#it is only really alluded to in the paragraph that starts with 'the problem with' if you would still like to read this

[utilitycaster]

@notstinglesstoo replied to your post “The thing is, and I haven't gotten a chance to...”:

I saw someone not long ago say cr has always felt like a product to them vs D20 feeling organic and I protected my peace but I did want to ask them if they were brain dead

​Oh man I wanted to address this at length because I feel this. My posts have been centered, again, specifically on published journalists picking Daggerheart aprt critically and applauding themselves for doing so despite it being within a couple of hours of its release and therefore any analysis is necessarily going to be based on at best, a skim, when they just as frequently will claim D20 seasons/Kollok are flawless works of genius based on only a partial read, but man D20's got a fandom problem too. (and all of the following comes with the caveat of "I really enjoy D20, and Dropout, and while we're at it WBN and NADDPod which both are half D20 Intrepid Heroes cast, and think Brennan is a particularly brilliant GM, and also it's obvious that the D20 and CR casts are on great terms, and wish the fandom for D20 were more welcoming and enjoyable because I feel it wasn't like this when I first started watching, as a CR fan, in late 2019 and has since curdled into something really weird and bad.")

The first point is the obvious one: technically speaking these are both products. These are performers doing an art form; it is also a portion of how they make their money with which they can buy goods and services. Believing that art is inauthentic when the artist gets paid and acknowledges that is a thing that happens is a fucking libertarian position at best. Like cool, you think only people who are independently wealthy by other means can make art, because it's not real labor, my kid could paint that, etc etc.

The second point is also pretty obvious. I have pushed back pretty hard on the "uwu CR is just watching friends! it's like we're in their living room" mentality among the fandom, which has decreased, thankfully, but like...it did in fact start organically as a private home game, and they decided, when invited, to make it A Show For An Audience. D20 was created on purpose as a show for an audience. This doesn't make it bad or fake - reread the previous paragraph - but in terms of "this is an group of people who really played D&D in this world together even before the cameras were rolling," Critical Role literally is that, and D20 is not.

I think beyond that...my biggest issues with the D20 fandom are first, the level of discourse is abominable. The tag is almost always just shrieking praise and the most surface-level readings possible. I keep bringing up the "Capitalism is the BBEG" mug but it genuinely sums up so much of how I feel; people who want their existing beliefs fed to them as surface-level no-nuance takes. I mean capitalism is fucking terrible but I do not need every work I watch to have a character turn to the camera and say "capitalism is bad" to enjoy myself, and indeed it makes it harder due to the lack of subtlety and grace. For all D20 fans complain about how unhealthily parasocial CR fans can be (and some can be), I find that a lot of the most unhealthily parasocial "how dare they BETRAY my TRUST by having a ship I don't like or not speaking up about every single societal ill" ex-CR fans move over to D20 and then pull the exact same shit; it simply doesn't get called out. Every time D20 fans are like "we don't want to become the CR fandom" it's like "your toxic positivity and unhealthy parasocial behavior exceeds the HEIGHT of what I've seen in CR; the main difference is that CR started in 2015 when D&D was still shaking off the raging bigot dudebros and so in the early days it acquired more of those fans, whereas by the time D20 came around the landscape of who played D&D and watched Actual Play had shifted wildly, and you need to judge September 2018 D20 fans in parallel to September 2018 CR fans, not September 2015 CR fans."

I also feel, and I alluded to this in the post about journalism, and other people have said this better than I have, but the pedestal people have put D20 on does feel like a single...not even misstep, but just, difficult choice that doesn't capitulate to the loudest fans will bring a good chunk of that fandom crashing to the ground. And that includes the journalists. For all the fans of CR can still be obsessed with the cast to an unhealthy degree? The cast and company have put up pretty strong boundaries and have not budged. D20 hasn't, and I think the second they do - and I think it will be for their benefit as a company and a channel - a big chunk of their most vitriolic CR-hating portion of the fandom will viciously turn on them.

[paineperdu]

September 5th - Hirschman

Over the past few days I read Albert O. Hirschman's The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before its Triumph. I think my thinking, my writing about this book might start with the small note appended after the short final part, in which he puts forward a pocket-sized - or even business-card sized - argument for intellectual history.

He points out that where the repetition of historical events is very rarely exact, the repetition of thought - of reaction to recurrent or similar problems by means of a process that abstracts away their particularities and contingencies in search of their truly characteristic core - often repeats verbatim. He presents it as "almost painful" that Keynes would present as an example of his "characteristically low-key defense of capitalism" the by then two hundred year old idea that commercial enterprise is a much less damaging, a much softer, pursuit than the pursuit of power over others. (Though, is the pursuit of money, even if not for that aim, the pursuit of a form of potential power over others?) He ends by saying

I conclude that both critics and defenders of capitalism could improve upon their arguments through knowledge of the episode in intellectual history that has been recounted here. This is probably all one can ask of history, and of the history of ideas in particular: not to resolve issues, but to raise the level of debate.

That is really what this book is about - an episode in intellectual history. It does not claim any particular causative relation of the thoughts and writings presented to the material development of society - and here I will insert a large digression.

Hirschman seems to have a kind of Marxist leaning, but not doctrinally, rather just as a sympathy. On page 81 he ascribes to Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and John Millar the "common conviction that economic changes are the basic determinants of social and political transformation" and cites Ronald Meek "in particular his 1954 essay 'The Scottish Contribution to Marxist Sociology'" - without particular comment on the Marxist implications and leanings of what might be called a materialist perspective. Perhaps paranoically, I view this uneditorialized citation of Marxist scholarship as a sign of sympathy to Marxism.

Additionally, Hirschman seems pessimistic or at least ambivalent of the capacity of ideas to effectively shape history. Late in the book he contrasts the unintended consequences of human action with its "structural obverse" - "actions and decisions are often taken becasue they are earnestly and fully expected to have certain effects that then wholly fail to materialize." More insightfully, he points out that "once these desired effects fail to happen and refuse to come into the world, the fact that they were originally counted on is likely not only forgotten but actively repressed." The final part of the book - as described also in my introductory paragraph above - seems very concerned with the effects of forgetting, intentional and unintentional. That is why he bypasses the more "modest" and familiar (perhaps) argument that reliance on the state for subsistence restrains our capacity for dissidence - he feels the unfamiliar, the stranger argument is more provocative of examining our own thinking about capitalism. (To end the digression with an aside, Hirschman gets points with me for his single allusion to Michael Polanyi's The Tacit Dimension - there is also a fun irony in choosing the younger Polanyi in a book of economic history)

So what is the unfamiliar, the stranger argument? It is also a particular episode and a particular line of thought. Hirschman alludes in passing to the argument that private property is necessary because it provides an alternative source of subsistence to the state and thus allows for the possibility of dissent, but he mentions it only so as not to discuss it. So which argument is he discussing?

I won't reconstruct the entire lineage in detail. You should read the book for that, it's not really what this post is for. In extremely brief terms - at the tail end of the middle ages, the passions, conceptually emergent from Greek thought as inherited by the Scholastics, take a particular place in nascent political thought, particularly in Machiavelli, where they are seen as something requiring restriction. Eventually the passions cease to be seen as a block, and one passion, avarice, becomes isolated from the others and seen as a passion that can hold the others in check. From this idea of an isolated passion of avarice comes the idea of a more rational notion of "interest" which itself becomes more specifically economic. This notion of interest counterpoised to passion is used to argue that the dominance of commerce places certain restrictions on the arbitrary power of the sovereign. We jump forward, over a very interesting discussion of the use of the French doux, to Adam Smith, who in one fell swoop renders the entire discussion incoherent to modern eyes in a kind of stunning dialectical move - economic interest is resultant from a wide variety of the passions, but, in their total contribution to this interest, the entire collection of other passions and motivations becomes effectively subsumed within economic interest, and human society can then be investigated on the basis of the latter alone. The range of ground social inquiry can cover suddenly becomes tightened, restricted, readying the ground for intellectual specialization. And the whole prior discussion vanishes from view.

Of course, as the earlier discussion of failed goals may intimate, the world regulated into order by the imperatives of commerce failed to materialize, and where it did materialize, it materialized in the form of law-and-order despotism. The actualization of the image was perverse.

Hirschman says

In sum, capitalism was supposed to accomplish exactly what was soon to be denounced as its worst feature.

That is what I find most interesting about this book. I very very rarely hear arguments for capitalism that actively advocate for its restrictive-compulsive features. Those are the features I as a communist am most likely to discuss, and, if I must play devil's advocate for capitalism or if I feel a particular critique is missing the point, it is often in this direction that I'll gesture. I do feel we can get bogged down in these intellectual critiques. A particularly powerful historical-empirical critique of capitalism, say, would be to demonstrate that the conditions of the English industrial textile industry were totally impossible without the underpinnings of triangle trade slavery, without colonial land seizure etc. and tearing the false image of 'freedom' out of the real throat and guts of capitalism feels much more important and much less flippant than tearing it out of its ideological mouth. But I think, as above, there is an important place for intellectual history.

[altshemist]

RE: ROY’S UPBRINGING, CHRIS MUSTANG AND HOW HE CAME TO BE BERTHOLD’S STUDENT     TRIGGER WARNINGS: childhood sexual assault/abuse ( not graphic & under the cut )

   roy's relationship with chris is complicated by a number of factors. she never wanted to have children but did not trust the foster care or adoption systems with her nephew on top of the guilt she would feel having little or no contact with her only living relative. she is poorly equipped to raise a child, especially one as young as roy was when he came into her custody, and unwilling to sacrifice her position as madam and ownership of the brothel. there is the question of whether a young boy should be raised in such an environment but she chooses not to worry about that and focus on raising him.

    i do not know how much i will address this in my writing as i am Very Cautious about doing so, but there is also the fact she simply did not know what to do with a first gen kid. she knew nothing of xingese culture, barely knew his mother, and did not want him to stand out more than he already did from his appearance alone. he is taught not to speak the little xingese he knows and to stand up for himself as amestrian and wholly amestrian. she did her best in the situation but is primarily responsible for roy’s estrangement from his own culture ( until post canon when he makes the choice to reconnect with it ).

    most of roy’s playmates were the women employed at the brothel, hanging out with them when they weren’t with clients and helping them get ready or work on various projects. this is where he learns to sew and cook. it is also where he gets his first taste of femininity, letting the girls dress him up or do his makeup as well as helping them with their own. he’s just playing and having fun and he enjoys it, it isn’t something he will examine his feelings on until much later when he is beginning to construct the most rigid parts of his public persona.

    the problem with being raised in a brothel with a caretaker who cannot keep a close eye on you is that bad things are going to happen. at the very least roy was going to see some things that he shouldn’t have. chris protected her girls but sex work can be dangerous and people can be bad. a young boy was something that could be desirable and to a handful of clients it was. ultimately the girls couldn’t protect him and there were a few who didn’t care to. although the memories were mostly obfuscated and blacked out, the change in his behavior around the brothel when these events began to occur was distinct.

    although roy would never tell her what happened in her establishment, chris would eventually find out and though she would take actions to protect him, it became clear this was not a safe environment. by this point roy has started practicing alchemy and is excelling both in its practice and his school work. he is a very smart boy and chris is not equipped to nurture that to its fullest.

    it is in a meeting with general grumman that she mentions the boy’s talent and alludes to something darker, to her wish to send him elsewhere and he offers a solution: his son in law. though he is not berthold’s biggest fan, he knows he is a talented alchemist working on his own theories and, he reckons, some time in the country would be good for the boy ! chris reaches out and with some convincing berthold agrees to accept roy as his apprentice.

    roy was more than happy to get as far away from central and the brothel as he could and had already been working on alchemy as a means of protecting himself and others, dreaming of becoming state certified and being able to do so on a much larger scale. berthold is his own set of challenges but he does not pose a physical threat and he is still an intelligent teacher and allows him to meet the girl who will be his best friend and later his wife.

    though roy does care for chris deeply, this all leads to their complicated relationship. he does not consider her his mother and after so long he does not resent her for failing to keep him safe, but it is still another barrier between them. she was formative in the persona he carries to this day and that is both a blessing and a curse. they both struggle, to some degree, with connecting with people in an honest way and it works out, ultimately in maintaining their relationship without needing to bring up every complicating factor in roy’s upbringing.

[etherrreal]

“5:00am”

Pairing: ushijima x reader Genre: fluff Summary: looking back, you’re not sure what made you think that jogging with ushijima would end in anything but complete and utter disaster, but it’s too late to go back now WC: 5k Warnings: brief mentions of non-serious injury, a little blood, implied smut, too many paragraphs about ushijima’s hands A/N: first fic gang! this was supposed to be like 500 words but as the blog title suggests, i’m a liar -Dawn

You’re not sure what possesses you to go jogging with Ushijima at the ungodly hour of 5AM –and on a Saturday, no less– but here you are, tugging a windbreaker over your tank top and leggings while he waits for you by the door.

Most of it, you’re sure, is just because you miss him. The two of you have been so busy lately –you with your new job, him with the whole professional volleyball thing– so this is the first weekend in a while that you’ll actually be spending together.

It’s only natural that you want to spend as much time as possible with your boyfriend before your respective commitments are back to pulling you both in opposite directions, as they have more times than you’d like to admit in the past four months you’ve been dating.

Or maybe 5AM-you, lacking caffeine, sleep, and any sense of real judgment, is just losing your mind.

Ushijima certainly seems to think so, if the look he gives you when you volunteer to accompany him on his routine morning jog is any indication. He’s far from the most expressive person you’ve ever dated, but you’ve been with him long enough to register the surprise on his features; the way his pretty olive eyes widen a fraction and the way he pauses to watch you, like he’s trying to gauge how serious you are.

“What?” you ask as you join him by the door, removing your slippers.

He raises an eyebrow at you. “You hate running.”

“Running? Absolutely. Jogging, however, I think I can handle, especially if it’s with my handsome boyfriend who I haven’t spent nearly enough time with lately.”

With your slippers out of the way, you move to reach for your sneakers next. A quick glance in his direction confirms that he’s still giving you that same bewildered look, a crease forming between his eyebrows. It makes you falter as you pick up your sneakers, wondering if you’ve made a mistake.

Now that you think about it, he does usually jog on his own. The two of you are no strangers to working out together –if him doing push-ups with you perched comfortably on his back counts as working out– but you’ve never actually joined him on a morning run before.

Is this something he prefers to do alone? Are you overstepping his boundaries by inviting yourself along before checking to see if it was okay? Suddenly, you find yourself wishing you would’ve asked first.

“Do you...not want me to go with you? Because if you’d prefer to go alone, that’s totally fine, I’ll just–”

He catches your wrist before you can put your sneakers back down, and the rest of your sentence is lost somewhere between the fingertips he presses against your skin and the other hand he uses to lift yours.

It’s almost criminal, you think, the way a single touch from him is enough to completely derail your train of thought, whatever you were babbling about suddenly the furthest thing from your mind. You think you shouldn’t be as phased by it by now, not after all the time you’ve spent together, but no such luck.

Really, it’s his hands that are the problem, now that you think about it. His hands, steady and calloused and strong, but still so undeniably gentle and patient when it comes to you.

It’s hard to pick your favorite feature of Ushijima’s when he looks the way he does –all tanned skin, broad shoulders, and chiseled abs– but his hands are pretty high up on your list. They have been from the moment you met him at Iwaizumi’s housewarming party last year.

You had obviously seen him before, though you never actually spoke to him until the party. It was mostly during high school volleyball matches between Aoba Johsai and Shiratorizawa, courtesy of your childhood friendship with Oikawa and Iwaizumi.

You remember spotting Ushijima and thinking he looked so serious and unapproachable, even more imposing than he did in the photos of him featured in that Monthly Volleyball magazine you used to watch Oikawa vandalize with ridiculous-looking mustaches and devil horns.

When you saw Ushijima at Iwaizumi’s party, he still looked serious, not to mention larger and even more intimidating in person, but his hands were warm and kinder than you were expecting, careful in the way they wrapped around yours when he introduced himself. It was only hours later when those same hands reached for yours again to help you off the couch that you realized you spent the whole night with him.

Now, months later, you’re standing with him in his stupidly expensive apartment, half-panicked that you might’ve overestimated his desire to spend time with you. But Ushijima’s hands are still steady and warm against your skin, even now, reassuring in a way you don’t think you’ll ever get tired of.

“I’d love it if you joined me,” he says, pressing a soft kiss to the back of your hand, and if you weren’t smiling before, then you definitely are now.

You pull on his hand to tug him down towards you, a request that he silently obliges. You perch on your toes to reach him and deliver a chaste kiss to his lips, smiling against his mouth. When you pull away to look at him, you find him smiling, too, in that soft and subtle way of his that you’re so glad he’s chosen to share with you.

“Just promise me you’ll be careful,” he adds. “We’ll be running for a while, and I don’t want you to get hurt. You’re clumsier than most.”

Sadly, he’s not wrong. You are pretty clumsy, almost cartoonishly so. He’s watched you bang your leg on his dining room table practically every time you pass it, heard you curse to yourself after accidentally knocking down every item in his shower. At this point, holding your arm in his is as natural to him as breathing, just so he’s there to keep you from tripping over your own two feet.

And while you definitely appreciate the concern, you don’t think it’s entirely necessary, at least not for this. Sure, you have a bad habit of falling on your ass more often than not, but you’re also able to do so without sustaining any major injuries. You’re confident this time will be no different.

Besides, it’s just one jog. You’ll survive, even if your muscles might hate you for it later. Still, you know he worries about you, which is why you reach up to give him another quick kiss.

“Deal,” you assure him once you pull away. Then, you grin, voice taking on a more teasing edge as you look up at him. “As long as you promise not to be embarrassed when I leave you in the dust. You know, since I’m just so naturally athletic.”

Ushijima’s never been the best at detecting sarcasm, but with you, like so many other things, it’s different. He can tell you’re joking by the way you giggle and wink at him, and when he huffs out a quiet laugh, you smile and sit down to put on your sneakers.

He surprises you when he kneels to tie them for you before you get the chance to do it yourself.

“Careful, Wakatoshi,” you warn him, not for the first time. “If you keep being so sweet to me, you’ll never be able to get rid of me. You might just be stuck with me forever.”

“That’s fine,” he says, like he’s already considered the consequences before and has chosen to accept them. “You’re the only one I can imagine being with for that long, anyway.”

He moves on to tie the laces on your second sneaker, taking zero responsibility for the way his words make your heart flutter in your chest. He always does this: says stupidly romantic things with barely any prompting and absolutely no consideration or even awareness of the effect they have on you.

His voice doesn’t change when he says them, either. He uses the same blunt tone he always does, like it’s a simple fact, like he’s asking you to pass him his phone charger instead of alluding to a potential future with you.

It just makes you fall that much more in love with him.

Not that you’ve actually told him yet. You’re still waiting for the right moment. You wonder if maybe this might be it, but then he stands up and turns away from you to open the door and the opportunity is gone.

Maybe that’s for the best. This morning, you decide that you can handle jogging with your pro-athlete boyfriend or confessing your love for him, not both. The latter will just have to wait for dinner tonight, assuming you make it back in one piece and your legs don’t just fall off from the sudden exercise.

You stand up and follow him out the door.

Ushijima insists you both take the time to stretch before you actually start running, so you spend a few minutes doing so in the empty lobby. You pretend to struggle with a few of them, just so you’ll have an excuse to have his hands on you.

You’re almost positive he sees through your little ruse, if the amused look he gives you is any indication, but he doesn’t complain, guiding his hands over your body to help you bend and stretch like he can’t see the grin on your face.

Once you’re all warmed up, you’re ready to start jogging. You follow behind him as he leads you along his usual path down the block, the streets noticeably empty, save for the occasional passing car.

You know the only reason you’re able to keep up with him is because he’s slowing down for you, but you don’t let it bother you. He’s a professional athlete, after all, and you’re the kind of person who doesn’t even like to run to catch the bus, so it’s to be expected. Still, you give it your all, remembering to keep your breathing steady just like he taught you.

And you have to admit, your aversion to any sort of cardio aside, jogging with Ushijima is actually kind of fun.

For the first five minutes, at least.

Then it all goes to shit.

You’re not sure how it happens, either. One moment, everything is great. Sure, you’re already feeling a little sweaty, and maybe your lungs are screaming at you just a tiny bit –the price of inactivity, and all that– but you power through it because, in the words of so many great orators before you, mama ain’t raise no bitch.

But then you trip on something –a pothole in the street, your own foot, who the hell knows– and suddenly you’re wiping out for the entire world –or maybe just your boyfriend and that one stray cat you passed, which is still pretty embarrassing– to see.

Ushijima’s quite a few feet ahead of you now, because as much as he tried to slow down for you in the beginning, you figure he just can’t help but speed up a bit. He’s not the type to do anything half-assed, not even a casual morning jog. You’re almost grateful for it in a way, because it means he doesn’t actually see you trip and stumble like a baby deer learning to walk for the first time.

He does, however, hear the yelp that escapes your throat, making him glance over his shoulder just in time to see you fall forward. He runs back towards you, but he’s too far to reach you in time, and your knees hit the pavement hard, your hands shooting out to catch yourself as best as you can.

You don’t even have to look to know that the skin on both your knees and your palms is scraped up. There’s also a shooting pain that starts at your ankle and darts right up your leg, reassuring you that you most definitely stepped on it wrong.

Ushijima is by your side in an instant, normally stoic face scrunched up with worry. He helps you twist yourself into a more comfortable position on the sidewalk, though it does little to ease your embarrassment or your annoyance with your own incoordination.

“I’m okay,” you try to reassure him, but that’s not entirely the truth. Your palms are stinging and your ankle is throbbing, not to mention the fact that your knees currently resemble a cat’s scratching post. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

The look he gives you is doubtful, and you know for a fact he doesn’t believe you at all. “You’re bleeding.”

And holy crap, you are. It shouldn’t be a surprise to you, since you felt the entire thing, but the sight of the blood on your knees and palms still stuns you a bit.

“Come on.” He wraps his arms around you, pulling you up with ease you would normally marvel at if it didn’t make you feel so pathetic. “We’re going back. I’ll be able to treat your wounds and take a better look at your ankle.”

