#like if this is more setup for a larger narrative it works

[corseque]

I honestly just wanted one single plot step that I could not predict given the 10 year wait. More behind the cut, I talk about Emet too, and I'm comparing his writing favorably to Solas' writing and why it worked better for me personally, but I am just talking about the writing skill that went into the games and not the dudes themselves, I love them both dearly of course. idk this is a mess and I am not going to edit it for clarity

For me, the game was a series of me saying

"ok I knew that. cool."

"oh yeah, I knew that. I guess it's good that the larger fandom knows about that now."

"nice, but yeah I already knew that too"

"that was something we've been talking about a lot for years"

"this thing they are acting like is a huge enormous reveal that the characters could not possibly have deduced through simply thinking about it in depth over the 10 years... the fans easily figured out by thinking about it in depth 10 years ago. So you would think his girlfriend would be able to figure it out more easily than we did. Like, why couldn't the game have been like 'oh lavellan already figured that out a while ago' it would have cost them nothing"

"this is something I've been thinking about for years, and now that it's being revealed, the companions' reactions to it are very irritating and jarring and unnecessary and I really dislike the experience I'm having right now, in this, the hour of my greatest triumph"

"this thing that is happening on my screen right now is something that I wrote an essay about 2 years ago describing how it would be a letdown if it happened without the correct setup"

"this way that they're characterizing Solas makes him less likable and less interesting than I have been finding him for all these years, and I have had people tell me 'no, he's simpler than you think' for years but I guess I was wrong, he really is simpler than I thought, so that fucking sucks. I wish I could take that information out of my brain."

"this thing is a retcon of information I have been thinking about for 10 years, and so I don't know how to follow along with this new direction, and I'm not sure if I even want to because it's not particularly interesting anyway"

"aw that was sweet"

"why is it like, so very impossible to have an honest back-and-forth with my favorite character about the dilemma that was most interesting to me about the previous game"

and then, as soon as, like, the other fans had caught up to the Solas lore that was really obvious from the other games, the game was.... over without anything surprising happening, or introducing a new element or plot point or perspective, or a real true twist (or two, or three) for those of us who have thought about it too hard for too long. It was very simple and easy, much, much, much, much easier than I was imagining. It all felt sort of like that Nicholson quote:

The thing was, the whole story was so interesting to think about because in 10 years, I couldn't figure out a good solution to it!!!!! It's why I was never able to write post-game fanfic about it. So I was stoked to find out some reveal we never knew about, some new information, in maybe a SERIES of steps of new information, that made the situation more complicated but also something that could be navigated by everyone involved. I know it was asking for a lot, but they had TEN YEARS, and they seemingly had set up the things they did in DAI on purpose, so surely they had some idea of a complex and satisfying narrative that would reconcile everyone.

The reason why I was expecting this is because FFXIV did a very similar story arc, which was started AND concluded WITHIN those 10 years (so it took the FFXIV team far less time to deliver as well). And the conclusion to the story in FFXIV did what I was expecting Dragon Age to do. So I thought, "holy shit, if this is the FFXIV version of this plot, how much more complicated is DA4 going to be!?!?" The DA devs also PLAYED FFXIV so they were completely aware, several years ago, of a satisfying story ending that was pretty darn similar.

People are probably going to think "oh, well Chelsea was disappointed because she spent too much time building it up in her head" but that's exactly it - I actually speculated and thought about FFXIV's story IN DEPTH NONSTOP for a year+ before its ending came out, and the ending absolutely blew me away. FFXIV Endwalker managed to introduce information and new story elements that I was not able to figure out in the YEAR I spent speculating on the ending of FFXIV's story. It took a complicated situation and revealed several several more facets to it that I was not able to predict, but were very interesting and thematically compelling, and took us all to surprising and climactic places that we could not have predicted.

Endwalker ("end" is in the title on purpose) too, was written to be THE ULTIMATE SATISFYING ENDING for a very long-running story in the exactly way that Veilguard SHOULD HAVE for Dragon Age, so while this complexity is being explored, FFXIV also gave catharsis to many different plot threads that have been built up through the previous expansions, until finally it ends with a bang. The story is desperately good to me, I loved it, it gave me closure for Dragon Age long before Veilguard was even revealed, and going back and looking at its story has made this whole thing far less painful for me.

So, I actually did not have a picture in my mind for how things SHOULD go. I just had the thought "I hope it's complicated and there are points of view or facts that we haven't before been exposed to, and the situation is resolved respectfully for Solas, not making him look like a fucking idiot (lol, the only thing I asked for). I don't even care what happens to Solas and Lavellan, I just need the story to be complicated and interesting to think about. Please, god, don't let it be "solas is wrong and he just needs to be convinced" because that's like the simplest story you could tell with this setup"

(btw they managed to tell Emet-Selch's story without making him seem like he's being an idiot on purpose or can never get anything right, and in fact the more the story goes on, the more you think of him as smart and capable and cool, so it is possible to write.... I wasn't asking for the entire moon)

And I played it and... yeah. Most of the story beats were more simple than I wanted them to be, a lot of them didn't make sense in my heart given the writing from Inquisition. (This is another essay, but if Solas' thematic story arc was always about him needing to let go of regrets, why was his personal quest the way it was? After that quest, doesn't he end up regretting not doing more....? Why did he never really talk about regret during Inquisition? If he was so trapped by regret, why was he able to do so many actions? It doesn't mesh well to me. The whole regret thing was very quarter-baked to me, I don't even like thinking about it.) His story never seemed like one that was as simple as being about one man's regrets, but then, I guess, it was always just about one man's regrets.

Emet-Selch's personal storyline (and the way it interacts with and affects the larger story) is very similar but much more cohesive and satisfying to me. It would be difficult to explain why without the aforementioned 5-hour essay. Emet-Selch's story IS about grief and anguish on a world-shaping scale in a similar way that Solas' was apparently always about letting go of regret, but Emet's story was also very pointedly and beautifully about that one theme for the entirety of his story from every tiny detail, from beginning to end - meanwhile, it seemed to me that they tried to introduce 'regret' as the main thrust of Solas' story only in the short story with the Regret demon onward.

From Inquisition just by itself, the closest I personally could get to a story theme for Solas was his inability to trust others hurting him and the world, but his trusting others in DA4 wasn't really addressed to my satisfaction. He is never required to trust anyone before the ending, he never opens up or makes himself vulnerable at all. People find out information about him, he never really dynamically opens himself. So the personal story I thought he had was never addressed at all, while a new one about regret was introduced that never made a ton of sense to me. And I don't think this is just because of my expectations - my reaction to FFXIV proves that I am able to meet good writing where it goes in surprising directions, as long as it's interesting and thoughtful and clear.

And I think this might be part of what people felt was off about the ending - Solas is sort of uninvolved in the revelations that are about him, and doesn't do much to be part of his own ending. Part of what I loved about Solas in Inquisition is that he is not controlled by you in any way, and so he feels like his own person with a very strong sense of character.

Anyway, Emet-Selch, in a very comparable and arguably more extreme plot position, is very involved in the revelations about himself, he always feels like a very strong character who cannot be affected by the player, and the whole situation is handled with deft emotion and care and delicacy. The story is comparatively very uninterested in litigating Emet-Selch or putting him on trial - the story allows you to simply feel the way that you feel in an organic way, and Emet's story spends that energy instead actually exploring his thematic material about grief and legacy, and the larger story theme of existentialism instead, in a way that is very refreshing and interesting. I've seen a lot of western stories tie themselves in knots over "redemption" and frankly it's almost never been interesting at all. Who cares about any of that. lol

(Now, I guess this is a matter of preference, because some people really like being able to shape a character's story, but idk I rewatched the ending of FFXIV and even though there wasn't a choice with Emet, because it isn't a branching story, his story felt more satisfying to me, maybe because there isn't a patronizing choice to be made for him. He is who he is, and he fulfills a very beautiful narrative role and purpose that no other character could in the story.)

I don't know how this could have been improved to me and still allowed players to choose Solas' ending for him, but I can actually think of a few different methods, none of which involve Rook condescendingly and patronizingly lecturing Solas as if Solas had never thought about a single aspect of this horrible situation he's in before that very moment that Rook lectures him lmfao.

All this to say... idk I'm writing this and I am not going back to edit it so it's stream-of-consciousness. But yeah

I just wanted the story to be complicated on a few more levels than I could have predicted. I genuinely don't care what happened, but I thought of a few twists like the Veil coming down and yeah, I was expecting A Single Twist or reveal to happen. In a Dragon Age game.

I wanted Solas to seem cool and capable and noble and smart, and actually feel like he was as old and experienced as he is.

I wanted a clear theme I could sink my teeth into

Like notice I didn't even say anything about Solavellan. Like I never in 100 years thought they were getting a happy ending where they were both alive in bodies, and I like that we got that, but I would honestly trade it for a more complicated story. To me, if a story is sad you can always write fanfic, but if a story isn't COMPLICATED, that's a much more urgent issue.

These 3 things DA4 didn't give me in a way that satisfied me but FFXIV did. anyway idk the way my hyperfixations work, I completely switch to a new subject so talking about Dragon Age is actually hard for me right now.

[bringthekaos]

Alrighty, here we go. Act III.

Mostly Jayce and Viktor centric, but with some wider thoughts as a whole thrown in. As usual, this is all my opinion, you’re free to disagree with me. Just don’t be a dick.

I am torn. I’m appreciative of the visuals and the JayVik crumbs (even though Christian Linke’s comments post-show have soured it to queerbait for me). But mostly I am disappointed. And I so badly didn’t want to be. I had such high hopes (and that’s probably my fault. I expected too much). They completely massacred Viktor’s character. There was such beautiful setup in season one of his background as a Zaunite living in Piltover. So much of his lived experience came from that—the oppression, the inequality, the xenophobia, the inaccessibility. It formed his opinions and his values, and that’s why he was so adamantly anti-weapon making. That’s why his number one goal was always to help the people in need down in Zaun. They showed us that he was a tinkerer and a builder, that he valued the ingenuity in machinery. They gave us that cute little boat from his childhood and the fucking Hexclaw.

Viktor was supposed to be a Zaunite champion. He was supposed to embrace Techmaturgy as a direct opposition to magic/Hextech. He was supposed to undergo his transformation into the Machine Herald of his own volition, with his own agency and bodily autonomy (yes I know it also stemmed from severe depression and one could argue that it messed with his decision-making, but still… he did that shit on his own). And there were so many opportunities to go this route in Arcane, and it would have worked!! If Viktor augmented his hand and his leg, but it cost Sky her life, he could realize the cost of magic, and turn to Tech. He could have been exiled back to Zaun, where he was supposed to be, and then the shitshow really could have unfolded—having one of Hextech’s creators now working for the other side.

And I know they had to change it so that he could be a bigger part of the overall narrative, as his original lore was rather disconnected. But there were much cleaner ways to go about it than disrespecting his entire character arc by turning him into a grimdark edgelord ethereal magic Jesus who no longer notices or even seems to care about the oppression and class warfare going on in his birthplace. Like. I’m sorry, him “curing” Salo? OG Viktor would have taken one look at a representative of the very oppression he stood against and blown him to kingdom come. (And yes, I also realize that he did it in Arcane because he was “under the influence” of the Hexcore, which only wanted to “infect more people.” But that’s another problem I have. This was never really made all that clear. And watching him go from “we will not be building weapons, that’s not why we invented Hextech/there is always a choice/we were meant to improve lives, not to take them” to making him turn human beings into weapons?? I don’t care that they tried to salvage his character by suggesting he wasn’t in control, it still undermines everything about him. And GOD, original League Vik had so much DEPTH. He was a hypocrite, he was still partly human and so he retained pieces/parts of all the things he preached against, which made him a wonderful contradiction. And he had a sense of humor and whimsy too! He enjoyed sweet milk, he cracked dry jokes and was sarcastic as fuck. He had a personality! And now he’s just… empty space man blinded by forced apathy.

And I think all of this is part of a larger problem—they wanted to use Arcane as a stepping stone to future shows, and as such, the class warfare and systemic oppression plot from season one was completely abandoned. They tried to solve it with “well they have to band together to face a bigger enemy.” Which in my personal opinion is a cheap cop out. There are always bigger fish, that doesn’t change the fact that Zaun has been living in Piltover’s filth with Piltover’s boot on their neck for generations. They’ve suffered injustices most of us can’t even comprehend. And then suddenly we’re supposed to believe they all band together to face this threat, stand side by side with their oppressors because Jayce made one speech about it? With no proof? And then all they get from the deal is one Zaunite seat on the council? And they’re okay with that? I never expected the show to solve systemic oppression, but I also didn’t expect them to abandon it this spectacularly.

The Noxus/Black Rose plot was clearly thrown in to set up future shows, and to show Netflix/investors/whoever that this massive financial investment has a future. And it destroyed the Piltover/Zaun story. I think this could have been a totally isolated story just about Piltover and Zaun, and been completely successful. In fact, I would have definitely watched future projects despite them not taking place in the setting of Arcane. And I’m not at all saying I don’t like Ambessa and Mel. I was very intrigued by the story of a warmonger like Ambessa facing her comeuppance, not just for her warmongering but for her affair with a damn MAGE. And her daughter trying desperately to break the mold her mother has set for her, while also struggling with who she is and these new, incredible powers she has. That shit is juicy as hell, and honestly should have been its own show. But throwing it into Arcane in season 2 with absolutely no hint of the Black Rose or its impending approach (beyond “the people who killed your brother don’t think the score is settled”) in season one, it just felt like the aforementioned cop out to get Piltover and Zaun to get along. And in doing so, they steamrolled Viktor to make him a bigger player in the narrative.

Did I like the final astral plane scene with Jayce and Viktor? God, yes. Is it one of the most beautiful confessions of love and eternal devotion I think I’ve ever fucking seen? Also yes. But it kinda feels like a bandaid on a bullet wound. I got the love I always knew remained between Jayce and Viktor, but I paid for it with Viktor’s entire character. Not to mention Christian Linke keeps pouring salt in the fucking wound, denouncing JayVik and “bromancing” them, and then also suggesting in one interview that Jayce and Viktor are actually fucking dead, and in another that Viktor will be back in future projects (with no mention of Jayce, which suggests that they’re turning him into Sky 2.0 and that he’s dead but Viktor isn’t). And that completely undermines the entire ending of season 2’s “intrinsically entwined/always you/in every universe.” And I know, I shouldn’t listen to this dude’s opinion on the matter, he’s not the only one making this thing, and honestly it was the easiest unfollow/mute of my life. But how hard is it to just shut the fuck up and let people enjoy things? To not comment one way or the other, let people think what they want, and rake in your millions in the process? Haven’t you ever heard of rainbow capitalism, my guy?

Ugh. I’m very sorry for being so negative, I didn’t want to be. I still love the show, and I’d still like to keep writing JayVik, even though it’s just been made near-impossible (I’m actually really glad that I never finished Oasis now, cuz I can go back to that and expand it well beyond what I originally planned cuz… it’s all I have left). I’m just mourning my cyborg wife, and the fact that goddamn SMEECH had what Viktor was supposed to. Hopefully the more time goes on, I can reconcile these changes and embrace them, cuz I love this fandom, I love this ship, and I don’t wanna lose it.

Anyway, I will still be sharing art and memes and posting analyses, because you can like a piece of media and still be critical of it.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

@grimharuspex in the comments of that @zoe-oneesama post said it the best; Butterfly should’ve been Emotion and Peacock should’ve been Desire. I know that Zoe has a limit on what canon she changes for her comic which I respect/appreciate given the thought she puts into it (even when canon’s various nonsensical magic rules are especially grating like this) but how do you think things would’ve gone in-show if this was the setup from the get-go? On that note, do you think it’s a good setup for canon in the first place? Why or why not?

This is going to be a rather long lecture on lore and world building and how the peacock fails on every level, so before we get into that, let's start with the positives. I saw a few people pointed out the Desire idea - that being that the peacock's associated Force should have been Desire while the butterfly got Emotions - and I think that they're absolutely right. That one tiny change does fix the surface level issues and make the peacock make sense for its larger role in the narrative.

It would complicate the whole magical slave thing and also mean that you probably have to rework a few of the minor sentimonsters, but generally speaking, it makes way more sense for Desire to birth a fully realized human being. The sentipeople being people while also coming from a single emotion will always be total BS in my eyes.

At the same time, I blame no one for just sticking to canon's lore. Reworking the lore is a serious thing and even I only do it when I'm telling a lore-heavy story. There are plenty of stories where I just stick to canon's nonsense because the lore isn't important.

Now that we've done our positives, let's getting into the negatives! The issue of the day is this: changing the Force from Emotions to Desire doesn't solve the larger problems with the peacock. Problems that we'll now get into. Buckle up, this is gonna be a long one.

Issue 1: Power Diversity

While I would not call myself a superhero expert, I have seen a good deal of superhero and magical girl team shows in my time. Most of you probably have. If you think about the power sets that we see in those shows, then you'll notice that one thing is pretty much always true: every power is unique OR the powers are all closely related in some way. You never do both because the two concepts don't mix. It makes no sense for half of the characters to have totally unique powers while the other half have copies unless there's some sort of special thematic reason for this like siblings sharing a power.

Without that sort of explanation, it just feels weird and it also makes the characters feel redundant. You don't need two speedsters or two supermen! One is enough. Heck, Avatar the Last Airbender takes place in a world where whole civilizations have the same power and they STILL didn't duplicate powers for the core team because they understood that it's important to keep the characters unique.

Miraculous is pretty obviously supposed to be the type of show where the powers don't overlap. Every character gets a unique power that's uniquely suited to them. We even have this confirmed in universe during that confusing scene in the episode Destruction where Orikko - the rooster - tries to explain how his powers work:

Orikko: No, you're mistaken! Time travel is Fluff's power and I can't grant the power that already belongs to another Kwami!

