson grew quiet and serious, constantly on his walkie-talkie, giving orders and receiving feedback and updating our position. He referred to me as ‘The Asset’. I was escorted to the heavy wooden door. It opened. Four other men stood before me. They were all European, in suits and sunglasses despite their being indoors.

“Agent Lavigne, IT. Monet, Logistics. Blanchet, Security. Garnier, Security.”

The French agents. I nodded to them politely. “Nice to meet you. I’m Charlotte.”

Agent Lavigne, lowered his glasses to reveal bright green eyes. He was pale with freckles and a shock of red hair. “Allow me to show you where you will be working.”

My heels clicked against the marble tiled floor. There were columns and statues and art everywhere. We went up the stairs to a large master suite. “This room has all the amenities you need. Unless required, you should be able to stay here and not leave it. There is a balcony in the back for fresh air.”

“Not leave my room?” I asked in dismay.

“There is an extensive amount of work you must do here. Your playtime is over.”

I pressed my lips together, glaring.

“Don’t antagonize her. Anjou said she needs to be kept happy.” Robertson immediately placed himself between me and Lavigne. I glanced between them, unsure of why there was this sudden tension.

Lavigne cleared his throat. “I meant no offense. My English is not that good.”

Lame excuse, I thought, but I nodded.

“The laptop you’ll be working with is directly connected to EVA. Your task will be translation and interpretation of the text. Nothing more.”

“Why fly me all the way out here if I’m just going to work with EVA?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it have been easier just to stay at Cassell? What’s with all the security?”

“That information is unfortunately classified.” Robertson said. Despite his serious demeanor, he smiled a little. “I will tell you this. Sometimes, Cassell doesn’t want to show it’s directly involved in a project.”

“Oh… … Okay…” I said. I nodded once in determination. “I’ll work hard!”

“We’ll leave you to it.” The two agents shut the door.

I jumped up onto yet another strange plush bed and opened the laptop. “Agent Meixiu!” I declared.

Immediately, the machine registered my face and voice. It spoke to me in EVAs vocal AI. “Welcome. I hope your stay in Paris was enjoyable.”

“It was! So what are we doing here?”

“We’re interpreting and translating the draconic text found underneath the slums of Mumbai. It’s a densely populated place, but the ruins are accessible through the sewers. Wells dug by Cassell are reaching even greater depths.”

Pictures of the locations of the dig sites and maps flashed across my screen.

“Your initial assignment will be to translate this document. It is composed of 15,000 symbols, 5,000 of those are unknown draconic.”

“Five thousand?!” I whispered. I sighed. “Okay… Let’s get to it.”

“Your acceptance of the mission has been logged. Welcome to Project: Leviathan.”

The reams of draconic script opened themselves before me. There were so many unfamiliar words mixed in with familiar ones. One thing was immediately clear. These weren’t ancient chants, prayers or curses. This was a history, a record of actions. What was stranger was that the actions weren’t of a dragon, but of a human man.

I stood up and looked around the room. It would take me months to translate all this and I was not interested in spending that much time away from Johann. There were several framed pictures on the wall. I got off the bed and pulled down one. Then I fished out a permanent marker from my luggage and drew a time dilation rune on the wall. When activated, three hours here would only be one hour outside the room. I rehung the picture over it.

I would not need EVAs assistance. As a supercomputer, she could only make guesses based on available information, and that was not always accurate. I had someone who had direct access to draconic script and was a native speaker. She spun out from my dragon scale necklace, floating there.

Ielia, a version of me from another dimension, appeared like a glowing ghost in the room. “Please help me translate this?”

She gave me a solemn nod.

#Johann Chu #Dragon Raja #Fanfiction #Writing

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sage-thrasher · 6 years ago

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Extra: “Sanitize” and Outsider POVs (Chemical Reactions)

Well, here’s 1.5k words of outsider POV: a hobbyist chemist/physicist meets Yui. Science results. It’s basically indulgent fluff I wrote for no reason besides, well... indulgence. Sparked by the thought that our knowledge of physics and chemistry has grown so much... people and science are pretty wonderful. Takes place in no specific time. Here’s Chemical Reactions.

---

Being wealthy and charismatic meant that Haru Watanabe was called ‘eccentric.’ He was also a middle-aged man with three children and a doting wife, the owner of a thriving spice business—mostly ran by the aforementioned wife—and a self-described scholar with a surprising amount of perceptiveness. Basically, Haru did everything else right so that he could get away with doing some things wrong.

(The first sin in question: throwing himself headfirst into physics and chemistry despite having enough money to pursue respectable subjects like history, politics, literature, or historical political literature.)

Haru had people who could do the tiresome but necessary business of actually bringing the goods from one place to another. Unfortunately, there did come times where he had to make the trek in person, generally when it involved a noble personage of one dinky plot or another who got delusions of grandeur. Haru would then kiss his wife and children, board the caravan, and head to woo the noble who was choking his trade routes. This time, he was with a scribe, a servant, and two hired Sarutobi guards.

(The greater sin: blabbing about his scientific interests with everyone who had the slightest amount of interest, which in Haru’s world, was the equivalent of looking in his direction.)

He’d talked his associates’s ears off during the journey there, and on the way back, both his employees were resigned to hearing his newest ideas--his scribe knew it by heart. Though the younger ninja had been interested at first, now the two Sarutobi were staring into the distance with glazed eyes.

(The final sin: making sure that he walked his hostage audience through the concepts in question until they understood it instead of blabbing without input, denying said audience the luxury of entirely tuning it out.)

So when Haru stopped in Chiyuku to pay the necessary pilgrimage to Healer Yui’s residence, he of course took her offer of tea as an invitation to speak about his newest pet theory. Haru hadn’t met with her personally before, having never been down this route himself, but he and every merchant with business on this side of the country knew about her. And Haru especially knew of her reputation for sharing knowledge. Was it likely that she knew anything about his interests? No, but that had never stopped him before.

“I have a great interest in science,” he began, smiling.

She didn’t pause in the middle of bandaging—the younger Sarutobi was lightly burned, but only because he’d practiced some sort of ninja technique above his skill levels, much to the exasperation of the older one—but she looked up.

“Is that so?” Yui was perfectly polite. “What kind of sciences?”

“Oh, physics and chemistry, mainly.” He let his smile grow brighter. “The very big and very small, the planets and the atoms.”

There was a glint of genuine interest now, even as she said, “Give me a minute, please.” Haru was content to wait as she gave the ninja instructions, washed her hands, poured herself a cup of tea, and took a seat across from him. “You’re a scholar in both subjects?”

Her voice was the mix of a rustic drawl and clipped enunciation that educated rural folk tended to have, and Haru could detect traces of other accents, likely picked up from all the travelers that came through Chiyuku.

(Again, he wasn’t a bad merchant. He was a rather excellent one, though his wife was the exceptional half. Haru was well-versed in the art of sizing someone up.)

“I am!” Haru sipped his tea and was pleasantly surprised by its mellow flavor. He’d had worse tea in fancier places. “Are you aware of the elements of matter?” Before he could start his theory, he needed to gauge her current knowledge.

It wasn’t quite a non-sequitur, but Yui took the small leap between topics in stride. “Yes. Carbon, nitrogen…” She hesitated. “I have the periodic chart of elements. A colleague of mine gave me some books with them.”

HHaru’s interest was piqued. “Did he?” He reevaluated her and took a different tack. “As you might be aware, we can put some elements together and create new ones. Organics from organics and inorganics from like. Not one from the other, and some combinations of elements won’t combine at all. Why do you think so?”

And so began a conversation like none other that Haru had participated in, beyond his wildest dreams. (A virtue: Haru could talk and talk and talk, but he could also listen. With colleagues and scholars—and his brilliant, incredible wife—he could sit spellbound for hours, with little to say but “Please, continue!”)

He kept asking why, why, and she kept answering. Yui spoke about the shape of atoms and the charged pieces that made up them. She spoke about the bonds between elements and the shape of those bonds, all connected by little electric pieces of matter that orbited around them. Finally, he asked about the interactions of magnets and forces, about the minutiae of why some elements had so many electric bits, why the shells around each center were numbered the way they were.

“I’ve...” she paused. “ I don’t really know. This is all a guess, anyway,” she added. “None of this will be proved for decades.” Yui cleared her throat, gone hoarse with talking, and she sipped her tea.

By now, the sun had dipped from its high point to begin its journey downwards. Haru’s guard took the opportunity to hazard a reminder: “Perhaps it would be best to continue—”

“Thank you, Sarutobi-san,” interrupted Haru. “I think we shall stay sometime longer, if it suits the esteemed healer.”

Yui seemed torn, having clearly enjoyed a conversation with someone who not only followed along but also hadn’t questioned her authority. “I wouldn’t want to keep you…”

“No, not at all!” He waved her concerns aside. “Now, you were talking about proof? How would you prove this?” Haru took care to keep his voice eager and curious, letting no suggestion of incredulity or accusation color his voice. He knew how easy it was to dismiss a woman’s knowledge, intentionally or not. Why, his own darling wife needed him as a frontman to manage the business, as silly as that was—she was better than he ever could be.

With a hesitant smile, Yui began to describe a series of fantastical devices: microscopes that used electric pieces, machines that spun bits of matter fast enough to tear them open, and lightning that could split bonded compounds in two.

Haru listened eagerly, soaking up as much knowledge as he could. His ability to listen, his experience, and his surprisingly deep well of common sense gave him a fine-tuned nonsense detector. And yet, her words didn’t set it off, likely because they made sense. Likely because she admitted freely how she couldn’t prove any of it, that this was baseless speculation.

(It didn’t feel like it.)

“What about chakra? Where does this fit in?”

The two ninja, alternatively bored out of their minds and surprisingly keen to listen, perked up at Haru’s question.

And to his ongoing surprise, she laughed. “I have absolutely no idea.” Yui leaned back in her chair, taking another sip. “An energy source from another universe? A force we don’t understand? Who knows. All I know is that it seems to break all laws of the natural world.”

Haru mirrored her body language, leaning back as well. “And you know how to use it.”

“I do, but I don’t understand it.”

He made a contemplative sound. Haru liked knowing things, and Yui had done him an enormous favor by sharing. Then again, he liked knowing things, and she… was a mystery. For not the first time this journey, Haru wished that his wife was with him. She would know what to say. (Another flaw: his stubbornness, his refusal to let anything go when it caught his interest...)

“Is your knowledge supernatural?”

(... and the bluntness that resulted from it.)

This time, everyone stared at him.

Yui blinked, a mix of shock, horror, and annoyance displayed in her creasing forehead.

Haru blinked back, suddenly aware that this faux pas was inexcusable, even for him. “Anyway,” he said, moving the conversation on before it lingered like a carelessly lit firecracker between them, “I must thank you sincerely for indulging me. As a token of appreciation...”

Haru opened the bag that he had carried with him, full of physics and chemistry books that he had planned on going over with the healer—before she’d blown away every preconception and filled his minds with theories in no book before her. He chewed his lip, considering the titles, and finally picked out the one that had the most similar and detailed analysis to what she’d told him. It was mostly a comparison of elemental properties and compounds, but… Haru had noticed that despite her detailed knowledge, she’d made up many of the words for the esoteric parts of her masterful theory.

“Here,” he said, placing the book on the table. “If you want any others in my bag, do let me know. And if it pleases you, I can send you any book on any topic you desire, if you promise to share me more of your wonderful theories.” He undercut his statement with a bright smile, trying to convey that he meant it as a friend—or at least a friendly acquaintance.

Yui gave him a careful smile back, though her openness had shuttered with his blundered statement. “I’d like that,” she said.

And just like that, Haru had another puzzle he knew he had to solve: the source of her knowledge.

#sanitize fanfic #Oc-insert #naruto fanfic #extra

250 notes · View notes

comicteaparty · 5 years ago

Text

February 12th-February 18th, 2020 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from February 12th, 2020 to February 18th, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:

When applicable, what about a creator’s art might convince you to check out their comic?

carcarchu

I like a wide range of art styles so it's hard to pinpoint specifics but if an artist is able to draw very attractive looking characters (recognizable character designs, outfits that don't look like they came out of 2004 gap catalogue, characters that can still be recognized even when they change their hair style) then i find that very appealing. beyond that how well an artist can integrate the characters with the actual space they exist in is something i find very important as well. a bunch of floating heads can only carry a series so far. if the artist can make the characters feel like they properly exist in the space i think it can really elevate the series although in practice this is something very difficult to do.

Deo101 [Millennium]

For me, honestly some art styles are very inspiring to me and that will sometimes get me to read just because I want to see the art more and learn from it. Things like textures, colors, character design... It can draw me in just by exciting me as a learning opportunity

chalcara

For me art‘s the hook and story the line. Come for the art, stay for the story, you know?

