#on the other hand baby gao is effective but not too interesting to me

[bladehorror]

[yutaya]

Discord was all, “what would Danny be like in an AU where he was CEO instead of the Iron Fist?” and then they were like “What would WARD be like if he was the Iron Fist instead of CEO?”, and I was like “wow interesting question and I kind of want to answer but also I have to go to work ttyl” - and then I didn’t reply for like, a week and a half, but - here we go.

So. A role reversal AU where Danny is the CEO of Rand Enterprises and Ward is the Iron Fist.

So maybe in this universe, it wasn’t Madame Gao who approached Harold with an offer to save him. Maybe it was Harold, desperately searching for any way to prolong his own life, who hears whispers about shadows who don’t die, that there’s an organization, and Harold doesn’t even hesitate to offer them a deal in exchange for immortality. It’s nothing to Harold to dip his company into criminal enterprises, after all. He even suggests a solution to the possibility of his straight-laced business partner hindering their business - a plane crash related solution.

But the Hand likes to believe they control everything, and in this universe, it was not their idea to approach Harold Meachum and acquire Rand as a resource. The audacity! This man thinks he can come and use them, an outsider, using their substance, and doesn’t even have the honor to offer a true sacrifice in return, only that which he wouldn’t mind giving up and which he may even be planning on doing with his company and his business partner anyway?

So the Hand says, interesting proposition, meet us in one of our upcoming base locations where we may be able to discuss terms and your supplying the building for our next facility there, and then just as Harold so eagerly suggested a plane crash for his business partner, he finds his own travel to Anzou cut short.

A plane crash may be too showy for the Hand’s usual tastes, but Madame Gao does appreciate the poetic-ism of it.

In another world, Wendall took Heather and Danny with him on his trip to investigate the Anzou facility. In this world, Harold took Ward, for another “lesson” on “being an effective business man”.

Did he bring Joy as well? Spin it as some family vacation time in China after daddy’s business meeting is through? Intend to have Ward watch her while he conducted the more unsavory parts of his business?

If Joy and Ward are both on the plane:

-A: Joy, like Heather, dies in the plane crash, leaving Ward as sole survivor. This would absolutely devastate Ward, and not really work, I think - maybe it would be convenient to create a whole “fueled solely by revenge and with nothing left to lose, Ward channels all his energy and stubbornness and drive into destroying the Hand who took his baby sister” plot line, but… that’s like, Darkest Timeline content, and it makes me sad to think about, and also Ward is at his core more of a “protector of those he loves” guy than a “dark and vengeful” guy, so.

-B: Both children survive the crash. Their father does not. Joy is devastated, and ten years old, and Ward’s first priority is to prevent his little sister from freezing to death on a snowy mountain top in the fucking Himalayas. So how does this go? Ward and Joy both grow up in K'un Lun. Joy wants to go home to Danny and Heather and Wendall and their company, so when the pass opens fifteen years later, she takes off, and Ward goes with her, because of course he does. 

Maybe in this world they’re closer, still brought together by living through their father’s death and by having to present a united front against the sharks in the water, even if those sharks are monks sneering at the foreigners this time instead of businessmen looking to tear down the children running a company, but without Ward isolating himself, going down a path of drug abuse and mysterious injuries. Without Joy going to college and law school and struggling to prove herself next to her “prodigy” big brother.

These Meachum siblings go back to New York and to a Danny Rand who lost both of his siblings and his uncle in one fell swoop, who was left alone but for his parents. Wendall and Heather, to their credit, are kind and loving parents who hug him and do their best to support their child through the entire family’s grief and talk to him about death and such, but they are still adults with jobs and responsibilities and a whole lot of workload dropped onto their plates in the fallout of the entire Meachum family’s tragic demises.

How does Danny fare, left all alone? He grieves. He’s lonely. He’s angry at the circumstances, at faulty planes, at the shoddy craftsmanship that must have gone into it because it’s easier to rail against that than the idea that sometimes these things just… happen. He’s even guiltily angry with the Meachums, for leaving him. But he’s also Danny Rand, who came out of tragedy and abuse a kung-fu master ball of hope and light.

So Danny makes the best of things. Maybe when he gets a little older, hits his teenager years, he starts going out. Gets really good at slipping away from his security guards - learns to be light on his feet. Goes to skate parks, marvels at some of the tricks the other kids can do, and starts learning a bit of parkour, just because it’s cool. Maybe he explores the city he only really saw before from penthouse balconies - makes friends with hole-in-the-wall restaurant owners and moving company workers and homeless dudes in the park. Maybe he visits Chinatown, Harlem, Hell’s Kitchen.

Maybe Danny ends up with connections all across the city, and in this universe, all those Rand Enterprises ads about being “for the family” and “there to support people” are a little more true than in another universe where the Hand was pulling Harold’s was pulling Ward’s strings. Wendall and Heather and business school teach Danny not to just give away all their products at cost when he takes over after Wendall either decides to retire early or just steps down into a lower position as part of a planned, gradual transition for the company, but maybe Danny helps set up programs to help get their product to disadvantaged groups without immediately inviting the board to oust him. 

Maybe Rand is heavily involved in philanthropy. Maybe a certain portion of those funds go to research on aircraft safety, and to families of plane crash victims. Maybe Danny still always separates out brown m&ms.

And then, one day, two adults show up claiming to be the long dead Joy and Ward Meachum, with a fantastical tale about surviving the plane crash and being raised in a monastery, and coming back now to reconnect with their old friend. They do not say that the monastery was part of a village that only connects to the rest of the world every fifteen years, or that the people there are all part of a cult dedicated to fighting a shadow organization of undead ninja criminals, or that, by the way, Ward punched a dragon in the heart and his fist glows now, because they are not idiots, but it still seems a little too good to be true. Danny wants to believe, but his parents caution him, and Danny’s fingerprint in an old ceramic gift won’t necessarily help ID Joy and Ward Meachum. Still, let’s say the Rands are a lot more willing to civilly work to gain proof one way or the other, and Joy and Ward don’t take offense to the need for verification, and somehow they figure it out and commence awkwardly trying to reconnect now that they’re all adults with different life experiences and nothing turned out how they’d expected it would as children.

And maybe the Meachum siblings get wind of the Hand in New York, or the Hand gets wind of the Iron Fist in New York, and they kind of try to keep Danny out of it but HA like that was ever going to work; they finish fending off a group of attackers in their new penthouse living room and once the ninjas disappear through the top-of-a-skyscraper-window they turn to find Danny standing in the doorway with an army’s worth of Chinese take-out in his arms and his mouth gaping.

They try to play it off. Danny points out that he literally just saw them fighting off fucking ninjas who left through the penthouse window and also Ward’s hand was GLOWING. They hesitantly explain, already formulating a backup plan to insist ‘no officer, Danny was super drunk last night, really,’ in case he calls the mental hospital on them. Danny, to their astonishment, listens seriously to their story, nods, and announces that there are some people he thinks they should meet.

CUE DEFENDERS. How does Danny know them in this AU? Probably through Claire, let’s be honest. He probably keeps bringing random bystanders he finds in trouble on the streets to the hospital and paying all their medical bills, managed to make friends with half the nurses in the city, and was super concerned when one of the hospitals was attacked by ninjas and one of his nurse friends died and another abruptly quit and all the officials were being very hush-hush about it, but Danny has connections with the part of the city that people like to ignore, and there were witnesses that night in the homeless and the street kids and the struggling immigrants working night shift across the street, and he tracks down nurse Claire in Harlem to make sure she’s alright (and to gush about her mother’s cooking, wow, Claire, I didn’t know your family owned a restaurant, that’s so cool!)

