#in retrospect this feels more like a personal thing than a proper thing based on the characters BUT ALSO. thats why it rules

[gemharvest]

This one actually goes so fucking hard idc. I don't know if I fully vibe with it still but it rules and based on that alone it's one I may still revisit one day.

[royposting]

i feel like im missing out so tell me about roy harper's abandonment issues (for educational purposes, obviously)

WELL i am glad you asked, i hope the following rant is satisfactory!! this is more ~vibes~ based than evidence based honestly so bear with me.

the thing about roy as a character when he is written well is that he is quite a subtle character; this is partially bc DC never really gave a shit about him honestly. meaning, a lot of what we can gather about him as a character (&person) comes from drawing logical conclusions from canonical events.

for example in my previous roy thesis where i discussed how logically his heroin addiction should be treated story wise compared to what we get.

so:

roy was very little when his father died (depending on which version of events you follow, he sometimes has a mother, sometimes he is a bit older, etc. i personally like devin graysons run for arsenal mini&will use that to base my canon on) and was taken in by the navajo tribe.

then, again depending on your canon, brave bow (his mentor&father figure at this point in time) either hands him off to ollie, or roy himself decides to leave. what we do know is that brave bow got sick and passed away shortly after ollie took roy in. meaning that is two father figures down before the age of 13. his time with the navajo was difficult as well, as he never really fit in, and would be told as such.

he idolised ollie; things obviously didnt turn out great in that regard for him. i dont like to consider ollie a TERRIBLE person, even back then, but he certainly wasnt looking to be the safe father figure this little boy so desperately needed and wanted more than anything.

a lot of it is, of course, that roy wasnt ever a popular character really, but looking at the older (pre new earth) canon, ollie wasnt really home a lot, didnt bring roy with him a lot, and honestly didnt seem to give many shits about him. leaving us with the image of this young boy left alone most of the time, without a proper place in the world.

he was honestly more of a teen titans character than a green arrow one, back then.

then ollie sets off with hal for a year: he doesnt even mention roy in GL/GA #1 when they decide to head out.

he starts messing with drugs around this time. like, how abandoned and lonely does a young person have to be to start shooting heroin? TT break up around this time, too, and donna breaks up with him, dick goes off to college - he is all alone, once again.

again, we have to imagine what fucked up mindset someone has to be in for all of this to happen. how insanely isolated and lonely he has to be to not call his friends and say hes struggling - he feels completely abandoned by everyone in his life.

then ollie punches him in the face and throws him to the street.

later on, left out of the roster of the NTT. we learn when we see him in NTT (vol 01 #27) that hes trying to build a life for himself. he doesnt do much vigilante stuff anymore.

he gets back into it, eventually, but until then, he keeps getting left behind: never good enough for anyone to take seriously nor stick around for. everyone always has too much other stuff, while he doesnt really.

he even fucking reconnects back with ollie like immediately before ollie dies lmao. which is honestly kind of funny in retrospect but ya know.

anyway he eventually gets back into things, becomes a dad, reconnects with his old friends. even joins the JLA. however there is always that layer of hurt over everything he does that just GETS to me ya know? like.

he is sometimes written in a way that i fucking hate where they essentially make him a chauvinist johnny bravo type dude who hits on teenage girls etc. i do not consider this canon. however we DO get a nice explanation for this in titans: secret files and origins (#1) where its essentially considered a front he puts on - similar in a way to how ollie tends to make jokes and be sarcastic when hes feeling insecure.

he tends to do this when cornered with his insecurities. he is so convinced that everyone he loves will leave him that he pushes them away first - ripping that band aid off before they get the chance to. if he acts horribly, noone will want to get close, leaving no room for him to get abandoned again.

yet he tries so, so hard to hold onto those he loves - consider, like, all of outsiders vol 03. consider how he, too, lost his best friend when donna died, but how he puts all of his own grief aside to help keep dick off that ledge. consider how part of his grief that lead to him joining slade in titans vol 02 (#26-38) is that he thought he was irredeemable after the events of rise of arsenal - he thought he had noone and nothing left.

i dont think much of his current issues are necessarily rooted in FACT - ollie (and debatably depending on your canon, brave bow) certainly did abandon him, leaving deep scars. but those are also what he bases his thoughts on his relationships on - this deep seated idea that he CANNOT be loved and wanted for himself and what he is (the romance with hawkgirl of all people certainly didnt help).

it doesnt matter that his friends and coworkers love and value him - we have to imagine the lens that he looks at his life and relationships through. personally id believe it if you said that his relationship to his daughter, lian, was the only one he ever trusted fully in his life - but he still feels like he failed her, that its his fault that she died, and he wonders constantly if he ever was good enough for her.

idk man this is a bible and SOOOO ranty but i care so so so much about him 🥺 and again this is vibes mostly - almost no writers actually give a shit about him so they dont leave space to actually sit and consider how he WOULD feel about these things. so this is just my interpretation. it shines through at times when you have a writer who is interested in him (such as judd winick, or devin grayson in the batman+arsenal mini) but usually they just pretend like his traumas wouldnt affect him at all. and i take issue with that.

[heinzpilsner]

(Writing this instead of watching a new trailer for the live action, because my timing is perfect as ever!)

...Anyway, here's a proper "smart and serious"™ remake of my "mixed signals zutara Southern Raiders" post (because my own poor choice of terminology I'm talking about you Sexual Frustration didn't sit quite well with me). Also, I realized some new things. And I'm a perfectionist of sorts! So, yep.

Let's analyze Zuko's and Katara's heated confrontation in the first half properly.

What Zuko actually said:

"Everyone else seems to trust me now! What is it with you? ... What can I do to make it up to you?"

What Katara heard:

- Zuko doesn't differenciate Katara from all the other group members -> he doesn't think much about their intimate connection in Ba Sing Se;

- He doesn't realise the implications of what his betrayal meant in the context of the said connection (i.e., he's either a callous liar who never really cared about her grief or a volatile person who can change his mind way too easily and hence can't be trusted);

- After hearing her out, he offered to make up for his betrayal, but did not apologize for his insensitivity. He still don't get it, the idiot!

(Was he hesitant to approach this topic directly with Katara being so furious, or genuinely just didn't get it? I wonder. He sounds like a person unaffected by the catacombs, but clearly doesn't act like one. Almost as if he was affected, but never realized the extent by which Katara was affected as well).

What Katara actually said to Zuko:

"Everyone trusts you? I was the first person to trust you! Back in Ba Sing Se. You betrayed me and all of us! ... You could reconquer Ba Sing Se, or you could bring my mother back!"

What she was implying:

- She was personally hurt by his betrayal ("Everyone else"?! She was (is) not just "everyone else" for him!);

- Either she's using the "bringing back the dead mother" idea only as another metaphor of impossibility of their reconciliation, or, as Zuko suspected, this also implies that her anger at him is somehow connected to the topic.

There are two possible readings of Katara's slip of the tongue though:

1) Zuko's dense hypothesis: Katara simply projects on him her hatred for the Fire Nation and Yon Rha specifically;

2) Romantic hypothesis (which recontextualizes the whole dialogue in retrospect): Zuko's and Katara's connection in Ba Sing Se was based on the shared trauma of their lost mothers. So, this (in the light of the future events) is just another hint that Katara is hurt by Zuko's insensitivity. It signals she still have feelings for him, which in some measure fuels Katara's fury. This interpretation is supported by heavy romantic framing of the scene (Katara's physical agression adds a hint of sexuality to the mix as well, implying a suppressed desire to touch. It's no more than my speculation though, but usually, when I see a "shoulder check" trop in media, it occurs between two guys in the middle of some school, not between an angry girl and a sad boy under the full moon, you know).

Now, the funny thing. Previously, the second half of the episode didn't make much sense to me after the first one, because I saw those two hypotheses as incompatible within the same narrative logic. But just now, I found a different in-universe logical explanation for such a conclusion.

You see, Zuko's dense reading implies what from the start he saw the whole "facing Yon Rha" business as an attempt to redirect Katara's hate/anger from him onto it's "right" sourse. "Better him than me" logic, I guess. (Gosh, Zuko, not so selfless!)

They go with the plan based on the Zuko's interpretation, and Katara forgives him as a result, which means his reading of the situation was the only correct one, right? Wrong!

Because for once, Zuko was lucky. He didn't really voice his reasons out loud to Katara, and she decided that his primary motivation was lying elsewhere.

Namely, that he finally understood the imortance of their connection in Ba Sing Se and wanted to show her he did sincerely care about her grief (He was also lucky it kinda was the truth. Just... not the whole truth, you know).

(Btw, acknowledging Katara's hurt feelings is the only thing that could turn Zuko's "I waited out here all night" stunt from creepy and inappropriate into more or less okay in her eyes in retrospect, so... Yep. Another evidence for this hypothesis.)

So, while Zuko saw this trip as an attempt to manage Katara's hatred (and what an awful idea it was, but that's not the point now), Katara herself saw it as a test for Zuko's sincerity (which he passed).

And, I guess, as a happy result of this little miscommunication (and despite the crying unhealthiness of the whole "facing Yon Rha" idea), Katara was finally able to forgive him, yay!

(Do not try this at home though, boys and girls. I'm serious, those kids need their therapy.)

... The only problem though is what this miscommunication wasn't exactly addressed openly in the show itself. It's kinda just here, in the middle of the whole "to kill or not to kill" mess, and I had to strain my brain really hard to come to this conclusion (but I'm not really a smart person, after all). Still, this is the only reading of events what turns the episode's narrative into something that feels logical and consistent to me, you know.

But... After such a heavy romantic framing in the beginning (I mean, "What's with her? What's with him?" questions alone are basically screaming "those two have something between them we all can't explain by most obvious reasons"), you'd expect something more substantial would happen between the characters in the end. ... I'm just saying. I know it could't happen.

Ouch.

[odessa-castle]

you know i want to hear about 'tonight on jerry springer: my son wants to marry a vampire spawn!'

I got a lot of asks about this one! Which, in retrospect, shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise.

tonight on jerry springer: my son wants to marry a vampire spawn! is, as more than one person guessed, about Astarion and Ulder throwing down, primarily over Ulder’s treatment of Wyll. It starts as a meet-the-parents dinner and, uh, devolves from there. And then Wyll is forced to actually talk about his feelings! The idea sprung from my dissatisfaction at how Ulder and Wyll’s reconciliation plays out in the game proper, followed by me getting into wyllstarion and being like “you know, Astarion would have some fucking Opinions about how Ulder treated Wyll.” When I started it back in like…oh god, October or November of last year, there were only a handful of wyllstarion fics out there, and none of them had really tackled this yet.

I may or may not finish it! I kind of wrote a version of this into NLTS already, and spoiler-not-spoiler, Astarion’s going to have even more words for Ulder when he enters the picture again.

Here’s an excerpt of what I’ve got so far:

Astarion’s posture is flawless, shoulders back, head high, but his hands don’t match the rest of the picture. He plays with the lace of his cuffs, rolling their hems between his fingers and palms. A small gesture, easily ignored, but Wyll knows by now to watch for such things. (And he cherishes them – the slight crease at the corner of Astarion’s mouth when, against his better judgment, something charms him; the release of his shoulders when he’s well and truly sated; the deft curiosity of his hands when he encounters a particularly challenging lock.)

Not that Wyll is fully at ease himself. The foyer is arranged just as it was seven years ago, when he last graced the halls of his father’s house, but surely the chandelier was not so bright before. He remembers the mingled scents of incense and horse musk, but now he nearly tastes the metal tang of blood beneath both. Part of him still expects his sword master to round the corner any minute now, barking at him to practice his forms one more time.

Astarion glances at the portrait to his right and does a double-take. “Wyll,” he says, “is that your father? With – hair?”

“My grandfather,” Wyll says, “but I can’t vouch for the likeness. I never met the man. This was painted after he died, based on Father’s descriptions. I always wondered how much the painter just substituted Father’s own features, though.”

“Well, the duke either described his haircut badly, or described a very bad haircut.”

[dropoff99]

—On WoT fandom disagreements and such—

Been reading WoT since 1998. For most of my life it was THE fantasy series as far as I was concerned and still is in many ways. The world and the characters were simply deeper and more realized than anything I was reading. The roster of fantastic characters, scale, the magic system, masterful use of multiple POVs, metaphysics, and general lore Jordan created pulled me in and wouldn’t let me go.

I stilI have visceral memories of the time around RJ’s death, distinctly feeling like nothing resembling a proper ending was going to come to what I felt like was the best fantasy series around . Very few other fantasy authors prior to his passing were eager to cite Jordan in tones of reverence. If anything many “serious” fantasy fans were embarrassed to admit they loved the infamously long series which was the peak of the genre once but had more or less stalled out. Knife of Dreams was amazing to me personally but with RJ’s death and the slog prior you couldn’t argue that a satisfying ending was on the horizon. Fantasy authors like George RR Martin (despite being a friend of RJ’s and WoT definitely influencing both his work and success) constantly railed against many of the tropes of the genre (Chosen ones, Tolkien imitation, lack of moral ambiguity, plot armor, etc.) that Jordan reimagined/leaned into early on. It also didn’t help that Martin didn’t exactly argue when people made critiques of WoT in front of him either (like the famous Stephen King interview he did much later). This wouldn’t really matter if these sentiments were not so common among fantasy readers when Sanderson hopped on board. What was clear to me very early on after reading TGS was that not only was Sanderson a fan but he clearly understood the gravity of finishing the series and the care/respect he had for both the community and Jordan’s legacy was evident. I never had the feeling that it was an outsider coming in who just didn’t “get” the wheel of time. Secondly what Brandon did very well is communicate what was special about the series as a whole to new readers.

I have my issues just like anyone else but I genuinely have enormous respect for the work that both Team Jordan and Sanderson did under circumstances that were obviously not ideal. I can see the arguments regarding Sanderson’s religious/political overtones entering his other works but certainly not Wheel of Time. Yeah he didn’t completely overhaul every institution Jordan created and had to resort to quicker solutions. I’m also not going feign any sort of religiosity or be his apologetic in that regard and consider it to be the thing I like least about Stormlight. His worldview/biases of course will remain (just like Jordan’s). However I really don’t think you can deny he was an enormous fan who had genuine love and respect for both the series and Jordan himself. The fact that Harriet (Jim’s widow and long time editor) picked him based on his work and eulogy mean a lot to me. The reverence with which Harriet still seems to hold for BS and the job he and Team Jordan did seems to indicate that at the very least the people closest to the work and previous author felt that the promise of Jordan’s vision was delivered as best as could be expected.

I’m not someone who is without criticisms for BS. I envisioned the direction of Mat, Padan Fain, Perrin, Logain, Nyanaeve and several others very differently after reading the story well over a decade by that point. I missed Jordan’s unique style on character perspective and gift for painting a visual I could walk into mentally. But I also think in retrospect Sanderson was the perfect choice outside RJ to do the job. Some of his weaknesses at the time (barreling through plot, lack of rich setting, hasty exposition etc.) actually worked in his favor as he converged gigantic swathes of character arcs which still required three massive books. I respect those who think Sanderson’s choices were bad. And if you really hate the guy based on political/religious views go off I guess. I just don’t see how claiming he doesn’t respect Robert Jordan or his legacy holds any water at all. Or at the very least, as someone who’s been paying attention to the community my entire adolescent+adult life, I have not seen compelling evidence for that to be the case.