Funnily I‘m looking less for pretty art and more for good visual story telling. I want the art to show whats going on without having to rely on dialogue.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I'm honestly very picky about art styles when it comes to comics, and that's a personal issue It has some to do with art styles being attractive to me, but honestly, the most important aspects of a creator's style to me are (1) consistency of style and anatomy, (2) level of completion, and (3) clear communication of what's happening. When it comes to whether or not I check out the comic initially, the main things that come into play with the promotional materials, covers, and/or thumbnails are contrast of the image and cleanness of the rendering. Of course, obviously, my personal tastes play into it. (I tend to like semi-realistic styles, sort of anime-ish but with a twist, or painted styles that may resemble concept art.) But honestly, probably more important than grabbing me initially to begin reading is readership retention. And that's where the 3 qualities I look for come into play: (1) Consistency of style and anatomy: This is probably the most important part for me as a reader. If I can't tell who is who because the characters change appearance from panel to panel, I'm ducking out, because that affects the clarity of storytelling. I also cringe everytime I see a particularly egregious anatomy error. I know what people look like. I see them every day. If I feel pain from looking at an artist's work, I'm not sticking around. (To be fair, everyone makes some kind of anatomy mistakes, but really it's if the anatomy mistakes are really awful to me and aren't as a result of a deliberate style CHOICE. Keyword, C H O I C E.) (2) Level of completion: This really just means that if it looks like the artist rushed through the panels or they were being lazy, I feel like their comic isn't worth my time. I mean, if an artist themselves doesn't care about their work, why should I?(edited)

. (3) Clear communication of what's happening: Once again clarity of storytelling is absolutely essential. If the composition of a large portion of the panels don't clearly show the actions of the characters, I can't follow the story. Aaaaaand as a bonus: Please, please, for the love of all powers that be, please, make your fonts legible. If I can't read the comic without squinting because your text is too tiny or hard to read, I'm not going to try. I have bad eyesight as it is. Take pity on your readers. I'm not going to suffer for your work. I have dropped far too many comics to count because the creator didn't care enough to make sure that the font was legible. And this applies to both desktop view, mobile view, scrolling format, and page to page format. Just.... Make your fonts big and clear.(edited)

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

That's interesting to think about how recognizable characters are when their hair style changes. I might try to use that as a character building exercise

Deo101 [Millennium]

Solid excercise: can you tell them all apart when they're bald and naked?

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

OoooooooOOOOOOOOOOHHHH

Might partake that challenge

Deo101 [Millennium]

Also it's really fun to draw characters in all sorts of hair and clothes so idk what id do if I couldn't tell them apart when doing that!!! That's like 40% of my art!

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

This just convinces me more and more to do AU art

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah aus are another 20% of what i draw LOL

Look im drawing the comic most of the time so I wish to partake in non canon things the rest

carcarchu

@sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD) i've read series before where the character gets a hair cut / dyes it and i'm like WHO ARE YOU? IS THIS A NEW CHARACTER?

Deo101 [Millennium]

Oh another good excercise is drawing your Characters in many different styles and seeing if they remain unique when not in yours.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I want to do all of this

This is stuff I hardly ever have time for

So I am extra attracted to it

Also, there IS a time later in the comic where a certain character's hair gets partially burned off

And then he cuts it pretty short to get rid of the singed edges

And I feel like his hair is like 80% of his character design

So I'm just a little scared about that

Deo101 [Millennium]

Also, @Cronaj (Whispers of the Past) , I am unsure what you mean by "readership retention" with something that makes you interested in a comic, could you explain?(edited)

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

By readership retention, I mean aspects of the art that decide whether I'll continue reading past the first few pages

(obviously story comes into play as well, but I won't pretend that the art in the first few pages of a comic don't contribute)

Deo101 [Millennium]

Oh okay, I thought you meant like how many readers have unfollowed or something

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Nah

More like, "oh cool! Your cover and blurb seem interesting. Lemme check out the comic!"

And then after reading the first few pages/chapter:

"ah... Not for me." Or "Nice, I'll keep reading!"

Deo101 [Millennium]

Gotcha

Capitania do Azar

Ohh I don't feel like dissing particular artsyle choices, but I know a few aren't for me. I'm no big fan of ultra realistic, hyper detailed stuff you usually see in super hero comics (other genres pick that style too sometimes and I still don't really appreciate). I particularly like artstyles that are distinct and recognizable, I have a hard time with stuff from different authors that just looks... Like a carbon copy (sometimes, the style being referenced is waaay too obvious and that is always a big no for me) Good use of color is key. Give me some good values too. I want colors to make sense and I am very tired of pink. I also appreciate consistency. If you give me artwork with a more paintery style but then the comic is cellshaded, that might tip me off. But not necessarily (tho I appreciate inner consistency inside the comic itself). Rushed stuff, like mentioned above, is also not a good look, but only insofar as it distracts me from what's happening in the story. Consistency is a very important word here, because I love seeing a common line that is able to take in all the differences that are necessary in character design and backgrounds, but also make me believe that they all could live in the same world.

Oh! And also: if the artstyle involves using lineart, I am really fond of sharp, clear lines with weight variation

sagaholmgaard

I'm curious about what you guys mean with consistency- do you guys not like if an artist's art style changes over the several years it might take to make a finished webcomic? Is it that it peeves you when the backgrounds are done in, say, a painterly style while the characters are done with lineart? Is it when the artists makes ordinary illustration work in a completely different style from their comic pages? (This is genuine curiosity I hope no one's feeling attacked rn ^^)

carcarchu

i personally really like seeing an artist's skills improve and evolve over the many years it takes to draw a series

even at the expense of a more "consistent" final product

sagaholmgaard

Yeah me too, it's one thing i really like about webcomics

chalcara

Can‘t talk about the others, but I get thrown off when one page is sprite comic, the next painterly, third cell-shaded without having a in-story-reasons for those style changes, like flashbacks or pov-changes. But more commonly, the issue’s the classic „comic‘s usually coloured, but oops, this time you only get the pencils because I had no time to update“. If that happens too often and/or doesn‘t get fixed for the archive I just lose investment in the comic.

Art evolution is natural, both in webcomic and published work with a dedicated artist.

Ah, that‘s another source of inconsistency - people switching colourists or even artists around. Once in a while is fine, but if it happens every month or so, I tend to get annoyed by it. It‘s actually why I killed my first webcomic twenty years ago; it was a collaberation and life kept getting in the way forcing me to switch colourists every five pages or so.

carcarchu

oh actually i have read a webcomic where they changed artist's 18 chapters in. i really fell in love with the magical and dark tone of the original artist and was engrossed in the world that they set up. they had a painterly style and it really set the atmosphere of the entire series but then the new artist had a super clean and cutesy art style and the sudden tonal shift really threw me off. in the long run the new artist was actually extremely consistent and better at actually releasing long chapters and very good quality chapters and the writing actually improved too because of it but it was never able to recapture what it was that i really loved about the original art style. also the new artist changed the character designs a little so the heroine was no longer even recognizable as the same person

since it was relatively early in the series i definitely would have preferred if they just got the new artist to actually redraw the first 18 chapters in the new style just so the change wouldnt be so incredibly jarring

chalcara

Any harsh breaks like that will cause some people to break away from the comic, I found. I dumped one of my favourite-for-years comic because the creator got bored by their main character and completely sidelined her in favour of a group of minor characters I had absolutely no interest in.

Didn‘t mean the comic got worse - by all accounts its still beloved by quite a sizable audience - it just wasn‘t for me anymore.

sagaholmgaard

Ahh that I can relate to. I get super attached to the main character and usually have a hard time getting into any spinoffs with the rest of the cast, even if I want to (and im a hypocrite because i also want to make spinoffs for ever side character in my own comic LOL) i guess if the style changed a LOT from page to page that would throw me off too. that feels like the artist is trying to experiment, maybe making sort comedic comic strips would be more acceptable then? Every style would at least be contained to one strip at least

DanitheCarutor

That's... actually a really good question. I don't really go for a specific aesthetic. Sometimes what's going on in the thumbnail attracts me, or it could be the use of color, the style, a character design. I'll check out a comic with just about any art style. I guess maybe if I have an idea of what the creator is going for with their art? Like, the art may have a lot of kinks, but maybe being able to tell what style they're trying to go for makes me want to check out their work? Honestly, I don't have a really strong art bias, as long as the comic is readable I'll go for almost anything. Maybe I won't check something out if the style looks extremely uninspired... like if it were the most generic, based off Japanese cartoons, style ever then I might give it a pass. But even then I do sometimes check it out anyway, so I really don't know! This question is surprisingly hard to answer! To give my last quip about last week's topic, since I don't want to derail the current one. I feel the creator's personal life is no one's business. I understand if they're a legit bad person, but digging into a creator's life to see if they qualify to be supported is... I dunno. This mindset makes me feel that if someone who liked my work ever tried to get to know me, they would be doing it solely to see if I'm good enough for them, which feels really invasive and predatory. I fully understand most people can't just enjoy something, that's how the world is, it just kinda sucks sometimes. The world kind sucks sometimes. Alright! I'm doing with giving my final thoughts on that subject.(edited)

Deo101 [Millennium]

The question is specifically about what draws you to art, rather than what turns you away so if you don't want to rag on any art styles that's not what it was asking for I think! Though yes it's very closely related (and it's not bad to say what you don't like)

Eilidh (Lady Changeling)

I definitely am more likely to read a comic that has a distinctive style - no particular style preferences, really. Interesting use of colour/value is definitely a bonus. But as long as it's engaging and the composition is good/readable, I don't really mind whether the art is "good" or not.

DanitheCarutor

@Deo101 [Millennium] I wasn't trying to rag on anything. I couldn't specify what about someone's art would draw me to their comic, it was easier to the one thing that might not, but I still said that I may be drawn in regardless. Sorry if I came off like a douchebag, totally not my intention. <_<'

Deo101 [Millennium]

No I know, someone earlier said "I don't feel like dissi g particular styles" I'll be honest I was typing my post as you were and so I didn't even read yours til after I said something(edited)

Just kind of a general thing! Feels like it went to what turns us away instead of what draws us in so just kinda a reminder of the op

sagaholmgaard

Readability is definitely important for me to want to continue following a comic, but what about the art that makes me want to read something...? I definitely have a preference toward cartoony styles overall. A solid character design will make me wanna check out a comic. If the main character has a recognizable silhouette and interesting shape language. I also love really bold lineart, especially if it's used to create shadow and contrast. Interesting color schemes too. I think how the background is drawn can really make me want to read something as well. I know BGs aren't people's favorite thing to draw but to me if the setting looks very well though out and designed, that definitely motivates me to check something out. And awe-inspiring sceneries are always hella cool! I read a lot of things outside of my artistic preferences though, but I think these are the things that might make me pick something up based only on the art itself.

keii4ii

I think I tend to find more appeal in certain compositions, which is a more subtle aspect of style. I am a major sucker for evocative use of backshots/ not-showing-the-(whole)-face, for one thing. Compositions that make full use of the three dimensional space around the figure(s) is another (this doesn't necessarily mean putting a lot of stuff around the character; you can have a mostly empty space and still make it feel very 3D).

(I hope both of those things show in my own works... I just love those things soooo much )

Deo101 [Millennium]

Oh I LOVE when a panel like... Cuts a face. Something about it makes me lose my mind every time

DanitheCarutor

@Deo101 [Millennium] Ooh! Lol sorry about that! I was so caught up with off computer stuff that I didn't notice anything else typing while I was. I haven't read the whole conversation yet, but I can see how it would turn to that. "What draws you in" is a hard topic to stay on. At least I imagine it would be since it's hard for me to talk about.

Ah! I admit I really like shots focused on scale, specifically ones were you can feel how tiny the MC is compared to what the camera is focused on. Does that make sense? Like the panel shows this ginormous thing, and it has the MC in it to show how massive it really is. That's awesome when done right.

Deo101 [Millennium]

Tiny little person. Yes. Very good

DanitheCarutor

Tiny people in giant worlds are the best!

keii4ii

I love those too!

