#maybe i should rewatch the scene itself | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

shanblackrx · 2 months ago

Text

Ok, first of all, I have just rewatched the special episode and although I already knew how it'd end, the moment the credits went up I literally buried my face in my hands and SOBBED. It's not that hard to make me cry with media, but I usually just tear up and nothing more. The last time I remember sobbing like this was with the end of Chimera Ants arc of Hunter x Hunter manga, which is a completely different type of story and media whatsoever, back in 2012. And I didn't know the end. Spectacular manga btw go read it

That said, I'm freshly out of it so here's a few of my considerations, personal opinions and also my theory. I'm not diving into the analysis of the episode itself for now, as I like to make these for more specific things I find in the work so they deserve a separate post for each, though I will be analyzing the post-credits scene because we don't have answers so we need to speculate.

Looooong text with almost no pictures ahead, just my yapping:

I expected the special episode to be really just Jack and Joke's cute little established relationship, which we did get to see (they're so disgustingly sappy, oh my god. I love them) for a good chunk of the episode. But we all also expected the wedding which, technically, did happen, just not how we wanted.

I think a lot of us just wanted only the happy part of it, maybe just a small conflict that would resolve within the story, which is what special episodes usually offer, especially because the original series wraps up perfectly and doesn't really give that much room for a continuation. And I think that because a lot of people expected this, they were utterly disappointed with it, even mad (that and also killing off one of the leads, like. Yeah I get it lol).

And I understand. Jack & Joker is perfectly balanced, with a nice and perfect ending. If I could choose, I wouldn't want a continuation either - you know, the chances of ruining a perfectly good show increases if you extend it for more than it should, and J&J is already perfect the way it is.

But I was offered the special episode, and now I have to work with it.

The first time I watched it I thought it was a bit rushed and confusing, albeit very intense (in a positive way). In my much calmer (as one can be), much less stressed out and anxious mood of my rewatch, I could feel it better. And I think it's way more seamless than I thought at first. Curiously, I also had the same feeling with the og series; it got so, so much better once I've rewatched it, and it kept getting better with all the small details I caught in every new watch.

It still has all the essence of J&J. The absurd comedy, the action, the romance, the heavy angst, the visuals, the lack of canon tattooaran even if it's heavily hinted. So all in all it was still a complete J&J experience.

I really do like the fact Save is not a perfect boss - he's basically just a math kid. He's not prepared to take care of a whole neighborhood like he did with bank accounts. Variables - people - were not in the system of his little bank computer. Taking care of a whole community is no easy task, especially since he is no mafia, he doesn't have the kind of experience and intimidation to keep bad apples in check. And even so, he still worked his hardest; and even so, it's still not enough.

So having criminals that were under Alice's thumb but now scattered like cockroaches searching for another ditch make having control over these fires they set even harder. I think it's a nice and coherent touch, and stuff happening because of it makes sense.

Also, although the uwu language JackJoke used throughout the moments they were out and about making everyone unwilling witnesses of their disgusting love was extremely funny and cute, it was really nice to see their heartfelt conversation when they were alone in Jack's room. It felt much more like they were baring their hearts for the other to hold, a genuine moment of intimacy, especially since they were making their wedding invites individually and by hand. It bore such a huge significance to their relationship I really can't begin to tell you how much I loved this scene. (they're also wearing shirts of complementary colors 😭💚)

I wasn't really expecting Carbon to make a comeback. But his explanation on why makes sense, and once again it hints that money and power walk together. It also gives him a more definite end (dying, finally. bitch) to take him out the picture for good since he could just eventually walk out the prison and go after them once again.

The casino mission was SUCH a delightful surprise to me! It's such a heavy wave to the pilot episode and it was really thrilling. Joke playing and cheating on poker was one of the sexiest things he could've ever done in his life lmao also even when he's cheating he manages to be gay af with his little ace and jack cards.

Admittedly, I was a bit underwhelmed with the fighting scenes. A lot of them were subpar compared to the ones in the og show, it not only lacked intensity but it was also awkward to see people in the background waiting to join the fight instead of throwing themselves into it, much like Jack's rampaging into Boss' office, which is one of my absolute favorite scenes in the og show, that's what I was expecting of them. However it was super nice to see the other piggies fighting with what they had, showing they were better prepared. Aran here takes the cake for me.

After that it was downhill. Joke not letting other people decide his destiny is one of the most Joke things in the entire show. With all that was happening it was rather predictable, but then again J&J does its thing and takes the predictability for a twist. "กูรักมึงที่รัก" ???? Using tirak in this situation when every other situation it was used was extremely, sickeningly sweet? Devastating. These words in that tone will be branded on my brain forever.

The whole thing with Jack going through the stages of grief and the ghost wedding destroyed me, even more so in my rewatch. Once again I'm here EATING UP Yin's crying scenes (one of my most favorite scenes in any BL ever is Vee crying under the rain at the bridge). I know everyone talks about War's acting when it comes to crying and obviously he always nails it, but I still think Yin should have more recognition in these kind of scenes too, because he always manage to make it so heartbreaking, and it wasn't different here.

The swings scene with him hallucinating Joke to be able to accept his presumed death was one of the most beautiful, most heartbreaking 'endings' I've seen in a Thai BL.

HOWEVER. I absolutely refused to believe they'd actually end in that note. It could be as devastatingly beautiful as it gets but I genuinely thought if they ended it like that it'd be SUCH a huge stab in the back of fans. Jack and Joke barely managed to live a happy life to then be yanked from it. It really didn't feel fair, that they gave us such a perfect little ending in the og show to then just say 'how about no?'. I was honestly in shock and denial. I was really thinking like 'I really, genuinely don't think they'd do this. I will only believe it ends like this when the episode reaches the end and stops playing by itself.'

And I'm glad I thought like that because they really didn't let me down. Some Marvel level of post-credits scene this is. The relief to see Joke isn't actually dead. The enormous cliffhanger.

I still am of the opinion that J&J didn't need a continuation, but now that it's out there, I just hope it's as good as the og show. And that maybe we don't have to wait for another 2 years, although I will gladly do so if that means they will deliver another sublime experience.

But I also hope it ends with that and they manage to move on to other, new things, because they've already proven they can do anything they want and it will be good. I really, really want them to take over the Thai BL world as a power couple with their independent productions, because they showed everyone they can.

Now, to the post-credits scene. Here goes my theory:

Reading all theories and also frying my brain to come up with what will they do with that cliffhanger, I thought of something that might make sense. This, however, would only work (well) in a full 10-12 eps season rather than another special episode or movie.

First of all, I think it's a new character (and that's why I think this will only work with a full season, because introducing a new character just for a short episode will give no substance to it). It's no one we know and I tell you why I think that: Joke had someone specific in mind. I don't think he's talking about Carbon here. Especially because everyone in the conversation knows Carbon very personally, he could just say his name.

So having this in mind, he might've been referring to this new character. So the fact this person is the one... 'housing' Joke, and who tended to his wounds, and also for his shock, this person might be either an old cellmate or someone else that's been incarcerated and Joke knows about or personally. Maybe a rival thief. So he's talking about this person here.

Also, VERY important missing information in the subs: Joke says "someone like me" in the sense of 'has the same abilities/did/does the same things'. This is crucial information that is in several other subs but not in the English one. Because the English subs on this ep are dogshit, lbr.

So I think one option that could happen:

This person wants Joke to either work for or with them. After all, you can't just wipe an alias like "legendary thief" in a year. Whatever it is that they want him for, it might be convenient for them that Joke's deemed dead, or they actually needed Joke to "die" for it to work. They might be in cahoots with someone we already know, or they might be acting alone.

This can be a double-edged sword because the person can be good, neutral or evil and we might not know until the very last minute.

Now one thing that caught my attention: The black shirt in the background.

Absolutely nothing when it's about clothes is Just There in J&J. There's always a lot of subtle storytelling in their clothes, especially when it comes to black and white. And specifically a black shirt hanging in so openly there and no other piece of clothing while Joke is wearing white? This is deliberate.

Do you remember Jack's red ticket? When the joker turns black to white, etc? This might be the opposite of that. This might mean starting from square one, undoing everything up to that point, or it might also mean Joke's darkening arc. Joke's wearing white, so washing this away to taint it black. It might also mean someone who's opposite of him if the shirt is referring to this new character, but I'm not too sold on this idea since black is mainly Jack's motif, especially in relation to Joke. Also, maybe this is the 'enemies' Nang was talking about.

And maybe because Joke has no choice but to do what he's told, whether if it's under threat or because maybe Jack would be in danger if he doesn't because that's their thing, or both, probably both, he can't show up to Jack or any of the piggies, and that is the main conflict of the season.

This can tie with the whole 'moving on' thing about Jack that everyone is terrified of. I don't think that even if it might seem so to add to the tension, Jack will ever actually move on; not FROM Joke at least. He can move on from the pain, make peace with the idea he's not coming back, but not from what he feels for Joke. If Joke appeared in front of him be it tomorrow or in 10 years, he'd probably just resume their lives together (after coming back from the shock of seeing him alive which can take some time). He himself said Joke is the one he loves the most. And some people change you so viscerally and completely that they'll always mean the same to you, forever, which is definitely the case for both.

Maybe if we're going through this route because J&J's classic angst and pain, Joke's gonna watch him from afar going on with his life, then that lack of self-worth he has that I'm pretty sure doesn't just vanish in such a short time even if he's found love and some healing, might keep him from approaching Jack even if he wants to and can do so; he wouldn't want to ruin whatever Jack has built without him so far.

If that's the case, if this really happened, I'd want Jack to find out and tackle Joke on the ground when he's being watched just like their first encounter after the 5 years. It'd be one of the most poetic cinema cycle closing one could pull off with this possible new season. But that's just my wishful thinking.

It can also be something completely different and I'm all for it as long as it retains J&J vibe, quality and unpredictable turns.

And also many more YinWar kissies, there's never enough of those.

48 notes · View notes

wenellyb · 10 months ago

Text

How I feel about Buddie...

You guys have been warned, this is a long post.

I've always liked 911 and was a casual viewer but never got involved in the fandom or anything. Of course I knew about Buddie, but I personally never saw it. Buck and Eddie have always acted like best friends and do stuff best friends do. I have never seen any scene that could be interpreted as romantic, except maybe for the "you want to go for the title" scene. But to me it wasn't enough to ship them, especially since it was the only scenes in their hundreds of scenes together that could be seen as romantic.

That being said, I've always thought the ship was cute, and I understand it because who doesn't like a good friends to lovers storyline?

I just never got involved in the fandom because their behavior reminded me of the Stucky and Destiel fandom, which were chaotic experiences for me. Some people just don't know how to handle non canon ships and act entitled, complain to the showrunners and harrass the cast. I've always tried to avoid fandoms like that, but wasn't against the idea of Buddie as a ship.

The 911 Lone Star crossover episode for me was the confirmation that Buck was into men. To me, it was obvious they confirmed he was into men but hadn't set up a storyline yet. So naturally I thought... if they set up a storyline it will be with Eddie. There was no doubt it my mind.

So fast forward, a few years, I wasn't really watching season 7 and then I see all the fuss from Buddie shippers I follow, and it makes me watch the sneak peek video from 7x04 and I'm like....For sure Buck is being jealous right? (it was the scene where Eddie interrupted Tommy giving Buck a tour)

So I decided to watch the episode convinced this was going to be the episode where they confirmed Buddie, but I was also very cautious because Buddie shippers had cried wolf too many times before.

So I was careful, but I was also convinced that this was it: "Buck was going to get jealous of Eddie hanging out with Tommy and then confess his feelings or the other way around".

And that's actually what was happening until the end of the episode, we saw Buck get jealous, and most of us assumed he was being jealous about Eddie.

We didn't figure out until the end of the episode that it was all about Tommy.

And that's the beauty of that episode because you think you're watching something when in fact you're watching something else and when you rewatch some scenes you understand it, and that plot twist was written so beautifully.

So we have Buck and Tommy have a heart to heart in Buck's kitchen and they kiss. And what a kiss... the kiss itself was Nice but the look Buck gave Tommy after the kiss was breathtaking.

From that moment on, I was rooting for them.

But I still had Buddie at the back of my mind because I was thinking, what if this is all temporary and they're planning to break them up to set up a buddie storyline? So I shipped it but didn't want to get my hopes up.

This feeling got bigger when I started watching 7x05 and I saw the way their first date ended. I thought... this is it, we might not see Tommy again, what a shame. But then Buck talked to Maddie about his date and confessed it was with Tommy. And Maddie asked: "so tell me about the hot pilot", and I thought this isn't how they'd talk about a character we never see again. But I didn't know for sure.

Maybe they were setting up a Buck x Eddie storyline....

I changed my mind when I saw Buck's coming out scene to Eddie, the scene was beautiful and at that point I still was thinking Buddie was a possibility. But one line made me think that Buddie wasn't happening: "I can't stop thinking about him".

No writer would put a line like that and have Oliver say it like that with that look, if they were thinking Buck and Eddie would have a romantic scene in the future. And if you do write that, you would get a jealous reaction from the other character, not a "You should call Tommy".