[darkqueenofshadows85]

Sonic Frontiers (2022) Story Review

Disclaimer: I will be judging this game by the plot and writing, not the gameplay.

Introduction

Greetings, mortals! For today's review, we'll be looking at one of the most recent main series installments of the Sonic franchise, Sonic Frontiers (2022).

I can't believe it's already been a year since this game was first released (time flies, doesn't it?), but anyway, I hope you all enjoy my long overdue Sonic Frontiers review... 😅

Though honestly in retrospect, it's actually a good thing I waited this long to finish the review, considering The Final Horizon update had been released earlier this year, which in my opinion, was a major improvement over the base game's third act in a multitude of ways.

This is part of a series of reviews in which I’ll be going into slightly more detail about my thoughts on the main series Sonic game storylines, and why I think they're either well written and engaging, or an absolute trainwreck (or somewhere in-between). I’ll be giving my stance on the character portrayals, visuals, soundtracks, voice actors, and what themes/messages they had to offer. Keep in mind that these are just my own personal thoughts. Whether you agree or disagree, feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions!

(SPOILER WARNING)

Anyway, let us begin! ^^

Plot

Sonic explores the mysterious Starfall Islands to collect the Chaos Emeralds after he and his friends are separated when falling through a wormhole. Sonic struggles to find and save his friends while facing a horde of robotic giants called Titans, and also meets an artificial girl named Sage, created by Dr. Eggman, who cautions Sonic to leave the Starfall Islands.

Characters

For the first time in little over a decade, the characters are written correctly. I love how the characters acknowledge how badly they've been written by Pontaff during the Meta Era and have all been redeemed here.

Sonic has been reverted back to his original personality from the Adventure/Dark Era titles, striking a perfect balance of his cockiness and his heroic nature. His playful and snarky attitude is still present, but done in moderation while also highlighting his empathy and dedication to his friends.

Amy, Knuckles and Tails all receive major character development over the course of the game's story. They all learn to be independent individuals, believe in themselves as heroes rather than Sonic, and go their own separate ways for a while. I also like how they play a more active role in the revamped version of the game's climax shown in The Final Horizon update.

Additionally, Dr. Eggman also has some proper development over the course of the story. At first, he uses Sage and treats her as a normal AI, but later on he shows genuine care for her as if she's his own daughter.

Now let's talk about the newcomer, Sage. Her character arc is learning love and wanting to be Eggman's daughter, which really hit me in the feels by the end. Her story honestly reminds me of Shadow's character arc in SA2, only Sage still has her Maria alive and while Shadow came back in his next game appearance after SA2 due to fan demand, Sage on the other hand was resurrected in a post-credit scene due to the replicable nature of AI, and in The Final Horizon update, she's spared her death entirely. I hope she goes on to become a recurring character in the series just like Shadow did.

Visuals

The in-game cutscenes look good visually for the most part, and I do like the cinematography for some of them.

Soundtrack

As usual for the Sonic series, the music in this game is awesome. I'm Here and Undefeatable are two of my favorite vocal tracks. Vandalize, Break Through It All, Find Your Flame and One Way Dream are also amazing. The game's credits themes sung from Sage's perspective, Dear Father (the base game's first credits theme) and the credits theme of The Final Horizon DLC, I'm With You (vocal version) were both truly touching and heartfelt in their own ways.

Voice Acting

Needless to say, the current Sonic voice cast has significantly improved since their last game appearance. Roger Craig Smith gives Sonic a more mature tone of voice, showing just how much he's developed as a character over the past two games and became more humble. Ryan Bartley does an excellent job portraying Sage, Colleen O'Shaughnessey (Tails) is great as always, and Cindy Robinson (Amy) gives a more reserved and less high-pitched voice performance on par with how she sounded in Sonic Boom and Sonic Forces. Dave B. Mitchell's performance as Knuckles has greatly improved since we last saw him in Team Sonic Racing, giving the character a more stern, yet somewhat laid-back tone. Mike Pollock's performance here is one of the most nuanced portrayals of Dr. Eggman in the entire series, retaining his usual hamminess and humorous tendencies while also showing a much wider range of emotions which haven't been seen since as far back as the Adventure games or even 06.

Theme/Message

Throughout the game's story, the pervading and most impactful theme is that of love, in all shapes and forms. Specifically, including Sonic's general love for the people close to him, Sonic and Amy's love for the world, the love between friends Sonic and Knuckles share, the familial love Sonic and Tails share as surrogate siblings, the developing love between Eggman and Sage as a bond of father and daughter, many relationships and bonds demonstrated between the Ancients/Koco, and so on. What makes it particularly powerful here is how unafraid the story is to touch upon how these bonds may be stressed by separation, strife, grief, despair and loss, and still manage to prevail in the end over impossible odds.

Conclusion

Overall, I love Sonic Frontiers for reverting the Sonic franchise's writing style back to how it was before the Pontaff duo came on board, and it's a good foundation for the future of Sonic games. The Meta Era titles from the previous decade were holding Sonic back and were generally the worst part of the franchise in my opinion. The comics are awesome, the movies are awesome, the Sonic Boom TV series was generally well-received (even though I personally can't stand it), and from what I've seen of the first two seasons so far, Sonic Prime is easily the best Sonic show since Sonic X in my opinion, whereas the games since 2013's Sonic Lost World have been failure after failure with the exception of Sonic Mania. The story and writing quality of the game series started going downhill with Sonic Colors in 2010, and while the gameplay of both Colors and Generations is admittedly good, it still doesn't excuse the downgraded writing quality and boring childish stories. I'm happy that the games aren't holding Sonic back anymore, but are more on par with everything else Sonic is in. Here's hoping the new era of Sonic will prove itself to be a bright new future for the Blue Blur.

My final score:

5.6/5 (Great)

[devildamn]

You plan on making poly headcanons? Id love to read them

Heck yee, I love poly ships >w< Tbh, the way I see it, even as a harem, there are some pretty distinct smaller groupings. A bunch of em…. Hmmm… I’ll make a list with my thoughts on each. Just plz keep in mind, for the MC ships, I’ll explain more the relationship between the named characters than with them because… MCS are just so varied, I cant account for everyone and how they’d be. And if I do bring em up, it’s based on what I like in my MCs lol <w< Or what I think would mesh the best.

-        Diavolo/Lucifer/Barbaratos: Yee I ship these council goons. Their friendship is so cute, especially how both Lucifer and Barbaratos have a soft spot and give in to Diavolo’s antics uwu Like, I swear, anytime one of them tells Diavolo no to something, the other will help enable him anyways. I’m a sucker for ‘touch starved/needy Diavolo’ too, so I like to imagine the three’s relationship starting as professional with the occasional moments of showing they care, but once they get closer and Diavolo confesses (particularly to Lucifer) about his insecurity in feeling alone, their level of touchy-feely-ness will gradually increase… behind closed doors that is. Barbaratos has no shame in his affections being public, he likes making Diavolo happy, but Lucifer is hesitant to make their relationship known. He’d rather keep up appearances, and Diavolo doesn’t want to ask too much of him, so this is their compromise.

-        Asmodeus/Solomon/MC: Ahahaha look v-v I am not much of an Asmo fan. But I can see his appeal, and I do like the Solomon/Asmodeus ship. That said, how their poly ship can work depends entirely on the MC (tho that’s a given with how different MCs can be lol). Asmodeus is sure to love having two powerful humans be in control of him, even flaunting it as a sort of status symbol. And he’d most definitely act like a brat. I don’t see Solomon as being one to give into Asmo as much as he’d want someone to, so I can imagine this scenario being common, lol:

Asmo going to Solomon for whatever reason. Solomon is busy/distracted and keeps brushing off Asmo’s attempts to get his attention. Asmo gets HUFFY and storms to MC to demand attention from them instead.

Basically, MC would have to bear the brunt of Asmo’s needs lol. Solomon won’t always be so obtuse, but he’s just not as inclined to emotional stuff.

-        Solomon/Simeon/Luke: Love their dynamic. Just friends looking out for each other <3 I can especially imagine them in domestic situations. Their dissing Solomon’s cooking? Solomon’s and Simeon’s shared custody of keeping Luke from trouble? <3 <3 <3 Bonus, heres a scenario I like:

Luke being a ‘helicopter parent’ to Solomon’s annoyance when he gets super into a project. Bringing him snacks, tidying up his workspace, sending him texts to remind him of stuff he needs to do. All the while scolding him for not taking better care of himself, but secretly feeling happy that he is needed. Simeon helps take care of Solomon too, but not to the extent that Luke does. He’s better at watching from the sidelines, amused at Luke hauling a semi-conscious Solomon from bed to get a proper breakfast.

-        Belphegor/Beelzebub/MC: >-> Here’s a bit of a rant. It’s no secret I hate Belphie. No hate to Belphie lovers, y’all are great and free to love who you love, my gripe is just with how little the story did to redeem him to us. Anyways, my hate for him extended so much that it affected my love for Beel too ;o; See, before his return, I LOVED Beel. He was cutting it close with Mammon in being my favorite. He’s such a wholesome boi full of love for his family <3 But with Belphie’s return�� loving Beel and hating Belph is just not good for him.It’d never work. They are a package deal. The closest of the brothers. Of course all your time with Beel or Belph would be spent with the other as well. Even Belph tells you that in his dream scenario, he’d run away with you and Beel and live happily together. They are already set on loving one person together, that’s just how it is -w-“

-        Lucifer/Mammon/MC: Mammon is Lucifer’s favorite brother. In particular, people note that he finds Mammon to be cute. Weeeeeellllllllllll, here’s a bit of tmi for my take on my MC, the reason they dislike Lucifer is because his personality is a bit like theirs too, with some key differences. And of course, that being the case…. Mammon is their favorite too. So, the way I see this is, both Lucifer and MC sharing Mammon. Lucifer scolds him, MC comforts and enables him, Lucifer tries but can’t stop MC, and the song and dance continues. <3

-        Leviathan/MC/Mammon: Listen, the beef these two had is the first thing you’re thrown into and I find it hilarious in retrospect. Levi does not like you, and only approaches you to use you to get back at Mammon. This makes Mammon the first to form a contract with you, and later, become your first genuine friend out of the brothers. The first to care uwu Then, WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE and Levi has grown to like you, his dialogue about you preferring Mammon? “Is it because he was your first?” Motherfucker, you could’ve been the first if you weren’t so up your ass in calling me ‘Normie Trash’ X,D Jealous shit. But it’s cute in a way. His rivalry with Mammon, their bickering. Both vying for MC’s attention, calling out each other’s bs, later having moments of defending the other when shit gets too far or others attack em, it’s entertaining to me.

-        Asmodeus/MC/Beelzebub: I’ll keep this one short. I can see this solely because Asmo has, on multiple occasions, spoken of his interest in Beel. To be FAIR, Asmo would form a polyship with ANY of his brothers, lol, just typing this one in particular for that reason.

-        Beelzebub/MC/Luke: Absolutely wholesome. Adorable. I feel that out of all the brothers, Luke has the best relationship with Beel. I’d love to see them interact more -w- (I am on Lesson 29). As it stands, I’m jumping into headcannon territory straight up lol:

MC and Luke get close first. Luke is the first person to have reached out to MC with good intentions (which compared to the brother’s hostile initial meetings, is a HUGE relief), and since MC respects and does not tease Luke, he attaches to them like a puppy. Beel and them grow close too with the reveal of the family history, and Beel generally feeling at ease with both people. Can you picture Beel feeling drowsy, draped over Luke as he studies and finding the scent of baked goods and vanilla coming from him comforting? Cuz I can -/w/- Hella cute. Luke IS pushy, and Beel finds it annoying at times. They’d have arguments, and initially, Beel would subconsciously make Luke feel threatened with his size and temper, but with the help of MC interfering, he’d be more mindful of it in the future. With the curbing of Beel’s temper, Luke would also learn to feel more comfortable around him, and ALSO with MC’s interference, he’d be more mindful of his nagging nature. All in all, their arguments would lead to them feeling huffy the next day and giving the other the silent treatment… but then after a while, Luke would bake too much of something and aaah, he GUESSES Beel could have some since it just so happens to be his FAVORITE… and they’d be back to snuggling. Bleeh.

Aight, so that was the list <3 I’m open to others, and if you’d like any more specifics on any you are free to send me more asks! Just that these were the ones I could think of immediately and distinctly. To be fair, MC could be added to any of the ships I have without em, but as stated before, it’s hard to characterize MC as anything other than what I like uwu So I’ll refrain from doing so unless it’s specified as such. My MC, Boo <3 Thank you for the ask!

[mittensmorgul]

Hi, I have a question, and I hope it would be interesting for you too... Could we talk about angel's wings and feathers?..

I always thought that angel's wings were a part of their true form, a kind of energy which we can only see as a shadows or electric sparks or ash or something like this.

And I didn't think that it could be a real wings with feathers as bird's. Until, while rewatch, I've noticed that angel's feather were mentioned in SPN at least twice (maybe you've noticed more?):

1) In 8.12 when Henry Winchester time travels he uses an angel feather in spell. And then Dean tells that Henry stole an angel feather from the trunk of the Impala. So feathers are reall??? Why did the Winchestets keep the feather in the trunk of the Impala and where they get it? (ok, maybe they found it in the bunker)

2) In 12.13 Sam uses a white feather in spell returning Gavin back in time (we know this spell needs an angel feather)

So now we can see how the real angel feather looks like???

Does that mean that the angel's wings can be presented in physical world like a real wings with feathers and this is not fanfiction? I like this idea so much.

I think that the creators of the show didn't let us to see it, as many other great things, that is sad...

I would really like to know your thoughts about this.

(Sorry for my bad english, it is not my native language...)

Hi there! First off, your English is fine! (lol it’s my native language, and I just typed it “Inglish” by accident, so you’re already doing better than I am :’D)

ETA: DON’T REBLOGGY THIS YET. I forgotted something that @thayerkerbasy just reminded me of, and I’m editing this post... brb... okay NOW YOU CAN REBLOGGY!)

As far as I know, those are the only times in canon we ever see or hear mention of an angel feather, and both times it’s for the same exact spell. They reference that it’s Henry’s spell when they use it again in 12.13, but make no mention in dialogue of it being an angel feather. Yet Sam had a whole jar of fluffy little pin feathers, so the assumption is that they’d been collecting them for a while (unless those were either found in the Men of Letters’ spell ingredient stockpile when they moved into the bunker, or otherwise given to them by Cas at some point).

It’s weird, because they seem like a very limited commodity, especially after the angels fell and their wings all burned up. Even after Cas got his original grace back, his wings never seemingly recovered. When we did finally see his wing prints in 12.23, they were still... not healthy... So my thinking is that any spell that would require them will become impossible to cast when their current supply runs out. All the other angels-- at the end of the series-- were either dead or locked in Heaven with their broken wings. We never learned any of their fates. Maybe they were all rendered obsolete under the Heaven Remodel?

A little behind the scenes from the early days of SPN as a bonus, since it’s tangentially relevant:

When they were filming the very early episodes of SPN, they had a lot of choices to make about what to show us based on what their budget would allow them to portray. Think of an episode like Wendigo, 1.02. One thing I see people say often was that it was a shame we didn’t see more of the monster, but only saw like... bushes shaking, or a vague form moving through the underbrush, or a blur. They made a stylistic choice right there to keep it within budget.