DanitheCarutor

Oh, also this isn't a webcomic, but I've been interested in reading Vinland Saga after seeing this page on Twitter.(edited)

Something about extremely hideous expressions on semi-realistic faces jives with me.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

What draws me in easiest is the design aspect of characters, environment and the webcomic title! It's a bit of a turn off when the title doesn't look polished. That's one of the main draws for me is an intriguingly designed logo with a catchy name that follows through their chosen aesthetic. I've seen many comics that stand apart from the title image they chose and it's a bit jarring to see! Great examples of wonderful execution of these aesthetics are BlackOut City, O'Sarilho, Sink Your HookTeeth and Shadrunners(obvs there are many more) I have to agree with @sagaholmgaard about backgrounds! There are quite a few creators who avoid them and stick to simple colours and gradients that just dont keep me in the comic- though my fave genres include a lot of world building, so BGs in a romance may not be emphasized as much. Lastly, dynamic character design!! I love a wonderfully crafted cast that allows me to read the characters easily no matter what setting or outfit they're in. Also it's really random but i do love an artist who can draw really good shoes?? That is always a draw in for me (edited)

Capitania do Azar

Oh I meant it in the way that if you spend a lot of time experimenting with different styles and techniques, you'll never be good at any of them. Style and approach changing over time is, imo, inevitable and good :) @sagaholmgaard(edited)

@@FeatherNotes(Krispy) I constantly think my logo looks like crap next to other webcomics', so thank you (edited)

DanitheCarutor

Oh god, @FeatherNotes(Krispy). Titles and logos are legit my weakest point, that part of the comic creation process is the worst! I have this cosmic-horror/fantasy comic I've been developing since 2005, and it took me till just last year to come up with a decent title. It'll probably take another 14 years to come up with a passable logo. Lmao!

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

It is really hard! Because that image/logo and name represents the body of work so firmly, its also got to stand strong with what it's representing and stand up to other titles too! Basically, i like to think of something that will help generate top results when i search on google for the title, which to me helps it stand on its own on the web, and sound catchy enough for pitches in person! I don't want to steer the convo away too much from the prompt, but there is definitely more to discuss about titles and their chosen aesthetics

varethane

@DanitheCarutor have you read Golden Kamuy? If you love hilariously hideous expressions in manga, it seems like it may be your jam lol

(it's also set in a specific historical period and contains a lot of really interesting material about the time/place it takes place in)

Also I feel like I have never, even one time in my life, come up with a good title for anything-- both Chirault and Wychwood are placeholder titles that I used just to kinda name the story for myself, which I initially intended to change when something better came along, and then nothing ever did

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I know I'm generally drawn into a comic if it's just... generally a visual feast? And it doesn't even have to be a beautiful feast - just... a feast! A super intriguing artstyle, beautiful or not, is something for my brain to pick apart and enjoy. Detailed backgrounds, intricate costumes, fascinating presentation/layout... all the way to crazy expressions and fun asides, and even some gory or scary bits to make me go EEK. Basically, if I'm reading it, and my hand is twitching with the prospect of drawing fan art, then I'm in for good.

DanitheCarutor

@FeatherNotes(Krispy) Urg that is such a nightmare! And there are only so many different styles you can do for a logo, and so many variations of words, it's like how there aren't any truly original stories anymore. I got lucky with the title for my current comic, it's the most generic thing ever, but fits in a tongue-in-cheek way. @varethane I've never heard of it, but the face compilations I'm seeing are intriguing! Man, I love stupid facial expressions.

Capitania do Azar

@varethane golden kamuy, I see you are a fellow of taste as well

varethane

(I love it so much)

Capitania do Azar

@DanitheCarutor oh idk about the "only so many things you can do with logos", I've seen amazing things in this world, if there's a limit I'm not seeing it

varethane

(I can always tell exactly when I was binging it because there's a big chunk of my phone's photo gallery that's all screencaps of Asirpa making dumb faces)

Capitania do Azar

@varethane guys shooting each other in the woods? I'm always in for that

DanitheCarutor

@Capitania do Azar Lol I guess? I can't see how you can have an infinite number of designs for writing, while still trying to keep it vaguely readable. But I really don't like lettering, so my imagination is hardcore lacking in that department.

Capitania do Azar

Lettering and logo design are their own fields of expertise, it's ok

meek

Hmm I'm similar to a lot of previous responses where I can't pinpoint a specific style or trend of art work that draws me in because the styles of comics I read differ incredibly. That being said, there are some things that I do look for to keep me coming back: 1) Consistency of style/anatomy: unless there's a specific reason for the general art style to change (not including semi-deformed or chibi versions of characters), I appreciate characters staying proportionate or just otherwise consistent throughout the comic. And art evolution isn't something that's at odds with consistency, it can actually help that by making characters more distinct and easier to distinguish from each other. 2) Potential for art evolution: Almost the opposite of the previous point lmao but if I find a new comic and I see the latest page is of a much higher skill level than the first page, I'm immediately hooked. I want to see the journey. And I want to see how far that journey goes, even past the point where the art "gets good". There's at least one comic that I can think of where once it hit the style that it wanted to, the art has stayed consistent for the past several years but so much so it's almost plateaued and become stagnant. It's still good art, by all means! But I want to see it grow and evolve more. 3) Good panel/speech layout: Okay it's not quite art in the same sense but someone else mentioned this above and I think it's important too? There are so many comics I can think of that I couldn't read or I dropped off at a point because reading was a chore, either because of giant or unsightly speech bubbles, tiny or ill-fitting font, a combination of the two, etc. Sure, graphic design and layout is a skillset completely different from pure illustration, but it's one worth knowing because otherwise you could do a disservice to your art and your story.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

@meek Seriously, the text is so important to me, and I consider it a large part of page layout and design

meek

Agreed!! It's something that bothers me with printed comics all the time. I've tried to read so many "classic" graphic novels and I just.. I can't get past the giant text boxes with small font with miniscule kerning and ESPECIALLY if they then add color to it. Please, keep in mind your readers with reading difficulties But to turn this into a positive One of my favorite things that also helps make a comic feel more personal is when the creator turns their handwriting into a font or otherwise have FUN with the speech bubbles

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

YES. As someone with bad eyesight, typography is one of my favorite aspects of finishing a comic page.

Deo101 [Millennium]

It also is super important for me with ADHD, reading is hard enough as is! so bubble layout and clarity can really bring the whole thing together and elevate a comic

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I tried that but got the feedback that my text is hard to read and the way i format my speech bubbles is distracting (: But some people have said they really like it so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Though I do think I could have done better with the font. I have good eyesight and bad handwriting do I think i have a much easier time reading weird text than many. Since you guys care so much about text, would you mind taking a quick glance at my comic and telling me how readable it is? It'd be nice getting feedback from random people as opposed to only my readers who felt strongly enough to leave a comment unprompted

meek

Oh man I have this specific panel in mind from some early 2006 Avengers comic of like.. what not to do Basically it was a bright yellow text box with this white/light blue font. It was just. It was a nightmare to read Oh sure!! Definitely send me a link

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yep! Send me a link too! I'd love to help you out

I also have a good typography book to recommend if you're interested. I can drop it into #art_resources(edited)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Here is link: https://www.webtoons.comen/challenge/puppeteer/list?title_no=290620

Thanks for taking the time to give me critique!

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

The link's not working, but I can probably find it on Webtoon

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

And I think i dould find a typography book interesting, so yes please do send the link

Sorry, i think the link is missing a slash

Did we both delete the link

Deo101 [Millennium]

did we both delete a

yah

i got it

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Lol

Deo101 [Millennium]

https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/puppeteer/list?title_no=290620

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Thanks

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I found it

(The font is a bit small on mobile, but the font is fine?)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Wait can we move to shop talk?

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

(maybe we can have this discussion on shop talk channel? )

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Sure

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

OH LOL

DanitheCarutor

@Capitania do Azar Oh god, they so are! I envy anyone who enjoys that craft, I'm a lot better than I was, but lettering is still so hard. ;v; At least the fancy stuff is hard, regular speechbubble lettering is easy as long as my hand cooperates.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

There's a book I had to read for a web design course I took, and it is seriously a life saver

It put text in a whole new perspective

DanitheCarutor

I do all my lettering traditionally, but maybe that book would be helpful, I legit hate doing it no matter what medium I use. (sorry for continuing to derail the channel.)

Capitania do Azar

@DanitheCarutor i used a website that converts handwriting to fonts + font forge for tweaks to get personalised fonts

DanitheCarutor

I used to type bubbles out, and I've thought about it for my current comic but I mix up words and letters really bad, and I forget to add words entirely while typing. It wouldn't be so bad if my brain saw the mistakes while rereading everything, although sometimes it takes a couple days or another set of eyes for me to actually see them. When I write the bubbles in with a pen I make a lot less mistakes since it takes more effort to write out each letter, also my brain can keep better track of the ones I do make. I feel like that's an excuse that makes no sense.

Deo101 [Millennium]

no it totally makes sense

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I can't say I'm ever especially drawn in by art? Besides the sense of "it looks like a lighthearted action story and I like lighthearted action stories", not much catches my eye. Though, I will drop a comic if I'm put off by the art. Like I can forgive if some things look janky at the start of the comic, but if that jankiness doesn't improve over time, I'll drop the comic. I'll also drop the comic if the character designs are bad (i.e. indistinguishable from each other, or in rare cases just too gross to look at). But again, I can't exactly say "good character designs draw me into the comic" because a lot of comic banners/thumbnails don't really show off full character designs.

chalcara

Varied bodytypes are catnip for me. And I like comics with expressive characters over comics that limit expressiveness to keep the characters pretty.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

Oh, definitely agree with that second part. Comics where it looks like everyone has had a ton of Botox is a huge pet peeve of mine

Like, eyebrows are not the only part of the face that can move.

Do more

renieplayerone

Yeah i agree with the janky art thought. I think it helps me follow through the jank if i see that the later pages, the artist has shown growth, and i dont want to force anyone into a "gotta redraw it" loop if thats not something they want (of course everyone has their reasons and theyre also valid af) Ill tend to be more forgiving about the jank if i know its someones first webcomic or first comic in general, because you cant learn how to make comics without actually sitting down and making the dang thing. So yeah, the jank can be a double edged sword(edited)

What super draws me in is comics with a great sense of color. While i love anything vibrant, if the softer watercolors are done well, they're chefs kiss. Prime example of that is Stand Still Stay Silent

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I've been thinking about this question all week and I think I finally boiled my answer down to something short, sweet, and to the point. It's gotta be some kind of spooky and some kind of cute I have a pretty broad range of art styles I like and I definitely also read stuff that doesn't fall under those categories, but I think my favorite stories or artists are some blend of those two things. I don't really have a preference between color and greyscale. Like I definitely love a good color feast comic, but if you know how to use your grey tones or even just black and white well it's just as good for me. Maybe that's also just me trying to justify being mostly a greyscale artist to myself TuT

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

@mariah (rainy day dreams) devils candy would def be up your alley then!

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Devil's candy v good

renieplayerone

Devils Candy is amazing

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I love to combination of cute monsters and action also.

DanitheCarutor

@renieplayerone I'm not sure if it fits totally with your preference, but if you're looking for watercolor Lost Honey is gorgeous! https://www.losthoney.com/

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Lost Honey is another great comic great to look at, really interesting world

DanitheCarutor

It's one of my faves! ;v; There is another comic that was half watercolor half digital that I used to love reading (if I remember right pages set in the current time were digital, and backstory stuff was in watercolor.), but it has been discontinued for years now. It was called Toilet Genie/D00R, a comic about a genie who was locked in a public toilet and was awakened by a pug that got thrown out by her owners. It was so pretty, with such an interesting style!

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Oh wow I haven't thought about that comic in 5 years! X'D I didn't read much of it, because I don't think there was much of it available at the time, but yeah, that one was also very pretty (edited)

renieplayerone

Oh those colors are really pretty!!

DanitheCarutor

Right? Lost Honey is total eye candy. @mariah (rainy day dreams) Yeah, it's sad the creator never got to finish it. I think about it every so often since it's one of the extremely rare (semi)watercolor webcomics out there.

Also I'm extra attached to traditional mediums since I work in a traditional medium myself.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Same. Got that ink wash/watercolor bias.

Eilidh (Lady Changeling)

My current comic is marker shaded but I so want to do something with ink wash after this one...

DanitheCarutor

Yeah, right now I'm working with color pencils since they're cheap but I want to give gouache or acrylic a try for my next project, depending on which story I do.

Kabocha

Hm, the question is... a lil' challenging to answer. I think in a lot of cases, the art isn't necessarily what gets me, but when it does -- Sometimes it's when someone uses a resource I like/made and I can go "OOOH! I know that thing you used!" Screentones are another one that gets my attention pretty quick. Sparkles... And probably effective spot color use. As much as I enjoy many full color webcomics, there are many that get tiring to try to read for one reason or another (usually it's either a font or a saturation issue - too many similarly saturated colors near one another gets tiring to read). Also, soft coloring. Oooh, just... when the art feels like it ought to be printed on those soft-touch covers... Yeah, that gets my attention. ...and watercolor/inkwash, too. ... okay that's a lot of things that grab my attention, but tl;dr: oh hey look at all that cool stuff that people can do!

mariah (rainy day dreams)

That was part of what was so hard for me thinking about this question cuz really, a lot of things get my attention X') and the more I thought about it the more I was like "I like when a comic is like X, but oh also Y is great and I do really enjoy Z as well!" I just ... like so many things. But I think that's better than being really picky. I've meet some folks that are super picky about art and basically only like one style and I'm just like... you're missing out on so many amazing things!

