#it's a bit gratuitous but i actually made it add to the plot

[ginnyw-potter-archive]

When I finally roll out of bed I'm updating Experimentally in Love. Finally a smut chapter. I hope you're happy 😁

[kotias]

2024 fic roundup

Thank you @eybefioro for the tag!

Well well well, end-of-year check-up, huh!

What fandoms do you write in?

Oof. I'll do the exhaustive list + the 2024 list specifically.

2024 list:

Good Omens

Deadpool / Marvel

One Piece

Exhaustive list since my beginnings in 2005, in addition to the above:

Dragon Ball

Eyeshield 21

Harry Potter

Naruto

Avatar: the Last Airbender

FFXIV

How many words have you published in 2024?

Published? Damn it xD

Okay, so, I'm going to gratuitously add the words for an epic secret project, as those will be published for 2024 hehehe.

I will not count the CYOA into the mix, as it is not representative of the actual amount I wrote; I did write a few bits, but in the grand scheme of that collab, I pretty much wrote nothing.

96,881 words!

To which I'm adding around 20k words for the epic secret project, so this leads us to a total of... 116,881 words!

Well, fuck, that's a lot.

/oggles at her WIP folder with 200k+ words of WIPs

I'll also link this slightly different count I did in September.

Hum. Guess I know how much I'll have for 2025 huh :D

What is your greatest achievement this year?

Second greatest: getting properly back into writing.

After 8 years of writing slump keeping me at a tiny 3k words a year, this is simply unbelievable to me that I'm sometimes able to churn out that much in a single day.

First greatest achievement:

The epic secret project that you will hear all about very soon. I loved working on it and seeing it take such vibrant colours and life. It is my baby, and I am feeling genuinely sad that we are reaching the end of this project.

What are your favourite top three fics you wrote this year?

Warzone , a Poolverine fic (Marvel, Deadpool & Wolverine). Summary:

Being a mutant sucks, sometimes. Sometimes, your cells will battle one another to the death, leaving you sobbing in your bed. Or out of it. Fully naked, in the middle of Blind Al's living room.

I really had a lot of fun working on it; this is the ultimate fic format to me, it has hurt/comfort, fluff, domestic bliss, smut, and becomes a songfic. If you want to read something that has my writing identity all over it, this is the one.

Dance Our Night Away , an Ineffable Husbands fic (Good Omens), inspired by @gleafer 's art. Summary:

1944, 29th of February - leap year. Crowley and Aziraphale are invited to a ballroom dance party, and will dance- but angels don't dance, do they?

A light fic, just dancing together in a ballroom on some Frank Sinatra, was is there not to like?

My Arum Lily , an Ineffable Husbands fic (Good Omens), written for gcaledonian on the @goodomensafterdark subreddit. Summary:

Hoowee, laudanum! Last time Crowley does that!

This is 8k words of indulgent porn, I cannot say more than that, because the plot does not exist. This was written for gcaledonian over 2 months in a group chat we shared, advancing with each new prompt she gave me, until I decided I was done.

I then decided to do her a surprise: I had it beta'd, and had 7 remarkable artists do art to illustrate it.

This is The Cemetery Porn. If you like muttonchops, wings, cemetery sex, this is the fic for you.

What was your biggest pit of despair moment?

The goddamn epic secret project that I can say nothing about yet!! It has been so important to this year to me that I simply cannot not talk about it in every way. This is a crazy adventure that brought me to the greatest highs and weirdest lows, but holy shit you guys, it is gorgeous.

What have you learned?

I have learned that by being indulgent, I get other people to be indulgent with me. /whispers epic secret project

It is crazy what I managed to do, genuinely, and I still have a very hard time processing the fact that I managed to pull so many crazy people in my crazy projects. It's just... wow. Thank you, whoever is reading this and recognising yourself. I love you so much.

What fic did you want to do but never made it off the ground?

Pièce Montée, a Sanji/Pudding (One Piece) fic. I'm not letting it go, it's kinda taking the dust here but I'm keeping it alive with some strong CPR, don't worry, it's alive, I'll do something with it hahahahahahahaha

Did you beta any fics? Any favs you want to shout out?

I'm not the best at doing it; after a while, I just... lose concentration and forget to continue.

But, I beta'd for a while this fic: What Have I Lost? it is very good, very worth the read if you haven't!

What ideas are percolating for next year?

Oh wait, let me pull out my fic folder spreadsheet...

Okay, let's go.

Continuing Sheltered Scars, a tattoo AU for the Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), where Crowley is a new tattoo artist arriving in London, and Aziraphale is an art gallery holder who is a war veteran. I'm very happy with the concept, but have a hard time concentrating long enough to continue, I have to get back to it.

Continuing the edits on Down the Path of Sin, co-written with @daneecastle in a huge-ass RP and that will be added to the multiverse of her Reversed Veil of Worlds. So proud of what we did with it, it's an epic story deserving to be out there.

Writing the Ineffable Rockstars AU fic planned out with @daneecastle , @elenthyaolyenths , @vavoom-sorted-art ; expect around 15k words of it, and it's going to be so great :D

According to my spreadsheet, I should get back to Pièce Montée (see above) and to Tanabata, an Eyeshield 21 fic project that is set 10 years after the end of the story of the manga.

Those are the active WIPs. Now for the plot bunnies running havoc in my brain and waiting for an out...

Miscellaneous fandom (whichever will inspire me to make it happen): University AU - outgoing student officer x professor. This is a pure catharsis fic idea, as I'm an outgoing student officer in a university and sometimes I just need the out.

Deadpool & Wolverine fandom: Streamers AU - Logan with his headset that has like cat ears on it, his streamer name is LHowlett, but his gaming name on any platform is Wolverine. Has a daughter (Laura) who helps him out on raids, but despite his older age, he's clearly an absolute beast at gaming. People follow him because he's got a foul mouth, an absolute jerk to his friends but somehow the sweetest sweetheart when they pick up a new one on party finder- so basically, a golden mentor to new people. The X-Men are his raid party. One day, somebody is missing and they go on Party Finder to get somebody for the empty slot, and stumble on Wade. Logan complains the entire time because Wade isn't a very good listener (annoying for a raid lead) and an absolute chaos gremlin during the raid, but the stream watchers see him chuckle silently and grin for the entire session and soon enough start demanding to see that Dead Pool guy again.

Deadpool & Wolverine fandom: Consequences of the Time Ripper, they swapped and regenerated from the time ripper into each other's bodies, then swapped back pretty quickly but that was weird huh. And then it happens again. And again. And again. And they're very confused as to why, especially as it feels like random times, like they're just watching a movie and Wade bumps a foot against Logan and SWAP - I can imagine the thing feeling like a hiccup that continues for too long and after the 6-7th swap they're just "OH COME ON"! And like any good soulmate story, this finally stops when they get their shit together and finally become a couple and put the label on it. Aka: a 5 times/1 time, like "Five times Wade and Logan body swap, and one time they understand why"

Deadpool & Wolverine fandom, longfic, outlined: Baby Mine, Wade and Logan are looking to adopt; but with their situation and appearances (gay mutant couple, with strange schedules and Wade looking scary to humans), no agency really gives them a chance. One day however, Vanessa calls them, asking if they're still looking to adopt. One of her friends was found dead in her apartment, leaving behind her young baby. They do adopt the girl, and call her Ellie. Fic centered around Ellie's birthdays and other big life events as she grows up.

I... I think that should make up for most of my 2025 year.

Who do you want to thank?

Damn. Where do I even start?

First, thank you to @daneecastle for bringing me into a community that allowed me to meet so many people it was almost overwhelming. I never had so much of a feeling of a community, never met so many fandom people and I have you to thank for it, love.

Then of course comes @goodomensafterdark that brought so many good things to me, such a vibrant and beautiful and gorgeous community, I love seeing it thrive like it is. As a result, thank you to @vavoom-sorted-art for yelling loud enough in my ears about that community to push me to slide into it during the angst war.

I also have to thank all my fellow writers and artists working so hard and so diligently on that project. Thank you all so much, you do not realise how honoured I am that you all trusted me with it. Thus, as the representatives of that joyous bunch... enormous thank you to: @theravenmuse , @eybefioro , @whatareyou42 , @gaiaseyes451 , @theonewiththeshippinggoogles , @quona for being fantastic wranglers with me. Thank you. Thank you so much.

More exhaustive thanks for this crazy team will come in due time. I have feelings, alright?

[ewanmitchellcrumbs]

Saltburn Thoughts

I was fortunate enough to attend an advance screening of Saltburn this evening, and I need to get my thoughts out so I can go to bed without feeling like I am full of television static. This is spoiler free, but I will place beneath a cut, just in case. Please feel free to DM if you have specific questions or want actual spoilers.

I had high expectations for Saltburn. I loved Promising Young Woman, so I knew I'd enjoy this. It surpassed everything I thought it would be. I feel like this film changed me and I am chomping at the bit for a rewatch.

In true Emerald fashion, there are twists - yes, plural; there is always more than one. If, like me, you are from a working class background then the twists are really easy to spot. There's no way for me to really explain this without spoiling it, however, the twists will feel infinitely more shocking to you if you're middle class/from a privileged background.

I was a little concerned as to how someone as affluent as Emerald would handle the issue of class divide, however, it is brutally unapologetic in its depiction of the upper classes. A refreshing take on how out of touch they are with the real world, and it's funny but also deeply uncomfortable.

The film made me laugh consistently. I'd absolutely classify it as a black comedy. It's dry, situational humour.

There are scenes that are incredibly jarring, they burrow under your skin and make it crawl, but they are utterly spellbinding and are powerful metaphors, they don't feel gratuitous.

I am blown away by Barry Keoghan's acting. He was sensational, he utterly eclipsed both Ewan and Jacob with his performance.

If I'm being honest, if I had approached this film as someone who isn't a fan of Ewan then I'd have struggled to remember Michael as a character by the end of Saltburn.

This isn't to say that Ewan's not great - he's insanely funny, and has some amazing lines, but his screentime is so short (literally a couple of minutes spread across a few scenes) that is adds virtually nothing to the advancement of the plot. His character is awful, but you can't help but pity him.

TL;DR: Saltburn was fantastic and I am eager to watch it again.

[neptunesdyke]

hello! ✨i’m obsessed✨with your commentary on jennifer’s body. (is it out of line to ask to read it?? 👀 if so, please disregard.) you’re just so right about this! would love to hear more about your thoughts on the matter❣️

omg im so sorry this is MONTHS late i’ve just been extremely depressed this year and it’s been a bit. continuously overwhelming for me but i can’t explain how much i appreciated getting this ask!! i want to pursue a career in writing and teaching about horror and feminism so anyone showing interest just!! means the world to me!!

anyway,, long overdue analysis under cut….

TW: discussions of SA and murder/violence against women (lemme know to add anything else please)

the main points i was arguing were: the differences between the soundtrack and the original score for the film serve as tools to elevate the comedy and horror respectively while also subverting ideas of femininity, and how they interact with the actual narrative/narration itself.

(also there r many feminist readings of this film obviously so this isn’t going to look into that but it did serve as a basis for my paper/analysis)

the relationship music has with the film in general begins with the title coming from the Hole song of the same name. both the song and film are rape/murder allegories for a girl named jennifer, and anyone familiar with the song before seeing the film is given an indication into what is to happen to jennifer. the title itself centres the story on jennifer’s actual body, what it means to the plot, how it is viewed, by who, and the power jennifer has by wielding it. the title also removes a layer of personhood from her as this is not a story about jennifer, but her body, again relating back to the origin of the title which tell the viewer jennifer is bound to be another body, another victim, another girl to become just a body at the hands of men.

speaking of men, music is central to the plot as it’s a band who commits the act for fame and glory. they also sing to mock jennifer as they (attempt to) kill her and their song replays throughout the film, something jennifer cannot escape even after escaping them. and i think placing musicians as instigators tells the viewer like hey..maybe pay attention to the songs in this..they might tell u smth

and this idea is reinforced throughout the film so many times. a great and early example in the film is when I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You by Black Kids plays during needys introduction of her friendship with jennifer. the song is a one sided love song that has spanned since childhood, which begins hinting at needy and jennifer’s deeper relationship.

also fun to think like whose jealous of who and whose the friend left behind in the sandbox so to speak

this subtext found via the soundtrack is also used often for levity or humour. most of the soundtracked scenes are shot at school, often the brightest, and funniest compared to the dark homes and roads of devils kettle. scenes that are supposed to be scarier such as needys encounter with jennifer after the fire, and when she later jumps on needys car, have an original score. it lets the viewer know when the humour is being set aside in favour of horror, which helps balance the films tone and guide the viewer.

but also serves to trick the viewer. the scene that actually made me write the paper originally was when jennifer approaches jonas on the football field in her very 2000s mini skirt while Scared Heart by It Dies Today tracks over the scene. it made me like. cackle out loud but also had this moment of this is really smart. it’s playing off of megan fox’s sex symbol status with gratuitous camera work, playing into humour with the song choice to leave an image that’s funny bc it’s juxtaposes what people know. why is this pretty girl strutting to heavy metal? it’s l the deeper implication of what’s stored inside jennifer, not only hidden by her physically or by the narrative, but in the expectation of what the audience will take from this scene.

it banks on people finding it funny and maybe a bit strange so when she goes full cannibal on him in the woods it’s definitely a shock but..maybe not really! the story plays a lot with what ppl expect, something horror comedies are known to do obviously, but needys narration also does this too

the one time the viewer gets to hear jennifer’s side in all of this is when she explains what happened after the fire, how she was sacrificed and the powers she gained. yet needy constantly interrupts her—interjecting herself into the story as the true narrator but also removing a layer of Personhood from jennifer just as the title does.

she cannot even tell her own story without needy, the OST, soundtrack or narrative structure controlling her in some manor and i think that’s a rlly powerful use of sound on physical and thematic levels!

okay this is kinda a random point to end but i don’t wanna keep going forever so yeah this isn’t everything and tbh if i do end up editing my paper properly i’d b down to share!! and again tysm for sending this in and for ur patience omg <33

original post

[allys-diary]

stories i om-nom-nom'd :: october 2024

Finally got around to catching everything up (What is this? A life with an touch of "balance"? It almost doesn't feel right--)

End of Oct2024 Update: I was right, it didn't feel right. Life threw me a curveball literally second week of the month because I dared say the "q word".

movies

𝐉𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐩𝐨𝐭! (𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒) – 𝟒/𝟓 ⭐️

An absolutely ridiculous movie with an insane dystopian premise, and yet somehow I went into it going "You know what, that could actually happen in this lifetime, shit's been fucked a long time…this feels like natural progression for some reason."

I had a pretty good time watching this and just seeing everyone turn up the goofball behavior to 11. Action scenes were good, and I'm pretty sure that this is a bit of a teaser on what Awkwafina's action scenes are gonna be like for when she comes back to MCU in the upcoming projects. Like you can tell that even though her character was meant to be on the "weak" side and unable to fight, the choreography kind of gave it away that she's been training 👏👏

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞 (𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒) – 𝟒.𝟓/𝟓 ⭐️

The only thing about this is that I wished we got more action scenes from Pom Klementieff. They fumbled the bag so hard making Joe's "final boss" fight be her right hand man/boy toy rather than actually having a face off of Joe v Antoinette.

tv shows

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝟏 (𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐕𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨)

(Putting in a gratuitous shot of shirtless Markiplier because why tf not, it's in the show)

I have beef with Jeff Bezos and the entirety of Amazon now for how spectacularly they failed at the marketing for this show and constantly moved the goal post to something that seemed impossible and made Mark's fanbase work on triple overtime. Especially knowing that they gave the most unethical YouTuber one hundred million doll hairs to reproduce some warped and somehow even more dangerous version of Squid Game but make it IRL.

But I'll probably do a deeper dive on that in the near-ish future. All I'm gonna say now is that I'm glad the series is finally out, and I really hope they make more because while the series did end the same way as Season 1 of the podcast did, there's something at the end a la Marvel that teases what could go down in Season 2. Ohh, and I wish the episodes were longer.

𝟐 𝐁𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐞 𝐆𝐢𝐫𝐥𝐬

S01E01 "Pilot" After getting clips of this so many times while doomscrolling on YT Shorts, I've finally decided to get into the series, and so far even though I know that it's full of jokes that 100% would not fly in 2024, I'm living for it. The first episode introduces the titular "2 broke girls", Max and Caroline, and explains the backstory of just how Caroline got to cross paths with her future bestie. She's the daughter of a disgraced billionaire that scammed countless people out of their own money and now all of her assets have been frozen and she has nothing, leading her to a small diner in Williamsburg where she hopes to start over. By the end of this episode, we're introduced to what will be the central plot of the entire series: Max and Caroline are going to save up to start a cupcake shop together, "and all they need is 250k".

games

𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫: 𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐁𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐬

Chapter 23 : Vera follows Bluejay's advice and talks to Gabe about what she found in Inferno, giving him another suspect other than Lilly's ex Sam and pulling from their own history that stormy breakups don't necessarily lead to violence. At the end of the shift Jericho finds out that Vera's a barmaid at another club (you know, the one called Club?) and right before he can start putting the moves on her, Gabe pulls up and starts asking about who's in charge.

Chapter 24 : Jericho makes a big show of exactly how not to behave when being questioned by the police (he's full on defensive and combative and insists on his rights to not have to show anything, which just adds to the sus behavior), and our side mission is to answer any questions the cops have while still managing to get everyone's orders down in a timely manner (they weren't kidding when they said "time management"). At shift end, Gabe asks to see the back room, Jericho puts on more toddler behavior and refuses, but Ash is already coming in clutch and replaced some of the blood bags with strawberry margarita mix and explains that since they're a "goth establishment", it's just a gimmick, and even gives Gabe a taste of one. And now Gabe's doubting Vera and calling her an "overemotional neurotic"

𝐃𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐖𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠

Episode 5, Day 1: Emily can't go to Ireland on such short notice because of the price, and Patrick tries to reassure her that everything's gonna work out and she doesn't have to go, but bitch ass Brigid's gotten it into her head that this is cockamamie ritual's the only way to appease Lady Mary, and even has the gall and wherewithal to look ohh so happy at the end of the shift when she finds out that the trip's been canceled since the ticket's so expensive.

Tell me Brigid, what good would this do again? Going out of your way and bending over forwards and backwards to thwart your son's wedding ?! It's not like he's gonna marry you , you fucking weirdo. The toxic boy mom energy's insane with this bitch , I swear to high heavens

Episode 5, Day 2: Francois once again coming in clutch and spending his lottery winnings on a ticket to Dublin for Emily . We all need a bestie like Francois istg. Side mission for this episode is to load up Emily's suitcases to the cab. Only thing as at the end, once again Brigid's looking more and more like she wants to marry her own damn son because she ends up announcing that she's going to Dublin with Emily and her family . And another thing at the end? Patrick finds the lucky penny at the restaurant, so Emily & gang (and Brigid, the fuck) are about to arrive in Dublin realizing that they went there for nothing.