This brings us to the problem with the peacock: it is not a unique power. It's derivative on multiple levels.

Derivation Level One: Akumas

The first and most obvious level is how similar sentimonsters are to akumas. In terms of how they're normally used in the narrative, they're pretty much the exact same power to the point that you literally can't tell which one you're dealing with until someone tells you. The narrative uses them interchangeably with some episodes using an akuma, some using a sentimonster, and some using both.

In fact, I thought that it was really weird that Gabriel didn't switch to maining sentimonsters back in season four. You had akumas breaking their bonds left and right, which is a thing that sentimonsters literally cannot do, making them the obvious fix to this new problem.

To really highlight the whole "indistinguishable power" issue, allow me to highlight some dialogue from Kuro Neko to show that this is very much an in-universe problem:

Cat Walker: You think that's Cat Noir? Ladybug: Of course it's Cat Noir! He must've been akumatized because he regrets having given up his Miraculous!

Ladybug: You'll see once we deakumatize him. (She runs towards Kuro Neko.) Cataclysm his bell, I'm sure that's where the akuma is! Cat Walker: Hang on! (follows her) Ladybug, what if that's a sentimonster? If I use my power on him, he'll lose control and become more dangerous!

Cat Walker: (cringes) What I mean is you're right to doubt, and I agree with you. Until we know for sure whether we're dealing with a sentimonster or someone who's been akumatized, we shouldn't make any brash decisions. (Kuro Neko leaps away.) Let's find out more.

This sort of confusion should be impossible unless it's the result of clever planning by the villain, but that's not what we're dealing with here. Kuro Neko was not about Gabriel tricking the heroes. He sent out a normal sentimonster having no idea that Chat Noir had just quit. And yet Ladybug had no idea that this was a sentimonster. She looked at it and saw an akuma.

Cat Walker also didn't know that it was a sentimonster. He just knew that it wasn't Chat Noir, which was probably the only reason that he thought to question Ladybug and warn her to be cautious. They only realize that it's a sentimonster once they learn that there's a child inside it.

This is canon accidentally telling us that akumas and sentimonster are just straight up indistinguishable unless you see then made or do some experiments to figure out what you're dealing with. That's not a good look if your claiming that each miraculous grants a unique power. It is, however, a great lead in to the second power that the peacock copies: the power of illusions.

Derivation Level Two: Illusions

I said above that it should take careful planning for a sentimonster to be confused with an akuma. While we never see that type of carefully planned setup, we do see sentimonsters used to successfully impersonate humans on several occasions. One example is the episode Optigami which gave us SentiNino and SentiAlec. Seemingly perfect clones of Nino and Alec who did whatever Shadow Moth told them to. We even see a scene where Shadow Moth is telling SentiAlec exactly what to say.

You know who else gives us this type of scene? Rena Furtive in Rocketear:

Ladybug: You said that if Nino could have heard what you were saying, there'd be no misunderstanding? Rena Furtive: Absolutely! Ladybug: How well do you remember what you guys said on the balcony? Rena Furtive: Every. Word. Ladybug: Do you think you could make... a sound illusion? Rena Furtive: Totally.

Is there any doubt in your mind that the peacock can do anything that the fox can do? What's even worse is that the peacock does illusions better than the fox! Fox illusion vanish in a puff of smoke if you touch them. SentiNino was real enough to wield a miraculous because he was a fully corporeal illusion that would have kept on going if he hadn't been snapped away. This brings us to derivation level three: the power of creation.

Derivation Level Three: Creation

The peacock doesn't just outshine the fox, it outshines the ladybug! Lucky charms vanish as soon as Ladybug detransforms. Sentimonsters last forever. The ladybug is only useful in battle as it requires a super villain to cast its cure (which is asinine, but let's not get into that here). The peacock can be used at any time. The ladybug doesn't give you what you want, it just gives you a puzzle to solve. The peacock can fulfill your deepest desires and even create life.

Outside of the extremely specific circumstances that the show gives us - aka an ongoing battle with a super villain - the ladybug is kind of useless. If you want the power of Creation, you're going to use the peacock. This brings us to our second main issue: power balancing.

Issue Two: Power Balancing

The ladybug and the black cat are supposed to be the two most powerful miraculous in existence, but it really doesn't feel like that's true. Sure, if you put them together they rewrite the universe, but that's not part of their individual base power sets. At an individual level, they don't actually feel all that powerful when compared to the butterfly and the peacock. It's more like Marinette and Adrien are smart enough to make their very limited powers work while Gabriel and Nathalie are dancing along easy street and making fools of themselves with every step.

I've mentioned before that I can forgive the butterfly's overpowered nature because this is an episodic show. They want each episode's fight to be unique and interesting and so we have to give them room to have one power set that should be an insta-win card, but isn't because plot.

I can give them that grace once. I cannot give it to them twice.

There is no reason why both the butterfly and the peacock need to feel more powerful than the supposed most powerful miraculous in existence. I've even talked to one person who is rewriting canon with the assumption that the peacock and the butterfly ARE the most powerful ones because they are! Nothing proves this better than the fact that they've both made creations that can copy the powers of the ladybug and the black cat (see: Copycat, Strikeback, Ladybug, Sandboy, Miraculer, and probably a few others that I'm forgetting).

They're also the only miraculous that don't require an active user. You can create a sentimonster or an akuma, then detransform and have a snack while your creation does whatever you need it to do. That's so incredibly broken and such a terrible move in terms of power balancing. Either have all of the powers require active users or, at the very least, have more of a mix of active and passive powers. Why do Mirage, Shelter, and Lucky Charm vanish when their caster's detransform while akumas and amoks stick around? There is no in-universe logic to explain this. It works this way because that's what the writers needed these miraculous to do. A fact that makes it impossible to get invested in the lore of this show.

When designing a complex magic system, you generally don't want "because plot" to be the only answer to why things work they way they do. You want your magic system to feel real and organic to the world. That's how fictional worlds come to life! If Miraculous' magic system was well designed, then you could take it and use it to tell a wildly different story set in the same universe, but you can't. Everything about it is designed around making canon's story work and not around making an immersive world that you can almost believe exists.

There are stories that I wouldn't hold to that standard, but they're mostly short form stories. Anything as big and complex as Miraculous needs to have a solid lore system backing it or else you lose all sense of stakes. A great example of this is the Bunnyx problem where you know that she can show up at any time and reset the timeline even if things are happening in her own past, so why do we need to worry about bad things happening? And how are the ladybug and the black cat the most powerful ones when you have nonsense like time travel and the power to create human-like creatures? Early canon lore was decently solid, but the longer the show goes, the more nonsense the lore gets and that makes me sad because I love good lore.

Some Final Thoughts

You may have noticed that I didn't really talk about the sentikid issue in this post. That's because my dislike of the peacock came long before that fun little twist. While sentiAdrien is yet another great reason to dislike the peacock, it didn't need to be a thing for the peacock to be a terrible idea. Take away the sentikids and you still have an incredibly derivative and lore-breaking power set that never should have made it into the show.

I actually completely redesigned the peacock for my own rewrite which I start plotting back when I was first watching season three, long before sentiAdrein was even on my radar. That's not something that I usually do in my fix it stuff. I usually try to stick close to canon and make more minor tweaks, but the peacock is so fundamentally world breaking that I had no choice but to do a total overhaul. This is already an incredibly long post, so I won't go into that here. I'll save it for another ask that's sitting in my inbox. I'll schedule them to post back to back.

For this post, I'll just end by pointing out that switching the peacock to Desire makes it derivative of and arguably better than the pig, too, since the pig can only tease you with what you want. The peacock actually gives it to you. In fact, I'd say that the peacock may be a better pig even without the switch!

You can also argue that the peacock is better than or at least equal to the rooster and the goat because they're also just variations of the butterfly and the ladybug's power. Like there is legitimatly potential in taking those miraculous and doing an AU where each Kwami's power is an aspect of creation because the powers are so awkwardly intertwined. Probably make the peacock the master and all others spawn from that one or something like that.

Anyway, this is why you can't design powers around characters if you want good lore and a large team! You have to start with the powers and go from there! It's why I edit Nino's character to be more of a protector since that's his supposed True Force! Also because I want him to be more narratively important but that is a rant for another day.

[phantomchick]

Naruto and being the Underdog

Okay so recently I was discussing naruto's characterisation in the comments section of a fanfic and the author was explaining that they don't like/never vibed with Naruto's character (which is totally fair). But then they explained how they felt the supposed underdog setup was contrived and didn't really work because Naruto never actually starts at zero thanks to his jinchuriki powers and being the yondaime's son. (And so here I am, on my soapbox to discuss how Naruto and the concept of being an underdog relate.)

On a physical level perhaps this applies, but Naruto places an equal (if not larger) amount of focus on the emotional action as it does on its plot action.

On an emotional level he has to work for each and every one of his personal relationships.

He wants to be hokage a role he can only take if he is both respected by his village and powerful enough to protect it. It''s a twofold goal. And in terms of the social aspect this is clearly stacked against him due to the hatred and exploitation of jinchuriki as well as shinobi in general, achieving emotional connection and dialogue between people who are used to might makes right or who are pre-disposed to look down on him or want to kill him puts him firmly at a disadvantage narratively.

With the notable exception of Hinata whose love is unconditional, whether it's Tsunade, Neji, Sasuke or Gaara or even Kurama the respect and attention that naruto craves are things he actively pursues in both good and bad ways and he earns them through his own effort.

He does this both by striving to understand these very different people and where they're coming from as well as surviving all the shit the world throws at him. Emotional and physical tasks.

In terms of being a jinchuriki and getting the rasengan easily thanks to his shadow clone bullshit / birthright connections to the yondaime It must first be acknowledged that the jinchuriki power is more of a disadvantage than a boon to him at first. First, because of kurama actively going out of his way to mess with his chakra control as a kid while doing the leaf exercise he was unable to learn the regular clone jutsu; it also results in him experiencing the trauma of discrimination and isolation from a young age which could easily have led to festering self-hatred and alienation if not for Iruka's intervention, it results in multiple S ranks who are fully capable of killing even shippuden level Naruto targetting him, and while the trade-off of boundless energy and survive-ability is immense those same boundless resources have the potential to burn him alive if he loses emotional control/gives into his most negative emotions - that's basically making the subtext text at that point, the story is about his emotional development and growth, something his "OP buffs" don't earn for him. Let's talk about boundless chakra resources for a moment. At the end of the original series, he only knows the rasengan; the rasenshuriken, the shadow clone justu and sage mode/yinyang mode by the end of the series and that's like 5 justu tops if we're counting yin/yang/bijuu mode and sage mode as jutsu. The majority of what he learned from jiraiya for three years seemed to be taijutsu only with a side of failed bijuu control. Naruto has his jinchuriki chakra from the start but that doesn't translate to an ability to use it, he has to spend hours working out how to do the shadow clone, he did not figure out how to do the jutsu because of his chakra even if that was the reason he was able to use it at all, and when it comes to the rasengan I will cite [someone who deleted their reddit account] here:

Naruto completed the first stage in three days and one night. He figured out how his chakra needed to move to burst the water balloon (thanks to a cat) but because he didn't have the necessary chakra control, he improvised by using another hand. He completed the second stage in three weeks or so. The next day(?), Jiraiya gave him a hint to improve his focus which allowed him to finally complete it. And the third stage was completed seven days later to win his bet with Tsunade. Once again, Naruto didn't have the control to focus his chakra the correct way despite his continuous efforts. It wasn't until he came up with another improvised method by using a shadow clone to focus the chakra that he was able to complete the final stage.

Meaning he is the one who comes up with unorthodox methods, such as also using his other hand, or using a shadow clone to focus the chakra, to learn it in four and a half weeks but he still had to figure out how to do it all himself. The shadow clone would've been useless without his understanding of the jutsu or his ability to do the individual parts of the jutsu. He earns the jutsu and could conceivably have learned it the old fashioned way were he not under an artificial time limit as both Jiraiya and Kakashi, both without jinchuriki power, know it and can use it.

Now I'll talk about his supposed privilege as the yondaime's child: Sasuke gets chidori and later kirin thanks to HIS connections but that's never remarked on in the same way. And in fact most people in the naruto-verse learn a big jutsu from their clan or parent; see Might Gai, the genius of hard work, learning the eight gates thanks to his father. The rasenshuriken is something he's only capable of learning thanks to his chakra and shadow clones I hear you quote Kakashi, but it's again, something he couldn't do without actually putting the work in to learn the jutsu. Naruto is on a time crunch because of Akatsuki, the fact he is capable of learning the jutsu once he has advice on wind chakra from Asuma and has practiced forming the rasengan and doing windblades enough means he didn't need the extra chakra to do it, having the chakra didn't automatically make him capable of the rasenshuriken all it did was speed up his chakra control practice exponentially, it would have taken him more time practicing but he could have learned the jutsu eventually even if he wasn't a jinchuriki. Now summons. Being the Yondaime's child might get him an in with Jiraiya to let him have the toad contract, but Sakura and Sasuke also get summoning contracts thanks to personal connections with Tsunade and Orochimaru and Jiraiya only gets him the opportunity. It's Naruto who has to use his willpower to stay on Gamabunta's back and it's Naruto who has to form relationships with his summons like Gamakichi, (a bond that becomes instrumental toward the end of the 4th war). Additionally learning Sage mode wasn't just a result of Naruto getting the contract because neither Sasuke nor Sakura achieved it despite both having contracts (and despite Kabuto managing it where Sasuke didn't) Sasuke with the Hawks as well as the Snakes. And importantly Naruto was unable to use clones or his extra chakra to speed up his training in this. In fact the clones only come into it after he has successfully mastered sage mode and function as a limited extra resource that's can't go beyond three shadow clones meditating and this doesn't function as more sage powah but as a means of extending his sage modes duration, a workaround that's only needed because his being a jinchuriki gets in the way of him gathering sage mode in real-time with the toads on him. In conclusion while his chakra lets him practice jutsu to learn them faster, this is not the case in either his sage mode or the yin yang release and only applies to the shadow clone, rasengan and rasenshuriken - all of which he had to actually learn and understand the mechanics of otherwise the jutsu wouldn't have worked no matter how many shadow clones he had try it and that with the exception of shadow clone he demonstrably could've learned them without being a jinchuriki. And in the case of rasengan and rasenshuriken he is under artificial time-limits imposed by Orochimaru and the Akatsuki.

So that's shadow clone, rasengan, rasenshuriken and sage mode covered but what about bijuu mode. An overpowered special mode he only gets for being a jinchuriki, that B only bothers to teach him because he's a jinchuriki, surely that's LEGIT op bullshit. No? No. At least not in comparison to the Sakura's forehead seal from Tsunade, Sasuke's Mangekyou abilities like izanagi, giant purple warrior and amaterasu, Obito's mokuton, Madara's sage of six paths abilities or the rinnegan's everything, anyway. Not to mention what the edo tensei are capable of.

The only reason bijuu mode works is that he earns Kurama's regard on an emotional level, it's not something which being a kage's kid or having jinchuriki chakra levels actually does fuck all to contribute to. He was that all along but Kurama still hated him and tried to take over his body. It's Naruto himself who has to reach out and make that effort to understand this person who he's always seen as a burden or a curse or an annoying tenant who doesn't pay rent, a monster who tries to kill him and take his body. It's Naruto who has to put in the emotional labour and see Kurama as a person, no matter the harm he's done.

Naruto is the underdog in spite of being "the chosen one" and having the strongest bijuu and a kage father because emotional labour is never easy and in a world like his it seems insane to even try. It's why everyone except him was prepared to give up on Sasuke, Naruto recognises his anger at Itachi and desire to avenge his family as valid, Naruto when he finds out the truth about Itachi from Danzo tells Sasuke he gets it, why he wants to destroy the village, why he's so angry, when Sasuke changes his mind and decides to become hokage instead of destroying it so he can change it, Naruto understands WHY even if he still wants to be kage himself. The problem with Sasuke is that his anger is self-destructive and self-isolating, not that it exists, it's when Naruto fights him one last time and makes Sasuke realise that he's only hurting himself and his loved ones at this point, that "talk no jutsu" finally works and Sasuke is able to listen to Naruto and come home.

It's also why Naruto earns being hokage; in a world full of killers, someone who is capable of acknowledging the harm done and not ignoring or forgetting it (like how he tells pain he can't forgive him), but who is also capable of looking past that and understanding the motivations and feelings of the person he's dealing with and talking to them on that level as equals hits so hard. It just felt like a fantastic set up for a diplomatic hokage capable of dealing with other kages and achieving a peace in spite of the fact they're all to the last, untrustworthy ninja mercenaries who are generally very ends justify the means. In a world of kill or be killed Naruto is still willing to kill, but he's also willing to understand and to talk. And he wasn't born with that, he worked for it and failed often, especially with Sasuke, it was never easy, it often appeared hopeless but he kept trying.

And we rooted for him because of it.

[corellianhounds]

Hello there!

Justo One thing...

Do ya think the character of Cara Dune was well achieved?

Personally, I think she's the second most empowered woman (after Leia) un SW.

I loved her in The first two seasons, and, in any moment I felt that she was a forced inclusion; her unique personality was what shone the most, and his companionship with Din was very enjoyable.

Honestly, I wish they'd given her more development (taking into account that she's from *mjm* Alderaan)

(Although, now that I think about it, that place could be Kleya's...)

Anyway, I just wanted to know your opinion :)

Have a great day!!