The options they faced were showing us a “dude in a rubber mask” type monster and showing it more, versus one really terrifying shot of a Proper Monster™ dying in spectacular fashion. Rather than go full-on cheesemonster, they chose to leave most of it up to our imaginations, giving us glimpses or hints of the monster.

They went back and forth on this a bit over the years, attempting to show us more on occasion, but most of those times the audience reaction has been varying degrees of wtf... Think about some of the scenes where they attempted to give us more than a glimpse at the supernatural, or a blood splatter, or whatever. It didn’t always work well. Think: the wire fight from 13.23...

I mean, it took us until 11.14 to ever see an angel “flap away,” when we saw Casifer zap Dean off the exploding submarine.

For the most part, I appreciate the fact that they understood the limitations of their own budget and didn’t give angels cheap little wings just to be able to show them on camera. Over time, only being able to see them as shadows, or as char after the angel died, became part of the lore of the show.

I blame Adam Glass for writing that spell, because he probably thought it sounded cool or whatever, that it was effectively a throwaway line because no other spell they’ve ever used has required an angel feather as an ingredient, and in story it was only linked into this larger Men of Letters Legacy plot that in retrospect feels like Chuck tying up loose ends and putting previously “deactivated” plotlines back into play.

I do find it kind of interesting that both iterations of this spell (the second resurrected by Bucklemming) were both tied to Abaddon. Henry’s spell in 8.12 brought her into the story from the past, she eventually travelled to the much further distant past to bring Gavin into the present (presumably with her own power alone, no angel feather required), and then after she was killed, they used the spell to return Gavin to his own time. So in a a way, the spell was part of a closed narrative loop, never to be referred to again.

Kinda wild that we’d never heard of angel feathers being a thing for spells until we learn that Dean apparently had some just stashed in the trunk, though... :’D

As for how corporeal angel feathers are/were, they exist in the earthly plane enough to leave char marks when they burn, when an angel is killed, so they must always have had the potential to manifest physically. I can’t imagine they ever would’ve had a budget to show us anything more than what we usually saw, though. It did give them a LOT of flexibility over how exactly they presented them to us when they DID show us. And I can’t even imagine the suffering Misha would’ve endured as an actor spending all those years wearing some weird wing harness rig. It would’ve been... impractical. And the CGI the show could’ve afforded-- especially in earlier days-- would’ve been... bad...

But what they were able to show us? Was often awesome. Remember when Raphael showed off his wings in 5.03? LIGHTNING!

And when we finally did see actual corporeal-appearing wings in 8.23... it was Dramatique™

And for More CGI Is Sometimes A Bad Thing Science, please have the attempt at Michael’s “true form” from 14.01:

It’s kinda a super-letdown after AU!Michael’s previous shadow wing displays from 13.01, but more specifically from 13.22:

those... were... badass... 

Even the pre-wire-fight wing shadows on Dean were badass:

But if they’d tried to show us more of them, to make them move through action scenes for example, it would’ve been... bad...

So what we’re left with is the knowledge that there is some sort of corporeal element to wings that we simply can’t see most of the time, but clearly angels have the ability to show or hide them at will, even from other angels. Could it be an act of will on the part of the angel that manifests a bit of their grace in the form of a physical feather? Honestly, that’s the theory I’ve personally adopted toward canon. In fanfic, I’ve read tons of various headcanons about what angel wings are and how they function-- everything from “a manifestation of their true form” to “angels share a lot of traits with birds” to “an extension of their grace,” and everything in between.

I personally, in canon, like to think of it as akin to how they’ve used angel grace for other spells. I mean, when we recall that angels haven’t been on Earth much for the last few thousand years (aside from at least a couple of known incidents where angels interfered with humanity, like Ishim and Company in 12.10, for example, and the presumptive extension that the Men of Letters knew of the existence of angels and likely summoned one up a time or two the same way Lily Sunder had, giving one explanation for how Henry Winchester knew of this spell and had an angel feather to use for it, but also recontextualized when Lily Sunder taught us that humans can use their own souls to power spells in the same way angels used their grace... which sort of makes the notion of needing an angel feather AND his own soul to charge that particular spell in 8.12 a bit redundant unless Lily’s knowledge of angelic magic was more advanced than Henry’s... hrmpf.... so much tangent... back to the point)...

We did eventually learn of other spells that required an angel’s actual grace, not concentrated in the form of a feather. The Angel Fall Spell in 8.23 being the prime example. Metatron took ALL of Cas’s grace for that one, even if he didn’t use all of it for the spell and left a “fragment” (Metatron described it as “not a lot, but enough.”). 

ETA: HECK. I have 9.03 on the tv right now and it’s distractedly made me disgusted enough to have forgotten something that Thayer just reminded me of: Lucifer’s “fossilized feather” in 12.07. It held enough grace to restore and heal him after Rowena’s spell in 12.03 had degraded him. Which really only adds to the theory that “feathers” are simply bits of grace that have been rendered solid somehow, but that can be transformed back into grace as needed.

And then there was the Rift Spell for travelling to alternate universes that required archangel grace, as well as the time travel/ward breaking spell that Sam found in 11.14 that ALSO required archangel grace specifically. Would these spells have worked with an archangel “feather?” Possibly, if material feathers are somehow just crystalized bits of grace, but since we never got a full explanation in canon, and never even really saw corporeal feathery wings that dropped feathers or could be plucked, and never even had mention of corporeal feathers outside of their use in this single spell, it’s really up to our own interpretation. And I kind of like it that way, because that way we get to have fun little discussions like this one. :D

I know this isn’t a definitive answer, but it’s how it all makes sense to me, in the hand-wavey sort of way that all of canon works. :’D

[popculturebuffet]

Lilo and Stitch Crossover Arc: “Rufus” (Kim Possible) Better and Worse (Paid for by WeirdKev27)

Aloha all you happy people! It’s back to Kauai for the third of my look at LIlo and Stitch’s crossover episodes! This retrospective was made possible by WeirdKev27, who had the idea for it and paid for me to review these episodes. You too can buy reviews for only 5 bucks a pop. Just go to my ask, Direct Messages or discord.

Now with my plugging out of the way, this one, out of all four is the one I looked forward to the most, and out of the four shows in this crossoverathon to make the trip to the Kauai, this one is hands down my faviorite. 

Kim Possible was just damn good and having rewatched a handful of episodes and the movie (Easily one of my faviorite Disney movies and the best DCOM, I will not back down on either), I can say it holds up every bit as good as it did in the early 2000′s. Frankly like Danny Phantom i’m surprised I never thought to get to it till now. But no time like the present: The show proper is a fun super spy sendup, but still feels unique: Instead of i’ts Teen Superspy working for some knockoff of MI6 or S.H.I.E.L.D., Kim is self employed, simply helping people because it’s the right thign to do and not for any reward with the help of her bumbling  but loveable sidekick and future boyfriend Ron, though the romance angle wasn’t overplayed with the two, just hinted at here and there, enough to make it plausable for Ron to realize he has feelings in the movie and for Kim to return them and frankly it’s probably the best handled “Friends to lovers’ plot i’ve seen in a children’s cartoon. I”ll get more into that if I hit my stretch goal for it on patreon, more on that at the end of the review, but while it has no baring on this review I still felt it worth noting as that trope is NOT easy to pull off.

Point is, the show was smart, funny, engaging and had two great characters, a tremendously talented voice cast, and more anchoring it. It was a treasured part of my adolsence. It also had one of the only succesful “Save our show” campagins from fans i’ve ever seen. Despite So The Drama having been written as a finale and having reached Disney’s episode count, fan demand for a fourth season was so incredibly high we got one and it’s to this day one of the very few Disney shows to live past three seasons as a result. The show is in full on Disney Plus, along with the movie, which I HIGHLY recommend and hope I get to talk about, and the recent live action remake movie which .. is not bad. Not GREAT but the leads do make a good kim and ron, paticuarlly my boy Sean Gambone as Ron, and for a live action remake it really does get the spirit of the show. 

But obviously we’re not here to talk about the show proper, though I REALLY want to now, but instead it’s crossover. So far the crossovers for Lilo and Stitch have been, much like said live action remake, OKAY, but nothing amazing, often shoving in sideplots related to Lilo and Stitch proper we didn’t need, forced morals and not really having a good amount of character intraction. The good news is this crossover DOES fix a lot of that.. the bad is that it also has some new problems, and still falls into some of the same traps the other episodes have. See what I mean with the full review under the cut!

We open at night, with Lilo and Stitch playing hide and seek. Adorably though Sttich dosen’t quite get the hang of it and proudly announces where he is. However things are quickly interupted when he’s kidnaped by a mystery ship out of the blue. It’s a good hook to start with, leaving us wondering who it could be...

And thus, if you hadn’t gone into this episode knwoing it was a crossover, giving us a hell of a reveal with a cut to Dr. Drakken being the one to kidnap stitch!

Look I love this Doofus. He’s easily one of John DiMaggio’s best roles, up there with Jake and Bender, and the one along with Bender that cemented his career. as one of voice acting’s finest. He’s just so loveably incompetent, over the top and quick to bicker with Sheego, which leads to some of the funneist moments in his home series as she’d either skewer him good or he’d shove his boot in his mouth and help her point instead of his own. He’s just such a great character and he not only fits neatly into Lilo and Stitch’s world, but the writers clearly get him perfectly. We get a hilarious bit where, fed up with Hamsterviel, who he’s teamed up with, he simply fakes the radio going out, adjusting the dials purposfully to make it come in buggy something I GUARANTEE he put in for SHeego and I gurantee she saw right through. His plan is to create a clone army of Stiches.. meaning Hamsterviel’s big evil plan.. is a copy of someone else’s.

Lilo goes to Jumb and Pleakly, the latter of whom has been collecting magazines adorably. Lilo plans to go after Stitch but Jumba says she can’t go on dangerous missions without him and to get a professional and this part.. does not work for me. Most of the time Jumba ENABLES Lilo’s behaviors and while not wanting an 8 year old to run out into the night is a good call, he also suggests getting help.. instead of you know GOING WITH HER WHEN IT’S LIGHT. It sounds more like Nani’s idea... it fits her more to not want Lilo to run out and to want to get help versus Jumba whose admant about keeping secrecy yet very lax on things, and you know would BE concerned that his prized creation was suddenly stolen and actually think about it. He’s just so horribly out of character it hurts. 

And Nani’s absence really hurts the episode. See the last two, as much as I missed the lovely and talented Tia Carrere’s presence, didn’t really need her, though still could’ve included her: she could’ve made a cameo at the start since Lilo was there to visit her and she woul’dve made a better target for Spats than trudy, with Oscar fighting Jumba instead, allowing us some crossover interactions instead of having Jumba argue with a random asshole the episode wrote in. But it’s minor stuff. Here though? Her being the one to tell Lilo not to go would’ve made more sense: She’s protective by nature, and while she’s let go more since the movie, it’d make sense for her NOT to want Lilo to blindly chase after someone who beat stitch of all beings, as well as for her ot be the one to later tell Kim not to let lilo be involved. It’d be stronger coming from her sister and surrogate mother than Pleakly and it would’ve been a better arc to have Nani let Lilo off the leash so to speak and accept she needed to save kim. Instead she’s just gone for no reason and Jumba is grosly out of character and i’m disapointed. 

That said the setup is the best and most intergrated so far: Pleakly sees an article about kim so he reaches out to her via a message on her site, while Lilo is stubborn about not being help.. obnoxiously so to the point it hurts the episode. While her being inscure about someone else saving Sttich would be fine, the episode never adresses that and instead just has her say she can because shut pu instead of accepting help. The episode would’ve flowed better if instead she accepted kim but Nani had Kim push her away, and thus create more problems. More on that in a bit. 

But as I said this setup is great: it uses BOTH shows for once isntead of feeling like the first two, and honestly the next one judging by the blurb on the wiki, where its just “Hey x character visits Kauai”, here it blends both: The two main villians team up, and Kim is logically called for help since that’s what she does and they don’t want to risk lilo’s saftey. It’s good stuff. 

So our other heroes enter the episode, on a ritzy jet as Kim’s dad had an old college friend with an airline. I admit the episode weirdly downplays Kim’s penchant for getting rides, getting a helicopter that appears to be a touring one and getting this one via her dad instead of the usual person who owes her a favor. IT was a neat part of her character: that she got help from people she already helped on adventure’s we hadn’t seen to establish she can’t drive herself yet and to show she’s an experinced heroine with a lot of history before the show started. I also like how a handful of episodes after season 1 had returns from people we HAD seen before or linked to them, a clever way of having callbacks. 

It’s simple stuff Kim is ready for the wrold saving mision and ron hopes to get a vacation in. Nothing too out of the ordinary. 

So the next day Lilo tries to go it solo but is spotted before she can leave, while Pleakly has built a.. photo colloage of Kim’s face on the wall...

... no wait i’m getting paid for this. Nevermind. 

It is funny as it is unsettling though and Kim arrives and Pleakly faints.. Ron also arrives doing fake kung fu moves. This episode gets ron about half right... they overdo it a bit on the shenanigans, but Will Freidle’s natural charm and talent mean that even standard ron bits coughed up by a cat onto a page and used for this script still work simply because he’s that good at delivery. 

We also get the who’s on first bit you all knew was coming as Kim asking what’s the Sitch confuses lilo and i’ts .. pretty funny. Again you could see it coming from a mile away, but Daveigh Chase and Christy Carlson Ramano really sell the hell out of it and we get a nice runner after of Kim misprouncing his name and trying NOT to say her usual catchphrase. 

She also gets filled in on the alien thing... and while she admits i’ts a lot to swallow, she also admits she’s seen weirder. And given this episode would, by airdate (ignoring the one for So the Drama as that aired before the last batch of season 3 episodes but continuity wise takes place between seasons 3 and 4), take place around the same time as the season 3 intended finale “Team Impossible”, by this point she’s seen vengeful fishteens mutated by a horrifying summer camp, a rogue gentecist who basis her crimes against nature on a beanie baby knockoff, magical monkey based kung fu, a magican egyptian amulet, killer robot’s resembling teenage girls, a body swap episode, a plan using a barcode to destroy the internet, an attack on canada, a giant poodle, a complicated time travel plot, a trucker with a mullet, her sidekick getting turned into a surprisingly competent supervillian, and draken’s plan to use his rap career to promote brainwashing shampoo. And that’s just a handful of the things I was reminded of on the episode list. So yeah, this isn’t THAT much of a stretch. Oh and lest you think Kim never encountered aliens the series finale was an alien invasion by aliens Draken had pissed off earlier in the season. Suprised Lilo didn’t you know have Stitch and the family army pitch in. Maybe Leory and Stitch was going on at the same time? 

