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spencerreidslove · 4 years ago

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Hi! Do you know that one episode where the unsub froze his victims to death? I think they were meant to survive to join a cult or something like that, but yeah. I was wondering if you could write something like that (doesn’t necessarily have to be based in that ep) but the reader is kidnapped or something by the unsub and he starts to freeze her or idk and then the team arrives? Could it also be Platonic!Bau x reader, but spencer and reader r together? I hope that made sense. Thank you!!

A/N: I tried to stick to this episode as much as I could, but it’s been a minute since I’ve seen the episode so I probably went off from the actual plot. Also, sorry this took me 80 years to write!

————

Spending nearly a week in some random town in the middle of nowhere, Ohio was not how you wanted to spend time.

But that came with the job. The BAU has orginally been called in due to bodies that had been frozen to death. No new bodies had turned up and the team was facing a dead end.

You placed a hand on your husband’s shoulder as the rubbed his eye so hard you thought it might pop out.

“Spence, honey, look away from the board for five minutes.” You said.

“I need to finish this geographical profile.” Spencer muttered.

“Spencer. It’s nearly midnight, Hotch told everyone to go to the hotel nearly an hour ago.” You said, leaning into Spencer’s side and wrapping your arms around his waist.

“You go ahead. I’ll stay and work on the profile.” Spencer said.

“What did you say when you married me?” You asked.

“Huh?”

“Spencer, what did you say when you married me?”

“Lots of things. Be more specific.”

“About always being there. Be there by coming back to the hotel.”

Spencer laughed a little bit. “I think you’re twisting that a little bit. Look, go ahead and I’ll be there within half an hour.” Off your look he said: “If not, then I will owe you. Seriously.”

“Fine. Half an hour. I’ll be counting.” You said, grabbing your bag. You waved at Spencer as you made your way out of the precinct.

The hotel was nearby so you decided to walk. You were almost at the hotel when you heard someone call out from behind you.

“Excuse me? Ms?” The voice called out.

“Yeah?” You asked, turning around. Years at the FBI had made you cautious, so you kept your distance and crossed your arms so your hand was over your gun.

“Can you point me in the direction of 48th street?” The man asked.

You made a rookie mistake. You turned away from the man and looked at the road behind you. “I think it might be-“

You felt a sharp pain in between your shoulder blades; maybe a needle. Before you could figure out what it was your vision started to cloud and you felt yourself falling.

“Spencer.” You muttered before your eyes closed.

“Kid...Kid!” Morgan shook Reid’s shoulder.

“I wasn’t sleeping!” Reid cried, shaking himself awake. Morgan laughed. “Sure you weren’t. Did you sleep here?”

“I must’ve.” Spencer said, looking around at the table in front of him. “I was working in the geographical profile. I fell asleep.”

The rest of the team funneled into the room, and Spencer excused himself to the bathroom to splash some water on his face.

When he returned to the room, something was off. “Where’s Y/N?” He asked.

“We thought you knew.” JJ said.

“No, she left for the hotel late last night. I stayed here.” Spencer said.

“She wasn’t in the lobby this morning.” Emily said.

At that very moment, a uniformed officer walked past the room, holding a bag that looked very familiar.

“Sir.” The unie said, sticking his head in the room to talk to the detective in charge. “I was out canvassing and I saw this bag on the ground. You said it’s by where this guy’s looking.”

He held out the bag, handing it to the detective. The detective opened it, looking through the wallet. “This purse belongs to one...Y/N Reid.”

The world was falling from below Spencer’s feet. He must’ve fallen back into a chair because the next thing he knew he was sitting with his head between his legs.

“Breathe, Spencer, you need to breathe.” JJ said, rubbing small circles on his back.

“I-she was supposed to go to the hotel-and she-“ Spencer knew he was hyperventilating but he couldn’t stop.

“Reid, we’re going to find her but in order for that to work you need to calm down first.” Morgan said.

“I can’t-she...she’s gone.”

Cold.

It was the only thing you could feel. Maybe Spencer had turned the thermostat down again and had taken all the blankets with him.

“Spence...blankets. Hand ‘em over.” You mumbled, rolling on your side.

You tried to reach out a hand to grab them, but you couldn’t move your arm.

You furrowed your brows as you slowly opened your eyes. Then you remembered. You weren’t at home in bed with Spencer.

Man. Needle. Falling.

The thoughts came back to you slowly. When you finally opened your eyes you looked around, seeing you were in some sort of dark room.

It was freezing.

“Freezing...” you said. “Oh shit.”

You rolled your head back and looked down at yourself. Your hands and feet your tied together, explaining why you couldn’t move them.

The door to the freezer opened. “Good, you’re awake. It’s always so much more fun when they’re awake.” The same man who got you said.

“Let me go.” You said.

“No.”

“Look, you don’t want to do this. I’m in the FBI. You know what will happen if you kill me?”

“I know. I only took you because you’re a Fed.”

The man stepped closer to you. Grabbing you roughly by the rope, he made you sit up. He punched you. And then again. And then again.

“He has to have some sort of industrial freezer.” Hotch said, putting his hands on the desk.

Spencer still hadn’t fully calmed down. He had now swung the way of throwing himself into work. He stared at the same geographical profile he had been working on the night before.

Every time he looked at it, all he could think about was you telling him to come back to the hotel with you. And him refusing.

“Kid. Step away from the map. Let someone else take a look for a moment.” Morgan said.

“I can’t do that.” Spencer said.

“Fine. Then come with me to eat something. You need it.”

“I can’t do that either. Y/N is missing, so I’m not going to stop working.”

Morgan left his side for a moment. Then, he returned and took the pen out of Spencer’s hand.

“Hey!” Spencer called.

“You can get this back in five minutes. Take a break, pretty boy.” Morgan said.

Spencer sighed and followed Morgan out into the hallway twoards a vending machine.

The pair stood in silence for a moment. “It’s my fault.” Spencer muttered.

“Reid, what?” Morgan said.

“Y/N-she kept telling me to come back to the hotel. I said she should go ahead without me and I’d be there in half an hour. If I had just gone with her she wouldn’t have been taken.”

“Spencer, you can’t blame yourself for that. If you would’ve been there, you might’ve both been taken. You you could have been killed. We can’t go back and change last night, but we can work to find this son of a bitch. And to do that you need to be present, not nearly passing out.”

Spencer sighed and took the bag of chips Morgan was holding out to him.

A few minutes later they returned to the room, where the group was huddled around a table.

“We might have something.” Hotch said.

“Garcia, taking into account Y/N’s abduction site, how many people in that area have industrial freezers?” Rossi asked.

“Just one. A Stewart Hull. Sending his home and work to you now. Go get out girl back.” Garcia said.

You had been left in the freezer alone again. The man had punched you several more times and turned the temperature down. You were 90% sure there were icicles on your eyelashes.

The door opened again. “Well, Little Ms. Fed, our time has been fun. But I think it’s time to end it.” The man said. He was wearing a full snow suit and was holding some sort of machine.

“Time for the freeze.” He said.

This is it. You thought. And I’m never going to see Spencer again.

You closed your eyes, preparing for the cold to hit you. But, just as you thought it was going to happen, you heard a familiar voice.

“Stewart Hull, step away from the freezer.”

JJ? You thought. You opened your eyes again to see her standing across from the man.

Afterwards, when asked to recall what happened, you won’t remeber much, other than the feeling of cold, the man yelling, and then gunshots.

Soon, JJ was beside you, calling for a medic, and untying you.

“Y/N, it’s going to ok.”

“Cold...” your teeth chattered. “Spence...”

“He’s here, he’ll be here any moment, just hold on.”

Then the cold took you.

You woke up to beeping. As you’d lowly opened your eyes, you realized you were in the hospital.

You blinked a few times and turned your head to the side, spotting Garcia sitting in a chair next to your bed, typing away on a computer.

“Penelope.” You muttered.

She looked up from her computer, jumping out of the chair.

“Mrs. Dr.! Don’t ever scare me like that again!” She cried, wrapping you in one of her signature Penelope Garcia hugs.

“How long have I been out?” You asked.

“2 days. They said you had early stages of frostbite.” Garcia said.

“Spencer?” You asked, looking around your hospital room.

“The Boy Wonder is down the hall getting some food. Morgan practically had to drag him down there. He hasn’t left you.”

“Could you got get him please?” You asked.

“Y/N?” Your husband’s voice said from behind Garcia.

“I’ll give you two a minute.” She said, leaving the room.

Spencer looked like a mess, you probably did too. “Hey.” You said.

Spencer dropped his bag and came up beside the bed, wrapping his arms around you. “Please don’t ever leave me again.”

“Not if I can help it.” You said.

“I’m so sorry.” Spencer said, his shoulders shaking a little bit.

“For what?” You said, holding him tighter. He was crying, you realized.

“I should’ve left with you.” Spencer said.

“Never mind that. We’re both here now.” You said.

You both say like that for a while, Spencer and you embracing.

“However, I think you were more than half an hour late to the hotel, so you do still owe me.” You said, trying to make a joke.

“I owe you for the rest of my life.” Spencer said.

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

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#criminal minds #mgg #spencer reid x reader #aaron hotchner #cm #criminal minds fanfiction #david rossi #derek morgan #dr spencer reid #emily prentiss #penelope garcia #jennifer jareau #spencer reid x you #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fanfic #criminal minds x reader

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outlandishthoughts · 3 years ago

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Go Tell The Bees

I finished Bees a few days ago and am still digesting, but feelings so far...

SPOILERS AHEAD

Overall, I really liked it.

I liked the coziness of the early chapters, and the many many temporary residents of the New House. At this point, I think there’s so many characters that it’s hard to include every single moment and give every relationship page time, so for the most part I liked what we did get to see and wish we’d seen more.

I liked the focus on Brianna and Roger’s adjustment back to Ridge live, and would actually have loved to see more of that from the kids’ perspective. For someone that has said she doesn’t love writing kids, Diana is actually quite good at creating nuanced child characters IMO. Even Ian and Rachel’s nameless infant has a distinct personality.

It makes me sad to see Jamie and Claire get older, but it makes sense at this stage. It’s going to be interesting to see Claire “come into her full power” while Jamie has to find new non-physical ways of exercising his.

I did not realize that Jamie resigning after Monmouth would be such a thing, but in hindsight, he literally wrote his resignation in Claire’s blood on the back of an aide’s shirt. In these books that’s just Tuesday but in hindsight yeah of course that’s the kind of thing that would get around.

I started by not trusting Amaranthus at all, warmed up to her, and now don’t trust her again. I think she’s using William a little bit, maybe as a backup plan in case Hal somehow disowns Ben and Trevor.

I actually had sympathy for Ben until he remarried. I’d have more sympathetic if he’d been adult enough to at least tell his family privately instead of just running off to play General. It also annoyed me that people kept talking about how Hal would feel as though Ben doesn’t have a second parent.

I’m glad we got to see a little bit of Bree/William, but I wanted to see a lot more of him interacting with the Frasers. Sending them out on a random portrait mission felt kind of like a hat on a hat, I wish DG had just let William spend an evening hanging out with Brianna and her family instead of introducing that whole side quest.

Sometimes I’m not sure why DG choses to include the conversations she does - like we saw Roger and Jamie talk about telling Jenny that Roger had been at Lallybroch in 1737, and then we saw Jamie telling Jenny the same, but we never actually got to see her and Roger interact. She wrote a brief cute intro scene for Brianna and Fanny in the Daily Lines, but for some reason cut it.

I’m already bored of the Fergus’s biological parents plotine. I’m a little bored of Percy as well.

Richardson’s plan was very convoluted, even by time traveler standards. And he (Diana?) didn’t actually get the date quite right - the British abolished slave trade in 1807 (same as the US), but didn’t abolish slavery in their colonies until 1834. So you’re risking a massive upheaval to world history (no American revolution > likely no French Revolution > no copycat revolutions in other parts of the world > no Napolean/Napolonic Wars > no WW1 > no Russian revolution > no WW2 > no cold war) for maybe ending slavery 20 years earlier. And that doesn’t get into his convoluted plan for making this happen.

I was obviously pissed with Ulysses presented that letter, but actually didn’t hate it as a plot. I thought it made sense from his POV and that it was sort of an ethical quandry.

There were definitely a few minor continuity errors, but it also seemed much more culturally respectful at times, DG referenced a few specific native community members in her acknowledgments and certainly the book was much better for those additional perspectives better included in the editorial process.

#go tell the bees #Outlander #go tell the bees that i am gone #claire fraser #jamie fraser

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aotopmha · 4 years ago

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Hi! I love reading your posts. These days I mostly look forward to your episode analysis. But I wanted to know what are your thoughts on mikasa's character and would you say she is well-developed given the latest chapter? The fandom in the past mostly argued that mikasa is the most poorly treated female character by isayama. And now I guess people have resorted to some disgusting takes which I dn't wana bring up in your space. Thanks.

Cool you like my stuff!

I think she is one of the best executions of her character archetype and she is just like every other character in AoT: there are sections of the story where she has less focus and sections of the story where she has more focus.

In her character's case, I think her main focus was in the first arc and in this last arc, but there are key moments peppered in other arcs to bridge the way to her character in this arc.

In my eyes, she has been absolutely great in this final arc.

Mikasa has not been the only character I've seen criticized to be wasted potential in the story, but I think what some people want out of the characters simply is not what AoT offers or how the story writes its characters in the first place.

There are walls of text about the lore and plot, but the big character moments are always punctuated by big panels that let the moment breathe.