TL;DR: I like the role she played/could have played in Mando’s story but think it could have been done better with different writing and direction, and because of how they wrote the show there are a lot of missed opportunities past Season 1 I doubt they’d be able to salvage even if they did recast her.

(Uhhhh 3k words, sorry 😅)

SO. These are my opinions outside of what I think of Carano as a person

—

I think Cara’s character and whatever they wanted to say with the writing around her could have been better. There’s not really a lot of episodes with her in them and she’s not one of the main characters so it makes sense that we’re not following her story. If she was going to have a larger part in the overall narrative (as the cancelled Rangers show suggests) I think she needed a better setup, integration, and effect on Mando’s story in order for her character to have any agency beyond being there to help Mando when needed. As it stands she doesn’t have any change or growth over the two seasons she’s in, and aside from what we hear from Gideon in episodes 7 and 8 in Season 1, there’s not as much specificity to her character that makes me think she’s the only one who could fulfill that role. As a narrative tool to support the main character, you could stick any physically strong gunman in and it doesn’t change the plot. How could she have been more specific in ways that make her the only character for the job?

For example, Han Solo is the only person who can fulfill the role he does in A New Hope because he’s a smuggler and an excellent pilot, someone who watches out for himself and only cares about getting paid and has bounty hunters after him because he dumped Jabba’s spice out the window and Jabba wants his pound of flesh. This means he’s the kind of person capable of getting the main characters where they need to go, who has a reason to leave Tatooine himself, who can travel very quickly and relatively undetected, who keeps his cool in a firefight because he’s done it before, and he’s someone willing to sneak into places he shouldn’t and kill stormtroopers without batting an eye because he’s already willing to kill people if it means saving his own hide and getting paid. You needed all of those details in order for the story to work because a good man wouldn’t have done any of those things and would have turned Kenobi and Luke down. You needed someone on the run, a little desperate, strapped for cash, initially selfish, and levelheaded and charming enough to get out of whatever scraps he gets into.

That being said I liked the role Cara fulfilled in Season 1! I thought it was a whole lot of fun to see a character like her who we haven’t seen before in Star Wars. She was jacked. She’s built like a brick house, she’s visually different than the other female characters we’ve gotten, and I actually believe she can both stand up against Mando in a fight and give him a run for his money, which makes her a capable threat to Mando and the kid if they don’t leave town.

I also think that if we’d gotten a little more depth in the script and direction of “Sanctuary,” we could have better set up Cara’s past as an Alderaanian by how she appeals to the farmers’ frustration at the prospect of losing their land and being forced away from their homes. She has a personal reason for caring and trying to persuade them instead of just telling them they have to uproot and move like Mando does (something that makes sense for his character as a nomadic refugee whose people frequently have to leave at a moment’s notice), and it tells the audience that she’s showing this level of care not because she’s the female character there to coddle people’s feelings, but because she knows innately how they feel

However, because she was a soldier, we still get to see her bluntly presenting them with the logic of what they’re up against because she DOES know what kind of fight is needed to take down the Walker. She’s capable of standing in front of a crowd unafraid of their mounting agitation, and she’s an effective drill sergeant following this.

That’s the kind of specificity I wanted from her (and every other) character, but we don’t get a whole lot of that from her other episodes, and there isn’t always a lasting effect on the story of things done to her when there should be (like the kid choking her but that never coming up in anybody’s discussions or actions again; if that was ever referenced again, Cara could have had another reason to be on the fence/resist helping Mando in Season 2 from “The Tragedy” onward, which for the story means we as the audience feel more tension and uncertainty about whether he’ll be able to rely on her and whether the crew will succeed in the end.)

—

The Mandalorian was refreshing in that it had not just a wide range of characters, but a visually disparate range of them too. Design-wise, her character is believable as an actual fighter in the SW universe; the leading ladies in SW movies (which were the only live action SW media up until The Mandalorian) are all pretty… samesies. They can shoot and swing a sword and use the Force, sure, but for as much as I like for female characters to be capable of doing the same things male characters do, they really need to look like they can do the same things and are actually exerting some effort and taking a hit. To do that, you can’t just hire the same thin brunette starlets we’ve gotten in every single Star Wars movie and stage them to still look attractive in every scene. You can tell when they’re being doubled by stunt performers, and putting too much effort behind making sure female characters still look ~pretty~ in every action shot causes fights/ action scenes to lose their tension because action should take effort. (An easy visual example for these are the difference between how Claire is shot in Jurassic World vs how Amanda is shot in Jurassic Park III, or the difference between how Cassandra and the warrior women are portrayed in The Scorpion King)

Cara Dune is built like a prize fighter and she moves like one too. I do think she can hold her own in a close-quarters fight against a fully-armored and brutally efficient Mandalorian, and I do think she’s capable of carrying and using the equivalent of a machine gun and single-handedly hauling aforementioned Mandalorian forty feet to safety in the finale fight. Emilia Clarke and Felicity Jones don’t look like fighters so unfortunately sometimes their fight choreography doesn’t look convincing because (among other reasons) there’s no weight behind it. Carano hauling whichever of the guys it is in the suit up and over herself in “Sanctuary” and grappling with them on the ground is convincing. I believe that character used to be a soldier and I like the camaraderie she has with Mando because you get the impression she lets a lot roll off her back, no hard feelings.

Now unfortunately, I wasn’t always completely sold on the actor’s performance outside of the action. I don’t know whether to attribute that to Carano’s acting or the director’s direction or both, but I thought many of her lines could have been delivered better or maybe would have sounded better coming from somebody else, and/or the script itself just needed reworking, which is too bad because it takes me out of the moment and the character isn’t as effective as a result. (I’ve said it before, but you can’t act a bad script. People give Hayden Christensen’s performance in the prequels a lot of grief, but if you actually watch it beyond that, Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman aren’t great either in a lot of scenes, and they were already known for being talented, accomplished actors.)

Anyway, Cara wasn’t the worst, some scenes are better than others, and all of that can be said about other characters throughout the first two seasons and TBoBF; I have complaints about Amy Sedaris in several episodes and Carl Weathers in “The Siege” and honestly some of Mando’s lines in a couple episodes, just to name a few. Carano stands out more consistently though and I think her deliveries sounded rehearsed and ‘acted’, not like they were thoughts that character was having and saying in real time.

Now beyond Season 1, I didn’t like the direction they were taking her character and I think her becoming a cop was boring and not done well anyway (see: Missed opportunities for better characterizations between her and Carson Teva and my complaint about her scene at the end of “The Tragedy” not being compelling [scroll down for that bit]). Some of that is tied to the fact I just don’t care about the New Republic when this was a more boots-on-the-ground bounty hunter western show, and some of it is because trying to fill in lore gaps in SW canon is distracting and entirely unnecessary, especially when it’s not being done interestingly anyway and has almost nothing to do with the main character.

I think she would have been more interesting (and maybe they would have gone into it in the Rangers of the New Republic show she was likely supposed to helm) if she’d found out about the whole Operation Paperclip parallel they were going for with the Amnesty program: she was a soldier for the Rebellion and now Teva’s recruited her to be an officer, but then she finds out remnant Imperials— You know, the people who blew up her entire planet— are being given cushy jobs and housing there on Coruscant as long as they say they’re sorry and pinky-promise they won’t do it again? Are you actually hearing yourself right now??

After that I could see her going the rogue/vigilante route and she either starts killing Imperials on her own watch, or goes back to being a jaded drifter/merc who has no faith in the New Republic as a political force. That’s a compelling (and unfortunately relatable) story arc. We’ll never know and I don’t have any faith it would have been all that good, considering the direction the writing for The Mandalorian and TBoBF (and Ahsoka, so I’ve heard) went.

If they wanted her to be some kind of lawman, she could have just become a sheriff or enforcer for Karga and kept it at that. I’m not a fan of the whole “cleaning up Nevarro” thing they had Karga doing though, both because it doesn’t make sense and because it closes off a lot of opportunities for the show to continue with the same tone it had in the first season. It’s a bounty hunter/underworld/gritty western show, and the people of Nevarro should hate Karga for the whole fiasco with the Guild and the Mandalorian covert and the Imperials in Season 1. You’re telling me they’re all totally cool with the guy who was there in the middle of it (and had direct involvement with every faction and the person to blame for it all) just… running the town? He was a Guild broker, not a politician. Gideon calls him a disgraced magistrate; what did he do in his past to warrant being called that? What reason do they have to trust Karga? What’s a king to a mob etc. etc.

If you want Cara as Karga’s muscle on Nevarro and you want Karga in some position of leadership/control or power, the townsfolk have to give Karga an ultimatum post-Season 1: “We won’t run you out of town, provided you ban every Mandalorian from ever landing here again.”

That provides an obstacle for Mando to overcome any time he has to come back to Nevarro or needs help from either of them. (“A lot’s changed since you were last on Nevarro.”) The townsfolk can let Karga continue being Guild broker or something equivalent because as much as they may dislike the rough kind of crowd bounty hunters are, that port being an outpost brings in a lot of cash flow, so they’re at least good for business. Mandalorians and Imperials were not. 

Karga has to rebuild his reputation as somebody who can be trusted, so Cara’s the Texas ranger/sheriff/marshal equivalent keeping people in line. She’s physically capable enough to enforce that, and Karga being more judicious about his clientele keeps the town from breathing down their necks. It makes the town hostile terrain for the New Republic, so Carson Teva as the white-hat-cowboy sheriff has to tread lightly if he’s there searching for information of any kind. Change his character to be a bit more weathered and worldly so he knows how to navigate these waters, have him come from Alderaan, and now when he appeals to Cara in Season 2 to consider at least brokering an allyship or measure of trust in him, he’s not just a veteran, but a fellow countryman (of which there are very few left) and one who also believes the rest of these war criminals he’s been tasked with tracking down should get the justice they deserve. He might not be as extreme as Cara, but he’s far enough towards that side that she’s listening to what he says. 

That gives Cara more complex relationships with established characters and settings, which lays the groundwork for how the rest of Season 2 and beyond goes.

Now.

If you want to know what I would do/intend to do in fanfic in addition to the above with those end goals in mind, I’d reveal at the end of Season 1 when Moff Gideon shows up with his monologue that Cara Dune was a former Ranger of the New Republic, and a traitor who killed her entire squad.

Ooooh because now there’s history and Gideon’s trying to fracture her allyship with Karga and Mando to make them easier to eliminate by using it against her: Gideon proved by revealing what he knew about Karga and Mando that he knows truths about all of them, so even if Cara says he’s lying, Karga and Mando have reason to doubt.

Carasynthia Dune, survivor of Alderaan and drop soldier for the Rebellion, became a Ranger post-war, until she found out about the Amnesty program and put up a huge fuss about and against it. Can you just imagine how angry she’d be, finding out these fascists are being given leniency? Was that what I was doing the whole time I was cleaning up after Endor? Sending them back to comfortable lodging and jobs, as long as they exchange what they know and what they did during the war? They’re not even being imprisoned?

The Deathstar was the culmination of the Empire’s top researchers, scientists, engineers, and weapons experts. What does the New Republic want with Imperial science and technology anyway?

Maybe she went rogue, killing Imperials outside of her Ranger duties, exacting what she believes is justice on behalf of all those who suffered under the Empire for decades, or maybe…

She didn’t go rogue but was sickened by the truth and getting ready to quit the Rangers and had no problem telling everybody within earshot that they’re not punishing Imperials for their crimes. Everyone knows the Empire destroyed an entire pacifist planet to send a message, and that includes the Imperials working for the Empire at the end of the war; is amnesty really what they deserve?

Say the Rangers or some not-so-reputable members of the New Republic (or Imperial spies who have managed to infiltrate the New Republic’s inner workings) are just like regular cops and politicians and decided she needed to keep her mouth shut. They can’t just kill or imprison her (especially as an Alderaanian), that would make them look suspicious/guilty and make her a martyr, and she’s already talked too much. They have to discredit her and they need a legitimate reason to lock her up for good.

The next time she and her squad go out to clear yet another Imperial outpost and bring the prisoners back to Coruscant, they frame her for a crime she didn’t commit by setting them up and killing her entire squad in an explosion that kills the Imperials too, putting a target on her back and making sure everybody who knows her by name will never believe her again.

They intended to have her arrested, of course, but she managed to escape, and from then on she’s been “a lot of things since then.” Her being a former Ranger is enough to justify how she could hack into the prison registry to find Mayfeld (which will loop Carson Teva back her way when and if it’s noticed). That scene with her and Mando at the end of “The Tragedy” would be more tense because in this changed Nevarro, she actually IS working and corralling criminals there in the jailhouse, and he’s not supposed to be on Nevarro anyway— There’s more at stake when it comes to helping Mando now, which makes her loyalty feel stronger when she’s willing to risk what she’s established in order to help him. There are more moments we could have gotten with Mayfeld, the walking reminder of Empire, and if you’d had Mayfeld there in the finale it adds even more tension to the already fractious crew Mando has to mediate between (as well as adding someone who was just established as knowing how to navigate Imperial territory and tech).

As soon as they manage to defeat Gideon and the troopers, Cara’s the one to make contact with Teva, him leading the pack of X-Wings there to pick up the Imperial prisoners, and it’s only because Teva promised her earlier in the season that if she handed any Imperials over to him they would be tried for their crimes and wouldn’t be considered for the Amnesty program. That keeps Bo-Katan from killing Gideon like she wants to, puts tension between Bo and Mando’s allies, and keeps Gideon as a potential option later in the series when he inevitably busts out and gets the band back together, and it sets up potential conflict for later if Teva wasn’t able to/couldn’t/didn’t hold up his end of the deal.

The thing is, all of those ^ changes wouldn’t have taken up any more space than she already has in canon. All of that could have been delivered in the same amount of action, dialogue, and episodes, just differently, and I think it better knits all of these characters together. Anywhere you can use some of your already established narrative pieces to thread cause and effect together is going to feel more cohesive and satisfying because it’s strengthening all of your characters and making for tighter storytelling.

Anyway 😅 I hope I answered that coherently, thanks for letting me rant lol

[heyclickadee]

Okay but at base we’ve got:

1. Nothing that’s shut the Tech lives speculation down in two years despite the publication of several reference books and several things since the end of the show, one thing in recent weeks in particular, that have fueled it despite ample opportunity to clarify and put it to bed.

2. An announcement for a new show that doesn’t have to shed light on the Tech situation but will probably pick up on the organized crime setup we got from the first two and a bit seasons of the bad batch and the walkabout arc from TCW season 7, and which could provide a vehicle to at least let us know Tech’s alive and fulfill one and maybe two very heavy handed lines of foreshadowing, because it takes place in the same era and potentially the same year as the latter half of TBB.

3. Confirmation more or less that these storylines are connected and going somewhere (Filoni’s comments on seeing how these arcs work together and how he can see where they’re going), which means that the shows in this early imperial era from TCW season seven onward aren’t really being thought of as wholly separate entities and that they *are* leaving plot lines unresolved on purpose so they can tie them together in a larger conclusion later on. Which is both frustrating (aaauuggh I like self contained narratives) and gratifying (this is what I’ve been sayinnnnnggg) for different reasons.

4. An indication via a show about Maul putting together his crime syndicates that they are using these shows partly to fill in gaps, which means the gaps with Rex, Echo, the batch’s incomplete arc, Wolffe, Riyo Chuchi, etc will almost definitely be filled in eventually. (I actually think a clone rebellion series is still in the works and that that’s ultimately where all of this is leading—you don’t have Tarkin say they have to prevent a clone uprising and then not follow through and show the uprising—but that once we get there it’s going to be the conclusion of this whole era.)

5. Still, as always, what looks like the most heavy handed foreshadowing in the entire series belonging specifically to Tech, and literally all of it pointing to the most cleanly laid out and certainly the most justifiable character return Star Wars has ever done. Either it’s the most well-executed, textbook fakeout I’ve ever seen, or…I don’t even know what we’re doing here because they would have found a new and completely baffling way to botch a character death that no one has ever done before.

6. Tech’s helmet in the opening of the new Tales of season, apparently. To be clear, I don’t think we’ll see Tech in Tales of once it comes out, not even as a cameo. I do think that means they’re not just dropping this character and that he is something on their minds.

[knickknacksandallthat]

if you don't mind me asking, what got you into kevin's character?

for me it was actually your fic, but since its so normalized in the fandom to dismiss his trauma and call him a coward and annoying for doing things that other characters are loved for, i didn't really care about him when i first read the books

now hes my favorite

Oh, anon, I love this!! What an honor, I’m so glad to have helped you join the Kev lovefest 😊 (Welcome to the dark side lol!) It makes me so happy that the A Fallen Star series has awakened this in you! 💖

And wow, what a good question. I don't mind at all! I actually had to think about this for a while to try and remember…how the heck did I get here???

So here is my ridiculously uncalled-for POV on Kevin’s character and slow descent into madness below:

(Disclaimer that these are just my thoughts and anyone in the aftg fandom can hc or think whatever they like about Mr. Day 😊)

Like you, anon, I was easily swayed by Neil’s perspective of Kev on first read. It makes sense and is a credit to Nora how we so fully buy into Neil’s opinion of Kevin that many of us just run with it. And to be fair to the fandom, it’s canon – Andrew, Neil, and all the Foxes tell us he’s a coward and annoying and so we assume it must be true.

So, I created many fics that played into this image and focused on andreil. (Because who isn’t enamored with andreil??? Legit, deranged obsession and couple goals lmao). Using that lens, it was easy to make Kevin the punching bag because he is the quintessential “straight man” in comedy (and yes, I do hear the irony in that) – the foil to other characters to make them seem better, braver, funnier, smarter, etc. It’s an age-old trick/trope in fiction that works very well. And it was an easier transition for Nora to make, I think, once she made the decision to remove Kevin from the main narrative of her story.

