#more cartoonish than anything . No stakes.

[prolibytherium]

Man those The Hobbit movies really were bad huh

[duhragonball]

What’s your overall opinion on Jiren as a character and an antagonist?

I think a lot of Jiren critics miss the point with the guy. In particular, Team Four Star keeps trying to reduce Jiren to some cutting soundbyte. He's boring, he's like U11's Superman, he's an inversion of Goku, etc. You're never going to appreciate a character unless you're willing to meet the concept halfway.

In brief, he's the Man to Beat in the Tournament of Power. Unlike the other 69 opponents in the event, who resent Goku for getting them into this mess, Jiren finds Goku to be a nuisance, unworthy of his time or effort. Jiren can sweep the entire field by himself, and he knows it, but he's so bitter and depressed that he takes no satisfaction from any of it. This is just another job for him, one more chore in a long list of tasks that only he can do.

Jiren's sick of it. He suffered all this tragedy in his past, and now he's achieved seemingly ultimate strength, and it feels pointless to him. He wants to protect his universe and uphold justice. I think he's got that much in common with the Pride Troopers at least. But there's no joy in it for him. His victories are meaningless and hollow to him. Defeat is virtually impossible. Fighting the Tournament of Power is no better or worse for him than sitting alone in his room, staring at the wall.

I think that's what frustrates a lot of fans, because they want Jiren to be this exciting and charismatic figure, a cartoonish supervillain like Vegeta, or Frieza, or Cell, or a bizarre monster like Broly, or Buu, or Janemba. But Jiren flips the script by not giving a shit about Goku. He's not mad at Goku for causing the Tournament of Power to happen, he's not excited to fight Goku, he's not charmed by Goku's enthusiasm. He just wants to dominate the Tournament and leave. Not that Jiren has anything better to do with his time. He just wants to get it over with.

I think that's what makes the Vegeta vs. Jiren segments of the tournament so fun to watch. Look, I'm a big fan of Vegeta, but nobody thought he was going to be the one to take Jiren down. Vegeta's job was to try anyway, and get beat down to show just how tough things would be for Goku. And yet, we kept seeing Vegeta diving headlong into the fray anyway. He'd fight Jiren solo, he'd double-team him with Goku, he'd watch Goku fight Jiren and look for openings. Vegeta kept coming back for more, taking any action he could get, often with a big smile on his face.

Why is it so satisfying when Vegeta manages to get those small little victories against Jiren? He never came close to winning, but he still managed to find openings in his defenses, and he kept coming back for more, and in the end, he gained Jiren's respect. Why does this matter? Because Vegeta's loaded with passion, passion that Jiren lacks. He does take satisfaction from winning, and he does care deeply about the stakes, and even if this battle were just for funsies, he'd still give it his all because he enjoys combat for its own sake. That's what makes him so tenacious, even when he doesn't stand a chance.

And that's what stymies Jiren, because on several occasions he wonders why his opponents refuse to just roll over and accept defeat. That's what he'd do in their shoes, after all, because for him victory and defeat have lost all meaning. There's similar moments with 17, Frieza, and Goku, but I think the moments with Vegeta are especially prominent, just because Vegeta is so laser-focused on defeating Jiren personally, as opposed to merely winning the tournament or running down the clock.

Ultimately, what turns Jiren around is when Goku and the others manage to win him over with their fighting spirit. Once Goku surpasses him with Ultra Instinct and he starts to despair, his teammates cheer him on, and he forges ahead. He loses the battle and Goku praises him for his performance, and he finally understands what it is that drives the others. Then he confides in Toppo that he has no friends and Toppo's like "We're your friends, dummy." So Jiren still has a long way to go, but at least he's beginning to climb out of his rut.

And that's what makes the character interesting. For his opponents, he's this wall they have to break through, but for him, it's about rediscovering something through the course of the battle.

Is he a good villain? No, but he's not supposed to be a villain at all. He's an antagonist in a story without a bad guy. He's an opponent who lacks the passion that the main cast have, and that's a weak point he discovers as the story wears on. It's a very cool thing we see. I don't know how that will work for future Jiren stories, but that's a problem for another day, I guess.

[glassshard]

Whenever I don’t like a major piece of media I really like to analyze why. Ever since the RLM Star Wars Prequels reviews I’ve found this exercise super helpful. I think it’s even more helpful than analyzing why I love a piece of media, since my heart is a lot more shallow than my head, and will happily latch onto media with all kinds of problems simply because a boy was stabbed in a sexy way or the music was good.

But after ten hours of Baldur’s Gate 3 this weekend, I just had to drop it. I don’t like the game. It charmed me at first with its high production values and its excellent exploration, but my ardour cooled quickly as it began to butt up against my personal predilections. At first it did so in totally subjective ways with its unlovable D&D mechanics. I don’t know D&D and the game did not have any interest in teaching me about it. It just kinda throws you into a system that has no place in a video game in my opinion, full of unnecessary tedium and opaque mechanics. But you know what, that’s just me. Plenty of people love it. I could deal with bad gameplay, I like lots of games that play like crap. Let me sing you a song of the Legacy of Kain series.

But then the story failed to grip me. It’s written like fanfiction, with no explanation for any of the races, proper nouns, or concepts because you’re expected to already know them. I love in media res, but c’mon. Ya know what though? Still just my opinion. Open world games are super popular, lots of people love them. Remember how much you enjoyed Dark Souls? Look at that vampire, keep going. Sure he’s walking around during the day and vampirism in this setting just seems to equate to some Spirit Halloween accessories but it’s fine!

But then! But then! Then that vampire killed my character in a cutscene! And I thought that was GREAT. Unexpected! Finally! The game’s getting good! I’m invested! I’ll need to save scum and reload but-

Wait, I don’t need to? That wasn’t a game over? I can... I can rez my character? My character died in a story cutscene and I can have another character rez them with a scroll? And then... then I can go talk to the vampire because he’s still hanging around? But I can’t even tell the other party members about it? This is... this is not right. This feels objectively not right.

You can’t use a game mechanic to rez a story death. That’s not how this works. That’s like if Cloud had pulled out a phoenix down on Aeris or Corvo just started shoving jellied eels down the dead Empress’ throat. That is deflating the very concept of death in the game. There are no stakes now. Why should I care about anything? Why do people even hate vampires in this world if death can be cleaned up with a square of toilet paper available from any shop?

Still, I pushed on, in a stubborn daze. This was a sixty dollar game, I had to keep trying!

The underwear inventory slots felt juvenile but that’s fine, that’s fine. The character designs are extremely Ren Faire, but no big deal. One of the party members is named after a Care Bear but don’t be superficial, Ashley. I can equip armour I’m not proficient in and the game’s not going to tell me why I shouldn’t, but I’m not going to take it personally. The mind control mechanic is making every interaction feel cheap and silly, and all the parasitized party members feel fake and offputting. It seems very contrived that they’re traveling together, and I don’t understand why my character would remain in the company of ANY of them when he himself knows they have his same mind-control powers and can never be trusted and sometimes the illithid powers are framed as course-altering and sometimes they’re not and nothing is consistent except the cartoonish characterization of the “evil” races but it’s fine, it’s fine, keep going

But then I got to a portion where my character was able to ask a dead Mindflayer questions about the plot. And I realised, sharply: I do not care about the answers. I do not care about this world or this cast or any schemes at play. No immersion will be happening; my suspension of disbelief is irrevocably snapped. This is a Saturday morning cartoon with dicks.

And it all really went back to rezzing that story death. While a lot of my gripes about this game are completely subjective and to do with my own tastes, I think it’s objectively bad design to allow a story death resurrection. It deflated everything for me and I couldn’t recover.

So! I did not like Baldur’s Gate 3, and in my mind my character’s story ended when their trusting nature was exploited by a vampire, and they were killed. But the experience did teach me some interesting things about my own tastes, and what I require to become invested in a video game narrative.

[sidhewrites]

Nineteen. Get ready! Things are happening! Drama is about to unfold! I've decided rather than leaning into more grounded horror, I'm going to have "higher" stakes but it's a little more cartoonish and obvious that the story will have a happy ending. It was my original plan, which means a lot of the earlier content will have to be rewritten, but I think the next few chapters will be a lot of fun.

Project Info

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

I get back to my apartment first. Again, Josie finds me sitting on the living room floor, book open on my lap to the page Ruby showed me before. I don't know if it's the lack of sleep or constant teeth-grinding that's doing it, but for some reason, looking at the book gives me a headache. Something about the illustrations don't sit right in my brain. They keep moving in the corner of my eye, shifting just slightly, but as soon as I look at them straight on, nothing's changed. I don't get it. I don't like it. But I'm grateful not to be alone anymore when Josie arrives, with various folders and printouts, and two homemade grimoires.

If things were less awful right now, I'd say something clever, or at least call her a witch, but instead, I just look up with a relieved smile. "Ghost book," I say, holding it up,

"You have no idea how jealous I am."

"Of my ghost book?"

"Of your ability to see ghosts. After we take care of Renfield, the next thing on our list is figuring out why."

"You sound confident."

"I am." She sat down beside me, throwing an arm around my shoulders. "We'll figure it out. Everything's gonna be fine, okay?"

"Okay."

"What time is it?"

I check my phone. It's 4:36, but, more importantly, it's only a half hour until sundown. Even if Lucy doesn't know how to help, neither Josie nor I would say no to a third set of eyes to help us figure out the right way forward.

But Josie frowns. She stares hard at the book, withdrawing her arm and turning her head this way and that, as if a different angle would make the letters more legible. "It's definitely the Latin alphabet," she says after a minute, but the words aren't coming together for her.

I point at the illustrations, still not sure what to make of them. There's definitely something there -- distinct lines of ink meant to invoke the idea of a shape of some kind. But it's like looking out of a foggy window. "Can you make anything of that?"

"It looks like...a ghost?" She holds up a hand before I can protest. "Like a classic depiction of a ghost. A semi-formed person in the mist, kind of. Maybe standing above an animal's body?" She points to the dark shape at the bottom of one of the images.  When I don't respond, she scoffs. "Okay, well, what does it look like to you?"

"No-- I mean..." I gesture helplessly. "I only mean that it's a little convenient, if that's a ghost coming out of an animal's body, don't you think? It can't be that easy as decoding some mysterious book and, bam, here's a banishment ritual." Maybe Lucy would have better luck deciphering it when we met with her.

#

"It's a banishment ritual," Lucy says, leaning over the book. The little crease has formed between her eyebrows as she stands besides me, tilting her head back and forth as if a different angle would reveal its secrets.

"Shut up." I barely resist slamming the book shut in frustration. It's not that easy. There's a catch. There's always a catch.

"No, I mean it." She points at a few words. "There's the word banish, and these are ingredients...I think." But when she indicates another line in the text, it doesn't make sense to me. "Ask Josie, would you, please? I wonder if she might have a better idea of this than myself."

Josie looks up. "Did someone say my name?" Unable to talk to Lucy herself, she's been sitting off to the side, reviewing her various papers for any hint of something useful. But now she looks up, confused, looking between me and where she assumes Lucy is standing.

"Er..." Lucy starts, fiddling with a bit of lace on her dress. "I suppose I did say her name."

"You did do that." I nod tentatively. "Josie, you heard her say your name?"

"Did I?"

"Lucy, say it again."

Lucy shifts, and does so. "Josie?"

"Oh --" Josie's eyes go wide. "That was Lucy, wasn't it?"

I nod.

"I heard -- I heard my name. Like something whispering to me in the trees, or the wind, or something. I heard it."

[Transition. They put their heads together and form something of a plan. Then,]

I stop at the end of the walkway. Josie waits just on the other side of the gate, but all this thinking has given me an idea. "Do you think..." I start, frowning at my feet, then at the hem of Lucy's gown, just barely transparent. If I squint, I think I see a few blades of grass bend underneath the fabric's weight. "Hey, um. Lucy, come here a minute?"

She doesn't understand where I'm going with this, but, after a moment, she does. She follows me to the edge of the pavement, our toes just barely touching the threshold.

"Do you feel anything?" I ask. When she still doesn't follow, I prompt her further. "Some kind of boundary, or something that means you can't go any further? You told me the other day you can feel when you reach it."

[She considers it.] Then, slowly, holding her breath, Lucy reaches a hand out. Past her feet. Past the gate. And into the world outside the Graveyard.

It takes all my will not to scoop her up into a hug then and there. [Cheering.] [Possibly take out and have this scene happen a

"Come on. Say stop as soon as you feel something. Let's see what you can do." I can't help the sudden thrill in my heart. Terrible as things are, I can't help but imagine taking Lucy out on the town. I'd be a proper gentleman with a lady on his arm, listening in awe as she tells me about how excited she was when gas lamps were replaced by electricity, and how the radio works. Or maybe I'd take her for coffee. Even if she couldn't drink it, I imagine she'd be thrilled to watch the espresso machines and the steamers at work.

She steps slowly. We make it the six feet to the asphalt, then to the crosswalk. She's in the very middle of the street as she comes to a stop, eyes wide, head on a swivel.

[possibly take this scene out and add after the magnus part]

[Dialogue. She's so hype to be here. Can she get into kaz's front door?]

The time for wonder stops abruptly as a fire alarm goes off in my building. I look up, and my stomach drops. Smoke wafts in my window, too wispy to block out any light just yet. But I can see it. I leave Josie and Lucy behind, and sprint into the building, down the hallway, to my front door.

Green smoke seeps out under the crack in my door, smelling vaguely of rotten eggs and charred bacon. Bafflingly, the first thing that pops into my head isn't oh my god fire, but instead Renfield is burning breakfast.

In my defense, it's been a crazy few days.

I throw the door open without thinking, coughing as the putrid smell fills my throat. "Renfield!" I shout, tugging my sweatshirt off and holding it over my mouth. "Baby!" Neighbors poke their heads out the doors. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I hope someone calls the fire department, but I stumble around the apartment focused only on saving my cat. I forget that half the furniture had been moved, and knock my knees into a chair before nearly falling over the couch. But I make my way to the bathroom, where the smoke is thickest, pouring out from under the door like gaseous vomit.

I curse, and forget myself. In my panic, I throw the door open.

A man cackles, and a dark shape sprints out of the room, barely shin-high.

He flees into the night, taking the smoke with him.

In its wake are strange, glowing footprints in the shape of little kitty paws.

Tag List

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@vigilantdesert

[zestyderg]

new question: favorite aspect of each dinaurian character? or just stuff you like or dislike about each in general

>:D

Duna: Unlike Raptin and Dynal, Duna really just regards the humans at first with indifference instead of like... active malice, which I find interesting. She was just doing her job. In the trio of Hunter, Rosie, and Duna, Duna has the braincell. Actually, even between the dinaurians she has the braincell. Kinda funny since shes like 14. The fact that she chooses to defy her entire species to help humanity after Hunter saves her, knowing the consequences, is really brave of her. She's quite compassionate, even if she's not as outwardly emotional, and her being more calm and logical is a nice contrast to rosie's energy and short-temperedness.

Raptin: Ah the angry raptor man. Like Duna, he was just doing his job, and tried to see it through to the end. His undying loyalty to his kind cannot be overlooked, even if he was a total bitch to humanity. That's probably why he's an Elite in the first place. He loves his people more than anything and will do anything to ensure their survival. Like yeah he fucks up majorly and I think Rosie should get to maim him (she should get to maim many people honestly), but I still like him lol. Nothing will justify that ugly ass green he has though, like the devs could have chosen any other shade of green?

Dynal: I've already mentioned him trying his best for his people (he and Raptin are similar in that regard) after the whole Guhnash ate their planet thing. Another thing I like is just his presence throughout the story. Everytime he shows up you get this feeling of "oh shit, that's a guy you don't wanna mess with". He exudes power and elegance, and this comes across pretty well in his battle form too. He even outsmarts the protags, disguising himself as Richmond to trick them into assembling and handing him the missing sub-idolcomp, raising the stakes and really showing off how much of a threat he is. Dynal means business, and he has no problems letting everyone know it. But even then, he has a high sense of honor and believes in a fair fight. I still find it kind of funny that one fight earned his respect (it didn't earn Raptin's) and losing the fight would not have stopped him from pressing the button, but he was just like "oh humans are cool now, guess I don't wanna make them extinct after all". Also I just really like his design and theme.