“Whaa– but we’ve barely even started jogging!” you protest, pouting despite the stinging of your cuts. “I told you that I’m fine, Toshi. I can still walk–”

You try to put pressure on the ankle you rolled and immediately wince. You almost stumble forward again, but this time Ushijima is there to catch you, holding you against him with his arms around your waist.

“No, you can’t. You need to treat your injuries, so stop being stubborn and let me help you. We’re going back.”

You bite the inside of your cheek, eyebrows drawing together in frustration –mostly at yourself– but stubborn as you are, you know he’s right. There’s no arguing your way out of this one, not that he would listen to you in the first place. He’s always been protective of you, which means he won’t be budging on this.

You heave a defeated sigh but nod at him anyway, relenting. He helps you hobble along with your arm around his shoulders and his arm around your waist for a few steps before he seems to think better of it.

In one fluid motion, he’s picking you up in his arms, holding you bridal style against his chest. And while normally his arms are one of your favorite places to be, the fact that he has to carry you like this all because you’re an idiot who can’t watch where you’re going is doing nothing to ease your already damaged pride.

You try to convince him to put you down and let you walk on your own, but unsurprisingly, he doesn’t agree. Your face, which is already warm with embarrassment, just seems to heat up even more. Your mortification only increases when you spot his apartment building a few streets later.

God, the two of you were running for what, maybe five minutes? Six? And now you’re already back home? Talk about embarrassing. And right after you promised him to be careful, too.

The fact that the pothole –which you are now deciding to blame for your fall, because you don’t think your ego can handle anything else– had the audacity to trip you and then not immediately swallow you whole to save you this embarrassment is honestly disrespectful, at this point.

Ushijima was right earlier. You do hate running. And you hate yourself even more for believing that jogging at any hour –least of all 5AM– would end in anything other than complete and utter disaster.

Your only consolation is that it’s so early, chances are that no one else saw you trip and almost eat shit in the middle of the street. It’s the little victories that count, you suppose, though you might just have to burn this outfit later to rid yourself of the reminder. You’re not sure how you’re ever going to live this one down.

Thankfully, the universe seems to take some pity on you, since you don’t pass any of Ushijima’s neighbors in the lobby. He maneuvers you into the apartment, managing to close the door behind him and remove his sneakers without putting you down.

When he does finally let you go, it’s to place you delicately on his bed. He disappears from the room and returns a moment later with a first aid kit and an ice pack, while you flop defeatedly onto your back against his pillows, pouting.

“I can’t believe I actually fell.” You groan, throwing an arm over your eyes. You feel the bed dip beneath his weight as he sits beside you, but you still don’t move. “The one time I willingly decide to run, and this is what happens. We didn’t even make it past the supermarket!”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. It could’ve happened to anyone,” he says, opening the first aid kit. His voice is as straightforward as ever, but you know he’s trying to comfort you in his own way. “Besides, it could’ve been a lot worse.”

“Worse than twisting my ankle and making a fool of myself five minutes in?” You shift to prop yourself up on your elbows and raise an eyebrow at him. “How?”

“You could’ve twisted your ankle and made a fool of yourself two minutes in instead.”

The bluntness of his response makes you snort, cracking a half-smile as you push yourself to sit up fully. “Good point.”

You watch as he gets to work, mesmerized by how careful he is with you. He takes your palms in his hands, wiping away the blood gently and cleaning the small scratches it reveals. The scrapes on your knees, which he moves to next, sting more, but he moves slowly enough that it doesn’t overwhelm you. He’s always taken such good care of you, and this time is no different.

After all of your scrapes are covered, he examines your ankle, which is unsurprisingly the worst of your injuries. When he helps you tug your sneaker and sock off, you can both see it’s already swelling.

It’s not broken, he assures you, but it is lightly sprained. You’ll need to rest and compress it until you’re ready to walk on it again, but the ice should help with the swelling. He lifts your ankle on top of a few pillows to keep it elevated, covering it with the ice pack.

He moves higher up on the bed to sit beside you against the headboard, searching your face for any signs of discomfort. “How does that feel?”

“It still hurts, but it’s not as bad as before,” you answer. “Honestly, I think my pride is more damaged than anything else.”

You lean back against the pillows propped up on his headboard and sigh, unable to stop the guilty frown tugging at your lips. As grateful as you are for his help, you also feel really bad that he had to stop and take care of you at all.

If you hadn’t insisted on joining him on his run, then none of this would’ve happened. You would still have two normal-sized ankles, and he would be able to finish his run without having to worry about you and your chronic clumsiness.

“I’m sorry I ruined our jog,” you find yourself apologizing, fiddling with the hem of your shirt guiltily. “It was supposed to be cute and fun, but all I did was screw it up. I’m sorry you had to come back to take care of me.”

Ushijima shakes his head. “Taking care of you isn’t a burden. There’s no need for you to apologize.”

His hands reach for yours, large enough to engulf your own as he turns them over. His eyes follow the path his fingertips trace lightly over the band-aids covering the scratches on your palms. “If I hadn’t gone on ahead of you–”

You press a hand against his chest to stop him, his eyes flickering back up to meet your own.

As endearing as his concern is, he’s not the one at fault here. You don’t think anyone is, really, except for maybe that damned pothole you may or may not have tripped on. More importantly, you don’t want him to blame himself for this.

“Nuh-uh, nope, none of that. I’m the one who tripped, remember? It’s not your fault I suck at running. Or any kind of physical activity, actually.”

You pause, tilting your head thoughtfully as you mull over your own words. He watches the mischievous smile he’s learned to love appear on your face, hears the teasing edge seeping into your tone as you lower your voice just a bit.

“Except maybe the one that involves you railing me into the mattress,” you add with a smirk, playful and just shameless enough in a way that never fails to draw him in even more. “That one, I don’t mind, for obvious reasons.”

He sighs, though your words don’t surprise him. “I really wish you wouldn’t word it that way.”

“Too late~”

You’re practically singing as you grin at him, grabbing his chin and bringing his face closer to yours.

He mutters something about you having a one track mind, but you don’t miss the amusement in his eyes or the fond little smile he casts in your direction. He doesn’t stop you from pulling him in either, allowing you to rest your other hand on the side of his face.

“Thank you for taking such good care of me, Wakatoshi.”

You meet him halfway for a loving kiss that you hope is enough to express your gratitude, one he doesn’t hesitate to return. When you break apart, he rests his forehead against yours.

And right when you think you can’t possibly love him anymore, he promises quietly, sincerely, “Always.”

As usual, he gives you no time to recover. He kisses you on the forehead and then stands up, announcing that there’s something else he needs to go grab before leaving the room.

Honestly, you’re hoping it’s food. You’re starving, and after all of this morning’s excitement* (see also: trauma), there’s nothing more you want than to cuddle up alongside your boyfriend while enjoying a plate of your favorite breakfast food.

To your surprise –and slight disappointment– when Ushijima returns, it’s not with food or anything else to treat your injuries, but rather with a set of keys. He sits beside you again, opening his palm to offer them to you.

“Well, those aren’t pancakes.” You take the keys anyway, twirling the ring around one of your fingers before raising an eyebrow at him. “Are these what I think they are?”

“The keys to my apartment,” he confirms. “I want you to move in with me.”

Your eyes widen. It’s not the last thing you expected him to ask you when he offered you the keys, but it’s definitely not the first one either.

When he first held them out to you, you thought maybe he was just giving you a copy of your own to hold onto, just in case you ever needed them. You’ve thought about offering him the same a few times before, just so he could let himself into your own apartment whenever he comes over instead of you having to get up and open the door for him.

But that’s not what’s happening here. It looks like Ushijima’s chosen to skip the exchanging apartment keys step entirely in favor of just straight up asking you to move in with him. And while part of you is thrilled by it, your heart hammering in your chest with excitement at the prospect of getting to wake up next to him every day, of getting to come home to him, there’s another part of you that’s wondering if maybe you’re moving too fast.

It’s not that you don’t trust him, or that you doubt how much he cares for you, because you don’t. Your previous partners couldn’t even spell commitment, much less agree to it, but Ushijima’s not like them.

He told you, not too long after the first few times you went out together, that he doesn’t believe in dating casually or wasting his time. If he’s with someone, it’s because he sees a future with them. Hearing that was a bit intimidating at first, but it was also extraordinarily refreshing.

Asking you to move in with him, you know, is just another step towards that future. And while the idea excites you, making you feel more secure and adored than in any of your past relationships, there’s a part of you that’s still a bit hesitant.

After all, what sets you and Ushijima apart –more than your senses of humor, more than your completely different levels of athletic ability, as evidenced by the ice pack and bandages you’re currently sporting– is the fact that you, unlike him, often get caught up in the “what-if’s” of a situation. Whenever you have to make a decision, you psych yourself out by imagining every little thing that could possibly go wrong.

He calls your name, tearing you from your thoughts. He’s looking at you like he already knows what you’re thinking, like he can see the tangle of anxiety you feel nestling into your bones. Maybe that’s why he reaches out to take the hand that’s not holding his keys, lacing your fingers together.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “You haven’t said anything.”

“I know, I know, I’m just...processing.” You give his hand a quick squeeze, moving the keys around in your other palm. “How long have you been thinking about this?”

“Since my last away game.” He answers right away like he doesn’t have to think about it, like he just knows. Not for the first time, you find yourself envying his conviction. “I went straight to your apartment from the airport, and you were already there, waiting. I realized how much I liked the idea of getting to come home to you, and vice versa. I’ve been waiting for the right time to ask you to move in since then.”

“Wakatoshi, that was last month. You’ve known since back then?” You stare at him with wide, wondering eyes, your cheeks already warming at the implication, growing even warmer when he nods. “And you don’t think it’s too soon? You’re not the least bit hesitant about living with me?”

“Hesitation is only necessary for those who are unsure of their desires. I know what I want, and that’s you, if you’ll have me.”

If you’ll have me. He says it like it’s easy. Like he’s already yours, to love and to be loved by.

And he is, you realize. He has been for a while, just like you have. You knew you were in love with him this morning, and you’ve known it for weeks before that, too. You just weren’t sure when or how to bring it up, but now you are.

“I’d like that. I like you– wait, that’s not right.” You release his hand, and he stares at you in confusion, the corner of his mouth curving downward. You’re quick to smooth it away with your thumb, your eyes earnest and full of affection as you correct yourself, “I love you, Wakatoshi.”

The confusion in his eyes quickly transforms into surprise. You’re not sure what stuns him more: your confession itself, or the confident, doubtless way you say it. You smile at him and take his face into your hands, careful to move his keys so they don’t scratch him.

“I’ve known it for a while. I just wasn’t sure when to bring it up, but now I am. I don’t expect you to say it back unless you’re ready, but–”

“I love you,” he says confidently, unwaveringly, and now it’s your turn to be stunned.

You blink, taken aback for a few seconds before your lips begin curving into a goofy smile. “Really?”

He hums affirmatively, and after that you can’t do anything besides kiss him. He’s quick to return the gesture, moving his mouth against yours and winding one arm around your waist to pull you closer. He pulls back from you right when you’re about to deepen the kiss. You try to pout, but it’s hard to do so when you feel as giddy and over the moon as you do now.

“Does this mean you’ll be moving in with me?”

“Of course.” You beam at him. “I’d love to move in with you, Wakatoshi.”

He smiles, his arm moving up to wrap around your shoulders, and your own smile grows brighter as you lean into him, cuddling against his side and resting your head against his chest. Things between you are quiet for a few moments, both of you basking in the comfortable silence.

You’re shifting his keys in your hand when a thought occurs to you, and you can’t help the laugh that escapes your chest.

“So this is why you let me go running with you this morning,” you tease. “You knew that if I did injure myself, that would just make it harder for me to leave, so I’d have no choice but to say yes to moving in. How sneaky of you.”

“You volunteered to join me–”

“I know, Toshi, I’m just kidding.” You grin, tilting your head to look up at him. “So, what do you say we go make some breakfast in your kitchen? I’m starving.”

“Our kitchen now,” he corrects, and your heart flutters in your chest for what must be the tenth time in the hour or so you’ve been awake this morning. It can’t be healthy for you. “And I’ll be the one making breakfast. You stay here and rest that ankle.”

He kisses your forehead and stands up to head into the kitchen. You frown at the loss of his warmth, but another look at the keys in your hand has you smiling again.

Maybe jogging isn’t so bad after all.

Written by: Dawn

[alastorseye]

About Remadora

When I say I really hate the HP fandom, I'm talking about the "fans" that hate everything about the saga, but still having Harry Potter accounts. They change the original story, claim that fanonical facts are canon, and launch hatred and death threats at those who simply like HARRY POTTER JUST THE WAY IT IS. Yes, I'm mostly talking about Marauders fans, which I joined after reading the books because I thought it would be interesting and funny. I suddenly realized how toxic and hateful that fandom was, it's like a cult dedicated to deifying Remus, Sirius, James and Regulus, and it seems that hating Snape, Dumbledore, and Remadora is a requirement to be a part of it.

At the beginning I used to consider Wolfstar as something funny, a bromance, it never bothered me, I mean... every fandom has fanon ships and I respect that, but the way they always hate Remadora and their shippers is something that MUST stop.

"You see!" said a strained voice. Tonks was glaring at Lupin. "She still wants to marry him, even though he's been bitten! She doesn't care!"

"It's different," said Lupin, barely moving his lips and looking suddenly tense. "Bill will not be a full werewolf. The cases are completely -"

"But I don't care either, I don't care!" said Tonks, seizing the front ofLupin's robes and shaking them. "I've told you a million times. . . ." And the meaning of Tonks's Patronus and her mouse-colored hair, and the reason she had come running to find Dumbledore when she had heard a rumor someone had been attacked by Greyback, all suddenly became clear to Harry; it had not been Sirius that Tonks had fallen in love with after all."

"And I've told you a million times," said Lupin, refusing to meet her eyes,staring at the floor, "that I am too old for you, too poor . . . too dangerous. . ."

When I read this part of the HBP I realized that Remadora was my favorite Harry Potter ship. Of course I wasn't aware of the death threats I'd receive later. I've read some "reasons" why some fans hate Remadora.

"Tonks forced him!"

We all know how insecure Remus was. I don't have to explain what's written in Wizarding World (Pottermore). This is the Remus bio:

Well, we can read that Remus was really attracted to Dora.

"Remus, so often melancholy and lonely, was first amused, then impressed, then seriously smitten by the young witch. He had never fallen in love before. If it had happened in peacetime, Remus would have simply taken himself off to a new place and a new job, so that he did not have to endure the pain of watching Tonks fall in love with a handsome, young wizard in the Auror office, which was what he expected to happen. However, this was war; they were both needed in the Order of the Phoenix, and nobody knew what the next day would bring. Remus felt justified in remaining exactly where he was, keeping his feelings to himself but secretly rejoicing every time somebody paired him with Tonks on some overnight mission".

This is so sad and cute, and that's undeniable. I cried when I read it. If someone still thinking that Dora forced Remus to marry her after reading this paragraph... I mean... they're probably talking about another book series.

"The age gap!"

I'm so satisfied to know that some Remadora shippers have explained this. When it's about a kid and an adult... OF COURSE IS HORRENDOUS! Because children are not physically and mentally prepared to have romantic relationships. Wizards are legally adults at 17, REMUS MET TONKS WHEN SHE WAS 21!

I mean, many old people abuses of young people innocence, or something. But we all know that Remus wasn't one of those! He really loved Tonks, and that's canon. I don't know what's doing in the fandom people who denies canon facts.

Remus and Tonks were two physically, mentally, and legally adults loving each other.

"Remus didn't love her!"

He was an introvert, Tonks was an extrovert, she made his life better. And of course, I loved the way he introduced himself when he was trying to prove he wasn't a Death Eater:

"I am Remus John Lupin, werewolf, sometimes known as Moony, one of the four creators of the Marauder's Map, married to Nymphadora, usually known as Tonks, and I taught you how to produce a Patronus, Harry, which takes the form of a stag." (Remus Lupin, DH)

Maybe I'm not the only one who perceive he was proud to be Nymphadora Tonks husband.

"I.. I made a grave mistake in marrying Tonks. I did it against my better judgment and have regretted it very much every since". (Remus Lupin, DH)

This phrase makes more sense after reading Remus bio. He used to think that he was "too poor, too dangerous" for her. He thought he wasn't enough for her. He never imagined that she would love him back. He was a werewolf, and of course he knew he was dangerous, you only need to be emphatic to realize he tried to get away from Tonks because he loved her, he didn't want to hurt his beloved woman!

If you don't believe me, read this again. It's in the chapter 11 of Deathly Hallows:

"Don't you understand what I've done to my wife and my unborn child? I should never have married her, I've made her an outcast!"

So, if Remus was trying to escape it's because he loved them, he thought he spoiled their lives. And of course, no one likes to feel that their influence is bad for someone they love!

"Their relationship came from nowhere! They don't have a development"

Well, the saga's name is HARRY POTTER, not The Love Life of Remus Lupin. The story is about the tragic life of this kid and everything he went through to save the world of a cruel and dark villain. I know many readers are young people in love, and they only want to ship everything, but that's not the main topic here, maybe mother's love would be the topic. Of course Ron and Hermione had a development because they were HARRY'S BEST FRIENDS, and they were always with him, from Philosopher's Stone to Cursed Child. Remus and Tonks are minor characters, and it's funny the fact that this usually comes from Wolfstar shippers, so... is Wolfstar more developed than Remadora?! I mean... they can ship whatever they want, Snape and the Sorting Hat, Dobby and Voldemort, anything, but that does not give them the right to disrespect such a cute, tragic and beautiful canon ship as Remadora.

"They are queercoded! Their relationship is homophobic!"

It's surprising to hear this. It's like... people gets angry just because the author doesn't make queer their favourite characters? I will explain why I don't think Remus and Tonks are "queercoded":

Whether through their dress, their behavior, their language, or other subtle forms of implication, queer characters were written or designed to communicate their unstated queerness to those who were searching for representation.

And this is the definition on the website Pride.com:

"Using LGBTQIA tropes and stereotypes to allude to a character's sexuality without explicitly confirming it in the text."

We all know that Disney used queercoding on characters like Ursula, Scar, Jaffar. And why do we know that? Because DISNEY WANTED TO PORTRAY THEM LIKE THAT, get it? Disney, THE CREATORS MADE THESE CHARACTERS INTENTIONALLY QUEER. How? BASED ON STEREOTYPES.

And going back to Remadora, I was really happy to see by first time a bada*ass woman, with short hair who wasn't portrayed as a lesbian just because the way she looks. This character didn't follow the: "Straight women have long hair and are girly", and "short dyied hair is for lesbians". I'm very very very surprised the fandom follows these stereotypes.

About Remus: I don't know how the phrase "being a werewolf is a metaphor about people with HIV AIDS" means "he's gay". Fenrir Greyback bit him when he was a kid. Many people interpret this as "r4pe". Okay, even thinking that it is the meaning of the "bite", I still cannot understand how being "r4ped" and "infected" makes him queer. Is this (again) a stereotype about people with AIDS and gay?

"JK Rowling created Remadora because she didn't like people shipping Wolfstar!"

It is true that fans love shipping everything, they queerbait and queercode everything. That's great, that's not the problem. The problem is when people starts bashing fans who ship canon straight couples. A very good example is the polemic on Falcon and Bucky relationship, some fans wanted them to be a gay couple, Anthony Mackie said that two men can only be friends, and there is no need to always give them a romantic connotation. People cancelled him, they called him homophobic. Yes, just because a person with authority (on the story they're following") didn't like the fact of queercoding their favourite characters. It's the same about Remadora.

Grindeldore is a very interesting and underrated couple by the way. You can love or hate JK Rowling, but the truth is that Harry Potter story is hers, and even if Remadora was "because she didn't like Wolfstar", she is the author, it was her mind where these characters first appeared, as a big Harry Potter fan I respect and like the original story, that's not a sin. An author has the right to make some changes if some characters were misunderstood by the readers.

(Yes, I wrote this a bit angrily since I've seen too much hate towards Remadora shippers)

[blackjack-15]

Two Can Keep a Secret (if the Family Tree is Dead) — Thoughts on: Ghost of Thornton Hall (GTH)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT, SAW, CAP, ASH, TMB, DED

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with my list of previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: GTH; SPY; mention of ASH (and the ASH meta); mention of Nik/HER’s spoilery hints about GTH.

 NOTE: THIS META CONTAINS DISCUSSION OF AND REFERENCE TO SEXUAL ASSAULT. MORE DETAILED SECTIONS ARE MARKED, BUT THIS WARNING STANDS FOR THE WHOLE META.

 The Intro:

It’s time to get our Spooky on, lads. And we’re gonna do it in a meta of truly staggering length, so maybe go to the bathroom and get a snack before you start. My apologies.

Due to the (to be quite frank) absence of nostalgia surrounding them, there’s not really many games that are post 2010 that the fandom tends to agree on, but Ghost of Thornton Hall happens to be a standout in that pretty much everyone has found something to like about it. It often tops the charts of “best newer game” polls, and puts in a valiant effort against the more nostalgic mainstays.

There are a lot of reasons for this, in my mind – the quality of the writing, the choices that Nancy can make that actually affect the outcome of the game and especially affect Nancy, the fabulous voice work, the purposely-unanswered questions that give a deeper sense of horror — but if you ask me, the love for GTH really boils down to one thing:

Atmosphere.

Nancy Drew game fans (and I’m including myself in this) tend to prioritize atmosphere in the games, probably because without good and proper atmosphere it’s easier to pick apart the formula as you’re playing and to avoid being immersed in the game’s story, and GTH has it thick on the ground (figuratively and literally). The fear, unease, and overall sense of being an Intruder in this story comes from the overwhelming atmosphere provided by the grief of the characters, the time-sensitive nature of the crime, the secrets of the house and family, and, of course, the rather stellar visuals and locations.

The Thornton’s house and grounds really feel alive, but dead — in fact, they almost feel alive in the way that a zombie is, where they function and feed but have no heart. The gloriously (and meticulously) decorated walls are cast in shadow and grime; the portraits feel ominous and disapproving rather than lifelike and nostalgic; even the graveyard, as spread out and opulent as it is, feels claustrophobic and unwelcoming.