This character setup works well enough when you’re doing a fic from Neil or Andrew’s POV, providing an easy source of humor to fall back on. So, for me, I think my thinking shifted once I started working on Flavors of Fall and delved into Andrew and Kevin’s storyline there. That fic forced me to think from Kevin’s perspective, and I found at the time I had a shallow understanding of what made Kevin tick. It totally threw me once I really started considering sequels for that fic and the 12 Day Program for Courtship, both of which have Kevin cast as a main character. I had to dive deep into his makeup, seriously considering his motivations, his likes/dislikes, his personality traits, his relationships, and how he would react in any given situation.

Because I was interested in his character development, I started delving into fics like orionauriga’s just pretend , @likearecordbb's Long Walk in the Woods, @thetrojeans daylights, sunsets, and @dayurno's the age of no regret series. They are all brilliant, fascinating character studies of Kevin Day and his relationships that are extremely well done. There’s many more, of course, but I was searching for fics that specifically delved into Kevin’s thought process and choices and stayed there a while.

That’s what led me to feeling like I needed to tell his story with Dead of Night. Of course, it turned into a larger series with my flavoring of Kerejean added because I’ve never been a huge Kevin/Thea relationship fan. (But that's a discussion for another day which you can start here and here for that adventure.)

Now all that I’ve described above gives you the mechanics of the descent – the when, the where, the how. But it crucially misses the why. What is it about Kevin that got me in the end?

Ironically enough, it was his potential.

I think when Nora stripped away any kind of romantic narrative (RIP Kandreil OR Riko/Kevin/Jean) or a chance for a tragic storyline (Kevin dying in the end) it resulted in removing a lot of Kevin’s emotional vulnerability. We don’t get to hear what he’s feeling or thinking unless it’s related to Riko, the Moriyamas, or Exy. This means his storyline is consumed by the stereotypical sports underdog story, with us following his rise to champion (which is still a powerful enough narrative on its own that shines even in the midst of Neil’s crazy plotline. Switching that racquet to his left hand in the championship game? Iconic.) 

However, it leaves us very much with a shell of a person. Kevin’s character outside of Exy is reduced to a handful of facts – there’s a passing comment on his like of history, and the stark evidence of an alcohol addiction as a coping mechanism. We’re told he used to dance. That he learned French because Jean Moreau taught him. That he has no qualms about taking (mild?) drugs (cracker dust). Despite how much we’ve run with it as a fandom, the only allusion I’ve found in the books to him being strict with diet is this section from The King’s Men:

“No one needs to eat this before a game,” Kevin said. “Eat some granola or protein if you’re that hungry.” “Hello, there’s protein in the peanut butter,” Nicky said. “Let go of me before I tell Andrew you’re outlawing chocolate. I said let go. You’re not the boss of me. Ouch! Did you seriously just hit me?” … “Kevin, just let him go,” Neil said. “It’s not worth fighting over.” “When our defense is sluggish, we all suffer,” Kevin said.

From what I can find in the books, Kevin never once denies Andrew eating ice cream. (Which I’m 100% able to admit I might have missed something so feel free to quote me where that scene is because I was totally searching for it). In fact, every time they go to Sweetie’s, it’s implied Kevin orders ice cream with them. In the infamous kissing scene in The King’s Men, we actually have proof that Kevin got ice cream:

Kevin still hadn’t messaged Nicky by the time they reached the ice cream aisle, so Nicky gave in and called him. Neil half-expected Kevin to ignore Nicky’s call, but Kevin wasn’t so sour with them that he’d turn down a free snack…Nicky grabbed spoons from the kitchen and distributed pints to their hungry owners. Neil checked his expression when Nicky came back from dropping Kevin’s off….

Now I do think it’s in line with his character and his upbringing to have issues with food, so I’m all for buying into that specific hc. But we have very little evidence of it in the text.

His personality is reduced mainly to anger, arrogance, or cowardice (all traits that don’t make us sympathize with him). The only facts we have about his Tragic Past™️ are two things: his mother’s death, and his hand injury. Everything else we assume is based on Neil’s knowledge of the mafia, Wymack’s hearsay, Andrew’s deductions, and Kevin’s reactions to Riko and Tetsuji. We have literally no idea what happened to Kevin in the Nest. His trauma and his time spent there is a complete mystery. The closest we get is Riko’s comment to Neil in The Raven King:

“I am going to love hurting you,” Riko said, “like I loved hurting Kevin.”

This, I think, is one of the main reasons many of the fandom “dismisses” Kevin’s trauma in comparison to Neil’s because we can’t see it. We don’t know what happened and we don’t get to experience it, so this lack of explanation or motivation leaves us only with very cold personality traits. We’re unable to root for him as a character because we can’t sympathize. We can empathize because we know Very Bad Things™️ must have happened in the Nest, but we don’t see them happen the same way we do Neil or Andrew. Even Kevin’s hand injury is old and “healed” when we’re first introduced to the character.

The only true canon moment where Kevin appears “human” is in The Raven King with Kevin’s “then run” and “you should be court” conversation with Neil. His admittance that Neil’s life is more important than Exy is instantaneous – he doesn’t even pause to throw his Exy dreams down the drain if it means Neil can survive.  In a weirdly parallel way, we see Kevin’s thought process implicit in his conversation: “at least you’d have a chance.” It is strikingly similar to Neil’s internal conversation of: one of us should make it. (And there’s another whole separate discourse I could get into on how Kevin and Neil are two halves of the same coin, but we’ll save that for another day.) But even the revelation of Wymack as his father has more shock value than true emotional weight – we never see what that conversation looked like or how either party actually reacted. (In some ways, I feel like Dan being pissed at Kevin is given more “screentime” than Kevin’s response to telling his father and how Wymack reacted.)

So with Kevin’s emotions and past firmly locked down, we’re left to brush off Kevin’s reactions (or lack thereof) as part of his indifferent personality. It is what it says on the tin. (And that’s not to say Kevin is a perfect character by any means. He has flaws just like every other character.)

Now some people very accurately depict and buy into those limitations as simply being Kevin’s character/personality – I’ve read some awesome fics where Kevin is Ace/Aro and/or on the spectrum. These are completely valid, extremely well done, and I could totally see why others see and write him this way. Canon practically sets them up for it.

For me, though, it circles back to our skewed view of Kevin given to us by some deeply loved but also deeply flawed characters (cough, Andreil). Those same characters that we’re told time and again not to judge them by their cover but to try and understand how they’re affected by (and make choices because of) their trauma.

While Andrew and Neil end up giving each other this grace through a hard-fought battle of truths and exchanges, they do not extend this same courtesy to Kevin, and neither are we given the chance to do so. We literally can’t because, again, we don’t know what the full extent of Kevin’s trauma is.

Kevin doesn’t talk about his time in the Nest to any character, meaning we know nothing about it. Ergo we don’t know what choices Kevin makes because of it. In The Foxhole Court, Wymack specifically tells us Kevin was Riko’s pet. In fact, there is so much specific language that Kevin himself uses around the concept of ownership, and that Nora uses when referring to him that it jarringly sticks out in the text.  He has no sense of personal space or proper boundaries, viewing people only as assets to be used for the good of the team, which at the very least is a sign of mental abuse. But the fact remains that we just don’t know. We don’t know how far this mental abuse was taken, how often or severely he was injured, if he injured or was forced to injure others – we don’t know.

But it’s obvious whatever happened to him started as a child and built from there. Which means he has years of abuse and power dynamics embedded into him. He has every right to be afraid. In fact, we are demonstrably told and shown often in canon that Kevin is afraid…but fear does not equate to cowardice. In fact, we know that bravery often means being scared and doing something anyway. And in many cases, that’s just what Kevin did (with a crutch named Andrew). But even before he entered his deal with Andrew, it's important to remember that even though he was brainwashed and beaten from a young age to understand that he would die if he betrayed the Moriyama family in some way, he left them.

This is always so significant to me because so many abuse victims stay in their situation thinking/hoping/praying it will get better – either because of an idea that their abuser will change (“they’re just having a hard time at work rn”) or that the victim will fix whatever flaw the abuser finds lacking. Or alternatively, they recognize the situation is bad, but they can’t leave because they feel like they have nowhere to go, no one who will help them, trapped by their lack of skills/contacts/money. In Kevin’s case, both situations rang true. And yet he left. He left, and in only a year and a half’s time he recovered from his injury and led his team to the championship.

But he is only at the start of his recovery. I think he’ll need years of therapy to recover from all that happened in the Nest. I think many of his emotional and social shortcomings are a direct consequence of that timeframe and he did not have the freedom to address them until the threat of the Moriyamas was removed. I do not think they are permanent parts of his personality – I think in time, he will be allowed to grow and recover and contribute much more to his relationships than he’s capable of doing at the end of The King’s Men.

Though the series finished, I think Kevin’s story is just beginning.

That’s why I think he’s fascinating to explore as a character. That’s why I love writing him right now because in many ways, his possibilities are endless. There’s so many opportunities to explore different facets of his story that we never get a chance to in canon. Kevin’s character and narrative is a tantalizing tease which many of us have fell hook, line, and sinker for. (Including yours truly.) We want to rabidly sink our teeth into it and shake it, like a dog with a bone.

So we do. 😉

Phew. Okay, that’s enough. None of what I’ve written above is new I’m sure to those of the fandom who have been here since the beginning or have become diehard Kevin fans. But thank you for letting me ramble in this ask, anon. Writing about Kevin has been a very fun and therapeutic adventure for me. So I’m so glad that there are others out there who are enjoying it too 😊

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 5 Thoughts: Getting Babadooked

Honestly, I didn't really vibe with this one. I didn't hate it or anything but it didn't really grab me. I'm not really sure there is a whole lot to say about it either. It's an interesting premise in a cerebral sense but I don't think the incident itself was super compelling.

Spoilers for Ep 5 below the cut.

I think the setup was pretty great but when it got time to do something spooky there wasn't really much of it there. The build up was compelling enough. A movie that's so obscure information on it in any sense is hard to come by. The singular review being not overtly strange but not really a review at all. A contest that's pretty clearly a scam of some sort. Some hints that the theatre was wrong, a single weird staff member hinting at more, spooky popcorn, etc. The movie itself is entirely mundane except that it's a home-movie of your own family, with a detail you never noticed while you were living that movement. Then it just sort of ends.

It really felt like it could've done with a couple more minutes to give it a bit more of an ending. The conclusion, while scary to think about as a full scenario, lacks so much detail and happens so abruptly it's hard to feel like there is really much of a conclusion at all. Just a minute or two of blind panic and a hurried attempt at an escape before they get kidnapped, and presumably, replaced would've been a much better climax which the final post on the site would've helped reinforce. There was even a narrative device worked in that would allow for all sorts of fucked up stuff to happen and still be coherent in the format. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] is just [EXTENDED SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PIPE MURDER] by a different name and could've done a lot of great work in leaving that sort of imaginative space for the listener.

For the office drama portion of the episodel; Klaus being the IT manager before Colin is an interesting detail for sure. Wasn't entirely expecting that but it explains a few things. It doesn't significantly alter any of my previous understanding other than suggest that the precursor to the OIAR's system might be a little bit more fringe. As in if Klaus set up Freddy entirely then the Klaus sheet might not be from a German version of the OIAR. The response 121 came back a lot sooner than I was expecting but still feels a bit like a slow burn.

DPHW Theory: 2377 lines up well enough. It was mostly a weird time where they got compelled to do something. Makes sense, not too exciting.

CAT#R# Theory: CAT2RB is properly filed this time around but still not a whole lot to say. You could assume the ones that were wrong are all wrong and so the tria prima thing is back on the table but with so few data points it's hard to call any of them anomalous. R# could be some sort of scale indicator now though. Rank C incidents supernaturally affect single people or objects, Rank B's can affect larger areas or spread from person/object to person/object, Rank A's are wider still, and Rank S's are on very large scales. That idea fits pretty well with what we've seen so long as you labour under the assumption that the effect an incident can have doesn't map directly with its Rank. Daria's incident ranks higher than the violin but lower than the Institute. Whatever happened to Daria was passed onto her through another means so is higher even though the violin ended up killing more people it never grew beyond just a violin. Where as the Institute is a hole building that's seemingly supernaturally tainted.

Header talk: Disappearance (undetermined) -/- Invitation is fairly interesting. Showing some broader concepts than I think we've previously seen.

[inkblackorchid]

I watched this duel again yesterday and I honestly wish I had any sort of fresh take or unusual perspective on it, but I think the truth is that I just don't. This duel is three things for me:

Proof of concept for a very intriguing larger narrative (whose execution sadly doesn't land all the way for me)

The introduction of a character who has several interesting key aspects to them (and who could have, perhaps, been handled a bit better)

Emblematic of all the issues I have with the WRGP arc's writing.

As I said, I don't think I have any truly revolutionary things to say about this duel, but I feel like getting my thoughts out, so expect a fairly non-structured, stream-of-consciousness post below. There are multiple things here that bother me and I finally want to dissect them. Feel free to follow along if you also like examining stuff like this in more detail than it perhaps needs to be examined in. And I really mean examine them in unnecessary detail. Be warned, this post could count as a dissertation in terms of length. But I'm passionate and like analysing things, so no attempt to control its length was made.

So, I won't mince words here. The Team New World duel is absolutely where several major aspects of the time-travel-Iliaster plot completely fall apart for me. I want to make it clear that this isn't the fault of Aporia's character writing or what this duel is building up to, though. Nor do I think that the concept of a secret shadow organisation using time travel to influence world events is too out there. Lbr, this is yugioh. The time-travelling-cyborg-shadow-organisation is absolutely not the culprit of why I think some things don't work here. (And by here I mean specifically the WRGP arc.) Moreover, I'll be the first to admit that the finale this duel builds up to, with everything from the Ark Cradle beginning its descent to Yusei's final duel with Z-ONE, is stellar. So there are several things that do work here—but I think that may be exactly the reason why the other things piss me off all the more.

So what are the "other things", then?

Well, simply put, a lot of this arc's supposed setup and worldbuilding falls apart as soon as you start asking a few simple questions, first and foremost "why". And again, I will likely not be treading new ground here, but this just irks me to no end. However, so this post doesn't devolve entirely into unproductive whining about a part of the show I wish had been better than it was, I'll be doing another thing here: Trying to provide solutions for the things that irk me as I go along. As a kind of thought exercise, and because it's not hate motivating me here, merely extreme frustration about an arc that feels like it was fumbled like a hot potato. So, let's start digging through this mess.

The elephant in the room.

This whole arc (and in fact even the pre-WRGP arc before it) hinges on the concept of antagonists using monsters that can absorb synchro monsters, which is treated as such a monumental problem that we see Yusei, our protagonist, in downright anguish about it not one, but several times. Like, this eats at him.

(Pictured: A troubled boy brooding about his synchro summoning issues.)

And look, I know everyone and their mother has brought this up at this point, but this is already the first bit that falls apart under the weight of the question "why". Why is Yusei so hung up on the fact that duelling against Meklords means using synchro monsters becomes pretty risky? Why is this enough of a problem to supposedly drive the plot for a not insignificant stretch of episodes? Now, I know Yusei uses mainly synchro monsters as his heavy hitters, and I have seen someone bring up the fact before that even irl, completely altering the strategy of your entire deck is a pain in the ass, to say the least. And I do want to admit that this is a valid argument. If Yusei genuinely had to change his whole deck to accommodate the new circumstances, that would be a Herculean task, to say the least. However. While I can see the merit of that argument, I have to raise two counterpoints: One—who said he had to permanently change the entire structure of his deck? The show never gives us reason to believe that anyone other than the cyborgs will suddenly jump out of the woodwork and also use an anti-synchro strategy, and it doesn't show us anyone else who uses a strategy like that, either. And two—note the framing of this issue. The show never suggests that Yusei needs a new deck, or that all his old tricks are completely invalid now. It harps on and on about how he needs a new strategy, yes. But is that the same thing? In my opinion, nothing really demands that Yusei needs to restructure his deck completely. If anything, he only needs to keep in mind that this is now a possibility when duelling people, and thus start keeping a backup plan. And unfortunately, he kind of does, which is where I need to address the Dragon Knight Draco-Equiste-shaped elephant in the room, because it sadly undermines that sensible argument something fierce.

(Yeah, remember this thing? Because I do and sometimes wish I didn't just so I wouldn't have to get frustrated about it all over again.)

Listen. We're all not stupid. Even before the Team Unicorn match, the vast majority of people watching 5Ds would have been aware that tribute summoning, ritual summoning, and fusion summoning are very much methods to get around the dreaded synchro-killers that already exist in the card game and don't require any supernatural shenanigans to be acquired. But speaking only for myself for a moment, I was still at least a little bit willing to suspend my disbelief and accept that not being able to synchro summon would be a categorical impossibility for our beloved motorcycle family before this scene. Except, then Draco-Equiste comes out. And naturally, you're left to wonder "ah, so this is the solution to the synchro problem, then"? But no. No, it very much isn't. Because unfortunately, this is the one and only time Draco-Equiste even shows up. Immediately before and after this duel, this card is treated as though it never existed. Even though this thing could have posed a serious threat to the Meklords, what with being able to absorb the effect of a dragon synchro monster in the graveyard and being able to bounce back effect damage. (Can you imagine how differently the Team New World duel might have proceeded if Yusei had summoned this again?)

