#it’s like also interesting it demonstrates that the stakes are such that at this point

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Which dorm arc do you think was the best written? I liked the ignihyde arc the most if I have to be honest

This might be unfair to the other books (since most of them have fewer parts/less time for their stories + book 7 isn't even complete yet for me to judge), but I think the writing in book 6 is the strongest (as in, "most interesting" and "most narratively sound") so far. What gives book 6 a massive leg up over other books is that the conflicts addressed in book 6 were foreshadowed WAY in advance through other content like voice lines, vignettes (I believe Ortho's Precision Gear), and events (like Wish Upon a Star). It was sooo satisfying to see all of the payoff (and Idia breaking down)!!

I don't think the other books are bad by any means except for book 2, sorry not sorry Leona, I just feel that 6 had a lot of space to touch on more characters and their development than only the Ignihyde boys; I loved catching up with characters we've already met and seeing how they've grown or changed, even in little ways. Additionally, I personally prefer stories with "high stakes" and family-oriented drama involved in them, so they biases me quite a bit toward book 6. The high stakes and family drama angle is also true of book 7, but again, it's not out in its entirety yet so I'm going to reserve my judgment until it has.

Something that's unique to book 7 (and that I wish previous books did, even if it elongates them significantly) is actually deepening our understanding of every character within the dorm. I would have been so bored if book 7 focused solely on Malleus. I loved getting to learn more about what makes Lilia tick, and seeing how Sebek and Silver develop from their experiences. I feel like I didn't get a significant enough of a look into many of the other boys during the main story campaign... Instead, we're often told about things that happened without truly witnessing it for ourselves. I know, I know, that's the whole point of a visual novel--expecting a lot of reading. I still would have preferred like... more flashbacks and scenes demonstrating what we're being told rather than the dialogue doing it for us. Show me how Riddle's relationship with Chenya and Trey has changed since their childhood! Show me young Jack being inspired by Leona's play and wanting to be in the same team as him! Etc., etc., etc. I could always look to vignettes and event stories for more lore on each character, but those are always portrayed as "AUs", whereas the main story is what is 'canon" so it's sort of sad to see that we never get to look any closer at most of the supporting cast upon that bigger stage.

It’s exciting that we now get to see more of the boys since we’re now dream hopping for book 7; I’m just going to hold my judgment for now since I found the pacing uneven and a little quick for what we’ve seen of Pomefiore so far, especially when compared to the longer Lilia dream segment. Again, I find book 6 stronger in this regard but that could be because its scale is slightly smaller and it has fewer characters to juggle. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how book 7 wraps up—maybe it’ll completely win me over!

[flanaganfilm]

Hi there! I recall hearing at some point that in Midnight Mass, there was a deleted scene where Erin speaks in the confession booth about knowing Bev killed Pike, but doing nothing about it (or something to that effect? Apologies if I'm misremembering). I thought that was an interesting bit of characterization, could you elaborate on what that scene was like and why it was ultimately cut?

Yes, that's correct! It was a great scene, too. Very well acted by Kate and Hamish. The general gist of it was that Erin confesses to Father Paul that she was pretty sure Beverly Keane was the one who poisoned the dog, but that she knew she wouldn't do anything about it, given her standing in the community and her feeling that nothing would happen to Bev. And she knew that Father Paul was obliged to keep it secret because of the nature of the sacrament of confession - he couldn't tell anyone. She also talked about how her mother, who was abusive, was celebrated by the community even when they knew what she did, and how that made her feel like she would always be viewed as the problem child. No one would listen to her, she figured.

It was meant to show Erin being too afraid to do something in this case, even though she knew it was the right thing to do, and then we'd see her make a different decision at the end of the series when the stakes were at their highest. It was also meant to help demonstrate one of our central themes about the spread of fanaticism - that early in that process, good people often see what's happening and choose to believe it'll get better on its own, or that it isn't their place to intercede. And finally, it was interesting to me because it gave Father Paul an early glimpse into what Bev was capable of. He tries to persuade Erin that she might be wrong, that maybe there was another explanation - something else I quite liked thematically. He tries to rationalize it and reframe it right away, which is an important character trait of Father Paul's when we later learn how he responded to the Angel. I really loved this scene. It was cut because Netflix wanted the episode to be shorter, and had targeted that scene specifically as one that they felt "dragged". They also were confused as to why there wasn't a consequence to Bev, "why doesn't Father Paul do anything with this information" and weren't moved by my argument that 1) that isn't how confession works, and 2) his denial of what he learns is an important character trait. First we tried a shorter version of it, but it was one of those situations (frequent on that show) where a truncated version made the scene less impactful - shorter wasn't better. Ultimately they pushed for its removal and we conceded, opting to save our powder for a different creative battle. I regret cutting it. The show was better with the scene intact.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

You might’ve already got this before, and I’m asking this in genuinely good faith.

Your essay was very interesting, and convinced me of Erikar as a ship reading. I also really enjoyed your dissection of Eridan as a very honest person drawn into destructive behavior. It very much lines up with his status as a Prince of Hope! One who destroys conviction/belief through conviction/belief.

What confused me was your insistence on the hidden hand of the author. Death of the Author and all that, what’s implied in the text can be taken on its own separate from commentary but you seem to be doing an autopsy— the text implies [this] so *Hussie* must have intended for [this] and then tried to cover it up. If they genuinely thought it was a better ending, why not do it? Why the secrecy, why the feints? I think it’s a little conspiracy-brained to insist on a secret “better ending” that we don’t have author’s word or drafts on.

I’m also a little drifted on your frustration with the deaths of the trolls? You write that the theme of Homestuck— a standard coming-of-age story, a reckoning with society and the exit from youth— is undercut by the deaths of the trolls, because that means they *had* to die, in *punishment*. I disagree. Their deaths are tragic, not just.

Homestuck has a lot of methods of revival, the choice to (for the most part) perma-kill some characters (the trolls for one, and then AR, WQ, and WK) is a deliberate choice to make death mean something. If dying doesn’t mean anything, what are the narrative stakes? Murderstuck marks Gamzee as a threat, Eridan as a tragedy. The deaths there are meant. To be sad. To demonstrate that sometimes kids don’t get to grow up, that sometimes the society they live in cuts them down.

Homestuck is a sad story at times! It doesn’t need an ending where everyone gets to live to keep its coming-of-age conclusion.

I hope this made sense. I’m not trying to attack you, I’m just skeptical of some of your points. I hope you go on to do more analysis in the future!

If you want to believe that, go ahead 👍 again, arguing my points on that front would require its own entire essay, lol, so I'm not really planning to do that as the answer to an ask. The only thing I really want to say here is that while Homestuck is often sad, as you say, its underlying tone is unwaveringly hopeful right up until Game Over/the Retcon, and even kind of beyond that. If you prefer a sad story, then you can have a sad story, but it's just not a reading consistent (to me) with the entire rest of what Homestuck is.

For example, the whole narrative grapples with the debate of predestination vs. free will. Do things happen in Homestuck because they have to, or because characters are making choices? But with the introduction of John's retcon powers, it lands firmly in the "free will" side of the debate: the retcon powers outright defy the power of stable time loops - a reflection of how Breath is associated with freedom and choice. This is the optimistic option.

Another thing the narrative grapples with is the realness vs. fakeness of magic. I don't think it's hard to argue that between LE's "evil wizard" status and Godtier!Calliope's wand-induced black hole that the arrow falls firmly in the realm of magic being undeniably real. This is the optimistic option (and yet another narrative element that Eridan is extremely relevant to).

Moreover, even post-Retcon, there are elements that are kept that soften the tragedy already present in the story - for example, the concept of the Ultimate Self, and the implication that all surviving characters will eventually achieve it, takes the edge off all their doomed and dead counterparts, who won't actually be relegated to double death in the dream bubbles, since in a way, they'll live on through their alpha counterparts. It turns those sacrifices from bitter to bittersweet, and serves as a counterpoint to common takes like John being sad that he doesn't know the version of his friends that exist post-Retcon. The inclusion of it in the post-Retcon story, even with its botched delivery, says to me that Homestuck is still intended to be optimistic at its core, even with the extreme Giving Up that Hussie did.

And let's not forget how Calliope gets to come back to life, no strings attached, and that her stated purpose is only to live. Up to the end, the tone is that of HOPE, and I think there's no mistake that HOPE is supposed to be what defeats LE.

