#or. yeah. like there was another story where the protagonist acts differently and someone edited that story to make this one

[auberginesdonthavelimbs]

Just finished book 2 of 5. I was impressed at how grounded and believable the protagonist was at first; everything she did felt like what a 15-year-old in her situation would do.

But then, alas, the love triangle. She had to be illogically in love with the guy she'd had two conversations with because. You know.

And of course he's also gross and possessive, and the other guy is a bit too but not as bad. But also literally just everyone involved in this situation has handled it so badly. Mostly before the book started. So much of this could have been avoided.

So, not important why, the fairies needed an in to human society, so they picked a fairy girl who was still young enough to pass for a human toddler but I guess in their culture old enough to make life and death decisions for herself. Someone compared her mental development at that age to a human 11- or 12-year old.

She agrees to have her memories completely and irretrievably erased. Her entire identity will be erased and replaced with a new person who will grow up thinking she's human. This kid has volunteered to die.

And this kid has a best friend, maybe a bit more than a best friend. And she - irresponsibly, cruelly - promises him that she'll try to remember him, and that they'll find a way to be in each other's lives again after her memories are erased.

That was nonsense and she must have been told as much. Either she was lying in a misguided attempt to make it easier for him or she really didn't understand, but either way I think it shows how immature she was.

So this kid's memories get erased. She's basically dead now. A new child occupies her body, who is able to speak and reason but has no autobiographical memories. She grows up and becomes her own person.

Meanwhile, the best friend is waiting to see the girl again. As soon as he's old enough (actually two years before that standard age, no idea why that was allowed), he enlists in the fairy military so he can be assigned as a guard to the girl. They are trained in combat, but the guards' role mostly consists of making sure no one finds out the kid isn't human, and using memory-erasing elixers to cover up any revelations. When the friend enlists, it's been about 7 years, and the girl is, for most intents and purposes, a ten year old child.

He spends the next five years spying on her off and on. For her protection, and to keep the secret, of course. It's still an uncomfortable violation of her privacy, but at least for the other guards it's just a job.

But this guy. Is convinced that his best friend is still in there. Worse, at some point before the book begins, he has managed to convince himself that he is in love with this girl, who he's never actually interacted with outside of spying.

He's a full adult. He was practically an adult when he first enlisted, five years ago. When she was 10.

This should not have happened. It would have been blindingly obvious to anyone why he wanted this assignment so badly. He was obsessed with this girl. He did not hide this fact. Someone should have sat him down and explained that his friend was dead and not coming back. Someone should have denied him the guard duty on the grounds that he is way too emotionally involved. He was clearly not ready to be normal about this child who was wearing his dead friend's face.

(And name, incidentally. That was also a stupid idea. Whoever decided that is also on my list of people who handled this situation badly. This girl, the protagonist, who was raised as a human, deserves better than to be called by the name of the dead child she looks like. It was already going to be hard enough for people who knew that girl to see the protagonist as her own distinct person. Giving her the same name just unnecessarily muddies things.)

And he is not remotely normal about it. He immediately starts flirting with the protagonist the first time they speak. A few conversations later, he says he's in love with her. Not just because she used to be his friend, but also because he watched her singing to herself when she thought she was alone. And whatever else he saw of her when she didn't know he was there.

And I think the adults in his life failed him, and I think his friend told him a cruel lie that gave him false hope, but also he is an adult now and holy shit dude no you are not in love with the child you've been spying on the last five years please stop.

It gets worse in the second book.

I am still planning to finish the series.

I just started reading a Twilight knockoff (affectionate) from 2009 and was delighted to find the protag was a whiny annoying 15yo. She apparently hates other teenagers and complains to her parents about being forced to interact with them. 20 pages in and my expectations are so high.

[rosellerivers19]

Animal: Its weird but at least its self aware

So I heard about Animal being well . . . kinda insane when it first came out I also heard people who liked it though later on.

I saw a few scenes of the movie and seeing the violence I thought it was probably a really bad movie since so many people thought that.

but I've been watching a bit of it recently and well I don't think its that bad. Now if you've seen my last post you'd ask how I can dislike Pushpa but like Animal and I'm not saying I like Animal per se I also don't absolutely hate pushpa the movie I just didn't find it entertaining. Animal for me however was really entertaining for me because it's really crazy the protagonist of the movie isn't someone we're supposed to like or agree with he's being blatantly pointed out as crazy by the movie and thats why its fun.

it's so nonsensical and ridiculous that i can't help but cringe and smile while with pushpa I could just hope the song would at least be good.

My previous reaction was that the father in the movie was the 'bad guy' because of a few scenes I saw without actually watching the movie but after watching some of it I'm actually insanely impressed that he was able to deal with ranbeer's character at all.

He has flaws yeah and he admits them he doesn't believe that he's some superior being. I don't love the father character because all of the characters I think aren't really supposed to be liked.

And the movie showing that just makes me happy inside because of how self aware it is.

The violence is still. . . . icky but its not like this movie was going to be my all time favorite.

None of these characters are perfect but its fun to see how they're affected by Ranbir's craziness.

But a scene I found funny was when gita anjali's family was scolding her for falling in love with Ranvijay she just kissed him infront of them

It was really just a "I don't give a damn about you anyway" to her family and they were covering the kids eyes as the bgm starts playing. In the telugu version it actually has a comedical bgm as well

I want every scene to start like that for real

I'm also a bit biased because Gita anjali's brother asked her to say something while her family was scolding her in telugu but what ever.

And its not like their relationship was seen as something good or to take example of since well he cheated on her because he's a crazy bastard.

I also like the mood swings he has from sensible to mental it makes the movie more funny because you don't know when he'll detonate he's actually a time bomb. *haha got the reference?*

he hates his father one second saying he can't handle being in the same country as him and then tells Gita Anjali that his father is the best in the world?!?!?

I just wish the movie in the trailers advertised itself more like this nonsensical film that they show in the story itself instead of the action drama movie but it makes sense more people would like to see that.

I will edit this when I finish watching the movie

Edit: Also another thing

I saw on tiktok a scene about the film where Ranvijay was telling Geetanjali to

"think like a man gita anjali! think like you have biceps like me, even down there you've got something like I've got"

And oh god I almost doubled over laughing

Ah yes like think like the man who says 'Papa' in 50 different accents and acts like a madman in 2 seconds flat.

Do not get me started on that alpha scene-

[moemammon]

When I was in High School, my crush and I got into a fight and neither of us were talking to each other. One day I was headed up the stairwell to get to my science class, when I saw them coming up from behind... I don't think they had even noticed me yet considering that they were busy talking to their friend BUT I am slow going up stairs so even if I rushed up the stairs roadrunner style they would have caught up to me, well; the little corner that connects the steps going up to the second floor and the steps heading down to the ground floor had a large open window... and I jumped out, like I literally just jumped out. I didn't even think it through, I just saw the window and my body was like "Yep, IK what to do." I landed on a bush or tree? It's too big to call a bush but too small to call a tree, landed in a squat before my feet gave out and I fall onto my knees and got two large grass stains on my jeans knee part, couldn't walk right either after that landing, I was shaky all day lol but it was a risk well calculated bc the whole thing would have been so awkward. I mean we used to be like BFFS before the rumors began and then they started and we just stopped talking without warning, we couldn't even look at each other. Our science partners, bc we were in groups of four, literally got fed up of our bullshit bc we literally refused to acknowledge the others existence... anyway, I digress...

Anyway, this whole story is a long winded way of me requesting how the brothers would react to an MC that literally just jumps out windows to avoid awkward moments, or to dodge people that want to ask them for favors, or when they straight up want to avoid someone?

And sorry about the large ass message, but thanks for letting me vent

You have a special place in my heart, window-jumping anon. Just uhhhhhhh look down next time okay? Ily

The Demon Brothers react to GN!MC jumping out of a window to avoid an awkward moment

(Mario jumping sound effect)

Lucifer

He approached you after class to ask exactly what you were snickering at your D.D.D. about during class.

Must've been real funny if you weren't listening to your lecture, huh?

"I imagine you've somehow found something worthy of laughing about in Demonology 101?"

You do not have the guts to tell him that you and Mammon were texting back and forth, abusing a new photo editing app to alter pictures of the eldest himself.

I mean, take a wild guess about how he’d react to seeing how big you edited his head to be-

The avatar of pride lets his eyes pierce into you, like he's trying to stare a hole through your blanket of "uh"s and "um"s,

You don't exactly see a way out of this one, but you can NOT let Lucifer see your photo gallery.

So you glance to your left to the open classroom window, and do the only thing you can think of: you jump.

Luckily you're on the ground floor so you??? really didn't have to jump so dramatically. But the fact that you yeeted yourself into a bush JUST to escape has left Lucifer speechless.

Honestly? He so impressed with your dedication that he's not gonna stop you. Besides, he's gonna see you back at home anyway so-

Also thinks you might be hanging around Mammon too much because that 100% seems like a stunt he’d pull.

Mammon

GIVE GOLDIE BACK RIGHT NOW

He KNOWS Lucifer told you to bring the credit card to him, and he demands to know where it's hidden! He's positive you know where it is!

But you don't really though?? You just brought the card to him like you were asked. If anything, you're the victim here!

But Mammon isn't having that. The avatar of greed is circling around you like an angry cat, patting you all over like airport security to see if you've got his beloved card.

"Where is it, huh?! Ya really think you can steal from THE Mammon?! Even if Lucifer told ya to, who do ya think you are?!"

When he has confirmed that you don't in fact have his previous Goldie, he's now cornering you up against a wall.

If looks could kill, you would've exploded into a fine powder

And you feel like your mental strength is about to do just that. So what do you do after you notices the slightest of breezes caress your face?

You jump outta that open window, before Mammon can even finish his "Wh- Oi! What're ya-"

Even though you just face planted into the garden, you're up on your feet and making a mad dash for somewhere that wasn't here.

Mammon lets you run for ten while seconds before he's hopping out after you. You think you can outfox the Great Mammon?! Think again!!!

Levi

You... weren't interested in this movie in the slightest, but you didn't have the heart to tell Levi that. Especially not after he’d begged/harassed you for the past week about watching it with him!

Reluctantly you agreed, and now you were suffering,,,But Levi was ecstatic! This movie was a classic! Sure it was an old one and the acting was a little bad, but you could overlook that if you watched it with your heart, not your eyes!

According to Levi.

You managed to keep your eyes open for the grueling one and a half hour movie, enduring every corny line of bad acting, horrible CGI, and lame sound effects straight out of a 90s super hero movie, and now the hell was finally over...

Or so you though, until Levi followed that up by immediately pulling out a cosplay outfit worn by one of the supporting characters in the show.

Funny how it seemed specifically tailored to your measurements. Even funnier how Levi was looking at you with those damned eyes.

You knew what he wanted without him even having to say it. But one look at the gaudy outfit he presented to you made your heart burn with a sudden indescribable urge.... to escape.

Honestly you caught him so off guard by suddenly getting up and sprinting out of the room, that he makes a sound that's pretty much the noise equivalent of "?!?!?!?!?!?"

He watches you run down to the end of the hall, throw the window open, and fuckin JUMP. Pretty sure he just witnessed your death??

Also this kinda solidified his 'gross otaku' mentality, seeing as you literally jumped out of a window to get out of cosplaying with him. A simple no would've sufficed, MC.......,.,,..,,,

Hey gamers... can we get an F in the chat? 😔✌️💦

Satan

Satan lent you a book to read last week that he was sure you'd be interested in! He found it pretty interesting himself, so he wants to see if you'd like it as much as he did.

That being said, you don't have the heart to tell him that you,,, didn't read any of it. Well you kind of did, if the cover counts for anything.

You doubt he would accept that as an answer, considering how you told him how much you appreciated receiving the book, and how you'd definitely read it and let him know how it was.

So now, Satan had come into your room with two cups of tea, ready to settle down and have a nice, long talk about your thoughts on the riveting plot that you promised you would indulge in.

"I'm really glad you decided to read it. I found that the protagonist reminded me a lot like you. I'd like to know what you thought about it."

Satan sets down the tea cups, and one sip tells you that he brewed it exactly the way you like.

His expression is eager and warm as he waits for you to begin gushing about just how deeply the story touched you... how absolutely moved you are by the sheer majesty that was the book he lent you...

Okay yeah, you're sweating bullets. You can't imagine how the sparkly eyed avatar of wrath would react to learning that you chose the company of your D.D.D. over Satan's book.

You don't have such an ice cold hard that you can just crush this book nerds dreams like that! And every time you look at his expectant face, the weight of your crimes weigh heavier on you until... you break.

Satan watches in shock and awe as you almost perfectly reenact the big scene where the main character leaps out of the window of a building rigged to explode, before making their escape. And you did just that.

Wow.. he never thought you could be so moved by a story, but he completely understands...

Asmo

How many outfits, Asmo. HOW MANY OUTFTITS WILL IT TAKE TO APPEASE YOU?

He's made you model TWELVE outfits so far, and you swear if you see another ascot, you're gonna lose your mind.

Asmodeus doesn't seem to notice the way the light slowly fades from your eyes, because he's pulling out outfit number thirteen with that cheery smile of his.

"Isn't this one absolutely adorable? Look, this part will look lovely around your waist! This part here hugs your body in all the right places, and this-"

You can't do it. You've gotta get out of here. You'd love to stand around and get mild rug burn from trying on a billion different clothes, but-

Actually no you wouldn't.

You DID promise Asmo you'd hang out with him today, but this wasn't really your idea of a good time.

"-Oooh, just thinking about it makes me want to eat you up~! Here, put it on for me, will you? I'll give you a kiss as a reward!"

You would do no such thing.

You make a mad dash for his ornate window and push it open. He has no time to stop you as he helplessly watches you vault yourself out like the room was on fire.

"MC?! Wh-where are you going?? Come back here! Grass stains are impossible to get out of that fabric!!!"

Beel

He means well. I swear he does. It's just that Beel can be a little... overbearing when he's worried about you. He cares, okay?

But he hasn't seen you eat anything all day! You tell him it's because you've got a stomach ache from who knows what, and you promise you've had little snacks here and there to keep from starving, but he can't accept that!

Eating is important, and you need it to survive. So Beelzebub was currently trying to nudge your mouth open with a pizza slice, while you vehemently refused. "Just one bite. And then another after that. You have to eat, or you'll go hungry... and I don't want that."

Beel knows the true pain of being hungry, and he’d never wish that on you! So just forget about your stomach ache for two seconds and open up-

Not that you really can. The aroma of that pizza was not sitting well on your stomach, and you were pretty sure you needed a fast escape or you'd risk losing your lunch. Greasy foods didn't exactly mix well with sour stomachs...

Beel still won't let up. He has a strong hand planted firmly on the small of your back, as if trying to prevent you from leaning back any further in your attempt to escape the pizza.

"If you eat this, I'll treat you to dessert at Madam Screams," he says, as if bribing your refusal of food USING food will somehow work out.

You can't break his heart, but you seriously can't eat that! Your head is spinning, thoughts racing, face becoming greasier and greasier from the pizza pressed against it, and-

You snap. In a sudden burst of strength you break free from Beel's grasp, and sprint toward the nearest window. All you see is your chance for freedom, and you're taking it.

You leap out and tumble into the ground, all while Beelzebub wonders what?? Just happened???? Did you really hate pizza that much...?

He never knew you were such a picky eater... To think you'd go so far as to jump out of the window though...

Belphie

You thought it was cute at first, when Belphegor wanted you to join him for his naps. And you didn't mind much. It was the weekend, you were tired, and he makes a pretty good body pillow.

But you didn't realize he planned for this to become an everyday thing. The youngest might not act it, but he sure could be spoiled.

But seriously, if you slept any longer, you might never have a normal sleep schedule again! It never occurred to you just how often Belphie sleeps.

He's definitely not human, because there's no way you can keep up with that, and maintain a normal lifestyle.

But the way he quietly, gently grabs your sleeve to cue your next nap session makes your heart clench. Why was it so damned hard to say no to this gremlin??

You were trying your best though, but the words always seemed to get caught in your throat. Belphie picked apart your excuses, doing everything in his power to take you back to the attic.

"You can study when you wake up." "Mammon wants to go shopping? Reschedule." "Lucifer told you not to be late to the board meeting? Just hide."

You're starting to get sucked into the sleepy lull of his voice, and it feels like your entire body is becoming heavy with fatigue. But no.... you resist!

Since there's no escaping this through words, you have to think fast. Fortunately, your fast thinking has led to an amazing solution!

Jump out of the window, baby

Belphie is just??? Did you fuckin???? Are your legs okay??????????????

He probably stops asking you to nap with him for a while, since you're willing to almost break your legs just to get out of it. You're gonna make him have weird dreams....

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

Modern Munkustraps and Why 2016 Misto Is Boring (And Also Why Tugger Is Less Good Now)

So, yeah, this is a very long, poorly edited essay that is basically just me writing down a bunch of feelings about the Broadway Revival and why it doesn’t work for me. Of course, it’s not the worst thing out there and everyone can like what they like, but here’s one big reason why I don’t like this particular thing.

So, I’ve mentioned that, having seen the whole thing, I don’t particularly like the 2016 Broadway Revival of Cats. I adore the cast, I appreciate the effort everyone clearly put into it, and some individual numbers work well enough out of context, but it’s a case of strong parts forming a weak whole.

One of the problems I had with it was with the character of Mistoffelees. It should be clear to anyone looking around this blog that Mistoffelees is my favorite character in the show. I hate insulting any Mistoffelees, which is why 2019 Mistoffelees frustrates me so much. The moment I realized I’d become a fan of Cats was when I was genuinely angry when I learned that Tom Hooper cast a non-dancer as Mistoffelees. Basically, problems with Mistoffelees will motivate me to rant.