…and maybe a few days in to the whole “wow some people claiming to be my childhood friends back from the dead have appeared” business he goes to visit his girlfriend at her struggling dojo that she refuses to let him help with and finds! Claire! learning martial arts! Cool!!

And some other shenanigans, idk, how do timelines work, somehow Danny’s protagonist luck and sunshine power means he manages to meet all the other Defenders at least once somewhere in-between starting to sneak out when he’s fifteen and getting himself adopted by the entire city by the time he’s twenty-five, and then all this Meachum-vs-the-Hand stuff is happening and the city’s favorite billionaire is in the thick of it, and lol guess what Danny your girlfriend has secretly been a member of the Hand this entire time, yeah she didn’t have the “Danny hates the Hand” thing as a reason to hesitate on telling him this time but also their relationship was moving a lot slower when he wasn’t hiding in her dojo from hitmen, so forgive her if she hadn’t quite gotten to the family conversation yet -

- but that’s all part of a lovely universe where K'un Lun makes Ward and Joy more of a unit, and Danny was forced to make other friends with a whole city to choose from rather than just an abusive monastery cult and Davos. Let’s rewind.

Fifteen-year-old Ward is on the plane with Harold. Ten-year-old Joy is at home, staying with the Rands for the duration of Daddy’s boring business trip.

The plane goes down.

Ward finds the pilots with black creeping up their veins. He finds Dad, dead in the snow. He’s at a loss, and a little sad, but also, guiltily, relieved.

He’s free.

He’s also stranded on a snowy mountaintop and likely to freeze to death, cold and alone and without ever seeing Joy again.

Ward is stubborn beyond belief. He has an iron core of contrary asshole-ness that got him through 30 years of abuse. He never gives up without a fight. He never gives up, period.

He picks a direction, and starts walking.

There are monks. Maybe he didn’t find his own salvation. Maybe the monks saw the crash and came to investigate, and found a teenager trudging through the snow. But he wasn’t collapsed in the ice. He stubbornly insists that he might have made it on his own, that they didn’t rescue him. He’s not helpless. He’s not.

This one has fight, the monks murmur to each other. There is fire in his spirit.

They take him back to the village, where there is warmth, and food, and dry clothing, and a tree that smells like brown sugar. Ward wants a phone, so he can call the Rands. Explain what happened. Talk to Joy.

We don’t have phones here.

Fair enough, it is a monastery on top of a mountain in the Himalayas. Ward doesn’t know why anyone would want to live in a monastery on top of a mountain in the Himalayas, but he doesn’t really care. There must be a way they get down the mountain, for supplies and stuff. There must be a way people get up the mountain, to visit the monastery. Ward wants to go home.

The pass is closed. K'un Lun sits on another plane of existence. The pass only opens once every fifteen years, and then it is guarded by the Iron Fist, to protect us from the Hand. You can not leave.

Ward has managed to walk himself right into the clutches of a new enemy. These people intend to imprison him.

Ward has never been a planner, but he has tenacity in spades. Over the next month he makes 21 escape attempts.

“There’s no point,” says one of the bratty monk children that’s taken to following him around. Ward knows this one is the child of the head monk here. His father taught him to look out for political details like that. He doesn’t know the kid’s name, and he doesn’t care. David or something. (His father was always disappointed in Ward for failing those lessons too.)

Ward ignores him. He takes off into the snowy wind - walks and walks and nearly freezes in the cold and when he finally spots lights in the distance and makes his way to salvation, it’s just fucking K'un Lun again.

He doesn’t give up. He doesn’t. But. It might be smart to recuperate. Conserve his resources. Break into the monks’ plum wine barrels. Serves them right if their captives steal their stupid wine. Stupid monks.

Some asshole makes a remark about his foreigner status. Ward swings a punch at them. They take him down in two seconds, and laugh about it. They sneer at him, mock him.

He’ll show them.

Ward trains in their stupid kung-fu cult school. The teachers are harsher on him than all of their students, he can tell. They’re trying to break him. Jokes on them, Ward has survived Harold Meachum for fifteen years. In another life, he makes it for thirty, kills the bastard, and thrives. This is nothing.

The harder they try to break him, the stronger the steel in Ward’s spine holds him up. Fuck them, and their fucking pass, and their kung-fu cult, and their pretty little prison. Ward claws his way to the top on pure spite.

He becomes the Iron Fist.

The monks have grown complacent, after fifteen years. They send him outside, into the pass, alone and away from the village even as he’s expected to guard it. The Hand could travel between the outside world and K'un Lun. Anyone could.

Idiots.

A bird flies overhead, and Ward feels triumph.

He’s finally going back to New York.

In New York, at Rand Enterprises, there are Danny and Joy. After the tragic death of her remaining family, Joy is adopted by the Rands. She keeps her last name. She acknowledges Heather and Wendall as her parents, but still calls them by their first names. They all go to visit Harold’s and Ward’s graves every year, on the anniversary, and also on their birthdays, on Father’s Day, sometimes just when they’re passing by or having a bad day, or have life milestone news to share, like when Joy gets into law school, or when Danny is thinking he might want to let Joy and his parents handle the business and become a nurse. 

Both times Joy and Danny get older than Ward ever got to be, they hole up in one of their rooms together and go through 3 bottles of wine, and their parents don’t ground them in the morning. Danny visits Joy on campus, and she rolls her eyes but grins as she introduces him to her friends. Joy holds Danny’s hand while he comes out to his parents as bi. Danny and Joy put all the brown m&ms in a dish in front of an empty seat, for Ward, even though he was never a part of that game with them. When they play monopoly, no one ever uses “Ward’s piece”. In this universe, Joy and Danny are the close siblings - not codependent, like Joy and Ward were, but best friends, in a way that Joy and Ward weren’t.

Joy did not have to fight tooth and claw to prove to herself that she could live up to her father’s legacy or her brother’s reputation. She becomes a cutthroat business woman with a strategic mind, but she also knows how to put away the shark teeth in her personal life. Danny grows up on neither the hope of seeing the rest of his family again nor with the weight of having to start over and make new friends. He, Joy, and Ward were isolated kids, and he and Joy stay fairly isolated once Ward is gone, since they still have each other.

Danny has a sunshine nature, and he still learns the names and faces of all the Rand employees. He still chats cheerfully with all the delivery people and waiters and checkout clerks that cross his path. But - he’s not as lonely, here. He’s more content in his upper-class world, schmoozing at the charity galas even if he’d much rather be camped at the refreshment table, and he talks to the catering staff just as much as the bigwigs he’s supposed to be networking with. He puts on his tuxedo and accompanies Joy to orchestral concerts, and he is absolutely the big gun his family breaks out when they need to show a client someone earnest and hopeful and who truly believes in the good of their company.

When Ward comes back, he may lose his temper on the security team at Rand. Just a little. He’s come so far, and he’s waited so long, and he’s SO CLOSE to seeing his baby sister again, and these idiots think they can stop him?

So maybe he breaks past them. It’s not the smartest move, but. Dad always said Ward didn’t think things through. And Joy is right there, only a few floors away. He won’t be stopped now.

He busts into her office. Joy threatens to call security. Danny rushes in, and they stand side-by-side, a united front, examining this stranger claiming to be their dead brother.

