#its like if i started writing general meta about how The Shadow of Earth killed Uldren Sov in Forsaken

[renarinkholin]

Let’s Talk About “The Young Wolf”

So the Destiny fandom as a whole has really latched on to “The Young Wolf” when referring to the player character Guardian, and this is a little strange to me. Not that people like the title (I don’t care for it much, but that’s a difference of taste thing) but that the fandom treats it as The One True Title/Name for our Guardians, as declared by lore. 

I wrote up a meta response to a post about a week ago, and just used “our Guardian” throughout, then mentioned in the tags that I don’t care to use “The Young Wolf” because I don’t really like it. I got a response that basically said, “I agree with your meta but people use The Young Wolf as their title because it’s canon and using ‘the Guardian’ is confusing and terrible.”

But is it really canon that this title is the main title amongst the many, many titles and accomplishments our Guardians have picked up? I decided to do some searching and my conclusion: It really isn’t.

Lore Check

NPCs and lore call our Guardian “Young Wolf” only 17 times in Ishtar Collective, which searches through lore books, dialogue transcripts, item descriptions, etc throughout Destiny and Destiny 2. The use of this title happens in three different cases: 1) used in the context of the Iron Lords/by Saladin directly, 2) used in a list of titles and accomplishments, as one of many, 3) used by non-Iron Lord characters in a general sense.

Saladin and the Iron Lords The first usage accounts for the majority of the title’s appearances, 10 of them total. Of these, 7 are said by Saladin, who gave our Guardians this nickname, 2 are by Tyra Karn (one of which she uses “A Young Wolf of the Iron Lords”) and 1 is when Shaxx calls you “Saladin’s Young Wolf” in the Homecoming opening mission of D2. I’m not going to screenshot all of these, but feel free to look them up if you want.

One Title Amongst Many The second usage, when it appears amongst many other titles, happens 4 times across the games: two times in Calus’ prophecy fanfic about us, once in Saint-14’s eulogy in the Corridors of Time, and once in Phylaks’ dialogue during her Empire Hunt.

Other Cases There are only 3 times where NPCs use “The Young Wolf” as a general title to refer to our Guardians. Vyhar calls us this in that his Ghost’s Fragment, Osiris calls us this in the Season of the Hunt’s transmission from him, and Saint-14 calls us this once while talking to Ikora.

Conclusions

The fact that the overwhelming majority of times we hear someone in-game or in-lore call our Guardians “The Young Wolf” it’s either Saladin using his personal nickname for us, someone referring to our status among the Iron Lords, or someone listing off a bunch of our titles and accomplishments. The fact that there’s only 3 times ever that it has been used in a general context, and two of them showed up this season means that I really can’t take at face value the notion that the “Young Wolf” is our main, general title. If the fandom wanted to just pick a title out of a hat at random amongst the many we’ve picked up, sure, it works. It is a title our Guardians have. It’s nowhere close to being the title for our Guardians.

In the grand scheme of things? It’s a pretty minor title. In fact, it’s mostly one character’s nickname for us. What’s the accomplishment here: “played Rise of Iron’s story campaign”? That’s the accomplishment the fandom has decided to define our player characters by? It’s baffling to me. 

After all, Emperor Calus decided to call us the Shadow of Earth, and that shows up in lore far more times numerically than “the Young Wolf.” Drifter calls my Warlock “Snitch” every time she plays Gambit because she didn’t side with him. I don’t see why either of those would be any more valid as a general title in the same way Saladin’s nickname, “Young Wolf” has become.

There’s better general titles out there. A whole bunch of characters refer to our character as “The Hero of the Red War,” including Asher, Saint-14, the Drifter, the Spider, Aunor, even a random Titan named Joxer. In lore, that seems to be more of the go-to “general” title for our Guardian in D2. And that makes sense, if we’re talking about our Guardian in the context of Destiny 2, it would make more sense to use their title that refers to them completing the vanilla campaign, not a random D1 expansion that, lore-wise, is pretty forgettable.

There’s a whole handful of titles we’ve got as a result of killing Oryx: Kingslayer, Destroyer of Oryx, Slayer of Oryx. In terms of importance, that’s a way bigger deal than finding and containing SIVA. Or “Crota’s End” for killing Crota. 

All in all, I think if we’re being honest, the devs try pretty hard to avoid giving our player characters any kind of name or main title in-universe. It’s tricky to write dialogue that way, but they do a pretty good job of it. Most of the time people refer to us, we’re just “the Guardian.” Or vendors will refer to you by your class as a title. Or a specific character will choose to give us a nickname and that specific character calls us that, which is what happened with Saladin. The few times where the writers are narratively written into a corner and they need someone to use a general title for us? They just pick one at random, it seems.

Anyway, this is a long post that probably will not really have an impact on anything. And in all honesty, I’m not trying to tell people that they should stop referring to the Guardian generally as “The Young Wolf” or that it’s bad or something. I just find it weird that this one got stuck in the fandom’s brain like this, and it’s one that you won’t see me personally using in a general sense because I find it to be kind of lame and I don’t think Rise of Iron was all that narratively important. I don’t really care about Saladin and I don’t see why I should pretend like his nickname is my Guardian’s general name in fandom spaces.

When I write meta, you’re going to see me using “our Guardian” or “the Guardian,” because that’s the general name the game gives. I don’t think of my Guardians as “the Young Wolf” any more than I consistently think about them as “Crota’s End” or “Shadow of Earth” or any of the other multitudinous titles we’ve accumulated over the years. They’ve done lots of things and they’re all of those titles technically. They’re just my Guardians though. 

People can refer to their Guardians however they want, and I’m sure “the Young Wolf” is sticky enough at this point that people are probably just going to keep using it in the general sense. But I take issue with assertions that it’s the game’s canon main title for us, or that it’s the objectively correct thing to call our Guardians. It’s not, it’s a minor title among many, and I personally am not interested in doing it. 

PS: If you read this whole post, you deserve a bowl of spicy ramen, on me! Have a coupon for it.

[reactionimagesdaily]

I dont understand bionicles at all, so maybe a crash course into like. 1) what a bionicle is 2) general plot of the bionicle story? happy 5k btw <3 love ur page!

OH BOY OH BOY, this is a question I've been waiting for. Thank you so much for asking, and I’m glad you like my page!! <333

A couple of disclaimers, before I start: I'm going to focus mostly on the mainline plot, but let it be known that there WERE a bunch of serial stories and comics and games that added to the story overall. Bionicle was, I think, one of the first big instances of a plot that was consumed through a bunch of different mediums.

I'm also going to try and do a lot of streamlining - it's not that I DON'T want to talk about bionicle, but there's 10+ years of story to cover, so... yeah. :P

Also! Sorry in advance to anyone whose 'read more' function doesn't work, because this is gonna be a doozy

So, what is a bionicle? From a meta perspective, Bionicle is a Lego theme that ran from 2001-2010, and was briefly rebooted from 2015-2016. It's name is a mashup of biological chronicle, and it was hugely successful in its time, essentially helping to save the Lego company from bankruptcy. The idea is that you use finnicky technical pieces to build humanoid figures (and sometimes their vehicles!) and then. play with them

From a textual/lore perspective, I'm not sure Bionicle is an in-universe term lol. But the characters that we recognise as 'bionicles' are grouped into a bunch of different classifications - 'Toa', 'Matoran', 'Makuta', 'Glatorian', and so on. The characters are kinda like inverse cyborgs, where there's metal on the outside and flesh and muscle on the inside. They often function like robots (e.g. have removable and replaceable masks that they constantly wear over their faces) but are still essentially living creatures.

So, what's the general plot of the story?

...[inhales deeply] Okay

In the time before time, there's an island called Mata Nui that sits in the middle of the ocean. It's populated by these dinky lil' guys called 'Matoran' that live in six villages organised by elements - fire, water, ice, air, earth, and stone. They eke out a life as best they can, facing dangerous wild animals (collectively called 'Rahi') and worshipping the Great Spirit, who is confusingly also called Mata Nui. (They named the island after him.) The great spirit, they say, once watched over them all, but was long ago forced into an enchanted sleep by his evil brother.

(These are the matoran. Look at these cute little guys :3)

One day, six canisters wash ashore, on the island's golden beaches. And out of these canisters step six strange figures called Toa. Tall, strong, and heavily armed, there is one of these 'Toa' for each of the villages, and each of these guys have control over an element. They are the main 'heroes' of this story.

(These are the six Toa. Here's a fun game - spot the girl!)

Each of the six Toa are named characters - from left to right we have Onua (wise and grounded), Lewa (fun-loving and mischievous), Pohatu (friendly and confident), Tahu (hot-headed and impulsive), Kopaka (cold and quiet), and Gali (intelligent and compromising). Some of the Matoran are also named characters - there's Jaller, the captain of the guard at the fire village, Hahli, a sports player from the water village, Matoro, a translator from the ice village, and Takua, who's technically from the fire village but is also an 'outsider' who tends to wander the island. Takua is especially important because he becomes the Toa's 'chronicler', following them around on their adventures and writing everything down for posterity.

Without getting into too much detail, the Toa spend two real-life years getting into wacky highjinks. They hunt for masks (as aforementioned, the masks they wear can be removed and replaced) that grant them special powers, fight the Rahi, and also face up against a terrifying race of creatures with mind-control powers called the Bohrok that are determined to strip the island of all life. They also fight against a being called Makuta, a mysterious shadowy figure who claims to be the brother that forced Mata Nui into his slumber. When they first meet him, Makuta takes the form of a Matoran to throw them off, before turning into a nebulous black void and doing his best to murder them all to death.

(Makuta as he appears in 2001's 'Mata Nui Online Game'. As far as villain introductions go, marching out to meet all the heroes and then telling them "I bore you, for I am nothing. It is from nothing that you came, and it is into nothing you will go. The people of this world are builders, but look into their hearts, and you will find they also have the power to destroy. I am that power. I am destruction. And I will destroy you." is pretty fucking solid though I say so myself.)

There’s a lot of cool worldbuilding and mysterious details about the island. At one point, the earth Matoran note that they can only dig so far into the dirt before they come across some hard material - some type of metal - that they just can’t break through. Also, amidst the stars in the sky, there’s an ominous blood-red star that’s appropriately known as the Red Star. What’s it doing there? Nobody knows

Also at one point, the Toa also get mutated into new forms after falling into a liquid that's called 'energized protodermis' but should really be called 'McGuffin Sauce'. There's a lot of changing forms and characters being mutated in this series in general, which I'm sure has nothing to do with the fact that Lego always needed new figures to make into toys.

(This is how the Toa look after being mutated. In these forms, they're referred to as the Toa Nuva -and let me assure you that that distinction will soon become necessary. :P)

So, in 2003 in our world (I’m not sure about the timeline within the lore), Takua the chronicler finds a mysterious mask and brings it back to the Turaga, who are the wise old rulers of the Matoran (The most promiment of the Turaga is the Turaga of fire, who’s called Vakama. He’s an even-tempered and wise old man who’s not above hitting villains with his walking stick if they threaten his village.). It turns out that the mask is special - it’s the mask of Light, and it’s part of a prophecy that involves the arrival of a seventh Toa who’s destined to defeat Makuta. So Takua and Jaller go on an adventure to try and find the seventh Toa.

Meanwhile, Makuta isn’t just going to sit around and wait for the Toa who’s destined to defeat him to rock up: he unleashes his secret weapons, the Rahkshi, who are, in lore, suits of armour driven by slugs. Sounds corny - in practice, they’re hella intimidating.

(Look at these bad boys)

Some more adventures happen and, to make a long story short, the Rahkshi kill Jaller and Takua the chronicler puts the mask of light onto his own face, transforming into Takanuva, the Toa of Light. The audience surrogate and ‘weird’ character was the secret hero all along!! I love that honestly.

(Takua and Takanuva - before and after)

As someone with light powers, Takanuva is essentially the perfect counter to the big bad Makuta, who has shadow powers, so he finds Makuta’s lair intent on beating him. Makuta challenges him to a game that’s called ‘Kohlii’ but is basically this universe’s version of lacrosse - Takanuva accepts and proceeds to wipe the floor with him. During their fight, they fall into another conveniently-placed pool of energized protodermis and become merged, forming a new being called ‘Takutanuva’. Takutanuva doesn’t stick around very long, because he’s this weird contradictory being of both light and shadow, but before he fractures he opens a gate underneath Mata Nui and lets the Toa, the Turaga, and some named Matoran get through. Inside, they find a hidden city - a whole other world.

Takutanuva then manages to use his powers to hack the universe and bring Jaller back to life. Hooray! After that, he dies, and Takanuva is back. Makuta is nowhere to be found. [eyes emoji]

So now the Toa, the old Turaga, and a couple of Matoran are inside this whole new location, and they’re all wondering what the heck is going on. Well, not all of them are wondering. Vakama, the head Turaga, steps forward and admits that actually, the six (seven) Toa heros that we’ve come to know and love... aren’t actually the first Toa. Gasp!

The next two years of sets and story are essentially one giant flashback, as Vakama tells the current heroes about adventures past. It turns out that the hidden city they’ve found is called Metru Nui, and once upon a time, Vakama and the other Turaga were Toa themselves, fighting to keep the city and the matoran safe.

(New (old) Toa! The flying green one is Matau, who was a stunt-driving excitable madman, and then on the ground from left to right we have Whenua (nerdy chronicler), Nokama (schoolteacher-turned-superhero), Vakama (anxiety-ridden leader), Nuju (absent-minded stargazer), and Onewa (racist prick who needs (and gets) a character arc). To differentiate themselves from the Toa that we’ve come to know and love, these Toa are the Toa Metru)

They had a bunch of adventures of their own. They fought the Vahki (capture robots upholding an authoritarian police state) and the Morbuzakh (evil sentient vines), and they also had ‘arch enemies’ in the form of the Dark Hunters, who were mercenaries that hunted Toa.

Also, that story about Makuta putting Mata Nui to sleep? Not a story so much as a history lesson! Ultimately, the reason that the city of Metru Nui was abandoned was because Mata Nui WAS awake, watching over them all, but then Makuta forced him into slumber and essentially caused a cataclysm. The Matoran were rounded up and forced to sleep as well, and the Toa Metru had to flee the city. When they came back, it had been overrun with Visorak (basically giant spiders), and they had to fight hard to defeat the horde and its leaders and escape with all of the sleeping Matoran.

Once they left Metru Nui (and arrived on the island that would become Mata Nui), the Toa Metru sacrificed their powers to wake up all the Matoran - which is how they transformed into the wise old Turaga. Also, the Matoran woke up with no memories, which is how they’d never known about Metru Nui up until this point.

Anyways, after exploring Metru Nui and making plans to move back in, everyone does some digging around and discover something about Mata Nui: his spirit is fading. Whatever Makuta did to him, it not only put him to sleep, but it’s also slowly killing him. After presumably having an existential crisis, the gang come up with a solution: there’s another legendary mask, the Mask of Life, that should be able to resuscitate Mata Nui, or at the very least, keep him from kicking the bucket while he’s sleeping.

(The Mask of Life! If you look closely, you can see that the faceplate is shaped like a humanoid figure (because, yaknow, life) and if you think that’s not the tightest shit ever you can get out of my face)

So, the modern-day Toa (the Toa Nuva, if you guys remember the name) are like ‘okay, give us the location of the mask, we’ll go and find it’. So they get sent to another island, this one called Voya Nui, and they arrive and... get their asses handed to them? What?

A quick backtrack: a gang of thugs called the Piraka had already arrived on Voya Nui in search of the Mask of Life, wanting it so they can use its power to blackmail powerful organisations and generally get ahead in the criminal world. (From a Meta perspective, they’re,,, really interesting. Up until this point, the villains in Bionicle had either been wild animals, or villains with grand overarching plans. These guys are basically overpowered street thugs, complete with their own theme song - the ‘Piraka Rap’. Look it up on YouTube; it’s fucking hilarious, because the rest of Bionicle is generally timeless, but the Piraka Rap was basically dated as soon as it came out. I love it.)

(The Piraka themselves! Fun fact; in Bionicle lore, ‘Piraka’ is a slang term for ‘thief’ and ‘murderer’, and was also considered so vulgar that if a Matoran called another Matoran ‘Piraka’, war would be declared over it. These guys are really just going around calling themselves slurs. I have to respect that.)

So, yeah. The Piraka defeat and imprison the Toa Nuva when they get to the island. Now what?

Well, now it’s time for the Matoran to get involved! A group of named and previously-established Matoran set out to see if they can rescue the Toa. There’s Jaller, Hahli, and Matoro, who I’ve already mentioned, and then there’s Kongu, Nuparu, and Hewkii. And I need to take a break to say that all these characters have been with the story since 2001 (it’s now 2006), and they’ve all contributed to the plot before!! Kongu is a prominent Matoran from the air village who led a flight of giant bird-riders to save the day one time, and Nuparu is an engineer from the earth village who basically invented mechs to help the Matoran defend themselves against the Bohrok. These guys are BADASSES and I want to bring up how a really strong initial 3 years of storytelling laid a great foundation for so many small characters. It’s just neat! :D

Anyways, these Matoran travel to the island of Voya Nui in canisters (like how the original Toa landed on Mata Nui) and while they’re sailing the ocean blue, their canisters are struck by lighting from the mysterious Red Star. And that lighting, say it with me now, TRANSFORMS them! Specifically it transforms them into Toa. They end up calling themselves the Toa Inika, because they’re searching for the mask of life, which is also called the ‘Ignika’.