In 2016, the problem with Mistoffelees isn’t the choreography. I prefer the original to the new stuff, but Misto’s material was fine. Ricky Ubeda completely nailed the dance part of the role. Broadway Revival Misto is still worlds above Tom Hooper’s Misto in every way. Really, the problem with 2016 Misto is that it often feels like he isn’t there. He has very little presence. His dancing is impressive, and his dynamic with Tugger is cute and fun, but he has no real personality outside of it. I don’t know how he feels about any character other than Tugger. There are no moments that center around him other than his dance solos. He doesn’t seem to have much of an arc when it comes to saving the day at the end. Is he already confident in his magical abilities? Is he still unsure of himself? Is he trying to prove himself? How does he feel about anything that happens to or around him?

As a show with a large ensemble cast, it’s impossible for every single character to feel fully developed. But, in shows/stories with large ensemble casts, there are always a few characters who stand out. Instead of a single protagonist with one big arc, you have several main characters with their own small arcs. Munkustrap is the group’s leader who has to fight to defend his tribe. Demeter has survived an abusive relationship and she confronts her abuser and starts to move on, finding a potential partner who she can trust. In the 1998 film, at least, Mungojerrie has an interesting arc. He used to work for Macavity, but he left. When Macavity shows up, Jerrie’s terrified of him. He knows what he’s capable of and probably witnessed some really messed up shit. But, when Munkustrap is wounded and Alonzo is struggling to fight Macavity on his own, Jerrie is the first cat to join the fight. He doesn’t do very well, but this inspires other cats to help out as well, and Macavity is eventually outnumbered and forced to flee.

Mistoffelees is another character with an arc. He’s coming of age, no longer a child but not really an adult either. He’s trying to prove himself and be seen as an adult. He has magical powers, but he still struggles to control them and doesn’t know exactly what he’s capable of. Outside of magic and dancing, he’s awkward and doesn’t fit in socially with neither the kittens nor the adults.

When Old Deuteronomy is kidnapped, and everything seems hopeless, Mistoffelees really isn’t participating in the action. Although he’s publicly done magic before and other cats have noticed, Tugger’s suggestion that Mistoffelees might be able to help is dismissed by most of the group at first. But, Tugger is completely confident in Misto’s abilities. He’s the first cat to believe in him that much. Tugger hypes up Misto and his confidence builds until he’s willing to try using magic to bring Old Deuteronomy back and succeeds. He’s a hero now, and he’s known to have a skill that no one else possesses. He’s respected by the tribe. As someone who can be consulted in emergencies, Mistoffelees can now be seen as an adult.

Now, Mistoffelees didn’t always have this arc. The Originial Broadway Misto comes across as completely confident in his abilities the whole time. Actors who played Misto in the 80s tended to play him as the same age as Munkustrap, already one of the adults and already established in the tribe. But, starting in the early 90s, some actors started to play Misto younger and less secure. By the time the filmed 1998 production was done, that had become the standard way to play Misto. I think the actors cast in the role wanted to make things more interesting, since Misto getting Old Deuteronomy back is a bit of an anticlimax. There’s a problem. It’s solved immediately. On with the show. But this was a big, spectacle-heavy number near the end of the show. It feels like it should mean something, but it just doesn’t. Old Deuteronomy is easily returned to the tribe and then Memory happens and makes everything else seem meaningless.

But, what if Mister Mistoffelees wasn’t about getting Old Deuteronomy back? What if Mister Mistoffelees was actually about Mister Mistoffelees. Having the song be a moment when a young cat comes of age makes it feel like the song means something, even if the stuff with Old Deuteronomy is anticlimactic. Since it happens late in the show, there’s plenty of time to build up to it. Misto is on stage for most of the musical. His character can be established. We can see him trying to prove himself and failing to socially connect with the other cats. So, when he does prove himself and he does gain the approval of the cats who dismissed him as a weirdo, it’s satisfying. The song has a bigger impact when Mistoffelees is portrayed as a young man coming of age.

So, what does any of this have to do with the Broadway Revival? Why does the title of this essay mention Munkustrap when the essay itself is mostly about Mistoffelees?

Well, it’s because Revival Era Munkustraps have stolen Misto’s character arc.

The Broadway Revival isn’t the only version of Cats to do this. Tecklenburg actually constructs the story around it, making Munkustrap the protagonist. It seems like the changes to Munkustrap’s character started to appear when the show started getting revived. When I say Revival Era, I mean every version of Cats put on after the London Revival in 2014, though there are naturally some outliers. This was when Grizabella was redesigned and rewritten. This was when an attempt was made to redesign and rewrite Tugger, which was thankfully abandoned soon after.

Before this era, it wasn’t really confirmed to the general public that Munkustrap and Tugger were Old Deuteronomy’s sons. They were still often portrayed that way, but it wasn’t something anyone thought viewers needed to know. The dynamic between Munkustrap and Tugger began to change now that everyone was expected to view them as siblings. Tugger, instead of messing with every authority figure on stage, now tends to single Munkustrap out. He wants to annoy his older sibling. The Tecklenburg non-replica didn’t even bother showing anyone but Munkustrap being frustrated with Tugger’s antics. The vibe you get in these productions is that Munkustrap is the older sibling who is left in charge while Dad’s not home and he’s trying to be responsible, while Tugger, as the younger sibling, is constantly messing around and annoying him.

Compare how Munkustrap and Tugger interacted during Tugger’s number in 1998 vs. 2016. In both versions, Tugger crashes the party and Munkustrap is not amused. But, in 1998, Munkustrap stands back and waits for Tugger to basically get all that rebellious energy out of his system. If he has a few moments to run wild, he’ll calm down and act up less later on. So, Munkustrap just waits it out. As for Tugger, he never directly targets Munkustrap when he’s messing with the authority figures. He targets Jenny and Jelly, and Skimble by proxy, but he leaves Munkustrap alone. Both brothers have some silent agreement not to get in each other’s way.

In 2016, most of the moments where Tugger messes with an authority figure have Munkustrap as that authority figure. He’s more focused on annoying his brother than anyone else. He and Munkustrap are sort of bickering throughout the song, with Munkustrap being one of the cats who gets the “terrible bore” line. 1998 Munkustrap wouldn’t do this. He doesn’t get the “terrible bore” line because he’s too mature to insult Tugger like that. Instead, Misto, a more immature character does it.

These two different dynamics imply that Munkustrap and Tugger are in different age groups. 1998 Munkustrap tries to take the high road when Tugger crashes the party and Tugger has enough respect for him not avoid targeting him personally. The only exception is with the bagpipes in The Pekes and the Pollicles, and he was mostly doing that to entertain the others. He starts a dance party and then gets disappointed when it doesn’t work a second time. Munkustrap was already being annoyed by everything else that was going on as well, so Tugger’s antics don’t stand out in that regard. The vibe you get is that, though Tugger does like teasing Munkustrap a bit, they have a mutual respect for one another that they both take seriously. They’re both adults, too mature to bicker.

When Tugger targets Munkustrap with his antics and Munkustrap tries to argue back, they come across like two kids bickering. They both seem younger. This means that, in general, 2016 Munkustrap is played younger than 1998 Munkustrap. 2016 Munkustrap’s arc is about him learning to be a good leader, probably hosting the ball for the first time. He wants everything to be perfect so he can prove himself to his father. His defending the tribe and being willing to give Grizabella a chance are moments when Munkustrap begins to come of age.

So, 2016 Munkustrap’s arc is that he’s a young man, just coming of age, trying to prove himself, and eventually doing so. It’s not identical to Misto’s arc, but it’s pretty close.

And this is why 2016 Misto fails to stand out. Munkustrap’s arc makes Misto’s feel redundant, so he doesn’t have it. 2016 Misto already has Tugger supporting him from the very start and never feels like he lacks confidence. But, with Misto’s arc given to Munkustrap, nothing was put in its place, so Misto no longer has an arc. You don’t have scenes of him trying to appear mature and sophisticated around Bustopher, or his awkward attempt to help Old Deuteronomy and Munkustrap defend the tribe when Macavity’s around, or any of those other little moments that give Misto personality, because he no longer has the arc that those scenes are part of. There’d be no pay-off.

Honestly, the biggest problem with this isn’t that Munkustrap is different, but that his character was given this story and the expense of another character’s arc. Munkustrap already had a smaller arc that took a backseat to his role as storyteller and protector. He’s already the perfect leader, with his only flaw being his grudge against Grizabella. The main thing Munkustrap has to learn is the moral of the entire play. Outside of that, he’s the narrator and the straight man in the more comedic numbers.

This change also isn’t very good for Tugger. Tugger is not really a character with an arc. He doesn’t change any more than anyone else does. What changes, is how the audience, and some of the other characters, perceive him. In his own number, he’s fun, but he also comes across as a bit of a jerk. He doesn’t care what other people think of him, but that means he doesn’t seem to care about upsetting them either. His interactions with his fans sometimes demonstrate this. He just casually knocks over Tumblebrutus and Pouncival, briefly uses the latter as a chair, and then knocks them over again. Tumblebrutus and Pouncival both think Tugger is awesome, so they don’t mind, but that’s not a very nice way to treat kids who look up to you, even if they don’t mind.

But, then we get to Old Deuteronomy. Tugger appears again, interrupting Munkustrap, apparently being rude again, but then you hear what he’s actually saying. He’s also narrating about and praising Old Deuteronomy. At first, it’s kind of funny, because he’s just talking about how Old D got around, but then you get this line:

And his numerous progeny prospers and thrives And the village is proud of him in his decline

When he mentions “numerous progeny” he gestures over the crowd, ending on Munkustrap. He’s one of those numerous progeny, but he never gestures to himself. He never references himself as Old Deuteronomy’s son, but he does mention Munkustrap. This is followed by “and the village is proud of him”. After the “numerous progeny” line, it’s an awkward circle back to the main topic. But, Tugger seems to address Munkustrap as he says this. In his own way, he’s telling Munkustrap that he’s doing a good job and that everyone’s proud of him.

And then, when Munkustrap and Tugger duet, Munkustrap looks so happy about it. He didn’t expect Tugger to behave and he’s thankful for it. It’s a heartwarming moment and it shows Tugger in a new light. He was inconsiderate during his own number, but now he’s showing nothing but sincere respect for his family.

But, Old Deuteronomy is the ultimate authority figure of the tribe. Everyone loves him and he outranks Tugger. Having Tugger be so sincere here, in contrast to his attitude before, is mainly to show just how beloved Old Deuteronomy is. Even a cat who delights in pissing off authority figures has nothing but respect for him. The real stand-out moment is Mister Mistoffelees.

So, after the fight with Macavity, the tribe is in pretty bad shape. Their leader has been kidnapped and their protector is wounded. And, the kittens witnessed all of it. They saw Macavity kidnap Old Deuteronomy while they could do nothing to stop it. Macavity actually attacked Etcetera and Electra, who both tried to stand up to him. Jemima was right next to Etcetera when she was hit. Then, their protector, the strength of the tribe, someone they probably saw as invincible, gets beaten up in a fight. Munkustrap, when knocked unconscious, lands right in front of Electra, the kitten who seemed to have the closest relationship to him. Electra and Rumpleteazer try to wake him up, but they can’t. Mungojerrie can’t stand it and goes to take on Macavity himself.

So, there was a lot of violence and the kittens had front row seats. Now they’re all sitting in the dark with no idea what to do.

Then, Tugger speaks up. Right away, he has a solution. Tugger starts up a musical number and you can see the kittens getting into it like they’re at a rock concert. Not only does he have a solution to the big problem the tribe is facing, but he presents it in a way that distracts the kittens from what just happened.

And this is all without mentioning the subject matter. Unlike Old Deuteronomy, Mistoffelees doesn’t outrank Tugger and he doesn’t have the universal respect of the tribe. Tugger just thinks Misto is awesome and he’s singing an entire song about it. Misto was the cat who casually insulted him during his own number, but Tugger’s ego was unaffected. Tugger responds with absolute faith and support.

And Misto needs that faith and support. Throughout the entire ball, Misto has been trying to impress the authority figures of the tribe. Tugger, with how popular he is with the younger cats, has a lot of influence over the tribe. He’s an authority figure, in a sense. But, he was the only one in that category who Misto not only didn’t try to impress, but straight-up rejected. He doesn’t care what Tugger thinks. With everyone else in his generation either wanting Tugger or wanting to be Tugger, he stands out. Tugger respects that. And, Misto gets the approval he was looking for in the one place he didn’t bother to look. Misto finally getting that approval is what builds up his confidence so he can bring back Old Deuteronomy. And then Tugger gives him all the credit.

So, the audience is introduced to a character who seems egotistical and inconsiderate. But, he’s not. He never was. Tugger does things for the lulz sometimes. He likes to make a scene and he likes to make a mess. But, the Rum Tum Tugger is artful and knowing. He pays a lot of attention to the other cats and he cares about them. He loves his family, he looks after the kittens, and he gives support to those who need it. He’s actually not that different from Munkustrap.

But, the younger Tugger who bickers with Munkustrap comes across as more genuinely immature and it makes the more sincere moments feel out of nowhere. It’s hard for someone playing a younger Tugger to remain in character during the more serious moments. It just feels like whiplash.

Tldr: So, yeah, the point of this very long essay is that 2016 Munkustrap’s character arc, which has spread to pretty much every production of Cats done in the last five years, has the side effect of making Mistoffelees boring and Tugger obnoxious. It’s an alright arc for Munkustrap, but it sacrifices the arcs of other major characters in a way that a show with an ensemble cast can’t afford to do.

[queenofnohr]

Twisted Wonderland: Floyd Leech Birthday Suit-up (SSR) - Voice Lines + Personal Story

Voice Lines

SSR Summoning Quote: Today, me n’ Jade are the stars of the show~ You’re looking forward to giving us presents, right? Summoning Line: Hey, isn’t it a landweller tradition to sing a birthday song? Then let’s hop to it. Start on three, okay? Groovy: Thanks for celebrating with me. I’ll give you lotsa interesting things on your birthday, Shrimpy. Set Home: Happy Birthday to me! I’m excited to see what kinda birthday this’ll be. Home Idle 1: Azul shined my shoes for me, so I wanted to put ‘em on right away. Look, they’re so shiny you can see your reflection in ‘em. Isn’t it great? Home Idle 2: I got a lot of birthday presents from my parents. But the dorm rooms are small so they stopped sending big ones. Hmph~ Home Idle 3: *yawn*...... All the excitement’s making me sleepy. Wonder if I should go get someone to gimme a present to stay awake. Home Login: Can you guess who the first person who wished me happy birthday was? The correct answer is…… Jade! Every year we’re the first to wish each other happy birthday. Home Idle Groovy: Shrimpy, isn’t that plate bad for serving food? Fufu, it’s okay, you don’t have to start over. It’s funnier this way. Home Tap 1: Professor Knifejaw said that since it’s my birthday, if I don’t do my homework, he’ll give me extra “presents.” He’s so meaaaan. Home Tap 2: Otter gave me a percussion instrument from the Land of Hot Sands! He also gave Jade a string instrument, and the main color on them matches our hair. Home Tap 3: I pestered Goldfish for a gift and he gave me a shoehorn even though he was super mad. It’s even engraved with an F! It matches Jade’s. Aha! Home Tap 4: Sea-snake and Crabby hit me with pies at club practice. It was lotsa fun in the end, with everyone throwing them at each other~ Home Tap 5: What is it, you curious about my brooch? It’s got the same design on it as the shoes I wear with my dorm uniform~ It almost looks like it was shrunk down by magic. Home Tap Groovy: Hey, what’re hiding behind your back? Aha, you’re so obvious, acting all suspicious like that. Go ahead and hand your present over now.

Personal Story

Birthday Suit-up Chapter 1

Happy Birthday, Floyd Leech

-Octavinelle Dorm - Birthday Party Venue-

NRC School Newspaper Special Edition Interview with the Birthday Boy ~Floyd Edition~

> —Happy Birthday.

Floyd: Oh, you came to wish us well, too, Shrimpy. Thanks~

Please tell us how you feel after celebrating.

Floyd: It was real lively and suuuuuuper fun. We’ve had parties at our parents’ house, but it was never this boisterous. I liked how this one wasn’t so stiff n’ stuffy.

—I’ve heard that you always have sweets in your room; is that true?

Floyd: Huh? Isn’t it obvious, Shrimpy? Even if you eat dinner, dontcha get hungry before bed? It’s ‘cause both me n’ Jade are still growing.

—What are your favorite sweets?

Floyd: Mmm, it kinda depends on my mood that day…… A while back I used to really like peppermint candy. A week ago it was melon soda-flavored gummies…… and yesterday it was almond biscotti. I think chewiness matters more than flavor when it comes to the stuff I like. I also like stuff I can only find on land. If you find some rare treats, lemme know will ya, Shrimpy?

I will. Semi-related— what’s your favorite food?

Floyd: That would be~...... takoyaki! Oh, do you know what takoyaki is? Eh, you don’t know, Shrimpy? I didn’t expect the people at school to know, but you’re like a walking dictionary, aren’t ya? Just the other day, after the Mostro Lounge closed, me n’ Jade got together with some other Octavinelle guys and ate some. They’re pretty hard to flip when you’re making them, but I’ve done it so many times I’m reallyyyy good at it now. Also, even though it’s called takoyaki, if you use other ingredients for the filling, you’ll never get bored of it.

What kinds of ingredients have you tried?

Floyd: First was shrimp and cheese! Then sausages, then oysters....... Tomato, broccoli, shoots, fresh cream, chocolate, anchovies, potato salad, and konjac......

You’ve sure tried a lot of things.

Floyd: Yeah, I have. In the end, it turns into a game of who can make one with the weirdest combination…… They all turn out so bad it’s funny! I ate everything properly ‘cause Azul got mad that we made all that gross food. Next time, I’ll invite you too, Shrimpy. It’s a promise.