Ward’s goal, all these years, has mostly been about getting back to Joy. But he can’t deny that when he thought about her, sometimes he’d think about Danny, too. It was unavoidable - they share so many memories, after all. It’s always been Joy-and-Danny, and big-brother-Ward, their whole lives. Joy-and-Danny-and-babysitter-Ward. Joy-and-Danny playing make believe and Ward, being an asshole.

So Ward stands frozen in the doorway, and just as he’d exclaimed “Joy!” when he burst in, he now breathes “Danny?”

And Danny and Joy have always been the more hopeful of the three siblings, the two who want to believe, who can look at a package of m&ms and think ’it’s a dream come true.’

They look at the way the stranger hasn’t made any move to hurt them, and the way he looks like Ward, and the way he can’t keep his eyes off of Joy, but not in a creepy way like so many businessmen they’ve had to deal with: in a way that seems so relieved and hopeful - and they run a DNA test. Joy is right there, after all, and there’s no question about her identity. They’re literally standing in their pharmaceutical company. They pop down to one of the labs and Danny asks Eva if she could do him a favor, pretty please with a cherry on top, and Eva laughs and says “you got it, Mr. Rand,” and Danny whines “Eva, I keep telling you, it’s Danny,” and Eva grins and says “whatever you say, Mr. Rand,” and basically Ward is Ward and they’re in for some complications what with all the telling Wendall and Heather they have to do and the reviving Ward legally they have to do, and the getting to know him again after fifteen years of thinking he was dead, and Joy definitely snaps at some point down the line and screams at Ward and cries and hits his chest going “you left, you left, you left,” and Danny had gotten used to telling Ward’s ghost all his woes and relying on an idealized version of him and is now suddenly remembering with trepidation what an asshole Ward actually was, and. it’s gonna be a rough time. It’s gonna be a rough time, but they’ll get through it, because they all refuse not to.

….And maybe we still have to deal with the part where Ward is the Iron Fist, and the Hand are in New York, and maybe Ward doesn’t actually give a flying fuck about stopping the Hand or anything that fucking monk cult kept going on about, but the Hand sure does care about manipulating the Iron Fist into doing its bidding. And Ward may not care about K'un Lun, but like HELL is he going to sit back and twiddle his thumbs when those assholes inevitably threaten his family.

“You will not touch them,” Ward seethes, and suddenly his fist is glowing and he’s beating the assailants up, and his fist is glowing and is that a tattoo, and Ward’s FIST IS GLOWING.

“What the fuck, Ward.”

“Right,” Ward says, pushing back his hair. “There’s something else I should tell you.”

[lizzybeth1986]

Quick Thoughts on TRH Book 1 Chapter 14

• Funny how the TRH team so desperately needed to spend close to half the book on mindless nonsense with Drake's family...and just a single chapter on the MC's entire first trimester. Via a 6 minute long time jump. Truly funny.

• So now that we're back in Cordonia, the pregnancy is underway, and we're finally getting into the meat of past intrigue, most of the fandom has this for a reaction:

It's a legitimate reaction, the story is moving forward...but the denim-clad, whiskey-guzzling problem that is the root of this whole mess - and the reason why the Walker Ranch portion took so long the way no other place in the series ever has...that problem still exists. It exists in a large, insidious way, and even while we're rejoicing the return to intrigue we might not always notice how even that is rife with issues. But more on that later.

• If you want avoid seeing these posts on your dash, these are the tags to blacklist: #trh quick thoughts, #trh qts, #trh qt reblogs, and #long post.

• Screenshots:

Hana: @aestheticsayeed (photoshoot) and the Abhirio YouTube channel.

Maxwell: @itsbrindleybinch and the rash rec YouTube channel

Drake: @thefirstcourtesan

Liam: @callmetippytumbles (photoshoot), the SavageLordBarlow YouTube channel, and me.

• Title: The Announcement

Alternative Title: Let's Cram One of The Most Important Part Of The Book Into A 6 Minute Montage!

Alternative to Alternative Title: What We Really Wanted to Title This Book - The Royal Yeehaw.

• I'm hoping that with each chapter where you're shown a scan or something that's considered a milestone in pregnancy, I can come out with a corresponding tiny story of my own! Let's see if that works out.

• So...I had my first actual ultrasound at 7 weeks (first time we heard a heartbeat) but the real fun one was the 12 week scan! By then you can see hands and legs (the ultrasound pic the writers chose for this chapter was...eh), and the kids can definitely feel them (not see - yet)...and they're going to use those limbs like nobody's business starting from then 😂

My 12 week scan took around 45 minutes to happen coz Baby V was jumping and kicking all over the place (not that I could actually feel any of it yet lol), and the poor doc wasn't getting clear enough images of her as a result 😅 When we finally saw her she was in all her energy-fueled glory, kicking up a storm (she's a cat-loving kindergartner now and she still kicks exactly like that 😅😅)

My mum had come down to visit and for some good ol' TLC, so she accompanied me inside the room. To date she insists she saw V wave at her 😁

• Back to the story - Madeleine has booked a press conference without our approval (still sucks at her job, I see) and we're left hoping to make lemonade out of those lemons she's thrown our way.

• We can choose to either be excited about announcing it, or worrying about putting the news out too early in case something happens in the first trimester. With the last option, the answers vary depending on who you married and therefore what your title is. If you are Queen, Liam reminds you that a public and accelerated timetable is a part of the price of royal life (still not a good enough excuse for Madeleine to fix this press-con without our approval). If you are Duchess, either Maxwell (or Hana in Maxwell's playthrough) tell us it's too early to start worrying. Bottomline is the MC is persuaded to view this as a good opportunity to celebrate.

• We are give three options for venue, suggested by Liam, Drake and Hana respectively - Hana suggests the royal ballroom since it's where the most important announcements are done, Drake suggests the less-stuffy palace grounds and Liam (of course, since that garden was his mother's pet project!) suggests the gardens. You then get to choose how you want to make an entrance:

(The screenshots are from the following:

1st row - @itsbrindleybinch Maxwell playthrough

2nd row - Mine

3rd row - The SavageLordBarlow YouTube channel, Liam playthrough. Their Liam is called "Dennis")

• Madeleine balks at the idea of a royal event turning into a rock concert, as if one of the most iconic images of Buckingham Palace in the 21st century wasn't Brian May of Queen rocking it out on his homemade guitar on the rooftop.

• Arrangements done, now it's time for THE DRESS. We have a wine-red chiffon ensemble with pearls on the neckline and a jeweled belt. It's called "Apple of My Eye", because presumably no one does apple analogies to symbolize fertility quite like Cordonia does.

• In addition to being Duchess, if you are Queen, you have the additional option of choosing a tiara. We were last able to do this during the ball in the TRR Book 3 finale, before we were honoured with the Champion of the Realm title. This is something you can only access if you are Queen.

• We reach the venue we have chosen, with the entrance we have chosen, and we can either choose to announce formally, or yell it from the top of our lungs. Nobody cares coz they're too happy there's an apple pie baking in that oven 😅

• Among the press we see the usual people: Ana, Donnie, Samir aaaaaand Brad from PM/Smoothie Star Thad from Platinum. He expects pregnant women to have baby bumps from the moment of conception.

• What's he going to be called this time? Chad? 😂

• For a dude who is mostly a spy-journo, he's doing a terribly poor job of hiding it. He doesn't do his research on pregnancy timelines, immediately jumps up to ask a question when the topic turns to that of the alliances with Auvernal and Monterisso, and gets caught pretty easily. He's probably also the dude who was upto something on our honeymoon, taking pictures of us and gathering information on our whereabouts. Whichever country got him on board for this, really needs to rethink their hiring process.