And then I was conforted in my feelings when the writers doubled down and had Buck invite Tommy to Maddie's wedding. Buck could have just apologized and asked Tommy on antoher date, but no, he invited him to his sister's wedding.

There has been absolutely no hint of a romantic relationship between Buck and Eddie throughout the season. There has never been a sign of jealousy from Buck or Eddie's side when they were dating Tommy, Marisol. If they had been setting up that storyline, the writers would put some hints here and there. Instead, they shared meaningful scenes like best friends do.

I never had anything againdt Buddie as a ship, I was even open to it, but all the times I thought Buddie was going to happen, it was because of the fandom, not because of something I saw in the saw...To me Buddie is and will stay a fanon ship.

TL:DR: I don't hate the ship, I find it cute but the behavior of some shippers has made me want to stay away from the fandom. And when I thought Buddie might be happening, the writers showed us they had long term plans for Bucktommy.

#evan buckley #eddie diaz #tommy kinard #bucktommy #platonic buddie #911 abc #long post

161 notes · View notes

tyrantisterror · 4 months ago

Text

At Sea Without a Map Post-Script

After two months of so, my little writing experiment At Sea Without a Map has come to an end. And because I'm vain, I not only felt compelled to share it, but to talk about it in depth after the fact, so here we are. This is going to be long, though, so I'm not only going to break it into sections, but put it all under the cut for the sake of your dashboard. So go ahead and dive into the depths of the Sea of Monsters with me one more time!

Part 1: Never Stop Blowing Up

The writing process of Wizard School Mysteries Book 3 was really strained - not because of the book itself, mind you. When I was actually able to work on it, Book 3 came together really well - I think it required the least substantial rewrites of any my novels thus far. It's just that real life was kind of beating the shit out of me while I was trying to get it done - or maybe the better metaphor was that it was just slowly but steadily draining me of energy all the time. I'm honestly surprised I got the book out in roughly the same amount of time as the first two - by the way life had been treating me, it should have taken longer.

But when I got done with it I was accutely aware of how tired I was. I still had the creative drive, but fuck I needed something simple as a palette cleanser - something easy, and more importantly, something that was allowed to be bad. I needed something creative to do that was surplus to requirements and fully within its rights to suck ass so long as I had fun making it.

Around this time, I decided to rewatch Dimension 20's Never Stop Blowing Up. Brief explanation of what that is: Dimension 20 is an actual play show, i.e. a recording of people playing D&D and other TTRPGs. I'd say its reputation is built on the contrast of its main DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, who makes these meticulously crafted campaign plans, and his chaotic band of improv comedian players who promptly derail those plans spectacularly. Like, a good deal of the show's humor comes from Emily Ashford or Ally Beardsly doing something so off-the-wall that it shatters whatever the scene was going to be and creates a far more absurd and zany spectacle in its place. Which is why Never Stop Blowing Up is pretty notable, because it's the one campaign where Brennan himself is the agent of chaos, fully unleashing his own brand of madness that the players struggle to keep up with. And fuck does he seem to have fun with it.

Of course, all of the analysis above is purely from the outside looking in - it's likely that a lot of the "chaos" is played up for the audience. But still... there is something to the idea of a person who's been working on meticulously structured stories letting loose and just doing something extremely stupid.

So I decided to give myself a Never Stop Blowing Up moment - a short story that would be simple by design, with no standards to live up to or goal beyond "have fun telling a silly little story." I then came up with a few key criteria:

It can't be set in the Midgaheim/ATOM universe. I don't want the burden of figuring out where this story would fit among others.

It's gotta be a romance. People who've read my books might have picked up on the fact that I like to write about people falling in love, for the same reason I like to write about fire-breathing reptiles and friendly monsters (i.e. I use writing to indulge in things I'll never experience in real life). I've only used romance as subplots in my fiction before, and tend to feel a bit guilty if I focus on it too long - like I'm being self indulgent. Well, this is all about self indulgence, so the romance should be front and center.

It's gotta be SIMPLE, episodic even. Not complex plotting required.

I almost chose my xenomorph romance for this, but I had developed its outline to the point where it would be too complex to fit. I then considered a sort of superhero story that could be pitched as "what if Bringing Up Baby but Katherine Hepburn's character is a Harley Quinn-esque supervillain and Cary Grant's character gets turned into some sort of horrifying genetic mutant in the first ten minutes." That one hit a weird roadblock when I got to the character brainstorming phase (the first phase of any writing project I do) - I was trying to figure out what the mad scientist who turns out Cary Grant-figure into a mutant would be named, came up with the name "Dr. Skullfuck," immediately realized that having a character named "Dr. Skullfuck" is a Mark Millar-ass writing move that I could not allow myself to do, but then couldn't stop thinking of the name "Dr. Skullfuck" and giggling, which just brought all thinking to a grinding halt on that project.

(I'll still probably do it someday, though - just, you know, without Dr. Skullfuck)

Inspiration struck again, though. I'd been getting into Epic: The Musical, a musical retelling of The Odyssey, and it put me in the mood for a sea monster story. But, more than that, it got me thinking about one particular archetype from sea monster stories - but that brings us to the next part of this Post Script...

Part 2: It Was Always About Calibani

Ok, so, one of the big changes Epic: The Musical made involved Odysseus's encounter with the sirens, and before you read more of my rambling, I'd like you to watch two animatics for the two songs in question here:

youtube

A summary: one of the sirens takes the form of Odysseus's wife to try and tempt him into getting in the water, Odysseus tricks her into giving him directions, captures her and the rest of her kind, and proceeds to have his men slaughter them horribly. In the OG story the sirens don't die - nor does their song involve imitating a man's wife, for that matter, it's just a really pretty song.

This is done for an important narrative purpose - Epic: The Musical is focused on analyzing the moral ambiguity of Odysseus, and how it is constantly challenged by the impossible choices he is forced to make in his attempt to get home. At this point in the musical, Odysseus has decided to stop trying to be a compassionate man, shirking all mercy in favor of utter ruthless pursuit of his goals. These two songs are meant to be unsettling as hell - this is the beginning of a series of heartless choices by both Odysseus and his men that will culminate in the mutiny and complete annihilation of Odysseus's crew, as well as Odysseus himself being so hopelessly stranded that nothing short of divine intervention will save him.

I bring this up because when I first heard these two songs - specifically while watching these two animatics - it, like... it devastated me. I was so horrified and sad, so shaken by it. And part of it was for the reasons outlined above, but admittedly that wasn't the gut reaction I had. No, my immediate reaction was, and I quoute my own broken brain verbatim here: "You can't kill the sirens! They're not for killing, they're for loving!"

...now, those of you who know me are probably not surprised by this very stupid sentiment coming from me. One of my more popular posts is just me talking about how down bad I would be for various folkloric monsters whose whole shtick is "looks like a pretty lady but Watch Out." But as a person filled with immense self loathing and doubt, my brain immediately looked at that very stupid sentiment I expressed and said, "Wait, no, that's fucking dumb, I'm fucking dumb. The sirens are remorseless murderers. These sirens in particular preyed upon a man's love for his wife, who he has not seen in twelve years, to convince him to let them kill him. They are, by all standards of morality, Very Fucking Evil, and if they were not women you would not feel bad about them getting killed."

And as my brain argued with itself over this topic, I got to thinking about the various monstrous/othered sea women of The Odyssey - not just the sirens, but the witch Circe, the nymph Calypso, the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. And I thought about the others of their kind in other myths and folktales - selkies, mermaids, etc.

There's an archetype of sea monster that focuses entirely on one specific anxiety sailors are prone to, namely the fact that (for a good deal of human history) being on a boat meant spending a lot of time away from women. The horror of this monster is how it uses that desire for female company to tempt people into danger - like a mirage, it leads you to expose yourself to danger in pursuit of an illusory comfort.

But, unlike real world mirages, these monstrous sea women DO exist in their stories. More than that, they're often, like, sad and lonely. Their narrative purpose is just to be a temptation, but that doesn't change the fact that they do have lives of their own in these worlds. And, softie that I am, I can't help feeling sad for them, especially the ones who actually seem to want the same companionship the sailors they tempt want. Sailors don't stay with their Circes, they don't marry their Calypsos. The sirens live on a barren rock, alone, Scylla is left to wallow in misery at her monstrous form, and the selkie always has to leave for fear of being trapped by a person who won't love her on her terms.

I realized I had my hook for this simple, easy, silly little sea monster romance story: I was going to give a sea woman the happy ending she'd never get from anyone else.

Sailor may be the protagonist, but make no mistake: At Sea Without a Map was always, always, ALWAYS about Calibani.

The goal with Calibani was simple: I was going to set up a fairly standard Monstrous Sea Woman, but where other stories would let her be in one episode of the travel narrative and move on, this one would stick around. She'd be an unambiguous predator of human beings - an open and admitted maneater - but she would have no true malice to her. She, like all predators, eats what she can get to survive, and it just so happens that she's adapted to eat humans. And the story would pose the same question to the reader that my brain posed to me during Different Beast: is there any way you could make a siren-style sea monster sympathetic? Can you make a normal person who doesn't have my particular brain rot look at a maneating siren and think, "You're not supposed to kill her, you're supposed to love her!"

One of the few unavoidable plot points of At Sea Without a Map was that Calibani and Sailor's relationship would become romantic. What kind of romance it was could have varied substantially - it could have been one-sided, it could have been toxic, it could have been far more tragic OR far more comedic. But it was always, always going to be a romance of some sort - the goal of this experiment was to make you, the reader, love Calibani. All else was icing on the cake.

I decided to base Calibani's personality on Miranda from The Tempest - i.e. a sweet girl who is both wordly and naive, who understands the strange setting of our "lost at sea" story far better than the audience viewpoint character does, but views the mundane world of the audience viewpoint character with wonder and naiveté. In fact I almost named her Miranda outright... except I already had a character in the setting I chose for this story who had that name, and as an allusion to the same Shakespearean character no less. So I settled on naming her after Miranda's adoptive sibling (of sorts), Caliban - more fitting in some ways, as Caliban is a fish-human hybrid who is arguable more native to the magic island in The Tempest than Miranda herself.

(Calibani isn't the only Tempest name homage, either - her mother, Sycorax, takes her name directly from Caliban's unseen but oft-spoken of witch mother. Dr. Antonia Warefore takes her first name from Antonio, one of the human villains in The Tempest who hopes to use being lost at sea as a way to perform a coup. And the mothman Iriel takes her name from Ariel, the wind spirit in The Tempest who aids the wizard Prospero in controlling the magic island. If Sailor has a "real" name, it's probably either Ferdinand or Miranda, the two lovers who manage to blend civilization and the wilderness together with their romance.)

Visually, I wanted Calibani to not be any common archetype of sea monster woman, but rather something that evokes the popular images while still being her own thing. She's not a mermaid or a siren or a selkie - she's basically "what if a sea serpent was also a girl." In-universe, she's chubby because she, like all marine megafauna, needs blubber to survive. Out-of-universe, she's chubby because I've found that routinely drawing cute chubby girls is good for my mental health.

Part 3: CYOA

Now, while we live in a post-Muncher society where shame and cringe are emotions only the cowardly should experience, I am nonetheless Very Catholic about expressing my own feelings of, like, liking girls and shit. I cannot help feeling guilty when publicly expressing adoration of women without, like, an excuse - it's gotta be a joke or something, you know? I can't be genuine about it, or else Jesus will beat me with a cane for disrespecting women with my lecherous gaze.

But luckily I've cultivated a loyal audience of fellow monsterfuckers, which meant I had an excuse lined up: if I made this a choose your own adventure type deal, a story with audience participation, then you all would be my accomplices. And Jesus can't cane all of us! He doesn't have enough hands! I found a loophole bigger than his stigmata!

Plus I love collaborative story-telling - there's a thrill in not having total control of where the narrative is going. As Brennan Lee Mulligan must know, there's a joy in having to deal with the chaos thrown your way by letting others grab the figurative ball, even if just for a moment.

Part 4: Offbeat Melody

Since I did not want to set this story in Midgaheim, I decided to steer myself away from a vaguely medieval setting altogether. But I also didn't want to limit myself with the need for "realism" that putting it in a normal sea would require, and making a new setting whole cloth would start pushing this project into "not easy" territory.

Luckily, I had a setting lying around that I hadn't played with in a while, which just so happened to have a location that was PERFECT for the sort of Never Stop Blowing Up style madness I was aiming for. For a few years I ran a Monster of the Week TTRPG campaign called Offbeat Melody, and one of its core setting elements was taking the goblin universe hypothesis in paranormal science (yeah it's a real hypothesis) to an illogical extreme. We had specifically seen glimpses of the Sea of Monsters in Offbeat Melody, i.e. the parallel universe where monsters like Nessie, Ogopogo, Champ, and the like all hail from. Well, why not have a whole story set there? It's literally a universe devoted solely to creating sea monsters - what better place to strand our modern Odysseus?