In a word, the game is – visually, thematically, story-wise, and atmospherically — haunting. And I think that overwhelming feeling of being haunted is, in large part, what draws fans back to this game again and again.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the scariest parts of this game are the things that you, as the player, do not see. Sure, the apparitions of Charlotte, the ghostly figures, the appearance of Harper — these are all scary, but the fear is gone after a moment, leaving the player unsettled but not running to hide under a blanket. The deaths of the fifty-four souls, the secret behind Clara’s birth, Harper’s breakdown — all these things that you don’t see, that you can only hear about or have hinted at are where the fear of the game kicks in, especially for older players.

It’s no secret that, despite the games being labeled for ages 10 and up, that the actual age of the Nancy Drew games fandom hasn’t been around 10 for some time — most people playing these games are in their 20s or 30s, or have siblings who are in their 20s and 30s and got into the games through them. Sure, there are some outliers, but the Clue Crew is much closer in general to the ages of the River Heights crew than they are to the age that that box says.

Because of this, the writers (and I’m going to especially hat-tip Nik here) behind the games have been able to slowly graduate the topics of the games to be a little bit older, hiding the true horror behind things that younger kids just won’t think about. This is especially the case with GTH and SPY, but you see it in a lot of the newer games, where the implications of events are normally scarier than the events themselves.

GTH takes that and runs with it, choosing to hint at and dance around truly upsetting — for any age — topics, presenting a mystery and a story that only get scarier once you’ve finished staring at the screen. The characters’ emotional problems and issues — loss, abandonment, anxiety, guilt — are like this too; while they’re present in the game itself, when you take a step back after finishing the game you realize just how badly scarred everyone is in the story.

Because answers were purposely left vague in order to 1) make the player work for it and 2) keep the 10+ rating, pretty much everyone who plays GTH has a slightly different opinion on what went down at Charlotte’s party, who the Thorntons really are, the circumstances of Clara’s birth, why the children of a female Thornton take their mother’s name — you name it, and there’s around 10 distinct opinions on it, and many more offshoots of those opinions besides.

I’m going to talk a little bit here about a couple of the “biggies”, since I don’t want it cluttering up the Suspect portion of this meta, so bear with me. I’m not so much interested in “this is the Correct answer” as much as just presenting the information from the game and wondering about its conclusions…but I (like everyone else) have my little pet theories, so what follows will be a little bit of reporting, a little bit of inference, and a little bit of supposition.

What follows is a frank discussion of topics such as rape and incest as they apply to GTH. If this is something you’d rather not consume, skip down to the next bolded line.

The most talked-about question left hanging in the game is, of course, who Clara’s father was. I think this question is best addressed from a two-pronged approach, however, because to figure out who Clara’s father could have been is a question that requires another question to be answered: why would Clara’s mother not tell her, even on her deathbed.

The most popular — and horrifying — answer to this is that Clara’s father is Jackson, and that she was a product of rape and incest. Now, just looking at the timeline, this theory adds up; Rosalie (Clara’s mum) would have been 25 when her father was 51 and would have raped her — young enough (especially in relation to her father, a middle-aged man of a lot of power in and out of the family) that she would have been scared to tell anyone anything, but old enough to not have it be super out of the ordinary that she got pregnant and had a baby — especially in 1968.

To add to this theory, there’s the note in the cellar that asks “who was this Jackson?...what’s he hiding, and who put it there? Was it Charlotte?”. If you’re looking for clues with the incest theory in mind, this seems to point directly to it — “who was this Jackson”? both Rosalie and Clara’s father. “What’s he hiding”? his crime of raping his daughter and impregnating her. The mention of Charlotte alludes to the supposition that Charlotte found proof of this crime — tangible proof — and put it somewhere; this pretty much supposes that there’s a document somewhere that names Jackson as Clara’s biological father, such as an admission of guilt or a paternity test.

The final “proof-positive” to this theory is that Rosalie refused to tell Clara who her father was even on her deathbed. We know from the family tree and Wade that Clara was between 5-10 when her mother died (I’m inclined to believe the family tree, and chalk the discrepancy up to either the writers not being concerned with math or, more likely and more charitably, to show that Wade isn’t a Perfectly Reliable source, just like everyone else), and Rosalie’s protection of Clara from the truth makes sense with a child in that age span. It’s one (horrible, horrible) thing to be forcibly impregnated by your father, but to have to say it out loud, and to say it to your child — that’s something that no one can even remotely blame Rosalie for not being up to, especially when weakened by sickness.

There are smaller points — like pointing out that this might be why Virginia (Wade’s mum) was skipped over in inheritance — but these small points have dozens of explanations, so they’re not really good for bolstering a theory unless you’re already dedicated to it and are looking for crumbs to shore it up.

End of frank discussion. The previous topics may be alluded to and/or mentioned, but not discussed in detail from this point on.

Now, let’s talk about another explanation. I think there’s a tendency to jump on the “Jackson Theory” because 1) there are clues that support it, but more importantly 2) because it’s horrifying, and it’s natural to leap to the scariest thing you can think of when considering a game that relies on fridge horror in the first place.

In the “Jackson Theory”, Rosalie would have hidden Clara’s parentage because of shame, horror, and trauma, and probably to (at least momentarily) spare Clara’s feelings — but Jackson isn’t the only explanation for her reticence.

Generally, we can break apart the reasons for Rosalie’s silence into three distinct emotions or emotional states: shame (supports the Jackson Theory), trauma (supports an assault by a known wolf), or, often overlooked, ignorance.

Clara is mentioned repeatedly as being outwardly and obviously scared about her place in the family — a fear borne from and exacerbated in her childhood, as Nik plainly states (“her insecurity wasn’t just a personal flaw, it was a response to her uneven upbringing,” emphasis mine).

An easy way for Rosalie, worried as she must have been about leaving her daughter alone, to fix this if Clara really was a product of incest, is to name a distant Thornton cousin, preferably one who was already dead or out of the picture, as the father, which would assure Clara’s place in the Thornton line by both blood and her future adoption. This way, if Clara’s parentage was tested, she’d show up as a Thornton from both sides in a way that wouldn’t be suspicious, and her daughter would have an easier life.

But Rosalie didn’t do this — she never even hinted at the identity of Clara’s father. As a woman known primarily for secret keeping — not just about Clara, but about everything (“She loved her secrets,” Wade says), Rosalie would have been adept at hiding things through various means, including through lies and subterfuge, not simply staying silent. Given the little we know of Rosalie’s character, then, let’s consider why she wouldn’t have said anything — even something false — to ensure her daughter’s safety when she died.

Looking outside of Jackson (and with any other known Thornton being quite unlikely), the vast majority of assaults are committed by those known to their victim — friends, acquaintances, classmates, etc.

The Thorntons were — and are — an incredibly powerful family, both monetarily and socially. Having dealt with families such as the Thorntons before in matters like this one, it is frankly incredibly unlikely that, had Rosalie been assaulted by someone she knew, that the truth wouldn’t have come to light through another source, and that the perpetrator would have been punished in every way possible.

BRIEF DISCUSSION OF ASSAULT STATISTICS AS THEY RELATE TO ROSALIE’S POSSIBLE CASE.

Some people familiar with only the post-20th-century world as “the modern age” and with a less stellar grasp of the pre-tech-boom world might raise an eyebrow at this supposition of punishment, but this is Exactly what would have happened — and did happen with regularity — even as “far back” as ’68 — especially when the crime was committed against a young, privileged, wealthy woman of the community.

Note, this is after the USMPC adjustment to the definition of rape in ’62, but before the adjustments in the early 70s; in 9 years, forcible rape rates (this number includes only female victims, so the true number of victims is indisputably higher, given the enormous jump in rape statistics in 2016-present as male cases have been included) had soared in the United States from around 17,000 per year in 1960 to, in the year Clara was born, 31,000 reported cases (source: DisasterCenter). With these soaring numbers came soaring awareness, and combined with Rosalie’s identity as a rich, powerful young woman in a rich, powerful family, it’s on the outside of belief that, had her attacker’s identity been known or suspected, that it could have remained a secret and gone unpunished.

END OF BRIEF DISCUSSION OF ASSAULT STATISTICS AS THEY RELATE TO ROSALIE’S POSSIBLE CASE.

Given this historical and social backing, the simplest and unavoidable potential answer to why Rosalie wouldn’t have either told Clara who her father was or made up a “brief love” who abandoned her Dishonorably, is this: she didn’t know.

(I’ll spare a mention here to say that, ignorance because of being a “wild child” in the 60s and having had multiple partners would be a possible theory, but it disregards everything else we know about Rosalie and her behavior, and that her reputation as a party girl would have been common knowledge, unable to be hidden from those who were alive at the time. So let’s move on to what else would cause ignorance.)

Though attacks by a person unknown to the victim are, in relation to known assailants, rare, in the absence of other evidence, the simplest answer to Clara’s parentage was that Rosalie was assaulted by someone that she did not know and had no way of knowing — and who had no idea of the social power of his victim.

Rosalie truly left nothing behind that points to her daughter’s parentage, even for later discovery or for Clara’s private eyes in a bank lockbox when she came of an Age that Rosalie deemed appropriate — so the conclusion to be drawn is, in the absence of evidence, that Rosalie didn’t answer Clara’s question because she simply couldn’t.

This ties into the other theory/mystery I want to cover here — that of what happened the night Charlotte died, and how (and in what way) Clara was culpable and responsible for Charlotte’s death. We know that, according to her, Clara went there simply to “scare” Charlotte — and given the circumstances that Clara gives this confession in, I’m inclined to believe her — and it’s my opinion that the reason didn’t have anything to do with the truth of the identity of Clara’s father.

My stance here — and it’s here that I take a solid stance, rather than presenting options — with Charlotte (and I’ll talk more about her general character in the Suspects section) is that Charlotte found the same breadcrumbs as the players did and came to the same conclusion — that Jackson was Clara’s biological father. The difference, however, is that I believe Charlotte’s conclusion to be understandable, but ultimately incorrect, and that Rosalie’s assaulter was a stranger.

Horrified, this is where Charlotte’s “cryptic obsession with Jackson” (mentioned in the note in the cellar) began, and what led to her changing the beneficiary of her will from Clara — poor, pitiable Clara, already a victim of so much, whose insecurities would be compounded by this truth — to Harper.

An important part of this theory — and of really any theory — is the consideration that Clara was pregnant with Jessalyn at the time. Not only does this partially explain why Clara’s thought was to save herself (and her baby) rather than dragging Charlotte out with her (regardless of any other factor), but it also brings a potential answer as to why Charlotte would change her will to favor Harper, rather than Clara. Just as the cellar note asks “Who was this Jackson?”, I find myself asking a similar, but no less important question:

“Who was this Austin Neely?”

Listed as Jessalyn’s (still living) father on the family tree, Austin Neely isn’t present anywhere else in the game — not by name and not through mentions of “Jessalyn’s father” or “Clara’s ex-husband/ex-boyfriend” or anything like that. There’s not even a mention of Clara contacting him as a guest for the wedding or to help search for their daughter. His absence is glaring, especially in a game so focused around family — so the question of who is Austin Neely is a question that seems incredibly important to me, given that Clara was pregnant at the time of Charlotte’s death.

In mentioning this theory, I do fully acknowledge that I have only some circumstantial evidence — mostly emotional, and based off of who the characters are/were — to support it, but given the total lack of information on Austin Neely, my guess is as good as anything else.

So here’s my theory: Austin Neely is not Jessalyn’s father, and Clara, like her mother, became pregnant via some type of assault (and given that this was the late 80s and given Clara’s age at the time, I would say the most likely culprit is date rape). When Clara became aware that she was pregnant, given her insecurities about her place in the Thornton clan and her lack of knowledge of her own father, would have come to this conclusion: she was not going to let her baby go through what she herself went through. So she did what her mother could have — and honestly speaking, probably should have — done, and lied.

Austin Neely was probably a friend or an acquaintance of Clara’s — someone her family didn’t really know, but that she could make up a story about dating/being engaged to and became pregnant by before it all fell apart. He would have likely received a payout (probably a rather large payout, given the Thornton’s money and influence) and disappeared from the area and the Thornton’s lives, signing off any responsibility or claim to “their” child before he left.

As a result of this, her child now has a father and doesn’t have to grow up wondering, and Clara avoids the stigma, court case, and general Uproar that would come with attempting to find her attacker. She also, importantly for her, avoids that mess for her child, who will grow up in a semi-normal atmosphere, surrounded by family, not doubting her place in the world — and no one has to know.

Except, of course, one person would know. The head of the family: Charlotte Thornton. From then on, based on this series of events, the story behind Charlotte’s death becomes quite straightforward.

Clara’s paranoia and general cleverness clue her in to the fact that Charlotte has changed her will in Harper’s favor, and is scared out of her mind; having recently experienced a trauma and being pregnant with a child, she’s afraid that she will be left with absolutely nothing, that her machinations with Austin Neely and all her striving will have been for nothing, and she will be cast off, unable to give her child the life she wants to give her.

Compounded by her ground-in fear that she does not belong, she decides to try to settle it with Charlotte — she’s going to scare her, to punish her, and make Charlotte rethink the changed will.

And Charlotte, bearing the weight of the family name and business, not to mention its continued propagation on her shoulders, sees a woman who has been — like her mother — assaulted and left pregnant, whose mental state is already fragile, and who the “revelation” of who Charlotte thinks her true father is would topple her completely — sees poor, pitiable, emotional, suspicious Clara, and refuses.

I think that, more than anything else, would have set Clara off. Remember what she yells at Charlotte’s ghost?

“You had so much, so much, and I had nothing.”

In answering some of the questions about the game, Nik/HER’s response is to say that Clara did not literally light the match that burned Charlotte alive — but we know that Charlotte burned all the same. In the video of her birthday, there are candles; in the dust and soot on the floor where Charlotte died, we see candlesticks. And in the response, again, we know that Charlotte lit the candles for the celebration.

In my ASH meta, I discussed the many meanings of the word “fire” and the term “setting the fire” — and that’s important here too. In this case, the fire was set by Charlotte refusing to reconsider the terms of her will; in her refusal, she probably touched on the same point that she makes in the note in her room — that Clara isn’t stable enough to take over the company. Now, I doubt she would have said that straight to Clara’s face, but even framed as a “you have enough to be going on with and I don’t want to burden you” sort of thing, that just would have reaffirmed all of Clara’s fears — that she was unwanted by the Thornton clan, that her child would be unwanted as a matter of course, and that she would truly have nothing.

And so my guess would be that Clara shoved her. Not hard enough to break anything, not even into a direct flame, but shoved her, and Charlotte jostled the table, and a candelabra fell to the floor, where we see it still in the modern day.

When Nancy sees Charlotte’s ghost out in that house — and yes, I’m firm on that being Charlotte’s actual ghost, as she’s out in the open air so carbon monoxide doesn’t figure in, and there’s no way for that to be Harper/Jessalyn — she burns from the skirt up, which follows with a candle falling to the floor and lighting that incredibly flammable dress on fire.

The last thing to note from HER/Nik’s response is that at the end of the game, Nancy faces the exact same choice that the Thorntons have: to help, or to save herself. In this, we have to look back to Clara and Charlotte, and conclude this: Clara chose not to help. It’s debatable how much help she could have really been — we’re not sure how pregnant she was at the time — or if it even occurred to her until she was already out and chose not to go back in — but at the very least, Clara’s guilt comes not only from the fact that she quarreled with Charlotte right before her death, but that she could have tried to prevent it, and didn’t.

Given the supposition that Charlotte was literally on fire, I really do doubt that getting her out or finding water to throw on her would have been successful, but it doesn’t matter — because Clara looks at it as a choice, and Clara (more importantly) looks at it as the wrong choice, and a choice that she’s been punished for since the day it happened. That’s why, when speaking to Charlotte’s ghost, she says this:

“Haven’t I suffered enough for you?”

The last point I want to make in this OBSCENELY long introduction is about GTH’s place in the pantheon of “Haunting Games”. When you look at the bare-bones (heh) circumstances that make up GTH, you’ll start to see shades of other games.

A relationship/marriage gone a bit wrong, a family secret, an ancestral home, a relative/ancestor whose spectre looms over the story, mysterious apparitions and appearances, and Nancy’s status as an outsider and a skeptic — yeah, both CUR and HAU should come to mind immediately.

Having said my piece about, well, the badness of CUR and HAU and their unsuccessful approach to their basic plot points, it delights me that GTH takes a good hard look at them and says “well, what if we did this well this time? What if we gave our characters the complexity, the emotional resonance, the secrets and lies that we should have the first time?”

Like CUR and HAU, the Family is at the center of the game — except this time we believe in this family, in their relationships to one another, and we feel the effects of the family and their choices, not just hear about it from a diffident 9-year-old or a cranky caretaker. The history of the Thornton clan comes alive through the house, the graveyard, the books and journals that we have of them. We understand what this family is and the choices that they make — even if we don’t approve of them — and they feel real, not just like a background chucked in to Make The Spooky Things Happen.

Also like CUR and HAU, we deal with a central relationship and the complexities that come over two people deciding to get married. Happily, this game (unlike CUR and HAU) treats the central relationship as a thing of Import, and comes to the conclusion that it’s the happiness and well-suitedness of the couple that matters, not the family that surrounds them or anything else. It asks the question “what happens if one person runs away from the relationship?” and answers it, quite satisfactorily, with “there are probably some issues that need ironed out before anything else should happen”.

Interestingly, GTH also takes the good points of CUR and HAU – especially HAU’s atmosphere and CUR’s love of family tidbits — and improves upon them as well. Instead of Jane showing off her studies so that Nancy can solve a few puzzles, Wade walks her through the Thorntons were (at least in his eyes) and helps her get to know the people she’s helping. Instead of being duly impressed at the atmosphere in a bombed-out castle, everywhere on the island is teeming with fog — literal and figurative — as Nancy tries to decode the past to help the future.

Now then, let’s leave the general behind, and focus on the specifics of GTH.

The Title:

Ghost of Thornton Hall is a great title in the way that Secret of the Scarlet Hand is a great title – moody, evocative, gives us our location/focus right away, but not in a way that spoils anything, etc. If anything, it’s a little more flexible – are we dealing with The Ghost of Thornton Hall (Charlotte), the ghost(s) of the Thornton family, the ghosts of those who died on the island, or — in a very fun way — are we talking about the ghost of Thornton Hall — the spirit of the building where so much life and death has happened?

As a title for a Haunting game, you really don’t get much better than GTH, and it centers the player’s attention right where it should be — on the messed up family that the game centers around, and how their past impacts their future.

The Mystery:

Nancy’s phone rings in the middle of the night, with Savannah Woodham’s drawl on the other end, informing her of a kidnapping that’s taken place. She’d go herself, but believes wholeheartedly – and is frightened by — the ghost that’s taken up residence on Blackrock Island, Georgia, and doesn’t believe she’d be enough help.

Of course, this isn’t the whole truth, but we’ll get into that later.

Armed with both her detective skills and her inherent skepticism, Nancy sets off for Georgia to find the missing bride-to-be. Of course, when she gets there, she quickly discovers that the family — and family history — is even murkier and laced with tragedy than the presence of a ghost would suggest, and that, even with everyone searching for Jessalyn Thornton, she is nowhere to be found.

To find her, Nancy has to delve deep into the Thornton family lore, Jessalyn’s relationships with her family and friends – not to mention her preoccupied fiancé — and figure out what really did happen to dear, sweet Charlotte Thornton nearly two decades ago…

GTH, as a mystery, is chock-full of hints, clues, red herrings, and background facts that make figuring out the truth behind everything a joy and a delight — not to mention a task that will take more than one playthrough. GTH is also unique in that its mystery can end in more than one way, and that Nancy’s choices actually have more of an impact than just what souvenir she sends home to her erstwhile boyfriend. Choosing to save herself, to save just the “innocent” (for a certain value of innocence), or to save everyone leads to different endings not just for Nancy but for everyone involved with the Thornton Clan, from its matriarch all the way down to a certain spook-hunting ex-girlfriend.

Underpinning the mystery is this question: did Charlotte really come back as a ghost to haunt Blackrock and the Thorntons, or are her appearances just the result of sneaky relatives and atmospheric maleficence? Can all of the sightings be explained by a mixture of carbon monoxide poisoning, a few relatives playing dress-up, and huge amounts of suggestion and guilt? Is it the case, as Rentaro posited a few games earlier, that a ghost doesn’t have to be real to haunt you?

In a word, no. In a few more words, of course not.

Tying the whole of the ‘haunting’ mysteries together is this (previously mentioned) fact: Nancy is not remarkable for being a Skeptic, she is remarkable for being a Skeptic in a world where ghosts exist. The moving wood (and possibly the silhouette) in MHM, Camille’s ghost dancing along in TRN, the reflection of Kasumi in the water in SAW, the ghost of the Willow in GTH — these are all real, unexplainable-by-tech-or-imagination ghost sightings, and the fact that Nancy doesn’t believe in them doesn’t change their reality one bit.

In the house, you can cite carbon monoxide and Jessalyn/Harper running around in a costume for at least some of them — though not all. But the sightings outside — carbon monoxide does not stay in the system for very long in clear air, blessedly — of Charlotte? The consistency of the spectre? The apparition of her burning up at the site of her birthday party? These aren’t things that you can explain by costume theater — especially since these sightings have been happening for over a decade by people who haven’t stepped foot in Thornton Hall.

When they say that Blackrock belongs to Charlotte and has since the fire, it’s not a literary turn of phrase — Charlotte is there, and refuses to be forgotten. Nancy’s status as a Skeptic prevents her from hysteria, but it does not stop her from being haunted by the Ghost of Thornton Hall.

Now, let’s talk about the players — dead and alive — that make this mystery as complicated and dark as it is.

The Suspects:

Beginning with the matriarch of the Thorntons seems as good a place to start as any, so let’s talk about Clara Thornton. Cousin to Charlotte and Harper, Clara was taken in after her mother’s untimely death (but before her aunt and uncle’s equally untimely deaths) and became the equivalent of a sister in at least Charlotte and Harper’s eyes — though Clara herself was always unsettled and wary about her place in the family.

After the events of Charlotte’s tragic birthday (covered above), Clara visited Charlotte’s grave every night for a year, and was hospitalized after being pushed off of the widow’s walk (more on this later). Whether due to her upbringing or her Thornton blood – or, most likely, both — Clara is secretive, paranoid, wracked with guilt…and a loving mother and extremely capable businesswoman.

