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itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Creation”

Happy Saturday, everyone! Oh man, oh man, oh man. I think I'll need to steer clear of the general RWBY tags this week, simply because I know the sort of responses I'll see to this episode. From smug celebration at Ironwood's downfall, to bad takes about what makes us human, this episode is a petri dish of sensitive material handled insensitively.

Let’s unpack it, shall we?

We open on an action that feels like a summery of the last three volumes: a grimm attacks an airship from the front, no doubt killing its pilot, while the other grimm conveniently ignore our heroes, no masking in sight. The group looks a little sad at the destruction around them, but ultimately ignore it because they have bigger, heroic things to do. I could write a whole, additional essay on how the huntsmen code — to protect the people — has been warped and abandoned by our protagonists in their effort to do what they think is right. It's a tale that might have been compelling if only RT knew they were writing it.

We get a shot of Atlas drones unloading the bomb before one is taken out, presumably by Qrow and Robyn. Segueing to Ironwood and the Ace Ops, they're waiting for Penny to arrive, the former carrying a massive gun presumably capable of capturing her. Despite the horror we saw on their faces last episode at the realization that Ironwood would kill Marrow for speaking up, it seems that now the Ace Ops are entirely in agreement with these measures. A week ago the implication was that they fell back in line out of fear, but now Harriet talks passionately about "putting down" the group if they were stupid enough to accompany Penny. "The General gave his terms." Vine sighs at this, but doesn't actively disagree. He's just "retracing the steps that led us here."

So, congratulations on introducing four new characters, not bothering to develop any of them, killing one off while ignoring Qrow's hand in that, and having the other three become all, "Yeah! Mass murder is a perfect solution!" off screen. Marrow is the only one with something resembling development and, as covered in these recaps, that's been pretty badly executed too.

Ironwood sends them to deal with Robyn and Qrow after Winter reappears to "assist" him. That gets quotation marks because most viewers at this point have realized that she's who our two birbs spotted in the elevator. Winter isn't on Ironwood's side anymore, she's just skillfully clearing the field for the final attack. Indeed, we get a moment where she hesitantly brings up the bomb and Ironwood responds that he hopes she's not going to try and talk him out of it. No. Winter doesn't think that's possible. This was her final attempt at peace.

One of the reasons why I think I'll stick to my own blog for a while is because the fandom has a tendency to paint broad personality traits as evil when applied to some characters, yet simultaneously heroic when applied to others, when really it's about how that those traits are used. What I mean is, I've seen a lot of Ironwood critical posts that emphasize how stubborn he is. He thinks he's right and he won't back down. He wont listen to others. He's going through with this plan and if anyone tries to stop him? That's their mistake. Totally evil, right? Except, this is the exact same behavior Ruby displays, particularly in Volumes 6 and 7. She was stubborn about stealing from Argus and continuing the fight to the point where it endangered her and her teammates, to say nothing of the rest of the city. She refused to listen to Qrow, or Ironwood, or the Ace Ops, loudly announcing that she was right about, well, everything. If they didn't agree with her, the options were to leave the group entirely, or fight her. The actual difference here is that the writers have taken Ironwood to an extreme, one that's incredibly easy to understand as bad because it is bad: bombing Mantle has no defense. Ruby pulls the exact same nonsense, it's just not to that same extreme and her actions are followed by scenes that are meant to make us forgive her: a sad look because she didn't mean to get a city attacked by a leviathan grimm, a cry on the staircase because she didn't mean to risk the lives of an entire kingdom... even though she did. Ironwood is the bad guy because he's been written to take specific, OOC actions like shooting unarmed kids. He's not the bad guy because when other characters go, "Don't do this" his response is, "I have to." Because that's been Ruby's motto ever since she "had" to use the Lamp to rip Ozpin’s life story away. RWBY introduced those extreme actions of shooting the youngest in the group (for no reason) and threatening to bomb a city (for no reason) or shooting a councilman (for no reason) because when you remove those you've got a man who looks exactly like our hero. Ironwood's arc has been peppered with these confusing, unpersuasive actions because if you just keep the story as him stubbornly keeping to a plan he thinks will save the world, you're left with the reminder that all Ruby has done lately is stubbornly keep to plans she thinks will save the world. This moment with Winter just highlights how ill thought out Ironwood's descent has been because he does everything Ruby does... with a few, tacked on, “and randomly shoots people!” moments to ensure we understand that he’s definitely evil. No comparison to our heroes here, folks!

Ironwood is a bad guy now. That’s certain, but he was made that way so the story never had to grapple with the question of what that means for Ruby if we really start condemning things like lying, secrets, stubbornness, or endangering others for the greater good. Well then damn, if we strip away the hypocrisy then she might not be a good person after all. Or the people she’s simplistically labeled as bad might not be the devils Ruby claims they are.

But that’s a level of nuance RWBY would rather pretend doesn’t exist.

All of which is highlighted by Ironwood’s reaction to "Penny." He sighs and sags over the gun, immediately putting it aside. With his hand on her shoulder, Ironwood tells her she's "done the right thing." Precisely the same way Ruby would lower Crescent Rose and give someone a smile when they decided to fall in line with her.

Which, of course, is the moment when Emerald reveals herself, dispelling the Penny illusion and revealing Team JNPR The Second behind her. She gives a quip about it feeling "weird" to do the right thing before disappearing.

From there the action picks up fast. I really enjoyed this battle simply from a choreography and energy standpoint. It gets the blood pumping, Ironwood's hand-to-hand is spectacular — especially that moment against Ren — and the group actually displays teamwork for the first time in what feels like forever, all of them needed to land a hit on Ironwood. As always, out of the context of the rest of the show it feels and looks great. My primary issue is that we get this fantastic fight against Ironwood. Not Salem, not Cinder, not Watts (like last volume when Ironwood was still a hero), not even Emerald as a means of transitioning from murderous villain to the group's best bud. No, what's arguably the best action sequence in the volume thus far goes to beating up the guy they betrayed from the start. There's no catharsis for me here, only frustration as we watch Ironwood stand in shock as Winter powers up Nora — who's fine now, I guess — and she slams her hammer into his face.

It never should have come to this and when a good character is done so dirty, their downfall doesn't evoke the emotions the writers are looking for. Watching Ironwood fall doesn't generate feelings of victory, or even tragedy at a course of events others were powerless to stop. It's just frustration at watching years worth of bad writing, sprinkled with fantastic ideas that never go anywhere.

Oscar gets a few hits in, Ironwood snatches his cane, and just as he's about to throw a punch, Winter arrives with the most dramatic sword slash I've ever seen.

Ironwood's aura breaks and he falls, unconscious. We cut to an image of a droid's head separated from its body, one of Robyn's arrows through its skull. That doesn't have meaning or anything.

I suppose I should be grateful they didn't rip Ironwood's arm away during the fight, or outright kill him, though I'm still expecting him to die before the end of the volume.

Hmm. Wouldn't that be something? If after Salem's arrival, freezing cold, a Hound attack, grimm soup, a giant whale, a massive army, and a hack ending in self-destruction, the one character who actually dies is Ironwood.

It's looking more and more likely.

Honestly, beyond all the obvious, what's so frustrating about this fight is that characters are only now using their impressive abilities to their fullest. Emerald creates an entire fantasy of what's happening and then straight up disappears, but she only does a half-assed version of that when fighting against Penny. (And really, she put more effort into helping the heroes she just joined over Cinder, the woman she's been obsessed with since the start?) Marrow refuses to use "Stay" against a group they wanted to peacefully arrest because that's just too horrible an act, I guess, but he'll do it on his own teammates the second Qrow and Robyn don’t want to fight.

This is what I mean when I say the rules of the world bend to assist the protagonists in absurd ways. It's not nearly as egregious as Amity suddenly being up and running, but the fact that characters become substantially more powerful while fighting for the protagonists than they do against them is still a significant problem.

So Ironwood is down and out. As much as I hated watching that and didn't necessarily want more, am I the only one who felt like it was... a bit lackluster? I mean, the action was great, yes, but relatively short. There was no dialogue, such as another delve into the moral questions that led to this fight in the first place. There certainly wasn’t any hesitance against fighting a former ally. (Again, we’re meant to believe that the Ace Ops won because they just couldn’t bear to fight the group seriously, but every former ally here is capable of wailing on Ironwood without a single pause or pained look?) Ironwood just skillfully blocks for a while, is blindsided by Winter's betrayal, and then falls unconscious. Given that we learn he and Jacques will be evacuated after the rest of the kingdom, it's possible he'll escape somehow and we'll get a fight 2.0, but if not that feels like a rather tame end to the guy forced into the antagonist seat. Plus, what was the point of having Qrow frothing at the mouth to kill him this whole volume? I never wanted that to happen, I'm glad it hasn't, but I'm nevertheless left to ask why we bothered with that eleven episode side plot if we were going to erase it with one sentence from Robyn about Qrow being better than this. If that's all it took, let them work through Qrow's irrational anger while sitting around in a cell.

Winter tells the group to move onto "phase two" which is when we're treated to a flashback. We return to the ending of the last episode, with Ruby realizing that opening the vault is an option. Jaune, all smiles, goes, "We never considered using what's inside!"

This is what I mean about no consequences! This is what I mean about it all being a meaningless circle that ends with undeserved praise for the group! We started this horror show with Ironwood going, "We don't have a plan to protect the people, so I'm going to take what people we do have to safety" and the group going, "We don't have a plan either, but we're going to stop you implementing your plan because it's not perfect, risking a kingdom's worth of lives in the process." Now, the group has used two plans, one of which two characters knew about at the start and another they could have devised with the information they had. Oscar and Ozpin's, "We have an all powerful magical blast in our cane" and the group's "What if we used the Staff for something other than raising Atlas?" are both things that could have come up in the office debate. These were both always on the table! Instead, Ruby grew furious over the mere thought of cutting their losses, betrayed Ironwood again, attacked his people, denounced him to the world, and then two days later goes, "Oh wait! We could do something now that we could have easily done before if we hadn't made a needless enemy!"

Everyone realizes how much worse they made things, right? Turning against Ironwood, bringing everyone left in Mantle directly under Atlas, sitting around while an army was devoured, drawing it out until Penny was hacked... all of it would have been avoided if the group had thought and discussed things for a few minutes, not jumping straight to violently resisting what Ironwood came up with first. "We never considered..." Ruby says. Yeah, you didn't, except that's not something to smile about. The group made the situation a thousand times worse with their reaction when they could have just magically evacuated the kingdom from the start. “Maybe we could use it to save Penny and get everyone in Atlas and Mantle back to safety." Nothing has changed! They had this ability the whole time! Nothing about the last twelve episodes led them here, they just randomly thought of it after RT had padded the volume with needless drama. Considering that they're heading to Vacuo now, we could have just made this the finale of Volume 7 instead: big fight with Ironwood, revelation, get everyone evacuated while Salem attacks, leave her behind, then Volume 8 begins in Vacuo with the group knowing Salem is out there looking for them. This entire volume has been pointless. What did they accomplish?

Oscar got kidnapped and beat up, Nora was scarred, Ruby and Yang realized horrible things about Summer, and the whole world is panicking about a witch. Good things are... Ren and Ruby unlocked some semblance stuff? Weiss loves her brother again after he proved himself useful to her? Great work, team.

So this one moment makes everything they've done up to this point useless and, of course, once thought up the plan goes off without a hitch. Note that the summary of this episode says, "It's risky, dangerous, and nearly impossible — but it's the only plan they've got." Nearly impossible? That's a whole lot of talk for a plan that was implemented perfectly.

There is, admittedly, one snag, but one that is likewise made meaningless just seconds later. We'll get to that.

We see Winter call Weiss who also smiles at hearing from her sister. Obviously interactions like the group's with Emerald are the bigger concern, but it's still an issue that no one reacts as they should to people reappearing in their lives. Rather, RWBY continually confuses audience knowledge with character knowledge. We know Winter is on their side now, but Weiss hasn't a clue. Last she saw, she and Winter were agreeing to head down different paths. She has no reason to think her sister isn't loyal to Ironwood, so why isn't the group treating this call with suspicion? What if it's Ironwood trying to mess with them through a presumably safe party? I swear to god, with any consistency in the story this group would be dead ten times over because their decisions are so stupid. Oscar decides to believe in the guy currently beating him to a pulp, the group decides to trust a villain over a flawed ally, and now they see Ironwood’s second calling and are like, “Great, big sister Winter is checking in!” There’s a difference between a hopeful story filled with second chances and characters whose reliance on the narrative bending to assist them makes them come across as insanely naive.

None of which even touches on characters forgetting that other characters are presumably dead. Ironwood shot Oscar off the edge of Atlas, but doesn't react to learning he was kidnapped, or when he shows up to the fight. Thanks to Marrow's comment, Winter thinks YJOR have perished in the whale, but also has no reaction to them appearing to help with this plan. Absolutely nothing is followed up on.

We then get a flashback within the flashback (fun) of Winter — shock — not arresting Marrow. It's precisely as I assumed, with Marrow angrily asking why she hit him and Winter responding with, “Because you were about to get killed if I didn’t do something!” As I said last recap, I feel like I should let the marginalized groups lead this discussion, but I do want to add that no matter how well intentioned — or strategic, as I mentioned last time — the imagery itself is still harmful. No matter the context, we were still left with white woman Winter putting her knee on black man Marrow's back to arrest him, and it’s an image that everyone in the U.S. should be familiar with the horror of. Far more of a problem than the (presumed) ignorance of this scene is, I think, the choice to make Winter entirely unrepentant. I think some of this discomfort could have been alleviated if RT had written Winter as apologetic, contrite that it came to that and asking Marrow to understand that she only did it as a means of assisting him. Asking his forgiveness. Instead, we get this

So what, the only emotion we have room for is gratitude that Winter beat him up? Yikes.

As a lighter side note, I find the animation here unintentionally hilarious. Winter's assistive device makes her shoulders look too high, making this gesture more, "Woman exaggeratedly pouts about not getting ice cream for dinner" and less, "Woman sternly closes off during a disagreement about saving lives and betraying their general." Gotta find our humor where we can, right?

What's intentional, but far less funny, is the needless animation to show us that, yes, Marrow is peering at Winter calling Weiss. Oh, the shenanigans.

The elevator opens where Qrow and Robyn spot them. "Speaking of help," Winter says, as if she has any reason to believe Qrow didn't kill Clover. He and Robyn lower their weapons a bit, as if they have any reason to believe Winter and Marrow aren't still loyal to Ironwood. Would it really be so hard to have Winter immediately throw up her hands in the face of their almost-attack, blurting that she's not their enemy and needs their help, please listen? Again, RWBY can't remember which characters know what, let alone what their motivations and reactions should be.

We then enter the third part of the flashback where everyone piles into the Schnee dining room and discusses doing the things they could have done from the start. I'm metaphorically banging my head against that table. In RWBY's favor though, we also get a long shot of Jaune continuing to boost Penny’s aura.

Though it's only one of many issues, just the other day I asked, "Hey, why has Jaune always needed to hold onto the person he's assisting, but now suddenly he can touch Penny once and the boost remains?" It still doesn't explain why he was letting go before/why him needing to boost her continuously didn't put a hard time limit on their plan — not that Mantle's hour limit meant a thing — but at least they're showing more of that here.

Oscar notes that Atlas has enough gravity dust that it won't fall immediately when they use the Relic, but they will have to move fast to ensure no one is underneath. Yeah, like all the civilians you put there. He also cautions that the Staff isn't a "magic wand" that they can just wave to make all their problems go away... even though that's precisely what they're going to do. Ozpin gets some lines that aren't apologies or followed by attacks — hallelujah! — about how the Staff's spirit is a "character" and requires that you be able to precisely explain anything you want him to make. Blueprints, examples, a firm knowledge of how this will be accomplished — all of it is required to actually get what you're after. That's a cool limitation. It's just too bad we didn't know about it episodes ago, forcing our heroes to find ways to meet those requirements. Instead, they already have everything ready to go the moment they learn about it: Penny has her own schematics and Whitley apparently has knowledge of the entire kingdom after sending some ships out. Normally I'd go, "Really?" but I'm still just struck by how much good he's done compared to everyone else in this room. Your show is seriously broken when the side character the writers didn't even want the audience to like until a few episodes ago is more active, mature, and sensible than the heroes.

From there we see the group implementing the plan. They fly up through the hole Oscar left, straight to the vault. Penny opens it without any trouble and Ruby uses her speed to grab the Relic and stop time, halting her self-termination. I do like that combination of skill and their knowledge of how this magic works. That felt like a smart move. What's interesting though is that the Relic appears to stop time in the entire kingdom. We see people in Mantle and Atlas slowing to a halt too. I assume no one remembers that happening after time restarts, otherwise people would be freaked out by suddenly being frozen in place.

Wouldn't that have been cool though? The group often takes a while to use the Relics, either deciding what they need, or watching Jinn's information, so what if you had a population that blinks and suddenly, from their perspective, half an hour has passed? How long might Ozpin have sat on his knees after Jinn told him he wasn't able to defeat Salem? How long was that space frozen? We could have had a world built around rumors and fairy tales. Not the random stories Ozpin brings up to make a point and that we never hear about again, but tiny details that foreshadow these revelations. A Beacon where the kids tell each other spooky stories of people suddenly losing time, once a whole day. The wives, sisters, daughters, and nieces who disappear, or wake up one day with horrifying, unnatural powers. We see magic influence the world around it, but we've seen very little of the world reacting to that influence. The one time I can think of is Blake reading a book about "a man with two souls," the fiction clearly inspired by knowledge of Ozpin. And indeed, it felt great to recognize that as a significant detail and then be proven right years later as the lore was revealed. We could have gotten so much more of that if RWBY was better planned out.

I'm getting off track though. As time stops we see a series of images: Ironwood being led to a cell with Jacques, Penny succumbing to her hack, Team JNPR The Second preparing to contact the kingdom about what's going on. Then everyone is distracted by the giant, blue, buff Ambrosius who comes out of the Staff.

...there's a lot of innuendo in that last statement lol. At least RWBY is committed to the crazy design they chose? I was never particularly comfortable with the image of characters gaping up at a giant, naked woman in chains, so it's nice to balance that a bit with an equally giant, naked dude in chains.

From here things get confusing. In all honesty, I'm not sure if this is another moment where RWBY is trying to pass off a retcon as the group being brilliant, or if I, as an individual, simply didn't follow the logic. I won't bother to rehash the slow, meandering way that Ruby reveals their plan — that certainly didn't help with the clarity. Not in an episode where we didn’t even know these rules ahead of time — but it boils down to this:

The moment they have Ambrosius create something new Atlas will start to fall. Two of his creations can't exist at the same time.

He needs clear instructions about what he's making in order to create it.

The group has brought him Penny's schematics so that he understands how she's built.

They want, specifically, "a new version of her... using her exact robot parts."

They can't just create an exact duplicate of Penny because that would carry the virus with it.

They can't create an exact duplicate without the virus because that Penny would cease to exist as soon as they used Ambrosius to make an evacuation plan instead.

So they essentially want Ambrosius to create a new Penny by removing all the robot parts from the Penny that currently exists, carrying the virus with them, and leaving only the human parts of Penny behind: her aura/soul. Then, the purely robot version is destroyed when Ambrosius creates something new.

Except... this new Penny, this human Penny, still needed a human body. That's what Ambrosius created and that's the snag I don't understand. They want a version of Penny that's just her aura, just her soul, but that soul still needs something to be housed in. Ambrosius himself notes that. At first I thought the group would just have some wisp-like version of Penny they'd have to find a new body for — perhaps leading to a new one for Ozpin too — but she's just... given a human body when he takes the technology away, something she absolutely didn't have before. That is Ambrosius' creation. That is what should have disappeared along with the removed parts of Penny, leaving only her soul — what Ambrosius didn't touch — behind. Instead, the plot oh so conveniently has Penny get a new body for free and it's untouched as they move onto the next task.

Ruby drops a casual line about Ambrosius not being able to kill, or destroy, or something, which I think is meant to be the justification here. The rule (which, again, we JUST learned) about not killing anyone supersedes the rule of two creations not allowed to exist, allowing Penny to stick around. But even if that’s true, it’s a load of bull. What, does the magic think no one in an entire city might die if the floating mechanism is removed and it plummets to the ground? Ambrosius didn’t say, “Sorry, can’t stop floating Atlas because thousands of people are still here and they’ll die if I create something new,” but we’re supposed to believe the group skated by on, “Sorry, can’t destroy the last creation like everything else because there’s a single person still using that body and she’ll die if I create something new”?

Seriously, did I miss something? Or is this another, "Amity is ready because the group needs it" situation? The rule of creations ceasing to exist is bent because the group needs to have their friend around. Ambrosius is certainly enthusiastically complimentary, saying how "smart" the group is and that they've "done their homework," but I'm not so sure. It feels like a moment where the show is (once again) insistent that the group is far more talented and brilliant than their actions actually imply. It's only the rules of the world twisting and turning that allows for their success. To say nothing of how the episode dropped all these rules on the viewer in a ten minute info dump, ensuring we didn’t have any time to think about them before the deed was done.

It doesn't add up for me and honestly, even putting that aside? I hate this. I absolutely despise it. Look, if it turns out this really does make sense then props to the group for coming up with that plan. Our snag aside, the rest is a legitimately well thought out wish. I don't have a problem with the execution so much as the message. I've been saying since Volume 7 that RWBY has done Penny a disservice in terms of her "real girl" narrative. Whereas before we had a firm message that you don't need "squishy guts" to be human, to be real, Volume 8 continued to carry us further and further into the idea that it is necessary. That Penny's body is entirely inhuman, something to hate, but at least her soul is human and good. That's what the virus arc taught us: your terrible, technological body might be betraying you, but hold onto the parts of you that are really human. I hated that too, but I never thought RWBY would go this far. They made Penny fully human and went, “THIS is the version that always should have existed.”

And this isn't just me reading into the implications. It's right there in the text. Blake says that they're looking for “Penny, the girl who’s always been there underneath." Meaning, underneath the metal. The girl exists trapped in the robot body. Yang holds up her arm and says that the metal is only "extra," it's not really who you are.

That gets into two perspectives on disability that RWBY just doesn't have the nuance for: what's an integral and celebratory part of one person's existence can be seen as something separate and discomforting to another. Though there are many people with disabilities who would happily cure themselves with a magic Staff if given the chance, there are just as many who say no, this is a part of my identity. I don't want to change, I just want the world to accommodate my existence. However, RWBY takes a hard stance here, saying that any metal in your body is intrinsically bad. We didn’t use to have this take, but now the show has embraced it. Blake says the real Penny is trapped in there. Yang's words implies that she'd get rid of this "extra" bit of her if possible. Mercury with his metal legs is the enemy. Ironwood with half his metal body is the enemy. Whereas once difference was truly accepted, now it's shunned and fixed whenever possible. Those who can't be fixed, like Yang, must simply deal with the lot they've been dealt, reassuring themselves that the metal isn't really them. But Penny? Penny they can fix.

