#it does fall out of line with the usual Chapter III progression but not in a way that needs you to have expectations to subvert

[strixcattus]

This might be partly my own bias (from it being my experience) but I think I'm more right than not—the Fury is easily one of the, if not the, best Chapter IIIs to encounter first.

You get through your second chapter. You're used to the looping. Maybe you've even done a full route and think you know everything. And then the Chapter III title card fades and you're met with MEAT.

It feels like you've completely broken the world, but it's still in line with the format of the game. Some Chapter IIIs (Razor and MoC) break the game because they fall out of line with the format, so they work better once you've been through a couple routes and understand how things are supposed to work. But you can get the full effect of MEAT at any time. Others (Greys, Wraith, Thorn) break the pattern by taking away one of your options, which works just as well at the end of your first route as it does every time, but they can't match the sheer weight of looking around and seeing MEAT. The sound of the MEAT path. The MEAT cabin. The background music that's among the best tracks in the game.

Just. MEAT. You get past Chapter II and for your troubles you get MEAT. It really sets up how much you can break the game.

[rwbyvein]

Firen Lhain: Chapter 810: Taste of Freedom:  Part II / III

"Guess what?" Taj asked, and spun away from his console. Emerald and Mercury just glared at him.

"Yes?" Cinder stated.

"Pirates." Taj excitedly said to a dead room. Taj spun back around, picking up the control. "I swear Nora would have been so excited about that."

"Don't lump us in with them." Emerald admonished.

"Oh, don't worry, I'm not." Taj stated. "You couldn't hold a candle to them."

Cinder stood up and gently walked over. "What, exactly, are we facing?" she said with a sinister turn.

"About time you showed your true face." Taj sneered.

"Yes, well," Cinder stated, "it seems our time together is coming to an end."

"Thankfully." Taj replied, "Two airships, and outriders."

"Out-what?" Emerald asked,

"Oh, you're just going to enjoy Vacuo." Taj stated, "You can ask your flaming bitch about that later. Right she needs to get up top and fireball their asses if they get too close." He then looked over his shoulder at Emerald. "Feel free to join her." he then looked back at his controls.

Emerald huffed, "And what does that mean?"

"It means if you all jumped overboard it would make my life easier. Until then, we're stuck with each other."

"How can you possibly be so rude?" Emerald asked, "You don't know anything about us!"

"I know you think Faunus are beasts." Taj said, waving his hand over his shoulder. He then turned to Cinder, "You might want to keep your pet in line if you don't want me to just drop you all off right here."

"What did you call me?!" Emerald shrieked at him, and Taj held up the back of his hand to her.

"Emerald." Cinder said to her, and Emerald looked at her with tears in her eyes. "Another hour or so and we will be free. Until then, let's not antagonize him any more. Why don't you come and join me?"

Emerald took a step towards her.

"Try not to fall off." Mercury haphazardly stated.

"Don't pay him any mind." Cinder stated, "He will miss you almost as much as I would."

Emerald looked at Mercury, who quickly looked way.

* * *

Emerald nervously stood on the roof of the airship a she looked around. Ever so often looking right back at Cinder. She smiled and looked Emerald in the eyes. She reached her hands out and Emerald nervously raised her hands to let Cinder take them. "Just relax." Cinder said to her. "Look into my eyes and relax. You've never questioned my plans before, so just relax and trust me. All you have to do is not fall overboard. If they get close enough, an hallucination or two might help me. We're a step or two away from freedom we've never had before. He will drop us of in the lower Athabasca, and be on his way back to their little tower. We never have to see them again."

"Unless Salem figures out where the Fall Relic is." Emerald stated.

"I don't plan to wait around like sheep for the slaughter." Cinder stated, and Emerald developed a shine in her eyes. "We're not here to hide, my dear, we're here to build an empire." She then reached her right hand forward to cradle Emerald's face. She then pulled away, looking at the pair of airships approaching them. Rather than the shiny metal of Atlas, it was duller, the windows narrow slits. The craft itself shorter and flatter than the Atlasian one. Far less elegant, though. Emerald looked back at Cinder, and basked in her beauty. Simply being in Vacuo would help to make it more beautiful. She saw movement, and turned back to the airships. What was moving was, two per airship, what appeared like motorcycles, except with wings instead of wheels.

"What are those?" Emerald asked.

"I'm going to guess outriders." Cinder said with a disturbing look. "What they don't know is that they are facing the Fall Maiden. They are probably hick enough to not know what a maiden is. Just keep an eye on the outriders."

"We don't want them escaping." Emerald voiced.

"No." Cinder said, and Emerald worked towards her, "We have to let one escape. Everyone in these gods forsaken waste need to know to not fuck with the queen bitch of the badlands."

* * *

The two airships and three outriders listed, falling, on fire as one hurried to escape.

* * *

Neo jumped up as the heavy footfalls walked around the crates and just stared at Jaune's silhouette against the dim light leaking from the staircase. "So, for one thing, I have eyeshine, so I can see REALLY well in dim light. Much better than you can. Even if you're good at it." Neo glared at him, unsure of what to do. "Second, we need to decide where you are going to be sleeping."

Neo glared at him a moment before jumping up and pointing at him, looking at him questioningly before looking around.

"How did I find you?" he asked, and she looked at him with shock before nodding. "Hmm. My antlers act like Aura radar?" Jaune asked, and Neo just glared at him. Jaune just shrugged. "Anyways, where are you going to stay?"

Neo glared at him before looking down. She then dramatically looked at him before looking around.

"Nope." Jaune stated, and she glared at him. "I've been wanting to spend time finding out what's in these crates. If you want your own room, we can give you your own room." She glared at him and Jaune pulled something out of his pocket. She looked ready to fight until he handed her a key "One of our guest rooms on the third floor."

She looked at him curiously before looking down and staring at they key.

"Uh, yeah, enjoy."