I think people want volume because volume automatically means more complex characters to them, but I think AoT likes to be concise much more.

I've said this before, but I think Mikasa is one of the best examples of this in the story.

I've disagreed with the claim that Mikasa specifically is wasted potential for quite a bit, but I think I do with most AoT characters. I think most of them were used to their fullest potential.

But with Mikasa I especially do now because I did get everything people seem to claim they are missing out of her character.

I got a character arc about gaining a healthier understanding about relationships.

I got a character arc about growing more pragmatic and mature and understanding when feelings need to be put aside to do the right thing.

I got a relationship-centric female character who is not required to throw away her relationships to grow and plays with gender roles in a fun way because of the masculine elements of her character, like her strength and muscular build.

I got a relationship-centric character who has relationships outside of her most focused-on relationship.

Her backstory would've worked just as well were she a male character.

There are several key points in the story where her caring about others drastically effects the plot of the story.

If she could've killed Reiner and Bert when they revealed themselves, the story would be very different.

If she did not throw away the blade Armin had back in Trost and wasn't there to help him, the story probably would be very different.

If she wasn't there to stop Kaya from killing Gabi, the story probably would be pretty different.

Hell, if she wasn't there to save Sasha in that one scene in Trost, even then things would've been much different because Sasha is so essential for some of the events in the early stages of the final arc.

People talk about how details add up and I think Mikasa is 100% that character, except some of these details are actually key points in the story.

This is also true in the anime. We had a few altered scenes, but we got other ones in return, like the one with Hannes in season 2 or a couple of scenes with Historia in season 3.

I think every ounce of pathos you could wring out of her character has been wrung out of it.

I love her character as this motherly, but powerful protective presence and her being powerful, but also human.

The scene with Reeves in Trost and the scene with Hange in Shiganshina come to mind as two contrasts. Her as powerful and her as grieving.

The reason why she is lower on the ladder of female characters for me is that her character is still constrained to her archetype.

Everything you could do well with that archetype is done incredibly well, there's even subversions in there with the masculine elements of her character and details of her character arc.

But there isn't anything in particular I find that's very unique about all of the aspects that make up her character.

I think at some point people were complaining that she had only a few lines of dialog in the Shiganshina arc or something like that, but I still take that over the four scenes with Levi in the Uprising arc that all said the same thing in essence (torture scene, scene with Historia, scene with Armin, scene with random MP thug).

She is very much a quality over quantity, show don't tell character:

(Chapter 84)

I take this over any monologue about pragmatism Levi makes in the Uprising arc.

Of course, Mikasa is a character and characters are written by people.

Maybe Isayama could've written her in a way where her relationship with Eren isn't as big part of her character or not a part of her character at all.

Maybe he could've even made her be the kind of character that does have elaborate inner and outer monologues about losing her parents or those she cares about or being stuck between duty and family.

He could've made her have the same amount of focus every arc.

But I feel like she's not the only character who was like this.

As I said, I think everyone has been out of focus at some point or another.

Reiner was a non-character before Clash and wasn't even there in Uprising.

Eren was actually gone or unconscious for a lot of the Female Titan, Clash and Uprising arcs.

All of the Paradis crew was gone for most of the Marley arc.

I also feel like even the most complex characters in the story don't reflect or angst massive amounts in the first place. As I said, I think there aren't that many walls of text concerning character motivation.

All of the information you need is there in simple, but layered dialog.

In that sense I don't see her being treated more unfairly than other characters.

I can say that I think the only characters that I feel weren't used to their fullest potential were probably Bertholdt and Historia.

I really do feel we got everything we could out of Mikasa's character, though and the ending for her is pretty much perfect.

Thank you for the ask!

#Attack on Titan #Shingeki no Kyojin #Mikasa #Mikasa Ackerman #AoT #SnK #Asks

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itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

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RWBY Recaps - Volume 8 “War”

Hello, everyone! Story time.

Yesterday food was delivered for my two idiot dogs (they’re thrilled about it) but, because it was delivered by Fed Ex, shenanigans were bound to ensue. These particular shenanigans involved realizing that the food had not been left at the front door like tracking said it had. Instead, it was down the very long driveway by the mailbox. Specifically, it was on a low wall beside the mailbox, currently inaccessible due to a mound of plowed snow.

Now, how the delivery guy managed to get it there I’ll never know, but given that our postal system is currently killing itself to get us our Amazon orders for Christmas, I shrugged, let it go, and resigned myself to lifting an 18 pound bag plus box over that snow without dying. Which meant that in reality I just dragged it, uncaring what bumps the bag might accumulate along the way. What are the dogs gonna do? Complain about presentation?

Snow successfully circumvented; I was home free!

… until I was lifting the box into the car, hit a patch of black ice, and was suddenly looking up at the sky, my right hip and leg screaming.

I’m fine. Bruised, but fine. It’s 2020. Did I expect to not fall? C’mon, Clyde. Be sensible.

The reason I'm telling you all this is because falling on ice at 10:00pm with an oversized bag of dog food was less painful than watching this episode.

I jest... but only a little. To be fair to RWBY, it admittedly wasn't painful in any new way. Everything that's a problem this week has been a problem for years now: confusing motivations, changing semblances, unpersuasive character beats, etc. So in some ways this episode — especially as a hiatus episode — is rather underwhelming. I expected RWBY to do something big before taking six weeks off, but this episode simply set the (unstable) stage for what's to come. With the exception of Ren, nothing changed this episode, which makes for a rather "Okay..." note to end on. It's not inherently bad, it's just a bit of a letdown after hyping ourselves up over the expectation that something even crazier than grimm soup will happen. Which, to again be fair, is on us as opposed to the writers. But that feeling of, "If this was last week, what in the world will we get right before an unpredicted hiatus?" was palpable. Turns out the answer was, "A pretty tame episode."

As always though, let's start at the beginning. This episode is titled "War" — straight to the point — and it's actually a little shorter than our last three episodes, adding to that "Okay..." feeling overall. We open on the outskirts of Atlas, amidst what appears to be a wheat field, or something similar. Upon reflection, it makes sense that the bubbled city would be able to grow things not normally growable in the tundra. This might also explain Cinder's strange beginning. Perhaps her orphanage existed on these rural outskirts and then she was brought into the city proper? We'll probably never know for sure, but at least this is a simpler answer than, "The Madame went off to an entirely different Kingdom to secure her child slave." Occam's Razor and all that.

Ironwood's army has assembled to hold off Salem's army. Wow, aren't we glad Ironwood invested in thousands of trained professionals rather than a handful of independent fighters? Seriously though, this is now a battle of numbers. May says later in the episode that Ironwood's forces are doing their best to assist Atlas, so they should go help Mantle... but that help only exists because years ago he recognized that the tiny class sizes of the Academies, this

wasn't going to be enough if grimm attacks suddenly increased. Sure enough, now they're in a situation where Ironwood needs even more men to keep up with Salem's creation magic. The fact that he has any at all is crucial to what little hope is left. How do Jaune, Yang, and Ren think they're going to get the time to look for Oscar without everyone dying while they're gone? Because Ironwood's army is keeping the attack at bay. I love how the story keeps angling for the "Military people are evil" message while actively showing us how much a military is needed in this world. If Ironwood had been a generic Good Guy who dismantled his armed forces because others wanted to ignore that they've always been at war against objectively evil creatures — both the grimm and Salem — then there would have been nothing to hold Salem off until small team rescue/bomb plans could be implemented.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. As usual. The army is on the front lines and one guy is scared enough that he's shaking. Can't say I blame him. As always, RWBY functions best when it leans towards horror, with skeletons rising alongside the normal grimm and intense music playing to convey the stakes. Ironwood watches the onslaught and immediately calls for a civilian evacuation into the subway system. Get people below ground, behind a few, defendable entrances, rather than wandering about the city where land or sky grimm can pick them off easy-peasy. Makes sense. Yet I'm already seeing fans make snide comments about how Ironwood is "still running," which just demonstrates how many viewers take the emotions of the show at face value — who is Good and who is Bad — rather than considering the situation and deciding for themselves. What's far more egregious than viewers enjoying a story however they'd like on a Saturday before the holiday though (seriously, my salt aside, no one has to enjoy RWBY any one way) is that RT again tries to paint Ironwood as crazy when he's... just not? Beyond the choice to animate him with scary expressions

once he gives the order the soldier starts to say, "But sir — " and Ironwood yells for him to obey right now. The scene makes it look like Ironwood is doing something shady again. Here's this goon balking at the order, but we're not told why. What's bad about getting the people to (relative) safety? Why is this order treated like something to question at all? We're not told and, from what we do know, it's not something that would be questioned, so unless we learn something new post-hiatus, that line exists only to make Ironwood look bad. It's a (nonsensical) excuse to have another ally turning against him (slightly) and to give Ironwood the chance to look scary and violent again. Nevermind that his city is under attack and if a subordinate started questioning a completely sensible and time-sensitive order? I might yell too.

So we're off to a great start. The above looks particularly stupid given that we immediately see the flying grimm arriving in a populated area, terrifying all the civilians there. Everyone bolts for the subway and we cut away from a man trying desperately to reach his daughter, unsure if either of them survive. But people want Ironwood to not use what few resources he has? See, this is why generic messages like, "You have to stand your ground" don't work. Sometimes there are situations where you should run and that doesn't automatically equal being a coward. It means you're smart enough to take the actions necessary to save as many lives as possible.

Later on we'll have a similar issue with the message, "You have to trust people" when my darling Oscar briefly loses his mind.

Now though, we see that the "fugitives" Yang, Jaune, and Ren have been taken into custody. Of course they have. Look, when the preview dropped yesterday I saw a number of takes along the lines of, "How dare the Ace Ops do this. They need to put aside their differences until the attack is over!" but no, they really don't, because it's no longer their responsibility to extend trust towards this group. Especially when doing so, to their mind, has a high chance of making a horrific situation that much worse. What are they going to do if, in the middle of a Salem attack, the kids they decided to trust betray them, attack them, and leave them knocked out somewhere while the world burns?

...Oh wait, they already did that.

See, the group broke trust first. Numerous times. The Ace Ops listened to Yang admit that she and Blake had betrayed Ironwood days ago. Then they watched Ruby betray him again by alerting the rest of the team, turning them against him. They swore they wouldn't attack, so Team RWBY attacked them first. They learn that Qrow had a hand in murdering their leader. They encounter the group again and Weiss gleefully asks if they want a second defeat. They watch Ruby tell the entire world to dismiss Ironwood because he’s the one who can’t be trusted. Outside of JYR not immediately attacking them when they arrived to help (something I praised them for), this group has never put their trust in the Ace Ops. So why do they — and we — expect the Ace Ops to do so now? Imagine for just a moment that it was reversed. We find out that someone betrayed the group for no good reason, set themselves against them, continued to do so as everything fell apart, told the rest of the world they’re the enemy, and then a close associate is involved in Ruby's murder. How many people would expect the group to just shrug all that off? Would they put their differences aside and embrace these people because blind trust is (supposedly) the right thing to do? Of course not! Yang would punch their lights out and everyone would cheer, but that's because they're the established heroes. Outside of that role, no one else is allowed to mistrust those who have proven themselves untrustworthy and take precautions against getting betrayed again. To say nothing of how these characters don’t have our meta perspective. Meaning, they live in a world where this trio is not a part of a protagonist group destined to remain a part of the plot because that’s how story conventions work. They’re three random teens who were promoted to huntsmen early. They’re three soldiers out of many who can, at any time, be taken out of the fight. No one on the Ace Ops is working under the belief that they “have” to be a part of this fight. From their in-world perspective, you could toss them in jail for the rest of the battle and that’s that. Outside of their fugitive status they are entirely unimportant.

So yes, Jaune, Ren, and Yang are in handcuffs. They deserve to be. Don't worry though, they get out very soon.

Yang makes a snide comment about Winter "Still just following orders" and honestly? I've lost the love I used to have for her as a character. Yang is just an exercise in frustration whenever she speaks now. Thus far she's blamed Ruby for everything that's gone wrong (ignoring her own choices there), did a 180 to yell at Ren for acknowledging how bad things are, worried nonsensically about Blake being disappointed in her even though Ruby is the one she fought with, and is now back to the "You just follow orders" shtick. Yang will label anything she personally doesn't like as evil order following, but conveniently ignores how following Ruby's orders helped get them into this mess, and how the one time she went AWOL made things even worse. These characters don't actually have beliefs they stand behind, they just say whatever is currently necessary to make themselves look good, even if that contradicts previous statements or actions.

She also gets mad at Vine for saying that grimm don't take prisoners, ignoring that she only found this out a few hours ago. No one in the group is equipped to navigate the emotional minefield that is this war because they can't even take two seconds to put themselves in another’s shoes. Weiss doesn't bother to consider Whitley's situation. Jaune points at the snow and gets frustrated that Harriet doesn't magically know there's grimm soup flowing nearby. Yang snaps at Vine for stating what she also knew to be a basic fact about grimm up until Oscar's kidnapping. It's all framed as, "How can you be this stupid?" rather than, "Oh yeah, these people haven't had the experiences I have. If I was randomly told this I'd doubt it too. I should try to explain this in a way that will make sense to them and increase my chances of being believed."

This is the group who decided it was a good idea to tell the whole world about Salem and did it just as badly as I suspected they would. The story has shoved a delicate, information-based war into the hands of punch-happy teenagers and refuses to grapple with how that's a bad thing.