Point is she’s in but goes with Pleakly in trying to keep Lilo out of it. And here’s yet another place the episode missteps: Kim’s REALLY patronizing to Lilo, treating her like she can’t do anything and later ignoring her advice when she brings up the current later, something that ends up getting Kim caught. The latter part especially bugs me since Kim normally listens to her clients pretty well, and had she doubted him could’ve at least asked Waid since she contacts him in the same scene. Speaking of which THAT’S why I feel her patronizing “not now kiddo” atittude dosen’t work: her spy master IS a child, her brothers have helped out multiple times, and the incident I mentioned from where she met her younger cousin who idolized her at an old west town was understandable: Her cousin was getting into dangerous stuff and throwing herself out there recklessly with no regards to her own saftey and impeding the mission with her well meant antics. Lilo.. knows who their looking for, knows the island well, and knows stitch’s weaknesses. And she goes from being annoyingly hostlile to kim to helpful, so it makes kim even more obnoxious for not accepting said help. It’s just.. draining as when this part of the plot ISN’T in play, Kim is fine. She’s her usual self.. not AS well written as the parent show, a bit too reliant on her catchphrases, but still not half bad and Christy Carlson Romanao, like Fredle helps paper over the weaker bits of the script.  She’s not even out of character in her actions, as she does have a tendency to think she knows everything or undereistmate people.. the problem is it’s written poorly enough she comes across as insufferable, and unlike the show, where she actually learned something here.. she just learns to work as a team? When she does on a regular basis with Wade and Ron? 

It’s just so frustrating because they almost had it just right, but instead just had to try and put some half assed moral about teamwork in there. They broke from the formula of having an experiment of the week but they still just HAD to keep to their own formula. And look Kim Possible has it’s own formula.. but it used that to great effect, often using the episode’s plot to shake it up in fun ways, and the plots were still diffrent enough and the villians bold and intrestin genough that it didn’t grate.  This is starting to grate. And I do remember good and intresting episodes of the show.. but i’m starting tor ealize why I don’t remember NEARLY as much of Lilo and Stitch as I do the other shows it’s crossing over with: it’s so bolted to the formula they all just sorta blend together. It’s really fucking disheartning to realize something you loved so damn much as a kid just.. isn’t as good as you remember. And with these other shows.. I don’t have that as much. I accept proud family’s fault, Jake Long actually seems MORE intresting than it was at the time, and rewatching kim possible it’s excellent, same with recess coming up. I really need to watch more Recess. The most disheartining thing about this arc is the crossover just shows how BETTER the other shows were. Lilo and Stitch wasn’t a BAD show, and it isn’t here.. but it’s a mediroce one. it has a good premise. but it feels like they just don’t break away from the premise enough. This just... hurts a lot to type and realize. I really loved this show and movie as a kid and while the movie likely still holds up this.. this just dosen’t. 

I need a moment... i’m breaking open the glass case containing my emergency patrick stewart clip excuse me...

That.. I needed that. 

So before the bicker sisters can head off, we get our goofy comedy subplot: Jumba thinks Rufus is one of his experiments, one that could destroy the universe if not cancel and is highly unstable. As for why this one wouldn’t of worked out, I get why: it’s TOO powerful. Stitch is a weapon of mass distruction in a cuddly package, but he’s also easily deployable, kind of like Wolverine if he was in the body of a cartoon mascot. Having the THREAT of destroying ap lanet is fine and good for the long term but it does you no good if you can’t control it and i’td just destroy you too. 

So he and Pleakly try to steal rufus without telling Ron why after Ron naturlaly refuses to sel land a chase insues. So while the boys and gender fluid person have their comedy plot, the girls head to where stitch was taken and find Draken’s glove.... they know it’s his because he put a note saying “return to dr. draken, his mother gave it to him”. That’s just.. fucking precious. And entirely in character. So kim aranges a ride, and dives into the ocean, but finds lilo in her parachute, and tries to send her back despite LIlo offering valuable advice both about the area , the current I mentioned earlier, and about stitch, i.e. Draken’s base is underwater (something Kim didn’t realize which feels odd for her), because Stitch can’t swim, something I genuinely forgot. 

So while Kim sends Lilo back, or rather intercut with that but I choose to compress plots for my own convinence we cut back to Drakken and Shego. And I WAS worried that Shego wouldn’t show up, she wasn’t in the synopsis or anything and was delighted to find that nope she’s here. Drakken just isn’t the same without her.. I mean I liked the recurring subplot in season 4 where other villians would break her out, that was great, but in the end the two need each other. I may not ship them romantically but as a comedy team one just needs the other: Drakken needs Shego to cut down his ego and Shego needs someone to snark at and complain about. Sullivan and DiMaggio just had perfect chemistry and it’s easy to see why Drakken and Shego went from just another part of the Rogue’s Gallery to Kim’s arch enemies. 

Which is why I am sad Gantu and 625 don’t show up for this one. I mean I can buy it: Hamsterviel likely is doing this on the sly to see if he can find a better minon, but the two sets of villians have similar dynamics and i’d love to see Shego and 625 dunk on their bosses together. It’s a really big missed opportunity but I do get it as they may of just nto been able to fit the two together or it may of been hard to block a lot of scenes iwth the human sized drakken and the giant sized gantu. So unlike a lot of missed opportunites in the other episodes, this one I at least can understand. 

We get some GREAT banter with the two though. Out of the four guest characters in this one the crew really got Drakken and Shego down and the two bicker like any episode of Kim Possible, with Shego pointing out the massive bill on Stitch’s cage and how Drakken’s tried cloning about five times now and it’s never worked, and of course how he’s 50 50 splitting with a hamster bellow his station. Seriously why get rid of Gantu and 625 but keep the annoying rodent, I don’t get you episode. 

Of course while they quack quack bicker bicker Stitch escapes and Shego gives chase. Sadly we don’t get a fight between the two like we did with Jake, another missed opprotunity but Stitch getting out of her grasp by licking her is objectively funny. Stitch finds he’s underwater though and gets recaptured. 

Kim gets captured for the first time shortly after as the current caught her, but luckily she has kimunicator gloves and calls waid to call ron. Meanwhile Ron finally catches rufus back and Jumba explains the situation.. but Ron understandably dosen’t want to give up his buddy especially since Rufus has shown no signs of being a planet killer before. He’s not mooncake... althought i do think those two could hang. God now I just want a final space kim possible crossover to wash this out of my mouth. 

So it’s down to Lilo, the really not all that ambigiously gay their pretty darn gay duo, and Ron to save the day. Lilo finally gets to do what she kept asking kim to do: use jumbas hot rod car spaceship thing to go down under the sea, and they send Lilo and Rufus in since hteir small enough to get in and suriive the pressures. Our heroes arrive and Drakken is nonplussed.. only for Lilo to prove WHY she can keep an alien in line by freeing stitch from teh leash drakken has him on using kim’s grapple gun, and then frees kim. The good guys win and the bad guys loose and the base starts to self destruct.. eh they’ll be fine. They still have the movie to get to. 

So time for the wrap up: Stitch sniffs Rufus and confirms what the audience knew... that he’s a naked mole rat not an experiment. Which didn’t make sense to begin with for either show: Jumba’s archive should’ve been able to scan him or something (And if not he could build something to do that), and Kim Possible not only implied from day one Ron had Rufus a while, long before the rain of the pods, but A Stitch in Time outright confirms Ron bought him years ago in middle school. It just makes no sense and while it thankfully dosen’t take up a ton of the episode it still takes up too much. 

But with that our heroes prepare to part on good terms but Pleakly decides to celebrate with  Luau. Kim’s repsonse “Well I can do anything...”

And we get a gratuitous luau sequence! I do love a job that allows me to type the phrase “Gratuitous Luau Sequence’ They clearly ran short and we just get a good minute of everyone doing hula dances for no reason. I mean.. you could’ve done a quick gag with the experiment who was mistaken for Rufus... who I now realize given the finale was befriended by someone. I’m headcanoning now Kim and Ron came back for that one and Kim had him sent to space as part of one her dad’s projects where he and earth would be safer and he could help with space missions or something. 

Final Thoughts: As you could tell I had mixed thoughts. As a crossover this melded things better, had a more original plot and the actors from Kim Possible brought their a-game.. but once again some disapointing characteteriztion and downright stupid decisions really let the episode down. These episodes just depress me every time and I’m looking forward to being done.. which given how excited I was going into this.. yeah. Like all of these despite their flaws I recommend checking it out if you like Kim Possible, if nothing else than for some extra drakken shego banter but.. keep your expectations low.

Next Time on Kim Possible: A team of spiteful assholes who are in a way repsonsible for Kim’s Career try to shut her down. It’s the intended finale episode outisde of hte movie people buckle up.. or you would if I was doing any of these. Though I should do “Team IMpossible” at some point. 

On the finale of these crossovers: The Recess Gang are the final visitors to Kuai as Lilo must find and stop a lazy monster... no i’m not guest starring too. 

Tommorow: Another kev one this time by patreon as I put two similar episodes of a show or franchise against each other and ask “Who Did It Better?” This time it’s two episodes of Celebrity Death Match, original versus revivial may the original.. probably win. 

If you liked this review, please consider supporting my patreon, YOU CAN FIND THE LINK TO IT HERE.  For just 2 bucks a month you get access to my discord, to pick a short each time I do one of my shortstravaganzas, and acess to my Patreon exclusive reviews! Next month I intend to do one for the show whose crossover gets the most likes within a week of it’s relase. Proud Family has already passed American Dragon so you have a week to get it ahed. And if you like Kim Possible, help me reach my 25 dollar stretch goal! At that i’ll review So The Drama, along with the Recess and Proud Family Movies. So check it out and i’ll see you at the next rainbow. 

[lakemojave]

Supergiant Games: Same Bones, Different Skeletons

I just finished a retrospective of all 4 games by Supergiant on my twitch channel, and I have a few thoughts I wanna connect and questions I wanna explore. My love for these games is real strong and i could write a whole essay just gushing about them, but I wanna give some thought to what makes them so compelling: not just to me, but to damn near everyone I’ve talked to on their discord who feels the same. I myself rank Bastion among my favorite games ever, and Hades is climbing that list at a clip. And even though I could take or leave Transistor or Pyre, they keep pulling me back.

But I could talk a whole lot about each game’s appeal and waste a lot of time. I’ve gushed enough to my friends about how Bastion and Pyre’s rugged, apocalyptic atmospheres draw me in with their incredible vibrance to contrast. I could talk about how Ashley Barrett’s vocal tracks carry Transistor on their shoulders, or what makes Hades so much goddamn fun that the game doesn’t really need to be much else. But I realize that if the Supergiant library is so universally appealing to me, there must be some sort of connective tissue between them--some sort of fundamental similarity that makes them work. After thinking about it for more than five minutes, it turns out there are many; some are pretty obvious, and some less so. This brings me to the conclusion that the Supergiant library, with its four wildly distinct and different games, still follow a noticeable formula--one that is flexible enough to allow such completely different games.

Game Design

The Supergiant library are all essentially top down action rpgs, Transistor having the most elements of the genre. This is still a pretty weak connection, given how different they all play from each other. The only two that have much overlap in the most basic sense are Bastion and Hades, with the same general fast paced, real time combat. On closer examination, the two games have enough differences in the variety of mechanics at play, (Bastion with its multiple weapon slots and a shield, Hades with its sheer number of commands) that even they are hard to compare.

There are, however, several mechanics that the library loves to use. The first that comes to mind are the difficulty conditions: idols in Bastion, limiters in Transistor, titan stars in Pyre, and the pact of punishment--and arguably Chaos boons as well--in Hades. Their function is simple: increase your challenge for a little extra reward. Bastion and Pyre go the extra mile by fixing in world building elements to this mechanic; Bastion’s idols inform about the game’s pantheon, while Pyre informs about its, well, evil pantheon. The use of these conditions is indicative of Supergiant’s game design philosophy as a whole--you, the player, can make the game as hard or easy as it takes for you to have fun. The inclusion of infinite lives in Bastion or god mode or hell mode in Hades further builds on this point. This library is designed for all sorts of audiences, whether they want to be challenged by their games or simply immersed in the story.

Another repeating mechanic in these games are the use of challenge rooms, which started in Bastion as the training grounds and, to a lesser extent, Who Knows Where. In Transistor they are the sandbox test rooms, and in Pyre they are the beyonder crystal’s scribe trials. They appear in Hades a little more ambiguously; the infernal troves or Erebus rooms are not quite the same, but they serve a similar function. This function is a momentary break from the gameplay loop for a little extra reward, much like the previously discussed conditions. Transistor and Hades’ challenge rooms offer relatively negligible rewards; the sandbox rooms simply offer xp and unlock tracks for the jukebox, while the Erebus tiles offer double the reward for any normal tile. Bastion and Pyre go the extra mile by giving specific, long term rewards for their challenges. In Bastion’s training grounds, the Kid earns weapon specific abilities that are among the game’s most powerful; in Pyre’s scribe trials, exiles can earn character specific talismans that feed their specialization. For the most part, these rooms give the player a low stakes opportunity to practice, hone their preferred playstyle, and reward the effort, all while being completely optional.

Akin to these breaks in the game loop are designated resting areas/hub worlds. The Bastion, the Sandbox, the Blackwagon, and the House of Hades each offer a moment to interact with characters and lore, goof around with the environment, buy permanent upgrades, or just take a break. Transistor utilizes this function the least of the library, since it never once requires the player to enter the space. Pyre utilizes it the most since it has the most breaks in both frequency and number. In a way, this decision is both a game design and storytelling choice. Between all four games, perhaps excluding Transistor, this is where the majority of story beats take place. It is where the player can read up on some fresh lore or meet the ever growing cast of characters, and eventually grow to cherish them (as I often do playing this library). Without little breaks like these, the climactic or world/story shaking events that take place out in the actual playable space have no impact or narrative weight. The fact that all these sort of interactions are completely voluntary also rewards the player in the storytelling sense; by choosing to engage with the figures of the story rather than having that choice decided for them, the player feels as though they themselves have agency in the story unfolding.

Style

Perhaps the most distinct part of the Supergiant library, (and perhaps what I personally love most about it) is its aesthetics. There are few games that look, feel, and sound the way these games do. Yet, the four of them hardly resemble each other. Bastion is a rugged, frontier-esque sci fi apocalypse, Transistor is a sleek, cyberpunk apocalypse, Pyre is a high fantasy purgatory space, and Hades is simply stylized Greek mythology. It is a shock to remember, then, that these four games are all designed by the same artistic team.

I confess I don’t know much about art, so I don’t have anything too profound to say about Jen Zee’s art style, besides that I like it a lot. It is also worth noting that despite her spearheading art and character design for the whole library, each game still looks visually distinct, and not just in their overall aesthetics. Take the character design of the library, for instance. Bastion’s human figures tend to be short, stocky, with exaggerated facial features. Their colors are highly saturated, with a soft, almost blurry quality that gives a level of warmth to the fatalistic atmosphere. Transistor’s characters, barring Red, tend to be based around palettes centered around a single color, such as the Camerata red and the spectrum of the function character profiles. Pyre is the first of the library to use talking portraits, which contrast robed figures with stark color palettes and simple designs with unrobed figures with much noisier details. Hades is easily the most distinct of all four, using simple colors and thick outlines on all its characters. The most consistent feature of all their designs, as usual, is how wildly different they are. For Hades, Zee makes sure that characters only look alike in any way if they have some relation to each other, such as the Furies, Achilles and Patroclus, or Zagreus and his parents. On the whole, the versatility and variety in the character design is impeccable.