Though GTH doesn’t actually have a culprit —Jessalyn wasn’t kidnapped and Charlotte wasn’t murdered — Clara is, as the resident secret keeper and witness to Charlotte’s death, the closest thing that we’ve got. Clara’s sense of guilt is far beyond anything that she could have done, and is haunted so completely as to turn her rather cold.

I have a lot of sympathy for Clara, who made a mistake in a fit of anger (whether that’s pushing Charlotte or just not helping her when she started to burn) at the age of 21 and has been wracked with guilt and haunted by the spectre — real and imagined — of her ‘sister’ ever since (not to mention knowing that her other ‘sister’ blamed and hated her for it). Charlotte died before she had the time to make too many mistakes, but Clara had the entirety of the estate and the business — thousands of people’s livelihoods — thrust into her hand when she was a single mother of 21 years of age. Even had Clara been completely stable, it would have been a lot, and it’s no wonder that she rules the company with an iron fist.

I also want to point out that, due to Harper’s breakdown at the funeral and her afterwards, that even had Charlotte’s second will been found right then, Clara still would have inherited until at least Harper received her bill of mental health, as the closest heir to Charlotte of (legally) sound mind and body.

Let’s talk then about the other heir, Harper Thornton. A fan favorite for a myriad of reasons — her Helena-Bonham-Carter-esque design, her wonderful VA (props to Keri Healey, voice of Hotchkiss, Sally, Paula, Simone, and Madeline!) knocking her lines out of the park, and her dark sense of humor, Harper is, like most of the Thorntons, incredibly unstable, paranoid, violent…an affectionate aunt, and a pretty darn good detective in her own right.

Since GTH doesn’t have a ‘culprit’, Harper stands in her own guilty/not guilty paradigm along with Clara. She had nothing to do with Charlotte’s death personally, but was the one who caused assorted injuries and thousands of dollars in property damage at the funeral, and the one who pushed Clara off the widow’s walk and hospitalized her. Yes, Harper was young — 18 when Charlotte died, but pushing your cousin/sister off of a balcony is wrong at any age.

It’s worth noting that of the three Thornton ‘sisters’, one is guilty of some degree of manslaughter/criminal negligence, and the other of attempted murder. When Charlotte notes that she herself has a dose of the “Thornton paranoia”, she’s not just whistling Dixie.

The biggest problem the Thorntons have, honestly speaking, is that all of them are way too emotional and react without thinking. Clara confronting Charlotte, Charlotte not taking Clara aside to talk about the will, Harper’s injuring of others and blaming/pushing Clara, Wade destroying machinery, Jessalyn disappearing rather than talking things out…none of the Thorntons, past or present, have seemed to think with their brains since the woman who received the land on Blackrock Island after the Civil War in the first place.

In keeping with the theme, I want to talk about Charlotte Thornton next. A girl who inherited the Thornton land and business at way too young an age — I don’t even wanna know why Jackson hated his adult daughter Virginia (and yes, I know that there’s a supposition to this in the “Jackson Theory”, but it’s pure supposition) so much that he would stake the family future on a 20-year-old, no matter how much everyone liked her — after the death of her parents four years prior, Charlotte was the darling of the Thornton family.

Well-liked by everyone with a beautiful singing voice, Charlotte was nonetheless every inch a Thornton; she outright acknowledged her own paranoia, kept secrets and locked rooms closer to her than her family, and had a flair for the dramatic and emotional. After considering her cousin/sister Clara too unstable for the task of inheriting the family Business, Charlotte, rather than turning to her older aunt or naming multiple beneficiaries to ease the load, instead leaves 100% of it to her younger sister Harper.

I do want to point out the irony here in leaving the business to Harper over Clara on the grounds of mental stability. Whatever else Charlotte was good at, she was not a good judge of character, even giving leeway for her being 21.

After her death, Charlotte haunts the family home, unable to leave the place that was, for a year, hers to inherit. But why would ‘dear, sweet’ Charlotte haunt, frighten, and otherwise unsettle those around her — from family to neighbors to curious kids — especially to the extent that she does?

To answer that question, we need to talk about the family member that everyone says is incredibly close to Charlotte in personality — our missing bride, Jessalyn Thornton.

Clara’s daughter, Jessalyn is painted as being a sort of return of Charlotte; everyone loves her (all Thornton employees are combing the island looking for her, for heaven’s sake), everyone agrees on her, and she’s next in line to inherit the Thornton family business. She’s even around Charlotte’s age (24, rather than 21, but close enough) during the game, for heaven’s sake — the comparisons are not subtle, nor are they meant to be.

Since it’s more than halfway through the game that Nancy meets Jessalyn, the things that people say about her are the best clues to her personality that we have…right?

Everyone agrees that Jessalyn would never run off and make people worry like this, that even if she was scared or had second thoughts about the wedding or even just needed to be alone, that she would never do this to her family. And, as it turns out, everyone — her mother, her uncle, her best-friend-cum-fiancé — everyone is wrong. Jessalyn did exactly that — she ran off, made everyone worry, and didn’t think about her family, friends, fiancé, or employees one bit.

It also takes her no effort at all to fully believe a woman she’s never met that her mom is a vicious, cackling murderer just because her (single, incredibly busy) mother is a bit emotionally cold, so she’s also not a great judge of character.

And remember, we’re told over and over again — Jessalyn is just like Charlotte. Sure, Jessalyn is also our Nancy foil in this game — a young woman who needs to learn the truth about her mother, coerced/guided by a quasi-unreliable source, worrying her family by running off — and that’s important for Nancy’s character, but Jessalyn is first and foremost our Charlotte analogue. Jessalyn’s family and friends don’t understand who Jessalyn is…so I think it’s fair to say that Charlotte’s family and friends didn’t understand who Charlotte was, either.

We see Charlotte, through her writings and actions, could be thoughtless, was a poor judge of character, was secretive and paranoid — all things that no one even alludes to when speaking of her. Sure, there’s the idea of not speaking ill of the dead, but someone would have noted these things, even fondly or mildly.

So why would Charlotte haunt this place, haunt these people, when she was so good and kind and loved everyone? The simplest answer, the least convoluted explanation, is just that she wasn’t. That the Thorntons didn’t understand Charlotte, as much as they loved her, just like they didn’t understand Jessalyn.

Speaking of Thorntons who may be misunderstood, we’ll focus on Wade Thornton next. A little more rough-and-tumble and a little less refined than his relatives seem to be, Wade is introspective, superstitious, hard-working, and a bit gloomy…along with having some anger issues, vast amounts of distrust, and a bit of egotism.

Wade’s (at least legally) guilty of a few things in the past, but since he won’t even go into Thornton Hall, he’s a pretty easy cross-off of our list of suspects. Wade’s there to give Nancy information on the Thornton Clan, to provide the explanation as for (partially) why Savannah isn’t there herself, and to show another facet of the Thorntons — their anger.

Whether or not you agree with Wade’s actions that led to Clara pressing charges — though I think everyone can agree it’s pretty stupid to destroy your own family’s machinery, especially when the only danger to the employees was caused by him scaring them half to death — and it highlights that Wade, philosophical though he is, is just as much a Thornton as those he despises. He even calls himself out on it – that while he used to think he was on the side of “Good Thorntons”, he’s not so sure anymore.

The best (serious) line in the game does come from Wade — I will be in love with his description of dating Savannah as “[falling] for her like a Black Tuesday banker” until I die. It’s a perfect metaphor without sounding pretentious, and shows just how bleak his own worldview really is.

Next is The Fiancé, Colton Birchfield, who has the most hilariously WASP-y name to ever come out of a Nancy Drew game. A man who’s struggled with depression and anxiety all his life, Colton was born to two politicians and has lived in the spotlight — and his marriage to Jessalyn is getting just as show-stopper-y as a campaign trail before she disappeared.

I mentioned above that the resolution to Colton and Jessalyn’s relationship is the healthy, sane version of what should have happened in CUR and HAU, and I stand by that. While I don’t necessarily like him going back to Lexi after the game is over — a relationship interrupted by one party being paid off is not the healthy, loving, loyal relationship that Colton needs — it’s clear that he and Jessalyn would have made each other content, but never fulfilled romantically.

Colton’s guilty of nothing more than not being in love with his best friend, and he’s a refreshing breath of air as someone related tangentially to, but not cast down by, the Thornton family drama. He may get less sympathy than our other cast members, but he’s no less deserving of it, and I’m really rooting for him to find someone that will give him the same amount of love and loyalty that he’ll give them.

We’ll journey outside the Thornton family and their (almost) relations for our next ‘suspect’. Addison Hammond, Jessalyn’s friend and bridesmaid, makes a cameo phone appearance here to tell us that Thornton Hall is Totes Spooky, and that Jessalyn vanished not once, but twice in the night.

I quite enjoy Addison, not because she plays a big part or because she’s an exceptional character — she’s as bare-bones as we get in the later games (ignoring MED/SEA/MID), honestly — but because she’s simply a girl in her 20s reacting the way that most of us would if our unnecessarily spooky friend dragged us to an old haunted house and then vanished twice. Good for you, girl.

Coming in for a wonderful appearance is Savannah Woodham, ex-ghost hunter, ex-girlfriend of Wade Thornton, and the detective who was supposed to be on the case. Savannah’s too scared of the Ghost (and too reticent to talk to Wade face-to-face) to risk stepping foot on Blackrock Island herself, but she’s more than willing to send the biggest skeptic she knows, hoping that Nancy’s skepticism will keep her safe.

As lovely as Savannah is in SAW — and I adore her in that game — she really shines in GTH. Probably the biggest moment she gets in the game — and probably my second favorite moment in the game period — is her tale of tracing the shape of the old willow tree on her wall, only to have a body discovered under that exact willow tree after a storm. It’s a delightfully creepy — and most importantly, completely inexplicable by any means other than accepting that the supernatural exists — moment, and I think it’s key to understanding Savannah as a character in GTH.

Savannah suffers under the weight of knowing that there truly are Things that Go Bump in the Night, that can’t be arrested or captured or gotten rid of by normal, legal means. Her background knowledge of the Thorntons helps Nancy to get an initial feel for the family, and it helps to not have an ex-girlfriend wandering around that the Thorntons might have a grudge against or dislike for.

She is, in effect, the mirror image of Nancy — what Nancy might have become without her inborn skepticism — and that alone, even ignoring everything else about her, is fascinating to me.

Our other phone contacts are Ned Nickerson and Bess Marvin, teamed up due to George’s absence while doing an internship (at Technology of Tomorrow Today, no less!) and Bess’ extreme boredom without anyone else to hang out with.

The lovely thing about Ned and Bess is that we get to see Ned when he’s not Solo Boyfriend Ned, but a college guy hanging out with his friend. Their light-hearted banter is hilarious and comfortable (Bess dramatically asking permission to do a spit-take in his living room is of particular note), and we really get to see a different side of Nancy’s oft-abandoned boyfriend.

You can tell that their voice actors are having a terrific time as well (Scott Carty’s pitch-perfect imitation of Jennifer Pratt’s cadence and tone makes me laugh every time), and it really helps bring a bright and colorful spot to this otherwise rather tense and grim mystery.

We’ll round out our character list with the quasi-amateur, quasi-professional detective herself, Nancy Drew. Through her foil with Jessalyn — discussed above, so I won’t get too into it here — we get to see Nancy in a slightly different light, and get to look at the effect that she has on those around her when she disappears.

We know Carson and Ned (and occasionally Bess/George, and even more occasionally, Hannah) worry about Nancy while she’s off on a case, but this is the first time Nancy herself is dealing with what she leaves behind every time she jets off to Venice, or gets trapped in a lava tube, or lost in a rock maze. Nancy hasn’t investigated a straight-up kidnapping (or what appears to be one) since Maya in FIN (no, I’m not counting HAU, as it’s not played as a kidnapping nor does anyone think it is until 2/3 of the way through the game), and she has the same sense of urgency here that she did back then.

Upon replaying the game, the player will lose that sense of urgency for Jessalyn — we know she’s alive and well, and was never kidnapped — but Nancy’s reactions to the family are what stay interesting. She’s concerned for Jessalyn, but does most of her detective work through getting a sense of what the rest of the family thinks of the missing girl.

Given Nancy’s reputation as a good girl, a solid presence (if an occasional one) who loves her family and friends, and who is always responsible, it’s easy to see why she misses the one question that would have helped her solve the case in half of the time: what if Jessalyn isn’t missing? After all, Jessalyn, like Nancy, would never jet off after hearing an unsubstantiated claim about her mother without telling anyone or pausing to confirm it through a different, more trustworthy source, right?

In this game, we discover a huge characteristic about Nancy: she is reckless. Now, we know this already from other games — that Nancy is reckless physically, confronting bad guys alone, diving down into murky catacombs, jumping from pillars in ancient tombs — but here we see that she’s also reckless emotionally. Even though it interferes with her investigation, Nancy gets personally involved in this case; she’s mad at Colton for “cheating” on Jessalyn, she’s upset by the tragedy of Charlotte’s death, and she’s concerned for Jessalyn’s safety in a different way than she usually is with a victim or suspect.

Nancy’s always been willing to take huge risks, but she always stays emotionally on the surface level of a case — a good and necessary trait for a detective, and one that allows her to face down killers, saboteurs, and forgers without blinking. Here, Nancy’s dragged down into the web of the Thorntons, and — as we see in the middle and bad endings especially — she doesn’t quite recover from it. Nancy loses a bit of objectivity here, but what she gains is humanity — and she’ll need that for the last two games in this meta series.

The Favorite:

With such a well-executed game — even though it doesn’t fall in my personal top 5 ranking — there’s going to be a lot to love, so let’s get down to it.

My favorite puzzle is probably Nancy’s trek to ‘discover’ the ‘ghost’ — aka completing Harper’s tasks in order to meet her, culminating with reciting Charlotte’s rhyme while blindfolded. It’s a different kind of puzzle than the type we get commonly with Nancy Drew games, and really helped spark and keep the tension needed to maintain such a spooky game.

My favorite moment in the game is a quieter one — it’s Nancy’s remarks on Charlotte’s room. She’s taken aback at how, after a game of everyone talking about Charlotte, that it’s opening the door to her room that cements Charlotte as a living, breathing person. She continues that she can’t let that feeling distract her, that she needs to treat the room like the rest of the house and gather tools that will let her find Jessalyn, but it’s lovely to see the effect of the Thornton’s history really settle into Nancy’s bones as Charlotte Thornton turns from a scary rhyme that children chant to a girl who lived and died in the same walls that Nancy’s exploring.

There are, of course, other things that I love — the objectively creepy poem (“we’ll let you share with Charlotte/a gown of coal and glowing flame” is an incredible line), Savannah’s story about the willow tree, the small Francy crumbs of Frank being sullen after his Very Revealing voicemail in DED and considering an MBA, the multi-layered relationship that Wade and Savannah have, the gorgeous detail of Thornton Hall — and all of these add up to a game that’s frankly just enjoyable to play.

The big thing to mention in this game, as I talked a bit about in the intro, is its atmosphere.

Throughout the entire game, there’s this palpable feeling of death and grief and loss and pure pain, and those emotions are what GTH relies on to keep itself Scary, not the few spectre scares and swinging scythes that it also has to offer.

I don’t normally quote things other than the games/words of the cast and crew in these metas, but I do make exceptions when the quotation is this good, so I tip my hat here to Tumblr user aniceworld, speaking about ranking GTH their top Nancy Drew game of all time:

“The reason GTH is so successful as a scary game is because there’s such a pervasive sense of sorrow at Thornton Hall. People have died here who shouldn’t have. A family has been destroyed. The house has seen so much trauma it can literally no longer stand on its own. There are ghosts that live here, whether you can see them or not.”

This horror is far better than bloody slashers or obnoxious “continuous mysterious accidents”-style thrillers that tend to permeate the genre; instead of random death-by-umbrella or scary-guy-in-the-shower incidents driving the plot, the emotion behind death and loss and betrayal gets to take a turn at the wheel, and the game is much better for it.

The Un-Favorite:

As with any game, however, no matter how good the atmosphere, there are some things that I don’t love.

I’m not actually the biggest fan of Harper; while her design is great and her VA does a spectacular job, she’s a little cartoonish among a cast that endeavors to stay as far away from broad stereotypes as possible.

It’s fine to have a large personality, it’s fine that she’s a bit cracked, it’s great that she has her own reasons and motivations beyond “expose the truth” (especially since she’s not interested in exposing the truth, just in proving that Clara’s a murderer) — she’s just really not my cup of tea, and I prefer Harper as the Anonymous Note Leaver to Harper the Conversational Partner.

Even if she does get some of the best lines in the game.

I don’t really have a least favorite moment or puzzle that sticks out to me; there are puzzles I struggle more or less with, but none of them are immersion-breaking or so frustrating that I have to get up and walk away. The ones I love, I enjoy solving; the ones I don’t love, I turn to the walkthrough and finish them up to get on with the story.

The Fix:

So how would I fix Ghost of Thornton Hall?

Even given my small problems with Harper, I’m not sure I’d change her. Sure, she’s a bit Broad for the game, generally speaking, but she’s also another example of what loss can do to a person — it can make you cold and withdrawn, it can make you righteously angry and dismissive…or it can turn you malicious and violent. She’s an important presence regardless of my personal taste, and while I might tweak a line of dialogue or two, it’s important to note that her Persona is just another thing for Nancy to discover and re-discover as she investigates the Thorntons.

While not a perfect game — very few, if any, of the Nancy Drew games qualify for that title — Ghost of Thornton Hall is an excellent entry in the Nancy Drew series as a whole, and in the smaller series of Nancy-centric games. Through it, we get to see what happens to those who are left behind after a tragic, sudden, and even violent loss — and that becomes more and more important as we leave behind the gloomy Georgia island and leap across the pond to Glasgow.

[fincalinde]

weakness 3, 4, 11

3: What’s your favorite line of narration?

I'm too lazy to pick out only one sentence, so have a short paragraph I like:

Jin Guangyao's mother had told him once, the only time he asked, how she managed to keep going. She had touched his face and kissed his brow and her eyes had been distant as the heavens as she gave him the answer: I pretend to myself that I am not my body. With practice, I believe it.

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

For a single sentence I'm fond of this little knife:

"And you have the house ready and waiting," says Jin Guangyao, then raises a hand to his mouth in horrified dismay.

If I'm allowed a bit more... I was quite pleased with how I managed to convey LXC's stance at the end when he's explaining to JGY why he's continuing to support and trust him:

"Not because it does not matter to me whether you are right or wrong, but because I believe you are right. If I believed otherwise I hope I would have found the strength to do what was necessary. I think I would."

... mostly because it not only encapsulates LXC's position, but also alludes to canon. I specifically had him word it as 'if I believed otherwise' not 'if it were otherwise' as a nod to the fact that it is actually not otherwise in canon*—LXC simply believes it is otherwise in canon due to getting incomplete information from Wangxian, which casts everything in its worst possible light prior to JGY's explanations and puts him in a frame of mind where he's vulnerable to being tricked by NHS.

* Yes yes, the method of murder for JGS, I know. It was certainly gratuitous and JGY knows it's the only thing he cannot justify, hence why he wants to explain it last. For me it's like... look, man, they're fictional, everyone seems really het up about these women used to kill JGS** in a way I don't really see applied to the 'worst' (I am also not mad keen on ranking) acts committed by other characters. While it does get mentioned, I don't really see 'well WWX is good/not evil except that one unforgivable thing he did to Wen Chao's mistress!' cropping up in any and all meta about him. I also don't see handwringing over the children of the Tingshan He, for example. So my eyebrow goes up that these women always get an asterisk when JGY is being defended. Call me when every defence of WWX includes an asterisk about Wang Lingjiao, cheers.

11: What do you like best about this fic?

m8 i'm just relieved it's over.

Really though, I wanted to write a fix in which JGY gets what he wants in a realistic manner: in short, I wanted JGY to win. It was @fairylantern who suggested the divergence point to me and I immediately got a very clear vision of how that single change could set off the type of cascade I wanted. While I originally thought it could be done as a shorter piece in a style that was more of an overview, on starting to write it I realised my error and did a full outline. And then even during the writing of the draft, every scene kept on being longer than I expected in order to hit all my bullet points. There was a lot of anguished wailing at this stage.

Anyway, I always write to an outline, beginning to end, and while a couple of subplots did end up changing during the writing of the first draft, it wasn't anything crucial. The editing process was really about refining what I'd produced to align with my copious and occasionally incoherent notes. I took ages to edit because [redacted irl situation] and not because it needed a lot of work done. But regardless of the fact that it was situational and not a problem with the draft, it was a fight and a half to get it to a point where the later chapters were in a good enough state to post.

I certainly don't think it's a flawless work and there are things I would fix up now if I could, but as a thesis on Xiyao I stand by it. So yeah, I like that feeling of by and large having achieved what I wanted to achieve. I do have those two oneshots I need to finish, and then I will close the door on that AU feeling positive overall about the experience.

[ryansaiditposts]

The Lore of Folklore:

The Real Story Behind the Characters of Taylor Swift’s Folklore

 

 

We are all familiar with Taylor Swift’s record breaking, surprise quarantine love child, Folklore. Even more so in the Swiftie fanbase, we are familiar with the proverbial “love triangle” established in “Cardigan”, “August”, and “Betty”. What if I told you that I believe the entire album is centered around just these characters at different stages in life with Taylor’s story woven in? Also, what if I said that Taylor/Rebecca were an allegory? Not to mention the complexity of “Hoax” being a combination of all the characters in one? Of course, you would probably ask me for clarification, and that is the intention of the next few paragraphs. These characters reveal certain patterns of behavior, call and responses, and self-referential phrases that map out a much bigger story to tell. The trio of songs mentioned above were just the starting point.

 

To give you an overview of where we will be going, I want to give you the songs as they relate to each character. These will then be fleshed out to connect them in the way I hear and see Folklore play out. The songs and respective characters are as follows:

 

Betty- Cardigan, Mirrorball, and Exile (featuring James)

James- Betty, This Is Me Trying, and Exile (featuring Betty)

Augustine- August, The 1, and Illicit Affairs

Taylor- Seven, Invisible String, Mad Woman, Epiphany

Taylor/Rebecca- The Last Great American Dynasty, My Tears Ricochet, Peace

All Characters- Hoax

 

The genius of this album is that the struggles and identifiers of these characters can sometimes be interchangeable. That is what creates the magic, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. There is more than one perspective to these stories, but this is all what I heard from Inez.