(The Toa Inika. Being transformed by a bolt of lighting means that in addition to their regular elemental powers, they also have electric/lighting abilities.)

Souped-up and ready for action, the Toa Inika manage to defeat the Piraka and rescue the Toa Nuva. However, through plot shenanagins, the Mask of Life ends up being sent to the bottom of the ocean around Voya Nui, and the Toa Inika learn that under the waves is a hidden city - Mahri Nui. As they descend, the Mask of Life does something odd; it sends out a wave of energy, transforming the Toa Inika so that they can breath underwater. So now, they’re the Toa Mahri. (Because they’re headed to Mahri Nui. You get me?)

Mahri Nui is ruled by the Barraki - ancient warlords who were imprisoned under the sea many thousands of years ago after they became powerful enough to threaten Mata Nui himself. They were put in a prison called The Pit, but during the cataclysm caused by Makuta putting Mata Nui to sleep, the city of Mahri Nui sunk into the water and slammed into the Pit. Many prisoners and Matoran died, but the Barraki were freed. Uh-oh, spaghetti-ohs.

Speaking of Makuta - guess who’s back! Thought dead after no-one could find him after Takutanuva died, it turns out that his spirit is possessing a robot body that had previously been a prison guard. He spends some time hanging out with one of the Toa Mahri, Matoro, basically playing mind games with him and trying to get him to turn to the dark side. Eventually, three different characters and factions smack the shit out of him, and he slips out of the robot body to go do... something else (watch this space). 

This year of story was REALLY plot-heavy and I kinda can’t do it justice here. The important developments are that the Toa Mahri eventually manage to reclaim the Mask of Life, and Matoro yoinks it. While his teammates act as a big distraction, he swims away and puts on the mask. It basically grants him ultimate power, but it also fuckin’ kills him. His final acts are to teleport his friends to safety, and then release a massive burst of energy that burns him up and saves Mata Nui’s life. The Mask of Life, with no-one left to wear it, sinks into the ocean.

(“In his last moments, Matoro feels no fear. He know he has succeeded--the Toa Mahri are safe, able to resume their lives in Metru Nui. The Turaga and Matoran will know that they became true heroes. Matoro does not see himself as a hero. As a Matoran, a Toa Inika, and a Toa Mahri, all he ever tried to do was his duty. Now that duty has led him to his destiny.”- Bionicle Ignition 11: Death of a Hero)

[dries tears] Anyways, now that Mata Nui’s life has been saved, the only thing left to do is wake him back up. To do that, the Toa Nuva (the Toa that showed up at the very beginning of this story, if you recall) need to journey to the core of the universe, and a civilisation called Karda Nui. Three of the Toa Nuva - Lewa, Pohatu, and Kopaka - are sent to a village in the clouds, where they protect the local matoran and battle the forces of Makuta. Because, as it turns out, the big bad Makuta that we know? Makuta is actually the name of his species. The guy just wanted to feel special, apparently. The Makuta that the Toa have been fighting for over half a decade is technically called Makuta Teridax (or just Teridax), while the other Makuta have other names that I can’t remember off the top of my head.

Anyways, while those three Toa are figuring that out, the other three - Tahu, Gali, and Onua - journey to a place called the Swamp of Secrets in order to find a set of keystones that supposedly contain instructions on how to awaken Mata Nui. And it’s there that they find an unlikely ally: the Mask of Life itself.

See, the Mask of Life has always been a weird one - if you recall, it released an energy pulse for no reason that transformed the Toa Mahri and let them breath underwater. (It’s also done some other fucky stuff that I haven’t been able to mention - there’s a short story about how one time, a guy touched it, and it gave him the ability to involuntarily bring everything around him to life, which ultimately drove him mad. So. You know. That’s fun.) Well, it turns out that when the mask sank into the ocean after Matoro’s death, it ultimately ended up in the swamps of Karda Nui, and it senses the battles raging about it. More than that, but it remembers Matoro’s bravery as he donned the mask knowing it would kill him, and remembers how his final wish was to save his friends. Wanting to know what it means to be a hero, the Mask of Life creates a body for itself, and ventures out into the swamp to discover its destiny.

(The Mask of Life has a body now!! Good for him! Good for him.)

There’s some more shenanigans that I’m skipping over - at one point, Takanuva (Toa of light, remember him?) rocks up to help. Long story short, our eight heroes - Tahu, Gali, Onua, Lewa, Kopaka, Pohatu, Takanuva, and the Mask of Life - fight their way through the Makuta and into the very core of the universe - the Codrex. Inside, after yet more shenanigans, the Mask of Life figures that in order to wake Mata Nui up, it will have to sacrifice the body it’s built for itself. The moment is sad, but the mask remembers Matoro’s sacrifice, and is inspired to act. He sacrifices his dreams of becoming a hero, and in doing so, becomes a hero... ;_;

The mask flies deep into the Codrex, its body dissolving; when it reaches the bottom, it creates a massive energy storm that the other characters have to escape. (Our heroes make it out - most of the villains end up getting vaporized, big RIP.)

And just like that, the journey is over. After years of battle, the Toa Nuva have completed their purpose, and awakened the great spirit, thus bringing peace back to the land. Everyone meets back up in Metru Nui - the Toa Nuva, the Toa Mahri, the Turaga, the remaining Matoran. It’s a glorious day. And as they gather, something happens.

Deep, deep beneath the ocean, energy pulses through rock, and machines that have been dormant for millennia begin to whirr and move. The island of Mata Nui - long abandoned as the Matoran moved back down into Metru Nui - cracks open like a wallnut, each half sliding into the sea. From underneath where the island had been, a tremendous head rises out of the ocean, countless galleons of water pouring off of it. Titanic shoulders follow. Then the chest, and the limbs, and slowly, surely, Mata Nui rises.

Meta context: for years, the nature of Mata Nui has been a mystery. Is he a metaphysical being? Is he a real person? No-one was sure... but they know now. That solid material that the earth Matoran couldn’t mine through, all the way back in 2001? That was his skin. The mysterious red star that created the Toa Inika? That was a failsafe machine orbiting Mata Nui, poised to create new Toa as necessary. The island of Mata Nui was atop his head, Metru Nui was his brain, Karda Nui was deep in his guts. The Matoran were workers to keep him functioning, the Toa were basically his immune system (the canisters they arrive in are literally shaped like pills)... All this time, all these stories, all these characters, this entire world - they have all been inside a robot the size of continents.

(Fucking hell. Look at this. The clouds come up to his ankles.)

Celebrations ripple through Metru Nui as everyone realises what has happened. The great spirit is awake again! The Toa have won! But as the Turaga raise their voices to try and congratulate the Toa, a chill spreads over the spectators as the air grows cold. Everyone stops and looks around. What’s happening now? And then, from everywhere and nowhere, a voice rumbles. It’s a familiar voice. An unwelcome voice. A voice that most of the gathered heroes thought they’d never hear again.

It’s the voice of Makuta - the original Makuta. Makuta Teridax.

And what does he say?

“I AM EVERYWHERE. I AM EVERYTHING YOU SEE.”

Matoro’s sacrifice had ensured that Mata Nui’s body did not die, but before the great spirit’s consciousness could return, Makuta supplanted it with his own. After that, all he had to do was wait for the Toa Nuva to achieve their objective. And as they finished the fight and won the day, they handed victory to him on a silver platter. No longer does he need to strive to rule the universe - he is the universe.

(Meta perspective again but like: FUCK, man. I can’t emphasise enough how mind-breaking this was for the kids who were invested in the series. Think Thanos snapping his fingers in Infinity War, except probably more devastating, because there wasn’t a direct sequel lined up to give the heroes another chance, and there wasn’t a way to ‘undo’ it. This was a plot development that we all had to live with T_T)

(You can tell things are bad because his eyes changed from green to red.)

And what of Mata Nui? What about the spirit that the Toa were actually trying to wake up?

Oh, Makuta stuffed Mata Nui’s consciousness into the Mask of Life - and then blasted the Mask into space.

[inhales deeply]

man...

Okay, in all honesty, part of me wanted to end it there. But you know what? We’ve come this far. And there is more to the story. So I’m going to ignore my concern I won’t be able to do it justice and blunder on.

 Bionicle’s last chapter (2009-2010) follows Mata Nui himself - no longer an abstract spiritual concept, but rather a concrete character. A god felled from his pedestal, struggling to find a way to save his people. And it’s AWESOME. Armed with only the Mask of Life and a sentient shield named Click, he wanders the shithole deserts of the planet he crash-lands on, bringing the disparate tribes together, uncovering secrets about who made him and what his ultimate purpose is, and learning what it means to be a regular person. Also, at one point, in a move very reminiscent of the god that he once was, he turns a guy into a snake. You know. As a ‘fuck you’.

(There’s something really cool to me about a main character being someone who essentially lost all the power of the cosmos. Mata Nui might just be my fave character in this whole story honestly.)

Eventually, Mata Nui discovers some crucial pieces of information. Firstly: the planet that he’s landed on, Bara Magna, is his ‘homeworld’ in that it’s where his giant god body was built. Secondly: the two moons orbiting Bara Magna (the jungle moon of Bota Magna and the ocean moon of Aqua Magna) were once part of the planet itself, and split off during a planet-destroying cataclysm, leaving behind a desert wasteland in their wake. Third: the function he was ultimately built for (his ‘destiny’) was to reunite the three celestial bodies into one planet, bringing life back to Bara Magna’s harsh desert environments. He was on his way to complete this task when Makuta crashed his systems with a computer virus - which was what forced him into the ‘slumber’ that he was in for most of the mainline story.

His fourth, and probably most important discovery, is that he’s essentially his makers’ second attempt at a world-fixing giant robot. Before creating him, his makers (the ‘Great Builders’) constructed a giant robot that malfunctioned and exploded. Long-deactivated, the pieces of it are still scattered through the deserts of Bara Magna - in fact, many of the villages on the planet are set up in or around these giant robot pieces. Mata Nui figures that if he can reconstruct this old robot, he can use it to complete his destiny, and maybe even save his people.

It isn’t easy. He has to convince the villagers he’s come to befriend (the Agori) to give up their homes and their safety, and he has to find an experimental power source that’ll actually get the giant metal body moving again. But eventually, he figures it all out. Powered by the experimental source, the Mask of Life, and probably also friendship, he inhabits this enormous form and rises once again. Without missing a beat, he reaches out and begins to pull the moons towards the main planet. As far as he’s concerned, he’s going to fix everything, or die trying.

(The power of skybeams)

However, it won’t be that simple. Makuta senses that Mata Nui’s spirit has inhabited a new form (and I don’t mean that in a metaphysical way, I mean that in a computer/technology way), and he quickly jets over to Bara Magna. Obviously, flinging the fucker into space wasn’t good enough. It’s time for him to destroy Mata Nui, mano y mano. Giant robot y giant robot.

(Makuta and Mata Nui, facing off. God I love this picture.)

It’s the final battle - for real this time. The two giant robots begin to punch each other, and Mata Nui is up against some obvious disadvantages. For one thing, he can’t risk attacking Makuta with all his might, because he doesn’t want to hurt his people, who are still inside the giant robot. (Inside, they’re fairing... poorly. It’s like facism, but if facism was being actively enforced by God.)

In the fight, a hole gets blasted in Makuta’s body, and out pour a whole LOAD of Rahkshi. (Remember those guys?) However, Tahu and Takanuva also manage to escape, and join a ground battle that’s breaking out between the Agori (and their protectors, the Glatorians), the Skrall (a tribe of warriors native to Bara Magna who are absolute dicks - I’ve had to gloss over them, unfortunately, but believe me when I say that they’ve been major antagonists for as long as the narrative has focused on Bara Magna), and a bunch of guys who are called ‘Piraka’ but aren’t the gang of thugs from Voya Nui. (I think they’re the same... species?) Long story short: large-scale shitfight is happening at the feet of the two robots that are slugging it out. Makuta, being a dick, decides to try and literally stamp on all of Mata Nui’s friends down below, and Mata Nui has to desperately hold him off.

Around this point, the Mask of Life (which is really the MVP of this whole story) uses its convenient energy bursts to imbue Tahu with a set of golden armour that allows him to release energy blasts of its own. (Why it singles out Tahu, I’m not sure, but I’m presuming it’s because Tahu was the first face of the series and it just makes thematic sense for him to be a major player in the final battle.) Tahu uses his new golden armour to disintegrate ALL of the Rahkshi - and there were a lot of them on the field of battle, let me assure you. Makuta feels the loss of so many creations at once, and falters, and Mata Nui seizes his chance. He’d done his work well before Makuta had arrived, and the jungle moon is now in low orbit above the planet. Pouring every last ounce of his strength into one more push, he surges forward and up, pushing Makuta up and making sure that his head is right in the path of the falling planet.

Crunch.

(Kudos to Makuta Teridax for being such a persistent antagonist that the only way to get rid of him for good was to drop an entire damn planet on his head.)

Mata Nui guides the falling body carefully to the ground, letting it open and freeing his people. The remaining Skrall and Piraka surrender. The Matoran and Toa meet and mingle with the Agori and Glatorian. Mata Nui raises his hands, and completes his purpose; aided one last time by the Mask of Life, as well as his body’s innate systems, he enacts a synthesis on the now-united celestial bodies. Lush forests and large bodies of water appear in the desert. Life flourishes. Birds probably start to sing. Mata Nui has completed his purpose, and vindicated all of the heroes who fought for him for so long.

He feels himself fading. He lets his spirit withdraw into the Mask of Life. A new slumber - this one, earned, and of his own volition.

Perhaps one day, he will return.

(“We will honour Mata Nui, and all those who fought for him, in our memories. But the time has come to move on. His destiny is fulfilled, and for many of us, it has yet to be written. My friends, it is time to go.”- Tahu, The Mata Nui Saga, chapter 34.)

And there we go! Very, VERY long, but that’s the general plot of bionicle. There are an absolute tone of details I’ve missed out or skipped over, and I encourage you to search them out for yourself if you’re interested. But them’s the basics! :D

[myupostsheadcanons]

Books “Read” in 2020

Previous entries: 2019, 2018, 2017

I don’t rank these based on actual literary quality, but by how much i enjoyed reading/listening to them. Hopefully with Audible’s new “Premium Included” feature it would cut down on so many Average/Below Average books next year, it’ll give me more of a choice on what kind of books/podcasts i want to listen to rather than given a handful to pick from a month.

The “Top 10″

Forging Hephaestus / Bones of the Past: Villains' Code Series - Drew Hayes has became one of my fav authors over the past couple years, from his Vampire Accountant series, 5-min Sherlock, and his Spells, Swords, and Stealth books. FH is one of the few times he wrote Adult Fiction. This is the second time Drew created a world of super heroes (the YA Superpowereds), thus previous experience in dealing with the nuisances and meta of super meta dynamics. I love the main character, Tori, and especially love many of the side characters (like Ivan) and the comedy is the right tone of dark and not-in-your-face (not quite as well -written as something like The Venture Bros or The Tick, but being adult fiction you can get away with having characters named Johnny Three-Dicks and Captain Bullshit)

Dreadnought / Sovereign - the second super hero series I’ve placed on my top list this year, this one is Young Adult. This one is far more serious and deals heavily in issues like trans and women’s rights, mental abuse, and social acceptance. The main character is full of angst, but that should be a given for a 15 yo with lots of mental baggage and new social pressures. The main character is the main draw, most of the side characters are a bit more one-dimensional.

The Trouble with Peace: Age of Madness, Book 2. It isn’t a “First Law” book if you don’t want to strangle half of the main characters. Many are stepping outside of the shadow of the previous generation and finding themselves falling flat on their faces. If they aren’t at each other’s throats, they would soon have to deal with rebellion in the streets and the constant looming presence of Bayaz, who waits to sweep the board clear and rearrange the pieces the way he sees fit.

Michael J. Sullivan’s: The Riyria and Legend of the First Empire Books.

Riyria Revelations: Theft of Swords / Rise of Empire / Heir of Novron

Riyria Chronicles: The Crown Tower / The Rose and Thorn / The Death of Dulgath

Age of Death / Age of Empyre, Pile of Bones

After finishing the Legend of the First Empire books that came out earlier this year, I went ahead and read the prior series that takes place in the same world. I would suggest reading the entire series by Publish order, but they can be read Chronologically. I read the Legends books first, and it helped me see where Sullivan was heading and when he started to plan out the Legends books in more detail. (The early cameo of the Main characters from Legends in a mural in Heir of Novron, and knowing who is behind the events in Dulgath)

The Dresden Files: Peace Talks / Battle Grounds - They really should be read as one book, because that was how they were written. It is a Feast of Crows / Dances with Dragons situation, where the book got too long and got split up. The fans are pretty divided by the book(s) ending and how some of the main characters are handled, but these are Jim Butcher’s characters not theirs and he can drop bridges on whom ever he wants.