So they do and the very first thing Penny does is hug Ruby, exclaiming, “Do hugs always make you feel this warm inside? Wow. More!” and proceeds to hug all the others.

What's the underlying message there? Penny didn't understand hugs before this moment. She never experienced the "warmth" of them while an android, despite the fact that here warmth is entirely metaphorical and has nothing to do with a literally cold body. RWBY really went and said that the "real girl” android was never actually real at all — not as real as she could be — because it's only when she's given "squishy guts" that she understands the true happiness of a hug.

Wow.

I mean seriously, wow.

Never-mind that, you know, we've seen that happiness and warmth since she was first introduced.

RWBY is really rewriting all the core themes introduced in Volumes 1-3 and it sucks. The show is absolutely the worse for it.

To say nothing of all the other disservices to Penny's character here. There's all this buildup about whether she'll still be the same Penny once the wish is complete, but of course she is. We wouldn't want to have Penny struggle when she becomes something other than what she's always been, would we? After all, it took Yang an entire volume to work through the shock of a metal arm, but taking away a metal body for a human one is in no way traumatic. Having a normal, human body is intrinsically a good thing! Of course Penny accepts it with nothing but smiles. Becoming human is celebratory, but becoming more machine is a horror.

She gets to watch her body self-destruct, glitching out and collapsing in front of her. But again, nothing to unpack there that can't be covered with a hand over her mouth.

There's no discussion of whether Penny still has the Maiden powers, or whether a wish like that would mess with the transfer in any way. How did the group know this action wouldn't register as a clear-cut death, forcing the power out of her and into someone new? Obviously they couldn’t know, but no one even thought to bring it up?

And the entire time they're formulating their evacuation plan, there's no talk of whether these portals will appear before everyone currently alive in the kingdom. I mean, if they do then Ironwood and Jacques can just waltz through and escape into Vacuo. If they don’t, then Maria and Pietro don't necessarily have a way out. We still don't know if they're stuck floating in Amity, or if Amity crashed, or if they made their way back to Mantle or Atlas. More importantly, the characters don't know. I have no problem with RWBY keeping that a surprise until the finale, but I absolutely take issue with Pietro's daughter walking through a portal, seemingly not to care whether her father is going to make it out too.

It's been the same with Qrow and his nieces' relationships. The show is good at insisting that these families love each other because they hug and smile while on screen together, but when shit is actually going down, none of them care about pesky things like disappearances, arrests, or “The last time I saw you, you were with an old woman on a damaged station after a villain attack, potentially stranded in deadly cold if life support failed.”

So yeah, this entire arc with Penny has been a disaster. From throwing away her framing subplot, to giving her a virus that did absolutely nothing, to giving her the Maiden powers which she's also done nothing with, to erasing her android status for a “She's really human now” message, Penny has been done dirty by the show these last two volumes. Not nearly to the extent Ironwood has, but still. At this point I wish they'd just kept her dead dead. Why do I want her back when that resurrection produces no reaction, her conflicts lead nowhere, and one of the core things that made Penny Penny has now been magically erased?

I've been saying for weeks that killing Penny off and keeping Penny around each had serious downsides attached, yet I never expected RWBY to do BOTH.

Also, I'm warding off any, "But Pinocchio was made into a real boy too" defenses. RWBY is not Pinocchio. Penny is not Pinocchio. I thought the allusion was going to be the Pinocchio inspired girl heading into the whale, not the show forcing the exact plotline — down to a blue, magical creature — onto a character whose entire journey has been about accepting herself as an android. Congratulations, RT. You just obliterated years of work.

Again, if you'd like an example of how to do this far better:

As Penny's character falls apart, Atlas shakes, alerting Jaune and the other that a new wish has been granted. Jaune pecks at the screen and realizes "That did, uh, something…?” but doesn’t realize that there's a giant, red "LIVE" up in the corner.

Jaune tries to warn the entire kingdom about their plan, but what he actually says is

“Atlas is falling, but — !”

And then the communications cut out.

Watts, perhaps?

Our heroes are really good at saying things that make large populaces panic, huh? This is the one (1) snag in their "impossible" plan, but as said above, it doesn't amount to anything. We get a shot of Nora, horrified at the thought of kingdom-wide communications being down, but literally seconds later Team RWBY has made portals appear that everyone can walk through. So... why do we care about communications? More importantly, why does the show try to make us care? So much time is spent getting the viewer invested in problems that never come to mean anything.

Including the problem of Salem herself.

Because the group successfully creates that evacuation plan. This is it. Everyone is leaving while Salem still reforms.

Yang asks if they can use the vaults themselves as a single point for everyone to go to and Ambrosius agrees. So everyone is going to pile into the Vacuo vault that can only be opened by an unknown Maiden? They're going to put an entire kingdom's worth of people, including their enemies, into the vault where the Relic of Destruction is? Yeah, that's great. Prior to this — like if this had been the plan at the end of Volume 7 — I would have 100% agreed that these risks are better than death by Salem/grimm/cold. Now though, Oscar as axed Salem for an unknown length of time, the cold is having no impact on the civilians outside, and the grimm only attack background military personnel that supposedly no one cares about. They couldn't have spent another few minutes (especially with time stopped!) to figure out a means of getting to Vacuo that doesn't involve revealing and providing access to the location of a super secret vault? To say nothing of what they're going to do if Salem wakes up and snags one of those portals for herself. Two kingdoms for the price of one!

But that's what they're going with. Weiss gives Ambrosius a schematic of the kingdom, I guess, and he makes branching pathways appear with numerous portals for everyone to step through. They'll enter through one and, when they exit another, will be in Vacuo. Easy peasy, right? Especially since Ambrosius doesn't seem to have any limitations about how often his power is used. Is it three creations every 100 years like Jinn? We're not told, at least not to my recollection. However, I was expecting there to be a waiting period, that they'd fix Penny, go to evacuate the kingdom, and learn that sorry, I can't make another creation just yet. It feels like the sort of shit move these beings would pull — "Don't cry to me when it's not what you wanted" — it would have been another commentary on the group's insistence on putting friends over the people's safety (like demanding the Ace Ops not bomb the whale because of Oscar), and crucially, would have kept the action in Atlas. Isn't that what this volume is? The battle for and potential destruction of the Kingdom of Atlas? We have two episodes left and, unless something unexpected happens, we're moving that action to Vacuo. Why?

Meanwhile, Penny's corpse is just chilling in the background 😬

While all this is going on, Winter reassures Jacques that he and Ironwood will be evacuated too, though she makes it clear saving him was Weiss' idea. It checks out, considering Weiss is the one who turned her father's arrest into a joke last volume. Winter still takes his abuse seriously.

The group prepares to leave with a celebratory, "We did it!" from Weiss. I'm still banging my head against that dining room table. Before they can pass through the portal though, Ambrosius leaves them with one, dire warning: "Do not fall."

In any other story a line like that is a neon sign announcing to the audience that someone will absolutely fall, and maybe they will, but RWBY has dodged consequences so often I wouldn't be surprised if this was merely another way to string us along. Remember all the hype surrounding Salem? The cold combined with her army and magic? How she was going to decimate Atlas and leave our group broken in a Fall 2.0?

I mean, we still have two episodes left. Forty minutes of content. Salem might still decimate them, especially since something has to happen in the finale. But god, it's a problem that we've come this far without a payoff. Salem randomly decided not to attack anyone, was stopped by a weapon added in solely for this purpose, and now the whole kingdom is being evacuated with a plan the group could have used at the start. This volume really is meaningless.

“We go to vacuo and hope we’ve thought of everything” they say as the camera zooms in on Cinder's smiling face. For the second week in a row.

Bingo time!

Winter betrayed Ironwood, the group used the Staff of Creation, and I'm axing Maria on behalf of Pietro. You can't have the guy's daughter become human — after he was killing himself to give her his aura?? — and magically walk to Vacuo, not knowing if he's even survived since she last saw him, and expect me to think he hasn't been forgotten. Same with Maria. Has the group mentioned her since Amity cut out, notably for reasons they couldn’t explain? Of course not. Did they care to find out what happened? Of course not. I have no doubt they'll both re-appear in the next two episodes, Pietro crying over how perfect his girl is now and Maria congratulating the group on their actions, but we're still marking it.

This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever created, I hope you all are enjoying it :D

Another week, another couple feet added to the hole we’re digging. I know I keep saying I have no idea what's going to happen next... but I have no idea what's going to happen next. A Vacuo ending was not in the cards, not outside of them miraculously showing up in ships. Maybe they have been on their way to Atlas (somehow...) and will arrive precisely when everyone has left! Anything is possible at this point.

See you next Saturday, everyone. Hold on until then lol. 💜

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #mymetas #rwby recaps #rwby creation

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iamnmbr3 · 3 years ago

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I know you're not happy with the show but making things up is really damaging your reputation. The show is not a failure; it's the biggest launch of any disney+ show so far with the highest ratings. The first trailer has so many views because it's 7 months old, compared to the first episode being out a week and a half. The CGI doesn't look like it was done by a two year old (seriously lmao??). The tesseract looks dull because it powers down once in the TVA. Stop pretending Loki was mind controlled when Marvel confirmed in his character bio that he was emotionally influenced by the scepter. Bucky was mind controlled. Selvig and Hawkeye were mind controlled. Loki was influenced like Banner and the others were by the sceptre when they were around it on the helicarrier. Please consider that care has been taken to make Loki more multifaceted in this show, not OOC - he's just got more emotion and character to him now and feels to me and a lot of others, more like a living, breathing person who is struggling in the immediate aftermath of being shown the most traumatic recap of his life. I'm really sorry you're not happy with him, but his emotional core and inner heartbreak is being treated with love and respect by the show.

Hahahahahahahahhaha oh my god anon this was a funny read. Ngl usually when ppl come clowning in my inbox with incoherent rants I just delete it. But this was some quality clowning. This was just too funny to not share with everyone. So I’m gonna go line by line here.

“I know you're not happy with the show but making things up is really damaging your reputation.”

I’m gonna be real with you anon. This makes me sad because I will never write anything this funny. This made me laugh out loud. My reputation? My reputation?!?! I run a blog on Tumblr dot com. No reputation can recover from that. Also as to making things up? Uh. Where??? Just because you don’t like what I have to say doesn’t mean it’s made up. However with that kind of attitude I think you have a bright future ahead of you working in PR for the GOP. They love people who talk like you.

“The show is not a failure; it's the biggest launch of any disney+ show so far with the highest ratings.”

Ok I literally just talked about that HERE. But let me add a few more points here for your convenience. First of all, Disney+ hasn’t actually been doing that great. In fact Disney’s stock recently fell precisely because Diseny+ has underperformed. It missed growth expectations and none of the shows have attracted that big of an audience. Loki had MASSIVELY more interest than either WandaVision or TFATWS and yet it only drew 890K households for the premier - just barely more than either of those shows got. There haven’t been any numbers released for the episodes after the premier but given how boring and unfunny and uninteresting the premier was, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of viewers, especially more casual ones, didn’t come back for more.

“The first trailer has so many views because it's 7 months old, compared to the first episode being out a week and a half.”

Incorrect. Trailers get most of their views in the first week, and the vast majority in the first 2 weeks. Indeed, they get the most engagement in the first DAY usually and then it starts slowing. The early trailer that got 18 million views got most of that very quickly and then has grown extremely slowly ever since. The more recent trailers are not tracking to get anywhere near than engagement. Why? Because interest is dropping. Now maybe people just aren’t as interested in the trailers because they’re just happy to watch the actual show now or because they loved the first trailers so much that they decided to watch the show just based on that and didn't want to spoil themselves watching later trailers. Who knows. I certainly have my theories though.

"The CGI doesn't look like it was done by a two year old (seriously lmao??)."

Actually I said the posters looked like they were done by a 2 year old. Most of the CGI looks like cheap made-for-tv effects done by an underpaid and under qualified adult. But go off I guess. Also don’t even try to defend those badly photoshopped posters to me. I have eyes. I could argue with you but a picture is worth a thousand words. And just. Look at this thing! This is real. It’s so bad but it’s real. Who wants this?

"Stop pretending Loki was mind controlled when Marvel confirmed in his character bio that he was emotionally influenced by the scepter.Bucky was mind controlled. Selvig and Hawkeye were mind controlled. Loki was influenced like Banner and the others were by the sceptre when they were around it on the helicarrier"

That’s mind control lmao. The scepter was magically influencing his mind. Do you think emotions come from our feet or something?! (And that’s not even getting into the torture and conditioning he underwent or the fact that the Other had his claws in Loki’s mind and was hurting and threatening him in addition to the mind control). Also why do you think it’s appropriate to come on my blog like this and make these sorts of demands? This is my fandom blog that I run for fun. I can engage however I want. You need to learn to cope with that. If you enjoy the show that’s great. Go enjoy it. Don’t tell other people what to think. That’s not appropriate, reasonable, or healthy. If you find yourself truly unable to cope with strangers having different opinions from you about a tv show based on a comic book I definitely suggest you seek help from a professional.

"Please consider that care has been taken to make Loki more multifaceted in this show, not OOC - he's just got more emotion and character to him now and feels to me and a lot of others, more like a living, breathing person who is struggling in the immediate aftermath of being shown the most traumatic recap of his life."

I don’t see any evidence at all of care being put into the show. The writing and storytelling is incredibly sloppy. It gets even the most basic things wrong - like Loki’s speaking style or the fact that he wasn’t young in the 70s or that he speaks the Allspeak not English or his skin tone or hair length or the fact that Jotun!Loki should’ve had ridges on his skin. The head writer and story creator also is openly disdainful of Loki and talks about how he’s a “shithead” and “proper and pompous” and how he needs to be put in a situation where he has to stop “blaming” Odin and Thor for all his problems. He shows no understanding of Loki’s character or care for it. Maybe care was put into the show and they just messed up but I don’t see evidence of that. There’s certainly no way you could know that for a fact unless you are involved in the production in which case you are a biased source who has an ulterior motive for silencing critics of the show.

Also TV!Loki doesn’t feel like a real person to me at all. He feels like a caricature. He doesn’t act like Loki or do or say the things he would or even stand like he would. Look how Loki behaved when being interrogated by Natasha or when being berated by Odin. Loki is someone who puts on a performance as a sword and a shield. TV!Loki is a stupid clown.

"I'm really sorry you're not happy with him, but his emotional core and inner heartbreak is being treated with love and respect by the show."

No it’s not. It’s being turned into a punchline. The “humor” in the show derives entirely from invalidating Loki’s feelings and retconning his motivations and humiliating and mocking and denigrating him and turning him into a literal punching bag. The show robs the character of all dignity and seriousness and makes a mockery of him and the fans he meant so much to. And for what? The humor isn’t even funny.

#asks #loki tv series #loki show #loki tv show #loki 2021 #loki series #Marvel #MCU

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dojimakaichou · 2 years ago

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SENT FROM @taaboh ― ( unprompted / always accepting )

if random questions are OK, feel free to ignore if not: if you were to assign a moral alignment for your character (lawful/neutral/chaotic) (good/neutral/evil), what would it be and why?

OOC.

Hey, duckie ! Random questions are always more than fine. I’m going to base this answer based off of my understanding of the D&D alignment system, because that’s the TTRPG and definitions that I’m most used to ! I usually say that Daigo is TRUE NEUTRAL ( a slang term for Neutral without any additional Chaotic or Lawful classification ). TRUE NEUTRAL is defined in the 5th edition PHB as : “Neutral (N) is the alignment of those who prefer to steer clear of moral questions and don’t take sides, doing what seems best at the time. Lizardfolk, most druids, and many humans are neutral.” ( pg. 121 ) True Neutral characters can have respect for tradition or laws, but it normally has to be proven to them first that there is a reason or necessity to do so. They are more comfortable defying societal expectations than their Lawful Neutral peers but, unlike someone who is Chaotic Neutral, believe that there is a use for order in the world. They see Good and Evil as unrealistic and often extreme measures of a person and prefer more intimate judgments that take into consideration the circumstances individuals are faced with. True Neutral characters have difficulty sentencing others without hearing their personal accounts ( which can lead to them extending second chances more often than executions ). This is not to say that a True Neutral individual is a merciful one. True Neutral is best understood as the alignment of FAIRNESS. True Neutral characters are as capable of helping their loved ones, being protective, responding to threats with threats, etc. as any other alignment ― but they do so whilst viewing life as an impossible - to - define, complicated concept that everyone in the world grapples with. While I could see arguments for Daigo being Chaotic Good, I do think declaring him such gives his conscience too much credit. Daigo, from the moment we meet him in Yakuza 2, is a character ruled by the situation he’s in. He’s a drunken brawler starting street fights and running a gang in an effort to lash out at the Clan and the circumstances his connections to it forced him into. When he becomes Chairman, he holds an office that demands a degree of bloodlust or ambition for power. Daigo, however, responds to his appointment by using it for diplomacy. More than anything else, his reputation over the years as the Sixth Chairman is built on how FAIR he is and how far he will go to fight for and establish alliances. That being said, he is always advantageous, and many of his plans are founded in the interests of the Clan at the time ( ex. stealing Akiyama’s fortune when the Clan is bankrupt or advocating for its dissolution when he sees it will become a pawn ). True Neutral, I believe, also allows the needed room for the concept of the yakuza as a whole in a way that Chaotic Good doesn’t. As the franchise points out, gray areas in society exist and must be understood without a strict Good / Evil code. The yakuza are, as a whole, one giant gray area : a system that creates a sanctuary for outcasts while encouraging activities that many so - called Good individuals would scowl at due to their illegal or harmful nature. Daigo, as Chairman, interprets the yakuza as a home first and foremost, as he proclaims to Mine ( a sentiment along the lines of ‘ the Clan gives people somewhere to go when they have none ’ ) ― but in order to keep that home safe and stable requires him to be complicit in the traditionally questionable and less - than - legal activities it profits from. A Chaotic Good character ( in my opinion ) would have a difficult time fitting into the established idea of a what a yakuza is / has to be ( which, interpreting it that way, CG makes a lot of sense for Kiryu ). Do I think Daigo has a strong set of personal values that influence his individual decisions ? Yes. But do I think that Daigo’s environment often forces him to swallow a lot of those values and react to problems with solutions that he views as the best for his men / will generate the ‘ better ’ outcome in his mind ? Very much so. Daigo is not a character that follows right vs. wrong, he is a character that functions on what is necessary at the time. Hopefully this answers your question ! Thank you for sending it in !

#taaboh #ooc. Ironically as a DM I usually try to steer players away from TN.#I think there's a big misconception with this alignment. A lot of people view it as the ' do whatever you want ' or ' be selfish ' alignment #which it can't be. That is arguably more suited to CE.#TN is a difficult alignment to play b/c it depends on you removing yourself as an individual and looking purely at what is happening to your #character / the environment you're in.#I've found players do better with CN and LN than they do TN.#TN is a blank compass.#CN and LN at least offer a needle.#⤿ OOC. ✕ HEADCANON ✕ MAINVERSES #⤿ OOC. ✕ DASH GAMES

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zoe-oneesama · 6 years ago

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I'm sorry if this seems rude, but your treatment of Alya makes me very uncomfortable. This isn't something you're entirely to blame for, as a good chunk of the fandom treats her very poorly (with either ignoring her or reducing her role to "ships the lovesquare"), but the amount of comics and posts you've made about punishing Alya feels a little extreme to me at this point. I understand the salt after chameleon, but everyone was ooc in that ep. Also it's been over a month. (1/2)

I will start by saying thank you for coming to me with your complaints in honestly the nicest way you possibly could, I really appreciate you taking a very calm and critical tone in approaching me with a genuine concern.

I will also point out I can’t think of any comics I’ve made attacking Alya or punishing her, so I’m not sure what you mean by that, but maybe I’ve re blogged someone else’s comic and it’s not coming to mind right now. But I also try hard to tag stuff so people can block the rants they don’t want to see. I guess the probelm is I use the #alya salt tag instead of #anti alya.

And I can agree that Alya’s characterization has gotten out of hand in the fanon vs canon, particularly when we had that long hiatus so fanon Alya bled into the consciousness and confused what actually is canon Alya.

However I won’t apologize for being critical of Alya. I will try to explain my own reasoning for you though so maybe you can understand where I’m coming from.

My two main criticisms of Alya are 1) She’s not a good journalist and 2) She disregards Marinette’s feelings even though she’s her best friend.

The Good Journalist is something that I personally think is a fanon idea. Her being an ethical, searches only for the truth reporter who has integrity about the facts came from the hiatus, and my position on this is supported in canon.

When Marinette’s identity, the secret she holds most dear, is in jeopardy, because it’s Alya who is making the claim, she is unconcerned. If Alya was a threat to her identity (i.e. someone who often had evidence to support their claims) she would be worried, but instead she brushes it off. Like it’s not the first time Alya’s pitched a theory from left field at her. Even Nino laughs right in her face.

Volpina backs this up with her posting an unverified video of Lila claiming to be best friends with Ladybug without getting any sources or evidence that it could be true. In doing this, not only is she reducing her blog to a gossip column, but she is directly endangering this girl by blasting her relationship with a Superhero where anyone could see it. Because her scoop is more important that truth.

There’s also her crusade to find out Ladybug’s secret identity, something that, having established she’s a huge superhero comic fan, she should know the repercussions of. Endangerment of self, friends, and family in the face of a very dangerous super villain. It continues to prove where Alya’s priorities are.

But I actually want to make something clear: Being a bad journalist is not something I hate Alya for. She’s a young, immature girl. She’s wrapped in the excitement of magic and superheroes and is riding the hype to it’s conclusion. It’s partially Ladybug’s fault for indulging in Alya and being biased towards her friend that Alya has the platform she has and the belief in her abilities. And Alya does put a lot of hard work into her journalism, she just needs to do more growing and get a better understanding of what ethical journalism is.

I’m just critical of it because of the fanon warping her into this amazing journalist when she’s just a kid with no self preservation and tenacity.

The Bad Friend thing is what imagine you mostly came here for. And I want to make it clear here as well: I don’t think Alya is a terrible friend. Most of the time I don’t think she’s even a bad friend. But what happened in Volpina, Heroes Day, and Chameleon hit me in a bad way.

In Volpina, we see Marinette express concern about Lila hanging over Adrien and Alya dismisses her to gush over her blog.