Anyway, Ironwood comes on the radio to say that the whale is pretty indestructible on the outside, but it might be vulnerable from the inside, so let's get a bomb in there. Seems like a good enough plan as any, especially given that the grimm is currently on the very outskirts of the city, away from the civilians if/when it's blown up. What kind of bomb might this be though?

Could it, perhaps, end up being a now severely damaged android who is based off of Pinocchio?

Time will tell. For now, the group is quite obviously upset that Ironwood is planning a big BOOM while Oscar (and Ozpin! Tellingly, no one mentions Ozpin...) is still inside. Here's the thing: Both sides are right here. YJR are right to be worried about their friend, while the Ace Ops — who have no emotional ties to Oscar and, as just established, are questioning whether or not a grimm really kidnapped him — are right that they cannot prioritize a single life over the entirety of Atlas. They just can't! And any hero worth their salt is going to recognize this. You cannot knowingly sacrifice thousands of people (if not more) for one (admittedly awesome) farm boy. It would be a different situation if the people of Atlas volunteered to remain in danger to give Oscar a chance at escape, but that obviously isn't the situation here. If someone told me, "Sorry, Clyde, we can't get you out because the place you're in is super dangerous and attempting to extract you would likely cause the rescue party to die. Also, the longer we don't blow this location up the longer lots of other people die" I'd be like, "Fair enough. Have a nice life!" I mean, obviously anyone would be terrified and devastated by the news, but if you're still thinking straight and have even an ounce of compassion for others, you don't trade all those lives for your own. Spock does not open the door to flood the whole Enterprise with radiation!

And notably, neither does Kirk. Oscar isn't given the chance to sacrifice himself — ignoring his choice to try and undermine Salem's forces rather than escaping — so Jaune, Ren, and Yang are deciding that for him. Which, again, makes sense for them emotionally, but it's still a selfish choice. They're prioritizing their family over everyone else's. If someone ever told me they’d risked a whole city for my sake I’d be touched, but also pissed as hell. Because what were you thinking?

Which is really my biggest issue with this divide. It would have been nice if the show had done more to make me believe these three are that ride and die for Oscar. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that they are and I'll take this characterization over the apathy we had in the past, but let's be real, it kind of came out of nowhere. The group as a whole pretty much ignored Oscar up until the movie invite and two of these characters — Yang and Jaune — have actively hurt him in the name of getting at Ozpin. Now suddenly they're willing to toss aside their huntsmen duties — protect the people — in order to save him? Nice sentiment, it's just that, as always, we have very little development for it, especially given the level of emotion shown. Particularly when it comes to Ren. The prospect of someone sacrificing Nora? I 100% believe that he draws a hard line and this kick-starts a change in his semblance. Ren is shown to be thinking about how he lost his teammate Pyrrha? Totally believe it! Someone is sacrificing the kid I'm not sure he's ever had a conversation with? That's less persuasive. At the very least, it would have been nice to have the trio grapple with whether they can or should prioritize Oscar over everyone else, rather than taking such a black and white stance of, "Of course taking the time to save this one guy while everyone else dies is worth it. You're evil for thinking otherwise."

We even get a shot of Winter's hand shaking and clenching like Yang's used to, just to hammer home who the correct party is.

While they begin this argument we cut to Salem who is literally conducting her grimm in their attack against Atlas.

Very nice. I love when a villain has

Emerald watches her, clearly freaked out, and then sneaks off to where Oscar is held. In the hallway she encounters one of the jellyfish grimm, so she casually makes it not see her until it has passed.

Her semblance works on grimm, but not “real girl” androids? Okay.

We all realize how crazy powerful Emerald is though, right? The stuff that she could do in a fight is staggering and I'll be forever salty that all she managed in the Penny battle was to create a couple different Cinders. Emerald, Marrow, Salem herself... RWBY has a real problem of having the antagonists conveniently not use the power at their disposal when the heroes need to win.

So Emerald starts listening in on Ozpin's torture. We learn that Hazel was recruited when he tried to kill Salem numerous times and had to watch her keep reforming. Which, if I remember correctly, is a technique she used back when she and Ozma were playing at Gods. It worked and now Hazel believes that they "share a vision. She's going to create a new world order," one without Kingdoms or Huntsmen Academies. No, says Ozpin, she's going to divide humanity past reform, summon the Gods, and hopefully die when they take out all of Remnant.

...My god, did we finally get Salem's motivations after seven years?

Seriously though: seven years. It's way too late, especially when we now have so many questions attached to this supposed goal. If Salem always wanted to divide the world irrevocably, why didn't she attack, oh, say, a thousand years ago? Why has she kept to the sidelines until now? None of this answers why she held off until our simple soul was conveniently ready to fight her. We also have the issue of Salem's knowledge, or lack thereof. So she obviously knows about the Relics and that they'll summon the Gods, but not how to work them? How did that come about? Even Ozpin's motivations are murky now. He repeats Salem's curse word-for-word — though notably, minus the "You must learn the importance of life and death. Only then may you rest" part — yet unless Salem told him this herself when they first reunited — and we know they both hid things from the other — Ozpin could have only gotten this line from the lore episode, something he witnessed along with us just a few weeks/months back. So is he only now realizing that this is what Salem wants the Relics for? Might he be wrong? Or did he somehow figure this out lifetimes ago and we're just not told how? If this is the case, why haven’t Salem’s motivations come up before now?

This sudden, "Oh yeah, she's always wanted to die" feels pretty tacked on. Like RT had Salem arrive last Volume because that's ~cool~ and then suddenly realized that they have to deal with her motivations now, so they hastily cobbled this together. But, as said at the start, this is entirely expected for RWBY nowadays. A problem to be sure, though one we've been putting up with for a couple of years now.

During all this, Hazel shouts that this is what Ozpin deserves and the first word out of his mouth is, "Yes."

But Oscar and the rest of Remnant don't deserve it, so make the right choice for them. How did RT think they were going to make this guy an antagonist? Ozpin has so much self-hatred and yet is still trying SO HARD that he makes Ruby Drinking Tea While The World Burns Rose look laughable.

Oh yeah, we'll be getting to that scene in just a second, but for now I just want us all to appreciate Ozpin as a character, even if the story won't.

....

.......

..............

...Okay, moment done lol. Sorry, Oz, there's a lot to cover this episode.

We cut to a semi-conscious Nora who asks Weiss, "Now what am I good for?" So that’s a double serving of oof. That's when Ruby arrives with fine china steaming with tea. Or coffee. Or hot chocolate. Whatever it is these girls are drinking. What comes next is accompanied by a strange kind of vindication for me. I mean, the fandom dragged me so hard for taking issue with their snuggly smiles during Ruby's message, yet now we literally have the girls sitting back in a mansion as everything goes to shit around them. I know the knee jerk reaction to this will be, "They have to watch over Nora" and “They deserve a break” but really? All three of them need to watch her? And a break during the height of the action? Blake says she hopes everyone else is okay, but who is actually out looking for information about the rest of their team? May. Who's going to do something to get Nora help? Whitley. These characters are so good at telling us they're the heroes while rarely ever displaying those traits. They all (somehow) saw the attack on Atlas and have the ability to get out there and defend people — the job they wanted — yet Ruby looks out the window and asks, "What can we even do?" while taking a long sip of tea. The people of Mantle are (supposedly) freezing to death, yet one of the few with aura, Weiss, sits by a roaring fire going, "Do we just wait for someone to come? If they even come.” I'm sorry, you didn't consider this before you told the whole world about Salem? No one questioned whether asking for potentially non-existent help was worth the risk and what they'd do if it never came? Or even just what they’d do in the meantime? I’m not saying the girls can’t have basic necessities like drinks, or that it can’t be done in style when that’s conveniently available. I’m saying them enjoying the food, warmth, and relative safety of the Schnee household (built on racism) while casually talking about what, if anything, they should do for the people dying outside looks a bit Not Good. "Should we wait for the fire department?" Asks the character as their kitchen burns, sitting beside a number of water buckets that could help slow things down. "If they even come," they sigh, taking another sip of tea. This is ridiculous! The city is currently under attack by the series' Big Bad and half our heroes are just sitting around, watching the evil lightning, wondering if they should try to do anything about it.

"How did it all get like this?" Ruby asks her cup, ignoring the many steps she took to make things this bad. It continually boggles my mind that Ironwood is out here trying to keep people safe in the subway, coming up with a plan to blow up this whale, sending out an army to kill countless grimm... yet "What can we even do?" Ruby is supposed to be the hero here. You know, the one who has silver eyes and could one-shot huge numbers of Salem's army if she actually went out there and tried to help.

Ironwood is taking action... and so is May. As said, she's the one out looking for info on their teammates and when she returns says that they should all get back down to Mantle. Why? Because, as mentioned earlier, Atlas at least has an army to help with things. Mantle only has them.

Yet suddenly, Weiss doesn't want to leave.

Where did this come from? They succeeded in their preferred plan of telling the world what's going on over Ren and Yang's plan of helping what people they could, and now they're looking for something to do. Why wouldn't they head back to help? (Especially now that the shields are down.) Weiss yells that there are people dying in Atlas too but, as established, Atlas has the army. And where was this concern when they refused to let Atlas leave? After a Volume and a half of pro-Mantle content, this seems to come out of nowhere. Worse, Weiss tries to guilt May by asking if she has family in Atlas, which leads to the reveal that she's trans. Her family rejected their daughter.

I want to be clear that I'm very happy RT made this canon. For what she is — a side character we know incredibly little about — I really like May and the fact that they were clear in her identity rather than keeping it to twitter deserves recognition. Yet I'm not going to pretend that the reveal didn't leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, simply because we have this incredibly privileged cis girl, who knows a great deal about shitty families, hearing how horrible May's was and still trying to tell her she needs to suck it up and help Atlas over Mantle. When May angrily asks whose side she's on, Blake makes a comment about hearing that before, comparing her to Ironwood. May is painted as the misguided one here, but can you imagine if someone told Weiss to go help Jacques over her found family, Team RWBY, regardless of what he's done to her? The fandom would explode, and rightly so. There's something to be said for realism here, showing us Weiss and Blake's inability to see where May is coming from... but it doesn't feel like a commentary on that. It feels like another Penny situation: May is put in her place for being inconsiderate, even though this time it's her choosing to help people who are ALSO in danger over the people who represent family she's broken with.

I wanted conflict this Volume and I absolutely got it, but damn if it isn’t badly thought out at times.

Because rather than grappling with these personal motivations, Ruby brushes them aside by yelling, "There are no sides! We want to help everyone."

Does that extend to Ironwood? Ruby's speeches started falling flat when she betrayed Ozpin, attacked Cordovin, betrayed Ironwood, attacked the Ace Ops... This girl does not want to "help everyone." She wants to help those who agree with her.

Yet her rock solid optimism generates the question, “So how exactly do we get out of it?” which, as expected, Ruby has no answer to. The story keeps showing us how bad a leader Ruby has become, yet no one is actively responding to that. They kinda disagree about lying to Ironwood, but still go along with it. Yang kinda criticizes her sister, but that's then lost to general worry as they split (on Ruby's end, anyway). They want to know how she'll lead them next and are seemingly fine when Ruby continually says, "I don't know." At this point I'd be like, "Well... you didn't like May's plan of going back to Mantle, but apparently can't come up with a plan yourself... so I'm going to go with her."

This is the same conflict we had last Volume: Ruby spoke optimistically about saving everyone, yet was unable to come up with a way to do that. Ironwood had a plan that, while horrific, might save a lot of lives. Yet Ruby is presented as the one to back. Now here she is, hours later, still unable to figure out a way to achieve her perfect outcome. Ruby wanting things to be a certain way is not going to make them so and I’m wondering when someone within the group is going to recognize and act on that.

As Ruby fails to answer this crucial question, we pull back to see Whitley listening in at the door.

Cutting back to Ozpin and Oscar, Hazel has listened to all this craziness about Gods, immortality, the destruction of Remnant... and literally goes, "Cool story, bro."

Okay, he says "Nice story" but the emotion is the same. Which I'm really happy about! I mentioned in a recent post that, as far as we know, Hazel hasn't been told anything about the Gods up until now. What Ozpin is telling him sounds like gibberish at worst, incredibly hard to believe craziness at best. Now chuck in Mercury's point that as a tortured prisoner he'll say anything to get free, as well as the fact that this is Ozpin talking to Hazel... and I'm really glad Hazel just ignored his speech (for now at least). It wouldn't make sense otherwise. Granted, this means that the plan literally amounted to, “Let’s info dump a bunch of nonsense-sounding lore on our enemy in the hope that he’ll believe us and betray Salem.” It’s something to try, certainly, and it admittedly is a much better plan than what Oscar is about to cook up.

So since Hazel won't listen to Ozpin, Oscar wants to try instead. Why did you two switch in the first place? It's really obvious that RT is having the characters do weird things in order to stretch out the plot.

Either way, our farm boy is in control again. What new strategy will he try?

"Her name is Jinn."

This is BEYOND stupid. No, none of this "You have to trust people" nonsense. This is not “people,” this is Hazel. There is a Grand Canyon's width of difference between learning to trust your allies and blindly trusting an active villain who just rejected your "Please defect :(" speech. Even if we remove Hazel from the equation, this is still a monumentally foolish move. I mean, has Oscar considered where he is? This isn't some random warehouse he's been taken to, this is a semi-sentient grimm, a creature creating other creatures out of its ceiling

and whose doors automatically open when people need them to (Mercury). This is a living being created by and connected to Salem herself. How does Oscar know Salem can't hear everything he says? Or that the whale can't relay information to her? That the grimm in the walls won't pop out and run to their master? Or even that a normal person isn't listening in at the door — like Emerald is. If that had been Tyrian instead, that's it. They're done. Game over.