What Lies Beyond: Cycle of Galand, Book 6 - This is a “mythology” book (like Sullivan’s Age of Death was) where it introduces most of the Pantheon of their religion and corrects much of the mythology that had been lost over the decades. They seek a weapon to vanquish the Litch and save their world and the afterlife from oblivion, but not all of their Gods are happy about it.

Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash - Yahtzee (Zero Punctuation!) has to be one of my favorite internet personalities for the past 10+ years, and I eat up every book he puts out and because he wrote the books, and is an actor himself, he could deliver the lines as they are intended to be. The sequel to Will Save the Galaxy for Food does not disappoint and even ups the stakes from the previous book.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon - This has to be one of the most charming books I’ve read. It is magic and wonder at it’s finest, no need for long explanations on how the world works. If you like Ghibli movies, you’ll be interested in this book. It has its dark moments but isn’t outside of what you’ll find in something like Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Nausicca.

The Goblin Emperor - the youngest son of the Elf King finds himself emperor after the death of his father and brothers in an assassination. The only problem is, that he is only half-elf... his late mother was a Goblin, and he had been in exile as an embarrassment to the family for most of his life. He knows nothing of how the courts work and what’s left of his own family work against him just for being who he is.

Lost Gods: Brom - I liked this book more than I did American Gods (which I read a few years ago). It is darker and bleaker by the bucket loads. One of the few books with a downer ending that I actually liked. I would compare this book to books like All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men-- but it is a Fantasy!

Above Average.

Siege Tactics (Spells, Swords, & Stealth. Book 4)  - What happens to adventurers after they retire? A fun concept that is explored with our party of NPCs running across a town full of epic-level characters that no longer have a player.

The Arthurian Saga - The Crystal Cave / The Hollow Hills  / The Last Enchantment / The Wicked Day - A more realistic version of the Arthurian tales, taking the POV of Merlin, bastard son of a princess, as he earns notoriety as a scholar and wizard.  The Wicked Day takes the POV of Mordred, making him far more sympathetic than other iterations of his character.

Arc of a Scythe - Scythe / Thunderhead / The Toll - Science and Technology eliminates death and in order to prevent over population and complacency an order of grim reapers are chosen to randomly deal out quotas of permanent deaths. An example of what happens when every need and want is satisfied by a higher force and the apathy that causes rot in human society and the superiority complex of those in charge of life and death.

The Diviners / Lair of Dreams / Before the Devil Breaks You / The King of Crows - Horror during the Roaring 20′s. Tackles issues as Racism, Poverty, Government Secrecy, Christian-Evangelical Cults, Nationalism Cult Mentality, Communism, Labor Unions, Eugenics, Post-WW1 trauma... It could almost pass as an adult fiction book. I wouldn’t recommend giving it to someone under High school age.

Ancillary Justice / Ancillary Sword / Ancillary Mercy - Artificial Intelligence takes over human bodies as a form of capital punishment, controlling ships and space stations. The dominate human empire outgrew the need to label any gender, using “she” to refer to everyone rather than the vaguer “them/they” pronouns, and only outlying colonies stick to the binary ideals. Think of “The Left Hand of Darkness” but on a more broader scale and as the default majority/ruling empire. Toss in a solid military action novel on top and it isn’t nearly as boring as Left Hand.

Children of Time / Children of Ruin - War destroys the human population of Earth and those that remain are the ones that headed out to the stars on tera-forming missions. A virus created to advance life forms to prepare a world for human habitation runs amuck with out its overseers, creating intelligent arachnids, crustaceans, and squid.

The Licanius Trilogy - The Shadow of What Was Lost / An Echo of Things to Come / The Light of all that Falls -  It is very heavy on info overload, there is a lot to keep track of, so much so there is a summary of book one and two at the start of the third. I like the twist at the end of the first book and that the villain is actually trying to help save the world, and you spend most of the second stuck between who thinks they are doing the right thing and who is actually doing the right thing - a lot to talk about doing the lesser of two evils.

Mythos - Steven Fry - A humorous retelling of Greek mythology. I read Mythology - by Edith Hamilton prior to this book, which is a more scholarly take on the myths, and helps if you are unfamiliar with classical mythology prior to reading Fry’s take on it.

Iron, Fire and Ice: The Real History That Inspired Game of Thrones - a nice history book about Iron Age royalty. It is actually refreshing to read after going through so much faux fiction that is in Philippa Gregory’s books.

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? - Children ask questions to a Mortician about death and what happens to bodies after people die. I listened to her autobiography last year/year before and it is worth picking up this one along with it.

Average, but still good.

Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet Universe: Triumphant (Genesis Fleet, Book 3) / Tarnished Knight: Lost Stars, book 1 - The realistic space battles just drag me back in each and every time.

The Case of the Damaged Detective: 5-Minute Sherlock - Drew Hayes can’t write a boring book. It isn’t quite on point as his other series, but still fun to read. Hayes is really good at making YA books with Adult Protagonists. It is a road-trip book, the main character is a washed-out operative that is getting his second chance playing bodyguard and future assistant to the 5-minute Sherlock.

Locked In / Head On - Do you remember “Surrogates”? that Bruce Willis movie where people walk around in robotic avatars, well... it’s almost the same thing. A virus kills millions, save for a select few that experience “lock in” syndrome and are able to connect to robots via their brains and the internet.  The main character is gender neutral and you get a choice to listen to the book with a male or female reader.

Murder by Other Means: The Dispatcher Book 2 - more John Scalzi! The first book was in my top list a few years ago, and i enjoyed the sequel just as much. Between Scalzi’s The Dispatcher and Locked In series, i like the Dispatcher more.

The Shattered Sea Trilogy: Half a King / Half the World / Half a War - Joe Abercrombie’s attempt to make Young Adult books. It keeps all the grim dark, but lacks all the swearing and humor that made The First Law books more enjoyable. Many of Joe’s favorite character tropes are still present and is one of the better “Fall to Darkness” stories I’ve read. It also has different POV characters each book and is one of those “faux fantasy” settings.

Mage Errant: Books 1, 2 & A Traitor in Skyhold: Book 3 - If you are wanting to get away from Harry Potter, pick up this book series. It takes place in magic school, but it is its own world and setting and not just a hidden world within our own. The main group of kids are misfits among the school, unable to master their powers, that get taken up by the badass librarian to be trained in more unconventional ways.

Dawn of Wonder: The Wakening Book 1 - the main character has ptsd from growing up in an abusive household, and i thought it was handled rather well. He would be rather competent and cleaver most of the time until he gets triggered into an episode, he fights really hard to overcome this short-falling of his. Standard classic affair else wise, family leaves home because the local authority figure doesn’t want them around anymore, goes to big city, kid wants to do good and avenge the deaths he was accused of, joins the badass school of hard knocks...  big powerful evil thing trying to consume the world.

The Rage of Dragons - It shares a lot of tropes and story points with Red Rising... just in a fantasy setting, not in space. If you are wanting fantasy with POC main characters and a non-European-centric culture, that doesn’t pull any punches, give it a shot.

Earthsea - Tehanu and Tales from Earthsea - I had read the first three books several years back, and i did re-read them in order to refresh myself prior to reading the final two.

The Secret Garden - I absolutely loved the movie from the 90′s as a kid, and finally got around to listening to the book.

Six of Crows - A heist book in fantasy world with the magic users being heavily “Jewish / Slavic” coded by how they are treated and persecuted. I might have thought more favorably about the book if i hadn’t read other books with “street rat slum” main characters. (Seriously, after spending six books with Royce in Riyria someone like Kas is just second bananas)

Unconventional Heroes / Two Necromancers - Comedic Fantasy, the humor’s not on par with say MogWorld, and has more jokes than Fred The Vampire Accountant. It is still a parody of villains and heroes in fantasy worlds. I would find it safe for a 12/13yo to read, cursing and all, though they might not be aware of many of the tropes that are being deconstructed. The reader of the book did better in this one then he did with Six of Crows and Beezer, still the audio needed some editing because it repeats itself a few times.

Once More Upon A Time (Free Audio Book)  - I don’t always care to read romance stories. I like the idea behind it however, to trade their love for each other in order to save their partner’s life, then learn to re-love one another again.

Monster Hunter International - If you think Dresden is too liberal, this takes a hard turn to the right.. replace the magic with GUNS, lots and lots of GUNS. An organization that hates the government but hunts monsters for government bounties. The main cast is multi-ethnic and they do make fun of that at one point. There isn’t a lot of thought into the plot, because action is #1, but it is fun enough to ignore the politicking.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Collection - i bitched about there not being an omnibus last year, and then Audible uploaded one. The ending is still one big clusterfuck.

Stephen King’s Insomnia - this book is the bridge between Steven King’s two universes. It is a sequel to IT and brings up the Darktower often. IT dealt mainly with childhood fears, Insomnia deals with Elderly and feminine fears.

D’Arc / Culdesac: War with No Name - I liked D’Arc more than i did Mort-e, and Culdesac is more on track with Mort-e. The virus that mutated the ants and animals reminded me of the virus from Children of Time/Ruin, even though i read Mort-e first, reading D’Arc after CoT let me notice it.

Michael McDowell’s:  The Amulet / The Elementals / Gilded Needles / Blackwater - From the guy that wrote the screenplay of Beetlejuice, and the pioneer of the Southern Gothic Horror. Gilded Needles is a bit out of place, taking place in 1890′s, and is more of a social horror rather than a super natural horror the other books are.

Gardens of the Moon: The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Book 1 - high fantasy dark fiction. if you really want some CHONKY door stoppers, there’s over 10 of them in this series. Could’ve done less with the manipulative bastard mage that speaks in 3rd person. I had read The Willful Child, an attempted comedy science fiction novel by the same author, and it showed that the author was unfamiliar with that kind of genera and should stick to grim fantasy.

The Knife’s Edge / Citadel of Fire: The Ronin Saga - This is one of those series that I’m always going “oh, that reminds me of [insert another better series]”  At times it reminded me of The Licanius Trilogy, Shades of Magic, Arc of Scythe, Riyria, Korra... It is just shy of being as good as them, and is rather firmly in that Sci-Fi Fantasy Ghetto and has a bit of “anime” feel to it with their magic users having ‘power levels’ and the power creep. 

In Calabria - My only problem with the book is the massive age-gap between the Main character and his love interest. Outside of that, the whole Unicorns in the modern world concept is done very well.

Pout Neuf (Audible Free Book)  - Journalism and romance during WW2. A quick read and the book really shows that research had been done about the setting and time period.

Nut Jobs: Cracking California's Strangest $10 Million Dollar Heist: An Audible Original - Not only does it talk about the heist, it actually touches on the subject of migrant farmers and slave labor, as well as the desertification of the California Valley.

The Science of Sci-Fi: From Warp Speed to Interstellar Travel (Free Audio Book) - a neat little informative podcast if you are looking for an introduction to some of the harder science fiction.

Mythology - by Edith Hamilton - Text book about Greek Mythology. Like “used in schools” text book. It is a good read if you don’t want to go through Ovid, Virgil, Homer, and all the other classical writers on your own.

The Space Race: An Audible Original - America didn’t win the Space Race. Russia did just about everything first. The only thing we did first was put people on the moon. It also goes into detail about how the inventor of the Nazi’s V2 rockets became employed with the US Space program. As well as the government’s announcement to let space travel become privatized.

Pale Blue Dot / Cosmos: A Personal Voyage - It’s Carl Sagan. Come on! Everyone should be reading them. Pale Blue Dot was being turned into an Audiobook in the 90′s but with Sagan’s death, only the first few chapters were read by him and his partner reads the rest of it (she does a decent job, and i understand why they wanted her to read it, it should’ve been done similarly to Cosmos, with guest readers doing each chapter)

Thicker Than Water (Free Audio Book)  - start up pharmaceutical company scams people out of millions with promises of a miracle machine that was ahead of its time. Story told from the whistleblower himself as he recounts what his job was within the company and how he knew the owner/founder of the company and how coming out about what was going on ruined his relationship with his family and friends.

Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - biography on Douglas Adams and the history behind the creative process behind the Hitchhiker’s Guide series.

The Genius of Birds - It reminded me a lot of “The Soul of an Octopus” in quality. It is rather informative about birds, how they behave, and how we judge intelligence in non-human animals.

It’s “ok.”

Les Miserabes - I can see why people favor movies and theater versions because of how dense the book is, getting the cliff notes version of the book instead of reading several chapters about the Battle of Waterloo. 

Viva Durant and the Secret of the Silver Buttons (Audible Free Book) - It’s cute, and I spent the next several weeks humming that freaking song.

Challenger Deep - A book about mental illness by the same person that brought us The Arc of a Scythe series. It isn’t a bad read, but if you are prone to get panic attacks and have mental illness yourself, you might get too into it and make you uneasy. It can help with neurotypical people with understanding how some illnesses work.

Into the Wilds (Warriors, Book 1)  - Ah, the cat book. It is prob because there are soooo many books in this series that it over-saturates the kids impressionable minds.

House of Teeth (Audible Free Book)  - I read this book prior to Monster Hunter International, and thinking back on this one, i am reminded about the other. Save for this one is PG. So... the kid friendly version.

The Martian Chronicles - Space Horror, on Mars. If you like old science fiction, like Classic Trek, Wells, or Forbidden Planet stuff. There is a lot of zerust.

Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection - The third superhero series I’ve read this past year. It is not as ground breaking nor subversive as Villain’s Code or Dreadnought. The humor is a bit too forced and parts of it falls into “we can be more offensive because it is an adult book” category.

Interview with the Robot - Don’t really care for books or programs that are set up in the “interview” format where it is two people talking to one another. (I have no fucking idea how this book got top Kids book of the year on Audible, it is more of a YA book... it must been because it was Free and lots of people picked it because the rest of the choices that month were complete garbage)

Micromegas - perhaps one of the oldest examples of Speculative Science Fiction. Written by Voltaire, it is about a giant from another solar system that is so big that humans and life on Earth are microscopic. “what value are the lives of ants to a man?”

The Three Musketeers - i had forgotten how much espionage there was in this book. I would say this is a good companion book to Don Quixote, as it takes its fair share of inspiration from and even name-drops the character a couple times. 

Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist / David Copperfield / A Tale of Two Cities - DC is the standout IMO among the three, it is Dickens’ Magnum Opus. Les Mis did a far better job with the Revolution than Tale did as well. I felt rather obligated to reading these books because of the subplot in the Age of Madness books being about Poverty during the Industrial Revolution and Workers Revolts against the Ruling Class.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - the version i listened too made most of the Americans sound like GWB... which is funny because one of them is Canadian, and the Comic Relief character about how boorish Americans are.

Stuck (Free Audio Book) -  it is a neat idea, getting jarred free of time but everybody else isn’t and doesn’t remember. It gets a little heavy for a kids book near the end, edging into YA territory as the character gets older mentally and the people around him age physically.

Phreaks (Free Audio Book) - i knew a lot about Captain Crunch and other phone hackers of the 60′s. There is a subplot of the big radioactive corporation covering up causing cancer to their workers, and the father (voiced by Christian Slater) being in the closet but still homophobic about it.

Silverswift (Free Audio Book) - If you like fairy tales set in modern times, it is worth a look. It is similar to In Calabira in that way. The mom being the nonbeliever and thinking grandma is off her rocker, but the granddaughter knows it in her bones that grandma is telling the truth.

Sleeping Giants - alien mechs from the distant past, once mistaken as the titans and gods form mythology, now being studied and experimented on by the government. This is another “interview style” story telling.

Celtic Mythology: Tales of Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes - there is a lot of names and stories, it is worth prob getting a physical copy of the book to keep things straight and to use as a reference.

How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps - A love letter to The Legend of Zelda’s Ocarina of Time and other RPG games.

Casino Royal: James Bond - the movie was rather faithful, including the part of being tied to a chair. I do wish they kept more of the book’s ending where Bond was ready to retire prior to his secret-spy love interest gets killed.

Aliens: Bug Hunt - a compilation of Alien stores about people landing on various planets and encountering aliens, not always the Xenomorphs we know, but the term “Bug” came synonymous to any dangerous alien lifeforms encountered.

Macbeth: A Novel - retelling the story of Macbeth but in a novel form. If you can’t get past the language of the original play, this would help. It sets it more firmly in historical fiction.

Hannibal: A Novel -  I went ahead and re watched the tv show after finishing the book. I’ve seen the movie a dozen times, and i understand why they changed the ending to the movie. The book is the main one that characterizes Hannibal and the show uses a lot of the plot. Hannibal Rising wasn’t really needed because Hannibal (in this book) does think/talk about what happened to his sister and home, and i can see why Harris didn’t want to write that book either. The audiobook is rather poor quality, they talked too fast in places and i don’t really care for their acting...

The Power of Six - I read I am Number 4 several years back and this one popped up on sale so i nabbed it. I like Neil Kaplan, and i think this one is better than the first one and actually gets into the meat of the story.

Cut and Run: A Light-Hearted Dark Comedy - body parts harvesting.... mmmm.

Calypso - non-Fiction, biography of the author. Talks about his family, his life with his partner, and what he does. Much of it is charming and it is read by the author. this was prior to him loosing his marbles about retail workers and becoming a karen.