Birthday Suit-up Chapter 2

—You often leave your collar open; do you have difficulty keeping it closed?

Floyd: I wouldn’t say it’s difficult, just annoying. Just ‘cause I’m good at squeezing people, doesn’t mean I like being squeezed, ya’know? When I first got on land, I didn’t like clothes either. It felt like there was seaweed clinging to my body all the time. And on top of that, you gotta wash your clothes every time you wear them, right? I wondered why humans would bother with such a troublesome thing. But now I like picking out my clothes. Being able to wear lotsa different colors is fun. Shrimpy, did you know? Even if it’s a flashy color on land, it’ll look dark under the sea. Besides, with stuff like clothes, shoes, accessories…… It’s fun to get all dressed up on land. But I get in trouble when I buy a bunch of stuff and load it all up in the room. ‘Cause Jade cleans the room, we got a lot of empty space, so I asked him if I could use it for my stuff, but he cut down my request with a single, “No.” Ahhhh. I wonder if I can use another dorm room for storage.

Is there anything you like to collect?

Floyd: Eh~? Well, Jade likes collecting plants, and Azul likes collecting coins, but…… I tried collecting stuff, but I got bored of it…… Oh, I guess there’s that. I don’t really collect them, but I did buy stuff with moray eels on them.

What kinds of things did you buy?

Floyd: A T-shirt with a loose sketch of one, and a mascot keychain with a goofy face. Because there’s a legend that says the Sea Witch has super-competent moray eels as henchmen, in the sea eels have a kinda rough image attached to them. They’re carnivorous fish, after all. But it’s really weird how moray eel merch sold on land is strangely cute. I wonder if that’s how eels appear to humans. Anyway, I gave the T-shirt I bought to Jade and he happily put it on. Aha. But Azul said, “Don’t you dare go out wearing that.” Even though it’s soooooo cute, isn’t he so mean~?

Birthday Suit-Up Chapter 3

—Which do you prefer - your human form or your merman form?

Floyd: When I first got into my human form, I didn’t know how to move my tail fin- er, legs- and my body felt so heavy…… “I swear I’m gonna turn back into a merman and jump into the sea right now,” is what I was thinking. But lately I’ve been thinking this form isn’t so bad. There are only fish and merfolk in the Coral Sea, but there are lotsa different types of people in the school. So it’s not boring at all. Also…… it’s fun being on land ‘cause I can do stuff like play basketball and dance. Recently, I’ve gotten suuuuper into parkour.

What’s parkour?

Floyd: Oh, you don’t know? It’s when you do stuff like kick off of handrails and walls or climb buildings…… It’s a sport where you head for a goal while keeping your movement as fluid as possible even if there are obstacles.

It sounds difficult.

Floyd: I guess I’ve never really thought of it as easy or hard. I’ve always liked doing obstacle races since I was a kid.

You have obstacle races under the sea……?

Floyd: Yeah. The goal is to swim through a sunken ship on a fixed route. The inside of the sunken ships are broken all over, which makes it complicated to get around since there’s lots of stuff that gets in the way while you’re swimming. You gotta avoid obstacles with minimal movement so you don’t lose your speed while swimming. Then, the one who reaches the goal first wins! ……See, it’s kinda like parkour, right? That’s why I like it. I’m happy I learned to do something new, and it’s fun ‘cause it’s like swimming on land. There’s no set way to avoid stuff or head to a goal, so I guess you could say it’s really…… free? I hate when there’s stupid stiff rules...... Oh, that reminds me, there was a day a while back where I overslept, and when I got to class through a window using parkour, the professor got suuuuuper mad at me. I tried real hard not to be late, so shouldn’t I get praised instead? Next time I’ll try not to get caught. Aha.

Thank you very much for sharing so much with us. And happy birthday, again.

-

*For those unaware, Floyd nicknames everyone after aquatic creatures. (Barred) Knifejaw is Crewel, (Sea) Otter is Kalim, Goldfish is Riddle, Sea-snake is Jamil, Crab/Crabby is Ace, Shrimp/Shrimpy is Yuu/the protagonist.

[collectivefandomstuff]

mum... im being bullied on this site for writing and posting a story that apparently makes me into a racist even though i tried really hard to write it so its clear that the POV character is a shitty person and not me??? halp, i need advice pleaze

Hi there :) this is a sensitive subject, but I’ll give it a try.

When writing, what we’re essentially trying to do is communicate what’s in our heads to someone else’s using words. And, contrary to what some believe, using art/writing/whatever as a medium to convey those thoughts are hard and we all end up miscommunicating eventually. Now, in my experiece there are several types of literary miscommunication so I’ll try to cover them all:

1. Miscommunication due to differing perspectives. This happens when you and your audience comes at a text from different viewpoints. Sometimes it’s that you write from the metaphorical north and you can’t see that from the south this story looks way different. For example, look at 13 reasons why. They had a very graphic suicide scene that was meant to “start a discussion” but had other, much less positive consequences. In these situations, I usually ask myself: 1) am I willing to let the southern perspective stand? (as in, am I okay with what it implies?) and 2) is anyone getting hurt? If so, it’s not generally worth it.

The second incarnation of this miscommunication has to do with ethics. For example, if I were to write a story where the main character has an abortion, I would count on this making the character more sympathetic, not less, since I grew up in a culture without any real “pro-life” movement. I would be wary of the portayal because the protagonist would go through intense emotional turmoil, but I would never give the politics a second thought. Thus, if my audience tells me that the main character is a bad person (or that I am) I can stand firm on my ethics (or change them) and act accordingly.

2. Miscommunication through language. This is a big one. Sometimes when we speak to someone we just express ourselves poorly, and the same thing happens when we write. This one is hard to take as a writer, because there’s a prevailing idea that if you can’t convey your point you’re a bad writer, but that’s not the case. When writing, you usually start off writing cliches that have been written a hundred times before, and as you work at it you eventually start incorporating more of your own creativity into the work. When you do that, you can’t rely on people knowing the formula anymore and that’s when we start making mistakes. Let’s say I base a character on one of my friends, and someone criticizes that character for being a sexist trope since she dresses slutty and is pretty sexual. I’m over here like “no?? that’s Claire!” But in reality I failed to make the text reflect what I know: that Claire is multifaceted and interesting. These miscommunications help us become better writers and they never go away either. You know that one tumblr post about the Literature PhDs who has a whole seminar about whether Edgar Allan Poe was racist? Yeah.

From what you told me, you decided to take on writing an unsympathetic protagonist. That’s real tricky, and also a great way to practice characterisation and writing in general. It’s great that you’re doing it, but it also means that making these sorts of mistakes is more likely.

*this one is extra difficult if you’re writing in a second/third etc. language.

3. Miscommunication due to subconcious bias. We’re all products of our enviroments, upbringings, and experiences. Like with varying ethics due to cultural differences, we can’t ignore that sometimes we have preconceptions we’re not necessarily aware of and those can sneak into our writing. For example: I grew up in Europe, where there’s a strong anti-romani sentiment. The first time I learned about romani it was through the sentence “you can’t trust gypsies, they’re all thieves” (this is a slur and should not be used by non-romani. I’m using it here because this is a direct quote that underlines the severity of the jargon). I’m aware of this, and I conciously try to fight the cultural upbringing I had, but these things run deep. If I wrote a text and someone told me that it was offensive towards romani I would take that seriously, because sometimes bias shows up even when we don’t mean for it to. It doesn’t make us bad people, but it is something we have to be aware of as a possibility when we write.

Finally, there’s one more explanation that has nothing to do with miscommunication. Sometimes, tumblr does that because while tumblr is a safe space it’s also a bubble. A bubble with many, many people that tend to see the world through the good ol’ fashioned black/white goggles. Sometimes the audience is just wrong.

To you, anon, I would like to say this: from what you wrote it seems you’re going through a tough time. It’s hard being the target of an anonymous mass that are accusing you of being a bad person, especially in regards to a work you put a lot of effort into and conciously tried to make non-offensive. It’s okay to feel like you can’t handle it and simply change your account/take down the story/whatever makes you feel safe. Writing a story online shouldn’t become a source of bad feelings and thoughts.

If you want tips on the story itself, I would say try to re-read it and attempt to see it through the eyes of those who critizise you. Do they have a point? You can also ask someone else to read it, to get feedback. It can be really hard to see your own work from another perspective. If the discourse isn’t too toxic, you could also engage with your audience and ask them what parts of your story are making them feel that way, since this isn’t what you intended.

No author is perfect, least of all people writing for fun on the internet and it’s not always apparent to the audience how much their comments can hurt, in the end you wrote this story to communicate something and you’ve become a better writer for it. Likewise, you’ve learned something from the response and you’re under no obligation to leave it up or take it down or fix it or whatever. Don’t let it scare you away from writing more things.

I hope this helped. Take care of yourself anon❤️

Edit: I wanted to add that if people are genuinely drawing a direct link between your views and that of a purposefully flawed character then that’s on them and you should do whatever you feel is best for you and your well being.

[mellicose]

Doctor ... WTF?

An impassioned rant about the steady decline of Doctor Who, the trajectory of the Thirteenth Doctor, and the righteous indignation after The Timeless Children, not only as a Whovian, but as a woman-

I love how certain people are spinning The Timeless Children as being good, yet the BBC has released (2)TWO statements basically telling fans the following:

“Doctor Who is a beloved long-running series and we understand that some people will feel attached to a particular idea they have of the Doctor, or that they enjoy certain aspects of the programme more than others. Opinions are strong and this is indicative of the imaginative hold that Doctor Who has – that so many people engage with it on so many different levels.

We wholeheartedly support the creative freedom of the writers and we feel that creating an origin story is a staple of science fiction writing. What was written does not alter the flow of stories from William Hartnell’s brilliant Doctor onwards – it just adds new layers and possibilities to this ongoing saga.”

Creative freedom, huh? Ask Joe Hill about it. Or Gaiman. The writers, including Chibnall, are only free to do what the Beeb and the other show investors tell them. 

They go on:

“We have also received many positive reactions to the episode’s cliff-hanger. There are still a lot of questions to be answered, and we hope that you will come back to join us and see what happens, but we appreciate that it’s impossible to please all of our viewers all of the time and your feedback has been raised with the programme’s Executive Producer." 

Uglylaughing.gif

There is a huge, monumental difference between 'not being able to please everyone all at the same time' and basically making a whole fandom, New and Classic, young and old, come together with the same level of disgust and disappointment.

I also find the people arguing "Canon? What canon?" about the Doctor now being the Lord and Savior of the Shining World of the Seven Systems to be foolish at best, and disingenuous at worst.

No canon?? So what have I been steeping myself in for years  - a vague approximation of a tale? Please. Of course, writers have embellished and alluded, but tampering with the unspoken but well-known 'no touch' rule about the Doctor's origin is ... well, it's canon, in and of itself...

...which Chibnall completely wrecked, and I can't imagine why. Hubris? By all accounts, he was a fan. I thought Moffat was a dick for bringing back Gallifrey, but now, to me, my disappointment then vs now is like comparing a fart to a shitstorm.

Please excuse the scatological references, but I'm using it deliberately. It is a swirling turd, which I and many others wish we could flush down and forget forever.

In another RadioTimes article - which basically is the BBC - amongst the usual apologetics, Huw Fullerton drops this little gem:

“The glory days of David Tennant et al were in a different TV landscape, and if the Tenth Doctor touched down now it seems unlikely he’d command anything close to the ratings he did over a decade ago.”

Yeah, you can all take a break to have a hearty laugh. Or throw up. Whichever. Did they just hint that, basically, the incarnation of the Doctor who continues to get as much love (if not more) than Four, who still consistently gets thousands of butts in seats in conventions worldwide, and has made the BBC hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling in merchandising “wouldn’t command the ratings he did in 2008?”

As Gary Buechler of Nerdrotic said in his response to this article: “Actually, if David Tennant had been given as many chances as Jodie Whittaker, it would’ve had Game of Thrones-level ratings.”

And I agree. Not because I’m a Tenth Doctor stan, but because it’s just ... categorically true. His seasons consistently got average rating of 7.5 to 8 million viewers - and this in a time before BBCiPlayer, so 7-day catch up ratings meant nothing. It was butts on sofas then, which, to me, speaks of a massive, sustained interest.

But Huw goes on to say that such things mean nothing. And that the huge, telling sink in both overnight and 7-day ratings between the 11th and 12th seasons, and the dismal 4.69m 7 day ratings for The Timeless Children - the lowest for a NewWho finale since its reboot - shouldn’t be taken as a loss of interest from the fandom.

Then, pray tell goodman, what does it mean? Does it mean that fans are following the Thirteenth Doctor’s adventures in spirit? Ratings are tanking. Outside of the precious few who blindly tweet and write articles about the show solely based on its now female protagonist, people are notoriously furious, especially after the execrable season finale.

Yet BBC’s Piers Wenger, who once produced the show, says “I don’t think it’s been in better health, editorially. I think it’s fantastic and I think that, the production values obviously have never been better.”

Right. Okay. So, putting Tom Ford makeup on a pig makes it haute couture, huh? The writing is appalling, and after two excruciatingly painful to watch seasons, the Doctor has failed to appear - all I’ve seen is borderline sociopathic navel gazing from an ‘alien’ wearing a pastel duster.

How dare you besmirch the unfailingly cool reputation of the long coat, Chibnall? Jodie? How?? 

I will not let someone piss on my head and call it rain ... ‘because it’s a woman.’ Assuming I’ll accept it just adds insult to injury. Who do they think we are, as female fans? I will not cosign garbage to further an agenda that is ultimately damaging one of my favorite things ever, Doctor Who. I agree that politics, and a positive moral, have always been a part of DW, but at it’s best the writing was so good that it only added to the entertainment. Now, the BBC is feeding us all the bitter pill, without the kindness to hide it in a piece of tasty cheese. It gives the impression that they believe we are already so indoctrinated that we no longer need artifice!

Well, not only am I not indoctrinated, but I refuse to ingest.

I refuse to allow people to silence me because the Doctor is now a woman, and so am I. That, I shouldn’t say anything, or complain, because it’s an act of rebellion on womankind, not only in entertainment, but in general. Well, to that I say ... er ... I disavow.

Disavow. Disavow.

And this from a woman who once criticized Peter Davison for saying that casting a woman was “a vital loss of a role model for boys,” taking it as a sexist comment when in truth, it was just a relevant narrative concern about gender-swapping the traditionally male-presenting Time Lord. Just changing a character from male to female doesn’t do anything but demonstrate a tone-deafness about the emotional and physical differences between men and women, which exist whether we want to address them or not. This is why genderswap reboots are terrible. They are trying to further the feminist agenda, while surreptitiously painting traditional, every day femininity as weakness, and something to be avoided at all costs. I reject the modern Hollywood representation of what a ‘strong woman’ is meant to be. I can be clever, yet sensitive enough to comfort a friend when they confide their fears about a cancer relapse. I can be funny, and not at the expense of the man in the room. I can be brave, but not at the expense of my friends. The mind boggles as to why they thought their current tack with the Doctor was going to be any good. The Doctor is a woman, but more importantly, she’s a Timelord. Where are they? Is the alien that we’ve known and loved for the last 60 years truly gone away, and Thirteen is from a whole different timeline? If so, I don’t want to know her. 

And it breaks my heart.

Why continue to support a corporation who thinks of me, the fan, as no more than a heartless, thoughtless consumer? A drone? A sheep who has no conscious idea of what I like or need?

I’m done. It’s been two seasons of absolute dreck, with absolutely no sign of a course-correction due to the overwhelmingly negative response. I may be many things, but I’m no masochist - even in the name of love. And Chibnall, knowing that many fans would go back to the classic stories to cleanse ourselves, went back to the beginning and took a giant shit there too. 

Oh, the cleverness! the absolute schadenfreude of not only tampering, but rewriting the Doctor’s origins! I suppose that tells me he truly was once a fan. But no longer. Even if it turns out that the Master is as full of crap as Chibnall and it’s all an orchestrated lie, I don’t care anymore. Every inexplicable, terrible thing that happened before has already exhausted my patience with the narrative.

As veteral DW writer and script editor Terrance Dicks said:

If you’re concentrating on putting forth a political message, rather than on doing a really good show, I think there is a danger, maybe, you can do both but it would be hellish difficult, and I think that there’s maybe a danger that the show wouldn’t as be as good as it could or should be, because you’re not looking at the right aims.”

It seems like all that has been lost in time. Big corporations are buying up beloved science fiction properties, and systematically destroying them by trying to mix their politics into the mythos. [see ‘the fandom menace’]

I say, don’t support things that make you unhappy, in the name of nostalgia. That’s how they continue to upset us, while lining their pockets with our hard earned money. Complaining amongst ourselves, writing emails, or making angry Youtube videos no longer works anyway. Now is the time to just ... let it go. No more special edition DVDs, novelizations, or pretty action figures. Hit them in the pocketbook. We will still have fond memories of better times. I will not let them hijack, retcon, and retool them too.

There is a telling paragraph hidden in the depths of the article, which makes my DW fangirl sink:

It’s not as simple as “the ratings are down so Doctor Who will be cancelled,” as for the publicly-funded BBC there’s an interesting question about exactly what ratings are for beyond bragging rights. Obviously they need to make TV that people want to watch – but which people?

Not us, Huw. That’s who.

[toxicsquad]

There is no better way to get to know someone than through a good question tag. In this case we have decided to make an Indie game dev question tag with the responses of our four developers. We hope that it will reveal many unknowns, but if you are left with any questions, do not hesitate to use our ask.

What part of game development are you responsible for?

Athe: I write and write, I melt in my seat, I correct, I cry and then I program. It’s an endless cycle. Occasionally I laugh like crazy while I eat Pringles.

Sam: I draw and color without leaving the lines (almost always) the sprites, the illustrations and the ravings that usually occur to us past 3 in the morning.

Illy: English translations.