ALSO his stupid little evil laugh he does when he plots to get the sub-idolcomp back. Literally boo ah hahaha levels of cartoonish evil lmao

BONUS MINI RANT ABOUT THEIR APPEARANCES IN CHAMPIONS BECAUSE BRUH

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT?? Duna seems like herself, so I won't really talk about her.

One thing to note is how they all refer to humans as mammals in a more demeaning manner, and how every human runs from them. I refuse to believe EVERY human, especially in the world of fossil fighters, that they came across ran from them.

Raptin... bro... I get that you're a bitch but you had your arc last game. LIKE... he seems frustrated because people keep running away from him (he brings up the fact that humans look too greasy for him to EAT?? HELLO??), but Dino/Dina approaches him, and he's just mean to them. Probably why they run, Raptin. He does tell the protag that if they're lucky, Dynal won't eat them. Bro. Maybe don't spread rumors about your king EATING HUMANS? YOU KNOW, THE BEINGS YOU AND HIM SHARE A PLANET WITH NOW? Common Raptin L

DYNAL HOWEVER GOT THE WORST OF IT. HE IS SOOOO MEAN TO THIS HUMAN KID HE JUST MET. AFTER HIS CHARACTER ARC LAST GAME HE SHOULDN'T BE ACTING SO RUDE??? He should have been eager to test your strength but still courteous to you imo. Dynal's a good guy! Being mean to every human he meets would be fucking bad when you're trying to coexist with them, and he knows this!! GOD IT ANNOYS ME HOW THEY JUST MADE HIM THINK HE'S ABOVE HUMANS AGAIN.

Anyways none of the dlc stuff may even be canon so I'm probably just getting worked up over nothing.

[jazzforthecaptain]

Guess who's back on her Fast & Furious bullshit.

Is the new movie good?

I mean, how do you define good? Did I have to suspend disbelief about a lot of things (gravity, friction, inertia, technology, projectiles, the towing capacity of a Dodge Charger, etc.)? Yes. Absolutely. 100% from about 20 minutes into the film.

Was it fun? Fuuuuuck yes.

Did it pass the found family vibe check? For sure. It referenced people I'd almost forgotten about. They pulled the original actors to play all of them. The movie even has a discussion with itself about how quickly and completely people still get pulled into Dom's orbit, which is a great bit.

There's some eyeroll inducing lines - there always are - but this iteration seems more aware of itself than past films, and the writing is better than 8 and 9. Even when someone says something worthy of a comic book font, it matches the tone of the scene. The action sequences are outrageous and the movie knows it. It's fine with it. We live in a world where the heroes discover a massive explosive in the back of their vehicle and nobody even says "WHAT?" This are roads we know.

It's fun. It's a greatest hits review of the good stuff from F&F. Charlize Theron is somehow better in this than she was when she first showed up in the franchise to chew the scenery. John Cena is, frankly, adorable in his role. And Jason Momoa's sheer chaos energy - this man has range. Over the years I've watched him go from Ronon Dex to Conan the Barbarian to Aquaman to Duncan Idaho, but I never expected Dante Reyes. There's so much personality in this character that it escapes into everything he's wearing and driving. Momoa's humor and comedic timing shines. Dante makes a Joker for Dom's Batman and his Justice League of associates, literally assembled out of DC and Marvel actors.

The plot is whatever. It mostly connects, even if it pushes past belief before the first half hour. Did you come here for the plot? This franchise? The one with the car chase against a submarine, against a tank, against a plane? The franchise where a shadowy agency airdrops muscle cars into a combat zone? Where our heroes drive a car out of one high rise and into an adjacent high rise? Where they launched a Fiero into space to ram a satellite and hitchhiked onto the ISS?

I stopped being here for the plot after Fast Five. Honestly I should have given up sooner but what can I say? I'm stubborn. I mean, for a movie where people chase cartoonish bombs through Roman fountains and back cars out of low-flying planes, it's ironic how ultimately safe and predictable the storyline is. But like... it's a pretty satisfying story. It's a bedtime story for a baby Toretto, where the good guys face impossible odds, get framed for something they didn't do, and have to fight their way out of corner after corner with ever-escalating stakes; but where love and community always saves the day, and nobody ever really dies.

So was it good? I feel like that's the wrong question. Was it what I wanted? Yeah. Things suck right now and this was a silly, feel-good treat for myself. It was fun to get dressed up in my Fast & Furious shirt and go to the theater. It reminded me of all the things I love about the franchise and better still, it owns the franchise from start to finish. It doesn't try to be anything else. The Fast & the Furious, Fast & Furious, and Fast Five are always going to be where my heart is. This touched on those vibes without dwelling too long on them. When it hurt, it was a good hurt, and then we got on with things.

[soul-dwelling]

Would soul eater worked as a low stakes, kinda episodic, kinda slice of life (not sike SEN) thing? Like a higschool drama-comedy, with the twist being not only the halloween world but also that the students are soldiers in an ancient war while its treated casually, think like My life as a teenage robot or something.

Even as a lower-stakes story, I imagine, at some point, it would climax into a _big_ stakes story, not dissimilar to how Soul Eater NOT wrapped up with a big finish despite mostly everyday stories. 

I mean, Ouran High School Host Club--the anime, that is--was slice of life but had a higher stakes finish. 

Maybe you could say the same about Dragon Ball and One Piece being seemingly, not slice of life, but lower-stakes--before Dragon Ball went hard into the battle storylines rather than the exploration storylines, and when One Piece was probably always high stakes but just not as noticeable given the slow buildup and worldbuilding so that, once you get to those big reveals, they have crept up onto you. 

(And this isn’t dissimilar to a topic I saw discussed about whether My Hero Academia would have been better with lower stakes…which, yeah, I think that series really needed more lower stakes and academia-focused stories before, “Boom, fight against the PLF…and then another fight with the PLF.”) 

Maybe the lower stakes would have helped the plot points and story arcs get some focus--but that also would be a long time for the story to spin its wheels on episodic tales rather than any overarching story, and while I think there would be enough readers and a good enough story there, I am not optimistic that a publisher and a set of editors would have liked that approach or thought it was enough to keep up sales and get any interest from animation studios and merchandisers. 

I think there is too much in the DNA of Soul Eater that “low stakes” quite works, not unless you really ramp up the comedy. For example, you have the literal grim reaper as the headmaster. I can’t see that kind of story approach working unless you treated your story like Cromartie High or Nichijou. Then again, Full Metal Panic and Mashle have high stakes stories…but a lot of slice of life and goofier components that can be simultaneously hilarious and epic (...Full Metal Panic less so since its creator decided to be a fucking shithead). 

I mean, maybe in the vein of My Life as a Teenage Robot could work--but, again, that show at least has a visual style and storytelling conceit that feels like it can toe the line between high stakes and low stakes (mecha as a visual style, mecha as questions about what it means to be human and potentially as representative of assimilation culture and marginalization). Soul Eater is “here are really cartoonish designs and shenanigans like something from Henry Selick or Jamie Hewlett.” I get that The Nightmare Before Christmas and Gorillaz are dark. But unlike those two, Soul Eater feels like a more cartoonish version of those stories and their tone: that cartoonishness doesn’t quite work as anything but low stakes--unless you keep reinforcing the grimness, which it did via what Lord Death has done, and thereby disrupts most attempts for low stakes storytelling. 

…Maybe that’s why Soul Eater NOT didn’t take off as well. It’s not like you can’t have low stakes stories in this setting: enough fan creations prove that. But I feel like NOT tried so hard to avoid tackling anything too grim already within Soul Eater, namely, Lord Death himself (who has, what, one major appearance throughout the entire manga and only mentions elsewhere?) and decided to make anything grim entirely original (Eternal Feather’s possession, Shaula, what happens to Meme). Then fucking Fire Force comes along to make things even more grim as if to swing the pendulum the other way: “NOT was too sweet, and I want to set up how Soul Eater is so fucked up, so here’s a grim, depressing, uniformed story whose only legacy is going to be that it was a prequel to a better story--and in the process makes that better story now less interesting.”

[queersatanic]

There is no reason for "Andor" to be as good or radical as it is, given that it is a Disney property, and it even sets itself apart as far as torture.

Lots of shows from the so-called Golden Age of Prestige Television made you root for horrible people due to how those shows were structured. If you wanted to see more "Breaking Bad," then Walter White had to keep doing horrible things. "Andor" does some of the same things: it effectively humanizes the fascist characters, really makes you empathize with them, and structurally even root for them to overcome adversity — such as Deedra Meero fighting against misogyny — but then it doesn't leave you with that because it's given you other characters to meet who experience the results of fascism, empire, and domination.

The torture scene in "Andor" a callback to the original "A New Hope" scene where protagonist Princess Leia is tortured offscreen.

For all of the shortcomings George Lucas has, politically and otherwise, your sympathies are always supposed to be with the rebels fighting against tyranny rather than the state agents torturing helpless people for information. The creators of "Andor" carried that forward as well.

(Scene from S1E9 "Nobody's Listening!")

DR. GORST:

Oh, the restraints are nothing to be feared. It's much safer for you to be tethered as we engage. There's nothing intrinsically physical about this process, but we've had some early trails that were a bit chaotic. There's an Outer Rim moon called Dizon Fray. There was a sentient species there. Quite unusual. Extremely hostile to the concept of an Imperial refueling center that was being planned. I say "was" because they created such a stir that the local commanders were granted permission to use any means necessary, and, um, well.. What's important for our purposes here today is that the massacre of the Dizonites was broadcast and recorded as proof of mission. They make a sound when the die. A sort of choral, agonized pleading. It's quite unlike anything anyone has ever heard before. There were three communications officers monitoring the documentation, and they were found hours later huddled together in various states of emotional distress, in a crawl space beneath the ship's bridge. We've taken the recordings and modified them slightly. Layering, adjusting. And we found a section of what we believe are primarily... children, which has it's own particular effect. Doesn't take long. It won't feel that way to you, inside. Let me know when you're willing to cooperate. Oh, and if you're having difficulty speaking, just shake your head from side to side.

DEDRA MEERO:

You'll want to be sure of that, Bix, that you're cooperating fully. It's repeat listenings that cause the most damage.

A show like "24" with its protagonist Jack Bauer in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks was almost cartoonish in its propaganda repeatedly showing torture to be necessary, moral, and effective.

Even in "Andor," something unrealistic about it is that the character Bix Caleen actually does know something that she ultimately can (and does) reveal to her torturers. Writing conventions are such that things we're watching are supposed to have stakes, and each scene is supposed to matter. Even when characters are suffering, we want them to have agency such as holding some information back. Bix correctly points out that it doesn't matter what she says since they're not going to believe her and keep torturing her anyway, and it would have been nice if that's all it had been. Eventually, everyone who is tortured tells the person hurting them what they want to hear in the hopes it will make them stop, but that doesn't make what they're saying useful.

"Rogue One" gets a little closer in that the tortured character, Imperial defector Bodhi Rook, is just trying to tell the rebel partisans something truthfully from the start, but he isn't believed until subjected to sci-fi magic probing from a psychic species. That film is a mess overall and it's a miracle it came out as good as it did, but it is one of the few fictional works to portray torture as being completely meaningless in terms of gathering information.

In typical fiction rules, when our protagonist is engaging in torture and threats against a person's life, the point is that it's effective, and they're cowards who will ultimately reveal the critical information. Whereas when our protagonist is the one being tortured, the point is that they are brave and will resist revealing the critical information.

We have been trained to think that the truth is less dramatically satisfying: that torture is an expression of power and domination. It's violence by those who can against those who are helpless. Torture doesn't help gather reliable information unless the person asking the questions already knows all of the answers.

We need more of that in fiction. Not torture with a pornographic eye or meant for entertainment like so many horror films were for that period in the mid-Aughts but "torture as it is," with all sympathy and full point of view for the people being harmed, with most examples being people who know nothing or know nothing useful.

this graph from Jacob Geller's new video depicting the ratio of good characters torturing people on screen to bad characters torturing people on screen within the Call of Duty series is driving me crazy

[jcmarchi]

Knuckles Show Review – A Low-Stakes Climb

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Knuckles Show Review – A Low-Stakes Climb

The live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie series that started in 2020 has delivered entertaining adventures starring everybody’s favorite Blue Blur and his ever-growing stable of friends. One of the highlights of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was Knuckles, voiced by Idris Elba. The fish-out-of-water gags and his strict adherence to the echidna warrior code, which is in stark contrast to Sonic’s fun-loving personality, made for an enjoyable dynamic within the cast of characters. Knuckles, the new six-episode streaming show on Paramount Plus, tries to carry forward that dynamic. However, thanks to low stakes, a palpable disconnect from the larger Sonic story, and too much emphasis on the human characters in the world, it falls short of the heights reached by the two theatrical films.

Warning: While I try to remain as spoiler-free as possible, some aspects of the narrative and characters are mentioned throughout this article.

This spin-off series follows Knuckles as he trains Wade Whipple (Adam Pally), the goofy police officer from the first two Sonic films, in the way of the echidna warrior. Though Wade is fine as comic relief in the films, I often struggled with placing so many of the emotional stakes at the feet of this character. This becomes particularly true once his family joins the show. The weakest parts of the Sonic movies are the scenes featuring the human characters. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 appeared to learn that lesson, as it sent many of the main humans away on a trip, but the inverse is true in Knuckles; on multiple occasions, I wondered why we were focusing so much on the family drama of Wade instead of what Knuckles was up to off-screen.

The family storyline that consumes much of the latter portions of the show can be compelling in bursts, but it almost feels like an entirely different show altogether. The show does very little to inform viewers why we should care about these characters aside from the fact that they’re related to Wade. The mother character (Stockard Channing) is the most likable of the bunch, particularly when the other major players feel like cartoonish caricatures of sitcom archetypes – even more so than in the movies. Thankfully, when the titular character is on screen, it’s another strong performance by Elba. I’m also happy that much of the CGI of the Knuckles character looks great, particularly when in fights.

The action sequences of Knuckles are the highlight. One scene, in particular, takes place in a kitchen and benefits from crafty camera work and a simulated single-take effect. The action scenes are well-paced throughout the six-episode season, but they do shine a light on one of the most significant shortcomings the Sonic franchise must overcome if it hopes to expand out in spin-off series such as this: Sonic’s gallery of enemies just isn’t that deep. Having the main antagonists of Knuckles be two rogue agents of GUN and a guy who used to work for Dr. Robotnik demonstrates this in irreconcilable ways. Sure, we’re promised Shadow in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and we could still get the introduction of characters like Metal Sonic or Chaos in future media, but this series shows that the pool is pretty shallow.

Installing low-profile villains for the franchise’s first streaming series could be forgiven if they made their mark, but they feel like retreads of what Dr. Robotnik was trying to accomplish in the first movie; their entire motivation is to capture Knuckles to steal his power. Ellie Taylor and Kid Cudi deliver fine performances as the rogue GUN agents, but the characters rarely serve as anything more than plot devices for the characters to progress on their personal journeys and foils in fight scenes. We do learn of their motivation later in the show, but at that point, I only cared about them because when they showed up, it usually meant an action scene was coming.

When you aren’t watching a fight sequence play out, you’re usually enduring a joke shotgun blast with a relatively low hit rate. The seasoned comedic delivery of actors like Adam Pally, Paul Scheer, and Cary Elwes do wonders for some of the jokes on offer in Knuckles, but it’s often not enough to keep the momentum up and running. Instead, in the times when Knuckles wasn’t on screen, I was more enthralled by the heartfelt moments, which, much like the humor, have a relatively low success ratio. Much of the family dynamics are framed around an absurd bowling tournament that apes the vibe and storyline of Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story a little too closely, making it difficult to connect to the characters or the overarching narrative. Knuckles feels noncommittal when it comes to the tone it’s going for. While it’s not impossible to be an action-comedy series with sentimental moments, it’s a trickier line to walk than Knuckles can accomplish.