As I said in replies on that post, as an artist, I just can't imagine spending literal years, and literally a million words and thousands of images, writing something that's so thematically and tonally consistent, only to hard swerve right at the end, without extenuating circumstances.

And the thing is, there WERE extenuating circumstances, and they're fairly well-documented.

The kickstarter got funded, and while the story is muddled, we know the production of the game was extremely troubled, and Hussie was having difficulty being a project lead for that while also grappling with everything else. Everything else being, of course, an ever-increasing number of irons in the fire - more third-party artists he had to commission and manage, more merchandise he had to be on top of, bigger updates to sate the demands of the fanbase.

Which, speaking of, was infamously one of the most awful and toxic fanbases to ever exist, and one that Hussie has deliberately attempted to distance himself from since. I can't imagine the kind of daily abuse, harassment, callouts, and worse that Hussie had to endure as Homestuck's creator during the fandom's peak years. I don't blame him at all for turning against them.

Therefore, given the way the tone and themes hard swerve, the way several characters get bent entirely out of shape (you're telling me Karkat had several means before him of bringing his dead friends back and WOULDN'T SAY ANYTHING???), the way several plot threads are simply left dangling in the air, and the way some characters reach really weird and unpleasant conclusions (davepeta, gcatavrosprite), I think it's actually LESS reasonable to assume that the ending we got was the original plan. Hussie saw that to do the ending he wanted to do back in act 4, he'd need to write for a year, maybe two years more, and then looked at his mounting stress and pressure, and looked at the fanbase he'd come to hate, and just went "nope." And I can't even really blame him for it, lol. In his position I'd probably do the same.

Also, please don't mistake "the deaths are undone" for "the deaths will not have mattered" - I think there's a reason that the game over timeline characters still exist post-Retcon. Their arcs don't end with their deaths, and their failures are weights on them that must be narratively resolved - I believe that they go on to be the ones to defeat LE, although I have much less evidence to support this. It just makes narrative sense to me - the post-retcon team focuses down the Felt, various Jack Noirs, and the Condesce - the latter of which is their final boss, as the ultimate representation of the shitty society they're doing away with on their path to creating a new one.

Meanwhile, the dead and "irrelevant" versions of the characters, the ones who grappled with and were harmed the most by what LE represents - immaturity, selfishness, and cruelty - go on to band together after death, and defeat him in the bubbles, a culmination of their vengeance for the havoc he wreaked. And with him being destroyed in the bubbles by the dead and irrelevant, symbolically, he will be rendered nothing more than a bad dream for the waking, relevant, and alive.

Thus Gamzee is still an antagonist, although it becomes (Gamzee) and (Equius) who go on to form LE. Those deaths and those failures still matter, they still happen, they still have narrative weight. Even without the Game Over versions of the characters still existing and still being important, the decision to welcome antagonists like Gamzee and Eridan back into the fold is rendered more complex and more significant BECAUSE we've seen how badly they can go.

The speech originally given by post-Retcon Vriska to (Vriska) is also, to me, a weird artifact of this hypothetical original ending - as it exists within the actual comic, it's said by the wrong person to the wrong person - Vriska with her character development reset to a (Vriska) who's had her characterization destroyed in order to make the first Vriska seem more right. I think originally, it would've come from (Karkat) to Meenah, the latter of which being the one whose idea it was to fuck off with the treasure, and who caused the Beforus team's worst problems, and who has a track record of fucking off whenever she's tasked with taking responsibility. Thus, it would serve as a conclusion to Meenah and Karkat's arc, as well as Game Over Sadkat's arc specifically, would convince Vriska to go with him, and would give Meenah some narrative commeuppance, which would kickstart some sort of Beforan troll feelings jam that would rally them together to actually be useful for once in their lives/afterlives and contribute to the LE fight.

Again, if you PREFER the sad ending, I can't stop you, but the reason I'm going in on there being an "original ending" that isn't sad is because the sad ending doesn't make narrative sense. Why is the ultimate self speech coming from a combination of two characters that barely spoke? Why is it triumphant that Meenah and character-development-reset Vriska get to be the big goods in the fight with LE? Why do multiple prophecies suddenly get dropped right at the end when all other prophecies DO come true? Why does Karkat spend so long being sad his friends are dead, and also why is he deliberately set up as the Friends Troll (blood = bonds), and then suddenly not care that multiple methods exist for bringing back his friends? Why bother softening the blow of all the dead/irrelevant alternate selves if they're intended to be fully tragic? Why introduce a mechanic that would let them save whoever they want consequence-free and then not use it to do that? Why does Roxy love wizards so much and then not get to meet the wizard boy? Why is the entire rest of Homestuck so carefully crafted, so narratively satisfying, so thematically and tonally consistent, and then all of it goes to shit right at the end?

So yeah lol this is the SHORT version lol this isnt even the LONG version of this essay

[archivistofnerddom]

The Bad Batch + Going to Book Festivals

Inspired by the fact that the National Book Festival is happening next week

Hunter

He gets dragged around to the different informational pavilions, tables, and displays by Omega. She’s just so darn eager to see everything, so he doesn’t mind.

Hunter also likes going to author and panel talks when he’s getting overwhelmed or overstimulated. He parks it in a quiet, out-of-the-way corner and just listen. It’s a good way for his brain to cool off when the external stimulation becomes too much. (Tech gave him a specialized map with the best “quiet areas” highlighted.)

He also picks certain talks that he wants to go to because they interest him. Hunter is a big fan of thrillers and historical fiction, so he likes hearing those authors talk. (Crosshair goes to one or two with him.)

When Omega is distracted, he’ll also get a few books signed for her as a surprise. (He gets recommendations from the rest of the Batch. He’ll also save one or two to give to her as Christmas presents.)

Wrecker bullies him into wearing a punny t-shirt, but it really doesn’t take much to convince him. Hunter even mandates that they all join him in wearing such shirts (so that they stay on-brand as a family).

Crosshair

Yeah, he stakes out a table for them early in the day, and he does everything in his power to keep it. They need a home base to dump their stuff throughout the day, especially their collective massive book haul. (Everyone contributed to it, but Tech and Omega are the worst culprits .) Crosshair is more than happy to hang there and read, if it means they keep this table. That being said, Echo and Hunter do take shifts, so that Crosshair can go to talks when he wants.

Crosshair knows which authors sign when, so he’ll scope out when they should be getting into which line and when. He’s got it down to a science. (Tech is duly impressed.)

He doesn’t necessarily stick to one genre of books when he raids the book sale pavilion, but he does skew mainly towards fiction.

The only books he personally wants to get signed are a few books of poetry and a nature book. (He likes the details involved.)

Omega bought him several adorable and brightly colored bookmarks. Crosshair used them with such pride, even if they seem out of character for him.

Tech

Tech is absolutely in nerd heaven at a book festival. His favorite books, tables, pavilions, and talks are those that have to do with science, technology, history, and different cultures.

He takes Omega to the pavilions that talk about information technology, historical preservation, and library management. They both enjoy learning what goes into keeping information safe and protected for future generations.

Tech also has the map of the entire book festival memorized. He also seems to know where everyone is at any given time, so he’ll randomly text people about where they need to go to get to the next talk they wanted to attend. (Crosshair and Echo suspect tracking devices.)

He and Wrecker require supervision when they go to any hands-on science demonstrations. They get carried away sometimes.

Tech also walks away with a large collection of cool notebooks and pens. (He’s going to give some to Omega for Christmas, but he wants a few for himself too.)

Wrecker

You know who will be carrying most of the Batch’s giant book haul out of there? Yeah, Wrecker. He doesn’t mind though, because he’s really happy that they had a good time and got great souvenirs from the day.

Wrecker absolutely enjoys the graphic novels. He will fanboy out over the art styles and the stories. He’s a big fan of the visual medium. (Wrecker is why they bring so many posters from the festival as well.)

He’s makes sure that everyone remembers to eat and drink throughout the day too. Wrecker also makes a point of bringing food over to Crosshair at their claimed table and just hangs out with him while he eats. (He uses the excuse that he wants to get off his feet for a little bit, but it’s largely because he wants to keep Crosshair company.)