* * *

Neo walked into the room, used the key to lock the door, and simply look around. Her own room. With more rooms. She walked up to one and it was a closet. Her closet? She shook her head and moved to the next, and it was a bathroom. Her room had her own bathroom. She could lock herself in here forever, never having to worry about the outside. Assuming they would bring her food. Which knowing them, they likely would. Unless the buck came to kidnap her again. She them stood up proudly to her full 4'10" height. At least in heels, and heels counted, right? She shook her head to clear away those thoughts. She had a castle in a castle, with idiots to protect her.

* * *

There was a knock on the door. Neo moved up to it and stared, unsure of what to do. She had never had someone knock before. Most people were either on business and trying to not draw attention to herself, or they were the unwelcome type of visitor and usually ended up stabbed. She moved towards the door and knocked.

"Neo?" Ruby called through the door, "We, um, hope you're enjoying your room, and we just wanted to tell that you we had other things. Like a Garden! Kind of. We really did plan to work on it. At least when we don't get so many unexpected, um, visitors? Oh, there's also a library! A really nice library! That you probably saw on the way up here. Anyways, like I said, we hope you enjoy your room, and we'll, um, get you when dinner is ready."

Neo unlocked and opened the door. She looked Ruby in the eyes before closing and locking the door again.

* * *

The airship dropped down into the canyon, hovering just over the ground. Taj looked back for a moment, "Is this really where you guys want to get dropped off?"

"Guys?" Emerald asked.

"Oh no! You're offended!" Taj shouted, and looked back to Cinder.

"Yes." Cinder said with a forced smiled.

"I'd love to say I'll miss you, but I won't." Taj replied, "Hit the airship a couple of times when you're all clear."

* * *

Taj sat in his chair periodically looking back. "They're really not going to do it, aren't they?" He asked, "You know what?, fuck them."

* * *

The airship floated upward, with the three no where in sight.

* * *

Taj got his bearings to make course to the nearest trading hub. Following the usual trade routes was a hell of a lot safer.

* * *

Cinder walked into a cave, followed by Emerald and then Mercury. Iti slowly listed to the left until they saw a small, Vacuan airship. The two stopped, and Cinder turned to look at them. "You should know by now I always have a plan. Before we rejoined Salem, I used our money to buy ourself a small airship and had it filled with supplies."

"And, they hid it in a cave?" Emerald asked.

"Actually standard practice in Vacuo." Cinder said with a wicked smile. "They are not fond of undue scrutiny. Or any scrutiny, really. Welcome to our new home, such as it is."

"Are we really going to live in a place like this?" Emerald asked.

"You were a street rat." Mercury said to her, "You have to have slept in worse places."

"But?" Emerald asked.

"This is our home." Cinder said as she stepped up to her, gently craddling her face. "It's just a bit of a work in progress. But, we have food, water, an airship, and no one knows where we are."

"Except Taj." Mercury stated, and Cinder looked at him.

"Who vowed to never have anything to do with us, ever again." Cinder replied, and both Mercury and Emerald recoiled with shock. "What?" Cinder asked, "I like to plan for these things."

[pontificalandwarlike]

Enjolras the (Non-)Survivor

Or, an essay on why I struggle with survivor!Enjolras

[ cut for length......  buckle down kids cause this is about to be a long one. ]

As I hinted at previously, there are 3 layers to why survivor!Enjolras is a strange and confusing beast to me. 

Let’s start with the easiest/simplest, which is: history. See, the point of having Enjolras survive the barricade is usually to give him a second chance, right ? He lives, he continues on, and he triumphs the next time, or maybe two tries later, or maybe ten –– but the ultimate goal is a happy ending of sorts for our golden boy. Or at least a triumphant ending, a closure of sorts, a successful closing arc for him and his Revolution. Except.... 19th century history isn’t kind to the French Republic. A lot of survivor!verse stuff take 1848 as the happy ending ( and I in no way mean to insult or nitpick them at all ). And on the surface, that makes sense ; that’s the next successful revolution ! Except the revolution might have been successful, but the Second French Republic born of it really wasn’t. Like, the February Revolution of 1848 happened in... February, as the name suggests; four months later, the June Days Uprisings were a major rebellion in Paris, where the workers rose up en masse, complete with barricades, in protest against the Second Republic’s policies. I won’t go too much into history here ( although there’s a lot of fascinating stuff ; a book I read characterized the June Days as the last major barricades ), I mostly wanted to mention it as an indicator of how rocky the Second Republic was from the start. And then, of course, the Second Republic lasted all of four years. In 1852 we have the Second French Empire, because they went and elected Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte –– aka Napoleon III, aka Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew and heir –– as the president of the Second Republic, and he did as Bonapartes apparently do in France. So, with 1848, Enjolras either dies on that barricade, or lives to see his beloved Republic fall apart in front of his very eyes and then give way to yet another empire. Not a very happy ending, and quite honestly, I don’t know how much his story changes functionally from what we already see in canon. 

Let’s say for the sake of argument that this boy survives past 60 and sees the next republic come to be in 1870. Well, first of all, to do that, he has to : 

lead a failed rebellion and deal with the physical, legal, and emotional aftermath of that 

live under a regime he tried to overthrow for another 16 years 

watch the Second Republic fall apart and give way to the Second Empire

live in an empire for almost 20 years

and finally, live through yet another bloody revolution 

which, clearly, is not a great time for anyone. But also, the Third Republic was a bit of a mess of its own. See : the Franco-Prussion War, the Ordre Moral and the suppression of the Commune which lead up to 16 May 1877 ( “le seize mai” ), the aggressively polarized politics... Hell, just look at the wikipedia page for the Third Republic. Similar to 1848, simply getting to 1870 and the successful Revolution that leads to the Third Republic is not a happy ending in and of itself. 