And it would all be forgiven if the story felt essential – or even consequential – to the world of the Sonic series. But instead, having not yet seen Sonic the Hedgehog 3, I can’t help but feel that Knuckles has that sitcom quality where everything ends up right where it started. Sure, there’s a journey with some sentimentality, minor character development, funny gags, small Easter eggs, and enjoyable action scenes, but if someone asked if they needed to watch Knuckles before going to see Sonic the Hedgehog 3 when it arrives in theaters this December, I’d be hard pressed to find a narrative reason to answer them in the affirmative.

That’s perhaps Knuckles‘ biggest flaw: Despite its sometimes fun and heartfelt moments, it feels entirely inessential. Video game adaptations have an outdated reputation for being bad. Knuckles isn’t outright bad, but when compared to its contemporaries like Fallout, The Last of Us, Twisted Metal, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and even Sonic the Hedgehog 2, it feels like a video game adaptation from a bygone era.

About Game Informer’s review system

[lem-cup-rev]

4.8 | Boys’ Night Out

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)

🌸🌸🌸

Ooooh now this is the clunky, awkward, baffling She-Ra content this season has been sorely missing!

Have I mentioned how much I’m not interested in Sea Hawk? I literally never have because he isn’t important. But I liked his first episode! Maybe it’s because in that story he was the adventure the girls were on, navigating a harmless funny egomaniac to get what they want. But he’s never been connected to the story since, and he never feels grounded in the stakes.

What I really liked from him in this episode was his elaborate poses and song sequences. He has such a great macho-fae flamboyant energy.

I love when Bow gets frustrated about being the only one working on their friendships! That was such a great reveal of depth, the way he’s super positive and reasonable the whole time but he’s like ‘Yeah, I do that on purpose, but I have feelings too!’ I also loved how he was really dejected until Sea Hawk managed to get him singing an enthusiastic shanty and he was like ‘Yeah okay I love this.’ I did think his characterization overall was more messy and hard to follow than I made it sound though.

The song about being friends had such a surprising return to kindergarten vibes, and I would love for the show to play more with that but right here it feels pretty out-of-nowhere. There was the makings of an idea I really liked where this could be a very nostalgic, childish episode about the value of friendship, which breaks into sudden depth in the third act where Bow reveals his very adult feelings about how hard it is to be the only one trying to do the work. Such a clever, interesting bridge between the show’s cartoonish sincerity and the harsher emotional themes.

Swift Wind didn’t get to do anything lmao. It could have just been a Sea Hawk and Bow mission, that might have had a little more resonance since they had such a senpai kohai thing in the early episode. It’s funny that Bow seems completely over his crush on Sea Hawk and he’s basically as tired of his bullshit as all the princesses and I am.

Aaaaaughgjffjfhh Glimmer and Adora are talking past each other! It feels so forced! Maybe I would like it more if I understood why they got so ready to kick each other to the curb. It’s hard to believe! I’m really trying to figure out if there’s a way to enjoy it and I’ll come back in like a year and be like “Oh this is awesome actually! The tension!!” There’s definitely a really fun concept here for these extremely self-righteous hero friends, who usually feel like a badass team and pride themselves on their kindness and closeness but really have a lot of personal issues, to kinda have one bad day and end up turning all their most bitter, uncontrolled feelings on each other, and have no idea how to get out of their own heads before they start to hate each other. There’s so much painful emotional waste to splash around in, like the Horde arcs. This show is about knifes and the twisting thereof! But yeah it’s not really hitting for me.

Oh I liked seeing the pretty Salineas village! That immediately made the threat from last episode more impactful. I love the squid people!! I love that the Flutterina people were moths too! There's a lot of neat furry species in the civilian towns that we see, and it also really makes it stand out how this show has the classic fantasy thing of nonhumans are only on the evil side. The Rebellion has no furries! The Horde has many!

Seeing Mermista in her little depression bath right after seeing the refugee evacuation was so funny, it’s the first time any of the princesses have seemed like despicable spoiled royals.

Octavia was here for basically the first time! I love the hot octolady! Also it isn’t brought up at all but it’s cool to think of what it’s like for her to burn down presumably her homeland.

I love that she lost her eye to a child and she was like ‘Yeah I’ll reclaim this. I’ll tell it to the enemy like it’s cool and just shows how badass our leader is’

It’s so wild to see Hordak ‘in the field’! He was always so cool as a secluded menace but now he’s so cool on the battlefield and the good guys get to see it! Could he have done this at any time? What a legend.

Catra is starting to chill out! We see her give orders in a calm, reasonable way. I love that she’s settling into her position. I LOVE that she talks to Scorpia’s phone for minutes without noticing that she hasn’t heard anything back. I love that it takes her this entire episode to realize Scorpia’s gone. That little understated arc has gotta be the best written part of this.

Omg Mermista’s rock remix???? God I love musical numbers so much. I had to stop myself from giving the episode an extra star for it. I want there to be a proper musical episode SO BAD.

Next time: Time is like a bagel…

[twentiethcenturymoviesandtv]

The Princess Bride: The Characters, Part 2: The Sicilian Crowd, the Villains, and Conclusion

When we are first introduced to Inigo, he’s not exactly a glowing example of heroism.  A former alcoholic, Inigo is a Master Swordsman, working as a mercenary, he is one of the trio who first kidnaps Buttercup (under Humperdinck’s orders).  He’s fine with the abduction itself, but shows a few of his true colors when he objects to murdering her, already proving himself a little more decent than Vizzini, the leader of the band.

A little later, during the duel with Westley, much is revealed about Inigo, more in fact than you ever learn about the backstories of either Westley or Buttercup: the story of his father’s murder and his own desire for revenge, so strong that it has encouraged him to dedicate his life to mastering the art of fencing.  The duel, exciting enough from an action and comedy standpoint, also clues the audience in on a few other key details: Inigo isn’t really all that bad of a guy, just a man on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, again demonstrating the same duality (just reversed) that Westley does.

Despite not having as much screen time and focus as Buttercup and Westley, Inigo is the Breakout Character of The Princess Bride, a Determinator, the Lancer of the film.  As I mentioned, he’s also the character we receive the most information about, learning that he is a man of honor, good hearted, and loyal through his interactions with other characters, notably Westley and Fezzik.  Thanks to his sympathetic backstory and one-track mind, he’s understandable to the audience: we know everything about him and why he is doing everything.  He’s totally transparent in the best way, he makes sense, and the audience roots for him.  They care about him, even when he’s initially introduced as a more villainous character (albeit one with truly hilarious lines).  The audience arguably has a stronger attachment to him than they do to Westley and Buttercup, which is very unusual, especially when Inigo disappears for a while after Westley defeats him in battle.

In a way, Inigo would seem to have the qualities very necessary to carry a film: tragic backstory, sympathetic motivation, understandable actions rooted in very clear character traits, and indeed, a lot of elements that put him in the Hero camp.  And yet, like Buttercup and Westley, while some things fit him into this mold, others don’t.

Although he doesn’t have a connection to Humperdinck (aside from him being a distant employer), he does have a very strong tie to the main villains of the story in Count Rugen.

Rugen is, of course, the six-fingered man who murdered Inigo’s father so many years ago, and scarred Inigo himself.  It is he that Inigo is out to get throughout the entire film (and his entire life), a much stronger tie to an individual character in a personal way than Westley’s nemesis: Humperdinck.  Rugen is much more of an arch-nemesis, representing a very personal loss to Inigo, something that cuts much deeper, even, than true love.  While Westley never seems particularly worried about himself or Buttercup because he just knows that True Love will keep them together, Inigo reacts very strongly to Rugen and his own emotional journey, traits more typically associated with a protagonist than a cool confidence in how everything will turn out.

As a direct result to this personal stake in the story, Inigo, being at full strength and in full health, is the one who is given the final climactic battle at the end of the movie.

Where Westley has a rather anticlimactic confrontation with Humperdinck, Inigo gets a huge duel with Rugen, the climax centerpiece, the scene most memorable and most quoted in the entire film, ending in Inigo actually achieving his goal: getting revenge.  Afterwards, he even muses that after having gotten his revenge, now he no longer knows what to do with his life, with the film implying that he will become the next Dread Pirate Roberts in Westley’s place.  

Unlike Westley, and even unlike Buttercup, Inigo has an arc, pursuing what he wants actively, achieving it, and moving on.  He makes choices that have huge consequences in the plot: pursuing revenge, leaving Vizzini, finding Westley and bringing him to Miracle Max.  In a way, a huge part of the story is Inigo’s, just as much as it is Buttercup and Westley’s.  

Westley has the Heroic qualities, Buttercup has most of the focus (and her title in the movie’s name), and Inigo has the dramatic arc and climactic battle.  On their own, no one character manages to pull off the full requirements for being a fantasy protagonist, or even a protagonist at all, but together, they manage to make one complete protagonist between them.  While the story of The Princess Bride, in plot beats and story elements, seems very much like your very traditional fairy-tale story, in terms of protagonist, the execution is actually very complex.  By taking the traits of a protagonist and dividing them equally between three characters with varying levels of screen-time and activism within a story (not always at the same time), the story manages to get the audience’s interest invested in not one, but three characters equally, weaving the major threads for each of their stories in amongst each other to keep it all tied together.  And in the end, both the characters and the audience (even the Grandson!) feel closure and satisfaction.

But Inigo, Westley and Buttercup aren’t the only characters in the film.  Every story needs their supporting cast, and none are quite as supportive as Fezzik.

Fezzik is a Gentle Giant.  He’s big and strong, for sure, but he’s also very kind, the Big Guy with a heart of gold who, while not exactly being a pushover, isn’t out to hurt anybody who doesn’t deserve it.  He’s the Brute of Vizzini’s Beauty, Brains, and Brawn trio, and manages to subvert the Dumb Muscle stereotype.  He’s not terribly clever, but he does have a wit and intelligence to him that isn’t typical of most fairy-tale giants.

He and Inigo are borderline inseparable, and much like Inigo, Fezzik is somewhat okay with kidnapping Buttercup for money, but he’s considerably less approving of killing her.  Like Inigo, he is a man of honor, preferring to fight Westley in a ‘sportsmanlike’ way instead of clubbing him over the head with a rock like Vizzini first suggests.  He’s a good, loyal friend, rescuing Inigo from the palace guards, sobering him up, and then accompanying him throughout the rest of the story in finding and reviving Westley and then storming the castle.

Unlike Inigo, Westley and Buttercup, Fezzik has no stake in this story.  He has no goal to achieve here, no personal mission.  After Vizzini, his ‘boss’, is killed, there’s nothing keeping Fezzik in the story except his own will, like the Chewbacca to Inigo’s Han Solo.  He’s here because of his loyalty and concern for his friends.  He just wants to help, and help he does, turning his back on his mercenary ways pretty easily and without any real convincing.  He’s along for the ride, a supporting character that manages to be more than just ‘the comic relief’.  (In a way, one of the smartest things The Princess Bride did in terms of its characters was to make everyone funny, so no one is relegated to ‘just’ the comic relief.)

With that said, Fezzik still remains an active character in the story, helping with the storming of the castle and providing the Muscle (and the heart!) for the mission, and providing the escape by finding Humperdinck’s four white horses in his stable.

Starting out as a Minion with an F in Evil, Fezzik ends The Princess Bride as one of its most memorable and loved heroes, a kindly figure of support who’s anything but minor.

Which is more than we can say for the deceased leader of the trio of kidnappers: Vizzini.

Vizzini is the smartest of the trio sent to abduct Buttercup, but despite his bragging, he demonstrates hints that he’s not half as smart as he thinks he is.  The brains to Inigo’s beauty and Fezzik’s brawn, Vizzini is merely a Big Bad Wannabe, the final obstacle for Westley’s initial reunion with Buttercup, a Disk One Final Boss before the plot kicks off with portraying Humperdinck as the real villain.  However, while the film points out that Fezzik and Inigo fight Westley with honor, and he leaves them respectful of their talents (defeating them in the process), Westley shows no such respect for Vizzini’s ‘talents’, and simply Out-Gambits him, despite Vizzini’s Poisoned Chalice Switcheroo.  In the end, Vizzini is Too Clever by Half, and is the only one of the Sicilian Crowd to be killed, most likely due to his arrogance.

Despite his death being one of the most memorable scenes in the entire film, Vizzini doesn’t receive much screen time, or even narrative weight, in comparison to the true villains of the movie.  After all, Vizzini is only a hired stooge, a pawn in Humperdinck’s evil plan.

Humperdinck, as far as fairy-tale villains go, isn’t terribly impressive.  He’s no great dragon or emperor, or evil wizard.  He’s just a prince, a man with a lot of power who’s used to getting his own way.  He does plenty of rotten things along the way (torture Westley and kill him, order Buttercup’s kidnapping, attempt to kill her) but in the end, his goal isn’t world-domination, or wealth, or anything like that: he’s just after an excuse to go to war with the neighboring country.  He’s not after Buttercup for her beauty, like many other fairy-tale villains before him, he’s just after her to use as a political figure, aiming to kill her after their wedding night and pin it on Guilder.

Arguably, this makes him worse.

There’s no great, over-the-top explanation for his villany.  He’s not cartoonish or after traditional fairy-tale things, he’s actually after something that we’d see in the real world.  He is the true Big Bad, the Chessmaster, The Evil Prince obsessed with war, who, ironically, happens to be a Dirty Coward.

Oddly enough, throughout the film, although Humperdinck is presented as the Archenemy of Westley, there’s no real personal connection between them.  This isn’t like Beauty and the Beast, where both men are vying (in their own way) for Buttercup’s affection.  Humperdinck honestly couldn’t care less about Buttercup, viewing her as a tool to get what he really wants.  In the end, he rushes through a marriage ceremony in order to murder Buttercup after the wedding, again, nothing personal, just business.  His only connection to Westley is happening to choose the wrong girl to murder.

As such, as opposed to Count Rugen’s thematically resonant demise, Humperdinck is actually allowed to live, and go free at the end of the story, which seems to be a big-time rule-breaker in terms of fairy-tale storytelling.  The Grandson himself expresses irritation and disbelief at this fact, after all, villains should be punished, not sternly talked-down by a paralyzed hero.

Yet, that’s what happens.  Considering that the most Humperdinck managed to do was temporarily kill Westley, he gets very little ‘revenge’ in return.  Like I said in the Story article:

Westley couldn’t care less about Humperdinck other than the fact that he’s getting in the way of his and Buttercup’s storybook love.  Humperdinck is an obstacle to his true goal and drive, and he’s not worth the killing.  Once he’s out of the way and Westley and Buttercup are reunited, Humperdinck ceases to matter to Westley.  If the story had been from Miracle Max’s point of view, Humperdinck would have died or at least, have something more horrible happen to him, but since Humperdinck never really succeeded in doing much of anything throughout the story, he’s actually so pathetic that he’s not worth Westley’s time.

So, yeah, Humperdinck is left to live with his cowardice because his death wouldn’t have provided the characters anything except maybe catharsis, and honestly, that’s not really a good enough reason to off your villain

He’s such a coward, he doesn’t even have a chance to take part in a climatic duel.  He’s so unimpressive as a fantasy villain that he even strips the audience of their chance to see another sword fight, without diminishing his hatefulness and narrative weight as a villain.

Thankfully, the audience does get their climactic battle: thanks to Count Rugen.

Rugen is Inigo’s archenemy, rather than Westley’s, and unlike the rivalry between the main protagonist and antagonist, Rugen’s relationship with Inigo is very personal indeed.  Rugen, the six-fingered man that Inigo wants to hunt down and kill so badly, is the man who killed Inigo’s father, and left him scarred as a little boy.  Rugen is the Dragon, a Soft-Spoken Sadist who serves as Humperdinck’s Right Hand Man and Torture Technician.  He is the inventor of the torture machine that ends up taking Westley’s life, and throughout the film, serves as co-conspirator to Humperdinck.

He’s pretty rotten, and just like Humperdinck, proves himself to be a Dirty Coward too.

However, while Westley let Humperdinck live with that knowledge, Inigo offers Rugen no such mercy.