𝐃𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝

Season 2, Episode 3, Part 13: Turns out that Sarah's an equal-opportunity bitch and starts throwing barbs at Monet, too…she just leaves her "best" jabs for Emily. Then Luca pops up revealing that the big wigs have decided that the Rising Chef episode won't air on prime-time because of some "shocking revelations" that were made, putting Emily in an internal panic.

Season 2, Episode 3, Part 14: Frank and Monet are scouring the net trying to see if they're the subject of the "shocking news" that led to the decision to take the show off of prime-time but find nothing, and Monet decides that he shouldn't let the public's perception of him dictate what he creates, or who he dates (ohh hey look that rhymed). He decides that in this round he'll create something as Felix the chef rather than Monet the artist.

Season 2, Episode 3, Part 15: Luca makes a comment about how underwhelming Monet's simplified menu for this round of Rising Chef is, sending him into a panic. Leroy walks in and announces to all the contestants that their slot on prime time TV has been bumped in favor of airing a special all about the engagement of Sarah's sister, Shivani. This brings up all of Sarah's insecurities of being in her sister's shadow all over again, making her down two entire glasses of wine in one go, and already looking tipsy afterward.

𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐩𝐩

We've entered a new event where the outfits to be won are basically "Tell me you made a Simpsons costume without actually saying the name Simpson because this isn't an official partnership", where Mia and Leo are looking forward to binging the new season of their favorite show and decided to dress like the show's main characters "Glomer" and "Farge"

youtube & tiktok channels that devoured my watch minutes

I haven't really been consuming anything other than ASMR channels to help me sleep, so once again I'll be recommending some channels that have been most effective in giving me that nice cozy vibe or actually straight up sending me to dreamland, along with a recommended video from them

𝐀𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐀𝐒𝐌𝐑

𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐀𝐒𝐌𝐑

𝐒𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡���� 𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐀𝐒𝐌𝐑

𝐓𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐒𝐌𝐑

stories to om-nom-nom next

𝐑𝐞𝐝 𝐎𝐧𝐞

Might not like The Rock/Dwayne Johnson all that much (barely at all), but I am a ✨whore✨ so obviously I'm gonna watch this for Evans.

𝐒𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐞��'𝐬 𝐇𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐇𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐥

Just in time for spooky season, Game House Original Stories released a brand new game that centers around titular character Scarlet Harrington, along with her husband Charles and their son Ian, as they manage a hotel that she inherited from long-estranged great-aunt Maud.

I didn't have a lot of time to give when it comes to playing games with plot that I could write about in these posts because of family emergencies and the subsequent family drama that followed…all throughout October…so I wasn't able to get into any of the games or even get into as much movies, shows, or content in general. Hopefully it'll be different for November, we'll see…

[zorilleerrant]

I think the version of a show they would do if they made an Arrowverse!Billy is actually a high school drama. Instead of being siblings, all of the Shazamily would be the same age, and they'd be in some sort of club together - probably a radio/podcast club of some sort - and they would be the main characters. They'd start as freshman (and the show would collapse if it hit season 5, as all high school dramas inevitably do). They would get their powers in episode 1, Animorphs style, while they were trying to walk home.

I don't think it would be particularly dark, but they would occasionally do Issues Episodes, which would be handled to various degrees of success, but pretty much always feel weird because they break off from the season narrative and don't advance ongoing character interaction plots. That's where we'd get the heft of character backstory, though, so they would be a lot of people's favorite episodes. They would have a lot of flashbacks and discussion of people's various traumas.

Other than those episodes, we'd have a standard Big Bad/Monster of the Week structure as the A plot of each season, with B plots that ran 1-3 episodes about mundane school things. There would be a running theme (but not enough content for a whole plot) about hiding superhero things from each kid's parents. This would especially be used to highlight the tragedy of Billy either being secretly homeless or having abusive parents (probably Uncle Ebenezer).

(There would also be a bunch of drama around dating and relationships, and unfortunately Billy would definitely be endgame with Mary. There would be a lot about him pining and being in love with her, or having awkward dates where he thinks he upset her. Darla would end up dating Freddy in season 3 with no buildup, Pedro would have a boyfriend who was mentioned once and then showed up again in the series finale, and Eugene would be so haha funny that he couldn't get a gf.)

We would have several funny bit parts for teachers who really played it up and were a lot of fun to watch, and one of them would become a kind of mentor to Billy, but it wouldn't be developed enough and everyone would think he should get more screen time. There would also be a wacky art teacher who's Darla's favorite and everyone would think she was very funny. (She'd wear hot pink and big flower patterns and have funky earrings.) Each kid would have their own favorite subject and corresponding campy teacher.

The superhero plots would be pretty standard, but they would have cool special effects, and a lot a lot of flying. (There'd also be gratuitous flying shots every time they went home, just for fun, with silly one-liners during.) Each season's Big Bad would be a standard Marvel villain, but cartoonified, and some wouldn't be very recognizable compared to other versions. The MotW would usually be something made up for the show, or background rogues from Batman, Superman, etc. Probably their main hurdle would be teamwork, and they would easily defeat the villain after resolving their interpersonal problems each week.

They would also add some kind of Shazam Dog. People would be like why didn't they just use Tawky Tawny.

HI I LOVE YOUR BLOG

I have been rewatching some CW shows (of the DC arrowverse), and I wanted to ask how do you think a Captain Marvel show would have been done? How would you have written it to match with the arrowverse energy or as it's own thing seperate from the other shows? I'm not sure if you've even watched the DC CW shows, but I honestly think a live action show would have been nice to see. Black Adam apparently exists in the CW, but by brief mentions of versions of his name and country only.

Aww thank you!

I used to watch the CW arrowverse shows for years until I fell very far behind and struggled to keep up with them all. I thoroughly enjoyed them even if their versions of the characters were very different from the comics.

If I were to put a Captain Marvel show in the arrowverse there would be a few different options.

Option 1: setting the show in the same universe as Supergirl. As a whole his character and brand of hero fits better in that world than in the main arrowverse world. It's also (generally speaking) often lighter in tone and would accommodate his fantastical adventures and cheerful attitude.

Option 2: setting it in the main arrowverse would, in my opinion, lend itself best to the New 52 version of the character. Billy as an angry runaway foster kid given powers he doesn't know how to use or control ends catching the attention of a lot of bad people. Maybe he's on his own at first and moves in with the Vasquez family as like a closure to his first character arc. Maybe the other heroes would think he's a metahuman and the Flash approaches him to help with his powers.

Option 3: bring him in via the Legends of Tomorrow crew. Fawcett City is trapped in a time bubble, forever living in a loop of 1940s Era life. The Legends essentially pop the bubble and drag all of Fawcett to the present. Billy has to adjust to the 21st century while being a hero.

Option 4: since the arrowverse dived headfirst into the multiverse, including traveling through it semi regularly, the connection could be via the fact that the Rock of Eternity is technically the center of the DC multiverse. Captain Marvel could be from any world in the multiverse, including his own, and be pulled in via one of the many crises and make friends with all the arrowverse heroes (before accidentally revealing his identity). Then like Supergirl he could have a self contained show that only crosses over when someone travels across worlds.

Thank you for this ask! It was a lot of fun to think of scenarios that would fit Billy and Cap into the established arrowverse. If anyone else has any ideas feel free to share them!

[quidfree]

hey im reading wuthering heights for school and i chose it over frankenstein bc i saw it on ur blog a while back lol do you mind sharing more of your thoughts on it if you have any more? they were so interesting!!

i really like this ask so i’ve been sitting on it trying to think of a good response, but i can’t quite formulate it in a nice digestible way so it’ll have to be a bit all over the place.

the main thing that i want to talk about is how funny it is that your main choices were frankenstein and wuthering heights, because to me these are extremely similar books in a lot of ways? firstly in that i really love both of them for quite comparable reasons (nb choosing WH on my say-so will hopefully nonetheless not be a choice you regret haha), but also because they have a lot in common?

both have two of my fav narrator set-ups in literature which involve a random intensely pretentious and obtuse outsider who is retelling the whole book as a tale within a tale about a really wild holiday he had. this is iconic because (a) i love reading povs from people who are annoying because the author made them so on purpose (b) it adds a fun layer of hearsay to the dramatic plot of the book to know how unreliable the story we get is. the nanny in wuthering heights is one of the most infamously controversial narrators in classic lit and honestly i don’t trust the bitch either. but yeah tldr lockwood and walton are both insufferable dumbasses who r taken by the dramatic male protags and way too into the super personal crises of the mcs.

obviously the Gothic Girl Core…. brontës and mary shelley really paved the way in the aesthetic and the horrible sad lives they lead. but they’re both incredibly good at conveying Gothic Atmosphere, from the Humanity to the Wilderness to the Evil Within. scenes w pathetic fallacy in both books have some of the best descriptive passages in western lit in my humble opinion. like the combo of the Dark Scenery and Inner Turmoil…. and theres also the Women Writing Men aspect that adds some Layers that i always find interesting.

mary’s is more about Privileged Male Intellectual Hubris (wonder why) and emily’s is more Emotional Turmoils of the Rich and Fucked, but both have a psychological element that disguises a deep and interesting questioning of ethics and society. What Makes A Man + Nature and Nurture are core qs of both… inherent savagery and the cultivation of goodness… yeah theres a lot going on there.

bad communication kills guys! (but really though)

everyone in both books is like, either deeply annoying or deeply horrible or both, and make Bad Choices constantly, so you have to be willing to ride out the consequences of these terrible choices to enjoy them. personally i love flawed people being horrible as long as they’re framed properly so for my money the vibe in both can be both Haute Comédie and Deeply Tragic as you ride along and it’s all very enjoyable. altho victor frankenstein is more of a bitch than anyone in WH and i will stand by that. actually WH kind of edges out frankenstein in this regard bc the whole supporting cast in frankenstein is like obnoxiously saccharine but in WH basically everyone sucks at least a little so it’s more fun and balanced. esp true wrt cathy and heathcliff vs victor and liz.

i like people’s Dark Urges and Personal Failings driving the story… like yes i enjoy greek tragedy inescapable fate bc it hurts the most but when people are Responsible for the bad they create… that’s Modern and yet real. both works walk the line between Inherent doom and people very much making Bad Choices A Lot. and i enjoy that they were both women in very repressed & sexist societies writing hard violent grim stories that disturbed audiences as much as enthralled them.

also this isn’t comparative but kate bush’s wuthering heights = top 10 songs based on literature, yeah?

anyways sorry this is only half about WH & uses very gratuitous caps for emphasis but seriously please submit thoughts or interesting essay questions on WH proper after this if you like i really enjoy talking about classic lit w you all :)

[relenafanel]

Local, Mediocre Talent: A Meet-Ugly AU

Geralt/Jaskier

Find it on Ao3:  Local, Mediocre Talent by relenafanel

For the Modern AU Challenge. Week 1: Meet-Ugly

Tag: witcherauseptember

_______________________________

“They’re setting up for the live band,” Geralt observed, finishing his pint of ale in one long swallow and gesturing to Eskel to hurry up. “Let’s go.”

“They’re supposed to be decent,” Eskel answered, his body language saying he was hunkering down and had no intention of going anywhere. He took a casual drink from his own glass, still half full as a pointed gesture.

Geralt snorted, not believing that for a second. Eskel was fucking with him. “I don’t need the assault on my senses. The—“ he gestured around the pub “—is bad enough. Add some local, mediocre talent covering the best of the 90s and it becomes unbearable.”

“EXCUSE ME!” 

Geralt barely had time to react before some brightly dressed and way too loud (visually and auditory) guy got in his face. The guy was lucky that Geralt wasn’t the type of person to greet people getting into his personal space aggressively with his fists. He made a sound in warning anyway.

“Have you even heard us?” the stranger demanded, half-draped across the table so he could stare directly into Geralt’s face, his pointer finger an inch from Geralt’s nose. 

Geralt knew he should be taking it as a threat, but it was a laughable one. He considered chomping his teeth just for the amusement of it.  “No.”

“Then maybe you should leave so someone else can have your table! I don’t need to be universally liked, but this is just insulting! You’re just. Sitting there. Complaining about a band you’ve never even heard of, right in front of the lead singer by the way, like some kind of hot but rude jackass.”

“I’m trying to leave,” Geralt answered, shooting Eskel a significant look. Eskel, the ass, just looked like he was seconds away from bursting into laughter.

“Try harder,” the guy suggested, straightening and digging into the shoulder bag he was carrying. He drew out a CD in a cardboard sleeve and a gold sharpie, scribbling something on the cardboard and flicking it in front of Geralt. “Gratuit for you, darling. Maybe you’ll learn some taste.”

The man could do scathing sarcasm. Geralt would give him that.

Geralt stood, picking up the CD automatically, maybe out of some long-remembered politeness of taking something handed to him. It was also the reason he kept finding fliers in the front seat of his car. “If this is your idea of taste,” he said to the guy, gesturing to his vibrant sequin shirt, “then I’m better off without any.”

He walked out, enjoying the affronted gasp behind him way more than he should.

***

Of course, the joke was on him two weeks later when halfway through his drive through the Mahakam mountains, his truck radio gave out. Geralt, typically not the biggest fan of music, had been using it to mask the death rattle coming from Roach’s undercarriage.

He didn’t have the money to fix her until he finished this contract, and as someone who took care of his belongings it was an aggravating reminder of his failures.

With a sigh, he half-remembered where he’d thrown the CD from the night with the annoying musician, and one-handedly dug it out from the garbage. He shoved it into the CD player with little fanfare.

***

By his trip back, Geralt had listened to the CD a total of three times and had to admit it was okay.

***

(Which, from Geralt, regarding music, was pretty much the equivalent of praise.)

***

Geralt turned the key to start the ignition, tensed as always that this might be the time Roach didn’t start. Once again, she came through for him and the music came on automatically.

“What’s this?” Eskel asked pointedly, his tone and expression telling Geralt that he knew exactly what it was.  

“Don’t.”

“Oh, I will,” Eskel retorted, but then didn’t follow it up with any ribbing, which was frankly more disturbing than if he had. It told Geralt he was planning.

Fuck.

***

Geralt had listened to the CD countless times over the course of the month it took to save up enough to fix Roach. Without the rattling, he no longer needed the music to distract his ears, and he popped the CD out of his dashboard like a man freed. 

It was the first time he actually looked at the cardboard sleeve. It was just a stylized silhouette of a musician with the band’s name, website, and social media.

To my #1 fan

Jaskier

Fuck, he could hear the tone it was meant in. That scathing sarcasm that landed like paint thinner. Despite the tone, or maybe because of, he could feel the burst of pleasure in his chest. 

He was halfway through scrolling through the band’s Instagram before realizing what he was doing, seeking out pictures of Jaskier. He realized, suddenly, that he’d been listening to the man’s voice for over a month.

Geralt closed his eyes.

Fuck.

He closed the app.

***

(He may have accidentally followed the band’s page.

Then he may have accidentally found Jaskier’s page and followed that too. The man had 3,000 followers, he wouldn’t notice another one.

He may have also accidentally liked a picture, but no more than two.

Fuck, three.

But Geralt was old and social media confused him. Wasn’t his fault.)

***

“This is a lovely jacket,” Jaskier said, somewhere behind Geralt. “I love a man who feels confident wearing leather.” 

A pause.

“Oh, you’ve mistaken me, I’m flirting with your jacket. Leather looks a bit like I’m playing dress-up in daddy’s clothes when I wear it. I get leather-envy.”

Geralt closed his eyes for a moment, trying to work through too many things going through his brain. First and foremost was the realization of how easily he’d known that voice, despite only hearing Jaskier speak that once (and also every time he’d introduced the bonus “work in progress” track on the CD). Second was what Jaskier was saying.

Geralt had a leather jacket. Geralt also wanted to hit his head against the table for thinking that in the context of listening to Jaskier flirt.

Third, he realized that this had been what Eskel had been planning: secretly orchestrating Geralt meeting Jaskier again.

Fuck. He wasn’t ready for this. He wasn’t even wearing his nice shirt.

He wasn’t even wearing his nice shirt?! The idea he cared if he was wearing his nice shirt or not was the last, and worst, of all the realizations.

Jaskier walked by their table and then paused, backtracked, and looked at Geralt. “I know you.”

Geralt nodded, not far enough into his crisis to actually talk with Jaskier.

“Oh” Jaskier said, and his shoulders slumped. “Right. The gorgeous man who hates local music. I wasted a CD on you.”

“Not wasted,” Eskel said, while Geralt was trying to formulate a way to say ‘I think I was wrong, and maybe am into you’ in a normal way. Jaskier thought he was gorgeous and Geralt had a crush and a lasting bad impression.  “He listened to it. Didn’t you, Geralt?”

“Did you?”

“It was good,” Geralt tried. He didn’t miss that Eskel had managed to drop his name, casually, which made him forgive almost the entire plot of dragging him here in the first place.

Jaskier’s face lit up, which was -- fuck. “Did you?” he preened, leaning close to Geralt just like he had the first time. “Was it?”

“I… liked it.”

“Praise!” Jaskier crowed, slipping into the booth next to Geralt so his knee was pressed firmly against Geralt’s thigh. “My bread and butter. Do it again.”

His hand landed on Geralt’s knee in a way that was less to steady himself and more as a flirtation. It was something Geralt should and would discourage, right after he finished leaning into it.

“I listened to it in my truck. Every day for a month.”

And that. Wasn’t great, was it? If the way Eskel took a drink from his pint to hide his amusement was any indication, it wasn’t great.

Jaskier blinked. Then his expression shifted from teasing to thoughtful. “Do you normally listen to music in your truck?”

“The radio, sometimes.”

Jaskier tilted his head to the side.  “Then that is praise. Thank you.”

Geralt nodded, dropping his hand so the tip of his finger brushed against Jaskier’s. He’d always been better with physical flirting, anyway. When he tried flirting, his banter tended to have barbs.

Jaskier looked down at his hand.  “Huh.”

***

“Hi I’m Jaskier. We’re going to try something new tonight: being a 90s cover band! First up, a cover of the 90s hit Baby’s Got Back, because there’s a man in the audience whose attention I’m trying to get, and I never know what’s too far. And Baby, he’s got Back. Second, we’ll go for the Spice Girls Wannabe My Lover, because I totally Googled 90s music before getting up here and both of them were in the first results and I’m trying to make a point. What? It’s called Wannabe? Fine. Corrected.” 

“Sorry,” Eskel said beside Geralt, looking pained at the spectacle Jaskier was making. 

That was the thing. Geralt should hate the attention, but. 

But.

Eskel looked over at him and his frown grew deeper.  “Are you smiling?”