Offbeat Melody was always sort of a Never Stop Blowing Up project, or at least NSBU adjacent. Some of my most unhinged story-telling moments are in that campaign - you could make a supercut of just the "commercial breaks" in the various sessions and it'd basically be an I Think You Should Leave episode. Taking one obscure corner of its multiversal world and exploring it in detail was perfect for this project.

Part 5: Monster by Monster

With our main romance as sorted out as could be for a CYOA story, it was time to figure out the "episodes" of this sea voyage. I settled on there being ten to roughly align with The Odyssey - just in terms of number, mind you, not in a one-to-one comparison. The first was, obviously, Calibani herself, which left nine more slots for me to fill with monsters. Let's go through them together in brief:

Tree Storks - any lost at sea story eventually has to get its protagonist into an island at some point, but this immediately begs the question, "Why don't they just stay on the island where it's safe?" The answer to that question has to be, "it's not safe there, actually." The Odyssey does this quickly and cleverly with a one two punch: the first island seems safe until you realize the food on it brainwashes you into forgetting everything except your desire to eat it, and the second island is full of delicious sheep but also giants who will eat you just as easily as they eat the sheep. When other islands show up in the story later, you immediately regard them with suspicion, because you don't know HOW they're going to be fucked up, but they definitely will be. My goal with the second episode was to establish the same sort of danger - that land is NOT safe, that islands WILL be fucked up and dangerous in ways you might not expect.

I also wanted to establish that this is not just a sea of monsters, but a very WEIRD sea of WEIRD monsters. It couldn't be any old monster on this island - it had to be one that was unique, unexpected, and maybe just a bit silly while still being menacing.

I've always felt that there's a lot of un-mined horror potential in storks, cranes, and herons - any bird with a long neck and spear-like beak it uses to stab smaller creatures from above. Just imagine yourself in a frog's place in the world - tiny, going about your business, when suddenly something shoots down at you from above and impales you before you even feel the shadow fall over your face. Or perhaps you did see the shadow - some of these birds spread their wings to create shade specifically to attract fish, and then spear the poor little bastards.

Well, what do people often look to islands for when out at sea? Shade - the shade of a palm tree. And palm fronds kinda resemble feathers, don't they? Wouldn't it be both ludicrous and terrifying is there was a stork big enough to mimic a palm tree - and wouldn't that be a DEVIOUS trap for a sun-drenched sailor to fall for? So the Tree Storks were born.

The Globster - I made a list of sea monster archetypes in the early planning for this project, and one I wanted to include was a kraken, i.e. some sort of tentacled sea beast. But I didn't want to do JUST a big squid or octopus, or even a riff on them. I wanted to take the idea of "big sea monster with lots of tentacles" into a stranger direction.

Since the Sea of Monsters is explicitly the home universe of lake and sea monster cryptids, I thought it might be fun if ASWaM's kraken equivalent was a globster - just a big ball of rotten meat. I love drawing monstrous faces, so I decided it'd just be, like, MADE of hideous rotten faces, all melting and congealing together, with its tentacles doubling as the tongues of its many mouths. A perfectly wretched image that, like the Tree Storks, would do well to establish how Fucked things could get in this setting. Plus similar monsters had appeared in Offbeat Melody, which would make for a fun sense of familiarity for the, like, five or so readers of mine who had listened to that campaign before.

Captain Peter & the Dolphin - Another thing I did in the early planning stages of this project was make a list of the different sea voyage stories I know and love, the most contentious of which is The Life of Pi. That's a story that I love on a literal level but kind of hate on a figurative level - its whole theme/message is that doubt is the worst thing you can have, that if you don't commit to believing something with zealous conviction you are a coward. As a person who thinks doubt is valid, that "I don't know" is sometimes the ONLY truly valid answer to a question, I have issues with that message.

But I can't help loving the beautifully ludicrous idea of a non-anthropomorphic tiger sailing the ocean on a big Odyssey of its own. Like, if that story didn't actively hate me for being agnostic, it would be one of my favorites.

So I decided to, you know, just steal the idea of a tiger Odysseus. The tiger in The Life of Pi is named Richard Parker. Richard Parker also happens to be the name of Peter Parker's dad. Hence we get Captain Peter - the figurative son of Richard Parker, if you will. And to ratchet up the absurdity of a tiger Odysseus, I made him a pirate and the sole sailor of his voyage. Somehow, this tiger has manned a boat on his own.

Captain Peter was intended to be the hero of another story - a sign for the readers that it IS possible for a stranded person (or, in this case, tiger) to survive out here. To that end, he had to rescue our heroes from another threat, but not one that would be interesting enough to take the focus off of the tiger pirate. Originally I planned for that threat to just be a big shark, but I ended up liking my shark design too much to put it in a role that small, so I quickly designed a nasty dolphin for the role instead. I think that worked out well, honestly.

Dr. Neptune - Episodes 5 and 6 were the mid-point of this journey, so I wanted the two monsters of those to escalate things significantly. I figured episode 5 was probably a good place to FINALLY give some meaningful exposition on what was going on, and there are a lot of stories about mad scientists doing weird shit on islands in my big list of sea voyage stories I love. So we get Dr. Neptune, a classical brain-in-a-jar mad scientist who's affable enough to give more-or-less accurate exposition but loony enough to be a problem. This also felt like a good spot to remind the reader that Calibani is not just a girl with a tail but rather a Sea Monster herself, and one that we'd been making stronger by allying with.

With his human-but-not-quite nature and cyclops eye, Dr. Neptune could sort of be seen as the Polyphemus of this story, couldn't he?

The Crocodisle - One of the sea monster archetypes on my list was "the island that's actually a sleeping monster," of which there are many in mythology and folklore. My favorite is the Jasconius from the voyage of St. Brendan, mainly because it's more or less benign and actually comes back to help St. Brendan and his crew at the end of the story. I always love when I can find an old story with a friendly monster in it.

When thinking of my own spin on the island monster concept, I remembered the only Magic the Gathering card I had as a kid, which I still have and love to this day: The Sandbar Crocodile. This card already inspired Crocogon's color scheme in The Atomic time of Monsters, but I felt I could go to that well again one more time, and so made a crocodile that wasn't just a sandbar, but a whole damn island to itself. And, like Jasconius, it turns out he's pretty chill.

I did not think of the pun name "Crocodisle" until I was actually writing the chapter in question.

The Femdom Mermaids - These three were a late addition to the roster. When I had Calibani bring up mermaids early in the story, I realized as soon as I wrote her rant about them that we'd HAVE to meet some later on in the story.

The readers had significantly shaped Calibani and Sailor's romance by this point, and I decided that it could be useful to have a chapter that was devoted to showing definitively how these two were good for each other. I thought the mermaids could provide a good contrast: have them act out a seemingly more benign take on the monstrous sea women trope (they abduct our hero to protect and care for them!) only for it to quickly feel MORE deranged than Calibani's comparatively simple desire just to eat him.

The spirit of Calibani's rant about mermaids was taken from weird* girls I knew in high school complaining about cheerleaders, so I wanted the mermaids to look like the sea monster equivalent of popular kids to Calibani's chubby weird girl. Two of them got the names of famous beauties - Helyne = Helen of Troy, Clio = Cleopatra.

(*when I say "weird" I mean it in a complimentary and affectionate sense)

Bob, meanwhile, kinda... rebelled, I guess? Before I had names for them, I listed "bob" by her as just, like, a descriptor for her hair cut, but then I liked it as her name, and once she was named Bob she became more than just a mean popular girl. She was a weirdo too, the little punching bag of the two mean popular girls who did their dirty work and smiled through their abuse because hey, at least they included her. It gave the trio an easily defined dynamic, helped make two of the three more visibly nasty, and gave us comic relief in an arc that could very well have gotten too uncomfortable otherwise.

And I guess it worked - readers REALLY loved Bob, and were very vocal about it, and I realized mid-arc that I had accidentally made her too likable to just leave in this arc. So Bob got to be rescued from her awful friend group thanks to readers like YOU.

Lord Ironteeth - yeah, this was the shark that was too cool to be a minor threat. When I drew his noggin, I realized he would need a chapter of his own, one with gravitas. I decided he'd specifically be the threshold guardian -once we beat him, we'd know for sure how to get home, even if there were a few more threats in store.

Spindle Inc and Sycorax - when I was a kid I used to have this recurring nightmare about being on some sort of underwater sea station that had this huge sea serpent trapped inside it. I'd look at the sea serpent from a window within the station and see it coiling in its tank, only for it to look at me with fury. In that glance I would suddenly realize two things with absolute clarity: first, it was going to break free and kill everyone, and second, we deserved that destruction for what we had done to it. The terror of the dream was less that the sea serpent was going to break free, and more the guilt of knowing that all the mayhem that was about to unfold was our fault to begin with.

I thought that would be fun to homage with the penultimate chapter of this story. OBVIOUSLY the sea serpent was Calibani's mom, obviously the trauma of its capture was why Calibani grew into a predator that specializes in hunting humans, obviously we would have to free the sea serpent despite that running counter to Sailor's goal of getting home. Easy, easy, easy plot point to include.

Spindle, Inc. is the primary antagonistic force in Offbeat Melody, so they easily slotted into the role of the arrogant humans who captured this monster for nefarious and selfish motives. They could tie a lot of other plot threads together too - Dr. Neptune was a scientist who worked for them as a contractor only to get screwed over (i.e. they stranded him in the Sea of Monsters, expecting him to die, and then used his research to make their own base of operations in it), we'd learn of him through a spindle briefcase left behind by some unfortunate rogue agent who got eaten by the Globster while he was trying to escape, hell they could even be one of the possible origins of Sailor themself (more on that later). Very useful villains, Spindle.

The Abyssal Mother - I knew the last sea monster would need a lot of punch to it. I briefly considered just a big whale - the Moby Dick to Spindle's corporate Ahab - but it felt underwhelming after all that came before. So I went for arguably the most dramatic possible sea monster, a full on Cthulhu-style elder god. If you're a frequent follower of this blog, you might know I have particularly high standards for Eldritch Abominations, so I realized this was going to be a pretty big challenge for me to live up to, and decided to keep the cthulhu in question reserved to the last few entries as a result - the less it appears, the less it has to live up to.

I realized I had a good angle when my experiments with the Cthulhu "squid for a head" concept ended up having a face framed in shadow - you know, the same visual that our protagonist has in most appearances. That provided some very juicy parallels between the two that made this final monster feel particularly noteworthy to me, ones that I'll leave you to ponder, since they tie into...

Part 6: Themes

I did not set out to have a theme in this story. I just wanted to make a sailor and a sea monster kiss. That was my only goal.

But I really don't begin with theme in ANY of my writing. I figure out topics I want to address, but for all my novels I feel like the themes didn't start coming together until about halfway through the first draft, when enough of the elements of the story had been set down and interacted with each other enough for me to realize what I was saying with them. A huge part of my second and third drafts for my novels have focused on making the themes of my stories more concrete and unified.

Well, ASWaM is very much a first draft of a story, but it's a simple enough story that I think the theme found itself pretty well despite lacking subsequent drafts to refine it.

ASWaM is about doubt and direction. It's about being adrift in a world that is in many ways hostile by nature, about not feeling like you're where you're supposed to be or even WHO you're supposed to be, and about setting off aimlessly in the hope that maybe you'll find your way to that mythical land of "what my life is supposed to be."

When I began the story, Sailor had amnesia and wore clothes that obscured their identity as a way to make it easier for anyone to step into Sailor's role. Sailor had to feel like You, the Reader, and so we don't know their name, their gender, their eye color, their hair color, even their skin color (note that their hands are always wearing gloves, and their face is always in shadow).

But it also meant Sailor is, well, undefined, at least at the start of the story. Sailor doesn't know who they are, what they are, how they came to be. Sailor feels distinctly that they should be Something Else, should be Somewhere Else, should be Someone Else, should not be who/what/where they are. Sailor is plagued by doubt, by a need to go in a different direction, by a need to be other than they are.

This initially contrasts with Calibani, who begins the story very confident that she is doing exactly what she was designed to be doing and acting exactly like she should be. As they interact, they begin to shift each other in opposite directions - Calibani questions her existence and nature, sometimes to a self destructive degree, and Sailor begins to find something about who and where they are that they like. They find a healthy middle ground together - doubtful enough to want to be better people, but with love for themselves that allows them to not feel the need to up-heave their lives entirely.

I knew at the start that I would build an expectation for there to be some answer to the question of who Sailor is and where they came from, because those are the questions that begin the whole narrative. I brainstormed a number of answers to those questions, but once I got a few chapters into writing the story and saw this theme of doubt developing, I realized I couldn't answer them. From a thematic standpoint, the doubt HAD to remain. So I gave hints to possible answers, bits of evidence to support the possibility of them being true, but never planted a smoking gun that answered it for sure.

Sailor can't know the answer because NONE of us know the answer. Outside of blind Life of Pi style faith, you cannot know for sure that you are living the life you're supposed to live. All you can do is figure out whether you're happy with the life you've got, or if you need a change. Sailor will never know who they are supposed to be, but they did learn who they are, and they love that person now.