Wrecker has a second sale pavilion haul that is largely made up of fun socks, shirts, mugs, and other fun assorted literary themed items. Some are for him. Some will be Christmas presents for the family. Most will be given to kids back home who couldn’t make it in to the book festival.

He’s responsible for rounding up the rest of the family at the end of the day. Because of that, he’ll just track down Tech first and use his locator system to find Hunter, Omega, and Echo. (Crosshair is easy. He’s napping at their table.)

Echo

He absolutely loves the various library tables that explain the different resources they provide. Echo enjoys learning about how they make books accessible to different populations with different types of needs.

Whenever he needs a physical break, he’ll either dip into the back corner of an author talk or go quietly hang out with Crosshair and read.

Echo also enjoys books about history, though he also likes perusing literary analysis and some fiction. It all depends on what he’s feeling that particular day. Sometimes, he’ll grab a spooky, creepy, or morbid book just for funsies.

He doesn’t mind hanging out in lines to get books signed. Echo can keep Omega entertained when they’re in a line for a particularly popular author. The amount of silly games they come up with to pass the time entertains those around them to no end.

Echo can and will exploit the fact that he has prosthetic legs to get good seats for all the talks Omega wants to attend. He’s just so nice about it that most people don’t realize he’s doing what he’s doing for a completely self-serving reason.

Omega

She makes a point to get as many authors to sign the festival poster as she can. Omega wants to frame it afterwards and hang it up as a cool memento once they’re back home. The whole Batch team up to make this happen.

Omega also makes sure to get a family photo while they’re all together and wearing the punny shirts Wrecker (and Hunter) mandated they wear.

She is adamant about getting more than one copy of each book she likes. When asked why (because that starts to get expensive real quick), Omega says it’s because she wants to share the books with people at home. (They maintain a Little Free Library, so she likes adding new books whenever she can.)

Omega gets super excited to talk to people in whatever line she’s in for book signings. She likes to hear about what they think about the books and the various talks.

More often than not, she wears herself out throughout the day, mostly due to sheer excitement. Omega will fall asleep on the nearest shoulder when they’re on their way home. (All of her brothers thinks that’s absolutely endearing. They consider that a sign that it was a good day.)

+ Batcher

Batcher is the best dog, though she stays at home while they’re at the festival. She does, however, get a massively oversized Clifford the Big Red Dog t-shirt and a new dog toy that Omega found at the sales table.

Bonus - Rex

Echo sends him a borderline inappropriate punny shirt and a book whose subject is weirdly specific to something that happened during their time serving in the military together. Rex doesn’t know what to make of that, but he reads the book anyway.

[mercyisms]

hello anon and apologies for promptly dropping off of the face of the earth after promising to reply to this. in the interest of trying to be useful, i'm going to dash something off-the-cuff, but i hope it helps! i think this idea is already routinely demonstrable in the text, but tamsyn muir was also kind enough to explicitly spell some of this out in this lovely interview: "That said, the God of the Locked Tomb IS a man; he IS the Father and the Teacher; it’s an inherently masc role played by someone who has an uneasy relationship himself to playing a Biblical patriarch. John falls back on hierarchies and roles because they’re familiar even when he’s struggling not to." one of the ways this is dramatized in the text is, y'know, john shoving some of the earth's soul into a barbie. pygmalion the earth into perhaps the most iconic form of white femininity. it's a move that may be complicated by details such as a) john's indigeneity and b) the queerness implicated in john preferring barbie to any of his more 'masculine' toys, but there's a lot to interrogate here on how john's proximity to systemic oppression (across various lines) is retained and the ways in which they're replicated despite his intentions, or the ways they come through even when certain axes of oppression (gender, race) operate differently in the nine houses than on contemporary earth, or what john prioritizes above altering these systems. so on one hand, thinking about john's affinity to tall blondes might lead you there. however, because the 6ft tall blonde is not just alecto but is, in fact, an enduring role, now you can open up some more questions. for me, these questions might look like: what is the relationship between this role and john and john's empire?

the 6 ft tall blonde is always john's bodyguard. that's another key point of comparison. we may consider: when the bodyguard is alecto, she is stylized as a (to really simplify it) romantic counterpart in some ways; she is a caretaker (i'm quite sure there's a line in ntn about how john is unable to sleep unless alecto strokes the bridge of his nose or similar; possibly the only one granted access into the fact that john is afraid); she, based on what we have to go off of, trusting of and ultimately deferential to john's judgment prior to entombment. she is also stylized as a highly, and traditionally, feminine person (see: barbie), though alecto is repulsed by and in conflict with her body and gender presentation. and then you might consider augustine. at the urging of his lyctors, john entombs alecto. john identifies augustine as one of the lyctors most repulsed by and mistrusting of alecto. in her vacancy, the lyctors come into their roles as the emperor's fingers, and augustine, first saint, takes up a particularly key role. we might also note that augustine is staked out by the text as deeply gender ambiguous (g1deon and mercy, among others, are gendered without hesitation. the narration questions augustine's gender), but frequently pivots on misogyny. certainly, he accuses mercymorn of trying to become A.L. bodyguard 2.0 but in a way that a) suggests she is failing and b) while mercymorn and M-- both function as guardians and protecting figures to John, both come to the table with a different texture. augustine (exchanging 'your mom' jokes, etc., with john pre- dios apate minor) and A-- (thinking especially of how john remembers only A-- calling his new eyes 'cool') is also fulfilling a role for john that his other (remaining) lyctors are not. humanizing confidante, perhaps. he is not only a thousand year old friend but a caretaker for a slightly more fallible and human john. augustine also reaches a point where he can no longer support john. where john-as-emperor and the goals and demands of his empire diverge from what augustine sees as morally defensible. and so he's replaced. augustine and john wrestle. they reach an equal impasse. and ianthe -- rather than save her mentor and overthrow god -- chooses to sacrifice augustine and take up his place. of course, kiriona is also present and given some nicer titles, but by the end of nona (see: the tower besties little fight before the tomb is opened) we understand gideon is being used by john, while ianthe is the bodyguard proper, choosing what information to feed back to john (NO new updates on his duplicitous sluts, thanks!) and working very hard to keep john separate from alecto, in order to keep mr. gaius in a state that benefits ianthe and ianthe's goals. ianthe also has some wild and fucky (complimentary) gender shit that may also be fun to track. also, notably, ianthe is not of particular interest to john, who vastly prefers harrowhark. the strain of desire is possibly broken. so we don't just have, you know, a very fun enduring bit of the 6 ft blonde bodyguard, but we also have an interesting progression. we can see how this role evolves. john shaped alecto in one way, and had to set her aside. augustine allowed himself to be shaped by and used by john, up until a point. ianthe is the consequences of john's empires and the decisions or neglect that coalesced into the nine houses' politics and hierarchies, but we've reached a point where john is now (wittingly and unwittingly) in conflict with these hierarchies. the 6 ft tall blonde is not only a signal that certain hierarchies, roles, and systems persist in john's empire, but i think you could compellingly map out ianthe is the logical conclusion of said systems & that provides a really interesting context to read her actions & plots, both in conversation with alecto (and her shifting position) and augustine, but also with john. (and the 'rebrand' john is engaging in during nona, as he moves away from the neo-roman lyctors to tower princes & a flirtation with greater indigenous stylings, ex. 'kiriona' over 'gideon'.) anyway! i hope some of this helped. i know i'm not necessarily spelling out the entirety of my personal reading here, but i hope i've laid out some of the pertinent points of analyses and also some of the 'work' (points of comparison or characterization, etc.) that i think is happening wrt to our tall, tall blondes.

[dapper-lil-arts]

Sooooooo....have you seen forgotten friendship?

Any opinions on the special

And wallflower?

I think its pretty phenomenal, it honestly has the best stakes of any MLP episode i've seen when it comes to magnitude. the stakes are personal, and yet they feel world ending, deeply emotion and character driven. The fact that Sunset Shimmer has gone so far into goodness that she would gladly sacrifice all of her memories for her friends is utterly phenomenal. Also visiting Equestria is at its absolute funnest, with the same tone, she gets to reunite with celestia and have a bunch of rly cute interactions with twilight! Also wallflower is fine enough for a badguy, i think her actual dialogue is a bit too soft for her actions though. its pretty funny that someone that should be saying "I WILL NEVER STOP HATING YOU-- AND I'LL MAKE SURE EVERYONE ELSE FEELS THE SAME" she says something like "now everyone knows youre the biggest meanie" which is like baby talk. its amusing to me. Concidering her actions, her way of demonstrating her desires is surprisingly tame. Also i love that part where scitwi is like "You made the mistake of fighting the power of friendshi--" And pinkie just shouts "yeah we get it LIGHT HER UP LADIES!!!" And they all fucking shoot wallflower LMAO thats so funny to me. they might as well have been holding AK-47s at that point. Good antagonist though, very interesting role to a phenomenal special with status quo-affecting stakes.