What I most enjoy about these games is Darren Korb’s soundtracks, which continue to vary wildly. From the closet-recorded Bastion soundtrack to the whole two and a half Hades score, Korb’s scoring keeps improving and changing in the 10 years Supergiant has operated. His music, which adds and changes motifs as each game progresses, contributes to the atmosphere just as much as the visuals do. Whenever he teams up with Ashley Barret to add vocal tracks to certain parts of the game, they always manage to place them at critical narrative or emotional beats, turning them into the games’ most memorable moments. The team goes one step further every game by incorporating a musician or source of music into each game, giving the music just as much character as the one performing it. It also sneaks its way into the aforementioned hub worlds by providing the player a means to play their favorite tracks whenever they want (except in Hades, where they have to pay in game for that privilege). In essence, Korb makes sure to give each game a distinct feel through its music, but familiar enough to connect the library in the player’s mind.

Just as Supergiant gets so much mileage from Korb and Zee alike, they also manage time and time again to make use of Logan Cunningham’s top notch voice over work. Originally the sole voice actor at Supergiant Games, Cunningham continued on from famously narrating Bastion as Rucks to remaining a ubiquitous voice throughout the library. His role as the Transistor in the game proper drives the emotional core of that game, and his role as the Voice/Archjustice proves to be a solidly effective, yet distant antagonist. In Hades, his roles are somewhat overshadowed by Korb’s performance as Zagreus, (which I’m still blown away he still had time to do) but his performance as Lord Hades is still excellent. Supergiant also uses Cunningham in Hades to sort of satirize how often he narrates for them by casting him as the narrating Old Man, then allowing Zagreus to break the fourth wall and acknowledge him. It is as if the team at Supergiant knows how much they use the same stylistic team, then mocking that same choice.

To other studios: learn from Supergiant

I’m running out of things to say and my ball of yarn that connects all these newspapers and polaroids on my wall is running thin. I would talk more about Supergiant really knows how to end a game and frequently does so in similar ways, or that their library is a masterclass in character-driven stories, but this little essay is long enough.

Instead, I wanna talk about how Supergiant does something right which so many AAA developers and publishers don’t seem to understand. To contrast with the Supergiant library, consider Assassin’s Creed, another franchise I have spent an embarrassing amount of time playing. This franchise releases a game almost every year, and in my experience, when a company does this, you tend to get the same pig with a different paint. From the original Assassin’s Creed to their most recent release, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the differences seem to be night and day. Combat and free running are far more complex than they once were, rpg elements to story and gameplay have been introduced, composers, writers, voice actors, and cast members have changed with each release, and the sheer size of the game has become staggering. Yet, in the 13 years and 11 main releases in the game’s history, (plus spinoffs) any change has not only felt incremental over time, but fundamentally insignificant to the skeleton of the game. Assassin’s Creed 1 and 2 play and feel differently, but the differences are subtle. The bones are different, but every year they assemble to form a vaguely Assassin’s Creed shaped thing. People who play games tend to hate this and frequently berate companies for this practice; Bethesda and GameFreak receive the same criticism that their games are so formulaic that their new releases might as well be carbon copies of the ones before it.

Yet, Supergiant Games, with its four games over ten years, has used essentially the same team and building blocks to make games that can hardly be considered interchangeable. Whether its the passion of this humble little indie studio or the sheer talent of this team, Supergiant takes the same pile of bones and assembles them in a different shape each time with care and attention. They are proof that a formula doesn’t need to be tweaked or altered or given a different coat of paint in order to be accepted; instead the formula needs versatility, the means to produce a fresh result each time. It also works best when we adore the result every time.

[sell-our-skins]

Day 1 of Paradise Motel Week Inspired by this and this comic by Tapefish AO3 Link

The Girl was sitting in one of the ratted Diner booths, aggressively scribbling her orange crayon on a stained napkin. The light of the sun was just beginning to poke through the cracked widows of the Diner turned Killjoy base. The Girl smiled as she felt the beams of sun shine down onto her, making her feel warmer. After all, there wasn’t a proper heating system in the Diner.

A bell echoed through the silent front room, breaking the Girl’s focus and signalling someone had just entered. Kobra Kid slithered into the room, still wearing his bike helmet. 

“Hiya Kobra,” she flashed a smile at him, fully showing off the gap in between her front teeth. He carefully slipped his helmet off and ran a hand through his freshly bleached hair. Kobra gave a somewhat lopsided smile and a bag of chips to her in return. 

“Mornin’ Motorbaby. Got you something, don’t tell Pois, though,” the lanky Killjoy flopped down into the booth across from her, putting his sunglasses back on. The Girl tore open the bag, happily shoving chips in her mouth. It was rare that she got something like this, with Carbons being pretty hard to come by. She had completely abandoned her crayon and drawing, instead drawing her full attention to the potato chips.

“What’cha drawing?” Kobra pointed at the napkin, full of the Motorbaby’s messy drawings. She brought her head back up, trying to talk through her mouthful of the chips, “Dwawing.” 

“Please don’t talk with your mouth full,” he sighed. Kobra wasn’t mad at her, he could never bring himself to be. None of the Fab Four could. There was something about her, an aura maybe, that made it impossible to be. The Girl nodded and continued eating her chips. They sat in a peaceful silence for only a few moments.

She swallowed the food before she spoke up again, “Hey Kobe?”

“Hey kid?” he echoed, a shadow of a smile appearing on his face. The Girl struggled to run a hand through her hair, a habit she had picked up from Kobra himself. She squinted at the patch on his red leather jacket, a snake, she remembered. 

“How was I made?”

It took Kobra off guard, if he was being completely honest. If it weren’t for his glasses, the Girl would have seen a thousand different expressions flash over his face in seconds. The question had come out of nowhere, like a slap in the face. Kobra blinked once, twice before awkwardly clearing his throat, “I don’t think I’m the best person...to answer this?”

His voice had trailed off like it was a question, something not even he was sure about. The Girl, however, didn’t comment on it, she didn’t even seem to question it. Instead, she nodded, took her chips, and wandered off. Leaving Kobra to his thoughts and the napkin. 

--=+=--

The Girl was hunched over in a dark cabinet, the heat of the desert afternoon growing way too hot for her to handle. Who knew living in the middle of a desert filled with radiation would result in scorching hot afternoons? It may have been a fairly tight space, but it was comfortable, quiet, and her own space. The motorbaby was continuing to munch on her chips, much slower than earlier, though.

“Kid?” Poison’s familiarly loud voice called out. They sounded close, probably in the same room as her. She let out a little snicker. When Party spoke up again, she could hear the chuckle in their voice beginning to form, “Oh boy, I sure do wonder where our motorbaby could’ve gone. Too bad, I guess she doesn’t want this shiny looking rock I foun-”

At that, the Girl fell out of the cabinet loudly announcing her presence with an exasperated sounding, “I WANT A ROCK.” 

Poison burst into laughter, their greasy hair tied up into a loose bun. They squatted down to her level, offering a hand to help her up. The tiny Killjoy happily took it and once she was up, Party replaced it with the rock. It was smooth, but had tiny bumps along the surface. She carefully ran her fingers along it.

“Got somethin’ on your mind, kid?” Party’s words cause her train of thought to go reeling off of it’s tracks. She carefully pushed the, now empty, bag of chips back into the cupboard, remembering what Kobra had told her. 

“Where did I come from...like, how was I made?” she didn’t look up from her smooth-not smooth rock, giving it a light squeeze. Party seemed a lot less taken aback than Kobra had been, which made sense, in retrospect. Kobra never was the best with existential questions like the Girl’s had been. Though, their eyebrows still raised for a moment.

“We found you wanderin’ round the zones, and decided to take you in. You were like a tumbleweed,” their voice was still loud, but the tone of it had changed. It was more calm, maybe. More sincere. 

‘Like a tumbleweed,’ she pondered. The Girl never liked tumbleweeds. They were invasive, and weren’t supposed to be there. She once saw Ghoul belly-flop on a tumbleweed for a Carbon. It looked painful. Tumbleweeds were just dead plants. The Girl didn’t like tumbleweeds.

“Like a stray cat,” she offered, as a replacement for the previous comparison. Cats were better, in her opinion. Newsie fed stray cats by her station. The Girl had gotten to hug one once, and it was quite possibly the softest thing she had ever held. Cats were better than tumbleweeds. 

“Like a cat,” Poison agreed.

--=+=--

It had cooled down quite a bit since the afternoon, the whole of the Diner now being a pleasant temperature. The youngest Killjoy wandered into the back room that Kobra and Ghoul have turned into a workshop of sorts. The walls were filled with different electronics and scraps and it was lit by exclusively yellow-tinted-lights, giving it a completely different feeling than the rest of the Diner. 

Ghoul was hunched over their work table, all the way in the back of the Diner. Xyr hair was pulled up into a messy, greasy bun, and xe was pressing xyr face close to the trinket xe was making. Most likely some form of explosive. The Girl made her way towards the tall desk, Ghoul giving her a quick glance before going back to what xe was doing. 

“Hey Funko,” she started, “Where did I come from?”

Xe turned towards her, still holding the screwdriver. “We built you out of scrap,” xe said nonchalantly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, xyr signature smile on xyr face all the while. 

The Girl gasped dramatically, her mind utterly blown. It made sense, she supposed. Maybe that’s why things charged if it was near her for too long. Maybe she was like one of those superheroes in the old comics she would read, the ones with the supernatural powers that would always try to help people. It might be nice, being made of scrap.

“Are you made out of scrap?” she wondered out loud. That seemed to take xem slightly off guard. Ghoul’s smile twitched, but only for a moment.

“In a way, kid,” xyr smile went back to normal as xe went back to tinkering. It was nice for the Girl to think that she and Ghoul had something in common. 

--=+=--

Night had finally washed over the zones, making the sky a deep blue shade. The night’s starry freckles had fully come out, lighting up the sky and the area below it. It had fully cooled down, making it downright pleasant to sit outside, which is exactly what Jet Star and the Girl were doing. 

She had asked Jet to do her hair, which was exactly what he was doing.  He was putting half of her hair up into a bun, the only noise coming from the crickets, no doubt hiding in some bush. 

“Jet Star?” the Girl asked, breaking the peaceful quiet. 

He responded with a soft sounding, “Hm?” Not looking up from what he was doing. 

“Where did I come from?”

“Where did you come from?” he echoed. 

“Yeah. How am I here?”

“Easy,” he emphasized his words by finishing the bun, a gentle snap coming from the hair band, “You were a gift from the Phoenix Witch.”

“Oh,” the Girl thought about that for a moment. Unlike the other responses she had gotten today, this one just felt...right. Somewhere in her chest, she was filled with a warm, tingling feeling. For some reason, the answer resonated with her. She ran her hands over the sand, which was slightly warm. It was more pleasant than anything, compared to the scorching hot it was earlier in the day.

“That’s pretty cool, actually.”

“Sure is, Motorbaby.”

[radramblog]

Radiohead Retrospective Part 9: Hold me, hold me

We’ve arrived at the final Radiohead album to date. The only one to come out since I became a fan, and as such the one I can actually remember listening to for the first time. On a cold winter morning in Perth (so not that cold), releasing on a Monday, I excitedly ran up to buy the album on iTunes and download it before I had to catch the bus to uni. The last time I think I will ever have bought music on that platform, at this point. I remember listening to the opening two tracks, the two that had dropped with gorgeous videos over the weekend, before diving into the album proper.

And then a mate showed up at the station when I was transferring buses so I ended up talking to him instead of listening to the second half, and I didn’t get to do that until the afternoon.

I think it’s fitting that this album be the one with such a story attached, considering how personal an album it is compared to the previous few. A Moon Shaped Pool is a clear reflection of the events surrounding it- Thom’s divorce from his partner of 25 years, Rachel Owen, and her subsequent early passing from cancer, and the death of producer Nigel Godrich’s father during the recording sessions. There’s a deep loneliness and tragedy in the album, and one that seriously resonates with the times.

With that in mind, Burn The Witch is kind of an odd fit for the album. Themes of mob mentality and moral panic, images of medieval plague houses and witch hunts don’t quite suit the tone A Moon Shaped Pool generally conveys. Which is why it’s probably for the best that the song appears at the very start of the album, somewhat separated from the bulk of the work.

This might imply that I don’t like the song. Far from it, for a while, Burn the Witch was my favourite track on the entire thing. I adore strings on rocky music, and in this case, they almost chug, like the guitars on a System of a Down song, with the electronic elements being such an excellent subtle contrasting part of the music. Thom’s vocals are all-encompassing in the chorus, and the timing of the strings getting that little psychotic edge to them at the same time is so perfect.  

As much as the album is separate from this song, it’s still an excellent choice for an opener, both in the tracklist and the promotion. Because like a fair few other songs on this album, Burn the Witch has been a Radiohead song without a home for a very long time, as early as the Kid A era, with early versions of its lyrics showing up in the Hail to the Thief art and website. It was something hardcore fans had been clamoring for for more than a decade, especially after one live show where Thom responded to the cries by playing the first few bars- and then saying “alright for the rest of it you’ll have to wait until we get the orchestra” (paraphrased). And get the orchestra they did, with its majesty in this song being a statement.

Daydreaming is an extremely different song from Burn the Witch, as one would imagine from what I’ve said previous. Piano driven and muffled with allusions to Plato’s Cave, it’s a song that sounds like giving up, and all the pain (and all the comfort) associated with it. The song is a slow, slow build to an emotional climax who’s lyrics are incomprehensible on account of being backmasked. For the record, it’s commonly believed that they’re “Half of my life”, a reference again to Thom’s relationship with his late wife.

The song is relaxing for its majority, the soft pianos and vocals a cold comfort to the defeated emotion the song portrays. This is sort of shocked out of the system 5 minutes in, as the strings are louder and clearer, and the backmasked vocals get more distorted, and loud, sounding like snoring, drowning out the gentler electronic sounds. This does eventually settle, with both strings and vocals lowering to more of a rumble, everything else fading out until they are all that remain. The note the song ends on is kind of disturbing, frankly.

It’s somewhat awkward that the two songs with music videos are at the very start of the album, leaving the rest of this to be a wall of text. I’ll find something.

Track 3 presents an interesting parallel with OK Computer, with both Decks Dark and its Subterranean Homesick Alien using UFOs as metaphor for the human condition. Instrumentally, of course, they’re completely different, but the thematic tie is there. Decks Dark has also at some point vied for the place of my favourite track on the album, the very fun, rhythmic delivery of the vocals in the verse something I’m fond of singing along to, and that absolutely killer backing choral giving the song a haunting feel.

Decks Dark effectively has four distinct sections- Chorus(?) 1, Verse, Chorus 2, Outro. The first chorus is this very mysterious thing, light on instrumentation aside from an electronic drum beat and a simple piano line (with heavily panned noises that I’m pretty sure are only in the right ear). The verse, as I mentioned, has the haunting choral and fresh bars, a heavier piano laden into its airy instrumental, a quiet but killer bassline that gets to kind of show up in the second chorus. Chorus 2 feels like a reflection of the first, a bit more grounded, the mystery explored, and the outro is… I mean the bass and piano are great but I always forget about this part of the track, like I could take it or leave it. Fortunately for said outro, the song is very much more than the sum of its parts, and it’s an excellent fit for the album.

Speaking of being able to take or leave things, I’m not particularly huge on Desert Island Disk. A low acoustic guitar-based track, with a distant echo of an electronic piece playing only in your left ear for like, half of the track, with less subtle electronic sections following up, panning between ears, that (and I mean this as a compliment) remind me of the Spore soundtrack. Christ that’s a weird comparison.