The final duel between Inigo and Rugen is one of the show-stopping setpieces of the film, paying off a considerable amount of buildup foreshadowed with much of Inigo’s dialogue and character.  Like I said in the ‘Story’ article:

On the other hand, Inigo’s villain, Count Rugen, is killed, for a very simple reason: that’s the logical end to fulfill Inigo’s story.

In order for Inigo to feel fulfilled and gain satisfaction, to lay his father’s spirit to rest, Rugen has to die, knowing why he’s dying, and who it is who killed him.  In a sense, the antagonists fit the ‘antagonist’ bill much the same way the protagonists do: by splitting the roles, from Humperdinck having the main plot being responsible for most of the obstacles, where Rugen fills in for the emotional punch instead.

There are other characters too, of course: Miracle Max and his wife Valerie, offering a comedic look at a few other residents of Florin, The Albino, Rugen’s assistant, The Impressive Clergyman, and even Yellin, the captain of the guard, but for the most part, these characters (aside from Miracle Max and Valerie being responsible for resurrecting Westley) serve as comedic filler, without much actual narrative weight.

As fairy-tale archetypes with surprising amounts of dimension, the characters of The Princess Bride all do their jobs with ease, falling into natural roles in an organic fashion, despite the unconventional structuring of the characters’ parts to play.

The beauty of all of these characters is that none of them are in the slightest bit realistic.  These are very clearly ‘fairy-tale’ characters, who don’t think about things in the way that we do, and yet, the audience still relates to them, is entertained by them, is concerned for them.  Even though characters don’t act in terribly realistic ways, they are motivated by things that we understand: love, revenge, etc.  The audience feels and understands their emotions, and therefore understands where characters are coming from, even if the actions taken by the characters are primarily ‘fantasy based’, superhuman, incredibly skilled and heroic or villainous in the context of the story that the Grandfather is reading to the Grandson.  

The Princess Bride’s characters are not portrayed as ‘people’, instead being played as simple characters typical of traditional ‘fairy-tale’ stories.  Each character, whether hero or villain, behaves almost as though they know what part they inhabit, playing the ‘fairy-tale’ aspect straight, with a comedic edge to the archetypes found in a book, a familiar-feeling, simple, but emotional story that people have loved and laughed with for decades.

The characters of The Princess Bride serve their purpose incredibly well: making the audience care about what happens to them.  Every role is memorable, unique, distinct, with plenty of quotes and character tics to be referenced and replicated decades later.  They perfectly match the film they belong to: a fantasy classic that has finally been Vindicated by History, gaining it’s rightful place among fantasy greats.  

Thank you guys so much for reading!  If you have something you’d like to add or say, don’t forget that the ask box is always open!  I hope to see you all in the next article.

[otnesse]

No kidding regarding that, especially the current Disney writers (at least the older Disney writers from the Golden Age to the early parts of the Renaissance made an actual effort to have their antagonists actually BE competent, at least competent enough for there to be actual stakes to the plot. I'd probably state that the start of bad quality writing may have been with Linda Woolverton, especially when Gaston simply was a badly written villain, being the most cartoonish DESPITE being a normal human being.). Making Vader into effectively a madder Kylo Ren (or even an Infinite the Jackal from Sonic Forces) was a mistake. There have been maybe a few times where Vader is closer to his Legends counterpart regarding self-loathing and being competent, but its few and far between right now.

On a side note, its those interactions Vader has with his soldiers in ANH and also his interactions with Boba Fett in the GIFs above that's part of the reason I'm not even CLOSE to being scared of the Empire, or Vader for that matter despite the Death Star weapons, especially knowing how actual totalitarian dictatorships tended to work. Yes, Vader has killed men who failed him from time to time, but its usually for failing key mission objectives in a really major way (and even there, his exact words of "You have failed me for the last time" when we first see him do so implies he doesn't kill for the first failure at least), and at least he actually LISTENS to his men and acknowledges their suggestions (heck, in the case of Jaine Dir, at least in Legends, he promoted the guy to be on relatively equal standing with him precisely BECAUSE of his being willing to make blunt assessments that Vader wouldn't wish to hear). Usually in totalitarian regimes, the leaders, usually due to having the tendency to think they being leader are absolutely in the right hate even the very idea of someone even slightly implying they're in the wrong and tend to bully anyone into going along with their will or even straight up murder them. If Vader were in any way like, say, Lenin or Stalin, Jaine Dir the very second he tried to give that assessment would have been stabbed by him with his lightsaber, or otherwise been humiliated by Vader in front of the other soldiers. Even Palpatine showed hints of him at least listening to his followers suggestions and taking them into account (aside from his acknowledging Vader's suggestion of converting Luke instead of killing him [Palpatine's original suggestion], an underappreciated bit is that Palpatine had to be convinced by Tarkin to do that whole Rule of Fear thing. Tarkin was the one who directly suggested that bit regarding the Tarkin Doctrine. It's even part of the reason Palpatine made him a Grand Moff. Contrast that with Lenin, who was the one who literally came up with the Red Terror entirely on his own, and if anything was known to browbeat at best anyone who tried to suggest a different strategy or anything that didn't 100% align with him, regardless of whether it would help his cause or not.). I have more reason to be scared of the Red Ribbon Army from Dragon Ball than I do the Empire, especially when they were almost Soviet-esque regarding killing anyone for extremely trivial reasons. Not to mention Geldoblame from Baten Kaitos, who's behavior with Azha was eerily similar to Lenin's famine.

In a sense, Lucas may have screwed up there regarding depicting what was supposed to be a totalitarian regime.

I really love Vader´s short scenes with Veers and Piett, they were bassically his right hands there, he listens to him even when it´s advice he doesn´t agree to and they are in fact working together as group. As long as they were competent and did their job Vader worked with them and listened to their advice.

I like the prequels but in a way I believe some creators post PT have forgotten this about Vader, especially in the comics, they are trying to write Vader as a kind of extension of Anakin circa 23 years in the middle of his breakdown in ROTS instead of writing him as the 40 year old man Darth Vader is, the guy who wanted to bring order to the galaxy, who actually believed the Empire was the best way to achieve that, who believed the Senate still had a part to play in this whole thing and who believed the Death Star was a tecnological terror, who actually had forgotten about Obi-Wan and Yoda and whose only disloyalty towards the Empire and the Emperor was over Palpatine´s intention of killing Luke.

As Lucas said Vader at 40 is a man with a job with a twisted perception of reality and deep in the darkside but whose main motivation, peace in the galaxy, was something that still appealed to him. He didn´t go on a killing spree every tuesday for shit and giggles.

This also can be seen in his interactions with Lando and Boba Fett.

I personally love the part from ROTJ novelization in which Vader thinks to himself why is Luke saying he has to let go of his hate if he doesn´t hate anyone(except for himself, deep denial there but this is Vader´s honest pov)

[pulaasul]

Digimon Adventure Tri – Daisuke and the others? Who are they?

A Digimon Adventure Tri review.

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This review may be a bit late, but I didn’t watch the fifth movie because I was spoiled by a certain plotpoint and tropes and I really detest tropes of that plotpoint. Considering that I opted not to watch the fifth movie, I didn’t watch the sixth movie as well, I may get confused at the chronology of the events.

I had watched Last Evolution Kizuna, the review of which is linked here, thankfully the producers of Kizuna opted to have an original story as opposed to continuing from the plot threads that Tri left hanging over the course of six movies.

With the reason for this review’s lateness out of the way, let’s continue on with the Tri’s review.

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Despite the lateness, I am reviewing  [デジモンアドベンチャーtri - Dejimon Adobenchā] Digimon Adventure Tri

As with some of the movies I had reviewed on my blog, I have an alternative title for Digimon Adventure Tri as a whole.

 デジモンアドベンチャーtri 大輔たちわだれだ？or Dejimon Adobenchā Daisuke-tachi wa dare da?

Digimon Adventure Tri – Daisuke and the others? Who are they?

TL:DR

Tri was an enjoyable watch. If you want more characterization of the OG chosen 8 and their respective Digimon, it’s a definite watch.

If you’re a big fan of the 02 kids, they do acknowledge them, but better not to expect anything on that front to avoid disappointment.

For me, Digimon Adventure Tri as a whole is a 6.8/10 for me.

I love the many things they did here, but both my bias for the 02 kids and the many things happening just left a bad taste in my mouth.

If that doesn’t hint my love for the 02 kids, this is your confirmation XD.

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I’ll start with the movie series’ art style. I still maintain my stance that I do not like the art style they chose for Tri. I will, however, expand on my reasons from the other review.

Tri’s art style is better suited for still images rather than animated. The best suited comparison I can make, and I’m sure a lot of people will protest, but it’s like the Pokemon’s Sun and Moon anime art style.

From what I heard, the new Pokemon art style focuses more on animation detail and flow. Tri’s animation and art style, while a major improvement from the fights seen in Adventure and 02, still come short seeing the ‘derpy faces’ and awkward poses found in the movie.

(Yamato has bulging pecs and it looked like both Taichi and Yamato skipped leg day)

The new art style does make the ENTIRE CAST absurdly attractive from Taichi to Himekawa even down to the background characters who have something unique in their designs despite just being one off characters.

The new art style does lessens the “cartoonish” vibes we got from the first two Adventure seasons of Digimon, so no extra-large heads, hands and/or feet. You could definitely feel that this was an updated version of the previous art style, although taken to extremes.

Although… Jiggle physics are seen on the Digimon.

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PLOTWISE...

Having watched the entire movie series, I can definitely understand why the 02 kids were given that treatment. However, there were plenty of instances to incorporate them into the plot organically than what we were shown.  

The overall plot was heart wrenching, it delves into the themes of sacrifice and unchecked grief.

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT! BE WARNED!!!

We’ll backtrack a bit, I stated above about how the 02 cast could’ve been incorporated into the plot organically than what we were shown.

There were many instances where they could’ve been mentioned by anyone of the cast: the appearance of the Digimon Emperor, Hikari and Takeru checking up on Ken after the Emperor’s appearance, even the instances where they welcome Meiko into the group by encouraging her in times of distress; among other things.

A simple muttering of “where are they?” or “how are they doing?” from anyone, especially from Hikari and Takeru who were a part of the 02 team, would’ve made their exclusion from the main events a bit bearable and understandable.

Them not acknowledging their absence is a very out of character: for Takeru and Hikari, as they were teammates; from Taichi and Yamato as they mentored Daisuke, the former passing the goggle-torch unto him; Mimi and Sora for Miyako; Joe and Koushiro who has commented how reliable Iori was and how his thirst for knowledge was an admirable trait.

all my cons bullet points are my salt towards the 02 kids’ absence lol

In other matters, another thing worthy of criticism, this is for the franchise as a whole, is the fact that there’s a Leomon death inserted in every iteration of Digimon. (01&02 have the original Leomon, Tamers had Juri’s Leomon, Frontier both had Ice Leomon and KaiserLeomon in Kouichi Kimura, Savers had BanchoLeomon.)

Leomon’s death this time around fails to have an impact considering it has become a meme nowadays. Anyone vaguely aware of the franchise would even joke about the Leomon’s screentime before he dies, which was the case in the Tri movies.

There are two events in the Tri movies that didn’t really needed to be there, which really hampered my score for the movie series. First one is how the Mysterious Person, using Young Gennai’s form, to lick Sora’s face.

Another event that didn’t need to happen was how the same Mysterious Person choked Meiko to the point of her losing consciousness, those events IN THE SAME MOVIE really put me in an uncomfortable state, as did a lot of people.

This may be my bias speaking, but I really don’t like how Daigo died in the movie series. I am sure his death potentially served to raise the stakes of the plot, but not really.

The stakes of the plot was already at an all-time high with showing the “deaths” of the 02 kids in the first few minutes of the first movie. It’d raise the stakes even higher HAD THE OG 8 CHOSEN CHILDREN ACKNOWLEDGED THE ABSENCE OF THE 02 KIDS.

Daigo’s death was unnecessary for the stakes were already planted, but they failed to sow those particular seeds hence his death was needed. That and I really love Daigo Nishijima.

Tri could’ve been a rescue movie on top of stopping the apocalypse movie, Meicoomon shenanigans included.

I will admit that learning of Taichi’s supposed death in the tri movies, turned me off from watching the movie series to its completion, back when this was first released. Learning that Daigo, my favorite character, dies in the next one really turned me off from the franchise. Watching it now, I still maintain my stance that he didn’t need to die.

Devimon’s appearance really felt tacked on, he would’ve been a great plot point for Takeru to overcome in the movie, instead we got a few seconds of appearance then nothing. Not even delving into Takeru’s psyche about Devimon’s appearance.

The entire last movie was needlessly dark and that’s says a lot.

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Considering this is a review, no review is complete until you state all the positive things you can say about the movie.

As with the debut season of the franchise, Character interactions are at the forefront of the movie series. In here we learned things about them, including Hikari’s teasing remarks towards Takeru or how Yamato is actually scared of ghost stories.

We also learned that the Teenaged Wolves broke up, due to musical differences as Yamato claimed and formed two new bands. “Knife of Day” and “World of the Knife”. The fact that the characters saying the band names have a Might Guy teeth shine effect on them was incredibly hilarious.

Koushiro being a blushing mess when it comes to Mimi was also great.

The viewers can really see the entire group’s dynamic with each other.

The digimon themselves aren’t just one-note characters. They may act as a foil to their human partners, it doesn’t change the fact that they weren’t one-note compared to what we’ve seen in both Adventure and 02.

Interactions aside, each human character having breakdowns and developing in the movie series was another thing I liked about Tri, tying them to digivolving to ultimate/mega level was a pretty neat idea.

It means that Taichi and Yamato aren’t the sole stars of the Adventure saga now.

Speaking of characters, the new characters in this movie-series [Daigo Nishijima, Maki Himekawa, Meiko Mochizuki] were introduced organically and were pretty great in their roles. The twist that the former two were Chosen Children before Taichi and the others was neat as well.

The three of them performed their roles pretty well: Daigo being a shady mentor, who’s loyalty is divided between his student and his work; Meiko being the new kid on the block really helped establish how out of place she really is, it does help that Mimi was incredibly welcoming towards her; Maki’s unchecked grief led her to taking drastic steps just to be reunited with her partner digimon, kickstarting the whole plot of Tri.

[I have a theory that Daisuke and the others were reporting to Maki, once she learned that they were aware of Yggdrasil’s plans, she led them to a trap that was when they were one-shotted by Alphamon.]

We go back to Leomon. It was nice to see a familiar face. Even his scenes were hilarious and awesome. Him being able to stave off the infection from various points in the movie he was in was also great. It makes sense in character as he does have incredible will power, going back to the Adventure days when he was possessed by Devimon’s black gears.

I also appreciate that the boys and girls had equal opportunities at being the eye candy. The boys were the eye candies during their time in the hot springs, while Mimi and Meiko had their chance as eye candies during the school festival.

Last and certainly not the least, were the new arrangements of the Original Sound Track of the Digimon Adventure themes from Butter-fly to Brave Heart’s orchestral version. They’re simply that good to listen in a loop.

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As for suggestions, I have a few. This is constructive criticism after all.

Acknowledge the absence of the 02 cast.

Explain why they were absent in the first place, or at least what the characters think why they were absent.

From vacation abroad

On Yacht

Even visiting people out of Tokyo would also work

Both Leomon and Daigo didn’t need to die. Mortally wounded characters are fine, makes us think they’re dead for a few minutes to delve into character development, as was the case for Taichi and Hikari.

Make the 02 kids’ lives as stakes in the plot.

Cut back on the flashback images.

Exposition is also good, even Taichi voicing out his hesitance would’ve made for a great character moment, instead of just glaring at the enemy.

D.R Gennai shouldn’t have licked Sora. That event really didn’t need to happen.

D.R Gennai should’ve just let Meiko bleed to the point of unconsciousness instead of choking her as he taunts Meicoomon to fear and give in to her infections.

Devimon should’ve been an earlier opponent that was later reused in the ending movie to show how much Takeru has grown add in digivolving to Seraphimon.

A video file of Daisuke’s and the others’ defeat at the hands of Alphamon should’ve been viewed after the reboot happened, that would’ve raised the stakes higher.