Kabocha

Right? And heck, even in some comics where the style would normally be unappealing (to me), there's just something about the art and the aesthetic that clicks to make it all work together for that project.(edited)

I do think, though, that there's always going to be a special place in my heart for greyscale or screentoned comics. There's just something about art that knows how to effectively make use of shading and contrast to make their work... well, work for me.

kayotics

Art is probably the first thing that draws me in to read a comic. The top, top tier thing that gets me to pay attention to a comic is really strong inks. I love inking, and unusual inking styles. To those who know me, that's probably incredibly unsurprising. I also love really angular styles. Some other stuff I gravitate towards: cartoony styles, expressive faces, and kind of ugly characters. I enjoy seeing characters that might be described as plain or are drawn in a bit of an ugly way. The last thing that draws me in? Hands. If an art style pays attention to hands, then I'm all for it.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Does a comic have characters with big, crooked, toothy grins? I'm down for the count X'D https://media.tenor.com/images/618576ebcc4f6d2a12438624be77c54f/tenor.gif

varethane

oh hey, did someone mention webcomics done in ink wash/marker?

Chirault was that!

1367 pages of..... ink with greyscale marker..........

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

honestly blows me away that you toned it traditionally like, all of GJS is inked trad, but to ink AND tone in marker is just.....damn

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I love ugly characters

RebelVampire

When it comes to art, I'd say there are about four factors that will draw me in. First, readability. Can I visually follow wtf is going on in the comic? I have no interest in the visuals if I can't understand what action characters are taking. So the first point is always for if that is true. Second, character distinguishability. Can I tell one character from another? I am notoriously bad even in real life at being able to tell people apart, so when reading for fun, it's super important to me that I don't have to put a lot of effort into telling characters apart (exceptions for identical twins, of course). Third, personal appeal. Do I think the art is pretty or cute? Like, obviously this is subjective so I can't really put into words why I'd find one style appealing and the other not. But ya know, I like stuff I think is pretty to look at. Fourth, backgrounds. If a creator puts a lot of effort into their background scenery, I'm very sold on it. I love beautiful backgrounds, and the effort put into them give me an overall better impression of the comic as a whole. Since it takes some real passion to take care with backgrounds. All this being said, I'm not much of a stickler for art. If a comic is well-written enough, they can fail all these points and I'll still read it. This is just a list of what aspects have to be in the art for it to draw me in.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

My points are pretty much the same as Rebel's, with the addition of a few things: I adore comics with dramatic facial expressions and consistently excellent anatomy. Also, if the art style is unique? If I feel like I've never seen someone draw that way before? That's ++. So good. I've read comics where I thought the art was good but the story was mediocre, but I've never read a comic where the art met all my points (and Rebel's), where it made me go, "holy fuck," audibly, and then had the story disappoint. Comics where the art made me go "holy fuck" audibly: Excecutioner's Academy: The art is so pointy and colorful and detailed and weird. It's full of personality and life and so are the characters. Warning: hiatus comic ): https://tapas.io/series/Ex-Ac Ava's Demon: You guys know about Ava's Demon, right? With original music and animations ending every chapter, this might be the most effortful comic I've ever seen. https://www.avasdemon.com/pages.php#2611 Sfeer Theory: Everyone looks so different from each other, it's fantastic. Some characters are not conventionally beautiful, yet they're still so appealing. And backgrounds! And a thought-out and unique magic system! https://sfeertheory.com/comic/01-00/ Electric Bones: Backgrounds! Banter! http://electricbonescomic.com/index.php/comic/page-001/ I also loved Prague Race, but unfortunately it was cancelled ):

If anyone else has recommendations for comics with amazing art, I'd love to hear them!

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

For me, it just has to be an art style I like to attract my attention. I generally like realistic art, stylised art, or pretty much any style that hasn’t been done to death (like generic anime art; much as I love manga, I’m really tired of the over-saturation of bland and soulless anime-inspired art). Pretty much anything unique and well executed will grab my attention. I especially like greyscale and limited palettes.(edited)

And just to clarify, I do like anime-style art when it has expression and/or skill behind it; just not when it looks generic and manufactured. Overall, though, it’s the writing that’s ultimately the most important thing to me in a comic, so I’ll enjoy comics for their writing even if I’m not a fan of the art.

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #comic tea party #ctp #reader favorites

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6stronghands · 6 years ago

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Goodreads interview with Seanan McGuire

Author Seanan McGuire is the busiest person you know, even if you don't know her yet. She's that busy. McGuire has 33 novel-length works currently listed on her bibliography page, and that's not counting her pseudonymous acquaintance, Mira Grant. Scroll down and you'll find short fiction, essays, comics, nonfiction, and poetry. The crazy part? She didn't turn to full-time writing until about three years ago. Along the way, McGuire has won several marquee book prizes, including Hugo and Nebula awards for speculative fiction. Her series of fantasy novellas Wayward Children was recently picked up by the TV network Syfy for development. McGuire's brain is clearly a restless explorer, and her ambitious new novel, Middlegame, maps out another enormous chunk of notional real estate. In the new book, a pair of separated twins named Roger and Dodger endeavor to solve a series of increasingly sinister mysteries. Why were they separated? Why are they being hunted? Why are they developing world-breaking powers? And perhaps most importantly—why did they get such ridiculous names? The brother-and-sister team find themselves squaring off against a cabal of eldritch predators who have cracked the ancient code of alchemy, the missing link between science and magic. Speaking from her home outside Seattle, McGuire talked with Goodreads contributor Glenn McDonald about the new book, the weird science of alchemy, and the curious case of the prescription typewriter… Your bibliography is really astonishing. Are you just writing all the time? Seanan McGuire: Well, I'm not writing at the moment because I'm talking to you. But yeah, I was writing right up to the point where my phone rang. That's pretty much my life, because I am a workaholic and I enjoy what I do. GR: When did you make the leap into full-time writing? SM: I made the transition around January 2016, I think. The best advice I ever received from anyone, about professional writing, was from Todd McCaffrey. He said: Don't quit your day job until you're reasonably sure you can pay your bills off of your royalties. My last job was for a nonprofit, and I was basically sick all the time because I was writing all these books and I was still working a full-time day job. My friends never saw me. Like, never. Then the ACA happened, the Affordable Care Act. I don't think people realize what a difference that made, for all of us that work in the creative fields, to be able to get affordable insurance. I kept my day job for a few years after I strictly had to, just because I was terrified of dying under a bridge. The attacks on the ACA that are happening now are terrifying. Genuinely terrifying. Especially if they take away the protection for preexisting conditions. GR: Were you into writing as a little kid?

I was. I did not figure out that writing was an option until I was about three. I started reading before I was talking, really. Then I started getting migraines because I was trying to write, but I didn't have the physical coordination to actually write at the speed that I could think. So the doctor prescribed a typewriter. Really. My mom went to a yard sale and got me this gigantic thing. It weighed more than I did. I started writing stories. At the beginning, they were all very factual. I would write stories about going to look for my cat. A lot of my earliest work was what we would classify as fan fiction now. There were a lot of adventures with My Little Ponies. The thing about being a genius when you're a kid is that you grow out of it. I was perfectly average by the time I hit school. But there was that brief, frustrating time when I was so far ahead of where they wanted me to be that they just didn't know what to do with me. I would write until 3 a.m. on my typewriter, which sounded like gunfire. GR: There seems to be some of that experience in the new book, with the child prodigies Roger and Dodger. Their relationship is fascinating; it's a sibling thing but also this deeper connection that suggests they're resonating on the cosmic level. SM: I love that this is my best-reviewed book so far and it's about characters with intentionally terrible names. It's a delight to have people have to try to talk seriously about the relationship between Roger and Dodger. It's terrible, and it makes me so happy. Roger and Dodger really are soul mates because they are functionally the same person. They're one person split into two to embody the Ethos [the alchemy formulation sought after in the story]. I don't think that's a huge spoiler; that's basically the premise of the book. We know that, but they don't for a good part of the story. Locking down their relationship, a lot of that was looking at my own relationships with my siblings and the places where it's good or weird or awkward. GR: For readers who might not be familiar, what do we mean when we talk about alchemy? SM: Alchemy is sort of like magical chemistry. It's this idea that you can transform parts of the world into other parts of the world. You just have to figure out the right combination of elements. The classical example is lead into gold. But alchemists also believed that there were spirits and such that could be called upon to help with these processes. It has some of what we might call sorcerous ideas. They were trying to find the magical formulae for these things, like the panacea, which is the cure for everything. Or the alkahest, which is the universal destroyer, a fluid that could dissolve literally anything. Then there's the Philosopher's Stone, which was said to give eternal life. Harry Potter fans are probably familiar with alchemy, more than previous generations, because of the character Flamel, who was an actual and quite famous real-world alchemist. GR: Did you research the actual history of alchemy?

Yes, this was the first time I really jumped into it. I did a lot of research, and research makes me so happy. I hunted down every book I could find on alchemy; they're all downstairs in the library now. Alchemy was a real thing, even if it never worked, even if they never turned lead into gold with these processes. Really smart people spent a really long time trying hard to make these things happen. I wanted to make sure what I was trying to do would fit into at least one school of alchemical thought—and there were many, many schools of thought. Alchemy sounds a little ridiculous now, but there was a time when it was a commonly accepted belief. GR: In the book you have a great villainous force in the Alchemical Congress, who are modern practitioners of the ancient art. They reminded me of historical groups that purported to be keepers of secret knowledge, like the Masons. SM: Right, or like the Order of the Golden Dawn. I never found a specific historical analog to that in alchemy, but maybe that's because they never got it to work. My Alchemical Congress is a group of people who can actually say that alchemy works. They're able to do all kinds of ethically negotiable things. With that kind of power, you're absolutely going to have a group that locks it down so it stays in what these people consider the right hands. GR: The cover image of the book depicts a delightfully creepy magical item known as the Hand of Glory, which also has a historical basis. Do you recall when you first came across that? SM: I feel like I've always known. I don't remember where I first read about that. I studied folklore in college, and the Hand of Glory was very common in certain parts of Europe. It's amazing. Everyone was chopping hands off for a while there. GR: When did you actually start writing Middlegame? SM: Middlegame is kind of unique. I'd been thinking about it for ten years, but it took me a while to develop the technical skill to tell the story and have it make sense to people who don't live inside my head. My brother must have heard me explain this story 90 times before I even sat down to write it. At this point in my career, I have the enviable problem that, for the most part, I don't get to just sit down and decide that I'm going to write. Everything has been pre-sold. I'm working off contracts until 2023. So I know exactly what I'm going to be writing every day when I get out of bed. GR: Don't you ever just get burned out? SM: Well, I think I'm dealing with ten years of systemic burnout because I'm exhausted all the time. But if you mean: Do I ever get to the point that I can't write? Thankfully, no. I think everybody's wired differently that way. So much of my storage space is devoted to people who don't exist. There's a certain concern that if I leave them alone, those parts of my brain will go offline. GR: There are fictional lives at stake! SM: There are! You don't depend on me for your persistence of existence. If I forget about you, you'll still be fine. GR: Your series Wayward Children was just picked up for development with the Syfy channel. Is there anything you can disclose about that? SM: No, not really. For the most part, for myself and other creators, we can't disclose anything because they don't want to let us know what's happening. We have family members that are going to ask, and they don't want us to be the leaks and endanger the production, so we're frequently not told things. I've basically just sold them my canvas, because I'm a wee baby author from the perspective of Hollywood. I have no properties under my belt, I have no track record. There's not a lot of bargaining power on my side of the table. But I trust the people that are involved in this project. And even if I didn't, honestly, television changes everything. The worst show that absolutely butchers my concepts—which is not a thing I'm expecting with this team at all—but the worst show in the world is going to be seen by more people than have read the first book. So that bumps my book sales, almost guaranteed. That sounds very mercenary, I'm sure, but that's just the math of it. Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, even Neil Gaiman—they weren't household names until they got something on TV. My mother raised three daughters on welfare, and she lives with me. I'm basically her sole support. I worry fairly regularly about what would happen if I get hit by a bus and can't write anymore. But what happens with a successful TV show—or even a failed TV show—is that my mom lives off my royalties for the rest of her life. GR: This is a question we've been polling authors on: When you read for pleasure, do you read one book at a time or do you have several going at once? Some people say it's insane to read multiple books at the same time, but I usually have two or three going. SM: Well, I'm currently reading six. GR: Is there anything else you'd like to highlight or discuss about the new book? SM: Middlegame is currently a standalone, but there are two follow-ups I'd really like to write, so please buy Middlegame from your local bookstore so that my publisher will let me continue!