Someone: "Wow. Salem got the Lamp and managed to ask where the Beacon Relic is. Since the school is still overrun by her army, she snatched it up quick, finished destroying Atlas, and is now on her way to Vacuo. She's nearly completed her plan in days! How did all this happen?

Oscar: I, um... told her what she wanted to know?

Someone: You what?

Oscar: But not Salem! I just told Hazel! ... and then the information somehow got back to her.

Someone: "Somehow?" You deliberately told one of Salem's henchmen this crucial piece of information, in a place where there was a good chance you would be overheard by conventional or magical means, and you're surprised that she "somehow" learned it and used that information to doom us all?

Oscar: ...Yes?

This is so staggeringly stupid it... well, it could only have been done by a kid. So at least that fits lol. Oscar, I love you, but Ozpin should have been screaming in horror the second those words left your mouth. Generations of precautions undone because a kid wants to believe the best of the guy currently pummeling him. Sweet, but stupid. I’m all for optimistic characters, they just can’t risk the whole world on that optimism. Oscar risking himself on the seemingly doomed plan to turn Hazel is one thing, Oscar risking all of Remnant on the seemingly doomed plan to turn Hazel is another thing entirely.

Even though you know this is precisely how the story will go. Oscar willingly hands over Jinn's name to Salem's forces, but happily none of the THREE who hear about it will tell her. The story's unwillingness to follow through on consequences doesn't change what a bad move this was. I mean, Oscar himself accused Ironwood of playing into Salem's hands by disagreeing with them about how to not die, yet a few hours later he will willingly give Hazel the one piece of information Salem needs to move closer to world-wide destruction? That's uh... well, that's something.

They should have just had the poor boy be tortured, spill the beans to make it stop, and start an arc of self-forgiveness. Oscar can be awesome without coming up with world-dooming plans.

So yeah, Oscar is hoping that Hazel will use the Lamp himself and find out the truth. He wants Hazel to trust him and the man he despises most in the world enough to go against the immortal woman he's terrified of, get the Lamp away from her somehow to use for himself, wasting a once in a generation question to confirm all this, so that Salem will lose a guy with muscle who, to be frank, is absolute insignificant in the grand scheme of her power. Fantastic.

As said, Emerald overhears all this and immediately runs to Mercury, who is less than convinced by her "Salem wants to destroy the world" talk. Just as he's expressing doubt, Tyrian appears to confirm that this is exactly what she wants to do — and he's loving it.

“Of course she is! You’re surprised? Salem is destruction incarnate!”

It's a legit point. Are our villains so dense they never considered that Salem might do something to the world they didn't like? It's like the group not thinking about how Salem is still around if Ozpin has been fighting her for a thousand years. RWBY continually gives the impression that these characters don't think about their situation past what they're doing at any given moment.

Tyrian maintains his title as best villain though, simply because I understand what he's doing, why he's doing it, and he's so damn good at it.

Also, can we appreciate Mercury's face here?

Amazing. This is the kind of humor we should be getting in such a tragedy-laden Volume.

The two of them, Tyrian and Mercury, head off to Vacuo for the Secret Mission, despite Mercury's newfound hesitation. I quite liked these quiet moments between him and Emerald. It has a very "Do what you've gotta do" vibe while showcasing their care for one another, something we haven't seen in a while.

Back with the airship group. YJR are still horrified that Ironwood would blow up Oscar (even though he has no idea Oscar is there), begging the Ace Ops to give them "a chance to try to rescue him first.” Ren goes pretty hard on the "no one is replaceable" bit, which is frustrating not being what he’s saying is inaccurate (it’s not), but because that's not the issue here. The writing has Harriet start yelling about Marrow replacing her old teammate and Winter replacing Clover, but the question is not whether you'll just forget a teammate and move on with someone new, but whether you're willing to sacrifice them for the greater good. That's the stance: Should we sacrifice one life to save thousands? Will you, as a protector of the people, put those people before your own found family? Yet what RT has Harriet say is: Oscar is replaceable. Which obviously makes her come across as an ass. Like the random soldier questioning Ironwood — or making Elm about to punch a defenseless Ren in her anger — it exists solely to show how bad these character are... even as they say pretty persuasive things.

The writing also continues to be confused about whether the Ace Ops are friends or not. Yang certainly didn't think so... up until she asks (rhetorically) whether Marrow would sacrifice himself for Elm, Harriet, and Vine. Since their introduction, the story has loudly insisted that the Ace Ops aren't friends... up until it's revealed ("revealed") that Harriet is actually gutted about Clover. So which is it? Are we supposed to believe that these are cold soldiers who only work together out of duty, or that they're a team who clearly love one another? I'd say that show has shown us the latter, but it doesn't seem to understand what point it's trying to make. Does this look like a soldier who doesn’t care?

It’s especially weird when Ren again makes the claim that this is why they lost to Team RWBY. Because they're not a team.

...So is this why they did such a fantastic job fighting the geist, demonstrating such perfect teamwork that the group was open-mouthed impressed? Is this why they nearly took down a Maiden together? Is this why Ren, while furious at Yang and Jaune, was still able to work seamlessly with them to try and rescue Oscar? Do we think if Yang was suddenly beside Ruby again that the two would fail spectacularly in a fight because they had a minor disagreement?

This is now the third time RT has tried to excuse nerfing the Ace Ops with, "They disagree about things and are thus not friends and thus can't fight well together" — despite all evidence to the contrary — and it's getting really old.

At one point Harriet tells Ren, "I had you pegged as the most level-headed of the bunch, but I guess you’re just as naïve" which, ignoring her then random claim that people are replaceable, is correct. I also pegged Ren as the most level-headed of the bunch considering he was just yelling at Yang for how much damage they've caused, all the mistakes they've made, and that maybe — just maybe — they should have tried harder to work with Ironwood. Yet now here he is, in a position to start that process, and the Ren we got in the snow is simply gone. He's fully Team Yang and Jaune again, facing off against the evil Ace Ops.

I knew this was going to happen, but it's still disappointing. The story gave Ren a great speech to appease those of us frustrated with the direction the story has taken... and now we’re back to ignoring that. Ren was told off for daring to question how great the group is, apparently thought it over in the snow, and is now of the opinion that yes, they are that great. People are going to die because of us? Who cares about that anymore! We will absolutely, single-handedly rescue Oscar and there's no reason why this might be a questionable choice when an entire city is on the line. Again, emotionally understandable (if we buy into the group suddenly loving Oscar this much), but it rings hollow right after making Ren the one person who was willing to look at the big picture.

Good news though: Jaune got the braincell this week! He suggests that they go in to try and rescue Oscar/provide intel, but won't stop the Ace Ops from launching the bomb when necessary.

See, this is heroic. This is what the group should have done during the Mantle conflict: Volunteering to take the personal risk of facing off against Salem while letting Atlas try to escape. Basically, not forcing everyone else to risk their lives for their pipe dream, which is what Ren and Yang want by rejecting the bomb entirely. Jaune recognizes here that they can't prioritize Oscar over an entire city, but also that they may still be able to save him before the bomb is complete and ready to go. So they compromise, with JYR the only ones at risk.

Good job, Jaune!

Winter agrees to this plan with a firm, "I outrank you" to Harriet. People are going to love that.

Oh, but in his anger Ren's semblance suddenly changes. So we're back to the ridiculous.

Truthfully, I like this direction. Granted, I would have liked some buildup to it, especially since this is the second time this Volume that RWBY has dropped a major semblance change on us, but the idea itself is really cool. Ren can now see emotions! Awesome! And I don't mean that sarcastically. I actually think that’s a neat extension of his original semblance.

Too bad the story seems to think he's a mind reader.

Seriously, take a look back at the dialogue. What Ren sees are confetti-like petals floating around a person, their color seeming to determine their emotional state. Red means Harriet is mad, blue is sadness for Marrow, etc. But what Ren ends up saying is a great deal closer to mind reading. Harriet is angry about Clover and is gutted at his loss. Marrow is questioning his place here and wants to leave. These aren't base emotions, they're targeted thoughts and feelings about situations not immediately apparent from the verbal conversation. “In fact, you don’t want to be a part of it at all anymore." How does Ren know that? They just gave him telepathy instead of the cool power with firm limitations that the imagery suggests.

There are also some, uh... iffy implications in all this. For example, Ren allows Yang privacy by not reading her mind emotional state, but has no qualms about reading every one of the Ace Ops’. So privacy is only for the people you care about, huh?

We could also say something about RT perpetuating unfortunate racial stereotypes: the two women of color are pure anger, the marginalized man is pure sadness, the Asian coded character is pure calm... and the white woman set to turn against the others gets a mix of all emotions. AKA, human complexity.

To be clear, I don't think RT is doing this deliberately. Rather, they’re writers who have demonstrated time and time again that they don't have a good handle on depicting the sort of sensitive material that RWBY is infused with, and that extends to the mild, but still unfortunate, implications in scenes like this. Even if we ignore the iffy details — a benefit of the doubt that, at this point, many fans aren’t willing to grant — we're still left with the continuity errors. Visually, we're presented with a woman who is experiencing multiple emotions at once and is, therefore, torn. Yet Ren reads Winter definitively: "I know you [don't want this] either." It's yet another moment that makes me wonder how much communication there is between the writers and the animators, because too often the two seem to be at odds with each other.

As the group prepares to go into the belly of the beast (literally!) we return to Ruby who is, once again, failing to make me believe she's this super compassionate person.

“Wait! What about Qrow and Robyn? Maybe if we get them out of wherever they’re held—”

Please tell me I'm not the only one who took issue with this? Ruby doesn't express an ounce of worry for her uncle, not even when she learns he's been arrested, and the one time she brings him up it's in the context of what he can do for them in this fight? Ruby doesn't grapple with whether to rescue her uncle (personal desire), or get the message to the world (her version of the heroic action) and then realize that, now that her duty is done, she can finally turn to the more selfish act of helping her immediate family. Instead, Ruby seems perfectly happy to let Qrow stay in prison up until she's unsure what to do next and thinks that maybe he has the answer. Heaven forbid Ruby think about rescuing him because she loves him.

Sadly, this Ruby is long gone.

In recent years she's expressed no gratitude for him saving her life, no respect for him as her teacher, demonstrated incredibly little compassion for his own struggles, and outright told him that if he wasn't going to listen to her then he doesn't need to be part of the team. Then he's arrested and she doesn't care until she deems him useful again. Like the fandom wondering where the sisterly bond between Ruby and Yang went, I'm likewise wondering where the bond between Ruby and Qrow went.

May outright rejects this though, yelling that they still don't get it. “This is not a situation where everyone wins!"

She tells the trio they have to choose for once: Are you going to help Mantle, or Atlas?

...which means there's immediately a knock at the door, interrupting the moment where they have to decide.

See, this is just like Ren. The story keeps giving us moments where characters speak absolute truth, dangling the potential for the group to grow from these realizations... only to pull back before it goes anywhere. Ren is once again aligned with Yang and Jaune in their desire to save Oscar. May's demand is interrupted by the plot. If means nothing to give us these moments unless the story acts on them.

It's Klein at the door. Whitley called him to help with Nora because I guess he's a doctor now, as well as a butler? Fine. Let’s run with it. Weiss is super pleased to see him and hugs Whitley for the good deed.

Why so shocked that Whitley would look out for another, Weiss? Could it be because he's had so little reason to be kind when everyone, including you, has treated him horribly? If Klein always had these medical skills — if you’ve grown up with a doctor — why didn’t you talk to your brother and ask if he knew how to contact him? And of course, she apologizes to Klein for her father’s actions, but not to Whitley for her own. Whitley's surprise isn't cute to me.

Weiss stuck a weapon in his face, insulted him, sent him to his room like a toddler... and now is randomly hugging him because he did something she liked. The context of this scene doesn't paint Weiss in a good light. Like the rest of her friends, she only extends basic respect and kindness towards others when they're assisting her. Whitley was nothing to her until he suddenly proved himself useful. That's not cute sibling love, it's a love that's going to run out the moment Whitley puts a toe out of line, according to Weiss' unspoken list of what behavior keeps him in her good graces.

I believe that Klein cares for Whitley because he greets him kindly and gives him that shoulder pat on the way up. Whitley didn't need to first prove himself to Klein somehow and Klein didn't start this interaction by shoving a gun in Whitley's face, just in case he wouldn't let him through the door. They feel more like family than this hug does.

So yeah, Whitley and May have done more good this episode than our entire main cast. How about we just make this story about the side characters instead?

We then hear a massive boom and the group runs out to find a crater. Penny has landed in front of the manor, which is pretty convenient considering we saw her pass out as she fell.

She's somehow still in control despite the hack and apologizes to Ruby, then falls unconscious (again).

And that's where we end! Definitely a cliffhanger, though a rather underwhelming one considering we already knew Penny was in serious trouble. As said at the start, this episode felt rather underwhelming to me, especially as a halfway point before a hiatus, and compared to some of the stuff we've seen previously. It's not bad per-se — especially if we ignore the issues that have been around for an age now, which is most of what this recap deals with — it's just not terribly exciting either. Everything of importance — Salem's attack, Oscar's rescue, Penny's demise, subordinates turning, Nora's condition, etc. — had already been established in previous episodes and very little of it moved forward. Ren's semblance is the only thing the episode gave us that we couldn't have (generically) guessed for ourselves between last Saturday and now.