Daisuke and the others should’ve joined the last fight in the last movie. Escaping from the hospital through their Digimon before collapsing at the very end.

I have no problem with Daigo’s partner becoming Baihumon. I think it’d been better had it been Azulongmon, considering he was the goggle head during his time and thus the leader of his group.

We know that Azulongmon is the leader of the Four Digimon Soverigns.

I think it’d come full circle had Daigo been partnered with Azulongmon.

I think the movie would then end with everyone visiting Daisuke and the others, Meiko included, introducing her to them.

Overall, I give the movie series a 6.8 out of 10 rating. It was a good watch, but the plot fell once they delved into darker themes and darker events for the sake of being dark and without substance. There were a couple of events that didn’t need to happen but happened for the sake of being dark.

Daigo’s death was certainly one of those events. The stakes could’ve been raised higher had the 02 kids were integrated into the plot and not just relegated into glorified silhouette cameos.

These suggestions would still run the course of the plot we got in Tri, but it would’ve flowed the plot organically and didn’t go dark for the sake of being dark.

I wanted to be generous with my rating, but it just won’t do. Even my bullet points review had more Cons than Pros. Factor in my bias for the 02 kids, and you get a 6.8 rating.

[whispersafterdusk]

Lost in Time - ch 3

That night he'd left Sam and Remington to guard the sinkhole and had helped Xu get Dawa and the unconscious woman back to the clinic.  Dawa was cleaned up, shown how to wrap his badly sprained ankle, given some painkillers, and was released; the woman was still unconscious when Arlo stopped by the following morning -- Xu assured him that the woman seemed healthy enough but that he'd have to monitor her closely since there was no telling how she'd been kept alive for so long inside that tube or what that preservation might have done to her.

Arlo had a nagging curiosity about the woman - and who wouldn't?  The realization had hit him as he was dressing that morning that they'd just pulled a woman out of an Old World facility, who might actually BE from the Old World herself.  That was huge.  It wasn't even something he'd have believed if he hadn't personally witnessed it himself.  Who she was, what year she'd come from, how she'd ended up down there...all of those were questions he knew he needed answers for but first he'd have to wait for her to wake up and recover and then hope it wouldn't be too overwhelming for her to find herself in a completely different time period. ((Continued below cut))

It was just one more thing on his mind as he walked out to the sinkhole with Selene and Higgins both in tow; he'd had to firmly put his foot down once already and none-too-politely tell Higgins he wasn't allowed down into the facility without a Civil Corps escort unless he wanted to be locked up until his shop fell off the leader boards entirely. Higgins had a tendency to "be the best" at the expense of everything and everyone else, and Arlo could absolutely see the man attempting to sneak down into the ruins to claim all the "best" stuff for himself and selfishly hoard things out of the reach of the Research Center and the other builders in Portia.  He'd not mentioned the woman to Higgins yet but it had occurred to him, on the walk out there, that their mystery woman might actually have personal property down in that facility, and that if anyone had a claim to anything out of there it'd be her.

The minor hitch with that thought was since Arlo hadn't mentioned the woman yet and probably shouldn't mention her until Gale made an announcement...until Arlo could definitively say "this absolutely does not belong to you" he knew Higgins would probably think it'd be worth it to try and risk sneaking in.  

With that in mind his misgivings about bringing Higgins along doubled but...unfortunately Selene couldn't handle a job of this magnitude on her own in a quick enough manner for Gale's liking, and while Arlo even had doubts that Higgins would wait long enough for them to get the skeletons out before he tried taking anything the more pressing matter was making sure that sinkhole didn't get any bigger or further damage the facility and risk something leaking out into their water supply (again).  To do that quickly they'd need the man's help...there just wasn't any way around it.

Up ahead the bright red tent Remington had set up stood out against the snow and served as a beacon for them between the trees.  They all carried rope and tools, and Selene had measuring equipment and an old metal detector she'd cobbled together with the Research Center's help; once they'd taken some measurements and more closely examined the shaft they'd have Dana give her recommendations on how best to reinforce everything (on the basis that the elevator shaft wasn't too different from a mining shaft and if anyone would know how to shore up crumbling dirt walls walls it'd be her).

In front of the tent was a sizeable bonfire burning away, and as they approached Remington came out of the tent.

"How was your night?"

"Not too bad, actually.  Set that little alarm clock to go off every couple of hours and Sam and I swapped off to keep the fire going," Remington grinned.  "Planted the tent off to the side and all the heat came right in while the smoke blew by."

Arlo nodded; he'd felt bad that they'd had to stay out in the elements all night but then again, thinking back to his doubts about Higgins... "Good to know.  I'll be taking tonight's post.  Did you see anyone?"

"Not a soul."

"Good."  He turned to Selene and Higgins then.  "Selene's already been down there, and I've already briefed you on what to expect," he said, directing  that to Higgins.  "We're not constructing anything today - all Gale wants us to focus on today is assessing and then taking those assessments to Dana to create a plan.  Any questions?"

Both builders shook their heads, and Arlo led them over to the tied off rope that was now connected to a motorized winch and pulley system staked in the ground with big iron rail spikes; Remington must have been busy overnight as there were now four sets of makeshift rope harnesses hanging from the lowest branches of the tree the rope system was connected to.

"The motor can handle two at a time," Selene said as she inspected one of the harnesses.  "-you know, if you don't mind being face to face, back to back, or face to whatever with someone in close quarters."

"One at a time sounds fine," came Sam's voice from behind them, her tone as dry as the desert; she headed over to slip on a harness as the others chuckled and readied themselves to head down.

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He needed to make a quick trip back into town before camping out for the night and on his way in Arlo stopped at the clinic again.

"How is she?"

Xu looked up from a pile of papers on his desk.  "Well, the vitals I'm getting are getting stronger.  She's surprisingly not too dehydrated and while there's some signs of muscle atrophy it's not debilitatingly so.  There's some skin break down and irritation where all those wires and things were glued on, and..." he paused, tapping the end of his pen on the table.  "Well.  I shouldn't speculate.  She does have some very strange scarring patterns but I'll wait until she wakes to discuss their origin with her."

Arlo glanced over to the bed in the corner that held the woman; her hair was dry and someone had loosely pulled it into a ponytail just over her left shoulder - Phyllis was there silently taking the woman's pulse and recording it on a clipboard in hand.  

The woman looked as pale as the white hospital gown she now wore and could have easily been mistaken for a wax statue if he didn't already know she was a living, breathing person.  "Keep us posted, and keep this quiet as well - and that's by Gale's orders."

"Oh I know, he's already been by.  In fact, he told me to bar entry to anyone that wasn't you and the Corps, Phyllis, or himself -- with an exception for those sick and injured, of course, but then I think the screen is enough to keep her from view." Xu chuckled and swept up the papers, beginning to tap them on the table to even them out into a neat stack - Arlo noticed the topmost page had two cartoonish outline drawings of a female body, front and back, and Xu had made markings across the halves.  "Even if he hadn't I don't think I'd be telling anyone anyway.  They'd probably think I'd lost my mind."

Arlo nodded.  "If I hadn't been there myself I wouldn't believe it either."  With that he left the clinic and headed further into town; once he had stocked up on food, bought another long-sleeved undershirt, new liners for his boots, and had stopped by his room to grab a whetstone he trekked back out for his turn at keeping watch over the sinkhole.

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With such an unusual situation and a patient that was both a delicate case and also not an alarming concern Xu had brought over pillows and blankets from his home and packed a dinner and breakfast for himself.   The floor of his clinic wasn't all that comfortable but at the very least if all he did was lightly doze then he'd hear every little noise in the room and could respond immediately if the woman took a sudden turn for the worse.

Or, as it happened, if she happened to wake up.

The change in her breathing pattern was very slight - barely more than a pause and a quiet gasp - but in the silent room it stood out to his practiced ears, and in an instant he was flinging blankets aside to get on his feet and over to her bed.

Her eyes were open but unfocused and she didn't seem to notice him appearing beside her even when he flipped on the lamp at the head of her bed; when he waved a hand within her line of sight she flinched and sank further into her pillows.

"Hello there - can you hear me?  My name is Dr. Xu."

Her eyelids fluttered -- he knew then that this sudden bout of consciousness wasn't going to last long.  Carefully he reached out to take her pulse, and her head on the pillow slowly turned in his direction.

"Can you hear me?  Can you tell me your name?"

A few garbled noises came out of her then right as she slipped back into unconsciousness Xu swore he heard at least one word that sounded like 'Elizabeth.'  

He remained standing there for some time, taking her pulse at regular intervals and monitoring as it returned to normal levels.  When she was back to her baseline vital readings he turned the lamp off and headed back to his desk, taking up his pen and writing Elizabeth across the top of the woman's file.

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The temperature was slowly warming as the days passed -- it was still definitely cold (it WAS winter after all) but the frigid front that had brought that monster storm with it had long since moved on and Portia was gradually returning to a more normal winter temperature range.

This was, of course, a double edged sword, especially out near the sinkhole; the mud was only getting deeper the more everything thawed out and it was starting to make it a bit dangerous to get anywhere near the lip of the hole.  Selene was already drawing up plans to build an anchored platform around the sinkhole, leaving Higgins the bulk of the work when it came to making the support beams and cross braces for the shaft.  The two of them (after Arlo had 'gently' persuaded Higgins to act like a team member) had managed to outsource some of the minor parts to the smaller shops in town and yet even with five builder's shops working together it was still going to be a week or two before the shaft was shored up and the platform built.

Arlo felt thankful (and a bit guilty that he felt thankful) that tonight wasn't his turn to take the overnight watch as he waded back into town, coated in mud to his knees and wanting little more than a meal and a bath but, as he did each time he came back in after a watch, he went to the clinic first.

Phyllis greeted him as he came through the door, then somewhat awkwardly asked him to wipe his feet -- not that that would do much but it did get the point across that it would be appreciated if he wouldn't track mud in beyond the door.  From the doorway he couldn't see the bed behind the screen but he could see the back half of Dr. Xu, and could hear a quiet conversation going on back there in the corner.

'Does that mean she's awake?'

Phyllis walked over to Xu and placed a hand on his shoulder; Xu leaned his head back enough to peer around the edge of the screen to look over at Arlo at the door.  After a moment (it seemed like he'd shuffled something from hand to hand) Xu flashed Arlo a confirming gesture -- everything was all right.

He also assumed that meant that yes, the woman was awake.  That also probably meant that now wasn't the time to intrude.

Arlo gave Xu a quick nod in return and left the clinic, plodding from its doorway over to the Corps building.  Sam was inside "sparring" with the training dummy and stopped when he entered, looking him up and down.

"Wow."

"Yeah.  The mud is getting worse.  Selene's going to put a platform up for us to work off of before we all sink up to our eyelids in it."

He'd been hoping the Corps building would be empty (he wanted to strip his boots and pants off right there, but wouldn't do that in front of Sam) so he settled for kicking off his boots and very carefully tiptoeing across the room to his bedroom, doing his best not to shed too much mud as he went.  Once inside his quarters he stood on an old throw rug and stripped down, leaving the muddy clothing in a heap on the rug.  His legs were cold, clammy, and red.

"-Sam, could you get me a bucket of water?"

He heard a muffled acknowledgement; while he waited he rubbed a towel up and down his legs, working warmth and feeling back into them.  Soon there was a single knock at his door and when he cracked it open there was the requested bucket of water and he could just see Sam's back disappearing out the front door - Remington was out there now for the rest of the afternoon and soon Sam would be relieving him for the overnight post.

He brought the bucket inside and sat it next to the table he used as a desk; after retrieving the old bristled brush he kept in his wardrobe he began to attack his boots and get the worst of the mud off his pants.  The water was looking pretty grim by the time he was done and finally Arlo tossed the soaked pants over the banister of the stairs at his door and left the boots tucked under the stairs before moving to get dressed in clean clothes.  His stomach was making it very clear it was time for a meal and after hours of being out in the cold he was thinking a plate of spaghetti drenched in hot sauce was in order.

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She'd asked him to call her Eli and Dr. Xu was happy to oblige - honestly he was just happy she'd awakened and actually stayed awake for more than a few passing moments while seeming alert and roughly aware of where she was.

Talking was difficult for her so he was careful to phrase everything in 'yes' or 'no' questions so she could nod or shake her head and despite the initial awkwardness of her struggle to form words and his struggle to boil his thought processes down into only two variables they were able to get a few tidbits of information across.

He'd learned she was Elizabeth Summers, and preferred to go by Eli.   She wasn't in any pain.  She hadn't been aware of the scarring across her body until Xu had brought it to her attention.

Perhaps more importantly she'd communicated she was a Dubei native...if he'd had any doubts about what time period she'd come from that certainly settled them.

Being as she couldn't quite carry on a conversation Xu decided against trying to broach the subject of where and when she was now; after his quick questioning session she'd drifted back to sleep and he went back to his desk to record all the details he'd gotten while Phyllis hovered at his elbow.

To be honest Xu had had doubts she would know anything about her scarring; in a way it was probably for the best as what it LOOKED like pointed to a rather horrific origin.  

Namely, it looked like parts of her had been sewn back together.

Both arms had long lines of scars, of various lengths, up and down from shoulder to wrist, with circular scars at the shoulder and across every finger joint -- they were reddish pink lines with tiny dots beside them reminiscent of suture marks.  These same sorts of scars were also along her chin and jawline on the right side, her lower ribcage area, and down her left leg.  It brought to mind something like a ragdoll's stitching, though more precise and tidy than one would find on a children's toy.

Considering her origin and what he was seeing on her body he had a theory that she'd suffered some sort of terrible trauma and that facility she'd been found in had been some sort of medical center, and it amazed him to think that the Old World had had such technology that they could seemingly stitch a person back together and have that person survive the ordeal (much less survive for 300 years afterward!)

He would need to have a talk with the Research Center, the Civil Corps, and the builders of Portia - if that truly was a medical center down there then the place shouldn't be torn apart willy nilly.  Maybe with this woman's help they could identify medical equipment that they could still use or replicate...just the thought of being able to reclaim even a fraction of the medical knowledge and tools of the Old World had Xu nearly vibrating in excitement.

One day at a time, however.  The first step would be getting Elizabeth healthy again, without causing her undue suffering when it came time to gently break it to her that she was 300 years outside of her time period and there was no returning to the world she'd once known.

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Together the five builders that called Portia home managed to get all the bits and pieces crafted and in place for the sinkhole.

They'd gotten the platform up around the perimeter of the sinkhole first and had created a dual-motor system that raised and lowered an improvised elevator car that was open on two sides (so they could access the doors on either side of the shaft without adding too many moving parts for the power stones to handle) and had rubber wheels mounted on the two walls to keep it steady inside the shaft since it was a slimmer car compared to the original one they'd found (and dismantled) at the bottom.  Cutting all those vines free had taken an entire day on its own but it had been worth it now that they could move up and down the shaft as needed via a system of levers at the top, bottom, and also one within the elevator car itself.

The walls were now secured with heavy wooden and steel beams and metal plating that would hopefully keep the dirt walls of the upper half from crumbling further; once that had been completed they'd moved on to attempting to rewire doors to allow access into the upper levels of the facility to check for more remains -- the second thing on Gale's list had been getting an approximate "head count" for how many graves they would need to dig.  Arlo had a sinking feeling they'd need a lot more space than Gale was expecting - probably more than they had room for in Portia's graveyard - and he suspected that they may have to dig a mass grave when it came down to it.  Petra and Merlin were eager to examine and study the facility and had expressed hope that the computers were intact enough to maybe pull a staffing roster but even if they could how would they match names to skeletons?  A mass grave with a tombstone bearing whatever names they could find would probably be the best they could manage.

Tonight had been his night to keep watch; he was debating whether to build the fire back up or leave it for the others to decide as the sun was beginning to peek over the hills when he spied Remington heading out toward him -- seems the time to switch out was just about here, and if Remington was already on his way then Selene and the others wouldn't be too far behind.