[livefastdriveyoung]

Takeaways from Testing Day 1

The RB-20 Maintains Status Quo - Max ended a full 1.162 (don't quote me but I think that's the correct math) ahead of Lando Norris in P2. The car did not appear to struggle under its 142 laps. It also remained consistent across majority of the runs. Checo will drive tomorrow.

Aston Martin is being underestimated - Fernando Alonso is a world champion, he started his session in P3. He stayed there for a great deal of the session. Even ending in P8 puts him in the points if this is a race. Additionally, Lance pulled through into the top five, taking P4 for a period of time. He's a strong driver, he shouldn't be underestimated. They both finished in the points, and had Lance not lost his mirror he could have pulled a fast lap.

Williams Car is the problem, not the drivers - I cannot reiterate this one enough. Alex Albon had a fuel pump problem, so entirely out of his control. Logan Sargeant has improved. Undoubtedly so. Not only has he built up his muscle and trained hard, he spun out and still managed to get back onto the track, and sit at P10 for most of the session before ending P11. Allegedly the reason he had a spin out was also because of a gearbox/transmission error. Whether it was the cause or the issue was the result, he held it together well. The car is having problems, not the drivers.

Mercedes Performance - We know that Lewis Hamilton is a strong driver. He's never been the best qualifier when there are competitive cars. Yes, George did not do as well as he could have, ending with P12, but he experienced at least two lock-ups. There's no guarantee that the issues don't exist in Lewis's car as well. We'll see what happens.

The complaint about their front wing design is interesting. F1 and FIA are separate organizations. Mercedes wouldn't blatantly violate the letter of the law, they would be the first team to be called out for it. They follow the letter and have the approval of the FIA. It has been approved. Whether F1's concern about the 'spirit' of the law being violated is something that could impact them, I don't know. I'm sure that the new rules will include a provision against this next year, but any immediate action, I doubt. Symonds is unimpressed.

Haas is not to be thrown out of the running - yet - A new team principal means that there are going to be changes. They straight out said the focus was on the Tyres and not on performance. While they are not a strong team, I think that throwing them away just because you might have preferred Guenther, or like to rely on what you already know, this isn't that. Yet.

Visa Cash-App Racing Bulls - Forget it, I'm calling them V-CARB. Anyway, Daniel Ricciardo, (LOL that autocorrected to all caps which is so funny) had minimal struggle with the car. His first few laps were not great,, but to end in P4 is wonderful. His statements about a podium in the beginning of the season being a dream not a reality is interesting, but I wonder if that is self-deprecation/spreading the party message from within Red Bull's house. Yuki finished P13, but, again, only had a morning slot. He was high up for a good portion of the day as well. I think this is going to be interesting. The narrative that they are not a junior team anymore seems to be accurate.

Stake did well - The C44 is worlds ahead of last year's model. Additionally, we forget regularly that Bottas was a Mercedes driver, he's won Gps before. Zhou is not a bad driver, I think this might be his last season to prove himself because I think Audi will keep someone who has a history of winning, and if the rumors are true, Carlos Sainz will be getting one of the seats. But that might motivate him. He's also young, 24 is below the mean age of the drivers (29) and if he can demonstrate improvements, they might keep him over Bottas.

Ferrari Fights - Buckle down y'all. I don't think that Carlos will do anything to sabotage Charles, he's not an idiot, but he's going to do what he has to in order to prove that Ferrari are losing out on a driver. He was P3 today. Charles is great, we know he can drive, his improvement is clear. I'm curious as to what that is going to look like.

if he's moved on from this, he's going to need to demonstrate to Audi that he can be a First Driver.

Alpine - Pierre pulled P5 right at the end. Ocon is toward the bottom. I'm not sure what's going on in house but nobody is happy allegedly. Guess we'll see.

[gayleviticus]

I was skimming thru the gospels recently, trying to get a feel for how they're structured for myself, and smth that caught my eye are what events each Gospel use to open Jesus' ministry after the initial baptism, gathering disciples etc

Matthew, wanting to present Jesus as a second Moses, opens with the Beatitudes, and the sermon on the mount. Jesus is an authoritative teacher of God's Law, the Torah, and how he tells us to live is important.

Mark similarly opens with Jesus teaching in a synagogue, except - we aren't told any of what he said! But we know he teaches with authority, an authority he demonstrates in a very dramatic way by casting a demon from a possessed man. Jesus is God's representative, one who speaks and acts with authority, and yet there's something mysterious about him that can't yet be grasped.

and it's interesting, bc it's sometimes said by people trying to push back against a hyper-theologised protestantism that neglects the social justice implications of the Gospel, that christians spend too much time focusing on the epistles theologising about who Jesus is, than the Gospels which tell us about his moral teachings. But if we accept such a binary division (which I don't), Mark is much closer to the latter than the former; he gives us some teaching, for sure, but much of his Gospel is about establishing Jesus' authority not just through miraculous works but through his Passion and Resurrection.

Luke, meanwhile, opens with Jesus at the synagogue in Nazareth, applying the words of the Prophet Isaiah to himself to declare the Spirit of the Lord is upon him to proclaim liberation and the year of the Lord's favour - in response to which he is rejected by his own hometown. This is doing a lot of things at once; firmly placing Jesus in the tradition of the OT prophet hated by others for speaking the truth and championing social justice, but also foreshadowing Luke's interest in the eventual way Christianity was rejected by Jews and went to Gentiles (which btw i acknowledge this raises issues of supersessionism, but we do not have time to unpack those; suffice to say Luke wrote with a specific agenda at a specific point in time when there was a v specific relationship btwn Jews, Gentiles, and Christianity as a Jewish sect).

Finally, John opens with... Jesus turning water to wine? It almost seems like a parody next to the other gospels! Next to handing down the law, casting out demons, and fulfilling biblical prophecy, throwing out some extra booze at a party seems rather indulgent.

Jesus even seems to acknowledge this "What concern is that to you and me? My hour has not yet come." The Son of gOD should be making a big, dramatic debut, not performing party tricks. And yet he does it anyway.

I'm sure there's much to be said about the theological significance of this - a reference to the Eucharist, a fulfillment of OT themes of the great eschatological banquet with wine running freely, 'the best wine saved for last' as symbolising Jesus.

But what strikes me most is how low-stakes it is - and it's not as if the rest of John is exactly slice-of-life; unlike the other 3 gospels people are much more consistently out to get Jesus here. And yet as his first great sign, through the miracle of water into wine Jesus celebrates the goodness of God's creation, of wine to make man's heart glad, of weddings to join two people in commitment, of parties to celebrate family and friendship. In a sense he's hallowing everyday life here; the lack of drama is the point.

And I think it makes for a poignant book-end with the epilogue to John, which involves no dramatic ascension to heaven as in Luke, nor the giving of the Great Commission as in Matthew, nor the ambiguous cliffhanger ending of Luke. It involves Jesus having breakfast on the beach with his besties. Jesus' ministry in John starts with a wedding and ends with brunch with the bros.

[anthurak]

Rambling about Perma-Death in Videogame Stories

So is anyone else just completely and utterly done with the trope of ‘If you die in the game, you DIE FOR REAL!1!1’ that we see in untold numbers of stories about characters getting trapped in video games?

Like I was just watching some clips from the Jumanji reboot and now I just can’t stop thinking about the same thing I thought when I saw it back in 2017: WHY does perma-death HAVE to be a thing here?

If you haven’t seen it, the premise of the reboot is that the magic board game of doom from the original 1995 film realized that board games are getting less popular and thus upgraded itself into a videogame cartridge/console to be more appealing to would-be players. And has now sucked in four unsuspecting teens for an adventure now parodying videogame tropes instead of a board game.