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awakenedfoolacademy-blog · 7 years ago

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Beginning The Fool’s Journey

Week 1: The Fool

Hey all! My name is Jaclyn, one of the facilitators at Awakened Fool! I found this project, because I accidentally started it. Haha! I was sitting at my computer one night a couple weeks ago longing to chat in depth about the cards and discuss their medicine, what we know, what we only think we know, and what we totally know we don’t understand. So, I asked y’all and you answered tenfold. I got in touch with Raven and we literally fell in love with this project and academy and with what it could possibly do in the community in terms of teaching and uniting us.

I have always been spiritual, always somehow just known things, without any explanation. I would share these crazy stories with my stepmom, who for my birthday last August, bought me my first Tarot deck. It was electric. It was at my birthday party, we were all drinking and I was doing readings for everyone-with no real concept of what I was doing. But that night as I got in bed, I looked at my boyfriend and said, “This might sound weird, but I need to go hold my Tarot deck.” My hands were tingling, I got up and grabbed them. Since then, I have dived head first into deep study of the Tarot, astrology, and pretty much anything I can get my hands on. I’ve found that these spiritual tools have given me a way to explain my intuition concisely. This drive to learn is eventually what brought me to dreaming up Awakened Fool.

I will be using the Motherpeace deck. I was hesitant to use this deck because of the controversy currently surrounding it (there are two cards that depict tribal women wearing traditional, ritual clitoral mutilation garb, which was never fixed by the creators, two white women). Now, I want to be clear that I have struggled a lot with the continued using of this deck, however, there are many problems with hundreds of decks created more than twenty years ago, the Rider-Waite included, and there are problems with decks made even now. It is important to understand the implications of every deck you use, do your research, and make a decision from there. At the time of the Motherpeace’s creation, the deck was one of the most diverse in rotation, something that I do feel is important to acknowledge. I love the diversity of this deck, and while I do not condone the irresponsibility of the very gross refusal to create new art for the problem cards, I also recognize a part of this deck that has spoken to me. It is circular. It is the only deck I have in this design and I have grown to use this cyclical-ness to give and receive intimate readings. The circular nature of the Motherpeace allows me to read the cards not just in reverse and upright, but also in degrees. For this reason, I have chosen to work with the Motherpeace for this set of lessons.

To me, the Fool means to be humbled. It means innocence and the start of a journey, a beginning. But it also means responsibility and the laying down of ego. We are all Fool’s here. When I pull the Fool in my readings (Which I had been for a week prior to the creation of this Academy), it is talking to me about taking responsibility for my actions, learning to humble myself to the things I don’t know and the level I am actually on. The Fool reminds me that while we may know where we are going, we cannot predict the events that will take us there, and so we should remain open to change and road blocks, stumbling is okay as long as we keep moving.

Which is perfect because I want to learn different ways of interpreting the cards. I could read the guidebooks, and I have scoured them, but I find it so interesting when people read a card that doesn’t necessarily align with a book. I want to learn how you read cards, how you feel when you pull them, and your process of using them as medicine. You can help me by challenging me. Make me talk more about the cards and how I came to the conclusion I did. Make me have discussions, because that is what I crave. Especially when it comes to the Wheel of Fortune, because every time ya girl thinks she’s got it figured out, she realizes she actually does not.

Welcome to Awakened Fool Academy, friends! I’m so happy to go on this Fool’s journey with you.

Humbly,

-Jaclyn

Hello, hello! Raven here, your ever-excited co-facilitator alongside Jaclyn. It’s wonderful to see everyone who is planning to take part in this journey!

When she reached out to me, I felt a pull in my gut, an intuitive click. My work as a tarot reader has picked up recently, and with it has come harder questions, steeper steps in my climb as an intuitive. There is always work to be done to deepen our relationship with our working tools. I hope that this Academy will help me to more clearly communicate the messages that I receive in my work.

When I was 8 years old, I received my first deck of Tarot cards from my grandmother. The pictures on the cards amused, confused, and excited me. My family was always mixed about their comfort with the occult and the esoteric, despite being naturally curious people. Myself, I genuinely felt a calling within me. I identify as a Witch rather publicly and my work with the tarot is something I consider an integral part of my practice. I’ve been reading tarot off and on for about 20 years now, and recently have allowed myself to step away from the more traditional interpretations and toward a more personal expression of my understanding. By USING the tarot regularly, and learning how they speak to me, I was able to put the guidebook down for good.

In the past, I have naturally gravitated toward a more traditional card style, one that pulls heavily from the art of Pamela Coleman Smith. The Awakened Fool Tarot Academy program is helping me to force myself away from the more well studied card styles and toward a more emotional and creative style of interpretation. It is all grounded in fact, but driven predominately by clairvoyant intuition. More on this subject later, maybe!

As for The Fool. In The Fountain Tarot, my eyes see the Fool card as being represented by a young person leaping excitedly across a great chasm, a void. Unencumbered, arms stretched wide to each side; legs jumping, yet strong and sure. The little human seems unrestricted, like a person set free of prison. Running toward something more than away from... Like a child running into the arms of their favorite relative. The sky around the figure is gray, cloudy, overcast like a lovely Seattle sky. The distance is obscured, as is the Moon - a hint at the deep soul searching and shadow work that is coming ahead. The Moon is full, but distant, looming but not omnipresent. Like an echo, audible but only just. There is a joy in the lack of knowledge. A leap of faith, in its truest form. The figure doesn’t know what is ahead or around them, but they know its is big. And that they need to face it head on or risk not playing the game at all.

Let your imagination run wild, people. Let your stomach guide you in your words regarding these cards; let the words come naturally. They are already inside of you, you just need to learn the language they are in before you can speak them into existence. I look forward to working with and learning with you all. <3

Excitedly,

-Raven

#awakenedfool

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shitloadsofwrestling · 7 years ago

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Shitloads Of Wrestling Interview: Jamin Olivencia [May 30th, 2018]

For several years, someone who I’ve considered one of wrestling’s best kept secrets has been constantly improving over the last decade in the greater Louisville area. Jamin Olivencia is a 13 year pro whose matches are impossible to follow, with an unbridled intensity and next level commitment to his craft. I got a chance to slow Jamin down just for a moment for this quick but informal video about his career...

SOW: Jamin Olivencia, a wrestler I've known since before your first match at OVW! Through the years, you've had a lot of evolutions, from tag teams to having an entourage to being one of the most intense warriors anyone could take on. Through it all, would you say there's a point in your career that you were at your personal peak? Maybe a time where you thought you were at your absolute best?

JAMIN: I feel during my time as OVW Champion (my first run) was where I was at my best. I was training 6 days a week, wrestling 5 days a week and never stopped bettering myself. It was important to me that I was on my game.

SOW: In 2009, The Jamin Olivencia Show was probably my favorite thing in professional wrestling. You as the condescending show host doing something that I hadn't seen anybody doing prior, which was treating a talk show segment as if it were an actual talk show, complete with a producer, director, and cue cards for the audience. How did that idea come to fruition, and is it just me, or did Abraham Washington's version seem a little familiar?

JAMIN: This idea came as a joke between me and my good friend Paredyse. We would come up with ridiculous ways to make people laugh and The Jamin Olivencia Show was a joke that ran out of control. I sent my work to WWE thinking it would be a great concept for me. Later, a WWE employee later revealed to me that The Abraham Washington Show was stolen from me, even the same exact lines I used. I was told that they didn't see me as the "right" fit for that type of character. HA!

SOW: In 2011 when you returned to OVW, I think that time period had some of my favorite matches I've seen you do. You had a newfound intensity where I think the most popular version of Jamin Olivencia was smashing fools left and right. What was your favorite match from that time period?

JAMIN: Looking back it's hard to pin point exactly what was my favorite match, but I recall having memorable moments with guys like Rudy Switchblade, Ali [Vaez], and Doug Williams. They were the way showers of me seeing my own intensity and potential.

SOW: I've always been genuinely puzzled as to why you've had trouble breaking through that glass ceiling. You have a very unique look, your work in the ring is incomparable to others, and you've got an amazing charisma. Why is that with all of that going for you, no one has yet to pull the trigger?

JAMIN: I haven't broke through the glass ceiling mainly because of me. As my career progressed, I started to fall in love with other art forms outside of wrestling. I started to fall in love with my daughter more as she was starting to have conversations with me. There were an accumulation of things I experienced that turned me off from the business. To this day I always have an open door anywhere to perform and I am grateful for that. But I think my need to impact the world started to expand more than my ego in wrestling. It was tough to make those decisions at first. But now I am finding myself with even more opportunities. I still wrestle. It just has to be on my time. I recently even entertained the idea of possibly performing for the new OVW which is coming soon..

SOW: When you reflect on your career, what would you say was your proudest moment? Not necessarily your best match, but a moment in your career where you felt like you got the exact response you wanted, for example.

JAMIN: I think you were there. When I wrestled Bo Dallas in a dark match in Nashville. The audience got behind me, and when I walked through the curtain after the match, all these vets that worked backstage complimented me. JBL in particular told me he never saw anyone, in all of his years being there get the audience behind them in a comeback like I did. His fascination with me he said, was the fact that no one knew me and that I still created a true emotional connection with the audience that night. Hearing all the feedback, my peers telling me how good I did with my facials, movements, and the way I presented myself. That, made me feel great. I felt like I "made it" that night.

[Side note... I was there!]

SOW: Your recent path of positivity has been extremely interesting. You seem to be a man of many talents, but I'm curious to know what the ultimate goal for your current movement is.

JAMIN: Thanks for the compliment! During my wrestling career I found myself having other strong suits. Going to schools and holding deep discussions with kids. Not "motivational" speaking but actually holding and sharing deep conversations with kids that allow them to see their own bullshit. I have found that after going to several schools around the country, schools were calling me back and expressing how much the kids enjoyed having me. I never entertained the idea that I could be a positive force in the world on this type of platform but as the years moved along I am finding myself having a deeper purpose to help others change their perspective in a way that's beneficial to them. To not seek the answers outside of themselves and look at their own shit with more honesty. My poetry was something I did for fun and that has turned into more also. So now I am finding myself getting more attention outside of the wrestling world, which is fun and scary because all I ever known was wrestling. Now I can say I know myself. I want to give the world more of me. Not just in speaking, but in wrestling, in life.

youtube

SOW: Do you have any upcoming events that fans should keep an eye out for?

JAMIN: Schools out for the summer and I have been training to get in the ring again, I am getting that itch.

#jamin olivencia #pro wrestling #ovw #wwe #2010s #2018 #sow interview

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howling--fantods · 7 years ago

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An Excerpt of the Essay: David Lynch Keeps His Head by David Foster Wallace

I know a lot of you love David Lynch and this is an EXCELLENT defense and deconstruction of his work. The full essay is largely about the film Lost Highway, which was about to be released, and is 67 pages with 61 footnotes. The whole essay is incredibly entertaining and if you like to read, is worth it. You can find it here: x. This excerpt mainly concerns Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. I put the footnotes at the end, I know it isn’t ideal, but it is hard when there aren’t pages.

9A. The cinematic tradition it’s curious that nobody seems to have observed Lynch comes right out of (w/ an epigraph)

“It has been said that the admirers of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari are usually painters, or people who think and remember graphically. This is a mistaken conception.”

—Paul Rotha, “The German Film”

Since Lynch was trained as a painter (an Ab-Exp painter at that), it seems curious that no film critics or scholars(42) have ever treated of his movies’ clear relation to the classical Expressionist cinema tradition of Wiene, Kobe, early Lang, etc. And I am talking here about the very simplest and most straightforward sort of definition of Expressionist, viz. “Using objects and characters not as representations but as transmitters for the director’s own internal impressions and moods.”

Certainly plenty of critics have observed, with Kael, that in Lynch’s movies “There’s very little art between you and the filmmaker’s psyche…because there’s less than the usual amount of inhibition.” They’ve noted the preponderance of fetishes and fixations in Lynch’s work, his characters’ lack of conventional introspection (an introspection which in film equals “subjectivity”), his sexualization of everything from an amputated limb to a bathrobe’s sash, from a skull to a “heart plug,”(43) from split lockets to length-cut timber. They’ve noted the elaboration of Freudian motifs that tremble on the edge of parodic cliche—the way Marietta’s invitation to Sailor to “fuck Mommy” takes place in a bathroom and produces a rage that’s then displaced onto Bob Ray Lemon; the way Merrick’s opening dream-fantasy of his mother supine before a rampaging elephant has her face working in what’s interpretable as either terror or orgasm; the way Lynch structures Dune’s labrynthian plot to highlight Paul Eutrades’s “escape” with his “witch-mother” after Paul’s father’s “death” and “betrayal.” They have noted with particular emphasis what’s pretty much Lynch’s most famous scene, Blue Velvet’s Jeffrey Beaumont peering through a closet’s slats as Frank Booth rapes Dorothy while referring to himself as “Daddy” and to her as “Mommy” and promising dire punishments for “looking at me” and breathing through an unexplained gas mask that’s overtly similar to the O2-mask we’d just seen Jeffrey’s own dying Dad breathing through.