He grabbed a light breakfast at Django's and headed back up the hill intending to go to his room and catch a couple hours of sleep but found himself pausing to look to the clinic -- Xu had mentioned the woman had awakened a few times but each time Arlo had checked in she was asleep still. Should he check in again?  It was more for his own curiosity than anything else as he had no ties to her (though, he didn't need to be her friend to worry about her health he supposed) but maybe there was a point where his constant checking would be intrusive...

Arlo's train of thought was interrupted as the clinic doors slid open and Xu walked out; the doctor saw him standing there halfway between the clinic and the Corps building and offered him a quick wave.

"Good morning, Arlo."

"Morning.  How's your patient?"

"Doing well.  Getting stronger, staying awake for longer periods.   I'm actually off to Carol's to see about clothing for her since I'll need to have her up and walking soon to start building those muscles up.  -- oh, and have you seen Selene leave yet?  I may need crutches or a cane to assist Elizabeth in the short term as she gets her legs back under her."

Elizabeth?  That must be the woman's name.  "I haven't, but if you hurry you might catch her before she gets too far out.  If you don't manage to catch her let me know and I'll tell her when I go back out to the sinkhole later today."

"I will, thanks.  Have a good morning."

"You too."

As Xu's steps turned toward the ramp that led down to the plaza Arlo finally headed in to the Corps building; it was quiet and he was yawning his head off as he plodded down the stairs into his room.  One of those tin alarm clocks that seemingly everyone in Portia had was sitting on table near his bed and he set an alarm for two hours from now -- he knew if he wasn't careful with how long he slept now he wouldn't sleep properly tonight.

As he kicked off his boots he wondered what this Elizabeth was like - hopefully language and dialects hadn't changed too much in 300 years, and he did sincerely hope it hadn't been too soul wrenching to wake to a completely different world.  The more he tried to think about how that might feel the less he could picture it, and rather than get himself worked up over it he fell into bed and tried to empty his mind -- he could theorize and think all he wanted when he was actually rested enough TO think.

--------------------------------------------------

It was nearly a month after finding Elizabeth before Arlo actually got to speak to her.

Work in the ruins was still ongoing -- each time they opened a new door or found a new floor they found more remains; they were up to 96 skeletons so far and assumed they were only going to find more the further in they went. Gale had marked out an area along the city wall across from Sophia's farm as the place for the mass grave they'd need, and was merely waiting to hear how many bodies were going into it before he commissioned the gravestone.  

The facility was one giant maze and Higgins and Selene were both working overtime to keep churning out electrical systems to handle things short-term while they continued to search for where the power source in the lower level had been; Selene was convinced that if they could find where it was, even if it was depleted, they could use that as a main focal point to work from instead of having dozens of smaller power devices scattered everywhere.

As usual on the mornings after finishing the overnight watch Arlo came in to town for breakfast at Django's and then was returning to his room to sleep when he found Dr. Xu, Phyllis, and Elizabeth outside the clinic; the woman had a cane in hand - it was made of metal tubing with a rubber-padded handle, and was painted a pastel orange color, and was flanked by Xu and Phyllis as she took a few hesitant steps beyond the door.  She was in a heavy coat that hung open and Arlo could see a soft yellow sweater and a colorful shawl beneath it and had on a pair of cargo pants and a pair of work boots with thick soles with her hair brushed back from her face and gathered at her neck with a wide black barette.

The woman's bright blue eyes were sizing him up as he came into view, and when Xu noticed him he waved him over.  "Arlo, would you care to meet to Eli?"

"You're Arlo?" Elizabeth asked as he came over.  "I'm told you're the one who hauled me out of the ruins.  I owe you one."

"Not at all - protecting Portia and her residents is my job, no one owes me for anything," he said, coming to a stop a few feet away.

She moved the cane to her left hand and offered her now-free right hand.  "Elizabeth Summers.  Call me Eli."

He shook the offered hand.  "Pleased to meet you, finally.  It's good to see you're on your feet."

"Technically, yes," she said, smiling faintly.  "It's going to be awhile before I'm back to normal.  I haven't been this thin since I was in high school."

He wasn't entirely sure what a high school was beyond some sort of educational institute but nodded all the same.  "Take it one day at a time.  There's no sense in rushing a recovery."

"No sense and no means to."  She shifted the cane back to her right hand.  "I know the first thing I need to do though is get a full accounting of what happened: how you found me, how you got me out, and what that facility looks like and where it is.  I also need to get in there ASAP."

"I can provide all that, no problem."  Arlo looked to Xu as he spoke and the doctor was silently shaking his head at him.  "-I think it may be awhile before we can take you in, though."

"I don't care if you have to strap me to your back and carry me in, I NEED to get in there.  The little bit the good doctor here told me has me concerned about the facility's power source -- if it's thermal we should be fine, but if it's nuclear I absolutely need to get in there and check on it."

"...nuclear?" Arlo repeated, brows furrowing.  "What's that?"

"Nothing good, if it's damaged."

"What happens if it's...nuclear?" Phyllis broke in.  She said 'nuclear' slowly, like she was testing out how the word sounded on her tongue.

Eli paused, biting her lower lip again.  "...right, so I want to preface this with the fact that I'm not meaning to cause a panic, but nuclear is...uh... I don't even know how to explain it clearly since it seems like so much technology has been lost - I don't think you'll have even the basic terminology knowledge needed to grasp it.  So, basically - nuclear is a power source that, if stable, lasts for hundreds of years.  The reactor - the central source of the nuclear power - can meltdown and explode to varying degrees of severity if its been damaged and the explosion can poison the land and any person the debris - called 'fallout' - comes in contact with.  Even a small explosion could render this entire region unlivable for generations."

Arlo's eyes widened at that - like they needed something ELSE to worry about.  "It's that dangerous?"

"Technically, yes.  Depends on IF the reactor was damaged and HOW it was damaged - we built these things to last but knew it wasn't impossible for them to suffer some sort of damage or failure. They all have hundreds of layers of safety measures in place to help prevent a meltdown but Dr. Xu mentioned the warning you got about auxiliary power which means the main reactor isn't powering what's left in that place -- if we're lucky it'll just be the condu- the uh, the wires, I mean - have lost connection somewhere and the reactor is fine.  That's best case scenario.  The worst case is the reactor was damaged, the aux power being out means the safety measures won't be active, and we might have a volatile situation on hand."  After that Eli huffed out a heavy sigh.   "I'm praying that Fate says it's just the wiring or that the place is deep enough it won't matter either way but I won't know until I get in there."  

Arlo looked wordlessly to Xu and Phyllis; Phyllis looked sick to her stomach and Xu seemed deep in thought.  He looked back to Eli.  "-how strong do you feel right now?"

"Tired, a little noodly in the knees, but considering the circumstances it could be worse.  This is something that can't wait."

Arlo nodded, and turned his attention to Xu again.  "I don't think we have a choice, Dr. Xu.  We can ride her out there on horseback then I can carry her down again, or Remington or Sam could.  Is Eli cleared to leave the clinic yet?"

"Truthfully I don't want her out of my care just yet.  But if things could get that dire then you're right that we have no choice."  Xu rubbed his chin.  "Let's see how you manage walking today - how long your legs can hold you.  We'll use that as a baseline and keep a close eye on you tomorrow to make sure you don't push yourself beyond your limits."

Eli gave Xu a small smile.  "I know where my limits used to be and where they are now, doctor.  And those lines change when lives are on the line."

Xu nodded, seemingly satisfied or at least not against the sentiment.  "All right then.  Tomorrow morning we'll make the trek regardless, I guess."  His gaze moved over to the small stables that was attached to the side of the Corps building.  "Am I correct to assume that the Civil Corps will provide the horse?"

"She can ride either Spacer or Arrow.  Teddy doesn't really tolerate anyone but Sam on his back."

"Seems we have a plan then."  Xu turned slightly and placed a gentle hand on Phyllis's and Eli's shoulders.  "Phyllis, go ahead with the planned exercises for today.  I need to check in with the mayor and update him on Eli's progress, and I'll also let him know about our little...um.  Problem."

"Of course, Dr. Xu," Phyllis said with a nod.  She stepped around him and gestured for Eli to follow her, and as the two slowly made their way toward the plaza Arlo heard a quiet "let me know if you need to stop" from her before they were both too far away to overhear.

Xu watched them a moment then scratched at his head.  "She's handling this far better than I was expecting.  It actually has me MORE worried than I was before."

"Howso?"

The doctor watched the two women for a few moments before responding.  "She's shown remarkable resilience in accepting that she's 300 years in the future as well as--" he stopped abruptly, then continued on.  "It hardly seemed to faze her, in fact.  I don't like that one bit...I feel as though she's suppressing her reaction, maybe supplanting it with her concern over the facility and reactor.  I'd much rather see some sort of remorse, or fear, or...or, really, any reaction other than calm acceptance."  After a pause he looked to Arlo.  "It sounds silly to want to see proof of some sort of emotional pain - no one should want to see someone else suffering - but in this case I worry about the underlying effect on her mental health if she really is refusing to consider or accept how she may actually be feeling about all this."

Arlo mulled that over for a moment; it was never a good thing to bottle things up for too long - such thoughts eventually ate away at you until you exploded like a shaken drink.  "I understand, I think.  And maybe she's just not ready to really let it sink in.  The reactor could just be a convenient thing to think about instead."

Xu sighed, nodding, then shook himself and fixed Arlo with a firm look.  "I trust I don't need to impress upon you the importance of not sharing this with anyone?"

"Of course not.  I've not said a word to anyone, nor will I."

"Good.  I realize I really shouldn't be sharing her details with anyone, as they are quite personal, but being as you directly brought her into my care I feel your perspective may help my own.  Especially since you personally saw where she was, what she came out of, and what it's like down in that facility.  Your recounting of all of that has given me some insight on how to handle her trauma when it comes to the surface, and I do appreciate it."

Arlo nodded.  "It's not a problem at all, and I'll admit hearing how she's doing means I worry less.  I can't imagine what it might've been like down in that tube...it'd be awful if she was aware the entire time she was down there."

"True...but then again, maybe that's why she isn't traumatized now.   She'd have had 300 years to consider her situation and come to terms with it."

"Maybe, but could you imagine the boredom once she had?"

With a quiet chuckle Xu took a few steps away.  "I should get going.  Tomorrow morning will come a lot sooner than it seems."

Arlo gave him a little wave as Xu turned to follow after Phyllis and Eli.

[mittensmorgul]

Plastic fantastic

I've put off doing this long enough, and spent the intervening days reading everyone else's interpretations, so there's gonna be a lot in here, but also a lot that I've probably not focused on too heavily because other folks have already said the things better than I could've. So this is just a recap of the things I personally feel are most significant and thematically cool going forward. It's... a lot... :'D

15.04 was infused with an element of surreality. Which I ended up referring to throughout this post as “plastic.” Hence the title. But this got super long, so here have a cut. :’D

Right from the THEN segment, we're reminded of Cas. Rowena's sacrifice, Cas's own suffering at Chuck's hands, and how this has affected Sam and Dean-- Sam miserable for having done what they had to do (right?) in sacrificing Rowena, and Dean PISSED but feeling like this was the only way to free them from what he sees as Chuck being a "fanboy" of them. It shifts directly into BECKY, who was described previously as a "fangirl" and involved in a supremely unhealthy relationship with both Chuck AND Sam (even if it was completely one-sided and creepy with Sam). And then shifts to Chuck being told-off by Amara in 15.02, in essentially a recap of all the best insults and condemnations she could fling at him... because he deserved it honestly, I mean HE LOCKED HER AWAY FROM THE DAWN OF CREATION TO SUFFER ALONE WHILE HE DID HIS THING TO MAKE HIMSELF FEEL BIG.

Okay, sorry, I just really hate that guy and his hypocrisy sometimes (read: all the time).

Right. Where were we. At the beginning.

Gunfight in the bunker, with the Danger Lights activated. I've been waiting for this scene since we got BTS photos of Jensen all battered and ragged with the beard. This... isn't real. It's not SPN universe real anyway. Since the SPPT promo came out, I have been eager to see this episode just for this scene. I guessed it was a vision Sam was having/receiving because of the Equalizer Wound, the beginning of his glimpses into "Chuck's writing process." Is this an AU that Chuck actively created? Is it just the sort of thing Chuck daydreams about? Or in the style of Supernatural episodes past, is this some sort of window into the ending Chuck wants/intends to write for them, which obviously would be something they absolutely could not let stand?

Like Dean’s nightmare he awoke from in 10.09 where he saw himself slaughtering a room full of people at the beginning of the episode, which became reality by the end of the episode? Is Chuck’s horrific ending that Becky hated what we actually saw play out in Sam’s nightmare? The show has invited us to consider that as at least a possibility. Or, to at least assume Chuck’s horrifying ending was at least that awful.

There's so much in this scene that doesn't match up with what any of us might imagine Sam would even consider a nightmare of his own mind's creation, you know? And yet it's SAM who is plagued by these incongruous nightmares that don't even really connect up with things that are relevant to the things currently on his mind, you know? After recent events, one would think the things that would plague Sam's nightmares would be the loss of Jack, or his role in Rowena's apparent death and his guilt/depression over it, or even the fight against the ghostpocalypse and the people who lost their lives as a result of that. Instead, he's having "nightmares" about having gone full Boy King of Hell demon blood addict, which hasn't been a pressing personal fear of his for more than a decade. He's even talked specifically about how he's made his peace with that entire time in his life, such as his talk with Magda in 12.04. NOT coincidentally also written by Davy Perez.

That's because... this is NOT Sam's "nightmare." Why would Sam "dream" about Dean's regular gun having the power to spark out demons? Why would he "dream" about BENNY being a human (and alive!) ally of Dean's that Sam had sent his own army of demons to destroy? Why would Sam dream that his demonic-self would hunt down and kill his loved ones (Bobby! Jody! and nobody else mentioned! as if this was some weird time-travelling situation combined with Benny's human presence!), and then in the end hunt down and murder Dean in cold blood? This wasn't Sam-As-Lucifer (though I believe we will be seeing that particular nightmare in next week's episode), but SAM. HIMSELF. Turned into the demon he always feared he was "destined" to become before they learned how to tear up the story and make their own choices about their destiny.

The problem now is that they actually believe that Chuck has gone, and they're on their own now. Sam believes that this must be his own nightmare, and therefore he's just stuck with it, as his own mind and memories and fears come back to torment him. He's lost his power to fight against it, like Dean's lost his power to fight against his current experience. It's as if the only power Chuck retains over them is in the fact that they BELIEVE he's gone, you know? Magic's power is in the belief of the caster, Rowena has recently reminded us with her own life. And I think that's exactly what's leaving Sam and Dean so completely vulnerable to manipulation by Chuck, in ways they've never before been vulnerable to it. Because they've both staked their entire futures on the fact that they so firmly believe they're free of Chuck's story.

Sam is just... so confused by this nightmare, he can't even make sense of it at all. And the sleep deprivation isn't probably helping.

I think we've all covered the Meat Man conversation already, as well as all the Dean vs Food stuff, so I'll only add that commentary in here if I think of something I haven't already said on the subject.

Dean calls out Sam's assertion that he's fine, directly telling him "No, you're not," and expressing his understanding of what he's going through.

And here come the cheerleaders. And doesn't this (as I believe many of us have already said over the last two weeks) just smack of Sam's "fake case" Gadreel had him trapped researching inside his own mind in 9,10? Crowley had to convince Sam that what he was trapped inside wasn't real, that he was possessed by an angel who was forcing him to experience these things. And obviously the God Wound isn't direct possession, and I don't doubt that this is a real case, but how much of this case might have been "arranged" by Chuck, or how much of Sam's perception right now may be clouded or colored because of the effects of that Wound?

Not only that, but Dean is also a participant in this entire odd case, and he doesn't even HAVE a wound connecting him directly to Chuck, you know? But his judgment seems to be equally clouded by something, as well... I'm gonna call it Intense Denial. Dean is basing his entire life right now on the presumption that Chuck has stopped interfering in their lives, when I think the exact opposite is true. I think Chuck is now focused on them more directly and more intensely than he ever has been before, and their obliviousness to that fact is only strengthening his hold on them, and amplifying his power over them.