“No,” he lied, because even if his mouth wasn’t stretched into a grin, Eskel knew him well enough and for long enough to recognize that Geralt didn’t hate what was happening. He wasn’t not smiling.

On stage, Jaskier reached over to grab a phone offered to him by the bass player.  “Oh! Oh! Essi just reminded me of Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover, like the good bro she is. Yes. That. A better suggestion than Spice Girls. I mean, I don’t really care if you want to get with my friends. Essi isn’t even into men.”

The drummer smashed the cymbals, making Jaskier jump.

“That’s my cue that I’ve taken the gag too far. We’re not actually doing 90s night, but thanks for not immediately booing us off stage!  And Geralt, maybe if you could slide into my DMs on Insta?”

“Joke’s on him for thinking you have Instagram,” Eskel observed. He was already done his drink and looked like he was ready to leave after sitting as the third party to some truly awkward flirting. 

Geralt didn’t say anything.

“You have Instagram?” Eskel realized.  “Let me guess, next you’re going to tell me you know what sliding into someone’s DMs means.”

Geralt shrugged.

Eskel squinted at him.  “You didn’t get a smartphone until 2015. You think Tinder is for pyromaniacs.”

Geralt shrugged again.

“Wooooo,” Jaskier said on stage, holding up both his phone and the chorus of the song he was singing.  “We have contact! Geralt says:  Hi. Thank you everyone in this room for putting up with my nonsense! You have great energy. Hold on, I’m just going to...” he said, typing into his phone. “Tell me what to say!”

The audience seemed to be used to Jaskier engaging with them, because a few yelled out suggestions, including one outright filthy potential sext that Jaskier gave a ‘are you really?’ glance to.  “Oh! I know.”

Jaskier: You really do have a great butt. I noticed when you left.

Geralt: You sure you’re not flirting with my leather jacket?

Geralt watched as Jaskier read the message and then floundered a little in surprise.

Geralt: I’ll wear it if you want.

Geralt: Maybe tomorrow night?

“YES!” Jaskier replied out loud.  “Yes! I have a date for tomorrow night. Now, we should maybe re-start this song?”

“Stop looking so smug,” Eskel grumbled, stealing Geralt’s beer and downing it. 

[airgetlamhh]

Thoughts on Lostbelt 3

So, Lostbelt 3. 

Just came out, and this time I played it in good time. Hopefully that’ll continue! Spoilers ahead for Lostbelt 3, and also for Qin Shi Huang’s interlude which has yet to come to NA. I’ll mark that section specifically so people can skip over it.

You might remember that I did one of these for Lostbelt 2, and if you haven’t seen that you can find it here. These are freeform and have no real set structure, they’re just one big post for me to gather and explain all my thoughts about the story. I’ll talk about characters, themes, pacing, etc. as they occur to me, and so expect this to be fairly chonky.

Now, once again, I’m going to lay out the thesis statement ahead of time, so people can feel free to skip over or read as they please. I expect this will be somewhat more controversial than my opinion about Gotterdammerung.

Lostbelt 3, the Synchronized Intelligence Nation, is bad.

I had wondered how to start this, but over time my thoughts kept coming back to the pacing. There are sixteen chapters in the Lostbelt, and almost nothing of any consequence whatsoever happens for the first eight. We fight Akuta, she runs, we fight Akuta, she runs, we spent like eight battles fighting the beasts Koyanskaya let loose and they amount to nothing and have no plot relevance whatsoever, we fight Xiang Yu and then he runs, and then we fight Xiang Yu and Lanling and then we’re forced into a truce and then nothing happens until Spartacus leads the people of the Lostbelt to rebellion and Qin drops the meteor and the march to Xiangyang begins.

Nothing happens. 

Obviously that’s an exaggeration, there some events. Qin examines the Shadow Border, we meet some of the characters, but that’s all, really. A solid half of the Lostbelt is almost entirely useless faffing about, and then it rams the accelerator so absolutely nothing has any time to land and we speedrun our way through it. To put it in perspective, it’s one chapter shorter than Gotterdammerung, which was already five chapters shorter than Anastasia, and it feels significantly shorter than Gotterdammerung too. I complained in my write-up of that that it felt like things just happened for no reason, but at least things happened. In comparison, half of Lostbelt 3 feels bereft of content, the only important events of which could be condensed into about three chapters tops.

It feels like it’s a mid-year 1 Singularity. We have detours to kill random beasts unrelated to the actual plot, we get interrupted by fights as we try to talk, we faff about for ages and then speedrun our way to the actual climax. By the end of the Lostbelt, I was left with a lingering sense of “Wait, is that it?” 

Moving on from the pacing, I think I should probably address the characters next. This is likely to be the largest section, since so much of the issues in the Lostbelt come from the characters and it’s only by talking about the characters that I can really engage with the themes. I’ll start from the least relevant and work my way up, meaning that I’ll be addressing basically the entire conglomerate of characters that aren’t Qin, Yu, Xiang Yu, Spartacus, Liangyu or of course Jing Ke.

Red Hare and Chen Gong, they’re comedy, make no mistake. They’re there to add a bit of humor to scenes and it’s fine, they’re funny. It’s a mistake, in my opinion, to follow such a powerful scene as Spartacus saving the villagers and it inspiring them so much that the Lostbelt reconnects with the Throne of Heroes by having it result in nothing but comic relief, but they’re inoffensive. 

Koyanskaya, she’s Koyanskaya. There’s a bit more hinting about her true nature here, but besides that she’s exactly the same. Nothing much happens besides that truly gratuitous torture scene that made me glad FGO’s story isn’t voiced, because it really was just deeply uncomfortable. I think that after two chapters and a prologue full of her being untouchable and smug and constantly ahead of everyone she did need to stumble a bit, but having her get punked by Shuwen and then gruesomely and gratuitously tortured while she screams and begs for help was completely unnecessary.

Han Xin and Li Shuwen, they’re fine. I’m not much of a fan of the whole stuff about Li Shuwen being so powerful as to stand up to four Servants, three of whom are meant to be insane powerhouses in their own right, but we’ll get to that in a bit. Han Xin when he’s allowed to just go apeshit at the end is one of the very few genuine delights about the Lostbelt, I really enjoyed him. 

Lanling is a disappointment not because he’s badly written, but because he’s barely written. We start the Lostbelt to a flashback of his death and it sets us up to expect a bunch from him, but all that we really get is that he’s loyal to Yu. His only purpose in the story is to function as a connection for her outside of Xiang Yu, and boy howdy does this whole thing fail, we’ll get to that too. If he’d had more time, I expect he’d be quite good, but as it is he’s barely in the story and his only major character moment outside of Yu is when he tries assassinating Guda and admits he’s not really built for it.

Mordred and Nezha are there respectively to bounce off Spartacus and to reveal that Xiang Yu is based on her body respectively. That’s it. They vanish from the story for a good few chapters and I didn’t notice because Nezha becomes irrelevant as soon as you meet Xiang Yu and Mordred becomes irrelevant as soon as Spartacus died. You could remove both and the story would change not at all, and while I do think that Mordred’s role in giving Spartacus someone to bounce off of was nice and I enjoyed their interactions, introducing a whole character just to bounce off another means that when the other character is gone, the one you’ve introduced is just there. It’s insanely noticeable with Mordred.

Gordolf is a genuine delight. I think my honest favorite scene besides Spartacus’s in the chapter is when he and Guda have to decide who gets the only dose of antidote. Guda flat out telling them what hand they’d throw was perfectly in character but I genuinely adored Gordolf completely throwing the match and faking that it was an accident and that Guda got the antidote fair and square, after having it pointed out that he never once tried to lord it over Guda that he saved their life from the poison. When Guda forces him to drink it, Gordolf’s complete dedication to getting them the antidote and refusing to let Guda die because he’s the director and he is personally responsible for all their safety, that’s good stuff. I love Gordolf very very much, and I think that this Lostbelt really gives him some shining moments that emphasize why he’s so wonderful.

I think that is basically all the minor characters barring the village boy, who I will get to in a bit, but if you’re noticing a trend it’s that they’re mostly fine, inoffensive. Nothing stands out as truly genuinely very bad, but for the most part they’re all wasted potential. They exist to fulfil exactly one role, and then hang around long past their welcome in most cases, with Han Xin, Li Shuwen, and Lanling managing to avoid that, albeit in the first two more due to their overall lack of presence until the very end.

Now, Liangyu. Here’s where things start to break down a bit.

In this Lostbelt, Qin Liangyu is a warrior who distinguished herself enough to be frozen in Mt. Li, where Qin keeps their heroes to be used when necessary. Alongside Han Xin, she’s defrosted to handle the Chaldea threat. Her major point of focus in the chapter is engaging with the “Confucianism” that Chaldea represents. She’s the one who hears the poem first, she’s who reports it to Qin, she’s who steals the Shadow Border and who ends up confronting Chaldea first when they get to Xiangyang. When we finally get to hear her conviction, why she is so willing to fight for her home...

It’s revealed that Qin destroyed her village, her family. They had been inspired, not to rebel, but to simply seek to govern themselves and live as a nation outside of Qin’s domain. Qin’s response was to fire a meteor at their village. When the instigator escaped, he tried to do it again, and that was why Liangyu fights. To avoid the needless death and suffering that is guaranteed by opposing Qin.

No one is horrified by this. No one reacts to her blaming the victims for wanting a better life. No one points out that her loyalty comes entirely from a place of fear and loss, that Qin took away everything she held dear and then threatened to do it again and again and again. She fights because Qin would otherwise wipe out everyone, and this is heralded as splendid loyalty and honest devotion, despite the fact that it’s effectively the same logic as why someone might not resist their abusive partner. That is all Liangyu is meant to do, show us some kind of loyalty and validity to Qin’s path, and they even have Mashu lost for words when she is confronted. All to show us that true loyalty is submission, and that it’s a valid and good reason to fight, to be too scared of the tyrant above you wiping out everything if you don’t. Not something to oppose Qin for, but something to commend them for inspiring.

That reading, despite being a clearly obvious one, isn’t ever once entertained by the story. No one points out Qin’s tyranny as the starting point for Liangyu’s suffering, even though it clearly is. It’s not that it’s refuted, it just never once comes up, because the characters acknowledging it or challenging it would hurt the clumsy point it really wants to make.

As a digression, this Lostbelt is a step back for Mashu. Her climatic character moment in Part 1 is rejecting a world without suffering and having the purest conviction necessary to block Ars Almodel Salomonis, but now she’s shaken and starts thinking that maybe that was a mistake all because it was only a possible future she rejected with Goetia, instead of the actual people in front of her? I can’t see that as anything but a regression, considering it was a point that her conviction was able to overcome the most powerful attack in the series even as it destroyed her body to protect those behind her. It’s done almost entirely to make us question whether or not Qin has a point, and given that the answer to that is a resounding and obvious “no” all it ends up doing is taking a hammer to Mashu’s solidly built up character every time she responds to an obviously flawed argument with “...” to give it unearned validity.

Spartacus next. He is an honest to goodness genuine joy. There are a few bright spots in this Lostbelt and Spartacus is one of them. He is very well written, allowed to think and philosophize about the nature of rebellion and whether it’s needed, and his musings on why he rebelled and whether or not it was justified to rebel against Qin when their people smiled so innocently like he’d always hoped for was unironically fantastic character work. His sacrifice reigniting the will to ask for more inside the people to the point of connecting to the Throne once more is absolutely fantastic, and his interactions with Mordred are great too. I absolutely do not have a single bad thing to say about him, he’s just wonderful. 

Jing Ke. She’s a delight. She is a constant denier of everything that Qin suggests, and she functions as a beacon of good sense in the chapter. Where others are falling prey to some nonsense writing that makes them wonder if they’re doing the right thing, Jing is constantly pointing out the horrible, horrible tyranny going on, and constantly reminding people that Qin is in fact, a monster. Her final moments, getting to trick Qin into downloading a virus, arguing against them on philosophical grounds and then mocking them when they’re surprised that she would use that as a chance to kill them, and the argument itself of humanity’s virtues being in its ability to communicate and progress even if they don’t have a certainty of peace ahead of them, all of it was great. I’m sad she died and never got a chance to see Guda again in the Lostbelt, but all in all, she was well written.

Xiang Yu and Yu Meiren. This is where things get really, truly, genuinely disappointing. As concepts, they’re really cool. Xiang Yu as a machine built from the body of a god with the ability to calculate and compute the future giving him an inhuman mindset is a really neat idea, as is Meiren being effectively a True Ancestor. Them finding love as two non-humans who understood each other where no one else did is good in theory. 

In practice, Xiang Yu and Yu Meiren’s romance, the emotional core of the chapter, is without question the worst romance written in the Lostbelts thus far, and probably the worst romance in the game. It isn’t until chapter 13 of this 16 chapter game that we get any exploration of it at all beyond Meiren being devoted to Xiang Yu to the point that she completely cripples her own agency as an interesting and individual character to work entirely for Qin when they threaten Xiang Yu’s life, and the exploration we do get is just...explaining how Xiang Yu is a robot and how he lived in Panhuman History. No examination of their mutual feelings, just Meiren describing how her Xiang Yu lived.

This Lostbelt is not a reuniting of lovers long past. This is Meiren finding a man who shared an origin with her lover and devoting herself entirely to him, even though they aren’t the same person at all. This could have been an incredible hook!

Imagine if this Lostbelt looked at Meiren’s two thousand years of stagnation in mourning for Xiang Yu and her sole desire being to be reunited with him and then it gave her her wish. She betrayed her own history for the Lostbelt’s, because it gave her a chance to see her beloved again, but this Xiang Yu is not her Xiang Yu. He doesn’t even answer to the same name, doesn’t recognise her at all. Having thrown away everything that connected her to Panhuman History just to see her beloved again, she is now trapped in a world she doesn’t recognise with a man who isn’t her Xiang Yu, her sole connection being...Gao Changgong, a regular human from Panhuman History. The greatest of ironies, her only meaningful connection being one of the humans she hates, because she sacrificed everything for a man who doesn’t even know her name.

Lostbelt 3 is a story about stagnation and the dangers of easy ignorance, but Meiren’s story doesn’t engage with that central theme whatsoever. Hers is a story entirely about how she merely existed just to exist before she met Xiang Yu and after he died, and her only experience being happy was with him. A few short years in literal millennia of existence are all that she cares about, and indeed she doesn’t change even slightly over all those years. And despite this stagnation leading her to consign her own history to death, the history that her Xiang Yu is from and fought for, the story never once engages with that. She is, in fact, rewarded in the end by becoming a Heroic Spirit and getting reunited with her Xiang Yu. 

And really, that’s what gets me. They have a perfect setup to tie into the theme of the Lostbelt, how an uncertain future of progression is sincerely better than a stagnant peace born of ignorance, and they don’t tie their Crypter into it nearly as well as LB1 or even LB2. Kadoc is obsessed with conflict and overcoming Guda to prove his own strength in a reflection of how Lostbelt 1 is a hellscape where might makes right, and Ophelia is stuck doing nothing but following her role without a choice in a reflection of Surtr existing only to fulfill his role, being capable only of destruction and incapable of changing that. In contrast...Meiren doesn’t engage with SIN’s theme of the worthiness of peace at the cost of stagnation at all, really.

I’m talking a lot about what she could be instead of what she is, because what she is is obsessed with Xiang Yu. Her sole concern in every single appearance besides her single moment of independent characterization with Gao on his deathbed is Xiang Yu. She sacrifices her initial independence to obey Qin for Xiang Yu’s sake, she fights for nothing more than Xiang Yu’s sake, she wants nothing more than to be with Xiang Yu forever, even if it’s not her Xiang Yu, even if it’s sacrificing the world her Xiang Yu fought for. She chooses the peace of stagnation and is never once punished or even questioned for it. She tells Lostbelt Xiang Yu about his history in her world, and then he tells her that he understands why her Xiang Yu loves her, and then decides on the spot that he loves her too. That’s it.

Every other existing romance that they play back into in Fate is one that they put effort into selling. I mean, just think about Sigurd and Bryn! Imagine if, instead of all the little touches and bits in the chapter where they go in hard on selling that Sigurd and Bryn are madly in love with each other, they just didn’t have that. Imagine if Kadoc and Anastasia barely interacted except for Kadoc telling Anastasia how her past went. It really feels like Urobuchi looked at Meiren and Xiang Yu’s existing famous romance and decided that he just didn’t need to sell it, even though it literally wasn’t the same people involved.

 And to be clear, I understand the intention. Xiang Yu has an alien mindset because of his calculation of the future, and this alien mindset means that he does things that are hard to understand for us. But at the end of the day, Lostbelt Xiang Yu hears a single story about himself in Panhuman History and decides that it makes sense that, given everything he and Meiren experienced there, that they would fall in love. And then he chooses to fall in love too, in the span of a single conversation. That isn’t believable, but more to the point it isn’t satisfying. This isn’t a great reuniting of lovers, it’s Meiren telling a stranger how a hypothetical alternate timeline version of him lived and him deciding he loves her because of that one single story. 

And the way this love is represented is...it’s kinda typical Urobuchi. Meiren’s tragedy is undersold and given second billing to talking about how tragic Xiang Yu’s life was and how bad it made her feel and how she wished she could have done something, while LB Xiang Yu ignores her plea to stay and to not fight anymore by declaring that he must fight for the Lostbelt because of his programming, not for her, and then after he’s defeated and Guda beats Qin he declares that he’s actually madly in love with Meiren and will ignore her stated wishes again to fight until he dies, whereupon he promptly talks about dying with regret for leaving Meiren behind and quotes the poem and everyone claps. This great romance begins by Meiren telling Xiang Yu about how sad his life was in her history, is defined solely by Xiang Yu doing anything he wants at any time while Meiren feels sad about it, and ends with Xiang Yu ignoring Meiren’s wishes to sacrifice himself for absolutely nothing and to have it later revealed he knew exactly how she would react to this and did it anyway.

It’s not that I don’t buy the romance, it’s that I can’t buy it. It’s every terrible romance you’ve seen in fiction before where there’s no chemistry to sell it but the author keeps telling you how perfect they are for each other, only in this case the author tells you how perfect Meiren and Panhistory Xiang Yu are for each other and then shrugs and decides that Lostbelt Xiang Yu is basically the same anyway so it works. And it really, really does not. 

The Xiang Yu of Panhistory is somewhat interesting from what we hear in the chapter, but Lostbelt Xiang Yu is very bland and Yu Meiren is just a tragically wasted character. Instead of a story of being shaken out of stagnation and learning to grow and move forward, we get a story of stagnation being the good and right choice for her. Instead of a story of trying to make the past happen again instead of acknowledging that they are two different people who cannot simply pretend everything is as it was, we get a story where Lostbelt Xiang Yu decides it makes sense that an alternate universe version of himself would fall in love with Meiren, and then skips all the actual development to decide he’s madly in love with her too. Instead of a story of Meiren realizing that her closest connection for the longest time was a living human and that she can live for more than just the memory of a man long dead, we get Meiren’s character being solely, completely about Xiang Yu from beginning to end, and even later in Chaldea where she exists for nothing more than “haha married couple” jokes.