So yeah, underwhelmed is the mood of the day, with a hefty dose of salt for everything that continues to be a story-breaking problem in this show. I will say though that, as has become the trend for this Volume, all the establishing shots are gorgeous. RWBY is, at the very least, pretty to look at.

As a final note, in lieu of the Bingo board (since, again, not a whole happens plot-wise) I want to point out something mentioned by a friend: how absolutely bonkers our timeline is now. We began the second day last episode with the sun rising (recall that Jaune had tried to sleep that night at the outpost. So it’s definitely sunrise as opposed to sunset).

And we re-confirm that it’s sunrise at the start of this episode.

Yet throughout the episode many of our shots take place at night (note the stars behind the trio).

These moments with Ruby can't take place in the past because they're talking about the attack, an attack that only happened after Jaune's group met up with the Ace Ops and the geyser attacked — during early morning. I doubt I'm supposed to believe that it has been another full day of Salem starting an attack, a full day for the group to fly to the whale, a full day for Penny to fall, a full day which would put us at the end of the Volume’s timeline at only the halfway point... so I think RT is just going for the aesthetic of night shots without thinking about what that does to the continuity. It's a mess.

Not the highest praise to end on, but I’m working with what I’ve got lol. I feel as naïve as Oscar when I say that maybe Part II will be better.

I will, of course, see you all in six weeks. Until then, I'll do my best to catch up on asks. Another doomed endeavor, but one can try!

A very Happy Holidays to all of you who celebrate and, as always, thanks so much for reading! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #rwby recaps #rwby war #mymetas

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clonewarsarchives · 3 years ago

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When Clones Attack: Q&A with Clone Wars Director David Filoni

By JR Minkel on August 11, 2008 (original article link on Scientific American)

The new animated feature Star Wars: The Clone Wars picks up where Episode II: Attack of the Clones left off: Civil war has broken out in the Galactic Republic, which has mounted an army of cloned storm troopers to counter the Separatists and their legions of droids. The story focuses on the young but powerful Jedi, Anakin Skywalker, who along with his fellow lightsaber–slingers are battling the Separatists led by General Grievous and Count Dooku. The movie focuses on Anakin's relationship with a new trainee, named Ahsoka. A weekly cartoon series will take up the story again beginning in September on the Cartoon Network. ScientificAmerican.com caught up with David Filoni, the director of the new movie and series, to learn more.

What makes the Clone Wars a compelling setting for new Star Wars stories? Did George Lucas always have an animated film in mind?

During the Clone Wars there are many stories taking place. We have already seen the saga of Anakin and Luke Skywalker in the live-action films, but in The Clone Wars movie and TV series we move beyond that one story and can focus on different areas. An example would be that we spend time focusing just on the clones and their point of view from the trenches. I think George always wanted to do an animated movie; he has always had an interest in animation, dating back to his early student work and his original development of Pixar as a computer animation division. Animation and Lucasfilm have always been together in some way.

What does the movie tell us about Anakin Skywalker that we might not have gleaned from the movies? What new things do we learn about the Star Wars universe?

We see more of Anakin as a good person and a hero, not as dark and tormented. Our Anakin is a cross between Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. He is cocky like Han, but a bit naive like Luke. And we see him interact with many more characters—like his Padawan [Ahsoka]—and we see more of what really makes Anakin a great Jedi and leader. And we'll learn all kinds of new information about the "galaxy far, far away". We'll go to new planets, meet new Jedi, encounter fierce enemies—it's all pretty vast, and too early to give away yet.

How much freedom did you have in creating the look of the film and in coming up with the plot? How much of it was set out beforehand by Lucas or by others?

I was given a pretty wide latitude by George to make The Clone Wars look like what I wanted. He just told me to make it great and something no one has seen before. I used a bunch of different Star Wars design styles to come up with a unique look, from the previous microseries to original concept paintings for A New Hope. George gave Henry Gilroy (the season-one writer) and me a broad idea of different groups or areas of The Clone Wars—the large-scale battles, the small-scale personal stories on the front lines, the senatorial intrigue, and the more roguish Outer Rim stories. The early plots were then hashed out by Henry and me. We would take those ideas back to George and he'd get us feedback and move things around, teach us if the idea worked within the Star Wars universe or not. Eventually the story ideas were driven more and more by George because he became so excited about the project. He started coming to us with a bunch of stories he wanted to tell, and we worked off his outlines after that.

How does the style compare with the 2003 animated TV series, also called Star Wars: The Clone Wars? Do the plots overlap at all? How did you try to distinguish or blend the two?

The styles are actually a lot different, although I kept some slight elements of design on some of the characters. Anakin's outfit was inspired by the 2003 series, and I took some of the angles and the graphic look and tried to work it into the more dimensional characters we have. I know a lot of fans liked those shorts so it was an attempt to give a nod to that series within this Clone Wars, but when it comes to the plot and stories there is no direct correlation between the two. The 2003 series was very exaggerated, not just in design but in its storytelling and action. We chose to stay more in the Star Wars universe for our Jedi powers so that The Clone Wars film and TV series will hook up with the live-action movies George made before. We couldn't have a scenario where one Jedi could destroy hundreds of battle droids by himself; it was too superhuman for the drama and vulnerability that we wanted to get across. But it's always exciting to see the work that Star Wars inspires in different artists from comic books, novels, video games, to our own work on this series.

Special effects are obviously an important component of the Star Wars films. How does the film push the state of the art in animation?

I think we just chose to look at things in a nonphotorealistic way, just to simplify some things and let traditional painting represented through texture carry a lot of the frame, even on the character models. I tried to relate our show to my experience with traditional 2-D animation—how the simple shapes and actions in drawing can create life so effectively, even when there is nothing photorealistic about it. Having artists paint every inch of the sets and characters maintains a human touch, which audiences seem to think is sometimes lacking in CG [computer graphics]. So even when our frames are still, I think that the painted texture on everything maintains a bit of the random life that we want to see. Imperfection is just more appealing.

How will the film tie into the new animated TV series?

The film is a stand-alone story, but the events in it set the stage for what is coming. The relationship between Anakin and Ahsoka will be a crucial story arc to the overall war, at least in how we see the Clone Wars develop from the Jedi's point of view. But the series goes beyond just that one story and looks at the war from many fronts.

Can we expect more animated Star Wars movies?

If you would like to see them I'd love to make them, but we'll have to see.

#Dave Filoni #crew #long post #interview

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imagines-oneshots-blog · 4 years ago

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Hello all my fellow American Gods fans!!!

So a few days ago I heard the news that American Gods was being cancelled...

I was devastated, as I’m sure many of us are as well, though I can’t say that I’m all that surprised. The show has had continued turmoil behind the scenes since the very beginning. The treatment of Orlando Jones by the season 3 writers is reprehensible, and the AG fandom reacted strongly to it. And apparently viewership dropped as much as much as 60% (source) during season 3, so it makes sense that the network would elect to cancel the series.

BUT despite the sorrow we feel now I think there are multiple silver linings here!!

For one, we will be getting some kind of closure from American Gods. Neil Gaiman himself tweeted that there will be more AG content coming, it just won’t be under the umbrella of the show itself. It might be a stand alone movie, it might be something else.

And also, this cancellation means that the plot is now completely in our hands! It’s ours to do with what we will and we don’t need to be as concerned with the direction the show will take. Now that, my good friends, means I’m bringing Sweeney back from the dead ASAP!

In an effort to soothe our collective sorrow over this cancelation I thought I’d give a little update on the WIPs I’ve got on the burner which star our favorite big, angry leprechaun, for anyone who is interested!!

SO, without further ado, roll the list!

All That Glitters - Despite the utterly embarrassing amount of time since I posted the last chapter, this fic is still active! I’d say this fic is about 65-70% done. I have about 5-7 more chapters planned, but as always I’m open to expanding and altering my planned story plot depending on feedback my wonderful readers! After the last chapter’s big reveal, suffice to say I have some awesome things planned for this story!! I’m going to aim for an update within the month.

Request from the lovely @raspberrymama - Sweeney x reader + sex pollen. Yeah fam, you heard that right. Sex pollen. This story is 60% written, I plan to post as soon as it’s finished!

Request from @shaw-2000 - Sweeney x Reader; pending

Request from freya - Sweeney x reader Reader is an artist with the Sight, she who makes a living drawing real fairies into illustrations, and one day she stumbles upon Sweeney! I’m super excited for this one, and it’s about 30% written. As with all requests, I’ll post as soon as it’s finished!

One Shot Idea (potentially for a monthly AG challenge?) - Sweeney x Reader + thigh riding!! Literally sparked by a random idea I got one day. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any Sweeney fics featuring thigh riding so I thought I’d take a stab at it! This one is in the early stages, but I’d love to know what you think - would you read this??

Potential Pablo Schreiber fic - Pablo x Reader; okay so I’ve never actually written fic for real people but I had an insane dream the other night that inspired this. It would basically be a short multi-chapter fic that details a hot and heavy relationship. Maybe you’re working on set and he notices you at a wrap party? There’d be potential pool sex and definite on-set shenanigans. Maybe some bar/house sex.... What do you guys think?? I haven’t really delved into the world of writing for real people so I’d love your feedback!!

I do hope that this helps soothe the hurt of the American Gods cancellation!! I for one an excited to take full creative license and run with the characters that this amazing show has fleshed out.

I’m gonna tag a few friends that I think might be interested in this, no pressure if you’re not into it!!

@raspberrymama

@guiltgoldglory

@shaw-2000

@symphonyofmars

@pinkleopardss

@beansidhefeatherfluff

@blog-lady-vi

@alexa4040

@hiddlebatchedloki

@chloe-the-fool

Please don’t hesitate to DM me and let me know if you want to be added/removed to the tag list!! Love you all!

#American Gods #American Gods cancellation #Mad Sweeney #I'm such a hoe for this man

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pebblysand · 4 years ago

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of breakable clay [extended author's notes on chapter viii of castles]

oh my god. it’s out. jesus christ.

okay first off, before i dive into anything, i know i’ve already done this in the actual a/n but i would like to wholeheartedly thank @whiffingbooks over on discord for helping me with figuring out the structure of things fic. although i have to admit i did not, at all, do what i told you i would do, talking it out was massively helpful in figuring this one out, so thanks a million. secondly, i would like send all of my most sincere and affectionate thanks to @whizzfizz on here, who mother-of-god basically designed this entire chapter and listened to me rant, and rant, and rant about it for days on end without complaining. i’ll go into a bit more depth later on, but THANK YOU.

now, a few facts on this chapter before i dive further in:

wordcount: 19168. i legit would apologise for this but i promised i wouldn’t so i’m not going to. that’s growing up people. don’t apologise for yourselves haha.

soundtrack: so i’ve never mentioned this but each chapter kind of has a soundtrack? like a song that i listened to on loop while writing this. here, i would basically point you to the entire spotify of a band called barns courtney (there’s one album and a few eps), i basically listened to all of their songs on loop this past month. i feel like they have such a strong gryffindor energy, in the good, the bad and the ugly. this chapter is definitely sort of an ode to gryffindors so their music was a very big inspo. if i had to point you to one song, it would probably be dopamine.

favourite line: ‘I dig my fingernails into the inside of my palms and it feels like the blood that comes out is already boiling.’

what is this chapter about? now, that’s an easy one. survival.

okay, now, spoilers under the cut.

ugh. holy fucking shit. i’m actually at a stage right now where i strongly believe that no one on earth will want to read this because everyone probably hates me right now for the choices that i made, especially after i made you wait almost three months for this shit. i always feel like whatever i’ve put out was the hardest chapter to write so far but this one was really out there in terms of struggles - i’m really sorry it took so long, but here we are.

there are reasons, though. first, as i said in my may round up, i didn’t really start writing this until about a month ago, because a lot of things were happening in my life that i needed to take care of. i took exams (which i passed!!!!), my mum had a health emergency, ireland added france to their mandatory quarantine list (it has been removed as of yesterday thank. fucking. christ) and i started a new job. it was a lot.

anyway, this being said, when i did get to writing this chapter, as mentioned above in the thank-you section, i kind of first struggled with the structure of it. now, you will see this is a recurring theme this time around but for this, my instincts were telling me one thing, and my brain was saying something else.

basically, what came first here wasn’t the actual content of ginny’s letters (more on that, obviously, in a minute) but the ‘mood’ i wanted for the chapter. i wanted to recreate, both for harry and for the reader, this sort of idea of being completely immersed in a book or a story. like, you know the kind of mood where reality just kind of blends out, where you start reading something and just. cannot. stop. i don’t think he’s much a reader (at least not canonically) and so i wanted this to take him by surprise, for her to take over his life with her words. i explained in the previous a/n [link] i chose to have ginny’s war be told through letters (basically, i thought it would be the best way to narratively tell her story), and i really wanted harry to experience what she’d lived through almost first hand.

now, interestingly, my idea for how to do this originally was to have the letters sort of be interwoven into the events of 1999, throughout the next couple of chapters (meaning this one and chapter nine). i had this idea in my head of him living through ‘real life’ things but not being able to take his mind off her letters, with the letters also sort of echoing the events that were happening in 99, etc. having the two plot lines develop at once and meet in the middle, kind of.