But back to the current point in the episode:

Sam interviews the vice principal of the school, and the girl who was killed was in the drama club, debate team, cheerleading, campus ministry, you name it. That's... an awful lot of potential friends, so Sam asks about BEST friends, and we're directed to Veronica "and the girls." Veronica is singled out, which makes her speech to the empty room later even more interesting...

This episode relies on a lot of the elements of the case they're investigating to seem rather... plastic. And Veronica stood out as one of these elements. She could've just been "one of the girls," but she was identified specifically here, and it's like that designation itself somehow altered reality just a little bit. Heck I think I'm gonna need to put this line of thought on hold until we get to the speech scene. Remind me to come back to this.. >.>

The Whitmans interrupt (oh those crazy parents from 1.08, at it in a completely different role), seemingly uncaring of the dead girl and demanding their son's future not be ruined by postponing the lacrosse game. (OH THE IRONY) Sam rightly calls them out on framing it as "the end of the world" if he doesn't get into his first choice college. These parents have already been established to be Those Kinds of Parents who will do anything for precious little Billy to get whatever he wants in the world. They'd probaly strangle kittens on live TV if it would guarantee their son's future, you know? We haven't even seen the full extent of what they were willing to do for their son, and they already feel like cartoonish villain types.

I need to take another aside here to talk about the boy’s name. BILLY. Which, considering how we left things in 14.20, we’ve all been wondering about what Billie is up to in the Empty, right? This boy that will, by the end of this episode, become a literal stand-in for Jack on a cosmic scale? Is called Billy. Just... consider that.

I can already hear Becky critiquing Chuck's Monster of the Week here... and in turn parts of the fandom cynically saying that this is the complaint on MotW episodes forever-- that they're boring or unimportant or skippable because the monsters are predictable and boring, and just... NO. YOU HAVE OFFICIALLY MISSED THE POINT.

I think the general assumption is that the case we watch Sam and Dean solve is being directly affected by Chuck's simple act of typing it out. In exactly the same way we believed Metatron influenced the events of s9 by the simple act of typing it out. Could he control the thoughts of the people he wrote about? Not exactly. Could he manipulate the situation via the power of the angel tablet-- the direct word of God-- to influence the scenario and events in improbable ways? Yes, I absolutely think he can. And I'll continue discussing this as we go along.

But we return to Dean leaning against the car eating pretzels. I've already written about his constant eating and drinking in this episode, but PRETZELS?! That's a new one for Dean. It's usually jerky, or chips, or candy, or... all sorts of other things. Where did he even get the pretzels from?

He'd apparently been at the morgue examining the body, and found a vampire tooth. So this case that seemed NOTHING like a vampire case based on how the body was found, suddenly there's irrefutable evidence that it's a vampire instead. Almost as if the facts of the case have shifted somehow, rather improbably and inexplicably. Just as inexplicably as Dean finding the beaver mascot riding a scooter "awesome."

The second girl to be abducted calls out Veronica as being "so fake" in her grief over Susie's death. And yet, improbably, after a long cheer practice, she's the only one alone in the school parking lot late at night. Where's the rest of the cheer team? The coach? Anyone? How was she there all alone? Yet she was, because the case needed her to be.

It's plastic.

Like the little square of crime scene tape left unattended in the woods. Weird, right? That after the scene was cleared and the original investigators left, it was still left there around an empty patch of dirt. And Sam and Dean... are just... standing there at the edge of the woods, boxed in by yellow crime scene tape and orange cones while they have their conversation about the fact the police have no idea what could've done this, and Sam laments the fact that it's THEIR job. THEY deal with the truth and carry the weight, while everyone else gets to go back to their blissfully unaware lives.

Dean busts out the flask while the two of them stand there in their own personal crime scene box, like their lives are the crime here. They ARE the victims of a cosmic crime. And the corpse of what their lives could've been, of what Sam had always thought he'd want of his own life, to live in a little town like this and just be NORMAL, is what they'll find on the autopsy here. And Sam is just beginning to realize he can't identify with those sorts of people at all.

And then we jump right from Sam lamenting the lost white picket fence to Becky's house-- where the front railing is white pickets, where she's built a real life for herself. Yet even something about it seems... off... just a little bit. That older kid seems way older than 7, which I assume would be the oldest any of her kids could be based on when we last saw her in canon, before she began to recover from her obsession and begin building a true happy life for herself. Heck maybe I'm talking myself into a problem that doesn't exist, and he's supposed to be just a really big 6-year-old, but okay. Or maybe he's adopted, or the kid of her husband from a previous relationship. GAH This is so not relevant to anything, why can't I let it go... >.>

Regardless, she clearly loves her family, and is invested in her life with them. Her husband is a man who truly appreciates and loves her in return. I'm really happy for her. Her husband at one point says, "Where would I be without you," and she jokingly replies "Covered in puke." And it's the same sort of cute exchange we saw between Sam and Jess in the pilot, where he asked, "What would I do without you?" and she jokingly replied, "Crash and burn." And considering that Sam himself will mention Jessica at the end of the episode, it seems worth pointing out the thematic similarity they're trying to set up here.

I wonder how much Becky has told her husband about the reality of the Supernatural books she's built her business and hobbies around, or her own part in the events of the books? More than Sam ever told Jess about the reality of his life? At this point, I'm gonna be glad her husband didn't end up pinned to the ceiling on fire.

Becky waves goodbye to her family as they leave for a day of fun, and Chuck waves back at her. He's inserted himself into her life again, and it's freaking creepy.

Chuck says he "wanted" to see her, and corrects himself to "needed." And here we have the laying out of the classic “NEED VS WANT” conundrum we’ve been yelling about for literal years. Funny that Chuck has it all wrong himself, you know? Becky makes herself clear that she neither wants nor needs him. He's not welcome there at all, and yet he presses on, past her assertion that his problems aren't her problem. I've already written a little bit about what Chuck apparently wanted from Becky, and what he actually got from her, so I'll try not to repeat myself, but to say that Becky was far kinder to him than he deserved.

So we learn about the second cheerleader's kidnapping, Dean makes an uncharacteristically flippant comment in front of the Vice Principal (somebody has a fetish), and kinda... blinks in shock at himself before professionally affirming they'll look into it and turning and walking away. Like he can't quite believe he actually said that. Which is weird, right? Because this is the sort of thing Dean has made flippant and kinda gross comments on in the past, right? But even when he's made comments about which cheerleaders are legal (4.13), or suggestive comments about even college students, he's rarely done so this blatantly directly TO the school principal, you know? This was... odd... like everything is just slightly out of sync.

I'm fascinated by the tiny models of Supernatural things that Chuck is prodding at in Becky's house. The first thing we see is Lil Levi's gas station. The only time we have EVER seen this gas station was in 10.03, when Hannah and Cas stopped there for gas, and yet Becky has the Impala parked by the pump, and what looks like a yellow classic car of some sort on the other side, hidden by the pumps so it's impossible to really see it there.

(I swear I will replace these Mittens Quality Screencaps™ as soon as HotN properly caps the episode... apologies for the photos of my tv in the meantime)

It was Cas's pimpmobile we've actually seen at this location in canon. And this was the gas station where Cas was losing his grace, desperately trying to get to Dean in time to save him, and Hannah kept getting them lost. He calls her out over her feelings-- dangerous temptations-- clouding her judgment and getting in the way. They're attacked by Adina, and Crowley arrives just in time to save them both from her, stealing her grace and force-feeding it to Cas, enabling him to power up again and save Dean. Aah, callbacks! And I mean, it might just be a visual callback to the fact that Jensen also directed that episode (and that gas station was named after his nephew), but it's still a reference that brings an awful lot of baggage with it, regardless of what prompted its appearance in miniature in Becky's house. Not to mention, this reference happened LONG after Chuck had supposedly stopped writing about the Winchesters' lives. And yet... Becky seems to know this reference, which had nothing to do with Sam and Dean and everything to do with Cas.

The second model we see looks incredibly like (or at least should all be having us THINKING of) the Carver crypt from the first three episodes of s15. And that's... super creepy, right? What is this building? Why did Becky have a model of it at all? This happened DAYS ago in canon.

And the third is Singer Salvage yard, with the Impala parked out front. How long has it been since we've seen it? In an episode that opened on Sam's "nightmare" that involved him strung out on demon blood having just killed Bobby and Jody in Sioux Falls? Interesting that Chuck expressed fascination with that particular model in this episode, isn't it?

He asks if Becky is still obsessed with his work, and she corrects him. She's obsessed with HER work. She'd essentially dismissed Chuck as the creator of Supernatural, and relegated him to the role of Recorder Of Events, as a prophet. It wasn't actually HIS story. But what she's made of it, what she's made her life's work, IS HER OWN CREATION, based on the same reality she believed that Chuck had been nothing more than a conduit for. And OUCH for a guy like Chuck to not even get credit for any of it now, because of the lie he'd told to insert himself into his own creation. It's incredible to me. He wants nothing more than recognition as the creator, as the writer, and Becky's far more interested in her OWN stories about the same characters. She saw herself as more than Chuck’s equal as a writer, she saw herself as his superior. He just recorded, she CREATES. She dismissed everything Chuck was most interested in, and writes the characters all having achieved a measure of peace and happiness, the same as she has. And Chuck... hates it. :'D

Remember, this is the guy who invented monsters before he invented anything else. Leviathans were his first creation, even before the archangels. But they had a nasty habit of eating everything else he tried to create, so he grudgingly locked them in Purgatory, and moved on to the next thing. And he's had a lot of similar failures over the years... like the original hellhound that Lucifer stole away (and that Sam killed in 12.15). Seems like this has always been the story Chuck wanted to tell, because he's always only ever had his original drama with Amara as a source for his creation. He's... obsessed... with his version of events, no matter how many times he's confronted with reality, he weasels out of personal responsibility for everything. Like he does in this scene with Becky, letting her believe he's just a poor dude who wants to keep writing and lost his writing mojo because his prophet powers dried up.

This is probably the first Becky's heard Chuck had a sister, who Chuck only explains rejected him because she "sucks." And... Chuck... you're leaving out the horrific things you've done to her as an explanation of why she refused to help you. He's still hiding behind the “super cute” Chuck Facade. And nothing he says is an out and out lie, but it's entirely a manipulation, a complete reframing of the cosmic scale of what's happened into something he expects Becky to be able to offer him sympathy over. And she's just not having it. And again, good for her.

Chuck admitting that he's lost and hates himself at least engages Becky enough to try something to get him moving forward (again, still thinking he's just a guy who's lost everything). And tells him if writing makes him happy, then he should write.

Meanwhile Dean's incongruously eating a hot dog (WHERE IS HE GETTING ALL THIS FOOD?!) and interviewing a beaver. Sam questions why, and Dean's not only gotten information about the case (mascots have access to cheerleaders), but information about the kid inside the suit (he's a smart kid, got a full ride to IU). Dean's been unusually productive while chewing that hot dog, apparently. But he’s basically a caricature of himself during this case, like he’s trying to wear a suit he hasn’t worn in 15 years, and is finding it really ill-fitting. (it’s probably all the snacks he’s eating, honestly)

Veronica hands Billy a black wristband printed SUSIEFOREVER, which... is probably how Billy's feeling at the moment (hello, she was his girlfriend and he accidentally killed her... this is gonna haunt him forever). Veronica (who we've already been told by the latest girl to disappear is "so fake" in her grief over Susie's death) seems to be coming on to Billy, or at least making her interest in him known. And we DON'T know how all of this will resolve yet, but there's an awful lot going on in this scene. Did Veronica actually kill Susie? Is she the vampire and is that the reason for this OTT "so fake" grief on her part? Did Billy's "anything for my kid" mother who interrupts the scene actually kill her and Billy know something about it? Why is everyone acting so... weird?

Because we're back to the plasticity of this entire case again. What's actually killing cheerleaders? What's really going on here? If this entire case is Chuck's machination, because he wrote it down, and therefore subtly affected the situation, is that why everything seems just slightly off? Slightly malleable, as if Chuck is only working out the details of the case as he's writing it all down?

Billy leaves with his mom, and Veronica is left in a dimly lit gym filled with empty chairs and programs for the memorial service. She's practicing her speech to this huge empty room, speaking into a microphone. And as she talks, she edits her speech.

We've seen Chuck do this. in 4.18, he had Dean push the doorbell with determination, and then went back and edited it to read "with forceful determination." Just before the doorbell rang, and it was a forcefully determined Dean doing the ringing... So Veronica's self-edit here seems almost like a Chuck self-edit.

Remember how I mentioned way back toward the beginning of this mess how Sam asked the VP for a clarification on who Susie's "BEST" friends were, and Veronica was singled out among a group of her close friends? And now Veronica stands alone not only as the sole person in the room here talking to empty chairs, but as the one with apparent motive to kill Susie, who's been accused of expressing a lot of over-the-top melodramatic "so fake" grief. And... she edits her relationship with Susie on the fly:

Veronica: We are here to celebrate the life of my friend Susie. No. *clears throat* *takes a breath* We are here to celebrate the life of my best friend Susie. My best friend Susie who I miss like... *sigh* like she was a part of me. And in many ways she's still a part of me. She'll always be a part of all of us. Susie Martin was as rare as a ghost orchid and as unique as a snowflake. So beautiful inside and out. But as Robert Frost tells us, nothing gold can stay. And that's what Susie was. Pure gold.

And during this entire speech, to the empty room, the music in the background is ominous, looming, tense. The musical cue is telling us to doubt her performance here, with the high strings picking up the tension just as she comes to a close and Dean shows up with his slow clap. I mean, it was a pretty OTT speech, delivered with an intensity that literally does feel rehearsed. Stilted. Plastic. Everything in the case so far has pointed the arrow at her being the monster. The framing of the narrative would support it if it had been true, but the background of the entire case feels exactly as Becky has described it. What if THIS was the original ending to the case that Becky had voiced her complaints about, as if THIS is the story that Chuck would've written.

But that's such weaksauce. MotW episodes are nothing if not thematically consistent. Vampires are about revenge cases, and this case is a very specifically pointed bit of revenge, of Chuck against the Winchesters. They ruined the last story he tried to tell, and the fact this started out looking like something OTHER than a vampire case (possibly a ghoul, based on the parallel to 9.10, and a dismembered body), and then seemingly remolded itself INTO a vampire case halfway through... it feels like that first fang Dean found at the morgue was Chuck sinking his teeth into their lives.

And Veronica, no matter how the case had painted her to this point, was completely innocent. A bit plastic, because she's a victim of this reality bend as much as Sam and Dean are, because the real monster of this case is Chuck-- only Sam and Dean don't have any idea yet.

Dean calls her on her fake emotions, and they directly accuse her of killing her friend. And get the proof that she was innocent because she HAS BRACES, which she's apparently self-conscious about, but it proved she wasn't a vampire. *SIGH*

Plastic.

So Sam and Dean look for video evidence from surveillance cam footage, which the police had apparently already looked at and found nothing, but now they find a car driving past immediately after the second girl's abduction. Did the police not see it? Or is this another bit of plastic?

Meanwhile back at Billy's house, his parents refuse to even hear him say Susie's name, and suspicion immediately shifts to their entire family. Billy's father washes blood off his hands, and nobody seems to find this strange. Are they all monsters? Did one of them slip up? What the heckeroo is actually going on here? Whatever it is, it feels like they're all complicit, and Billy seems to be having reservations. Except they've also got the latest victim tied up and blindfolded in their storage room. So... they're definitely guilty of something. But we're only halfway through the episode at this point, so there's clearly more to the story.

Chuck tells Becky he can't see what Sam and Dean are doing anymore, as he conveniently scratches at his left shoulder where his wound connecting him to Sam is. Which is wild, right? Because what little we know about the Equalizer gun was that it fired INTENT. And that it affects the person shot and the shooter identically. So what was Sam's intent when he shot Chuck? Dean had just told Chuck to "Go to Hell," but Sam didn't say anything out loud when he shot Chuck. Was his intent "stop fucking with our lives" or more vaguely grief-filled "go to hell" or something more? Because whatever intention Sam shot at Chuck seems to have directly caused both Chuck's loss of power AND his inability to see directly into their lives now. And after having watched the Sam and Dean show for their entire lives, Chuck is PISSED about not being able to see what they're up to.