Now the big ‘threat’ posed to our protagonists is that they each start with multiple ‘Lives’ which allow them to immediately respawn when they die. But they only have three lives each, which of course leads to the implicit idea that if they can’t lose ALL their lives or it’s GAME OVER, ie; they’re dead for good.

But the thing is, nothing in the movie actually DEMONSTRATES to our protagonists that this is actually the case. They just… assume that if they die three times they’re dead for really realsies.

And while watching/rewatching the movie, I just kept thinking WHY did the threat of perma-death have to be a thing? And also the fact that it didn’t even make SENSE in this context.

Like the Jumanji game is clearly sentient to a degree and seems driven first and foremost to get people to play it. So I have to ask; WHAT sense does it make for Jumanji to outright, permanently KILL its players? After all, if the players are permanently dead, they can’t exactly PLAY now can they?

Furthermore, just look at the old-style sidescroller games that Jumanji clearly based its new form on. What happens in those games when you lose all your lives? It doesn’t permanently lock you out and keep you from playing ever again. Instead you lose your progress and are sent back to the start of a level. Or in those particularly hard games, you are sent back to the very START of the game.

So don’t you think that makes WAY more sense for how Jumanji would work?

Imagine in the film when the heroes’ fifth party member Alex, the kid who got trapped in the game twenty years earlier, starts to lose his last life, the rest aren’t able to save him. He seemingly dies… and then there is this bright flash.

Then all five of the players are suddenly back in the jeep with Rhys Darby hamming out exposition at them, right back at the start of the game.

I don’t know if that would make for a better paced film, but I definitely think it would make for a more interesting story that could explore some of the real underlying aspects and nuances of how playing a videogame actually goes. Because now this is no longer a challenge of luck or split-second intuition, but of trial and error. You know, like most ACTUAL videogames!

Now that our heroes know there ISN’T actually a threat of permanent death (because this is, you know, a GAME!), they can engage in one of the most FUN parts of playing a big, open-world sandbox game: trying any number of crazy, nonsensical ideas to see if one of them actually sticks!

And I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a great way to ratchet up the dark-comedy as the characters start trying all kinds of crazy ideas that get them killed more often than not. And if you think that wouldn’t make for a very entertaining movie, let me point you to a little-known flick called Groundhog Day! Not to mention the fact that story would still have stakes. The characters still have the goal of completing the game and there’s always the threat of them losing their progress and having to start over. Plus it makes for a great method of character development and bonding as the five are forced to learn how to work together until they’re functioning as a seamless unit.

This is really my overall point about how the threat of perma-death in these kinds of stories feels like such a crutch to needlessly generate generic drama and stakes. Not to mention kind of going against the very thing that makes something a GAME in the first place.

It’s why my actual favorite ‘people getting sucked into a videogame’ story is actually the anime Log Horizon. Because in that series the respawn mechanic of the MMO the characters are sucked into still works, and the story instead revolves around its characters learning to adjust, adapt and live in this new reality. Not to mention it still finds an interesting way of maintaining stakes and consequences to characters dying even if they can respawn: Namely that because the game’s respawning mechanic involved taking away a certain among of Experience Points from a player as a ‘cost’ for reviving, this means that players now lose pieces of their memory every time they respawn.

All in all, while I understand its appeal to writers as an easy way to generating stakes and danger for characters, this whole trope of ‘die in the game you die for realsies’ feels SUPER old and super cheap at this point. And I have serious respect for any story that subverts or averts it.

[msmargaretmurry]

would love to know which romance novels you’ve enjoyed!! i feel like we share a lot of “standards” so it would be pretty likely for me to enjoy anything you recommend.

p.s.: have you read any emily henry books? i feel like you might like those. <3

i have not read emily henry but i've heard pretty good things! i actually have a copy of beach read on my shelf that i am hoping to get to this summer. thank you for the recommendation! <3 will talk about some romance novels i've enjoyed under the cut. i am always accepting recs btw!!

my platonic ideal of a contemporary romance novel is evvie drake starts over by linda holmes. the setting feels real, the characters feel real and have real problems, the emotional stakes are proportionate and believable. bonus points for the portrayal of baseball and the main guy's relationship with baseball feeling normal and real. linda holmes's books (i also really enjoyed flying solo, tho not as much as evvie drake) are so character-driven that it almost feels like the romance arcs are secondary to the character arcs, which is ideal to me personally!!

i read a lot more historical romance than contemporary because i find it easier to get over the "that's not how that works!!" of it all in historicals, for reasons not worth elaborating on here. i tend to enjoy kj charles because she's very good at having a strong exteral plot in addition to strong characters! think of england is my fav of hers. for het historical romance i really liked courtney milan's brothers sinister series (esp. the countess conspiracy) and tessa dare's girl meets duke series (can't remember which one i liked best but i listened to them on audiobook at work and i do remember having to stop during a sex scene because i was like oh my god this is actually hot i can't listen to this at work LMAO). i have read every bridgerton and they're all a little dated and some are more mid than others but the francesca book, when he was wicked, is the best one imo.

i liked bringing down the duke by evie dunmore but i did not like the sequel so i haven't read more of hers 😅

it's not structured quite like a traditional romance novel but i really loved peter darling by austin chant, a gay trans peter pan retelling.

i do want to give a shoutout to a romance novel i did NOT think i would enjoy but wound up actually liking a lot, canadian boyfriend by jenny holiday. i was going to skip it because i don't like alternating first person pov but my coworker who loved it told me joshua jackson does the male pov chapters in the audiobook and i was like. fine i will listen to joshua jackson. and i had plenty of quibbles with the book (for one thing i thought the whole book could have been done without the central "fake canadian boyfriend" premise and might have been better for it, lol) but i was surprised by how moved i was by the male lead's complicated grief as a widower and i thought the hockey parts felt realistic and good. going in i was also like urgh ough hockey player/ballet dancer romance is gonna go so hard on the big strong man/tiny dainty woman of it all but it DIDN'T, and i thought the female lead's relationship with dance was nuanced and interesting. i don't think i could have read this book with my eyes due to the povs but the audiobook with alternating narrators worked nicely. and definitely not a perfect book (if i were to rate it on goodreads i'd probably do like a 3.5 rounded down?) but i liked it so much more than i expected to and i feel like i need to demonstrate that i am NOT a hater by default and i CAN be a generous reader when i think a book has earned it 😂

[exhausted-review]

Doctor Who: 10- The Dalek Invasion of Earth

This Serial is kind of a tough one. Simultaneously it shows dramatic acting and grand stakes, alongside some pretty unfortunate writing and the exit of a character who I really wanted to eventually deliver on the promise of her initial appearance. It's good in some ways I think are somewhat interesting, but the reasons it disappoints are what really interests me. In spite of that, Doctor Who's tenth serial delivers a lot to love.

This serial sets up a lot of dramatic promise, with the concept that the Daleks have virtually conquered the earth with only a few pockets of resistance remaining. There's a lot to love about this concept. I wish we got to see even more of the Daleks being ruthless dictators over earth but we do get a lot of it, and the Dalek coming up out of the Thames is a pretty good cliffhanger to leave off the first episode. I really enjoy how ramshackle and hopeless the resistance fighters are. These things all set up something really great.

I also really love Ian and Barbara in this episode. The fact that the companions all get split up is a fantastic piece of dramatic work, and I really like how it allows the serial to show different sides of the Daleks' rule over the world and how it's fallen into disrepair. Ian's bizarre guerilla tactics and hiding in the forests and mines and such is great, but I also really love Barbara's interactions with other resistance members, and other ordinary people under the daleks. Pretty great stuff.

My primary point of contention with the episode has to do primarily with The Doctor and Susan. This episode sees Susan exit the show in pretty frustrating fashion, which we'll get to in a bit, but before that it sees much of Susan continuing to fulfill the role of a damsel in distress. I feel like her having so much time separated from the other companions could have given us an excellent opportunity for Susan to finally demonstrate all that knowledge we've been assured she has since An Unearthly Child, but instead we have the resistance fighter David to save her when she gets into danger. It's frustrating. The burgeoning love between Susan and David is an interesting dramatic point, but I do kind of detest it being some of Susan's best dramatic writing in the show.