Our Harlem: Seven Days of Cooking, Music and Soul at the Red Rooster - the history of Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance. I didn’t mind this podcast so much because i was reading The Diviners during the same time.

Malcolm and Me - another biographical book. one of the free books i got during Feb’ Black History Month.

History of Bourbon (Free Audio Book) - Informative about the liqueur industry in America.

Junkyard Cats: Shining Smith Book 1 - post apocalyptic action science fiction novel. the moment that guy showed up i was “that’s your bf.” and it was so... the plot wasn’t hard to figure out, it’s all about the action and setting.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - One of the better Heinlein books. The man can’t write romance and he is rather big on casual polygamy and open marriages. An anarchist-revolution book written by someone that is more on the Libertarian side of the aisle. Mycroft (the computer) comes off as rather antiquated, an AI that runs on a closed server, communicating through the telephone lines and printed paper, makes me wonder what Heinlein would’ve done if he was told about the internet and Deep Fake tech. (the book takes place in like 2075, but written in 1966)

Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World - the production of coffee and it’s prevalence around the world.

The Life and Times of Prince Albert - Exactly what it says on the can. *rimshot*

The Real Sherlock: An Audible Original - a biography of Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Design of Everyday Things - using psychology to improve the design of systems, products, and the modern business model.  It gives proper terminology for several common design features and how to improve on existing structures.

Bottom of the Barrel.

The Pagan World: Ancient Religions before Christianity. I was hoping there would have been something in there about European Religions, there isn’t, and the book was mostly Greek and Roman life styles and how gods are worshiped. It let me know where the word “auger” came from and why it was used in the Licanius Trilogy.

Life Ever After - disjointed at best. a couple that aren’t good for each other spend the next several hundred years in a crappy relationship.

Beyond Strange Lands: An Audible Original - The audio was complete crap on half of the voices. Which is bad because this could’ve been better. It is a Pod Cast Show and the director couldn’t make sure everybody had decent recording equipment and the sound effects often drown out the actors.

Henrietta & Eleanor: A Retelling of Jekyll and Hyde: An Audible Original Drama - They were going for a modern telling, but the language used is archaic. They speak like Dickens characters even though they talk about cellphones and computers.

A Crazy Inheritance: The Ghostsitter book 1 - The concept is there, but it is too nerfed. It was made for the 8-12yo crowd in mind by people that don’t know how to write for children.

Tell Me Lies (Free Audio Book) - It really wants to be smart. Who’s playing who and who is the actual villain of this story? If you want a quick “who done it?” maybe look into it.

Evil Eye (Free on Audible Plus) - told through phone calls between a mother and daughter. The whole genera of evil boyfriends/husbands isn’t really my cup of tea, and the boyfriend’s actor was too fake and the set up to the meat of the story was annoying.

The Half-life of Marie Curie - I didn’t mind learning stuff about Marie Curie... falls squarely in “made for TV lifetime movie” quality though. You should not carry around a vile of uranium where ever you go.

Alone with the Stars - A girl in Florida hears the call for help from Amelia Earhart, but nobody listens to her. Part fiction, part biographical. It would’ve been better as a biography and talking about various conspiracy theories about what happened to her and finding the pieces of the airplane.

Beezer - The son of the Devil learning to become a good person with a found family... however, most of the characters are annoying.

The Year of Magical Thinking (Free Audio Book) - very heavy on the subjects about loss and death.

Complete Garbage.

The Getaway (Free Audio Book) - A man being a POS by stalking and abducting women. It broadcasts just about everything that is going to happen.

Agent 355 (Free Audio Book)  - Do you like “American Mythology?” Like the whole “the founders are the greatest people in the world” kind of vibe? I don’t. I also hate the main character for being one of those “i’m smart, because i read books that women aren’t supposed to” girls when she doesn’t really think for herself at all.

[superman86to99]

Superman #83 (November 1993)

Funeral for a Friend: uh, that one Green Lantern supporting character who died when Coast City got blown up (Joe? Gary?). In this issue DC’s superheroes pay tribute to the tragedy of Coast City while also deciding what the hell to do with the giant engine that’s now in its place. Weird early ‘90s Hawkman! Dr. Fate with boobs! Already-slightly-psychotic Hal Jordan! EVERYONE IS HERE.

(Nice one, Guy.)

Meanwhile, Lex Luthor Jr. is also sneaking around Engine City, supposedly to prevent it from falling into the ocean and killing some of Aquaman’s friends, but in reality he just wants to look into the Cyborg Superman’s computer to see if he can find a recipe for making kryptonite. As the heroes argue about what to do with Engine City (Hal says drop it into the water, screw the fish), some leftover Warworld aliens start attacking them, like the holdout Japanese soldiers who never found out WWII was over.

The attack precipitates the city’s fall into the water and the heroes have to think fast to prevent a fish holocaust. Their solution is for all the Green Lantern-related characters (Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, Alan Scott, Alan’s daughter Jade) to “detoxify” the debris with their powers before it falls into the ocean. And it works! These guys should totally open a carpet cleaning business.

As for Lex Jr., he does find the recipe for kryptonite inside the crumbling city, but just as he’s about to write it down (he wasn’t carrying any floppy disks, apparently), Supergirl yanks him out of there to prevent him from burning alive. What an unsupportive girlfriend. Anyway, Superman then takes some of the debris and builds a giant memorial for Coast City’s 6,999,999 anonymous lost souls, and Gary. Sweet Gary. You will be missed.

Creator-Watch:

If the art looks different that’s because this is the first issue inked by Joe Rubinstein, ending Brett Breeding’s classic two and a half year run as Dan Jurgens’ main inker (so classic that it feels a lot longer than that). Breeding will be back for Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey and other stuff, though. As for Rubinstein, Don says: “At  the time, I had trouble with the transition, being soused to Brett Breeding’s finishes over Jurgens’ pencils, but looking at it now, the art looks great. It doesn’t look as smooth or blocky as Breeding’s finishes, but Rubinstein’s hatchier style serves Jurgens pretty well, even if it takes some getting used to.”

Plotline-Watch:

At the start of the issue, Superman goes to pick up Batman to take him to Coast City, only to find him wearing a different costume, acting differently, and sounding like a different guy. That’s because that’s not really Bruce Wayne in the suit anymore, but the replacement he got after Bane broke his back. That’s right: freakin’ Psi-Phon and Dreadnaught.

Superman gives a speech about how superheroes must work together to prevent another tragedy like Coast City from happening, but when Guy asks him if that means he’s going back to the Justice League, he’s like “uh, not yet.” Wisely, he’s gonna wait for Grant Morrison to get there first.

Hal Jordan’s characterization in this issue is interesting. In Green Lantern #47 (which came out the same month), he’s bummed about Coast City but still hopeful and serene, while here he’s already going Parallax on us. Wonder if Dan Jurgens knew more about what DC was planning for Hal than the other comic’s writer.

There’s a cute scene where Superman is flying by Kansas on his way to Coast City and quickly drops some flowers for Ma Kent. (That, or Flash picked this moment to hit on a random older woman.) 

Former TV exec/crime boss Morgan Edge has released an autobiography where he trashes the Daily Planet’s Cat Grant for using her sexiness (and, you know, sex) to get dirt on him and send him to jail. He also accuses Cat of being a crappy mother to her son Adam. He kind of has a point there, because what kind of mom would let her kid play with an Atari in the early ‘90s?! The SNES and the Genesis were already out!

Believe it or not, Morgan Edge’s pervy dad in that screenshot above isn’t the creepiest thing in that scene. Don: “Very spooky how the guy dangling outside of Cat’s apartment goes without mention. An ominous foreshadow of one of the very few missteps of Jurgens’ run.”

But the most ominous part of the issue is at the end, when Clark Kent accepts Jimmy Olsen’s offer to become roomies, since Clark lost his apartment on account of being dead and all. Don wants you to know that “Jimmy is still in that towel by the way” in the scene below. I hope.

Patreon-Watch:

Shout out to our patrons Aaron, Murray Qualie, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, and a warm welcome to Samuel Doran! Last month our patrons got to read an article about Superman’s bizarre first Elseworlds appearance ever, the Kamandi: At Earth’s End miniseries, and got a veeeeeery early look at this post you’re reading right now (since Don finished his part way before I did mine). Right now I’m preparing this month’s Patreon-only article, which involves Superman wearing pointy ears and Luthor wearing make up. Find out more at https://www.patreon.com/superman86to99

Oh, and in case you missed it, we’ve been posting Don’s new commentary for older issues on the Patreon as free posts (click above and scroll down to see them). EVEN MORE from Don after the jump!

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow​):

Another classic issue, and such a nice wrap-up to the "Death and Return" storyline (as well as being a much-needed check-In on the DC Universe at  large).  We start with the cover, and it’s a very good one, letting the  reader know right away that it’s a big team-up issue.  (It also is a real showcase for 90s costume design, and how weird the JLA lineup was at this point).

The opening splash is a neat image of a rarely seen pairing, Superman and Commissioner Gordon.   Jurgens draws James Gordon a little heavier and more Pa-Kent like than I’m used to seeing him, but it’s still neat to see him interacting with Superman. A page  later, we get another rare pairing—the returned Superman with the imposter Batman, Jean-Paul Valley.  The tension in the interaction between “AzBats” and Superman comes across well in their exchange, as does Superman’s doubts about who he was really speaking to.

It’s a dreamy looking Superman crossing the country from Metropolis to Coast City, and I daresay that they’re trying to channel Dean Cain a little as he approaches Kansas.

The best panel of the issue though is the two page spread  of all the heroes gathering at the wreckage of Coast City, and there’s so much to love here.  The body language, and facial  expressions speak volumes about each of the characters:  Superman looking swashbuckling and upbeat, Green Lantern brooding like a man barely holding on, Green Arrow all attitude and shadow.  Just a great spread.

Another cool image is Aquaman showing up late, and emerging very royally in protection of his ocean (undercut masterfully by a legitimately funny couple of lines from Guy Gardner).  Page 14’s Hal Jordan is a great drawing, and this whole storyline seems like a table setter for the "Emerald Twilight" story coming up.

The sequence of a firelit Luthor  at the computer is a good look at his madness, but it does beg the  question of just how little Supergirl seems to take in.  He was JUST talking aloud  about Kryptonite, and she emerges seeming not to hear.  The image of  Supergirl flying Lex away as he struggles against her psychic grab is a  good one, even if her uniform is depicted as a little clingier than I imagine it to really be.

Superman floating above his obelisk with his arm in front of  his face like Dracula is a cool look, even if it is a little dramatic.

Lastly, the image of Clark turning up the stereo is a good one, even if his hair length is wildly  shorter here than in Coast City (and I usually dislike it when they  mention real world bands, as it comes off trying too hard to be hip).

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

I  have to love how meta it is to have Superman outright saying that Batman is dressing more “threatening” these days,  on page 2.  I guess he couldn’t come right out and say “you have an  extreme new look, and it’s totally badass! Batman the next generation!”

Last  we saw of Supergirl she was storming out of the party on Lex’s Zeppelin after Lex II was getting all horned up at  the sight of Lois Lane, but it appears here they’ve mostly patched  things up as they fly to Coast City.

More meta-stuff: Jimmy clunkily complimenting Lois on her new hair by saying she “oughta be on TV or something!”.   This whole exchange is very expository, really, “Clark must be pretty mad… though he’s busy worrying about where he’s going to bunk…”  Anything else to get in there, Jimmy?

The harshness some of the heroes have for Lex Junior seems a little out of place, especially since he’s still known to  most of the heroes as an ally from "Panic in the Sky", and the "Doomsday"  storyline.  Superman’s comment was borderline, but where is all this  anger Flash is showing coming from?

Being  as familiar as we are with these writers, there are certain phrases or ideas that a certain writer will go to way,  way too often.  Byrne had a number of stories where Superman would  “ionize” something with his heat vision, and it occurred to me that  maybe he just liked that word.  I would submit that Dan Jurgens likes the word “atomize”.  It was used by the Cyborg  Superman when talking about Doomsday, and is used a bunch just in this issue.

I find it hilarious that Hawkman appears so prominently in this issue, but doesn’t get any lines.  This issue is an  interesting time capsule—I had almost forgotten about the de-aged  Starheart powered Alan Scott era.

Speaking of lines, they don’t give Captain Marvel much to do in this issue, but I always like seeing him, even if his only contribution is the odd “Holy Moley!”

Colouring error on page 12, where Hal’s ring has a red centre (maybe the colourist had Alan Scott’s red and green look on the brain?)

A raging Hal standing by Green Arrow is a sad foreshadowing of their confrontation to come in Zero Hour.

[monotonous-minutia]

because I think of it altogether too much, some dialogue on the differences in the role of the Muse in Les contes d’Hoffmann, in the play versus in the opera. Enjoy my nerdy, disorganized, former-literature-major ramblings as I spend altogether too much time picking apart the minutia of this issue (but hey, it’s in my URL, so).

In the original play by Michael Carré and Jules Barbier (the same people who wrote the libretto for the opera), the Muse doesn’t double as Niklausse. We get two separate characters–the Muse and Hoffmann’s sidekick, Friédrick.

The play opens with a monologue from the Muse, similar to the one in the opera (some lines are taken verbatim). The monologue in the play, though, isn’t about the Muse being mad at Stella and wanting to win Hoffman’s love. It is in a lot of ways a love letter to the real Hoffmann’s writing, of which Carré was a huge fan (obviously, he wrote a whole play about them). The works of E.T. A. Hoffmann were (and to an extent, still are) hailed as being unique, strange, and otherworldy compared to most of what was seen at the time. The Muse here talks about her stories as if they’re her own, and she happens upon Hoffmann in the tavern (read: when he gets drunk, he gets inspired to write weird stuff). She’s here, then, to introduce this story–the play that we’re watching/reading–as one of her own. She does reappear at the end and makes a statement similar to that made at the conclusion of the opera, that the poet had to suffer to be truly great and now that he’s given up on love she has him to herself–but it’s not that she specifically tried to make this happen, she’s just pleased that it did.

After the Muse’s opening monologue, she tells the audience that the people are coming and she’s going to hide, because they scare her. She puts on a suit and hat similar to that warn by the students that will soon be populating the tavern, so she can blend in with them and not be noticed. I’m guessing this is where the inspiration for the Muse also being Niklausse eventually (partially) comes from.

But we don’t have Niklausse in the play; we get Friédrick. Friédrick is, in my perception, ridiculously adorable. He spends a good portion of the play serving sass. There’s a ton of banter between him and Hoffmann, and some with Friédrick and the side characters as well as they collectively role their eyes at Hoffmann. So, much similarity to Niklausse. A few differences, though: the guys in the tavern love making fun of him, because he’s younger, and Hoffmann is even a little bit meaner to him than their operatic counterparts, and Friédrick is just kind of resigned to it, though he does make fun of Hoffmann at times. Mostly he feels sorry for him and feels the need to take care of him, as he can’t seem to take care of himself.

Friédrick is referred to as Hoffmann’ “shadow,” in that he follows him around everywhere making sure he doesn’t get himself arrested or shanked. He is also referred to by Hoffmann as “the voice of reason” through all his adventures, though of course Friédrick doesn’t remember any of them, since they didn’t actually happen. But he is constantly dragging Hoffmann out of trouble in these stories, which is why Dappertutto tries to off him in the Giulietta act. Dappertutto is annoyed that Friédrick first rescues Hoffmann from Olympia when she goes crazy (which is a big part of the play, and written into the libretto, but rarely ever portrayed on stage for the opera), then saves him from Crespel when Crespel tries to get Hoffmann for (as he perceives) killing Antonia (another bit that’s in the libretto but rarely portrayed onstage) and, finally, is trying to literally drag him away from Giulietta. As with Niklausse, Hoffmann severely under-appreciates Friédrick and all that his friend does for him. But when Dappertutto tries to give him a “sleeping potion” that he says will just make him pass out long enough for Hoffmann to get it on with Giulietta, Hoffmann kind of gets a reality check when he’s like “Wait, okay, but what if he drinks it and then he dies?” Dappertutto insists that no such thing is even remotely possible. I do wonder where Hoffmann’s sudden suspicion and consideration comes from. Like, is he already suspicious of Dappertutto, or is he just concerned because Friédrick is so small a single dose of Nyquil could end him? (Being a lightweight myself, I do wonder.) But we never find out either way, because Giulietta waltzes onstage and downs the poison first and of course Friédrick arrives just in time to save Hoffmann yet again. I just gotta wonder: given Friédrick is not the Muse in this version, why is it that he’s the one who drags Hoffmann out of trouble over and over again in a series of stories that didn’t actually happen?  As constantly annoyed as he seems at Friédrick, he’s the one making the choice to have him play that role. And Friédrick is pretty cool with it. I guess they were roommates.

The Muse’s role, then, comes with a different vibe. She doesn’t have any influence over Hoffmann’s love life or seem quite as imminently concerned about it. She’s not following him around in the same way; she kind of just has to wait for him to come around. She’s less assertive and pretty resigned to having to deal with the constant BS but at the same time seems less bothered by it. She’s not totally dependent on him or solely invested in him; she just likes him a lot and enjoys writing stories with him. The operatic Muse is much more definitively attached to Hoffmann and sees his love life as a direct opposition to them. The stakes are higher for them than for the Muse in the play.