The point of all this historicizing is that, given his position in history, and his ideology as a radical revolutionary republican –– no matter what he survives and lives to see, Enjolras is just destined to be a tragic figure. There’s just no happy ending for him in history ; the best he can do is go out in a symbolic blaze of glory on a barricade somewhere, as he does.  

Alright, let’s move on to layer #2 now, which is the symbolic/meta layer. This is also the most fun layer for me, and I’ll shamelessly mooch on some other people’s brilliant meta for this. There’s a lot of things you could talk about in the Brick, but I’m going to speak mainly to one of my perpetually favourite scenes, which is the execution of Le Cabuc. More specifically, the speech that follows right after it. I could quote the whole damn thing, but the key part is : 

“As for myself, compelled to do what I have done, but abhorring it, I have judged myself also, and you shall soon see to what I have condemned myself. [...] Citizens, in the future there shall be neither darkness nor thunderbolts, neither ferocious ignorance nor blood for blood. As Satan shall be no more, so Michael shall be no more. In the future no man will slay his fellow, the earth will be radiant, the human race will love. It will come, citizens, that day when all shall be concord, harmony, light, joy, and life; it will come, and it is so that it may come that we are going to die.” (Tome IV, Book 11, Chapter 8) 

It took so much restraint to not bold the entire passage, but I managed to stick to a few phrases only. There’s sort of two ideas happening here. One is nor blood for blood / in the future no man will slay his fellow / all shall be concord, harmony, which is to say that Enjolras and the revolutionaries are fighting for a world without violence. Sit on the contradiction of that statement for a moment. They are fighting for a world without violence. There’s a fundamental ideological crisis here, and that is the contradiction of violence in the name of a world without violence. A question aries, then: where do people who have shed blood in the name of liberty and progress, fit in a world after revolution? More specifically for me & this essay, where does Enjolras, a “pontifical and warlike nature” fit in a peacetime world ? We have our answer in to what I have condemned myself / so Michael shall be no more / we are going to die. The answer is, he doesn’t and he can’t. The answer is, if you try to fit him in, he becomes Robespierre and Saint-Just and the Terror. The answer is, a warlike nature is a warlike nature in war or in peace ; and Enjolras is made to be the war that brings down regimes, and just because there is no more regime to be brought down doesn’t change his nature. ( Note that this is many chapters before the moment they realize they’ve been abandoned, that Paris isn’t coming to their aid ; that doesn’t happen until Tome V, Book 1, Chapter 3. Why does that matter ? Because Enjolras has no reason yet to believe they won’t survive this rebellion. And yet here he is, already condemning himself –– to death, I imagine, given the rest of his speech –– and a few lines later proclaiming that we are going to die. The revolutionaries, these men fighting with blood and sweat and tears for the future, are not going to live to see it. Because there isn’t a place for them in the world they are trying to build. They’re writing themselves out of the future. ) 

All this to say : if Enjolras survives a successful barricade, there is no place for him in the world it creates. He has already condemned himself, and the rest of the revolutionaries with him ( “We will share your fate !” Combeferre shouts, and Enjolras replies simply with “Very well.” ) He is Michael, and in a world where Satan is no more, he too will be and must be no more. ( I mooched a lot of ideas off of this meta thread, so feel free to go there for more intelligent, coherent, and informed thoughts than mine. )

Okay, then what about a failed barricade ? Well, let’s talk about that on the symbolic/meta level for a bit. Enjolras surviving a failed barricade... doesn’t make sense, on that level. It’s sort of the point of his story, that he dies there. That he dies embracing Grantaire, holding his hand, smiling. That’s the ultimate sacrifice, yes, but also the closure of his character arc : accepting love, accepting the skeptic, accepting people-with-a-lower-case-p, even when they don’t fit neatly into his revolutionary worldview. It’s a symbolic redemption of the heartless, ruthless version of republicanism he espouses at the very start ; it’s the antithesis of “Silence before Jean-Jacques! I admire that man. He disowned his children; very well, but he adopted the people.” In other words, his arc remains incomplete on a symbolic level if the barricade fails and yet he doesn’t die. Also, can you imagine Enjolras surviving the barricade when everyone else has died ? I sure can’t, unless some magic stepped in and saved him when the Guard thought he was dead and he really should have been dead. 

Anyway, having addressed the symbolic/meta reasons of why Enjolras surviving the barricades is a baffling situation to be in, let’s go to the third and most practical layer : characterization. Look, Enjolras as we see him in the Brick is made of exactly two things, and that is 99% Revolution and 1% his friends. ( Percentage may vary. ) So then, who is he when we rip both of those things away from him ? Who is Enjolras, when his Revolution has failed and his friends have all died ? I don’t have a good answer to that. I can’t possibly imagine him giving up, or God forbid turning a cynic, because that runs contrary to his entire person. It’s hard to imagine him becoming a moderate, peaceful republican or something along those lines, because he’s built on quite the absolutes, and while Combeferre/Courfeyrac/Feuilly/et al. to temper his beliefs, I just don’t think there’s a way he’s ever going to bend that far. He’d break before that. But at the same time, there’s no way he can go on like before, as if nothing happened. That’s just not how trauma works. This boy, all of 26 years old, waged a war, had his hands drenched in blood, killed people he didn’t want to kill ( see : the artillery sergeant scene ), watched all of his friends die by his side, was abandoned by a group of people he believed so deeply would be on their side, and saw the ideals he devoted his entire life to shatter to rubble in front of his own eyes. He’s not walking away from that unchanged, because that’s just not how human beings work. 

So then, to summarize. I can’t imagine him giving up, because it’s not who he is as a person; I can’t imagine him choosing a moderate path, because I don’t think he has it in him to be that tempered; I can’t imagine him continuing as he was, because that’s just not how we work as people. So I’m at an impasse. 