So, of course, we're left with the question: Why the fuck was this even here? And on the surface, the answer is super simple: To sell copies of Dragon Knight Draco-Equiste, naturally. But narratively? Narratively, this card's appearance is a disaster. It's a miscalculation of such insane proportions I can hardly find the words for it. Because it proves the assumption many viewers, especially TCG players, would have had from the start: Fusion, ritual, and tribute summoning are still a thing and would definitely work against Meklords. To say this takes the wind out of the sails of the central problem of "oh no, what are we going to do without synchro summoning" would be an understatement. And that's without addressing the fact that the actual "solution" the show provides against the Meklords, as cool as Shooting Star Dragon and Red Nova Dragon are, is, on paper, ludicrous: In a bind because your synchro monster gets absorbed? Just synchro summon harder! And I just. Please. We can agree that this is silly, right? Even if they're very cool dragons and I definitely appreciate them, this is almost looney tunes logic.

Swinging around to a more productive discussion, could they have done their "uh oh, synchro summoning is now impossible"-bit in a better, more coherent and less silly way? Probably, but depending on how they might have handled it, they would have probably needed to sacrifice some other things. The issue here is the thematic element. Synchro summoning is hated, and thus punished, by the emperors of Iliaster because to them, it's a symbol of humanity's greed and subsequent destruction. And originally, the show ends up vindicating its use despite their warnings about the destroyed future in a sort of awkward "with great power comes great responsibility"-way. As in, synchro summoning still has the potential to ruin humanity by the end of the show, but Yusei and the others "earn" their right to use it anyway because they and humanity as a whole learn the lesson not to overdo it. Supposedly. The metaphor is, frankly, a bit wonky, which might be another problem in and of itself. But what's relevant here is that any attempt to fix this conundrum would thus have to keep the thematic element intact. To do that, our protagonists would therefore have to rely on synchro summoning at the start of the arc, as they did before, and would also have to rely on it by the end of the arc (again). The in between is, I think, where more interesting things could have been done with the concept, though—moreover, it's where I think the plothole of "hey why doesn't anyone tribute/fusion/ritual summon" could have been addressed. Say the gang learns that synchro summoning might now get dangerous and actually tries to shift gears. Say they do try out fusion, ritual, and tribute monsters to account for that—only to run into an in-universe meta wall and realise that sure, these monsters might not get absorbed by Meklords, but their effects and strength can't keep up with the synchros their opponents use, or that they're flat out too cumbersome to summon! It could have been as simple as showing scenes where trying to get tribute fodder onto the field or play a fusion or ritual spell card would have been too slow, too inefficient in a duel. They could have also gone an even simpler route and flat out made it so that Meklords could have absorbed any extra deck monster. Would this have made them stupidly overpowered? Sure. But wasn't that kind of the point, anyway? The Meklords were supposed to be a nigh insurmountable obstacle that ultimately required discovering not one, but two new, unique ways to synchro summon—and even then, the solutions still weren't perfect because Shooting Star and Red Nova can still get absorbed under especially tricky circumstances. So I doubt making them that much more powerful would have mattered. (And they had to be heavily adjusted for the irl TCG as is, so there's not really a need to factor in that concern, either.) Finally, and I admit this pains me a little to say, I think that any version of the synchro dilemma that wanted to make sense should have flat out removed Draco-Equiste. The card does nothing except open plotholes, and especially if we want to keep the themes intact without opening the can of worms that is alternative forms of summoning possibly being a better solution than Accel Synchro or Burning Soul, its presence just becomes a hindrance. Sorry, Dragon Knight Draco-Equiste.

So much for the synchro dilemma, then. But unfortunately, this is not the last aspect of the worldbuilding surrounding the three emperors of Iliaster and especially their Meklords that's built on a shaky foundation, to say the least. Onto the next one.

2. The Meklord genocide and the many questions it asks (and never answers).

I'm gonna roll several points into one here because they're all related to the Meklord genocide—that being the supposedly unavoidable catastrophe in the future where Aporia received all his trauma from. And I want to preface this with two statements, one good and one bad. Firstly, Aporia and the way his backstory gets exposed, quickly getting us intimately acquainted with the utter devastation of the Meklord genocide, is extremely compelling. You really get a sense of the terror at play and it gives him a perfect, understandable motivation for wanting to avert that future at all costs, even if human lives have to be sacrificed along the way.

(Ahhh, the lovely smell of childhood trauma in the making.)

Secondly... The Meklord genocide makes zero sense, and it has everything to do with the fact that once again, several major aspects of it buckle under the weight of a few simple questions. But let me roll that back first and examine what those major aspects, which the Team New World duel introduces us to, are.

Number one: I went back and checked, and this is the first time in the series that we are introduced to the concept of synchro summoning resonating with Moment reactors. Previously, the reactor itself, through the concept of planetary particles, and, by extension, the Moment energy itself was only implied to be something like a perpetuum mobile, infinitely producing its own energy.

Number two: Now, we have heard of Moment rotating backwards and exploding in the show before. But there are two new things here, one being that the Iliaster trio explains that in this instance, it caused a chain reaction, and that, for some reason, all the Moment reactors began exploding one after the other. The other, more crucial part being that they claim the Moment reactors responded to people's hearts. This ties in with another small thing introduced much earlier, where Bruno/Antinomy explains that Clear Mind, Yusei's accel synchro technique, is a way of "controlling Moment". Both link the reactor and its energy, which are pillars of 5Ds' worldbuilding, to human emotions. And I already need to say this here: This doesn't make lick of sense. But more on that later.

Number three: We don't get an outright explanation for this in this duel, as in, it's not stated verbally, but right after Moment supposedly "responds to people's hearts", the Meklords show up, heavily implying that the reactor, for some reason, summoned a robot army to destroy humanity.

Now, I'm going to give you the quick-fire round of questions these three concepts immediately sparked in my mind when I saw these scenes, because I think that will illustrate just fine why I have such a problem with all this: Since when is synchro summoning linked to Moment and how? If humanity already knew through the Zero Reverse incident, which is the foundation for 5Ds' canon, that Moment reactors could spin too fast, gain a negative rotation, and subsequently explode, why on earth did nobody think to install safeguards against that? Why are the Moment reactor and its energy linked to people's hearts now? How does that even work? And how is a human supposed to "control" a sodding energy reactor that was implied to stay in perpetual motion through a set of gears, which famously know how to read hearts, through achieving a clear mind? And why, oh why did the reactor—independently of its human creators, apparently—have a killer robot army at its disposal to let loose on humanity when it grew sick of their shit?

This plot has so many holes, it may as well be a net instead. And you know what the worst part is? The show answers none of the questions above. Moreover, the implications behind the concepts introduced for the sake of setting up the Meklord genocide are buckwild, to say the least. Let me run with this real quick to highlight the absurdity here.

Taking the idea that an energy reactor can respond to people's hearts and summon an on-demand murder robot army of apocalyptic proportions when humans around it grow too evil at face value honestly makes me wonder how the Moment reactor in NDC hasn't exploded five times over since its creation. You mean to tell me that between Goodwin's Iliaster goons, the Arcadia Movement, the corrupt security forces, and all the duel gangs in Satellite, there weren't enough evil people there to make the reactor go crazy? Plus, all of these people were already synchro summoning as if their life depended on it! Synchro summoning is basically ubiquitous from the moment the show starts, to the point where it's more unusual to see a duellist who doesn't synchro summon than one who does. But somehow, that wasn't enough to affect the reactor yet? Or is the implication here supposed to be that the part where the man-made machine meant to produce limitless energy can suddenly see into people's hearts was added later into the reactor's development? That humans for some reason decided, "yeah, that's what our new energy source needs! A way to shame and punish us with violence on an unimaginable scale for our transgressions!" And that's without addressing the robot army. Who built these things? And who decided it was a good idea to put them at the disposal of the very reactor itself? Do you mean to tell me some team of utterly cracked up scientists decided that the best entity to put in charge of the robot army that was constructed for some reason was the reactor system supplying the world with energy, "computers can't be blinded by human error and would thus never deploy this army for selfish reasons"-style? (Honestly, I almost wish that had been the idea here, but I'm absolutely certain it wasn't.)

I can already hear two major criticisms to the above, purposefuly hyperbolic extrapolation in the back of my head here. Allow me to talk about them for a moment.

One—"Okay, so the WRGP arc has plotholes. Didn't the dark signers arc have those too, though? It's not like they explained everything about all that stuff."

You're right! It did! As much as I love the dark signers arc, it hardly has the most tightly-written worldbuilding of all time, either. There are lots of things, some small (why was Rudger/Roman somehow a signer and a dark signer at the same time), some not so small (why on earth did Rex' plan to summon the king of the underworld and remake the world seemingly hinge on one of the signers failing to seal their tower, which he could have never guaranteed in a million years) that the DS arc never properly takes the time to explain. But even so, the dark signers arc doesn't fall apart under questions such as "why" and "how" nearly as easily as the WRGP arc for a reason that is as simple as it is stupid: The DS arc has a much less ambitious premise, and though its antagonists are cool, they don't actually pose a greater, moral dilemma. Think about it. The premise of the DS arc is a run-of-the-mill prophecy thing. You've got your chosen heroes, your destined enemies, and a battle for the world using supernatural shenanigans. And a lot of questions of "why" or "how" are relatively quick to be brushed aside with "magic" (or rather, Crimson Dragon/Earthbound Immortal shenanigans). Moreover, the dark signers themselves, while having interesting stories relating to the heroes on a personal level, are still, fundamentally, pure evil. They're not fighting to prevent a devastating, apocalyptic future, they just deadass want to get revenge and destroy the world. And all the more complicated, major themes the arc has (class discrimination, police brutality, how societal alienation can lead teenagers to join cults, poverty, etc.) are actually not really tied in with the Earthbound Immortals, instead happening on the sidelines or only being tangentially related to the dark signers (such as when Kiryu becomes a dark signer through the abuse suffered in prison). The only major theme that ties in with the dark signers is destiny VS. freedom of choice, which also gets resolved in the battle with Rex Goodwin. (Interestingly enough, all the more complicated themes on the side were also dropped after this arc, but that's a rant for another time...) Perhaps the arc still has some inconsistencies here and there, but largely, it stays fully coherent. Thus, the DS arc makes it way easier to suspend one's disbelief, making the unexplained parts seem much less egregious.

Two—"Calm down, this show was made for twelve year-old Japanese boys. They don't need to explain any of this."

If you honestly think children don't deserve well-made entertainment whose concepts and worldbuilding can hold up to scrutiny, I have nothing to discuss with you. Sure, children will swallow some concepts much easier and will suspend their disbelief much longer and more artfully than any adult on average, but that doesn't mean "kids are dumb anyway so why bother putting as much effort into worldbuilding for their shows as for adult shows" is the hot take you think it is. I am fully congnisant of the target audience for this show—that doesn't make me any less convinced that said target audience deserved a show where things made sense while they were watching it and where things could still make sense if they decided to rewatch it years later. Because, you know, that's what I think a good show should be able to do.

And with that, I can come back to the WRGP arc and an issue that ties in with both things I just addressed: The WRGP arc's actual story premise, buried beneath the well-known, equally beloved and beloathed tournament arc format, is a lot more ambitious than the DS arc and has several, fairly heavy, core themes that it sets up and tries to resolve by the end, among them: learning how to cooperate as a team (during the WRGP) and learning how to be independent (by the end of the show), destiny VS. forging your own path (round two), and, most importantly, taking responsibility and fighting for one's future. That last one especially is not only a good topic to address in a show specifically made for 5Ds' target audience, it is also represented by both Team 5Ds and Team New World in-story. Spicier yet, both teams are actually fighting for the same thing. Team New World, having seen the supposedly unavoidable, tragic future and thus decided to take action against it, is fighting for a future that doesn't have to be marred by such tragedy, by whatever means necessary. And Team 5Ds, young, hopeful, and trusting in their connection to one another and humanity as a whole, is fighting for a better future because they believe that tragedy can be avoided. The future these two teams want is almost the same—the only, crucial difference is that Team New World has embraced the use of drastic measures to bring that future about, while Team 5Ds hasn't. To Team New World, the future presents something like a trolley problem, if you will: They think doing nothing will lead to that inevitable tragedy and erase humanity, whereas sacrificing New Domino City in the present will still kill people, but preserve humanity in the long run. And they have firmly decided pull the lever and set the course so the trolley runs over just one person instead of many. Team 5Ds, meanwhile, isn't even thinking about the lever, instead insisting there has to be another way, and that even thinking about getting anyone killed for this is stupid. The whole conflict is, on paper, wonderfully compelling, because you can see where both sides are coming from. Sure, Team New World's members still act like absolute dickheads in true yugioh-tournament-opponent fashion, but ultimately, their goals make sense. Viewers can put themselves in their shoes and perhaps think that, faced with a horrible dilemma like theirs, they would make the same, awful choice to set the course and cause suffering now to avoid greater suffering later. For the greater good.

Unfortunately, the questions I listed above undermine all this somewhat, because as good as these antagonists are on a character level, it's incredibly easy to poke holes into their backstory and especially the circumstances surrounding the horrible, distant future they want to avoid so desperately—which, in turn, undermines that terrible future somewhat, because this is a narrative that demands weight (in my opinion). But if the supposed threat at the end, the terrible thing even our protagonists briefly aren't sure they'll be able to avoid, begins falling apart at the seams in terms of logic when you think about it for more than two minutes, where is that weight supposed to come from? There is also another question to be answered here that I need to discuss so I can touch on a central aspect that hampers the plot in this arc somewhat later:

Why are they so convinced that horrible, destroyed future is utterly unavoidable?

I want you to really think about this question, with me. Canon... never really gives us any direct proof that they're justified in being this certain. However, that doesn't mean we don't get an answer, per se, though the answer is a bit vague.

The implications here are... something, to say the least. First, as our basis, we have to assume that every "correction" Iliaster has made has been to avoid humanity's destruction in the future. Because frankly, that's all we get as far as Jose, Placido, and Luciano's definition of the "correct path" goes. Then there's the second bit. Apparently, they've been merrily "repairing" history for a good while already, yet, for some reason, they always get the same outcome: The Meklord genocide. This, in turn, has led them to take more and more drsatic measures to try and avoid it. And I want to point out the very obvious, mind-boggling implication that comes with this: Apparently, after every "correction" they made, these three have either let history run its course to see where it ends up this time, or have quickly zipped over to their own time to check whether things were still shit. Meaning Iliaster's whole deal of fixing history to make sure the Meklord genocide never occurs has been a very, very long run of trial and error. (I want you to think of all the possible "fixes" this could have included for a moment. We know from BBT that killing Pegasus was one of the ideas they had, for example. Did they also try to kill the presumed Industrial Illusions employee who came up with synchro monsters? Did they try to kill Yusei's dad so Moment would never be invented? Could they not have tried to simply inhibit the creation of the robot army, then? Or made sure someone installed some bloody safeguards on the reactors, as Yusei later does in-canon, which somehow works when he does it? The list goes on.) Now, we know that in canon, their newest idea is that the future can be fixed if they just destroy New Domino City altogether.

Here, the questions begin again (you may sense a running theme): If Moment is already invented and internationally known, why would destroying its place of invention do anything? If synchro summons are already a thing, doesn't that mean destroying NDC would only slow the catastrophe down, at best? And most importantly: Why are these guys so utterly convinced that this "repair", of all the ones they've already done, will save their future? How can they know that this particular plan will work when they've supposedly already tried everything?

(There is, of course, the tragic possibility to consider that perhaps, they know that there's no guarantee this will work. They've tried everything, after all. So maybe they know this won't fix things, either. But we know that Aporia, like Paradox, like Antinomy, and like Z-ONE is, somewhere at the bottom of his despairing heart, still desperate for a shimmer of hope. And maybe, just maybe, he has reached such a point of desperation that he'll watch an entire city getting destroyed if it has even the faintest chance of succeeding. But unfortunately, this is purely speculative—the show never states this, and so, I can only leave it in the realm of fan interpretation.)

The show never answers this question, either, instead relying on the audience to suspend their disbelief some more and assume that Iliaster has put in the work and is 100% certain that the future can and will absolutely end in disaster unless they destroy NDC now. It almost acts like they have some sort of supernatural foresight; they know things nobody else in the show's world does, and due to this (and their non-human status) they label themselves as superior to the "foolish humans", who, without their guiding hands, will only bring about the apocalypse. But their superiority and the internal consistency of their actions is already wobbling under the weight of all the half-assed worldbuilding I mentioned above, which is an extra big problem due to another, major difference between the WRGP and the DS arc: While the DS arc stylised itself as a sort of funky genre mix between cyberpunk dystopia and urban fantasy (in a very broad sense, given that ancient Inca gods are very much real and their prophecies come to fruition in the modern day, yet we are not presented with any sort of magic outside of the conflict with the dark signers), the WRGP arc, aside from its tournament format, stylises itself much more as science fiction. The antagonists are no longer ancient, evil shadow gods, they're cyborgs from a destroyed future. Their motivation isn't as simple as wanting to destroy the world, either! In fact, they want to save the future! And they don't pose a threat to our antagonists through shadow duels in rings of fire and giant, magical monsters that sacrifice human souls to be summoned. No, they have advanced technology like high-tech robots that cut our protagonists off from one of their go-to tactical options, and they send out duel robot armies, and they travel through time by means of sophisticated wormhole-technology.

...But do they?

Now, I said I don't just want to complain here, I also want to provide solutions—and I intend to stick to that. But first, because these two things are so intrinsically tied together, let me address the final aspect that puts Team New World as antagonists and the WRGP arc on such shaky ground from a writing perspective.

3. Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, magic-science cyborg nonsense.