And I wonder, incidentally, if this will be the same factor that's causing problems for the Winchesters, too... that Sam may have inadvertently severed whatever protective force had made their lives as hunters as... implausibly unproblematic as they've always been, you know? I think we'll be seeing that develop more in the next episode, but we saw hints of it happening in this episode too (like with Dean's comment about the killer having a cheerleader fetish). But regardless, I think this is why Sam is suffering these grief-fueled nightmares, his inability to breathe, and his general current mental state. He’s suffering from the same intent he’d fired at Chuck. Only it hit Chuck with a case of writer’s block, while it hit Sam with something he’s been unable to truly define or explain. Yet.

Becky tells Chuck to write about the Winchesters if he loves their story so much, because that's what SHE does. Her stories don't have to be based in reality for her to enjoy them, but Chuck's only metaphorically a writer. He doesn't just want to make up tales, he wants to literally create reality. During Becky's entire pep talk, Chuck's holding a little figurine of Sam pointing a gun, and ain't that just on the nose? She plucks Sam out of Chuck’s hands and puts him back on the mantle (and I admit to at first thinking it was the Cas doll from 5.06, because Dean did the same thing with Cas, putting him up on the mantle like that), but Chuck still expresses doubt in his ability to actually write.

And here's where the most incongruous stuff in the entire episode begins happening-- the family dynamics of a killer family. It's still unclear who the monster is among them, but like Dean, we are leaning toward the father. The thing is, none of it's actually plausible. That's the beauty of this entire case. It's plastic.

How did this single kid out of this entire town get turned by a vampire, and his parents just... completely accepted what happened immediately without question? How did they KNOW what to do for their son in this circumstance? They went out and killed animals for their blood for him. Where did they learn to do this for him? And then how could they so casually just... kidnap a whole human being just to feed their son? Why not go back to feeding him animal blood like he'd done before? They didn't see anything wrong with any of this, either. DID THESE PEOPLE NOT HAVE QUESTIONS?!

And what of the vampire that made him? Did that vampire just... turn him and run? Did he give the kid a pamphlet explaining vampire life to him or something? It's just utterly baffling that this whole family just... incorporated this development into their lives as if it was all an entirely normal thing to accept about their kid. The dad KIDNAPPED A WHOLE ENTIRE HUMAN BEING for him on his own initiative, the mom was ready to shoot Sam and Dean for interfering in their plans. LIKE HOW IS ANY OF THIS NORMAL?!

And perhaps most bizarre of all, Sam and Dean didn't see anything wrong with it in reflection later that night. But I'll get to that when we get there. Heck this note-writing thing is really hard when I already know everything that's gonna happen. I have enough trouble staying on point without the benefit of foresight. :'D

So these parents are insistent that they're doing all of this, sacrificing all of this, just for him. And when he tells them he doesn't want them to, they just beg him to tell them what he wants from them. And he's just so frustrated because they aren't listening to him. Like they don't even care about him despite professing they're doing all of this so he can be happy. And he's just... profoundly not happy.

So the father, when Sam and Dean show up, still thinks they're going to ARREST him. Which is a weird thing for a suspected vampire to believe, and he's horrified when Dean pulls out a machete instead of handcuffs. This is a totally shocking development for him, and yet he STILL holds it together enough to bargain for his wife and son's lives. And the wife is profoundly confused by this, and our suspicions shift to her. But that's still... not quite right. She's prepared to literally shoot what she believes to be two FBI agents to save her son, again, as if all of this was entirely normal. As if this is what normal people are willing to do for their monster children.

I've already written a bunch about Becky's critique of Chuck's writing, and how poorly Chuck takes her notes. Chuck... is really out of touch with fanfic culture. Becky's reading this story as if it was fic, not reality. She kudos'ed and commented, and expected Chuck to just accept that and move on, because that's how fic culture works. But he demanded a beta read level critique, and Becky gave it. And he shouldn't have asked for it if he didn't actually want it.

And here comes the revenge that justifies the Vampire Plot. Chuck... is the vampire. he's the monster that doomed Billy for no reason. Who drove the parents to such extreme lengths to protect their child. Because that's how CHUCK saw what TFW had done to protect Jack. He saw it as just that outrageous and unfounded, even though it was in no way the same. We just witnessed Chuck's critique of TFW's actions in 14.20, and it was scathing, mocking, and vindictive.

Plastic.

But I also suspect that Becky wasn't reading ~this case~ exactly, because she complained that Sam and Dean were tied up (they were never once tied up in this episode), and she complained about the villain monologue being stale (Dean does most of the monologuing here, and it's Sam who figures out what's actually going on). Just one more bit of plastic.

But Chuck somehow managed (even if he couldn't see it) to put Jack's 14.20 realizations about himself into Billy's mouth. As if Chuck's story had already been written, and through some power of its own it was brought into reality via these previously innocent people. The story itself is more powerful than the author.

Like Jack, Billy has been trying to accept responsibility for his actions. He couldn't control himself, he didn't know it would happen, but he's dangerous and needs to be stopped. And Billy's speech isn't a "villain monologue," but a painful confession of everything he'd done. So what story was Becky reading?

Sam angrily judges the parents' actions, and Dean expresses his shock that the father would've just let him cut off his head to save his son. And is taken aback at the comment that he must not have kids, if he doesn't think he wouldn't have done the same for his own child.

And Dean's like... well, no I wouldn't have done the same for my own child. It's a super messed up situation that I'd really been trying not to think too hard about, thanks. It's been less than a week and here you go bringing up the worst day of our lives, so thanks for that... but they carry on. The mother says they just wanted him to have a normal life, and that's something Jack never would've had regardless because of what he was. But he had *a* life, with the Winchesters. If Jack had been a vampire, they wouldn't have gone out hunting and kidnapping teenage girls for him to eat, you know? But they were willing to raid heaven and shout down God for Jack. But context matters. And this hastily assembled vampire family ready to play revenge/victim for Chuck's story lacked all context. They were plastic.

It's Billy who ends up dictating how his parents are to handle everything, calm as can be. And his parents finally listen to him. And he sacrifices himself to the Winchesters. And they just... go along with it, take him out to the woods, and Dean kills the boy kneeling at his feet, accepting his fate as he's clearly crying, while Sam watches on. It's what Chuck had wanted in 14.20, and Dean had refused to give him. And now this entire situation has been Dean, manipulated into providing that demanded sacrifice, one way or another. And the most interesting bit of it? Chuck... couldn't even see it playing out. He missed the whole show that played out in Chuck Puppet Theater despite the fact. Like whatever he actually wrote was irrelevant, because his intent is somehow still connecting through to the Winchesters in pantomime.

And Sam and Dean's reactions to all of this are also just weirdly plastic.

I've already written about Chuck and Becky enough I think, but Chuck's moved on from "Writers lie," to "I can do anything, I'm a writer." With some of the worst villain monologue we've ever gotten, with "There, see, it's making you feel something! That's good, right?" While Becky is outraged and heartbroken over Chuck's ending. The only thing I need to say about whatever Chuck's planned ending is, is that if the series ends the way CHUCK wants it to, it'll go down as the biggest intentional betrayal of a fandom in the history of television. The show has stated to us in this episode that Chuck is the final boss big bad, and that he cannot be allowed to win. He can't have the final word in this story.

In *our* world, the current writers have officially called out a good number of sins of their past and exposed them via Chuck. They wrote the Leviathans being a personal favorite of Chuck's despite being pretty universally hated by fandom... well... they're looking for redemption for themselves in s15. THEY can't allow the story to end horribly. They've staked their current writing cred on it, as well as the entire history of 15 years of building TFW into the heroes. Sure, they've joked that not all fans will be happy with the ending, but in serious comments they've also promised a "real" ending and not some advanced level deus ex machina that wipes everything clean, either. That's a lot to deliver, and Chuck's suggested ending of the Winchesters horrifically dead doesn't deliver any of it.

So... back to the denouement of the episode. To the Impala! The least plastic thing in the entire episode. But it's pretty plastic.

Sam suggests that what Henry did for his son, was something they would've done for Jack, given the chance. And no, he's not talking about kidnapping teenage girls to feed him, he's talking about offering himself as a sacrifice in his son's place. Because Dean literally did do that. He was willing to sacrifice himself to kill Jack before he could kill again. It's what Chuck had presented as the ONLY way to stop Jack from destroying the world, with the examples of Jack having accidentally killed Mary, and then the whole of society crumbling because Jack told everyone to stop lying. But Sam? He wasn't willing to sacrifice both of them. And then he learned the truth from Chuck, about the manipulations that forced them all to this point, how Chuck probably did have the power to make everything right, restore Jack's soul, everything... but he didn't want to because it was more entertaining for him to watch them act out his plots instead. He WANTED that drama, that horrible sacrifice. He ENJOYED it.

But given the choice, I think Sam and Dean both would've traded places with Jack. We actually *saw* Cas literally exchange himself for Jack in 14.08. But Chuck wasn't satisfied with that trade. He wanted more from them, and they decided they were done playing on his stage.

There's a bit of incongruity in the speech Dean gives Sam about his current state, as well. He's usually so much better at reading Sam, yet he's comparing Sam's current mental state to his own back in the crypt, after Chuck. And just... no? This is not it at all? When he told Sam he's felt like cashing in, *we* think of 13.05, where he literally DID think of cashing in, you know? That feels far more similar to how Sam's feeling right now than to Dean's ANGER and "we need a plan!" bossiness from the crypt after Chuck. It's jarring as a comparison, because IT'S THE WRONG THING ENTIRELY.

But it's wrong, because it's the glaring omission of Cas that's already been lampshaded in the episode. That Dean's current blind spot here is shining a violently bright light on what SHOULD be said. Just like the end of 13.05 when we all yelled "HELLO, DEAN" at the television when Cas didn't say the line to him. We've been talking FOR YEARS about how this show uses narrative negative space like this, how it expects us to shout HEY WHAT ABOUT CAS?! at the screen, or to see that even this driving scene in the dark, in the car, is a perfect inverse mirror of that scene in 13.05, where Sam had spent that entire episode feeding his favorite junk food that he criticized Dean for in this episode, Dean and dragging him out on a case in the hopes of making him feel like himself again and... that's what Dean's telling Sam he wanted to work this case for now, to show Sam exactly what Sam had tried (and failed spectacularly) to show Dean in 13.05.

Dean even quotes some of Cas's last words to him before he left, that he should "move on."

But they needed to walk around the giant Cas-shaped hole in the narrative. And they needed to do it this incongruously. And that's exactly why it works.

And it's why Sam CAN'T move on. He doesn't feel free. I've already written a bit about this, and how it's directly tied to Sam's wound, and what it's probably doing to him. And what IS it doing to him? Chuck wobbles his head side to side, and the Sam and Dean bobbleheads on the desk beside him follow suit.

[recentanimenews]

OPINION: What Does It Truly Mean to Be "Over 9000?"

  Hello everybody, and welcome back to Why It Works. Today's topic is a meme that has at this point graduated to the great meme graveyard in the sky, but I’m sure you’re all well aware of “it’s over 9000!!” as a cultural concept. As Vegeta's eyes flicker between his scanner overlay and the Saiyan before him, his lieutenant Nappa desperately calls for a power reading before exclaiming that infamous, legendary line. How could his power level be that high? 9000!? That’s such a large number! We’d better be on guard, Vegeta.

  Image via Funimation

  You’ve likely seen it replayed and reconstructed in a thousand formats because that’s what memes do — but there’s frequently a nugget of insight to be gained at the core of viral phenomena, and “it’s over 9000” strikes me as a meme that reflects more than Goku’s impressive power level. Today, in my continuing efforts to make thorough investigations of trivial things, I’d like to break down the essence of something being “over 9000” and explore not just why the gag is funny, but what it can tell us about storytelling in general.

  The fundamental joke of “it’s over 9000” is that it immediately prompts a followup question of “over 9000 what?” To put the gag in another context, imagine if one martial artist asked another how skilled he was, and his opponent responded “12” with no further comment or explanation. It’s a betrayal of our expectations of character assessment, tethered to an overblown emotional and aesthetic reaction, which further distances us from the intended tone of the scene — and when the characters are taking something very seriously, but the audience cannot, laughter is a common result. But even that explanation doesn’t really explain what “over 9000” implies in a storytelling sense. To do that, we have to explore the nature of conflict in Dragon Ball up to that point.

  Image via Funimation

  In the original Dragon Ball, Goku began his journey as an unusually strong, but otherwise mundane young boy. Rather than powering up and using energy attacks, Goku, Bulma, and their companions generally beat enemies by either outwitting or physically incapacitating them. There was no established “rule set” for how powers worked in Dragon Ball because any powers displayed were clear and physically tangible — you don't need to teach your audience how a punch works for your audience to know a punch's strengths and limitations.

  Evolutions of power levels worked in a similar way. When Goku and Krillin finished their grueling training while wearing giant tortoise shells, they earned the ability to move faster and jump very high — cartoonish, fantastical powers, but still powers that felt like a coherent output of the training they’d put in — and matched Dragon Ball’s partly farcical, partly adventurous tone. For a long time, an ordinary man with a gun was a genuine threat, and the idea of an “energy beam attack” was a mythic, terrifying concept.

  Image via Funimation

  This was all well and good for a while, but you can only scale up grounded, physically tangible powers for so long. At a certain point, Goku’s powers began outscaling the manga’s ability to contrast him against tangible threats, largely coinciding with the shift from the playful Dragon Ball to the grittier Dragon Ball Z. And so, right at the beginning of this transition from a story that didn’t take itself seriously to a story that takes itself pretty darn seriously, Vegeta and Nappa arrive with scanners designed to bridge that gap, informing us that power levels exist now, and that’s how we’re going to be judging super strength going forward.

  Of course, power levels don’t really mean much to us yet, and so all we’re left with is a man yelling at his smart glasses, terrified that another man made a number go up. When the disconnect between a story’s dramatic intent and actual effect is that pronounced, while simultaneously tossing out years of worldbuilding in favor of a new and much sillier system, you almost have to laugh.

  Image via Funimation

  Dragon Ball isn’t the only franchise that’s attempted this sort of tacked-on worldbuilding quantification and suffered dramatically as a result. The Star Wars prequels featured a similar moment when the films attempted to “explain” the vaguely defined but dramatically coherent Force, a power system that felt more mystical than scientific, and clearly didn’t require any quantification. Nonetheless, the prequels decided to reveal that Force powers were actually the result of “midichlorians,” tiny particles that Force heavyweights happen to be particularly rich in. This shift was an unnecessary and ridiculous concession to the need to explain everything — and though it hasn’t possessed the staying power of “over 9000,” “midichlorians” was a meme in its own right for quite some time.

  So what can all this tell us about storytelling? Firstly, that when you attempt to quantify the unquantifiable, you risk losing the magic and mystery that made your story interesting in the first place. Trust your readers’ intelligence and try to build a world that feels vast and unchartable, not rigid and solvable. And in a more immediate, practical sense, know that when you tether your conflicts’ stakes to metrics that don’t mean anything, you risk losing your audience entirely. Find smarter, more engaging ways to convey growth than “the protagonist’s numbers went up,” or risk becoming a cautionary meme for all of eternity.

  Image via Funimation

  Finally, as an apology to Dragon Ball for beating on it through this article, I have to confess that the ultimate tragedy of "it's over 9000" is that this scene doesn't need to rely on arbitrary numbers to convey differences in skill. Akira Toriyama is a skillful storyteller and he knows how to make someone seem powerful — even as Nappa articulates his famous line, the rocks rising off the ground around him, and even Goku's confident, uncompromising expression, clearly convey the amount of trouble he's in. If you know how to set a scene, you don't have to lecture the audience on what's happening. Believe in your readers and your work will be richer for it.

      Nick Creamer has been writing about cartoons for too many years now and is always ready to cry about Madoka. You can find more of his work at his blog Wrong Every Time, or follow him on Twitter.

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com