An Enjolras who survives with a few of his friends is easier to work with, because he as room to be at both ends. He can go through his terrible post-barricade phase, the survivor’s guilt, the trauma, the fears and the insecurities and the doubts that are borne of that experience. But then he can build himself back up, piece by piece, with the help of his friends –– and he can help them build themselves back up in turn. And at the end of the day, they stand back up as they did, scarred and wounded by their experiences but still standing. For what, I’m not so sure ( see history rant above ), but at least standing. 

But an Enjolras who survives alone ? I genuinely have no idea what he would do or be, in the long-term. In the short term, sure, he’d be terribly guilty and terribly scarred and probably honestly terrified for a while. And then ? Does he heal from that on his own –– and if so, how ? What happens if he does heal –– does he go on to join or found another revolutionary group ? What happens if he doesn’t heal –– does he die, somehow ? 

This is not to say that I don’t like writing survivor!verse. The opposite is true, actually ; I love it. I love angst, first of all, but it also lets me explore a side of Enjolras that doesn’t happen a lot in other places. Which is to say, an Enjolras stripped and broken down, an Enjolras shattered and torn apart, an Enjolras guilty and doubting and robbed of his own self-assured confidence. This essay is more to explore in more depth why I struggle with Enjolras post-barricades on a broader and longer-term scale. I could probably go on but I’ll stop now because this is already 2100+ words.

[shinneth]

Gem Ascension Tropes (Peridot-specific: L - M)

Reference:

Primary Peri Post ▼ Primary General Post ▼ Full Article

Lack of Empathy/No Sympathy: Standard traits of the Pre-Earth Manipulative Bastard Peridot; very prominently shown in the flashbacks during Chapter 1 of Act III.

Lap Pillow: Is this for a fatigued Steven in Chapter 5 of Act III.

Laser-Guided Karma: Considering how much of a Manipulative Bastard Peridot once was – so much of one that she ended up being responsible for many of her fellow kind’s demise due to her ambition to rise to the top – the moment Peridot actually got promoted was a bit of an unpleasant wake-up call as now her colleagues largely consisted of gems that were superior to her under conditions that wouldn’t allow her to bully her way into success like she had before (and, in fact, Peridot herself ended up being seen as a target for said gems to bully). Peridot tried to take it in stride and see it as a challenge (as the lack of challenge from her former position induced so much boredom, it likely played a role in Peridot going out of her way to stir things up to begin with), but then her first mission’s level escalated to the point where she required assistance, leading to Peridot meeting her new escort, Jasper. Peridot came out of that encounter so traumatized that it nearly shattered her identity. She was forcibly put in her place and finally had to face reality that her aspirations and perception of herself were purely delusional – while this by no means reformed or redeemed Peridot, it did almost entirely erase many of her absolute worst traits, which in turn made her more receptive to Taking a Level in Kindness not long after this when she was captured by the Crystal Gems.

Last of Her Kind: Peridot is the first and only ascended gem in existence and will likely remain that way for all time now that Homeworld is destroyed along with the Diamond Authority. By that token, she’s also one of the two remaining Diamonds in existence, though most might consider this subverted since Peridot isn’t a pure, natural Diamond.

The Law of Power Proportionate to Effort: Also invoked on Chartreuse Diamond, but is more evident with Peridot as she has much greater limitations on how to utilize her potential, and unlike her Alter Ego, performing greater feats runs the risk of depleting her stamina or even inflict pain.

The Leader: Honestly, Peridot bears various traits of all four flavors of this trope. But primarily, she can be best defined as a Mastermind-Charismatic hybrid.

Left for Dead: Presumed to be this until it’s brought up very early on in Act II that there is a much greater chance of her still being alive, as Peridot can be better utilized by White Diamond as a Hostage MacGuffin to entice Steven back than to be one of her millions of drones or just killed outright.

LEGO Gemetics: Due to diamond dust and a diamond shard being mixed in the injector fluid that would later create her, Peridot emerged as a Peridot/Diamond hybrid, albeit her Diamond traits were benign and naturally wouldn’t have developed until hundreds of years later. But then White Diamond (who, along with Blue and Yellow, were behind several similar cases of gems being Unwitting Test Subjects) forced the diamond bits in Peridot’s gemstone to condense and form a proper diamond prematurely, resulting in Peridot now being simultaneously a low-caste gem and a Diamond simultaneously.

Life Isn’t Fair: A sad fact of life that Peridot tries to drive into Steven’s head during her Get A Hold Of Yourself, Man! speech in Chapter 6 of Act I.

Like a Duck Takes to Water: Per canon, but often discussed in the GA continuity. While it’s acknowledged that Peridot by no means had an easy time adjusting to Earth at the start, she nonetheless has adapted to Earth life and culture at a steady pace. In less than a year’s time, Peridot has shown to be better adjusted to Earth than all her fellow gems – an especially remarkable feat, given the other Crystal Gems have lived on Earth for thousands of years. In Chapter 7 of Act I, Ruby expresses her envy of how easy Peridot makes it look, when she herself (and Garnet, by extension) still struggles adapting to Earth even now.

Like You Were Dying: Instead of sorrow and despair for failing to escape Homeworld when she was inches away from joining her friends, Peridot is last seen smiling and laughing at Steven and Garnet when Act I concludes. Even after they escape, Peridot’s taking her loss in stride by grading the results of her mission. Deep down, though, she’s obviously broken.

Literal-Minded: Per canon; while she’s made a lot of progress with Steven teaching her about Earth lingo, there are still plenty of moments where Peridot is dumbfounded by certain phrases of Steven’s, which he then takes time to explain for her. Since moments like this were a large part of the foundation of Steven and Peridot’s relationship, Steven is always happy to teach her new phrases and metaphors when they come up.