• Donnie has the one brain cell existing among the press and uses it to ask us why we're announcing so early. You can either choose to claim that you wanted the Cordonian people to know asap, or be honest if you didn't want this to happen (to which Madeleine gives you an "apologetic shrug"). The third option has the MC claiming she wants to shed a light on, and be honest about, the entire experience of pregnancy, even if it does result in a miscarriage - which Samir notes as being a noble endeavor.

• With regards to the alliances, we don't give a clear answer yet, but we do hint at what we're looking for when we finally take that call (strength, understanding, advantage for Cordonia). The LI also gets to briefly highlight their sentiments at this point, and show different reactions - Liam has tears in his eyes, Drake can't stop grinning, Hana squeezes her wife's hand and Maxwell screams WE'RE HAVING A BABYYY.

• Additionally, if you're married to an LI other than Liam, the press asks him what will happen if he decides to have children somewhere down the line. He maintains that the MC's child will have the first right to the throne, even over his future children - effectively writing his own bloodline out of that throne if he isn't married yet. Which...well, we knew this was coming. We knew they weren't going to change this. It's disappointing, but not surprising, that they chose this route.

• Once the press meet is over, we get felicitations from different guests, mostly from the Council:

- Duke Landon of Portavira: Compliments the couple by calling them 'glowing' and wishes them well. Penelope plans to design something for the child, and Kiara promises to talk her out of placing too many dog motifs.

- Duke Godfrey of Karlington/Krona: Gives the couple a formal paying-of-respects, and hopes for more dignified attire for the heir (shut up Godfrey Not Gao, I had to waltz in a MINI-DRESS at your goddamn home 🤬).

- Queen Mother Regina: This varies between the Liam playthrough and other playthroughs, obviously, because in the Liam one she is his stepmother and obviously there is that closeness. In all the others, she is warm and friendly, congratulates the happy couple, insists they call her Regina rather than "Your Majesty" (there is a brief moment where married!Maxwell is confused about whether to call her "Your Majesty" or "Your Grace") and assures them that she will always be ready to provide for the "kingdom's heir". Liam's interactions require a more personal touch, so he hugs Regina before the MC can opt to, and she calls their child her grandchild as well. Liam and Regina moments are rare to come by, so I'm happy whenever I get to see them. I also haven't seen her since the book has begun, so I'm chuffed that she's there (pls don't make her knowingly part of the plot pls pls).

- Lord Barthelemy of Ramsford: Has to make everything about him wherever he goes! His felicitations to us lasts all of ten seconds while his attention towards Donnie and Samir takes up all of his time. He manages to score an interview with both of them. The most interesting part isn't that, though. It's the comment he makes about Regina as she leaves: "she always was a generous one..." - now what's THAT supposed to mean?

• Hakim is neither on the Council, nor is he shown here. I'd like to believe Kiara's family have distanced themselves from the group because the MC doesn't deserve the honour of their presence, but we know it's more likely coz the writers would much rather write Kiara and her family out of the story. Which is a pity because they're the most amazing family Cordonia has.

• Madeleine now comes forward, suggesting to us to follow the tradition of getting a royal announcement of their pregnancy done. This is done in a fashion similar to our Engagement Photoshoot, but with our own choice of clothes and less variations overall.

- Our attire is pretty much anything we'd like to pick out from the closet, as long as it's been already paid for. The LIs on the other hand have three different options for their outfits:

Liam gets his outfit from the TRR3 finale, his Costume Gala outfit and his official outfit. Oddly his outfits have titles like the MC's does.

Hana gets her Costume Gala flower dress, her plain black dress and her usual pink one.

Maxwell gets his Costume Gala squid outfit, his black suit and his usual Gucci shirt.

Drake gets his Costume Gala blue brocade, his official grey suit and his usual denim.

- What I can't understand is why her muted black dress is always touted as the formal garb for Hana, when they could easily allow her to wear that gorgeous black traditional outfit of hers. That could have been an option for this shoot. But no, they decided to arbitrarily code that one and block access to it if you didn't pay, even though Lorelai had apologized to Hana and therefore her outfit should have been coming back to her!

- I've said it before and I'll say it again: the decision to pay wall that entire outfit, considering it was taken away from her in an act of abuse and intimidation - and it should have been by all accounts returned to her when Lorelai apologized whether we paid for that scene or not - is sickening. Shame on you PB.

- Once we are ready with our outfits, we meet Ana in the throne room, and she's busy preparing an announcement sign to place in front of the couple. We take a couple minutes to admire the sign, then proceed to posing for Ana. If you took the engagement photoshoot in Book 2 or 3, it's referenced at the beginning. Each couple's scene here is unique:

(Screenshots: Hana's from the Abhirio YouTube channel, Maxwell's from the rash rec YouTube channel, Drake's from @thefirstcourtesan and Liam's from mine).

Liam

Ana begins by suggesting the couple take their places in their thrones, looking at each other. Though the photo is great - glamourous and dignified - Liam and the MC aren't quite feeling the shot. The MC isn't fond of the idea of sitting so far away from Liam, and Liam agrees, telling Ana that he finds the pose too stiff - and that above being King and Queen of the country they are also a couple deeply in love, and their child is not simply an heir but a sign of their love for each other. So the ensuing picture is warm and filled with joy.

Once Ana leaves, Liam tells the MC about how his own parents did exactly such a photoshoot when they were expecting him, and how much more he understands them - now that he is going to be a father.

Hana

There is a warmth and a sweetness to the first shot itself - a simple one that has them simply looking into each other's eyes - that Ana tells them she knows their child will be brought up in a loving home.

For the second shot, Hana asks the MC whether she'd rather have a shot alone, and offers to move out. Possibly because the MC - married to Hana or not - constantly makes everything revolve around her and constantly pushes Hana and her issues to the background like they're not important. I'm sure Hana got that impression from you somewhere, MC.

The MC, however, is surprised by this and insists she be part of the picture. She can choose to either say that this baby belongs to both of them or that without her it wouldn't be a good picture. The MC who is married to her insists she understand her value in their relationship (yeah it took you three and a half books to realize that LMAO), and that Hana belongs with her. She should never think of herself as belonging to the sidelines again, ever (maybe you should work harder on convincing her, MC, because everything you've done until now was mostly all about you and very little about Hana).

The dialogue after Ana leaves is sweet and romantic, with the MC telling Hana her hair smells of roses and Hana and the MC clinking imaginary champagne glasses, before Hana stops her in mock-surprise and promises a real (non-alcoholic) drink back in Valtoria.

Maxwell

Ana finishes the sign and gets ready for the shoot. Maxwell holds a formal pose on his knees that places more attention on the MC, adopting a severe, sombre expression. This surprises Ana, but the MC clearly knows what's up and wants him to relax. To help him, the MC distracts him (pretend you're Bertrand/imagine me naked) and that mental exercise energizes him enough so he can do this shoot in a more relaxed manner.

Once Ana packs up, Maxwell and the MC stay behind to talk, chatting about the excitement level in the kingdom and (optionally) how that excitement can't match their own (Maxwell speaks of constantly having adrenaline at this point). They jokingly speculate on the unsolicited advice they will get, and Maxwell cracks a joke about how as Bertrand's brother he was brought up on a diet of unsolicited advice. Relaxed and happy, the couple return home.