They’ve noted all this, critics have, and they’ve noted how, despite its heaviness, this Freudian stuff tends to give Lynch’s movies an enormous psychological power; and yet they don’t seem to make the obvious point that these very heavy Freudian riffs are powerful instead of ridiculous because they are deployed Expressionistically, which among other things means they’re deployed in an old-fashioned, pre-postmodern way, I.e. nakedly, sincerely, without postmodernism’s abstraction or irony. Jeffrey Beaumont’s interslat voyeurism may be a sick parody of the Primal Scene, but neither he (a “college boy”) nor anybody else in the movie ever shows any inclination to say something like “Gee, this is sort of like a sick parody of the good old Primal Scene” or even betrays any awareness that a lot of what’s going on is—both symbolically and psychoanalytically—heavy as hell. Lynch’s movies, for all their unsubtle archetypes and symbols and intertextual references and c., have about them the remarkable unselfish-consciousness that’s kind of the hallmark of Expressionist art—nobody in Lynch’s movies analyzes or metacriticizes or hermenteuticizes or anything(44), including Lynch himself. This set of restrictions makes Lynch’s movies fundamentally unironic, and I submit that Lynch’s lack of irony is the real reason some cineastes—in this age when ironic self-consciousness is the one and only universally recognized badge of sophistication—see him as a naif or a buffoon. In fact, Lynch is neither—though nor is he any kind of genius of visual coding or tertiary symbolism or anything. What he is is a weird hybrid blend of classical Expressionist and contemporary postmodernist, an artist whose own “internal impressions and moods” are (like ours) an olla podrida of neurogenic predisposition and phylogenic myth and psychoanalytic schema and pop-cultural iconography—in other words, Lynch is sort of G. W. Pabst with an Elvis ducktail.

This kind of contemporary Expressionist art, in order to be any good, seems like it needs to avoid two pitfalls. The first is a self-consciousness of form where everything gets very mannered and refers cutely to itself.(45) The second pitfall, more complicated, might be called “terminal idiosyncrasy” or “antiempathetic solipsism” or something: here the artist’s own perceptions and moods and impressions and obsessions come off as just too particular to him alone. Art, after all, is supposed to be a kind of communication, and “personal expression” is cinematically interesting only to the extent that what’s expressed finds and strikes chords within the viewer. The difference between experiencing art that succeeds as communication and art that doesn’t is rather like the difference between being sexually intimate with a person and watching that person masturbate. In terms of literature, richly communicative Expressionism is epitomized by Kafka, bad and onanistic Expressionism by the average Graduate Writing Program avant-garde story.

It’s the second pitfall that’s especially bottomless and dreadful, and Lynch’s best movie, Blue Velvet, avoided it so spectacularly that seeing the movie when it first came out was a kind of revelation for me. It was such a big deal that ten years later I remember the date—30 March 1986, a Wednesday night—and what the whole group of us MFA Program(46) students did after we left the theater, which was to go to a coffeehouse and talk about how the movie was a revelation. Our Graduate MFA Program had been pretty much of a downer so far: most of us wanted to see ourselves as avant-garde writers, and our professors were all traditional commercial Realists of the New Yorker school, and while we loathed these teachers and resented the chilly reception our “experimental” writing received from them, we were also starting to recognize that most of our own avant-garde stuff really was solipsistic and pretentious and self-conscious and masturbatory and bad, and so that year we went around hating ourselves and everyone else and with no clue about how to get experimentally better without caving in to loathsome commercial-Realistic pressure, etc. This was the context in which Blue Velvet made such an impression on us. The movie’s obvious “themes”—the evil flip side to picket-fence respectability, the conjunctions of sadism and sexuality and parental authority and voyeurism and cheesy ‘50s pop and Coming of Age, etc.—were for us less revelatory than the way the movie’s surrealism and dream-logic felt: the felt true, real. And the couple things just slightly but marvelously off in every shot—the Yellow Man literally dead on his feet, Frank’s unexplained gas mask, the eerie industrial thrum on the stairway outside Dorothy’s apartment, the weird dentate-vagina sculpture(47) hanging on an otherwise bare wall over Jeffrey’s bed at home, the dog drinking from the hose in the stricken dad’s hand—it wasn’t just that these touches seemed eccentrically cool or experimental or arty, but that they communicated things that felt true. Blue Velvet captured something crucial about the way the U.S. present acted on our nerve endings, something crucial that couldn’t be analyzed or reduced to a system of codes or aesthetic principles or workshop techniques.

This was what was epiphanic for us about Blue Velvet in grad school, when we saw it: the movie helped us realize that first-rate experimentalism was a way not to “transcend” or “rebel against” the truth but actually to honor it. It brought home to us—via images, the medium we were suckled on and most credulous of—that the very most important artistic communications took place at a level that not only wasn’t intellectual but wasn’t even fully conscious, that the unconscious’s true medium wasn’t verbal but imagistic, and that whether the images were Realistic or Postmodern of Expressionistic of Surreal of what-the-hell-ever was less important than whether they felt true, whether they rang psychic cherries in the communicatee.

I don’t know whether any of this makes sense. But it’s basically why David Lynch the filmmaker is important to me. I felt like he showed me something genuine and important on 3/30/86. And he couldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been thoroughly, nakedly, unpretentiously, unsophisticatedly himself, a self that communicates primarily itself—an Expressionist. Whether he is an Expressionist naively or pathologically or ultra-pomo-sophisticatedly is of little importance to me. What is important is that Blue Velvet rang cherries, and it remains for me an example of contemporary artistic heroism.

10A (w/ an epigraph)

“All of Lynch’s work can be described as emotionally infantile…Lynch likes to ride his camera into orifices (a burlap hood’s eyehole or a severed ear), to plumb the blackness beyond. There, id-deep, he fans out his deck of dirty pictures…”—Kathleen Murphy of Film Comment

One reason it’s sort of heroic tot be a contemporary Expressionist is that it all but invites people who don’t like your art to make an ad hominem move from the art to the artist. A fair number of critics(48) object to David Lynch’s movies on the grounds that they are “sick” and “dirty” or “infantile,” then proceed to claim that the movies are themselves revelatory of various deficiencies in Lynch’s own character, (49) troubles that range from developmental arrest to misogyny to sadism. It’s not just the fact that twisted people do hideous things to one another in Lynch’s films, these critics will argue, but rather the “moral attitude” implied by the way Lynch’s camera records hideous behavior. In a way, his detractors have a point. Moral atrocities in Lynch movies are never staged to elicit outrage or even disapproval. The directorial attitude when hideousness occurs seems to range between clinical neutrality and an almost voyeuristic ogling. It’s not an accident that Frank Booth, Bobby Peru, and Leland/“Bob” steal the show in Lynch’s last three films, that there is almost a tropism about our pull toward these characters, because Lynch’s camera is obsessed with them, loves them; they are his movies’ heart.

Some of the ad hominem criticism is harmless, and the director himself has to a certain extent dined out on his “Master of Weird”/“Czar of Bizarre” image, see for example Lynch making his eyes go in two different directions for the cover of Time. The claim, though, that because Lynch’s movies pass no overt “judgement” on hideousness/evil/sickness and in fact make the stuff riveting to watch, the movies are themselves a-or immoral, even evil—this is bullshit of the rankest vintage, and not just because it’s sloppy logic but because it’s symptomatic of the impoverished moral assumptions we seem not to bring to the movies we watch.

I’m going to claim that evil is what David Lynch’s movies are essentially about, and that Lynch’s explorations of human beings’ various relationships to evil are, if idiosyncratic and Expressionistic, nevertheless sensitive and insightful and true. I’m going to submit that the real “moral problem” a lot of cineastes have with Lynch is that we find his truth morally uncomfortable, and that we do not like, when watching movies, to be made uncomfortable. (Unless, of course, our discomfort is used to set up some kind of commercial catharsis—the retribution, the bloodbath, the romantic victory of the misunderstood heroine, etc.—I.e. unless the discomfort serves a conclusion that flatters the same comfortable moral certainties we came into the theater with.)

The fact is that David Lynch treats the subject of evil better than just about anybody else making movies today—better and also differently. His movies aren’t anti-moral, but they are definitely anti-formulaic. Evil-ridden though his filmic world is, please notice that responsibility for evil never in his films devolves easily onto greedy corporations or corrupt politicians or faceless serial kooks. Lynch is not interested in the devolution of responsibility, and he’s not interested in moral judgments of characters. Rather, he’s interested in the psychic spaces in which people are capable of evil. He is interested in Darkness. And Darkness, in David Lynch’s movies, always wears more than one face. Recall, for example, how Blue Velvet’s Frank Booth is both Frank Booth and “the Well-Dressed Man.” How Eraserhead’s whole postapocalyptic world of demonic conceptions and teratoid offspring and summary decapitations is evil…yet how it’s “poor” Henry Spencer who ends up a baby-killer. How in both TV’s Twin Peaks and cinema’s Fire Walk with Me, “Bob” is also Leland Palmer, how they are, “spiritually,” both two and one. The Elephant Man’s sideshow barker is evil in his exploitation of Merrick, but so too is good old kindly Dr. Treeves—and Lynch carefully has Treeves admit this aloud. And if Wild at Heart’s coherence suffered because its myriad villains seemed fuzzy and interchangeable, it was because they were all basically the same thing, I.e. they were all in the service of the same force or spirit. Characters are not themselves evil in Lynch movies—evil wears them.

This point is worth emphasizing. Lynch’s movies are not about monsters (i.e. people whose intrinsic natures are evil) but about hauntings, about evil environment, possibility, force. This helps explain Lynch’s constant deployment of noirish lighting and eerie sound-carpets and grotesque figurants: in his movies’ world, a kind of ambient spiritual antimatter hangs just overhead. It also explains why Lynch’s villains seem not merely wicked or sick but ecstatic, transported: they are, literally, possessed. Think here of Dennis Hopper’s exultant “I’LL FUCK ANYTHING THAT MOVES” in Blue Velvet, or of the incredible scene in Wild at Heart when Diane Ladd smears her face with lipstick until it’s devil-red and then screams at herself in the mirror, or of “Bob”’s look of total demonic ebullience in Fire Walk with Me when Laura discovers him at her dresser going through her diary and just about dies of fright. The bad guys in Lynch movies are always exultant, orgasmic, most fully present at their evilest moments, and this in turn is because they are not only actuated by evil but literally inspired(50): they have yielded themselves up to a Darkness way bigger than any one person. And if these villains are, at their worst moments, riveting for both the camera and the audience, it’s not because Lynch is “endorsing” or “romanticizing” evil but because he’s diagnosing it—diagnosing it without the comfortable carapace of disapproval and with an open acknowledgment of the fact that one reason why evil is so powerful is that it’s hideously vital and robust and usually impossible to look away from.

Lynch’s idea that evil is a force has unsettling implications. People can be good or bad, but forces simply are. And forces are—at least potentially—everywhere. Evil for Lynch thus moves and shifts, (51) pervades; Darkness is in everything, all the time—not “lurking below” or “lying in wait” or “hovering on the horizon”: evil is here, right now. And so are Light, love, redemption (since these phenomena are also, in Lynch’s work, forces and spirits), etc. In fact, in a Lynchian moral scheme it doesn’t make much sense to talk about either Darkness or about Light in isolation from its opposite. It’s not just that evil is “implied by” good or Darkness by Light or whatever, but that the evil stuff is contained within the good stuff too, encoded in it.

You could call this idea of evil Gnostic, or Taoist, or neo-Hegelian, but it’s also Lynchian, because what Lynch’s movies(52) are all about is creating a narrative space where this idea can be worked out in its fullest detail and to its most uncomfortable consequences.