So, I've talked about the strongly differing methods the Iliaster trio uses in comparison to the dark signers. Sci-fi is the name of the game now, so we've got robots, cyborgs, advanced tech and... time travel. But amidst all this, you may have noticed something. Even though our plot is supposedly decided by futuristic tech now, the magical/occult element that was there in the first half of the show doesn't actually get dropped. Why? Because it can't be. Because the signers, our protagonists, are defined by their status as a group of magical chosen ones, hand-picked by an ancient Incan deity. Regardless of what the writers of the show wanted here (and my personal guess, based on hearsay and what I've read on forums, is that they wanted to hardcore-pivot to sci-fi because they hoped it would engage audiences more), this was an element they couldn't erase. (Or, well, technically, they could. The signers do lose their marks at the end of the show, after all. But perhaps they thought doing that earlier was too risky.) So genre-wise, we've got a bit of a situation here. From the pre-WRGP arc on, 5Ds is more of a sci-fi show, yet, we've still got all this occult stuff wandering around that can't be cut out of the narrative and still influences it because it's too intrinsically tied to our main actors not to. And you might have noticed that this actually doesn't just extend to the signers. As in, they're not the only ones where sci-fi and magic elements mix. This happens for the Iliaster trio, too. Placido gets a sword that can randomly cut a hole in space-time (and it's never explained how). The Meklords can cause real damage in duels even though they're supposedly not supernatural. Moment reactors can suddenly read people's hearts. Not one, but multiple cyborgs get a magical girl transformation where they change clothes and runners, or even combine from three people into one. And for some reason, the Crimson Dragon, even though its "own", central enemies, the dark signers, are already defeated, doesn't take its marks away from our heroes until after the cyborgs are taken care of, suggesting that the ancient, magical entity recognises the robots from the future as a supernatural threat of some sort. None of this is presented with any sort of attempt to get it to make sense, yet, we're supposed to believe it isn't magic, because we're all about robots and time travel now.

(Insert the magical girl transformation song of your choice.)

And I want to make one thing clear: I'm not saying this weird genre-mix couldn't have worked. In fact, I think it's hilarious and low-key brilliant even in the wonky state we got. Sure, let's make the antagonists robots from the future while keeping our protagonists the agents of an ancient Incan god on the mortal plane! If nothing else, you absolutely can't argue the idea wasn't original.

However, even with all the love I have for the show, I can't help but feel like there's an issue here, and the only way I could put it into words would be genre dissonance. We are supposedly in a sci-fi show now, yet the central antagonists, who are also the fundamental reason for this genre shift, seemingly can't decide whether they're actually using technology or magic for their schemes. And this becomes a problem insofar as that seemingly no effort to meaningfully fuse the fantastical elements with the pseudo-scientific ones is made, yet at the same time, they aren't properly separated, either. Specifically the latter might be harming the show even more than the former. Let me explain what I mean.

I'm no stranger to the fact that sci-fi sometimes likes to use technology that's supposed to be so advanced that to an outsider, it begins looking indistinguishable from magic. And in all fairness, that is probably what the 5Ds writers were gunning for. What hampers this a little, though, is that we're just coming from an arc that had actual magic in it, which leads to the allegedly scientific elements sending some mixed messages. Especially because they're never explained. And I'm not saying we needed super hardcore, internally fully consistent sci-fi worldbuilding here. Frankly, with all the weird nonsense 5Ds has already mostly handwaved by the start of the pre-WRGP arc, that would have been absurd. But I think a few explanations here and there, hell, even just the occasional off-handed remark, could have done a world of good for this arc, and especially for the Meklord dilemma and the setup of the ruined future. I don't need a whole breakdown on how exactly a reactor knows about the greed in people's hearts, but a remark somewhere on the side about how, for example, the particles that are the central player in that reactor also happen to be copious within the human heart (which would be impossible to prove, but ignore that) would have been nice. And I don't need a full breakdown of how the robot army was built; a throwaway remark that humanity created it as weapons in their supposedly endless, petty wars could have been cool, though.

My point is, fundamentally, that unlike the occult nonsense, which can skirt by on prophecies and simple, black-and-white, good VS evil stuff, the sci-fi elements feel like they demand a surface-level justification for their existence, at least. A surface-level justification they didn't get. And this is without addressing the much, much bigger problem that may actually be the root cause of most, if not all the things I've listed above so far: The time travel.

I don't think it's any sort of new, groundbreaking opinion to say that time travel is a notoriously finicky worldbuilding element that many writers, regardless of medium and/or skill, have already massively shot themselves in the foot with. And unfortunately, I feel like this has happened in 5Ds, too. Specifically because the time travel has seemingly absolutely no limits. The Iliaster trio (and even Paradox) can seemingly be everywhere they want, in any time period, and do whatever they want/deem necessary. Worse yet, the time travel is actively shown to have massive consequences more than once. And I think it's under the weight of this massive, utterly uncontrollable element that the plot really begins to collapse. Because frankly, with the implications we're given, things just really don't look good in a universe where limitless time travel can be used! Let me circle back to two questions from above to really emphasise this: Why are these guys so utterly convinced that this "repair", of all the ones they've already done, will save their future? How can they know that this particular plan will work when they've supposedly already tried everything? In a universe with limitless time travel, these questions become an absolute mess to deal with. And the real problem is that canon never even entertains the idea of answering them. Sure, you can begin to fill in the gaps for yourself if you feel like it. Maybe it's not that all the previous "repairs" Iliaster did truly didn't work, maybe they brought about even worse futures and that was the reason why they were discarded. Or maybe there's a hidden in-universe rule that people from the future who go back to the past actually don't have the power to change anything, as in, no matter what they change, it will never affect their present, because their actions will always loop back around to causing the same things they already know. But there. Precisely there is the problem. I'm not getting this from canon, I'm making it up from scratch. And sure, all stories have gaps—that's where a lot of fanfiction lives, after all. But when you reach the point where you have so many gaps that the audience can no longer suspend its disbelief over these gaps, that's when there's a problem. And the WRGP arc, for all that its antagonists are extremely compelling, pose genuine, moral dilemmas, and for all that it resolves in one of the best arcs of 5Ds, has precisely this problem for me. The worldbuilding is stretched too thin, and my suspension of disbelief breaks and leaves me wondering why so many good themes have to be buried in an arc that is this frustrating to watch sometimes.

*deep breath*

Okay. So now I've aired all my grievances and laid out all the problems that make me shake my fists in frustration at this arc, at the Meklords, and at the Team New World duel. What about the productive part, then, you might ask. I did say I wanted to provide solutions, as far as I can, anyway. How would I try to solve this mess?

Well, honestly, I think the solution here, at least to me, would be fairly basic: More consistency. Make it make sense. The genre mashup can stay exactly the way it is, but maybe tone down the magic on the cyborgs a bit. Make them actual cyborgs. Even if their tech is justified through bullshit, at least justify it. Why does Placido have a reality-splitting sword? Oh, it's actually the Moment Express wormhole technology in miniature. Why can Moment reactors see into people's hearts? Well, duh, they contain the same, special particles as human hearts. Why is there an army of robots in the future to begin with? Humans built it. For war. Like they did so much else. And why did the reactor use it against them? Because it was just responding to their own negativity. Their own, constant desire for strife and petty conflicts amongst one another made them actually turn the weapons against themselves (or rather, against the people they personally didn't like, which ends up being everyone when everyone has a grudge against someone) through the reactor. (The show almost does this one, but not quite.) How do the three emperors of Iliaster know destroying NDC, specifically, will fix the future? They don't! They're doing this on trial and error, and more importantly—and I think this would work best if it was introduced purposefully late—they can't actually save the future by changing the past, because they're not from the past. They just don't actually know that this is a rule of time travel.

None of these fixes would have to be big, episode-spanning things. Off-handed remarks would have been enough. But I think just that could have saved many points from becoming the plotholes they did.

And with that, I think I'll finally leave you be, I've rambled quite enough. To anyone who has made it all the way to the end, I can only give a sincere, heartfelt thank you. I realise this is a LOT of words. Moreover, I'd like to leave you with one more statement: Though I can absolutely understand if this post comes off as me getting on a soapbox and cupping my hands around my mouth before yelling, it's not meant to be. I absolutely invite discussion about the the handling of, the themes behind, and all the arguments I gave regarding the Meklord worldbuilding and the Team New World duel. So, feel every bit as free as I did to yell about this. This post encourages yelling.

[penultimate-step]

Cliffhangers: when do they help?

There's a reductive negative stereotype of cliffhangers that comes to mind when people complain about them: with neither planning nor setup, a dramatic situation occurs to the characters. "how will the characters get out of this one?," asks a dramatic voiceover, as the show cuts to credits. Then, next episode, the whole thing is resolved immediately in two seconds, so the series can go back to focusing on the actual plot.

Now, as I said, this is something of a stereotype, not something that often happens - most writers know better than to do something so blatant. It does sometimes happen, but usually the situation has more nuance to it than that.

The cliffhanger that inspired this, the recent Oshi no Ko 158-9, has very little of those mitigating factors. It is almost entirely the negative stereotype, a cliffhanger that adds very little to the story and detracts much. Which got me thinking a bit on cliffhangers in general - what separates a good one from a bad one?

The same week OnK gave us that disappointing cliffhanger, another weekly manga I follow, Chainsaw Man, had a cliffhanger that felt much more interesting. (Though perhaps given we haven't had the followup chapter, this is premature...nonetheless, it is an easy at hand example.) Looking at the chapters preceding them, we can see a difference in pacing and buildup.

OnK 158 comes after a few chapters of winding down and calmer pacing - the cliffhanger, in this case, doubles as a spike in tension, intended to kickstart the next bit of serious plot, coming as a surprise and shock to the readers. This is already something of a problem, as it doesn't have anything to build on; but arcs have to start somewhere, this isn't in itself a problem. but by framing it a sudden jump, it puts all the true requirements for execution on the followup, where it's leading to. Which is why when the next chapter immediately follows up with a "just kidding, teehee uwu" it kills the whole momentum.

CSM 176 goes for the more conservative approach - while it does still end on a shocking twist, this comes in the middle of an already intense fight scene. It forms one brick in a larger rising action, supported by previous scenes, so even if the followup doesn't land it doesn't kill the whole momentum. It's not trying to establish it's own setup - where OnK ended one chapter with a sharp shock and then tried to offramp into character revelations, CSM dual purposes them - Yoru's revelation about the Gun (and Tank) as well as her own personal actions are twist, cliffhanger, and plot development all in one. So it works as a story beat regardless of where the chapter leaves off.

But that feels a little too hostile to cliffhangers, right? Like am I just saying that cliffhangers are an artifact of the serial storytelling format, and could basically be excised? Is a "good cliffhanger," one that integrates itself with the story beats, basically indistinguishable from a non-cliffhanger? that can't be true, right?

Anyway while rolling this around in my head I tried to think about some memorable and positive cliffhangers that I've read in the past. And one that came to mind was from about halfway through the webnovel Pact. So, spoilers for that.

So at the end of Arc 7, the protagonist gets into a fight with a demon. He loses. Chapter cuts, we start arc 8 - from a completely different perspective. What happened to our previous protag is left up in the air for a whole arc, with hints slowly trickling in - but it is only when the arc ends that we get a more complete picture, that he had lost his connections, been removed from all the memories of others, and fallen into a place outside conventional reality.

In this case, the cliffhanger, I would argue, helps the narrative significantly - in separating the event from the resolution, forcing readers to stew on it while other plot threads go on, it made the eventual revelations more satisfying, not less.

I don't think that quite helps my point though. "Cliffhangers are good when planned and executed into the story and bad when they aren't" seems like 2 steps away from saying "its good when its good and bad when its bad," that doesn't much clarify things for me.

That might just be what it boils down to, though - cliffhangers are just one of many ways to control the pacing and tension in a story, with no special negative or beneficial properties, and are good when used in cases where an upswing in those things are good, or the author otherwise wants to direct focus and attention to an element. The negative stereotype, with examples like OnK's, are a result of pursuing those in the short term while sacrificing longer-term story stability - a misstep many longer stories make, not anything tied to cliffhangers inherently.

I still feel like there's something important I'm missing that separates the bad example from the good. But I think I've lost the train of thought here, and this has gone on far too long for what was originally intended to me just me musing to myself about why recent developments in my favorite ongoing manga aren't hitting as well as they should.

[mollybearrttrpg]

the d20 kind of sucks for TTRPGs

In a good number of systems, the 20-sided die is the primary die used for determining success or failure of any given action. On paper, this makes sense. 1-20 is a good number range, and the factors of 2 and 10 make a lot of sense when developing games, as it gives you a lot of freedom to make giant tables or the like without sacrificing consistency.

However, in my experience, the d20 is too random. When you break it down, you have pretty much exactly a 5% chance to roll any given number on the die. So if you need to roll a 15 to succeed on an action, you have about a 25% chance to succeed that action not including any modifiers. This works very well when you're handling "straight" rolls, or typically when doing something your character doesn't have any particular advantage or disadvantage with.

For example, when you have a character who has say, practiced sword combat their entire life with a deep variance of targets, and you have maybe a +5 to this roll to hit someone with a sword with a threshold of 15. This is a fairly typical setup, but this now only increases your chances of succeeding on this roll to 50%. Which... feels bad. The d20 makes this check with modifiers still basically a coin flip, which ideally should not be the case with a (functionally) percentile die. The larger margins of values should give more dynamics to rolling checks, not less.

In Pathfinder 2e for example, a system I quite like and enjoy, this problem gets especially bad when you consider how critical successes and failures work in that system. The way criticals function is that if you succeed or fail a given check by 10 (so with the 15 example, rolling a 5 is a critical fail and rolling a 25 is a critical success, including modifiers). Theoretically, this is sort of designed to solve the problem I proposed, in which that characters who are exceptionally skilled at something still often have a coin-flip level probability to do the thing they're good at.

However, in practice, instead of making characters who are skilled at their thing more likely to succeed and succeed well, it doesn't really change anything except the frequency in which critical successes or failures are rolled. At the end of the day, the threshold to succeed is the threshold to succeed, and rolling higher than that is more or less just a narrative tool (unless you're rolling a critical in combat), which you don't necessarily need codified gameplay mechanics for. You can kind of just do that when an exceedingly high roll calls for it.

Basically, I just don't think the randomness that the d20 introduces is useful, and essentially having a "fuck you" mechanic in which you can just get unlucky and be completely unable to function in gameplay sense just... is bad. I don't think the forces of RNG should be able to deprive players of their agency, and the inconsistency it introduces is a net negative to enjoyment of the game as a whole. I think in order to deprive players of their agency and have it remain fun, there needs to be structured, non-randomized systems that do this. You can get unlucky in real life, yes, and that can make you unable to function. But in a TTRPG, it just isn't that fun or interesting to me. Players should succeed well thought out maneuvers and fail poorly thought out maneuvers or those completely outside of your expertise. Randomization should be used for the things that fall in between those margins.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

If you had to pinpoint the main issue of MLB, the root of all evil if you may (aside from Astruc), what would it be?

If we're going super high level, it would be narrative consistency (I believe this is a synonym for "narrative coherence" or, at least, I've always used them pretty interchangeably and googling one finds you stuff on the other). I wanted to get an official definition of this term and wikipedia gave me this from a larger article on the theory of narrative paradigm:

Narrative coherence is the degree to which a story makes sense. Coherent stories are internally consistent, with sufficient detail, strong characters, and free of significant surprises. The ability to assess coherence is learned and improves with experience. Individuals assess a story's adherence by comparing it with similar stories. The ultimate test of narrative sense is whether the characters act reliably. If figures show continuity throughout their thoughts, motives, and actions, acceptance increases. However, characters behaving uncharacteristically destroy acceptance.

I also found a pretty good overview of the topic on the blog of a random editor. You can follow that link to read the whole thing, but I wanted to highlight this section on characters as I thought it was particularly relevant to the stuff I talk about on this blog:

Your characters will have their own personalities and behaviours that the reader will become familiar with as the story develops, so if you deviate from these patterns, the reader will notice. That’s why it’s important to maintain character consistency – that they would act in a way that is right and in keeping with their personality, rather than making them act out of character to make elements of the story fit.

As you can hopefully see from the above sources, the stuff I've talk about on here, and just generally thinking about the show, most of the issues with Miraculous have to do with the show being narratively incoherent. Characters do whatever the writers want them to do. Plot lines get dropped and picked back up then dropped (Lila) with no rhyme or reason. Big, meaningful setups lead to nothing (Gabriel learning all the temp heroes identities). Twists come out of nowhere (Kagami being a senti). They all indicate that something is majorly wrong here.

I am not involved in the production of this show, so I cannot tell you where all of these issues come from. It may be that the writing staff doesn't know what they're doing or it could be that unknown forces like marketing are driving the writers to do things that they'd rather not or it could be a mix of the two. For example, I'm pretty sure the magical charms we get in season four were only added to sell stuff like this and this, which is why I try to approach this show without pointing fingers at anyone too specific unless there's some hard evidence to back up what I'm saying. All I know is that this show has a massive writing problem and I'll end with a little advice on how I avoid this issue. It may or may not work for you. It all depends on your writing style.

When you sit down to write a story, it's very normal to not have a clear path for how to get from story point A to story point B. You don't need to find that path before you start writing. You just need to keep in mind that B is your goal and start figuring out how to logically get there.

I often describe this process as taking a journey with a known destination, but no planned route. However, just like with a road trip, the further you go, the more limited your options become because of the choices you made. If you skipped stopping at an interesting city or landmark, you can't change that fact and we're not turning the car around just so you can get a picture next to the big ball of string. You had your chance and you missed it. Accept that and move on.

Similarly, as you write your story, you have to own the choices you've already made on your journey. If you choose to let a character in on a massive secret (Alya learning Ladybug's identity), then you have to fully own how that choice would impact all elements of the story (Alya's opinion of Lila) not just the short sighted elements you wanted it to impact (note how Lila's not a thing in season four? Almost like they didn't plan out how to handle her and Alya at the same time?) Own the route you committed to and find a way to tell the next part of the story in a way that feels like it's on the same route and you'll be fine.