Sher: I draw BGs

What tools do you use (hardware / software)?

Athe: Recently my desktop PC has passed away, so I’ve had to rescue my old PC from the garage. I also have a laptop that saves my life more times than I would like to admit. As for the software, I need, above all, drive documents, video editing programs, image etc (I have an Adobe package) and of course Renpy and Atom.

Sam: My main friend and companion is my tablet, a wacom intuos S (pistachio color, so cute). As programs I mainly use the Paint Tool Sai, because there is nothing in this life like its stabilizer. And less frequently than I would like (for details, texture brushes, effects ...) I also use Clip Studio Paint, which I only know how to use at about 2% of its capacity ... If someday I have time I would love to stop and learn seriously what can be done with it.

Illy: During the school year I live in a residence, so I use an old laptop, and when I return home I use a desktop computer that never has memory space. I translate the chapters in the same Atom where the complete script is and I keep them in google drive files where I share them with our beta reader. I also use editing programs like photoshop when I have to translate comics or procreate for when my artistic skills are required.

Sher: ipad+procreate+some final tweak in photoshop, I don't need much more

What is your favorite part of the job?

Athe: Would it be wrong if I say that is when we released the episode? During the whole production time everything is very stressful, there are times when it’s really uphill, but when we release a new chapter it feels soooo good. It's like saying to yourself, yeah, dammit, I can do it. Look at everything you've climbed by yourself. You're doing it right.

Sam: In general, my favorite parts are when the first scenes start to be programmed, and I can see the sprites with the backgrounds, the texts, and how the illustrations look. Everything always looks so much better when viewed in-game… I also really like being able to check out the script as it is written. And from the artistic part that concerns me, when I see that my hands capture the idea that I had in my head ... Especially in character designs.

Illy: Having to find a way to translate very spanish expressions into English, research vocabulary that I have never had to use and commenting on some translations with our beta reader (which we adore) to make it understandable without losing the original meaning.

Sher: I like to do the lineart when the sketch is complete, if I no longer have to think about anything else and it's just going through it, I find it very fun and relaxing

What is the most difficult part for you?

Athe: Offf, yes, I admit it, sometimes writing is the WORST. Other times I love it, especially when I can expand on the descriptions or stop at a part that is intimate or that I find interesting (for example, Hasiel's conversation from 6.3, small spoiler: P). But, I HATE having to paste scenes, often the protagonist moves between scenes and you always have to add lines to those transitions that really do not interest anyone, but that otherwise the text would be confusing. Anyway... It is a very wide world, with a lot of history, I have to deal with what I need readers to know to understand the facts, although sometimes it gets a bit boring.

Sam: What part does not... Rather who e.e Zihel and Ariel are a thorn in my side. Especially Zihel. I know it has to do with the fact that it has never been my strength to draw boys, and much less if they are more masculine in appearance... That's why I also suffer a lot from drawing muscles. Another thing that brings me a headache is the perspective of the illustrations. Every time I try to get out of the typical shot or poses a little... It doesn't work out.

Illy: Doughy’s  stuttering ¬.¬

Sher: chairs, sofas, tables... anything with four legs is my enemy

Anything to help or encourage you while you are working?

Athe: I need music, no, seriously, I NEED IT. I’m unable to focus without it. If, on top of that, I can get what I hear to act as a sounding board for what I write, the text is a thousand times better... But the muse is a pretty bad person.

Sam: Having a show/movie in the background that entertains me. The longer the better, so I don't have to stop to think what I want to put on next.

Illy: Eating sunflower seeds to trick my brain and not be tempted to do something else that distracts me.

Sher: I try to see other artists to motivate and inspire me before I start drawing, what I find most difficult is that initial push and that is where I need the motivation, then I usually have something in the background but it is not necessary

Something that’s a pet peeve or discouraging?

Athe: Some narrative climax moments. Generally, they are not important plot moments (that is almost entirely decided), they are often small decisions to go from scene A to scene B, but I can spend a LOT of time deciding which is the fastest and best way to tie those two ends. I'm the worst.

Sam: Many times when starting, I can't get the poses to fit the way I want, for example.

Illy: Finding many parts in a row that I find especially difficult to solve and that make me believe that I have forgotten how to English properly. And looking at how many lines I still have left.

Sher: When I don't know how to fill in some area, if I see something very empty but I don't know how to solve it, I can spend days looking at the screen without being able to advance, even if I have other areas that I could do in the meantime

What is required on your table or work surface?

Athe: Notebooks, sticky notes, pens… I’m a person who writes everything down, especially the tasks, but I also order the story by color schemes. The stack of sticky notes have 9 different colors, each one represents a character and I play a lot with them for a lot of nonsense. Besides, even though I have been writing on the computer for many more years than I wrote by hand, I still have a preference for the analogical.

Sam: Coffee, sweets, chocolate, cereals... And cats.

Illy: My phone, the sunflower seeds, a Capital America: Civil War 1L water cup, sticky notes that remind me of tasks.

Sher: I have nothing really lol all my things are for decoration

Your most productive hours?

Athe: Owl. Totally nocturnal. Although I have several crises a month to force myself to work at other times that always end... Wrong.

Sam: Also at night for the most part, although I can no longer stay awake as long as I endured before having a job (the good old days...) However, in the middle of the afternoon, when the zoo that I have at home is still taking a nap, I also manage to go a long way.

Illy: From when I finish eating until 7 or 8 in the afternoon, when I don't have to cook, clean, run errands...

Sher: I take over for Illy apparently, from 7 or 8 is when I start to get into the mood until bedtime

Do working hours make you forget to eat or make you eat twice as much?

Athe: It depends, in the past I ate a lot, now if I have stress I don't eat anything. If I'm in a normal productive phase and I'm not on my nerves, I'm probably eating by inertia.

Sam: They make me eat more, but especially junk food e.e And they make me forget healthy meals, especially dinner at night.

Illy: It depends on my mood, but I usually eat twice as much.

Sher: I'm generally a VERY distracted person so I don't usually get to focus on a task to get to either of those two modes but I guess when I am sooooooo much on the task, I forget. But that happens like a couple of times a year and "forgetting" is "I delay an hour."

What part of your set up would you improve / change (in aesthetics or functionality) if you had no money limit?

Athe: I'm trying to match some of my peripherals with the rest. They are all a damn different color, apparently I'm cursed... Now seriously, I wish I had a better graphic card that would allow me to make video captures, some speakers and a quality printer.

Sam: Actually, I don't think I need anything more complex than what I already have… But if I had to improve something, I'm curious about the most professional tablets, the big ones with the included screen and all that stuff.

Illy: A new laptop that lets me open 4 chrome tabs, Atom and photoshop at the same time without dying.

Sher: A pc screen that will not change the colors I use on the iPad would be nice, really

Which character are you most like? And why?

Athe: Phew I think the easy answer would be to say Akane ... But, Akane is a better person. : P

Sam: This is very difficult... They are all very different, but still I do not think I look much like any of them. If I have to say something, I could identify with Maske's tendency to avoid problems, and his more homey and calm side. And well… Since Akane has been an OC of mine for many years, surely I have something of her too.

Illy: I think I partly have Maske's instinct to stay out of trouble, and on the other hand Joe's shallowness, although tbh I wish I really did look like any of our awesome babies.

Sher: surprised because (unpopular opinion around here) is one of those who I "least care" about really but I would say that Pin because he is a little dumb, happy and probably has a Satanic room and proud of it

Favorite CG/art.

Athe: AT THE MOMENT. Maske chapter 1. It couldn't be more predictable. I know.

Sam: I quite agree with Maske in chapter 1. But I would also put Pin in chapter 5 and Akane in chapter 6.2 on the top.

Illy: Kyeran in Coco's tank ?? Is he even real? Being basic is my brand.

Sher: surprised again and disappointed but I would say that of angel Hasiel because I like pretty dresses, pretty hairs and pretty wings

Favorite BG/scene.

Athe: The Red Light District amazes me. I already liked the life of that place, its history, but the way of expressing it... Uggg Sher took it to another level. The dirt on the street, the night, the constricted buildings...

Sam: I think I’ll say Raziel’s square, I like it a lot from the first day.

Illy: I don't know if I can choose just one T__T but I would say that the Red Light District and Valefar's pub are at the top.

Sher: for not repeating the red light district that I also like very much, I really like the areas of Coco's laboratory, including the “main” area although the perspective is horrible and makes the characters look tiny, but I like how it looks :(

Your favorite chapter to date?

Athe: Ufff... The first and second one I assure you no, hahaha. I will say that the third one, but also for things that are not necessarily from the chapter, but of the production. It was a good moment. I felt that everything was flowing with ease. We all assumed a clear role, they were times that made us feel comfortable and capable of assuming what came next, I think it was a qualitative leap also, both in texts and in art.

Sam: Oh. Well let's see... Chapter 5 is amazing for me, for everything that happens but also because there are many personalized interactions and choices. I can't say I have a definitive favorite, but it could come close… Also from the last ones I really like the 6.2.

Illy: Chapter 5 has so many details, so many things happen, it's hard not to be my favorite. But the last ones with the specific routes are so great that if I stay with the 5 it’s with the  pain of my heart to have to choose one.

Sher: I would say 5 also because in the end when a lot of things happen is when you remember the most

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No hay mejor forma de conocer a alguien que a través de un buen tag de preguntas. En este caso hemos decidido hacer un Indie game dev question tag con las respuestas de las cuatro desarrolladoras. Esperamos que os aclare muchas incógnitas, pero si os quedáis con alguna no dudéis en usar nuestro ask.

¿Qué parte del desarrollo del juego llevas a cabo?

Athe: Escribo, escribo, me derrito sobre mi asiento, corrijo, lloro y después programo. Es un ciclo sin fin. Ocasionalmente me río como una demente mientras como Pringles.

Sam: Dibujo y coloreo sin salirme de las líneas (casi siempre) los sprites, las ilustraciones y los desvaríos que suelen surgir a partir de las 3 de la mañana. 

Illy: Las traducciones a inglés.

Sher: Hago fonditos

¿Qué herramientas utilizas (hardware/software)?

Athe: Recientemente mi PC de sobremesa ha fallecido, así que he tenido que rescatar mi viejo PC del trastero, también tengo un portatil que me salva la vida más veces de las que me gustaría admitir. En cuanto al software, necesito, sobre todo, documentos de drive, programas de edición de video, imagen etc (tengo un paquete de Adobe) y por supuesto Renpy y Atom.

Sam: Mi principal amiga y compañera es mi tableta, una wacom intuos S (color pistacho, muy cuqui.) Como programas uso sobretodo el Paint Tool Sai, porque no hay nada en esta vida como su estabilizador. Y con menos frecuencia de lo que querría (para detalles, pinceles de texturas, efectos…) también utilizo el Clip Studio Paint, el cual sólo se usar como a un 2% de su capacidad… Si algún día tengo tiempo me encantaría pararme a aprender seriamente todo lo que se puede hacer con él. 

Illy: Durante el curso vivo en una residencia, así que uso un portatil del año que reinó carolo, y cuando vuelvo a mi casa un ordenador de sobremesa que nunca tiene espacio en la memoria. Los capítulos los traduzco en el mismo Atom en el que está el guión completo y los guardo en drive donde los comparto con nuestra beta reader. También uso programas de edición como photoshop cuando tengo que traducir viñetas o procreate para cuando mis habilidades artísticas son requeridas.

Sher: ipad+procreate+algún retoquito final en photoshop no necesito mucho más

¿Cuál es tu parte de favorita del trabajo?

Athe: ¿Estaría mal si digo que es cuando sacamos el episodio? Durante toda la producción todo es muy estresante, hay veces, que se hace realmente cuesta arriba, pero cuando liberamos un nuevo capítulo sienta taaaan bien. Es como decirte a ti misma, sí, joder, puedo hacerlo. Mira todo lo que has escalado tú solita. Lo estás haciendo bien.

Sam: En general, mis partes favoritas son cuando se empiezan a programar las primeras escenas, y puedo ver los sprites con los fondos, los textos, y cómo se ven las ilustraciones. Todo queda siempre mucho mejor cuando se ve dentro del juego… También me gusta mucho poder cotillear el guión conforme se va escribiendo. Y de la parte artística que me toca, cuando veo que mis manos plasman la idea que tenía en mi cabeza… Sobretodo en diseños de personajes. 

Illy: Tener que buscar la forma de traducir a inglés expresiones muy nuestras, investigar vocabulario que no he tenido que usar jamás y comentar algunas traducciones con nuestra beta reader (a la que adoramos) para conseguir que se entienda sin perder el significado original.

Sher: me gusta hacer el lineart cuando el sketch está completo, si ya no tengo que pensar nada más y es solo ir repasando me parece muy divertido y relajante

¿Cuál es la parte que más te cuesta?

Athe: Ufff, sí, lo admito, escribir a veces es lo PEOR. Otras me encanta, sobre todo, cuando puedo explayarme con las descripciones o detenerme en una parte íntima o que a mí me parece interesante (por ejemplo, la conversación de Hasiel del 6.3, pequeño spoiler :P). Pero, ODIO tener que empastar escenas, a menudo el protagonista se mueve de escenarios y hay que agregar siempre líneas a esas transiciones que realmente no interesan a nadie, pero que de lo contrario el texto quedaría mal montado. En fin… Es un mundo muy amplio, con mucha historia, tengo que lidiar con lo que necesito que los lectores sepan para entender los hechos, aunque a veces se haga un pelín peñazo.

Sam: Qué parte no… Quiénes, más bien e.e Zihel y Ariel son mi espinita. Especialmente Zihel. Sé que tiene que ver con el hecho de que nunca ha sido mi punto fuerte dibujar chicos, y menos si son de aspecto más masculino… Por eso también sufro mucho dibujando músculos. Otra cosa que me trae de cabeza es la perspectiva de las ilustraciones. Cada vez que intento salirme un poco del típico plano o poses… No sale bien. 

Illy: El tartamudeo de Doughy ¬.¬ 

Sher: sillas, sofás, mesas… cualquier cosa con cuatro patas son mis enemigos

¿Algo que te ayude o anime mientras estás trabajando?

Athe: Necesito música, no, en serio, LA NECESITO. Soy incapaz de concentrarme sin ella. Si ya consigo que lo que escucho haga de caja de resonancia de lo que escribo, el texto es mil veces mejor… Pero la musa es bastante mala gente.

Sam: Tener alguna serie/peli de fondo que me entretenga. Cuanto más larga mejor, así no me toca pararme a ver qué es lo que quiero poner después. 

Illy: Comer pipas para engañar a mi cerebro y no tener la tentación de ponerme a hacer otra cosa que me distraiga.

Sher: intento ver otros artistas para motivarme e inspirarme antes de empezar a dibujar, lo que más me cuesta es ese empujón inicial y es donde necesito la motivación, luego ya suelo tener algo de fondo pero no es necesario

¿Algo que te corte el rollo o te desmotive?

Athe: Los nudos narrativos. Generalmente, no son nudos gordos de la trama (eso está decidido casi en su totalidad), a menudo son decisiones pequeñas para pasar de la escena A a la escena B, pero puedo tirarme MUCHO tiempo decidiendo cuál es la forma más rápida y mejor planteada para atar esos dos cabos. Soy lo peor.

Sam: Muchas veces a la hora de empezar, no conseguir encajar las poses como quiero, por ejemplo. 

Illy: Encontrar muchas partes seguidas que me cueste especialmente resolver y que me hacen creer que no tengo ni idea de hablar inglés. Y mirar cuantas líneas me quedan todavía.

Sher: cuando no se como rellenar alguna zona, si veo algo muy vacío pero no se como solucionarlo puedo tirarme días mirando la pantalla sin ser capaz de avanzar, incluso aunque tenga otras zonas que pudiera ir haciendo mientras

¿Qué no puede faltar en tu mesa o superficie de trabajo?

Athe: Libretas, post-its, bolígrafos… Soy una persona que lo anota todo, sobre todo, las tareas, pero también ordeno la historia por esquemas de colores. La pila de post-its tienen 9 colores diferentes, cada uno representa un personaje y juego mucho con ellos para miles de idioteces. A parte, a pesar de que llevo muchos más años escribiendo a ordenador de los que escribí a mano, sigo teniendo querencia a lo físico.

Sam: Café, chucherías, chocolate, cereales… Y gatos. 

Illy: El móvil, las pipas, un vaso de 1L de agua de Capital America: Civil War, post-its que me recuerdan las tareas.

Sher: no tengo nada realmente lol todas mis cosas son de adorno 

¿Tus horas más productivas?

Athe: Búho. Nocturna totalmente. A pesar de que tengo varias crisis al mes para forzarme a trabajar a otras horas que acaban siempre… Mal.

Sam: También por la noche en su mayoría, aunque ya no aguanto trasnochando tanto como antes de trabajar (qué tiempos aquellos…) Aunque a media tarde cuando el zoo que tengo en casa aún está echando la siesta también consigo dar un buen empujón. 

Illy: Desde que acabo de comer hasta las 7 o las 8 de la tarde, cuando no tengo que cocinar, limpiar, hacer recados...

Sher: le tomo el testigo a Illy aparentemente, a partir de las 7 u 8 es cuando empiezo a entrar en el mood hasta que llega la hora de dormir

¿Las horas de trabajo hacen que te olvides de comer o te hacen comer el doble?

Athe: Depende, antes comía mucho, ahora, si tengo estrés no como nada. Si me encuentro en un rango productivo normal y no estoy de los nervios, probablemente, esté comiendo por inercia.

Sam: Me hacen comer más, pero sobretodo porquerías e.e Y hacen que me olvide de las comidas sanas, sobretodo de cenar por la noche. 

Illy: Depende de mi estado de ánimo, pero normalmente comer el doble.

