#it feels deader than usual this season and that makes me sad

[theamazingannie]

Either The Circle is dead on here or tumblr is making it nearly impossible to go through the tag cuz there’s barely ever any posts and my sister is slacking on watching and I NEED to discuss this

[olderthannetfic]

You’ve probably heard of that film version of The Magnificent Seven from a couple of years ago. Maybe you know it’s based on a film from 1960, which is itself a remake of Seven Samurai.

But if you’re like 99% of fandom or even that guy I know who worked on the 2016 version, you probably don’t know that there was also a TV series starring, among other people, Ron Perlman.

(This came up because said dude and I were working on another Western starring Ron Perlman. A sucky one though. Alas, I cannot pimp it.)

Mag7, as it is usually called in fandom, was quite the little slash fandom in its day, yet it is nearly forgotten by newer fans. The show aired for two seasons from 1998-2000.

It’s one of those shows I bought, sight unseen, so I could catch up on older fandoms. I ended up liking it more or less, but I don’t think canon has aged well. It’s too bloodless for the era it came out in while making a pretense at covering serious, dark shit. It has neither the standing sets of old Western TV nor the big budgets of the 2010s Western revival. It’s too white. The one black lead gets relegated to token status along with all Native characters. The treatment of women is laughable, from the Happy Hooker stuff (gah!) to the time they try to teach the tomboy to be more girly so she can get the young dude in the cast (ragescream!). It feels more in line with what I’d expect a Western to look like in 1988 than 1998, especially on the heels of the far more inventive The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. in 1993.

Fanlore says that Mag7 suffers because current fandom is not into Westerns, but my problem is that I am far too into Westerns, and this show is not a good one.

OTOH, there is a lot of material here to work with, and work with it fans did!

It’s a super interesting fandom for a fandom historian because of how intensely AU-infested it is. Maybe you’ve heard something about “ATF-verse”? That’s a Mag7 thing. It’s not just regular AUs: The fandom is full of these shared universes with established rules for writers who want to play in them.

The “Seven” are:

Chris Larabee: The black-clad, taciturn loner with... wait for it... a dead wife and child.

Vin Tanner: The soft-spoken woobie, sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit, who has spent time amongst the Indian tribes. (It is every bit as cringey as you think.) Fandom’s #1 fave, natch.

J.D. Dunne: Horrid little twerp with a terrible hat. I wanted to stab him every time he was on screen. x100 whenever he was interacting with a woman.

Buck Wilmington: Played by Dale Midkiff of Time Trax fame! (What? Everyone important, by which I mean me, loved Time Trax!) He is Chris’s old friend and polar opposite, a jolly, good-humored man raised by a prostitute mother. Ladies, including the working girls, love him. Also he gets fake dead more than once, so he’s clearly the BEST character, and fandom ought to have loved him the best too! >:( 

Josiah Sanchez: Ron Perlman plays a wacky preacher and ex-gunfighter. Is he haunted by his past? Does he make woo-woo philosophical proclamations about this? Does this show love its ubiquitous Western cliches? (Don’t answer that.)

Ezra Standish: If Vin is the quiet, soft-spoken woobie, Ezra is the woobie who hides his Tragic Pain under a mask of charm and cheer. He’s the one with the rapidfire con artist patter, the fancy suits, and the Southern accent. He has a complicated relationship with his con artist mother. His wardrobe is a thousand times prettier than anyone else’s, and he crossdresses at some point. Naturally, he is fandom’s other darling after Vin. Possibly the #1 darling in ATF-verse.

Nathan Jackson: Nathan is a former slave and a doctor. He has a girlfriend in the local Seminole village and not enough to do on the show.

Other characters include a sad widow for Chris to have sad dead partner angst at, the judge who sends them on missions, and, in the pilot, that guy who played Harper in Sharpe. The judge is played by Robert Vaughn, which I 100% did not realize until I was looking at wikipedia just now!

Anyway, standard Western hijinks happen. The mystery of Chris’s wife’s death is eventually solved as angstily as possible. Chris pretends to kill Buck as part of a ruse at one point, making them my ship of choice. (What?) J.D. and the local tomboy get set up by all the other characters, causing me to want to stab not only them but also myself in the eye.

COME AT ME BRO!

Oops. I’m supposed to be promoting Escapade, not starting fights about old tv shows. Anyway, I think the canon has some issues, but the fic... let me tell you, there are no words more likely to attract me to a fandom than “presumed dead”, and Mag7 fandom delivered, not only in the slash but in the gen. I have no idea, years later, where to find any of those fics or even which ones I read, but I remember there was self-indulgent melodrama and it was GREAT.

Sweet, sweet idfic, come to Mama!

I would link you to a vid, but as Fanlore hilariously confirms for me, there are like no good vids in this fandom. They did eventually release it on DVD, but the image quality is... uh... not great. Oh, wait, I did love this lulzy het vid about ladies being thirsty for Buck.