I didn’t have a problem with this when it first came out. Marinette knows Lila is a liar only because she is Ladybug and so she knows Lila is lying in her interview. Marinette has a problem with liars AND a jealousy problem that has gone unchecked by Volpina. But from Alya’s perspective, Marinette is being unreasonably possessive and is prone to over reacting. She has no obligation to interfere with Adrien and Lila just because Marinette is feeling territorial.

This only becomes an issue in addition to the other two episodes.

In Heroes Day we get this gem of a line, which is really irritating, esPECIALLY because as a series finale it had to come after Frozer, which proved that Marinette has made great strides in overcoming her jealousy. As her best friend, Alya should be giving Marinette the benefit of the doubt, not Lila. But instead, she doesn’t ask what Marinette’s problem is with Lila she just assumes it without opening discussion about what could be bothering her usually kind and accommodating best friend. Compound it with her dismissal of Marinette in Volpina, and I’m beginning to get weary.

But then Chameleon. Ooooooh Chameleon. Let me count the ways Alya specifically failed as a friend:

1) Kicked Marinette out if her seat without asking

2) Replaced Marinette as her seatmate with her boyfriend without asking

3) Pushing Marinette to the back row seat alone without asking

4) When Marinette claims Lila is lying, Alya asks for Marinette to prove Lila isn’t telling the truth instead of investigating if Lila is telling the truth.

5) Pulls that not apology apology that puts the blame on Marinette for getting upset about the situation.

(gif by @oui-ladybug)

That last on is subject to interpretation, but look at it closely, There’s no “I’m sorry for putting you in that situation without your consent.” No “I’m sorry for not taking your feelings into account.”

This throw away line is like someone saying “I’m sorry YOU got upset.” Like you overreacted. Like it’s your fault you got hurt.

You may say I’m reaching, and I’ll admit my interpretation is probably not a universal one. I’ve made no secret of it in past posts. I have a personal issue with how Alya acts in regard to Marinette’s feelings.

I had a best friend from the age of 5 to 20. Looking back I can find a lot of flaws in our friendship but at the time I thought it was great, mutually supportive and filled with love. Until she started dating. She had a boyfriend her last two years of high school and up to around the time we stopped being friends. She was attached at the hip to him, spending all her free time with him instead of me and bringing him to outings with us without asking me first. I tried to hide my discomfort because I had already almost lost her friendship by throwing up a fuss over her dating him - because he was my ex (first!) boyfriend. But I put my feelings aside because she was really into him and I valued our friendship more than this dumb guy. But apparently I was the only one.

Things went downhill fast when we graduated high school. She and her boyfriend stayed at home and went to a local college (no shame there) and I went to a university 3 hours away. We weren’t going to see each other near as often obviously, but we had always been very good at texting and calling each other so I wasn’t worried. But she didn’t text me anymore. She never called. All contact I had to initiate first. She never made the drive up to see me unless she needed something (she stayed at my place when she wanted to go to the Renaissance Fair nearby my college).

But what hurt most is when I would drive down to see her. I’d drive the three hours, having made plans weeks in advance to make sure it worked around our schedules, only for her to cancel last minute on me. Because she wanted to hang out with her boyfriend instead. The same boyfriend she saw LITERALLY everyday. And it happened multiple times.

She didn’t care what I did for her. She didn’t respect my time or effort or feelings. She assumed I’d be fine with it. She assumed I wouldn’t mind or if I did I’d “get over it” like I always do (get over it as in grin and bear it). She made decisions for me and without regard to what I thought. She just wanted a cardboard cutout to call Best Friend without actually putting in any of the work.

There are plenty of other things that started to bother me about our friendship, but because this is what ultimately ended it it’s what bothers me the most. So I take personal offense with Alya making assumptions about Marinette’s feelings and justifications without asking. I have issues with Alya making decisions for Marinette without asking. And I especially have issues with Alya choosing her boyfriend over her best friend because that hits me personally.

I know Chameleon was OOc for the characters…for MOST of the characters. But Alya? This has been building up. It’s not the first time. It’s just the most egregious time.

And a bonus it’s really annoying that Alya assumes Marinette is crazy jealous when a few of Marinette’s craziest moments are a result of Alya’s insistence or pushing OR Alya tries to steer her away from making mature decisions.

Marinette stealing Adrien’s phone?

Marinette making an elaborate scheme to separate Adrien from his bodyguard to go on a date with him?

Marinette tries to be realistic and help Adrien on his date while simultaneously letting him go?

Alya was one of those cases where one event made me think back really hard about her role as Marinette’s best friend and just what kind of hand she’s had in shaping Marinette’s behavior, and honestly? She’s not the amazing friend I remembered her as in Season 1. Which sucks! Because I lOVEd Alya. A sassy mom friend who takes no shit and gets shit done? A gorgeous POC that pushed her friend to make things happen for herself?! Yes please!

So I still hate on Chameleon, not just for the episode, but for the wakeup call I DIDN’t ask for!!

p.s. the reason I’m still salting on it is because the episode totally failed to resolve Alya’s issues in this episode. i.e. being a hypocrite.

#alya salt #ml salt #my opinion #ask zoe #ml #miraculous ladybug

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harperfinkles · 5 years ago

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My Ranking Of Every Barbie Movie

A few months ago I finally decided to watch every barbie in order. When I was a kid I loved barbie movies, but I stopped watching them after Princess & The Popstar came out, and I felt like I’ve been missing out ever since.

Here I present to you: My Ranking Of Every Barbie Movie!

Keep in mind that I’m basing this off of my personal enjoyment of each film, and not by how “good” it is. There are many movies here that are ranked high despite being objectively flawed, as well as there are movies ranked low despite being objectively good. My opinions are also subject to change, especially since some of these I’ve only seen once.

36: Barbie & Her Sisters In A Puppy Chase

This entire movie is a mess. Like most of the barbie & her sisters movies there’s no real plot. The events of this movie only happen because of bad luck, which is never a good way to kick off your movie. I also find barbie to be completely OOC in this movie. Her disorganization and lack of planning is something that isn’t present in any of the sisters movies. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy movies that humanize barbie and give her more flaws but there are way more creative ways to do it. It doesn’t help that her insistence to “keep positive!!!” and “be optimistic :)))” just robs this movie of any meaningful message.

Then after the frustrating mess that is the puppy chase itself, Chelsey STILL wins her dance competition despite the fact that barbie didn’t let her practice, and she cheated by adding her sisters and the horses to the dance. It’s unbelievably stupid. I don’t know how the writers of this movie thought we would buy into that. I’m probably never going to watch this movie again.

35: Barbie Presents Thumbelina

The main reason I don’t like this movie is because of the style of the Twillerbees. Unlike Mariposa (the only other movie that doesn’t have a barbie protagonist) their faces look inhuman in a way that makes it hard to relate to them. I would’ve much preferred if Thumbelina had just gotten the normal barbie face, just her body becoming smaller. Besides that I think the girl whose name I can’t remember is annoying, and I didn’t like Thumbelina’s plan to get on her good side to save their home. Both of their character developments were weak and unbelievable. Then once the parents were convinced to stop demolition the movie lost all of its dramatic tension. This movie isn’t ‘bad’ per say, just completely boring. Not I understand why I never rewatched this as a kid.

34: Barbie In Princess Power

This movie had so much unrealized potential, but fell apart due to its plot that went all over the place. The villain and his frog were extremely annoying, Kera’s friends were completely one note characters, and Dark Sparkle was so petty and unnecessary. The part that pissed me off the most was how Kera’s identity was revealed to everyone. First off Wes was forgiven for this way too easily, despite it completely making me lose what little faith I had in his character, and secondly her parents handled it so casually. It seemed more like she had gotten in trouble for sneaking out to go to a party than her being forced into getting superpowers and using them to fight crime in the city. Plus the animation was absolutely horrible. What is with Mattel and changing barbie’s model every new movie?

I really wish this movie was better. Barbie as a superhero is such an amazing concept, and it makes me sad to see it executed so terribly.

33: Barbie & Her Sisters In The Great Puppy Adventure

Another movie with the most annoying villains possible. They’re the core reason I couldn’t stand watching this. In addition to that I found that the treasure being under the big willow tree was completely predictable from the first ten minutes of the movie. And even though the puppies were quite cute, their voices were so annoying. There are also a few plot holes (if you can call them that) such as the metal detector app (it hurt typing that) and how the girls knew that scaling the wall of the cave would lead to where the elevator lead. Despite this I still liked learning about barbie’s childhood and all of her achievements, though her grandma was quite creepy.

32: Barbie & Her Sisters In A Pony Tale

This movie straight up has no plot. It’s the worst of the sisters movies in that regard. Many chunks of this movie felt like filler (such as the party scene), and the character conflicts were weak and contrived (such as Chelsey and Staci's). One thing that I really liked about this movie is Barbie’s character, but that’s pretty consistent with all the sisters movies that aren’t Puppy Chase. I also found the two french guys very annoying (is there any sisters movie with a good villain?).

31: Barbie: Fairytopia

I feel bad for putting this one so low, especially considering how high my placements of all the sequels are. It feels like information is revealed to quickly at the beginning and the rest of the movie is just boring. Elina is very interesting but she could use a lot more character development. The part about her being bullied for not having wings was relegated to cheesy dialogue and didn’t really amount to anything. Plus the fungi aren’t nearly as funny as they are in Mermaidia.

The main reason I’m not putting it lower is for nostalgia and setting up the rest of the Fairytopia series. Aside from that I also really liked the vibe of the one underwater scene, and the “friends you haven’t met” line was quite good. This movie is just a complete anomaly in the great track record of early barbie movies. You honestly don’t even need to watch it to understand the sequels.

30: Barbie: A Perfect Christmas

As a musical this movie really sucks. The only song that I actually liked was barbie’s one solo, and even her singing voice there really didn’t sound like her. There’s really no plot to this movie, but I did find myself enjoying the dynamic of the sisters a lot more than the other sisters movies (even though Skipper’s Arc with the concert came out of nowhere and stressed me out). The way Santa’s magic was shoehorned into the story really bothered me though.

29: Barbie Video Game Hero

The best thing about this movie is definitely the side characters. They all had nice designs and personalities, especially Bella and Chris. The concept of this movie is also so creative and fun that I actually enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. I liked it mostly during the first two levels as well as the bonus one, but the last two really soiled it for me. The fact that there’s an open world game with no clear way to win makes no sense in the context of the rest of the game, and the Just Dance advertisements are absolutely cringey. This movie has a strong beginning but really falls behind in the second half. The last scene of the movie really made me want to rip my eyes out.

28: Barbie: Spy Squad

This movie really suffers from not getting the audience to care. The characters aren’t developed enough in the opening and the way the girls got their jobs as spies seemed too easy. The storyline felt too straightforward, and even the plot twist at the end was kind of cheap.

Despite this I still really enjoyed many parts of this film. For one the animation is amazing. I loved the character designs, especially Patricia’s. Speaking of her, I thought she was a pretty good villain, even if she was a little cheesy and her ‘redemption’ arc was very clumsy. I also thought Lazlo was sweet. A lot of modern barbie movies only go halfway with the romance because they don’t want to be seen as bad role models for girls, and a lot of the times the Ken characters just seem unnecessary. I thought it was a good idea to have him be the “love interest” of a non barbie character so his inclusion doesn’t feel useless, even if they never actually got together. It was also just really fun to see all the spy technology.

27: Barbie: The Princess And The Popstar

The placing of this movie is extremely unfortunate since I actually really liked Tori and Kiera’s characters. They both had spunk and I really like the tropes of the roundy princess and the celebrity who doesn’t find satisfaction in fame. The reason this movie is so low comes down to the terrible plot. It felt like they were trying too hard to make it similar to the Princess & The Pauper even though Tori and Kiera’s characters would much better suit a different plotline. The villains were just insanely frustrating and had such unclear motivations. The songs were also pretty bad (other than Here I Am), the Ken character is annoying, and the climax has barely any emotional weight since it wasn’t led up to properly. But hey, at least Tori/Kiera is a high quality ship. If it wasn’t for their relationship this movie would be much lower.

26: Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale

I love the set up for barbie’s character in this movie. She’s just been fired for the first time, Ken broke up with her, and she feels like her life is falling apart. She really reached a new layer of dimension with this movie, and she’s the best barbie as herself character in all of the movies. My main problem is the boring plotline with the flairies. Their character’s aren’t interesting and what they do to the clothing isn’t anything special. This movie also suffers from the boring villains. Barbie’s character is my main reason for liking this movie, along with the Ken plotline, even if it could be quite contrived.

25: Barbie: Star Light Adventure

This is a very weird movie. I had completely different reactions to it during the two times I saw this movie. The first time I thought it was very disappointing. The title said “adventure” so I was very surprised when the characters spent most of the movie training in the same location and we barely got to see any cool new locations. The pace was also extremely slow, especially near the beginning. The second time I started to appreciate the movie for what it is. The animation is absolutely stunning and I love what we saw of the creatures in this universe. Sa-Lee is definitely one of my favourite side characters, and the rest of the team was pretty cool too.

They also added a bunch of new things that I think are very unique to this movie. For instance I loved that barbie’s had telekinesis. She definitely needs more superpowers in future movies. I also liked that we got to see her parents.

My main gripe with this movie has to be Constantine. He was annoying for no reason and I think the movie would’ve benefitted from either having him be nicer and more of a character arc, or having him be a full villain who’s using the team for personal gain.

24: Barbie: Mariposa & The Fairy Princess

As a sequel this movie sucks. It doesn’t cover the same themes as the first movie, we don’t get Elina telling the story, the stakes are nowhere near the height as the first one was, and the characters in the first movie don’t get nearly enough screentime. Willa and Carlos’s part in this movie was underwhelming, but I’m especially annoyed by the fact that Rayna and Rayla weren’t even mentioned once. This all probably would’ve been different had the movie been made closer to the original, and I’m extremely confused as to why they waited to make it in 2013.

However if you disassociate it with the first movie it becomes way more enjoyable. I thought Catania was sweet and lowkey ship her with Mariposa (though it still doesn’t compare to the Mariposa/Carlos/Willa OT3). The crystal fairies themselves were an interesting addition to the universe and their designs were really pretty (I actually wish I was still into barbie at the time it was released just so I could’ve got some of the dolls). The increase in animation quality was also a plus. I’m also so happy that after the first movie Mariposa started running a library. It was such a natural progression in her character arc and it’s so perfect. There are still a lot of problems, such as a villain who feels utterly disconnected from the main story, clumsiness and miscommunication being repeatedly used as plot devices, and the annoyingness that are the puffballs. I’m still glad this movie happened and if you liked the first movie you should definitely check this one out too.

23: Barbie And The Secret Door

Oh boy is this one a mixed bag. It was actually the first "new” barbie movie that I saw, but it definitely did the trick of making me want to watch the other ones.

On the positive side this movie is so pretty. I love all the bright colours and the designs for Nori and Romy. Speaking of which, they were such great side characters, and an adorable ship! I especially like Romy since she was so funny and adorable. Plus, the “what’s a boy?” comment made me laugh. I thought that the world building aspect of this movie was really interesting, even if the animal designs weren’t the best.

On the negative side, I feel like the music was extremely disappointing. It got less annoying on my second watch through, so maybe I just have to warm up to it. I also feel like the villain was boring. This movie deserved a more serious antagonist, especially since we saw how terribly she affected the fairies and mermaids. I did overall like princess Alexa, but I’m kind of unsure about her arc relating to responsibility. I think a lot of modern barbie princess movies in general just aren’t as interesting as the ones that take place in the past.

22: Barbie: Dolphin Magic

What a cute movie. I loved Isla’s so much! She and Barbie were so adorable together. The dolphin’s themselves were quite cute too.

This is a very feel good movie, and it almost makes you ignore its flaws. The main thing that annoyed me is why couldn’t they just pick up the dolphin and put him back in the ocean? He’s not even that big, and there isn’t much distance that you’d have to walk with him anyway. The plot and villain aren’t that interesting either, and the sisters were sometimes annoying (such as Staci’s broken foot having no weight on the plot, and Treasure being absolute garbage). Barbie also seems a little too perfect in this movie, which isn’t even true for the rest of the sister movies and they’re all way lower on this list. I also laughed a lot when Barbie called Ken her “Friend”, since apparently romance is too inappropriate for a barbie movie. Still, if you ignore this and just watch all the Barbie/Isla scenes, the movie is really good.

21: Barbie: Fairytopia: Magic Of The Rainbow

Being introduced to all the different fairies in this movie was so much fun. I love all their different personalities and designs, especially Glee, Sunburst, and Lumina. Elina grew so much in this movie, and it truly is the perfect ending to the trilogy. The flight of spring was really cool too. The only real flaw this movie has is how clumsily Elina’s magic abilities are added in. It almost seems like she knew how to use it all along, even if we know she didn’t.

Also Dizzle is the worst. And that one apprentice’s wings being the braids in her hair was FUCKING RIDICULOUS.

20: Barbie In Swan Lake

This movie is definitely the most legitimately beautiful barbie movie out there. The colours are so nice, the dancing is so majestic, and I’d want to live in the forest any day. Odette is one of the prettiest barbie characters and I love her wardrobe. This movie also has two of the most iconic villains of my childhood who make me laugh every time I think of them.

Despite this I still don’t think this is nearly as good as everyone makes it out to be. First off, Odette’s character arc as the ‘chosen one’ wasn’t executed believably, and she wasn’t even that interesting. The romance was way too instalove-y for my taste (even Rapunzel had a more believable romance than this). The message of this movie was also really unclear in the Chelsey scenes. Overall it’s a great fairytale that I have lots of nostalgia for, but it doesn’t hold up as well when you really dig into it.

19: Barbie: Fairy Secret

I love how Barbie and Raquelle’s relationship is expanded upon in this movie. In Fashion Fairytale Raquelle’s motivations were confusing and she felt very flat. I love how we got to see them forced to work together despite their hard feelings and eventually come to forgive each other at the end once they got to the root of their issues with each other. It’s the ideal enemies to loversfriends scenario.

This movie is just really fun. Exactly what a barbie movie should be. Barbie’s stylist friends were great, and the Ken parts were pretty funny. I do overall like the worldbuilding, though Gloss Angelos looked way to small to even be classifed as a city, let alone the biggest fairy city in the world. It’s like 90% castle and 10% actual city.

In the end I always wish that Barbie, Raquelle, and Ken remembered what happened to them, and that’s the most frustrating part about this movie.

18: The Barbie Diaries

Despite being made by a completely different studio than the other movies (and having a downgrade in animation quality), this movie really holds up today. There’s a lot going on here, and it makes the plot seem way more complex than any other barbie movie. We also get to see into barbie’s head a lot more than any other barbie as herself movie, what with her fantasies that we got to see visualized. This movie is just the perfect blend of magic and normal life, and even if I do prefer the fantasy based barbie movies, this one will always hold a place in my heart.

17: Barbie And The 12 Dancing Princesses

There really isn’t much to be said about this movie. It’s just plain good. There’s nice music, a good plot, a great villain, a cute cat character, and a girl obsessed with bugs. What more could you want?

The only thing I don’t like is the wedding scene. It seemed quite out of place. Their relationship wasn’t that important to deserve the last few minutes of the movie.

16: Barbie And The Three Musketeers

Barbie sword fighting is all I’ve ever wanted in life. This movie really broke the mold for what barbie could do. Corinne is a great protagonist, and the other musketeers were great too (even if their personalities weren’t developed that much). I love how important their friendship was and how easily Corinne integrated into their group. This movie is super fun and just makes me want to scream “GIRL POWER” from the top of my lungs.

There were still some drawbacks though. The prince was annoying, I got so tired of that one sound effect that keep on repeating over and over again (if you’ve seen the movie you know what I’m talking about), the cat was way too immature, and while the villain was good, he was not subtle at all. The movie still had a solid storyline, and I loved how it ended with the girls going on another adventure. *sigh* If only this movie had a sequel.

15: Barbie: The Pearl Princess

Lumina is one of my favourite barbie protagonists. She just felt human in a way that not many others do (even though she’s technically a mermaid, not human). She was naive, but not stupid. I loved seeing her react to a world she hasn’t seen before. This movie had such a unique approach with her aunt Scylla. Her aunt may have done something completely wrong, and she admits to that, but Lumina doesn’t ignore the way aunt Scylla has cared for her and loved her over the years. She accepts her found family and her biological family at the same time, and lets her have a chance at redemption. In addition to that I really loved Lumina’s pre transformation outfit. It’s my second favourite barbie mermaid outfit next to Nori’s in Mermaidia.

I also liked how much the animals of this movie felt like active members of society, and had intelligence levels equivalent the mermaids. I’ve never really seen that in a barbie movie, at least to this extent. Kuda was a great animal sidekick who really felt like one of Lumina’s true friends. I also like how Spike looked dangerous but was a real softie on the inside.

There are a lot of other elements of this movie that I liked too, like how sweet Fergus was, and his love of botany. I liked the gag about Caligo thinking he’s being poisoned, and being paranoid about which cup he’s gonna drink from. Even if the Ken character wasn’t utilized much, I liked his dolphin friend. My only complaint is that the climax was a little messy, and I didn’t enjoy Caligo as a villain that much.

14: Barbie In A Mermaid Tale 2

This worked very well as a sequel to the original Mermaid Tale. Eris’s return as a villain felt very natural, and this movie continued to have Merliah feel like a genuine teenager with her own dreams and mood swings. The only reason it’s lower than the first one is because the plot isn’t as all encompassing and it doesn’t feel like Merliah’s life has changed as much as it did originally, if that makes sense. The plot also feels a little too fast at times, but the pacing doesn’t affect the movie drastically.

Kylie was a wonderful addition to the cast. She was mean, but you could clearly tell that it came from her insecurities about her own talent. I cannot emphasize how well her conflict with Merliah was developed. I loved their banter at the beginning and how they came to understand each other at the end, to the point where it didn’t matter who won the competition. It’s just.....SO GAY. I love it.

Speaking of which, Fallon and Hadley were both really cute in this movie too, more so than the first one. I just love how little men there are in the Mermaid Tale movies.

13: Barbie: Princess Charm School

Last time I watched this movie a few years ago I absolutely hated it, but after rewatching it again my opinion has completely turned around. The plot of this movie may still be very basic, and the supporting characters, Princess Isla and Hadley, were very one note, but it’s the strength of the Protagonist, Blair, that really makes this movie. I love seeing her determination in an environment she’s not used to, and how selfless she was even when she’s surrounded by selfishness.

Also can we appreciate how dark this movie was? Dame Devin literally MURDERED Blair’s parents in a car accident. It’s not like that hasn’t happened in any other movie, but in this one the tone just feels a lot more jarring.