There is, to be clear, an attempt at relating this to the other theme of the chapter, humanity. Meiren and Xiang Yu are both discriminated against for their inhumanity, and it’s pointed out that they’re so fitting for each other because they, as non-humans, understood each other. I think this could have worked if it was given more emphasis, but as it stands it just kinda...isn’t. It, and they, take a backseat to Qin’s emphasis on this theme, so all this theme does for them is another justification as to why they are totally in love and why Urobuchi doesn’t have to write them actually being in love.

And then Xiang Yu dies, and Meiren goes crazy because her entire world and every facet of her character revolves around one man, and we have to kill her because he ignored her pleas and then died knowing he would die and knowing she would go crazy when he died. This, after spending the entire chapter from the first time we meet her being completely ineffective and failing at every turn, only becoming a threat once she devours her own Servant and even then only for a few minutes before she ceases to be relevant. Thanks, Urobuchi. Love it when you write women.

It’s a genuine disappointment, because you could do so much with Meiren and Lostbelt Xiang Yu bonding as themselves, not as Meiren from 2000 years ago and Xiang Yu from Panhistory, and with Meiren being able to honour her love without letting it chain her down to stagnation like it did in practice. But they don’t do any of that. They tell us that this great romance exists without putting in any of the work, and then expect it to work. And for me? It didn’t, at all. It is again, without a doubt the worst romance in this arc, and probably the worst romance in FGO.

Finally, Qin. 

I think Qin is a fantastic villain. They are completely, utterly loathsome in every way, and the early chapters with Spartacus and Jing Ke around really highlight it. Spartacus’s musings about rebellion culminate in a reassurance that it is in fact right and just to rebel against the oppressor that is Qin despite the peace they offer, and Jing Ke consistently and constantly responds to all their justifications by pointing out what absolute drivel they are. It is a sincerely excellent setup for a Lostbelt King that isn’t a tragic case of someone trying to save what they can after a horrible accident, but one who in their arrogance created a hellscape that was pruned solely due to their own tyranny. Qin is the perfect balance of hypocritical and arrogant and cruel while being utterly convinced of their own perfection to make a fantastic villain to break out of the “tragic king after apocalypse” type we’d had for the first two Lostbelts, and has the perfect ingredients to a tie-in back to Goetia and how Goetia earned the title of “King of Humans” in their final moments.

But, unfortunately, the chapter starts softening up on them as it goes on. Where before, we had people calling them out for tyranny and obvious wrongdoing, by the end we have Holmes praising them for shouldering the difficult responsibility of humanity all by themselves and being the one we get on our Lostbelt CE, a spot reserved before for the inhabitants of the Lostbelt that we befriend. Because, ultimately, the Lostbelt doesn’t want to condemn Qin. 

What Qin does is monstrous in the extreme, but by the end of the Lostbelt it feels like the game has forgotten that. Instead of pointing out the obvious problem in Liangyu’s loyalty being based on the certainty that Qin would murder everyone if she didn’t do it for them, Mashu and Guda have to just accept that it’s valid. Instead of reminding themselves of Spartacus and Jing Ke’s rejection of Qin as a tyrant, they praise them for taking over the responsibility of humanity. Instead of having the Lostbelt represented by the boy who dared to look up and dream of something more, it’s instead represented by Qin descending to live among humanity in their final days. Even Qin’s final act for Meiren has them claim without irony that they guide their people by the light of reason, when the entire chapter has been about how Qin uses threats of incredible violence to control everyone and how they had to conquer the world by force to enact this horrible regime, and no one points out the shocking hypocrisy in Qin claiming that they guide through reason instead of, you know. Giant meteors. 

I didn’t name that boy, because the story doesn’t name that boy. In a story that is ostensibly about the horror of humanity being stripped of everything that makes them an individual and showing us that the spark and drive to be different and to learn and grow and change still exists even after over two thousand years of Qin trying to stamp it out, they don’t name the boy. This isn’t because names don’t exist in Qin’s empire, because explicitly the heroes are all named, and implicitly such a massive divergence would need to be highlighted in some way, so it’s not an intentional dehumanization which would actually fit. 

Instead, despite this child being the first citizen who dares to enjoy a poem and who dares to step outside the boundaries of his village, despite him being proof positive that Qin’s tireless attempts at stamping out the human spirit are doomed to failure even after ruling the entire world for hundreds of years, despite him being inspired by Spartacus’s cry of rebellion against the tyranny of the world he was born in...he doesn’t have a name. And that really hurts the Lostbelt, I feel, because it just doesn’t take the time to even name our Lostbelt friend. He is, ultimately, not important. The symbol of the Lostbelt is Qin as the ultimate human, despite the entire point of the Lostbelt being that it’s a rejection of this concept, that Qin’s choice of becoming the one and only human is wrong and that the individuality of Panhistory is superior. Instead of enshrining the boy who dared to be different in the CE, pride of place is given to Qin.

That’s my biggest issue with Qin, really. We are given a perfect setup for Qin as a villain and indeed do reject their whole worldview and ideals and everything as being completely wrong, to the point that Holmes even rejects the idea that they are a human. In the final parts of the chapter, Holmes declares that the defense Qin dedicated themselves to is the domain of a god, and that despite their insistence that they did so as the only human and that they rejected becoming a god, ultimately they were deluding themselves, having simply taken on the role of a god while declaring themselves a human. This is the harshest condemnation that Qin ever gets and the final culmination of theme of humanity and what it really is that’s there throughout the Lostbelt, a complete and total rejection of the idea that one can do what Qin did and still claim to be human.

But instead of engaging with this, the story softens up on Qin by the end because it wants you to roll for them. It’s exactly what happened with Skadi, a solid character and path built up from the beginning and then swerving towards the end to make them more likeable. That Qin is the one on our Lostbelt CE and that it’s all about how Qin did their best to “shoulder the responsibility” for mankind instead of highlighting their tyranny is just kinda emblematic of how the story treats it once Jing Ke is gone, because when she’s not in the party people stop pointing out the obvious tyranny going on, and when she’s dead everyone starts acting like Qin is almost reasonable and that their path was a valid one that wasn’t so wrong, even though theirs was more right. It even completely ignores Koyanskaya pointing out that Qin loves humanity like an owner loves its pets, not as actual individuals, but this love is treated as completely valid thereafter instead of being a huge problem.

Big Big Spoilers For Qin’s Interlude Now, Skip Ahead To The Next Bolded Section If You Don’t Want To See Them

One of the reasons I’m so harsh on them for what could, in context, be seen as relatively minor softening up on Qin compared to the actual defeat we deal them is because of this Interlude. As a brief overview, Qin completely ignores the ending of their Lostbelt, which lasts for three months despite every other Lostbelt lasting a day at most before it vanishes and the implication of the final chapter being that it’s ending soon, returns to Epang Palace despite it having been destroyed and corrupted with a virus and despite having promised to live as a human on the ground with the rest of the world until the end, and then uses the data on the Shadow Border that somehow survived the virus and destruction of the palace to somehow construct a machine that allows them to create Singularities. 

They then use this to create a bunch of Singularities related to “what-ifs” where they were a cruel king who ruled over Xiangyang and murdered all their subjects so they can piggyback on the Human Order instead of being destroyed with their Lostbelt and everyone in it, and then keeps the Singularities around as time bombs to destroy Panhistory like Goetia did if they ever feel like Guda might lose. When this is figured out, no one in the know bothers to tell Guda to protect their feelings, and no one intervenes in any way or challenges Qin in any regard besides telling them to believe in Guda.

This interlude turned Qin into the most loathsome character in the game for me. They declared they would put it all on the line challenging Guda and then lost and stepped aside, even helping to destroy the Tree of Fantasy, and even having Da Vinci praise their grace in stepping aside when it was clear that they had lost. But that didn’t happen. 

Instead, Qin lied. Qin pulled the trigger on everyone in their entire world and then decided that they didn’t actually want to uphold their end of the bargain, so they abandoned the people they swore to live alongside until the end and constructed a scenario where they have the sole authority to destroy all of human history forever if they feel like it, something made possible only because author fiat dictated that they still had the data and the capacity to use it after the twofold destruction of the Epang Palace and only because author fiat dictated that their Lostbelt lasted for months after the Tree was destroyed when every other Lostbelt disappears after hours. And all this happens because fundamentally, they don’t want Qin to be wrong, and they don’t think Qin was wrong. They pay lip service to the idea, but the end result is that Qin is always meant to have a point, and that despite having people point out their obvious hypocrisy at ther start like Jing Ke, by the end of the Lostbelt and beyond you are meant to take them at face value as a Hard Enby Making Hard Decisions doing their best to save the entire world. 

SPOILERS FOR THE INTERLUDE OVER, YOU’RE SAFE NOW

To begin the summary for Qin as a character, I’d like to point out Fate’s relationship with Great Man theory. This theory is, in brief, a suggestion that the course of history is largely influenced by exceptional individuals and leaders that exert their will on the world as a result of their own superb capabilities, such as being more intelligent, charismatic, powerful etc. than all other men around them. This is obviously a theory with a bunch of holes, but what’s interesting is that Fate has always engaged with this idea and has always refuted it conclusively.

In Fate, if you are a single human trying to save the world, you will fail. Kiritsugu’s chasing of the Grail and his ultimate failure because of his own flaws making it physically impossible for him to consider a path to salvation that didn’t involve killing is a rejection of Great Man theory. Shirou understanding that one single person cannot possibly save everyone in the world is a rejection of Great Man theory. Amakusa’s inability to save the world in any way besides erasing free will is a rejection of Great Man theory. Goetia’s decision to erase history and start again to make something better and his ultimate defeat is a massive rejection of Great Man theory. Zelretch, for all his insane power, is literally paralyzed by that selfsame power into not being able to do anything, while someone like Aoko who doesn’t think of anything but what’s right in front of her is actually able to accomplish things because she doesn’t try transcending the limits of what a human is capable of. It is one of the Nasuverse’s most consistent themes, that it is fundamentally wrong and doomed to fail if you ever attempt to impress your will on the entire world in a misguided attempt to save it. 

And yet Qin simply doesn’t engage with that. Qin is Great Man theory distilled into a character, and by the end of the Lostbelt and beyond the game gives up on challenging that. They declare themselves as the ultimate human with the sole responsibility to administrate mankind and despite losing, the game respects them and their path and refuses to condemn them the same way that it condemned Ivan for doing all he could to save his people, even if it meant inflicting his own ideas on the entire human race. And that’s a consistent problem with the last two Lostbelts, but it sticks out more for Qin because Qin didn’t face an apocalypse. Qin brought the world to an end with their own two hands, but the game simply cannot keep up the condemnation as much as it should, because it wants you to like them and wants you to roll them and spend money to do so. And that’s where Qin falters for me. They’re a fantastic villain, but the game doesn’t let them be a villain, regardless of how much it clashes not just with FGO’s themes, but with one of the overarching ideas behind a lot of stuff in the Nasuverse as a whole. 

I’ve basically talked about the thematics and the characters together in the last section, so this is just me talking about its construction as a story here as a short(er) final roundup.

It’s badly written, really. Like I mentioned earlier, basically nothing happens for about half the chapter and then the latter half puts the pedal to the metal and speedruns its way through everything. Nothing is given the time or dedication it needs besides Spartacus’s sacrifice in the chapter, I feel, and that works to its extreme detriment. 

In terms of things that happen, it strained my sense of disbelief as bad or worse than Lostbelt 2 did. I knew it was going to be rough when Mordred, one of the Knights of the Round Table who was easily able to go toe-to-toe with Siegfried and stomp most people she fought in previous appearances, ends up firing her Noble Phantasm at Xiang Yu and doing no damage whatsoever despite being a direct hit, and then Xiang Yu ends up defeating a group of four Servants including powerhouses like Mordred and Spartacus without breaking a sweat and explicitly while holding back.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, that I’m starting to sound like some BLer who cares for nothing besides calculations and VS debates and whatnot, but that’s not what I’m about. I don’t care to argue whether my favorite Servant could beat Goku or not, partially because the answer is an obvious yes because they’re my favorite, but mostly because that’s just not really relevant for a story. 

What is relevant, however, is the idea of suspension of disbelief. In telling a story, you don’t need to be realistic, but you need to be consistent. Having internal consistency is a vital part of selling your work to the audience, because if they start thinking that anything can happen at any time because the author wants it to happen, they can get pulled out of the story real quick. If you introduce someone as being Double God and being able to wipe the floor with every single one of the protagonists without breaking a sweat, you have to make sure that when or if they are defeated, their defeat is internally consistent. Either they lose their strength somehow, or the protagonists find some way to power up or change their tactics or do something different to defeat them next time they fight. When you pull a victory or defeat out of your ass without some kind of internal consistency, you had better make sure that you’ve got your themes on point, because if you’ve failed in making something internally consistent and you can’t justify the event happening because it fits perfectly with the themes of the work, then it takes people out real quick.

That’s where this Lostbelt falls down really hard in terms of story construction outside of its characters, because it has neither. Xiang Yu is introduced as an unstoppable murdermachine that we can only hold off temporarily or wait for him to retreat, even when that means devaluing our own Servants’ capabilities and making Mordred who is a Knight of the Round table look like a chump. But then later, Spartacus vaporizes a meteor with nothing but his Noble Phantasm, except Xiang Yu was just straight up too much for him, even though Xiang Yu is pretty much the greatest symbol of Qin’s oppression and its source, the incredible violence that they are willing and able to visit upon anyone at any time if they feel like it. Spartacus loses horribly to one symbol and then annihilates the other and it feels weird.

Later, we’re also introduced to Meiren being a True Ancestor with infinite mana who curses us so badly that we only survive with Koyanskaya’s aid. Even Koyanskaya is urging us to run and there’s explicitly nothing we can do to her. That’s fine! It’s a good setup for a really tough boss! But what it means is that now we have two people set up as completely unbeatable even with all the help we have, including Red Hare and Chen Gong. That’s an awkward setup that really needs a solid resolution, especially when the final battle with them is fighting both, together, while both are completely fresh and Chaldea has just fought their way through Xiangyang, defeating Liangyu, Han Xin and the royal guards, and Li Shuwen. 

And the game doesn’t engage with it. We beat them both despite them both individually being able to wipe us out earlier in the chapter, and despite nothing having changed for us. If anything, they should have the advantage of conviction, or at least Xiang Yu should. But we beat them and Nezha gives some nonsense about how Xiang Yu lost because he never had any rivals to fight against, despite him having been used to conquer the world, and despite him having fought alongside the great heroes enshrined in Mt. Li during these conquests. Meiren isn’t even acknowledged, which isn’t much of a surprise, but it is disappointing. Despite her being held up as an insurmountable threat at first, she’s not even considered worth mentioning in favor of talking about Xiang Yu.

That problem continues along with Qin, who comes at us with a Grand class Saint Graph and whom we end up defeating all by ourselves, not as a battle of wills but flat out defeating them, even though we only have Mashu, Red Hare, Nezha, and Mordred who have all been exhausted fighting through all of Xiangyang. People are hyped up as insanely dangerous and then lose not because of the thematics and not because the story has constructed things so that their loss makes sense, but just because the author says it happens. All the battles are handled with in-game battles, which the game grew out of a long, long time ago. The difference between the climactic battles with Ivan and Surtr and the climactic battle with Qin in terms of actual writing is night and day, and the sole saving grace, that it is explicitly characterized as a conflict between the two philosophies and a battle of which one comes out on top, just isn’t enough to overcome the insane hype of being on par with a Grand that Qin gets for absolutely no reason. It devalues Grands and it made the victory against them feel unearned even with the idea that it’s a conflict of philosophies, which I usually eat up. To compare it to the great example of that in Fate, it feels like Shirou VS Archer, except instead of the point being that Archer cannot bring himself to fully deny Shirou’s ideals and is defeated by Shirou reminding him of their beauty even though he wields the power to crush Shirou instantly if he wanted, it’s like Shirou proved his point about ideals by beating Archer up fair and square. It just isn’t nearly as well written.

It isn’t all bad. Like I mentioned, Spartacus, Jing Ke, Gordolf, they were all genuine delights that I loved. The meteor, the assassination, those were both excellent scenes. But overall, the Lostbelt was half nothing happening and then the latter half made up of one or two cool moments with a hell of a lot of bad shit connecting them. Its theme of stagnation is indecisive and muddled because of Qin and Meiren, its theme of humanity has its conclusion ignored and conflicts with the overall idea of Great Men in the Nasuverse, its treatment of its female characters barring Jing is uncomfortable at best, and it tries to sell us a romance without putting in any of the actual legwork to make it believable. 

I wish Lostbelt 3 had been better. I can see easy routes to make it better. But more than anything I wish that Meiren had been done better. She’s an immortal True Ancestor who has lived for thousands of years and seen the birth of modern humanity, living through so much of our history, and instead of having a story of learning how to break free of her stagnation she’s just obsessed with a male character who isn’t remotely as focused on her to the extent that every choice and decision she makes in the chapter is focused entirely around him. It’s just...uncomfortable.

For all the hooks she had as a character, Meiren is reduced to an accessory for her man, and I think that’s a crying shame.

[youlackconviction]

i'm gonna add a bit more to this.

do you want to know an example of a really fantastic sequel to source material that was already a few decades old by the time the new film was made?

ghostbusters 1984 ghostbusters afterlife 2021

yes i'm intentionally ignoring any ghostbusters films which came between those two, but i will mention one in a minute for reasons.

i was a teenager (yes really) when original ghostbusters screened at the movies and let me tell you, it was HUGE. that movie was so incredibly popular and really became a cult icon in what seemed like minutes. yes it was corny and silly and far-fetched and slapstick but it was also unique and funny and well crafted, and didn't pretend to be anything other than what it was. great soundtrack for the era, cool action sequences and special effects that didn't obscure the actual plot, and good comedic acting/scripting.

and afterlife honoured everything about it. even down to pulling in members from the original cast and having them become pivotal to the plot. and the new actors they cast were also perfect for their roles. the story was respectful of the 1984 film and didn't retcon who the og characters actually were...

and here's where i'll mention the 2016 all-female ghostbusters film. i mean whatever, make "the girl version" of a movie if you want. i think it lacks imagination and originality to do that (rather than writing a new unique story to showcase an all-woman lead cast). but whatever.

the part where that film really lost me completely is when they brought in bill murray as a character who didn't believe in ghosts, (i mean wtfuck) and then killed him off a few minutes later in the most gratuitous and disrespectful way possible, just for overt girlboss clout. i was pretty disgusted. some kind of "shit on the original (male) lead actor" reverse fanservice for lulz? yeh great idea. not.

but afterlife 2021 surprised me in a way that honestly i'd given up hope of being surprised ever again. a totally (originally) unplanned sequel many years later, with mostly brand new cast - that still absolutely nailed or improved on everything good about the original, and handled the returning characters so incredibly well. you really got the sense that the creators loved ghostbusters 1984 and just wanted to pay genuine homage to it.

and THAT is what we hoped for, for LOKI. and what we absolutely did not get.