The whole Muse/Niklausse dynamic on the opera fascinates me to no end. I can’t even quite put into words the thoughts I have about it. Lately when I think about the question “If you could go back in time and talk to anyone in history who would it be?” I just want to go and talk to Barbier and Carré and ask how they came to the decision to make Niklauuse and the Muse the same character because–is there really anything in literature that’s quite the same as that? We get “a madwoman, come down from the heavens, to fight with a frivolous woman over the love of a fool” (a line from the libretto) who transforms themself into their poet’s best friend, and deals with his BS which is (as I rambled on a bit in an earlier post) borderline emotional abuse in some cases and even in its mildest forms raises the question “Why, sweetie, why do you put up with this.” Well, they can’t not, can they? What’s a Muse supposed to do? They’ve got their poet and have no other purpose in life that to serve as their inspiration. What would they do if Hoffmann did actually choose Stella over them? It’s basically out of the question.

So looking then at the Muse/Friédrick dynamic was an interesting transition. I can start to see some of the pieces but in some ways it also raises more questions. Was Niklausse ever an actual person, like Friédrick? Is the Muse donning the disguise for just that one night, to be witness to the storytelling, as the Muse in the play does? Does the operatic Muse just figure that Hoffmann will be drunk enough to not notice the difference when the real Niklausse comes back later? Or was Niklausse the Muse all along, and the Muse has for years (or however long) personified themself as another student to try and win Hoffmann on his level? Further, is it Hoffmann who comes up with all the little things that Niklausse does that hints to us what his status actually is, showing that Hoffmann is subconsciously aware of the connection all along? Or is it the Muse infiltrating the storytelling as it occurs to insert themself further, trying to get Hoffmann to really see them during the course of the telling?

On one hand I go crazy over the fact that these questions are never answered, and I wonder why the librettists went from the relatively straightforward Muse/Friédrick dynamic to the super meta, almost incomprehensible Muse/Niklausse dynamic. On the other hand, I appreciate the weird genius behind this that makes me think unreasonably hard about the creative process and art in general and also the relationships we have with people in our lives who we depend on in ways such as this. Also, I appreciate how the ambiguity allows different productions of the opera to have so many interpretations of the role (although there are definitely some interpretations that can go to hell as far as I’m concerned).

Also I think a lot about the names. I think Friédrick is just a cute name and I think it suits the original character. And the transition to Niklausse makes sense: a new interpretation of the character warrants a new name–plus Niklausse comes from “Nicholas” which means “victorious people” which makes sense, you know? Niklausse triumphs in the end, so why not have a powerful name like that? If I were a Muse taking on a human form on earth, I’d want something with that kind of power, too.

[mittensmorgul]

So everyone around here should know by now that I find s6 really narratively shaky, and it clearly has its ups and downs. That murky middle section I cringe my way through every time, some dubious-at-best standalone eps. But it also has some of my absolute favorite episodes in the entire series. 6.11 is right there. 6.09 is the most delightful soulless!Sam episode and just delightful in general. 6.15 tops most people’s lists. And then the run I watched today-- 6.17 through 6.21.

I went back to the Hellatus Rewatch Notes I did over the summer, and wasn’t surprised to find just this one post with three short paragraphs:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/186154895705/619-mommy-dearest-ouch-this-marks-the

and this tag: #i just couldn't face writing long wailing meta about the manipulation revealed in 6.20 today sorry

I’m not sure I’m in any better place to write that long wailing meta today, but I’m going to at least try. The narrative we’re seeing spin out over the first half of s15 deserves it. I think it’ll be easier if I talk about this whole chunk of episodes at once, though. S6 might be pretty slapdash as a whole, but this run of episodes in particular seems to all be working together to tell a coherent story, and to be setting up massive narrative paths that Dabb Era has chosen to walk back down from a different perspective. So rather than talk about each of these episodes, I’m gonna talk about what they mean, for the cosmology of the universe, Chuck’s role in all of this and how the parallels have been drawn back to this by his actions in s15, and Castiel’s position in all of it. Dean’s, too, but I’m even going to talk about that in relation to Castiel, because for better or worse, s6 had played the long con on Cas, and as far as we knew at the time, the Storyteller had won...

We’ve all discussed the disconnect between Dean and Cas in s15, but so much of that has fallen into debates over which one of them was right or wrong in their disagreement. I don’t think EITHER of them was right, OR wrong. They’ve just been coming at this fundamental question of Free Will from opposite sides, for the entire series.

For billions of years-- or according to 6.20 at least 400 million years or so if Cas was standing at a shoreline watching the first fish flop itself up on land-- Cas has been. S4 established his character, showed us his doubts in Heaven’s plans that led him from loyalty to rebellion, through torture and brainwashing to fighting free of that in the end. That established his journey into understanding free will and humanity, truly, in ways that he expressed in 6.20 that he desperately tried to share with other angels. Most of those other angels... never understood, never had a reason to understand. Like teaching poetry to fish. Even the angels loyal to Cas, or who didn’t want to follow Raphael in the wake of the failed apocalypse, never seemed to understand this.

S8 gave us some additional insight into Cas, through Naomi’s description of him as an angel that never followed orders, at least not completely. That he’d always had a rebellious streak, or perhaps just a spark of curiosity and interest in creation, and humanity specifically. He refused to participate in horrors inflicted on humanity in the name of Heaven and had been punished by it and programmed back into angelic compliance every time.  But until Dean Winchester, he’d never truly rebelled. He’d never rejected Heaven entirely. And even then, that rejection didn’t happen until season twelve. He’d still been trying to maintain a loyalty to the other angels even through s9 when Metatron told him he may drape himself in the flag of Heaven, but he still did everything for one man. I don’t think that was a lie at that point, but I do believe it’s something Cas hadn’t actually admitted to himself until that point. And he wouldn’t admit it to another angel until 12.19, when he told Kelvin in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t acting on Heaven’s behalf, but to spare the Winchesters.

(yep, even then, after the mixtape, after all of that, Cas was still on about Sam and Dean... and even in 13.04 as he argues with the Empty for his freedom, he still frames it in terms of Sam and Dean... ironically the same thing that Dean has taken heat for when talking to Cas, always making it “you, me, and Sam” in 11.23 and the beer run scene and in 12.19... Cas is just as guilty of not being specific as Dean is, for different reasons, but to the same effect)

Back to s6 though. Cas did make his choices. He was adamant (on flashbacks from 6.20) that Dean was “retired,” that he wasn’t to be dragged back into their fight, even as he was desperate to ask Dean for his help. (again, I still blame Sam and his terrible promise he extracted from Dean in 5.22 for that one) Regardless, that choice led Cas down a cascading spiral of worse and worse choices in a desperate attempt to shield Sam and Dean from what I’ll call The Story. Except in doing so, he’d only kept digging the hole for himself deeper and deeper, not realizing that he hadn’t been set up to be the hero, but the villain.

This is the position Chuck seems to desperately want Sam and/or Dean to finally accept in s15:

Chuck: No, this is more, this is….. hope. That’s what’s stopping me. You, you still think that Dean and Cas are gonna fly through those doors just in the nick of time. You still think that you’re the hero of this story. You still think you can win.

And that’s exactly the taunt Metatron used on Cas in 9.18. And it’s exactly the taunt Crowley used on Cas in 6.20:

CROWLEY You kill my hunters. Why can't I kill yours? CASTIEL They're my friends. CROWLEY You can't have friends, not anymore. I mean, my God. You're losing it! CASTIEL I'm fine. CROWLEY Yeah. You're the very picture of mental health. Come on. You don't think I know what this is all about? CASTIEL Enlighten me. CROWLEY The big lie -- the Winchesters still buy it. The good Cas, the righteous Cas. And long as they still believe it, you get to believe it. Well, I got news for you, kitten. A whore is a whore is a whore.

and this is part of a much larger passage-- their entire conversation in Hell-- but the point boils down to this:

CROWLEY Granted. Yes. But just to show you how serious I am about this scheme...How about I float you a little loan? Say, 50 large? 50,000 souls from the pit. You can take them up to heaven. Make quite a showing. It's either this or the Apocalypse all over again. Everything you've worked for -- everything that Sam and Dean have worked for -- gone. You can save us, Castiel. God chose you to save us. And I think...Deep down...You know that.

YOU CAN SAVE EVERYONE, CASTIEL. Dean, Sam, Humanity, Earth-- even Heaven and, grudgingly, Hell too. And in doing so, prove God resurrected you for a PURPOSE. This was what Cas needed, what motivated him the entire year he resisted bowing to Raphael and obediently falling in line while the apocalypse started up again. He could have a purpose, a mission.

Cas had still been struggling with this in Dabb Era. His desperation to “get a win” in 12.19 stemmed directly from this absolute fall into hubris from s6, ending in the release of the Leviathan and Cas’s apparent death again in 7.02. He’s been trying to atone for that guilt ever since.

But in all of this, Cas has never really forgotten what it was to be an angel, what it meant to serve God and to serve Heaven. There was no free will. The few times he questioned his orders, he was punished, tortured, and reprogrammed back into line. He’s fully aware of all of this. For him, learning the extent of Chuck’s manipulation of the story is more a confirmation of his entire experience over billions of years, while that revelation absolutely shattered Dean. For Dean’s entire life-- the blink of an eye for an angel-- he’s believed in very little other than his own personal choices.

Essays have been written about Dean’s underclass upbringing, his life on the fringes of society as a drifter and a con artist, going from town to town under false identities and living a life in the shadows. And yet Dean has always believed that was of his own choice. That he wouldn’t have chosen to do anything else, that he would’ve been bored in a “normal life,” and proved that in season six when he leaves his last chance at a normal life behind with Lisa and Ben and throws himself entirely back into hunting. Because that’s the tragedy. That’s Chuck’s story for both Sam and Dean... they don’t get to be happy.

(this is why I don’t trust Eileen’s story with Sam, fwiw, because that was literally exactly the story Chuck intended her for, exactly the same as Lisa)

This was Sam’s story with Jess from the pilot episode. This was Dean’s story with Cassie, Sam’s story with Amelia... with Rowena... Every time they have a chance at a relationship, Chuck turned it into a tragedy.

But back to the point here...

Dean prized his free will above all else. He’s doubled down on that sentiment even in s15 talking to the girl he didn’t yet know was actually Lilith, confirming that he’d never want to live in a world where all his choices were made for him, or where the whole game he was playing was engineered specifically for him to lose. He’d always stood firm on the point that-- for better or worse-- all of his choices had truly been his own.

(again, why “I didn’t have another choice” is the worst thing any character can say on this show)

For Dean, Chuck’s revelation shattered him, possibly even more than Cas’s betrayal in 6.20 did. And for all he cares for Dean, for all he’s studied Dean and learned about humanity and free will from Dean over the last decade, Cas still can’t understand why, because it’s not the same identity-destroying revelation for him, as an angel who’d had to fight for every choice he’s ever made, as it was for Dean who based his entire worldview on the choices that made him who he is as a person.

And s15 is taking all of these themes from the run up to the end of s6, and turning them inside out.

What makes a hero?

What power do we have against “destiny?”

What power do we have against a seemingly unassailable enemy?

What morally or objectively wrong paths will we be led down before we discover it’s all a trap?

What chance do we have at real happiness, and what would that even look like?

What sacrifices are we willing to make to ensure that humanity overall will prevail against impossible odds?

What ~actually~ needs to be done to stop the eternal cycle of apocalyptic tragedy that Chuck has put them through from the start? (Raphael just wanted to reboot s5, Chuck has shown his hand that horrific tragedy is always his intended endgame, regardless of what form it takes)

Can we achieve a real victory without unleashing an even greater horror on the world for once? (s6 ended with Godstiel eating purgatory, s7 started with the Leviathans escaping into the world, and now Chuck is obsessed with Leviathans and monsters again in s15, while Jack is literally consuming angel hearts and supposedly attempting to gain enough power to kill God... but what will consuming that power make Jack into? He’s already “eaten” Michael, Cas has already stopped Belphegor from “eating Hell” and becoming a new evil god, but Rowena ended up becoming the vessel of Death that brought all those souls back to Hell, effectively neutralizing that particular threat at least for the time being... but this is definitely something I’m still mindful of as the season progresses)

All of these questions were crucial in s6, and throughout the entire series, but this was Cas’s character turning point, and it’s what he’s been fighting his way back from ever since. I can’t help but think that-- like with Belphegor in 15.03, like his choice to return to the Winchesters in 15.06, like his journey to Purgatory with Dean in 15.09-- he’ll be confronted with these specific choices again.

A few other points from these episodes that I think are interesting to keep in mind:

6.17 and the confrontation with Fate herself. If Chuck doesn’t get you, Fate will, or so it would seem. A lot of the themes of this one hit again in 13.19 Funeralia, with why we shouldn’t mess too much with the natural order. I just watched it a couple nights ago, so it’s incredibly fresh in my mind. I still think that episode is incredibly important to what Billie is meddling with in s15, in ways that haven’t entirely been revealed yet.

6.18, and more time travel done right. But also, the Major Sign we all should’ve been more focused on in what Rachel revealed, and what the Winchesters accidentally tipped her off to about Cas. She implied that the Winchesters were becoming a massive drain on Cas’s attention and time in Heaven, when we know the Winchesters had hardly seen Cas all season. When Rachel investigated what Cas was actually up to, she discovered the truth of what he was up to with Crowley, and he was forced to kill her for it. What he wouldn’t do to protect his tenuous shield around the Winchesters? It’s taken them until s15 for them all to finally get on the same page.

6.19, and the pure pain. 

6.20, oh right, THIS is the pure pain.

CASTIEL I'm doing this for you, Dean. I'm doing this because of you. DEAN Because of me. Yeah. You got to be kidding me. CASTIEL You're the one who taught me that freedom and free will -- DEAN You're a freakin' child, you know that? Just because you can do what you want doesn't mean that you get to do whatever you want! CASTIEL I know what I'm doing, Dean. DEAN I'm not gonna logic you, okay? I'm saying don't...Just 'cause. I'm asking you not to. That's it. CASTIEL I don't understand.

I think he understands now. Or at least he’s miles closer to understanding.

6.21, okay let’s just take everything from Dean and complete Cas’s fall into the role of Big Bad.

I know I had a point in mind when I started writing this, but I’ve written myself out again :’D

[delineative]

writing year in review: 2018

total number of completed stories: 9

total word count:

ao3: 43 879

(+ ~5k on socks)

fandoms written in:

dorohedoro

we both chose each other - noi/shin

houseki no kuni

growing without rest - phos/phos

idol producer / nine percent

counting flower petals all day long - xukun/zhengting

leaving nothing behind - xukun/zhengting

when we see each other again - jun/zhengting, ziyi/zhengting, yanjun/zhangjing/zhengting, xukun/zhengting, justin/chengcheng/zhengting

take one step closer - xukun/yanjun/zhengting

nct

from first principles - 00line

produce 101 china / rocket girls

coincidence makes sense - yamy/meiqi/xuanyi

seventeen

the earth in its turning stopped (last 2 chapters) - seungcheol/jeonghan/joshua

reaching for you from the endless dream - wonwoo/jun

wips:

out of the wips i’m currently working on:

dirtmix assignment (will be revealed very shortly!)

nahyuck pacific rim au

markrenmin enemies to lovers fantasy au

looking back, did you expect to write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected?

around what i expected... i was aiming for 1 fic a month and didn’t quite manage to hit that but i feel like each fic was longer than usual (i’m a terminal shortfic writer so anything over 3k is long for me). like i kept going 1-4k over my projected wordcount which was extremely panic-inducing when i was trying to write to deadlines lmao so overall i’m okay with the quantity of words i produced this year!

what pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?

fandom-wise probably the survival show spiral and moving into ncity... if 2017 was the year of yugioh then 2018 was the year of rpf. some of the stuff i posted to socks was very uncharacteristic of my usual m.o but i think everything i put on main was very true to brand i.e ambiguous relationships + vague pining + emo conversations in the dark

did you take any writing risks this year? what did you learn from them?

i signed up for svtbb and had to drop out due to exam pressure, which was sad bc it’s the first exchange/fest i’ve ever defaulted on, but then i went and did lordeventeen and yuletide even though they partly ran through exam seasons too so i guess i learned nothing?!?

actually i think i probably could have afforded to take a few more risks genre-wise, i feel like everything i wrote in 2018 recycled the exact same themes but also at the same time those themes are the only thing i can write. terrible taste i will never change i will never improve that is a promise etc etc

what’s your own favorite story of the year?

reaching for you from the endless dream had me tearing my hair out while i was writing it but ultimately i feel like it paid off! i’ve always wanted to try canon compliant + magic and this ended up with some of the best writing i’ve ever done, plus i’m happy i was finally able to write something for one of my favourite svt ships <3 honourable mention to the concept behind when we see each other again, my post-disbandment allzzt ship manifesto titled after csc_uri_dasi_bol_ttae.mp3 

best story of the year?