Drake

The couple see the sign Ana made, and like it because it's dignified but not too much. To which Ana responds that she didn't want to presume too much about their tastes. The shoot begins with the MC trying to think of all the pregnancy announcements she has ever seen (including one where a man yells into a breast pump like it's a telephone) and worries and becomes nervous over how to do this - and Drake calms her down by telling her a simple pose would do the trick, and most of all, to "focus on us". This calms the MC down, and she nails the simple pose alongside Drake.

The ensuing conversation between the two expands on what Drake said, where they refer to themselves as a good balance between dignified and "regular". There's a clear indication of how far they have come from that first photoshoot in this scene.

Aaaaaand...CLICK!

(Screenshots: @callmetippytumbles for Liam, @aestheticsayeed for Hana, the rash rec YouTube channel for Maxwell and @thefirstcourtesan for Drake)

• This scene is good in two routes, and not so great in two.

• The MC and her spouse go back to Valtoria, where the MC takes rest and the LI takes care of her. She can give in to her cravings (huge turkey leg, cheetah cakes, omelettes or fancy unpronounceable food), but a few weeks later she experiences a lot of nausea, to the point where she might (optionally) tell the LI that it's the worst thing they've ever done (completely normal, I assure you. A pregnant woman's hormones are unpredictable af). Both corgis (if you've bought them) help her and do their fair share of doting on her, and the LI in their own way tries to help.

• Based on who you haven't married, you get various scenes of your friends helping out:

- Liam: offers all kinds of help but the suggestion that stands out is a chicken soup recipe that belonged to his mother.

- Hana: makes a playlist of all kinds of music tracks to get mother and baby through the first trimester, including the TRH Lullaby tune which is now canonically Hana's composition. She's chosen artists from all over the world, and recorded a few of her own tracks in cases where she isn't satisfied. She also has a second trimester playlist coming up!

- Maxwell: aka the man who wrote a story about the MC but put HIS face in the cover, offers to let the MC vicariously live through him by giving her a voucher (the Maxwell Vicarious Vivacity Simulator 3000) that ensures that whenever she craves to do or have something not allowed for her, Maxwell does it on her behalf. The LI jokes about how that's a lot of power to give a person.

- Drake: Asks after the MC's welfare, and is given a choice of two things to do - either he can bring her ice-cream, or tell her the story of how the boys created their barbershop quartet so many years ago. He's perhaps the only LI who is given options for pampering the MC as a friend.

- Madeleine: The only person outside of our LIs (and later Olivia) who has an extra scene prior to the MC's ultrasound scan, is Madeleine. She gives the MC a Cordonian Ruby, explaining that it helps with nausea and that Liam's mother would swear by it. She looks concerned...and her words to the MC about making sure she takes care of herself, almost sound a bit of a warning.

Given what we find out later on in the chapter, both this sequence and the sequence where Bartie Sr comments on Regina have been placed there for a reason. Madeleine definitely knows something and there's a possibility she will have a flashback scene of her own.

If you bought the red pandas in Book 3, they will be clamouring around Madeleine for the apples as well.

• I have to laugh at how completely written out of the larger story Kiara and her family are. Even Penelope who is a non-entity and who only had something of value to give to the story when she was being a lying backstabbing snake, somehow manages to have a father in the Council and a promise of a future storyline. After all that the TRR team put Kiara through, I wouldn't even say Kiara deserves a better story. No, what I'd say is she (and Hana, definitely Hana) deserve better writers.

• I mean, you can call it a coincidence anymore, the fact that the women that the story gives the most material and most attention to, are the white women.

• This thread of sequences comes full-circle with a scene where the MC and LI sit by the lake, and where they're both shown finally coming to terms with the MC's nausea and using the tart apples as a way to make things better for the MC. There's a sweet scene in there where the LI kisses both mother and baby.

• We're finally ready to meet Dr Ramirez, and to get an ultrasound done. Olivia and her new...chauffeur, Roy, will be serving as security detail for this occasion. Wonder when we'll find out what Roy is helping her with.

• She gives you a dagger...which we might maybe end up threatening to use the next chapter? I'm guessing Olivia already has an inkling of something going down at the doctor's, since she indicates that we will know when we'll need to use it.

• Depending on whether or not you revealed the pregnancy to her last chapter, her dialogue changes. She makes a mention of it if you have. She's genuinely happy about the pregnancy, and wanted to wish the MC in person.

• Both Liam and Olivia wait outside while the MC and LI have their time with Dr Ramirez, if you're married to one of the other LIs.

• Dr Ramirez mentions that "the first few months have been treating you well"...which indicates that the MC is at least 12 weeks along (10 according to the calculations of certain countries, that count from conception onwards. Dr Ramirez also confirms this during the scan), since that's when you do the nuchal translucency scan. It usually takes place at the end of your first trimester. Which means we've effectively covered the MC's entire first three months in the span of 1/4th of a chapter, actually (considering the entire montage is approx just over 6 minutes).

• Dr Ramirez then lets slip a little factoid about Liam's mother, which baffles the couple because Liam himself never had any knowledge of this. She speaks of Eleanor's fondness for apple tea during her pregnancy and how much trouble she had with her nausea.

• Cordonian Rubies and apple tea have both been mentioned on the TRH loading page.

• If Liam isn't your LI, you call him and Olivia back to the room and ask him about this new development, and he confirms that Dr Ramirez was never mentioned in the official records, as well as the fact that she had a relatively easy pregnancy with Liam (if your LI is Liam, though, Olivia returns to the room on her own, stating that the doctor mentioned something about tea to one of the interns). But the conversation takes Olivia back to a very vague memory, and of course she needs us to go back and make sense of it. Which leads us to our first Olivia flashback!

- I have a feeling Olivia's childhood gown might be the groundwork for maybe a Theodosia outfit in TRM? Just a small guess. IDK.

- Olivia gives us a timeline for this particular incident - it was a few months after they left the Walker Ranch. As we recall, Eleanor was showing some early signs of not feeling too well, and had arguments with Constantine at the time. So if Eleanor was already pregnant by that time, she was clearly close to finishing/past her first trimester by this point.

- The setting of the scene is a mock-battle between Olivia (who plays a knight) and Drake (who plays a dragon, and they use TCaTF Dom's dragon sprite to establish how Olivia imagines him in this game). Some Dom-Drake parallels going on there.

- No matter what you choose, Olivia wins. She can either destroy the ice blast or deflect it with a fan, defeat + kill the dragon or feed him meat so he will forever be beholden to her. Either way, the options work out for her.

- At this point, possibly because nothing has really happened to Drake yet, Olivia and Drake share a pretty decent rapport. They're not thick as thieves or anything (and Olivia confirms that they were "barely" friends and turned to each other as playmates only when Liam wasn't around, if you choose to ask), but they tolerated each other enough to have fun playing while Liam is away.

- During this time, conveniently, Liam is having "lessons". Nice job writing Liam out of his own story yet again, PB (I'll explain this later). The scene is clearly centered on Olivia, with some focus on Drake via the mystery of Jackson's talk with Eleanor.

- Liam is with his mother, worried about how sick she is and wanting her company since he gets so little of it these days. And it is likely not too long before he loses her forever. My heart breaks in advance for the little guy.

-

Loads to unpack here!