Sher: en general soy una persona MUY distraída así que no suelo conseguir centrarme en una tarea para llegar a ninguno de esos dos modos pero supongo que cuando estoy muuuuuuy dentro de la tarea, me olvido. Pero eso pasa como un par de veces al año y “olvido” es “lo retraso una hora”.

¿Qué parte de tu set up mejorarías/cambiarías (en estética o funcionalidad) si no tuvieses límite de dinero?

Athe: Estoy tratando de que alguno de mis periféricos peguen con el resto. Todos son de un maldito color diferente, al parecer estoy maldita… Ahora en serio, desearía tener una mejor gráfica que me permitiese hacer videocapturas, unos altavoces y una impresora de calidad.

Sam: En realidad, no creo que necesitara nada más complejo de lo que ya tengo… Pero por mejorar, me llaman la atención las tabletas más profesionales, las grandes con la pantalla incluida y eso. 

Illy: Un portátil nuevo que me deje abrir 4 pestañas de chrome, el Atom y photoshop al mismo tiempo sin quedarse tieso.

Sher: Una pantalla de pc que no me cambiara los colores que uso en el ipad seria bonito la verdad 

¿A qué personaje te pareces más? ¿Y por qué?

Athe: Ufff Creo que la respuesta fácil sería decir Akane… Pero, Akane es mejor persona. :P

Sam: Esto es muy complicado… Son todos muy distintos, pero aún así no creo que me parezca mucho a ninguno. Por decir algo, me podría identificar con la tendencia a evitar problemas de Maske, y su lado más casero y tranquilo. Y bueno… Dado que Akane es OC mío de hace muchos años, seguramente tenga algo de ella también. 

Illy: Creo que en parte tengo el instinto de alejarme de las movidas de Maske, y por otro la superficialidad de Joe, aunque tbh ojalá parecerme realmente a nuestros bebés geniales.

Sher: sorprendida porque (unpopular opinión por aquí) es de los que “menos me importan” realmente pero diría que Pin porque es tontito, feliz y probablemente tenga una habitación satánica y orgulloso de ello

Tu CG/arte favorito.

Athe: DE MOMENTO. Maske capítulo 1. No podría ser más predecible. Lo sé.

Sam: Coincido bastante en la de Maske del capítulo 1. Pero también metería en el top la de Pin del capítulo 5 y la de Akane del capítulo 6.2. 

Illy: ¿¿Kyeran en el tanque de Coco?? ¿Es siquiera real? Ser básica es mi marca.

Sher: sorprendida de nuevo y decepcionada pero diría que la de Hasiel de ángel porque me gustan los vestidos bonitos, los pelos bonitos y las alas bonitas

Tu BG/escenario favorito.

Athe: Me flipa el Barrio Rojo. Me gusta la vida de ese sitio, su historia, pero la forma de plasmarlo… Uggg Sher lo llevó a otro nivel. La suciedad de la calle, la nocturnidad, los edificios constreñidos...

Sam: Creo que me quedo con el de la plaza de Raziel, me gusta mucho desde el primer día. 

Illy: No sé si puedo elegir solo uno T__T pero diría que el Barrio Rojo y el bar de Valefar están en el top.

Sher: por no repetir el barrio rojo que también me gusta mucho, me gustan mucho las zonas del laboratorio de Coco, incluida la zona “principal” aunque la perspectiva sea horrible y haga a los pj parecer diminutos, pero me gusto como quedo :( 

¿Tu capítulo favorito hasta las fecha?

Athe: Ufff… El uno y el dos os aseguro que no, jajaja. Diré que el tres, pero también por cosas que no son necesariamente del capítulo, sino de la producción. Fue un buen momento. Sentí que todo estaba fluyendo con facilidad. Todas asumimos un rol claro, unos tiempos que nos hacían sentir cómodas y capaces de asumir lo que venía después, creo que fue un salto cualitativo también, tanto en los textos, como en el arte.

Sam: Ay. Pues a ver… El capítulo 5 es una pasada para mi, por todo lo que pasa pero también porque hay muchas interacciones personalizadas y elecciones. No puedo decir que tenga un favorito definitivo, pero podría acercarse… También me gusta mucho de los últimos el 6.2. 

Illy: El capítulo 5 tiene tantos detalles, pasan tantas cosas, que es difícil que no sea mi favorito, pero los ultimos de rutas específicas son tan geniales que si me quedo con el 5 es con un poco de dolor de tener que elegir uno.

Sher: Diría el 5 también porque al final cuando pasan muchas cosas es cuando mas se te queda grabado

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[eva-writes]

I was tagged by @danwritestuff (a million years ago and only now I actually got to finish this thing) so here it goes:

1. How did you begin writing? Technically I started when I was like seven or eight and was working on an illustrated story about a dog and a magical bone. Yup, true story. But I think I actually started to get into writing when I was in seventh grade and a teacher told us to write a short story as homework. I don’t even want to think back on what I wrote because it probably wasn’t good, but I will never forget that my teacher told me that she enjoyed my story and that I was good at writing. There’s literally nothing better than having someone believe in you. And I initially only wrote in Spanish but funnily enough after getting into roleplaying my brain kind of made a switch and it comes more naturally to me now to write in English.

2. What was your first writing project? Tell us a little about it. Again, the story of the dog and the magical bone. But the first serious project that I still hope might see the light of day when I stop planning and actually sit my ass down to write it is a fantasy trilogy. I started it in 2008 and needless to say my mind has changed a lot in a decade, so as a result that story has changed very much from my original idea. I think that’s why I haven’t really done much writing and I’m stuck in ‘development hell’, because the thing just keeps mutating and my ideas for that world and those characters keep growing and changing.

3. What is your preferred medium for writing first drafts? I’ve always used Microsoft Word.

4. What rituals or habits do you have around writing? I always have a cup of tea next to me. And I say stuff out loud too, especially when it’s dialogue. I also sort of act out certain stuff to find words that could describe that. Definitely not rituals, just weird habits I have.

5. We all have a “type”– of character, plot, theme– what is yours? Well, I always go for fantasy or scifi stuff because it’s easier for me to make up shit than do extensive research about things that are real (also it scares me that I migh portray something in an inaccurate way). So yay, I’m lazy like that. I tend to include reserved, quiet characters (even if not the protagonists, they’re there). I don’t know, I just have a deep appreciation for introverted people that are more of the observing/listening type than the talking type.

As for plots or themes, I like to dabble into the ‘self-discovery’ paths for the protagonists and the ‘change established structures’ in the world. As for important themes, family bonds are always there in one way or another (both biological families or ‘found’ families amongst the characters). Also I have this weird thing about names. In every story I have characters that are called a certain way by most but then they are given a different nickname or are revealed to have a different name by someone that is/becomes close to them. For some reason the way other people call each other has always had such a deep meaning for me.

6. Introduce us to one (or more!) of your OC’s. I have an army of OCs, I have no self-control when it comes to creating them... my latest one is a gentle giant of a man stuck on an island where people don’t age and those stranded there can’t escape (shoutout to Mira and Ally for @timelessrpg!). And this guy is mute and deaf because I’ve learned a bit ASL and I wanted to integrate that into a character, explore different ways to have him interact with those around him without having to rely on speaking.

7. What’s your favorite genre to read? Fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction and psychological thrillers. But I’d give a shot at every book that sparks my interest regarding of genre.

8. Your favorite genre to write? Fantasy and science fiction. I like creating my own playground rather than using our lovely little world.

9. How do you conduct your authorial research? Google searches to start off. Then once I get a general overview I start to look for more specific stuff in books, videos, etc. I use YouTube a lot. That thing is a treasure chest of information and it helps with ther ‘overview’ part so then I can do more digging about specific subjects.

10. What does your editing (gasp) process look like? I’m such a jerk to myself when I edit, so I guess that’s another reason why it’ll take a while for my stories to see the light of day. If you look up the word perfectionist in the dictionary you see my picture... But I’ve been trying not to be so hard on myself lately and instead of staying stuck on that endless cycle of writing and erasing, I’ve been allowing myself to just write on. I’ve also made a deal with my roomie: I have to pay her $15 pesos (little less than $1 usd) whenever I got back to edit a chapter I had already finished. I’ve only paid her once, but it’s a good incentive not to go back an edit stuff too much and just go ahead to write.

11. What are your favorite tropes? I have too many, especially with romantic/platonic relationships. Enemies to lovers, is definitely one. Also any sort of yin yang/light and dark representations in character dynamics, I’m such a sucker for those. Any kind of trope that involves characters not seeing it coming and then just knowing they’d do anything for the other person (not just necessarily in a romantic way, I love bonds like that with people who become siblings to each other). Any sort of trope that involves a ‘partners in crime’ or ‘ride or die’ dynamic, I’M SOLD.

12. Show off your writing space. It used to be a desk when I still lived at my mom’s place. It was in it’s usual state of controlled chaos, as I like to call it (because there’s stuff everywhere but I know exactly where everything is). Now my roomie and I share a desk, and most of the times I just end up writing in bed, using a folding bed tray as my desk.

13. What is the most useful piece of writing advice you’ve ever used? Sit down and write is one. And also something that I saw in Victoria Schwab’s instagram: “I’m not writing a book, I’m writing a chapter. I’m not writing a chapter, I’m writing a page. I’m not writing a page, I’m writing a line”. That helped me feel more confident. The work put into trying to write a book always felt so overwhelming and like something I would never really get done. But thinking that even a little bit counts has made it feel like a less impossible feat.

14. What is the least useful piece of writing advice you’ve ever ignored? That it’s wrong to repeat a character’s name or identifier (the queen, the thief, etc). I used to think it was wrong to it because ‘being repetitive means you’re a bad writer’ and you’d have me do mental gymnastics to figure out different ways to refer to my characters which, honestly, end up coming off as forced. So yeah, I’ve definitely begun to ignore that now.

Another one is that writing ‘said’ is wrong. I’d rather use ‘said’ a hundred times than throw in random shit like ‘ennunciated’ just to avoid using ‘said’.

15. Your writing beverage/snack of choice? Tea, always. Either black tea or rooibos with milk.

16. How do you compile your ideas? Quick notes on my phone when I don’t have a notebook at hand. Word documents. And notebooks. Lots of notebooks. I have a specific notebook for each story. Lately I started posting stuff on my wall. I have a summary of each chapter that I’ve already written in little pieces of paper, kind of like a timeline. Above each ‘chapter’ there’s a blue post-it note with the stuff that led to the events of that chapter, and below there’s a green post-it note with the plot points that chapter will set in motion. It’s kind of to keep in order all the information I’m dealing with. And then above the timeline I have even more pieces of paper with specific events that must happen eventually and I just keep moving them around to construct the rest of the story. It might sound weird and confusing, but I swear it helps. I’m a visual person and it’s very damn helpful to see those pieces of story and ideas have some order.

17. What are your controversial opinions ™ on the craft of writing? That being a best-seller means the book is good. I don’t know if it’s controversial or not, but I don’t think quantity equals quality. Also, LET STORIES END. I get it, sometimes as readers we love a group of characters so much or a world that we want more, but that doesn’t mean there should be more. I feel that a lot of prequels, spin-offs and extended series end up taking away from the original story/saga because they were clearly not in the author’s mind from the beginning. There are exceptions to this, I’m sure, but I just feel authors should know when enough is enough rather than try to milk their series for all they’re worth. And I might get shit for writing this, but I’m also against the idea that all characters have to be woke and politically correct 24/7. I believe characters should be allowed to be ignorant and say wrong things and make mistakes, because then they get to learn and grow and become better people, and yes, possibly get called out or educated throughout the story. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me having faith in people learning and growing, but I happen to like characters that start out not so great and begin to really become better human beings during the story.

Tagging: @azianxpersuasionwrites, @briannaswriter, @allywritestuff, @proserpinewrites, @theichthyostegawrites, @montaguew, @loeswrites, @eridawrites, @roshwrites, @rjwrites, @ashlaaaywrites, @trishywishy & @dude-im-batman

[piracytheorist]

Colin’s M&G

Long, so under the cut. If you have more questions, don't hesitate to ask ;)

Edit; you're totally welcome to reblog this, if you want it even as a bookmark in your blog. I don't intend to delete it any time soon :)

Ok so this is kinda pointless to point out but. After he sat down and greeted us, he said "Any questions?" and I was like "Lots of them" and held up the paper I'd written mine down on. It was small, but he still went like "Lots of them?" with raised eyebrows and smiled.

The first question was by an aspiring actress who was asking his advice, and he started with self-confidence even when you're being rejected. She also asked him about being a musician and he said that he hasn't given that up, he still loves playing but it's just that his acting career took off. He says he's an actor because he's seen that people prefer seeing him act than listening to him play...

And my ass butted in and said "We want both." And the other attendees laughed and Colin said "You want both? Well, we'll see."

Then someone talked about how they liked seeing him play and sing in The Dust Storm and asked him if he would do it again.

Then the translator started translating the question for the Italian speakers, and when she was done Colin said "Yes." Cue laughing.

And THEN he said "I'm working on something that I can't talk about." And earlier he'd mentioned the Heartstrings thing, that it's a Western with Dolly Parton and stuff... so I'm wondering if it's Fairytale of New York (kinda unlikely since he said he's actively working on it, plus if I'm not mistaken there have been official stuff about him playing in it) ooooooor something else :D

Then someone asked him if he'd like to play in Broadway or something and he said he'd love to even though it's quite different from what he does now... and then he said "Have you got a job for me?" And BISH he did the same when someone asked him something similar in the panels XD I love one (1) nerd. (By the way, in a later panel he mentioned how he would like it but it would also be hard for him)

AND THEN IT WAS MY TURN.

I picked up my paper and Colin looked at me and said "One of the questions!"

So I start. "Some of my favourite moments with Hook were the ones where he was very angsty and even... beaten up and very sad..." At which point he gave me a look and some attendees giggled XD "like the scenes in the Underworld, where he's being tortured. Do you like playing that kind of scenes as much as some of us (I pointed that out lol) like watching them?"

And his first reply was "Yeah, it was fun. I might like it for a different reason than you" I NEARLY DIED DID I SAY I HAD MY COOL I LIED SORRY

And then he said about the makeup he wore in those scenes, that it took about two hours to put on. I asked him how it felt acting with the prosthetic over his eye, and he said it was weird because he couldn't open it - and he even covered his eye briefly with his hand, that peanut - and still ended with "But it was fun, it was great."

AJsjdlshwosehi2bsoaHaigz7fie

Ahem.

(People going to Enchanted, please ask him questions about whump! Let us be heard!)

Then someone asked about how does he choose which roles to play, and he said he tries to envision himself play this character with the script he's given, and if it doesn't feel good for him he doesn't take it.

Then another aspiring actress asked him for advice, and his answer summed up to getting to know your craft and focusing on it.

Then someone asked him if he had the possibility to be another person, who would it be... and though I found it kinda silly as a question it brought up some amazing reactions as he struggled for an answer. Then the questioner limited it to a musician, however the amazing reactions continued, then he finally chose the leading singer of Pearl Jam. And he finished with a "Wow! That took ages!"

AND THEN. AND THEN. A blessed woman asked him about Kiss Me Judas being listed on his IMDB page. And he confirmed it! He did say "I can't say much about it", but he called it one of the best scripts he's ever read. She asked what was it that attracted him to it, cue laughs, and he said he liked how different the character was, how dark the story is, but because it's an independent movie it'll take quite some time to be finished. He said he likes playing characters that push the boundaries, and he started talking about the protagonist (meanwhile I was screaming internally) and of course he added "It'll be fun."

(For a guy who doesn't like taking his shirt off he chose to play a character who gets very very naked, by the way)

The very next person asked him if he would be interested in directing or writing, and he immediately said he'll also be a producer in Kiss Me Judas. He said he'd be interested in directing, if it's something he liked and he could do it well.

Then, favourite scene as Hook and THAT'S where he chose Hook singing to baby Alice. It felt really real for him due to having had a daughter a bit before that. Aw!

The next question was how it's like to have a normal life as a famous person. He said he doesn't think himself as famous. He said he wants to do his job, then go back to his family and - in his own fucking words - wash the dishes. And he said it's easy to have a normal life if you choose to, and he connected that with an answer he gave during the panels about not being very active on social media. He's not the type that will take selfies often and be an influencer, and that helps with him continuing on with a normal life after work.

The next question was how would the show be like if Emma had chosen Neal. He immediately made a face and shook his head. Think of sdcc 2013 where he gave a thumbs down in a similar question. I don't want to make his answer public, because even though it was obvious he wasn't perfectly serious, I have my reservations. Ask me privately for that ;)

But he does miss MRJ.

All the while, the girl who was sitting right next to him was very very nervous and started turning away from him. (On his other side was the translator so that first girl was the fan actually nearest to him) Then he brought his chair closer to her and hugged her!

The next question was what he liked about the fans. He said he never expected to be where he is now... seeing people come and want to turn away from him - and he looked at the girl next to him with a smirk - but he finds it amazing that people respond to something he's doing. He appreciates it so much. Aw!

Next question was about his cooking and what he would cook if he had all of us (20 people) for dinner. He said he has a pizza oven at home and really likes making his own pizzas from scratch, dough, sauce and all that. But he'd probably make roast chicken or beef, since he likes making that too. He cooks every day, he says.

Bruh. A guy who works hard, adores his family, cleans the dishes and loves to cook. Get you a guy who.

Next question was if he'd like to play in a trilogy, like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars and what his relationship to sports is.

He said he loved that aforementioned stuff, but he also mentioned that Hook was a character he was meant to play (Aw intensifies!). He said he loves sports and plays football often.

Then @darkcolinodonorgasm asked him if the blacksmithing was for a role, and he pretty much shut all our expectations down. It's just a hobby.

However I really liked his answer, he said he loves the idea of craft, like with cooking, he loves drawing and painting and generally making things on your own. He even mentioned how some arts have eclipsed due to industry.

I mean, what more can he say to make us adore him?!