 

The 1 (Augustine)-

I have been sitting with this song for a while. I began to wonder why, for lyrics that for all intents and purposes were sad, did I not get sad listening to this song. Sure, it’s about loss and what could have been, but it’s mere conjecture. Almost like a love that never really existed outside of the storyteller’s imagination. A film that was never made, if you will. Then it hit me, “you weren’t mine to lose”. Augustine simply imagined what it would have been like if the man she did not end up with could have been the one. Betty and James DID have a relationship and the theme of this “film” is repeated in the stories told throughout this album. She would have not gotten the chance to have the movie kind of romance if he had not chosen to be with her. Rose flowing with his chosen family.

 If one thing had been different, could everything be different today? Had he not already been in love with another woman, could we have been the greatest love story ever told? Something also struck me as odd. She called out him meeting some woman on the internet and taking her home. Knowing he has a tendency to stray, there could be a superficial level of jealousy. Imagining that he’s cheating on Betty, but disappointed that it isn’t with her. Not because she’s necessarily a bad person, but I think that as we will see later on in this breakdown, Augustine struggles with conventional relationship types and ties herself to sinking ships for the tragedy of it all.

 

Cardigan (Betty)-

So, not to rehash lore we are already incredibly familiar with, but this song is clearly Betty knowing that James is going to run back to her after straying the path. Cool, amazing, fierce. However, there is language here that suggests this is not the same instance as him showing up to the party. I believe that James has a very toxic pattern resulting from his wondering eye and Betty just has a bad case of loving him. At least, for a while. Betty likes the fact that she is able to show James who he really is when all is said and done, and being someone who has struggled with confidence, she doesn’t want to let this love go too soon. Even if she should. More on that in a bit.

 

Betty says, “Chase two girls, lose The 1”. We all assumed that she was referring to herself, but knowing that she was almost waiting for his return, it’s very possible that she intended to forgive him even before he asked. She had scars from years of not being enough and she may have even been bullied as indicated by this and him seeing in her what others could not when he was present in the relationship. That feeling of “what if” made sure she would not completely walk away. When you are young they assume you know nothing. Well, knowing something does not mean you know everything and I think she stayed long enough to find that out the hard way. Peter does lose Wendy because he cannot grow up.

 

The Last Great American Dynasty (Taylor/Rebecca)-

 

Taylor owns the previous home of Rebecca Harkness in Rhode Island. This beachside mansion has all the salt air and cliffsides to scream off of that anyone would want. Rebecca has a big reputation as a maneater who just isn’t ladylike and mild mannered enough. Sound familiar? Taylor Swift has been demonized, ridiculed, and made infamous based solely off of complete speculation. Rebecca faced the same fate as a middle-class divorcee who was cast as a gold digger after the Standard Oil estate. Truth is, both of these women were just in search of love that could last. Under circumstances far beyond their control these things ended so loudly that there was no right to privacy while they grieved or attempted to make sense of it all. Worse? They were blamed in a blameless situation.

 

Taylor makes her identity known to mirror Rebecca’s at the end of the story. So, what’s the connection to the album as a whole? Bill grew up in the area that the rest of them would eventually be in later on. Cliffside and salt air, the characters revisit these scenes and similar ones several times throughout the story. They lived at a different time here, years later. In fact, in terms of the house itself, it sat quietly for 50 years until Taylor would acquire it. She then marks her entrance to the rest of these stories as she then will later touch on points of her life leading up to Holiday House.

 

Exile (Betty and James)-

 

Communication is key. However, Betty and James eventually resented the back-and-forth nature of their relationship. He believed that she would always forgive him as she had always set that precedent each time before in their relationship. Although they always knew they walked a very thin line, they always felt like the other person would become better to them if they loved hard enough. Each had their demons, though. Between James cheating nature and drinking problem, he could become withdrawn and combative. Betty loved James so much that she gave him second, third and hundredth chances and even excused his more aggressive behaviors in a Streetcar Named Desire type loyalty. Until the branch broke that they were balancing on.

 

For someone like James, being left as a result of bad behavior can often be skewed as a betrayal in and of itself. Her leaving could have only been a result of her not telling him how to be a better partner. On the flip side, Betty was not clear in her signals of being fed up with his actions, but allowing him back time and again. The blame game ensues and each call out each other’s faults too little, too late. They have, in fact, seen this “film” before. They kept the hope that the cinematic love they were both obsessed with would eventually play out if they wanted it enough, but did not put in the work or self-reflect enough to make it so.

 

My Tears Ricochet (Taylor/Rebecca)-

 

Of course, it’s about a certain sellout record executive of her previous label who did not even have the decency to let her own her masters. I will not be bringing his name into it because he does not deserve to even be thought about. However, I think Taylor does an expert job of exploring the anger stage of grief and death that Rebecca and Bill would have had to face in his untimely death as well. The allegory dips in and out of this song to further establish the mirror effect of these two women and their fears/perception. Taylor calls out her own inability to leave with grace. Rebecca was left to burn at the stake after Bill died with no one to defend her either. While it is not his choice to have died, grieving does bring about emotions of abandonment when still panning out. Much like Taylor felt when the label she trusted acted like they had never met and that she had not given them her all to gift them any kind of notoriety.

 

Gathering stones is beachside activity, but when, so is collecting jewelry. This in a metaphorical sense could allude to also gathering dirt and receipts when it all falls down. This line has quite an impact in the context of a business transaction and the marriage of a rich couple. Toward the end, each woman speaks as though they have gone to the cliffside and screamed into the open air. Rebecca challenges the masses to go for her heart in same way the public felt she had gone for Bill’s, but knows that she would be missed all the same. Each woman is directly calling out their naysayers and bullies telling them they know they’re drunk on pain and negating the good they had done before tragedy. These fake people have both built them up and torn them down in times it benefitted them the most.

 

Mirrorball (Betty)-

 

As I previously mentioned, Betty struggles with self-confidence (relatable content). This song takes a deeper dive into Betty’s desire to be noticed by James in the way she needs him to and to show him that she knows him better than anyone else does. When he does not pay attention, she breaks into a million pieces. Although her friends consistently tell her that the end is imminent, she has committed herself to changing the narrative. She’s walking the tightrope, another call out to the thin line they feel they have always walked in regards to one another.

The insecurity is palpable in the self-deprecating “I’ve never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try”.  Remembering from their teenage years, Augustine, a natural beauty, is able to draw men in with a sense of sensuality and a carefree demeanor. She doesn’t have to get too invested in relationships because she only chooses men that are in high risk, low reward circumstances. On the outside, it seems like she has all the confidence in the world and that is intimidating to someone like Betty who does not exude the same assuredness and has been burned by trusting unnecessarily before. In spite of this, Betty is still a believer in true love even if James has given her no indication there is reason to believe.

 

Seven (Taylor)-

 

Little Tay on her Pennsylvania farm just discovering her own voice and the meaning of friendship. Making her own tales of time gone by and recounting the origin story of a girl who makes “too much” noise any time she wants. Also, quite possibly the REAL queer-canon of the album. Taylor was close to someone who she has not seen for a while, a girl. She remembers the feeling more than anything and a certain protectiveness that she felt for this person who was having to hide in the closet. Labels did not matter and love was love in this scenario. She wants them to know their story and the care she felt for them is not forgotten and still a source of inspiration for her life in present day. Think “hope ur ok” by Olivia Rodrigo.

 

This song explores Taylor’s fierce feminism and activism into adulthood. The unwavering support she gives to the underdogs and why Rebecca’s story resonates with her so much. She was the wild child the world tried to tame with constant expectation. The subject of Seven that she befriended reminded her that there are beautiful things out there and grounded her in a way to keep looking for meaningful connections and to respect the stories of each person she meets to gain perspective.

 

August (Augustine)-

 

Somewhere on the beaches just outside this small Rhode Island town, Augustine was manifesting a relationship that she knew had a slim to none chance with James. Despite her hopes and efforts, August came and went. James dreamed of Betty with Augustine in his arms, but wanted is cake and to eat it too as a seventeen-year-old boy. The thrill of it all enticed him to give his summer to Augustine instead. Particularly because she was willing to pursue him in the way she did. However, much like the surface level pining found in The 1, she just wished she could write her name on his back in a performative ownership move as if to say finders keepers.

This superficial relationship was hallmarked in sex and lust by being spent tipsy and wrapped and in bedsheets. It wasn’t shameful or tawdry to two kids, but would show it’s truth one single time before becoming a feeling both would continue to chase. The shaky and electrifying experience of sharing firsts and secrets though “Never Have I Ever” and the charged nature of “Are you sure?” feeling like a pact. Until guilt set in for James, there was only excitement and both were forever changed. One by the hope of it all, and the other by the excitement.

 

This Is Me Trying (James)-

 

Years after the first thrill and eventual heartbreak, James has never found direction. He fell behind the classmates that moved on with their lives and ended up here. Still in their same hometown, he is a shell of a man grappling with depression and alcoholism. He’s in Betty’s doorway once again in her front porch light begging for forgiveness. He even matched Betty’s previous speech pattern in “Mirrorball” by saying “I just wanted you to know…” as if to respond to her finally because he sees her after it’s all been said and done. He pulled the rusted, vintage car that once made him so cool off the road to the same cliffside that they once made out in front of. This represents the edge that they all seem to stand at one point or another to contemplate their mistakes. He calls out his own substance abuse and aggression (which we talked about in Exile as well).

 

He wants to continue his same party lifestyle, but feels like an open wound because his bad behavior has finally caught up to him. All he thinks about are his own shortcomings, especially now that he is left alone with them. Betty once again gets compared to a film in a reel on the one screen they have in this small town. Now, only a memory instead of a reality. The defensiveness from being what he perceived as betrayal has subsided and he is left to face the cages he mentally put himself into and the fear that he was not as good of a man as he tried to project to others around him. Betty being the product of his transgressions since she is left broken and resentful toward him now.

 

Illicit Affairs (Augustine)-

 

Augustine finally pulls back the layers on why she continues to try to recapture the feeling that James gave her at a mere sixteen years old. Someone displaying all the confidence in the world may have had less than Betty in actuality. It was all a misconception. Instead, Augustine feels that her looks and sex are what she has to offer and by giving herself away, she hopes to capture lightning in a bottle one of these times. She recreates the same structure of what she had with James only to meet the same disappointment.

 

The beautiful setting of the beach house gives way to the parking lot behind the mall in a way. In some twisted way, James brokenness recognized Augustine’s and she had never been seen in real way before that and then not again after. James thought Betty’s level headedness would fix him and did not want to have to face himself via Augustine since they understood each other in the worst way. Like I said, that first taste left her living for the hope of it all and it was simply a dwindling mercurial high. A drug, though, that could work a hundred times over.

 

Invisible String (Taylor)-

 

Taylor’s stories are often on this album the only ones with direct references to actual places. This one references Centennial Park and Los Angeles. This is the story of Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn (William Bowery to some). This in and of itself is a modern day, currently in the making folktale. The idea of an invisible force bringing the two together to tell a great love story just like Taylor had always imagined. Here she self-references her own part in contributing to the media circus surrounding breakups and dating and owning her growth in those situations.

 

Allowing herself to live in the moment, she talks about the colors and touches of humanity this relationship has brought her. A deeper appreciation of the present and making memories that will one day make beautiful stories to tell for both themselves and for others that once tried to taint her narratives on hearsay. This is her story in her words and an expression of gratitude. Hell was the journey, but it brought her heaven.

 

Mad Woman (Taylor)-

 

This one is about the other one and his soon to be ex-wife. The one the masters were sold to. Shares a name with a two wheeled ankle destroyer and will also not be mentioned by me.  This is a slight reference to her Rebecca allegory in the sense that character assassination played a big part in that story, but not enough to say it’s a direct correlation. Although, it is interesting to note that they are hunting all of the witches even if you aren’t one.

 

Taylor gets raw about the cheating nature of the man in question whether it is in business or in relationships and how he should be called out for it. There’s a hardship in feminism, though. She watches as a woman who knows she is in the wrong defend the thief instead of the robbed. It explores the right to be mad when lied to or stolen from, particularly when you’re willing to go on record with false statements if they serve a certain narrative. Undeniably, this moment will go down in infamy for generations to come. In a word, folklore.

 

Epiphany (Taylor)-

 

Paying homage to her grandfather, Taylor sets a scene as a war rages on. Keeping your helmet to keep your life is a good direct correlation to mask mandates that swept the country as COVID-19 developed. The horrors of watching someone die for things that may have arguably been avoided sets the anguish apart in this song to any other she has done. This is the world in a life and death lens and nothing else. Trying to make sense of what she and the rest of us are seeing when it did not have to be this way.

 

The most hard hitting look at medical staff and the precarious position they stood in for both instances is found in the bridge. They watch to make sure someone is breathing. They stand in the face of danger and are contained to one place while a threat is posed but serve unselfishly and risk falling like the people around them in the hopes of reaching a breaking point or a point of clarity in the chaos. On a metaphorical level, this song establishes a very important piece of perspective for us to hold onto long after this virus is contained lest we forget.

 

Betty (James)-

 

The first injustice and a look into the dramatics of young love. We now at least get to know why James loves Betty so much and humanize him a little more for the things he’s been dealing with internally since a young age. He comes off a lot more charming here even if unsure. Possibly a reason why he leans on liquid courage later on, James is actually a bit shy in group interactions. This also causes him to avoid confrontation if it can be helped or talking about his feelings. He also has a tendency to fear loneliness as a result so he’s easily convinced to go along for the ride even if it isn’t the right decision.

 

However, here, he nervously plans for weeks to gather up the courage to ask for a second chance. From what we can gather, he was likely forgiven in this instance which made him more comfortable than before to do so again and again. The cycle started here with this grand gesture, but post-cheating, the damage was likely already done since he had gotten a taste of the thrill. Betty would serve as a constant, but she would not stand alone.

 

Peace (Taylor/Rebecca)-

 

Taylor knows she will likely always be speculated on, but she loves intensely even if no one else believes. Here, you can see her sympathy and understanding of someone like Rebecca who no one ever even considered that she may actually love her late husband. All she can ever hope for is that the person she dedicates herself to can recognize how invested she really is and can handle the storm that comes with that. She talks with her own pack of friends being wild and rowdy much like Rebecca, but hopes he never sees that as a sign of disrespect. It’s just who she is.

 

Everyone DID think the love was for show, but they knew nothing of what happened behind closed doors. Does a woman pace rocks staring out at the midnight sea who isn’t missing someone? I don’t think so. Painting dreamscapes on the wall referring to the home they share together. The very same place that tied Rebecca and Taylor’s stories together in the first place. I think Taylor learned to embrace the madness before the rest of Rebecca’s story became hers and stopped apologizing for being so loud but remembered to continue to let love in.

 

Hoax (Everyone)-

 

Every time I listen to this song, I hear a different character speaking to me. Then I realized each one was just taking turns. This one is a bit different so I’m going to break it down by character:

 

Betty- He had drawn stars around her scars, but the way he made her feel was just as bad as the pain they caused. She believed him each time he said never again. She let him back in time and again to be hurt in the same way, but nobody else would have done for her if he could just be the things he promised to be. She was bound to him even though he never came through.

 

James- He knows exactly what he’s done and that he cannot fix it now. He knows that she possesses a love for him that will never die, but that is unrealistic after a certain point. He resigns himself to having to miss her forever. The hero has effectively died, so the movie has lost a purpose in plot. He tried, but did not succeed.

 

Augustine- She had a plan for them. No matter the means in which to get it, she wanted him to love her the way he did Betty. She used slight of hand and a little convincing to lead him to her. It left her aching for more when she knew that would never come back. August slipped away and there was no winning. Winter came and the ground was frozen.

 

Rebecca- She stood out there screaming for a reason why she had to be left alone in the life that was supposed to be theirs. I don’t think she ever quite got past that feeling of abandonment and just needed anything to believe in. This beautiful mansion had become a kingdom come undone. Bill’s heart had given out like a broken drum.

 

Taylor- When you sign a record deal at such a young age and a man who has always taken care of you in that time suddenly becomes your biggest enemy, it can certainly feel like a total heartbreak. The hoax was making her believe that even if all was said and done he would at least have her back. He most certainly did not. She screams at the sun (now eclipsed) on the cliffside while he listens to her stolen lullabies. The part of herself that remains in New York being her life’s work.

 

Please let me know if you have anything to add! Any new perspectives I may have missed? I would love to further this conversation and find new ways to explore the Folklorian Wilderness!

 

-Ryan Freeman

[santaclausdeadindian]

Sorry for doing it this way, I think OP deleted their post or blocked me like a mature, balanced person would, so I have to tag you in

@mr-laugh

Oh boy, lot to unpack here.

So you didn’t even know there were that many subgenres of fantasy, one of the most popular classifications of fiction on the planet... And you think you know enough to tell ANYBODY what classic fantasy is?

And where exactly I attempted to do that, huh?

If you don’t even know the most common subgenres of this vast pool of fiction, why are you jumping into this discussion? You just admitted you don’t know anything!

There is no discussion, there is a stupid ass post. Don't flatter yourself, you don't know jack shit.

Me not knowing what exactly are the precize subgenres of a genre of literature, which, btw, are completely arbitrary and for your information, sword&magic is a legitimate category, has absolutely nothing to do with what that post you were so keen on agreeing with above. It was you who said pretty much any classic fantasy is like that: some poorly written, self-indulgent and borderline racist.

Did ya read the link, buddy? Howard talked about knowing what burning black man smelled like. He was quite approving of these things! And the books are pretty racist, it’s not hard to see, unless you ain’t looking.

Yes, I started reading and by the end of the first paragraph I was convinced he was ahorribly racist man. And? Still doesn't change the fact, that for my 12 year old self, there was nothing racist about it. I definetly wasn't looking for it, that much you got right. If I'd read it again, I'm sure I'd catch on to it now, that I know what kind of asshole he was. So the implied racism would be there. You got a point for that.

Rugged individualism? It always amuses me how that argument always pops out of the mouths of guys who are aping what they’ve heard their buddies say. If ten thousand mouths shout “rugged individualism”, how individualistic are they?

Then you should amuse yourself by looking up why this thing crops up as of late. It's coming from certain, supremely racist yet unaware of it publications that claim ridiculous shit like "rugged individualism" is a hallmark of white supremacy, among other, equally laughable things, like punctuality. It's a joke.

Again, I will give Howard to you, if someone that racist writes a black man saving the hero of the story, I bet there was something else still there to make it wrong.

Conan’s not some avatar of rugged individualism.

Uhm, yeah, he pretty much all that.

He’s as unreal and unrealistic as the dragons are,

It's called fantasy for a reason, buddy.

but more dangerous because White Men model their ideas of reality on Big Man Heroes like him;

Glad you are totally not racist, yo!!! It's such a relief that White Men are the only ones with this terrible behavior of looking up to larger than life, mythic superpeople and nobody else. Imagine what it would be like, if we would have some asshole from say, hindu indian literature massacering demons called Rakshassas, by the tens of thousands, or some bullshit japanese warlord would snatch out arrows from the air, or a chienese bodyguard would mow down hundreds of barbaric huns without dropping a sweat, or some middle eastern hero would fight literal gods and their magical beasts in some quest for eternal life.

it's a poison that weakens us, distracting us from actually trying to solve the world’s issues, or banding together to deal with shit.

This is what you just said. It's up to the white man, to get their shit together, be not racist and solve the world's problems, because those poor other people's just can't do it. If we would just not be oh, so racist, then China would surely stop with the genocides they are doing now, or blowing more than half the greenhouse emissions into the athmosphere, the muslims would stop throwing their gays from rooftops or ramming trucks into crowds and would just start treating women as equals, India's massive rape problem would be gone, subsaharan African would be magically bereft of the host of atrocities committed there on a daily, yeah, you sure have that nonracism down, buddy!

A rugged individualist would be smart enough to realize that even the most individualistic person needs others; no man’s an island, and a loner is easier to kill.

Individualism doesn't mean at all what you think it means, it's a cluster of widely differeing philosophies that puts the individual ahead of the group or state, it's ranging from anarchism to liberalism and is also has nothing to do with my point.

Central Europe?  What, Germany?  Because let me tell you, historically they are SUPER concerned about race!

Germany traditionally considered western european, central europe would be the people stuck between them and the russians, to put it very loosely. We are equally nonplussed by the self-flagellating white guilt complex and the woe me victim complex of the west. We did none of the shit those meanie white people did to the nonwhites and suffered everyting any poc ever did and then some. We don't give a shit about your color, we care about what culture you are from and if you respect our values.

I’m an American from a former Confederate state; trust me, race is everything.  It always is.

No it really isn't. How old are you? Asking without condescension, genuinly curious, because if you are in your low twenties at most, it's understandable why you think like this.

See that hike? Do you know what happened at that time that made virtually all american media suddenly go all in with racism?

Occupy Wall Street, that's what. It's a brilliant way to sow victimhood and hate and desperation amongst the people who have one common enemy, the powers that be, the banking sector, the politicians, the megacorporations.

Can't really blame you if you are in your early 20's at most, you grew up with this bullshit hammered into you. If you are older, step out of your echochamber please!

If you actually believe, that mankind doesn't progress naturally towards a more accepting society purely on the merit of there being more good people than bad and sharing a similar living with all the hardships in life, seeing that our prejudices inherited by our parents are baseless, that's how we progress, not virtue signalling courses and regressive policies. I was raised as any other kid, I had a deep resentment towards the neighbouring nations, I said vile, racist shit against people who I actually share a lot of genes with, of which fact I was in deep denial about, and then as I gradually got exposed more and more actual people of these groups, I started to realize I was wrong and everybody should be judged by their individual merits. It works throughout the generations, my grandma was thought songs about Hitler and how all jews are evil in school, she legit thought all black people at least in Africa are cannibals and shit, my mother stillsays shit that would get her cancelled in the USA, and I will probably have a mixed race kid as we stand now.

This whole racism is an eternal problem is laughable and disingenuous and I am actually sorry for you that you feel like that.

Moving on. As for Dany, the “noble white girl sold to scary dark foreign man” is a very popular trope, especially in exploitation films, which Martin draws on much more heavily than most authors do.