Actually, that’s a total lie. I have gone looking for Mag7 vids repeatedly for the Escapade dance party. Excavating my old spreadsheets, I see a bunch of interesting ones, like this slash vid of Nathan/Ezra. The Southern gentleman and the black guy are an obvious cliche teamup for Westerns, but the fandom rarely went there. This vid is great though! The only reason I���ve never played it is that no one at the con ships this.

Past Escapade panels include:

2001 - True pairings and permutations (Who are the "right" couples, and what other combinations are remotely possible? Video excerpts for newcomers.)

2003 - AUs! Crutch or creative lifeblood? (Are ATF stories a creative extension of the universe or a cop-out by folks too lazy to do their historical research?)

2004 - The Multiverse (Where canon is a formulaic retread of a remake of a classic, the critical mass of fan creativity has exploded in fascinating and bizarre ways. Often, richly textured parallel universes seem more attractive than stories based on the original source material. From conflict over "closed" AUs to creative in-breeding, what's really going on in the Mag 7 multiverse?) [HAH, EVEN YOU GUYS AGREE WITH ME.]

2005 - Where has the Old West gone? (Magnificent Seven has it all! Seven sexy men, horses, the old west, guns, adventure, right and wrong, you name it! So why isn't there more Old West fic? Why all the modem and future AUs? Where do we go from here?)

2006 - Cowboys- Real Life v. Fantasy (From Magnificent Seven to Brokeback Mountain, from John Wayne toughness to curtain fic. What's reel? What's fun? And how much reality do we want in our fun?)

2007 - Chris Larabee: Tragic Hero or Pig-Headed Bastard? (How worthy is Chris to lead the Seven? Does he lead them because he believes in protecting the weak an innocent, or because it strokes his ego? Does he truly value Buck's friendship and support? Vin's? Anyone's?)

2008 - M7: Need Topic! by Megan Kent [LOL]

2011 - Mag 7: Deader Than a Beaver Hat (They're gorgeous. They're archetypes. Lots of other fandoms have less to work with. So, what the hell?)

2012 - My Paring is OK. Your Pairing Sucks! (In a fandom famous for pairing wars, let's get it all out in the open and put it to bed. Come and defend your pairing of choice, and enjoy others doing the same. Inflatable lightsabers, laughter, and the ability not to take yourself seriously. All welcome.)

2013 - What holds the gang together? (The deal was simple: a dollar a day, plus room and board, for a month. And now they've been together *how* long? What holds these seven loners together over the long haul? All pairings, all points of view. Bring story recs to share.) [Duct tape. The answer is always duct tape.]

Mag7 on Fanlore (including links to many smaller archives)

Mag7 on AO3

Mag7 on FFN

[scratchface]

what are your thoughts on revolver and how did you react/what did you think when it was confirmed that revolver was yusakus special person and was the one who called the cops etc and how he regretted it due to the impact it had on his dad making him blame himself for what happened to his father.

An ask about Revolver? You have no idea how delighted I am to have an excuse to talk about Revolver. I hope you like character analysis because now you’re getting REVOLVER ANALYSIS.

Because Revolver is definitely one of the most complex and dynamic characters Vrains has. Revolver is a character that has grown and changed a lot over the course of the first season, but for the most part you can divide it all up into four phases: Mission Rev, Obsession Rev, “I’m taking you with me” Rev, and “It’s not that easy” Rev. 

Mission Rev was focused solely on his father’s mission, and patiently and relentlessly pursued its completion. He was driven and confident but also patient and calculating. He had everything under control, hatched nefarious plots, and progressed the mission. 

And then he lost to Playmaker, and becomes Obsession Rev. And suddenly, he’s not so in control, and not nearly as confident. He’s nervous around his father, and feels like a disappointment. He’s distracted by his need to find Playmaker and have a rematch. He descends into obsession, puts off the mission to buy time for pursuing Playmaker, and scrambles his priorities. 

And then his father dies, even deader than the rest of his family and allies, and Ryoken’s failed everyone he cares about. But it’s not too late to not fail humanity, and so we meet “I’m taking you with me” Ryoken, who is rather suicidal, extremely be-grieved, and is lashing out. He’s tired too, but determined to see everything through to the end and die, taking Yusaku and the Ignis with him.

And then he loses, again, and Yusaku is insisting that things can be different. And so “It’s not that easy” Ryoken gets on a boat and runs away because Yusaku represents Ryoken’s every single failure and he really can’t face him a moment longer.

Ryoken is a man shaped by his failures.

Now, I theorized Revolver was the special person pretty early on in my watch of the series. The time he listed three reasons Playmaker would bring the fight to them was certainly a start, but the real nail in the coffin was how he reacted to Yusaku saying “I have three reasons to defeat you”. He outright gasps and seems shocked beyond words. After Yusaku reveals his connection to the Lost Incident, Rev calls him “THE one” not “one of the six”. At that moment it was pretty clear that Rev was thinking of the specific victim that got the three things spiel. Further evidence was Yusaku’s dreams: we usually saw him dreaming about the voice and the whitewashed place, but after their first master duel, Yusaku dreamed about Rev. So I was pretty sure Rev = the special person was inevitable. 