For those curious, the possible Sailor origins are:

Occam's Razor: they're exactly what Dr. Neptune theorized, i.e. a human who got stranded in the Bermuda Triangle (or the Devil's Triangle or any other number of paranormal triangles) and fell into the Sea of Monsters. The trauma of that experience gave them amnesia. It's just brain damage and bad luck.

A Spindle Experiment: Dr. Warefore mentions that Spindle has been trying to find a way to make a human who can evolve like the denizens of the Sea of Monsters. Sailor may well be an attempt to do just that, perhaps one they wrote off as a failure and abandoned (they do that a lot)

A Deep One: Sailor is the offspring of one of the denizens of the Sea of Monsters (most likely the Abyssal Mother herself) who has somehow been tricked into believing they are human, to the point where they seem to be human to everyone else, even other monsters. Maybe a human summoned a sea monster to breed with on earth, and Sailor ended up being subconsciously drawn back to the Sea by their blood. Maybe Sailor never actually lived on earth at all, but was only made to THINK they had as part of the transformation into a human.

The Platonic Ideal of a Sailor: the Sea of Monsters is full of archetypal concepts, and arguably a sailor trying to find their way home is just as archetypal as any sea serpent, mermaid, or kraken. Our only proof that humans aren't native to the Sea of Monsters is Dr. Neptune, and he's not as reliable an expert as he claims to be.

This theme of doubt and direction also made the compass more important to the narrative than a simply mechanic for audience participation - a compass, after all, gives direction, and the feeling that Sailor is not where they're supposed to be, that they need to head in a different direction, is ultimately the catalyst of the plot. The compass is, in many ways, the antagonist of the story - the force that keeps Sailor from accepting themself. I realized this a little after I started making the different directions have personalities - initially they just represented broad concepts (North = follow conventional wisdom ala the North Star, South = preserve your short-term self interest at all costs, East = act with curiosity and be willing to take calculated risks, and West = throw caution to the wind and do anything that seems novel and exciting), but over time they became little characters themselves.

Since it was our thematic antagonist, I decided to pepper in some ideas about what the compass might be in-universe - and, in a move that would no doubt frustrate the compass, we also don't know for sure which of those is "correct." Is the compass a poltergeist, some amalgamation of dead sailors who try to steer other lost souls home? Is it a malign entity that leeches off of those desperate enough to seek its aid, living through them while pretending to aid them? Is it a device Spindle made to lure sailors to their clutches, OR to guide their experiments in human/monster hybrids? Was it a cursed item that forced a sea monster to assume a human shape? Who can say - the compass sure can't, it can only tell you a direction to go in.

Part 7: Q&A

Since this was an interactive story, I felt it was only fitting to add one last interactive element to this post-script write up, and some of your happily obliged me by sending in questions.

When I noticed how fast readers were falling for Calibani, I figured there was a good chance we'd end up staying in the Sea of Monsters. By chapter 7, I figured it was more or less a given, and by the end of the Lord Ironteeth encounter I was almost 100% sure Sailor would remain at sea. There was always a chance, though - while a look at the polls shows that the audience got more and more on the same page towards the end, there were always dissenting voices, and the desire to get an answer to the question of Who Sailor Was remained strong, as a number of people kept trying to find angles where they could get that AND stay with Calibani.

I was surprised early on by how easily the audience fell in love with Calibani, to the point where I made a few posts commenting on it. I mean, I shouldn't have been - as I said earlier, I have cultivated an audience of fellow monsterfuckers on here, and I know at least a few of them saw my bait and knew they could get me to be freaky in a way we found mutually agreeable (thank you all again for helping me escape being caned by Jesus for being horny).

Like, we REPEATEDLY ignored developing the plot in the Tree Storks chapter for several days just to spend more time with Calibani - something that I enjoyed immensely (this whole thing was an excuse for me to write and draw a cute chubby sea monster girl as much as possible aftter all) but also knew as a storyteller was not what most would consider a good story call. I like how it turned out, but it defied conventional narrative wisdom, you know? I was surprised.

On the other side of the coin, I was also surprised by how the audience NEVER chose an option that was humorously disastrous. I gave plenty of them, and, like, generally in collaborative storytelling there will be at least one moment where your collaborators decide to do the really, REALLY stupid thing that makes everything spiral out of control really quickly. I figured at least once the audience would choose the troll response, but no, you guys worked hard to keep Sailor and Calibani alive. You refused to let them hurt each other, refused to let them throw themselves into danger, refused to imperil them for your own chuckles. It was very sweet and unexpected.

I say "you refused" but to be fair it's not like NO ONE voted for the troll options - they generally got a handful of votes, just one that was beaten by a landslide of more reasonable options. Hopefully those of you who voted for the troll options enjoyed Bob throwing you a bone by disintegrating Dr. Warefore - that was my consolation prize to you.

Yes. I knew at the beginning that there would be two endings for this story: either Sailor leaves the Sea and goes home, or Sailor stays there forever. Or, you know, Sailor dies as a result of you guys choosing several stupid options in a row, but as stated above you guys avoided those scenarios pretty decisively.

Had Sailor gone home, the following would have occurred: first, they would forget everything that happened in the Sea of Monsters. Second, they would wake up in a hospital, having been found in the Atlantic Ocean by a human-recovery charity run by... oh, isn't that funny, some tech company named Spindle Inc! Spindle would foot the medical bills and even offer Sailor a job, but Sailor would decline because even now they're still not sure what Spindle even does. Sailor would go back to their life and find it familiar and utterly mundane, but not particularly happy. Their father died when they were 18, their mother was never in the picture, they have no siblings. They worked an office job and were sort of a nonentity - that position has long since been filled, but Sailor gets a new job and lives out much the same life: simple, mundane, dreary. Every now and then they get a pang of desire to leave, to go to sea, but they push it out of mind. They never even see the ocean again as long as they live.

Sailor would have gotten the normal life they thought they were supposed to have, the normal memories and name and identity, the mundane life of a normal person. And they just had to trade everything they found in the Sea of Monsters to get it. A question is answered, a direction is followed, but is it the right answer, the right direction?

Well, I think doubt would have remained.

I had a very vague idea for there to be some sort of man-eating giant in, like, a crystal castle. He got cut to make way for the mermaids.

I wanted to fit in a big whale and a giant crustacean, but there wasn't room or an interesting angle for me to want to make room for them. Saved for a possible sequel, I suppose.

I also wanted to have a scene with, like, DOZENS of sea monsters, including some of the ones from Offbeat Melody, but the goal of "this should be EASY you dumbass" made me kill that idea pretty quick.

Thank you!

The primary inspirations were:

The Odyssey and Epic: the Musical

The voyage of St. Brendan

The many "weird shit happens on an island" movies in Toho's filmography, i.e. Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, Son of Godzilla, Yog Monster of the Deep, Matango, etc.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

The Boy and the Heron

Ponyo (specifically Ponyo's parents - I wanted Sailor to have the same desperate energy as that wizard who fucks the giant sea goddess)

The Life of Pi

Slay the Princess (perhaps most obvious in the use of second person narration, multiple voices in the protagonist's head, and falling in love with a creature that has tried to kill you at least once)

I'm going to use this to springboard to a related point in a second, but first a genuine yet humorous answer: Yes, absolutely yes, I am enough of a big romantic sap that I would give everything about my life away to be with a person who loves me and explore a world of monsters in a heartbeat. Hell, I would have jumped in the water the minute Calibani asked and died with her fangs in my neck and a smile on my face. I am dumb this way. Do not follow my example.

On that related point, though... Most stories like this, I daresay ALL stories like this that I know of, end with the hero abandoning the fantasy world in favor of reality, never to return. And that seems like the proper choice and lesson on the surface - we don't want to tell audiences to give up their real life in favor of a fantasy, after all. That's encouraging escapism, and that's not healthy!

But, like... textually speaking, the fantastical world IS real to the characters in these stories. And it's often not really an escape - was Sailor's life devoid of conflict and suffering in the Sea of Monsters? Fuck no! It's just that they figured out how to deal with that conflict and suffering - they built skills and a support system, they adapted, they learned how to overcome what was there.

I think it can be argued that sometimes the return to a "normal" world is, in itself, an escape - the idea that your life can spiral into chaos but that's ok, you can just reset everything and go back to The Way It Was and Should Be is just as unrealistic and unhealthy an idea as You Should Escape to A Better World. Sometimes your plans for your life fall apart, sometimes you're thrown into a place you never intended to go, sometimes you have to learn skills you never anticipated needing and ally with people you never thought you'd befriend to deal with problems you never dreamed you'd have to overcome. And sometimes it's ok to look at your derailed life, your Not Where You Should Be life, and say, "Well, I've learned how to live here... maybe I can stay."

Especially if there's a cute chubby sea monster girl who loves you.

Bob was never supposed to appear past chapter 7, but about halfway through that chapter I realized the audience and I myself would be heartbroken if we didn't rescue her. Definitely for the best - she provided some well-needed comic relief in the final chapters.

This is gonna sound snarky, but, yeah - there were 58 choices with four options a piece, and we only chose one of the four. While some of the options would have similar results, almost none would have had identical outcomes. And some would have been VERY different.

Like, to go back to the beginning: when Calibani attacked, we could either throw a net on her, harpoon her, try to drive around her, or hide below deck. We picked the net, but for the other three options:

Harpooning would result in us hitting her in the thigh, causing her enough pain that she collapses on our deck and we, horrified at the violence we committed, just sort of push on. Calibani would be wounded for at least the next chapter, perhaps longer, and significantly weaker (and probably harboring a great deal of hidden resentment while also being genuinely scared of Sailor). She would be vulnerable during the stork attack, forcing Sailor to take a more active role in that chapter.

Trying to steer around her would result in us essentially fighting her with our boat, resulting in the boat capsizing and Calibani getting tangled up in it. We'd wake up alone on Stork Island and have to travel in search of our boat, alone and vulnerable among man-eating trees. We'd run into Calibani again, also beached and in trouble, end up recruiting her to help us get our boat out of the sand.

Hiding below deck would end in a sea storm that leaves us inside our boat as it's beached on Stork Island. We'd fend off the storks alone, and run into Calibani once we get our boat out to sea, as she got away more or less unscathed.

All of these would have majorly changed the trajectory of our relationship with Calibani and our identity as Sailor, despite seeming to have the same component parts on the surface. Now account for how similarly slight changes in the other options could have gone, and we could have had a very different story indeed.

Part 8: Our Girl

I just think she's neat!

#At Sea Without a Map

64 notes · View notes

horse-girl-anthy · 26 days ago

Text

essay titled "How I read Revolutionary Girl Utena" under the cut

I think that I've stuck with Ikuhara shows for so long because of the sense of confusion they cause in me. I find them bewildering, bewitching; like many of my other favorite pieces of media, they are in some ways ungraspable. RGU is so generative because you can never quite put your finger on it, it always rewards further consideration. and to even enjoy the show, you have to create some kind of schema of understanding. you have to connect the dots and create a picture of it.

I've talked about this before, but maybe I've never fully articulated how I ended up where I did, so here goes. my schema of understanding for RGU is very heavily influenced by my view that it is meant to be read as a piece of fiction; that it is, in a way, more than a story. this is true of all fiction to some degree, but RGU is one of the most insistent on being understood as a human-created narrative. more often, fiction asks you to suspend your disbelief--RGU says disbelieve everything you see. the show's execution constantly reminds the audience that it's an illusion being put on by a creative team. that led me to wanting to know more about the creative team and how the show was made.

Be-Papas did not set out to make a radical show. it ended up turning out that way more or less because the team fostered a spirit of true artistry, and because they faced little to none of the usual TV exec interference.

the hand of the writers can be felt throughout the entire show. obviously there's third-wall breaking moments, but even more than that, it's in the way the show plays out. due to how prevalent this is in Ikuhara works, I eventually stopped looking for a normal "why" answer to any question in his shows. it's often most useful to answer that strictly in terms of a writer, rather than acting like the shows have a "reality" of their own. or maybe it's better put that the "reality" of the shows arises from understanding the relationship between creator and viewer, story and audience.