(sorry edit: the tags posted in the reblog above this one were @unityrain24's not alwida's)

I am still kind of confused about what the "canon" is regarding Loki in Avengers: To me, the movie depicts a Loki who has been tortured and is not himself. But has the MCU officically changed its decision on this? Is it "canon" that Loki became "evil"? Are there any public statements regarding this? It's been 84 years and this is still messy to me

i mean good question. nice titanic reference.

but honestly? i don't give a fuckingmonkeybollock what marvel says these days. avengers LOKI canon was established by the creators and the film itself at the time of the film's production and screening, and nothing anyone says about it now can retcon that... that's just not how time works.

and certainly not some colossal stack of steaming rat turds like the disney plus series.

marvel can pry the original intended phase one and two mcu canon from my bleached white finger bones.

[popwasabi]

“The Mandalorian” S2 is a power fantasy with mini Star Wars trailers

The term “Plot armor” is often used by readers and viewers to describe the myriad of ways writers keep their heroes away from any real danger no matter what choices or actions they make in the narrative. It’s typically a derisive phrase for the way a writer’s hero seems to escape death no matter what is thrown at him for the sole purpose of moving the plot forward.

In Disney+’s “The Mandalorian” this term takes a far more literal description in the form of our main anti-hero, played by Pedro Pascal, in his beskar armor which seems to be, by all accounts the most indestructible material in the galaxy far, far away.

(I mean, it still looks really cool too, of course.)

The result of this narrative decision in this series is that action scenes often don’t have real tension to them. In another series you might be able to reasonably believe the hero might be in danger with blaster fire shooting all around them but with beskar it’s almost comically not the case at all. Stormtroopers fire laser blast after laser blast at The Mando and each time they bounce harmlessly off him as if he were fucking Superman. It makes scenes feel devoid of stakes and danger no matter what situation they are in.

The show thus becomes a power fantasy, as action scenes serve as extended highlight reels for the Mando. Where season 1 of the show mitigated the power of the Mando’s plot armor by putting him more often in situations where his beskar alone wasn’t enough to save the day, season 2 goes mostly full power fantasy as The Mando rarely runs into a situation he can’t just quite literally walk through.

(“Aim for his armor, men! That’s his weak point!”)

This isn’t to say the season wasn’t without its high moments or even that it wasn’t enjoyable plenty of times but the series’ devotion to fan servicey action and callbacks to “Hey remember ____” makes it a fairly shallow story. At least for myself.

Season 2 of “The Mandalorian” continues the story of Din and his small Yoda-like companion, The Child (later known officially as Grogu), as he looks to complete a quest to return the burgeoning Force wielder to the Jedi. As he seeks to reunite The Child with the ancient Order, he encounters other Mandalorians who are on a quest to retake Mandalore and right on their tail is the nefarious Grand Moff Gideon who is still bent on capturing Grogu for whatever it is he has planned for the Empire.

Let me start this review by saying power fantasies aren’t inherently bad to watch or read. They can be good, cathartic junk food for the soul and can also be compelling, artistic, or even deeply metaphorical in their own way. A movie series like “John Wick” for instance is a power fantasy that aims to reinvent the wheel in action film-making with Keanu Reeves performing perhaps the best gun kata of all-time onscreen. Another film like Paul Verhoueven’s “Total Recall” can satirize the power fantasy to show how ridiculous it is in concept.

So, making your hero an unstoppable killing machine isn’t necessarily always a bad thing if used properly.

(Seriously, this is one of the smartest action films ever made. Don’t @ me.)

Now that that’s established, however, “The Mandalorian” season 2, despite some strong moments here and there, is a power fantasy that lacks these elements for a more interesting narrative. If you believe killing dozens of stormtroopers onscreen while never suffering so much as a scratch for eight episodes equals compelling storytelling then boy does Disney have a series for you.

Through the first four-ish episodes, the new season is mostly just fine and even quite enjoyable. We have the Mando getting a fun side quest with Timothy Olyphant on Tatooine where they get to wrangle a sand worm in a callback to the Westerns that inspired much of the franchise’s aesthetic. The Mando gets to escort a frog lady to her home planet to give birth to some tadpoles and they run into some actual danger in this episode in the form of kyrnknas/space spiders. And we get the return of Bo Katan from Dave Filoni’s “Clone Wars” and “Rebels” cartoon series, with Katee Sackhoff herself reprising the role in a fun Mandalorian team-up episode.

(I’m just so happy to see my girl, Starbuck, again more than anything honestly ;_;)

But the wheels started officially falling off for me in the next episode.

Episode 5 marked the live-action debut of fan favorite Ahsoka Tano, played by Rosario Dawson, and she meets the Mando by getting the jump on him with her lightsabers. In virtually any other situation we have been told lightsabers can cut through virtually anything. Now, beskar has been shown to be plenty durable throughout the series so far but lightsabers? Surely not.

Well…

It is an overall good episode despite this but it marked the point for me where I badly wanted The Mando to just go the rest of the series without it. Obviously, the writers aren’t going to actually kill our hero, afterall The Mouse needs more money and he can’t have it unless we get 50 more Mandalorian episodes and spin-offs, but at some point I gotta feel like there’s a possibility at least that our hero might actually die or at least is in danger. It is actually super funny to me each time The Mando ducks or seeks cover in a shootout when I know, and the viewer damn well knows, he can literally walk right into the middle of it and shoot all these motherfuckers at his own leisure cause his actual plot armor is the stuff of adamantium and vibranium combined.

Episode 5 is mostly good though, it’s a nice callback to old school samurai flicks and for an old fan like myself it was enough to ignore beskar again saving the Mando’s ass.

(This was cool...This...was...cool.)

If episode 5 marked the point in which the wheels began to come off though, episode 6 is where the show really spun out into the ditch for me. Perhaps, this series worst episode, personally, episode 6 reintroduces fan favorite and series inspiration Boba Fett back officially into the fold and the result was perhaps the most self-indulgent entry of the series.

(I mean, it was directed by Robert Rodriguez so...)

Boba arrives to demand his beskar from The Mando who promptly tells him “no” before they are ambushed by a platoon of stormtroopers. Alongside Ming-Na Wen’s Fennec Shand, the three do battle with the stormtroopers with ridiculous ease. I’m aware that stormtroopers exist to be on the highlight reel of our heroes in this franchise and have a long history of not being able to hit the broad side of a bantha but again, I can only watch these guys die by the dozens onscreen over and over again while our heroes get away without suffering even a bruise before it starts feeling boring and repetitive.

It only gets worse once Boba actually puts on his armor. In a sequence that I would describe as “gratuitously” fan servicey, Boba wastes just about every last stormtrooper in this scene culminating with him destroying their two get-away vehicles in a single shot with a rocket. Considering he was killing them with ease just moments before with nothing more than a battle club and a bathrobe, it seemed almost hilariously needless that he donned his iconic armor.

(It would be tempting to say the stormtroopers fought as ineptly as the Putty Patrol here but even the Power Rangers have struggled a few times against these guys...)

I get that Boba is really important to a lot of fans, based on their perceptions of him in the original trilogy and subsequent books and graphic novels that came out in the following years, but here’s a hot take; this series didn’t need him in it. Maybe they didn’t need to keep him rotting in the Sarlacc Pit but this episode, alongside Ahsoka Tano’s feels more like marketing choices for the story rather than narrative ones. I’ll concede that there is a bit more substance to having Ahsoka there to commune with Grogu but their additions to the plot don’t actually show much of anything about the Mando outside physically helping him in a fight.

The way they tease, in both cases, stories that exist outside the internal narrative between Ahsoka’s search for Admiral Thrawn and Boba taking over Jabba’s palace at the end of the final episode, it feels like Disney threw in mini trailers for fans to nibble on at the expense of telling the Mando’s own story and letting it stand on its own like the first season.

The choice to have these characters shoved into this season again appears to be market driven not narrative. Once more, I get that these characters are important personally to many fans, but the appearance of these characters alone DO NOT equal good storytelling.

(Me when a fan tells me “But Boba was such a badass in *obscurely titled EU book that a handful of general audiences have read*! He deserves this moment!”)

The final episode of the season is truly encapsulating of all these issues “The Mandalorian” has, however. Moff Gideon, played by the always sharp Giancarlo Esposito, has Grogu imprisoned aboard his ship. The Mando and his friends plan a rescue mission to save him and, just like nearly every episode before, it is stupidly easy for our protagonists.

The crew of five, again, walk through every Imperial on the ship. I don’t mean this metaphorically by the way, I mean this literally as Cara, Fennec, Bo Katan and Koshka Reeves (played by WWE’s Sasha Banks) without a single moment of real adversity just blast through every stormtrooper on the ship and never get hit once in the process.

A good action scene needs an element of danger, a sense that our hero might actually not come out of this alive even though we all know they will. An action scene without this has no tension and without tension it becomes booooooooring.

(Even John fucking Wick is capable of bleeding, guys...)

The finale had a chance, however, to add real stakes and danger to the scene in the form of this season’s new enemy; The Dark Troopers. These Imperial battle droids were foreshadowed as these super soldiers at the end of episode 4 and seemed to be billed as a real dangerous match for our heroes to faceup against. When the Mando finally gets himself face to face with one he finds they are not as easy to kill as the nameless stormtroopers from before. To see The Mando briefly face real adversity for a change snapped me out of my cynical mood so sharply for a moment I thought I had turned on another series by accident.

But of course, danger never lasts long in this series as The Mando’s armor again saves him first from getting pummeled to death by the droid’s super fists then he uses his plot spear, cause of course he has one of those too, to finish the job.

Danger over.

Moff Gideon doesn’t fair much better in this episode. This villain who had been built up for two seasons as this calculative monster gets stopped rather easily with Mando and his friends barely breaking a sweat. This character feels wasted because of this, even though I’m sure Giancarlo Esposito will return in the next season. He just feels about as much like a pushover as the nameless stormtroopers in this series.

The episode had one more chance though to show these Dark Troopers meant business toward the end as we found the heroes cornered on the command deck with nowhere to run and a dozen of these droids ready to blast and pound them into the floorboards. But help arrives in the form of a Deus X-Wing Machina.

Without having to face even one Dark Trooper, Luke fucking Skywalker arrives on the ship and kills every droid without breaking a sweat. It plays as inspiring in the moment but again I just found myself bored and irritated. A chance to see the series heroes actually use their wits and show their creativity in a moment of true danger thwarted to please fan boys.

I get that Grogu called out to him in episode 6 but creatively this felt like an extremley lazy way to solve the heroes’ dilemna.

(“Hello my name is Jedi. I enjoy doing...*computes script* Jedi things.”)

This season wasn’t all bad. It certainly had nice production value that made each alien world pop and beautiful to look at. Every actor and actress played their parts expertly well, with what they were given, and made for interesting characters at times. There are also nice homages to both Western and Samurai cinema throughout the season that fans of both will appreciate. And Pedro Pascal is just so good on his own, especially in tender moments with Grogu, that you forget that his character is kind of a Gary Stu.

But the main crux of the issue here that I’m trying to get across is the reason you need to remove the plot armor of your heroes is not just because action scenes need tension and stakes, it’s that when faced with danger these scenes reveal who these characters are. I used to believe that the reason Mandalorians and Jedi had such a fierce rivalry in the lore despite the obvious advantages of wielding the Force was because these famed bounty hunters were just that fucking good at killing. That despite being, on paper, normal people they had great martial prowess, athletic skill, and the tactical wit to outsmart people who can literally sense their feelings. But now with beskar and the way this series is written, it appears the Mandalorians were challenging warriors just because they happened to harness the most OP armor building material in the galaxy.

It makes you wonder how the fuck they were conquered to begin with…

(Maybe they just needed more knee rockets...)

This takes away from the mysticism of the Mandalorians for me. It makes The Mando less interesting to me in the way he fights. Yea he can shoot really good too but really it’s the armor that makes him the fighter that he is and I find that kind of boring. We occasionally get this character to remove the armor during the series, including a whole episode that was easily one of the best of the season, and in every case he’s more interesting once the helmet comes off. I get that fans hold a lot of reverence for that armor, yea it still looks really cool, but making it this impenetrable super material doesn’t add anything to the story.

If anything, it takes away from it.

(Plus how could you not love Pedro Pascal when he’s out of armor? uWu)

I wouldn’t go as far as to say I hate season 2, even though I spent 2000 plus words just now lambasting it but I guess I just want to say I am unimpressed more than anything. I feel like I’ve seen better Star Wars be it in the movies, cartoons, books, video games, etc and I’ve certainly seen better action in the franchise as well.

Considering fan reaction so far appears to be overwhelmingly positive, I am definitely in the minority here and you are welcome to enjoy this series as much as you want in spite of how unimpressed I am with the season. But considering all I have seen of this fandom the last few years, regarding complaints about fan service (“Rogue One”), easily defeated/underdeveloped bad guys (“The Last Jedi”), and Mary Sues (The sequel trilogy in general), I have to ask again what is it actually that fans like or don’t like about new entries in the franchise? It’s not that there isn’t valid criticisms there and “The Mandalorian” is enjoyable in sincere ways too but it has many of the issues I hear commonly said of more divisive entries in the Disneyverse. So why does it get a pass?

I’ve been told it’s not worth my energy to talk too derisively about the fans in one of my earlier write-ups, so I’ll leave it at that but it does make me wonder.

(“Rogue One” admittedly has a simarily self-indulgent action sequence though haha...)

Season 2 of “The Mandalorian” isn’t the worst piece of Star Wars media ever created, far from it, and for most part its solid enjoyable Saturday morning cartoon theater but if the series wants to really take steps to become more compelling in the future it might be good to stop bubble wrapping their heroes in plot armor. Literally.

Until then this is the way…I guess…

Me getting ready for the backlash...

[orbitariums]

i don’t wanna miss a thing | stark! reader

hey guys! this was requested a while ago, just got up to it <3

word count: 1.9k 

Request: You are Stark's daughter and whenever he pisses you off you go over to Peter's house to chill out without Stark knowing and Aunt May loves you. Can be a oneshot or headcanon I'm not picky love ♡

    "Dad, seriously?" you shouted, a mixture of a whine and anger, standing at your dad's heels as he walked away from you.

    "Dead serious," he whipped around on his heels to face you and stared you down, and you folded your arms over your chest, rolling your eyes. Of course Tony noticed, and he furrowed his brows. "And enough with the attitude. Your eyes are-"

     "Gonna get stuck there, yeah, I know," you completed his sentence for him - how could you not, when he'd been saying that to you since you were a child? But if anything, he was to blame for your supposed attitude problem. Attitude was practically built into Stark blood.

    "You're being a little brat. Don't you start," Tony warned, and by the look in his eyes, he was dead serious.  

    Tony had this thing where he didn't like when you complained about not getting what you wanted because- "look around!" he'd say, "what more is there to ask for? He just didn't want you falling privy to the spoiled rich brat trope, which you appreciated, but you both knew you weren't anything like that. And anyways, you still felt like you reserved the right to complain. Like right now, he was telling you that you couldn't go out for your friend's birthday trip to Cape Cod on the weekend because of "family stuff." When did you ever have family things? It was really just you and Tony and your mom - and the Parkers, since you counted them as family. Peter Parker was your close friend, and that was before he became Spiderman. Him being Spiderman now, and working with your dad, was just a small plus.

    "This is so unfair," you muttered, scoffing as you turned around and headed for the door.

    "Don't you talk under your breath!" Tony called after you, and since he couldn't see you, you rolled your eyes hard. "Hey, I'm talking to you!"

    Tony's voice was cut off by the sound of you closing the door shut, and walking out onto the cobblestone streets. You'd get on the train and go the only place you ever went when your dad pissed you off - Peter's apartment in Queens. You loved Tony, but sometimes, you just needed a break.

    Walking into Peter's apartment, it was like a wave of calm rushed over you. You'd already relaxed some on the train ride over there, but actually being at his place granted you a homey feeling like no other. You could be with your friend and May, and Tony had no idea. It was your oasis, your home away from home. When you knocked on the door, there was a loud bang, then a:

    "Coming!" from Aunt May, whose voice you instantly recognized.

The door swung open, and you were greeted by the sight of May, who was very clearly frazzled but trying to appear put together. She lost the facade upon seeing you though, and groaned quite honestly,

     "Ugh, YN, I'm glad it's you. I'm a mess right now. Come in, Peter's in his room!"

    "Hey, Aunt May," you grinned, glad to see a friendly face, and she drew you in for a hug before you walked in, closing the door behind you.

May had a big kitchen glove on her hand and her apron was halfway done, the straps slouching down her shoulders. There were also bits of flour in her hair, and the smell of the smoke wafting from the kitchen was somewhere between burning and delicious. She noticed the confused look on your face and laughed, shaking her head with a wave of her hand,

    "Tryna bake. Yeah, turns out the emergency room doesn't train you in... baking mishaps."

You laughed,

     "Don't worry, me and Peter'll help you."

    "No need, hon', just make yourself at home, I'll figure something out. It's good to see- shit," May swore, catching a whiff of the smoke drifting into the living room from the kitchen.

    She ran off, and you shook your head playfully, making your way to Peter's room instead. You knew his apartment like clockwork, you'd been there so many times. You didn't only go when Tony pissed you off, but if that had been the case, you still would've been there a hell of a lot of times. You knocked on Peter's door and he answered, telling you to come in. He was sat on the edge of his bed, headphones in his ears, scrolling through his phone. When he looked up to see you, his face shifted in pleasant surprise. He took one earbud out and smiled up at you,

    "Oh, hey YN. What's up?"

    You smiled and leaned against his open doorframe, glad to see yet another friendly face.

    "Dad drama," you said.

    "Again?" Peter questioned, and he waved his hand in the air, beckoning you to him. You sat on the bed next to him as he showed you the song he was listening to on his phone. "Add it to your playlist."

    "Pete, you listen to the weirdest music," you chuckled, shaking your head- but you added the song to your playlist anyway.

    "It's not weird," Peter frowned. "Probably better than Black Sabbath."

    Your eyes widened playfully and you grinned, knowing that you were the topic of his teasing.

    "Don't say that around my dad."

    Peter's face went red and he seemed to recoil just at the idea of what would happen if he dissed Black Sabbath in front of your dad, who was the number one Black Sabbath fan.