* The first time I read this scene, it gave me serious Adriana-Leon vibes. It still does. Adriana has that scene where she wants to be open about her affair with Leon, and Leon declines. There's a familiarity between the two - notice how they address each other on a first name basis even though she is a queen and this was likely a time when titles and station were even more important. There is a familiarity in the way he insists on her time while Constantine is away, and despite the fact that Liam hasn't been able to spend much time with her.

* True, that familiarity is something that could also exist between close friends, the "sneaking around" could be Jackson trying to keep his BFF's secret from the king of the country. But you can't deny the Adriana-Leon parallels there.

* There is a possibility that someone else could be the father. One possibility that comes to mind for me is Bastien, mostly because his fondness for Eleanor and disdain for Regina don't exactly add up if he wasn't King Guard until Jackson died, and clearly didn't seem to have much of a relationship with the royal family otherwise that we know of. But it could work with his storyline: he gets Eleanor pregnant, she dies shortly after, Jackson takes the fall for keeping her secret and his family doesn't get the compensation they deserve, Bastien helps the children and maintains a close relationship with Drake partly because he feels responsible for Jackson's death, and he atones by following every order of Constantine's, including one that harms the foreign commoner woman that Liam was about to choose.

* Buuuut. The fact that Bastien has pretty much disappeared and is hardly even mentioned, makes this even less of a possibility, because buildup is important.

* In Jackson's case I guess the thing that doesn't entirely add up is how close Jackson and Bianca are spoken of as being. We never actually see them as a couple, but Drake gives us plenty of stories about them and their love for each other - to the point where Drake tells his dad he wants to find a girl to love as much as his father loves his mother...and Jackson unironically agrees. It's a small detail, but I think it's something that may indicate Jackson is a red herring as well.

* In conclusion, I don't know 😂

* "It's likely just hyperemesis gravidarum" 🤦🏽‍♀🤦🏽‍♀. Just? Juuuuust? That's...a serious condition. It's not just extreme vomitting or morning sickness (though that is awful too) - oftentimes it means you can't even hold fluid down, it means dehydration, it means a loss of electrolytes and even nutrient deficiency...to the point where you might even need to be hospitalized (Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, had this condition with all three of her pregnancies and was hospitalized in 2012 when she was pregnant with Prince George). I'm guessing Jackson doesn't know what the fuck those words even mean if that's his reaction!

* What should Eleanor and Jackson be prepared for?

* What are these two fearing besides Constantine discovering about this child?

* Do they know Godfrey and Bartie Sr have something or the other planned? I mean if Madeleine knew about the pregnancy there is clearly a chance she heard it from one of them. Were those two guys their main concern, and why they went alone to talk? Eleanor doesn't seem to have much trust in the Great Houses the way Constantine does, and seeing Bertrand's flashback scenes she'd be right to worry.

* How long after this did Eleanor die? Because yes there is a possibility that her second child may exist, but that depends on when the plot to poison her succeeded. And if she was far along enough to carry the child to term, or even give birth prematurely, how is it that not even the children in the palace had a clue? (the adults I can see as covering this up but it's possible to have SOME hint from the kids!). So I'm having a tough time with the idea that she managed to give birth before dying, or even that she managed to survive - unless someone was out there acting like Monte Cristo and giving her something that appeared to have the same symptoms as poison but was actually some lifesaving elixir idek. This team is capable of anything. They've retconned a zillion things so far so I wouldn't put it past them to completely retcon this as well.

- The kids have a chance of being caught by Jackson, if Olivia doesn't manage to find a good hiding place and hides behind Drake instead. But if you do succeed in hiding, we get to see Eleanor promise to spend more time with him, which Liam accepts with the grace he is usually known for.

-

@thefirstcourtesan has spoken before about the Nevrakis family's views on openly showing your pain in public, citing Diavolos' dialogues, but it also reminds me of that scene where we can defend Olivia against Lucretia, stating to her that having allies and friends to fall back on is not weakness, but common sense. The fact that little Olivia views crying as the worst thing that she could be doing, and the shock the adult Olivia shows at the MC's matter-of-fact statement on the value of support - as if such a thing had never even occurred to her - says plenty about the impact of those initial five years being the Nevrakis heir.

* What amazes me just as much, is how quickly Liam understands what is going on in Olivia's head, and how quickly he makes the situation safe for her before Drake can say anything. He's young, but perceptive enough to know not only that Olivia doesn't want to be seen crying, but also what she'd be most comfortable using as a cover for her tears. Those wounds are still fresh for Olivia at this point, making it even harder for her to stand back and rationalize - which is why it's a relief when Liam offers her an out.

* I honestly fail to understand people who claim he never cared for Olivia. It was clear from the get-go how much he valued her, he's vouched for her when very few would, he's shown concern for her multiple times - and I find it so weird that he's perceived as not concerned for her only because he doesn't return her feelings, whereas Drake can suspect a traumatized woman and never feel any remorse after she tells them the truth, and somehow that's okay (oh...I forgot. This is the Almighty St Drake we're talking about. Of course he can get away with anything).

• Is it just me or are the only scenes where the children are given extra focus and care...are the ones belonging to Drake and Olivia? The first scene, though advertised as Liam's, was really more of a group childhood scene - it was less about Liam himself and more about introducing the childhood gang. Maxwell's scene basically wrote him out so Bertrand could take centerstage! In contrast, Olivia's gives us important facts about Liam's family but focuses heavily on her grief and loss after her parents' death, and Drake's is not only intensely personal to him but also is the only childhood scene so far with variations if he is married to the MC. I shudder to think of what they will give to Hana in the name of a childhood scene, if she ever manages to get one that is.

• I honestly hope Jackson isn't the father of this child - even though there are enough hints to suggest it as a possibility (or to establish that he is a red herring). If that does transpire...then the story that should be about Liam, his mother, his family, will revolve even more around Drake. It will be about his angst. His feelings of betrayal and sadness at what his father did. His heartbreak at his hero having feet of clay.

How do I know this? Well, look at the sheer volume of things Drake has told us about Jackson over the course of these four books. Especially in playthroughs where he is getting married, you get stories upon stories upon stories about the man, one after the other. I had to wait till TRH to get even half that much information about Liam's own mother!!!

Enough. I've already seen this man eat up space that should have gone to Liam for his story, and make it all about himself (the assassination attempt, for example). At least let this one thing be just Liam's to grieve, not Drake's to take over and to make it all about him and his feelings. I've already seen him do this for every LI - the truth of Hana's return had to come from him, we spent most of Shanghai cajoling him into fixing his relationship with Maxwell instead of learning more about Hana, the entire Beaumont story was swallowed whole just to accommodate more story for his sister.

Of course, if Bastien is a possibility, the same problem would still arise because the writers were somehow desparate to make him close to Drake, than to Liam who would have been one of his wards to do security for.

• Olivia, Liam, the MC (+ LI in other playthroughs) discuss what the discussion between Eleanor and Jackson could mean. If the MC doesn't figure out that Eleanor was pregnant, Liam does - having read up on Hyperemesis Gravidarum (at least in my playthrough).

• Olivia's choice of words about Constantine is interesting - "Constantine never caught whoever killed Queen Eleanor"...which, well, most of us have an idea that Constantine might have done some covering up with regards to Eleanor's pregnancy and death - but does Olivia suspect this too? The wording makes me feel like she has some idea.

• Anyway, it's time for our scan! Dr Ramirez speaks of this as the 10 week mark (over here in India it's referred to as the 12 week mark - so we wouldn't say 1 week when we find out, we'd say 4). I was initially surprised the MC didn't opt for the 7-8 week scan, but I've been told in some places it's common to start with the nuchal translucency scan (which is this one).