No, he fucking doesn't. I already wrote a bunch of examples from the books you seeminly ignore willfully. First of all, she is sold to those olive skinned savages by a white man, who is a terrible, increadibly evil man. He want's to fuck the then 11-12 ish Dany so bad, she picks his slave most resembling her and rapes her repeatedly, "until the madness pass." He also maimes children and traines them as disposable slave spies by the hundreds. There is no boundaries colour here, GRRM prtrays all kinds of people as reprehensible, evil and disgusting. Just like you can find plenty of examples to the opposite.

What is he drawing from your exploitation movies exactly? He writes about the human anture, he writes about the human heart at war with itself, that's his central philosophy of writing.

ASOFAI is basically just a porn movie with complicated feudal politics obscuring it, which is probably why it worked so well as an HBO series (up until the last two seasons or so.)

There is no gratuitous sex scene in the books, the rapes are described as rapes, they are horrible, they are very shortly described and usually just alluded to.

The people commiting them are not put into generous lights and one of the single most harrowing stories hidden behind the grand happenings of the plot is a girl named Jeyne Poole, whose suffering although never shown, is very much pointed out, along with the hypocrisy of the people who only fight to try and save her, because they think her a different person.

Honestly, if you actually read the books and they came of to you as porn, you might want to do some soulsearching.Btw, the HBO series was a terrible adaptation, it immedietly started to go further and further from the books with every passing season and the showmakers made it very clear to everybody, that they didn't understand the very much pacifist and humanist themes of Martin. And neither did you.

We also get no indication Essos will eat it when Winter comes; hell, they seem to not know Winter exists, given the way people act, even though that is also unrealistic and weird.  Essos was just super badly designed, and Dany is a terribly boring character.

to be continued

[silvysartfulness]

3, 4, 10, 15

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

Oh... There’s no “always” scene, what scenes get me going varies from story to story, fandom to fandom. On the whole, I’m not that scene-oriented - it is the set-up and context that really get me going? The scenes are just expressions of that! Sorry! XD

There are a whole bunch of scenes I’m looking forward to write, though! In the Roadtrip, I do hope my steam will keep going until I hit the really messy, rewarding parts where the characters actually really start connecting (and yes, that includes the sex!) Especially Xue Yang’s and Song Lan’s relationship has a lot of very juicy things to explore, emotionally and physically down the line - that’s the story bits my brain tends to disappear off to when contemplating future bits of this fic, at least at the moment! :D

4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like) 

From the published chapters, I'm very happy with the “teacup” scene from chapter 6 of the Roadtrip! I find it poetic, and I like how it seemingly offers a respite from the turmoil of the ongoing scene - only to then double down and enhance the hurt of it. Causing readers pain can be beautiful. ♥

----

He had owned a little teacup, once, on the Mountain, a treasured delicate thing of white porcelain, and in a careless moment he had dropped it. It had still looked whole, but the next time he poured hot water into it, it had made a tinkling, almost musical sound, the water draining out of it as all the invisible cracks opened at once.

Even then it had still looked like a whole cup, only crackled, and it wasn't until he tried picking it up that it fell into a hundred pieces at his touch.

The roaring storm in his head had reached a crescendo so overwhelming it was almost bleeding into silence, and in that silence, he could hear his heart making that almost musical tinkling sound, shattered, all cracks breaking open at once.

----

From unpublished chapters, I very much like the following little snippet! Xue Yang isn’t one to consciously feel sorry for himself, he likes telling himself how heartless he is, that he can’t be hurt. Which is a blatant lie, and sometimes he just can’t help but wallow in self-pity. ♥

It has all the ingredients I like - there’s hurt, poetic phrasing, multiple vividly visual allegories:

----

There had been a hole in Xiao Xingchen's world after Baixue, ripped out of him to cause hurt - a dug-out trap he'd somehow, ironically, stupidly fallen into himself. A vacant space in Xiao Xingchen's life for him to occupy for a while, knowing that smile, that endless tenderness. He could see the gap close between them now, see it happen, himself forced out like unwanted water from near-drowned lungs.

It hurt.

----

10. How would you describe your writing process? 

“Frustration”..? Writing doesn’t come nearly as naturally to me as drawing, and unless I get lucky and catch a wave, it’s a constant struggle. Especially these days, when my brain has suffered enough burn-outs that I have genuine problems with memory, concentration and executive function.

But the process itself tends to go: Headcanon wildly -> decide that headcanons are interesting enough to make for decent fiction -> sketch a bit and flail about ideas to unsuspecting people to fix visions in mind -> write a very loose outline in separate document -> open word processor -> hope like fuck the characters will be willing to start talking -> trying to get it all to snowball and keep up steam until project is actually finished

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)? 

Tags. Tags fill me with dread. Tags feel like the bit where failure will bring purity antis or angry people in general down on my head, enraged, if I get it wrong. Tags give me the same undefined dread as filling in official forms (”What is your name?” I don’t know, I sob. I don’t know anything anymore!) I try?

Summaries are medium-hard, but I cheat and keep mine very short.

Titles, on the other hand, I love titles! For the Roadtrip, I’ve set up a challenge for myself that every chapter title should be able to be interpreted in at least two different ways, preferably more, with multiple layers of meanings and symbolism!

Like the “Sticks and Stones” chapter, for example, that starts very literally with Xue Yang fighting Song Lan with his pointy stick, ending up slammed down on the rocks - but it’s really about the very end of the chapter, and the implied “words can never hurt me” - ironically meant, since it’s Xue Yang’s words that almost kill Xiao Xingchen.

Same with “Poison In The Air” which both refers to the venom between all the characters at that point, and very literal corpse dust on the wind.

“Is it you?” of course paraphrases Xiao Xingchen’s question in Yi City, where he first says it after stabbing Song Lan through the chest, asking for Xue Yang to confirm that he’s alright. And then the same phrase when he’s on his knees, feeling Fuxue and realizing who the fierce corpse beside him is, and he says the same words, this time indicating Song Lan. In that chapter, he constantly sways back and forth in how he relates to them both, consciously leaving his questions undirected, to see which one of them will answer, a wordless “is it you?” aimed at them both.

“Reawakenings” alludes both to Xiao Xingchen regaining consciousness and him and Song Lan reconnecting, a reawakening of their affection (love) ending with them holding hands in sleep. “The Coffin House” is an evil red herring, that would seem to refer to Xue Yang’s and Xiao Xingchen’s past in Yi City, but where the final scene topples that perception on its head, grimly becoming something extremely literal.

Next chapter to be posted is called “Bitter Medicine”. Again to be interpreted both somewhat literally and figuratively. ♥

As for the whole fic itself, I wanted a title that 1: referred back to the Chinese origins of the Untamed, 2: something to do with roads and journeying, and 3: preferably something that captured the general air of the story I wanted to tell. I was very pleased to find the Chinese proverb I ended up using; 天堂有路你不走 地狱无门你闯进来: "Heaven has a road but no-one walks it - Hell has no gate, but men will dig to get there". 

It checks the first two boxes, and the sardonic irony of the whole quote fits these idiots and the way they’ve ended up hurting others but mostly themselves, and how they keep doing so inadvertently as they go along. They’re on the way to some sort of redemption, Heaven - but they’re making each others’ lives Hell as they go. They will get better at balancing things along the way, though - eventually. ♥

I could ramble about these metas forever, and I’m very very happy to have been given an excuse to do so! Thank you!! XD

There’s so much sneaky thought going into this story, and it’s a delight to actually be asked to talk about it! :D

[coasttocoastreads]

Welcome back to Week 2 of Coast to Coast Reads! Who’s still alive? Katya and I are dying while social distancing, but at least we had a few laughs discussing this book:

Crescent City (House of Blood and Earth) // Sarah J Maas

★★ / ★★★★★

Summary in one two gif(s):

Real Summary:

Crescent City, a place where vanir (supernatural beings such as angels, fae, shifters, etc.) and humans freely mingle and go about their days. Bryce Quilan is a 20-something fae/human who’s still reeling from the murder of her friends 2 years ago. But after she’s commissioned to help search for an ancient artifact, Bryce, along with her new angel partner Hunt, unearth previously buried secrets about the murder that threaten to expose a worldwide conspiracy. 

Pros:

Great side characters. I would die for each and every one of them.

Lots of different mythological creatures! Not just another Fae Book™️

Cons:

It’s literally ToG 2-7 combined. If you read Throne of Glass, you’ve already been spoiled for this book. 💀💀💀

It’s wayyyy too long

Drags a lot in the beginning

Plot .5/5 (the .5 is for you, Lehaba)

What can I say. SJM literally plagiarized herself by taking the plotline of the tog books and translating it to this new setting. The writing itself was subpar, and most of the time it felt like the author herself had no idea where the plot was going, instead letting it drag on until a plot twist that makes no sense is revealed. (You’ll know which one I’m talking about when you get there.) I’ll compare CC with ToG with spoilers under the cut. 

Pacing 2/5

The beginning is full of info-dumping as SJM tries to set up this world which is metaphorically like ours, but everyone’s hot and does fantasy cocaine all the time.  It narrates boring day-to-day schedules that could have been condensed into a paragraph and at times I was tempted to skip ahead. The plot does pick up near the last 25% though, so I’ll give it that. 

Worldbuilding 2.5/5

It was confusing. To be fair, after all the info was dumped at the beginning, I didn’t bother going back to try to figure things out when they popped up again after. But like still??? I think I only started understanding the hierarchy of the government with the Asterrii(?). Also what are the Triarii I am still lost. SJM attempts to blend a more modern society with one of fantasy creatures, and for the most part it succeeds, but it often just feels...strange. I think the one thing I’m most hung up about is why swords and guns still coexist. Like ??????? it’s one or the other plssssss abandon the “aesthetic” Also while they literally have cell phones and keurig machines there aren’t common things like cars? Why.

Characters: (This is unconventional, bear with me)

Main Characters: -infinity/5 they could go die for all I care

Bryce and Hunt were both super unlikeable, 10/10 would let fall from a cliff. They are literally just rewrites of Aelin and Rowan? Bryce is like ahahaha yeah people think I’m Just a dumb vapid Female™️ who parties too much and gets trashed but SIKE I’m actually the chosen one and I’ve been hiding it this whole time because I didn’t want to hurt people’s feelings uwu. And did I mention I’m actually a trained Warrior who can keep up with The Boys? It’s Aelin y’all. There are numerous times where a character says that she’s not stupid and I’m like...are you sure... This girl makes the poorest decisions, yet ofc, there aren’t any long term consequences... (Also 99% of her problems come from ghosting people literally just respond with “k” sis)

Hunt is... idek what to say about Hunt. He’s just Rowan but in angel form. His inner monologue cycles between I must pay off my debt so I can gain Freedom 😔, why is Bryce so hot 🥴, and Shahar 😭. Once again, literally Rowan who also was bound to some evil villain, had the hots for their CENTURIES YOUNGER pupil/protectee, and had an old lover die tragically which led to them believing they can never find love again UNTIL BryLin comes along. Snooze. 

Side Characters: Infinity/5 

Ruhn Danaan was the most valid character and that’s the hill I’ll die on. He literally just wanted to protect his sister cuz she’s stupid af but she keeps pushing him away bc he’s an “alphahole” (haha how subversive :/) I want a whole book about him and Hypaxia, preferably fanfiction so I don’t have to read “soft feminine breathing” ever again.

Literally all the supporting cast- Lehaba, Therion, Ithan, Jesiba, Flynn, Connor, etc, etc. had more compelling characters and side stories than Bryce/Hunt. I was 100% more invested in them and I can’t wait to read/write more about them. 

(Pls let me marry Jesiba Roga or Therion 🥺)

But while the people on the “good” side were spectacular, the villains all felt one-dimensional and the product of over-recycled and overused tropes mashed together. Sandriel and Pollux are literally just Maeve and Cairn (is that his name)

I’d recommend for:

People who loved Throne of Glass and are lamenting the absence of new content. Please read about Rowaelin 2.0

People stuck at home during this global crisis and have too much time on their hands. (If you need that free epub, hmu)

People who are willing to skip all scenes that feature just Bryce and/or Hunt 

People who hate themselves

Would I travel here?

Sorry, what? Already shredded my passport, not getting a replacement, sorry. 

Overall thoughts:

I wish I could somehow take those hours of my life back but alas. 

See y’all in two weeks with a hopefully better book selection,

Tiff

Spoilers under cut

Okay time to VENT

OKAY so CC=ToG, let’s break down how

Danika’s death is the Nehemia Incident, setting the mc up for a journey of self discovery/reclaiming their power. They both show up as ghosts later to encourage mc in a time of great self-struggle.

Syrinx if Fleetfoot. bc all female mc’s need a pet to reveal her Feminine and Soft side

Sandriel and Pollux are Maeve and Cairn. Evil female character with vast power and her torturer? COOKIE CUTTER FORMULA. The scene where Bryce offers herself up for Hunt in the lobby also kinda mirrors that scene in..HoF? QoS? Don’t remember, but pretty sure that happened. Also that scene was so fucking dumb, I really thought Bryce had a Smart Plan, but I was bamboozled once again. 

A gem from my notes: “Bryce is Aelin but with cocaine”

I think the whole demon portal thing is a ripoff of ACOWAR (or is it KoA I can’t even remember), sacrificing yourself to close the rift, etc, etc. 

Anyways, Bryce = Aelin, a party-girl front with a sob backstory that’s her superpower origin story who always has a Plan. 

Hunt = Rowan, broody warrior busy repaying debts getting orders they don’t want while pining over a lost love. They reluctantly let the female mc in and voila they’re in LOVE

The whole “plot twist” that revealed Hunt’s true plan along was so fucking dumb...

It wasn’t a plot twist, it was just plain bad writing

There was no set up at all, nothing alluding to Hunt secretly masterminding an attempted coup with the help of Magic Meth

The whole time I was like “...this is part of their plan right. There’s no way he legit planned this...”

Character’s POVs should reveal what they’re thinking, even if you’re just hinting at something to reveal later...this was just lazy

Another thing that really rubbed me the wrong way was the sudden reveal that Fury and Juniper had been in a relationship the whole time? Despite like above, there was no prior allusion to that?

It felt like half-assed representation at best and completely irrelevant to the story with it coming up again in a throwaway line near the end

Also? I’m fairly certain there was a scene in the beginning where they were all out clubbing and Juniper hooked up with some rando while Fury was also at the club with them? Was this before they got together or did SJM insert this so last minute that no one caught it?

Wtf is sunball. Can someone just help me out here.

Some people have been saying Hunt is Asian coded? Where???!!!!! All I’m seeing is the same stuff she pulled in ACOTAR where all the Illyrians were tan so people could claim they were poc for woke points but not get in trouble for art depicting them as white ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

SJM pls stay away from “like calls to like” you don’t deserve it

[wordsnstuff]

20 Mistakes To Avoid In Science Fiction

This is also available on wordsnstuffblog.com!

– This is a continuation of a series that began with 20 Mistakes To Avoid In Young Adult Fiction/Romance. I included a couple exterior sources throughout the article that covers certain points in more detail for those who would like further advice. I hope this is helpful. Happy writing!

–Patreon || Ko-Fi || Masterlists || Work In Progress || Studyblr || Studygram

Referencing Current Culture Inappropriately

Not all references to pop culture are misplaced in sci fi. For instance, in Ready Player One, it’s integral to the plot. However, it’s random references to political things or important people that do not have anything to do with the movement of the plot or are misplaced within the context of the universe. This can bring your reader out of the story and confuse them in terms of world building and basic information about the history of your constructed universe.

Not Understanding Space & How It Differs From Earth

Do your research about space if you’re writing about space, and learn about how different planets work, the rules of physics, the laws of gravity, the conditions in other parts of the galaxy, etc. This information is available to you in may places and in many formats that are broken down simply for you to understand, especially for writers. You just have to look for it. I actually have a resource master post called “Resources For Writing Science Fiction” that would be really, really useful for this.

Putting No Thought Into Aliens

Aliens shouldn’t just be modified versions of humans. Coloring a human purple doesn’t make them interesting. Think about the environmental factors on the alien’s home planet and how those conditions would affect their biological makeup and physical/mental features. Take the time to do this, because readers appreciate it when it’s done well.

Technobabble

This is just a word for technological-sounding gibberish that writers put into their book to make it sound legitimate. However, what a lot of them do not realize is that science fiction readers are often interested in science, and therefore know that it’s 3 sentences full of nothing. This is okay in some circumstances, but it can never hurt to do 10 minutes of googling to maybe learn a bit about what you’re about to feed to the reader before writing it. Technobabble is really useful for writing the first draft (where you’re just telling yourself the story to have something to develop), but it shouldn’t live past that point. 

Conlangs (Unless You’re A Linguist)

Do not take on constructed languages if you aren’t ready for years and years of study and practice with linguistics, because your conlang will flop. J.R.R. Tolkien, who is famous for not only his series Lord of The Rings and his novel The Hobbit, but also the invented languages within them. He had a long career in linguistics and was well-versed in it, and that is why they’re such a sticking point of his works. It took years of study and practice to create the conlangs in those books. Conlangs are no game. 

Prologues

Most authors do not like prologues for a plethora of reasons, but with science fiction there’s really not a good justification for having one. Start where the action is and input the important highlights from the past as they become important to the reader’s understanding of the present.

Info-Dumping

Long paragraphs or pages upon pages describing the setting or the way the character is feeling and so-on has no place in any book, let alone science fiction which is already packed to the brim with detail no matter what. Sprinkle detail in as it becomes relevant instead of getting it all out in one spot and then expecting the reader to see the significance in every one. 

Over-Explanation

It’s good practice to avoid over-description of things that don’t matter. The general rule of thumb is show, don’t tell, but also, don’t bore the reader with 3 sentences describing each button on a control panel that the main character walks past once and never appears again. 

Overly-Complicated Names

This is simply a pet-peeve of a lot of people, and it doesn’t really add anything to your story. It’s cliche and kind of laughable when a writer names their character “Celeste Apollo Saturn” or something like that. Sure, it makes you feel original, but it doesn’t add to the reader’s experience much. It’s okay to have unique, space-themed names, just don’t overdo it.

Not Exploring

Overthink your world. Overthink your characters. Overthink the details. Explore all the possibilities. The better you know your world and everything in it, the more vivid your storytelling will be, even if 80% of the details you’ve explored are left out. You should be an expert in your story, because that will make you tell it better.

Regurgitating Popular Sci-Fi

Please don’t rewrite Star Trek, Star Wars, The Avengers, etc. and just change the names. There’s a difference between taking a trope or a popular type of science fiction story and putting your own twist or speculation on it, and handing your reader a book version of an existing story.

Not Thinking Critically About Fictional Elements

"Apply logic in places where it wasn’t intended to exist. If assured that the Queen of the Fairies has a necklace made of broken promises, ask yourself what it looks like. If there is magic, where does it come from? Why isn’t everyone using it? What rules will you have to give it to allow some tension in your story? How does society operate? Where does the food come from? You need to know how your world works."

- Terry Pratchett

Underestimating The Audience

Your audience can deduce things, and doesn’t need every implication explained to them. You don’t need to beat the symbolism and implications into their brain by constantly alluding to it or reiterating it in a million different ways. Subtext is important, and it should be left as subtext, otherwise there’s no need for thinking about the story and your reader will forget it (or worse, be irritated by it).

Leaving Plot Holes Because You Think Nobody Will Notice

Don’t do this. Just don’t. There’s always going to be someone who notices even the most minute details that are not explained when they should be, and then shares with a friend, and then it becomes a thing. If the thought “eh, I don’t have to include this detail because nobody will notice that this whole scene is ridiculous without it” crosses your mind, kill it. However, there’s a difference between a plot hole and a detail that was cut due to irrelevance, and that’s explained in the next point.

Forgetting To Actually Deliver Information

You, after months or even years of planning, may forget to include important details for the reader’s understanding due to the fact that overtime they seem so obvious to you. Be careful about this, and make sure that every scene you write is set up with the information the reader needs to know in order to understand what’s going on. This is easy to do as long as you have someone on the outside who can tell you where things get confusing and where the holes are. 

Putting World Building Before Storytelling

You’re telling a story, and it’s important that you have an actual story to tell before you develop the world around it. Not every detail you plan out will be relevant to the story and won’t make it to the final draft, and that’s okay. Put the story first, and don’t sacrifice the reader’s focus to add detail that doesn’t enhance the story, because it will take away from it instead. 

Poor Choice Of Writing Style

point of view, tense, person You should be very careful about the stylistic decisions you make about the way in which you will deliver your story to the reader, because this is often what makes sci-fi convoluted and boring. The three main details you need to decide on carefully are which point of view you tell the story from, so which character you’re choosing to focus on, the tense  (past, present, or future), and person(first, second, or third). Most stories are told in third person surrounding the main character in past tense. Future tense and second person are pretty rare, but can be pulled off by authors who are willing to take on the challenge (though I don’t recommend it if you’re not willing to do a lot of problem solving and workshopping in following drafts).

Ignoring The Speculative Aspect

When your story deals with something like, say, time travel, you need to not only imagine the implications for your characters’ present, but their future along with everyone else’s. You also have to recognize that small changes may have a butterfly effect, but the universe has a way of straightening history out, and not all of them will have eternal lasting effects on the future. You’re speculating, and speculating doesn’t stop at how your characters’ situations change at the immediate moment, but also in the long run, as well as what implications come with each new detail you change between your world and ours.

Not Planning

This genre is not for the writers who identify as pantsers rather than planners. This genre is very, very difficult to approach as even a very organized author, and its readers are typically very observant and nit-picky. That isn’t a bad thing. It’s a great thing, as long as you’re prepared for what you’re in for. 

Historical Absolutes

Mark Vorenkamp actually explained this really well in this article, so I recommend heading over there because he articulates it way better than I ever could.

You’re Not A Scientist (And That’s Okay)

Accept that you’re not a world-famous scientist and that you don’t have all the answers or all the research to back up the speculation and estimation that comes with science fiction. That’s okay, and as long as you do your best to know what you’re talking about and do as much research as possible to add substance to detail, you’re fine. This is fiction, after all. Not a dissertation. 

This article is really, really detailed and extensive, and it’s a good continuation of what I’ve covered in this article. I recommend giving it a read if you’re about to sink your teeth into the editing or second-draft onward of your story, because it further examines things like the use of passive voice in sci-fi, and other, more advanced details of writing for this genre specifically. 