I really appreciated Delancey’s character development. She seems so cold and unforgiving at the beginning, but as more information is revealed to her she changes for the better. She was raised in such a negative environment and I can’t help but be proud of her. Her friend Portia was also really funny too. I love the “YOU STOLE MY CAKE” scene.

12: Barbie As The Island Princess

Is there anything better than crazy island girl characters who talk to animals? I think not.

I love Ro’s animal family. Azul and Sagi are essentially Ro and Tika’s dads, and it’s adorable. Azul’s peacock sounds are just absolutely ridiculous, and I love it.

The music of this movie was also soooooo good. Words cannot describe how The Rat Song makes me feel inside. On a more serious note, I Need To Know is absolutely perfect. I love the visuals that go along with it. And just when you think it’s over, Ro’s part ends and Prince Antonio comes in AND IT’S SO PERFECT. Love Is For Peasants is also the best barbie villain song in any movie. “You need to stop reading those books. Filling your head with thoughts!” ICONIC. The soundtrack of this movie isn’t as good when listening to it outside of the context of movie when you compare it to stuff like the Princess And The Pauper, but it’s still really good nonetheless.

The romantic element of this movie was also really good. I think this is the first time on this list that I’ve listed the romance as a positive aspect. Ro and Antonio are just really compatible people who fulfill very essential parts of themselves when they meet. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I also love Tika’s development in regards to their relationship too.

The villain was pretty okay, but I especially love princess Luciana. She may be a romantic rival to Ro, but she’s a victim too, and she’s given a very sympathetic role in the story even if her mother is the villain. Her arc was very satisfying.

11: Barbie In A Christmas Carol

Not really a typical barbie movie to list as one of my favourites, but it’s a christmas essential for me. Having Barbie be Scrooge was a very risky move, but god, did it pay off. Eden was cruel, but her story is so sad. I always feel her fear when her aunt disrupts Catherine’s party. This is definitely another one of the darkest barbie movies.

Also, GHOSTS. Ghosts should have been in more barbie movies. They all had cool concepts and designs, mainly Aunt Marie and the ghost of christmas future.

Catherine was such a joy to see in this movie. She’s a very kind and selfless person, but her friendship to Eden puts her in conflict with that side of herself. Seeing her fulfilling Eden’s role in the vision of the future was actually kind of scary. It makes it all the more satisfying when Eden apologizes to Catherine in the end. I really love their friendship.

Christmas Carol was always one of my favourite christmas tales after I watched the Mickey version, and I think this movie did it justice (thought it was slightly less traumatizing than that, thankfully).

10: Barbie In The Nutcracker

Even though I’ve had a copy of this for the longest time I never really took the time to watch and appreciate it. And now that I have I’ve gotta say that this was a great start to the barbie saga. The producers still hadn’t settled on making barbie movies the way they’re known for now, and you can tell by the lack of female characters and a few of the 2D sequences, but the sense of adventure this movie has is so unlike any movie that came after. And despite the limited resources they had for animating it still ended up looking stunning. They animators had such a good sense of colour, and all the landscapes looked amazing.

Before watching this I always thought that The Magic Of Pegasus had the best (canon) romance of any barbie movie, but now I actually think that this may be better. Clara and Prince Eric have great chemistry and such a believable bond. The last dance scene was amazing and it so was heartbreaking when Clara was sent back to the real world. I love the scene when Eric visits Clara’s house and confirms that it wasn’t all a dream.

Also, I really appreciate Clara’s decision to stay in the magical world. So much media, including barbie movies, puts emphasis on people staying with their family and choosing more stable environments. What writers don’t realize is that that’s boring. We don’t watch movies to learn about people’s normal lives, and I’m so grateful that this story ended the way it did. So yeah, thanks writers.

There were also many scary moments here too. The rock monster is TERRIFYING. Maybe the reason I don’t remember this movie is because the rock monster traumatized me so much I had to repress it. The Mouse King was also quite creepy. I wish newer barbie movies committed to making scary villains like him.

9: Barbie In A Mermaid Tale

I probably have the most nostalgia towards this movie since it was always my sister’s favourite growing up. Now it’s one of the only barbie movies she’ll watch with me other than the sequel. I expected to not enjoy this movie as much since I’d kind of exhausted it by this point, but I guess I surprised myself.

As I mentioned in Mermaid Tale 2, Merliah feels like a genuine teenager. She likes her normal life and hates responsibility. Because of this her arc of deciding to save her people feels so much more genuine and poignant.

The world building of this universe is just so good. The plot with Calissa and Eris was great, and I love the scene where Merliah is picking out a tail. The world just looks so pretty and magical, even if magic doesn’t play a huge role in this film. The soundtrack sets the scene so nicely, and Queen Of The Waves is definitely one of my favourite barbie songs.

8: Barbie In The Pink Shoes

This is definitely a huge unpopular opinion, so I should get all the negatives of this movie out of the way first. The animation of the faces is extremely creepy, Kristin was very irresponsible to decide to change her routine up at the last minute, and she would’ve worked much better as a choreographer than as a dancer. Despite these flaws there’s still something about this movie that makes me love it.

For one, despite the creepy faces, the dancing animations were still pretty good. And even though Kristin’s arc wasn’t the best I still find her final dancing scenes (the one in the ice palace and the one on stage) to be so inspiring. Keep On Dancing is such an amazing song and it gave me chills the first time I heard it. The movie is also quite pretty. The ballet outfits aren’t as traditional as ones in earlier barbie ballets, but they still have flare and nice colours.

The movie is also really funny. It makes fun of the ballets it covers a lot. I love the “you don’t look a day over 16″ part. The two suitors especially, Hilarion and Prince Albrecht, were so funny. I loved how their petty jabs at each other turned into compliments when faced with adversity. Hayley was also pretty funny since she was the realist of the movie.

I think the irl characters were used very nicely in the ballet world, and I liked how when Kristin got back it turned out that everything wasn’t as bad as it seemed before. Tara wasn’t as mean and Madame Natasha wasn’t nearly as scary. That’s one of my favourite tropes in fiction.

7: Barbie & The Diamond Castle

Liana and Alexa are basically a married couple. There is literally no way to refute this. Their arguments are adorable and domestic, and they clearly love each other more than anything in the world. They may have their differences at times but when it comes down to it they know each other more than anyone else does and work together so nicely. Every aspect of their lives is intertwined so much that separation usually isn’t an option for them. My heart broke when they parted since I knew that that was how Lydia would defeat them. I cried when Liana came to Alexa’s rescue, and the movie ending with them going to back to their normal house instead of staying at the diamond castle was beautiful. Truly the best and purest barbie ship.

Now that that’s out of the way let’s talk about everything else. The plot of this movie is so unique. There is no other barbie movie that’s about music itself. The muses and their drama and betrayal with Lydia was so intriguing. Seriously, Lydia was a scary villain. I was terrified of her as a child. Liana and Alexa seemed like they’re helpless against her powers, and it feels all the more victorious when they defeat her. The last fight scene was truly epic.

I really appreciate how little Liana and Alexa care about the two twins. They’re my least favourite part of the movie, and even if they do start working with them later on in the movie it’s made very clear that they don’t care about them at all.

6: Barbie In Rock ‘N Royals

I really didn’t have high expectations for this one. It was after I had watched The Princess And The Popstar and Secret Door, which both gave me a bad feeling about barbie pop musicals. But this movie really came through and made itself my second favourite barbie musical movie, and my sixth favourite overall.

The only thing I disliked was Courtney’s weird facial design. That’s it. The rest of the movie is basically perfect.

The movie started off at a relaxing pace but I was never tricked into thinking it would end that way. I love the Camp Pop vs. Camp Royalty plotline. Finn and Lady Ann seemed simple at first but their past was revealed at the perfect time. Clive was hilarious and him becoming the real villain was executed so well.

Seeing Courtney and Erika react to the camps was a delight. Their friends were so quirky and nice to them, and the camps themselves were pretty fun too (UNICORNS). Them finally meeting at the beach was such a breath of fresh air. I could imagine them becoming great friends in the future (cough sequel cough). Erika was probably my favourite of the two since she just looked really cool and had a more interesting arc. I just love it when two groups of people who have seemingly nothing in common come together to achieve a common goal. Also I have a theory that Sloan and Princess Olivia were in love the whole time, and the competition was the first time they could smile around each other without being ridiculed by their peers.

Now, onto the music. My favourite song is probably Gotta Get To Camp. I was shocked at how good it was. The choreography was also the most interesting since it was the only time the characters spontaneously burst into song. When You’re A Princess is also such a bop.

This is definitely the first movie I’d recommend to any classic barbie fan who wants to try out some of the new ones.

5: Barbie: Mariposa & Her Butterfly Fairy Friends

This is probably the closest to a perfect barbie movie you’ll get. The protagonist is very relatable, the supporting cast is great, everyone has good development, the world is scary yet so fascinating, and the villains are amazing. Also it has a non barbie protagonist. Having Elina narrate the story was such a great decision. Mariposa really sticks out in the long list of barbie protags. Her transformation scene near the end was so great. It fits the theme of the movie so well and I think that anyone can get inspiration from Mariposa’s journey.

When it comes to characters everyone is so much fun. Carlos is another one of my favourite barbie love interests, even if the movie didn’t commit to the romance fully. He and Mariposa have their love of reading in common and they like each other for non superficial reasons. Willa is also adorable and sweet. It would be very interesting to find out how she and Mariposa met, since they’re so different, yet they’re close friends nonetheless. Rayna and Rayla are both quite interesting cases. When they first showed up I rolled my eyes and thought they’d be tossed out of the way very soon, but they continued through the story and changed as people. They gained respect for Mariposa, and vice versa. Henna was also pretty cool too.

The setting was so interesting too, more than any other Fairytopia movie. Every place looks like it has danger lurking, and he characters genuinely felt small next to the landscape. One of my favourite things in this movie has to be the absolutely horrifying Skeezites. I remember playing the DVD game as a kid and having nightmares about it later.

4: Barbie As Rapunzel

This is probably the scariest barbie movie. Unlike other scary ones like Mariposa and Diamond Castle there’s such an aura of misery and helplessness to this movie that is like no other. Gothel is the main reason for it. The tower just looks so dark and every scene in the normal world has such tension surrounding it. It makes me even more emotional when Rapunzel finally frees herself from the tower.

All the paintbrush scenes are integral barbie moments for any kid growing up. I remember being fascinated by her art, and by how hope came to Rapunzel in her worst moments. We don’t get a real answer to how the paintbrush came to be, but it doesn’t feel necessary. It’s just so beautiful.

I love the animal sidekicks in this movie too. Penelope is so adorable, and I love how she, like Rapunzel, found the courage in herself to stand up and disobey her father. And having a dragon be one of the good guys was a really risky move for the second barbie movie, but it payed off so well.

This was truly an ethereal movie.

3: Barbie And The Magic Of Pegasus

This movie definitely has the most riveting original plot of any barbie movie. Wenlock was a terrifying villain and Brietta’s story is so sad. Plus, barbie standing up for Wenlock’s wives at the end basically invented feminism. I love that it’s about an ice skating barbie, and all the skating scene were so fun too.

Shiver is also adorable. I had a lot of the dolls as a kid and the only things I have left from them are the Shiver toy and the Wand Of Light. Speaking which, that wand was so epic and pretty. The movie was just so aesthetically pleasing.

Annika is another one of my favourite barbie protagonists. Like Merliah, she genuinely feels like a true teenager who's rebelling against her strict parents, and she learns a great lesson. Aidan was also a great mirror for her and when I was younger they were my favourite barbie couple. They have lots of good banter and I really buy their relationship development. I especially love the ice dancing scene at the end.

This movie is a barbie essential for me. It represents so much of my childhood. I used to watch this movie obsessively and it’s just as good now as it was back then.

2: Barbie: Fairytopia: Mermaidia

This is kind of an odd choice for my second favourite barbie movie. This one used to be my #1 favourite before I rewatched the one coming. I was obsessed with mermaids and fairies as a kid and no other movie captured my imagination the way this one did. The land of Mermaidia is so pretty and reminds me of everything I dreamed about as a kid. It also gave me Nori, my favourite non barbie character in any barbie movie and one of my biggest childhood crushes. I love how her sass comes from her insecurities about Nalu, and how she and Elina start to like each other once they see past him.

Elina/Nori is also another contender for my favourite barbie ship. They have nice banter (and I’m sure by now you all know how much I love that) and I love the scene when Elina sacrifices her wings for a tail to save Nori (that’s totally my favourite scene in any barbie movie). I wish we got more of their relationship in Magic Of The Rainbow, but I guess that wouldn’t have fit with the movie. Oh well.

This movie works very well as a sequel, while also being better than the original in every way. We had the same villain, and we got to see a part of the Fairytopia universe that we only saw a glimpse of in the first one. After Elina got her wings it only feels natural that the possibility of her losing them again is explored, as well as the prospect that maybe she doesn’t need wings to be herself. And compared to the original movie the stakes have been raised much higher, we have more reasons to care about the characters, and it’s so much funnier. The fungi annoyed me in the first movie but in this one they made me laugh constantly. And this movie wouldn’t be complete with the amazingness that is opera Bibble.

This movie doesn’t have the best plot, but it doesn’t suffer from it either. It’s one of those movies that just makes me feel relaxed and at peace (other than the Depths of Despair scene, though at this point I’ve seen it enough that it doesn’t phase me as much anymore).

1: Barbie As The Princess And The Pauper

We all knew this was coming. No other barbie movie comes close to this classic. It’s gonna be hard to describe why I love it so much since everything that’s amazing about this movie has already been said a thousand times before, but I’ll give it a go.

Anneliese and Erika are amazing characters. They may come from different social classes but they both have the shared experience of not being able to fulfill their dreams. This movie is so good at showing you how trapped they feel, yet still their duty to their lives never waver. My mom has an interesting story about how she got into this movie. She initially thought that barbie would be a terrible role model for me and my sister until she saw The Princess And The Pauper. Anneliese and Erika are clearly very complex protagonists who have interests outside of romance and are active participants in changing their destinies and saving the kingdom. Especially with Erika, who decides to achieve her dream of becoming a famous singer before getting married to King Dominick.

This movie has a bunch of nice relationships too. Anneliese and Erika click with each other so well and respect each other’s troubles without downplaying their situations due to the class difference. The romances were both nicely developed too. Erika and Dominick may have fallen in love over the course of a day but I appreciate how much he likes her stranger side (like when he walked in on her singing to her cat lmao). Anneliese and Julian’s relationship feels especially believable since they’ve known each other for a very long time. I also really like that they waited for Erika to come back before getting married. OT4 goals.

Preminger is a barbie villain like no other. The rest of my top ten has been dominated by scary and serious villains, but Preminger is just so funny and dramatic compared to them all. He’s the only barbie villain that has became very well known in pop culture.

All of the songs in this movie are so iconic. I think that’s the biggest strength of this movie. I'm constantly listening to music and the soundtrack is a great way for me to take this movie everywhere I go. The Cat’s Meow is a beautiful song, Written In Your Heart feels so inspiring, I Am A Girl Like You is great character study, If You Love Me For Me is a beautiful and tender love song, How Can I Refuse? is an iconic villain song, and Free is a great introduction to the characters, as well as my number one favourite barbie song. Every song has something special about it and that makes it one of the most memorable movie soundtracks ever for me.

I also love the cats Serafina and Wolfie. They’re two of the best animal sidekicks in any barbie movie since they feel a lot like the human characters. THEY ALSO HAVE SO MANY BABIES IN THE END FUCKING GOD.

I hope you all enjoyed my ranking. Feel free to comment with your favourites and least favourites, just be aware that this is all personal to me and really says nothing about the objective quality of each of these movies.

#barbie #barbie movies

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bigskydreaming · 5 years ago

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Do you have actual good dick grayson fanfiction recs? I agree with so much of what you say about his character and the treatment he gets and im desperate

omg anon I know and I feel your pain. Umm, you should be alright going off my bookmarks page here, as a starting point:

https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlashInThePan/bookmarks

I haven’t read all of them recently, but I’m pretty sure I stand by all of them as being ones I’d reread and still enjoy. And there’s definitely definitely NO Batbro incest in any of those, from start to finish.

There’s only 18 fics on it but as you no doubt know, I’m suuuuuper picky about my Dick Grayson characterizations, like….in particular how Dick and Jason’s dynamic is treated is such a sticking point.

I know I have one fic on there that’s by audreycritter, who’s a popular writer in the fandom for how she writes a number of different characters, and like, I love her Jason, and I even love how she writes Dick a lot of the time too? But I only have the one fic by her on there, because like….she does stick with the whole “Dick was kinda shitty to Jason as a kid” take on things in general, and its not even that she doesn’t do it WELL, like she doesn’t paint Dick as a terrible person when she writes that particular aspect of things, its more just that I’m sooooo sick of that take overall, that I’m just like gah, I can’t, even if its done well, I still just…its not what I want to read, personally.

So I just raise that point to be like, if you’re less picky than me in that regard, you could probably still find some quality Dick Grayson fics by going through the various authors on that list and seeing what else they’ve written, cuz some of them have put out a TON of content.

Personally, the Four Horsemen of the Apocafics in Batfamily fandom, like the tropes that I just CAN NOT with, are:

1) Dick was an asshole to Jason as a kid/blames himself for Jason’s death bc he wasn’t there more AND NO ONE IN THE NARRATIVE CONTESTS THIS LIKE WTF HOW DO YOU PUT THAT ON A NINETEEN YEAR OLD KID WHO DOESN’T EVEN LIVE AT HOME BC HIS DAD IS BEING AN ASSHOLE WTF.

2) The Batfam being assholes to Dick because of the Forever Evil/Spyral stuff, like just NO. DO NOT.

3) Dick betrayed Tim by giving Robin to Damian and didn’t consider his feelings at all, which…no, not how that happened and ignores the EXTREME clusterfuck that was Dick’s life at the time too, like enough with characters talking about how perfect Dick is and then resenting him the second he makes a less than perfect decision or enacts a decision imperfectly. Same with the Dick throwing Jason in Arkham thing, again, way to erase all context cuz its not remotely how that makes it sound, and also if you’re going to keep Dick’s actions as canon but completely disregard everything Jason did in that run (where HE was written incredibly OOC imo) that LED to Dick making that decision, like….just admit you want a reason to hate Dick and show what a terrible brother he is to Jason and go.

4) Fics that emphasize everything Bruce has ever done wrong to Jason and Tim and Damian but gloss over the extreme wtf-ery he’s done to Dick at various points in canon and just go with the ‘Dick is the golden boy, Bruce loves him the most-est, he would never do this to Dick’ EXCEPT HE WOULD AND HE HAS. Like, its the double standard. If you want to play the Bruce Is A Good Dad to Dick then like….it doesn’t work to play the Bruce Is A Bad Dad with everyone else card. And vice versa. Dick doesn’t get the special treatment the characters and fandom like to pretend he does. In particular I can not staaaaaaaand when fics downplay how utterly FUCKED UP Bruce’s treatment of Dick was, when Dick came to see him after he found out Jason died. Like, how do you downplay Dick’s father in all but name punching him, blaming him for his brother’s death, kicking him out of his own home, all when Dick (who had plenty of reason to be mad at Bruce, given he didn’t even TELL Dick or leave a message about Jason and had the funeral when Dick was still offworld, even though the funeral was only like five people anyway and thus they could have waited) made a POINT when going there, to try and avoid a fight, keep things civil. Like that issue was such a fundamental breaking of Dick’s trust in Bruce on SO MANY LEVELS and people in fic are like ‘oh and Bruce punched him that one time and that was bad too I guess.’

Anyway, those are just my personal big four Avoid, Do Not Enter tropes in Batfics (in addition to no incest/pedophilia/rape fantasy fics of course), when it comes to Dick’s characterization.

It doesn’t matter how good the fic is or how well in the CONTEXT of those particular tropes that Dick’s characterized, its just a no go from me, because the takes themselves are just ones that hold zero appeal for me and mostly just end up being a large source of frustration. So I’m sure there are absolutely quality fics along those lines that are well written and characterized and I mean, its not like people aren’t ALLOWED to run with those interpretations of canon, lmfao, its just….they’re too opposite my own interpretations for me to enjoy. *Shrugs*

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calleo-bricriu · 5 years ago

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Villains, Powerful (but Unstable) Characters, and This Idiot.

I didn’t want to hijack this post with a long, “Agreed, but...” because I also find it incredibly annoying when other characters (usually OCs as well, which is a double pet peeve) use the fact that, OOC, nobody is going to godmod anyone, to be blatantly disrespectful or dismissive of canonically powerful or dangerous characters because the player knows the other player can’t do much about it.

The “but” is that this character lost the majority of his ability to even feel fear by his mid-20s due to the type of work he does.

Fear is a generally burnt out circuit for Calleo.

His entire career revolves around being able to handle nasty, complicated, dangerous, and potentially lethal magic which also involves having to be able to handle nasty, complicated, dangerous, and potentially lethal people and both things feed off of fear so he spent years redirecting that particular emotion into calm + respect the power of the thing you're dealing with.

He's not lying if he tells someone he's not afraid of them not so much out of disrespect as it is being honest and guessing, sometimes incorrectly, that the person in question would be more offended if he lied to their face when answering.

However, both honesty and disrespect (and some dangerous/powerful/villain types would view that type of honesty as a form of disrespect) can very easily get your ass kicked and I do let that happen pretty frequently.

He also won't just march up to someone or scoff at them with, "I'm not afraid of you," but if they ask he's likely to tell them that he's not and some other characters do try to put that fear into him.

It doesn't technically work but it does teach him both that the correct answer is yes if it gets asked again and that he can't get away with running his mouth to that person so he just alters how he reacts/acts toward that person to avoid having his ass kicked again.

He's also not stupid and can recognize when someone is dangerous, dangerously unstable, quick to anger/violence, or is someone with a reputation for that behavior and very, very quickly adjusts his attitude and behavior if that person shows up.

I'm gonna drag @tmvoldemort , @absintheabsence and , @punybutpretty over here for this because the way Calleo interacts with each of those three people that he should probably definitely be afraid of is wildly different.

With @tmvoldemort Calleo knew the reputation Voldemort had, he knew that even 15-17 years ago the man was unstable and prone to bouts of violence seemingly out of nowhere, especially if he thought he was being disregarded or treated with disrespect so when they accidentally ended up in the same room after the same thing at the same time, Calleo immediately switched into completely deferential and respectful, including taking a quick mental note of how Voldemort spoke about himself and making sure never to sound like he thought they were 'friends' or anything close to equals.

In that case, it involves never using words like "you" or his name when talking to him, it's always third person (my Lord, him, his, etc...) which occasionally makes him have to stop and think of how to word something so it makes sense or doesn't sound ridiculous but that's better than slipping up, saying "you", and tripping Voldemort's temper.