and i tried to write that. for a long time. spoiler alert, it didn’t work. i think the reason is that every time i sat down with it, i felt like i was doing a disservice to both stories. i mean: 97/98 is important, but 99 also is, you know? and by taking the narrative in and out all the time, it was like you couldn’t concentrate on one thing. it was just very messy and didn’t have the intensity i was originally aiming for because it kept being dragged out of whatever was the main action at the time. i wanted harry to get sucked into the narrative, for her letters to take over his life, but in the end, the impression i just got was that the whole thing was confusing af. instead of deeply caring about both, i couldn’t bring myself to care either for ginny’s story, or for his.

also, i just kept hitting a wall: a wall called harry. basically, i knew that the next two chapters (i.e. eight and nine) would stretch from january 99 to june 99. and for the love of god, no matter how many times i turned it around in my head, there was - to me - no way that harry as we know him would just pace himself to read her letters throughout all those months. like, harry fucking potter isn’t the kind of guy who ‘paces’ himself. he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t sleep for a week to get through it all, you know? this is everything that he’s wanted to know since last may, he’s been desperately looking for answers up to this point, there is absolutely not way in hell that he’d wait it out nicely until june. it felt ooc to have him read the letters over a few months. and i just kept hitting that wall over and over. i considered, at one point, building him reading the letters into flashbacks but flashbacks of flashbacks were, again, quite messy, and i don’t think her letters would ever be something he’d volunteer to re-read, so. clearly, it wasn’t working.

then, i think on a random sunday a few weeks ago, i just went back to the drawing board and was like: okay, say we just write all of the letters and go from there, what would happen? by the end of the day, i’d written 12,000 words and that was that, really.

now, the second difficulty, once i’d decided that was…. what you all probably want me to talk about.

i know this is probably not what you want to hear but: i didn’t really plan this? like, i understand that a lot of people have sort of a headcanon about what happened to ginny in that year in hogwarts but i … don’t. like, as planned as this fic is (which it is, i know where i’m going, i promise) that was always a bit of a blank-space-tbd in my head. i think that this story, as hinny as it is, is mostly about harry. and while i knew what i wanted for harry from her telling her story (for him to get sucked in, for him to realise that his war wasn’t the only war in the world ‘cause he’s been bloody self-centered so far, for him to realise that his plan to protect her didn’t exactly work because it didn’t cater for who she is, etc.), i wasn’t really sure what that story was. i mean, i knew it was going to be bad and traumatic, obviously, but i didn’t know what would happen. and still, to me, what i wrote is a version of that year. it’s not really my headcanon (i still don’t really have one), and i definitely accept other versions, if that makes sense.

this being said, i obviously had thought about it a little. i remember writing chapter one with that line: ‘They have sex for the first time, that day – his first time and it feels like hers, too, but he wouldn’t dare ask, not anymore, anyways’ and thinking i wanted to leave the door open. to me, it was a door completely open: it could have indeed been her first time, or she could have seen someone else (consensually) during that year, or she could have been assaulted. i honestly didn’t know but yeah, that was always a possibility in the back of my head.

then, to tell you the truth, when i wrote the first version of this chapter (the 12,000 words i mentioned earlier), it wasn’t there. i sat down and decided that i wasn’t going to go there. firstly, because, while you probably don’t know this, i’ve written about sexual assault before. my previous long fic, children, in another fandom, dealt (in part) with that. and i didn’t want to be the-fic-writer-who-writes-about-sexual-assault. especially because trust me, there are people who are a lot more legitimate to talk about this than i am. i also didn’t feel like it was necessary to the story, i could do without it and still explain ginny’s early behaviour in the fic, explain her trauma, and have harry realise the things i talked about before. secondly, i’ll be honest: i know this isn’t what people in this fandom want to read. the hinny pairing is mostly about love and fluff (which i love, btw, don’t get me wrong) and i was like, ugh, i don’t want to face the angry comments. i’m writing this a/n the morning before posting so i admittedly don’t know what the reaction will be but i do anticipate a lot of annoyance with me. i knew that a lot of people wouldn’t like it if i went there, and it was just easier not to.

but then, as i started editing, there was a comment (and this, ladies and gentlemen, is a testament to how much your comments fucking matter, okay?). a comment that i remembered reading on the previous chapter and could not get out of my head, no matter how much i tried. well, hello, @whizzfizz. i’ll happily give credit where credit is due. it read:

This made me think of something you mentioned earlier in the fic (possibly Ch1) about Harry not being sure if he was Ginny’s first but that it felt like it. I wonder if this is something that is going to come up in her letters to him.

and, so, it turned. around and around in my head, and i couldn’t get it out. and i kept saying to myself: no, you’re not going there. no, you’re not going there. and then, one night, i caved. i was like, fuck, i need to know if this person really meant what i think they meant by this. and so we talked. a lot. and, i did a lot of thinking. about women. about wars. about violence against women as a an inevitable weapon of war. about ginny being harry’s girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend (more on that later), and what that would have meant in their world. and @whizzfizz, you said something that in the end really sold me. you said: ‘at this point, i don’t think it would be realistic for it not to have happened.’ and, that was that, really.

because i was right, initially. amycus/ginny (ugh, the idea of a pairing makes me throw up in my mouth a little but yeah, there it is) isn’t necessary to the story. but i believe it to be necessary to what this story is trying to show. the plot held well without it, no questions asked. 12,000 words of the da and their battles, of ginny’s rebellions. it was fine. but i think i wanted more than fine. to me (and i appreciate how fucking pretentious that is, please slap me in the face *eyeroll*), castles is more than its plot. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: this is about what is behind ‘all was well.’ it’s about trying to paint a realistic picture of their lives. and that includes the war. and realistically, as far as i’m concerned, knowing how humans fight their wars, knowing our history and the history of violence against women construed as a weapon in literally every conflict there ever was, there is no way that this didn’t happen. ginny says it herself: for us girls, it’s just the way wars are fought.

so, i did go there. and the whole fandom probably hates me for going there, but i sort of stand by it, i have to say. to be honest, on a sort of subconscious level, i kind of wonder: didn’t i always know i was going to go there? like, this fits perfectly into the plot to the point that i think it was probably in my head for much longer than i care to admit. now, i’m so, fucking excited to write next chapter because i finally get to write happy things, and hinny getting back together on rock solid foundations of openness and sharing, and trust, and i’m so, so glad. there are a couple of scenes in the next chapter that i’ve been working towards for months and i’m so, bloody excited to write them. everyone might hate me and i might just be writing this fic for myself now (lol), but again, i stand by the decisions i took. to me, it fits.

phew. okay, now that huge thing is out of the way and explained, here are a few more jumbled thoughts:

the more i think about it, the more i think that my reason for not wanting to be the-fic-writer-who-writes-about-sexual-assault is a bit ridic. children and castles, in that way, are so, so different. like, i appreciate the overlap between the silk fandom and the hp fandom is probably ridiculously small but if you’ve read both stories, they’re obviously very different. one thing that both stories centre on, though, is consent. and to me, that’s probably the most interesting element of ginny/amycus, and the most interesting element of writing characters within a restrictive pov, rather than an omniscient one. like, do i think ginny/amycus is rape? yes. 100%. do i think that ginny thinks it’s rape? that is a much more interesting question. she says it a number of times but i think to her, this is all about control. i think that because of what happened to her with tom, she’s someone who is terrified of losing control of her mind and of her own agency. so as not to lose that, she’s willing to do whatever it takes. it is a ‘you can control my body, but not my thoughts,’ sort of narrative. and, she never says it outright because i think psychologically she’s just not there yet, but tom is everywhere in these letters. and as her world just spirals out, she hangs onto the very few things that she can control: her relationship to harry, and her willingness to do what it takes for them to survive. she initiates the ‘relationship’ with amycus in an attempt to control her fate. later, as she explains to harry she feels a lot of guilt over what she did, and like a lot of sexual assault survivors, she thinks it was her responsibility. because i’m in harry’s head most of the time for this fic, i’m not sure i’ll ever really get to discuss that at length, but it’s definitely something that i wanted to show. another interesting question is: does harry think it’s rape? i think at that point in the fic, he doesn’t have the education, nor the vocabulary for that. i think instinctively (because he is someone who is very instinctive), he doesn’t blame her. if he blames anyone, it’s probably himself. he understands the necessity to do what you have to do to survive and thinks that no, no matter what she claims, that was not consented. that’s kind of what comes out in his annoyingly inarticulate letter to her at the end. beyond that, though, i think he’s a bit lost, just like she is.

on a mildly related note, there is something that i've been seeing a lot in the comments and that i feel like i should maybe address? namely: harry's reaction to ginny dating other people. i assume similar comments will be made about his reaction to ginny/alecto (meaning that he still decides to write to her, at the end of the chapter). i've seen a lot of people observe that he's much more 'chill' about it in castles than in canon. fair point but is he, though? like, he isn't happy about it in castles. and he's jealous as well. but he was never entitled in canon. he was jealous, yes, the chest monster and all that, but he never really did anything about it, and never really impeded on her right to see other people. now, this being said, i agree that in sixth year he might have thrown a tantrum, had she done what she did in castles, but that was sixth year. it was before the war. before he lost half a dozen people. before he had to adult bloody fucking quickly. this being said, i do think castles-Harry is more 'subdued,' i suppose, than canon harry. this is a choice i made early on, which to me is related to the fact that he kind of lost his 'voice' during the war. i mean, it took him six months of people talking shit behind his back to do a press interview to defend himself. i think with ginny, it's a lot of the same. he's a boy who blames himself a lot, and generally doesn't particularly think he deserves the people in his life. to me it's an evolution of his character within the the world of castles. i'm happy to agree to disagree on it, but to me it makes sense within the character evolution and the way the fic's gone, so to speak. now, obviously, he'll grow out of that in due course, but we're not quite there yet.

regarding their relationship, now, i have to say: one headcanon that i did have for this was her not outright telling everyone they’d broken up. i’m sorry, that plan was shit. i just don’t buy for a second that she would willingly have gone ahead with it, and i don’t buy for a second that tom wouldn’t have used her had he known they’d been together, ex girlfriend or not. plus, i think she needed something to hand onto, and that was her relationship with him. her letters. the belief that they would be together again. without it, i don’t think she’d have survived. and i think that summer after the war, they were totally on the same page, for different reasons. both of them kind of saw their relationship as the one thing that kept them afloat, the one good thing they had, partly also because they’d idealised it for so long. she says it as some point, it wasn’t a relationship, it was a lifeline (another sentence i came up with as a response to a comment, lol) and while that is toxic and was meant to crumble at some point, it was necessary for them, both during the war, and in the early days after it. i think her last letter to him is painstakingly correct on that one.

regarding canon, i know i’m bending a couple of things here, which i just wanted to quickly acknowledge: 1) i know jkr has said it’s teddy remus lupin. i just can’t believe, for a moment, that someone who hated himself as much as lupin did, canonically, would name his son after himself. naming his son after his best mate who died to young to become problematic though? i totally see it. so yeah, creative licence, it’s teddy james lupin in this house, lol. 2) when they meet neville in dh, he kind of hints that they’ve only just started to use the room of requirement a couple weeks ago. the text however, only says they’ve only been staying in it full time a couple of weeks ago. i needed them to have somewhere where to meet with the da and stuff, so i bent that a bit. it’s not strictly canon, but it’s also not not canon, if that makes sense.

on seamus blowing things up and talking about eight hundred years of oppression? full disclaimer, while i am french, i have been living in ireland for long enough to become eligible for citizenship in less than six months (yay!). i know some people have said that seamus is a bit of a cliche in the books/films and all (the only irish character keen on blowing things up, haha *eyeroll*), but i actually kind of love it? like, the whole thing about the cranberries and zombie at the start of the fic has been in my head for much longer than i care to admit. i love the idea that there’s this whole muggle war going on at the exact same time that no one ever talks about and actually, i find the idea of wizarding ireland v. muggle ireland and the whole political structure fascinating. like, is wizarding ireland an independent state? what’s the story there? i have a whole seamus fic in my head, partially on this topic, that i might or might not write one day.

lastly, i know this may sound a bit weird but i need to say it: once i’d figured out what and how i was writing it, i bloody loved writing this chapter. first stylistically, i really wanted to mimic the style of how i’d written the magazine article in chapter 5 (i.e. not writing out the whole thing but writing out in text the excerpts that harry focused on) and i love how that turned out. i think it was a good way to balance her words and his, kind of merging them into one, big narrative. second, as a writer, it was so fucking interesting to write someone who knows how to write, which believe it or not i’d never done before. additionally, i loved the challenge of editing this because it was like: i’ve got to edit this, but not too much? i was very careful about modifying and polishing too much of ginny’s speech in the letters because i obviously wanted it to sound like someone who was just writing as the words came to her, without polishing the words, the punctuation, etc. like i usually would. i wanted her to have quirks (she says ‘you know?’ a lot) and i played with her capitalisation and punctuation a bit too. i know these aren’t necessarily noticeable details but it was definitely something that i thought about and that was very fun and interesting to write, as a format.

wow, okay. this was LONG but i think i have everything i wanted to say. if you’ve read all of this (whyyyyy?), thanks so much for sticking around. if you’ve got any questions, anything i didn’t address, do let me know, anon or not, my ask box is open. now, i would love to say i’m going to chill or something, but the truth is that i have to a) actually do a last read through of the fic, lol and b) put it out. this is what i get for writing the a/n before finishing the damn thing, i guess. i’ll rest tomorrow, lol.

lastly, in terms of next chapter, realistically, i’d say eight to ten weeks. i have a full time job now and also, writing this was fucking exhausting and i need to take time out for a bit before coming back to it with a fresh mind. i will be writing other stuff though, i promise. i have a couple of prompts to get to (thanks!!!) and a couple of other ideas so i will probably be posting in the meantime, just not castles.

lots of love,

#castles #extended an #writing #fic #its out #holy shit #byyyyyye #I have not proofread this so we die like men eh

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muertawrites · 5 years ago

Text

Two Halves - Chapter Three (Zuko x Reader)

Part Two

Word Count: 2,450

Author’s Note: Something very important to note about this series is that in it Zuko has very long hair. I’m talking like feudal era Japan hair (use this post from @frogydraws for reference. It is *chef’s kiss* gorgeous). Also, I feel like I’m missing people who asked to be on the tag list - if you asked but don’t see your name, PLEASE direct message me so I can fix that! Other than that I don’t have much else to say about this chapter. It’s mostly exposition but who doesn’t love some good plot speculation?