The Doctor is, for the most part in this episode, not super objectionable. He works hard to help the resistance fighters defeat the Daleks, and his reasons for doing so are not expounded upon. The brief moment where Susan seemingly convinces him to help them fight is a great bit, but it's overshadowed by the end of the Episode which sees the Doctor behave in a significantly more frustratingly paternalistic manner.

The actual drama of Susan trying to decide whether or not she should stay with David or continue adventuring with The Doctor could have been much more interesting. It's frustrating when David says he's offering Susan the chance to build her own identity because Susan is sort of devoid of identity, but it's not in a young person finding herself way, it's in a badly written way. Significantly more frustrating is The Doctor cutting through the drama by simply making the choice for Susan by locking the tardis doors and leaving. It would be wrong to say it's unceremonious, but it's a very frustrating moment. Once the Doctor starts talking, Susan never tries to argue otherwise, that it's her decision, that she still wants to stay with him, that she needs time to think. She just stays silent. It's very in line with her character- or the lack thereof- that the series gives us of Susan.

I wanted more for her. The fact that we don't get more from her holds this episode down quite a lot. In the same way that An Unearthly Child is held up by its first episode and the enigmas and promise surrounding Susan, The Dalek Invasion of Earth is held down by how much it plays into the problems the series had with actually writing Susan and by her frustrating departure from the show. An otherwise excellent adventure harmed by unfortunate character work and bad writing. In a bad way, feels a lot like modern Doctor Who.

To end off- a quick bit of housekeeping. I think I'll only show the updated full list at the end of each series, so as not to fill my computer's hard drive with hundreds of images from the same spreadsheet. I will however, mention where I intend to put the story in my overall list. This story, for all its faults, is quite a bit better than the majority of Doctor Who to this point. For right now, it sits at #2 behind the first Dalek story, but I suspect it to fall quite a bit in future.

[frostiifae]

So, I dunno, thoughts about Witch from Mercury (including spoilers under readmore, so, y'know), because it seems like it's a cool thing to do, i guess. Maybe made more or less interesting because this is the first Gundam series I've actually paid full attention to.

In short, it's good! It's very good. But, I dunno, can't give it top marks as an alltime favorite. There are lots of superficial problems that probably mattered much more to me than they would to the average viewer, and like, you could argue that they just aren't even problems, I guess.

The biggest thing I can criticize without spoiling much of anything is that it dangles a lot over your head and then waits a long time to resolve almost any of it. It's tough for people who get anxiety, like me : ). No, that's not why I'm writing this post. This isn't a coping mechanism. Fuck off.

To reiterate, though, on the whole: good. Good show. Good stuff. Don't click "keep reading" unless you want to read a fucking novel, OK?

I have to say I think the strongest character of the show bar none is Prospera, but at the same time, she showcases the recurring problems I have with the show: firstly, that they spend way too long making Prospera sound sinister without you understanding at all why, and secondly, that it's a real shame we didn't get to learn more about her feelings and why (and how?) she'd gone to all of this trouble. I understand her goal in the abstract is to "create a world where Eri can exist", but it's not clear how exactly she intends to do that, and maybe it's just me, but those practical details can be really important in selling me on an idea.

Even so, I adore her. I adore the way she possesses so much influence over the plot despite having very little economic or political power herself - she just understands people, she understands what's at stake, and she understands how to manipulate things to get what she wants. I was so delighted to learn about her true motivation, imagine a girl kicking her feet and squealing as Prospera taunts Miorine about hearing the voices of her past that are urging her to seek vengeance. I wish she could have done more. I also wish she looked better. That helmet fucking sucked, dudes. C'mon.

I really want to say kind things about Suletta and Miorine, too - they had lovely character arcs in both seasons, Miorine in particular was a joy to have on screen at all times - but, ultimately, I also found them both very frustrating. The most engaging members of the cast by and large were side characters, my personal favorites being Chuchu, Nika, and Norea. (I guess Guel turned out pretty okay too.) It was a joy watching Norea go off the fucking deep end, even if her portrayal was a little shallow until it was a smidge too late; her final fight was beautiful and touching, especially the part where she went on a massive rampage and killed a lot of innocent people. I love me a hot girl who's a violent mass murderer.

Jokes aside; I found both of the main characters frustrating, but for different reasons. Suletta was the less frustrating of the two. Throughout season 1 I kept cringing at her total powerlessness within the narrative, which I know is kind of the point, but that doesn't mean I have to like it; at least in season 2 she develops a thin veneer of agency, and more to the point, the writers demonstrate that her lack of actual agency is in fact horrifying and not some kind of endearing country-bumpkin quirk, but it feels like it takes a long time before she can finally actually engage in the world she lives in.

To be clear, I don't just mean "she can decide for herself what she wants to do", that's her final arc, I know, I get it; more what I mean is, it feels like Suletta exists in a totally different show, an entirely different setting, for 75% of the show's runtime. She's not just clueless about all of the business politics and Earth vs Space racism; she's immune to it, it simply doesn't affect her, even when it badly hurts people she cares about, because she's unable to comprehend it, and can abstract away any threat behind Aerial's cockpit and duel herself to safety without ever understanding what was even at stake.

It's like Ender's Game but Ender himself never actually participates in any of the school politics, he just kinda is a prodigy in his own corner while the real story happens around him. If you're going to create a character who is powerless in the narrative, don't then shield her in the cockpit of a Gundam for the entire show, you know? If you're going to threaten me with her inability to understand what is going on, make good on that threat!! It just felt wasteful. She spent 16 episodes being a joke that we keep hoping will make Miorine smile, 2 episodes being depressed, and then the last 6 episodes being an actual character, and the tragedy is that I really liked that character and wish she'd been around for longer.

Miorine was much more fun, but also, much more frustrating. I wasn't especially into her character early in season 1, but she was at least a bitch in a fun (and highly sympathetic) way, and unlike Suletta she grew into a real character very fast, and got to spend the whole show actually having a meaningful impact on events around her. It was great! I have a few very small gripes about things she does - like the way she chooses to cut Suletta loose. I understand she's doing it for Suletta's safety, and I understand she's doing it because she believes Suletta won't be able to comprehend that reasoning - after all, their whole arc in season 1 was about depending on each other, and Miorine is being pressured into going back on her promise.

On the one hand, though, I feel like it was weird of her not even to try. At least try to explain to Suletta, listen, things are getting worse, you are going to get hurt, I don't want that, I need you to stop being Holder for your sake. You could even twist the knife further by having Suletta react with heartbreak but willingly agree when Prospera doubles down and tells her to do as Miorine says - imagine how betrayed and disgusted with herself Miorine would feel! For them to leave her completely in the dark, for her to fully betray Suletta with no warning and no attempted justification at all - and especially for Suletta to not question that - it just felt weird.

On the other hand, though, I'm really shocked and disappointed that Miorine didn't express more guilt over that decision. Given that her arc in season 1 revolves around recognizing that relying on Suletta is what makes Suletta happy, and she cares enough about Suletta to give her that kind of trust, you can't tell me that - even if she really believes it's necessary - she can just turn around and betray Suletta like she does and feel no remorse over it.

Overall this is a larger problem I have with Miorine; we don't get enough time with her feelings, so when everything finally collapses and she has a meltdown, it doesn't sell very well. I wanna be clear: I'll open the door myself is one of my favorite moments in the whole show, and that's why I'm sad. It could have been so much more, if we had had more time to see Miorine's heartache over what she did to her best friend, not to mention how tense and uncertain she must have been handing her full trust to Prospera, or leading a negotiation to Earth with the weight of Gundam's history resting squarely on her shoulders. I love cool, calm, reserved characters who can handle tense interpersonal conflict with a stern decisiveness. Miorine should be a slam dunk for me. But the best part about those characters is seeing behind the mask, even if only for little bits at a time, and there's just not enough.

Honestly, though, it's hard for me to hold anything against season 2 especially, because I think most of what frustrates me comes down to there not being enough time, and holy fuck, does that season go hard. I'm very ready to believe that there was all kinds of stuff cut from S2 because the sheer volume of things happening was so much. It's a shame to think that it's let down by its own density, that there was just too much happening to fit all of it into 12 episodes without a few things being left behind. There wasn't time for Miorine to introspect, there wasn't time for Miorine and Suletta to develop their relationship, there wasn't time for Prospera to get even more unhinged and weird, there wasn't time to examine how we could actually improve the world and its troubles, we just had too much to do. It's an unenviable position to be in, and I think it's fair to say the show does a great job with what it has.