I just started rewatching RGU, and I think that this approach is especially needed for the early show. so much about it feels canned, scripted. everything that happens could be out of a generic shoujo, using tropes as shorthand. Utena has fangirls, Touga is the playboy, etc. Anthy in particular should be seen in this light. in his interview with Takemiya Keiko, Ikuhara talks about how Anthy was originally conceived versus how she turned out:

– But, you made Anthy with the intention of her being a popular character, right? Ikuhara: We couldn’t. We had to abandon that idea in the process. I wonder why it ended up that way? I guess we got tired of currying favour with the viewers. We completely stopped.

in the first episodes, Anthy is written to be a "fan favorite" character. she's the victim, she's sympathetic, she's cute, she's subservient--almost a waifu! but they ended up dropping that, going in a new direction. I don't think it's only in the later episodes that the writing diverges, I think it was built in from the start. Anthy is like an eerie parody of the "shy quirky bullied girl." then in the later arcs, the show begins to pull that stereotype apart and examine it, dive into its dive into its depths and look for a truth.

but when it comes to the moment-to-moment writing of the show, this background needs to be kept in mind. in a way, early Anthy should be read differently from later Anthy. first of all, the scenes where she's meant to evoke pity, where the writers are trying to curry favor with the viewers, should be taken at face value. the show is only ever operating on the level it is presenting itself as; it's the entire picture which makes up its meaning, not the individual parts.

early Anthy is overall a fairly simplistic character. they hint at her inner depths, at her sinister side, but her relationship with Utena is, at this point, at a very early stage. Anthy is genuinely surprised by Utena's nobility; she reacts to her like the little girl she is. aside from the unguarded moments we see from her, though, Anthy is a stereotyped, strange, emotionally distant character. there was always something a little off about her, and when you look back with hindsight, you can definitely tell she's deeply traumatized. she looks out at the world with alien eyes, eyes that know suffering better than anyone else in the world. but at the start, the truth about her is buried. she's so far gone that she no longer even knows that she's suffering; she has become insensitive. and her true self is buried at the center of the earth, hiding from the world so she can never be hurt again.

to further clarify what I mean, I'll discuss two different early Anthy scenes.

when Utena defends Anthy in episode 1, Anthy reacts in this completely amazed way. I don't think an emotion like this is ever presented to the audience that we are supposed to doubt. the show is characterized by aritifice, but not by deception. there is no hidden secret to this image, or really to any moment in the show. each scene is communicating exactly what it seems to be. if the meaning is ambiguous, then that ambiguity is the point, but often it's not even that.

in episode 12, we are directly told that Anthy has grown attached to Utena and does not want to be separated from her. to cope with having to continue to the obedient Rose Bride despite having desires, she retreats utterly into a place deep inside herself. even when staring at the handkerchief Utena gave her, she shows no emotion. watching Utena fight, she is distant, cynical, almost sleepwalking. but then she wakes up on seeing Dios's nobility in Utena. again, all of this is readily apparent and directly communicated to the audience.

later on in the show, Anthy begins to fracture into increasing complexity, taking on more and more symbolic weight and always unfolding a new side to her personality. but it's not really the case that all those parts of her are simply hiding at the start of the show; they haven't developed yet.

episodic media, especially when created by a whole team of people, changes a lot in production. RGU is one of the most successful pieces of episodic media because it leans in to the ongoing process of TV. speaking of Anthy, Enokido said:

...Even us creators can’t understand Anthy’s inner thoughts (*note: naimen = inner feelings, interiority, true self). We created her while in search of that.

the show itself plays out like a search for who Anthy truly is (who all the characters are). watching, it feels like you come to discover that as the show itself does. RGU is very much a series which rewards rewatch, but it's not necessarily helpful to impose what eventually occurs on to the first episodes. rather, it's the process of development the show undergoes which should be examined. the heights that RGU reaches are to be found in that process of moving from stereotype to truth. in Adolescence, Anthy is presented as, on the surface, an entirely new character, and yet she feels right. this is because, by the process of watching RGU, you learn who she really is, and then when you see her in the movie, you know she is acting, for the first time, as herself.

#i still feel like i haven't fully articulated my point #and a bit like im repeating myself #but yeah #i keep thinking of this line from the movie Women in Love: a work of art has no relation to anything that is outside it #there's something in that which relates to what im saying here #rgu #commentary

51 notes · View notes

bookdragonlibrary · 2 days ago

Text

El Toro de Piedra spoilers

This episode and Climatiqueen, along with Revelator and papagarous, are what I was expected for season 6!

Daddycop and Sublimation are insteresting too, for exploring Sabrina's character and a new one, Sublime, but Marinette is written too much like old seasons in them to feel like they belong in season 6... And for me, Illustrhater doesn't feel like belong in this season at all!

More about the episode itself!

We have a Julerose's kiss (off screen yes, but it was expected but it's implied so the show might not be cancelled in some countries!). I love how the kiss was subtly offscreen to show it gives strength to Juleka to avoid censorship but also being impossible to miss what really happens :)

I love Juleka and Ivan here! I love the contrast with the soft song and the action. But also the contrast between their situation: "I'm my father's daughter" from Juleka and Ivan that rejects the idea that he's like his father. And the hightlight put on the word "legacy" during the song with special effets on Juleka. Because it is the theme of the episode. That a child could choose to follow their parent's steps or not with Juleka and her musician of a father and Ivan and Adrien and their supervillain dads. And the end when Ivan told his dad "that means your son is stronger than you." to show him what real strength is and that resistance and saying no are also a form of strength. With Raùl's reaction to the letter, it might imply that he was brutal with his son...

I also love the critique of policeforce. There were only two episodes when the police wanted to arrest the akumatised person because of what they did as a victim of an akuma: and this one. One was because of racism and this one because Raùl was a supervillain before. And the show shows that wanted to do something bad (stealing) and actually doing it are two different things. Plus Raùl being Spanish, so technically a foreigner might be still linked in racism from the policeforces.

Maybe the episode is set after Revelator because Marinette is asking herself and Nathalie if they should lie to Adrien even if to protect him, especially with the parallels between Ivan and Adrien and their supervillain fathers. The doubt is there even if Marinette still hesitate and struggle to what the right thing to do is. I update the post about Season 6 chronological order by the way!

The pun in French is paparapluie, a mix between papa and parapluie (the French word for umbrella), explaining why the plushie is a frog. We even have a kid song where frogs have a party under the rain! The symbol is really interesting in French because an umbrella is supposed to protect you from rain, like a father is supposed to protect his children from the harships of life, something Gabriel stopped to do when he transformed himself from paparapluie to Father and then Hawkmoth.

Now, the very end of the episode (big spoilers ahead!)

So it seems the one talking in the picture, the scepter, is the boss of everyone else. Maybe the Supreme from the Paris episode? The Diamond was Gabriel and the wheat head is Nathalie's father. But who is connected as the Diamond now? That gives another highlight to the Diamond Ball or whatever its name in Emotion. But also to one line in Juleka's song "There is no such thing as a diamond with no flaw". I don't know how to analyse this sentence with Gabriel but maybe his research of perfection is futile as perfection doesn't exist. But

The cog machine might be Tomoe Tsurugi since she's working in technology but I'm not sure with her voice. I need to rewatch it and a scene where she is speaking to confirm it. Her symbol is this one or the one on the right end which look like atoms liaisons.

From left to right we have:

an eye (?)

a brick wall

a pen

a wheel (?)

a scepter (the boss?)

a diamond (Gabriel)

a wheat head (Nathalie's father, Mr Sancœur)

a theatre mask

a sword

a fire

atoms

I think this organisation is the one we saw in season 5 with all masks and "perfect" children. So Audrey must be part of them too in some way. But she doesn't seem clever enough to be part of the leader from the list above. And if she does belong within them, maybe the mask since she is in the fashion industry. After all, when the temple of miraculous guardian was rebuilt in season 3, she was part of the few cast interested in it with Tomoe and Gabriel...

The Graham de Vanily must also be part of this organisation and that might be how Gabriel became part of them, by meeting Emilie. This family might be symbolised with the Sword since it's a symbol well represented in the nobility plus their family crest is a wolf with a sword.

Since they were introduced with an episode about a supervillain, could El Toro be part of them in some way too?

Now where Nathalie's loyalty will go... To Ladybug for Adrien's safety since she now knows she is Marinette. Or to this organisation? It depends what their goal is to see if it's bigger than her motherhood to Adrien or if their goal could maintain Adrien's safety.

Can't wait to see what next !

#miraculous ladybug #ml lore #nathalie sancoeur #gabriel agreste #adrien agreste #ivan bruel #parallels #ml spoilers #theory #my theory

29 notes · View notes

windypuddle · 3 months ago

Note

Based entirely on the two Mikoto MVs, I'm convinced Mikoto is the personality that killed all the people and John was the one doing the cleanup afterwards. John says "I learned how to clean a crime scene for you. Please jsut say thank you once please"

See I , when I found out that John could attack Es but Mikoto can't, also thought that Mikoto is the one who did the actual murders. Because if MILGRAM can differentiate between the two, you'd think it can differentiate correctly. Unless they just had to encode Mikoto in there somehow before they knew about John... but I can't think of how something like that would be able to tell the difference. Maybe brainwave patterns? the whole "prisoners can't attack the warden" and the 09 situation is really interesting too. MILGRAM is either supernatural (...they do have a telepathic rabbit) or extremely futuristically high-tech ("any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - arthur c clarke). And if it was that level... you'd hope its accurate.

Sorry. long winded way of saying I agree that Mikoto is the one who actually did the murder.

This was definitely what I thought before Double came out, and i only listened to the 09 t2 voice drama recently. I don't remember much of it besides John being scared that if he's fronting too often, Mikoto will disappear, and he doesn't want that to happen because he did all this to protect him, so he (John) should be the one to disappear. But I think (and correct me if I'm wrong) but when a system forms due to some traumatic event, usually the system forms after the event itself, so it would make sense if Mikoto did that, then John formed and cleaned it up, and Mikoto simply blocked out the memories. But Mikoto on his own repressing the memories seems more complicated than him simply not remembering it because he didn't do it, since amnesia is one of the diagnostic symptoms of DID; at least, it would make more sense as per Occam's razor.

[dramatic pause while i go rewatch MeMe and Double. putting this under the cut because it got super long]

MeMe

"I'd play dead even though I'm alive" (subtitle translation, bear with me) is a really interesting line. It could be referencing this facade that Mikoto is putting up about not knowing anything, or possibly his attitude during the murder detaching himself ("playing dead") even though he's the one actually doing it, leading to repressing the memory/pretending it was just a dream.

"'I' will save 'me'" as a line coming *after* the actual murder is interesting. I do think the general view of MeMe is that the more angry/harsher voice is John, while the milder one is Mikoto, but maybe it's not that simple. Nothing is ever that simple with MILGRAM...

"I won't forgive you if this is happening to me even though I'm right" is also interesting in that he turns the forgiven/unforgiven thing back on Es. But what is he "right" about? That he didn't do anything? The phrasing and use of "if" implies that he isn't certain.

The second murder/verse shows Mikoto in the Hanged Man t-shirt (the hanged man signifies sacrifice or indecision/waiting), which is also what he wears in the chorus where his voice is softer, supposed to be Mikoto and not John... earlier at the line of "I will save me" he takes the shirt off and puts on a plain white shirt and talks about shaking it up/switch up that brain, which only John seems to be aware of being a system, so if the plain shirt/shirtless is John and the tarot shirt is Mikoto... then that would indeed be Mikoto murdering someone.

In the mirror scene after the shower, when it sort of zooms out, the Mikoto closer to the camera is wearing his jacket (you can see it on his arm at 1:44) ... interesting. and then the "Take a good look at me until you find me, the truth will come to reveal itself" in the chorus... right after the mirror thing.... very interesting. veeerrrry interesting.

And then he gets the Devil card. Meaning (according to various sources) obsession, addiction, powerlessness, excess; violence and fatality; your "inner demons"/"shadow self"; and in the Fool's Journey, economic materialism. Hmm. like a job. That connects to how John says the stress of his job is what drove them to murder people as stress relief. Another observation: Most iterations of the Devil card have the Devil perched on some kind of pedestal which has two people chained to it, a man and a woman; Mikoto's version of the deck has neither of those people, but some strange objects instead, and the Devil's body is a mannequin, like the ones on the train in Double.

...

And then we see both of them in the same outfit, so maybe just ignore what I said about the shirts...

The security footage after the line "I'm already the fake one" implies that Mikoto doesn't remember those moments directly, but maybe is aware of them due to evidence/the actual security footage

In the very last chorus he flips the Fool card at the viewer, signifying that he's the one that the Fool's Journey is applying to here... and then does a whole tarot spread that i do NOT know enough to interpret. and then the last card he flips over is Death. Meaning transformation, release, change. Essentially, letting go of the past to embrace the future. Hmm. That makes me think John could entirely replace Mikoto by the end of MILGRAM. But who knows...

Double

Right off the bat we get John talking about all these recurring themes, that Mikoto is overstressed and work and too much of a people pleaser, but he needs to stop taking on so much, and John will help him deal with all the pressure and protect him from the consequences.

All this language about John "saving" Mikoto definitely could be implying that he cleans up the scene afterwards. While he does acknowledge that the murder was for stress relief, I don't think he'd go so far as to say randomly killing people is "saving" Mikoto; but if Mikoto was killing people, and John was cleaning up the evidence, that could definitely be it.

Based on the cues to tell the difference between John and Mikoto, the bridge of Double seems to be Mikoto on the phone with his mom, and John killing indiscriminate people... But tbh every single person in this series in as unreliable narrator. just to keep that in mind.

The ending frames of Double go so hard. I think it is Mikoto saying "I'm so sorry" which could be him apologizing for the trouble he's caused with all this damn murder! or just like.... everything. in general. Idk.

TLDR I'm not certain on the specifics of Mikoto and John's whole situation, but I can absolutely believe that Mikoto is the one who committed the murders, and the structure of Milgram itself supports this. The MVs complicate things but people are complicated. I 🩵 unreliable narrators

#puddle answers #milgram #puddle talks #mikoto kayano #john kayano #are we calling him that...#like full name #whatever #milgram project #prisoner 09

51 notes · View notes

vole-mon-amour · 5 months ago

Text

2x07, part 2.