And Lynch pays a heavy price—both critically and financially—for trying to explore worlds like this. Because we Americans like our art’s moral world to be cleanly limned and clearly demarcated, neat and tidy. In many respects it seems we need our art to be morally comfortable, and the intellectual gymnastics we’ll go through to extract a black-and-white ethics from a piece of art we like are shocking if you stop and look closely at them. For example, the supposed ethical structure Lynch is most applauded for is the “Seamy Underside” structure, the idea that dark forces roil and passions seethe beneath the green lawns and PTA potlucks of Anytown, USA.(53) American critics who like Lynch applaud his “genius for penetrating the civilized surface of everyday life to discover the strange, perverse passions beneath” and his movies are providing “the password to an inner sanctum of horror and desire” and “evocations of the malevolent forces at work beneath nostalgic constructs.”

It’s little wonder that Lynch gets accused of voyeurism: critics have to make Lynch a voyeur in order to approve something like Blue Velvet from within a conventional moral framework that has Good on top/outside and Evil below/within. The fact is that critics grotesquely misread Lynch when they see this idea of perversity “beneath” and horror “hidden” as central to his movies’ moral structure.

Interpreting Blue Velvet, for example, as a film centrally concerned with “a boy discovering corruption in the heart of a town”(54) is about as obtuse as looking at the robin perched on the Beaumonts’ windowsill at the movie’s end and ignoring the writhing beetle the robin’s got in its beak.(55) The fact is that Blue Velvet is basically a coming-of-age movie, and, while the brutal rape Jeffrey watches from Dorothy’s closet might be the movie’s most horrifying scene, the real horror in the movie surrounds discoveries that Jeffrey makes about himself—for example, the discovery that part of him is excited by what he sees Frank Booth do to Dorothy Vallens. (56) Frank’s use, during the rape, of the words “Mommy” and “Daddy,” the similarity between the gas mask Frank breathes through in extremis and the oxygen mask we’ve just seen Jeffrey’s dad wearing in the hospital—this kind of stuff isn’t there just to reinforce the Primal Scene aspect of the rape. The stuff’s also there to clearly suggest that Frank Booth is, in a certain way, Jeffrey’s “father,” that the Darkness inside Frank is also encoded in Jeffrey. Gee-whiz Jeffrey’s discovery not of dark Frank but of his own dark affinities with Frank is the engine of the movie’s anxiety. Note for example that the long and somewhat heavy angst-dream Jeffrey suffers in the film’s second act occurs not after he has watched Frank brutalize Dorothy but after he, Jeffrey, has consented to hit Dorothy during sex.

There are enough heavy clues like this to set up, for any marginally attentive viewer, what is Blue Velvet’s real climax, and its point. The climax comes unusually early,(57) near the end of the film’s second act. It’s the moment when Frank turns around to look at Jeffrey in the back seat of the car and says “You’re like me.” This moment is shot from Jeffrey’s visual perspective, so that when Frank turns around in the seat he speaks both to Jeffrey and to us. And here Jeffrey—who’s whacked Dorothy and liked it—is made exceedingly uncomfortable indeed; and so—if we recall that we too peeked through those close-vents at Frank’s feast of sexual fascism, and regarded, with critics, this scene as the film’s most riveting—are we. When Frank says “You’re like me,” Jeffrey’s response is to lunge wildly forward in the back seat and punch Frank in the nose—a brutally primal response that seems rather more typical of Frank than of Jeffrey, notice. In the film’s audience, I, to whom Frank has also just claimed kinship, have no such luxury of violent release; I pretty much just have to sit there and feel uncomfortable.(58)

And I emphatically do not like to be made uncomfortable when I go to see a movie. I like my heroes virtuous and my victims pathetic and my villains’ villainy clearly established and primly disapproved of by both plot and camera. When I go to movies that have various kinds of hideousness in them, I like to have my own fundamental difference from sadists and fascists and voyeurs and psychos and Bad People unambiguously confirmed and assured by those movies. I like to judge. I like to be allowed to root for Justice To Be Done without a slight squirmy suspicion (so prevalent and depressing in real moral life) that Justice probably wouldn’t be all that keen on certain parts of my character, either.

I don’t know whether you are like me in these regards or not…though from the characterizations and moral structures in the U.S. movies that do well at the box-office I deduce that there must be a lot of Americans who are exactly like me.

I submit that we also, as an audience, really like the idea of secret and scandalous immoralities unearthed and dragged into the light and exposed. We like this stuff because secrets’ exposure in a movie creates in us impressions of epistemological privilege, of “penetrating the civilized surface of everyday life to discover the strange, perverse passions beneath.” This isn’t surprising: knowledge is power, and we (I, anyway) like to feel powerful. But we also like the idea of “secrets,” “of malevolent forces at work beneath…” so much because we like to see confirmed our fervent hope that most bad and seamy stuff really is secret, “locked away” or “under the surface.” We hope fervently that this is so because we need to be able to believe that our own hideousnesses and Darkness are secret. Otherwise we get uncomfortable. And, as part of an audience, if a movie is structured in such a way that the distinction between surface/Light/good and secret/Dark/evil is messed with—in other words, not a structure whereby Dark Secrets are winched ex machina up to the Lit Surface to be purified by my judgement, but rather a structure in which Respectable Surfaces and Seamy Undersides are mingled, integrated, literally mixed up—I am going to be made acutely uncomfortable. And in response to my discomfort I’m going to do one of two things: I’m either going to find some way to punish the movie for making me uncomfortable, or I’m going to find a way to interpret the movie that eliminates as much of the discomfort as possible. From my survey of published work on Lynch’s films, I can assure you that just about every established professional reviewer and critic has chosen one or the other of these responses.

I know this all looks kind of abstract and general. Consider the specific example of Twin Peaks’s career. Its basic structure was the good old murder-whose-investigation-opens-a-can-of-worms formula right out of Noir 101—the search for Laura Palmer’s killer yields postmortem revelations of a double life (Laura Palmer=Homecoming Queen & Laura Palmer=Tormented Coke-Whore by Night) that mirrored the whole town’s moral schizophrenia. The show’s first season, in which the plot movement consisted mostly of more and more subsurface hideousnesses being uncovered and exposed, was a huge smash. By the second season, though, the mystery-and-investigation structure’s own logic began to compel the show to start getting more focused and explicit about who or what was actually responsible for Laura’s murder. And the more explicit Twin Peaks tried to get, the less popular the series became. The mystery’s final “resolution,” in particular, was felt by critics and audiences alike to be deeply unsatisfying. And it was. The “Bob”/Leland/Evil Owl stuff was fuzzy and not very well rendered,(59) but the really deep dissatisfaction—the one that made audiences feel screwed and betrayed and fueled the critical backlash against the idea of Lynch as Genius Auteur—was, I submit, a moral one. I submit that Laura Palmer’s exhaustively revealed “sins” required, by the moral logic of American mass entertainment, that the circumstances of her death turn out to be causally related to those sins. We as an audience have certain core certainties about sowing and reaping, and these certainties need to be affirmed and massaged.(60) When they were not, and as it became increasingly clear that they were not going to be, Twin Peaks’s ratings fell off the shelf, and critics began to bemoan this once “daring” and “imaginative” series’ decline into “self-reference” and “mannered incoherence.”

And then Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Lynch’s theatrical “prequel” to the TV series, and his biggest box-office bomb since Dune, committed a much worse offense. It sought to transform Laura Palmer from dramatic object to dramatic subject. As a dead person, Laura’s existence on the television show had been entirely verbal, and it was fairly easy to conceive her as a schizoid black/white construct—Good by Day, Naughty by Night, etc. But the movie in which Ms. Sheryl Lee as Laura is on-screen more or less constantly, attempts to present this multivalent system of objectified personas—plaid-skirted coed/bare-breasted roadhouse slut/tormented exorcism-candidate/molested daughter—as an integrated and living whole: these different identities were all, the movie tried to claim, the same person. In Fire Walk with Me, Laura was no longer “an enigma” or “the password to an inner sanctum of horror.” She now embodied, in full view, all the Dark Secrets that on the series had been the stuff of significant glances and delicious whispers.

This transformation of Laura from object/occasion to subject/person was actually the most morally ambitious thing a Lynch movie has ever tried to do—maybe an impossible thing, given the psychological text of the series and the fact that you had to be familiar with the series to make even marginal sense of the movie—and it required complex and contradictory and probably impossible things from Ms. Lee, who in my opinion deserved an Oscar nomination just for showing up and trying.

The novelist Steve Erickson, in a 1992 review of Fire Walk with Me, is one of the few critics who gave any indication of even trying to understand what the movie was trying to do: “We always knew Laura was a wild girl, the homecoming femme fatale who was crazy for cocaine and fucked roadhouse drunks less for the money than the sheer depravity of it, but the movie is finally not so much interested in the titillation of that depravity as [in] her torment, depicted in a performance by Sheryl Lee so vixenish and demonic it’s hard to know whether it’s terrible or a de force. [But not trying too terribly hard, because now watch:] Her fit of the giggles over the body of a man whose head has just been blown off might be an act of innocence or damnation [get ready:] or both.” Or both? Of course both. This is what Lynch is about in this movie: both innocence and damnation; both sinned-against and sinning. Laura Palmer in Fire Walk with Me is both “good” and “bad,” and yet also neither: she’s complex, contradictory, real. And we hate this possibility in movies; we hate the “both” shit. “Both” comes off as sloppy characterization, muddy filmmaking, lack of focus. At any rate that’s what we criticized Fire Walk with Me’s Laura for.(61) But I submit that the real reason we criticized and disliked Lynch’s Laura’s muddy bothness is that it required of us empathetic confrontation with the exact muddy bothness in ourselves and our intimates that makes the real world of moral selves so tense and uncomfortable, a bothness we go to the movies to get a couple hours’ fucking relief from. A movie that requires that these features of ourselves and the world not be dreamed away or judges away or massaged away but acknowledged, and not just acknowledged but drawn upon in our emotional relationship to the heroine herself—this movie is going to make us feel uncomfortable, pissed off; we’re going to feel, in Premiere magazine’s own head editor’s word, “Betrayed.”

I am not suggesting that Lynch entirely succeeded at the project he set for himself in Fire Walk with Me. (He didn’t.) What I am suggesting is that the withering critical reception the movie received (this movie, whose director’s previous film had won a Palme d’Or, was booed at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival) had less to do with its failing in the project than with its attempting it at all. And I am suggesting that if Lost Highway gets similarly savaged—or, worse, ignored—by the American art-assessment machine of which Premiere magazine is a wonderful working part, you might want to keep all this in mind.