~ Muerta

Everyone gathers in a sitting room in Zuko’s personal wing of the palace, clustered in groups or pairs in an attempt to create some sense of comfort after the night’s discord. Katara, Aang, and Sokka gather in the center of the room - their typical formation, still very much a reflex due to years of working as a team. You sit with Iroh and Toph to one side of the room, Iroh sharing a chaise with you and Toph seated on the floor beside you, one hand laid protectively over the top of your foot. Zuko stands at the room’s fireplace, passing a ball of flame between his hands; you watch him closely, already innately drawn to him as your partner, noting that while the others (mainly Katara, Aang, and Sokka) discuss the evening’s events, attempting to formulate a plan for whatever should come next, he remains silent, secluded deep within his own thoughts. He looks every part the leader you’re now married to, in a way you hoped you’d only see much later in your relationship.

“It had to be someone within the palace,” Sokka states. “The gates were too heavily guarded for anyone to get in from the outside.”

“But how could they commit a murder without being seen?” Aang wonders. “There were too many people around for something like that to go unnoticed.”

“That’s just the thing,” Katara counters. “There were enough people to create a big enough distraction that nobody saw until whoever did it wanted us to.”

“And we’re absolutely positive it was that specific guy who was the target?” Sokka proposes. “It wasn’t just a random attack to make a statement against the whole government?”

“No,” Zuko chimes in. “They meant to kill him. When I proposed making someone from outside the Fire Nation queen, he was the only one in favor of the idea. He convinced the rest of the board to support me.”

“Do you think maybe they wanted to make a statement against just you, then?” Aang asks.

“It wasn’t just a statement,” you tell him, speaking for the first time since entering the room. Everyone turns their heads towards you; the only one who doesn’t show any surprise is Zuko. “It was a threat, meant for both of us.”

“And probably on behalf of Ozai or Azula,” Toph adds.

“Do you think he’d really still have followers within the palace?” Katara questions. “Everyone who served him was imprisoned after the war.”

“It’s possible,” Zuko responds. “My father radicalized more people than we could possibly know of. I expected his resistance at some point.”

“If Ozai intended to stage any resistance, he would have done it much more gruesomely,” Iroh interjects. “He wouldn’t have wasted time with threats. He would have killed one or both of you, if not everyone in attendance tonight.”

“But who else could hold that much of a grudge against not only the Fire Nation, but the alliance with an outsider?” Sokka asks.

“It could be someone from the Water Tribe,” you suggest. Your words are deadpanned and grim. “It’s very possible they see this as another form of colonization.”

“Nobody else from either tribe is here, though,” Katara says. “It’s just me and Sokka.”

“I don’t think they’d be here officially if they planned to kill someone,” Aang reasons. “If it was someone from the Water Tribe, they’re probably in disguise.”

“They couldn’t have been,” Sokka replies. “They’d have to have been inside the palace, and nobody got in without official documentation.”

“Our concern right now should not be the manhunt,” Iroh speaks up in his firm, tepid way. “It should be the safety of our loved ones; our lord and lady especially.”

“He’s right,” Toph agrees. She stands, placing a hand on your shoulder. “I think she should stay with me tonight. I have the best chance of seeing someone and stopping them before they can do any harm.”

“She’s staying with me,” Zuko quips.

The entire room falls into a heavy silence, the air itself seeming to drop to the floor. Everyone stares at Zuko in shock, yourself included.

“We’re married,” he explains. “It’s our responsibility to look after each other. She’ll stay with me in my chambers.”

Five sets of eyes shift to focus on you. You meet Zuko’s gaze, the steely determination within them only serving to remind you of the bond you now share. You nod, keeping your eyes locked with his as you speak.

“It’s okay,” you affirm. “I’ll stay with him.”

After a few more minutes of deliberation, everyone parts ways for the night - Sokka is sent with Katara and Aang to provide them extra defense, and Toph goes with you and Zuko, moved to the guest chamber just outside his sleeping quarters so she can monitor any movement that happens during the night.

You follow Zuko into his rooms, arms linked together in a mutual nervous embrace. His chambers are divided into three spaces; two rooms connected by a sitting room and a large, covered porch. Zuko leads you down a short hall off the right side of the sitting room, opening a set of doors to reveal an ornate bedroom - your things rest at the foot of the four poster bed, your sleeping clothes already laid out on the mattress.

“This used to be a sunroom,” Zuko tells you. “But I had it converted into a bedroom. I figured it would be weird sleeping together, but also weird keeping you in your own wing across the palace, so… this seemed like a good way to be close to each other without making it too awkward.”

You squeeze his arm in a gentle, appreciative hug, turning to look up at him.

“Thank you,” you say. “I really appreciate all you’ve done for me.”

Zuko nods, laying one of his hands over where yours rests on his bicep.

“Let’s get changed,” he murmurs. “I’ll call for some tea and we can try to have a normal night.”

He leaves you, and you draw the curtains of the room’s sweeping windows so you can dress in peace; one side overlooks a garden courtyard, while the other gives a view of the ocean beyond the palace’s farthest wall. The sights are stunning, but the suspense you feel building in the pit of your stomach makes it hard to enjoy them in full.

Your hands shake as you undress, letting the layers of your wedding robes drop to the floor and leave you naked at the foot of the bed. You stare down at your night dress, the pristine white fabric glaring virginally up at you. You warily slide yourself into it, then cross the room to the vanity that’s been set to the left of the bed.

You can hardly control the shiver of your fingers as they work the beads out of your hair, taking the freed locks behind your head into the single braid you typically sleep in. You stare at yourself in the mirror, clutching the totems Katara gave you to your chest; your eyes are wide, your cheeks sunken, your knuckles white. A small voice, somewhere in the far reaches of your mind where the sound can hardly carry, tells you to have faith in your new husband; he’s treated you with nothing but kindness since even before the moment you set foot on his soil, and has showed nothing but the utmost respect for you - he wouldn’t be the man your family loved and trusted with your life if he shifted his behavior in such a sudden, drastic way by forcing you into his bed.

Despite these cries of reason, all you can hear is the voice of the beautician who prepared you for tonight - she hovers behind you in the mirror, her face contorted into a heinous, scowling grin as she cackles with laughter. She reminds you of the children you’re meant to bear, her nails digging into your shoulders as she goes on to tell you that, as the Firelord’s wife, he’s entitled to all the pleasure your body can give him, and will take it at any cost.

Your terror turns the man who’s been so endlessly sweet to you into a monster.

Through the bedroom doors, you hear a servant enter with a tray of tea, followed by Zuko’s gentle voice thanking them. You swallow, taking the strands of beads in your hands and twining them together, forming a necklace which you place over your head and tuck into the front of your night dress. After a few deep, quivering breaths, you stand, making your way out to the shared sitting room.

Zuko sits on the side of the room closest to his bedroom, head turned towards the now lit fireplace and eyes lost within its glow, his gaze distant and glazed with worry; he snaps back to the present when he notices you enter, giving you a faint, slightly defeated smile. His military uniform has been replaced with a simple set of pajamas and a robe, his long hair free from its knot, now hanging loosely about his shoulders and down his chest; he’s even more handsome this way, his features contoured by the darkness of the room and the light of the fire. You feel a rush of lightheadedness as you lower yourself across from him, nervously returning his smile.

“Uncle took the liberty of preparing our tea,” Zuko greets you. His voice is soft and welcoming, tinged with a mirth that feels almost ironic given the circumstances. “He didn’t want to subject you to my awful cooking skills so early in the marriage.”

You huff amusedly, sharing a genuine smile with him as he serves you. You sip the scalding liquid slowly, letting it ease down your throat and warm you from the inside out; it relaxes you, the shaking in your limbs disappearing.

“I’m glad we have him,” you say. “I don’t think we’d know what to do with ourselves otherwise.”

Zuko chuckles, his grin causing a manic tremble to erupt in your chest.

“He’s definitely the romantic one in the family,” he agrees. “He hasn’t stopped talking about you since he met you. I think if he were forty years younger, he’d have married you before I could.”

You giggle, a timid blush coloring your cheeks.

“I never thought I’d be so popular among Fire Nation men,” you tease.

Zuko smiles, wistfully and exhaustedly, letting out a soft breath of laughter; you can tell the nights events anchor his thoughts.

“I’m sorry tonight ended the way it did,” he tells you. “I wanted your arrival to be a source of happiness for our people. Maybe I was too hopeful.”

You sigh heavily, running a finger along the brim of your teacup as he meets your eyes; you can tell he blames himself for what happened.

“A hundred years of hatred doesn’t end in a decade,” you console him. “It isn’t just here, either - many people in the Water Tribe feel just as divisive as people do here.”

You cautiously reach forward and take his hand, letting your thumb stroke over his knuckles. His fingers tighten around your palm, and you can feel every callous and scar that marks his alabaster skin.

“We have to stand together,” you say. “We have to show the world that we can overcome the past; that things are different now, for the better.”

Zuko nods, raising the back of your hand to his lips and pressing a light, tender kiss to the knuckle of your forefinger. He smiles faintly, letting his mouth linger on the bone for a long moment before placing your hand back where it was on his knee, still twined with his.

“I really did make the right choice in a queen,” he muses. Heat spreads across your skin, your lips curling up slightly at his endearing remark.

“It’s late,” Zuko says after a beat, letting his fingers slip away from yours. “We should both get some rest.”

He stands, leaning over you and placing a docile hand at the back of your head. Your heart leaps from your chest and into your throat, your fingers curling to grip the skirt of your night dress as anxiety rushes to your head. You deny every instinct you have that tells you to fend him off. If this is when he chooses to take you, you have no choice but to go willingly - you can’t form any rifts in a relationship that’s already somewhat fragile, especially when doing so would mean driving a wedge through the center of an already divided country.

Zuko lowers himself and rests his lips to your forehead, etching the phantom of a kiss just below your hairline; he parts almost as soon as he arrives, leaving you dazed and flustered in his wake.

“Sleep well,” he murmurs, offering his arm to help you to your feet. You accept it, feeling much smaller beside him than you did only hours before. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

You each return to your respective bedrooms, your legs floating towards your bed of their own accord and dropping you backward onto the mattress. You stare up at the sheer, billowing canopy hung from the ceiling as the shivering in your limbs returns, your body completely unable to accommodate with what your mind can barely seem to process.

He didn’t force himself onto you. He didn’t violate the comfort between you simply for the sake of tradition and lineage. The extreme relief you feel is overwhelming, so much so that you think you might throw up or faint.

You fall asleep to the sound of the ocean beyond the palace walls, the danger that looms within them doing little to deter the peace that washes over you as you drift into a pleasant dream.

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cloudy-reverie · 3 years ago

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Hello I want to ask you something about Mars Red (I don't mind about spoilers) tell me what happened with Maeda and Yamagami-san in chapter 13 and also, do you think the anime was good enough? Thanks.

Hi there! I’ll answer both of your questions under the cut, as this will be a long post.

Do I think the anime was good enough? Well, I have mixed feelings about it, and I’ve been thinking of doing a full post of my thoughts after I’ve watched it all a second time now that it’s complete and easy to marathon. I enjoyed the anime immensely, but I’m not above critiquing things I like, either.

I started reading the Mars Red manga last year, and even now after the anime, I still prefer the manga’s version of events. I haven’t seen the stage play, the original source of material, so I can’t account for how accurately the manga or the anime adapted its events. As I understand it, the anime gained attention just for being an adaptation of a stage play, which doesn’t happen very often. Usually, it’s the other way around. That explains the interesting use of cinematography in the anime, the emphasis on drama and soliloquys and so forth. Some people might find the anime pretentious in that way, but, well, it is what it is, being adapted from theatre. Being an English Literature major, I didn’t mind it, and I also like the occasional artsy series.

Anyway, as a manga reader, I had different expectations going into the anime. The manga is more character-driven, whereas I feel the anime was more plot-driven, and the addition of anime-only characters – as interesting as they are – made the series seem crowded with only 12 episodes to pack everything in. The manga fleshes out the regular cast more (the anime didn't fully touch upon Defrott and Suwa’s pasts, left out Takeuchi’s shock over a revelation, erased parts of Maeda’s personality, left out some fun Code Zero moments, Aoi encountering Code Zero early on, etc.), and it definitely toned down the violence for a more mainstream audience because Shutaro’s manga rescue of Yamagami was far bloodier and terrifying, as Shutaro, agonizingly, begins to realize what he’s capable of and who he may become.