Does that mean occasionally having to give up on cool ideas that you really liked? Yep, but that's the nature of story telling. It's part of the reason why people are told to "kill their darlings." That's just a thing you have to learn to do if you want to be a good writer.

[rhetoricandlogic]

Liberty’s Daughter by Naomi Kritzer

By: Eric Hendel

Issue: 15 January 2024

Naomi Kritzer’s novel Liberty’s Daughter is a book that I both loved reading, and also a story which I think falls short of its full potential. Based in part on a series of shorter works written by the author (all of which have here been compiled into a larger narrative), Kritzer’s novel centers around the experiences of Beck Garrison, a sixteen-year-old girl who, along with her father, lives on a scattered network of artificially created islands and repurposed cruise ships known as a seastead. Set in an ambiguously dystopian near-future world, the novel introduces us to the six nations of the seastead, which was originally constructed by libertarian activists seeking to create what they falsely conceptualized as a utopian society valuing personal liberty above all else.

As the novel opens, the seastead has persisted in an ambiguous legal state for nearly forty-nine years. While the mainland United States government refuses to acknowledge this society’s independence (pointedly calling its embassy on the seastead not an embassy but an institute), it has also paradoxically neglected to arrest the many well-known corporate criminals who have fled here to avoid prosecution for their crimes. Over the course of Liberty’s Daughter, Kritzer uses this setup to explore contrasting articulations of human rights and social responsibilities, with the seastead slowly revealed to be an intensely authoritarian community in its own right.

All of this is introduced alongside a more subtle storyline, in which Beck’s realization of the true nature of the seastead’s views of human rights tracks alongside her gradually expanding understanding of the context in which her father brought her to live in this community. This latter development follows on from Beck’s decision to begin slowly reconnecting with her estranged mother, whom her father previously claimed had died years earlier. In this way, she eventually comes to recognize not only the truth of the seastead and the many ways in which its libertarian ideology fails, but also the precarity of her own privileged status within this self-described utopia.

The main plot of Liberty’s Daughter begins with a self-contained story that effectively introduces the novel’s themes. Beck is working as a “finder” (a person who is hired to negotiate trades on the seastead for hard-to-find commercially manufactured goods) when she is contacted by an indentured bond worker named Debbie Miller. While Beck is normally hired only by people hoping that she can find rare items for them, like slippers and bathing suits, Debbie has instead reached out to Beck in the hope that she will track down her missing sister, Lynn.

Having previously contracted a mysterious illness which prevented her from working, Lynn vanished shortly after asking her bond-holder on the seastead for a loan so she could pay to be seen by a doctor. Since then, everyone on the seastead to whom Debbie has spoken has claimed to know nothing of Lynn’s whereabouts, with Lynn’s bond-holder himself refusing to speak to Debbie at all. As Beck reflects immediately after hearing of this situation:

I had a bad feeling about this. My job is finding things, but normally that just means finding willing sellers for interested buyers. That’s why I was looking for the sandals. Finding a person was a whole different kettle of shark bait. But the seastead wasn’t that big, so unless she’d fallen over the side and drowned … I pulled out my gadget to take notes. “Okay,” I said, and keyed in the name. “What else can you tell me?” (p. 11)

This search draws Beck into a loosely connected sequence of overlapping objectives, all of which in turn coalesce into a larger story. Initially intent only on locating Lynn and verifying her safety, Beck soon discovers that the bond that allowed Lynn to live on the seastead has been sold to a “skin farm”—a dangerous factory whose impoverished workers routinely die due to exposure to chemicals normally outlawed. Worse still is that this factory is located on one of the seastead’s most infamous islands—a decaying cargo ship called Liberty (or “Lib” for short) whose residents abide by the single all-encompassing law that their exclusively capitalist society has no laws at all.

This brief story is resolved when, unwilling to simply abandon Lynn to her fate, Beck chooses to call upon the help of a private militia in Lib called the Alpha Dogs—a group for whose services her father had previously purchased a security subscription. In a scene which almost comes across as deliberately anticlimactic, Beck simply walks into the skin farm in which Lynn is being held captive, and, under the protection of the Alpha Dog bodyguard she has hired, commands that Lynn be set free. Critical to this scene is the exact manner by which Beck manages to free Lynn, and the exchange that occurs when she does so:

She was chained to the workbench. “Can you get her loose?” I said to my bodyguard. He gave me a look. “I’m hired to protect you. She is not on my contract.” “Yeah?” I walked over and grabbed her arm. “Lynn, will you give me the honor of your company? Say yes.” “… Yes?” “Lynn is my date and my contract specifies that you will provide protection services for me and my date at all times. And I want you to get us out of here.” (p. 38)

This scenario functions as an encapsulation of the themes that the entire novel explores. The way in which Beck frees Lynn (by extending the terms of the bodyguard’s contract onto her) reveals the vast gulf that exists between this libertarian society’s claimed values of personal freedom and autonomy and the reality of how these values manifest. Beck is only capable of entering the skin farm because of the bodyguard whom she has personally hired; having a member of a privately-funded militia at her side is all that allows her to move through this space without question. By contrast, Lynn is indicated to have spent the last two weeks chained to a desk in this same factory, unable to leave due to an outstanding medical debt that she had no choice but to incur. Even in this scenario, Beck’s bodyguard at first refuses to free Lynn by claiming he has no right to do so due to the terms of his contract; he only agrees to do what Beck says when she changes the situation so as to better meet those terms. While this is a community whose citizens claim to have no laws, the actions of Beck and her bodyguard reveal that the society abides by at least one: that the only rights which anyone has are those that can be forcibly extracted from the lives of others.

This examination of the limitations of the seastead’s ethos continues as the book progresses, with Kritzer’s novel quickly giving way to less a single narrative thread than a fascinating sequence of loosely connected subplots and self-contained story arcs which require that Beck directly engage with the entrenched social inequity of the seastead’s community.

After she has freed Lynn from the skin farm, there is a strange but also unexpectedly fascinating story in which Beck is recruited by the producer of a reality television program from the mainland United States. While working as this woman’s assistant, Beck comes in turn to serve a vital if indirect role in an emerging labor movement amongst bond workers like Debbie and Lynn. In the process of this work, Beck witnesses a bizarre inversion of the seastead’s libertarian philosophy when the producer of the program tries offering her employees healthcare, only to then be threatened by the leader of the entire seastead due to the dangerous precedent he fears this act will set. There is also, later on, an extended story depicting the outbreak of a mysterious plague originating from one of the seastead’s unregulated nanotech research facilities, with Beck and several of her friends desperately working to distribute a vaccine to the seastead’s overly paranoid citizens. Eventually the book concludes via a legitimately fascinating final act wherein what little governmental infrastructure the seastead previously possessed collapses. Beck and others subsequently begin working to rebuild their society, and in the process start replacing its libertarian, capitalist ethic with something more holistic and inclusive.

My main problem with Liberty’s Daughter is that, as engaging and creative as the book’s story is, there are also several critical junctures at which I think that Kritzer fails to fully explore the implications of this narrative. Instead, in these moments the novel pulls back from the events it is depicting and shuts down any further exploration of the issues its story has introduced, in a way that feels extremely artificial.

One example of this emerges in the conclusion to the story of Lynn’s escape from the skin farm. Initially simply expecting Lynn to go to the American Embassy so she can formally request asylum, Beck learns that a drug charge in Lynn’s past makes this option impossible for her. This is a crime which the book explicitly verifies to the reader is so minor as to be nonexistent, and yet because of this charge—and what it apparently means for Lynn’s future if she ever returns to the United States—she chooses to remain on the seastead in spite of the danger she now knows she faces. This is a plot point that is then abandoned as the story continues, with Lynn simply vanishing from the chapters that follow, and Beck—despite her prior desire to rescue Lynn—appearing strangely uninterested in contemplating how an excessively punitive criminal justice system has forced this woman to place her life in undue danger.

A similar issue emerges in the ending of the book itself. After a cholera outbreak leaves what little social infrastructure the seastead had previously possessed in shambles, a humanitarian group arrives to administer aid to the sick and injured. It’s in this way that Beck is unexpectedly reunited with her mother, Lenore, who has traveled to the seastead with this group. Here, after learning that Beck’s father has fled from the seastead (abandoning his daughter in the process), Lenore reveals the context in which her former husband, Paul Garrison, emigrated to the seastead: he kidnapped a four-year-old Beck after attempting to arrange for his wife’s death in a traffic accident. Lenore then claims custody over Beck against her will, and, in an act that leaves her daughter feeling both disillusioned and betrayed, forces her to leave the seastead for good. The book ends with a scene in which Beck and her mother begin planning a road trip, with Beck herself seemingly forgetting the sense of betrayal she had felt—and the ways in which her mother’s actions mirror the very same exploitative reduction of human rights which had marred so much of the seastead’s society.

Moments like this, while initially appearing minor, function to dampen many of the more pressing questions which Liberty’s Daughter raises. Just as Lynn’s decision to risk her life to remain on the seastead is an act which clearly exists within a still larger context that the book refuses to explore, Lenore’s decision to take Beck away from the seastead against her will raises the possibility that the flaws of the seastead’s exclusionary conceptualization of human rights are far more widespread. Beck’s mother, despite having never adhered to this libertarian ideology, ultimately ends this book by exerting a control over Beck’s life that seems to exist purely for her own sake—a desire to spend the last two years of Beck’s childhood living in a very traditional family setting, regardless of what her daughter has to say about this.

Yet rather than allowing these moments to exist in the story as points of ambiguity, they end up being pushed aside. Liberty’s Daughter ends with Beck and her mother going on a hike together. Even the book’s final line has Beck asking her mother if they can go on a road trip to the Grand Canyon, and Lenore answering, with a laugh, that Beck can go wherever she wants. Yet this moment feels hollow due to how it contrasts with Lenore’s actions: there is at least one place where she will apparently not allow her daughter to go, and, as the novel has demonstrated, it’s a very important one.

[fearsmagazine]

SUNRISE - Review

DISTRIBUTOR: Lionsgate

SYNOPSIS: “When an ex-cop named Fallon returns to the scene of a horrific crime, the residents of a rural town soon discover that this dark visitor is really a vampire who feeds on blood and fear. After he is befriended by a kind immigrant family, the instinctive killer is faced with a choice between revenge and redemption.” -Press Release

REVIEW: SUNRISE is an interesting concept. It is a hybrid tale that mixes an old fashioned western with a supernatural legend and a setting of the forest in the pacific northwest. It’s an idea with a lot of potential that unravels in the third act.

The film begins with the setup of a demon in the forest, it is given sacrifices, if it wants it can give the gift of immortality, time passes and the sacrifices got larger, and it came to be known as “the red coat.” There are numerous myths and legends about “red coats,” and I was hopeful that SUNRISE would weave a tale that was something new. However, they suggest that the demon in the woods is vampire-like without using the word “vampire.” The film updates the western genre concept by making the family of Asian heritage and the town kingpin, Reynolds, is partially driven by racism to get the family to sign over the farm. There are aspects to Reynolds that make him seem more like a fascist than your typical western capitalist. Reynolds also has the added dimension of a fanatical preacher during a scene where he gives a sermon and reads scripture. The character of Fallon is reminiscent of “Shane,” but his history also includes his family suffering at the hands of the Reynolds’ family. It’s a bit confusing as to why Fallon receives the red coat’s gift if Ma Reynolds made the sacrifice.

There is a problem with the third act. I’m not sure if it is the narrative or the editing. The film makes some confusing leaps where we are not sure what’s transpired to find the characters in their situations. I actually went back and rewatched scenes to see if I missed something but to no avail. Likewise, a few of the characters are never fully flushed out so that we understand their actions and relationships.

Likewise, there are elements of the story’s logic that are never explained. Baird offers several montages I think he is using to try to symbolize aspects of the tale but I don't believe they work. For example, he frequently shows this image of a buck in the woods. It can mean several different things, but what does it mean in the context of the tale?

The production is visually fantastic. They do a nice job of substituting locations in Ireland for the pacific northwest. The cinematography creates this nightmare fairy tale world as Andrew Simon McAllister serves as a hypnotic lullaby that is hypnotic. The costume designs are contemporary, but have subtle touches that infer the western motif. It all comes together to create this rich, layered atmosphere to the film.

It’s a great cast, but the performances feel constricted by the archetypes they are in relation to the narrative. Alex Pettyfer is the brooding loner of few words who is driven to violent extremes he’s been trying to avoid. Guy Pearce is the fanatical villain who employs, what he believes, is justified violent means to an end. Crystal Yu is the widowed wife trying to protect her family and homestead (yes, they are farmers). I loved Olwen Fouéré as the evil Ma Reynolds who believes and plays into the legend of the red coat.

SUNRISE is based on the classic western genre where the gunslinger seeking redemption is a blood-thirsty creature who is forced out of the forest when he encounters the violence being directed at an immigrant farm family suffering the loss of their patriarch. We are to assume that the red coat is a vampire, but given some of the traits Fallon exhibits it is something different. There are problems with the third act that impedes the enjoyment of the film.

This is Andrew Baird’s second feature film, his first the sci-fi thriller “Zone 414.” Based on the style and look of both films you can feel the influences of brothers Ridley and Tony Scott. Visually and technically, Baird is a talented filmmaker. He definitely needs to up his game as a storyteller based on the problems I had with his two feature films.

CAST: Guy Pearce, Alex Pettyfer, Crystal Yu, William Gao, Riley Chung, Olwen Fouéré, and Tamara Chanel White. CREW: Director - Andrew Baird; Screenplay - Ronan Blaney; Producers - Martin Brenann, Jib Polhemus, Ford Corbett & Nathan Klingher; Cinematographer - Ivan Abel; Score - Andrew Simon McAllister; Editors - Helen Sheridan & John Walters; Production Designer - Ashleigh Jeffers; Costume Designer - Ciana O'Kane; Special Effects Supervisor - Frankie Waite; Special EFX - Ignite SFX; Visual Effects - Nathan Mateer OFFICIAL: https://www.lionsgate.com/movies/sunrise FACEBOOK: N.A. TWITTER: N.A. TRAILER: https://youtu.be/S6btUl5QpFc?si=q2ubhsczIiHty798 RELEASE DATE: In theaters, digital and on demand Jan. 19th, 2024

**Until we can all head back into the theaters our “COVID Reel Value” will be similar to how you rate a film on digital platforms - 👍 (Like), 👌 (It’s just okay), or 👎 (Dislike)

Reviewed by Joseph B Mauceri

[wreathsstoreindubai]

Best Event Decor Agencies in Dubai – Weddings, Parties & Others

Dubai is the city of luxury, sophistication, and never-to-forget parties. Whether it's a glamorous wedding, business lunch, or a small birthday party, each party in Dubai needs to come along with breathtaking décor that transform moments into memories. That is why getting the best team for event decorations in Dubai becomes more necessary than ever before.

Let's explore the top trends, styles, and services that make the event decorations in Dubai into class-world.

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In a city like Dubai, where events are larger than life, every detail counts. From weddings and engagements to product launches and private dinners, décor transforms ordinary spaces into extraordinary experiences.

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In Dubai, companies use innovative décor to impress partners, clients, and media. Beautifully decorated events communicate a lot regarding the professionalism and attention to detail of a brand.

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Most of the Dubai decorators partner with online florists such as flowerstoredubai to guarantee the best flowers. This event designing and floral art fusion makes magic with the eyes.

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These decorators will collaborate with your budget and thoughts to ensure that each piece falls into place beautifully. Small, big, indoor, or outdoor – Dubai has the ideal décor team at hand to bring it into being.

Dubai Decoration Service Booking With online stores and websites, it is never a chore to find the perfect decoration partner anymore. Websites like flowerstoredubai typically have packages, galleries, and price lists, so you can plan without a hassle.

Most of the decorators provide:

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The Dubai city event industry is quick, professional, and customer-centric. Seamless communication, punctual delivery, and dramatic results are assured.

✨ Final Thoughts Whether it's a wedding, party, or corporate affair, décor transforms an area into a bash. With the best event decorations in Dubai has to offer, your wedding reception, party, or business function is an event and so much more than that – it's an experience.

From bloomed fantasy to high-end arrangements, Dubai has endless possibilities. And with a reliable service such as flowerstoredubai, it's all a mouse click away.

Why settle for the ordinary, then? Go premium. Go personal. Create your event a one-of-a-kind, never-to-be-forgotten experience with Dubai's finest decoration services.