He's also careful never to sound like he thinks he's smarter, more clever, or just generally better than Voldemort because that would also be stupid; when he shares knowledge that he even remotely suspects Voldemort might not know he always presents it in a, "I'm certain my Lord is already familiar with this, but in case he would like some additional information from recent research..." sort of way and stays well aware of the fine line between being complimentary and coming off as a sycophant. At worst, presenting knowledge-based things that way makes him seem like a super eager, weirdly entertaining little dog--or a kid trying to impress his grandpa, I guess.

He's also extremely careful to make sure he stays useful (or at least entertaining) to Voldemort in enough of a capacity that Voldemort will be less likely to kill him or damage him to the point of incapacitating him because doing that would be inconvenient for Voldemort and if there's one thing Voldemort seems to not enjoy it's purposely inconveniencing himself.

AND he's well aware that if he missteps or misjudges a mood, there's a good chance he'll end up dead.

However, he's still not afraid of Voldemort, he's just carefully respectful of Voldemort’s power, time, and fairly predictable unpredictability (I mean, really, all you have to do is feed him rare books and odd little gifts now and again and tell him he's pretty intelligent and clever.)

I don’t know how to do brevity IC or OOC so....

With @absintheabsence Calleo wasn't necessarily afraid of him at first either but he was wary because, even without the ability to use magic, and even accepting that some of the more dangerous aspects of Grindelwald's personality were directly tied to his extensive use of the Dark Arts, nobody is bound to be even remotely stable or predictable after spending 40+ years in solitary confinement and Calleo had no idea what kind of unstable it was just that his first reaction the first time Grindelwald looked like he was going to shuffle his old self across the cell and grab him, Calleo's immediate response was to back himself up against a wall and pull a wand despite being perfectly conversational with the, "You stay over there, I'll stay over here, and nothing will escalate." type statement.

And he figured out quickly how to recgonize when there was something he could do to derail oncoming instability or at least talk Grindelwald down and avoid something unpredictable and violent and when there was nothing he could do, he just left when it was the latter as he knew perfectly well he could easily end up dead in that situation.

Once it got to the point that he realized Grindelwald couldn't kill him or even do what he'd consider significant damage, even accidentally, and even if he really wanted to in the moment, he stopped leaving. It's not pleasant to stick around, because when it happens, Grindelwald does get amazingly violent, but he'd also rather see that turned outward than inward because when Grindelwald turns in on himself, any progress he's made in terms of improving mental health tends to significantly backslide.

Several times after that point, he has point blank told Grindelwald that he's not afraid of him.

In FB era threads it’s more of a Voldemort situation though he’s way more open with the, “We both know you’re not going to kill me because I’m useful to you, but, if you do decide to kill me I really don’t think I could care less unless I were dead. It’d be nice not to have to do things anymore,” aspect of it, even if he never says it overtly (but he definitely got bloodied up a lot for spending the better part of that nearly year at MACUSA making almost constant puns out of Graves’ name, especially since his reaction to being confronted by Not Graves about it a few years later was, “Oh, it was a grave mistake on my part.” while barely managing to keep a straight face.)

With @punybutpretty it's more--just pointless to be afraid of him because if he's going to do something to either make Calleo's life a living nightmare or just plain kill him, there is not a single thing Calleo could do to stop it. To him, there's no point in being afraid of a situation you can't change, it's just unnecessary stress.

You accidentally catch the attention of someone who is a literal god and who could either turn your reality into a hellscape or just kill you or anything in between, and it's best to just kind of roll with it and hope none of those rolls are a 1.

So, that's what he went with from the start.

And also, when faced with someone who's just messing with (for now) Muggles for fun, Calleo's unfortunate response is usually along the lines of, "HA! Okay, that was hilarious! Let's go find a group of them and see how chaotic it can get because there is nothing in this area and I'm incredibly bored."

#ooc #long post #how to be not afraid of a Big Bad but also still be reasonably respectful of their power #about #roleplaying advice

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dotthings · 6 years ago

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Let’s talk about Dean lashing out at Cas and his line “you’re dead to me,” in context of the current situation and what we know and have seen from Dean as a character. This kind of lashing out when Dean is in a great deal of pain, most often because he is terrified of losing, or has lost, someone he loves, is consistent for the character.

No it’s not OOC. No, SPN does not hate Dean. No, it’s not “abusive” and I wish to hell all the TFW lanes would wake up and realize the way some carelessly slap that “abusive” label onto Dean, or onto Cas, or onto Sam, trivializes abuse and hurts fans who are abuse survivors and who relate to the TFW characters for very good reasons. Unhealthy coping mechanisms or way too harsh, or misguided, they do hurt each other. Nothing in me idealizes the TFW relationships or characters and there are all kinds of problems in that familial team which I have blogged about here for actual years. They do have some repeat/cyclical behavior.

They also have character development and I’ve watched as they grow more self-aware and lesson some of their more unhealthy coping mechanisms and grow more honest with each other. It’s one reason I love S14 so much, it’s so character driven and the characters are vocalizing so much more honestly than they used to. I’ve waited so long for SPN to do a season with this tone. Each of them still makes mistakes but they seem increasingly quicker to realize it, to fully confess to each other what they were thinking, and vocalize their motives. In Dabb era in particular I’ve noted how some things I was used to extrapolating in earlier seasons, things that were tacit in the story, in the build of the characters, are now more often in addition to the story showing it, also being vocalized by the characters themselves.

Character development is good and it is sad when they slip back into unhealthy coping mechanisms again, but they are by nature imperfect characters and in fact those flaws are part of why we love them. So much as they progress, it’s not going to be all self-acceptance sunshine and roses and nothing but mutual understanding and kindness. So long as I am also seeing character development, I’m not going to hit the ceiling every time they mis-step.

Stuff you need to put my post in further context:

I’m speaking here as someone who writes a lot on Cas pov as well as Dean pov. I’m not someone who bashes the others in Team Free Will and only talks about Dean. I consider myself a dual fan of both characters (I love Sam too but that’s for another discussion, I relate the most to Dean and Cas and that’s just how I’m wired). I’ve been defending Cas for a decade. A literal decade and I don’t bash Cas, I love him, and I wish more Cas fans could at least extent some basic courtesy back and understand that if Cas hate hurts them, Dean hate will hurt people who love Dean.

I’m feeling terrible for Cas right now and I’ve already made a number of posts on his motivations and pov. He withheld information and he shouldn’t have done that, but we know it isn’t all on him, Sam and Dean have already vocalized they know it isn’t all on him, and we also understand why and we know he doesn’t deserve the harsh words Dean said.

Does this mean Dean is a horrible abusive person who doesn’t deserve Cas, doesn’t deserve love (from Cas or fans), because he lashed out? No.

Does this mean Dean is OOC, has never done anything like this, would never, and the writers are “destroying” the character? No.

Dean is getting a lot of hate right now. A lot. And he doesn’t deserve it.

What a trap is it to try to counter, in meta, the extreme hot takes of the farthest character pole extremes. Because if I catalog the previous examples of Dean lashing out at a loved one because he’s scared, grieving, hurt, worried, about another loved one, all that will go into standom’s hot takes machine and get spit out as “gotcha! See? He’s abusive! Look how mean he is!”

They will ignore how soft he is. How he is 90% of the time the biggest softest softie that ever softed. All the instances of how forgiving he is, how loving he is to those he loves, how protective, how gentle. That all flies out the window because Dean lashed out.

Some claim he’d never. Oh yes he has, oh yes he does, and oh yes he just did and there is nothing OOC here.

So I won’t make an extensive list of when he’s lashed out, and an extensive list of his soft squishy loving center would just not fit into one post anyway. But in case you don’t believe me that this lash out here is consistent, remember he screamed “then let it end” at Bobby, Dean broke lamps over Kevin’s death flinging the entire contents of a bunker library to the floor, MoC Dean lashed out at Sam over Charlie’s death, he yelled at Sam for calling Cas, who Dean was gravely worried about in S11, an “it,” he yelled at Sam out of his grief for Cas in S13. Which by the way, Dean again got a ton of hate for, from Cas extremists, who ironically claim Dean isn’t caring enough for Cas, but if he shows the intensity of the pain he is in due to his grief for Cas, that’s wrong too.

In 14.18 Dean lashes out for a complex set of reasons. Yes, a lot of it is his fear/grief on Mary’s behalf. Losing her is devastating to him and he’s going through it for the second time. A lot of it also is the fact that Cas kept information from him, didn’t go to him. Even though later in the episode Dean follows Sam’s confession about his own need to believe in Jack with his own, even though Dean vocalizes his shared culpability with Cas. The culpability isn’t the only factor here. Dean trusts Cas so much and he loves Cas so much and I think Dean’s also hurt Cas kept something from him and hurt that Cas thought he should fix the thing all on his own and it’s a little too similar to Cas in S6 an we know how that turned out. That doesn’t mean Cas is like he was in S6, I’m talking deep in Dean pov here, what Dean’s fears are and that it reminds him of it and that hurts extra.

I’m not saying it’s not mostly about Mary. But those things about Cas, the closeness of his bond with Cas, and a sense of personal trust being stepped on, that Cas didn’t, personally, go to him, didn’t lean on him, ask for him, confide...that’s also driving why he lashed out. Had Mary not been in peril, Dean probably wouldn’t have impulsively lashed out so hard, but he still would have been hurt Cas kept this from him and said something acerbic.

None of the dual Dean and Cas fans defending Dean are telling anybody they have no right to be upset or no right to be hurt. Nor are we hand-waving to make Dean perfect. That’s the whole point. I don’t need a perfect Dean to still be a Dean fan.

The lashing out isn’t a healthy coping mechanism and it’s sad what went between Dean and Cas in this episode, but it’s not the destruction of their relationship by any stretch. We already got, right in the episode, self-awareness from Dean’s end, we got Cas’s full emotional confession why he did it. Dean lashed out but Cas didn’t run, he didn’t assume he was no longer wanted at all, I think Cas understands Dean and he, like Dean, is forgiving, and nobody has told Cas to be gone from their sight never to return. It’s just going to take time.

Dean is really isolated right now, reflected in the framing of the TFW scene at the pyre and the TFW in the kitchen, where Dean is shown physically separate in scene blocking. He’s an island. He’s still freezing Cas out, but he needs some time. Let’s see what ep 19 and 20 bring.

Also where am I making excuses for Dean or treating Dean as perfect in this post or blaming Cas? Nowhere, that’s where.

I’m not interested in countering the Dean bashing by shoving blame onto the writer, because I thought this episode was a complicated honest emotional wallop, and I’m not going to deny Dean the right to be imperfect and complex by saying “he’s OOC” every single time he isn’t the sweetest softest best most supportive softie, every time he has a vulnerability, every time he says something he shouldn’t. It’s fair to say that writers control the character so if you don’t like what a character did, blame the writers, they’re the puppet-masters. But in this case it’s not doing Dean any favors by taking that defense, by denying how complex he is and waving around the “OOC!” flag to try to make it all better. Better IMO to talk about Dean’s pov and motivations and what makes him tick and give him some love that way.

#Dean Winchester #Castiel #spn #supernatural #supernatural spoilers #meta #Team Free Will

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pass-the-bechdel · 6 years ago

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Marvel Cinematic Universe: Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, once.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Seven (30.43% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Sixteen.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

Significantly flawed, and well-known in fandom for it. Unpopular opinion? I still think it’s better than the first Avengers film.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Natasha and Laura pass in a single-line trade. It’s sooo close to not counting.

Female characters:

Natasha Romanoff.

Wanda Maximoff.

Maria Hill.

Helen Cho.

Peggy Carter.

Laura Barton.

FRIDAY.

Male characters:

Tony Stark.

Steve Rogers.

JARVIS.

Thor.

Clint Barton.

Strucker.

Pietro Maximoff.

Bruce Banner.

Ultron.

Sam Wilson.

James Rhodes.

Ulysses Klaue.

Heimdall.

Nick Fury.

Erik Selvig.

Vision.

OTHER NOTES:

Everyone talking about Strucker like we already know who he is...

The “Shit!”/”Language!” gag was funnier before they hung a lantern on it. Not least because it takes almost a full minute before Tony harks back to it (fifty seconds, actually. I checked). If you’re gonna make a Thing out of it, you gotta follow up immediately, not after fifty seconds of cutting around to different character intros and action shots and a whole lot of other dialogue.

Urrgghh, ok, I’m going to break my standing rule about not discussing source material, because we gotta acknowledge the colossal wrongness of re-writing the Maximoff twins - canonically Jewish Romani - as willing volunteers in a Nazi science experiment. It gets worse the more you think about it. There are a few things about this movie which generated significant negative outcry, and this incredibly offensive decision is one of them.

Tony and Thor fighting over who has a better girlfriend does have a certain charm to it. If you’re gonna have a testosterone-off, it might as well be about how great your partner is.

I got a zero out of ten on this out-of-nowhere forced romance crap with Natasha and Bruce. We’ll come back to this later.

“I will be reinstituting Prima Nocta,” Tony declares, as he prepares to lift Thor’s hammer and thereby theoretically take charge of the Nine Realms. Primae noctis (believed to in fact be a myth) refers to a supposed Dark-Ages law that granted lords the ‘right’ to take the virginity of any newlywed peasant woman who lived on their land. So, this is a wonderful little rape joke from Tony (or, y’know, not so little, since primae noctis in reality would make Tony a serial rapist). Ha ha ha ha. Hilarious. Good one.

I’m really mad about the parts here that are total garbage, because mostly, the revels sequence has a nice low-key quality to it, good solid team dynamics.

I can’t fucking believe that they played the ‘and then Bruce falls with his face in Natasha’s cleavage!’ gag. I cannot believe it. Is this a disgusting frat-boy comedy from the nineties?

Honestly, Tony, just shut up and admit that you KNEW from the get-go that it was wrong to try and make Ultron happen (that is why you kept it secret from everyone else to begin with); don’t try to defend the decision now that you’ve got a ‘murderbot’ on your hands. Take responsibility for a bad choice instead of talking shit about how you had to and everyone else is just too short-sighted, damn it!

Andy Serkis is delightful.

The Iron Man/Hulk fight absolutely KILLS the momentum of this film. It goes for way the fuck too long (eight minutes) and has no narrative significance at all. Pro tip for action scenes: they should always be driving the story somewhere. You can pull off eighty minutes of action so long as your plot is advancing alongside/within it.

Also, Iron Man causes a huge amount of additional damage during this fight, in the service of the aforementioned pointless action. His efforts to minimise Hulk’s effects are extremely poor, and calling in his relief organisation to clean up after the fact does not negate that.

Gotta love that throwing a wife and kids at Hawkeye at the same time as we suddenly start pushing this Natasha/Bruce thing. That’s not transparent at all. I also understand this to be a major deviation from Clint’s identity in the comics, and very unpopular with fans for that reason, but regardless; reinventing him as a family man to reset the romantic blather after baiting fans with the possibility of Clint/Natasha in the first Avengers movie is such a shitty move. I was not invested in the ship myself and would have loved to have them reinforce the just-friends relationship between Hawkeye and Black Widow, because there are not enough platonic friendships between compatible men and women in fiction, but 'they’re not interested in each other because they’re busy with someone else!’ is a weak reinforcement indeed. Less forced romances, and definitely less token wifey who exists for no other Goddamn reason at all. This comes out of nowhere, and not in a clever-surprise kind of way.

“You still think you’re the only monster on the team?” Natasha says, after telling Bruce about her sterilisation. This earned a HUGE backlash, and for good reason - despite all arguments about how what Natasha meant was that her being raised to be an assassin makes her a monster, the direct implication of her words as they are phrased and as the discussion is structured is that her inability to have children makes her monstrous, and that’s deeply offensive. It’s also completely in keeping with a narrative which is often played out against women, in which their value as people is attributed directly to their ability to produce offspring, so it’s not even like this outrageous implication of monstrosity - the corruption of what it means to be female! - is that unusual. It’s awful, but not unusual. Add on the fact that 1) Natasha’s nightmare-flashes specifically foregrounded her sterilisation over all other details of her training, supporting the idea that she believes that it’s what makes her irredeemable (instead of, y’know, all the murdering and stuff), and 2) this is Joss Whedon’s work and he is OBSESSED with highlighting the womanhood of his female characters and treating it like their defining trait while also variously punishing them for it, and you’ve got every reason to interpret this terrible fucking line as exactly the heinous thing it (presumably, unwittingly) seems to be.

Steve ripping a log in half with his bare hands is the funniest thing in this whole movie.

Thor’s brief side-adventure with Erik Selvig is pretty out-of-place. He just...goes for a swim in a convenient magic pond that Selvig chances to know about. Seems normal.

Ultron is full of such boring, empty rhetoric. Reminds me of Loki in The Avengers, with all that sound-and-fury.

I love Paul Bettany.

Man, they sure do find Natasha instantly. It’s almost like making a damsel-in-distress of her who needs to be rescued by the team was completely meaningless...

Breaking my no-BTS rule (since I already have done for this movie at this point) because it’s well-known how Joss Whedon ordered Elizabeth Olsen not to show exertion or ‘ugly emotion’ on her face in this film, because God forbid she compromise her attractiveness by being human. Joss Whedon is not human; he’s fucking trash.

The final fight sure does just, y’know, get to a point where it ends. They really did not ratchet up the tension over the course of the Sokovia conflict, it just goes along until it stops (also, they say Sokovia is a country, but then they never call the city anything else, it’s just Sokovia. Is the city conveniently named after the country (very confusing), or is it a city-country, like The Vatican? I kinda assume it’s option three, which is that no one bothered to care because it’s just some fake European placeholder anyway and we’re not supposed to notice such a dumb oversight).

“I was born yesterday.” This is the best quip in this whole thinks-it-is-way-wittier-than-it-is movie.

Helen Cho deserved better than to be a prop rapidly dismissed and then just trotted past at the end for an ‘oh, she survived, btw’.

Back when I reviewed the first Avengers movie, I said that I considered that film to be heavily overrated, so maybe it’s not such a surprise that I actually like this one better. The two primary problems I had with that first film were the overly simplistic plot, and the fact that most of the characters were OOC compared to previous films, and this movie does do better on both scores, so I feel more engaged by it, and less annoyed. That said...this movie has still got a lot of problems, and those include iffy characterisation and a plot with various holes, nonsensical complications, and conveniently ignored or smoothed-down dynamics. When I say I like this movie better than the first one, I mean just that: I like this better. That does not mean I am here to sing its praises.

The tacked-on romance is part of the problem - for Clint as well as Natasha (but especially for Natasha). After Hawkeye was so heavily under-used in the first film (and his slightly-ambiguous relationship with Black Widow was the only human element that made him a character instead of a prop), Age of Ultron attempts to compensate by giving Clint a personal life, in the form of a magically-appearing heavily-pregnant wife and a pair of nameless children. The function of this family appears to be 1) to give Clint a reason to not be interested in Natasha, and 2) to ‘humanise’ him by giving him something to fight for and get home to, because we all know nothing legitimises a character quite like some otherwise-irrelevant dependents. Want a man to seem lovable and important? Give him a pregnant wife. That’s what women are for, anyway, right? To enhance a man’s story? In this case, to provide a man whose purpose in the story has been contested with insta-personality, because ‘he’s secretly a family man, ooh, twist!’ is way better than having to spend time on giving him something to do in the plot that is actually meaningful in some way. Great logic. Makes Hawkeye super dynamic, right?

Natasha, unsurprisingly, is hit much, much harder. As the only female avenger and one of only two prominent female characters in a cast which has seven-to-nine male characters of equal or greater importance/screen time (YMMV on whether or not you think Fury and Vision count for that list), the pressure is already on for Natasha to be served up a quality narrative, because if she doesn’t get one, well...she doesn’t have six-to-eight alternative characters to pull the weight for her gender. The best solve for this problem would be to avoid the ‘Token Woman’ cliche in the first place, but since we missed that boat...not having the personal story of your only primary female character revolve completely around her womanhood and her catering to heteronormative expectations of a love interest would have been a good choice. This weird, forced, chemistry-free thing with Bruce Banner? Was the worst thing they could have used to define Natasha’s presence in the film. It sticks out like a sore thumb every time they have an awkward interaction, and it leads in to that atrocious ‘monstrous infertility’ element (though that particular egregious mistake could have been included with or without a romantic blunder, it...probably wouldn’t be, and we’d all be the better off). Even the Hulk-whisperer part of the relationship - while not awful on its own with all the unnecessary romance and Unresolved Sexual Not-Tension removed - serves to highlight Natasha’s female-ness by making her the soft maternal figure for the team, because God forbid one of the other male members of the team be asked to ASMR-speak to the Hulk while delicately caressing his hand. If Natasha’s presence in the first Avengers film leaned too heavily on her gender identity as a defining trait (and it did), this movie doesn’t fix that problem at all: it doubles down on it.

The good news for most of the excess of male characters is, they by-and-large don’t feel as OOC as they did in the first film. The boorish romantic entanglement aside, Bruce Banner is still a naturalistic character highlight (all credit to Mark Ruffalo, who probably doesn’t know how to turn in a bad performance in the first place), and Thor’s dialogue is way less ridiculous this time ‘round, so he lands a lot closer to his personality from previous films simply by virtue of sounding like the same guy (unfortunately, the plot does not have the faintest idea what it wants to do with him as a character). Steve Rogers is still being written as if being Captain America is his character, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of his identity, albeit one which conveniently allows him to behave in a stereotypical self-righteously bland manner, thus avoiding the need for any nuance in his perspective or actions. This borderline fanfic-flamer ‘Captain America is my least favourite character so I’m going to write him as a boring stick-in-the-mud and then hopefully no one else will like him either!’ approach doesn’t grate quite as badly as it did in the first Avengers, and it can’t cancel out the innate level-headed charm of Chris Evans, so as disappointing as the bias is, it’s still a better balance here than it was last time. The one character who is not so flatteringly handled, however? Also happens to be the one who was arguably handled best last time, and unfortunately, he’s the one who is essentially treated as the ‘lead’.