I don't really get it. Considering this is Viktor (or it should be, or that it's another version of Viktor), why would he get so tempted with "There's gotta be another way. Send me back. I won't fail. I swear."

Like??? Or is he so desperate from loneliness, so different, that he wants for Hextech to be destroyed? Then why shoot at Viktor, and not destroy the stone itself? 'Cause Caitlyn with her gang still use it.

Oh, come on. The idea that Ekko saved Jinx from killing herself in their universe because Jinx can be sweet and nice and 'normal' is so eugh.

so she had the stones the entire time? they would've had such an easier way to recreate the thing. on the other thought, maybe that's the idea. she has the stones but she never uses them.

anyway, i'm so annoyed at what they've made out of Silco. Vander tried to DROWN him while also strangulating him. they had different ideas about Zaun. what kind of 'power of forgiveness' is this? this is bullshit. my beloved shark and his adopted daughter deserve better. well, at least Silco does 'cause Powder I'm not that mad about.

but Silco. oh Silco, my love, I am so sorry about what they've done to you. i'm also curious about what kind of role Silco had in this weird AU? they don't talk about him, he's barely there, shows up out of nowhere like a small nod for the fans and disappears like he has zero significance.

PLUS, when Silco gives that shitty "power of forgiveness" line, Ekko just chuckles and takes it like it's a normal thing to have? huh??? didn't you despise Silco in your universe? and Vander trying to murder him is not okay but Ekko just went with that explanation?

PLUUUS, the fact that Silco still has that horrible eye and scarring, which basically screams, "Vander tried to murder me" and he's still nice about it?

what kind of fucking chance? to rule Zaun? to what?

they gasp like it's some new knowledge.

what the FUCK is this? is this the writers' idea of a healthy world and a healthy relationship between these two? because it's anything but.

no, seriously, is there something I'm not seeing? what's the idea behind this nonsense? i rewatched this scene a couple of times, but i'm still ?????

it's an insult to Silco (and to me as a fan) tbh.

#jayvik #arcane #natiswatching #silco x vander

34 notes · View notes

gayofthefae · 2 months ago

Text

It isn't just about proof of behavior or anything, set that aside.

It's about how once you even just experiment with viewing Mike as a love interest to Will - not even having feelings for him, just "his eventual/endgame love interest" - he hits every romantic trope. Everything he does, in fact, is some sort of classic romantic trope in writing.

Something shouldn't be. The first thing I did to figure out if St@ncy was endgame was see if they had an overarching story - because it wasn't maintained through the seasons, I had to stretch a little bit and in the end, they didn't really. So with that example, any other pairing that isn't endgame - even canonically romantic, when placed into this test does fail.

Everything Mike does is able to be justified as motivated by romance or lending itself to romance. That should not be true.

I can prove Mike's queerness and feelings in the diagnostic-style: eliminating all other possible explanations to find only one that fits every data point.

But I can also format as the classic theory on universal truths, basing it on the simple absence of something from the world. "This is true because there is nothing that proves it wrong and there should be. The implication of a lack of disproof is proof."

Mike has feelings for Will because there's no other explanation. But Mike also has feelings for Will because I have rewatched this show repeatedly since believing so and a single scene should have not fit it by now.

Again, I have failed to justify other storylines before. I can't. This is not a testament to my ability to justify things. It should not have any structure or tropes at all, let alone classic romantic ones every time.

They wrote it like a love story and they never didn't. They didn't take breaks from writing it like a love story. They maintained the storyline the one occasion that they didn't, not doing so was the acknowledged storyline. They wrote it like a love story. It always comes back down to structure. Love Mike Wheeler all you want but he doesn't exist. You can insert anyone you want into their storyline - just like how people say if Will were a girl more people would get it - and it'll fit.

Jim loves Pam but she's with Roy. She thinks Roy is dead and they bond more as he supports her in that grief. Roy comes back but now she's distancing herself from Jim in a way she didn't before. He calls her out on it and she apologizes and he thinks they've made up, but after he and Roy both end up moving to the same place for a job opportunity, she does not keep in touch and when she visits them, he confronts her about it and she defends that she didn't keep in touch with him because they're just friends. Roy confronts her about not telling him she loves him in a long time to which she is unable to respond, so he agrees to a business trip far away from her. She thinks he might be in danger there, though, and she apologizes to Jim and they work together to go after him. She does not know why she can't tell him she loves him and says she thinks this is the end of their relationship. She also expresses that she's scared she's not good enough for him to stay in her life, so Jim tells her how much he loves her, saying it's Roy's words. When they get there, Roy is dying and feeling too low to fight for his life because he thinks she doesn't love him (we're stretching the genre here, I'm doing my best). Jim reminds her that he needs her and she is able to help, so she tells him she loves him. Jim is heartbroken but understands, he didn't want Roy to die either. After they get back and Roy is safe, Pam is spending more time with Jim than Roy.

Transferring the story to a sitcom maybe wasn't the easiest call, but you get it, right? That makes sense. It plays like a love triangle, and that final leg of her spending more time with him than her partner raises eyebrows to still having feelings for him from when they bonded while he was out of the picture. Maybe you don't know how it'll end, but it doesn't play like a friendship. It plays like a love triangle.

#byler #stranger things #mike wheeler is queer #byler tropes

22 notes · View notes

queervegancryptid · 3 months ago

Text

I just rewatched the last two episodes of Revolutionary Girl Utena. I just suddenly had a burning desire to see that in particular, and fortunately, it's on YouTube, the whole series.

And I gotta say, it hits differently now. It was always a powerful show, and the ending in particular is beautiful and kinda makes the show, in my opinion. I adored it immediately, and I'm really happy they had 39 episodes as opposed to maybe a dozen, which is how it would be if it were made today. You absolutely could make it today, though; the beautiful and terrible thing is, it actually is timeless in a lot of ways. And rewatching the ending episodes in particular now, like I said, it hits differently.

I've seen it at least a couple dozen times, but I don't think I've ever cried at it that much before. I guess maybe that's part of growing up. I really want to write about it, actually. It haunts me, in a good but lately very painful way.

This is about the political situation, if that's not clear. But it's about a lot more than just who the president is. It's about the lies people tell themselves, how people in power gaslight others into doing their dirty work for them, and yes, how patriarchy fucks things up for literally everyone but a fraction of a percentage of the population who have a vested interest in promoting it.

It's a good metaphor for a big part of what's going on in terms of political and social attitudes. One thing I don't see talked about much is the scene where the student council are doing their spiel, riding up the elevator together one last time. They each put a rose in a vase on the table. As they go in, they are shown to be different colors, based on each person's signature color. After Touga puts a white rose in, for Utena, the vase is shown again. Now, all the roses look the same.*

The meaning, I think, is two-fold. First, all of them being there together to hold a kind of vigil for Utena as she fights Akio unites them. They entered as individuals, but as long as Utena is fighting in this final duel, they're together, so the old differences and divisions don't matter.

Second, I feel like it should be considered along with the planetarium and Akio's tendency towards manipulation. That is to say, maybe all the roses are actually the same color, but his planetarium makes them look different; in the same way, his manipulative actions can't work without sowing division between people and pitting them against each other, and against their own interests. He literally gaslights everyone; the social hierarchy in terms of the school's nobility class (the student council) is itself a manipulation designed to keep them competitive with each other rather than being cooperative towards their shared best interests. Or like. Actually doing student council stuff.

Sound familiar? There's a lot more I want to say, but I need to get my thoughts in order. Anyway, I haven't rewatched the movie in a long time, but I'm guessing that will hit me a little differently now, too. I really don't like the voices in the dub, which is all I have access to streaming. But life finds a way, as the saying goes.

Expect more Utena-based posting in the near future as I distract myself from the things I can't control that are scaring me. But as always, if it's political, I try to tag it with "nik gets political" and 'us politics" if relevant, so people can block those tags if they want to.

* I posted this without that sentence, which really clarifies my point lol sorry

#revolutionary girl utena #shoujo kakumei utena #us politics #nik gets political #utena meta #this show is bursting at the seams with allegory and shit tho #i adore it so much

26 notes · View notes

alpaca-clouds · 7 months ago

Text

Why is it so hard to deconstruct Magical Girls?

As some might have noticed, I have recently been rewatching a lot of old anime from my teen days. And something I cannot help but think about while doing this is: "Why is it seemingly so hard to deconstruct the magical girl genre?" Because here is the thing: I know several attempts at genre deconstruction for this specific genre... But none of them are actually what I would count as a genre deconstruction.

Basically, deconstruction of a genre usually means that a genre is played straight. Like, you take the usual tropes of a genre and play them straight or with some sense of realism. Which we have plenty of in a variety of genre. I mean, with the rise of the superhero stuff over in the west, we have a ton of superhero deconstructions (like The Boys or Invincible), that mostly go for the most obvious issue with superheroes: "What if Superman was evil?" While also dealing with some other stuff, like how superheroes might be organized and controlled, how this would work with capitalism and so on and so forth. Now, a lot of folks are bored with "Superman, but evil", but yes, it is a very clear deconstruction.

In anime/manga we also have a ton of deconstruction going on. I mean, by now it should be fairly clear: Yeah, my original fandom obsession was Digimon Tamers, which basically deconstructs the first two seasons in many regards. And when it comes to the monster taming genre, there is also Narutaru, which is a deconstruction of the genre. And I might talk about Narutaru on another day.

There is also a ton of really great Mecha genre deconstructions - though ironically speaking, I feel like most of the Mecha genre is already deconstructing itself. When your biggest franchise (Gundam) in a genre frequently is build around the premise of: "You do realize, that this is about child soldiers, right? RIGHT?!" then maybe deconstructing the genre is not that hard.

But somehow... magical girls are different.

Like, there is a variety of shows that are kinda attempting to deconstruct the genre, but... Well, if you look on TV Tropes for the Genre Deconstruction Trope, it explicitly calls out that a Genre Deconstruction is "playing the tropes of the genre straight and more realistic", and it is explicitly not "some tropes of the genre, but darker and edgier".

And here is the thing: Most of what I know as Magical Girl Deconstructions, is actually "darker and edgier", not a straight up deconstruction of the genre. Which is not to say that they are bad! Hell no! I enjoy most of them. But they are not deconstructions.

Let me go over the three that left the biggest impact on me. Though first maybe we should define what makes Magical Girls?

I mean, the genre has changed a whole lot ever since Sailor Moon appeared on the scene. And maybe that in itself is a thing, because in some regards Sailor Moon - like Gundam - was fairly good at deconstructing itself. Never the less, I will go with the ideas that have been prevelent in the genre since Sailor Moon, even though there was magical girl media before it, that worked by different rules.

One or more girls usually between 12 and 17 years of age get a magical power to transform into super heroines.

The story usually is set in the real world.

Usually they will draw those powers over some sort of mascot character or multiple characters.

The shows usually mainly exist to promote merchandise, which is why the magical girls will usually have a ton of magic items and weaponry.

Almost always there is gonna be some fetch- or collect-quest involved for powering up those items.

The power of friendship!

Romance might or might not play a role, but it will always be secondary to the aforementioned power of friendship.

Usually the magical girls will fight "monsters of the week", that often are normal everyday things that get filled with evil magic by the villains.

The villains often are some sort of otherworldly empire, that has come to earth to either take over or collect items of some sort.

My Otome: Now, some people say that MyHiME is also a Magical Girl Deconstruction, with which I absolutely do not agree, where the fuck are my cute costumes and transformation sequences? MyHiME if anything to me reads like a monster tamer deconstruction, really. But MyOtome? MyOtome is a Magical Girl Something for sure. But... Well, it does not really deconstruct the genre, does it? This already starts with the story being set in a different world from ours, and with the girls not really being "chosen", but the setting being a school for magical girls. While some of the first half of the show does play with some of the typical tropes (monster of the week and such), the story fairly quickly goes to deep into the politics of its fictional world and the war story. While yes, technically you absolutely can argue that magical girls are in fact also child soldiers... They are not usually soldiers in a literal war, and the entire fantasy politics stuff - while I absolutely loved it - does not really feel like a real deconstruction. Instead it feels more like a fantasy war story, that you also put magical girls into. Yes, those magical girls behave a lot more like realistic teens, but that does not make it a deconstruction.

Uta~Kata: Alright, let me talk about my favorite of these, despite me being rather disturbed at some of the fanservice considering the girls are like 13. In Uta~Kata we have one girl, who gets magic powers, which is fine though, as several magical girl shows actually have just one main character. It is also set in the real world. However, this is where it ends. Because... Well, there is no fights. There is no evil. There is no weapons. There is none of the usual tropes. It is basically just deities mindfucking with this one girl to find out something, that I shall not spoil, given that nobody knows this series for some reason. But basically the only deconstruction in it is: "This is a girl with magic powers, and the girl works more like a realistic teenager would." Which... Uhm, yeah, no, does not really make it a deconstruction, does it?