[femmeleatherface]

Pride Movie Marathon: Week 4

Day 22: Brokeback Mountain (2005) - based on the short story of the same name by Annie Proulx

Day 23: Female Trouble (1974) - original uncut version

Day 24: Two 4 One (2014)

Day 25: Open (2010)

Day 26: Summer Solstice (2023)

Day 27: Moonlight (2016)

Day 28: Cabaret (1972) - based on the 1966 musical of the same name, the 1951 play I am a Camera, and various Christopher Isherwood novels like Goodbye to Berlin and Sally Bowles (maybe others)

Day 22: Brokeback Mountain (2005)

this one was showing in the cinéma for the 20th anniversary so i decided to make it my monthly fork-over-money-to-see-it-on-the-big-screen movie since for some reason all the new queer movies this year came out in may???? that classic gay month. anyway i've been wanting to rewatch brokeback mountain regardless, last time i saw it was something like a decade ago with my ex-best friend at a sleepover so it's been a while. what i remember most about that first watch is both of us went into it expecting it would be a fun romp with gay cowboys and then the further along things went we experienced the crushing realization that the only reason it had that reputation was because of homophobia and the film is in fact an incredible, devastating story in part about that very homophobia. then we had an analytical discussion about the way the characters' intimacy and violence were closely correlated and often blurred due to internalized homophobia. good times.

anyway, i still really loved this movie. i've seen it get a lot of hate over the years for how depressing it is, which i get. it definitely came out during a period where queer movies were becoming more mainstream but still falling back on old tropes of bury-your-gays tragedy porn, and this film is no exception and should be criticized for it. but now that 20 years have gone by and i'd argue it's much, much easier to find more uplifting movies, i personally find it easier to accept the film on its own terms and temporarily set aside the larger cinematic context from which it emerged.

and honestly... this film justifies its downer ending more than others. when i think of films that kill off its gay characters and then get mopey about it, i'm far more frustrated by movies like cloudburst, which starts off as a fun road comedy and then in the last ten minutes kills off one of the lesbians and is out of nowhere out of nowhere a really serious movie about accepting the death of your life partner as an older person. it's not that the film ended in such a downer way, it's that there was ZERO setup and it felt like it did it purely for shock value and because the creators can't conceive of a story with old lesbians where one of them isn't dead by the end of it. brokeback mountain at least sets up its downer ending narratively. the further along things get the more obvious it is that things will just not work between ennis and jack, ennis gets more and more depressed, and as much as it sucks that jack dies there's at least foreshadowing that it will happen. sure, it would be nice for things to end happier, but at least the film is honest upfront about its miserableness.

that said. i do think the ending is flawed. don't get me wrong, it's super effective at being super depressing--the person next to me in the theater literally started crying, the only other time this has happened to me in a movie theater was when i went to see a re-release of the wrath of khan--but i think the film is focusing far too much on its audience than its characters by that point. like... jack is killed, ennis is sad about it, he wants to spread jack's ashes up on brokeback but jack's parents won't let him, so he takes jack's old bloody shirt and keeps it in his closet presumably forever. it's all very effective, an absolute tearjerker, but what is the purpose of it all for ennis as a character? he is our protagonist, as viewers we want to see him change in some way to give the story purpose. so how does this change him, negatively or positively?

i thought about this all the way on my walk home, and the only changes i can think of are that upon meeting jack's parents he meets parents more accepting of homosexuality than his own, so he knows that things don't need to be the way he thought, and also he decides to be there for his daughter at her wedding after spending much of her life constantly away either by choice or circumstance. but neither of those really feel like are The Point of the film, so to speak. the first one does a bit, so if the film had ended there, that would have been alright. but it keeps going, and that's what keeps tripping me up. "don't let work and depression get in the way of spending time with people you care about" is a great closing message, but that's not what the movie was about!

to me, brokeback mountain (the place) was essentially a metaphor for the closet: it's a safe place where one can express one's queerness with trusted others, but slip out too much you risk the violence of the outside world, but also if you stay tied to it too long it will slowly kill you inside. that felt more like the major themes the film was exploring, but how on earth does the ending do much of anything with that? ennis now has jack's shirt literally in his closet alongside a picture of brokeback. okay, he's continuing to keep his homosexuality buried in the closet indefinitely... this could work fine, but it's the exact same way he was before, nothing has really changed for him mental-emotionally. maybe if this were a negative development, like he started to come out a bit but then jack's death buried him deeper than before or he went out and gaybashed somebody (jack's other lover, perhaps, coming to share their grief), then okay. depressing as fuck, but that is a definite negative turn more negative than previously. or heck! do a positive development! maybe to piggyback off the scene with jack's parents, ennis's daughter comes out to him as a lesbian and he decides to be that better parent because he knows now that's a thing you can do and wants a better life for his kid! or he comes out to her to show that he's fully accepted himself (something established at the beginning he wasn't doing)! or both! just SOMETHING to tie a bow on this, his story.

idk maybe i'm missing something obvious. i haven't read the short story, so maybe things are more satisfying there. but the film at least really feels like it cares more about making the audience bawls their eyes out at the end rather than provide a conclusion for its characters. and that does feel a bit disingenuous, even manipulative. i still think the movie is quite good, but hrm. that aspect could use work.

Day 23: Female Trouble (1974)

i had this recommended to me by an older gay guy i used to work with. we both really loved trash cinema and shlocksterpieces but i hadn't gotten around to any john waters movies yet so he recommended this one as a starter. i promised him i would watch it this month. i don't see him anymore now that i am in a much better job, but wanted to make sure i kept my promise, so here we are. it only took FOREVER, the library i originally requested a copy from only sent me the criterion collection bluray booklet and not the actual disk, so i had to re-request it from a different copy and oh my god. so much hassle.

but don't worry! it was worth it! absolutely loved this movie, so much in fact that i decided to actually hold onto the disk longer than i expected so i can watch it again with director's commentary. the best part was the dialogue, every line deserved to be plucked from the air and put in a kitschy gold frame with a mix of faux and real diamonds and dyed feathers from a boa made from a really rare bird and blinding neon glow in the dark pant. too tired from the brokeback mountain dissection to fully articulate but ah. so good. thank you, former older gay coworker! hopefully i run into him some time to let him know what i thought.

Day 24: Two 4 One (2014)

i was nervous going into this one because it's a comedy about a trans man who accidentally gets pregnant and there were just SO many ways that could backfire. but things actually turned out pretty well. there were parts of the film that reeked of cis writers, and i don't think they got a trans actor for the character (though they did get a man so. there's that), but overall it was very well handled and i enjoyed it quite a bit.

the score in this movie SUCKED though, oh my god. very generic do-dee-do comedy music that sounds like it was pulled from a bargain bin stock music library to save money--which, i mean, fair, budgets are difficult to get for indie movies sometimes, but GOD it sounded bad. it was especially agonizing because the film literally opened with a rae spoon song, nearly sending me hurtling back over my couch because 1.) i love rae spoon immensely, and 2.) i'd been thinking about them and how excited i am for their new lavender country-inspired album on my walk home. the fact that a rae spoon masterpiece had to share music space with a score even a film for toddlers would consider undignified is absolutely devastating.

Day 25: Open (2010)

hoo boy another pretentious queer art film. i've talked about how art films are not my thing so i will not reiterate it, just say that overall i did enjoy this one... up until i looked it up afterward. then i found out one character was supposed to be intersex and the relationship between the cis and trans guys was spposedly "the first time either of them had had sex with someone of the opposite gender" and ummmmm neither of those things were acknowledged in the movie, if these details are so important maybe include them? that got me a bit pissed off. but whatever.

it was still good at what it did. it has all the traits i dislike in art films--all the characters act in the same tedious manner (except cynthia, which is why she was my favorite, ily cynthia), the conversations are forced and unnatural, people do random things that are supposed to be deep but just come across as ridiculous--but i was able to accept these things more in this than i normally am, so props to the film for that. and honestly, i think the main goal of the film was to get the viewer to think and feel from all its creative aspects and it did, so it succeeded where it wanted to, i'm just not the audience for this.

i also love the wide array of beautiful trans* bodies we get to see in this. the film was made by queer people, with queer actors, including a wide array of trans people... or at least, white queer and trans people. a problem in queer cinema in general but very strongly felt in this one. the only people of color in the dang film are dead africans stuffed and locked in the back room of a museum (plus one imagined one/ghost/ambiguous entity decidedly not alive the way the main characters are). and sure, it's a very unnerving and effective criticism of the historical treatment of people of color and their literal corpses by museums (or in general, really), and the way many modern museums/society refuse to grapple with it and instead literally hide it away and in so doing continue the explotation, but ummmm. i don't think there was even one non-white extra the entire movie. if there was one, they were verrrrrrry much in the background and had zero impact on anything. ironically, the film ends up conveying an unintentional idea (not literally, but i'd argue certainly symbolically) that all the people of color died a long time ago and don't exist or contribute to art and the body projects we see all the white queer people do, who instead must speak on behalf of these poor dead nonwhite folks. which ironically does make the film feel a tad exploitative of black bodies itself, like the groups it is criticizing. i feel like this problem could have been SO easily fixed (or at least made less overt) by casting some queer people of color to play the nonmagical and alive protagonists, but nope. white people all the way.

Day 26: Summer Solstice (2023)

aaaaa this was lovely! it's a very smart movie: it recognizes the tropes of queer media that it's engaging with (trans narratives centering around suffering and physical transition, budding potential romances between friends, new love emerging following a failed/toxic relationship, trans men getting absolute scraps for representation, etc.) but turns them on their head or subverts them in some way!

for example, the film opens with the main character at an audition for a trans acting role, and he delivers this big long-winded monologue about just wanting acceptance and seeking happiness in his own skin through The Operation and it's all very dramatic and angsty. but in real life, the character's life is really quite ordinary and physical transition is a side thing. he's just trying to find work, make sense of his one-sided relationship, and deal with the sudden reappearance of his best friend from college. he's been on T for a year, and his body and general gender dysphoria certainly impacts how he interacts with the world, but mainly, like all trans men, he's just a normal guy going about his normal life. and i LOVE that. there were so many tropes going on that i kept making predictions for what would happen plot-wise based on what i've seen in other movies, but most of my predictions didn't happen and things proceeded in more complex, satisfying directions. i think that really speaks to how smart and well-written this film is!

ALSO TWO TRANS GUYS KISS IN THIS. POINTS WILDLY. it's a subplot of subplots, but GOD it was great to see. this movie said fuck you, romeos (2011)! mlm trans men don't need shitty cis boyfriends anymore, t4t is the future! woohoo!!!!!!!!

Day 27: Moonlight (2016)

another movie like brokeback mountain that i have actually seen before, but it was ages ago so i've been wanting to watch it again. i watched this film the first time in the middle of the night when i was way too sleep-deprived to appreciate it, so i wanted to give it the lucid attention it deserved, but devastatingly it's leaving tubi at the end of the month to probably enter the purgatory realm of the lighthouse and other a24 films that used to be on there but then were removed purely for the purpose of making me sad or something. anyway brokeback mountain WISHES it had an ending as bow-tyingly linked to its protagonist's emotional arc yet simultaneously audience-affecting as moonlight.

this really is such a great movie. there was so much i didn't pick up on the first time i watched it, both in terms of the story itself and how well-done it is (the parallelism in parts 1 and 3... ahahahH) but also just how excellent the filmmaking is. the cinematography, oh my goddd... the love given to black skin through the lighting and camera is really ever-so gorgeous. also, something i don't see talked about as much but which definitely deserves praise alongside the highly-praised score is the sound design. yes the score is fantastic, definitely listening to it later to add songs to my movie soundtrack playlist, but the decisions on when to use it and NOT use it and either experience silence or diegetic noise, particularly to emphasize chiron's emotions and depression and especially moments where he experiences mental dissasociation, is so, so, SO good, probably among the best i've seen.

if i were to make a point of criticism about this film, then i guess i'd say something about the third part felt rushed to me. it ultimately works well enough that i can brush it aside, but i was drawn out a bit more in the last 45 minutes than i was in the hour beforehand. i think part of it is that part 3 mainly takes place in the span of, what, a week? feels like a week. while parts 1 and 2 at least feel like they cover greater periods of time, so we get the sense of experiencing more of this characters' emotional growth and how his life has affected him and caused him to change vs. having a sudden life-changing epiphany. but i think it's also that we're thrust into the "hardness" of black after spending so much time with the "softness" of little/chiron with so little transition. it's a brilliant turn and i 100% buy it, and honestly script-wise the transition point is when chiron attacks terrel, but for some reason that doesn't quite land for me in the final product? i do accept it ultimately, so this is a nitpick more than anything, but it did distract me when for the first hour i was never distracted once. perhaps more time would have helped, or bringing up the events of what happened to chiron after he was sent to juvie sooner. or maybe i just need to watch it a third time and study the writing more closely. i don't know. i'll watch it again in another seven years or so.

Day 28: Cabaret (1972)

i selected this one because earlier this month i finished reading sex and the weimar republic: german homosexual emancipation and the rise of the nazis by laurie marhoefer after i went to a talk he gave about research he's done for a book on trans people in weimar-era germany (!!!!!!! I NEED THIS BOOK NOW!!!!!!!!), and the last chapter in sex and the weimar republic talked about this movie's popularity forming modern retrospective understanding of the weimar republic and the rise of nazism. marhoefer's argument was basically that the film portrays the era as one of sexual decadence and that such decadence (particularly queerness) caused the rise of fascism and is intinsically linked to it, which draws on historical misconceptions that the majority of people during the weimar republic disliked the sexual freedoms of the era and that nazism was inherently queer. i was curious and wanted to watch the film while that interpretation was still fresh in my brain.

i think... there's certainly room to make that reading. the film focuses a lot on the weimar republic as an era of sexual hedonism and only barely touches on other aspects of the time that maybe (probably) had more impact on the rise of fascism like the severe economic depression and lingering antisemitism. there's also certainly a lot to be read into the queer portrayal of the master of ceremonies and the drag goosestep/gorilla antisemitism numbers and how ambiguous both those things were in where nazism stars and queerness ends. but ultimately, i think the film is more portraying the sexual hedonism as a distraction; the characters are so wrapped up in it, they don't pay attention to the fascism rising around them, allowing it to gain power. queerness is linked to this hedonism, sexualizing it and ignoring elements of german queer culture and activism at that time which took place outside the caberets. but queerness, and sexual freedom in general, don't really feel like they are being presented as fascist. if anything, the film subtly implies that queer people are being excluded as nazis are included, with the beginning of the film showing that lesbians and trans women are present in the cabaret and then drawing attention at the end to their absence and replacement with nazis. but then again, the nazis do appear perfectly content allowing the queerly hedonistic site of the cabaret to continue after assuming power (which has zero basis in reality, those places were shut down VERY quickly), so there's certainly a strong reading to be made that the film portrays nazis as okay with gay people, which continues to completely ignore the history of the nazis' persecution of homosexuals.

also, as a side note: this film is apparently historically noted for its portrayal of bisexuality, and while that certainly does happen (and apparently does NOT happen in the original stageshow, what the fuck), it's in that realm of early queer representation where it's only Said, never Seen. which makes sense, simply Saying was a big enough deal and Seeing could result in even more serious threats of censorship. in cabaret, the characters brian and max have thick enough homoerotic tension to cut it with a knife, but eyefucking and brian admitting after the fact that he and max had sex is really all that we get. ostensibly this is the Said vs. Seen situation of early queer rep, but i think in this film there's more than that going on too, and it's that this story wants to appropriate queerness without actually touching it. the cabaret gets to be super queer, particularly around the master of ceremonies character and the drag sequence i mentioned, but also in terms of the people we get to see in the background. but the characters, and story itself, are played very safe and heteronormative. brian and max's affair is just a fling, a random thing that happened but won't again because max is gone and fuck that guy, the real romance is brian and sally, aren't they amazing, yay for brian and sally! bisexuality happens, and then it's forgotten in favor of the same old hetero thing. there is barely any discussion of how this impacts brian's relationship with sally or his understanding of himself. this is apparently worse in the stageshow, where the brian/sally/max threesome never happens and the story is painfully straight, yet i've been listening to the original broadway recordings (because the music is wonderful) and the songs themselves are so much gayer, the opening number featuring the master of ceremonies squeezing men's crotches for example.

and like. this story was in part based on the writings of christopher isherwood, which were based on his own experiences in late 20s/early 30s berlin. i haven't read them yet, but i'm familiar with the gist of it. isherwood, like many upper middle class british men, came to berlin because of germany's decriminalization of sodomy and the city's reputation as a homosexual paradise with a rampant population of male sex workers. to quote isherwood, he came to berlin because "berlin meant boys." the point being: Isherwood Was Not Straight. he was Very, Very Gay, and came to berlin to live openly in a way he couldn't back in britain. from what i've heard, the isherwood novels are basically semi-fictional memoirs, so they discuss berlin through the lens. and sure, the brian character in cabaret is not isherwood, he's just a character inspired by isherwood, creative liberties and all that. but cabaret (musical and film) are adapting isherwood's work, and erasing the queer themes of both that work and who isherwood was as a person is just really awful, honestly a little exploitative. this story wants to benefit from the experiences of a gay man without actually depicting any of those experiences and exploring german gay culture except, really, for the aesthetic of it. i'm glad the film decided to push to give us the scraps of queerness that we got and became a pioneer in cinematic bisexuality, but god. that history deserves so much more.

(also as a final note before i finally get offline and WRITE ALREADY, the film also sanitizes not!isherwood by ignoring and erasing some of the more flawed parts of who isherwood was as a person like his antisemitism and the fact that he was apparently very UNpolitical compared to his expat peers and was even ambivalent to the nazis until their rise to power actually began to threaten him and his gay romps. a choice that makes sense for an anti-fascist work that doesn't want to make its male protagonist too complicated or appear on the wrong side of history, but also a HUGE omission that paints isherwood via not!isherwood as a figure in a light probably too flattering for what actually happened.)

Comparative Rankings Because My Brain Insists

Filibus (1915)

Female Trouble (1974)

Cowboys (2020)

Potato Dreams of America (2021)

Moonlight (2016)

Summer Solstice (2023)

The Living End (1992)

I Love You More (2023)

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018)

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

I Love You Phillip Morris (2009)

What Really Happened to Baby Jane? And the Films of the Gay Girls Riding Club (1962-1972)

Gods and Monsters (1998)

The Killing of Sister George (1968)

Cabaret (1972)

Two 4 One (2014)

Death Drop Gorgeous (2020)

The True Adventures of Wolfboy (2019)

Olivia (1951)

Open (2010)

How Do I Look? (2006)

This is the Army (1943)

Salomé (1923)

Mikaël (1924)

Une nouvelle amie (2014)

Les adieux à la reine (2012)

Gun Hill Road (2011)

Anatomy of a Love Seen (2014)