The big problem for Tony Stark is that this movie is not interested in digging in to the pathos of any character, it’s all-flash-no-substance on that front, and Tony really, really needed a less heavy-handed slathering of ‘afraid of what might come (feat. messiah complex)’ to motivate his actions and reactions in this film, because without any exploration he’s basically just a billionaire kid playing with matches. If this were an Iron Man film (either the first or third one, anyway), we’d get into some tasty deconstruction of Tony’s mental state and confront his hubris, etc, and - crucially, most crucial of all, it’s a mainstay of all his past stories in the MCU - Tony would own up to his mistakes, listen to the advice of those around him, and take contrite steps toward fixing the problem not just in the direct sense of ‘beating the bad guy’, but also in the personal and emotional sense of working on his own flaws and making amends with the people he hurt along the way. This movie offers none of that. To begin with, Tony’s ‘I know best and I will not be taking any questions’ approach to creating Ultron feels like a significant step backwards in his character development so far (Iron Man 3 was specifically about addressing his PTSD and associated tumultuous emotions surrounding the fear of imminent alien invasion, so his reactionary and secretive behaviour in this film feels particularly out-of-touch with a mental reality Tony has been explicitly working on for the past couple of years); Tony is actively aware that it’s a bad call and thus hides it from the other Avengers until it’s too late, and then he’s bizarrely unrepentant about his mistake. Worst of all, he actually attempts to repeat that mistake, only worse, late in the film (the fact that his idiotic ‘mad scientist’ pep talk actually convinces Bruce to help him again is the weakest character moment for Bruce outside of the aforementioned romance crap). The plot rewards Tony’s second, far worse mistake, in the creation of Vision, who turns out to be ‘worthy of wielding Thor’s Hammer’ and whatnot and conveniently provides every necessary skill to defeat Ultron in a deus ex machina so overt you could use it as a textbook example, so even though Tony had absolutely no way of knowing that he’d get a good result this time and almost every reason to believe he’d just compound the existing problem, his reckless disregard for the literal safety of the planet is treated like a good thing because it happens to work out this time, and they just kinda sweep under the rug the fact that Tony is playing God (and being uncharacteristically stupid and selfish about it - in other films, Tony is normally only reckless with his own safety, and it’s when his actions spill out into unintended consequences for others that he realises the error of his ways and cues up a positive learning curve; it’s what makes him palatable). At the end of the film, once Ultron is gone and Tony has thrown some dispassionate wads of cash into ‘relief efforts’, he strolls and quips and eventually drives off into the sunset in his expensive car, with nary a mention of, I dunno, maybe a little guilty conscience? Maybe a hint of having learned a valuable lesson? The closest he gets is just suggesting that it might be time he retires from Avenging, but neither he nor anyone else lets on that there’s a need for serious self-reflection. The Tony Stark in this movie is the nightmarish male-fantasy version of the character, the playboy with the cool tech and no limits who does whatever he wants and then...literally rides off into the sunset in the end, no muss, no fuss. He’s kinda like a complete reversion to his original self, pre-Iron Man, frittering money around and designing weapons of mass destruction while convincing himself he’s bringing peace to the world one explosion at a time, but that Tony has no business here, seven years of character development down the track.

While we’re talking iffy characterisation, we should also segue into plot, and that’s something we can do easily enough by looking at our villain, Ultron. Calling Ultron an actual character feels...ambitious. He’s a CGI robot full of empty rhetoric and, you guessed it, more of those quips that this movie has in place of any meaningful dialogue. I’d call him self-fellating, but he ain’t got nothing to fellate, so instead he just blathers a lot in a manner that sounds vaguely poetically intelligent but is, upon a moment’s consideration, just vapid nonsense (much like Loki in the first Avengers, as noted above, but at least Loki had the benefit of a flesh-and-blood actor delivering his lines with conviction; James Spader does solid work as the voice of Ultron, but trying to make a CGI robot who spouts a school-kid’s attempt at edgy philosophy sound like a genuine menace is an uphill battle). Speaking of genuine menace, I assume the reason the film is called Age of Ultron is because A Couple of Days of Ultron Causing Disturbances in a Handful of Specific Locations was too much. For all the big talk (and there is..so much), Ultron doesn’t get up to all that much trouble, most notably in the sense that he apparently has his code all over the internet and yet he doesn’t bother stirring up a single ounce of chaos with that ungodly power. Why bother including this as an element of the character if it achieves zero story? Is it purely to make Ultron seem ~unstoppable~ because he keeps downloading into new robots? Because it didn’t really land, y’all. They try to play it like a big victory for the good guys when Vision burns Ultron out of the ‘net, but in context it’s meaningless because he didn’t do anything while he was there. Pretty much everything about Ultron was all talk, little to no action - even a whole bunch of the trouble he did cause happened off-screen, with Maria Hill just popping in to let us know that ‘there are reports of metal men stealing shit’. Cheers, cool. And you know, Ultron makes a song and dance about how he’s going to save the world by ‘ending the Avengers’, but then he...does not pursue that at all. He tries to make himself a pretty body, the Avengers thwart him, and then he enacts a doomsday machine to destroy all life on Earth. Like every other aspect of the character, the whole ‘end the Avengers’ schtick is just white noise, there’s no meaning in it. Ultron is just a same-old-same ‘What if Artificial Intelligence wants to WIPE US OUT?!’ cliche, and maybe that’s what he was in the comics too, I don’t know, but it’s the job of the film to tell that story in a dynamic way, and they had two and a half hours to do it. And yet.

There should be more to this than a nondescript placeholder villain concept and a series of action set pieces that just kinda happen until they stop. At least the first Avengers had some variety in each of its action sequences, using the location and the different skills and weapons of its antagonists, whereas this one is just ‘there are robots and the good guys punched and shot them until they were all broken, the end’. Even making the city fly in the end doesn’t actually make it interesting, not least because the characters spend most of their time running around the (weirdly, perfectly stable) streets not having to deal with any consequences of being up in the air anyway, and the doomsday device is too nebulous to ratchet up any real tension about figuring out how to deal with it. The conflicts with the Maximoff twins have at least some spark of life in them, but the characters themselves are treated to an over-simplified and very contrived narrative arc that uses what they do and what they know more as plot devices than as details of actual people’s lives, leading to a cheap death for Pietro so that Wanda will be distracted enough to abandon the big ol’ doomsday button, and it’s just all so convenient. There’s no heart in any of it, and it makes the moments that try to have heart all the more embarrassing and out-of-place (don’t even get me started on what a prescribed attempt at tugging the heart-strings it is to have Hawkeye name his magnificently well-timed newborn after Pietro, because DAMN). When I said I liked this movie better than the first Avengers, I meant just that: I like this better. That’s not to suggest that it is significantly better in any sense, because it isn’t, and I can’t even argue that this one has a better story, because honestly, it doesn’t. The first film made more sense, it was just less interesting to watch, and the things about it that were contrived were contrived in different ways. The first film was weaker and more irritating on character, and character is always the most important part of a story for me, so as annoyed as I am by the major character blunders in Age of Ultron, I’m still not as annoyed as I was after The Avengers. That is damning with the faintest of praise; this is just not a particularly good movie, it makes a poor use of its cast at the best of times, delivers a sub-par action extravaganza, and the script is not half as witty as it gleefully convinces itself that it is. It comes as no surprise, I’m sure, that I am very glad a certain writer/director departed the franchise after disappointing everyone with this outing. I say I like this better than the first Avengers, but gee, it’s a close call.

#Avengers: Age of Ultron #Marvel Cinematic Universe #Bechdel Test #female representation #MCU #Age of Ultron #Avengers

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pyrrhanikos-rp · 5 years ago

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Rules

Some of these are less rules and more information for your convenience, but please read through the whole thing. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to send me an ask or direct message.

This is not a mutuals only blog, anyone can send asks and starters. Just because I don’t follow back (from my main blog), that doesn’t mean I don’t want to RP or interact with you. Sentence starters and ask memes are a great way to interact with both the mun and the muse; I want to interact with my followers. If you send me asks, I do try to send asks back (see “Memes, ‘liking’ and reblogging”).

Godmodding/powerplay and metagaming will not be tolerated. You do not control my character. Do NOT write my character for me. That includes their actions, reactions, thoughts, feelings, etc. In addition, remember that information you know about my character is not necessarily information your character knows. If I catch you doing either, you will be warned. If you persist, the thread will be dropped.

The universe of RWBY is obviously very combat oriented. If our muses are about to get into a serious duel or fight, I’d appreciate it if we chat briefly to be sure to prevent any godmodding.

Content – I will NOT write smut. NSFW themes may occur and will be tagged as such.

Cross-overs and duplicates – My knowledge of other fandoms is extremely limited and the RWBY universe is heavily tied to who my muse is so I am not comfortable RPing my muse(s) outside of it. However, I am willing to RP with muses from other fandoms and fandomless muses that can work in the RWBY universe. Duplicates are okay. However, sometimes muses simply don’t mesh well, so I may still be semi- selective.

Memes, ‘liking’ and reblogging – DO NOT use this blog to find memes. I use my notes to track threads and asks. Tumblr barely works as it is and sorting through notes from a bunch of people ’ liking’ and reblogging a meme is aggravating. For the same reason please do not 'like’ a bunch of posts (memes, threads, or ask responses) at once either. Not only is it annoying, seeing a wall of notes without anyone sending in anything is disappointing and makes me think you’re only here for memes. It might not be your intent, but it makes me feel ignored. So unless you interact with me (IC or OOC) regularly, please reblog memes (particularly rp starters) from the source. However, even if you do not interact regularly, if you send me an ask from an ask meme (non-rp starter) then feel free to reblog that meme (I will try to send you an ask as well). Perpetually reblogging or liking memes with little or no interaction (IC or OOC) will more than likely get you blocked.

Shipping – I ship based on chemistry. In order to ship with me, I need to see the muses interact first. Once I get a feel for the chemistry (if there is any), a ship could happen (although is not guaranteed). Discussing the muses OOC, sending headcanons, etc. can assist in determining chemistry between the muses. However, pushing excessively for a ship will get you a definite no and possibly blocked. If our muses have interacted and you ship them, but are not sure if I do, please ask. I do multi-ship, so each ship will take place in their own verse.

Threads – I am fine with short, long, and paragraph responses with threads. I will try to match your response length when possible, but don’t worry too much about matching mine (my responses are sometimes inconsistent in length). If you continuously respond with one line, the thread will not go very far and may be dropped. So if you give me short responses, please give me something to continue the thread. Also, if a thread is making me uncomfortable, I reserve the right to drop it. In addition, please do not reblog closed threads that you are not part of. If you enjoy reading a thread, give it a 'like’ - although please do not clog my notes - if you have something to say (comedic, comment, or otherwise) about the thread, leave a comment or send an ask.

Time reminders – Sometimes I have issues thinking of a response, especially if a thread is getting stale or I don’t have enough to work with. I also tend to get distracted easily so sometimes I simply forget (or the thread gets lost to my drafts). If I have not responded to a thread, please give me at least 2-3 days before sending a reminder. Sometimes I get writers block, some days I get busy irl, and others I get tired or overwhelmed. If I seem to have dropped a thread, don’t be afraid to send me a message asking what happened.

Other - This one's not a rule, just an FYI. I'm more than willing to RP threads that take place after V3. For most, if not all, AUs where Pyrrha did not die, she will not have any maiden powers.

#Rules #ooc stuff #For those on mobile #rules

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artemis-entreri · 6 years ago

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[[ This post contains my review/analysis of the Forgotten Realms/Drizzt novel, Timeless, by R. A. Salvatore. As such, the entirety of this post’s content is OOC. ]]

Genre: Fantasy

Series: [As of yet unnamed]: Book I | Legend of Drizzt #34 (#31 if not counting The Sellswords)

Publisher: Harper Collins (September 4, 2018)

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Review Title: Salvatore’s Best Work to Date

Additional Information: Artwork for the cover of Timeless and used above is originally done by Aleksi Briclot. This post is very long and CONTAINS SPOILERS. Furthermore, this discussion concerns topics that I am very passionate about, and as such, at times I do use strong language. Read and expand the cut at your own discretion.

First, before I get into the breadth of this post, I feel that I need to make it clear that the success of Timeless most likely has no bearing on whether there will be other Forgotten Realms novels by authors aside from Salvatore. It was much speculated by many longtime fans of the Forgotten Realms novel line that if Timeless is successful enough, that Harper Collins would contract with other FR authors as well. While it would be nice if this were the case, numerous sources within the publishing sphere have indicated that such a development is highly unlikely.

Now, on to Timeless. If you’ve followed me for a while, you’d be right to suspect that there is some degree of sarcasm in my review title for this book. Indeed, a statement like that from me normally would be followed by, “but that’s not saying a whole lot”. However, with regards to Timeless, I am completely serious (insofar as my review title is concerned anyway). I feel that Salvatore has achieved a new height with Timeless that I, quite frankly, had not thought possible for him. After over three decades of writing and over 30 books of following the same formula, Salvatore has finally produced a book that makes me hopeful for his future works in the series. Overall Timeless is a decent book, with improvements in writing style, storytelling, characterization, and consideration of the Realms as a whole. Nonetheless, my hope is a cautious one, as the potential for a lot to go wrong is still there. However, Salvatore has also shown potential for a lot to go right. I’d really like to see the future bring much more of the latter than of the former.

Timeless represents a turning point in the Drizzt saga, as well as for the Forgotten Realms as a whole. The Drizzt franchise has been licensed to an external publisher for the first time since its conception, and with that many changes have come. Salvatore has declared that as far as he’s concerned, the “Legend of Drizzt” is over, and that Timeless represents a new story, that anyone could leap into. While this is certainly true at some level, I feel, after reading the book, that it may not stand alone anywhere near as effectively as it stands as part of Drizz't's overall story. Perhaps stating that the legend of Drizzt ended with Hero is not altogether accurate.

I’m a huge critic of Salvatore’s work, as well as being extremely critical of it. Perhaps sometimes I’m critical to a fault, but hey, I’ve got a lot of emotional investment in one of the characters he’d created (can you guess who? ;P) and I’m passionately in love with the world that character lives in. However, it was love of the character that led me to my love of the world, and if I didn’t love the world as much as I do, I might’ve fallen out of love with Artemis Entreri, especially after the treatment he’d been given in the Homecoming Trilogy. I’d first branched out into reading other FR novels because I wanted to learn more about the world that my favorite character lives in, so that I could better understand and portray him. What came as a result of me broadening my horizons was so much more than a deeper sense of connection to Entreri. This world became my escape of choice, one that I want to understand and know every aspect of, and the place in which I want to tell my own stories. The Forgotten Realms novels were more than simple entertainment for me, they were encyclopedias full of facts that I could compile about the world that I love, and no fact was too small for my fascination. Then, a strange thing happened (or perhaps not so strange): the more I’d read, the more I’d wondered how Salvatore became the most successful Forgotten Realms author. The Forgotten Realms franchise as a whole has a reputation for having third-rate fantasy, which is really unfair to many of the authors who published works within it, and I can’t help but imagine that this reputation has a lot to do with the fact that the Drizzt books are the most known out of the FR franchise. I do believe that the Drizzt books rightfully deserve to be called third-rate fantasy, but I’ve railed on Salvatore often and profusely in the past about what made his writing poor so I don’t need to do it again here. Timeless is a big change. As I was reading it, I was reminded of the better works in the Realms. Or, perhaps I should say, of the best works, which is high praise for Salvatore indeed, as while other low quality Realms novels are pretty forgettable in their specifics, passages from my favorite Realms novels stick in my mind, embodying within their evocative word choices the beauty and magic of the Realms. Although nothing in Timeless has made me feel transported to the side of the character, for once I could feel the tug, and that tug is the potential that never existed before.

Many times during my reading of Timeless, it felt like I was reading a different author -- a noticeably better one. I didn’t have (and still don’t have) an explanation for why this is the case, despite my having always held out a sliver of hope that Salvatore’s writing would improve. Over all of these years and too many books, I’d been disappointed over and over again. The best case scenario that I could hope for in reality was that Salvatore couldn’t get any worse, but oh boy did he get worse in the Homecoming Trilogy. Now that I’d suddenly gotten what I’d come close to giving up on, I’m really not sure how to handle it. I’m happy of course, but I want to know why and how it happened, and most importantly, if it is sustainable. Was it due to Salvatore himself, or his publisher? Unlike Wizards of the Coast, publishing books of all kinds is what Harper Collins does, and they’ve got more than enough expertise in publishing successful novels. As such, Harper Collins would have personnel who are much better equipped to assist Salvatore with all facets of his writing, and I’ve no doubt that they have editors who are better writers than Salvatore himself. I’ve seen enough good authors to freely admit that the greatest boon to their work wasn’t their own creativity but rather the contributions of their editors to know just how valuable a good editor can be. Perhaps Salvatore’s “leveling up” is due to having access to better editors. If this is the case, I do hope that they continue to help him as they did in Timeless.

I suppose it wouldn’t be fair to Salvatore to completely attribute all of Timeless’ writing improvements to his editor(s). He had to be willing to listen, to accept that what he’d written could be improved, and this wasn’t something that I’d thought he was capable of, given the thin-skinnedness that he routinely displayed on social media. Salvatore was willing to get rid of a lot of the tropes that I’d criticized him for, to the point that there are very few occurrences of what I’ve given the term “Salvatorisms”: his “cliché stable" was practically empty throughout Timeless and that alone was a huge improvement. I was so thrilled that “six hundred pounds of panther” didn’t appear even once, nor did the inane adjective of “killing” with regards to Guenhwyvar’s teeth and/or claws. Granted, Guenhwyvar didn’t have much “screen time” in Timeless, but that certainly didn’t stop those descriptors from showing up in the past, so this change is a great sign. Even more exciting than that is not a single appearance of the “how [character] [action]ed!” sentence construction reared its ugly head. This sentence construction is one of the worst Salvatorisms as well as being one of his favorites, so it’s a HUGE deal to me that it is completely absent in Timeless. For those unfamiliar with what I’m talking about, I’m referring to the overuse of expressions like, “how he howled!”, pervading Salvatore’s previous books. Now, for the first time as far as I can remember, “how he”, “how she” and “how they” are FINALLY used correctly to convey by what means and in what manner someone did something, instead of being this vague exclamation about something doing something to a degree that we’re supposed to know about because there’s an exclamation mark ending the sentence, but in fact we don’t know anything about because the quantification is completely empty. I honestly didn’t think that Salvatore could get to eliminating this so quickly AND so thoroughly. I’d expected to see a reduction of it like what happened with “six hundred pounds of panther” appearing less and less before disappearing completely. To the total elimination of the incorrect exclamations involving how things occur, I say this: Hallelujah and huzzah!

Of course, some aspects of Salvatore’s diction could still be improved. He is still exceptionally fond of using “magnificent” and “fine” for more things than he should. The former occurs 17 times throughout Timeless, which is more than in many of the previous Drizzt novels. Furthermore, 14 of those occurrences could really be substituted with more evocative and appropriate descriptors. The latter appears 53 times, and that includes the adjective forms. I didn’t count how many of those “fine”s were used as ineffectively as the 14 “magnificent”s but suffice to say, there are too many. But this isn’t a big deal and is an easy thing to fix. Even if Salvatore didn’t want to spend the time to expand his vocabulary, thesauruses are easy to come by, and even should he misuse a word, he has very capable editors to help him find an appropriate synonym.

While I certainly appreciate Salvatore changing things up, at times, I felt that he tries too hard in this regard, namely by attempting to change or create things that are fundamentally unnecessary. There were two main instances that stuck out to me. The first was the application of “fashioned”, as it applies to a gesture and then a facial expression. The former of these usages is less egregious, but the latter is just strange and awkward, as though Salvatore was trying to write in a fancy, archaic and/or eclectic way that ultimately just fails to become anything but pretentious. What makes it even more strange is that these awkward uses of “fashioned” occurs twice in one chapter, and then never appears again aside from the proper way in which the word should be used. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of the other tryhard new word application: “eyeblink”. This word rubs me the wrong way for several reasons. It’s redundant, it’s awkward, it’s contrived, it’s a poor rip-off from the much more poetic measurement of time “heartbeat”, it doesn’t have any precedent in FR literature, and it just isn’t necessary. I don’t know why Salvatore felt the need to interject his own measurement of time when there is a rich plethora of it in FR, or why he’s apparently decided that he doesn’t like “breath” as an expression of a short amount of time. I couldn’t find a single usage of “breath” in Timeless following the conventional method in FR literature to mean a very short amount of time. I wouldn’t mind Salvatore changing things up and adding new things if they weren’t so artificial, and the word “eyeblink” is like an ugly speed hump there to trip up the brain as it rolls along what would otherwise be smooth passages.

So, with the negative writing style details out of the way, moving on to the positives. Unlike previous books in the Drizzt series, Timeless feels like something that Salvatore actually put in effort to write. It felt like he actually associated some degree of emotional attachment to what he was writing, rather than making a desperate bid to have all of his characters stick out in Forgotten Realms lore and/or reap in as much $$ as he could because it was his last chance to do so. While his better descriptions aren’t at the point in which they stick in my head, seeing them for the first time did make me raise an eyebrow and nod approvingly, and I do remember that they exist, but sadly, not well enough to find them again without a re-read. Salvatore does a lot better job of showing and not telling, although he still has room for improvement. Regardless, similes and metaphors color the spoon-fed flat details like how many drow soldiers marched in whose compound or how many demons stood against our heroes who are fearless because we are told, not shown, that they are fearless. Additionally, Salvatore actually tells us more details of what the characters look like. It’s still not as specific as I’d like, but knowing, for instance, that Zaknafein had/has short hair and that both he and Drizzt have less angular features than other drow is a big plus from vague or absent descriptors. Previously, we’d take the “canon” appearance of the characters based on the artists’ interpretations of them. For instance, Zaknafein was thought of and portrayed by many to have long hair with a partial-ponytail because that was how Todd Lockwood painted him, when apparently, canon is very much otherwise. We’d also not known anything about what Drizzt looked like, other than that he’s “handsome” and has purple eyes. While “less angular” still leaves much to be desired in terms of description, at least it’s more specific. A detailed accounting of someone’s facial structure has the potential to be boring, but that potential doesn’t have to be realized. As an example, perhaps Salvatore could drop a line about the shape of father and son Do’Urden’s nose and how it’s like or unlike drow noses, thereby giving us more details while at the same time providing some drow lore. Or, perhaps the next time that Drizzt quirks an eyebrow, there could be a line in there about how the shape disrupts what normally has the grace of a willow branch. I don’t know, just throwing examples out there. Although I do like “beautifully curving skull” for Jarlaxle’s head, as it conveys both his own sense of narcissism as well as his attractiveness, it leaves much to be desired in terms of details. Is Jarlaxle’s head actually prettier than the average drow head, or is that all within his own mind? We might never know.