He then was asked about his opinion on the finale of the show. He said it was fulfilling, well-done, everything was tied up, and he was happy that they had the opportunity to close the show.

Last question, and actually only people who had already asked before raised their hands to ask. Sadly, he didn't choose me T_T

But anyway it was if he would do a prequel about Hook. He said yes, he loved playing him, but it would have to be right for him to play. He misses the eyeliner.

And that's it. Yeah. It was awesome. 10/10 would spend 270 euros again (though not immediately, lol)

[curestardust]

if you want: bit of a darker and more serious take on isekai (but beware of the bad writing)

“Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari” or “The Rising of the Shield Hero” or “Some of The Worst Written Characters I’ve Ever Seen” is another isekai spawned out of Japan’s never ending supply and it’s, to the surprise of no one, bad.

I was planning on writing a more in-depth review but I’m so pissed that I can’t be bothered. The story is that 4 random dudes from 4 different versions of Japan (never explained) get summoned into this game world. They all get predetermined weapons: a sword, a bow, a spear and a shield. The shield hero, Naofumi, immediately gets fucked over as apparently this game exists in the other 3′s worlds but not his, so he has no fucking idea what’s going on. In the painful 45 minutes of the first episode, the only person who chose to be on his party sets up Naofumi and humiliates him in front of everyone. The motive as to why this girl and the King hate him is never explained either. Obviously as the 3 other heroes are in posession of about 2.5 braincells each, they don’t question any of this and shun him as well. Cool.

Immediately after this, Naofumi abandons all morals and goes with a slave dealer to buy himself a slave, no questions asked. This slave will be his very first party member, Raphtalia. Because Naofumi is a “completely defensive class” (retconned) he needs someone to fight for him. Anyway, later loli Raphtalia grows into a woman cause apparently demi-humans age according to their level or something (makes no sense, she never ages further ever again). Naofumi also picks up an egg at the slave trader which turns out to be a loli. Then he runs across another loli. Have I mentioned that Naofumi’s entire party is made out of lolis? (Except for Raphtalia I guess but-)

Anyway, enough of the story. The fucking characters, mainly the 3 other heroes. Everything. Every-thing happens because none of the characters have brains. Including Naofumi! I sat down to watch episodes of this with the same dread as I watched some of my favourite series but not because I was worried how the story was gonna break my heart next or which of my favourite characters were gonna be in danger. No, what I was thinking about was “What kind of bullshit excuse will this anime pull out of its ass to make Naofumi look even more of a tragic character?”. Even if the 3 heroes wouldn’t want to communicate with Naofumi after the rape accusation (oh yeah I forgot to mention, he was falsely accused of rape, how delightful) there were numerous times where it was obvious that he wasn’t actually guilty. Then they could’ve just sat down, discussed what the fuck was going on and just go “LOL kay” and start working together. Why didn’t that happen? Cause they’re all BADLY WRITTEN.

The author was trying to say something I guess, about the cliché isekai protagonists hero complex and their disregard for the world they’re in or something. Which is funny cause Naofumi is the exact same as them except BrOoDiNg. I haven’t even mentioned the fact that he is insanely overpowered. His shield apparently has offensive abilities even in its normal form and when he activates the Curse Shield (also never explained what the hell that is) he gains offensive abilities which come out of nowhere! Almost every big fight ends with Naofumi awakening some random ass powerful attack and one shotting the enemy! What!!

And the worst part? In episodes 23-25 we get introduced to, get this, actual interesting characters and plot. Too bad you won’t see them until season 2! :)

“The Rising of the Shield Hero” tried to be a different kind of isekai and it could’ve been kinda good if not for the nonsensical writing and 0.5 dimensional characters. But what we were left with was another self-insert isekai fantasy that comes off like it was written by a butthurt incel who was bullied in school and couldn’t get any girls so now he wrote himself into a power fantasy where he is a brooding and tragic character with a harem of lolis and insane powers. 

EDIT: A few things I actually liked but failed to mention cause I was too pissed while writing this:almost no fanservice, very nice character designs (shame they’re wasted), fluid animation and an attention to detail particularly with clothing (lots of minus points for the horrendous CGI mainly during fights), the OPs are banger and Naofumi acting like a dad towards his companions (and it would be perfect if they weren’t trying to get with him either). IF the next season will focus more on the characters introduced near the end of this one, I’ll watch it with slight interest. 

[4/10] (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | This anime killed my parents

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 0.1

This is the beginning of what is essentially something like a text-based, very-not-blind Let’s Play of Danganronpa V3? I have a lot to say about this game’s story and characters, and this gives me an excuse to talk about any and every part of it that I feel is worth mentioning as I go along.

Be aware that this will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

All characters appearing in this game are fictional.

Yup, they sure throw that right in your face at the very first moment. And every single time you turn on the game after that. No other Danganronpa game does this during its startup.

This opening movie showing Danganronpa 1, 2, 3 and UDG is supposed to be an in-universe advertisement for season 53, right? But why are they acting like this season is going to be connected to the Hope’s Peak arc? That definitely was not part of the original plan.

“No knowledge of who I am. …Who I am? Who am I? I extend a hand. A hand that belongs to no-one. To take hold of my existence—”

Pregame Kaede:  “This is me. My name is Kaede Akamatsu. I just remembered who I am. Nice to meet… me.”

Uhh. I would say this part is a significant sign of what’s going on here. It sure sounds like it’s written as though the character we’re meeting here is literally coming into existence as we watch. But, this is pregame Kaede, not our Kaede. Our Kaede literally does come into existence moments before we meet her. If these lines had been used for her introduction, they’d have been a really neat hint at what was going on! But it really doesn’t make sense for pregame Kaede, who already existed as a person before this moment and is simply waking up from being unconscious.

Pregame Kaede:  “I’m the protagonist of this crazy story.”

Again, would be nice foreshadowing (especially because Kaede’s not really the protagonist), except it doesn’t really make sense here because the “story” hasn’t started yet. It’s a pretty weird thing for pregame Kaede to be saying about herself.

Ultimate Revival

Hm, the original Japanese prologue title, “Rise of the Ultimates”, is actually a better hint to what’s really going on. The localised title makes it sound like they genuinely did lose their memories of being Ultimates and are going to regain them, but “Rise” implies they’re becoming Ultimates for the first time, which they are.

Pregame Kaede:  “…A classroom?” (Yeah, this is a classroom alright. But… I don’t recognize it.) “Where am I…? What am I doing here…?” 

Pregame Kaede, you have just woken up to find yourself in a strange classroom with barbed wire on the windows. Surely you have seen enough seasons of Danganronpa to have an inkling of where this might be going.

For some reason, pregame Shuichi’s hat is the same hat that our Shuichi will continue to wear. I guess the producers had the idea for incorporating that hat into his backstory and issues when they saw his audition. Obviously, there needs to be a different in-universe reason for the writers to give him the hat than the out-universe reason that he’s the real protagonist and they had to hide his Protagonist Hair until the reveal. In-universe, the protagonist is Keebo.

The pregame characters – at least Shuichi and Kaede; we don’t hear anyone else’s name except Rantaro, who isn’t “pregame” – have the same names as the Ultimate characters. Seems a little surprising that the writers wouldn’t have picked new names for them, but I guess this isn’t Ace Attorney where everyone’s name has to be a pun. (Also, obviously, out-universely we’d have been a bit suspicious if the characters in the first half of the prologue had completely different names).

Pregame Kaede:  “Now listen to me, Shuichi… Shut up! You’re not the only one who’s confused right now!”

Pregame Shuichi:  “Ah, sorry…”

Pregame Kaede:  (After making him shut up, I retraced my steps again.) 

Pregame Kaede sure sounds a lot more selfish and less encouraging than our Kaede, doesn’t she.

So they were kidnapped and brought here. Which, uh… isn’t exactly the most logical way to bring in your successful auditionees. I could try to argue that Team Danganronpa told everyone their audition failed to try and avoid them blabbing to the general public and then went about it this way or something, but… honestly I’m just going to put this down to the rather flimsy out-universe writing for everything relating to how the outside world works. There’s going to be a lot of this in this part of the prologue. The out-universe writers didn’t want to make it too obvious what was going on, so they had to have some method of coming here that seemed plausibly like they were unwillingly being dragged into a killing game.

I’m putting it down to bad writing and not to a deliberate hint that actually the whole fiction thing was all a lie and they really were kidnapped by the Gofer Project or whatever because…

Pregame Kaede:  “Everyone pretended like nothing happened… It made me think how rotten the world is…”

…this is a very clear indication that this is not our Kaede. Pregame Kaede said in her audition tape that she had no faith in humanity, and this matches that perfectly. Even if you could argue that having wiped all of Ultimate Pianist Kaede’s memories of playing the piano would have made her less of an optimistic person (since all of her optimism is based in the reasons she plays piano), it wouldn’t have made her actively more cynical like this.

Pregame Kaede:  “But… why me? My family’s not rich and I’m no one special.”

I don’t know, Kaede, maybe because you auditioned to be in Danganronpa? This is another of the main problems I have with the way the outside world is portrayed in this game – and by “outside world” I’m including the pregame versions of the characters that we’re seeing here. It should be obvious to all of them that they’ve just wound up in the opening of a Danganronpa story! They should be celebrating!

Partly I can see that the out-universe writers are doing this to bring up the fact that right now these kids are perfectly normal non-Ultimates, but. Still.

Hello, giant humanoid mecha! Did you know this is Danganronpa, Gurren Lagann edition. Or it will be once our equivalents of Simon and Kamina actually exist.

Huh. I’m messing around letting pregame Kaede get thrown around by the Exisal, and there’s this flashing red effect on the edges of the screen, as if indicating she’s in pain, that keeps intensifying each time it happens. It stops intensifying after about four times, though; obviously you can’t actually die. That’d have cut the killing game short, heh. Although they’d probably have just picked another auditionee to take her place.

Oh man, look at pregame Kaito’s expression. He just looks so disgusted and contemptuous. That is so definitely not our Luminary of the Stars right now. Kirumi also looks uncharacteristically nervous, and maybe Kokichi does too? But our Kokichi pretends to be nervous often enough that maybe that’s not such a huge clue in his case.

Pregame Kokichi: “Do you want me to check on what’s happening?”

This, though, is pretty telling. He’s genuinely offering to do something to help out! That is not the Kokichi we know.

Pregame Tenko: “You can’t! It’s too dangerous out there!”

I also have to wonder if our Tenko would have said this given that the person who offered to take that risk is male. It’s possible that her worry about the danger would have overridden her misandry for a moment, though.

Rantaro:  “There are 16 of us – all high schoolers. What do you think that means?”

Yeah, guys, what do you think that means? Rantaro should not be the only one here who knows what is going on. The out-universe writers probably had everyone else not also show signs of this since they wanted to hint that Rantaro in particular knows more than he’s letting on, but, still. Right now, everyone should know what this means. Except maybe Keebo.

I’m assuming that this is a Rantaro who still has his memories and identity from season 52 and is fully aware that he’s been thrown into a new killing game. That seems to make the most sense – if they forgot to give all the new characters their memories, they might have forgotten to wipe his, too. And he’s a lot more obvious about being familiar with this situation than he’s going to be after the reset.

One thing to note is that everyone’s superficial personalities – speech patterns and such – seem more or less the same as they’re going to be. Guess that’s something that’s harder to rewrite by implanting fake memories, even if you can change the actual person behind that personality?

You know, I’m not sure why Tsumugi is here in a non-Ultimate outfit if this was supposed to be the real beginning and everyone else being in non-Ultimate clothes wasn’t planned. Keebo too, for that matter. But again, the out-universe writers don’t want to give stuff away.

Also, Keebo’s wearing a hat to hide his Protagonist Hair, aka antenna. Does that mean his antenna just isn’t there right now? Is he connected to the audience yet? Are they seeing this through his eyes and being very confused?

Monokid:  “I told ya we shoulda read the script!”

Hah. That’s pretty telling. I mean, on a first watch it probably seems like they just had a script for how they were supposed to present themselves as gamemasters for the killing game, but no, it’s literally the script for this entire story.

There’s a lot of little hints like this, particularly from Monokuma and his cubs, and I’m going to have fun pointing them all out.

(However, other than that I will be ignoring most everything the Monokubs say, because all of their bits are almost entirely annoying and extraneous.)

Pregame Maki:  “Moving stuffed animals…”

Pregame Ryoma:  “On top of that, it seems like they’re calling themselves the ‘Monokubs’.”

Pregame Kaede: (Moving stuffed animals? Monokubs?) “Wait! You guys call yourselves… the Monokubs? 

On a first watch, this’d just sound like everyone’s bewildered (with good reason), but in reality, this at least is a hint that everyone knows what’s really going on here and is finally starting to piece it together. Took them long enough, though.

However, given that they’ve finally figured it out, someone should really just get it over with and blurt out, “Oh my god we’re in Danganronpa!”. They’re all thinking it now.

Rantaro:  “This is exactly what I thought it was. 

Yep, Rantaro, but you’re really not the only one who’s thinking that anymore.

Rantaro:  “Why the ridiculous theatrics—” 

Oh dear, did your previous season not have the Monokubs or anything else equally annoying and extraneous, Rantaro? Man, you got lucky.

Monosuke:  “Ya think maybe they haven’t been given their first memory yet?”

Ha. “Given” their memory. Yeah, that’s totally how memories work, right.

Pregame Kaede:  “Hey, answer my question! If you guys are the Monokubs, then—”

Oh my god, Kaede, if you’ve figured it out then just blurt it out, stop letting them cut you off.

Pregame Kaede: “I have a skill that I devote myself to… but I wouldn’t call it an Ultimate talent… 

I wonder this is actually playing the piano or something else. She could have chosen her talent because of that, but also the writers could have just given her a different talent to what she asked for.

Pregame Shuichi:  “M-Me either… I-I don’t… have anything like that…”

Meanwhile pregame Shuichi literally has nothing. He only wanted to be a detective because he thought they were cool.

Pregame Kaito:  “Y-Yeah… same here.”

Neither does pregame Kaito; like hell this asshole would have the communication and teamwork skills necessary to be an astronaut at all, let alone earlier than usual.

Kaede is still trying to butt in and ask if this is Danganronpa and still getting cut off before she says the spoilery part of that sentence.

Monotaro:  “See, according to the backstory, there’s this Ultimate Hunt goin’ on.” 

Haha, yep, that’s really all it is: a backstory.

Tsumugi:  “Umm… what are you talking about?”

Heh, and Tsumugi’s the one to act confused about that. She’s probably worried that he just said too much. In fact, for someone so apparently-not-that-important, she has a lot more lines in this scene than most other characters, which I imagine is deliberate.

This magical girl clothes-changing sequence can’t be how things really happened. On my first time I was sure this had to be meaningful and took it as a hint they were doing the simulation thing again, but I was also sceptical that they’d do the same twist twice. But yeah – it just… can’t be how this happened? I’m not sure what really did happen here. Unless they have some really weird technology in this universe.

Monokid:  “Once the seal has been broken, we’ll be in the domain of the killing game!”

Pregame Kaede:  (K-Killing game?)

And from this moment, what we’re seeing here omits a few parts to avoid spoiling us. This is finally the point at which everyone reacts to being in Danganronpa. Again, took you guys long enough, geez.

Monotaro:  “This amazing story will begin for real this time! 

Yup. It’s a story all right.

Some of the words in the background during the Flashback Light sequence are pretty telling – not only does it have a bunch of stuff relating to the piano, there’s also things like “Chatty” and “Friends”, showing that her entire personality and history are being shown to her right now, including parts that shouldn’t ever have been erased if all she erased was her talent.

There’s also “Moonlight”, which I believe is a mistranslation that should say “Clair de Lune” – it’s French for moonlight, and in Japanese the piece’s title isn’t the French name but is just the Japanese term for moonlight, so it seems someone on the localisation team missed the memo that this was referring to the piece of music and translated it into English rather than French.

I would note that Gonta was one of the characters who never spoke at all during this section, which is clearly deliberate because if he had we’d have noticed him speaking with correct grammar… except then I remembered that he uses correct grammar in the original Japanese anyway. So that’s just a coincidence. I wonder what the localisers would have done with that if he had been one of the ones to speak up.

Keebo also doesn’t say a word, which has to be deliberate. I’m not sure exactly what would be going on with him here – surely he must already have been given his “character”, because he doesn’t have a pregame identity at all.

 After the reset, our Kaede starts out reacting word-for-word the same way as pregame Kaede did – as I said, it seems that the superficial personalities weren’t really rewritten. However, everything else about the kind of people they are has very significantly changed.

Kaede:  “How rude! Don’t freak out at me like I’m some sort of monster!”

Shuichi:  “Ah, sorry…”

Kaede:  “I’m sorry too, okay? I just have no idea what’s going on…”

Tellingly, the point at which this starts to diverge from what originally happened is when Kaede and Shuichi apologise to each other for freaking out, rather than getting into an argument. Because these are both good people, and their pregame selves weren’t.

Kaede:  “Oh! ‘Gymnopédie No. 1’ by Erik Satie. Try to imagine that sorrowful melody filling your head and soothing your heart— 

Also Kaede is now a huge piano geek. Too much of a geek to realise that Shuichi probably doesn’t know the piece she’s talking about, but, she was trying to help him calm down! Kaede is good.

Heh, during the Monokubs’ exposition about Ultimates, they mention they have eligibility to run for elected office. I think you’ll find a certain Ultimate is already technically the prime minister (albeit without having been elected).

Okay, but, question. Shuichi and Kaede started out shut in these two lockers in this classroom. But this and the Flashback Light classroom are the only classrooms with lockers. That is not enough lockers for everyone. Where did everyone else start out?

Kaede:  “You’re a detective? That’s amazing!”

Shuichi:  “Ah, no… I don’t have the credentials to call myself a detective yet… I just… happened to solve a case that I came across and… now people call me that.”