There’s an interesting moment where a new acoustic riff comes in right as you’re getting lost in the haze, cutting through the electronic fog (as it becomes the only instrumentation present), which is honestly a very precise bit of musical timing. I do enjoy the lyrics to the song as well, what with its final line probably not deliberately being an LGBT+ affirmation but sure working as one. The song is, basically, pretty okay, but don’t be surprised if I skip it on my next (less thorough) listen-through.

Ful Stop is a track that often convinces me I’ve fucked up my headphones or something, because of how quiet and how slow the buildup for its introduction is. It’s probably the angriest track Radiohead has put out in the last decade, harsh electronics and accusatory vocals kind of a surprise after the chillness of Desert Island Disk. The bass is killer in this song’s first half, and the almost cyclical presentation of its various elements as the bass and drums are still slowly getting louder and clearer is excellent until it breaks into its second half. I…forgot how long the first section of the song was, frankly.

The second section is really interesting, with its twin vocals making like the instrumentation as “Truth will mess you up” slowly gets quieter and quieter to the point of inaudibility and “All the good times” rising into clarity, all while the instrumentation just keeps chugging. I understand this one is one of the songs that predates the album (and unlike Burn the Witch was actually played live), and I’d like to see exactly how that particular one panned out before A Moon Shaped Pool took it’s approach to it. Good track!

Glass Eyes somewhat reminds me of Faust Arp, in that it’s a much quieter, shorter, and vocally driven track than what surrounds it. And just like Faust Arp, I really enjoy it. This track is distilled, purified anxiety, brutal yet familiar lyrics and a soft, hesitant piano line to accompany it. The strings are absolutely beautiful on this song, rising and falling with the lyrics, and especially with the second verse.

This song feels intimate, particularly with its last two lines. “I feel this love to the core” is a great illustration of how, when surrounded by harsh reality and anxiety, positive feelings like love can be amplified in context and touch deeper than they otherwise would. Of course, it’s followed up by “I feel this love turn cold”, as this album is, in fact, about tragedy- what do you do when that source of comfort goes as icy as everything else?

Track number 7 is Identikit, and no I don’t know what that means. Actually I don’t really know what any of this song means, to be honest, but it is kind of a jam. It’s also the track where the album’s title, and this post’s one, come in, in a nigh-incomprehensible background refrain in the first section that I’m pretty sure we only know the words for thanks to the lyrics booklet. The first half of the track is fairly simple, vocals (+ that refrain) along with a simple drum loop and guitar line.

And then the bridge comes in. Larger-than-life, especially as the electronics and backing vocals come in for its second section, but it’s always briefer than I recall. Most of the song stays in the relatively relaxed mood of the first verse, with the second being basically the same as the first instrumentally, though the guitar is doing some really fun noodling and there’s some electronic stuff going on in the other ear. I kinda forgot how much panning there was in the album in general- not the type of album for those with only one working headphone. Identikit is a track for which my feelings are a lot more muted than they used to be- not a bad one by any means, but I used to like it more and I’m not sure what changed.

The Numbers opens with n o i s e s and this luscious piano section, experimental and jazzy but ethereal and vague, before its main guitar and drums kick in. It’s a very folksy track by and large, still having the feel of the rest of the album but with a twangier guitar and more consistent percussion, grounding the more airy elements of the track with this very real instrumentation.

Speaking of Very Real, this might be surprising for people who only follow Radiohead’s music and not their politics or people, but The Numbers is actually a climate change protest song. It gets a bit more obvious in the second verse, as the strings come in with this very determined mood, and the lyrics get a bit less subtle about the whole thing. I can’t say I know if anyone’s played this track at a climate rally I’ve been to yet (but they should), but it’s kind of interesting that it took this long for such a song to get made, considering how long Thom in particular has been a staunch supporter of, well, not having oil companies burn the world down.

Our next song is Present Tense, one which I think currently sits as my favourite from the album, but boy does it shift. It’s a very groovy piece, almost liquid in its presentation, one I can’t help but jam to a little bit when listening to. There’s some really surprising elements in the track, a…shaker, or whatever you call those things that aren’t quite maracas, as well the echoing vocals feeling like backing singers, whispering almost as they’re layered on top of each other over and over.

The lyricism in the song kind of speaks its own mood- “As my world comes crashing down, I’ll be dancing, freaking out”. It’s a dance of rejection, of denying reality and shutting down to avoid the world and its pain, but you know, while groovin’. There’s a duality to them, with the verses presenting this anxious spiral and its avoidance, as the chorus’s one line- “in you I’m lost”- suggests a lifeline for the person experiencing this scenario. All in all, it’s an excellent track.

Our penultimate track is one with a total so long that Spotify really doesn’t want to show it all, Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief, which I’m not going to repeat because this post is already super ridiculously long. Fortunately, I have surprisingly little to say about this song. The majority of the track is pretty much fine, good vocals, a relatively basic instrumentation that gets more luxurious for the second verse/chorus, with a second clearer piano line and drums overlaid on their electronic substitutes from the first.

And then the final minute and a half happens, and it’s incredible. There’s no way they could have kept this up for the whole song, but the orchestral section in this part of the song is utterly mindblowing, a beautiful crescendo that serves as the album’s climax, more and more things and strings adding on as the progression of the song just goes and goes until it just…ends. I do wish it was longer, frankly, because there is a whole like half minute of outro that I just wish was more of that instrumental.

The final track on A Moon Shaped Pool is True Love Waits. But to talk about True Love Waits, we need to talk about True Love Waits.

That is to say the live version of the song from a 2001 Oslo concert, present on both I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings and Radiohead: The Best Of (the closer for both and the concert itself), since along with other tracks from the album this was one that had existed for a while before it finally got put to vinyl. It’s a lovely but surprisingly simple acoustic love song, depressing lyrics and wavering vocals aside. The chorus of the song is “just don’t leave, don’t leave”, a desperate plea for companionship that, in this case, seems to have succeeded. The track genuinely feels happy despite itself, a hopeful end to what was surely a melancholic concert. The video above isn’t that version, it’s from a different performance, but it’s close enough.

But of course, in reality, she eventually did leave. And then she died not long afterwards. This tragedy is reflected in the A Moon Shaped Pool version of True Love Waits, an utterly crushing piece of music. Those same lyrics over a simple piano version of the instrumentation, one that feels almost empty, or hollow, echoing into the void with only itself to answer. Those same lyrics that now feel so much more pained, an awful reminder of what was. The line “I’m not living, I’m just killing time” is so much harsher when the song doesn’t have that bright undercurrent to keep it going. While there’s a lot of emotion packed into the rest of the album, True Love Waits is the sonic equivalent of weeping.

It’s…hard to listen to. I believe it was literally scientifically determined, as far as something like that can be done, to be the most depressing Radiohead song. It’s basically not a song I ever listen to as a result- I really don’t need that energy in my life, honestly. Grieving is hard, obviously, but it’s not really a zone I want to deliberately put myself into.

And that is, ultimately, how A Moon Shaped Pool, and Radiohead’s current album legacy, ends. Not on a whimper, but something kind of like it. It’s a very good album, clearly, but there are moments from it I’d rather pass on most of the time- hence I don’t think it’ll ever be, like, top 3 for me.

At this point, Radiohead’s future is kind of uncertain. The members of the band took a break after this to work on solo projects and the like, but at this point, all of those have pretty much wrapped, and so the rumblings of LP10 are likely on the horizon. There’s no way of knowing what another album would look or sound like at this point, so we’ll just have to see. The band did release a 20 year anniversary edition of OK Computer, though, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see one for Kid A/Amnesiac within the rest of the year. It would, uh, have to be within the rest of the year.

The future of this series is of course similarly unclear. While I could and probably should end it, move on to talk about other albums and bands, some part of me does want to go back and take a look at some other Radiohead stuff. There’s B-Sides, there’s solo projects (which I really haven’t delved into personally), theres TKOL RMX 1234567, the list goes on. I guess you, and I, will both have to see next Tuesday. I hope to see you then, whatever it ends up being.

[eyebeastposts]

EyeBeast 2021 Interest Survey Results

The votes have been cast so let’s do a quick recap of the results and address a few things.

General Interest

Male Subjects in Fetish Stories: 57.5% Yes, 42.5% No

Female Subjects in Fetish Stories: 99.1% Yes, 0.9% No

-No surprise considering most of the subjects of my stories are female focused.

Preferred Subject of Fetish Stories:

Females: 70.8%, Both Male and Female: 22.6%, Male: 6.6%

Futa (Females with male genitalia): 53.8% Yes, 46.2% No

-I’m honestly surprised by the response to this question considering how taboo the subject of futa appears to be.

Direct Sexual Content in Fetish Stories: 77.8% Yes, 22.2 % No

Burping: 85.4% Yes, 14.6% No

Farting: 75.5% Yes, 24.5% No

Body Hair (arm pits, groin, belly, etc.): 54.2% Yes, 45.8%No

-In retrospect, I probably should have let people vote on the amount of hair on a person’s body.

IQ Loss/Mental Regression: 50.9% Yes, 49.1% No

Personality/Mental Changes: 77.4% Yes, 22.6% No

-Interesting to see the division between straight up intelligence drain as opposed to the general idea of mental changes considering how close the two subjects are.

Hypnosis: 66.5% Yes, 33.5%No

-I haven’t touched this subject very much, but judging by the reaction and my own interests, I wouldn’t be opposed to trying a hypnosis story again in the future.

Expansion and Growth

Weight Gain: 96.7% Yes, 3.3% No

Slob: 83.5% Yes, 16.5% No

Belly Expansion: 53.8% Yes, 46.2% No

-Strange considering how popular WG appears to be.

Breast Expansion: 62.3% Yes, 37.7% No

Butt Expansion: 74.1% Yes, 25.9% No

Inflation: 52.4% Yes, 47.6% No

Pregnancy (Female Only): 57.5% Yes, 42.5% No

Muscle Growth: 67% No, 33% Yes

Giant/Giantess Growth: 62.7% No, 37.3% Yes

Blueberry/Fruit-Based Expansion: 55.7% No, 44.3% Yes

Vagina Expansion: 66% No, 34% Yes

Penis Growth/Expansion: 60.8% No, 39.2% Yes

-Interesting that Penis Growth outdid Vagina Expansion considering the survey shows a higher a approval rate of female subjects. Must have something to correlate with the futa approval rate.

Shrinking: 71.2% No, 28.8% Yes

Transformation

Personality TF (Nerd, Bimbo, Himbo, Princess, Punk, Goth, etc.): 69.3% Yes, 30.7% No

Uglification: 62.3% No, 37.7% Yes

-Odd considering how close it is to slob, one of my more popular subjects.

Shortstack TF (Goblins, Dwarves, Imps): 56.1% Yes, 44.9% No

Age Progression: 62.7% No, 37.3% Yes

Anthro Animal TF: 51.9% Yes, 48.1% No

Full Animal TF: 76.9% No, 23.1% Yes

Humanoid Inanimate Object TF (Statues, Mannequins, Sex Dolls): 77.4% No, 22.6% Yes

Non-Humanoid Inanimate Object TF ( Clothing, Sex Toys, Appliances): 80.7% No, 19.3% Yes

Male to Female Transformation: 55.2% Yes, 44.8% No

Female to Male Transformation: 75.9% No, 24.1% No

Deviant Transformations (Fuckplant/Succplants, Buttfaces, Dorses/Queen's Stallions, Lady Pots, etc.): 67.9% No, 32.1% Yes

-Honestly surprised this category did this well, but that might be due to the sheer variety this subject matter covers. Might have to do another series of polls with each one individually to get a better idea.

Overall, I’d say the results were rather enlightening. If a subject you are interested didn’t get a high approval rating, it doesn’t mean I won’t ever write about it. I intend to keep things varied up like I usually do, but I will consider my options when doing polls in the future regarding these kinds of things.

Miscellaneous Questions and Comments

Starting off, let me address a few things people have mentioned I missed in this survey.

Hyper Expansion

-I kind of include this along with the other expansions, however my personal preferences usually steer me towards nothing too big with my stories. It’s very rare that I go anything beyond the size of a house for anything.

Bodypart tf ( butt tf, breast tf E.T.C)

-I find that very similar to inanimate object TF, but I can see enough differences to make it a different category. That being said, I’m not sure I’m too fond of the identity death usually associated with these.

Femboy

-Noted and definitely on the table depending on if the right story comes along.

Cavewoman/De-Evolution

-I originally had this on the poll, but I decided it’s more lumped into the Personality TF category.

General inflatable transformation like pool toys. Also flattening.

-I consider those part of the inanimate object TFs. As for flattening, nothing against it, but my usual repertoire consists of making things grow, not the other way around.

Head, hand, leg, and other body part inflation

-I’ve done head expansion to a certain extent in my recently done Raven slob story. As for the others, I think they’re a little to niche of a topic for me. Not forbidden, just not something I’m particularly interested in.

Fart Inflation

-Considering the positive reaction to both the inflation and fart category, I would have to assume this is a definite yes for most of my audience.

Candy/Sweets TF

-This has always been something I’ve wanted to do, but could never think of a good scenario to place it in. I’ll definitely put it on the table once I find the right premise for it.

Supernatural transformations (demons, angels, mythical creatures, etc.)/ Monster People

-For demons and angels, I feel like those should be included with the personality TFs. As for creatures, that depends on what we’re talking about. May need to do separate polls for each type to gauge interest.

Robot TF

-Not a particular interest for me, plus it kind of falls under the humanoid object TF category

Mutant TF

-Too vague

Monterfication

-Falls under both the uglification and/or anthro TF categories

Strong Fat

-A little too specific but seen as favorable with the results of the WG and muscle growth categories.

Clown

-Part of the personality TF category.

Possession

-Sort of close to hypnosis, but I can see enough differences to warrant a separate category. Just have to be careful to tread the line without going towards anything to icky in terms of rape or anything like that.

Immobility

-See hyper growth.

Clothing TF

-Already covered in inanimate object TF

Multibreast

-An excellent addition that’s more than welcome in my stories. Will definitely need to include this in a future poll.

Comments and Questions

Now let me address some questions and comments from the survey.

“But what about princess deadpool? watch the second deadpool musical.”

-I didn’t realize there was a Deadpool musical to begin with. I’ll have to take a look at that.

“Personally i always like if there is transformation between couple like male and female. Or even female and female. Rather than one transformation. Like i like it when one of slob, transformation can share with another person”

-I share this sentiment. Nothing better than two people indulging in one another’s desires. Although, I feel that’s for any fetish, not just slob.

“Your stuff is always a pleasure to read! Question though would be what are YOUR favorite things to do and such due to some of your things being commissions? Other than that you are quite grand at making kinky stories!”

-My personal favorites are just anything that can give me a challenge and an opportunity to try out things I haven’t thought of before, ergo my tendency towards variety.

“Dude i stay up day and night waiting for you to post everytime you do it makes me feel better about the evening btw if you want to chat sometime my discord is (NAME WITHELD)”

-I appreciate what this person is trying to do, but they really shouldn’t be posting information like this so willy nilly. Thank you for the offer, but you have to realize that there is a time and place for these sorts of things. Please do not come at me with friend requests or anything like that out of the blue. Regardless, I do thank this person for their kind words.

“I really like some of your darker stuff. I don't know if it's a common sentiment but I love unhappy stories.”