Madoka Magica: Madoka is probably the one really well known Magical Girl deconstruction, but I once again will argue that it does not really qualify much as a deconstruction - because the thing that makes the entire draw of Madoka Magica is that it does not play the tropes straight or realistic, but rather subverts them completely. The entire concept of Madoka Magica is build around the idea that the girls are supposed to die/be corrupted by design, which is a twist on the usual magical girl formular, not a deconstruction. While Madoka Magica is good at playing around with the aesthetics of the genre, the show does not really play any of the tropes straight, but rather puts in completely new tropes in that place. Sure, some of those tropes (teenage girls being moody and this makes them so great for corruption) are kinda based in what the genre offers in itself - but it also does not feel like a straight up deconstruction.

Again, nothing against any of these shows. I love them dearly. I do. I just find it... interesting.

And I am honestly starting to wonder at this: Why is there not a straight up deconstruction of a Magical Girls show? And be it just as a manga or comic or something along the sort.

Sure, the shows above do deconstruct single aspects of the Magical Girl genre, but never the whole thing.

Like, thinking of deconstructions of other genre, there is like a ton of stuff I could see as a deconstruction of the magical girl genre - without actually going into fully subverting it and twisting it around. I mean, especially Uta~Kata and Madoka go more into psychological horror than actually into the deconstruction, right?

Something I would more expect to see in a genre deconstruction would be:

Magical Girls actually running into issues in regards of keeping up performance in school/clubs while also saving the world.

Magical Girls running into issues keeping their identities secret and actually facing consequences because of this.

Yeah, obviously, I also could see "Magical Girl, who gets bullied, uses her powers on the bullies" (or, depending on how harsh you wanna go with this, you could also go for more severe scenarios like: "Magical Girl who gets sexually exploited by a teacher uses her powers against teacher".)

Something in regards to: "Well, what if the power of friendship starts to break?" As well as actually kinda deconstruction the entire "friendship and love" dynamic that Magical Girl stuff does play around with a lot.

Given how prevalent sapphic subtext is within the genre, one could probably also work with that.

The entire merchandise/weapons/item thing is also so ready for deconstruction - something that could go in a variety of directions. Either with how unpractical the actual stuff is, or just how it does hinder plot.

And of course the other prime thing ready for deconstruction: You usually have a fucking alien invasion of some sort in these stories with monsters, and people getting hurt, buildings being destroyed and what not... and nobody from any government gives a shit? No, but really. I would assume that some sort of government would try to get involved here.

There is probably a million other subtropes that one could deconstruct about the genre, but that is some stuff I could think about.

Ironically it would not even need to go fully into horror for that, even though deconstructions will probably always have a slight horror-sensibility about themselves. But... you know. I think if I look at the Magical Girl deconstruction stuff at large (aka the shows that I did not name here), a lot of it is built way too much around shock factor of the violence that one gets shown. And that... is not really interesting deconstruction, right?

Sure, violence can absolutely be a part of deconstruction. And I do not think a proper deconstruction should be anything less than PG13, if not R-Rated. But... Why make it all bloody? Like the main things that one can play straight and realistic, do not need blood. It needs ore like characters being more... batshit.

#anime #anime and manga #magical girl #mahou shoujo #pretty guardian sailor moon #sailor moon #puella magi madoka magica #uta~kata #my otome #my hime #deconstruction #genre deconstruction

29 notes · View notes

lurkinglurkerwholurks · 27 days ago

Text

Bloody Brilliant

First posted: October 8, 2019

Focuses on: Bruce Wayne & Kiran Devabhaktuni

This is my “behind the scenes” series where I indulge myself horribly by annotating my fics. Link to the fic itself above. Thoughts below the cut.

Finally back at these for my own enjoyment after months away. I was in the middle of noting up this exact fic when my browser shut down unexpectedly and lost everything and I collapsed into a fugue.

Anyways.

I was innnnncredibly nervous about borrowing Dev for the first time, because I wanted to do a good job! But I also wanted it to be a surprise, so I didn't show @bowditch anything until it was done. She ended up being my sounding board for several plot points—the magnet, whether Dev should get stabbed or shot, the alarm system setup, how Dev is at throwing—without knowing it, because I am crafty and can weave questions unsuspiciously into casual conversation.

Dev’s flat was hardly his castle. It was a place to sleep, sometimes a place to eat, a place he tolerated but rarely enjoyed. It was just… a place.

Dev's ambivalence about his place was pulled directly from CEC, in reverse. I wrote it first, then went back to make sure the vibes checked out. They did.

The look of stunned disbelief on Wayne’s face when he had taken in the front lock had been almost funny. Less so was the genuine alarm from Alfred, who had been the first of the two to visit Dev’s flat and had been the one to call Wayne to begin with.

pulled directly from the chat, thanks Bow

In addition to a now fully wired flat with a door built to withstand Killer Croc on a rampage and walls bristling with listening devices and sensors sensitive enough to track Dev’s resting heart rate, Wayne had also added vigilance training to Dev’s barely tolerated self-defense lessons.

also this, thanks again Bow

He wanted to drop his bag off on the mat, walk out of his own shoes, scrub the antiseptic hospital stink out of his hair, and collapse into bed for at least as long as he had already been awake.

I think I mentioned this in another BTS but this is exactly how I think through activity strings. I'm like a Sim. Gotta connect those tasks in a sensible order. At least Dev doesn't chant reminders to himself like I do.

Shower, bed. Shower, bed. Shower, bed. It was a chant that kept his feet moving all the way to the bathroom.

Okay, maybe he sort of does, but mine are granular.

“What the bloody hell.”

When I did let Bow read the draft, she was instrumental in pointing out the places where Dev needed to swear more.

The intruder was short, no more than 165 cm. For some reason that exasperated Dev, to be held at knifepoint by a shorter man. Not that the vertically challenged couldn’t be dangerous—look at little Damian or even Tim—but Dev had spent his life shying away from taller men. It seemed unfair to now be threatened by a wee one.

165 cm, for the Americans, is 5'5", while Dev is over 6'. Also while Dev's exasperation comes from a personal place (spending his life being afraid of big men), we share it. I also get irritated when I feel other people aren't living up to their full potential when inconveniencing me.

The issue with this particular man (other than the knife) was he had a look Dev recognized, even while sleep-deprived. The hunched shoulders, the emaciated frame, the sallow skin, the scabbed sores across the face, the jittering hand and dead eyes… Dev had seen it more than once, both on the streets of Gotham and in his hospital’s own emergency room.

I rewatched the opening to The Sixth Sense for this and googled drug addiction symptoms. I can't remember which kind of addiction I used. I know very little from my own experiences, so googling was my go-to.

“The drugs, man,” the wee one hissed, and Dev fought the temptation to ask if he had checked at the end of his rainbow.

Dev is too sassy, literally. A joy to write, a pain to keep alive.

me 🤝 Alfred

Wayne was going to give him such shit for this. Timothy, too. Mugged in his own flat because he forgot to click the little button on his way out. Dev’s gaze skittered to his left. And forgot to lock his bedroom window, apparently. Such shit.

I wish I could say I would react with more focus and alacrity. Unfortunately, I find it useful to base bits and pieces of the Fam on myself and I damn myself with this bit.

It was ridiculous. He was standing in an flat rigged to high heaven by the bloody Batman and he couldn’t even signal for help because he had harangued Wayne into raising the sensitivity level for shouts after one too many gaming-based false alarms.

This was also from the chat, thanks Bow.

It felt like a nightmare, one of those horrible dreams where everything slowed and a dash felt like running through quicksand. He couldn’t gather the breath to shout for help, and the monster was on his heels.

I am so mean, putting him in socks.

A mass, rigid and weighted, slammed into his back. Dev stumbled forward and fell with a cry, head slamming into the cold, unyielding front of his icebox. Around him, his photos and magnets fell with a clatter among the shattered pieces of a stool. Shooting stars flamed in front of his eyes.

I was pleased to accomplish two things here, both the magnet (which was the whole point of the fic for me) and the head wound because I'd already had a flash of what I wanted to do with that in a bit.

Dev threw up his arm, for what little it would do him. It had never been much effective before.

The shadow plucked the magnet from the air, then looked down at the plastic Bat symbol resting in its glove. “Did you just try to batarang me… with me?” the shadow asked.

That. That right there was the whole dang point of the whole dang fic, spawned from a conversation about bat-shaped magnets and who would own them. I'm always so glad when I get to use a line exactly as I first heard it.

Batman made a low noise that sounded like a grumble, one Dev had come to realize meant something like distress. Wayne had used it only yesterday to fuss over a dog-eared page Tim had left in his copy of Treasure Island. There was something perversely comforting about being placed on the same level as a bent piece of paper.

I had loved reading that book as a kid. The full, original, unabridged version. I can't even really say why now, but I do love giving Bruce similar interests when I can swing it.

Batman had taken a step back so he no longer loomed between Dev and the light. . . . Batman waited patient and still. . . . Giving Dev and the chaos around him a wide berth, Batman retrieved a clean hand towel from the drawer next to the stove and handed it to Dev.

He's no dummy, that Bruce.

The opaque lenses eyed him steadily for a moment more, then Batman turned away. He looked about until he spotted Dev’s bag by the door and rifled through the pockets until he found the mobile. After a quick dial and a few murmured words, he passed the device to Dev.

Ugh, figuring out the practicalities gave me a bit of a hiccup at first. They wouldn't just leave the intruder chilling on the floor, even restrained. But if I let Bruce leave, then Dev would take care of himself before Bruce could get back and do it for him but on the other hand if he weren't well enough to take care of himself, Bruce wouldn't feel comfortable leaving!

As always, Alfred saves the day.

Wayne shut the door, then crossed the space between the door and Dev to crouch just out of arm’s reach. “May I help you up?” “If you flip that switch by the door, the lighting’s alright.” Wayne nodded and backed away.

Bruce Wayne is NO FOOL and I love writing unspokens. Bruce knows better than to crowd Dev right now and when he asks for permission to help Dev up, Dev doesn't give it. Because he doesn't feel steady enough to get up. And Bruce gets all that without Dev having to say it out loud, so he pivots to meeting him on the floor instead!

One of those knees rested against Dev’s thigh as Wayne leaned forward to remove the towel. The warmth of it was grounding and Dev shivered as a piece of him came back to himself.

casual platonic touchingggggggg

The next bit of dialogue banter is also a fave. I like giving Dev the backward and archaic (to American ears) phrasings that work so well as Britishisms and I love him giving Bruce crap and Bruce giving it right back.

Dev retched, bidding a woeful farewell to the microwave burrito that had been his only food in the last eight hours.

The fact that I can, even when reading this, picture both the microwave burrito in question and the box likely means I pulled that detail from a memory. I don't like burritos, and certainly not frozen ones, so a memory of what, from where, who's to say. The mind is a mysterious thing.

He spat, then sat back again, this time against a warm brick wall of human instead of the cold metal door of the icebox. . . . “You’re alright,” Wayne said in a voice low enough to make his chest rumble against Dev’s back. It was a little like leaning against a tiger.

and now we're just being suuuuper indulgent. This was why I wanted to bang up his head. I want to use Bruce Wayne's chest as a backrest.

Wayne smacked a kiss against Dev’s temple and rumbled, “Yes. Hand me the kit.”

a gift from me to me

“Then I’ll get one every single day. And I’ll come check on you every single day.” Bruce nudged Dev into the room, then released his elbow to rifle through the dresser drawers.

THAT'S LOVE YO

He picked a pajama set off the top and placed them on the bed.

I spent too long frowning at this line during this BTS write-up. I can't decide if that's wrong, actually, because Dev would never be put together enough to have matching pajamas or if it's correct because he'd toss one into his cart out of expediency and laziness.

Dev hesitated and looked to the still-open window. Bruce’s mouth pressed into a flat line. “We’ll do something about that as well. You have the couch tonight, I’ll take the floor.”

I decided, as I was coming to the end, how I wanted it to end and that would not work if Bruce was on the couch in another room. Thank goodness I'd already set up the open window.

“You’ve already set off the heart rate monitor six times since I’ve been here, and if I went home now, Alfred would just send me back. Go to sleep, Kiran.”

This was also suuuuuper important to me, acknowledging that Bruce knows Dev but also has independent confirmation of how Not Good he's doing, no matter how well he's been hiding it, because the dang heart alert is still going off! I think I may have been feeling indeterminately anxious while writing this.

There was a hand in Dev’s, broad and calloused and strong. Dev held it while he slept.

I know exactly what Bruce Wayne's hand looks like and mannnnn I want to hold it so bad.

#fanfic bts brain dump #bloody brilliant #it's dev the light of my life #bruce wayne #kiran devabhaktuni #fanfic #batfic #CEC

15 notes · View notes

wyvernquill · 1 year ago

Note

I'm rewatching Anastasia and this convo would really fit in your AU

Hob: look, Murphy, I'm just trying to help Murphy: do you really think I'm an Endless, Hob?

Hob: you know I do.

Murphy: then stop bossing me around

I'm sorry, this ask is already over a year old, but I finally got around to writing a scene based on it! (Plus some Murphy&Gil bits I wanted to put in somewhere, anyway.) Hope you enjoy!