Kaede:  “Not many people can ‘just happen’ to solve a case. You should be more proud of that.”

Aww, Shuichi’s lack of confidence in his title and Kaede already encouraging him.

This series of images of Kaede growing as a pianist is really cute. Warmed me to her straight away the first time around.

Shuichi:  “That’s how you got your Ultimate title? That’s way more impressive than me…”

Kaede:  “No. That’s all I’m good for, really.”

And she seems really self-conscious about the “Piano Freak” thing, the fact that she’s so obsessed with it that she thinks she doesn’t have anything else going for her. That’s not true, Kaede! You’re an amazing person, all because of how hard you work and how much you want to make others smile 

So already Kaede and Shuichi both have a reason to admire the other for their talent – Kaede admires Shuichi’s talent because it’s much cooler and more useful than hers, and Shuichi admires Kaede’s because she worked really hard for it and didn’t just get her title by chance.

Kaede:  “But this is my first time meeting another Ultimate student.” 

Kaede seems enthusiastic to meet other Ultimates, too. I bet she’s hoping she can bond over the shared feeling of being really passionate about something, even if that something is different for each of them. No-one’s going to call her Piano Freak if they’re equally obsessed with something else themselves.

Shuichi:  “When I woke up, I was in that locker. I… don’t know how I got there… It’s like… that memory just fell out of my head—”

Not really – it got overwritten. The only one who would have had memories erased just now would have been Rantaro 

Kaede:  “We’re confused. We just need to relax, is all. Oh! Let’s imagine Maurice Ravel’s ‘Sonatine’…”

Playing music is all about influencing people to feel certain emotions, and Kaede cares so much about trying to do that to help out even when she doesn’t have a piano!

Kaede:  “When we get outta here, I’ll share it with you…”

oh no it’s not even Clair de Lune but ouch

I really like how the fragments in this game are Friendship Fragments, not Hope Fragments. Almost like friendship is one of the main themes of this game or something! It’s also neat design-wise how the first fragment is much smaller than the main petal-like fragments, because just being introduced to someone is only the small foundation for the much more meaningful friendship that might come.

---

[Next post]

[him-e]

Hey! I love your analysis’ of Reylo. They’re my favorite. I have a loaded question (hopefully you’ve never been asked) — when do you think both Rey and Kylo became PHYSICALLY attracted to each other? And when do you think Rey became ROMANTICALLY attracted to Kylo, because I think we can all agree after killing Han Solo and their fight on Starkiller Base, she was, and rightly so, hostile and angry. Sorry if it’s a stupid question but you just seem to go really in depth with details. :)

ok so I noticed a very similar ask is already making the rounds on here, but since I started writing this post before I saw it, you’re getting mine too, yay. 

First: physical vs romantic can be a false binary. Some people don’t experience a difference in physical attraction vs romantic attraction. On a literary level, and especially in the context of a space opera/fairytale geared towards a young audience, the distinction might be entirely redundant: the two spheres coincide, as the sexual element is never explicit in fairytales, and the romantic interest is often a stand-in for both. You don’t get a point where the characters are “only” physically attracted to each other in this kind of stories.  

Second: going from hating someone to falling in love with said someone is a pretty standard romantic trope. It’s juicy, it’s sexy, and it’s all about CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. In enemies to lovers stories, the initial hatred is not an obstacle but part of the romantic build-up.Usually there isn’t “one” turning point where the relationship dramatically changes, but many. It’s a gradual evolution. 

With that said… I believe a degree of attraction was always there on both sides (Kylo’s side being a bit more self-evident than Rey’s, though Rey’s part is interesting as well, more on that later). The romantic feelings, on the other hand, are still a work in progress. They still haven’t acknowledged them. 

Let’s start with Kylo because it’s easier. 

1) Kylo is VERY attracted to Rey since the beginning.

Our boy is very transparent when it comes to Rey.He instinctively recognizes that there’s something special to this girl, and he’s drawn to her like a moth to a flame.

^ He looks her up and down. Adam emphasizes this gesture with a blatant head motion because he’s wearing a mask and he can’t be subtle about it. Which means he was probably asked to be unsubtle.

^ He gets in her personal space immediately after that. There’s really no need to be this close if he wanted to simply mind probe her. 

This is especially interesting because the way this scene is edited we don’t see how he got so close that he’s practically…what, sniffing her neck? Whispering in her ear? So I guess the final cut was rather toned down compared to the raw footage of this scene, and it’s for the better, since Rey is immobilized and terrified and in no position to give consent to this closeness. (tbh, I suspect he was originally meant to touch her or cup her face in this scene, and they cut it because they wanted to make sure that Kylo never touches her—aside from bridal carrying her into his ship. See also how he touches her during the interrogation in the tfa novelization but not in the movie. This is an excellent decision in my opinion. It’s crucial that Kylo doesn’t cross that boundary without Rey’s consent, so it makes it all the more poignant when he touches Rey’s outstretched hand in TLJ. Yeah, don’t tell me this wasn’t all planned.)

This attraction isn’t conscious on Kylo’s part—he seems to be completely clueless about it. Both Rey and Kylo are coded as very immature for their ages, both because they’re supposed to have a coming of age arc (which in true sw fashion overlaps with a hero’s journey), and because they’re emotionally stunted as neither had a “normal” adolescence (for different reasons).

^ more unnecessary closeness and he’s also blatantly looking at her lips and neck here. I won’t go in deep into the interrogation scene because there’s too much to dissect, but yeah, the whole thing is Kylo being ridiculously fascinated by Rey and not knowing what to do with it.

But this is also where he starts going deeper into her… ahem, poor choice of words, sorry. I mean he looks inside her mind and he’s enraptured. He sees her loneliness, her fear to leave the place where she’s bound in a forced state of childhood, he sees the island of her dreams—and her affection for Han, which immediately triggers a cascade of unpleasant feelings for him. In short, this is where he connects with her emotionally (although forcibly) and where it stops being just curiosity and attraction and becomes something more, on a deeper level than just the physical, for him.

(casual reminder that this is a space opera so yes, Kylo can see a kaleidoscope of Rey’s inner world and HOPELESSLY FALL IN LOVE WITH IT in the span of 2 minutes of mind probe. This isn’t to be taken literally.)

As she slips out of his grip just when he’s starting to know her, Kylo LOSES HIS SHIT. He gives in to a childish temper tantrum at the sight of her empty interrogation chair, and when she shows up again at Finn’s side, he sees red. This is very possessive/jealous coded behavior.

THEN REY SUMMONS THE LEGACY SABER AND HE’S LIKE:

^ Heart eyes, motherfucker. I think at this point our boy’s fallen HARD. He still doesn’t know, of course. But it’s clear that this moment—the whole duel with her—left a huge impression on him. Later in TLJ, he tells Rey that she has “that look in her eyes, from the forest”, which, wow, someone’s been thinking about Rey’s eyes A LOT and memorizing that particular expression and romanticizing the shit of of it.

Verdict: Kylo immediately finds Rey attractive but has probably no idea why he feels that way, and starts making a lot of irrational decisions in order to take her with him and make her stay. By the end of TFA, he’s already caught a variety of Feelings. They will only intensify in TLJ, but the foundation, both in physical and emotional terms, is already there.

2) Rey. Rey is more complicated because she’s our protagonist/main pov, she’s female—female attraction is depicted differently than male attraction—and most importantly she’s in a situation of disadvantage for most of TFA. Due to her limited agency she is forced to react rather than act, and she’s constantly in a fight or flight mode. 

This, of course, makes her (subtle) attraction hard to notice and problematic to discuss, but we’ll get there.

^ Her first reaction to a full masked Kylo Ren is blind terror (with reason: Kylo chases, immobilizes, and then threatens her with his lightsaber). But remember: per the novelization, “she has seen this man before. In a nightmare, in a dream”. This already introduces an element of ambiguity: why this distinction? Was the dream pleasant? Kylo is, at this stage, the physical manifestation of a shadow that seems to be haunting her (in her subconscious, but also in the force vision she had minutes before). It isn’t as much repulsive as it is scary. 

Soon enough, she starts conversing with the shadow. Once the initial terror fades, she regains composure and starts demanding answers, even as tied up to a chair as she is.

The unmasking is a crucial moment.

^ This is when Rey sees Ben’s face for the first time—the prince underneath the beast—and it confuses her. It’s where she loses her combative attitude and has to regroup for a minute. She blinks, she breathes in, her eyes wander across his figure.The novelization states that it’s because he looks so average (LOL, sure) and not monstrous at all, but beyond the surface reading, this already tells us that Rey took time to register Kylo’s facial features and find them strangely unthreatening–even familiar. She definitely doesn’t find him repulsive or odd-looking.

From this moment on, she has trouble looking at him. She’s constantly avoiding his eyes or stealing short glances at him—he turned from creature into man, and she’s suddenly hyperaware of his closeness and her restraints. (this is where most people feel uncomfortable with that scene, because it’s dripping with ambiguous tension). Then she finds Kylo in her mind, she fights back and locks eyes with him again, this time unafraid. She chooses to look into the monster and while she turns the tables on him, invading his mind, she finds herself “inexorably drawn to”… something. His fears? The novelization leaves this unsaid, but the choice of words is interesting. She’s not merely pushing him out, or defending herself anymore. She finds something that intrigues her in there. That draws her in.

This scene is where they truly reveal themselves to the other—Kylo’s humanity and weaknesses, and Rey’s powers and strength. It leaves them both shaking and bewildered. It’s a sort of initiation—for both. To each other’s force powers, but also to the attractive power each has on the other.

Then comes another turning point—Han’s murder, which Rey witnesses from a privileged perspective.

^ There’s a sort of softness, but also enrapture, in her expression here. She’s completely sucked into this scene, all but forgetting she could shoot Kylo from where she is and end this at any moment. No, what she’s seeing is another side of Han, but also another side of Kylo Ren.

It goes back to when she was first introduced to the story of Ben Solo.

See? Raptured. Camera zooming in on her face. Light spheres floating around her as Han tells her about the boy who destroyed it all. This is a magical moment, the cinematography is telling us. 

On some level, even before meeting him in person, she’s drawn to him. Remember, this is a fairytale.

By the forest scene Rey is horrified, angry, exhausted, grieving. In the span of two days she was forced to grow past childhood, cut her umbilical cord to Jakku, and enter a scary phase of transition into adulthood, which Kylo is, like it or not, a big part of. Now she’s seen him murder his own father—he is a monster with a human face, something that seems to enrage her even more. The following duel is more of a discovery of her own powers (and potential darkness) than it is about Kylo (whereas for Kylo it’s definitely about Rey), but in the end she can’t bring herself to kill him. Again, this tells us more about who Rey is and what is her inner conflict than it does about her relationship with Kylo but… it’s something. I think on an instinctual level, even at this early stage, she recognizes something in him that resonates with her. His loneliness, his anger, his misery perhaps.

Verdict: at the end of TFA, Rey is mostly angry and scared of Kylo. All her actions revolve around getting the hell out of dodge, keeping Kylo out of her mind, and punishing him for Han’s death. Understandably. 

But she’s also curious. This man confuses her. He shows up in her subconscious, and he’s inextricably linked to her understanding of the Force, and her first experiences with it. It’s a sort of imprinting.

TLJ is when the really meaty part begins for Rey. In broad terms, TFA was Kylo’s romantic/sexual awakening to Rey, and TLJ is Rey’s to Kylo.The peaceful, safe setting of Ahch-To and the fact that through the force bond they can communicate but NOT hurt or manipulate each other draws Rey out of her fight or flight mode, allowing her to explore on her terms Kylo’s character, and all the questions and doubts he arouses (heh) in her. 

In their first force bond interactions, Kylo is calm and collected. In the other scenes he’s had so far he’s a hot mess of boiling rage and hurt (just minutes before, he smashed his helmet and launched an attack to the Resistance in which he thinks his mother perished), but with this girl who slashed his face in half and left him bleeding like a pig in the snow, he’s quite the soft spoken gentleman, lol. I think he’s been thinking a lot about Rey, he came to terms with his fascination for her, and now he wants to make Rey think about him too. He tempts and taunts her, from a place of relative knowledge/wisdom (or so he thinks). Rey’s the one who is in emotional turmoil. 

^ Initially, she tries to stick to her feisty heroine script, and she still has a lot of genuine rage and disgust for him, but mostly she can’t make sense of him. She feels insecure in what she knows (not just about Kylo but also about Luke, the Force, her role in this, everything. Nobody is telling her anything!), so she overcompensates with knee-jerk aggression and a false display of confidence (”I know everything I need to know about you!”). 

She also calls him “murderous snake!!!!”, which is hilarious and very revealing. IDK about snake symbolism in the GFFA, but here on earth, and especially in western culture, snakes symbolize insidious seduction, and that’s certainly the authorial intent behind this choice of words. By saying this line, Rey is framed as the quintessential virtuous maiden trying to resist (sexual) temptation, that biblically goes hand in hand with knowledge—which is exactly what Kylo offers. 

On a subconscious level, I think she already recognizes Kylo as a seduction.

^ This is the first thing that throws her off balance. She was probably expecting some angry shitty warped-moral-compass rebuttal, instead he quietly agrees that he’s a monster, while also “coming into the light” to let her see his face better. To make her see him. During the whole conversation, and part of the following force bond scene as well, Kylo is almost morbidly insistent to share with her the details of his past (”Did he tell you what happened? Did he tell you why?”). He wants her to see him, ugly as he is (in a spiritual sense).  

At this point, Rey’s sexuality is GETTING ANSWERS AND FIGURING SHIT ABOUT HER ROLE IN THE FORCE. And Luke (the biblical “God” of the island) is giving her none of that, other than hippie lessons about how the Force is a superior power blah blah and you better not fuck with it blah blah don’t go in the dark wet hole and remember that the Jedi aren’t supposed to intervene in mundane shit, blah.

I actually think the deleted fish nun party scene is important to understand Rey’s state of mind entering the third, and crucial, force connection. The point of that lesson—at least the way Rey understands it—is teaching her inaction and second-guessing her instincts. Luke is projecting his own disillusionment on her. He’s telling her to stop believing in heroes, when what Rey actually needs is believing in herself as a hero. She comes out of it feeling more frustrated and humiliated than ever. Depressed, almost.

Kylo, instead, gives her answers. Not definite answers, but something that propels her into action. He tells her, “do this and this in order to become the person you’re meant to be”. He strokes her ego. He talks about her destiny. He echoes and validates her suppressed anger and frustration. He digs up a painful truth about her family, and encourages her to face it. Even as she demands to know the reason he murdered his father, he makes it all about her. First, he made her see him; now he’s making her see herself through his eyes.

And, of course, he’s half naked through the entire thing. This is the first time Rey is confronted with something textually (as in, not simply existing in the subtext) sexual. The shirtlessness is obviously here for a meta reason too (to loudly communicate the romantic undertones of the dynamic, to symbolically strip Kylo of his layers, and to give the audience an eye candy) but even Rey the character is aware that this has to do with sex, someway. 

^ That’s why she stutters and averts her eyes. This is the unmasking 2.0, only this time the sexual implications are in the forefront. In a pg-13 format, of course, but still largely readable even for children.

This is where Rey starts wondering if they could actually touch. Gee, what a coincidence. 

The shirtless scene is a huge turning point where the romantic build up becomes, for a short while, glaringly sexual. It would be easy to say that this is when Rey’s physical attraction is born, but that’s an oversimplification. Everything in this movie and in the movie before has been building to this. Kylo Ren has been at the forefront of Rey’s thoughts since Starkiller. She has a powerful psychic connection to him, talked about him with Luke, wondered about the reasons of his patricide, questioned his backstory, exercised frantically to blow off the steam of their encounters. 

This isn’t when Rey first begins to feel attraction to Kylo—it’s where she’s first faced with the reality of it, and us with her.

And facing this reality is, in part, what prompts her to go into the dark side cave—the one the older male authority figure forbade her from going, the one in which she already subconsciously expects to walk a threshold. The threshold of knowing what happened to her parents, the question that she’s been avoiding for so long, that kept her bound to Jakku, to a version of herself who never grew up past childhood because growing up would make the years and years of abandonment painfully real, rather than just notches on a wall.

The cave scene has all the markings of an archetypal rite of passage into adulthood (and womanhood). The water, the near-drowning experience, the visions, the multiple selves, the mirror. Rey goes into it fully understanding that however it goes, it will imply a loss of innocence. Thematically, it’s a direct continuation of the other loss of innocence she’s just experienced—the sexual one, with Kylo.

Rey doesn’t get the answer she hoped for, but one that forces her to mature and come into her adult self—it’s time to take responsibility and be the hero of her own story, because the adults she were waiting for are nowhere in sight. So she comes out of the cave as more mature… but also desperate for human connection. Or rather, for connection to a specific someone. She feels “relief” when she senses Kylo’s presence in the Force inside the hut. 

And when she sees him, she thinks again of touching him.

In the movie we don’t get how the conversation started, and the novelization doesn’t delve into details either, and boy what would I pay to know what sparked Rey’s confession. But we can imagine. By this point, Rey already feels a kinship with Kylo, and her distrust and skepticism for him has eroded. She sees her own loneliness in him. She feels they were both betrayed by parental figures on some level. She’s made the mental connection that if Vader was brought back, then Ben could be too, by someone who loves him. Their force connections have been strange but they also gave her the chance to discuss stuff she would have otherwise bottled up. He’s physically attractive to her. He doesn’t judge her for going into the darkness. And when he tells her what she needs to hear the most—that she’s not alone—she makes that leap and reaches out to touch him.

It’s an olive branch, a comforting gesture towards someone she feels is just alone as she is, but it’s physical contact she seeks. She could have offered her sympathy in any other way, yet she chose to reach for his hand. Remember, she’s been thinking about touching him for a while already.