-I tend to avoid going dark in my stories, this is due in part to the prevalence of bad ends I’ve seen in most fetish content, especially things like hentai or doujinshi. Like I’ve said, it’s not off the table, but I usually prefer to keep things on a lighter tone in my stories.

“For the record Fat giantess slobs are the best.”

-That seems very subjective, but I won’t deny it’s a good combo.

“Recently I have noticed that you been doing a lot more slob material then just about anything else for the past few months. I admit I'm not a huge slob person it kind of comes down to my mood. while I would appreciate more variety in your subject matter you are the writer and I (and several others) appreciate you sharing your artistry with us.”

-A lot of that comes from what both my commissioners and people on my Patreon ask for. Keep in mind that I do have to oblige people that give me money to write. I do try to find time to write other things though.

“Just do what makes you happy. But i'd love to see more male focused expansion/transformation.”

-As I’ve said, I’m up for it, but I need the proper story and opportunities.

“male on female facesitting/squashing/trampling is always good.”

-See the above question.

“Do you ever feel discouraged to write something if it's about something you don't enjoy OR feel like you write too much of? Other than that, keep up the good work, take care of yourself, and good luck with your future stories!”

-For stuff I don’t enjoy, it depends. If it’s a fetish I’m not into, I treat it as way to try out some new things and vary up my writing ability. Whether or not I learn to appreciate said fetish is another matter. That being said, I’ve made it well known what fetishes I won’t touch at all such as rape, scat, or vore. I find that I don’t have too much of the second problem since I keep finding ways to vary things up with similar fetishes with either varied scenarios or interactions.

Various words of encouragement

-Thank you to everyone that sent me these, as they’re always a good pick me up for the day.

Finally, the Disney Princess empathy votes are:

Rapunzel: 37.7%

Alice: 24.1%

Belle: 20.8%

Tianna: 17.5%

Now you may be asking what this survey is for. Well…that’s for me to know and for you to find out at a later time. Although, I may be prompted to answer any requests about any associated writing things that come from this survey.

Summary

Thank you everyone who took the time to answer the survey and let their opinions be heard. In the end, we had over 200 people participate to give a pretty sizable sample size. I may consider doing several more of these in the near future to focus on specific topics and cover things I may have missed.

[autumnblogs]

Day 43: Openbound

We’ll principally be doing Act 6 Intermission 3 today, so expect lots of pictures in this one!

Believe it or not, I initially didn’t like Openbound very much; I felt like it kind of dragged on my first readthrough, and generally had a pretty hard time getting myself to care about the Dancestors. They’re a pretty unsympathetic bunch.

Then again, lots of Homestuck characters are pretty unsympathetic! I’ve been really feeling that in the second half, as retrospect allows me to view a lot of secondary characters through the lens that we’re not intended to get attached to them.

That said, Openbound is actually pretty key to helping us understand the second half of the comic, I think, and makes explicit a lot of the themes that it explores, and how it builds upon the first half.

I think that the theme of Openbound as a self-contained work within Homestuck that we can use as a tool to decode Homestuck can be concisely stated like this; “Nostalgia and a desire for unity with the past causes toxic stagnation.”

So, aside from the introduction that we’ve already gotten to Meenah through the short conversation she had with the other kids, this is our first real opportunity to get to know her! Boy is she obsessed with money.

Money, like Cake, is a symbol that is associated with the Aspect of Life. As an aspect principally associated with Raw Power - the power to do what you want, unfettered by the stringent restrictions that are associated with Doom - it’s natural that Life would be associated with money.

The origin of money in history is pretty nebulous; it precedes the invention of writing, so any theory concerning its invention is ultimately conjecture. What I think is interesting about money is that the move toward a monetary economy in history mostly (but not always) happens as a result of the fact that it is way more efficient to collect taxes; the state mints standard coins, only accepts taxes in the form of standard coins, and propagates them into the economy by buying goods and services from the market.

It’s a tool of government, and even though Meenah may abrogate her inheritance, the Princess can’t escape her birthright. Money offers control, security... and power. What makes all of this extra interesting is that money is effectively worthless in the afterlife. Here, there’s actually nothing for her to really buy or spend it on; anyone can dream up whatever they want with ease.

It’s a nice bit of callback humor that Meenah has the same reaction to discovering the Thorns of Oglogoth that Rose does, but unlike Rose, Meenah actually does destroy them on the spot.

For being so headstrong and dangerous, there are ways in which Meenah is really pretty surprisingly sensible.

Lord English can destroy ghosts - this has always been a pretty disturbing thought for me. I may have said something to this effect before, but if I haven’t I’m a free-thinking Theist - raised in the Church, and largely independent in terms of beliefs, but I’m still pretty convinced that there is some kind of life after death. It doesn’t bother me nearly as much in works that have final death as a general presupposition, but it always bothers me when some kind of eternal life after death exists in a setting, and can be arbitrarily denied by evil beings with some power or another, like how some Demons and Liches can destroy or devour a soul in Dungeons and Dragons.

In Homestuck though, it fits with the themes established by the ways in which everyone God Tiers - spiritual power can be pretty arbitrary, and generally signifies very little about the moral worth of the one who has it; it does not intrinsically elevate the one who has it. It fits with its general criticism of power and the powerful, whether that’s the Mayor’s hatred of Kings, or the associating of corporatism with the worst parts of Jane’s characterization and Crockercorp in general.

Lord English has the power to destroy ghosts and end the lives of immortals not because he has attained to any kind of heightened spiritual awareness. He’s just some douchebag who through cosmic serendipity was in the right place at the right time to become basically all-powerful.

I adore Meenah’s spark. Who gives a fuck if Lord English is invincible? She knows exactly what she’s going to do when she gets her hands on him, and she’s got a plan from the outset. I think it’s also interesting the way that even though Meenah is absolutely taken by the spectacle of power, it isn’t sufficient to make her want to join up with English. Only soft power works on Meenah Peixes; emotional intimacy, friendship... keeping her entertained. All of these are the actual way to moderate her violent and dangerous personality.

While neither Rose nor Meenah is a parallel character to either Gendo or Rei from Neon Genesis Evangelion (I think, actually, that Dirk is the character who most strongly parallels both of them), this bit reminds me of the way that Ritsuko describes both of them;

Rose says of herself and Meenah, “You’re not very good at this, are you? ... talking to people.”

Ritsuko says of Gendo and Rei, “They’re not very adept (at)... living, I suppose.”

The same can really be said of a lot of characters in Homestuck, particularly the ones who primarily find their identity in some form of power-seeking. Whether it’s Rose, or Dirk, or Meenah, or even someone as innocuous as Jake, none of them is particularly adept at living.

Rose is pretty conciliatory with Meenah; given her attraction to danger and darkness, it’s probably not surprising that she makes such an obvious pass at Meenah in spite of the fact that she probably knows what their relationship was in another life.

Further evidence that Rose is the horniest Homestuck character.

“you know how it is with ancestors

they just kind of hold this inexplicable power over you”

Dave continues to progress down the path of not giving a shit, as did Sollux before him.

He’s not quite to the level of reluctance that he eventually adopts, of choosing to just not engage with English at all.

Gods are, to some extent, aware of the various narrative forces that govern their existence.

About the only thing this piece of nasty trash has in common with Karkat is the extent to which they both blabber, and he helps create contrast with the other, somewhat more likable dancestors. Kankri is pretty much openly contemptible, and really in the worst way. I’m almost inclined to call him a concern troll because of the extent to which his verbal essays exist purely to make him feel better about himself. Any time it comes time for him to listen to people who historically actually suffered from the systems they were involved in, Kankri shows his true colors, slut-shaming and misogynistic.

Unsurprisingly, The Other Thief is also the vector for English’s ideology in her session, “turning us against each other to make us stronger.” While Kurloz may be a worshipper of English, and Damara may have thrown in her lot with the demon because of her nihilistic despair, Meenah (rather like Dirk!) is clearly driven toward a life of violence, and restless action for its own sake.

Now we’re starting to get some insight into Feferi’s style of rulership, which in turn, probably gives us some insight into Jane. For Feferi, leadership means taking power away from the people you’re leading if it seems like they have the potential to hurt themselves (or to be a drain on society if left to their own devices). It represents a violation of agency, perhaps not so severe as the kind that Vriska perpetrates usually.

Feferi and Jane are the sort of people, I think, who want to create a perfect world - but it’s important to them that they’re the one who’s creating that world, and less important that the world is perfect for anyone in particular. Just perfect.

https://homestuck.com/story/5288

John’s whole self-conception, and especially his conception of himself as a man, and someone who might be growing up to take on the same roles as his Father, is tied up in the icons of dadliness and masculinity in the movies that he likes.

So we should expect that his disillusionment with his past will change the way that he thinks about his future, and what he’s going to do with it. It’s a shame that this line of questioning never goes anywhere in Homestuck proper, but I’ll use it as evidence in the “John/June Egbert is trans” folder. Reminds me of how my decisive lack of affinity for the Boy Scouts serves as a nice little retrospective bit of evidence in my own trans narrative.

Based on the number of trans Eagle Scouts I know, I feel like there’s a certain extent to which it be like, a fast-track to figuring that out about yourself, like, you tried all the boy stuff and just decided, nope! Not for me.

https://homestuck.com/story/5290

Man, especially if we continue to read this section of Homestuck as conflating the characters and the audience, this whole section reads as John not just having a meltdown about Con Air, but also generally having a meltdown about his own story so far - everything he’s done in Sburb, etc. It just all feels lame and shitty in retrospect, when it was something that was kind of exciting at the time, at least up until the point where his loved ones all dropped dead there at the end.

It turns out that there was nothing particularly edifying about John’s suffering.

https://homestuck.com/story/5300

Teens can be such monsters. It’s the anniversary of Bro’s Death too. Davesprite is probably as broken up about that as John is about Dad, but it’s hard for boys/men to talk about that kind of thing with each other.

Cronus is even more of an incel than Eridan. He may be the most singularly contemptible character in Paradox Space. Do I hate anyone more than Cronus? No, I think I do not.

I won’t have a lot to say about the middle leg of Openbound; it’s relatively empty of substance, and not much that happens in it is ever relevant again compared to the first and second legs.

I like to think that this leg of the journey is, more than anything, a chance to ruminate on some joke characters who were already parodies; parodies of parodies, a joke made at the expense of an existing joke. The kind of thing Dirk Strider would write, basically.

Hey check it out, the Year of Our Lord 2012, and Andrew was starting to show some mild sensitivity in his choice of words. Just mild enough to have the lowest character in the story show a tiny bit of sensitivity himself.

This leg of the adventure does give us some more insight into Meenah’s character. Just like Vriska, she’s all about being a hardass super-murder, until she starts causing problems for the people she actually cares about.

Being Evil Sucks.

This is a really weird sentiment for Karkat to have in light of like, everything else about the latter half of the comic. I mean, he hasn’t exactly had the epiphany yet that the ideas that he has about being a leader are kind of awful and shitty, so it’s possible that he’s talking the Condesce up to avoid thinking about that. IDK.

He also immediately claims he’ll leave behind the meteor to go and join Meenah’s army, so maybe Karkat is just in a pretty low place in general? That tracks.

Karkat’s little conversation with Terezi explains at the two thirds mark of Openbound exactly what this whole thing is about.

Almost the entire second half of the comic is about examining the character’s guardians, and their relationships with them. The Guardians - Grandpa and Bro especially - are hyped up to be these outrageous badasses, both in-and-out of universe, and their ambivalent relationship with their kids creates this ambiguity throughout the comic about whether the kids are worthy, whether they’re living up to their parents’ legacy - and it’s the kind of thing that plagues them throughout.

But the thing is, Ancestors can be lame, or even terrible. They’re not really anything to aspire to, and the image of success that they project onto the world is one of learned confidence, and usually that only if they’ve really managed to make it.

Even the best parents are flawed, and instead of trying to measure up to them, growing up healthy usually means learning what those flaws are, and committing not to reproduce them.

Parents don’t suck; they can be awesome, and generally speaking, for a long part of our life, they’re all we’ve got. It’s hard not to love them. But we shouldn’t turn them into idols.

(On another note, it’s one hundred percent fitting for Terezi’s Ancestor to be an outrageous coolgirl. Terezi is perpetually anxious about being cool enough, the sort of person who is breathlessly fun to be around, who commands the attention of everyone around her, and she’s surrounded by them wherever she goes.)

https://homestuck.com/story/5340

John’s distress leads him to dream about his dead Dad, and boy is he angry. He spends a lot of the second half of the comic seething in rage directed at whomever is responsible for all the suffering he and his friends endure, dishing out beatdowns toward those responsible, but I’ve never gotten the impression that these little outbursts of his are particularly rewarding for him.

https://homestuck.com/story/5358

That was quite a blow. He knocked out like a tenth of Jack’s health bar.

https://homestuck.com/story/5387

Depending on where you’re standing some really totally different things can matter to different people. From Vriska’s point of view, the things that happened back when she was alive totally don’t matter at all anymore - only the matter of Cosmic importance that is fighting Lord English.

But the stuff that matters to the people she left behind, and the suffering she’s responsible for - especially for putting Terezi in a position where she had to slay her - all of that still matters very much to the people who are alive, which is what makes her self-conception as someone who is on the side of the angels now really... not sit well.

She clearly hasn’t changed all that much. She just thinks, as usual, that now that things are even, now that the score is settled, things can go back to the way they were before.

https://homestuck.com/story/5388

Tavros and Vriska are really bad for each other in general. Like, it’s not good for her to be around someone as pliable as Tavros is, and it’s plain to everybody that it’s not good for him to be around her either; whenever he’s around her, he apes her bogus inflated self-esteem in all the worst ways.

https://homestuck.com/story/5397

Tavros’ explanation of what Vriska does suggests that storytelling has become kind of a ritual for her - a means by which she is attempting to connect with her Ancestor, by performing the same actions she is, miming her - still the same old Vriska.

That’ll be all for now. Cam signing off for now - join me for the thrilling conclusion to Openbound tomorrow, Same Cam Time, Same Cam Channel.

[catflowerqueen]

Rescue Team Retrospective Part 8: Characterization, Part 5

Hero

Much to my surprise, they actually do have more spoken dialogue than I remember. However, most of it still seems to be when they are/think they are alone, when they are dreaming, or during dialogue tree options. They also have funnier dialogue options on the whole, compared to in Explorers. …And I honestly don’t remember how much they have in PSMD, but I feel like it still less than they had in Gates?

Anyways, I get the feeling that they’re a bit older than most of the other protagonists, mostly in terms of what little dialogue we do see and how their situation seems a bit more dire in general? They are more prone to speculating on their new nature as a pokemon, for one, and they seem a bit more active over all in actually trying to figure out what exactly happened to them. Possibly this is because they actually get some hints early one with Alakazam suggesting they go check out the Hill of the Ancients, compared to Explorers waiting until the expedition and then pretty much stumbling into a possibility with Uxie, PSMD not really seeming to touch on it until way, way late in the game, and Gates actually having some knowledge of what they’re there for, but then deciding not to bother finding out anything else despite having the clearest path.

The Rescue Team Hero has the smallest support group and the natural disasters they keep experiencing first hand, even within the town, make their situation the most dangerous from the get-go, but they rise to the challenge admirably. And also, no one questions the fact that they are choosing to live alone even though we do have multiple examples of parents with children present in the Square—which is another reason why I think they must be older, because otherwise I would hope one of the actual adults would question it. So I’d give them late teens at minimum.