    "Don't have to tell me twice."

You and Peter hung around in his room for a while. You didn't have much to talk about, but Peter could go on and on about his nerdy interests. You kind of just followed him around his room while he showed you all the new stuff that he was working on. It gave you a sense of peace to be around him. He was different from most of your friends, who could sometimes fit the "spoiled brat" stereotype that Tony so faithfully worked for you to avoid. So you liked listening to Pete ramble on about legos and Star Wars - it got you out of your head and made you forget about whatever stupid thing your dad had annoyed you over.

   "And that's the entire plot of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back," Pete said, sitting back in his computer chair while you observed his action figures on the shelf beside his desk, picking up a miniature Jar Jar Binks.

    "Hey, Pete?"

    "Hm?" he hummed.

    "Your aunt's baking... or trying to bake. Should we help her?"

    "Crap," Pete facepalmed, shaking his head. "I should've known. Come on, let's save Aunt May."

     The two of you sauntered into the kitchen where May had her back against the fridge, oven mitts to her face in pure despair. She shook her head sadly upon seeing the both of you, and gestured over to the burnt baked goods on the stovetop.

    "Remind me to never cook again."

    "Don't worry Aunt May, we'll help you," you reassured her, looking up at the kitchen clock. "'S only 3 PM. We've got time."

    "Ugh, I knew I loved you for a reason," May said, and both you and Peter helped her up off the ground. May put a loving hand on your shoulder, a smile on her face. "You're like the child I never had."

    "Hey!" Peter whined, making both you and May chuckle.

    "Works every time," you said, smirking.

You, May, and Peter spent the next few hours baking - it was a trial and error process, especially because May refused to use box mix. She felt it was important that she broaden her horizons and actually learn something new. But at some point, you finished, with flying colors. An array of brownies, cookies, and various baked goods lay before you. And besides, it had been a fun few hours - anything you did with May and Peter was always beyond ordinary. It was more of a dance party than anything else, Peter blasting his "weird" music which you not-so-secretly enjoyed anyway.

    May ordered takeout as well, because "I'm not even going to actually try to cook anything", and invited you to stay for dinner. You figured why not, but knew that it would be smart to get back to your dad afterwards. So once you said your goodbyes to the Parkers, you hopped back on the train to your house.

    "Nice to see you're back," said Friday as you entered the passcode, the gate to your house opening.

    "Missed ya, Friday."

You walked up the steps and opened the door - to your confusion, you were met with the sound of loud music. You were a bit frightened at first - Tony played his music all the time, but the house appeared to be empty, and you had to be alert of threats at all times, even though Tony took care of you without trouble. Then, you realized that you recognized the song, and that you could hear Tony singing from the living room, waiting for you to come to him.                                            

    You hung your head when you saw your dad standing on the couch, arms outstretched and his head flung back as he made a performance out of the song, singing and dancing along. And of course, the song was none other than "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith. And you were his audience. The music rang in your ears and your dad's singing was horrendous, but you couldn't help but laugh. If this was his way of asking for forgiveness, you'd accept.

    He pointed at you, and holding a fake mic in his hands shouted the words,

    "Even when I dream of you, the sweetest dream will never do, 'cuz I miss you babe, and I don't wanna miss a thing!"

    You just folded your arms and watched your dad make a fool of himself, but you couldn't lie - it was endearing. Tony Stark was nothing if not a drama queen, and he couldn't help but make a show out of everything, including his apologies. You watched him take a few more gratuitous moments, singing along to the classic song and dancing around, pleading with you.

     Eventually, he hopped off the couch and glided over to you, a crease in his brows as he fake pouted,

      "Missed ya."

     "Missed you too, dad," you smirked, leaning in for the hug that he was offering.

    He knew he pissed you off sometimes - he didn't grovel for your forgiveness, but he knew when he should at least apologize. As much as you and your dad argued, it was no mistake that your love was unconditional.

     "Forgive me?" he asked, gazing down at you, and you smiled.

     "Honestly, I forgot all about it," you chuckled, and Tony grinned.

     "Where do you go when you're mad at me anyway?" Tony asked, and as much as you were glad your whereabouts were unknown, you were surprised Tony hadn't just figured it out by now.

    "That's confidential," you reached up and kissed his cheek, even though he had narrowed his eyes at you, distrusting.

      "I'll figure it out," he called after you as you headed further into the house to get to your room.

     "Don't!" you called out.

As always, you couldn't stay mad at your dad for long.

[drunklander]

Drunj!Der Yells About Outlander

Thoughts on Ep. 512

Looking for a way to spend Mother’s Day? Well, we here at Outlander have the perfect idea! Celebrate with the women you love by watching us gang rape grannie!

This episode is like the perfect storm of everything that is wrong with Outlander. The cast and crew saying it’s their strongest episode yet when it’s basically artsy gang rape. The CYA trigger warnings when the story would have worked perfectly well without including yet another rape. The kool aid-drinking fans yelling at and acting holier than thou at the fans who rightfully call out the massive problem this show has with rape and assault. The fans yelling at other fans because It’S iN tHe BoOk so it has to be included. The fans yelling at other fans for wanting to follow the books but not wanting rape every 0.5 seconds. The fans yelling at other fans to fuck off if they don’t like the show. The women in the cast throwing out trigger warnings while the men are radio silent or wanting the gladiators to face the plague and fight for their own amusement. It literally has everything.

And I am tired.

I’ve been in this fandom for six years and have had quite a journey. From first discovering the show and immediately devouring the books. The honeymoon period where I could headcanon out all the problematic bits. The getting deep into the fandom nonsense. The getting out of the fandom nonsense. The judging the fandom nonsense because it’s funny and they’re all idiots. The getting sick of the fandom nonsense because it’s not even fun to judge the dummies anymore. The becoming more and more aware that it’s impossible to whistle past the problems in the books and the show. The sticking around, holding out hope things might turn around and the initial magic could be recaptured. And finally, the giving up.

The books are trash. The show is trash. There are a handful of good scenes in each which can be enjoyed on their own, but as a whole, holy shit this stuff is not good. (Seriously, I tried to do a Fiery Cross reread before the season started. I started like a year ago and am still only at Jocasta’s wedding because I just don’t care enough to actually get through it.)

Which brings us here. I am tired. I have already ranted and raged and yelled and swore and wrote far too many words about the gratuitous overuse of rape in the Outlanderverse. It fucking has its own tag for fuck’s sake.

So here’s a recap. And then I think I’m done looking at this show in detail. Not because the idiot fans insist on coming to my notes to tell me to fuck off if I don’t like the show. Not because the crew are condescending douchecanoes. Not because the author is a misogynist garbage heap. But because spending an hour of my time for a few weeks out of the year to write these things isn’t worth it. I did it for as long as I did because it took so little time. So why not? But yeah, it’s not even worth that tiny commitment anymore.

And to the people who I know will @ me about how no one was forcing me to stick around and I could have quit any time, yeah, no shit captain obvious, I know that. Fuck off already. I stuck around because I really liked the little corner of the fandom that I’d found. I made some awesome friends. Most of those friends have since quit the fandom. I’m really glad to have them in my life outside of this little corner of the internet. And it was a fun writing exercise. I don’t really like the show anymore, but I enjoyed building an argument about why I don’t like it and think it’s bad that has valid points behind it. Especially considering how blindly overly adoring a bunch of the fandom is about it. But now I think I’d rather consume Outlander content as pretty people in pretty period costumes in gifsets. Or like, on in the background but not really paying close attention. Why not quit altogether? Because to quote the great Ron Swanson (I’m halfway through a Parks rewatch and I just love that show a lot ok.), I can do what I want. And besides, there’s like a fucking library’s worth of fics that I haven’t read and have been meaning to. And I like the characters enough to want to keep reading about them in stories that are better than the canon. (Bless you fic writers, blesssss.)

So. Was this whole ramble self-indulgent and overly serious for a fucking TV show? Absofuckinglutely. But please see the aforementioned Swansonism.

Alright, fuckos. Let’s do this.

This is a Roberts brainchild, isn’t it. *checks credits* Yup. Knew it. This feels very much like a Roberts special. In that he is probs quite pleased with himself but like, it’s crap.

Yes, we ARE doing ANOTHER rape story! But look! It’s a disassociation montage! It’s the ‘60s, get it?! There are callbacks! An orange from the king in season 2! A vase from season 1! A rabbit from season 3! An amber-looking dragonfly! Jamie with the young hair spouting off book lines! ApPrEcIaTe MuH aRt! We are so good at finding new and creative ways to rape our characters! Fuck off, twatwaffle. You are the worst.

Like, does Roger feel left out at this point? He’s only been hanged. Literally everyone else has either been raped, been sexually assaulted, or been threatened with rape and/or sexual assault.

“But it’s not gratuitous! Look! They’re all so different! Jamie’s was overly graphic and he got a half a season to brood about! We manged to not show much of Fergus’ (but still showed a thrust) because he’s a child and it was just a plot device for Jamie and not actually about him! Mary’s was about Fred! Claire’s with the king was about Jamie! Jamie’s with Geneva was shot like p0rn! Marsali being threatened by the sailors was to motivate Fergus! Bree’s was about the other people in the room and Roger! Claire’s really has no purpose because she’s already been kidnapped and beaten, and that is super traumatic, and we’re gonna wrap it up with a bow by the end of the episode!”

This fucking show, guys. This fucking show.

Bonus points* for the Black character spouting off the superstitious stuff.

*By bonus points I mean this show, and the books are absolute shit on matters of race. The books especially.

The cast and crew have 100% heard everyone’s thoughts on the overuse of rape in the Outlanderverse. And their response has been to include more and more of it. We had a whole season of one character’s arc being about her rape and literally as soon as that was resolved, they gang rape another character. It really does tell you as much as you need to know about them. Lazy. Fucking. Cowards.

Kidnapping not enough trauma? Let’s add some gang rape! Gang rape not enough trauma? Let’s add visualizing that your daughter and grandchild are dead! Just like Fred died! This show really brings trauma p0rn to a whole new level.

Called the Bree and Roger shit.

This scene with the men rallying to go save Claire is like another layer of fuck you. Bree, you stay home, men, give your hero lines and let’s have a getting ready montage. Because your hero moment is what this is really all about. And your manpain about killing someone. *screams into a pillow*

The petty side of me is happy that it was Fergus and Young Ian who are with Claire when they find her and not Roger. Her two sons...

Why yes, I am judging all of the fans who like get their panties all wet over Jamie being like “It is I who kills for her.” Like “yeah go ahead and rape and beat Claire within an inch of her life if it means the big strong man gets to come in and save her and say something intense.” Fuck off and go take a hard look at yourself and what that says about you.

“Was there an Indian there?” “Nope, he wouldn’t help you because LiOnEl but somehow was able to peace out when it was in his interest. Because he is as bad as the ones who actually raped you.”

The Bree and Claire hug makes me both sad and angry. I want to hug them both and take them out of this fucking place and tell them that they’ve been done dirty and deserved fucking better from the writers.

Glad Marsali gets in on the hug. Claire’s two remaining daughters.

Claire’s “I have fucking survived” speech is like the one time she she actually talks about herself not in relation to a man. It’s about her. Claire. HOWEVER! It is epically fucked up that a woman needs to check off all the trauma she’s endured to show she’s a strong character.

So. Fucked. Up.

The fact that we’re spending time on Roger’s manpain about killing someone also really tells us a lot about the show’s feelings toward women. Yeah, killing someone is a big deal. It’s normal and expected to have feelings about it. But the juxtaposition of Claire’s speech about all of her traumas with Roger being like yeah, I killed a guy who had kidnapped, beaten and raped your mom is like, read the room, bro/writers.

The fact that the men put Claire’s rapist in her surgery, her space, her place of healing, where she is able to be most herself, makes me want to punch each and every one of them in the throat. Like seriously. Fuck each and every one of them.

Also Lionel is like cartoonishly terrible. Not that nuance has ever been this show’s strong suit. But like come the fuck on.

Marsali killing Lionel is the one thing about this episode that I didn’t hate. The men are all like “We kill for Claire! Let’s all rally in this montage and go do the manly thing of defending the woman!” Marsali is just like, yeah, that’s my Ma you fucked with. She shows some agency. She doesn’t do it in a performative way for the other men or for Claire like the guys do. She just knows this fuck needs to die, knows it’s gonna be hard for her and might damn her soul (don’t worry Marsali, all that religion crap is bullshit), and does it anyway.

Marsali’s arc has been my favorite of this whole fucking series. The one bright spot I was hanging on to all of this season especially.

Her quick scene with Jamie doesn’t bother me like Roger’s does. Because Roger is like oh no, I killed a guy! Can you forgive me? For killing a rapist? Like fuck off, bro. And Marsali is like yeah, I killed a guy. I hope I’m not damned for it, but the guy needed to die so I did it.

Also like, Richard had potential to not be cartoonishly bad. But like nope. “He reaped what he sowed, but cLeArLy I’m gonna need to escalate this further. Because manly men can’t let shit go.”

Fuck all men, tbh.

*googles how to emigrate to Themyscira*

Jamie’s speech that’s like supposed to parallel Claire’s can fuck all the way off. Giving him the last voice over just underscores how this was all about men. Not Claire. But the men. Fuuuuck everything.

Look! Everything’s fine again! Back to normal! Peaceful for a bit! With a cheesy af on the nose storm coming! So you know something bad’s coming! In case you forgot!

And Jamie got a book line. So it’s all good now.

And don’t worry about Claire, y’all. She feels safe now. Her and Jamie fucked it out.

It’s amazing, in retrospect, that I ever let this story suck me in so much.

Happy Mother’s Day! See you on the other side of the hiatus.

[jolie-goes-downton]

The Downton Abbey Oppositions Tag Game

Thank you for tagging me, @naevery !

1. Favourite plotline from your least favourite season?

My least favourite season (so far) is S5 (except its Christmas special, of which I love every single minute). S5 gave way too much screen time to characters that were neither interesting nor likeable to me, such as the Prince Kuragin saga and the Denker/Spratt feud, and intolerably drew out other plotlines that could have advanced a lot faster, such as Edith’s distress at the Marigold situation, Tom’s uncomfortable friendship with Sarah Bunting and Mary getting rid of Gillingham for good. But the two plotlines of S5 that I liked unequivocally were Rose growing up and finding Atticus, and Isobel and Lord Merton’s romance, which I find incredibly touching.

2. Least favourite plotline from your favourite season?

Favourite season is a draw between S2 and S3. In S2, I hated everything about Richard Carlisle, even when it served the plot and ultimately helped to advance Mary x Matthew. That guy made me shudder!

In S3, I hated the very idea of Mrs Patmore marrying the disgusting grocer. And I also disliked the whole continuation of the Ethel storyline, which would have been so much stronger IMHO if it had ended with the heartbreaking farewell when Charlie’s grandparents take him away.

3. What’s a quality that you actually like about (one of) your least favourite main/regular character(s)?

Like everyone else, I loved to hate Sarah O’Brien, but I was really touched by how protective she was towards Mr Lang the poor shell-shocked valet, and how she genuinely regretted having been a witness for the prosecution against Bates. That hidden, caring side of her was a real surprise.

4. What’s your least favourite quality of your favourite character?

My favourite character is Thomas, and while I totally understand where his bitterness and his mistrust of everyone and everything comes from, I’m not sure I can easily forgive his behaviour against Anna. To be scheming to get the same woman into prison who had put her arm around him when he cried about Sybil’s death, and who was the only one to offer him words of comfort when Jimmy had to leave, was just beastly. Ugly as Thomas’ systematic bullying of Miss Baxter was, at least there was a clear (if ignoble) purpose behind that. But Thomas’ cruelty to Anna, who has never done or even wished him anything bad, is just gratuitous. So, gratuitous nastiness to people who haven’t even remotely deserved it probably sums it up.

5. What’s your favourite thing that your least favourite main/regular character has done?

Not to repeat myself about Sarah O‘Brien (see no. 3), I‘ll say that I was also really touched by how grim Lord Sinderby acknowledged that he‘s human and not infallible at the end of the S5 Christmas Special. (I hope he qualifies as a main/regular character.)

6.   What’s your least favourite thing that your favourite character has done?

Probably Thomas‘ wine stealing in S1. Because that was neither understandable, nor clever, nor entertaining from the viewer‘s perspective, but just plain juvenile stupidity. I guess I‘m just miffed that it was nowhere near as clever as his later plots, nor accidentally beneficial, as they usually are.

7. What’s a positive aspect about (one of) your least favourite ship(s)?

I hated the whole Prince Kuragin storyline, that guy was such a creep. The only positive thing about it was how it took Violet down a peg or three!

8. What’s an aspect about your favourite ship that you don’t like?

My favourite ship (keeping in mind that I’m currently at ep. 6.02, so I can’t officially ship Thomas x Richard yet) has to be Mary x Charles Blake. The bit that I hate about it is that it didn’t happen! I was so disappointed that even the possibility just fizzled out and Blake, although he said he’d put up a fight, gave up just like that, even once Mary had rejected Gillingham. They would have been so well suited, and they’d have made such a power couple.

My other favourite ship is Isobel x Lord Merton, and if her (very understandable) “no” at the end of S5 will turn out to be final, I’ll cry. The fact that he turns up again in the hospital subplot at the start of S6 has given me new hope though.

9. What’s your favourite and least favourite styling/outfit of your favourite and/or least favourite character? (feel free to add pics if you want!)

Least favourite outfit is easily Thomas in a bowler hat. The shape just doesn’t suit him at all IMHO. Makes him look like a clown.

I also love his military uniform less than many other people do. It makes him look like such a hulk when he really is no hulk.

And while I love the cricket sequence in S3 for storytelling reasons, I’m not fond of the cricket whites either. (On anyone, TBH.)

Most favourite outfit - so hard! I won’t say no to any of those sharp suits and liveries, the Brancaster livery and the under-butler livery probably being my favourite. They’re his suits of armour, and boy does this poor man need armour. But deep down, my all time favourite outfit is probably when Thomas looks most relaxed and at ease, so I’ll go for the waistcoat & shirtsleeves look of the S3 tug-of-war scene or the S4 CS day by the sea. I also won’t say no to the t-shirt & pyjama pants of the famous “you know why” scene with Jimmy in S3. Maybe it‘s the hair, even more than the clothes.

OK, who to tag who hasn’t done this yet? @soft-in-my-old-age, @misunderstoodnotevil , @oleander4 , @thedanceronthestreets , @sgt-barrow, @bitletsanddrabbles , if you haven’t already, let us know your thoughts! And of course anyone else who feels like having a go.

[jippy-kandi]

Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna Movie Review

I've seen the film. It was pretty good! Spoilers under the cut.

So, before I watched it, I did read a few bits and pieces of random spoilers. However, I did NOT read the novel – because I wanted to judge the film on its own merits and not be thinking about “what the novel did better”. But I knew things like most characters were sidelined, who the villain was, and how the movie ends. I still have not read the novel.