[Mild warning for contemplation of one's potential death, and having once lost the will to life - I wouldn't call it suicidal ideation, it doesn't quite go there, but I figured I'd better be safe than sorry.]

Link to Anastasia AU Masterpost!

(Tag list, let me know if you want to be added or taken off: @10moonymhrivertam @martybaker @globglobglobglobob @anonymoustitans @sunshines-fabulous-legs @dreamsofapiratelife @malice-royaume @kcsandmanfan @acedragontype @okilokiwithpurpose @tharkuun @silver-dream89 @i-write-stories-not-sins-bitch)

“Hob.” Murphy interrupts, eyes flashing with frustration.

(Today’s how-to-be-a-Dream-Lord lessons are not going well - not that any of them have, but this one is a particular catastrophe. Gil has already given up on their contrary charge for the evening, and with the way Murphy’s shoulders are up and tension bristles between them, Hob is unlikely to make much more headway tonight.)

“Tell me. Do you truly believe I am him? The Prince of Stories? The Dream King?”

“Yes,” Hob lies, easily, unflinchingly, and with a smile on his face. A good lie has to be treated like the truth, and maybe, one day, it’ll actually turn into one. They’ve been trying so very hard to teach Murphy this, he should know it by now. “Of course.”

“Then, perhaps,” Murphy spits, and despite his feral arrogance, despite the way he holds his head high and squares his slender shoulders, it’s not the regal indignation of a King, but the helpless tantrum of an angry child who’s failing in class. “You ought to finally treat me with the fucking deference an Endless is owed, Hob Gadling!”

(There are tears in his pale-blueish eyes, Hob can see them, can hear the crack in Murphy’s hoarse voice.

Nobody has treated this man with respect in all the years he remembers, that much is obvious. Nobody but his birds. And he knows, they all know, that he’s no prince, that his blood runs red, not blue - runs at all, come to think of it. Endless don’t bleed.

But he wants to be. He wishes he was. Murphy is not Dream of the Endless, but he is ravenous for the spoils of such a role. Desperate to be respected, to be worshipped and revered, desperate to be owed the sort of treatment he has never received.

Hob ought to be ashamed of himself for taking advantage of that helpless hunger for kindness and decency… and he will be. For the rest of his immortal life, he’ll live with the shame of what he did to cheat Death, and still not regret it.)

Hob plasters a smile over his impatience and opens his mouth, gentle, calming words already on the tip of his tongue. Murphy is lonely and frightened and frustrated, that much is obvious. Fine. Hob knew it wouldn’t be easy, to teach their false Dream all he needs to know, and this is not an insurmountable roadblock. If Hob can only reassure him, earn his trust, be his friend, even, it will make everything much easier. Poor thing, lashing out like an injured animal. But Hob can surely coax him into-

Murphy recoils. Flinches back from the admittedly-half-faked warmth, his face, his entire bearing collapsing into itself like a heavy portcullis rattling shut.

“Don’t you dare,” he growls, pointing one of his stick-thin fingers at Hob’s face, “don’t you DARE! I have no need for your false pity, and I want no part of it! I want-” the white of his eyes is bloodshot, and in his terror, in his fury, in his desperation, awash in unshed tears “-I want out. This deal is off. Find some other poor sucker to teach how to play Endless, I won’t do it! I’ve had enough!”

And before Hob can say as much as a single word, Murphy has snatched up his coat and slipped out onto the rainy street, Matthew following - but not after awarding Hob with a colder glare than he would’ve thought a mere raven capable of.

Murphy does not manage to flee very far.

He is in an unfamiliar town, with no money, no valuables besides the clothes on his back that are now slightly finer than he used to be; and the winter is cold and deep and stifling. He gets no further than a handful of streets until he slows halfway across a bridge, shaking with cold more than anger, snowflakes dancing around him. It is a quiet, windless night - and it has always calmed him, to stand underneath the dark sky at night, and know that most of the city lies asleep around him.

Matthew settles on the bridge’s parapet, caws. Hops closer, cocks his head to one side. There is a clear question in his bearing, a what now? glinting in his eyes. Birds are open and honest - unlike humans. Liars and hypocrites all.

“...I do not know, Matthew.” Murphy admits quietly. He has taken the coat, but forgotten the scarf in his haste, so he tugs at his collar, to keep the cold air from trickling down his spine. “I truly don’t.”

He does not have the means to return to London on his own - and at the same time, does not have much desire to do so. He had nothing and no-one there, but for the birds. Pockets can be picked anywhere - he could make a new start in this nameless town.

…if only it weren’t winter.

Murphy shivers, feeling his bones rattle with it. The night is calm, but bitterly cold, and it will not end well for him, sitting in the snow until morning. In the dark of winter, he cannot afford a night without shelter, a day without a sure way to come by some food to keep his strengths up. In London, he would have known where to go. Here, he is helpless.

Damn Hob Gadling, and may Destruction take him! Murphy will have no other choice but to crawl back to him, and hope he’ll be kept on as Endless-impersonator. Hope, because Murphy’s made a right pig’s ear of it so far, slow and clumsy to learn, and outright refusing to play at nobility. He will always be a gutter rat, Murphy knows it. They can’t fashion him into a Dream King, and perhaps this flare of temper will prove to Hob once and for all that there is no point in trying.

There is no point in trying.

Murphy gives up on his collar, and rests his hands on the parapet. Matthew caws, and presses his head against his arm, a far better reassurance than Hob’s false smiles. It comforts Murphy, at least a little. He’s not alone, never alone - no matter how lonely he might feel.

Underneath them, a foreign river flows just fast enough to avoid the freeze. The water does not reflect any stars, but the snow dancing over the surface makes it almost look as if. His own reflection wavers and breaks across the waves.

(Some nights, he dreams of a darkened shore and a sea stretching far past the horizon, black waters that fold up into the night sky, indistinguishable from each other. Of a wooden pier, and galaxies swirling underneath.

Whenever he leans out too far, the reflected eyes he meets are not his own, and he wakes with a scream lodged in his throat.)

Murphy shivers again, and savours the last remnants of his pride, before it, too, will have to be cast into the dirt and abandoned.

“I believe you forgot this, young friend.”

Murphy’s head snaps up.

Dreams and nightmares approach without a whisper, perfectly silent at night if they choose to be. Gilbert is no exception; and if Murphy were to pay attention to anything but his heart racing like a startled hare, he would perhaps be a little distressed by the fact that there are no fresh footprints in the snow beside his own.

But it’s only Gilbert, kind-eyed and not-human, holding out Murphy’s scarf like a peace offering.

Murphy does not take it.

“Did Gadling send you?” he asks, wary.

“Robert informed me what had transpired between you two.” Gilbert admits. “But rest assured, I am here on nobody’s behalf but my own - and, well, yours. Frightfully nippy tonight, wouldn’t you say?”

Murphy does not say. He trusts Gil as little as Hob, perhaps even less. A dream attempting to betray the memory of his master seems hardly like a paragon of virtue, and is perhaps even more suspicious than a deceitful human.

(He does, however, take the scarf now. It’s too cold to be stubborn, and when he winds it around his neck, it smells of sunshine on a summer meadow, warm and comforting.)

“And if you truly wish to leave… dear boy, I won’t stop you.” Murphy does not like the way Gilbert looks at him, as if trying to see someone else beneath his skin. He does not meet Murphy’s eyes, if he can help it. “In fact I would send you off with well-earned compensation for your time, and travel fare. Unless…”

Gil steps up to the parapet beside him.

“...unless I can convince you to stay…?”

“Why would you?” Murphy mutters, instead of why would I, if you’re offering to pay me off? “It should be perfectly obvious that I’ll never pass muster.”

“Ironically,” Gilbert smiles, but only at the man he pretends to see whenever he looks at Murphy, “it is well known among the former denizens of the Dreaming that His Lordship was often prone to very similar bouts of pessimism. I have faith in you, Murphy - and so does Robert Gadling. Please, do not leave. I rather doubt we will succeed without you.”

"You…" Murphy struggles with the words, the sentiment behind them lodging uncomfortably in his throat. "You have great respect, even love, for Dream of the Endless' memory. So why do you pretend? Why try to fool his siblings that I am him?"

For a moment, Gilbert seems ready to insist, as always, that Murphy is, or at least might be - but, to his credit, he does not play Murphy for a fool, in the end. Not this time. Not like Hob always, always does.

"You are quite correct. I loved His Lordship deeply, in a way that could never be understood by anyone but a dream and their creator." Gilbert sighs, his soft meadow-green eyes gazing far into the distance of better days, lined by old grief. "He made me to be the Heart of the Dreaming, and he was the Dreaming, so I knew his heart and self better than any other. The loss, when he… you cannot imagine it, young friend. I thought I would wither away and die. I thought that would be a mercy. To live as a dream in a universe that does not contain Dream of the Endless seemed entirely unthinkable, and to be quite frank, I did not think I would survive longer than a year at most in the Waking."

"I understand," says Murphy, quietly, and he does. He is no stranger to the feeling of being so untethered, only floating along with the end looming over him, death - not Death, no longer, the Endless have been cast from their domains - only biding its time.

(In the first year he can remember, Murphy did not think he would see another, either.)

"And yet, the year passed. And I lived." Gilbert smiles, faintly, taking off his glasses to polish them. "I suspect it was humanity which saved me, for all that they robbed me of my home and Lord, as well. I found… such joy, in this world. In my human form, wandering among them. Calling a few select individuals friends, even. Young Robert's companionship was a particular blessing, and I owe him more than he can ever know."

He sets the glasses back on his nose.

"Lord Morpheus is dead." Says Gilbert. Says it like fact, like something too absolute for the sort of dream-creature born of hypotheticals he is, like an unshakeable truth he has resigned himself to. His voice only barely breaks over the words. "And I shall grieve him for all the rest of my days… but I must live to mourn him. Life goes on, young friend, and we must all move along with it. And, well. I cannot speak for Robert's motivations, but the true reason why I have agreed to this mad scheme…"

Gilbert takes Murphy's freezing hands in his own. His fingertips are not lined quite right, they would not leave prints that look even remotely like those of a human - but aside from that, his grip is warm, avuncular, firm, reassuring.

"I fear that his siblings will not be able to live on without him." Gilbert confesses, quietly. "They are not made to accept change and move on from a loss as monumental as what humanity has wrought upon them. To have you… not him, not entirely, but perhaps enough… it is my most solemn hope that it might give them some form of closure at long last."

"So that's what it is?" Murphy laughs, bitterly. "Charitable concern for the well-being of personifications of abstract concepts!?"

"No." Gilbert corrects mildly. "Love. For my creator's family."

Murphy scoffs. His chest aches with it.

"What you, hmm. What you must understand, about Lord Morpheus…" Gilbert seems to be choosing his words very carefully. "...is that, for all that he was often harsh and commanding, he was so very loving, always. My Lord loved with all his self, even if he would attempt to turn a cold shoulder to the world - and I think you are much like him in temperament, young Murphy.”

Murphy does not acknowledge that. He doesn't think he can.

“He loved his family, and he loved the Dreaming, and all the beings in it. I was his heart, or near as, you must recall, I knew the truth at the core of him.

Memories or not, love as he did, and you will be a credit to his name, and a comfort to all who knew him."

(Murphy does not have it in himself to love like Dream of the Endless did. He already struggles to love at all.

But perhaps, for the sake of the entity whose memory he will dishonour, he can try.)

“So. Will you come back and resume your lessons?” Gil asks, very gently. “You may leave, now or any other time, of course you may. But it would be to your benefit, as well as to that of many others, if you did not.”

“I’ll stay,” Murphy forces out. He could blame the way his hands shake on the cold. “For now.”

“Thank you, dear child. Thank you.” This time, when Gilbert smiles, it very nearly feels like it is directed at him, after all. “Now, let’s get you out of this cold, hm? And Matthew as well.”

Murphy lets Gilbert herd him back to their inn, sits through Hob Gadling’s apology and wonders if it was sincere - he can never tell, with this infuriating man - and continues to learn as much as possible about the life of Dream of the Endless.

But he’s slowly realising, if anything will convince the Endless siblings, then it certainly won’t be the trivia. He’ll have to learn to love like the Lord of Stories, for their deception to have a snowflake’s chance in hell.

(Oh, wonderful. As if this wasn’t difficult enough already…)

#WyWrites #dreamling #the sandman #anastasia dreamling au #thank you for the ask and sorry it took so long!#maybe at some point i'll go back and also write hob successfully recruiting murphy #but i was a little stuck on that so i skipped the recruitment and wrote this instead #fiddler's green's role in this au is just very interesting to dig into #deception and manipulation is not in his nature and the closest he gets to selfishness is just wanting to live a human life #so why would he agree to help hob with this scheme?#i'm quite pleased with the way i spun it - he really does it out of love and thinks it's ultimately for a good cause #and subconsciously the assurance that gil is doing it out of loyalty rather than as betrayal is very (suspiciously) important to murphy #also very light 1889 meeting parallels with hob and murphy's fight at the start!

68 notes · View notes