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[xfcklprtehkrx]

Malex vs Miluca #1

So I feel like I have been rambling about all my personal suppositions about the Malex ship without really explaining them, so here I go:

Michael had no interest in Maria until now (now to be explained in a moment), and since Alex has been back he had no interest in anyone else but Alex, despite that apparently being part of his repertoire.  Maria alludes to this while they are alone by saying something like ‘there’s a lot of single girls here so why aren’t you trying to pick one of them up?’  This is a behavior she has apparently seen many times.

So on to ‘now’.  The first time Michael and Maria sleep together for him, it’s comfort.  It’s the same day this happens:

His reaction here shows he’s pretty devastated and his reaction when Alex finds out about their night together is also pretty clear. Guilt, as evidenced by the look on his face and the evasive eye contact.  Like he cheated, but they aren’t together, so it wasn’t really cheating, unless in his mind and heart he still feels like they are together.  Then he tries to hide the necklace from Alex’s view (even though damage already done) so it’s not slapping Alex in the face.  It could also be a ‘man, worst timing ever’ thing, but I didn’t feel that way.

After everything happens with his mother and Noah, he just wants to get away.  It’s too much.  We see that here:

Michael is the one who always wanted to know more, and now he’s telling Max, who’s finally on board, to stop.  I suspect it’s because right now, he’s seen too much, knows too much, and he wants to step away.  Maria is the only person in his life who doesn’t know.

This scene also tells us what he wants to do for the time being.  Try to be happy, and right now, he can’t do that with Alex.  Right now when he looks at Alex he sees his father. The death of his mother is too fresh. The pain is too close to the surface.

Then of course there’s this:

I know the general thought is he’s talking about Alex, but I think it’s more than that.  He’s also talking about his mother.  He loved her and he lost her in the same moment.  Alex’s father was responsible for that loss, and unfortunately for Alex it’s guilt by association.  However, once Michael starts to work through the pain, that won’t be the case anymore, and he’s going to remember that the person he loves is Alex.

Yes, he calls it a ‘crash landing’ but let’s be real, it is.  When they are together they are drawn together like magnets and they smash together.  Sometimes it’s sexual and sometimes it’s arguing.  It’s also how potent their emotions are for each other.  They run high, both good and bad, and when it’s mostly bad, which right now it is since they are an epic failure at communication, it’s exhausting. They argue around their problems neither one really saying what they want to say, or apologizing.  Alex is ready to do that in 1X13.  Instead of showing up, Michael runs away.  When he’s ready, I think that will change.

It funny because even though Max and Isobel are also aliens, it’s Alex he actually has the most in common with.  I mean they both have abusive childhoods.  They both feel out of place, separate, and unwanted even though they are part of a group.  Michael because he was left behind at the orphanage and Alex because his father didn’t want him.  To me, this is part of the reason why Michael is offended when Alex doesn’t want anyone to know about them.  It’s also why he is so upset when Alex judges him.  Michael needs to be accepted.  Once Alex is officially discharged I think he will be able to do that. They are both super connected to music, though Alex left it behind because of his father.  Based on what he told Michael, he wants to reclaim himself, and music will definitely be a part of that self.  Due to their childhoods they are both almost pathologically afraid to show any weakness. Alex becomes the tough veteran who lost a leg but brushed it off, and Michael is the unaffected apathetic asshole (which he even allows Isobel to believe).  They connected naturally and opened up to each other when they were young.  After 10 years apart, walls are up, but I think if they try they can go back to that.

Okay, when Michael goes to Maria, I think he thinks he’s doing what Max said he should, moving forward. However, I really think that he was giving Michael permission to hope and let go of the bad.  It’s why he heals his hand, so every time he looks down he isn’t reminded of how love burned him.  Everything he says during this scene draws back directly to this scene:

And this conversation is specifically about Alex, and how Alex makes Michael feel.  He wants Michael to reclaim that feeling instead of being afraid of it.

Lastly, not only does he say he loves Alex right before he goes to Maria (and if it didn’t die after 10 years apart I doubt it died on his drive over there), but when you describe your magnetic pull to someone this way:

I don’t foresee a future where you are able to stay away from them forever. Trying to stop their literal magnetic revolution around each other, is like trying to pull a planet out of orbit... impossible.

Also, when Maria reveals her feelings to him, he doesn’t really seem pleased. His face seems conflicted, like he feels guilty.  If he wanted to be with her at that time, wouldn’t he be happy about it?  Why not smile?

Anyway, this is my break down of all this.  I could be 100% wrong, and I’m totally okay with that, since they are conjectures.  What this isn’t, is an invitation to people who want to argue to come flex.  You may think I am wrong, and that Michael and Maria are soul mates.  We are all entitled to our opinions.  However, even though your soul is burning to drop 9 paragraphs about how wrong I am and why, I’d appreciate you keeping your opinion reserved for your own posts.  

[blackjack-15]

A Surprisingly Thoughtful Spin — Thoughts on: The Haunted Carousel (CAR)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it.  

This game also has an additional section between “The Mystery” and “The Suspects” entitled “The Theme”, where I’ll talk about the philosophy within this game, and how it stands out and solidifies its place as a truly “Expanded” game due to that thoughtfulness.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with links to previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: CAR, brief mentions of CLK, CRY, HAU, and ASH, brief but slightly spoiler-y mention of the opening act of SPY.

The Intro:

The Haunted Carousel is, without preamble, a fantastic game.

    I know I normally start these with a brief analysis of what stands out about the game or what it’s done for the series as a whole — and I will do that, never fear — but I think it’s important to establish first and foremost that, while it’s not an Overtly Beloved game, it very much should be, and it doesn’t get enough near enough credit. Especially since, in my opinion, the many great modern games’ tight plots and varied protagonists have their roots in this excellent game.

With a logical and ever-progressing plot, characters who feel like actual people, beautiful visuals, and historical backstories that round out the present day plots (plots!! In the plural!! Huzzah!!), Haunted Carousel may not be a wild ride, but it is a consistent, fun, and surprisingly thoughtful one.

CAR is perhaps the odd one out of its fellow Expanded games (SSH through SHA) in that its location isn’t really anything immersive. You don’t spend your time outdoors in thick atmosphere nor surrounded by trinkets of the Maya nor stuck on an old ranch, but between a bright hotel room and a shut-down (but not rundown) amusement park during the day. Its historical background isn’t linked to a specific area, there isn’t a “standout” scene featured in every gifset or trailer, and the wackiest the game really gets is expecting the player to enjoy Barnacle Blast.

In most ways, in other words, CAR is an exceptionally quiet game in the middle of quite a few loud ones, which might account for it not getting as much credit as it deserves. There are flashier games, there are longer games (CAR is quite short), and there are games with better and more memorable cutscenes…but there’s not many games in the series (and none of out the expanded games as well-told and sincere as CAR.

Not only is CAR a lot of fun to play, but it also takes care to mean something – to tell an actual story rather than a bare-bones whodunnit. The characters all have their reasons for being there and being involved, and they all have something to say as well — some directly contrasting each other. CAR doesn’t feel really like a computer game where everything is laid for the Convenience of the Plot and the suspects are only there to robotically deliver plot points and incriminate themselves. Rather, it feels like a whole story with real people where a crime happens to occur, but not everything revolves around that central plot point.

It’s also remarkable in the presence of a protagonist, which isn’t really something that Nancy Drew games have done yet. Nancy herself doesn’t count because at this point, Nancy doesn’t gain or lose anything from the mystery; she’s not the one with a problem, nor does she discover anything about herself. The Nik-era games are notable for their strong protagonists (or, often, dual protagonists with Nancy acting as one out of the two), but CAR really is the first one to take a character and have Nancy be a part of their story, rather than having Nancy act as a magnet to four pieces of metal and a mystery.

Mechanically, CAR is much the same as games that have come before it, as we won’t see another big upset until SHA, with the addition of Nancy’s cell phone (oh blessed day) and, most importantly, a task list. Fans had been asking for a task list since MHM (which sorely needed one so that you could at least identify which hanzi you had already seen) and CAR delivers that long-needed mechanical update.

The historical backstory is more recent than in most games, happening not in Antiquity or even during the 1700s but instead in the modern(ish) day, featuring the man behind the titular Carousel’s horses, Rolfe Kessler. The backstory doesn’t feel like an appendage like in DOG, but really establishes why the Carousel is so important and helps serve the theme of the game (more on that later).

The last thing that’s really important to note in CAR is its villain. By now, HER is reasonably okay at camouflaging its villain for at least the first third of the game, and here does a good job keeping the player in the dark for the first bit. CAR is also HER’s first successful attempt at the friendly villain archetype. Elliott Chen is pleasant, accommodating, friendly, funny, and incredibly likable. He just also happens to be a forger stretched thinner than he’s comfortable with.

Ultimately, The Haunted Carousel is a great game with a huge thematic presence, likable characters, and an honest character arc. Not only should it be a must-play for any new fan, it should be on the top of any older fan’s re-play list, both for its intrinsic value and for its obvious influence on the plots and protagonists of the modern Nancy Drew games.

The Title:

As far as titles go, The Haunted Carousel is a meh one – admittedly, it’s probably the weakest part of the entire game. It does tell us what our focal point will be — the Carousel — and the mystery surrounding the focal point – that it’s haunted — but, like DOG, it doesn’t really go much past that.

After completing the game, the title does mean a little more — the events of the game are a carousel of hauntings in that they seem to be cyclical and mysterious, but are really a farce — a simple fair ride with pretty decorations but simple parts. The carousel itself also points towards the villain, who’s the only artist out of the cast, and seems to allude to Joy’s cycle of sadness — she’s haunted as well.

It’s not a brilliant title, all things considered, but because the game is so good, it’s only a minor blip on the radar rather than something symptomatic of the game’s value.

The Mystery:

Paula Santos, a friend of Carson Drew’s, hears about Nancy’s penchant for solving mysteries and decides to call her in to investigate some thefts and sabotage that Captain’s Cove, an amusement park in New Jersey, has been encountering.

Nancy learns that first, the lead horse on the carousel was stolen, followed by the roller coaster losing power and causing a serious crash. The last straw for Paula was the merry-go-round turning on in the middle of the night, and Captain’s Cove has been shut down until someone — perhaps a badly-attired ginger fresh out of high school — can figure out what’s causing these problems.

It’s Nancy’s job to explore the shut-down amusement park, talk to the leftover staff, help reconstruct a carousel horse, and use such Astoundingly Modern Technologies as a cell phone and a laptop in order to crack the case behind The Haunted Carousel.

As a mystery, CAR is a pretty good one; it’s the age-old Nancy Drew Sabotage set up, but with the twist of happening at an amusement park. There are plenty of clues and even more red herrings, and the attempt to keep you guessing until the 3/4ths mark is a solid attempt.

I don’t know if this mystery feels more fun because it’s at a place like an amusement park or if really is that fun, but the overall effect is the same, and CAR is a delight to solve. The backstory and present story fit together like jigsaw pieces, and the suspects are both interesting and a ton of fun to question.

Is CAR an overly difficult or surprising mystery? Not to the modern mind, I would say, especially given the mystery fans’ inclination to suspect the friendliest suspect (a hole-in-one suspicion here). But it is incredibly fun to see how everything is put together, and it’s a water-tight mystery, if not air-tight.

It’s okay that the mystery isn’t the absolute greatest, however, because it isn’t the most profound part of the game.

The Theme:

Prior to CAR, Nancy Drew games didn’t really bother with the concept of theme. It was new and novel and difficult enough to design detective computer games that ran efficiently with decent graphics and to put them out twice a year that HER focused, quite rightly, on that rather than on trying more complex ideas.

With the formula and the game engine firmly established, however, and a small but fervent fanbase ready to devour the latest game — and being in charge of their own distribution — HER was ready to expand their games in a way separate from technology or location: it was ready for a strong theme.

As a character, Nancy deals with some pretty heavy stuff during the course of her mysteries. In the early games, we don’t really see it affecting her that much, which is a product of simple writing and, in my opinion, the child-like resilience of an 18 year old. While she has her occasional line like “to think I almost made friends with a jewel thief!” in TRT, these cases tend to engage Nancy on an intellectual level rather than an emotional one.

CAR shifts that narrative slightly and allows Nancy to bond with a suspect — Joy Trent — over their shared loss of a mother. Joy has also lost her father recently and is stuck in mourning over both her father and her childhood. Her father, having realized how both repressed and depressed Joy is, decided to build her a robot to help her get in touch with her childhood again. In other words, the jumping off point of the story is a father who wanted good things, happiness, and safety for his daughter, and tried to go about it in a way that he thought would be best.

If you’re hearing echoes of SPY here, you’re correct. The difference here being that Joy’s repression of tragedy leads her into a pit of inaction while stewing over that tragedy, while Nancy’s repression (which I’ll talk about more in my TMB meta) pushes her to action while ignoring the driving force of that tragedy.

CAR is also, I believe, the first time that Nancy mentions the death of her mother to a suspect, and it’s a really humanizing moment for her. As much as Nancy can be driven, tactless, and goal-oriented, she’s not a robot, and she does have personal as well as professional reasons behind the things she does and the characters she tends to bond with.

The first big thematic point in CAR is the importance of connection. It juxtaposes morose, prickly Joy (who doesn’t want a friend but gets one anyway) against our villain, who is friendly and smiling and charming but is by no means someone Nancy should make friends with. It also asks a question to tie into this theme: are those who are mean bad, and are those who are bad always mean? It’s almost a Shakespearean theme (“one may smile, and smile, and be a villain”) and it’s well-placed here.

The second theme comes up in the backstory about Rolfe Kessler, a genius who struggled all his life with mental illness, eventually ending with him never getting the credit he deserved and without the companionship of the woman he loved, Amelia.

It’s a tragic story in a way that HER hasn’t really done tragic stories yet — MHM has a basically happy ending, in TRT by the end the implication is that Marie is finally going to get the credit and un-blackening of her name that she deserves, FIN’s is a whole mess so we’re not even gonna try to dissect that, and in SSH the Whisperer is vindicated. 

There’s no descendant of Rolfe in this game; no historian ready to exculpate him, no family members or friends to remember him fondly to Nancy over the phone. Rolfe is in the game, as in his life, alone. It’s a tragedy, and the way that Nancy and the player discover his genius and his story is quiet, as befitting the man.

Through Rolfe’s story we address the twin themes of remembrance — that how you’re remembered will generally be the way you lived (think DED’s dénouement for further insight) in the time that you lived — and of the role of trauma and struggle in life. Rolfe’s struggle against his illness didn’t make him a genius, but it did stand in his way of achieving all that he could.

And that’s where we tie into Joy and the main theme of the game. Once again, we see a person being limited by their mental illness and their struggle against it, and a world that doesn’t really take that struggle into effect. Instead of Joy being alone in this struggle, however, she has help — not just the small help from Nancy, but the help and support of her father through Miles the Magnificent Memory Machine.

Miles was created by Darryl Trent to help Joy unlock her childhood memories and move past her trauma in a healthy way – and only if she was actually dedicated to the task. The riddles, while not hugely difficult, are enough to dissuade Joy from ever really trying to get past them, as she’s not ready to open that lid just yet. As anyone who’s experienced mental illness (or had a close loved one experience it) knows, there’s no way for you to improve and grow if you’re not ready to receive the help you need.

Opening up just a little bit to Nancy and having someone who doesn’t have to care about her problems actually care is enough to springboard Joy to take the first step and try to tackle the riddles again with a little help. Over the course of the game, Joy gets more and more ready and less resentful towards her past and finds the strength to confront herself and her illness.

While the trauma of losing her mother in the way that she lost her (not to mention the added weight of her family’s financial situation) didn’t make Joy strong, the choice to struggle through and come out the better on the other side does make her end the game stronger than when she started and with more — pardon the pun — joy in her life. That progression is what makes her the protagonist, but is also sets her up to have the theme hand-delivered to her.

Miles states that it was Darryl’s belief that life is simply made up of memories. This is why it’s such a big deal that Joy’s memories of her mother are repressed, because her brain is actively erasing her life. As Joy moves through those memories with Nancy and Miles’ help, she gains back her life and is shown that, while struggle is a part of life, it doesn’t define life — and that a good life isn’t necessarily a life made up of only good things.

The presence of these themes (and of the final theme in particular) is what makes CAR such a strong game. Though the characters are delightful, the aesthetic is fabulous, the Hardy Boys are here, and the history and puzzles are fun, it’s CAR’s strong thematic elements interwoven with its plot that really makes it something special.

So let’s get on with those characters, shall we?

The Suspects:

Joy Trent is the current bookkeeper of Captain’s Cove and basically the man in charge apart from Paula. Her father Darryl used to work at/own half of Captain’s Cove, but died poor (specifically of a heart attack in bankruptcy court, poor man) after having to sell his part of the park to Paula. Thus, Joy holds a grudge against Paula even as she does good work for the park.

She’s also suffering a bit of childhood amnesia due to the trauma of her mother dying when she was young — the first of the women featured in this game series to share that backstory with Nancy. This forms a lot of the story’s B plot (with the historical backstory of the game being relegated to the C-plot) as Nancy and a funny little computer help her to move past this emotional block, confront her past, and progress to a better future.

As a suspect, Joy isn’t a bad pick at all, in part because she is responsible for a portion of the sabotage — the shut-down of the roller coaster while it was in operation – over bitterness for her father’s ignominious end. This little instance is helpful for diverting attention away from the true saboteur — though she doesn’t mean to — and it helps round out Joy as more than just the sad daddy’s girl (and resident protagonist) that she would be otherwise.

Well, other than her magical talking robot companion.

Miles the Magnificent Memory Machine isn’t really a culprit, but he definitely needs to be noted here, as he’s the best help that Nancy has outside of the Hardy Boys. Miles knows everything about Joy, yet he can’t move the story forward without Nancy completing a little task after task that unlocks the next portion of his (rather, by proxy, Joy’s father’s) quest to help Joy become a well-rounded, non-traumatized person who can face her past.

I’ve said enough about Miles’ part in the Theme section above, so I’ll move on without too much in this area.

Harlan Bishop is the security guard of Captain’s Cove and an ex-forger in a past life. He’s also voiced by Jonah Von Spreecken, best known for his long-running stint as Frank Hardy and for his writing of Francy fanfiction, God bless the man.

Harlan went to jail for forging checks and had a hard time getting a job once he was free, but Paula offered him a job as a security guard at Captain’s Cove and he’s been loyal since, even taking a pay cut in order to keep his job as the park was shut down. He’s also hilarious, giving such immortal quotes as “the whale is getting impatient” when trying to summon Nancy to the security office.

As a suspect, Harlan is interesting. He shares the key identity of the villain — a forger — as a red herring and as a way to complicate the mystery, and he does do something wrong in that he spies on Ingrid to get the passcode to her office. Sure, he does it for a good and innocent reason — he wants to be the best security guard he can possibly be, and that means learning everything about the park — but it’s still wrong to do, and Nancy (in a rather supercilious way) doesn’t hesitate to call him on it (and, once again rather arrogantly, for his past. Nancy’s done way worse than forgery in her hobby as a detective, after all).

Ultimately, Harlan is too good a guy to actually cause the problems and thefts at Captain’s Cove, and stays on with Paula even after getting other job offers once he helps Nancy recover the stolen lead horse for the carousel. He serves as Nancy’s “buddy” character after the mess with Nancy reporting him finishes its business.

Elliot Chen is the art director — and perpetually behind art director — of Captain’s Cove and our friendly neighborhood villain for the game. Elliott is the first to greet Nancy with a smile and a joke, and is friendly in a way that instantly suckers the player in.

HER has been trying since TRT’s Lisa to create a villain that’s actually a sort of friend to Nancy – or at least passes off as someone becoming her friend throughout the course of the game, and they nail it with Elliott. He even mentions Poppy Dada as a sort of inside joke with the player that makes one easily warm up to him.

As a suspect, Elliott is perfect. He’s sly enough to take advantage of what others do and fold it into his plan (the roller coaster) and to use people’s superstitions to his advantage both for privacy for his schemes and for driving the price of the carousel horses up.

He’s got just enough clues pointing towards everyone else — taking the eccentricities of his coworkers not only in stride but in good humor and flexibility towards his plans — and a pretty water-tight excuse for falling behind (procrastination — everyone knows artists and other creative types are the Worst Procrastinators) to help him pull off the vast majority of his plan without anyone being the wiser.

In short, Elliott is exactly the kind of character that this game needed, and his presence is a joy — even if (or perhaps especially because) he’s the villain.

Ingrid Corey is the chief engineer of Captain’s Cove, a graduate of OSU, and resident hippy-dippy “nutritionist” who can diagnose a B3 deficiency just by looking at Nancy. She’s a little crazy to talk to, but seems like at first she could just be using that to throw our resident teen detective off the trail.

As a suspect, Ingrid checks all the boxes once again, and not just because she, like everyone else, does something wrong. Ingrid, genius engineer that she is, decides to let a friend borrow the roller coaster’s blueprints to study them for a hefty fee, garnering her enough money for a 20K$ watch and enough left over to look for a new car.

Nancy also suspects her of insurance fraud with a man who got injured on the roller coaster when Joy sabotaged it, but it turns out in a show of startling naiveté, Ingrid just wanted to recommend a neck cream to the unfortunate man rather than help him profit off of his injury.

She doesn’t really become Nancy’s buddy, but she is remarkable in that she sort of disappears for most of the game. At the beginning, it makes her look a bit suspicious, but towards the end it just becomes clear that the game is less focused in Ingrid, who doesn’t really support the theme or move the plot along, and more worried about establishing its meaning and helping Nancy solve the case in time.

The Favorite:

While it should be obvious that my favorite part of this game is its theme and the associated thematic elements, I’ll try to branch out here a bit….though not so far out as to ignore the Hardy Boys, who are once again wonderful in this game. Honestly, most games with the Hardy Boys present are better than most games without the Hardy Boys. (Though of course, there are a few exceptions (notably ASH and SPY).)

CAR has one of my favorite casts (and favorite villains) of the entire series, so they’ll be here as well. It’s such a nice change of pace from games like FIN and DOG where the casts are lackluster to go to games like CAR that are so strong in making you care about the characters.