Little Miss Badass: She gets her moments of this in the latter half of Act I. Understandable, as Peridot’s the Hero Protagonist of this story. She does fairly well for herself for what limited abilities she has. Fast-forward to Act III where she’s gone above and beyond to resist White Diamond’s influence for nearly a week, and even after she falls… Peridot just becomes an Empowered Badass Normal who can kick ass even more. Really, though, the scene that best displays this trope is the final confrontation with White Diamond towards the end, where Peridot teases a Backstab Backfire and only stops because of how much satisfaction White Diamond’s fear of her brings.

Little “No”: Peridot lets out a few of these as she desperately begs for the life energy, now fragmented and fading away, to return to Pumpkin moments after her death. This doesn’t happen, but what does come shortly after this is the Angst Nuke.

Logic Bomb: Deliberately invokes this to fry every terminal in her old workstation and consequently poof every fellow Peridot in the room by tricking her former coworkers to input a code that would make their systems divide by zero and cause them to overload. This also happens to Yellow Pearl, though that was done by Peridot directly hacking her terminal while she was distracted with other business.

Long-Range Fighter: The counterpart to Bismuth’s Close-Range Combatant; Peridot is much more effective in combat when fighting at a distance, as she simply doesn’t have the strength nor the size to stay in a fight for long if she’s right in the line of fire. While this technically might no longer apply post-ascension (Peridot and Chartreuse have done some close-range attacks since then… to mixed results), Peridot still prefers to hang back and wait for an opportunity before acting; the element of surprise is still where she shines best, which is often best utilized when she’s far away from an opponent.

Loss of Identity: Develops a major case of this once she ascends to become Chartreuse Diamond. While she’d prefer being able to alternate between these forms rather than being stuck with one forever, the fact that She is What She Hates versus the irresistible feeling of being relevant and powerful really messes with her mind, and it often makes Peridot worry her Diamond Alter Ego will make her identity as Peridot completely obsolete.

This is Who I Am Chapter 3 reveals Peridot had a case of this long before the events of GA in the early phases of her Earth mission after learning about the Crystal Gems, when she had to return to Homeworld for reinforcements in Jasper and Lapis. After an unpleasant first encounter with Jasper, Peridot was no longer the stoic, sociopathic Manipulative Bastard she once was notorious for being. She was strong enough to not completely succumb to the submissive tendencies inherent to her kind, but Peridot was brought down harshly enough to be permanently shaken from the experience. Incidentally, this allowed Peridot to become more receptive to a Redemption Arc in the future.

Love Confessor: Peridot – albeit very indirectly – confesses to Lapis that she has a lot of feelings for Steven and is terrified of having to define their relationship, fearing life won’t ever be the same once she chooses to primarily see Steven as a friend, family member, or a soulmate. She leaves out a lot of details, but Lapis is pretty good at getting the message for the most part, so when she sees Steven and Peridot getting intimate much later in Act I (while thinking no one else is looking at them), Lapis isn’t the least bit surprised. To a lesser degree, this trope applies to Bismuth as well, as Peridot gives Bismuth an abridged version of what she confessed a couple of chapters ago moments before she and Steven are reunited.

Made of Iron: While Peridots are made to be durable, Hero Protagonist Peridot emerged as a next-level variant, as she was notably the only Peridot in her facet who didn’t experience any kind of pain when her limb enhancers were first equipped (something that normally gives Peridots, at a bare minimum, some minor discomfort – but usually visibly pains them). This aspect of Peridot was the foundation of the reputation she would gain in the future as a sociopathic Manipulative Bastard. However, her first meeting with Jasper, as revealed in This is Who I Am Chapter 3, downgraded this trope for Peridot significantly. Peridot can still take quite a bit of punishment, but she’s lost her ability to completely No-Sell her pain.

Male-to-Female Universal Adaptor: Justified, as post-ascended Peridot has the ability to shapeshift her body at will. She still had to study human anatomy thoroughly to make it accurate, of course. And Chapter 2 It’s a Birthday, Yes It Is confirms that Peridot could do it either way if she really wanted to… Steven: “So… nothing’s gonna pop out from there, right?” Peridot: “Mm… nope. Not unless you want me to. I haven’t really put that into practice, though… I’m still getting used to the fact I can shapeshift at all these days.”

Mama Bear: To Pumpkin. Everyone learns this the hard way in Chapter 8 of Act III.Manipulative Bastard: Pre-Earth Homeworld Peridot in a nutshell. Shows shades of this in Chapter 4 of Act I with her dangerously sadistic plan to capture Yellow Pearl and use her gemstone as a Skeleton Key, but that was likely invoked by Heroic Safe Mode.

Meaningful Name: Nickname, more accurately. Beyond “Chartreuse”, the only name White Diamond will address Peridot by in Act III is “Twilight” – a pet name akin to Steven’s “Starlight” designation. At first, it just seemed random and arbitrary, but just before Peridot ascends to become Chartreuse Diamond, White’s incantation indicates Peridot represents the “twilight years” of an endeavor where gems were randomly experimented upon for several thousand years. Since Peridot was one of the final gems created from Homeworld terrain, she was literally the last opportunity any Diamond had to experiment on a gem pre-emergence. Therefore, Peridot herself marks the end of an era of innocent gems being used as Unwitting Test Subjects. 

Memory Gambit: Peridot thought she never had real memories of Homeworld; just feelings. Once she returns to Homeworld, Peridot regains these memories and none of them are pleasant ones. Many of them were repressed because at the time, Peridot considered them not worth remembering or not relevant to her life on Earth (under the assumption she’d never return to Homeworld). However, some of them were buried out of utter shame early on during Peridot’s redemption arc in canon. 

Mental Affair: After nearly a week of torture, only to end up imprisoned within her own subconsciousness, a very exhausted Peridot (or, more accurately, the Determinator part of her) concedes to this with her idealized interpretation of Steven (who was unwittingly used to cause Peridot to get into this position to begin with). It’s implied this isn’t the first time it’s happened, and with Peridot still under the impression that she’s stuck on Homeworld forever, she’s more than ready to succumb to this as she believes this is the closest thing she’ll ever have to Steven again.