And one example that I still complain about (lol) is that in the manga, Shutaro and Aoi’s relationship is highlighted in the first chapter alone and emphasized in subsequent chapters. It’s clear they care for each other. It’s clear they’re among the main stage players. It’s easier to be emotionally invested in what happens to them by the end.

In the anime, Maeda takes centre stage instead, with the first episode introducing us to his fiancée, Misaki, whom he has never met in-person until she becomes a vampire. From that point onward, their what-if relationship and Maeda’s regret is frequently alluded to, culminating in the final episode.

Typically, whoever you introduce in the first chapter/episode are the characters that you’ll be going on a journey with, so it was a bit jarring for me when I realized Shutaro and Aoi and the rest of Code Zero wouldn’t be introduced until the second episode (well, Aoi did make an appearance, but they had her interact with Maeda more). We never get to see all of the flashbacks of Aoi and Shutaro, never are shown how much Aoi is determined to find Shutaro. We never even get to see Shutaro's “dream visit,” and then that silly vampire (sorry, Shutaro, I still love ya) left visible footprints in her yard after claiming he was a ghost, and she definitely noticed, so she knows something is up. Had if we had received all of that, perhaps the rescue and the finale would’ve been far more emotional for anime-only viewers invested in their relationship.

Instead, there was more feeling for Maeda and Misaki because the anime took care in telling their story. The anime was good in that aspect because they made Maeda and Misaki’s tragic relationship the focus, and so we were able to reach full circle by the end. Meanwhile, with Shutaro and Aoi practically being sidelined, I saw comments from anime-only viewers confused about why they were suddenly a main couple or getting the spotlight in the end. The anime could’ve avoided that confusion by tightening up their storytelling and fleshing out Aoi and Shutaro more as characters.

I also feel the anime focused a lot more on the politics and military, too. There were so many lengthy meeting scenes when it’s more balanced in the manga, I find. Also, just the other day, I was rereading some exchanges between Shutaro and Yamagami, and laughing, and thinking about why the anime didn’t include those because they were funny daily life scenes. There are also anime reviews complaining about the pacing, the random tone changes, and other things that might’ve compelled them to rate the anime higher.

So, do I think the anime is good? I might be biased, but I enjoyed it; it wasn’t a masterpiece, but it was good for what it intended to deliver. Also, I like series based in the Taisho era, so that was a bonus for me. The manga isn’t 100% perfect, either; it might disappoint Maeda fans, for one thing, and it does tell its story quickly (I wish it was longer). I personally prefer the manga over the anime, but I love both.

The way I view Mars Red anime and manga is like this: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009) are both favourite series of mine. FMAB is prefered by most people, and is widely considered one of the greatest anime series ever, a modern masterpiece. It adapted the manga completely – only because the manga had finished by then, and I absolutely love the manga. However, it doesn’t mean FMA ’03 is bad in comparison; it just has a different but no less unique storyline that Arakawa also liked. With the manga still running at the time, FMA '03, being as popular as it was, had no choice but to go its own way for completion's sake.

This is the case for me here: I like the Mars Red anime and manga for different reasons. I’d probably recommend the manga first due to my preference for deeper character development. But the anime also tells an interesting version, though it could’ve done with a more streamlined focus. Karakara Kemuri adapted Fujisawa Bun-o’s stage play in her own way, presumably keeping to the general storyline but also adding personal touches of her own (you’ll know if you’ve read any of her works before); Signal M.D. studio handled the anime adaptation with their own team of writers while striving for the theatrical atmosphere of its roots. They accomplish different results.

And now that there’s a game with more information about the characters, the Mars Red universe seems so much bigger in an exciting way.

Now, to your second question:

MAGComi is a monthly manga magazine, and you can read chapters online for free for a limited time. They made chapter 13 available to read while the final chapter 14, newly released, is for premium subscribers. Chapter 12 is still available to view, as well.

Since I can’t read Japanese, I will be excitedly awaiting a translation from Laughing in Quarantine scanlations until I get my officially licensed volumes in English this year and next. Thus, I can only make guesses based on visuals alone while factoring in the anime’s events.

So, in the previous chapter 12, Code Zero encounter Nakajima, as they do in the anime, though the context differs slightly. It’s more menacing, and Maeda is revealed to be inside one of those vampire unit mechanical suits, already a vampire himself, near mindless. Yamagami is enraged. A fight ensues. Then, the Great Kanto Earthquake occurs, as it does in the anime.

In chapter 13, as you can see, the fight continues, dangerously close to shafts of sunlight; the rest seem trapped by the rubble, unable to get to the two in time. Yamagami sees Maeda shed a tear, and they exchange words, and Yamagami seems determined to save Maeda’s humanity. Yamagami then pushes himself and Maeda into the sunlight. They grin at each other, exchanging more words, as they are both swept up into flames, dying together.

Then more incredible stuff happens in the rest of the chapter, as you can see! We’ll have to wait for the scanlation team to provide us more solid answers.

#mars red #ask #these are just my thoughts and opinions; no one has to agree #my post

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gofancyninjaworld · 4 years ago

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2020 in One-Punch Man. Part 1: Manga

How shall I describe this succinctly?

It's like ONE and Murata looked around them, saw a raging pandemic, massive disruption to all walks of life, uncertainty of when, if, or how it might affect them, took a massive drag of their cigarettes and said: “Fuck being conservative. Let's go wild. Fuck making our current arc a webcomic retread with fancier fights. Let's introduce more lore, let's have more characters interact in ways one would never have imagined, let's have characters do things that hadn't previously been thought of and make this really exciting.“

If you were holding onto the webcomic as your guide to what next, 2020 was not a good year for you.

723 pages in 24 updates (including revisions) changed the status quo ante in deliciously unanticipated ways!

Where we left off in 2019, we were following the webcomic pretty faithfully, with most manga-original elements being removed at a fast clip. Phoenixman was dead, the mercenaries had died a brutal death, the ninjas had been resurrected but had run off buck naked, Orochi was dead, G5 was very much destroyed, Drive Knight had appeared but had obligingly limped off, taking Nyan with him. The S-Class heroes were in trouble with the cadre exactly as expected and Saitama had met up with Flashy Flash. Tatsumaki had finally found Psykos. Yup, no real changes here.

2020, HAHA!

Awaken!

Throwing manga-specific elements away? As if! They took the great opportunity that preparing chapters for publication to critically review and revise the story so as to first, make it move at a faster pace and second, to be enriched. It’s meant that chapters for volume 22, 23, and 24 (to come) have been redrawn to accommodate the changes and we got the benefit of many of them between April and August of this year.

We started with Phoenixman’s fight with Child Emperor. It started innocuously enough with Phoenixman resurrecting, but then we got a much more interesting chunk of knowledge -- the existence of a metaphysical world modelled on one’s on psyche where the assault on Child Emperor’s sense of self took a much more existential nature.

From a purely physical battle (and some nifty cool info about the Subterraneans) to an otherworldy battle happening in parallel with the physical battle:

It ended up a very interesting examination of Child Emperor’s character and his relationships with other heroes, as well as telling us something else freaky about Saitama’s ability to be anywhere he damn well wants to be.

Ah, and Phoenixman lives. Albeit as a little chick (for now). He’ll probably be back, but not just yet.

The mercenaries were next. They didn’t die. Not because Amai Mask had a change of heart, but because Iaian listened to the niggling feeling in the pit of his stomach and turned his team mates around to intervene just in time.

As you’d expect, trying to guide the mercenaries back to the safety of the surface has been an incredibly challenging ordeal for the disciples. It’s revealed much more about the way the disciples trust each other and lean on one another, and yet, when there was no option to do so, Iaian stepped up wonderfully to fight to save the mercenaries.

We’ve also learned something interesting about why mercenaries exist at all in a world supposedly at peace. I look forward to seeing where this plot might go next.

Elsewhere, we got to learn a little less about Puri Puri’s dancing and swimming lessons, but we got some really awesome nods to the mythical in Bakuma (the baku is a long-nosed creature formed out of all the bits left over after creation that eats dreams) and Electric Catfish Man’s sudden sense of doom is both reference to the way catfish are supposed to detect earthquakes and just damn cool.

A monsterised exploitative business man taking the form of a demonic dream-eating monster that consumes weaker monsters so as to exploit their abilities is so appropriate on many levels (and unreasonably hot!).

Yes, Waganma does make it to the surface, along with Saitama and Child Emperor. Saitama gets chased away by a Sekingar outraged that there’s a clueless hero just wandering aimlessly around. Child Emperor goes back underground and I loved to death Waganma being pierced with remorse as he realises that the hero is going to go risk his life anyway. He’s spoiled, but his keeping quiet came from a place of being a scared human being desperate to be saved (a surprising number of fans did not like that -- they preferred to think of him as a psychopathic monster incapable of remorse).

Orochi still has a date with a gloved fist, but he’s getting to live a little longer than he did before.

Overall the story is tighter and there’s a lot more interest as well as future plot hooks than there were. I’m interested in seeing how it gets tied up in the next volume sometime in 2021.

Reddit did not take it well. Summary of discourse:

sorry not sorry, I lost patience around the 500th whiny post

Advance!

What about the new chapters we got? Also here, ho ho ho, that status quo has gotten a good kicking!

Orochi came back. Not the most surprising surprise in the world, given how carelessly Saitama punched him. Also not surprising that he came back stronger; Phoenixman had wonderfully demonstrated that monsters can bounce back from near-death situations much stronger. But his form... such a disgusting, slimy, ever-shifting mass of tentacles and dragons, consuming all in its way led to the third craziest development: his fusion with Psykos to launch a new monster.

I’ll spare you the disgusting intermediate stages but the end result has been the birth of Psykos-Orochi and with that, what had been a total sweep for Tatsumaki turned into a much more dangerous enterprise where every mistake of hers got punished brutally.

Why is that only number three? Because Tatsumaki raised up the entire base to try to encompass the whole monster (and it turns out that she was thinking far too small -- the monster had actually eaten large sections of City Z) and Psykos-Orochi uses the space to launch a beam so powerful that it literally cuts off part of the Earth itself. It was a real I see it, but I don’t believe it moment.

if you didn’t spend a few seconds just staring in disbelief, you’re not paying attention. OMG. Boy is the Earth in trouble.

Why is that only the second craziest thing? Because of why this fusion monster was able to do as it did. ‘God’ doesn’t just go round looking like a semi-tangible being giving random homeless men magic powers. Yup, the Earth really in in trouble if some supernatural being is smushing monsters together to make a stronger one and then granting it extra powers. Just like that, the struggle has turned cosmic.

Tatsumaki trying to figure out how to fight back and save City Z from being swept away by a tsunami, save the heroes, and save the planet from further damage by the beams all at the same time was one of the most spectacular fights to date.

As I said earlier, this monster has presented Tatsumaki with a real fight where the slightest mistake on her part leads to severe punishment. She wound up in trouble when she underestimated how extensive the monster actually was and let up on twisting it too early, only to have it come right back and skewer her hands.

Thankfully, Genos came in and saved her from that pinch, then held the monster at bay long enough for Tatsumaki to finish saving the strike team so she could give the monster her undivided attention.

Which is a very tame way of saying that that was an incredible development in capability. That some of the fandom had trouble accepting (they suck). Watching their protests has been an exercise in special pleading. They have no trouble understanding how Murata uses scale...until it came to accepting the size of the explosion resulting from Genos smacking away Psyko-Orochi’s execution beam then it had to be a fisheye lens (visibly incorrect, but who’s talking facts here?). Have had no trouble understanding how Murata portrays escalation... until it came to accepting that Genos is strong then no, somehow the monster had to be weaker. Have had no trouble with the freeze frame language that Murata uses to portray things happening at great speed... until it came to accepting that Genos could move really, really fast. For some people, the new is only welcome when it confirms and validates preconceptions. Anyway, that’s my rant done!

the most unlikely of partnerships and they’re still going despite having taken a hell of a battering since this scene

Guess who’s back?

We’ve also been seeing more heroes come back to the fray. The emergence of the Tower of Doom acted as a clarion call to every hero around and able to move. Metal Bat sneaked out of hospital to come running back. Tank Top Master hitched a ride with Mumen Rider to go to City Z. He intended to stick around and save people, but seeing how much wider scale the fight was, he literally threw himself into battle.

Drive Knight decided he literally had to have a piece of the action, took up a ton of power from the nearest substation and came flying in to intercept a desperately escaping Psyko-Jet... ah, I didn’t say? Yes, the monster turned into a machine to run away once hard-pressed.

And we finally got to see what Blast actually looks like, courtesy of a flashback of Amai Mask’s. He definitely looks the part of a caped superhero and it’s little wonder he’s stuck in the imaginations of so many. But now I’m even more interested in seeing what his deal is and what is he’s like now

The one thing we know for sure will be happening is that Garou will not be denied his destiny. He’s coming. But what else is happening? Ah, that’s all in the air.

Bring on 2021!

#OPM #review #long #2020 #so much has happened #so much still to come #manga #Garou is coming BACK #13th #December #December 13th 2020 #so many incredible developments #Genos coming back far stronger than he's ever been and then hanging tough despite overdoing it #the unquestionable appearance of a meddling godlike entity #the Psykos-Orochi fusion and all its crazy permutations #the massive loss of life in Z-City: such an irony between heroes killing themselves to save a few individuals when mass death is all around #Not mentioned; Saitama Flash and their misadventures with Manako

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