This is not a “proper” review of the movie -- because what’s the fun in that? You can google actual reviews of the movie by anime websites, if that’s what you’re after. These are just my personal thoughts, impressions and fangirl ramblings (I bias Yamato hard). Plus, a few comments from two others I went to the screening with for a different perspective.

It was like nerd city at the movie theatre, LOL. So. Many. Nerds. Some people even brought Digimon plush toys to the screening! I’ve never witnessed that before. It was great though, being surrounded by so many Digimon fans. I think the cinema was more than half full -- and this was an 800-seat cinema! 400+ Digimon fans? Whoa! I actually thought like only 20 people would show up, LOL.

I tried to put the following thoughts in “order” but some of it isn’t due to the nature of what they’re about . . . plus, I couldn’t 100% remember what order the scenes were in.

Screen time distribution (most to least): Taichi/Yamato, Koushirou, the 02 kids (roughly: Takeru, Hikari, Daisuke, Miyako, Ken, Iori), Mimi, Jou, a hamburger, a whistle, a beer, Sora. (Sora got shafted hard.)

Taichi was exactly just Taichi, which is 1000x better than tri. Taichi. He really did seem like a 22-year-old version of Adventure Taichi, beer-drinking and porn-watching and all. Thank you, Toei. Please don’t fuck him up in the reboot. (Although maybe that’s the idea?)

Yamato is the coolest motherfucker on a motorcycle. He looked SO DAMN GOOD in this movie. There were even a few gratuitous shots of his arse for no apparent reason, LOL. Or maybe that’s just me thinking, whenever he’s bending over or his back’s to us, “That’s a nice arse.” XD (HE IS THE ONLY 2D CHARACTER I THIRST FOR, I PROMISE. I’m actually engaged to Jungkook of BTS.)

Koushirou was the same old Koushirou we all know and love, doing smart stuff and generally being useful. He has no pointed interest in clothes or girls (Koumi began and died in tri., you guys). When it was shown that he was a company president, some people in the audience laughed, lol.

Takeru was pretty bland. I guess tri. Takeru will always be the definitive Takeru to me. This Takeru definitely evolved straight from 02 Takeru (who was also bland AF). But he was fine? I miss overly confident, charming Takeru. Also, where was your crush on your big bro??? lol

Hikari . . . was also fine? I don’t have much to say about her. I like tri. Hikari better (because she was cute? *shallow*). This Hikari was just serviceable. I think because everyone really is just playing second fiddle to Taichi and Yamato, they didn’t really add charms to the other characters. They just . . . serve the plot. And it seemed, at the beginning of the movie, that Takeru and Hikari were going to be in it a lot -- but they have most of their scenes in the first third-ish of the movie before disappearing until the end.

Daisuke was also exactly the same. But I’ve never been a fan of him, nor do I hate him (though he did get on my nerves in 02 sometimes . . .). I just don’t care about him, or any of the 02 kids, personally. :P

I don’t think Ken had a personality in this movie, LOL. He was fine, though. Serviceable. I’m sorry I lack opinions here, but there really wasn’t much to go on. He has no Kaiser issues or anything, he just seems like a normal, well-adjusted kid . . . with no personality, lol.

Iori didn’t have a personality either -- but everyone has always known that. Ha! XP He is just an extra reading lines. I found it odd that he seems so short though? I kept thinking he was still a 9-year-old because of the height difference between him and the others . . . I think Toei forgot that HE IS 17 AND THUS SHOULD BE VERY CLOSE TO FULL ADULT HEIGHT. Puberty is amazing, Toei! (Yeah, he can just be a really short person, I know. I wouldn’t have made that design choice, though. Especially when he’s short compared to Daisuke . . . who is short compared to Yamato . . . and Iori really is a midget.)

Miyako . . . it’s probably due to her voice actress, but she was SO LOUD. And I found her annoying because of it. In fact, she was the only annoying character in the movie to me. Loud people can be charming . . . but I didn’t find her charming. Sorry, Miyako fans. =\

Mimi has an e-commerce startup at 21, lol. OK, you go girl. She was definitely shafted, but she was in it a bit more than Jou I think, and definitely more than poor Sora. Probably a few minutes? Yeah, not a lot, especially compared to Taichi and Yamato. In one of her (four?) scenes, she loses consciousness and ends up in the hospital -- and Taichi, Koushirou and Jou are in her hospital room when Yamato bursts in and goes, “Jou!” You know, instead of acknowledging Mimi, THE COMATOSE FRIEND IN THE HOSPITAL BED. I just found it funny that’s how they chose to frame that scene. :P

Jou only had a few lines, but he was still in it more than Sora. But he is really just a doctor here. He could’ve been an extra hired for a doctor role and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, lol. Oh, Toei, please give all the characters almost-equal screen time in the reboot? Please???

Sora had like four lines and thirty seconds of screen time, TOTAL. I think the decision to hold her back from THE ENTIRE PLOT was SOLELY to have the scene where she reacts to Taichi blowing the whistle, so you know that the sound is going out of Neverland and reaching the real world (or whatever dramatic effect they were going for). I really think that’s it. That, or her voice actress did something terrible to Toei and they’re punishing her. :P

The movie basically opens up with Parrotmon attacking. Takeru was the first to be shown, then Hikari, then Taichi. Taichi is wearing those special goggles Koushirou made for him and he looked goofy AF lol. At one point, Greymon tackles Parrotmon into a building where you see some people inside running away from the rubble. My sister said (without knowing anything about tri.): “Does Tai not care that his digimon definitely just killed some people in that building?” I chuckled because . . . well. ;)

Yamato enters the scene COOL AS FUCK on his motorcycle (most of his entrance is shown in a clip that Toei released) and thank you Toei for doing that for him. He deserves a showy entrance. :) Although I do find it funny that he’s obsessed with motorcycles, given I still remember giggling as a kid at him NOT liking riding on the back of some guy’s scooter in Digimon: The Movie.

The music was nice and nostalgic and I have no complaints.

There is a quick scene of Yamato seeing a kid in a music store getting a harmonica, and watching a street performer singing. Obviously he’s thinking about his passion for music as a kid/teen (and his childhood in general?) and it was a nice touch. I think by the end of the movie you would’ve understood that Yamato was letting go of his past (childhood) and heading towards the future (adulthood).

A friend of Yamato’s makes a comment to him that Japan’s Self-Defense Forces are going to recruit him into the military due to his experience as a Chosen Child. Yamato replies, “that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard”. BUT . . . this is Kizuna telling you EXACTLY what is going to happen, lol. I actually “predicted” Yamato’s career path years ago -- but it wasn’t hard, as there is really only two ways it could’ve gone, lol. Military test pilot or commercial air pilot -- which one, especially given the context Kizuna just gave us, is more likely? ;)

Yamato is shown wearing GLASSES in class (looking nerd-hot AF). Toei Animation must not have researched Yamato’s astronaut career as intensively as I did, and therefore did not know that astronauts need 20/20 vision lol. Oh well, he can get it corrected. :p (Or, he doesn’t actually need glasses but WEARS THEM AS A FASHION STATEMENT. Because I can believe that. XD)

I think Yamato had about three different outfits in the movie? And he looked good in all of them. Are there people out there who think he’s not fashionable? I'd find that opinion strange, given the fact that the staff behind 02 and tri. were actively designing him as the well-dressed cool guy of the group. He wears exactly the kind of clothes the well-dressed cool guys at my high school/university wore. Sure, sometimes they force green tops on him purely for nostalgic reasons and it therefore clashes -- there is only so much you can do with a green top -- but overall, he is supposed to come across as someone who cares about his appearance. If you don’t think so, you’re either not into fashion or you aren’t aware of 2005-2010 fashion as a teen/young adult. (If Yamato was a millionaire, I’m sure he’d dress identical to BTS with super expensive clothes lol. But he dresses very well for a “normal” person. :p)

Taichi was shown with two of his friends who were asking him about his aspirations or something, and the guy looked like an unattractive nerd. My sister said: “I didn’t like how they showed Tai with sloppy friends, but showed Matt with good-looking people.” LOL. Her favourite as a kid was Taichi, BTW. XD;

Menoa and Imura were . . . OK characters. Menoa seemed likeable enough at first, but when her real intentions were revealed she turned into a typical, crazy, possessed villain. Imura was really just there to service the plot, like a necessary extra on set. There was nothing more to him.

Menoa’s English is terrible. And it’s very noticeable because she inserts random English words into her Japanese sentences, lol. I laughed when Koushirou told her that her Japanese is very good (because SHE IS ACTUALLY FLUENT IN JAPANESE . . . and not so much in English). Yes, I know it’s because it’s a Japanese voice actress -- but it was still funny every time she spoke heavily accented English, followed by fluent Japanese. :P

Menoa’s partner digimon, Morphomon, was cute in design. Eosmon was the villain digimon and was Menoa’s attempt at recreating Morphomon, who disappeared on her. Does this sound kind of familiar? lol

Omegamon devolves into Koromon and Tsunomon when fighting against Eosmon. Back in Koushirou’s office, Menoa explains that you only have a limited amount of time with your digimon before they disappear and that fighting accelerates it. Taichi has a circle of lights on his digivice that lose a bar of light every time he fights with Agumon. When the lights all disappear, Agumon will disappear. Koushirou and Takeru look at their digivices to check if they’ve got it – they don’t, and they are relieved. Yamato then checks his and . . . well. He has it. His eyes start watering and he storms out of the room saying something along the lines of his bond with Gabumon will not be broken. I FUCKING LOVED THIS SCENE. Top 3 in the movie for me, personally. We all have weaknesses. Emo Yamato is mine, lol. I like it when he gets so emotional he cries in front of other people. :3

The “porn stash” scene with Agumon at Taichi’s apartment was HILARIOUS. The funniest scene of the movie. Everyone in the cinema laughed so hard. It was Taichi’s reaction that sold it -- it was BRILLIANT. The magazines actually had girls on the cover wearing bikinis, so, at least Agumon kept his innocence! lol

Gennai randomly appears in Taichi’s apartment to confirm the thing everyone should’ve always known (but that they just made up for Kizuna and which DEFINITELY led to “creative differences” with Digimon series director Hiroyuki Kakudou). This, of course, would be the whole idea that the more you “grow up”, the more your bond with your partner digimon breaks until, eventually, they disappear. Does the idea have problems? Yep. Menoa lost her partner digimon Morphomon at age 14 because she decided to accelerate her learning and go to university . . . meanwhile, Koushirou is the president of his own freaking company and still has Tentomon by his side. Yeah, OK, Kizuna. And, sure, you can argue that it’s about BECOMING AN ADULT -- but I think you’d just be drawing lines where YOU want to draw them. How mature is 14-year-old Menoa to be an “adult”? Is Koushirou really not mature enough at 21? And what about Jou, who I definitely think is an adult in all sense of the word? And so on. So arguments about this I think are valid, but at the same time . . . it’s Digimon. I think it’s a flawed idea but I also just shrug and accept it as it is, lol.

I “love” how Gennai just pops in when it’s convenient to the plot. Hello Gennai, what’s dark Gennai up to? Have you seen him around licking underaged girls anywhere? No? You’re just popping by to confirm shit to Taichi? OK, cool. See you in the tri. sequel, never. (He actually does give Taichi a reasonable answer as to why the growth/bond thing was never brought up before: that it’s like talking about how long you have to live. I bought it.)

Yamato is basically the reason the 02 kids are even in the movie, lol. He asks them to investigate Imura and Menoa for him and they do so. They contact him later on with info and they ask that he take them out for okonomiyaki (which is awful by the way, lol) as thanks and he smiles and says he can do that. This is just a nice exchange between them. :)

Yamato eventually confronts Imura (or is it the other way around, lol) and Imura HAS A GUN. Which was surprising to me because I remember that in the English dub, Puppetmon’s gun was censored, so seeing a gun in a Digimon movie was a little surprising. Anyway, Yamato doesn’t seem concerned by the fact that this dude can just shoot him dead, lol. Gabumon is with him, but still. Imura can still kill you before Gabumon kills him, you know. XD But it’s all good because Imura turns out to be an undercover FBI agent who wants to arrest Menoa, THE REAL VILLAIN. I was spoiled with this so no surprise.

There is a scene where Yamato has his hand tenderly on Takeru’s face because he lost consciousness. It was sweet, but I would’ve liked it more if Takeru had more of a personality in the film so I could actually care about him, lol. Yamato’s such a caring big brother, though. :)

Yamato was perfect in this movie. PERFECT. I had a few issues with his characterisation in tri. (I think he was, overall, about 80% Yamato), but he was ALL YAMATO, ALL THE TIME here. He is my favourite fictional character of all time, so DEAL WITH THE BIAS. I love him and, honestly, Yamato>Taichi all day, every day. I totally understand you, Sora. DON’T @ ME TAICHI STANS. XP

The ONLY minor quibble I had was that Yamato asks Taichi if they should really try to save the other kids, because fighting means it speeds up their bonds breaking. My quibble is: YAMATO IS NOT FUCKING SELFISH. He’s SO selfless. He would fight to save the other kids NO QUESTIONS, even if it meant he’s accelerating the destruction of his bond with Gabumon. But I give this scene a huge pass because it basically had to go like that, because ONE person out of Taichi/Yamato had to be reluctant so that the OTHER person pushes forward and has a “hero” moment. And who’s going to get that “hero” moment? The actual hero and MAIN CHARACTER of Digimon, Taichi, of course. SO I GET IT. I even agree and would’ve written it that way too, for Taichi to be the leader and reassure Yamato that this is what they’re doing (unlike in tri. where Yamato 1000% deserved the mantle of LEADER and Taichi could’ve whinged off the edge of a cliff and I. WOULD. NOT. CARE.). BUT I will still rant about this 30 second scene in my blog and scream to the universe that Yamato Ishida is the most selfless fictional being on the face of the planet and you better fucking know it. :)

Menoa is Maki 2.0. As soon as Menoa is revealed as being behind the evil stuff, she is instantly psychotic. So Maki 2.0 she definitely is. But . . . I don’t really care. Could Toei have been more original? Yes. But I can’t be bothered to criticise them for recycling a plot, because I’d rather criticise tri. for doing it in the first place, LOL. OK, honestly? At least Menoa’s plot had an actual resolution, instead of Maki being revealed and then . . . fucking off out of the entire series so abruptly. Like??? Kizuna followed through with it, tri. did not. That’s why I’m OK with the rehash, because Kizuna did tri.’s plot better. (Maki’s plot would’ve been good if the tri. writers didn’t get lazy AF at the end and just . . . didn’t . . . finish it.) I might also be giving Kizuna a huge pass because it made me feel things, lol.

The movie really picks up after Menoa reveals her intentions and they end up in Neverland (a place she created in the Digital World?) where she claims all the Chosen Children can stay as children with their partner digimon forever. It became a lot more interesting after that. But that’s also near the climax, lol.

In Neverland, all the kids who have lost consciousness are in their child forms (from the first season) and are basically Menoa’s puppets. This was really cool; it not only gave you nostalgic feels to see them like that, but it was also pretty creepy to see them with glowing red eyes. The Chosen Children, as kids, attack Taichi and Yamato. I laughed when Patamon attacked Yamato’s face and Tentomon tackled Taichi, lol. But I have to say though that Sora’s absence was VERY glaring here. Because . . . everyone was there, but her. :(

Other Chosen Children from the past are present in Neverland too. I FREAKING SAW MICHAEL, MIMI’S AMERICAN FRIEND, STANDING BEHIND HER. I was so surprised at his appearance that I didn’t catch anyone else. There were definitely others, but I didn’t make them out at all because I was so caught off-guard with Michael. XD; (I DON’T EVEN GIVE A SHIT ABOUT HIM, LOL.)

Someone said that Taichi called out Meiko’s name in the movie . . . well, I’m pretty sure that Yamato does, and he calls her by her last name, “Mochizuki”. This is when they’re in Neverland and Menoa shows them her “collection” of Chosen Children. Meiko pops up for one second. It was like Kizuna went, “Oh! Hey, tri. existed by the way. Now let’s move on.” lol

While being attacked by the Chosen “puppets” in Neverland, Taichi manages to reach his hand out and grab Hikari’s whistle and blow it -- effectively “waking” them all up from their puppet states. Everyone in the cinema got hit with audible FEELS, because when Taichi blew Hikari’s whistle the screen flashbacked to that scene from the first movie. I found the collective audience reaction more powerful than the scene itself, lol. But I really liked it, too. :)

So while everyone else is in Neverland . . . SORA IS IN HER APARTMENT HUGGING PIYOMON. Thanks, Sora, you’re a real friend. *cough* After Taichi’s whistle blow, she intuitively knows what’s going on and says she believes in everyone . . . THANKS AGAIN, SORA, YOU CHEERLEADER. OK, look: I do think it is pretty selfish of Sora to choose not to fight. I understand all the reasoning behind it, I even think SHE DESERVES TO BE SELFISH FOR ONCE etc., and I am fine with it -- but I still think it’s selfish. Because it is. And that’s OK, nobody is perfect, and people are selfish from time to time. If only it wasn’t glaringly obvious that her selfishness happened only because Toei just wanted her out of the way for most of the film . . . her absence, as stated before, really was noticeable in scenes where literally everyone else was included but her. (I’d also just like to point out that her voice actress was STILL CREDITED THIRD after Taichi and Yamato in the ending credits. LOLing forever -- such little contribution, such big recognition. XD)

But don’t get me wrong, I love Sora. I really fucking do. Taichi used to be my second favourite character in Digimon for a long, long time -- but Sora managed to dethrone him from second place (fucking Yamato probably helped, LOL). I think, screen time-wise, Kizuna did her a bigger disservice than Our War Game did. Yes, let that sink in. Remember how little she was in that movie? It’s worse in Kizuna. But story-wise and character-wise? Kizuna probably did better, because Sora was angry over a hairclip in Our War Game lmao. If you haven’t already, check out her memorial story short “To Sora” that Toei Animation released online. It’s six minutes of Sora . . . which is 5 and a half more minutes than in Kizuna! XD;

There’s a scene where Agumon and Gabumon tell Taichi and Yamato that they like watching them grow up. It was very touching, but also very brief. It was one of my favourite moments though. It made me have quick flashbacks in my mind of itty bitty Taichi and Yamato growing up into who they are now. The enormity of everything they had been through since the first season. THE HISTORY. THE GROWTH. It hit me right in the feels.

Taichi and Yamato’s homoerotic-ness was actually toned down a lot, especially compared to tri.. They don’t have forced disputes where they get angry at each other and the gay sexual tension shoots through the roof. They’re just . . . friends. Two dudes who drink beer together and moan about their lives. The partnership between them and their digimon were the focus of the movie, more so than the friendship between them. I actually liked this, and I usually care more about the human connections over the human-digimon ones.