Premiere Magazine, 1995

42. (Not even the Lynch-crazy French film pundits who’ve made his movies subject of more than two dozen essays in Cahiers du Cinema— the French apparently regard Lynch as God, though the fact they also regard Jerry Lewis as God might salt the compliment a bit…) 43. (Q.v. Baron Harkonen’s “cardiac rape” of the servant boy in Dune’s first act) 44. Here’s one reason why Lynch’s characters have this weird opacity about them, a narcotized over-earnestness that’s reminiscent of lead-poisoned kids in Midwestern trailer parks. The truth is that Lynch needs his characters stolid to the point of retardation; otherwise they’d be doing all this ironic eyebrow-raising and finger-steepling about the overt symbolism of what’s going on, which is the very last thing he wants his characters doing. 45. Lynch did a one-and-a-half-gainer into this pitfall in Wild at Heart, which is one reason the movie comes off so pomo-cute, another being the ironic intertextual self-consciousness (q.v. Wizard of Oz, Fugitive Kind) that Lynch’s better Expressionist movies have mostly avoided. 46. (=Master of Fine Arts Program, which is usually a two-year thing for graduate students who want to write fiction and poetry professionally) 47. (I’m hoping now in retrospect this wasn’t something Lynch’s ex-wife did…) 48. (E.g.: Kathleen Murphy, Tom Carson, Steve Erickson, Laurent Varchaud) 49. This critical two-step, a blend of New Criticism and pop pyschology, might be termed the Unintentional Fallacy. 50. (I.e. “in-spired,”=“affected, guided, aroused by divine influence,” from the Latin inpsirare, “breathed into”) 51. It’s possible to decode Lynch’s fetish for floating/flying entities—witches on broomsticks, sprites and fairies and Good Witches, angels dangling overhead—along these lines. Likewise his use of robins=Light in BV and owl=Darkness in TP: the whole point of these animals is that they’re mobile. 52. (With the exception of Dune, in which the good and bad guys practically wear color-coded hats—but Dune wasn’t really Lynch’s film anyway) 53. This sort of interpretation informed most of the positive reviews of both Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks. 54. (Which most admiring critics did—the quotation is from a 1/90 piece on Lynch in the New York Times Magazine) 55. (Not to mention ignoring the fact that Frances Bay, as Jeffrey’s Aunt Barbara, standing right next to Jeffrey and Sandy at the window and making an icky-face at the robin and saying “Who could eat a bug?” Then—as far as I can tell, and I’ve seen the movie like eight times—proceeds to PUT A BUG IN HER MOUTH. Or at least if it’s not a bug she puts in her mouth it’s a tidbit of sufficiently buggy-looking to let you be sure Lynch means something by having her do it right after she’s criticized the robin for its diet. (Friends I’ve surveyed are evenly split on whether Aunt Barbara eats a bug in this scene—have a look for yourself.)) 56. As, to be honest, is a part of us, the audience. Excited, I mean. And Lynch clearly sets the rape scene up to be both horrifying and exciting. This is why the colors are so lush and the mise en scene is so detailed and sensual, why the camera lingers on the rape, fetishizes it: not because Lynch is sickly or naively excited by the scene but because he—like us—is humanly, complexly excited by the scene. The camera’s ogling is designed to implicate Frank and Jeffrey and the director and the audience all at the same time. 57. (Prematurely!) 58. I don’t think it’s an accident that of the grad-school friends I first say Blue Velvet with in 1986, the two who were most disturbed by the movie—the two who said they felt like either the movie was really sick or they were really sick or both they and the movie were really sick, the two who acknowledged the movie’s artistic power but declared that as God was their witness you’d never catch them sitting through that particular sickness-fest again—were both male, nor that both singled out Frank’s smiling slowly while pinching Dorothy’s nipple and looking out past Wall 4 and saying “You’re like me” as possibly the creepiest and least pleasant moment in their personal moviegoing history. 59. Worse, actually. Like most storytellers who use mystery as a structural device and not a thematic device, Lynch is way better at deepening and complicating mysteries than he is at wrapping them up. And the series’ second season showed that he was aware of this and that it was making him really nervous. By its thirtieth episode the show had degenerated into tics and shticks and mannerisms and red herrings, and part of the explanation for this was that Lynch was trying to divert our attention from the fact that he really had no idea how to wrap the central murder case up. Part of the reason I actually preferred Twin Peaks’s second season to its first was the fascinating spectacle of watching a narrative structure disintegrate and a narrative artist freeze up and try to shuck and jive when the plot reached a point where his own weaknesses as an artist were going to be exposed (just imagine the fear: this disintegration was happening on national TV). 60. This is inarguable, axiomatic. In fact what’s striking about most U.S. mystery and suspense and crime and horror films isn’t these films’ escalating violence but their enduring and fanatical allegiance to moral verities that come right out of the nursery: the virtuous heroine will not be serial-killed; the honest cop, who will not know his partner is corrupt until it’s too late to keep the partner from getting the drop on him, will nevertheless somehow turn the tables and kill the partner in a wrenching confrontation; the predator stalking the hero/hero’s family will, no matter how rational and ingenious he’s been in his stalking tactics throughout the film, nevertheless turn into a raging lunatic at the end and will mount a suicidal frontal assault; etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. The truth is that a major component of the felt suspense in contemporary U.S. suspense movies concerns how the filmmaker is going to manipulate various plot and character elements in order to engineer the required massage of our moral certainties. This is why the discomfort we feel at “suspense” movies is perceived as a pleasant discomfort. And this is why, when a filmmaker fails to wrap his product up in the appropriate verity-confirming fashion, we feel not disinterest or even offense but anger, a sense of betrayal—we feel that an unspoken but very important covenant has been violated. 61. (Not to mention for being (from various reviews) “overwrought,” “incoherent,” “too much”)

#i hope this post isnt horrifyingly long and doesnt annoy anymore #im gonna tag it #long post #cause i know some people filter that tag #BUT THIS IS SO FREAKING AMAZING AND ABOUT THE ESSENCE OF FILM AND ART IN GENERAL #and is a great example of how wallace was able to write in a way that makes the reader feel more intelligent rather than intimidated #by his intelligence #david foster wallace #david lynch #a supposedly fun thing i'll never do again

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centaurianthropology · 7 years ago

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I am not particularly well-versed in meta-analysis so I'm curious what someone better versed in the art (aka you) would have to say about the relevance of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias (to which I'm assuming the ep title was a reference) to the episode, the story as a whole, and potentially also specifically the Unknowing?

First off, don’t sell yourself short! Meta is seriouslyjust the art of blathering your own opinion about something with some semblanceof structure and using the facts at hand as evidence. That’s why it’s sofun to meta with other people. My own meta is always just my opinionbacked with whatever knowledge on the subject I happen to have. Hearing the metas from other people enrichesmy opinion and let me test my own theories against others.

Second, I should probablywarn you that it’s been a healthy while since I did any sort of poetryanalysis, and never considered myself particularly versed in it (no punintended). So for this meta, we’re going to only be using the words ofthe poem, and the context of the Library of Alexandria, which I believe is what’sbeing obliquely referenced with that particular quote. And given that we’re drawing ever closer tothe Unknowing, I feel like that’s a particularly apt little bit of poetry todraw from. I’m also going to dig alittle into the history of the Library of Alexandria for this one. Again, this isn’t my area. I took a few classes on Egyptology during myMaster’s work, and that’s been more than a decade ago. And even then, we didn’t get far into theGreco-Roman rule of Egypt, which is in large part where the history of thelibrary comes from. So I’ll be using myold friend Wikipedia here. If someoneelse out there happens to have made a proper study of the library and wouldlike to add things or correct some of my misapprehensions, please do!

So, yeah. Preliminariesdone. Let’s meta. And history.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from anantique landWho said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,Tell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:And on the pedestal these words appear:‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.”

I think a huge part of the underpinnings of the storyof ‘The Magnus Archives’ is change. The Unknowing is apparently adance that doesn’t end the world, but changes it irrevocably into somethingthat better resembles the Stranger. Something even more bizarre anduncanny than the world is currently.

It’s my theory, since hearingthis, that the world as it currently is, is held in balance. None of theGreat Old Ones have managed to get a firm enough foothold to fully transformthe world. But there have been moments when something like the Unknowinghave likely succeeded, but those successes were temporary. Let meexplain.

A little bit of historicalcontext, likely tweaked in the TMA universe, regarding the Library ofAlexandria. The Library was considered to be one of the great centers oflearning in the western world from around the 3rd century BCE until itsdestruction. It was believed to house somewhere between 40,000 and400,000 papyrus scrolls at its height.

The exact date of itsdestruction is unknown, though some believe that Julius Caesar’s army burned itas early as 48 BCE, though it might have been as late as the 270s CE. Quite a few of the works there survived at a smaller site called the Serapeum,a large temple built during the Greek rule of Egypt. The Serapeum itselfis thought to have been destroyed on the orders of Pope Theophilius ofAlexandria, during his purge of all non-Christian places of worship, around 390CE. A library to rival Alexandria’s likely did not exist again in thatarea until the House of Wisdom in Baghdad built its library in the 9th centuryCE (many historical books from before that period would have been entirely lostwere it not for the Arabic translations reconstructed there).

I want to lay this out toshow that there was no singular destruction of the library. All the dates are contested, and all theevents surrounded its eventual burning were also questionable. Given that the Serapeum survived as anoffshoot, and in the TMA universe, the library had an even more secretiveoffshoot in its Archive, it’s likely even harder to place the date of thatUnknowing event. But for convenience,let’s use the later date as the destruction of the Archives. Specifically, the library wasburned around270 CE during an attack on the city by the Roman Emperor Aurelian.

He’s an interesting guy. He’s one of those rose-up-the-ranks militaryemperors like Domitian that tended to do fairly well by his empire. Aurelian’s rule was actually a period ofbarely keeping things together for the Roman Empire. They were stretched too thin, and it was onlythrough his concerted military efforts that the whole thing didn’t collapseduring his reign. He was actually deifiedby the Empire for his work.

So it’s interesting that theLibrary of Alexandria was destroyed as part of an effort to maintain order, tokeep the world as the Romans knew it from unravelling. It was done as an effort to fight change, inour world.

Could that have been whereGertrude’s plan started to hatch? Weknow she went to Alexandria and studied the remnants of that Archive. She might even be responsible for the deathof that former Archivist still trapped there.

We’re viewing the destructionof the Institute as a part of the Unknowing, but whose word do we have forthat? Elias, who defines himselfentirely as the beating heart of the Institute. Of course he believes that the preservation of the Archive and theInstitute are necessary to prevent the Unknowing. And superficially, that makes sense. If the Unknowing is about changing the worldto be less, well, knowing, then maintaining the Archives should be of paramountimportance. But instead, Gertrudedecided to detonate the whole thing. Why? That’s the question I keepasking. If she knew that the Unknowingwas coming, and that things were rapidly declining toward the dance thatchanges the world, why would she pick that time to destroy the Archive?

Unless preventing theUnknowing is less about one side or the other winning than it is preserving thebalance.

So we come back to the poem ‘Ozymandias’,which is a hauntingly short, lonely piece. At its most basic, it’s a poem about all things ending, all thingsdecaying, and all things ending up as equal in the vast flat desert. We have in this a once-great statue, and aboast on a plaque demanding that the reader gaze upon the great works of thislost king. Except the works are gone,swallowed back by the equality of the desert.

Nothing beside remains.

I think that this specificline could certainly reference the Unknowing, in the simple fact that nothinglike that lasts. We don’t know if thedestruction of Alexandria was a successful Unknowing or not. One might claim that the fact that theStranger is attempting to dance the Unknowing again indicates it wasn’t. But how would we know? What is the result of the Unknowing? Change. But change keeps on going. Novictory is static. Do you think that ifthe Unknowing were to succeed, the Beholding would die? No. These beings, whatever they are, don’t have any concept of an end. They don’t exist that way. So one wins, and for a while they have astronger grip over this reality. Buteventually things turn around. All theirgreat works fall. The library isdestroyed. The mask shatters. All that’s left are remnants of thattime. A face in an empty desert.

And on a smaller level, Ithink that line is being addressed to Elias. His hubris clearly knows no bounds. He is very much Ozymandias, this King of Kings, this beating heart of hiskingdom. Look on his works: the libraryof the Institute is one of the premiere paranormal libraries in the world. The other supernatural beings look at thisman—because he still is mostly a man—and they respect him. They respect the order he keeps and the powerhe wields. And right now, it really doesfeel like we have to look on his works and despair. He’s the single most powerful entity directlyinvolved in the story right now.

But change happens. The library falls. The Unknowing happens or it doesn’t. This show is masterful at the surprisinganticlimax, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a part of theUnknowing. If the Stranger wins … andnothing in particular happens. Becausethe world is already uncanny. Things tipone direction or the other, but they are always eventually leveled backout. It seems much more immediate forthe characters, of course, as they are affected on an amplified scale by theseevents. But to the Great Old Ones? It’s just another move in the game, with therubble of a thousand moves before stretched out across the globe.

And this is why I really needto find out why Gertrude decided that destroying the Institute wasnecessary. This is why I need to knowwhat she discovered when she went to Alexandria. When she met the oldest Archivist inexistence. This is why I need to knowwhat was in the Schwartzwald tomb that was powerful enough to restart theArchive through Jonah Magnus. This iswhy I want to know more about what happened during the last Unknowing event,who won, and how. Because even though it’sjust another move in a game without end, even though everything does eventuallyrevert to the desert, we care about this particular move. And to understand how this is going to playout, Jon needs to understand what came before.

Elias is Ozymandias, revelingin his works even as they are fleeting. He’s lost track of his own scope in this game, his own importance. I think Gertrude kept that sense that she wassmall, and that her moves had to be strategic to achieve her ends, whateverthose were. She had a sense that allthings end, that some things might need to end. Perhaps she let go of too much. Jon isn’t Elias or Gertrude. He’sslapped in the face at every opportunity with the notion that he’s not the mostpowerful being in the room. He cares somuch he hates it. He wants to protectpeople, which makes this move and this choice matter to him perhaps more thanit even did for Gertrude. She wasplaying the game. He’s trying to save asmany people as possible. It’s the pieceson the board he cares about, not necessarily the result of the game.

And that’s where his choicesare going to differ from Elias and Gertrude. He’s not a statue in the desert, nor is he the sacking army that levelsthe library. He’s just one guy given acertain amount of power and more importance in this game than he everwanted. He’s connected to his humanity ina way that Gertrude wasn’t, and that Elias can’t understand. His entire history says that he’s isolatedand distant. That he avoids deep andmeaningful relationships. But that doesn’tmean he doesn’t care. Entirely theopposite, really. He cares toomuch. And that means that how he playsthis game is going to be radically different to the way that Elias or Gertrudewould. In the end, the Archive may wellfall. The Stranger may or may notwin. But Jon will simply try to savewhoever he can.

#The Magnus Archives #this has been a bit rambly #I started out with the poem #but ended up spiralling out through theories about characters #and a stroll through history #because I love me some history #hopefully you can figure out what the hell I was trying to say here #apologies for a certain lack of a central point here #biextroverts

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