We don’t really get too much of a backstory on them besides the fact that they apparently spoke with Gardevoir and suggested the memory wiping themselves as a test of their worthiness. I think that the implication might also be that they are actually from the pokemon world specifically, rather than pulled there like the Gates hero was, but it isn’t entirely clear from the dialogue exactly how far the “We” that Gardevoir spoke of could reach on their search for a savior, so it could really go either way. I personally headcanon them as coming from the human world, though.

Of all the different heroes, I still think they have the least actual characterization—though they definitely do have more of it than I previously remembered.

 Partner

I’m going to note again that I am just going with the original version. I know that DX changed some stuff—especially when it comes to the post game interactions—but since I haven’t played that version, I can’t comment on it.

The Partner actually seemed a lot sassier and selfish than I remember them being. Like, sure, I did recall that line about them faking a stomachache before they go off to save Shiftry, but even before that… well, they make fun of the hero’s name, for one, and they seem a bit self-centered and glory seeking when it comes to receiving personal rescue requests. Like… I touched on it a little in the Gengar post, but their reaction to the mail stealing scene struck me a bit differently as an adult than it did when I was a child. They weren’t angry that someone was stealing from their friend’s mailbox—they were angry that they weren’t the ones who would be getting the credit for completing the rescue requests. And maybe I’m just being nit-picky about it, but the subtle difference there just strikes me as putting the partner in a bit more negative light.

That aside, their devotion to the hero is clear. They are a great friend and go to many lengths to help them figure out their identity. And I actually think their moment of doubt after hearing the Ninetales Legend for the first time actually serves to strengthen their emotion and conviction. They really did go ride or die from the hero—knowing all the risks and having only their friendship as a reason to follow them on the fugitive arc. Comparatively, the Explorers partner literally was just dragged along with no say in the matter, the Gates partner thought it was just going to be a standard rescue mission when they agreed to help, and the PSMD partner was really the one who seemed to be calling the shots for the most part (and also accidentally got dragged along to their fugitive arc equivalent much like the Gates hero did, since their initial assumption was that the mission was going to be different than what ended up happening).

This is why I felt—and still feel—very betrayed by the fact that they pretty much abandon the hero after the main storyline. And they can even kick you out of your actual house if you choose them to be the leader. Okay, so the way that they frame it is to suggest taking a divide and conquer approach—that you can make teams specifically suited to each quest—but its just really sad that they no longer follow you around anymore or get any special dialogue if you visit their friend area.

I don’t think their goals and desires are as clear cut as some of the other partners. They seem to be almost making things up as they go at some points. Yes, there is an early indication and justification for wanting to form a Rescue Team initially, but they don’t really seem to get too into the idea of what that actually means until Caterpie expresses an interest in one day joining and the partner then suggests one day creating a proper base. And then promptly says nothing else on the matter or tries to get that started at any point between then and the fugitive arc until they randomly bring it up after meeting the mankey gang. Like, sure, some of that was put on the backburner when they got that suggestion to see Xatu… but there was still a little time before that, and there was ample opportunity for them to have had some sort of dialogue option indicating that they were still interested in doing that, but were going to put it aside in deference to the hero’s needs.

From that point of view, their bond with the hero probably is a lot stronger from the beginning. Which is in some ways good, but in other ways bad since it means we don’t get to see as much relationship growth. Though, ironically, I think we do see more growth from this pair in that matter than we do from the Explorers pair, especially considering the “moment of doubt” scene.

Like, sure, the Explorers duo are excellent friends, and obviously they are extremely close considering the whole Dimensional Scream thing. But while we do see some individual growth from the partner, there aren’t too many overt examples. Sure, we get that montage before the credits… but its just a lot more subtle. And that actually speaks more to the sort of easy friendships of young children, which is another reason that I headcanon that pair as being so young—which makes it all the sweeter that the duo can stand the test of time and remain close even after the big adventure is over.

That being said, I still think that the Rescue Team pair has less relationship growth than Gates or PSMD does. Which is probably one of the few nice things I can say about PSMD—I really do like how they handled the partner’s character growth there… it’s just too bad that a lot of the time it came at the expense of the hero, in multiple ways.

So I guess my overall verdict on the Rescue Team partner is that they aren’t as flat of a character as I remember, they’re still lacking in personal growth overall and are probably the overall weakest partner of the series even though there are some aspects in which they excel.

As a final note… Interestingly enough, it really is only the Gates and Rescue Team partners who really get the chance to make a deliberate choice to put the hero’s desires before their own—though it is slightly more subtle in the Rescue Team partner’s case. Sure, unlike the Gates partner, the Rescue Team partner doesn’t ever have the opportunity to actually ask the hero to stay with them—the hero didn’t tell them they would have to leave and then came back on their own anyways fairly quickly, and though the partner did question once whether or not they wanted to turn into a human again, they didn’t really comment much either way and the subject was quickly dropped. But it was the Rescue Team partner who worked through a moment of doubt and resolved to trust their hero, and, again, they did not have to go on the run with the hero. The hero outright offered to disband the team and give them the chance to leave, and they refused.

This is much like the subtle way that the Gates partner showed they cared. True, they didn’t exactly take back their words to the hero about wanting them to stay—at least not beyond what they said in the goodbye frism—but they were very willing to pass up on the opportunity to wish for their return if it meant the hero would be happier on Earth, and they tried their hardest to give them the best of both world when they did finally make a wish.

In comparison, the question was never really brought up with the Explorers partner, and they didn’t really have a choice or opportunity either way. And the PSMD partner didn’t give the hero any chances or opportunities at all, period—only some of which can be explained on the fact that apparently they also had their own case of amnesia, because even then they weren’t trying all that hard to look into the hero’s situation before that point when they, at least, actually got the opportunity to have an actual life and childhood full of new memories with their guardian and didn’t actually realize they had changed species at all, unlike the hero who knew full well from the get-go that they had amnesia and weren’t supposed to be a pokemon at all.

[linkspooky]

Kurogiri and Shirakumo

白 雲  Shirakumo ( ‘white’ ‘cloud’) and  黒 霧  Kurogiri (’Black’ “Mist’) are in fact the same character. Whoever would have guessed? Though, considering how much Horikoshi likes to make puns out of the character names it seems a little bit obvious in retrospect. Since he’s never been shown to have a face before this point, Kurogiri’s real identity has been a source of speculation for a long time. Now that it has been revealed, let’s take a look at what this reveal means for Kurogiri’s character and perhaps any future developments. UNDER THE CUT.

1. White Cloud and the Black Mist 

This post is going to work with the assumption that Kurogiri is Shirakumo, who’s original body was either revived, nomufied, or tinkered with by Ujiko to get to his current form but otherwise they are genuinely the same person. From that angle when you compare them, Kurogiri seems the opposite of everything Shirakumo aspired to be. If Shirakumo is white. then Kurogiri is black.

As established in vigilantes, Shirakumo’s greatest strength is his positive attitude. Of the Yamada, Aizawa and Shirakumo trio he’s the one who is the most encouraging towards the other two. He’s basically the parallel of what Mirio was to Tamaki, an over-emotional, headstrong, but endaring idiot who always puts his best efforts in. 

If Aizawa was the cold logician of the group, then Shirakumo was the one who understood the emotional aspect of being a hero the best. He was able to make connections between the other boys and see the best in them. He’s the bright optimist to Aizawa’s dour pessimist. 

If Aizawa is the one who gets bogged down thinking too hard, so much so he can’t take the step forward to save a single cat, then Shirakumo is the impulsive one who just saves other people without even thinking of the consequences first. He’s the one who always acts first on his emotions, as temperamental as a storm cloud. 

He’s shown to be emotional and impuslive, and barely able to keep his own emotoins in check, and also unable to think about anything logically the same way Aizawa does. However, due to the fact that Aizawa lacked the self confidence to motivate himself to do anything on his own, the two of them had oddly complementary personalities, and together were two halves of a greater whole. 

So, everything we know about Shirakumo is established pretty well in vigilantes. He doesn’t think about the small details, he decides everything based on his own emotions. Rude, sometimes in your face, always speaks what’s on his mind the moment he thinks of it with no filter at all. He’s friendly and great at establishing connections with others. Al of these character traits get inverted from white to black when he becomes Kurogiri. 

Kurogiri has two traits that stand out about him right away. The first how detached he is from his own emotions, and the second how polite and proper he acts while at the same time being one of the most ruthless characters in the series. 

For Kurogiri, his affable and friendly attitude when directed at others is mostly an act. He only cares about two things, Shigaraki who he was put in charge by All for One, and carrying out All for One’s will. Unlike Shirakumo who was impulsive, Kurogiri is slow and plotting and does everything for the sake of a greater plan in mind. 

He politely introduces himself to all of the children and humbly requests that they give them the oppurtunity to kill all might, and then in the same breath talks about how he’s going to massacre them without any emotion in his voice at all. 

If Shirakumo could save a kitten without even hesitating, then the opposite is true for Kurogiri he could kill a kitten without hesitation as long as it was for his master All for One’s sake. 

Shirakumo is warm, and encouraging like the sun. Kurogiri is cold and ruthless, a black fog that spreads over everyone. Shirakumo was someone determined to follow his own goals for the sake of his friends, Kurogiri seems to exist for All for One’s purposes. He’s very servile by nature and always claims his actions are either for the sake of what All for One left them, or for Shigaraki’s sake. Their goals are opposite as well, Shirakumo wanted to start his own hero agency, Kurogiri has actively been trying to destroy the hero system and everything they stand for, and has even been in an attack against USJ that tried to kill his former friend. 

Kurogiri also has stopped being impulsilve almost entirely. He now acts as the impulse control to Shigaraki, as he’s always the one to reason him down from his worst destructive urges even though Shirakumo was the impulsive and emotinoal one in his youth Kurogiri is now the cold logic that holds Shigaraki back. 

However, despite seeming like total opposites there are still some traces of Shirakumo’s behavior left in Kurogiri. What Shirakumo valued the most above everything else was teamwork, the combo he created together with Yamada and Aizawa.

Kurogiri is always, always, the one that insists that Shigaraki use teamwork rather than following his impulsive urge to destroy anyone who annoys him. This is another way in which they’re opposite, Shigaraki is the impulsive one, whereas the mature Kurogiri has always acted as his impulse control. 

Kurogiri encourages him to utilize teamwork, but he also encourages it in the opposite way that Shirakumo did. Kurogiri encourages Shigaraki to make use of people and use them to their fullest extent, whereas Shirakumo wanted teammates and equals to support his back. 

Kurogiri is also the one who believed in Shigaraki the most, before he accomplished anything at all. When he had only two failures in a row in the attack at USJ, and the incident with Stain, Kurogiri still continued to support him and see his potential. Which is exactly what Aizawa and Shirakumo’s relationship was, when Aizawa was struggling and at the lowest point in his life Shirakumo was the one who knew he had potential and saw him at his best. 

2. Kurogiri and Aizawa

So in vigilantes we see Shirakumo’s head was completely crushed by falling rocks which is most likely the reason why Kurogiri’s entire face is a formless mist continually created by his quirk. 

I do have a small theory on how he might have survived. During the fight that killed Shirakumo, Aizawa remembers hearing Shirakumo’s encouraging words coming out of his radio device even though the device was totally busted. His quirk might have evolved when the crock crushed his head, to its current form where he can extend his consciousness over the entirety of the black mist that he generates, and also speak through that mist. His consciousness might have left his body in the form of his quirk and continued speaking to Aizawa, only for his body to be discovered later by Ujiko and AFO and then ‘fixed’. Ujiko even says that quirks are evolving faster than bodies have the hardware to keep up with. 

It’s also just as likely that Shirakumo could be a zombie nomu and Aizawa just hallucinated that voice, but I thought I’d share that thought. Anyway, what was important about the traumatizing incident is that it taught Aizawa that he needs to handle everything alone from that point forward. 

In response to the fact that relying on teamwork got his closest friend killed, Aizawa shuts everybody out and decides to only rely on himself from that day forward. 

I’m pointing this out because after the traumatic incident where Shirakumo died, and Aizawa lost his closest friend, both Aizawa and Kurogiri from that point forward became inversions of themselves. Aizawa has a quirk best suited towards teamwork, but from that day forward he focused on doing everything alone. He gave up his support role that helped him be thoughtful for the sake of others and started only doing things for himself. 

I already went over how Shirakumo changed, but also it’s interesting how Kurogiri almost has the exact role of Aizawa now. Both of them are teachers to the next generation carrier of the AFO vs OFA conflict. Aizawa is the primary teacher of Deku, and Kurogiri is the primary teacher of Shigaraki, even though All Might and All for One respectively are considered their mentors. The ones who take care of them and watch them on a day to day basis are always Kurogiri and Aizawa. 

Considering that Kurogiri is a direct subordinate of All for One, and also most defniitely some kind of Nomu hybrid that was meddled with by Ujiko, it’s most likely that Kurogiri was revivified or even created for the sole purpose of watching Shigaraki, and giving him a mentor that could live with him on a day to day basis and oversee him as a caretaker unlike the bedridden AFO. 

Aizawa became a teacher to raise the next generation as UA, whereas Kurogiri was literally frankensteined to give Shigaraki a mentor figure to watch after him. 

Without one another Kurogiri and Aizawa both became bitter inversions of their previous personalities. Kurogiri became cold and ruthless rather than emotional and impuslive, Aizawa became someone who only relies on himself and gave up his support role. Kurogiri represses one of Shirakumo’s strongest traits which is his concern for other people, as he clearly has on several occasions demonstrated care and concern for Shigaraki to the point where Ujiko accuses him of spoiling Shigaraki, while at the same time acting as if he is only doing this for the sake of All for One. Whereas, Aizawa represses the sensitive side of him that is genuinely thoughtful and cares about others. He’s always been really considerate about other people’s feelings and a natural caretaker, but he pretends he doesn’t feel those things to push everyone away and keep them at a distance to prevent the fear of loss again.

Which is why it’s so ironic that Kurogiri almost resembles Aizawa in a way now. They both only operate on cold logic and repress their own emotions, for the sake of the plan or some goal they’re trying to achieve. They are both on opposite sides the cool headed mentors to their much more emotional and impulsive students, but at the same time form deep personal connections with those students despite claiming they don’t care about those kind of things. 

Hero and Villain, Aizawa and Kurogiri have become reflections of one another on opposite sides of the conflict. 

As for the reveal itself, having a former friend on the opposite side of the conflict is sure to lessen the black and white view of the world that most heroes have. Considering that Kurogiri is most likely a frankentstein’s monster that was experimented on and revived and against his will, it will be harder and harder for Aizawa to take the stance that Gran Torino once did about Shigaraki. 

It doesn’t matter where he came from at the end of the day he’s still a crimminal, will not work in a story where Kurogiri, along with the rest of the league of villains are clearly villains who were made, not born that way. Some of them are even former heroes. The fact that someone like Shirakumo could fall can show that it’s more simply than good people will stay heroes, bad ones turn into villains. That there is a system intentionally creating these villains and letting people fall through the cracks. They won’t be able to just dismiss Shigaraki and Kurogiri as mere villains any more and will be challenged to see them as people who need to be saved.