Umm. Is there anything else? I could talk about the dudes. I could gush about Norea and Sophie, I guess, but I doubt I have anything particularly interesting to add there, I'm sure the takes "Norea is hot" and "I wish they could have been more toxic yuri on screen" are lukewarm at best. I could talk about Eri, I suppose, but I don't feel really strongly about her - I think she's weird, her presence as a character is very strange, the fact that she was a protagonist is weird, and just like with everything else, I think it comes down to a lack of time to be able to really get into understanding her. I can't say it's a mistake, really, so that'll just stay a mystery, and it's one I don't especially care to solve anyway. She can stay a weirdo for all I care.

Uh, I think that's kinda all? Oh, what, robot designs? Uh, Aerial over Calibarn, don't @ me. They're both sick tho.

[stitchlingbelle]

Watching Halo, Episode 5

Flashback time! Halsey and Keyes both on Eridanus II. Were they colonists? Stationed there? Why are they at the school? They just saw John, so clearly it’s too early to be school-shopping for Miranda’s sake. God, are they shopping for kids? Was Keyes in on it from the beginning? This school is supposed to be some idyllic Waldorf-style nature school, and I love that, but it is not OSHA-compliant.

Here in the present, they’ve set up a whole temporary base around the second artifact, which seems like an utterly terrible idea to me. Do you need this much crap to dig out one monumental rock and load it up? (I realize real scientists would want to study it in situ for 6000 years before moving on to step 2 and archeologists wouldn’t want to move it at all, but you have unstoppable aliens to deal with in this universe!) Also, was bringing Miranda out here a good idea? It seems contrary to giving her free rein while her mom is gone? I’m glad her dad’s on her side at least. John, you need to snap out of it, buddy.

Kwan and Soren stuck in the desert, bickering, when he handcuffs her and leaves her alone in the middle of the desert? Wtf, Soren?

Poor Miranda making good points and still getting sidelined by her mom and Adun the Creep. Kai is still the smartest person here. What DOES the Covenant want? I appreciate the shot of the little drone. It’s funny to think that those have gone from scifi to a toy people fly in their backyards in my lifetime. John the Master Chief spots Kai’s hair and knows what’s up instantly and is immediately an asshole about it. I adore Kai—she took one look at John removing his and instantly trusted it was a good idea, and more, it’s clear from her less-flat affect in ep1 that she’s always been closest to breaking free (even without a mystical connection to ancient alien tech). And she’s 100% dead on here, too- why the hell is she unfit, but he’s not? And good on Cortana for speaking up for her, too. John: “I can’t hear myself think.” Cortana: “I can and you’re not missing much.” HA.

I haven’t gotten into Makee’s alien politicking much, but it’s definitely interesting how they both seem to need her and yet distrust her at the same time. You raised her! But “corrupted/ going native” is a trope for a reason, I suppose. Or are there two camps of aliens here? Is she really the only being who can activate these things? Were there aliens who could do it but they’ve passed away, or is it a unique human ability? (Well, humans and whatever race created this stuff.) Where did the Covenant get its info about the tech to begin with? How accurate is what they think they know?

Kwan, meanwhile, is demonstrating her best feature—sheer determination. I cheered when she finally got free. But when is she going to go, stranded in the middle of the desert, presumably without supplies? (I mean, I assume she’s about to find the mystics, but that’s the meta-brain talking.)

Craaaaap, John’s confiding in Keyes, who immediately gives him a brush off with his “I’ll look into it personally” bs. Of course he goes straight to Parangosky and Halsey and backstabbing and manipulation ensue. They at least try to protect Miranda from all their dirty laundry, of course in a way calculated to piss her off. “Finally a parenting issue we can agree on”—what did that little jibe mean? It’s getting increasingly hard to picture Halsey as any kind of mother. Exactly what did she want to do with Miranda?

Using a laser on the artifact makes ALL HELL BREAK LOOSE, and then John just stops with a look? Is that what happened? Wtf. And of course the Covenant hear that. Great.

Just as I wonder what Miranda saw in the data, her dad walks in and takes her off the project. She immediately pegs that it’s his own dirty past that’s at stake, though how dirty I doubt she knows. Master Chief, who is at least somewhat less credulous than I gave him credit for, is getting suspicious as well. Aaaand apparently he believes in direct action, because he immediately heads over and touches the artifact. And finds out HALSEY KIDNAPPED HIM? WTF. (Is the plague story a coverup? Did she murder a whole colony to hide this???) Master Chief tries to kill her ass and I was hoping he’d manage it, but no, Cortana steps in. Rats.

A brief break back on Madrigal where Soren finds Kwan gone… and then she EMERGES FROM THE SAND AND TAKES HIM OUT. Go Kwan, that was so much smarter than just wandering the desert, well done!

The rest of the episode is the biggest battle yet. My notes just say “Oh crap OH CRAP” at the top. Seeing the ship crash was fantastic and a definite “You Are Ultra Screwed” moment. I of course laughed at Cortana giving Master Chief advice and him snapping “I know how the game is played, Cortana!” Yes, writers, you’re very cute. I once again question how many Spartans there are and why we only have four here? In this super important not-hardened base that the Covenant is actively looking for? Like, worth 100 marines each, that’s great, but getting separated and pinned down is still a problem! Especially in this area which is wide open with lousy cover!

Which of course is exactly what happens to Kai, which I choose to believe is why she went down, instead of her being overwhelmed by trauma like the Master Chief predicted while he’s just fine, just Heroically Angry. (That bit of writing annoyed me.) (Yes I know he blew it too, he just got to blow it in a way that’s very differently coded than she did.) Halsey gets her one good moment saving Miranda when I 100% expected her to leave her daughter to die. (I did think Miranda would live to be extremely screwed up about it, mind you.)

So the Covenant got away with the new artifact, crap. And they pull the exact same gambit with Makee as last time, and I have the exact same complaint. Human makeup and nice clothes and not a scratch? She does NOT look like she just escaped that ship during the chaos of battle after surviving durance vile! Like, I want a poster of her on my wall but I do NOT trust her.

[episodicnostalgia]

Star Trek: The Next Generation, 120 (Apr. 11, 1988) - “The Arsenal of Freedom”

Teleplay by: Richard Manning & Hans Beimler Story by: Maurice Hurley & Robert Lewin Directed by: Les Landau

The Breakdown

The USS Drake has gone missing after being sent to investigate a planet (Minos) whose entire population has ALSO gone missing; so naturally the Enterprise has been sent to figure out why there are so many missing people connected to one planet.  On a probably-unrelated-note, it turns out the Minosians were arms dealers who sold super advanced weaponry, but I’m sure that won’t be relevant to the following 45 minutes.  Anyways, the Enterprise arrives at Minos to find zero signs of life, except for a hailing frequency originating on the planet’s surface.  Obviously Picard accepts the call, but it just turns out to be one of those un-skippable YouTube advertisements for a highly advanced weapons system, and Picard is like “That was weird. We should send some people to the surface to check that out.”

For what must be a first for this ENTIRE crew, Tasha makes a rational security decision in convincing Riker to keep the away team as small as possible, in the interest of general ship safety (since there is absolutely no sign of the missing Drake, which I honestly think is a MUCH bigger red flag than Picard is making it out to be).  Riker agrees (taking only himself, Tasha, and Data), but gets himself caught in a statis field almost immediately, so Picard throws caution to the wind and beams himself AND Dr.  Crusher down to help out… somehow.  Although, credit where credit is due, Picard does have the foresight to leave Geordi in charge of the Enterprise with orders to abandon him and the away team if it means protecting the ship.

Naturally all this leads to a double-jeopardy situation.  Down below, the away team keeps getting attacked by little killer drones that regenerate-and-adapt every time one gets shot down; meanwhile separate drone starts attacking the Enterprise, slowly picking away at the shields (oh, and it can cloak, making it tough to kill).  Geordi finally figures out a way to outsmart his mechanical nemesis by using the displacement of Minos’ upper atmosphere to reveal the drone’s location.  At the same time Picard conveniently falls into a pit that happens to contain a control panel that activates the holographic salesman (from the aforementioned automated message) who prompts him to finalize the purchase of their killer drones, in order to “end the demonstration”; thus completing what has apparently been a VERY high-stakes sales pitch. 