• It's a lovely scene overall in terms of how the LIs react to the experience - each option (both to the initial image of the child on the screen, and to the photograph later) comes with varied dialogue depending on the LI. They're all happy, emotional, and in some cases (like Maxwell's) it's sinking in that there's an actual baby coming out from all of this.

• Around this time, the foetus also has hands and legs and you can see them kicking around like nobody's business coz "o wow, what's this" is probably what they're experiencing at this point 😅

• The dude from the press conference tries really hard to pretend he is an intern and not a dude we met in a press conference - but his acting skills are about as good as his knowledge of pregnancy in general.

• I have a feeling that if we don't catch him next chapter, Liam and Olivia will, and we may get some answers at least on the score of all the paparazzi related suspicious stuff that's been happening - therefore leading us to a hint about one of the places we are "allying" with?

• I also have a feeling that both places - Auvernal and Monterisso - will be established as suspicious eventually, for varying reasons. Right now we're getting signs via Olivia that the Auvernese are planning something big, but I doubt Monterisso is going to be left behind in all this. Perhaps the journalist might offer some hints/leave behind some clues as to where he was from...and it might warrant a visit to that place just to investigate? I'd see Monterisso as more likely, if that is the case. Because I do believe the team will have us visit this place just once at least. I may be wrong, but let's see.

• General Thoughts:

- Sigh. We knew this would happen, wouldn't we. The team would spend nine whole chapters on largely irrelevant shit that could have been cut out and pared down to maybe 4 chapters max (but 2 chapters would have been perfect. After all, Hana's Shanghai segment was only two chapters, and we spent one of them trying to make Drake behave less like an angry toddler. It's only fair that Drake gets as little space, yknow), but now we're at the point where we're rushing through the first trimester alone.

- The announcement shoot scene was nice...but again extremely uneven across playthroughs. Both Liam and Drake's scenes were written largely as callbacks to their engagement shoots. In Liam's engagement shoot there was a pressure to represent both decorum and warmth - but in this shoot they explain to Ana that they clearly lean more to the side of warmth, and want to show that side of themselves. In Drake's engagement shoot, Drake is the one who is nervous and trying to fit in, with the MC helping him loosen up and be his natural self, while in the baby shoot he fulfils that role for her by stating to her that they could be having fancy trimmings but simple in their way of delivering the news. Do Maxwell and Hana get this kind of effort in their scenes? No. Not at all.

- Maxwell's engagement photoshoot scene was about the couple getting used to their relationship, and remembering what made their love blossom (pun fully intended). By the logic of the other two scenes, this one should have explored in some way how they've grown as a couple, but it doesn't. They didn't even bother to put half the effort into this scene that they did in the other two.

- Hana's engagement shoot initially explored her fears of turning into her parents, that she is not taking the MC's opinion into account. The MC gets to reassure her then. Unfortunately, they dropped that arc completely after that scene. So I can get an idea of why this particular scene is different, but I hate that they chose to drop such a compelling story for Hana and I would have honestly loved to see a parallel to that.

- The fact that the MC could tell Hana that she should never be in the sidelines is kinda sweet, granted, but actions speak louder than words, and most of the MC's actions re: Hana so far have been the exact opposite of what she's saying there.

- The team should have at least nailed this one scene for everyone, if not anything else - since this had the biggest variations. Yet they couldn't be bothered to do a good job of all of them?? Only two???

- Come to think of it, if the plot actually culminates in the presence of this extra child, there is one scene in Book 3 that could hint at it. The film that Liam takes the MC to watch at Castelserraillian, revolves around a couple named Lionel and Ramona (geddit?? Liam and Riley!) and their romance amidst a plot from a half-brother to usurp the throne (the name given in the movie is Percival, which coincidentally is Maxwell's middle name).

- The intrigue is nice, it does its job of raising more questions while offering a few answers, but I find it ironic that even in a plot that's about Liam's family, Liam himself seems unimportant and his feelings unexplored. You'd think that with an experience like that, where we've just heard about his mother not being able to spend a lot of time with him (perhaps months before her death)...you'd think that would elicit more of a reaction than "okay cool let's investigate". I know for a fact that if it were Drake there would be a whole extra set dialogues unlocked in the romantic route. I know that, because that's exactly what happened at Walker Ranch. Again, no other character who had a childhood flashback scene so far, got any opportunities to weigh in on how they felt after the narration was done.

- Other people's feelings and experiences taking precedence over Liam's own, in scenes/events that should be about him, is nothing new. In Book 2, we get to know about an assassination attempt on Liam...but that story revolves around Drake's pain and Drake's sacrifice. We never get to know how Liam felt about this, ever. In Book 3, when we should have been learning more about his mother, she's mentioned only a handful times instead. Again in Book 3, Liam sees his own father die, but his feelings are largely brushed aside to make space for more Drake hypocrisy (like his behaviour towards Kiara in Lythikos) and Drake observations (like the chat about Liam's hurt feelings in his playthrough, which only Drake is allowed to talk about).

- And this is the root of the current problem really. That they need to involve and include Drake and his family in everything that they can possibly involve him in (I mean, the only childhood scene he is out of, is the Beaumont Brothers one, and even then the brother that gets all the focus is the one that is marrying Drake's sister). That they probably might write the story in such a way that it's skewed in Drake's favour, will explore Drake's issues the most, before they even bother to explore anyone else's. Even now that we're out of the Walker Ranch storyline, the writing still shows a possibility that Drake's feelings (whether Jackson is the father of Eleanor's second child or not) may be explored more - just by virtue of there being way more material about Jackson than there ever was on Eleanor. Both Liam and Drake look up to Eleanor and Jackson respectively, but just by what I've read so far I already have an idea whose truth may hit harder.

- I still can't get over the fact that the writers have coded Hana's traditional black outfit in the way that they have...so that now, even if you did buy it, it's nowhere to be seen. The plain black dress is pretty but I can't stand to even look at it now.

- Perhaps the reason why Lorelai is being depicted negatively in this series, is not really her treatment of Hana (that should have been reason enough IMO) - since this very team has proved already that they don't exactly care that Hana was abused in that home and had her forgive the likes of Lorelai and Xinghai instead. There's a possibility that they're pushing for a more negative portrayal because she has some involvement or other in all this, and that is how they may create a Hana flashback scene as well. Though I'm not convinced they will place even half the effort on such a scene as they have on Olivia's scene this week.

- If that is the way the story is going, perhaps the larger theme of family then will involve the LIs seeing the family members they so respected, with actual feet of clay that will be hard for them to handle emotionally. Besides intrigue, it will also be a lesson to those very LIs to not repeat the mistakes their families made.

- I find the scene post press conference interesting, since there are tiny hints there that I feel we shouldn't be ignoring. The convenient placement of Godfrey, Regina and Bartie Sr, Bartie Sr's side-comment on Regina who is after all from the Krona duchy and who is related to Godfrey by marriage, Madeleine's offering of apples and her cryptic message to the MC to take care of herself...all of that adds up to something.

- Too bad only white people are allowed to take centerstage in this story.

• Anyway, that's for now from me. Until Saturday, guys!

[mst3kproject]

1109: Yongary: Monster from the Deep

 The first time I saw Yongary was when I was on a Kaiju Eiga binge over Christmas break one year.  It was on YouTube, with the sound removed for copyright infringement, and no subtitles.  At the time, this didn’t bother me much.  I thought I’d seen enough weird monster movies that I could guess what was going on from the visuals.  It turned out I really couldn’t.  Even now that I’ve seen it with sound, I’m still not sure what happened in this movie.