also reaching for you from the endless dream! i’m really proud of how this one turned out both in terms of technical quality (.... *repeats the same phrase 300 times* Is This Thematic Consistency?) and emotional beats, and it got so many lovely comments. i think this is probably one of my best fics ever, and i’m glad it struck a chord with other people too!

most popular story of the year?

not counting teiits since most of that was posted in 2017, it’s counting flower petals all day long, which really surprised me when i checked my ao3 stats? i must have hit the sweet spot of fandom growth + burgeoning ship popularity bc literally nothing happens in the fic other than one (1) kiss, but thank you for giving it so much love 💖

story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:

omg i think everything i wrote this year was WAY over-appreciated but coincidence makes sense, which features a f/f/f rarepair (raretrio?) in a fandom with very little western fan presence, so i’m not surprised by its stats but i’m still pretty fond of this one and consider it one of the better fics i wrote in 2018, and one of the best idolverse fics i’ve ever written

most fun story to write:

from first principles, the debate au fic i’ve wanted to write for like 6 years, my beloved pet project through the month of august, and i think it shows? i tripled my projected word count and in the process of writing fully converted to dreamyism(/renjunism), so a lot of love went into it, even though there are places you can tell i definitely rushed the execution. one day i’ll do justice to a proper nct sports anime fic... 

story with the single sexiest moment:

all the rated content i wrote this year was posted to socks other than the brief dance studio 3some scene in take one step closer, but i genuinely have no idea if that was even sxc since i wrote it on my phone in a feverish last-minute sprint on a plane while blasting twice bdz and haven’t reread it at all jhfgdfjdfh

most sweet story:

the general tone of everything i wrote in 2018 was much less depressing than 2017 but i guess the sweetest story was we both chose each other... what’s more romantic than dismembering a bunch of thugs with your beloved partner and then jumping off a cliff together!!

story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:

kind of a weird question to apply to rpf... characterisation perceptions are constantly shifting based on current meta and au role needs, though i feel like i’m always struggling to play catchup and by the time i publish anything the general image has shifted ;__; 

most unintentionally telling story:

from first principles draws heavily on my own experiences with high school debating... lots of 3rd speaker related anxieties and hangups projection all over the place in there lmao

hardest story to write:

every time i’m working on something, especially when i’m close to finishing, it is the hardest thing i have ever written... i can’t remember if writing has always been this difficult for me or if it’s an rpf thing. probably i struggled the most with reaching for you from the endless dream bc i’m deeply intimidated by writing jun (light of my life) due to the fear of not doing him justice, and also the deadline pressure nearly killed me. also at one point i called writing from first principles the worst experience of my life but looking back it wasn’t even that bad... mostly it was just that it kept getting longer and longer and eventually i was like Please God Let It End Already

biggest disappointment:

not finishing my svtbb fic... i am literally twitter user juncheolsoo i owe them SOMETHING!! not writing more fic. mediocre execution of decent concepts bc i got too impatient and rushed to finish things before i got bored of them

biggest surprise:

all of my fics about idol boys except one have over 100 kudos, which is just a ridiculous amount?! idol rpf fandoms have been so kind to me... i will work hard to become a better content creator in 2019!!

favourite opening line(s):

from leaving nothing behind:

“Are you looking for Justin?”

Xukun rears back, knuckles still poised to knock on the doorframe. “I—what?”

“Are you looking for Justin?” Zhengting repeats. He’s sprawled across the bottom bunk, leg dangling inelegantly off the edge. The phone in his hand casts an unsteady ellipse of light over his collarbone.

favourite closing line(s):

from growing without rest:

Beyond the arches the world is silent. The gem Phosphophyllite will become returns their gaze steadily, evenly. The shadows lengthen. In the distance behind them, a flicker of white, like light needling off somebody’s back, or the gleam of a pearl eye.

favourite 5 line(s) from anywhere:

from first principles:

“If only Mark-hyung was still here,” Renjun said, only half-jokingly. There was a brief moment of solemn silence as the three of them paused to consider their ex-captain, who had passed on last year to the realm of university debating.

when we see each other again:

So maybe they weren’t friends, but they were something. You couldn’t inhabit the same space for two years and come out the other side as strangers. Sometimes Zhengting thought that might have been easier than whatever this intimacy limbo was supposed to be, knowing somebody in the minutest details, what they looked like at the height of their intensity or the moments before they fell asleep, without really knowing them at all. Looking, and not having the gesture returned, or at least not equally.

coincidence makes sense:

The song ends, starts over. Meiqi doesn’t, though, pivoting to face them, and that’s all the invitation Xuanyi needs to unfold from her position beside Guo Ying and cross the floor. Like two halves of a single movement Meiqi reaches out to Xuanyi and Xuanyi presses their palms together, interlacing their fingers. The tilt of their heads towards each other like it’s something irresistible.

reaching for you from the endless dream:

Junhui was practically raised by the industry. The stage lying close enough to the bone it would be indistinguishable from it. He leaves his intensity on the stage but glimpses of it show through in odd moments, seamlessness without ease. It’s hard for Wonwoo to understand, but most things about Junhui are.

take one step closer:

You want to look into somebody, of course you have to let them look back. This is why he kept away in the first place, the terror of vulnerability when it could be staved off indefinitely instead, though he’d wanted to be seen, hoped for it, even, despite himself, something in the marrow singing out to be known.

It’s like an infection, a second heart in his ribs. A kind of longing that bites right through his hand. Strikes down to the quick. Severs the whole thing clean off. He ran so far from himself he landed in somebody else’s body, and here he is, still trying to escape.

top 5 scenes from anywhere you would choose to have illustrated:

jun lifting zzt up and spinning him around, from when we see each other again (;___; #junting_agenda_seeding)

wonwoo and jun in the kitchen with nectarines spilling out of the open fridge, from reaching for you from the endless dream

cxkzzt conversation in the dark while zzt is wearing a facemask, from leaving nothing behind

00z sports shounen hug, from from first principles

phos getting crushed by their future self’s gold arms, from growing without rest

honourable mention to noishin leaping off a cliff from we both chose each other, which actually did get illustrated in dorohedorozine <3

do you have any fanfic or profit goals for the new year?

cut down my wip list... please i have 25+ wips on my spreadsheet i just want to FINISH something for once in my life instead of constantly starting new wips and letting them rot in the graveyard of my gdocs

practise writing actual shipfic and not poorly disguised gen. i WILL get better at writing kiss scenes

try to write something over 10k again

relearn what figurative language is and how to use it. rpf boosted my productivity stats but at what cost...

[dankmemeslmao]