Mental Picture Projector: Post-ascension, Peridot is able to do this via her gemstone. Basically, a very convenient exposition device.

Miles to Go Before I Sleep: Even though Peridot has made peace with her strong sense of imminent death during the mission, she’s determined to at least see it through to the end no matter what happens.

Mind Rape: The only way White Diamond was able to break through Peridot’s stubborn resistance to her influence was to shock her into unconsciousness and separate the defiant part of Peridot’s personality from her mind and lock it down; this way, she would be rendered more submissive with virtually no self-confidence or self-assurance… and consequently, far easier to manipulate to White’s side. Chartreuse Diamond could barely function at first due to this and could only be restored to normal by Steven’s efforts… although doing so inadvertently made Steven suffer this trope second-hand.

Mismatched Eyes: Blue and Hazel, revealed at the end of Act I.

Supernatural Gold Eyes: A gem not in a fusion with heterochromia is the Mark of a Supernatural; specifically, an Unwitting Test Subject created with diamond dust embedded into her gem (and in Peridot’s case exclusively, a shard of Yellow Diamond).

Moment of Weakness: Has a few of these, but by far Peridot’s biggest one takes place in Chapter 2 of Act III, when after resisting White Diamond for nearly a week, Peridot finally succumbs via Delirious Misidentification when Master of Illusion White Diamond tricks Peridot into believing Steven really came back to save her. That small distraction lets White finally overwhelm and overpower her. This results in the birth of Chartreuse Diamond.

The runner-up is the moment in Chapter 7 of Act III, when Peridot (as Chartreuse) is made receptive to a forced fusion between herself and White. A simple Armor-Piercing Question about Peridot’s inability to fuse with Steven and the evidence pointing to her being little more than a Poisonous Friend to him makes her guilt-ridden and vulnerable enough to make Peridot give in, and thus Celadon Diamond is born.

More Expendable Than You: Besides acknowledging it’s her duty as The Leader to be the last one to head for the escape route even though Sapphire’s vision clearly dictates that whoever is the last to leave will ultimately fail to do so, Peridot strongly believes that out of all the Crystal Gems, she’s by far the one they can best afford to lose. This isn’t something she says in Act I, but in her messages to her friends throughout Act II, she all but outright states this to discourage them from trying to go back and rescue her.

Mortality Phobia: Even after seeing Sapphire’s vision and taking on the role as the one who will supposedly get left behind after “falling”, Peridot makes it clear she’s going to do everything in her power to avoid that fate. Throughout Act I’s final chapter, Peridot makes a point to be careful and vigilant with every step she makes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out.

Motivational Kiss: Gives Steven one in Chapter 6 of Act I while he’s freaking out over Bismuth executing White Pearl. Doubles as a “Shut Up” Kiss.

Ms. Exposition: Justified in that she’s the only Crystal Gem who’s lived in the modern-day Homeworld and therefore best knows how things work there, where to go, and what to do in order to reach their captured friends. Peridot exposits not only about nearly every aspect of Homeworld and what life is like for the working class, but also concepts like pallification, restoration stations, and using certain gemstones as Skeleton Keys. In Act III, she’s also this for catching her friends up on what they missed with her before returning, and for White Diamond in general. Post-GA, Peridot continues to provide relevant details of Homeworld life (despite Homeworld itself no longer existing); towards the end of This is Who I Am, in tandem with 5XF, they explain the concept of natural gem reproduction, how it’s done, and why all gems have the means for this despite this method being illegal on Homeworld for almost its entire history.

Murder by Inaction: While Peridot didn’t shatter 3UI with her own hands, she not only did nothing to stop 3UI from being executed but was the one who decided 3UI should be executed in the first place. This was definitely how Peridot got much of her competition eliminated outside of that single example.

My Significant Sense is Tingling: Once she returns to Homeworld, this is invoked any time Peridot comes across a familiar location, gem, or concept that results in Déjà Vu jogging her repressed memories.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Soon I Will Be Invincible - Review

by Wardog

Saturday, 08 September 2007Wardog dusts off her cape and puts her pants on outside the rest of her clothing.~Soon I will Be Invincible is a book written by a loser for losers. Perhaps I'm being slightly unfair but the guy on the back is aggressively bald, over-educated, a computer game designer and has written an over-angsty, over-affectionate novel about superheroes and supervillains. I'm not saying he's not somebody I would love to hang out with but then I'm not saying I'm anything other than a loser too.

I'm a fair-to-moderate reader of superhero comics but I'm no authority on the genre so what I'm about to posit could be either a) so obvious it's not worth stating or b) completely wrong but I do think there's been a bit of a change of focus. Back in the day, it seems to me that superheroes were deliberately presented as everyman figures, community-spirited boys-next-door who just so happened to get gifted with exceptional powers. They seemed to be saying: "This Peter Parker fellow, he could be you, you could be the superhero."

But, of course, moral values have shifted with time. We're no longer all about the wholesome friendly neighbourhood superhero, we want the dark and the driven and morally ambiguous. The people who read comics are, for the most part, people like me (weird, unpopular kids) and, here on either side of the millennium, superheroes - those gifted by pure chance or cruel circumstance to be more attractive, more powerful and more popular than, say, me - are beginning to look rather like the kids who laughed at me at school. Thus you start to pay more attention to the villains, initially just larger than life foils to set against the unyielding virtue of the superhero. But, unlike the hero, villains tends to be self-made men who have progressed down the long road to world domination by dint being more intelligent and more determined than everyone else around them. A familiar motif for weird unpopular kids, I'm sure. The superhero belongs to the realm of the blessed and the accepted. The villain is the perennial scorned and derided outsider. I could take over the world, you know. If I wanted to.