At this point it’s been concluded that the Minosians accidentally created a killing machine that was so effective it accidentally murdered their entire species, in addition to anyone who came poking around.  Since the Enterprise is now safe, and the mystery of the Drake’s disappearance is solved (in that the crew are confirmed to have met a nightmarish end), we can chalk this up to another happy ending!

The Verdict

There’s something to be said for a straightforward adventure story, and ‘arsenal of freedom’ successfully delivers on that front.  I can’t say there’s enough going on here for me to classify this episode as one of “the greats,” but it makes good use what it does have.

The highlight of this episode has to be Geordi’s command of the Enterprise.  It’s nice to see some genuine progression for a character that I’ve often felt gets overlooked, made all the better by the fact that I found his solution to the drone battle refreshingly plausible!  Usually when Star Trek is dealing with cloaked adversaries, it gets resolved with some kind of tachyon-scanner-upgrade-techno babble.  That’s all well-and-good AS LONG the writers also take care not to abuse such genre-conventions (which is another matter entirely), but I still tend to prefer solutions that adhere to the laws of physics.  As for Geordi’s time in command, I also appreciate how this episode builds on his previous experiences, in throwing him a greater challenge to overcome.

The away team’s adventure definitely makes up the weaker half of the episode, but even that is at least cheesily entertaining, avoiding any glaringly cringy moments.  My main criticism would be over how convenient Picard’s discovery of the control panel was, allowing him to call off the drones; but this is far from the most egregious deus ex machina on a Star Trek show, and it certainly won’t be the last.

But yeah, fun stuff.

3 stars (out of 5)

Additional Observations

I’ve gotta say, the skies of Minos are a beautiful shade of bluescreen- I mean blue.

TNG always suffered from a “women character problem”, in that the writers seldom knew what to do with them, so I was pleasantly surprised with this episode.  It’s not so much that writers did anything groundbreaking with the ladies here, but this has been their best overall use of them up to this point, by my reckoning. Tasha is shown to be competent and reliable, Crusher is able to keep her wits about her after she’s injured (even getting some added backstory), and even Deanna’s council to Goerdi isn’t half bad (which is really saying something for these early episodes).  The show still has a tremendous amount of work left to do in this regard, but it’s at least a tiny step in the right direction.

BATTLE BRIDGE:  This is only the second time we’ve been shown the Enterprise’s saucer section separating from the rest of the ship.  It’s a pretty cool feature that will be seldom used, but it’s an effective way to sell the raised stakes of a given situation, and thoughtfully applied here.

[alicerovai]

It's not necessarily that imho. May just be because of the super intense feelings at the moment. Maybe it's because they've never kissed each other, and it's different (I'm thinking Ed and Stede's kiss, because Stede had never kissed a man before but Ed had, and slept with them too, he just wasn't in love with them the way he is with Stede). Sure, it could mean they just weren't interested in anyone else so why bother (since they're open to an ace or grey ace interpretation).

(Also I don't mean to tell you what to do or say but that... Was maybe not the best phrasing. The "pure" thing equated to not having sex and the "ruining them". I don't think that's quite what you meant but a lot of people, myself included, who have religious trauma and are in the fandom have already pointed out, back during S1, how harmful the idea of sexlessness or abstinence equating purity or making them "better" is, when people were writing fics about one of them, usually Crowley, being morally better and purer because they didn't have sex. Again, I don't think that's what you meant but it's a topic one has to phrase carefully. I mean, it triggered me and I've read your stuff and know about your past hcs and know you don't think sex is bad, so...)

Also does this mean your nsfw pdfs are gone? I still want them (mostly I've been holding off on a few of them because they were very angsty lol and I wasn't in a good mental space for that, but I really really want the cute one in the 18th century). I mean probably not, but better to ask...

My personal read is more along the Stede and Ed situation plus the high stakes. There were others but never any they loved as much (again that's my hc and I've never had issue with the "they only slept with each other" hc, just if it was a question of what would be the equivalent of waiting for marriage because it's the "right" thing)

No, my “pure” meaning was different. I’ve drawn them making love so many times (and I’ve nothing against sex, as you well know) and that’s totally ok. They can have the experiences they want in the future when S3 will be out, I’m sure things will be okay for them (❤️). Mine statement is just what I’m thinking right now, right after seeing that scene. They’re “pure” not because they haven’t had sex or whatever. That’s just pure love. It’s beautiful. It’s way more beautiful that whatever NSFW content I’ve ever seen or drawn or imagined. But of course that doesn’t mean I will never draw NSFW content with them again. I’m just trying to say how much I loved that kiss and how Neil wrote it. It’s (to me!) so much better than a first passionate kiss. Maybe later they will make it better, they will demonstrate their love for each other in a different and more passionate way… I don’t know. But the first one. The first one had to be like this. They’re not human beings, they are two creatures who love each other and I love that.

Btw of course my NSFW GO content will continue to exist! 😉 sorry for being confusing, I’m just trying to express how I feel after that powerful scene!

[rriavian]

5 and 9 for Corintheus! <3

Thank you!! Ok I am incapable of answering anything succinctly but please enjoy my ramble :)

5. What was the moment for you that made you ship them? (If you do)

This is a very good question! I’d watched most of season 1 not really being sold on any pairing in particular, but seeing potential in a lot of interactions. Corintheus was a ‘hmm, could be interesting’ right up until we get to the confrontation at the convention. Before then Dream isn’t really that bothered by the Corinthian at all (which is hilarious given how obsessed the Corinthian is with escaping him) but in that conversation we see a depth of emotion in them both, a discussion of motive, that belies their canon behaviour. Not necessarily a moment where the masks come off, but one that is very very intimate, filled with this yearning on both sides that is incredibly compelling.

It was subversive—I’d almost expected Dream to be dismissive, to deal with him quickly so he could move on to the bigger threat (Rose as the vortex), but he wasn’t. He paused, explained, showed disappointment and pain but also love. And the Corinthian acted far less dismissive of Dream than he’d been all season—dismissive in the sense of just wanting to be rid of him, of not caring what he thought—revealing his own yearning, his own pain, and the same love.

As a scene it’s fascinating, and instantly made me want to write something.

Because it’s the first, and really the only, time in the entire show we really see Dream being this honest. The same with the Corinthian. Maybe it’s because they knew it would end with the Corinthian’s destruction, so there were no real stakes, but Dream isn’t as raw with any other character. The audience learns a lot about both characters in this scene, but it’s not just being shown to us, both are (finally) showing it to each other. As much as they are meeting as foes, the scene doesn’t limit them to that, has this intimacy Dream doesn’t really have with anyone else.

This is getting a bit long but…yeah. The convention sealed it for me because it revealed just how complex and layered their dynamic is, and it was irresistible. I couldn’t not want to explore it as much as I could :)

9. Which of the characters in the pairing is your favourite?

This is probably obvious but…Dream. Not that I don’t like the Corinthian! As a character he’s very interesting, and the more I write him the more I love his character, but I can’t help but be like sweetie your arguments would be stronger if you didn’t kill people. Like I get you sticking it to your creator but…as your first act of freedom was to murder a guy in the street I think Dream has a very good point about not letting you do that.

The Corinthian was fascinating to me when I watched the show because both me and the person I watched it with were like ‘he is objectively attractive but his actions are so vile I can’t find him hot’. I know this puts me in the minority but every time he was on screen I was just…unsettled, concerned for whoever he shared a scene with because this is an obvious predator please be careful. I’m asexual so that might have something to do with it, but I think it was a really nuanced part of Boyd’s performance where he could be such a compelling lure to those on screen (with me completely believing why they’d be taken in) while as the audience I’m like ‘my danger senses are screaming at me’.

I’ve accidentally rambled in the wrong direction. Oops! But Dream is my favourite for many reasons.

I think it’s best demonstrated by that moment in hell where Dream has the odds stacked against him, the simple equation of probability giving him no real chance, and though you know he can’t lose you don’t know how he can win. Yet he looks up and says ‘hope’. Yet he wins anyway. It’s a character defining moment for me—more than anything else, more than his powers, more than his tools, this is what Dream is. He is still wholly and completely himself even when he’s at his lowest. The battle wasn't just being able to think of a concept it's being able to become it.

And despite all that has happened to him Dream still can.