Korea’s top astronaut has just gotten married when he’s called off to a space emergency – somebody is testing bombs in the middle east and they need a guy in space to watch it.  The bombing causes earthquakes that cross the globe until they reach Korea, where the ground cracks open to reveal, what else? An oddly rubbery and humanoid monster!  Yongary proceeds to devastate the land, as oddly rubbery and humanoid monsters do, feeding on oil and taking an occasional nap, until the astronaut’s very much younger brother (I think) Icho and future brother-in-law (again, I think) Ilo discover its one weakness: itching powder.

So yeah, there’s a lot to unpack here.

If Yongary has a visual aesthetic, it’s empty pockets and boundless enthusiasm.  The production appears to have had very little money and they spread it very thin, resulting in effects that are shoddy and unconvincing across the board… and yet, the people who created them went all-out, absolutely determined to wring every last jeon out of their budget.  The monster suit never looks like anything but a monster suit, but they never shy away from showing it.  The model cities are large and elaborate, even as they lack detail or realistic lighting. Shots showing earth from space look like a seventh grade science fair project.  The matte shots are bad.  The itch ray is just light reflected onto things with a mirror.  It all looks terrible, but their hearts were in it.

Unfortunately, not half so much effort appears to have gone into the script, which wanders from character to character in a series of events that are connected only by the monster, and sometimes only barely.  A number of things are set up as if they’re going to be very important and then are simply dropped, leaving the impression that they were only there to fill time.

What, for example, is the point of the space sequence?  They drag the astronaut (whose name I never caught in the movie, and IMDB is no help) away from his honeymoon to observe this nuclear test.  Some kind of failure on the spaceship, perhaps related to said test, puts him in danger but after much worry he reaches the ground safely.  Wow!  Our hero is a great pilot with nerves of steel!  Surely this will be very important later.  Maybe he will be called to do something dangerous to defeat the monster!  Maybe something he saw from space, while he was out of touch with the ground, will be key to saving the day!

Uh, no.  He’s not even in the rest of the movie, really, and we certainly never hear tell of the space program again.  As far as I can tell, the only purpose to any of this was establishing the nuclear test (because everybody knows those create monsters) and then trying to have some tension before Yongary actually emerges.  The whole sequence was filler.

Then there’s the itching ray, which first appears in the hands of little Icho as he plays a prank on the newlyweds.  Exactly why Ilo has invented an itching ray, I don’t know.  Was it intended to do something else and just ended up being itchy?  When Icho swipes it again to use on Yongary, I figured maybe a souped-up itch ray would turn out to be what kills the monster but again, no.  The itching ray doesn’t even set up anything important. I think it’s foreshadowing that itching is Yongary’s weakness, but the ray has nothing to do with the chemical allergy that brings the monster down, besides manifesting a similar symptom.

The fact that itching appears in the movie in more than one context probably makes it a motif.  Why, out of all the possible themes and symbolism you could put in a movie, the makers of Yongary chose itching, I have no idea.  Perhaps it represents something below the surface trying to break free, like the monster itself?  If that’s the case, then it’s fitting that the source of the itching is always externally imposed: the ray and Yongary’s allergy induce itching, and the nuclear test makes the earth ‘itch’ so that Yongary breaks out.  Whether this means anything deeper than that, I honestly cannot say.

Itching brings us to Icho.  I’m pretty sure Icho is the actual main character of this story.  He’s there at the beginning, he’s there at the end, and he’s the one who realizes what the monster’s weakness is.  He even has a bit of an arc, I guess… he’s nothing but an insufferable brat at the beginning of the film, and while he continues to be bratty throughout he does develop a more mature outlook, coming to understand the need for Yongary’s destruction while still feeling sorry for the monster.

Icho is clearly supposed to have some kind of emotional bond with Yongary, but this is completely one-sided and even less justified than Kenny’s supposed friendship with Gamera.  Whereas Gamera saved Kenny from falling to his death, I don’t think Yongary ever even notices Icho – which is probably all for the best, since Icho is doing things like turning off his food supply and zapping him with itching rays.   Icho’s defense of Yongary is also a little more realistic than Kenny’s of Gamera. He never insists that Yongary is good and gentle, only that the monster didn’t mean to hurt anybody.  This is probably true.  Yongary is not presented as a creature with a personality or intentions, he is merely a force of nature, doing what giant rubber monsters do.  He does not seem capable even of understanding that he is causing suffering.

What’s kind of interesting about this is that it makes it clear that Gamera, rather than Godzilla, was the primary inspiration for Yongary.  The monster emerges as a result of a nuclear bombing that is never mentioned again. It eats oil and is strengthened by fire. Annoying little kids like it for no readily apparent reason.  As an attempt to create a Kaiju franchise in 1967, when the genre was already well-established, it was probably inevitable that Yongary would look like a ripoff of something, but the choice of Gamera for a model seems particularly weird when we consider the ending.  At the end of Gamera, the monster was sent to Mars where he would presumably continue to live without bothering humanity.  This is pretty cool and appeals to children.

In Yongary, the monster dies of internal bleeding while Icho watches.  This doesn’t seem to have bothered Icho but it sure disturbed Jonah and the bots, and once I saw it in a context where I understood what was happening, it made my jaw drop, too.  When I think back on the deaths of monsters in Kaiju Eiga, they tend to be fairly quick affairs: in Godzilla, King of the Monsters, the oxygen-destroyer pretty much instantly skeletonizes things.  Even bad-guy monsters tend to die or be driven off in one final blow or finishing move, as when Gamera throws Gaos into the volcano.  When the monsters visibly suffer, like Gamera with the baby Jiger inside him, or Anguirus when Godzilla rips his tongue out, it’s shocking and unpleasant.  Maybe this is because we think of these movies as being for children, or perhaps it’s the unavoidable anthropomorphic shape of the creature suits.  Whatever the reason, Yongary’s death is a major tonal departure and the ‘happy ending’ that follows it makes it even weirder.

I know basically nothing about the geography of Korea, but people who do have apparently written a great deal about how important the landscape is to Yongary.  According to critic Steve Ryfle, Yongary emerges in the northern part of Korea, near where the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed in 1953 – this makes him perhaps symbolic of aggression from the north, marching inexorably down the peninsula towards Seoul.  Korean critic Kim Songho noted that Yongary destroys the old Seoul Capital building, a symbol of the Japanese occupation of Korea before and during World War II (the building was knocked down in the 90s for this reason).

Using your giant monster to make a political statement, particularly an anti-war or anti-colonial one, is nothing new, but I don’t think the makers of Yongary intended a unified one by this.  The two political messages in the landscape seem opposed to each other: one paints Yongary as a semi-foreign force of aggression, the other as a native being destroying a symbol of foreign aggression.  This isn’t a problem for me, the non-Korean viewer, and the two ideas work fine when they’re each considered in isolation, but they do speak to the overall lack of unity in the script.

That lack of unity is probably the biggest single obstacle to enjoying Yongary for what it is, rather than the ironic amusement people like me get out of bad movies.  The jarring ending, the space program that is set up and then not used, and the inconsistent symbolism all make Yongary: Monster from the Deep feel like something assembled from parts rather than being a coherent whole.  All movies are made by committees, but a good movie shouldn’t feel like it was.