https://ift.tt/3hieAPB

You may be onto something here. Memes used to be simple. Relatable. Worth a chuckle. Then they evolved. New formats, new tag lines, new content that was then turned into a new meme. Then memes became increasingly meta and self reflective. They parodied themselves and the users who both made them and consumed them. They built off of one another. They grew. They morphed into something entirely novel. This progressed to the point where even that wasn't enough. They had to become something more than themselves. They became surreal. They became deep fried and nuked. Each flavor building off of the last and transforming into a nearly intangible, unknown entity. Art progressed in a similar fashion. Started off simple, I'm talking cave drawing simple. Then some pottery and some small abstract sculptures. Subjects everyone could relate to and understand. Then, as technology allowed for the creation of cultures and societies, art began to reflect that change and it evolved along with it. By the Ancient Greeks and Romans, art had become a more advanced version of the Stone and Bronze Age arts. Better drawings, paintings, and the addition of mosaics. Sculptures eventually shifted from stylistic expression to naturalistic representation. Still accessible to everyone, yet more nuanced and complex. After the fall of Rome art stagnated and didn't change very much for nearly a millennium. Early Christian art dominated for the most part, consisting of murals and frescos and simple statues. All of which were based on the Ancient styles. Romanesque and Gothic art also built upon these precedents. This all changed when the Renaissance attacked. A cultural explosion changed the art world forever; arguably starting with the Italian artist, Giotto. He began using techniques like foreshortening and linear perspective so that the material world could be represented as it appeared to us. A callback to the naturalistic stylings of the Greeks. Almost like a reference to the days of yore. A celebration of how art used to be, but with the explosion of new techniques and technologies, the art grew increasingly diverse. New and improved frescoes, meticulously crafted sculptures, architectural marvels and the inclusion of new materials in these works. Instead of tempera, oil was introduced along with new styles of depicting light and shadow through sfumato and chiaroscuro. These techniques and stylistic changes, while impressive, were simply an advancement of pre established art. The Renaissance paved the way for the explosion and diversification of dozens of art movements that followed. From prehistoric art to the end of the Renaissance, art was mostly about the same subjects and used similar techniques to accomplish the goal of producing a work of art. Yes, the technical proficiency exponentially improved but considering the centuries in between, few true advancements were made. Compare this to memes. They were so simple at first and really were nothing more. Then they got better. More technical. More circumstantial. More media to create them with. But memes could last years or many months before dying off. As time went on, the longevity of a meme shortened. This is paralleled in the art world. After the Renaissance the Baroque period started. Then the Neo-Classicism, Romantic, Realism, and Impressionism movements not long after. Still utilizing the same technical process but the reasoning behind the movements changed. No longer was it about simply depicting the world around us, it was about prompting the viewer to consider new thoughts and ideas. Urging them to look past the image and think deeper about meaning and context. Pushing the boundaries of what art could be. The Baroque to Impressionism era spanned roughly 300 years. Compare that to the thousands of years between archaic art and the Renaissance. It was a huge explosion of self expression. Finally, in the mid to late 19th century starting with Post-Impressionism, Modern art emerged. This movement focused on self-consciousness, self-reference, introspection, existentialism, and even nihilism. I'm talking Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Abstract Expressionism, and Surrealism to name the most well known. These styles changed what art could be. They were no longer about depicting life as is, or layering a painting with hidden motifs for only the privileged to understand, they were in and of themselves absurd. Abstract shapes, aggressive lines and colors, nonsensical dreamscapes. But it didn't stop there. Post-modernism. Pushing art to the limit of its potential. Pop art, Conceptual art, Minimalism, Fluxus, Installation art, Lowbrow art, Performance art, Digital art, Earth art. These movements are about skepticism, irony, rejecting grand narratives and reason and instead embracing the idea that knowledge and truth are the result of social, historical, and political discourse and subsequently are a subjective, social construct. It's irreverent and self-referential. It's avant-garde pushed to 11. But what's next? Post-postmodernism? Metamodernism? Hypermodernity? Who knows? Only time will tell. This is where memes are headed. They started off slow but have picked up so much momentum they're evolving at an exponential pace. They used to hang around for a couple years at most. Then it turned to months. Then maybe only one month. Suddenly it was a week tops. While some particularly great memes do still stick around much like the masterpieces of art in the past, new memes are created every day, every few hours. New movements of memes are being created all the time. Anti-memes. Dank memes. Abstract memes. Wholesome memes. Surreal memes. Deep fried memes. Nuked memes. Even black hole memes, time travel, and dimensional memes are now a reality. What's going to happen next? A return to the classics? A new format so brilliant it steals all our hearts and then starts a whole new movement? I'm excited for the future of memes. Once upon a terribly dreadful time, there was a small cat-licking bird that lived on a not-so-big lane by my house whose name was Charles just like every other soul, male or female, that lived on my smelly, stinky, orange, old, rotten, messy, busted cul-de-sac between Belmont and Rose which are both Gay-ass Streets Like North street or some shit that reminds me of a celebrity like Paris Hilton or some blonde loser that doesn't even know the capital of her own country, which is the United States of America aka: The U.S.A which is a pristine nation of beauty, opposing to a country as the country of Somalia and Belgium, a part of Europe, which doesn't even have a government, it's just in a complete state of anarchy just like my mind and soul which are both filled with outrageous nonsense that I'm typing down right now into some fat long sentence that probably makes no sense but who cares I'm trying to set some sort of weird record here like most ducks snorted or some weird thing like that and if I do set some sort of record I will be in the Guinness Book of World Records (though anti-American and pro-European, a place of pitty and despair as Somalia is) which was always my dream because that book has a whole bunch a cool and weird stuff in it and I would Become famous and add to the weirdness of the book like some of their records which reminds me of the Rob & Big where Rob sets all of those skateboarding Records And Big Black eats bananas and donuts and three weeks later they both get plaques saying the record they set and I want to get one of those so that's why I'm writing all of this stuff down without ever using a period or some other sentence ending mark like an exclamation point or a question mark or any other symbol that could possibly end my streak of words that is really long now and would take me a while to count just like counting sheep which is supposed to put you to sleep but it really keeps you awake because you want to keep counting and counting until you don't know what comes after trillions, but that would take Years or something because it would take a while just to count a trillion seconds or minutes would be even worse just like how ducks are worse that geese because they are more aggressive around their young unlike great white sharks which are often eaten by their mothers when they are born and the ones who do make it out alive have no mother to teach them how to hunt or whatever because none of that matters because us human beings have mothers unless they die or run off with some CEO of a big company or someone else who makes a lot of money and then they leave you with your dad and you are jealous of your friends if you have any because they have moms and you don't because your mom was some greedy pig who wanted money but ended up only getting the money part and she bought drugs because she was depressed and ended up killing herself from an overdose and you wouldn't even know about it until you become some rich person and check the files somewhere and learn that she died of a overdose and you eyes get all teary and then you start crying because you know that you wouldn't be alive without that woman you called mom and I just found out right now that the longest sentence is like 10,000 words so I have a ways to go and you have to go with me so let's go to 6th gear and throw out some words like Emphysema which I had to do a report on in 4th grade because we had a ton of projects and this was the disease one and we chose diseases out of a hat and I came out with Emphysema which is a form of lung cancer which is 98% caused by smoking which reminds me of the way my dad describes smoking: "you get plant leaves, wrap them in paper, light it on fire and suck on it" which is normally a sentence but not today because I'm setting out on the quest for a long sentence that I'm typing up which reminds me of a story my grandpa told me about himself when he was "your age" about how they covered the letters on the type writers and they had to type so that they could memorize where the letters are on a type writer and my grandpa says he will never regret taking that class because it helped him out a lot when it came to typing and now a days he is not bad a typing at all because He is almost as fast as me because I am a pretty fast typer and writing this article isn't taking very long and expect being pretty far pretty soon at the pace I'm going right now so there are going to be some serious records getting busted when I'm finally finished writing this article on this dumb website which will probably end up huffing this article even though it is fun-packed and joyful and keeps the reader reading when they use that excuse to mom saying "just one more sentence" but that sentence is 10,000 words long and still continuing to go at a reasonable pace and it is going to shatter most of those long sentence records just like how the chargers are going to shatter the most consecutive years without a super bowl win record and I doubt that they will win one in the near future but they patriots are going to win some serious super bowls because they are the best team ever even better than the cowboys or 49ers and no one cares a bout them so go patriots and boo chargers even though I live in San Diego and Like the Padres I hate the Chargers because they are bad and the padres are bad too but I don't care because they are my favorite team and the dodgers are my least favorite along with the Yankees because the Yankees get a lot of money to spend and the padres and marlins get almost nothing and then the Yankees buy a-rod for a lot and the Rays get almost no money but are still fighting for first place this season without expensive players like Derek jeter or a-rod or johnny damon or whoever because they are an all around better team that can beat the Yankees even though the Yankees can beat the royals a lot who really suck because they suck more that the padres do and so do the mariners and Rockies even thought the Rockies went to the world series last year they lost and haven't stopped losing for a while now, either and they are last place in the nl west and that is where the padres used to be but they started hitting homeruns and winning games and are dong pretty good right now despite having little offense except for Adrian Gonzalez who is leading the NL in RBI's even though he is on the team who scores the least runs in the league but they are not last in homeruns though they are like 5 away or something but I’m not sure so screw that and let's talk about something fun like water or food or dirt or something but I think food is the best because their is a lot of things to talk about with food like you r favorite food which mine happens to be some spicy burrito form Chipotle mexican grill and it is very good just like this macaroni my mom made one time that had bread crumbs on top and it was very good like all of the food they serve on top chef which I wish I could be a judge for because they have a lot of good food on that show and it makes my mouth water whenever I watch it and that is why I watch it because the food is totally awesome and sometimes I hate the people but they end up getting eliminated like the Dance crews in France's Best Dance Crew which is a great show and you should watch it because people do good dancing like the JFrabbawockeez because they won the first season and they are very good just like supreme soul and So real crew and phresh select and super cr3w and I’m only at 1500 words right now so I have to write some serious stuff like a life biography about myself and anything I’ve ever done which includes going to big bear to ski, fishing, breathing, swimming, going, farting, eating, sleeping and a whole lot more stuff which reminds me of 4th grade again when my teacher was debating with the class whether "a lot" was one or two words and all of the kids including myself said one while the teacher said two and he was right and we were wrong but no one cared because we all had fun arguing about and I have fun arguing with my friends about football and not baseball because in baseball we all like the same team but in football I like the patriots and my friends like the chargers and the 49ers and the eagles and the saints but my team always woops their team's ass and they say that the patriots "cheat" and that's how they won even though the patriots just pwned their team and they suck and my team is good but we all agree when it comes to baseball because we all like the padres and we never really argue over anything in baseball which is my favorite sport and I play it and I am good a it and I want it to be my profession but I doubt that that will happen so my backup plan is being a cop because you get all of the benefits and you get paid after you retire which is good news and I would also like to be some government dude or something like that because they get the benefits too so it would be cool to work for the government which reminds me that my principal worked at the white house and taught the president email because he was the computer guy or something like that so h knows a whole bunch of computer crap like my dad and he is fat too so everyone makes fun of him and I think he huffs kittens too but I am not sure and about that and what the hell is up with all the n00b and kitten huffing on this gay ass website like all of the things like "the writer may have been huffing kittens" and stuff like that it really annoys the hell out of me just like other things such as when people clip their finger nails it makes that weird noise that get me all crazy and I hate it just like how me friend hates the sound of chalk on a chalkboard which I find soothing and relaxing but he gets really annoyed and psyched out and he is also very pale-skinned and so is the rest of his family so it must have been some genetic thing like twins and clones and whole bunch of other confusing science crap that I learned a long time ago in 7th grade or something which was when we watched movies in class like UHF which has weird al in it and it is very funny because weird al has to save a TV station with a whole bunch of weird shows like wheel of fish and rauls wild kingdom with a whole bunch of cool animals like flamingos and turtles and stuff like that but who cares lets get to the meaty part of this article which is the part where I write the longest word known to man which is Methionylthreonylthreonyl...isoleucine which is cut out because it has 189,819 words so wikipedia had to cut out the middle part and the longest word is the name of a protein which is the largest known to man to so big names go to big things is apparently the moral of this story ladies and gentleman the road doesn't stop here and I have to continue no matter what you say or think so I should just write some story now that has no periods so lets start with a guy named Carl who liked fish and women and he went to Clara’s house and they had a good food but that isn't enough of a story to set the record so I think I’ll just stick to writing random crap which really makes no sense at all and here is some random picture that shows a guy who has two legs and another guy who has three who is mocking the guy with two legs because he rips his flesh in disgust every night and you think about who would be dumb enough to rip their flesh instead of cut the ring off or something that doesn't involve entirely gruesome crap like that and I have another life after this one just like how cats have 9 lives I have three because I’m on my second one right now and it is great and you might think I’m a whole new person but you are thinking wrong it's just when I died I came back t life and next time I die I’ll come back to life again and then when I die I’ll be dead for sure which reminds me of Stephen king's book called pet sematary which is coo because people come back to life because there was a burial ground that bring people back to life if they are dead and that book is a great book and you should read it along with the Harry Potter series which has magic in it and it is cool too so don't shank yourself when you are cutting that meat for dinner or you might die of massive blood loss or might just need a band aid I mean that works too or you don't even need a band aid because I don't use them and I have never gotten and infection in my life so maybe I’m lucky or have an alligator immune system or something but I don't use band aids and I don't use Neosporin on my cuts so I’m some sort of miracle I guess but I’m wasting twenty minutes of my miracle life on this retard article that I just want the Guinness book of world records to see and go that is the longest thing ever and have me in their book so I’m striving towards that goal right now and I’m not stopping until I hit at least 3000 words and then I’ll do the construction thing and finish thing up tomorrow or sometime after now and I will be the author of the longest single sentence on the planet earth which will be a real accomplishment on my part so you can be real jealous right now because I am making history right in front of you and if you are still reading this I am truly impressed because this article must be getting really boring by now and maybe your not even reading this just scanning the article for periods which I’m afraid you will not find until the very end of this article which is a very, very, long way away and if you are a slow reader well sucks for you but now I have to use that construction thing and I will finish this and now I am back after a hard day at work but I’m still going now so get ready to rumble with this long thing called a sentence that is as long as Mt. Everest is tall and the Marinas Trench is deep and speaking of the ocean fish of all kinds live in the ocean such as puffer fish which are poisonous to eat if not prepared right and will make you die after and you ADMINS BETTER NOT DELETE THIS BECAUSE IT IS SOME RECORD and if you do delete it well I will have this saved and what will you do then you people who will want to delete this because you don't care about people trying to break records so don't delete this or I will boycott Uncyclopedia and will be very mad at you guys like how I am Mad at Tim for being so annoying just like Celebrities and loud people and people who don't brush their teeth which makes me think of killing myself except I wouldn't do that because I am some sort of miracle as you probably read before or not because you are tired of reading this jumble of words that are still making a grammatically correct sentence that is breaking records right now and I won't stop until you let me break some serious records like longest sentence and some other weird stuff that I might get an award for or something but I also want that Guinness record plaque that you get for setting a monster record like most consecutive noses picked with boogers in them or something completely obscure like that which is like a bunch of the articles on this website which are actually some times funny like how to solve a 1x1x1 Rubik’s cube which made me laugh pretty good and the star wars one is good too so never delete those two because they are funny unlike this article because this article is more boring than funny but who cares some retard might laugh at this bundle of crap and I think that I will put that crap tag on this article so people know that this article isn't really funny but that it is long and boring like Dances with Wolves and some other long movies that you actually fall asleep during which is hard for me to do so I tend not to nut I did when I watched Dances with Wolves because it was really boring like counting sheep to a trillion or some other large number that some little kid says he wishes he had that many dollars but he will never get that many dollars because there isn't even that many in circulation right now and if there was that would be some major inflation right there so don't think you can get that much money kid because then you would not be doing this country a favor which it desperately needs I might add so instead burn money instead of make it and lower inflation rates and do everyone a favor except for the people who are already really rich and don't care about inflation and would rather drive an escalade instead of a Prius in times like this with all of the gas prices and stuff that would drive up your bill but they don't notice because they have a lot of money and don't care therefore they should die and burn in hell with all of the lawyers and other bad people on this ball we call earth that really isn't a perfect sphere because of the mountains and valleys makes it look all jagged but from space it looks like a sphere but looks may be deceiving so don't think that the world is a sphere no matter what other people say and tell them to eat themselves when they try to convince you that the earth is really a sphere but it isn't just like how most ignorant people think that Columbus found America but he really didn't that was Leif Erickson, but Columbus really found the Bahamas thinking they were penis outside of china and he was wrong so everyone forget Columbus and remember some other sailor like Henry Hudson who tried to find the northern passage but didn't so his crew killed him but a he was a great man any way so remember him instead of Columbus or remember William Penn who created Pennsylvania or remember your grandma or someone but not Columbus so go ahead and think that the earth is flat even though it isn't and it can have for corners if you think about it so go die and fall off a cliff or something interesting like that or at least get a life that want’ to penis e a cool record like the one I'm setting right now so go to a pawnshop and buy a life or kill yourself and get a new one or something weird like that or I will force you to and if you are still reading this you are an amazing human because I forget most of the stuff I’ve written already except for the great white shark thing at the beginning of the article and I remember that I need to go see some good movies tomorrow or sometime in the near future like within a week or something but forget that I'm only at 3500 words now so lets go to 4000 penis and then maybe I’ll call it quits because this is boring and I would rather write another article that is good and long but not all one sentence like this one so let's come up with some final five hundred words or so to say before I stop writing all of the nonsense so let's brainstorm ideas like poo, ducks, lemons, flanges, more ducks and star wars which sound about like enough and I like star wars out of there so let's talk about some penis star wars stuff like Kit Fisto who has weird tentacle things on his head and Ki-Adi-Mundi who has two brains and is on the Jedi which is penis honor and privilege because it is and Kit Fisto gets killed by Palpatine in the 3rd movie like Mace Windu who is cool and I like his light saber because it is purple unlike the standard blue and green colors which I prefer green out of but most people seem to like the blue colors but who cares about them they like blue and green is better so you better not like blue or you are some lame person that will be lame for the rest of your life like some people who think that they are cool but are really posers and they live their life not knowing that they are continually mocked and made fun of all of the time behind their backs and that they are really dumb or something so go out and tell all of the posers you know to not be posers anymore and tell them that they should go jump in a lake or something insulting like that and make them run and cry and you can laugh at them and hope they don't tell their mom who will be mad at you so maybe you shouldn't even do that you should just laugh at them behind their backs while they live the poser life and I'm near 4000 words now so let me slow down now yeah I have about a hundred words left so let me write down the exact amount before I stop writing so let me finish this thing up by talking about donuts and their fried goodness and how they make you fat and stuff but they do taste good so you should eat them because they are good and they taste good even though you could get fat but no one cares so eat them and be happy and I am starting to near 4000 nhe's my frienguy is actualy a 40 year old man that eats penis for a living for the ability to never show the meerkats who's doing the write things oh and my last remark is that socialism does not work because look at Europe and Greece which is failing miserably; America always wins, there is no doubt about America's beauty, Amen and I just made it longer, and longer still as I continue to talk and talk and talk and talk throughout this, though I believe it would be referred to more as typing, so I will continue to type and type and type and type and type until I grow bored of it, and I have so I will take my leave soon, but not before I say that I somehow managed to make this already super long sentence longer, so HALLEILUIA, but we are not done yet everything I just said IS NOT RELEVANT to daily life, if you read this all you have no life, did u mention I like waffles and pancakes and people and gay marrage. What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my words. You think you can get away with saying shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your tongue. You didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo. wtf u say? don't make me verbally abuse ur ass. i will nerd, come at me autistic fag. play a real game kid. are you going to shut the fuck up kid? yea yea same. all you can do is copy cuz ur not original and probably dumb as shit. i told you i would verbally abuse ur ass. stop flaming and making deregratory [sic] remarks about me. better be careful who you pick a fight with, otherwise you get beat up kid. now stop bugging me kid. "Dank memer" fuck you ,you fucking "dank memer". i hope you choke on your food you fat fuck. i will push you down the empire state building if i have to. i've hired a hundred snipers to hunt you down and blow your fucking head clean off. if you think i have mercy, you are DEAD WRONG. i have already bought you a grave, right inside the pacific ocean. your family will be killed too, so that nobody will ever care about you ever again. nobody will know your name. i will burn all facts about you. i want you to know that you cannot run unless you leave the goddamn earth. i will shove your last shit inside your own mouth. i know you haven't reproduced yet, you gay ass virgin. why do i want to kill you? because you are a retarded fucking asshat. i hope your last breathing moments are of you masturbating, so that i can breed you with a donkey. just kidding, as that offspring would probably be smarter than you. go ahead and paste your "navy seal copypasta" all you want, that won't protect you, you little twat. spend your last day on /b/, you little shithead. how many motherfucking hours have you spent on pornhub? oh wait, i already know. if you think your safe due to your anonamousity, you are goddamn dead wrong. i know your street address, so good fucking luck hiding. you have a week left, tops. once i kill you i'll sell your steam account on the black market. you think you can store all you info on the internet. think again. i have millions of russian hackers looking at your browser history. any time you use a website the hackers will delete what you type. i have made sure everybody thinks you are a wanted fugitive by the name of "paul blart". one of my snipers see you right now. tl;dr eat fucking shit you spastic twat. Lol. I'm an ex army ranger, degree in microbiology, make six figures a year, and can bench over 250lbs multiple times. If you don't believe me, feel free to check my post history where I have to other people that wouldn't stfu about it and called me a liar. Soooo.... No? I think your projecting. I'm guessing you're young, probably fat AF, and still love with your parents. Or, just your slut of a mother because your dad was smart enough to run the fuck away. If you had a real dad in your life, you wouldn't be such a disrespectful little shit. Like I tell everyone else who tried to be an online tough guy. I'll tell you the town I live in over a PM and we can hang out sometime... Hope you aren't a guy who ever gets married, has kids, get divorced, and then have everything, including the kids you help raise taken away. When that does happen to you, since most marriages don't work out, and divorce are initiated 80℅ by the wife. When you come here looking for legal advice or needing help because the family court treats you like garbage for having a dick, I for one, will simply say, told you say. Then, probably laugh a little at you. Take care bud. I don’t give a fuck who you are or where you live. You can count on me to be there to bring your fucking life to a hellish end. I’ll put you in so much fucking pain that it’ll make Jesus being nailed to a cross in the desert look like a fucking back massage on a tropical island. I don’t give a fuck how many reps you have or how tough you are IRL, how well you can fight, or how many fucking guns you own to protect yourself. I’ll fucking show up at your house when you aren’t home. I’ll turn all the lights on in your house, leave all the water running, open your fridge door and not close it, and turn your gas stove burners on and let them waste gas. You’re going to start stressing the fuck out, your blood pressure will triple, and you’ll have a fucking heart attack. You’ll go to the hospital for a heart operation, and the last thing you’ll see when you’re being put under in the operating room is me hovering above you, dressed like a doctor. When you wake up after being operated on, wondering what ticking time bomb is in your chest waiting to go off. You’ll recover fully from your heart surgery. And when you walk out the front door of the hospital to go home I’ll run you over with my fucking car out of no where and kill you. I just want you to know how easily I could fucking destroy your pathetic excuse of a life, but how I’d rather go to a great fuckng length to make sure your last remaining days are spent in a living, breathing fucking hell. It’s too late to save yourself, but don’t bother committing suicide either… I’ll fucking resuscitate you and kill you again myself you bitch-faced phaggot. This is not a joke. My favorite niece found your video- it ruined Overwatch for her, even made her a bit depressed and ashamed for awhile for even liking it. She has early signs of depression, her mother died of heart failure when she was only 7 years old. The game? She liked it.... because so many of the characters reminded her of her mother.... who was also like a sister to me.... ....You WILL pay for this, you sanctimonious jaded smug piece of youtube shit. Yknow why? Because my older brother, the father of the girl who you hurt with your cancerous scorn, is INFINITELY more pissed at you than I am. He's an old fashioned soldier. 6.5 feet, about 300 pounds, ex-navy, doesn't go online much, doesn't have profiles, but he knows a few very good programmers he goes to sometimes when his kids run into 'trouble' online. He's the type who only knows one thing, something you millennials don't: how to get shit DONE. Not much gets under his skin really, you can call him any name under the sun, even strike him and he won't hit back (HIGH PAIN TOLERANCE)... but you fuck with his little girl and he becomes a totally different ma, a VERY dangerous and reckless man. Even if I, his own little brother, were to hurt his daughter emotionally, even on accident...he'd break me like a damn twig without a second thought quite easily too and I'm NOT a small guy. I can't tell you my bro's fighting 'technique' because it seems to be a sort of blend and I'm no pro, but I've NEVER seen anyone, even bigger guys, last more than 5 seconds against him before they were on the floor in tears, screaming for mercy, with at least one or two body parts broken and/or bleeding. After he consoled his crying daughter about a week ago, he informed me of what happened. Unlike him, I use words to express my anger, words you've see quite a bit I'm sure- since I'm about 50-60, as pissed as mWhat kind of public image are they trying to portray here!? The NERVE of that company! shakes head They really need to have a better publicist.... Ah well, there's your LTE rant of the day/week/month/year/insert time frame ehre. Enjoy ^ Heh, well, I’m once again back. This time from a long hiatus involving College life, kiwi’s and cannibalism _^ But let’s ignore that for now, shall we? Today we have MUCH more important things to discuss _^ Like a certain warranty on a certain pair of a certain headphones at a certain store that a certain someone works at a certain summer after returning from a certain college. Like most warranties, it guarantees the safety of the product for a limited time, and promises you fame, fortune, and your money back if it breaks during that time. That, however, is where this warranties similarities to the norm cease. Are you ready? waits How ‘bout now? wait wait STILL not ready? Bah, forget you, I’ll go on anyway. clears throat I shall now paraphrase the warranty to you, in all it’s arcane glory and splendor. This warranty shall not be in effect in the cases in which :1.) The product is purposefully damaged. 2.) The product is accidentally damaged. 3.) An act of God damages the product. ……….pause for effect There you have it folks. This beee-autiful warranty will NEVER be in effect. It just won’t. No matter what happens, the company issuing the warranty can just blame it on God. I can just see just such a scenario playing out in my head…….wavy thought lines scene transition indicating an imaginary sceneTed: Yes, I’m calling to cash in on my 90-day money back warranty?Customer Service Agent: snicker Oh really? polite, polite Would you please describe the damage or malfunction your purchase is experiencing?Ted: …it just stopped working.Customer Service Agent: dripping with phony concern Oh, gee, sir…but it seems that “just stopped working” falls under our “Act of God” clause, and our company cannot be held responsible for any vendettas that God may have against you.Ted:…………….you’re telling me that because God hates me, my headphones stopped working? And that you won’t give me my money back?Customer Service Agent: can’t hold it in any longer laughing until they gasp Oh…God…that gets me every time…gasp giggle That’s just great….Sir, I suggest wheeze That you go to Church…snicker And see if you can’t convince God to fix it for you….guffaw Because…you’re waaaaaaaay more likely to get him to reimburse you then us! hangs upSo, you see? I am extremely impressed by this quick thinking company. If only I, too, could think of a way to so totally, and successfully scam my customers. Oh. Wait. I do. Every day, ……darn those Customer Service Plans! How stupid does a customer have to be to think that they should pay $20 now to insure their purchase of some stupid grill? If it breaks it would probably take 10 bucks to fix it. sigh Why must K-mart compromise my honor? Ack! I spoke its name! flee Alright I'm Baaaa~ack! That's right. Back from the dead like a fiery phoenix of nonsense and ranting, I return from months and months of not posting (and to make things even more interesting i won't mention anywhere else on the site that I made a new lte post!) So, today's topic is just on the concept of writing. I go to a very math oriented college (i'm gonna be a programmer) so the people here....just....really...suck at writing. Completely! happy So for a small nominal $50* fee I shall teach you, the Hypothetical Reader, how to write grade A quality stories, guaranteed! ** (* $50 shall be payable in invisible, imaginary Official Flaming Chickens Lunar Colony's Dollars (approx $1 OFCLC is $1,337,000,000,00 in US dollars, circa 1957) ** not a guarantee) So are you ready? Let's start with a basic story even a kindergartner would write! people, but who gives a fuck about what we're doing, because this is all bullshit. In this post-Freudian age the institution of marriage, as a by-product of religiously-fuelled monogamy, has deteriorated to the point that amorphous sexual identity, as opposed to rigid religiosity, has become the primary self-defining feature of the individual.But has anything changed?Has the entrapment of woman via marriage which Blake called a "gilded cage" merely deteriorated to the "rusty prison" of the Bang Bus, representative of the anonymous male-centric sex and continued subjugation? FUNNY MEMES FUNNY VIDEO MEMES FUNNY VIDEO MEMES

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[geoduinn-blog]

On why I adore Prompto, the transient heart of FFXV, and the power of bromance

So I wrote this pile of meta immediately after finishing FFXV and shortly before some similar analyses wound up on YouTube. While I agree with a lot of them, I don’t feel like they go far enough in exploring the gravity of the train scene and its impact on the story, so I decided to upload this almost a year after the discussion was relevant. Please excuse the outdated references to an ‘upcoming’ DLC for Prompto.