My single favorite thing about CAR, however, is the presence of a protagonist in Joy Trent. The first games (and quite a few of the middle games, it should be noted) treat Nancy as the main character and lack a protagonist completely, ignoring the fact that Nancy really can’t be a main character in the half-ghost (personality-wise) state she’s in, especially given that most of her dialogue is “ask a question, get an answer” rather than showing any real personality or particular motive beyond solving the case. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why that was the case given the limitations of the early 2000s and of HER in particular, but it does remove any possibility of Nancy being able to be the protagonist.

That’s why Joy’s presence is such a delight, honestly. She’s the character with the problem to solve — her past traumas — and the game carries Nancy through helping her in a way that Nancy’s never really helped anyone before. Sure, Nancy solves the mystery, but what she really does is offer peace to Joy, who can now grow up a little further and move on. CAR gives Nancy a purpose that will be improved and expanded upon in games like CLK, CRY, HAU, and GTH.

My favorite puzzle is the entire puzzle track with the carousel (including the conversation with Tink, who is a wonderful phone friend). There’s something super cool about going inside a carousel and finding out how the magic works, and there’s so much to explore in it that it’s really a magical place, even though it’s not actually anything supernatural.

My favorite moment in the game (other than the final ‘battle’) is the conversation with the Hardy Boys after Nancy nearly gets run over due to her own clumsiness. A classic.

The Un-Favorite:

Because of the care taken with CAR, there won’t be a lot in this section.

My least favorite puzzle is probably the mini-plot revolving around fixing Barnacle Blast — and then playing Barnacle Blast. While it’s not a horrible game in and of itself, it just doesn’t really fit the overall aesthetic of the puzzles of Captain’s Cove, and for me it sticks out quite a bit as a “oh we need a puzzle here what can we think of that the kids like” and came up with an arcade game in a vintage-style amusement park. It’s a bit off.

The stenography isn’t a great one as well, but I give it props for fitting the atmosphere and theme, so it’s not my least favorite.

My least favorite moment in the game…is probably where Nancy knocks over Elliott’s paint, as it seems to be a Big Moment but — Nancy doesn’t actually ruin anything, and it makes Elliott look a little silly.

I know that most of the games (especially as early as CAR) didn’t want to have Nancy do anything wrong in the non-second-chance story of the game, but actually having Elliot forgive her for messing up something important would have been a big step in establishing his character and throwing suspicion off of him — not to mention justifying his even further behind schedule as the game goes on.

The Fix:

So how would I fix CAR?

There’s not a lot of work to be done here, honestly. Take out Barnacle Blast and substitute it with a more on-theme mini-game, lengthen out the game a bit by playing up Ingrid’s plotline along with everyone else’s and perhaps giving Elliott something to do in the latter half of the game so it’s not so obvious by that point that he’s the Villain, and you’ve pretty much clinched it without any real re-working.

Like I said in the last paragraph of the above section, a tweak of the cutscene with “ruining” Elliott’s work would help his and Nancy’s storyline to have a different and improved feel, but that’s pretty much it as far as concrete changes go.

The beauty of CAR is that its simplicity actually works, rather than feeling bare-bones or underwritten. It’s not a difficult or complex mystery, but that’s not the point of Nancy’s being there or of the game as a thematic whole.

Sure, CAR deals with some pretty heavy themes such as loss, loyalty, debt, revenge, trauma, shades of mental illness, and even the question of is a bad person necessarily a mean person, but it accepts those bad things in stride and knows that they’re necessary in order to tell a tale of resilience and a happy ending. Miles the Magnificent Memory Machine delivers that theme to both Nancy and to the player, after all: “even bad memories have a place in a good life”.

[schraubd]

Rate That Apology, Part 9: AIPAC!

A few days ago, it emerged that AIPAC had ran some rather ... aggressive ads targeting Democrats. "The radicals in the Democratic Party," the ad text read, "are pushing their anti-Semitic and anti-Israel policies down the throats of the American people." Whoof. The ads also linked to a petition which said that "It’s critical that we protect our Israeli allies especially as they face threats from Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah ISIS and — maybe more sinister — right here in the U.S. Congress." Double whoof. When I first saw these ads, they were so out-of-character for AIPAC (which -- reputation notwithstanding -- generally tries to avoid wading into partisan frays) that I assumed they were fake. But they were not, and AIPAC has apologized for running them. So let's rate that apology, shall we? The apology is four paragraphs long, and it is interesting while it starts off pretty good, each paragraph is worse than the one which comes before it. Let's take them one at a time:

We offer our unequivocal apology to the overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress who are rightfully offended by the inaccurate assertion that the poorly worded, inflammatory advertisement implied.

That's not bad! What I like most about this is the phrase "rightfully offended". Not "those who were offended", not "if you were offended", not "read it as offensive". The apology owns up that the ad was, objectively, offensive. It also agrees that the ad was inaccurate and inflammatory. "Poorly worded" is a bit of a hedge, but in the context of the rest of the paragraph I don't think it detracts from the message.

We appreciate the broad and reliable support that Democrats in Congress have consistently demonstrated for Israel. The bipartisan consensus that Democrats and Republicans have established on this issue forms the foundation of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

This is also generally fine. It's less "apologetic" than the first paragraph, to be sure. But had these been the only two paragraphs, I think this would have been an overall pretty decent, unequivocal apology. Alas....

The ad, which is no longer running, alluded to a genuine concern of many pro-Israel Democrats about a small but growing group, in and out of Congress, that is deliberately working to erode the bipartisan consensus on this issue and undermine the U.S.-Israel relationship.

I understand the temptation to try to explain, in one's apology, why you said the thing you're apologizing for. I'm not going to say one should never do that, but it's a high-risk proposition and it rarely pays off. Mostly, that's because it comes off as an effort to dodge responsibility and to rehabilitate what actually matters, which is the underlying cause. But here we see pitfall of a different and more ironic sort. The purpose of the ad was to express concern about the erosion of a bipartisan consensus around Israel? Well gosh golly, what do they think this ad did if not contribute to that erosion? It'd be like writing an apology for cursing out prominent entertainer and then saying you did it only to draw attention about diminishing civility in public life.

We regret that the ad's imprecise wording distorted our message and offended many who are deeply committed to this cause. We look forward to continuing our work with friends in Congress to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship and oppose any efforts to undermine its deep, bipartisan support.

Oh how far we've fallen from the first paragraph. At the start, "poor wording" was contextualized in language that straightforwardly accepted responsibility. Here, it stands alone, suggesting that the only problem with the advertisement was in its choice in rhetoric and that it was expressing an important point poorly. Nooope. The advertisement called Democrats antisemites who were ramming anti-Israel politics down the throats of the American people in a fashion potentially more sinister than ISIS. We're a well ways past the point of poor wording here. AIPAC needs to actually reckon with what it did here, and why it was wrong. If the beginning of the apology seemed to gesture in that direction, it's gone by the end. I'll add one more note. For the most part in this series we've rated the apology of individuals, not organizations. And there are certain additional elements of an institutional apology that don't make a lot of sense for an individual. An individual can't "discipline" or "fire" the person responsible, nor can they really implement processes to "guard against this happening again". But an institution can, and maybe should be expected to. I don't think AIPAC has said anything on either of these fronts -- who was responsible, what actions (if any) were taken to discipline them, and what guardrails have been put up to ensure we don't see a repeat. That's worrisome, and knocks them down a grade. In general, my view of AIPAC differs substantially from the conventional wisdom. The latter sees AIPAC as this titan of Washington politics that brutally crushes even the slightest deviation from Likudnik policy. I see AIPAC as a paper tiger that generally seeks to cultivate relationships more than enforce dogma and has largely struggled to flex any concrete muscle in circumstances where there is significant political energy pushing against it. This truth is masked because for many years there rarely was any political energy pushing against -- but you see it in the case of, e.g., the Iran Deal, where AIPAC really did go all out to sink it and made pretty much zero headway. The problem AIPAC is running into is twofold. First, it wants to be bipartisan in an era of increased polarization. And second, it has a staff which I suspect actually is mostly left-of-center paired with a donor base that is increasingly right-wing. As much as folks like me see AIPAC as engaging in partisan attacks against Democrats (for all its talk about how it "supports a two-state solution", one never sees it drop $40 million to attack Republicans for abandoning it), it's also under a lot of pressure from its right flank which wants to see it really take the gloves off and explicitly come out as an anti-Democratic actor. They are tired of what they see as AIPAC coddling Democrats and want it to announce what they already know: Democrats are the anti-Israel party. These ads almost certainly came either from actors within AIPAC who agree with that sentiment, or as a result of pressure from external donors who are pushing that narrative. Hyperpolarization cuts both ways: Republicans, too, have little use for even a politically-friendly organization if it continues to gesture at straddling the middle. They don't want earnest efforts at cultivating bipartisanship; they want an attack dog. AIPAC isn't paying me for advice, but I'll offer some anyway: this would be a very short-sighted strategy. It's not just because explicitly aligning with the right would be perhaps a boon for the Republican Party but a disaster for pro-Israel politics. It's also that the right-wing actors AIPAC would embolden are ones whom AIPAC has surprisingly little influence over. Even as its reputation has drifted right-ward over the past few years, AIPAC has progressively lost influence among Republican elected officials who prefer to take their cues from more explicitly partisan outlets like ZOA or CUFI. AIPAC might rule the roost of "bipartisan" Israel talk, but it's hard to see what their niche is as just one explicitly right-wing group among many. For better or for worse, though, I doubt AIPAC is going to be able to right ship. It's just too big, and archaic, and creaky, and doesn't have the institutional adroitness to adjust to the new era its finding itself in. Unfortunately for people like me, these sorts of transitions are difficult, and there will be adjustment pains. Is it fun watching AIPAC get used as a punching bag, accused of forming an "unholy alliance" with Islamophobes and White Nationalists while prominent Democratic candidates nod along? Not for me -- but then again, perhaps AIPAC should have thought of that before handing out money to Frank Gaffney or putting Adam Milstein on its national board. More broadly, to the extent the pro-Israel movement aligns itself with Trump, that ipso facto represents allying with an Islamophobe and White Nationalist of the highest order. The sad truth is that AIPAC is mostly reaping what it has sown here. We can wince at intemperate rhetoric all we want, but the fact is the claim that AIPAC has aligned itself with -- has supported and is supported by -- at least some Islamophobes and White Nationalists is just as strong as the case that Bernie Sanders has aligned himself with antisemites, and the folks getting themselves up in high dudgeon over Elizabeth Warren not rushing to AIPAC's defense hardly would blink at similar accusations being leveled at Sanders (the idea that, if a rally-goer prefaced a question by saying Sanders is "forming an alliance with antisemites and Communists", Donald Trump would do anything but cheer him on is almost as fanciful as the idea that the national media would view it as an unspeakable slander if Trump did nothing more than ignore it). Anyway, I've digressed a bit from rating that apology. So: A good start is undermined, albeit not wholly erased, by a mediocre ending. 5.5/10 via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2Sbr3us

[autumnblogs]

Day 9: Troll Time

Time to get trolled.

https://homestuck.com/story/1527

This is the first of the events that I’ve noticed enough to talk about in Homestuck that alludes to the Alpha Kids. While Roxy on the other side of the scratch is the one actually responsible for the disappearance of Jaspers and the Pumpkins, at this point in the story, we have some pretty good suspects for exactly who disappeared both of them.

I could see myself guessing that Jade’s penpal is one of the trolls, but it wouldn’t be my first guess. I’m going to pay close attention to all of the events on one side of the scratch that are caused by the other side of the scratch, because my theory is that a Scratched Universe, more than anything else, is really terminated rather than truly being retroactively erased. Too much doesn’t make sense from a causal perspective (not necessarily from a temporally linear one) if a scratched universe is actually erased entirely, or even if it is closed off from the rest of existence - why can information enter and leave a Scratched Universe at all from an outside perspective, for example?

Are Side A Side B teleporters, appearifiers, and so on and so on, loopholes? Maybe it has something to do with the nature of Void, the Furthest Ring, and their seeming exclusion from the rules the rest of Paradox Space is required to follow.

The Doylist answer, which in Homestuck is also allowed to be the Watsonian answer, might be that while a Scratched Universe is *materially* erased, information about it is still permitted to propagate through narrative contrivances such as the author. Fenestrated planes can easily be considered narrative contrivances, but if we use this as our theory, it seems like Appearifiers and Sendificators would also have to be Narrative Contrivances (which I’m going to spell with a capital NC from here on out.) I... actually don’t have a problem with this hypothesis, so it’s what I’m going with. Also, since a friend of mine who’s reading this liveblog asked, I’m going to post a link to the tvtropes article on those two terms at the start of this paragraph for anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

Perhaps, given the proclivity for the Void to preserve lost information in the form of dreams and memories, and given the nature of Space as the medium through which events normally propagate (as well as the fundamental medium of storytelling from which all other storytelling mediums derive their medium-ness), and their proximity on the Aspect Wheel, Narrative Contrivances are objects which have are shared between these two domains - as objects associated with the Void, Narrative Contrivances are permitted to follow their own set of rules which to someone outside of the universe are obvious, but to anyone inside the universe are a complete black box, and as objects associated with Space, Narrative Contrivances function as a means by which to propagate information in such a way as to preserve causality, the logical topology of Paradox Space, and with them, the self-fulfilling nature of Paradox Space. They allow the world-line of objects travelling through the narrative to remain consistent, even when they would violate material geographical conventions.

This description of Narrative Contrivances makes me think a lot of things could be Narrative Contrivances, like First Guardians, for example, who can violate the speed of light.

This is all a lot of silly bullshit, but it’s fun to come up with theories to describe and predict Homestuck (and future Homestuck works, even though I’m not terribly invested in them.)

This has been a long Cold Open. More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/1529

John gets cyberbullied!

Man. Cyberbullying has really gone from being an individual concern to being an apocalyptic issue. Who knew? Maybe in writing the trolls and their cyberbullying as being inextricable from the apocalypse, Andrew Hussie predicted this.

I’m not trying to understate John’s issues by comparing them to stuff like massive social media disinformation campaigns - receiving Death Threats as a thirteen year old is terrifying, and on a general level, the fact that this kind of horrible shit was commonplace in the earliest days of social media should have been a big indicator that what was yet to come was going to be so, so much worse.

I’m also not trying to jocularly exaggerate the threat that almost completely lawless social media has on society. If you haven’t already, check out the excellent documentary The Social Dilemma, and then delete your Facebook account if you haven’t already (and since you’re reading my extremely anti-capitalist anti-patriarchy liveblog on tumblr, you’ve probably already done that. If you have, good for you!) And your twitter for good measure, come on, you know who you are. Mabe your tumblr too while you’re at it.

Cyberbullying is part of a larger theme in Homestuck, another one of those things that it’s Capital A About. As a work that is not only about growing up, but specifically about growing up in the information age, Homestuck is repeatedly about the ways that Social Media don’t just bring us together, but keep us apart from one another. Cyberbullying is one of the effects of Social Media pushing people apart - it’s so, so much easier to threaten to kill someone when you don’t have to look them in the eye while you’re doing it, and when you have the anonymity of a string of alphanumeric characters as a name to hide behind.

https://homestuck.com/story/1537

The Black Queen is a very bad woman. It’s always intrigued me that the Queens allow their counterparts’ agents free movement through their territory like this even on the eve (or the advent?) of full-scale war between their kingdoms. PM is just allowed to wander around Derse unsupervised.

I suppose that if even God and Satan can afford each other a bit of token civility while discussing the fates of sinners, so can Prospitians and Dersites.

https://homestuck.com/story/1542

@zeetheus​ John’s definitely proceeds Rose’s bluh.

Rose sips her Mom’s martini for the same reason that she later falls prey to alcoholism. Trying to grow up without help, Rose interprets the martini as a symbol of parental authority, the same way that she interprets the partaking of beverages in general as being a ritual of intimacy with her Mother. Empty signifiers.

https://homestuck.com/story/1549

Jack Noir’s grating voice is so outrageously distracting that it prevents itself as an intrusive thought in the Narrative for PM.

Actually, come to think of it, *all* of the Carapacians talk pretty much exclusively via narration. I wonder if that’s representative of an altered relationship with their narrative reality, which is the first time ever I’ve had that thought pretty much at all.

I always just chalked it up to one of the quirks of Andrew’s writing style, but especially when we take into account the fact that Homestuck is as metanarrative as it is, and that Carapacians are the only characters in Homestuck Proper who interface with the narrative prompt except for the audience, Andrew, and Caliborn himself, I can’t help but wonder. Maybe as living gaming abstractions, in spite of their limited intelligence and abilities, Carapacians have a unique relationship with the narrative laws of Paradox Space (perhaps in the same way that Narrative Contrivances do?)

https://homestuck.com/story/1569

Riffing a little more on the “Fetch Modus as analogous to thought processes” motif previously introduced, Jade’s excellent visualization abilities and vivid imagination serve her well as a Space Player, but tend to misfire, running wild, and seeing patterns where they don’t exist (intrusive thoughts make her see Johnny 5 in her Eclectic Bass and whatever the fuck mecha she’s about to accidentally imagine, I don’t know, I’m not a weeb.) Jade sure does think about robots a lot.

https://homestuck.com/story/1579

I have to say, I consider Terezi’s manipulative abilities to be genuinely pretty strong. I have never known a better way to strongarm me than by pointing out traits that I don’t know whether I feel good or bad about - it just terminates my thought processes.

Although in John’s case, it helps that he is, in fact, a weenie, a stooge, and most importantly, a nice guy. All these facts make him extra manipulatable.

https://homestuck.com/story/1584

<3

I have no reason to believe everyone in Homestuck’s universe isn’t stupidly badass, but I choose to believe that no one is as stupidly badass as the leads because it makes me happy to imagine that these kids are just ridiculously OP superhumans.

(That said, it’s kind of fucked up the level of violence that these literal children are involved in, maybe I shouldn’t get so excited about it. Should we be enthusiastic about the kids’ triumph over their dangerous enemies? Horrified by the travails they are being put through? Probably both motherfuckin’ things.

https://homestuck.com/story/1588

I think about this page a lot.

Rose Lalonde is a very dangerous young lady. She is ruthless, pragmatic, calculating, and cool. She’s even a killer, and literally just killed two imps before fighting this Ogre!

Why is she choosing to show mercy to it now? Is she just trying to get Dave’s goat? Maybe the answer is, deep down, she doesn’t really want to hurt anyone or anything.

https://homestuck.com/story/1589

Kanaya and Dave have a great relationship and I love them as friends very much. I wish dearly that there was more of them in the webcomic. They have approximately the same relationship with authenticity, which is to say that they don’t have an insincere bone in their respective bodies, but practice insincerity nonetheless to impress someone they care about.

For Kanaya relating to Rose, I think it’s a lot more innocent.

https://homestuck.com/story/1590

The least eloquent character in Homestuck has his brief, and I’m pretty sure only encounter with the most eloquent character in Homestuck.

Poor, poor Tavros. While Rose is pretty much always on this level, it seems a lot more innocuous when she’s talking to her friends, or the more mean-spirited and (relatively) competent trolls, the way she treats Tavros almost feels like bullying because of how obviously pathetic he is.

That said, he turns right around, and invokes exactly what’s coming to him. Y’know as much as Tavros is an authentic abuse victim and Vriska gaslights him into thinking a lot of the bad things that happen to him are his fault, there are a lot of times where he does stupid shit that invokes the justifiable wrath of the people around him.

https://homestuck.com/story/1592

While I could pontificate about the fact that Kanaya and Rose are my favorite couple, and squee enthusiastically, instead I will call attention to the fact that, by way of mixing her metaphors, Kanaya has been the victim of an authorial pun - she’s a Fruit Ninja. (Unless Fruit Ninja didn’t exist at the time of writing? It may very well not have.)

https://homestuck.com/story/1596

As the Page of Breath, Tavros sucks at communicating. Here, he sucks at communicating because in spite of his objectively pretty sick rhymes... he is talking to someone who just can’t be arsed.

https://homestuck.com/story/1602

This is one of those absurd moments that at first blush seems meaningless, but I think helps to decipher the kinds of things that John Egbert cares about. It’s one of the moments where he ritualizes an action that one of his heroes takes - John Egbert thinks that Nic Cage is cool, and wants to be like him, so he roleplays Nic Cage for a little while.

https://homestuck.com/story/1603

We’ve barely met the trolls, and they are *already* using the humans as a convenient method to troll each other instead of staying on task.

Karkat also establishes his love of RomComs before his introduction even rolls around.

https://homestuck.com/story/1618

Conceding ground to implacable enemies is generally the correct means to win in Homestuck, usually by getting them to destroy themselves or each other purely by their own unsustainably wicked or stupid conduct. Only a being as powerful as Lord English is sufficient to destroy the Significance-hoarding antagonist that is Vriska, as she threatens to overshadow everyone else in the universe by her own inflated self-importance. Only Vriska, so arbitrarily lucky, could possibly get into position to destroy Lord English. They were made for each other. They deserve each other.

One of my favorite dialogues in the whole comic. Man, I sure love Act 4. There’s something indescribable about the dialogue Andrew writes for this part of the comic. Homestuck at its best whiplashes from silly to scary to heartbreaking to heartwarming, and back to silly again, from beautiful to ugly, and I don’t think that even Act 5, as it piles up layers upon layers, well past the number of parts needed to make a whole, captures the essence of Homestuck as well as does Act 4.

Homestuck is different in every part, of course, and for everyone who says that Act 4 is peak Homestuck you will meet someone who says that Acts 1 through 3 were peak Homestuck, or who says that Act 5 was Peak Homestuck, or that Act 6 was Peak Homestuck. I do not mean to demean any portion of the work by saying that Act 4 is my favorite. The things I like in Homestuck the most are just the most themselves in this portion of the story.

https://homestuck.com/story/1627

I’m feeling less and less intelligent as I read more and more of Homestuck, because honestly, my theories read less like honest-to-god insights, and more like somebody who just wasn’t paying any fucking attention. Here, Jade spells out basically what I’ve been saying.

https://homestuck.com/story/1640

We’ll pause here for the evening. Reading was a little sparse today, but it’s a good place to leave off, especially since for some of these I wrote just stacks of theorizing.

Until tomorrow, Cam signing off, Mostly alive except for a bit of a cough, and not alone.