“Shipping moments” – if you squint hard enough. Takari: At the start, Takeru shields Hikari from harm. Sorato: While Taichi informs Yamato about the lives of some of the other Chosen Children, Yamato lets Taichi know what Sora is up to -- that she’s seriously studying flower arranging. Kenyako: Ken asks Miyako, and only Miyako, if she’s OK (when Daisuke is right next to her). Taiora: Sora says Taichi’s name when he blows the whistle in Neverland and she hears it all the way in the real world. (My sister legit whispered to me: “SHE DIDN’T SAY MATT’S NAME.” BITCH, he ain’t the one whistling! XP) Now, Digimon Adventure tri. shipbaited hard -- but Kizuna did not do this. All of these very small moments felt very organic and passed as if they were a natural part to the story, instead of something shoehorned in with the explicit purpose of shipbaiting. I really liked this approach. The Sorato one in particular (surprise, surprise) said a lot about Yamato’s relationship to Sora without being explicit about it. He knows what she’s up to when her childhood best friend doesn’t? Yeah, those two are definitely hooking up after classes. :P (I jest. But it does tell you with one sentence that Yamato and Sora keep in touch, which I appreciated. You gotta do that if you’re having babies together within the decade, you know?)

There were next to NO evolution sequences. I might remember it happening once or twice? Max. And . . . that was a REALLY lame choice. Especially when Agumon and Gabumon evolve to their newest forms; Taichi and Yamato are just floating with them up into the air and then, poof, the new evolutions are shown. Google tells me they’re just called Agumon -Bond of Courage- and Gabumon -Bond of Friendship- respectively . . . they were not named in the movie. Here’s the thing: I don’t really care about digimon and evolutions. But it was so underwhelming; they really should’ve amped it up with an evolution sequence to be like HERE BE THESE NEW AWESOME FUCKING DIGIMON ‘bout to kick your arse. It seems like such a no-brainer that I really don’t know who would sign off on a evolution sequence not happening. Oh well. As for the designs? They are OK, but definitely could’ve been better. I think “cool AF” when I see Omegamon and all his forms. I don’t think that of these new evolutions lol. (But my sister liked them and thought they looked cool, so . . .)

Also . . . the fighting scenes in this movie were pretty bad. Very underwhelming. Our War Game and Diablomon Strikes Back did a lot better. I both like and dislike the animation style in Kizuna. I do actually like the art of it, like how it looks. But I kinda dislike how it’s actually animated, because it doesn’t really look like they’re moving fluidly enough. It’s a bit too choppy. I just expected the fighting/action scenes to be more exciting (I was hoping Our War Game-level) and of a higher standard. But they are not, unfortunately.

Everyone in the cinema audibly GASPED when Taichi and Yamato were just talking to Agumon and Gabumon after the final battle, and then they turned around and they . . . just . . . disappeared. And then Taichi and Yamato CRIED. SO. HARD. And I actually started repeating in my head, DO NOT CRY, DO NOT CRY, lol. I didn’t cry! Almost, though. :p I really loved this scene. And I really think, narratively, it would’ve worked A LOT better for the movie to end on this scene. The actual ending scene that comes after it felt a little too out of place and tacked on to me. More on that later.

There was a small smattering of applause at the end of the movie, lol. But I did not clap, because I find that weird. :p (Even though I clapped, alone in my house, when Parasite won Best Picture at the Oscars LOL.)

The ending credits showed different photos of the kids. Unfortunately, I . . . don’t really remember most of them. XD; I think I saw Sora arranging flowers? And maybe Daisuke and Ken having dinner? I definitely saw Iori doing kendo, because I thought it was cool. And the one photo I definitely remember for sure: Yamato standing in front of a space shuttle. I stan astronaut!Yamato so hard, you guys have no idea how happy it made me that he’s pursuing his dream omfg my little baby boy. XD;

This is definitely Taichi and Yamato’s movie. Everyone else is just playing supporting/cameo roles -- some more than others, as outlined way above. (Well, except Menoa I suppose . . . and Koushirou to the extent that he’s just needed to be the Digi IQ.) But if you’re NOT a fan of either Taichi or Yamato? I think, though you’ll probably love all the nostalgia bits, you’ll also be really disappointed -- especially considering this is supposed to be the final instalment of the original Adventure continuity. It’s a great “love letter” to Taichi and Yamato specifically, but not for the other characters, sadly.

I saw the movie with my sister (a non-fan who used to like it as a kid) and a friend (a casual fan now, but she used to like it a lot years ago). I’ll refer to them as “S”(ister) and “F”(riend), respectively.

After the movie ended:

S: “Did you cry? Because two guys beside me were literally sobbing. SOBBING.” *Judging.* (LMAO.)

What was our favourite part of the movie?

Top 3 scenes for me were Yamato storming off with his eyes watering when he realises his bond with Gabumon has an expiry; the brief “speech” Agumon and Gabumon give to Taichi and Yamato about wanting to see them grow up; and Taichi and Yamato crying at Agumon and Gabumon vanishing. EMO EMO EMO.

S: “Sora doing fuck-all.” (LMAO.) F: “Yeah! What was up with that? It’s like they forgot she even existed.” S: “Sora is just a cunt.” (Note: S has a dry sense of humour and isn’t really being malicious. BUT . . . I do think most viewers watching Kizuna would have a poor opinion of Sora in this movie . . .)

F: “I liked the 02 kids. I guess it was mostly Davis. And I liked when Veemon was riding on Armadillomon’s back and Wormmon was trailing behind. It was just this random thing but it was funny. Maybe I just like making fun of Wormmon.”

About the idea that growing up affects your bond with your digimon:

S: “What I took from it was that you shouldn’t grow up too fast. Cherish your childhood, cherish your memories. But, eventually, you do need to grow up.”

F: “I don’t understand how this whole “Digimon disappear when you grow up” thing wasn’t known. Weren’t there older people with Digimon before? You’d think they could have made a more specific threat that was just affecting their digimon, not be like, “Yeah this happens to everyone, it’s just a fact of life that we’ve never addressed before.” It felt a bit like they were telling the audience to grow up and get over Digimon.”

What would we rate the film?

I probably have to watch it again to give a definitive score, but at the moment, I give it about a 7/10. It was good, but not great. The last half was pretty great though -- it definitely started out slow (there was a lot of exposition via Menoa vomiting words). Is it better than tri.? Chapter 3: Confession, no. Confession is better, I think, but I also haven’t seen it in years. But the rest of tri.? Probably. Especially the pile of shit that was Chapter 6: Our Future. *cough*

S: “4/10.″ (LOL.)

F: “It was better than tri.. I guess a 7/10 too.”

Sequel?

I think it’s definitely a possibility. I feel like the very last scene of the movie was slapped on just to be like, “Well, if we don’t do a sequel, you know that Taichi and Yamato are definitely going to reunite with their partners eventually for the 02 epilogue to happen.” The scene is of Taichi and Yamato saying something along the lines of meeting Agumon and Gabumon again one day.

And while it’s an uplifting ending, I actually think the movie would’ve ended better with the scene before that -- with the digimon disappearing and Taichi and Yamato crying. It would’ve made a bigger emotional impact and raised the movie up just a notch higher to end on such a ballsy note. But, of course, it would’ve meant a sequel definitely had to happen. So the actual final scene was added on so that a sequel doesn’t need to be made -- but that it leads to the 02 epilogue “off-camera”, in case they really don’t do a sequel.

I think there’s a 50/50 chance of a sequel. The movie actually does close the Adventure story pretty well -- it has all the ingredients to lead to the 02 epilogue without actually taking you there. But it also keeps the possibility of a sequel open, where they can show you exactly how Taichi and Yamato reunite with their digimon.

And, honestly, the only “barrier” I see to a sequel happening is that the reboot is airing next month -- and it’ll be confusing for the next generation of kids to follow one continuity, and then have a movie released with characters they recognise, but in an entirely different continuity. Unless, of course, the sequel comes out in another two years and the reboot has finished after one season (though there’s always a possibility it goes on beyond one season).

S: “Yes, I think there’ll be a sequel.”

F: “It seemed quite final. But obviously if the 02 epilogue is accurate that can’t be the end. Unless Matt finds Gabumon again on the moon I guess. “Oh hey yeah we don’t really disappear, we just go to space!” Yeah, it could go either way. Maybe they are saving Sora’s big part for the sequel!” (XD)

And that’s a wrap! I’ll probably read the novelisation of the movie eventually . . . and it’ll probably be like 95% the same, lol.

[iatheia]

EDA reviews Part 5 - books 38-46

Previous part 1, 2, 3 & 4

38) Casualties of War - a lovely story. In form and in function it is pretty much identical to the previous story, and even reveals pretty much the same info verbatim. The plot is similarly nothing outstanding, from ~5 minutes in you can tell pretty much exactly how it is going to turn out. That said, it has a much better atmosphere than the Burning, and Doctor’s characterization is also much stronger. Nice and relaxing, if a bit gory at times, and veering off towards supernatural by the end. 8/10

39) The Turing Test - Wow, these stories keep getting better and better! It is overwhelming and exuberant. Only a handful of books have even attempted to get anywhere near close into the Doctor’s psyche as this one has. Moreover, it has multiple narrators, and all three have a very different relationship with the Doctor, you get into the different facets of his persona, multiplicity of his character. You have a dashing and breathless romantic whose mere presence sweeps you off your feet, a reckless hero, an enigma, at the same time, there is a rather selfish and cruel streak as well. He is a manipulator, someone who knows more than he should and willing to use this knowledge to achieve his aims, willing to play people against each other and show a side of himself that they would be most accepting to see. It is never to the degree of Seven, this behavior is all Eight through and through, the core of his characters never sways, it’s just viewed through a different lens. The previous novels have established these facets, but more on accident, due to lack of consistency between different writers, picking one and going with it. But this is the first one I feel they were actually explored in full, though, certainly, there will be other stories to tackle this in the future as well (Caerdroia in particular comes to mind). An outstanding story through and through. 10/10

40) Endgame - Hot off the heels of the previous one, another fun story - or, at the very least, something that would have been a gem if it had managed to sustain the energy it had at the beginning. Doctor’s claustrophobia and depression were very poignant, and, as much as I loved Stranded already, it does make me look at that story in a new light with a newer appreciation. And, on top of that - this book is funny, the Doctor evading spy agents with ease is the comedy of errors. That said, in the second half there is too much runamock it’s a bit repetitive, not very well organized, they needlessly cross the ocean so many times, the situation at a given location is resolved the second the Doctor shows up on a scene, and it all ends in deus ex machina. The authors note says that the original draft was submitted unfinished, and boy does it show. Still, I had fun with it. 8/10

41) Father Time - It is hard not to notice though that some of the novels come in pairs (or trios). The Burning and the Casualties of War had a lot of overlap. Turning Test and Endgame were both based on political intrigue. And now, Endgame and Father Time, both feature some mysterious entity that know the Doctor from before, with him not knowing who they are. They are even called similarly, “The Players” and “The Hunters”. When these overlaps are so close to one another, it does rather stick out. This ark is not the first time this happened, obviously, there have been a number of stories before that makes you pause and go “wait, you’ve just done this in the previous book, too”. It’s probably more to do with how quickly the books are released one after another, so as the writers discuss some ideas, they end up being in several places....

That said, the first third of the book had me singing its praises. After going through the five stages of grief, and battling against the depression of the previous novel, the Doctor is finally reaching acceptance of his situation, and possibly nurturing hope for the future. It’s exactly the type of a fluffy story I have a weakness for. But then... you have a time skip, which gets all the pacing torn into shreds. Not only the conclusion of the first part is too abrupt, everything falling into pieces as if by accident, but also, none of the things that happened in the first part (or most of the characters that were introduced) matter for part two. It turns into a chess match play by numbers, moving characters across the board almost without any transition in service of “plot”, without much of consideration for their head space, keeping everyone rather ooc. The change in visuals is very abrupt - it’s hard to accept the Doctor as a millionaire business consultant living in a grand mansion, new family situation or not. It’s not just at odds with his bohemian persona, it also begs a question, if he is so famous, what do the UNIT and Torchwood are doing about it? And also, *sigh*. You have a sixteen year old girl, who, in the previous chapter, just been ten. And you decide to spend the next two chapters on little else than musing how “she hasn’t been interested in sex, even though she is SO HOT”, only to decide that she is interested now, actually. It comes across more than a little fetishistic, and the story continues to follow her around with the male gaze. I’m not here to follow sexual exploits of minors - not in a Doctor Who novel. It is utterly unnecessary, doesn’t add anything of value to the plot, not character driven, and made me lose pretty much all of the good will I had from the first part of the story (and I had a lot of it, because the start of it was basically perfect). In the third part, it just turns into a discount Taken story, somehow managing to lose any cohesiveness and suspension of disbelief, and fizzles out in the end. 4/10

Amnesia watch: #7. It’s a bait and switch - the Doctor was just pretending, but I’m counting it anyway.

42) Escape Velocity - I wonder, how much sponsorship did various fast food places paid for this novel.... 

And we are back with Fitz. I didn’t really say it before, but it was really rather a dick move leaving the Doctor all alone for over a century. I mean, it worked, narratively speaking (more on that later), but, still, in an option between traveling through space & time BUT leaving them alone for that long, without any idea who they are, without any network of support, letting them slowly go mad, only being there for the fun bits, versus staying with them to help them through it all, you are kind of a bad friend. Sure, Compassion was in the driver’s seat, but Fitz didn’t exactly protest all that much, did he? And why 20th century earth? If the conditions for Doctor’s maroonment was that he had to stay somewhere for over 100 years while the TARDIS repaired itself, then any other technologically advanced era that didn’t have two world wars would have sufficed? And, psst, Doctor, your adopted kid has a space armada. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind giving you one ship that would allow you at least space travel, you didn’t have to spend last 11 years on Earth - you could have went traveling, TARIS in tow on that ship, and only checked in at the deadline.

Also, I get it, memory loss is a traumatic experience, and the Doctor isn’t human, and there is a sense of wrongness. But, he has lived on Earth for over 100 years. In that time he had more memories and experiences than any human alive. After a while, this entire thing of “I don’t know who I am” should start wearing a bit thin, don’t you think?

This rant aside, the book is a bit play by numbers. A lot of unnecessary runaround, traveling from London to Brussels and back several times for no particular reason. A rather boring “aliens invading earth” plot that left me checked out for a vast majority of it. Nothing bad about it, but nothing stands out about the plot either. But, it did have several heartfelt emotional scenes - the long awaited reunion, seeing TARDIS interior again, the finale. They were fairly brief, and it’s a bit of a pity they weren’t savored for a bit longer, instead letting the plot get in the way, but the little that was there was nice. 7/10

43) EarthWorld - I was hoping to enjoy this book a bit more than I ended up, I usually am quite fond of Rayner’s works, but I guess it is one of her first books. It’s a bit monotone, landing on the side of quirky, whether it was suited for a scene or not. Also dwelling on the past quite a bit, invoking the imagery of Unearthly Child, War Games, Greatest Show in the Galaxy in a rapid succession, for no specific reason, and then dwelling for quite a long time on several previous novels in a not entirely organic way. Instead of using this as an opportunity so start afresh now that we’re finally back in the TARDIS, it feels like it is focused more than ever on recapping how they got here, especially as the previous novel offered a way out by letting Fitz forget most of the previous “ark”. There were a lot of lovely character moments - but some of it did feel overly gratuitous. Still, it’s a decent book, even if it doesn’t quite reach full marks 8/10.

44) Vanishing Point - Easily the best Steve Cole novel of the ones I’ve ever read and/or listened to. This is the fresh start to the team adventures that I was hoping for. The alien world is interesting, with great worldbuilding (which is actually kind of rare in the novels). A lot of exciting imagery. The characters are a joy to behold. Not just the trio, but the secondary characters too. The first half of the book is basically perfect. It... kind of fizzles out in the second half, never really delivering on its set up in an entirely satisfying way.

A big part of the difficulty of suspending disbelief, though, was Fitz’s leg. I twisted my ankle once. I could barely walk for several days afterwards (so it having happen at a beginning of a trip was Awful), it took months for it to fully heal, and even now it feels more wobbly than the other one. And a colleague of mine ended up getting a special boot, because she keeps twisting her ankle (always the same one). Fitz had twisted his ankle, and then he was shot in the leg. And he is running about mountains and waterfalls almost immediately. 8/10

45) Eater of Wasps - You have to give it to Baxendale, he has a very particular style. Everything described so masterfully you couldn’t help but imagining every single detail, like painting a picture before you. Even though a significant portion of it is body horror that is described exactly as lovingly as the British countryside. Never before has the title been this appropriate. Very careful in setting up the conflict and tension between the protagonists. 10/10

46) The Year of Intelligent Tigers - This story is just nice. Another one with incredible visuals and incredible feelings behind it, exuberant and overwhelming, like a hurricane. The ending is particularly strong. This is peak Eight - a force of nature, alien and unknowable, and yet, you can’t help but being swept off your feet. Stories like this one is exactly why he is the platonic ideal of who the Doctor should be.

Overall impressions so far: This was like a breath of fresh air. The “stuck on Earth all on his own” ark was not only beautifully executed, but it was also badly needed. The last time I was complaining that few novels actually did anything with Eight - he would react to the plot, but never really be affected by anything. And at the heart of it was the issue that the writers, through trial and error, did come to a consensus about who he should be, but rarely took time to actually get into his head - they started out somewhat flat-footedly, and then got swept up in other things. Here, though, they were forced to slow down and focus his undivided attention just on him, what makes him tick if you break him down to the barest essentials - so even after reuniting with the TARDIS and the companions, his portrayal is all the stronger as a result. Rather than merely reacting to the world at large, he is now an active participant.

The companions are great. There is nothing particularly special being given to Fitz to chew upon, but his presence is always welcome, especially with him being as mellow as he has been back in Autumn Mist. What is it about the Doctor that attracts so many companions with an acute case of praise kink, I wonder? Anji is also interesting, and I love seeing what’s being done with her. She slots in perfectly, delivering so sorely missed snark Compassion had in her pre-Shadow of Avalon outings, all the while having a rather unique relationship with the Doctor - acknowledging his eldritch horror moments, being one of the few who does stand up to him. Especially after the last couple of books, I’m curious to see where this goes and how it continues to build.

The books themselves are a significant step up to what was there before, which got pretty joyless for a short while, alternating between mediocre to awful. In this batch, tough? Sure, there are some weaker offerings, but even there there is at least one stand-out scene that makes the book. Even if the plot isn’t exactly the most revolutionary thing in the world, it is being made up with solid character work. Honestly, for any new readers I would recommend just starting with #37 Burning and going from there - at least so far.