SIWBI takes place on an alternative earth that, although rife with aliens, fairies, superheroes and supervillains, future tech and magic, is recognisably our own. The first person narrative alternates between the point of view of Dr Impossible, brilliant scientist turned supervillain and Fatale, a newly created cyborg who has just been invited into The Champions, a famous group of superheroes, previously led by Dr Impossible's arch nemesis. The plot, such as it is, is typical superhero fare: Dr Impossible escapes from prison and hatches the usual supervillain scheme to knock the planet out of orbit and herald in a new ice-age. Meanwhile CoreFire, the leader of The Champions, has disappeared and the group must to struggle to re-form into an effective unit and deal with the events of their past. As is practically de rigueur these days in anything dealing with people with super powers, the self-consciously trite plotline and the comic book archetypes are there primarily to illuminate the recognisable human dimension to it all. Thus The Champions battle not only Dr Impossible but their own very human failings and, even as he flounces around in scarlet cape and helmet, Dr Impossible angsts over the whether "the smartest man in the world has done the smartest possible thing with his life." It's not exactly ground-breaking but it seems to work well enough and adds pathos to Dr Impossible's obsession with invincibility, not so much to protect him from those with superpowers but to protect him from the very ordinary world that has always excluded and derided him and never loses its power to hurt him.

There's a lot to like here, if you're into that kind of thing. The chapter titles are all stock phrases ("Foiled Again" etc.) and most of the secondary characters are nods to various comic book characters. In fact the whole style and approach of SIWBI is incredibly affectionate and genial, although I do have to wonder what it's doing presenting itself as literary fiction because I can't imagine you'll get it, or indeed see the point of it, unless you're also fond of and familiar with the genre to which it offers itself as an homage. And I know that Grossman wanted specifically to write a book but it seems a peculiar choice to me. His writing style is brisk and punchy, favouring a lot of dramatic statements that would look absolutely perfect floating above a character's head in a speech bubble ("It was time for me to stop punishing myself and start punishing everyone else") but when they're just a just a line on a page they occasionally fall somewhat flat. It's kind of the equivalent of writing POW just like that. In fact, the blatant attempt to "literary-ise" the book, and through association the genre, is one of the more irritating features SIWBI. You like comics, dude, just accept it. Some people will laugh at you, some people will agree, and some people will start to talk about Maus. Regardless, Watchman will never be Ulysses.

As well as occasional stylistic difficulties the narrative jumps between the present and the past in a rather jarring manner. Although it's interesting to get (some of) the backstory, it does completely ruin the pace to the extent that what ought to be an adrenaline-saturated rush towards the final stages of Dr Impossible's plan bog down in a lot of superhero dithering and bickering. For the most part, Grossman is at his best in his supervillain's head. The attempt to give Dr Impossible a reasonably credible psychology for behaving as supervillains behave within the genre (always explaining his plans to the good guys, shrieking I AM A GENIUS at every slight provocation and so forth) does not entirely work because if you were actually capable of such self-awareness one would hope you would also be capable of behaving in a moderately sensible fashion. Nevertheless, Dr Impossible's seemingly unflinching commitment to a role he knows must always be the losing one does generate a certain emotional resonance and bizarrely, as the novel stutters to his inevitable defeat, a certain tragic force.

Dr Impossible, painted with all the narrative garishness a supervillain deserves, is not a subtle character:

For a second I stand at the fulcrum point of creation. God, I'm so unhappy.

But he is complex. Grossman writes him with genuine flair and appreciation. And, one loser to another, it's impossible not to empathise with his broken and lonely desperation:

If you're different you always know it and you can't fix it even if you want. What do you do when you find out your heart is the wrong kind? You take what you're given and be the hero you can be. Hero to your own cold, inverted heart.

Villain he may be but he's probably the arrogant, articulate poster boy for every geeky comic lover out there.

Sadly, the other characters can in no way live up to him, so much so they seem almost like afterthoughts. The Champions bitch and moan like a bunch of sulky teenagers and, even if that was partly the point, it didn't make them easy or pleasant to read about. As for Fatale, new superhero on the block, who narrates with Dr Impossible, she's tedious beyond expression. I had a feeling that, as a woman, she was probably meant to be saying profound things to me but her narrative voice is pedestrian at best and offers none of the exuberance or emotional engagement of Dr Impossible's. I skimmed most of the superhero sections.

Even so, Dr Impossible is worth the price of admission alone. If you're even remotely interested in the superhero genre or have ever contemplated world domination while sitting by yourself in maths, you'll probably find something to enjoy here.

PS - Please note the views expressed within the article are solely those of the author. Ferretbrain as a whole does not believe Mr Grossman is a loser.

Themes:

Books

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

~

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Arthur B

at 18:32 on 2007-09-08I'm sorry, but there's only room for one "arrogant, articulate poster boy for every geeky comic lover out there" and it's

this guy

. :)

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Wardog

at 16:05 on 2007-09-10Oh come on, geeks need all the help we can get :)

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Jamie Johnston

at 12:59 on 2007-10-01Aside from the merits and demerits peculiar to this book (which I haven't read), I wonder whether it was a good idea to try to do superheroes in a novel at all. They grew up in comics, which are basically a dramatic form like plays, films, or television. They seem to get on fairly well on film and television (never seem them on stage), but throwing them into continuous prose narrative strikes me as probably unwise and possibly self-defeating.

If Grossman has, as you guess, done it in the hope of giving the genre literary credibility, then he's rather missed the point, hasn't he? Putting superheroes into a novel doesn't make them into literature any more than doing 'Richard III' as a comic would make it into childish pulp.

'Heroes' is a pretty good example of an intelligent transfer of superheroes from one literary form to another because it recognizes and deals with the differences between the two forms. The scale of television (both the size of the screen and the length of episodes and series) means it can't cover the whole range of dramatic action that comics do, so it concentrates on what television does well, which is the drama of personal relationships; but it also remembers that saving the world is the point of superhero stories, so it uses the flash-back / flash-forward structure to suggest a larger drama going on without having to indulge in the big colourful battles which do the same thing in a comic. It also recognizes that on television, with live actors and real-time action, superhero costumes simply aren't going to be credible, so it simply ditches them.