Speaking of drow lore, Timeless does give us more of it than we’ve seen in a long time, from Salvatore at least. Part of this is because the endless machinations of the Matron Mothers of Menzoberranzan don’t provide anything new even when it’s a different Matron Mother doing the machinating. In Timeless however, we are given even more forgettable names, but we’re also provided with more glimpses into the detailed lives of the residents of the City of Spiders. We see that the priestesses of Lolth engage in activities other than praying to their goddess and having sex with each other in their endless power struggle. We meet female drow who are not just basically replicas of one another, and male drow aside from the most powerful and notable who might have more of a role to play in their society than their society would care to admit. We see more parts of Menzoberranzan than just the greatest of the noble houses. We even travel to a drow city that isn’t Menzoberranzan. We learn details such as grease and Gelatinous Cube goo being used as hair styling products by drow (or just Jarlaxle). And, of course, we’re told a lot more about the Do’Urden household, and although this topic is as uninteresting to me as Drizzt is, I still found it intriguing when Briza was revealed to be fathered by Uthegentel Del'Armgo, that Nalfein was fathered by Rizzen and inherited his lackluster nature, that Malice had killed her mother to succeed the position, and that Malice is small for a drow (smaller than males even). I’d be interested to learn who fathered Dinin and Maya. I’m not really sure what purpose it serves for us to be told that Malice is very good at sex, just as I’m not sure why it’s pertinent that Zaknafein is as well, but hey, I guess drow society needs something to gossip about. It’s probably part of the whole “sex sells” tactic, and at least it’s better than the fetishization of lesbians that Salvatore routinely engaged in in the past. Not a single incident of gratuitous sex between drow female and yochlol in drow female form occurs in all of Timeless, or any unnecessary female/female sex scenes for no reason other to titillate certain readers who enjoy the objectification of a type of people. I’m really proud of Salvatore for this, I hope that this is a trend that will continue. In any case, previously, most of the “behind the scenes” aspects of Lolthite drow societies had to be excavated from other FR books and/or resources, such as the War of the Spider Queen series, the Starlight and Shadows series, and the Underdark/drow-related D&D supplements. While Timeless doesn’t paint the full picture itself, it does a decent job of fitting into all of it if not tying it all together, and that is far more than I could say of any previous Drizzt book. In fact, the first part of the book reminded me of what it felt like when I was reading about the Underdark for the first time. After being tired of and frustrated by Salvatore for 30+ books, I’d long forgotten the sense of wonder and fascination I’d felt that first time. I think that it makes a certain degree of sense for each author who writes about the Underdark to introduce it in their own way, and although Salvatore’s was the first introduction I’d read to the Underdark, Homeland fell flat on its face compared to what Elaine Cunningham does in Daughter of the Drow. I can’t say that Timeless’ introduction to the Underdark is as good as that of DotD, but this time Salvatore has come much much closer.

Some of the details that Salvatore provides in Timeless made me recall something from one of the Underdark sourcebooks, but I can’t remember which one it is. Specifically, that sourcebook states that drow who have “off color” eyes like blue or purple are not purebred drow throughout their entire history. They’d have a surface race’s blood within their ancestry, most commonly a surface elf’s. I can’t help but wonder if Salvatore is going in the direction of a “grand reveal” that Drizzt had a surface ancestor. This would certainly explain the less angular features that he and Zaknafein share, especially if there was, say, a human ancestor in their bloodline. Furthermore, the drow as a race are horribly inbred, given how they have elitism within elitism. It is the case in our world that “mutts” are stronger and healthier than purebreds, and if we assume that that’s the case in FR genetics as well, Zaknafein and Drizzt being drow “mutts” would certainly partly explain their physical superiority among the drow. I’m a bit torn as far as my feelings regarding Salvatore linking Drizzt’s trademark purple eyes, with the supporting not as angular features, to canon established in previous source material. On one hand, I always support and clamor for Salvatore to make his books less insular, and a willingness to step back from always making everything contribute to Drizzt’s special snowflake status would show Salvatore to be not as shallow and egotistical as I’ve come to believe him to be. But ultimately, I think that I hope that Salvatore doesn’t go this route with Drizzt and Zaknafein. The “it was always meant to be!” reveal would certainly be mind-blowing to sadly most of Salvatore’s fans, but there’s a lot of problems with this trope, other than that it’s incredibly cliché. The idea that “goodness” being bred into him rather than a choice that he made would really rob Drizzt of the significance of his morality, as well as convey the really problematic message that what we are is more predetermined by accidents of birth than by our own choices. From an in-universe perspective, it would also imply that purebred drow are inherently evil, which has been a consistent theme in Salvatore’s books. However, the history of the drow indicates that this isn’t the case, but sadly, through the intentional erasure of non-evil drow deities, Salvatore has warped the canon. Most of the contents of this paragraph are speculation though, and it could just be that Salvatore isn’t going anywhere with Drizzt’s and to a lesser degree Zaknafein’s curious physical characteristics. It could just all be a coincidence, and I do hope that it is.

So, while I like a lot of what Salvatore has done in terms of worldbuilding in Timeless, there are also things that I really don’t like. The biggest of these is what I feel to be him taking liberties with things that he shouldn’t take liberty with. It’s one thing to state that Bregan D’aerthe, which not-so-coincidentally happens to be an anagram of the words “Baenre gathered”, is one of the possible ways to say “assassins for hire” in drow, but it’s an entirely different thing to inject modern real world political things into an established canon. I’m referring specifically to this:

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE that Salvatore did this. I can’t express how thrilled I am at seeing him show a spine and take a stand against something blatantly wrong. While Salvatore expresses sentiments that I agree with on his social media, he hasn’t previously put his pen where his mouth is, and in fact has done quite the opposite. I’m referring to the aforementioned fetishization of lesbians as well as the omission of male lgbt+ characters in a world whose creator has stated that pansexuality is the default sexuality and that the concept of discrimination based on sexuality is nonexistent. So, I’ve always sort of looked at Salvatore’s “social justice” stance with more than a little skepticism, and as much as I’d like to believe in him, because that would definitely make my life easier, I couldn’t. What he’s done here is impressive because it’s the sort of thing that could get someone into a lot of trouble. He’s risking losing his conservative readership with such a move, whereas previously his writing has just always been catering to the masses, avoiding confrontation, and directed wherever the money will come from.

So then, what’s my beef? I realize this makes me sound like I’m never going to be satisfied but I possess a great deal of the love of the Realms as a whole, a love that is fueled by the contributions of the array of creatives. The Realms is a beautiful quilt comprised of pieces created by different people, each one a different style, meshing together to make this whole big amazing work of art. Although I love what Salvatore has done, I wish he didn’t do it here. I wish that he’d done it in his own books, not in the one that’s part of a shared world. What he’s done with the covfefe thing in a Forgotten Realms novel is like if he’d taken a sharpie and written “Fuck Trump” on that quilt. The sentiment is good, and most of the people that created the quilt probably agree with him, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s rudely put a jarring mark on top of the quilt. From this day onward, not only does FR canon state that the drow language contains a word that’s just all-too-coincidentally the same as the nonsense construction created by the angry tangerine currently in charge of the United States, the word is also apparently now part of an established drow concept. I don’t really care for drow, I think they’re edgy and overrated, but I feel bad for what this does to them. It makes them even more silly and artificial. Not quite to the degree of Twilight’s sparkling vampires yet but certainly trending that way if this keeps up.

While we’re on the subject of the drow, let’s talk about demons, since the two seem to be closely linked, although I can’t figure out why the drow haven’t learned from millennia of dealing with demons that it never works out in their favor. The demons are either too incompetent and stupid to get things right or are too chaotic and unpredictable to do what the drow want, or some combination of both ends up blowing plans involving them in the drow machinator’s faces. It’s truly strange that Lolthite society has survived with all of their self-destructive tendencies, courting with demons being one of them, especially since being elven folk, drow aren’t particularly fertile, even with the massive amount of sex that they have, especially when, according to Salvatore, a great amount of that sex happens between priestesses and/or with yochlols, and there are only so many hours in a day to do things. All said, the drow should be at least endangered as a species. I get that they’re supposed to be chaotic but it’s gotten past the point of starting to get ridiculous that this species survives in the cutthroat Underdark. Sure, there’s the whole “it’s magic!” argument, but really, that doesn’t make it an excuse for lazy worldbuilding. I can get following this route when you’re just starting out, but the Drizzt books have been out for nearly three decades now and D&D is even older. Salvatore is definitely not contributing to the practicality of this race with yet another major plot that uses demons. Besides, Rage of Demons was so 2016. I get that the novels have been put on hold for two years but it’s lazy to just pick up as if those two years haven’t happened. They have, and the Realms have experienced changes. The demon rampage should be behind us, but apparently, they’re still very much a threat to the world thanks to Salvatore. He really needs to stop doing this, he doesn’t get to dictate the flow of the Realms, WotC does, and even though WotC gives him leeway due to his moneymaking prowess, it’s still incredibly egocentric of Salvatore to command a SHARED world to move, or more accurately adhere, to his pace and his events. Heck, Salvatore isn’t even consistent with himself. I can understand the demon threat still being an active concern if the Demon Lords had succeeded in getting out of the Underdark, as the Out of the Abyss adventure proposes an alternative ending scenario in which heroes don’t save the world and Faerûn is ruled by demonic influence. But the thing is, we saw Drizzt strike down Demogorgon, and we witnessed other demon lords retreating back to the Abyss. I get that demons aren’t very smart, as they seem even more interested in pursuing self-destruction than the drow, but it should be obvious to anything with even a pea-sized brain that if the biggest and most powerful among your kind can’t succeed at something, the chances are that you, an average whatever, aren’t very likely to succeed at it either. All in all though, it doesn’t make sense for the drow to keep using demons and it doesn’t make sense for the demons to keep being willing to be used in the same repeated ploys over and over again. The demon trope is a crutch that is being leaned on by someone too lazy to create a new one. Along the same lines of the repetitive plot is the yet another attempt to take over the surface world. Matron Zhindia’s name (had to triple-check that was the correct one) is as forgettable as all other priestesses of Lolth who have tried to take over the surface world and/or hunt down Drizzt because after the first ones to do it, namely Yvonnel the Eternal and Malice, it’s really a case of been there, done that. Do we really need to see it happen (and inevitably fail) again?

I’ll break up this negativity with some Timeless plus sides. First, on the whole, Timeless does feel a lot more like a Realms novel than most if not all of its predecessors. Salvatore’s tendency was to insulate his corner of the Realms so much so that he’d ignore the existence of aspects that should have a significant bearing on his plot. Namely, the erasure of drow deities other than Lolth, notably the siblings Eilistraee and Vhaeraun, is especially glaring. Given the activities that followers of both engage in, it was very unlikely that Drizzt, or even Zaknafein, weren’t discovered by them, and brought to be among other drow of like mind. My suspicion is that acknowledging the existence of those drow would be taking away from the special snowflake status of Drizzt as the only goodly drow. What was done was petty, small-minded, disrespectful to the rest of the setting and honestly, pretty pathetic. However, and very shockingly to me, there’s a chance that Salvatore has done the unthinkable in Timeless: he might’ve made an allusion to Eilistraee. Jeyrelle Fey, a member of Bregan D’aerthe, is described as a priestess of a goddess who isn’t Lolth, but Jeyrelle wouldn’t give the details when asked by Zaknafein who her patron was. Of course, she could just as easily be a follower of Kiaransalee, another evil drow deity whose existence wouldn’t threaten Drizzt’s "special snowflake only goodly drow" status. Or, even more strangely, Jeyrelle Fey could be a follower of surface elf deity Sehanine, and as unlikely as it is for a priestess of Sehanine to be in Bregan D’aerthe, I wouldn’t put it past the guy who elevated a minor and unrelated nature goddess to a position that should’ve been occupied by the drow deities whose portfolio specifically included non-Lolthite drow. Still, I’m holding out hope for the best case scenario. Yvonnel 2.0 is still receiving spells from presumably Lolth, but even she recognizes that she shouldn’t be in Lolth’s favor due to the degree to which she betrayed Lolth. And really, Yvonnel 2.0 shouldn’t be in Lolth’s favor, for Lolth has dropped followers who haven’t denounced her quite as flagrantly as Yvonnel 2.0 had. It would make a lot of sense for Eilistraee to take note of and to take Yvonnel 2.0 under her wing, but I fear that Salvatore will pull the whole “Lolth loves chaos and loves this the most because it was too unpredictable even for her” card. The thing about Lolth is that, despite what she supposedly stands for, in reality, based on the way that she’s portrayed by Salvatore, she’s more about absolute devotion and getting what she wants. Chaos would mean that things would work out roughly so that she gets what she wants about as much as she gets the opposite, but we’ve seen how badly she reacts to getting even a bit of what she doesn’t want. Someone like that is about order and absolute rule, not chaos. I would like to see Salvatore accept and incorporate the existence of the entire drow pantheon into his work. I’ve always believed that acknowledging the presence of other goodly drow (or at least, not totally evil drow) outside of Drizzt’s immediate family would be a boon. If anything, it would be a great chance to make Drizzt special in a less artificial way. Especially now, as it begins to require a crane to suspend disbelief that Drizzt, and his widely-traveled and very knowledgeable friends have somehow been totally ignorant to two not insignificant sects of non-Lolthite drow. Now its definitely possible that our favorite Paladi... oh wait, uh, Ranger? has developed in a such a way that he might have some trouble relating to Eilistraeens and Vhaeraunites, I nonetheless could see him being excited when meeting them for the first time. He'd likely then feel awkward and/or put off by the specifics of their worship but even so its something that should happen. For instance, while Drizzt would certainly get along better with an Eilistraeen than a Vhaeraunite, I could see him being very uncomfortable with the ritualistic dancing naked under moonlight, as he is rather prudish. I could also see him being freaked out by the fact that male priests of Eilistraee would often participate in their ritualistic dances after using magic to change themselves into female forms. Furthermore, while Eilistraee’s followers tend to be a motherly type of matriarchal, Drizzt likely has severe enough trauma associated with matriarchies that he’d see issues where there aren’t any, which is something that he’s already prone to doing. Certainly, while experiencing all of these things, Drizzt wouldn’t be showing himself in the most positive light, which might contribute to why Salvatore is hesitant to incorporate Eilistraee and her followers into his story. But the story of Drizzt is in no small part about acknowledging your weaknesses and becoming better for it, or at least, it’s supposed to be about that, except unfortunately we’ve gotten a lot of acting out in immature ways and not really confronting existent issues but magicking in unnecessary ones for the golden boy to add to his accomplishments. Again, though, this would be a chance to set some of the past transgressions right, by finally bringing into the fold elements that should be a piece of any goodly FR drow’s history. Eilistraee’s song reaches every drow from the highest matron mother to the lowest male slave, instilling in each of them her wish for them to live in freedom and happiness. Of course, if additional development isn’t enough impetus, Drizzt being freaked out by Eilistraeens could make for some very hilarious scenes, and comedy is far from the lowest form of entertainment.

As for Vhaeraun, while Drizzt would appreciate the elevation of male drow to equal status as female drow, the specifics of what Vhaeraun stands for, especially as he’s represented in 5th edition, would be antithetical to Drizzt’s beliefs. Nonetheless, interacting with a Vhaeraunite would be an interesting moral quandary for Drizzt, for it’s possible for one to not be overtly evil, especially when he could relate to their desire to oppose and free themselves and others like them from the Lolthite matriarchy. Drizzt loves projects, and the starting material would be something that he could relate to better than he’d ever could and can to Artemis Entreri. There’s some great storytelling potential here if Salvatore would just embrace more of the Realms rather than shutting it out.

There’s a great deal of emphasis placed in Timeless about it being unknown where Zaknafein’s soul has been all of this time. Of course, it would’ve made the most sense that Eilistraee or Vhaeraun scooped it up before Lolth got her clutches on it, and that result would even be consistent with when Cadderly inquired about Zaknafein’s soul and found that it was in a “good place”. The Demonweb Pits could hardly ever be categorized as “a good place”. Salvatore could actually eliminate an inconsistency (and ho boy does he have so many inconsistencies already) by acknowledging Eilistraee and/or Vhaeraun, but I fear that the repetitive assertions of “it doesn’t matter”, as spoken by the Priestesses of Lolth as well as by the narration is just yet another nail in the coffin of the hope that Salvatore will acknowledge Eilistraee and Vhaeraun at last.

I’m always a little scared whenever Salvatore touches a character that wasn’t created by him. I still feel that it was self-aggrandizing when he had Alustriel Silverhand, who is usually very busy with large-scale threats to Toril as a whole, take so much of an interest in Drizzt that she agrees to personally teach Catti-Brie magic. It isn’t quite as ridiculous as relegating Elminster to that role, but I suppose if it were Elminster, Salvatore couldn’t hint to the average reader that there might’ve been something more than friendship between Drizzt and Elminster, although I’d have so much more respect for him if he was open-minded enough to do that. Unfortunately, Drizzt’s encounter with Alustriel took place during the over two decades of books in which the only creatures capable of non-heterosexuality were universally female. Oh, and pedophiles. This period was obviously not exactly known for its flattering representations. But I do think that incorporating the unfolding fate of Dagult Neverember into Timeless is a good choice, for not only does it introduce some intrigue that isn’t the typical and vastly overdone Menzoberranzan intrigue, it fleshes out a story in a way that is in accordance with what we’ve been told already. The stuff that happens in late 4th edition leading up to now has set Neverember up in a position where he isn’t well-liked by people in his world or those outside of it, and those who have been following the tale wouldn’t mind reading the details about his ultimate fate. I have a feeling that the events that happen in the cities, especially Waterdeep, was designed to dovetail with the events in the upcoming adventure, Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. Timeless does leave us wanting for details for a location as rich in lore as Waterdeep, and while other authors have done a much better job of painting the details of the City of Splendors in their works, I don’t really mind that Salvatore doesn’t meet their measure because of what we were given in Death Masks, as well as what I hope we will receive from the two Waterdeep adventures. I’m ok with Salvatore not trying to reinvent the wheel especially when said wheel is already so smooth and well-crafted already.

Even with a cursory view of Waterdeep, I’m glad that Salvatore dared venture within it. I can imagine that it’s a daunting task, not like the much smaller by comparison Luskan, or even the still under construction Neverwinter. By stepping into Waterdeep, he’s tapping into a rich Realms resource, and unless he’s desperate to make his mark on it like he did upon the Realms in the Homecoming Trilogy, Salvatore only stands to benefit. Using the location of Thornhold as a plot point is also a good move in my opinion, as it is a place with a history that’s been explored in other works, leaving behind a precedent that Salvatore can build upon instead of overwrite, and thus far, he’s done a good job of building instead overwriting. It’s also really refreshing to see Salvatore write a drow city that isn’t Menzoberranzan. With all the emphasis placed on Menzoberranzan, readers not familiar with the Forgotten Realms as a whole would likely think that it’s the ONLY drow city in the Underdark. Certainly, Menzoberranzan is arguably the most zealous Lolthite city, but if one has not read the War of the Spider Queen books, one might not even know about the existence of drow strongholds outside of Menzoberranzan. Of course there’s the chance that Drizzt-only readers of the Realms now think that Menzoberranzan and Ched Nasad are the only drow cities, which is a shame since Ched Nasad is no longer exists. However, it’s still great that Salvatore acknowledges Ched Nasad in his own publication, which is different from it appearing in a project he supposedly oversaw. With the existence of a second drow city, it’s easier for readers to imagine that there are third, fourths, and many more out there. Furthermore, Salvatore’s description of Ched Nasad, including how the characters in Timeless use its unique structure to do combat, is true to and consistent with how it was portrayed in the past. In all of this, it’s so good to see Salvatore work in conjunction with that which was left by his peers. I want to see him doing more of this sitting at the table expanding the tapestry, rather than writing his name in sharpie all over what’s been woven before.

One of the things that Salvatore does is serve up ridiculously souped-up versions of classics in D&D. Guenhwyvar is perhaps the best example of this tendency, as in addition to being immeasurably more powerful than a normal figurine of wondrous power, she’s also intelligent and possessing of free will. She gets to choose her owner, for even though the magic of the figurine has some ability to compel her, as we saw with Masoj Hun’ett, ultimately, Guenhwyvar calls the shots for herself. In Timeless, we see that Salvatore’s not done with the already overpowered Guenhwyvar, for Catti-brie the Chosen of Mystra is looking into ways to extend her ability to stay on the Prime Material Plane, which means that soon, we’ll see Guenhwyvar being even more unlikely to be matched by anything similar. Is it really necessary to make Guenhwyvar even more overpowered? As if that’s not enough, Salvatore has to change one of the basic and most commonly practiced D&D spells: Comprehend Languages. For those unfamiliar with D&D, Comprehend Languages is a first level divination spell that multiple different classes can take. Even though taking it would mean giving up one of your first level spell slots in lieu of a combat spell, many low level characters take it anyway because of how useful it is. However, being a first level spell, it should serve no more than what it’s intended to do, namely, help a character understand languages that they don’t understand, and even then only providing the literal meaning. What Salvatore has done with it is made it into something that should be a much higher level spell, because according to him, using it on a person enough times helps that person to learn the language. The quantity that constitutes “enough” can’t be all that high either, because Zaknafein hasn’t been with Drizzt and Catti-brie for all that long. Comprehend Languages lasts an hour, and there are only so many hours in a day to necessitate refreshing the spell. Catti-brie is probably high enough level enough of a wizard that casting all of those spells wouldn’t be a problem, but unless they were unnecessarily refreshing the spell before the duration wore off, which they’d have no reason to do, what Salvatore has done is make a basic spell into something much more powerful. What’s the point of learning languages at all if one could just be zapped with a bunch of first level spells to gain a language that would be appropriate to a situation rather than finding oneself with an inappropriate language for one’s station in life? This modification is just unnecessary and is one of those shared world elements that Salvatore shouldn’t be tampering with. It’s one thing that Drizzt in the novels is an unbeatable master swordsman but the character sheet version of him is a total joke by comparison, but it’s another to start giving plot armor to fundamental spells just because it makes Salvatore’s own job easier.