FFXV is a flawed game. It is plotted sparsely and structured contestably. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, and its light-and-darkness lore feels okay at best, contrived the rest of the time. I don’t even want to mention its treatment of gender, or I’ll never write about anything else (and maybe this game deserves that). But the reverence and joy I often felt while playing FFXV must not be understated. As annoyed and even angry as I am at SquareEnix in the aftermath of one of its best games in a long time, the fact remains – this IS one of its best games in a long time. This is certainly not because of the flawless execution of each of its individual parts, and definitely not because of any attempts to respect its non-male fans, but because of what generally makes a FF game a FF game – the unforgettable atmosphere, the commitment to the characters, and the miraculous success of key dramatic scenes in the face of insurmountable narrative ridiculousness.

This hybrid between a tumblr meta and an HSC essay will explore that success through the framework of some of my favourite elements of the game: a scene wherein the villain Ardyn tricks the young protagonist Noctis into harming his best friend; the relationship between Noctis and Prompto, the bestie; and the expression of the core themes of the story through the world and atmosphere that these elements create together. Themes of friendship, transience, and sacrifice will be explored, but all in all, this is just an unstructured meditation on some things I love about this game – an ode to the flawed FFXV, crafted in its image.

Ok so the scene I described above really cements Ardyn as one of the most detestable FF villains for me, while also making me love Prompto all the more. In a nutshell, Ardyn swaps bodies with Prompto, and Noctis, following the logic of the story, attacks this supposed Ardyn. While the scene relies on a really stupid narrative device, its positive effect on the relevant character arcs is proportionately strong. My suspension of disbelief has just been brutally injured by a magical technique that I didn’t know the villain possessed until two seconds ago, but the scene still somehow works. It’s such a typically FFXV thing – logically pathetic, but narratively powerful enough that I yelled at my TV.

Okay. So I assumed straight up when Ardyn appears on the train and starts referring to Noctis as his ‘bro’, his ‘dude’, his ‘man’, that he’s just being a douchebag. I was ever so slightly suspicious that the game gave me only the option to attack Ardyn at this point, but I wasn’t exactly calm enough to question it when faced with the asshole who shivved my fiancé. I just wanted to shiv him back.

When he continues the gross façade with what seems to be mock surprise at the fact that Noctis is trying to kill him, it only serves to rile greater anger. Of course, he wants to kill you, you basket case. You’re just provoking him, now. Why are you acting like you’re one of us?

And then Noctis drops a few choice lines that will haunt me/him until the end of the game – things like “why have you been following us around all this time anyway; all this bad shit has been happening ever since you started tagging along behind us…” in other words, a violently sincere checklist of all of Prompto’s greatest fears. And this Ardyn, this Ardyn-who-isn’t-really-Ardyn, doesn’t fight back. He asks, disbelievingly, “Is that true?”

The horrible genius behind Ardyn’s plan is that it kills two birds with one stone – two beautiful, innocent, emotionally brutalised birds – by having them kill each other. What could be a worse fate for Prompto than finding out that his best friend doesn’t really love him; that, in fact, Noctis has been harbouring annoyance for him all along, and that this has festered into resentment the longer they stay together, and has finally become hatred now that the truth is coming out? What could be worse for Prompto than dying at Noctis’s hand?

At this point, let’s consider Prompto’s character. Prompto is a bit of a dork. He’s the same age as Noctis but has never considered himself as being in the same league as his friend, physically, intellectually, or socially. He has the lowest base stats of any of the four main characters. His defence sucks, his attack sucks, his magic sucks, and his HP is even worse than Ignis’s. His photographic hobby serves no practical purpose, unlike Noctis’s angling, or Gladio’s wilderness survival, or Ignis’s campside culinary creativity, which all mesh together ridiculously well. He’s the shortest in the group and the most feminine in appearance, and compensates the most (and apparently in the only way he knows how) with over-the-top body language and a tongue piercing and a wardrobe straight out of Hot Topic. Noctis even (affectionately) calls him a nerd on several occasions.

Prompto is painfully aware of his role in the group dynamic. He’s the annoying friend. The plebe in a party of royals. The self-conscious try-hard with no redeeming qualities, as far as Prompto himself is concerned. He is less aware of the strengths of his role, because they are not traditional male strengths, and because he is the only person in the group to successfully wield them.

Prompto is crucial to the main group because he is the best at maintaining relationships. He is the only one who is able to consistently offer the emotional support Noctis doesn’t let on that he needs; the only one with the courage to try to defuse the arguments between Gladio and the Prince, even at risk of harm; the one who puts aside his own anger to hold up Ignis when Ignis is stumbling blind through a swamp, fighting to stay himself while Noctis and Gladio just fight each other. When King Regis dies, not even Ignis maintains the level of composure and sensitivity that Prompto has. While the others crumble under an awkward and heartbreaking silence, Prompto softly attempts to comfort Noctis, while also instantly recognising that they need to flee, lest they face the same fate as Noctis’s father. While Ignis and Gladio sit in the dining car of the Tenebraean train in silence, Prompto attempts some semblance of normal conversation out of a desire to show Noctis that he is emotionally available.

His loud public persona and awkward tendencies mean that he comes across as slightly autistic or socially maladjusted. But he is far from stupid, and his reluctance towards anger and direct confrontation should not be mistaken for dullness. His instinct to support others just outweighs his instinct to respond to his own feelings.

But if he views these abilities as expendable, then why shouldn’t Noctis? By Prompto’s logic, the idea that Noctis might actually hate him and his loud, oblivious, materialistic personality is perfectly reasonable. That dramatic irony is the tragedy of Prompto’s character. It’s a tragedy that many players can recognise in some way, be it through themselves or who they once were, or through a friend or family member who underestimates their own importance.

Of course, Noctis does not hate Prompto. Far from it.

After chasing ‘Ardyn’ through the train car, suspended in a dreamlike state and mysteriously separated from his best friend, Noctis awakens to Prompto, lifting him to his feet. They scour the train together, stop the magitek troopers together, bring down a fleet together. So when Noctis sees Ardyn and Prompto standing atop the train, with Ardyn apparently having disarmed Prompto and now wielding Prompto’s gun against him, his reaction is instant. He bolts to save Prompto by throwing Ardyn from the train. It is at this exact, context-free, confusing, and somehow still earth-shattering moment that we realise Noctis has just flung his best friend off a moving train and is now stuck on top of it with Ardyn. Who proceeds to knock him out.

Now, let’s consider the relationship between the player and Noctis. Right from the start of the game, we occupy a space in the back of Noctis’s mind. We are the third-person in his RPG world, and while we have enough distance both visually and narratively to view him as his own distinct character, we are beckoned forward to identify closely with him, all the time. One of FFXV’s great strengths is its immersive power. Whether we are young and on our own clumsy journey into the responsibilities of adulthood, like Noctis, or whether the game serves as a portal into our past, it attempts to appeal to a universal sense of familiarity. It achieves this certainly not through the genders of the main dudes or the roles the game therefore assumes they should mould themselves to, but because the undercurrent of love is instantly recognisable to anyone lucky enough to have faced a challenge beside their friends. FFXV is about growing up by supporting the people you love and accepting their support in return, and as Noctis’s shadow, we get a first-row view of his appreciation of this. We feel his appreciation through the links we make to our own memories.

So, with this clarity of vision, in this spiral of dramatic irony with Prompto at the ugly centre, we know intrinsically that Noctis cares about him. This is not even something to be questioned. We see it in his affectionate exasperation and in the way his voice softens whenever he laughs at Prompto’s awful jokes. It’s in the sincerity of the scene at the motel, when Prompto admits his fears of inadequacy to Noctis, and Noctis tells him how much he values their friendship. We know how honest Noctis is in this friendship because his whole experience is one of helplessness in the face of destruction and thankfulness for what he has left – a lurching return to innocence, heralded by tragedy and softened by beauty.

But it isn’t only in these confessions that Noctis’s feelings are confirmed – it’s in the feeling that every moment the four friends spend together is precious and fleeting. The game is saturated with gentle scores and spontaneous bursts of music that ache to reflect the joy in the characters’ journey together. The lingering sadness in some of these pieces only reinforces the inkling that none of this can last – that they cannot be friends forever, because life has a way of ending things that should go on, and love hints always at sacrifice. Even game mechanics like the day-night cycle reinforce this feeling, as each sunset bathes the world in silence just a little too soon, and we think, ‘just one more fish, just one more hunt, just one more line of ridiculous, endearing dialogue’, but to push these boundaries would be to endanger our friends, and we are forced to retire for another night. The game sears moments of perfection into our mind, and in doing so, reminds us that each of these moments can only happen once. Every dungeon is new until you know what’s inside; every fish is a question mark until you catch it. (THIS IS A SERIOUS ESSAY I SWEAR.)

Prompto’s photos are perhaps the strongest mechanic of all when it comes to creating this sense of joyous ephemerality. What appears to be a game mechanic of little worth – indeed, what many hardcore reviewers criticise as a gimmicky addition to a weird bachelor party road trip of a game – holds arresting thematic relevance. Photography has been used in many games to express the irretrievability of a single moment, or to capture a second of the impossible (think of everything from Fatal Frame to Firewatch to Life is Strange – where photography exists in a game, it always provokes meaning, even if only sometimes offering a useful mechanic). Prompto is an indispensable member of the group – yes, because he’s funny, he’s kind, he’s supportive, and he puts himself in as much danger as anyone else to stop the Empire’s mad plans – but also because he is the group’s record keeper, the one producing proof that all of this happened. Prompto is the guy with the camera, and that means more than he can know. Noctis’s final request, after all, is to carry one of Prompto’s photos with him into death.

Let’s return to Noctis as a character, and try to understand the growth he experiences, leaving him at a point where he finally feels he can face that horrendous death in the absence of his friends. By the end of the game, he reaches a place  where he appreciates that he can fulfill his duty with only his friends’, fiancé’s, and father’s love to support him, despite that he will never see any of them again. He has accepted that the halcyon days of his closest relationships are gone forever. This is in large part due to the fact that he has proof of their time together. It is vivid in his memory even when the present feels like a dream – the sidequests and aimless travel easily last three-quarters of the full game, after all, and the endgame is more of a haunted epilogue than a true catharsis. It is in his ability to even sit on the throne, as alone, he would never have survived the return to a daemon-ravaged Insomnia. And it is in the final photo that he takes with him. Noctis is heartbreakingly aware that his power is all thanks to his friends, and his sacrifice is an attempt to reciprocate this love by returning them to a time when they were free.

The scene on the train and its brutal aftermath (yes, this essay thingy is still about the scene on the train) is a crucial turning point in Noctis’s journey. After Prompto is thrown form the train by none other than his best friend, who believed he was in fact Ardyn, Prompto is captured. Sure, there’s some as-yet-unpublished DLC that happens in the middle, probably involving more horrible experiences for Prompto, but we basically know where he ends up. Captured, detained, and tortured, and Ardyn seems to enjoy every second of it. When Noctis rescues Prompto, Iggy and Gladio in tow, he releases Prompto from the Shinra-esque rack he’s suspended on and supports his exhausted collapse. Prompto says, almost infuriatingly, “Tell me Noct… were you worried?” The millisecond it takes the decent player to hit “of course I was” and yell “I fucking love you, you prick” at the TV, Noctis is gathering himself for a reply. One almost expects anger, but instead, he replies with warmth and appreciation – not even pity. This seems to be the best possible response, because Prompto confesses he knew this was true – that Noctis would come to rescue him, and that the trick had been Ardyn’s design, and not a product of Noctis’s hatred. Their reunion is essentially a happy one, despite the circumstances.

Because this is FFXV, the scene feels slightly emotionally constipated as no actual reflection is afforded the exchange. The boys accept and go about their usual business (with the exception that Prompto, bruised and bleeding like everywhere, leans unmoving against the wall with a look on his face that suggests he’s probably going to be traumatised for the rest of his life). Noctis’s apparent calmness could come off as a little uncaring from a shallow analysis (AHAHAHA BUT WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE). However this is the first time in the entire game he has had any chill about anything. In short, he is returning Prompto a favour.

In long, he has come to terms with grief and better appreciates his role as someone who can bring stability to a traumatic time, and Prompto is a person who, for all his wildness, values that affection and stability, evidenced by the fact that he is usually the one providing it. Consider Noctis before this development. While a wonderful character, he was pretty typically a FF protagonist in his fear of letting people down, not being able to save someone, etcetera etcetera. Lightning couldn’t save Serah, Cloud couldn’t save Aerith, Tidus couldn’t save Yuna probably, Ashe let her fiancé and father die before she could raise a rebellion. Like her, Noctis couldn’t save Luna or Regis. For the whole first half of the game, his objective was to find Luna, to reunite with her, to bring her into the fold and finally marry her. Twelve years of betrothal come to a clamorous end when Ardyn murders Luna, and it echoes straight back to the death of Regis at the hands of Ardyn’s imperial army, at the start of the game. Losing not only his father and his lover but also his best friend would ruin Noctis. Talcott’s grandpa’s murder, and then Gladio’s injuries, followed by Ignis going blind, are the start of Noctis’s realisation of the length his friends will go to, to protect him. His reaction, understandably, is guilt. He hasn’t accepted his own political weight or the personal sacrifices he must make at this point, which is frankly a perfectly healthy and decent reaction to finding out that people are willing to die for you because your powers can save the world or whatever. We see how distraught Noctis is when Prompto falls, and he has to recount the ordeal to Ignis over the phone. No question from our end – Noctis cares immensely about Prompto.

At this point, he is still not the force of stability that we see him as at the end. It is through the next few days of quiet travel, the realisation that night is coming and will never end, and the slow, sad appreciation for these final moments with Ignis and Gladio that Noctis realises what everyone has been fighting for. They’ve been fighting for each other and for him, sure, because they’re friends, but they’ve also been fighting for that joy that they once knew and want to restore to the world. Prompto, too, has sacrificed more than a simple plebe should ever have been expected to sacrifice in this savage political diatribe, because he wanted to support Noctis. Noctis seems to realise, in this twilit interval between the open world of the past and the claustrophobic corridors of the future, that the time for him to become a stable force for his friend is now.

When Noctis frees Prompto from one of the most disturbing locations in the game, more akin to something from Amnesia than FF, his character arc completes. His developmental climax has already happened, and the endgame follows in swift, ghostly steps. Were you worried about me? Of course I was. The moment Prompto is thrown off the train marks a climax in Noctis’s grief about what they have left behind and what has been ruined. His reunion with Prompto forms an assurance that, despite the finality of this sadness, their adventure has fostered some future cure. The small, fleeting beacons of joy, now gone, signed a pathway toward eventual hope. Prompto will never recover, and Noctis will never be able to go back and stop what happened to him. But he is alive, and Noctis can make sure there is a future in which he can rest, and continue recording the passage of those moments vital to life.

We are important to each other. Our short time together was precious and transformative. The things we did together we may never do again, but to believe you mean any less to me because you’ll be in my past soon (OR because you’re a magitek trooper – surprise) is so, so wrong. That wreck of a bachelor party is the reason we made it so far.

And so this mess of an analysis winds to a close.

I’ve covered a few important points in this ridiculous monologue. The success of FFXV as an examination of transience and the power of friendship, probably. Some stuff about Ardyn was in there as well I think.

I don’t know. This game didn’t have a great deal of closure and neither does this essay. But I feel like there was some good stuff in there. I wouldn’t have spent so much time on it, otherwise. I wouldn’t have loved so deeply if that moment of perfection had never happened.

But all good things come to pass. The game, Noctis, this essay. That’s it.