I'd say a superhero novel should probably ditch costumes too, for different reasons. In comics, costumes solve three problems: first, how do we easily distinguish different characters when the simplified style of the artwork makes all faces and bodies look very similar? second, how do we make every page look exciting even when nothing much is happening? and third, how do we make it easy to work out what's going on when up to a dozen different actions need to be depicted on a single page smaller than A4?

The advantage of solving those problems outweighs the disadvantage of a slight loss of credibility. But in a novel none of those problems arises in the first place, so costumes have none of the advantages but retain the disadvantage of implausibility (which is in no way reduced by the traditional internal narrative explanation: "I must protect my secret identity by wearing a costume which incorporates a mask... and bright yellow tights and a billowy green cloak").

Gosh, if I look behind me through a telescope I can see the point where this comment stopped being relevant to the article... Oh yes, that's right. Well, I think that's probably why I'm very dubious about doing superheroes in a novel at all. The whole point of the superhero genre is that it externalizes the drama and symbolism of the story. The way the identity of each character is made explicitly visual through his costume and is expressed in action through his superpower is a prime example of that. The whole point of the novel, on the other hand, is that it internalizes the drama by taking the reader into the minds of at least some of the principal characters. Action in a novel is secondary - it affects the characters and triggers internal change. If there was ever a narrative form which was unsuitable for superheroes, it's got to be the novel, surely?

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Wardog

at 10:49 on 2007-10-04I think I read in the introduction or the acknowledgements or somewhere that presenting the story as a novel rather than a comic was a carefully thought through decision, and one the author felt strongly about. On the other hand, I do think the interactions of various literary (or artistic) forms is interesting and, for that alone, perhaps I feel more supportive of it than perhaps it deserves. I was possibly being quite unfair when I suggested it was a doomed attempt to confer a literary validity on a popular form. As you point out, books / comics hop easily to the big and small screen and back again and books do, in fact, turn readily into comics (I've even seen a comic version of Proust for God's sake) and it seems peculiar that it's always been an unspoken one-way street i.e. that things can be turned into comics and comics can be turned into movies but never the other way round.

For what I've read about Heroes, I think it was always designed primarily as a drama rather than a slightly more high brow than average contribution to the superhero-genre. Tim Kring claims explicitely that his inspiration was Lost, he has no geeky nostalgia for the days of X-men or whatever ... essentially he started with television and incorporated superheroes rather than starting with superheroes and incorporating television. If that makes sense.

And there are some quite amusing sequences about costumes in SIWBI in fact! I think the point is that the novel - regardless of whether you think it's an appropriate experiment or not - deliberately attempts to offer a plausible psychological landscape to the external superhero world. Thus, Dr Impossible has an outrageous costume to allow him to put aside the vulnerabilities (or attempt to) of the man behind the mask and become a supervillain capable of delivering the usual array of hysterical villain lines. And one of the themes of the book is the clash between the external and the internal, the visual and the psychological. It doesn't *quite* work because you can't actually offer up a credible explanation of supervillainous compulsions i.e. why do they always pour our the details of their dastardly plans at the slighest provocation.

But it was fun.

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Jamie Johnston

at 16:37 on 2007-10-07Perhaps my reaction comes partly from my continual annoyance at the use of the novel form in general. I feel that a lot of storytellers write novels not because that's the best narrative form for the story they want to tell but because either they prioritize being a novelist over telling the story to its best advantage or, worse, it simply never occurs to them that there are any other narrative forms at all.

But certainly I don't want to say that a story can't be transferred from a comic to a novel just as well as the other way round. In principle any story can be told in any form, it's just that some forms are going to be better suited to the nature of some stories. But genre is a horse of a different colour. Still, I mustn't be too categorical since I haven't actually read the thing! If he's trying to explore the inside of the characters minds then the novel is certainly the form to do it with, but I would tend to think that all that would really achieve is to expose the psychological implausibility of many central elements of the superhero genre. Which, from your comments, sounds more or less like what happened. But it's interesting to find the edges of a genre.

As for 'Heroes', I'm interested that you say that Kring (not a bad supervillain name, that) wasn't particularly interested in superheroes. I hadn't heard that, and judging solely from the content of the series so far I'd have guessed the exact opposite. I can count on one finger the concepts, super-powers, characters, and plot developments in 'Heroes' which aren't almost identical to things I read in the X-Men comics when I was 15. And I notice that the producer of 'Heroes' (and the script-writer of a couple of episodes) is Jeph Loeb, who was a writer on X-Men for a long time, if I recall correctly.

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Arthur B

at 17:12 on 2007-10-07I think that just shows Kring recognised that he doesn't actually know much about superheroes and was wise enough to hire people who did.

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Wardog

at 10:19 on 2007-10-09On a rather tangential note, it's interesting really that the novel, once the bastard offspring of better literature, is now very much established as, perhaps, the most authentic and recognised of all literary forms - perhaps in a few hundred years the comic will supplant it. I mean, there's not exactly much call for epic nowadays - what sort of narrative forms did you have in mind, Jamie? And I suppose the major point of interest for SIWBI is that it's a novel, not a comic. As a comic it would be sub-standard post-Watchman fare I'm sure. As a novel at least it doesn't get lost among a morass of very similar items.

And with references to Heroes, I think something similar is at work; because he is not a great big superhero geek, Kring is more concerned about providing good television and, therefore, lots of the very obvious superhero tropes and motifs and arcs he uses, he does so with the blissful ignorance of the utterly unitiated. Whereas any superhero fanatic worth their tights would probably be unable to use them as effectively because they'd be preoccupied with what enormous cliches they actually are...