For better or worse, one of the most talked about aspects of the Drizzt books is the combat scenes. Some people think that they’re great, but I’ve never much cared for them even before I’d learned about how they’re written more like hockey games than sword to sword combat. There’s a lot of chopping and slashing using weapons that are designed to stab and pierce, and I’ve never understood why Drizzt specializes in cavalry blades when he’s never engaged in the style of mounted combat for which those blades are designed. But, I suppose in a world with magical weapons that aren’t breakable by mundane means, people can do whatever they want with their weapons, but that does beg the question of why they choose a specific shape of weapon other than to “look cool”, a factor which should be at the very bottom of any self-respecting martial artist’s list of priorities. Nonetheless, Salvatore’s fight scenes, especially ones involving drow, tend to be rote and formulaic. After the first few books or so, the fight scenes don’t offer anything fresh, and the many pages in which they’re described just tends to run on and not serve any purpose, especially when Salvatore often uses the same adjectives over and over again, i.e. “wades in”, “whirling scimitars”, “pumping arm”, “blades working in circles”, etc. This has gotten so bad in the Homecoming Trilogy that the phenomenon that I’ve come to describe as C-rated Hollywood stop-motion battle scenes was high praise. Timeless sees a marked improvement in that the fight scenes are truncated and punchier, and the aforementioned descriptors that are repeated endlessly throughout the series hardly make an appearance at all. A large part of this might be attributable to the fact that Drizzt isn’t the focus of Timeless, Zaknafein arguably has stolen that position. Furthermore, although we’ve never seen him use a whip before, the whip has suddenly become one of Zaknafein’s core weapons in Timeless, so much so that we barely see him in combat without one. He is a Weapons Master, so presumably he has expertise with a plethora of weapons, however the whip is portrayed to be such a central part of his fighting style in both his past and present incarnations that it’s more than a little strange that we’ve never seen him use one before. I suspect that this was done largely to change up the fight scenes, and honestly, it’s a pretty lazy approach. It was strongly implied that Zaknafein was the most proficient with dual-wielding fighting style, which is something that he’d imparted upon Drizzt through training. However, we’ve seen so much of Drizzt’s dual-wielding and are likely to see a lot more. Salvatore could’ve perhaps done some more research into various dual-wielding styles so as to distinguish between father and son, but instead he took the lazy route and introduced another inconsistency into a work that already has so many that it hardly needs more.

Speaking of inconsistencies, it’s strange and difficult to suspend disbelief when we see Drizzt struggling against two normal marilith demons when he’d defeated Marilith, the greater demon responsible for the name of her race. That happened when he didn’t have the new and improved Twinkle-reforged-with-Vidrinath. Along the same lines of it being difficult to suspend disbelief, there’s no tension when any member of the Companions of the Hall are “in danger”. Even before they’d died and come back to life, they’ve been in “mortal peril” for more times than I can count but always managed to survive. This pattern has continued to repeat, for as we’ve seen, even a literally world-shattering event designed to kill off short-lived races wasn’t enough to penetrate their plot armor. The scene with Regis and the Water Weird was neat, however I rolled my eyes at the “tension”. After everything that Regis had gone through, the suggestion that there was a chance that he’d die alone and undiscovered in the sewers beneath Waterdeep is just melodramatic. Were Salvatore R. R. Martin, I might’ve not been sure, but Salvatore’s star characters are immune to death to the degree that they’re immune to danger. The final thing that really makes me roll my eyes at is how we’re supposed to believe that Jarlaxle still has a chance of betraying the Companions of the Hall. I get that he’s supposed to be a very unpredictable character who ultimately is in it for himself but he’s shown himself to go to great lengths and expend unimaginable resources to help the CotH. He’s not only one of their most powerful and resourceful allies, but also one of the most steadfast. He might be the way he’s supposed to be with other people, but at least with regards to the CotH, Salvatore has made him so pathetically predictable that the CotH must truly be very stupid, or otherwise very hypocritical, to still suspect him. It’s really a shame what Salvatore has done with Jarlaxle, in his usual way of “redeeming” all the characters he’s made them flat, one-dimensional and calculable. Jarlaxle’s also lost a lot of his edge and sense of menace, he is far from what he used to be in the earlier books, and not in a good way.

On the bright side, the flashbacks to Jarlaxle and Zaknafein’s past are memorable. Perhaps this is because their story is one that Salvatore has wanted to tell for a long time and has already written most of, leaving him more time to tweak it before the finalization of Timeless. I feel that those scenes have more the mark of having been pondered thoroughly and extensively than the much more forgettable “current” events in Timeless. The thing that sticks out the most in my mind among those latter events are the fight scenes involving dwarves. Salvatore’s definitely a lot better at writing dwarven combat than he is at writing drow combat. His dwarven characters also talk a lot more consistently like Realmsians, which can’t be said of his other characters. It’s not as jarring as the dialogue in the Brimstone Angels books but, “You mean the dead guy out at the desk”? Seriously?

Zaknafein was my first favorite character. He gradually slid out of this role for me because he died before we got to know him very well. As time went on and I got to know the rest of the cast better, I became of the opinion that the only reason that Zaknafein remained cool was because he’d been dead, thus not giving Salvatore a chance to do to him what he’d done to Jarlaxle and Artemis Entreri. With Zaknafein’s resurrection, since I no longer cared about him one way or another, I was more curious than dreading to see what Salvatore might do to him. This hasn’t happened, and I hope for the sake of readers who love Zaknafein still, the ones capable of introspection and analysis, that it doesn’t happen. Other than the weird thing with the whip, Zaknafein feels about the same. Which, while it isn’t a bad thing, unfortunately, it isn’t really a good thing either for a character who has a book dedicated to him to not receive much development beyond what he was before. My feelings toward Zaknafein have evened to a bland neutrality that wasn’t piqued one way or another by the characterization in Timeless. For lack of a better word, Zaknafein is boring. His key defining feature in the early books was that he stood out from the rest of the drow in that he possessed mercy and wasn’t a senseless killing machine, except for when it involved Priestesses of Lolth. However, Drizzt has usurped the role of being the “only good drow” so thoroughly that not even his father can share the limelight. So, Zaknafein had to pick up a different defining feature that sets him apart from his son, and that defining feature turns out to be drow racial elitism. I’m actually quite pleased with this choice, because it does make sense for Zaknafein to have it. He might not think that “lower” lifeforms are worthy of death, but he had lived in a society that heavily indoctrinated that mindset into its members for centuries, unlike Drizzt who’d spent most of his time on the surface and experienced the pains of racism directly. What I also like about Zaknafein’s elitism is that it makes him similar to male drow from other FR series, namely, Ryld Argith from the War of the Spider Queen books. Ryld wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t a good guy either, as I’d realized when he watched indifferently as a surface dweller died while he could’ve done something to save them. Zaknafein is perhaps more of a “good guy” than Ryld was, but he’s not Drizzt. This is actually really good that Zaknafein isn’t another special snowflake, but instead someone who could embody the mentality of drow males in general in the oppressive Lolthite matriarchy. It makes him more believable as a character, and his world more reasonable. While I said that the characterization of Zaknafein is boring, I do feel that it shows experience and maturation of Salvatore as a writer. I may just be being optimistic, but the sense I get from Zaknafein is that Salvatore’s years of writing Drizzt has taught him something that he applied to Zaknafein. Perhaps it’s because Zaknafein manages to be similar enough to Drizzt without being annoying, since he doesn’t preach and act sanctimoniously. I do wish that Salvatore would let Zaknafein become his own character though, without the none-too-subtle comparisons between him and Artemis Entreri. Jarlaxle may like Entreri as much as he likes Zaknafein, but the two are dissimilar enough that it’s really pushing a forced point to keep drawing the analogy. At times with Zaknafein, I also felt like Salvatore didn’t fully think out aspects of his character. For instance, Zaknafein professes to not care about House Simfray, and he shouldn’t given his character, yet he still wanted to personally slay Matron Hauzz for destroying “his” house. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because most if not all of the males of House Simfray, whom are the only things that Zaknafein cared about as far as that was concerned, were rescued and claimed by Bregan D’aerthe. It could’ve been just an excuse to kill another Priestess of Lolth, but Zaknafein expended a major bargaining chip with Jarlaxle to attain something that didn’t have that much value. It’s yet another typical Salvatore not well-thought out inconsistency.

All in all though, Zaknafein is all right. He might be being used as a symbol of regressive perspectives, but he’s mature enough to try to reconcile himself to literally a whole new world, while knowing when to hold his tongue. I got the feeling that Zaknafein was really trying his best, and although he gives in to his biases at times, the occasions aren’t extreme and are very understandable given his circumstances. I think that, whether it was by intention or not, Zaknafein is actually a good role model, because he never loses sight of what’s most important, and actually acts consistently with that fact. Even though it’s difficult for him to stomach the idea of his flesh and blood with an iblith mate, he doesn’t avert his eyes, but instead takes in the love that Drizzt shares with Catti-brie, and struggles to reconcile himself with it. When he knows that his beliefs don’t fit in a certain environment, rather than broadcasting them and/or forcing them down others’ throats, he attempts to keep them to himself. Zaknafein actually places the most important thing to him, his son, before himself, and is willing to go so far as to take himself out of that most important thing’s life because he thought that it was what was best for Drizzt. Drizzt, on the other hand... I’m not sure if it’s Salvatore’s intention to paint his golden boy in such a negative light, but I sincerely hope that it was his intention, because if he considers Drizzt’s behavior to be the right course of action, I’m going to be even more leery of people who try to emulate Drizzt.

One of the things that have always concerned me more than a little is how much of a pedestal Drizzt is elevated to in Salvatore’s novels, even when he does some really questionable things, and then those things are blamed entirely on the other party involved in the activities. Quite frankly, the thought of people emulating Drizzt terrifies me, because Drizzt has routinely engaged in activities that are very problematic. Even though he believes himself to be empathetic and sensitive to the needs of others, the reality is that his actions don't align with his statements. Drizzt is very egocentric, he surrounds himself with people who don’t do a lot of deep thinking and who only disagree with him on minor things. Other than the sanctimony and preachiness, Drizzt’s most problematic trait is that he’s convinced that he knows what the “correct” path is, and that the best way to “save” someone who has strayed from that path is to have them follow in his own footsteps. He has been through a lot, sure, but it’s still far from having experienced everyone’s hardships. Even though Salvatore would rather bestow upon Drizzt the opportunity to struggle with magically-imparted mental illness instead of exploring that experience through a character that would actually struggles with it (*cough* Entreri *cough*), Drizzt is still a far cry from being an expert on all things. However, Drizzt certainly seems to think that in his two short centuries that he’s seen everything, and his self-righteous diary entries are more insufferable than ever. Especially the one in which he goes on about how much he’s grown, it’s really hard not to roll my eyes and gag at it. Far from being shining examples of good, Drizzt and the Companions of the Hall are very similar in effect to a popular clique in high school, carrying about like they’re the best and the model of what’s right, living in an echo chamber of their own beliefs. Occasionally they’ll take pity on a deviant and try to “fix” them by pushing them down the same path that they followed, but really, Drizzt and the CotH are privileged in many respects. This sort of practice, the belief that Drizzt possesses that “evil” people need to be “redeemed” following the way that he knows best isn’t too different from the mentality behind practices like conversion therapy.

Had I any faith in Drizzt left, I would’ve lost the last of it in Timeless. There are two main things that contribute to this. The first is that Drizzt is disgustingly vain. I get that he’s supposed to be humble, but anyone who preaches about humility as much as he does doesn’t truly understand the concept. At least he’s self-aware enough to admit that he enjoys being in shape and that it’s flattering when Catti-brie spies on him during his morning practices. However, although he holds his tongue from lecturing Yvonnel about being vain, he doesn’t realize that her making her eyes the same color as his in order to entice him, and that tactic being effective, is a sign of the depths of his own vanity. Perhaps this is no big deal, but I don’t find vanity either heroic or noble, and since Drizzt is inflated to be one of the greatest heroes of all time, it dismays me that he possesses these sorts of qualities. More egregious though is Drizzt’s treatment of his own father, by which I was thoroughly disgusted. I don’t know how anyone would come out of reading that still admiring Drizzt, and knowing that they will makes me even more leery of those unshakable Drizzt fans. Drizzt’s only redeeming feature seems to be that he’s a good fighter, but for all of his years of being alive and all of his talk of having matured so much over those years, he acts like a giant manchild. I get that he’s in emotional turmoil because of Zaknafein’s return and his own struggles of reconciliation of the past to the present, but to say that Drizzt handles that much less gracefully than Zaknafein does is a massive understatement. Drizzt’s intolerance of Zaknafein being unable to instantly see things his way is pretty typical behavior for Drizzt, but it’s especially hard to stomach because Zaknafein gave up everything, not only once, but twice, for Drizzt, and later shows himself to be willing to do it as many times as necessary. Drizzt is a disgrace, not only to the drow who sired him, but also to his monk training. Using his new abilities to literally destroy dinner with his wife and father? Seriously? Physically assaulting his father because Zaknafein couldn’t convert fast enough to his perspective? It really scares me to think about how many people out there might be cheering Drizzt on as he throws a tantrum, and I fear encountering even more people like that in this fandom, when Drizzt already inspires them to feel justified in sending people death threats for pointing out their hero’s foibles. I think that Salvatore was trying to convey that there should be no tolerance for bigotry, but he’s going about it in a really bad way. While it is indeed the case that some people out there can’t ever be changed, there are others, like Zaknafein, who can be, but in the face of a violent response, the opposite of the desired outcome is what usually comes to pass. Furthermore, not every Zaknafein will be as noble as the one in Timeless, nor will every Zaknafein continue to give the benefit of the doubt out of unconditional love for that which not only wouldn’t return that benefit but also treats him with condescension. Drizzt continues his trend of being disrespectful to people he supposedly loves with Catti-brie. When he shattered the dinner table, he not only destroyed the furniture in their house, which is hers as much as it is his, and thus not his to destroy on a whim. Further, he completely upset the dinner that she’d worked hard to make for the three of them without even a thought, to say nothing of the familial atmosphere that she was striving towards. On the plus side, Catti-brie has been really shining lately, much more so than when Salvatore pumped up her Mary Sueness by dropping god-tier arcane knowledge and magic items into her lap with little effort. If nothing else, that woman deserves to be the Chosen of some deity for putting up with Drizzt’s bullshit. Catti-brie does everything that Drizzt should’ve done with Zaknafein, and although I’ve felt distaste for her since her resurrection, I’d have to give her credit for putting aside her own emotions to try to connect with someone even though the object of that someone’s disgust is herself.

Finally, we come to Artemis Entreri, who is responsible for leading me to the rest of the Realms, and who is the main reason that I continue reading the Drizzt books. It goes without saying then that Entreri is very close to my heart, and the handling of him in the Homecoming Trilogy was probably the lowest point of, in my opinion, the weakest trilogy of all the dark elf books. I think that it’s very telling that the people who celebrate all of Drizzt’s foibles, who believe in things like Dahlia being totally to blame for everything that transpired between Drizzt and her and feel that she deserves to die for her actions, think that Entreri’s “redemption arc” is the greatest thing ever. Needless to say, I disagree, as I’ve made clear in my review/analysis of Hero, but thankfully, Timeless seems to backtrack a little bit from the disagreeable conclusions made in the novel preceding it. The main problem with Entreri in Hero is that, much like what happened to Jarlaxle over the years in the Drizzt books, he’s lost his dangerous edge. We’re told repeatedly that he’s dangerous and deadly but the ease to which he conforms to the CotH’s code regarding “friends” thoroughly defanged him. So he kills a few priestesses of Lolth, but they’ve become like the Red Shirts of Star Trek, and it no longer felt like Entreri would do whatever it takes to achieve something in the most efficient way, with no time wasted on moral quandaries as he eliminates anyone who dares to obstruct him. In Hero, he read very much like a poorly thought-out facsimile of who he’s supposed to be, bent to the writer’s whim in order to achieve some cheap effect that the writer feels would gain the most positive response from an unthinking and very social-normative mass. I found this especially tragic because this nonsensical sort of character twisting that hardly deserves to be called “development” is what happens in the type of fanfiction that gives it and those writing it a bad rep. For all of my criticism of Salvatore, before Hero, I’d never felt that his canon was worse than fanfiction, and, well, Hero took me there. Timeless does bring back some of what made Entreri great, for instance, he gets some of that edge back in through his display of confidence, nonchalance and directness. His sarcasm is, for the most part, appropriate and characteristic, rather than thrown in at awkward moments to make that weak facsimile. However, what tempers all of this is that he’s too chatty, too willing to reveal things that he shouldn’t be willing to reveal, especially given to whom it is that he exposes himself. I understand that Salvatore wants to put Entreri in there for Entreri fans, as well as to touch base with what Entreri’s up to, but it’s done in a lazy and forced way, akin to what was done with Entreri in Hero, albeit not quite so bad. The character responsible for drawing this information out of Entreri is someone whom at most has a business relationship with Entreri. Clearly, the two don’t much care for one another, and add in the fact that the halfling is a wizard and thus someone that Entreri likes a little more than he likes priests, it makes little sense that Entreri would disclose what he does in this very short exchange. First, Entreri would’ve simply stopped at a shrug at most when Wigglefingers asserted that he cared for Jarlaxle and Drizzt. More likely, Entreri would’ve just stared at Wigglefingers unblinkingly, rather than revealing that he does care for them with his small nod. Second, and immediately thereafter, while Entreri might mention his reasons for needing payment to Wigglefingers, it’s unlikely that he’d mention Dahlia. He might to Jarlaxle or someone with whom he shares a longer history, but certainly not someone who’s barely a business associate that he also holds in contempt. Mentioning Dahlia not only represents him willingly divulging a potential weakness of his, but also puts her in danger. These are two things that Entreri would never allow if he could help it. Finally, and the instance that pitches Timeless’ Entreri back into Hero’s Entreri were the case an isolated one, is what would be a tirade for the assassin about caring for his friends. It doesn’t matter that this speech is delivered after a long pause, it shouldn’t have been said by Entreri at all. Wigglefingers is nothing more than a middleman, possessing less significance to his organization than Entreri to Jarlaxle. Entreri wouldn’t think it worth his time to correct the halfing wizard’s ignorance. Furthermore, how easily Entreri throws out the word, “friend”, just feels extremely unnatural. It indicates strongly to me that in addition to not knowing how to write a character who has experienced even an ounce of the betrayal and distrust that Entreri has, Salvatore either never met anyone like that, or is unable to project his thinking into the mind of someone like that. This isn’t surprising given how Drizzt is, but all in all, I find it discouraging. It was sad enough seeing Jarlaxle lose all of his teeth as far as the CotH is concerned, it’s very distressing and discouraging to see Entreri trend towards becoming a simpering follower of the CotH as well. Entreri’s tirade alarmingly has notes of the sanctimony and preachiness that Drizzt’s journal entries have, and I really hope that Salvatore stops going down this road of wish fulfillment for the social-normative crowd with Entreri. It’s so counter-intuitive how much he does this already in a series that’s about being different and reconciling with that, and he’s already got Drizzt as well as a lot of other characters to do this with. He doesn’t need to do it with Entreri too. Not everyone’s happily-ever-after is to be married and surrounded by friends as they go together “helping” everyone “in need”. Let the journey of recovery from a lifetime of abuse and trauma be enough for what it is. Heck, there are plenty of real people out there who can’t hope to even achieve this much, because it’s a lot harder than it looks, and connecting with others isn’t always possible. Give them something to relate to too, not everything has to become a Drizzt clone.

I don’t normally talk about the artwork for the Forgotten Realms novels because, on the whole, I find it very good. After they moved past the initial awkward phase of old man Drizzt and strangely busty illithids, I feel that they’ve been really good and on point. Todd Lockwood did a superb job of settling a strong precedent that his successors followed well, and even during that brief phase in which the Drizzt covers looked like Drizzt was modeling for hair product advertisements, nonetheless, the quality of the art was present. I could scarcely believe that the artist who did the cover for Timeless was the same as the one who did the covers for the Homecoming Trilogy. Other than for the cover of Hero (let’s face it, everything about that book was a complete disaster), Aleksi Briclot demonstrated mastery sufficient to put him alongside Lockwood. I’ve read the exposé regarding the conception of Timeless’ cover art, and I sort of understand what they were going for, but my biggest question remains: why?! Briclot did make a valiant effort to deliver what they asked for but the end result has me wondering who the heck approved this thing. It’s just ugly. It’s messy, chaotic, confused and overall looks like someone tried and missed badly. It’s an embarrassment for Briclot’s portfolio and I’d hope that he doesn’t show it even as a demonstration of his ability to “branch out”, because it’s a total disgrace to the Sumi art style that they apparently wanted him to emulate. Sumi art, or Sumi-e, is a style that has a great deal of tradition, and the philosophy behind it is very interwoven with the Eastern cultures that practice it. More than a visual art, Sumi-e is a belief, a practice, a lifestyle. It’s about so much more than the elegance of the brushstrokes and the patience and dedication that goes into mastering them. Understanding the harmony in working with how the ink permeates through the Xuan paper is akin to meditation in the journey towards enlightenment. Because of all the spiritual elements associated with Sumi-e and the aspects that have to do with the specific nature of the media, it is difficult to replicate digitally. Some have made good efforts in doing so, but most of the time, digital Sumi-e attempts fail to convey the sense of flow that is characteristic of traditional Sumi-e pieces. It can be achieved, but a lot more time needs to be invested in manually adding in emulations of the effects of ink permeating Xuan paper, as well as a good understanding of fluid dynamics and the paper’s qualities to achieve the proper impression. The thing about Timeless’ cover is that, while the gold isn’t a bad touch, the brushstrokes are messy. They bear no relation to one another. Far from conveying the sense of interconnectness that any Sumi-e piece is supposed to, Timeless’ cover art feels like lines forced together, and the “energy” I read in it is disruptive rather than peaceful. I feel like it’s a stack of sticks that have been sloppily tied together, ready to burst apart. Not all Sumi-e has to be zen either, there are as varied pieces as in any other media, however an overarching theme that’s central to Sumi-e is self-consistency and flow. Sumi-e pieces that convey tension and chaos have a powerful impact in which all of it synchronously does so, but the cover art for Timeless is anything but synchronous, and there is about as much flow as a river that’d been blockaded by a pile up of litter. There are so many different themes going on in one piece, and before you ask, no, that’s not a good thing. Sadly, it’s probably too late to not follow through with this Sumi-e travesty for the rest of the trilogy, but I do hope that the art director doesn’t decide anything so ridiculous again.

All in all, Timeless is a clear and definite improvement for the Drizzt series. I was dreading a reality in which the Drizzt books were the only Forgotten Realms novels that we’ll get, and I’d preferred that the Drizzt line died out with the rest of the FR novel line rather than drag its legacy through the mud. Over the years, I feel that Salvatore has taken a lot more away from the shared world than he added to it, so a future with only Drizzt seemed bleak indeed. While it seems unlikely that there will be any other FR novels, Timeless makes me dare to hope that reality might not be as bad as I’d feared. Although one of my favorite things about FR is the plethora of different voices and styles contributing stories to it, I’m not inherently opposed to one voice doing all of it, so long as that voice is considerate of those that came before it. Before Timeless, it’s always felt like Salvatore was more interested in one-upping those other voices. I really hope that the Drizzt books continue on the trend of improvement seen in Timeless, and that Salvatore will continue to write without being concerned about powering up his characters to ridiculous degrees so as to cement them in the hall of legends of the world. I hope that the experienced editorial staff at Harper Collins will continue to help him elevate his writing style. And, most of all, I dearly hope that Salvatore will broaden his thinking even more, to consider and accept the validity of different paths in life, and maybe to realize that what makes the greatest hero is the ability to accept those things, not the ability to “fix” everything.

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