That said, I was delighted when it was confirmed. It brings such a fascinating element to the series. What I hadn’t realized he was the one that let the kids go, however. I had always figured the project was deemed complete and the kids were let go. But Ryoken betraying his father and saving the kids is so much better, and says a lot about who Ryoken really is, under all that guilt and self-loathing. 

As for Ryoken’s feelings about it all, that’s one of my favorite topics to explore and analyze. I put most of my study on Ryoken into my fic Acid Rain, but it’s about time I made a post about Ryoken and the complexity of his guilt. Ryoken felt guilty about the torture the children were going through, and apparently went behind his father’s back to regularly converse with Yusaku. I personally suspect that there wasn’t actually a function of the rooms for speaking with the kids; I think Yusaku only heard Ryoken’s voice through his Link Sense, which is why we see that strange eye inside the network of the research center. Ryoken’s voice went through that, and Yusaku’s developing connection to the network was able to pick it up. We know Ryoken spoke with Yusaku on various different occasions through this method, because Yusaku’s memories of the voice are quite varied. Ryoken reaches out to Yusaku who knows how many times over the course of the six months, but that wasn’t enough. Even with his support, we see Yusaku’s eyes start to deaden; and almost immediately, Ryoken tells Yusaku he can go home and makes the anonymous call. 

Ryoken making the call may have been a direct result of Yusaku finally completely breaking.

And so, Kogami gets taken away, and Ryoken loses his father. And that’s where the real hell starts for Ryoken, because it sets up a system of sacrificing someone to save someone else in Ryoken’s mind: the idea that sacrifices must be made. He exchanged his father for the children, maybe even specifically Yusaku. This is the source of Ryoken’s guilt, his great failure and regret. It’s heartbreaking that he regrets doing something to selflessly good and kind, and it starts him on the path of darkness. Ryoken starts to think its better to hurt people for the greater good, he stops trying to be a good person. 

During this time, Ryoken returns to research center and finds Spectre. And this encounter was probably just as poisonous for Ryoken as it was for Spectre; that one of the kids came back probably partially justified all his fathers crimes, and also probably worsened Ryoken’s guilt over making the call. Spectre’s perspective of the incident confirmed all of Ryoken’s regrets: further convincing him that he should have let the project continue. 

Under his fathers digital direction, he becomes a cyberterrorist and hurts countless people, all in the name of preventing some absurd hypothetical conflict. He wants to be his dad’s perfect soldier, the savior of humanity. Revolver was directly born from Ryoken’s guilt over doing the right thing; Revolver was driven by his regret over Yusaku, while Playmaker would eventually be driven by Yusaku’s gratitude to Ryoken. There’s a neat, sad little parallel there.

And then Ryoken realizes Playmaker is the same child he reached out to, and he descends into obsession. Yusaku is at the center of Ryoken’s guilt and self-hatred, the living representation of the choice he regrets making, but is also someone Ryoken clearly cares about a great deal. For episodes Ryoken obsesses over finding Playmaker IRL, to the point of delaying his fathers plans and endangering his family. And then Ryoken finally sees Yusaku’s face, and he smiles.

At this point, we’ve seen the Knights hurt people pretty indiscriminately, and that they have the capacity to drag people into VRAINS through their dueldisks. Knowing Yusaku’s identity, Ryoken could have easily done this and taken Ai. He could have done any other amount of things to take Ai from Yusaku. But he doesn’t, and instead he pretends he still doesn’t know Playmaker’s true identity. Ryoken outright shelters Yusaku from the Knights by doing this, in the name of getting a rematch.

And this rematch is essential to Ryoken’s very psyche, because defeating Yusaku in a duel means defeating the choice he made as a child, deafeating the person he resents the most: his younger self. Defeating Yusaku is very much about Ryoken defeating his own weakness, his mistakes. It’s something he HAS to do himself. But that he chooses to do so in the most honorable, fair way available says a great deal more; despite Playmaker representing almost everything Ryoken regrets and hates himself for, Ryoken doesn’t want to hurt Yusaku. Even in their second speed-duel, Ryoken still tries to get Yusaku to hand over Ai: the only way Ryoken can get Ai without the consequence of feeding Yusaku to the Tower.

But Ryoken can’t beat Yusaku, and his dad dies because of it. Once again, Ryoken has failed and it’s again Yusaku’s fault. Ryoken’s fixation on Yusaku, in the past and the present, got ALL of his family killed, and potentially could also lead to the downfall of humanity in Ryoken’s mind. That’s what their final duel is really about: the completion of the Tower would kill them both, destroy the ignis, and save humanity: finally fixing the mistake Ryoken made ten years before.

And Ryoken fails all over again. His dad died to give him a chance at victory and he botched it.

And that means we can probably expect the triumphant return of Ryoken’s guilt complex sometime this season lol.