Kylo, after a moment of confusion, responds by taking off his glove. This is such a loaded gesture in terms of its romantic/sexual meaning that I’m still in shock it actually happened. He’s baring himself to her, so that this contact happens without barriers. His skin is not covered in first order leather when he touches hers. This is the real him.

^ And then they have their visions of the future, and that One Perfect Tear falls down Rey’s cheek and Luke blows up the hut and this is where my analysis can stop because by this point it’s completely obvious that our girl has FALLEN HARD, and since she’s the *shoot first, ask later* type, she hops on the Falcon to get her boy back before she can admit to herself she’s stupidly in love with him.

Rey saw a vision of herself with Ben Solo at her side, and she’s so blinded by the beauty of it that making it happen as fast as possible becomes her number one priority.

But feelings for someone don’t change overnight so radically. If she’s so massively affected by that vision, it’s only because her romantic attraction for Kylo has been building up at a consistent pace since the start of the movie, getting her to a point where she spontaneously sought an intimacy with him.

It’s the same for Kylo. Rey literally ships herself to him, but he’s no less reckless than she is in barreling into this promise of a future idyll. When Rey gets on the Supremacy, he already knows this has to end with Snoke’s death somehow. He doesn’t know how to do it, but he will. He will sacrifice his master to be with her, just as she did.

If you asked either of them if they’re in love with each other, I bet they would stare at you with uncomprehending eyes—it’s like they lack the basic lexicon to understand their feelings, let alone verbalize them. So Rey’s like “save the fleet because it’s the morally right thing to do!”, and Ben’s like “join me to rule the galaxy!”, and they’re both like, “you’ll stand with me!”. They’re trying to express the love they already feel but they’re doing it in non-romantic terms, because that’s all they know.

(gifs are credited with the “ ^ “ - click on it and reblog the op!)

[riderofthewind]

So I just finished reading Mortal Engines

And I needed to rant a bit about differences between the book and movie and why they were poor choices. I’m going to try and avoid generic ‘It’s different so it’s bad’ arguments because those suck, good movie adaptations of books that don’t massively diverge from the book itself are rare, it’s an essential part of making something great in most cases but in this case...oh god maybe they should have just done a shot for shot copy of the book.

This is gonna be a long one, but please join me on this nitpicky angry journey (and let me know the shit you liked/hated about the movie.)

OH GOD THIS MOVIE WAS SO TERRIBLE BUT THIS BOOK IS RATHER GOOD.

Warning: This will be nitpicky but I just...need to.

I'm a firm believer that a movie adaptation does not need to be faithful to the book it is based on to be a great movie. I love The Shining (I actually like the movie a lot more than the book but that's a rant for another day) however Mortal Engines manages to fail both at being a good movie and a good adaptation.

THE BEGINNING

The first like 30 minutes of the movie are almost shot for shot from the intro of the book and it's genuinely very good in both instances. London eats a small town, Hester boards, she tries to stab Valentine (in the movie she succeeds but he's fine. It's a change that I don't really understand because it doesn't actually change anything) and is chased off of London by Tom who is booted off by Valentine to cover his tracks. Tom and Hester group up because Hester is injured, they get picked up by another town who pretend to be nice and then are going to be sold as slaves.

I'm not going to go shot for shot through the changes the movie makes from the book because that'd be pointless. But I specifically wanted to recap this intro section because it's so close to the book and because where it diverges is mostly meaningless (and awful product placement.) However the part where it splits from the book is not just signposted, the script writer literally wrote into the script criticism of the book at this point in the movie. In the book, Hester and Tom remove a floor plating from their room and jump out, escaping before being sold as slaves. In the movie, they attempt this but Hester is too injured to make the jump out of the room and instead they are rescued by Anna Fang moments later. This makes sense and is a change that on the face of it I kinda like because yeah, it makes sense. Hester could barely walk at that point how did she make that jump? But the script in the film is so fucking bad that Hester may as well at this point go "I can't make the jump, i'm too injured" then turn to the camera and wink.

After this point the movie diverges in a lot of ways from the book, although it still follows mostly the same plot it just cuts out a bunch of stuff and ruins every single character then turns into Star Wars at the end because reasons.

SO

WHY THE MOVIE SUCKS

Okay, i'm going to get really nitpicky about specific changes that were for the worse that helped ruin this movie but to start with let me just summary and say. The movie sucks primarily because it's written terribly. Almost every character is reduced to shitty one liners after the intro, worst of all being Anna Fang, Valentine is reduced into generic villain, but even the characters who are similar to their book versions are just written so poorly that what worked in the book doesn't work on screen. Also Shrike's name sound so much like "Shrek" when being said out loud that it's hilarious. But overall it does stay surprisingly close to the book in plot up until the end, redacting a lot of stuff but rarely adding additional fluff. The way I'd break it down would be First act: Most similar to the book, overall very good. If the whole movie as this good it'd be a great movie.

Second act: Starts to diverge from the book to shorten it down for the length of a film. The writing is generally very very bad here, primarily because this section focusses on Shrike and Anna Fang. The former of which is reduced to saying "Kill Hester" over and over and the latter of whom is reduced to saying shitty one liners.

Third act: It's Star Wars but bad and has almost nothing to do with the book other than the location.

Also, I'm going to focus on story and characters here but keep in your mind that after the first act the cinematography gets terrible. Like genuinely it feels like a different movie also in terms of how poorly shot and edited the whole movie was after Act 1.

THADDEUS VALENTINE

Portrayed by Hugo Weaving in the film (doing his best Sean Bean impression) and uh yeah, the changes to him are central to the changes to the whole plot and basically what makes the movie so bad.

To begin with, Valentine is somewhat mysterious to start with. We know he's the Mayor's right hand man, he boots Tom off London after he hears Hester claim Valentine killed her parents but otherwise is charismatic and generally comes off as a very affable and likeable person. He is outspoken about the class divides in London having risen up from being a scavenger to the upper echelons of society himself. Both the movie and the book do this, it's great, he's a great character.

Valentine murdered Hester Shaw's parents long before the start of the book to take a piece of a weapon called MEDUSA back to London, which is used to rebuild the weapon which they intend to use to murder lots of people and basically make London an unstoppable monster. The big change the movie makes to Valentine's character is that this is his plan. Valentine does this in secret somehow, murders the mayor, stages a coup and takes London off course towards Asia to start firing off Medusa willy nilly and kill everyone and "save London" because they'll have so much to consume.

In the book this is the Mayor's plan and Valentine is being blackmailed into doing it because he wants his daughter to grow up in high society and have a better life. This is much better for a variety of reasons but the main one being that book doesn't reveal this until much later (in fact Valentine isn't even in most of the book) and it is foreshadowed by an earlier encounter with a bunch of pirates which didn't make it into the movie (which is fine because it's rather superfluous other than this foreshadowing.)

These changes aren't inherently bad but the way they are handled in the movie it basically just results in Valentine being an incredibly charismatic but evil villain the whole way through with absolutely no depth to his character outside of that. In the book what he did to get where he is puts strain on him and his daughter's relationship in a way that builds and results in his eventual suicide by refusing to escape with Hester and Tom, despite Hester's somewhat forgiveness of him seeing how hard he is trying to save his innocent daughter.

LUKE, I AM YOUR FATHER

It's heavily implied in the book that Valentine is Hester's father and not her mother's husband. But this only comes up like once in a conversation between Valentine and his daughter, Hester never learns about it and it's kind of a non-thing. It's only really there to show that Valentine was willing to kill someone who might be his daughter in order to build this life for his definite daughter.

In the movie, this revelation is made during the climactic battle between Hester and Valentine on the back of a ship during a fucking dogfight and oh god everything about it is the worst. He literally picks her up and dangles her over the edge of the ship and almost line for line repeats the Darth Vader father revelation from Star Wars. It's insane and goddamn I hate it.

SPEAKING OF STAR WARS

The movie changes the whole final sequence so that instead of it being a struggle for survival for each of the characters and the big climactic defeat of the villain being caused by the fact he was literally meddling with powers he didn't understand (in this case, old tech than they haphazardly rebuilt and didn't know how to fix when it broke) to being a generic big budget action sequence that copies more and more stuff from Star Wars. There's literally a sequence where a bunch of fighters are taking out guns so that someone can do a trench run. The action cumulates in Tom flying into the heart of London and blowing up the engines. It's just bad and generic and literally just Star Wars. It's boring as hell. As mentioned earlier, it's also just not shot well at all and it's a mess. They do these weird awful zoom ins every time a scene takes place inside MEDUSA and it's hideous and I have no idea why it's the way it is.

Other stuff:

ANNA FANG

I've mentioned a few times in this rant that Anna Fang only speaks in one liners in the movie but I can't get across exactly how shitty it is. She's damn cool in the book and the way they translated that to the movie was basically "she has a snarky one liner for every situation."

She does look cool though.

VALENTINE'S DAUGHTER

Katherine I think is her name? I literally just finished this book an hour ago and I don't remember. One of my complaints about the movie at the time was that she is a nothing character who does basically nothing. In the book she is a nothing character who does basically nothing but she also has a pet wolf. She exists solely to give Valentine a reason for being blackmailed, which in the movie isn't even a thing so she may as well have been cut out of it entirely. She sucks in both though so whatever.

HESTER SHAW

She is constantly described as ugly and deformed after what Valentine did to her. In the movie she has a kinda cute scar but that's it. This sucks but again, whatever. It's a movie, that's how this shit rolls unfortunately. It's hard to market your movie when the protagonist looks like Two Face in TDK.

All in all, I'm glad I went on this journey of reading the book after seeing and hating the movie. It was fun in its own weird way. I definitely enjoyed it more than being excited for an adaptation of a book I liked only for it to suck at least. That movie was bad but it led me to reading a good book so it did something of worth.

[kaleidographia]

[Review] Tales of Vesperia: The Brightest Star in the Night Sky Doesn't Shine as Strongly as I'd Hoped

Warning: Contains allusive/thematic spoilers.

The day is finally here! Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition, containing content previously unseen outside of Japan, has finally been released, so that us English speakers and/or non-PS3 owners can experience the new storylines, characters and features for the first time! Alas, this isn’t a post about that, firstly because this post is going up day-of-release and I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, and secondly because I am writing this from outside of the country and won’t be united with my pre-ordered copy until I return next week, RIP.

Therefore, this post is written from the point of view of someone who has only played the Xbox 360 version. I will try to keep it brief for the sake of not spoiling newcomers to the game, and also hopefully not to complain about things that are fixed (or broken??) in the Definitive Edition.

Tales of Vesperia is a game in the long-running “Tales of” franchise from Bandai Namco, the first one in HD, originally released for the Xbox 360 in 2008, later receiving an updated PS3 version in 2009, exclusive to Japan. Like many older fans, my introduction to the Tales of series was with Tales of Symphonia for the Gamecube, and I fell in love hard; I was therefore extremely excited to play the next games, but unfortunately, I never owned the platforms for them until very recently. Along with Tales of the Abyss, Vesperia and Symphonia form the “holy trinity” of games in the series almost everyone loves; find a Tales fan and ask them their favourite game, and the answer will likely be one of those three (note: I’ve heard very good things about Graces and the two Xillia games, but unfortunately haven’t had a chance to judge them firsthand myself). The three games, while not directly related in terms of plot or setting, share a lot of things in common, as they had mostly the same creative team, often referred to as “Team Symphonia” (as opposed to “Team Destiny” which made most other games since then). One notable difference is the scenario writer, Takashi Hasegawa, while Symphonia and Abyss were written by Takumi Miyajima.

The Tales series is known for its reliance on anime and JRPG tropes, often used in a way that plays off cliché expectations only to then layer plot twists and character development and produce a much deeper experience than what would be expected from the get-go. When used effectively, these methods produce a story that is both fun and emotionally challenging. Tales of Vesperia is no different, offering a cast of archetypes that should be highly recognizable to those familiar with the genre, and yet this may be best set of characters in a Tales game. The party has impressively good banter, chemistry and dynamics and several scenes had me laughing out loud or yelling, and I never had a bad time watching their relationships unfold.

Unfortunately, the game spares little time fleshing out backstories or learning more about each individual character outside of the main plot. By the end, I was left wanting, as the cast was so endearing and vibrant, yet I knew next to nothing about them aside from what had been relevant to show onscreen. I longed for more information about where they had come from and how they had gotten where they were, but it is a testament to the strength of the character writing that their storylines reached a satisfying conclusion despite this relative sparse amount of information about them. “Backstory is not story”, Craig McCracken and Frank Angones were fond of saying to fans of Wander Over Yonder, but for a game with the size and scope of a 60-hour JRPG, not providing that window of information feels like a hole in the worldbuilding.

Mechanically, Vesperia builds on the model established by Symphonia and refined in Abyss, where combat takes place in a 3D arena and the player can run around, hit enemies and rack up combos fighting game style (the franchise calls this “Linear Motion Battle System”). While Symphonia was in 3D, it restricted the player to a single side-to-side corridor of action. Abyss added the ability to run around in 3D space by holding down a button, a feature Vesperia also has. This makes combat easier and more fun, as nothing is quite as satisfying as avoiding an attack and then running around and hitting the enemy from behind. And, as the game allows up to four players controlling different party members, and I have a player 2 (shoutout to my roommate Opal), Vesperia’s system is the most well-suited to multiplayer. If nothing else, I never felt lost while on the battlefield yelling for backup. The one major flaw is that boss fights come with massive difficulty spikes and I often had to grind and formulate careful battle plans with Opal just to not get continuously massacred by bosses.

Storywise, Vesperia starts off very strongly, sort of peters out near the middle, and then the third act falls apart. At first the theme is anti-authority, with a protagonist who grew up in the slums, neglected by nobles, who became a knight and then quit out of disillusionment when it turned out all they did was squabble about politics, and the inciting incident and early driver of the plot is his quest to “fix the plumbing” as a popular Tumblr text post put it. It’s clear Yuri has all the reason in the world to not trust authority and he even goes full vigilante against unjust abuse of power, but while this thread seems like the most important theme in the story, after a while so many other elements come into play it ends up lost and doesn’t really make much of an appearance except to highlight the differences between Yuri and Flynn’s approaches to life and how they prefer to help people. On its own it’s a compelling idea, but it never gets the follow-through it deserves, and my expectations were certainly subverted—but in a bad way.

It’s hard to talk about the third act without spoilers so I will probably come back to it for a proper analysis at a later date, but its ultimate message was already kind of limp in 2008 and is even more laughable now. For a game whose initial premise was so strongly against authority, the ultimate resolution of the main conflict reads as incredibly daft in light of just about everything that is happening in politics at the moment. There’s a very strong environmental allegory and the comparisons to climate change are not subtle, but the writers probably bit off more than they could chew because realistically trying to solve this problem in the time the story allotted would have been next to impossible; I still would have hoped the implications of the given solution had been actually explored instead of settling for an “oh well, guess everything’s been fixed now”.

I’m being harsh about the plot because to me Vesperia has a lot of wasted potential. Don’t get me wrong: I do love this game. It is in fact up there with the holy trinity as far as my opinions of the series go, but it lands in third place out of the three because it just fails to live up to what its first half promises about the world it created. To put it bluntly, if the story had just ended at the conclusion of the second act, it would have been much stronger. That the game continues for another 20 hours on a completely different track with an unsatisfying, unrealistic conclusion is a huge shame because it brings down what could have been a real masterpiece of tropey anime JRPG narratives. I live for that stuff, there’s a reason I want to play every Tales game, but that’s what makes this letdown the most disappointing. At least the characters themselves get good conclusions; it is unfortunate I can’t say the same for the main plot.

Despite all this I think Vesperia is a worthwhile experience, and one of my favourite things about is its aesthetic sense. Every location is immersive, polished, and the pinnacle of what I want to see in a videogame, to the point I dream of Symphonia and Abyss remakes made in the same style (and every other game in the series, to be honest, but that seems unlikely with the direction it’s taken since then). I genuinely cared about the party and I wanted to see them succeed and I was ultimately happy that they did even if I did roll my eyes a lot. The combat was so satisfying and so fun to play with a player 2 it makes me twice as mad that Zestiria’s camera goes completely wild during multiplayer and prevents me from joining in. I should note that for someone who plays as many games as I do I am notoriously terrible at them so I heavily favour story over mechanics, but Vesperia is a game that reminds me that engaging gameplay can make a huge difference. Yeah, I suck, but at least I’m having fun while sucking. That’s more than I can say for a lot of games.

If you like JRPGs, games that let you run around and hit things, or fun and intriguing character dynamics, you’ll probably like Tales of Vesperia. If you’re looking for a coherent story from start to finish, you’ll probably disappointed, but there’s just enough there to keep you engrossed until the end. Overall, Vesperia is solid, and the parts it fumbles aren’t bad enough to ruin the whole thing, but hopefully the extra content in Definitive Edition helps to smooth it out; I’ll have to find that out for myself.

Aside from how it messes up the voice acting this time around. Oh, Bamco.

[buzzdixonwriter]

Chillin’ With Netflix (2018 edition)

LOST IN SPACE

Really well done, family friendly space opera.  Top notch production values, good / smart writing, superlative cast.

And despite all this, it couldn’t keep my attention past episode 4.

I put the blame on me, not this new series by writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless.  

As a preteen, I was in the prime target audience for the original Lost In Space back in the mid-1960s, and that series -- despite its wildly varying tone -- created an iconic show that, try as they might, every subsequent re-make struggles to overcome.

Seriously, it’s like trying to remake I Love Lucy only without Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley.

Yeah, it can be done, but why bother?  Use that talent and energy to do something in the same vein but different.

That being said, I deny no one their pleasure.  If you haven’t seen / loved the original, try this version; you might very well like it.

. . .

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE

Excellent production / writing / cast / performances.

I started out really liking it.

That enthusiasm faded.

I ended up enjoying this new retelling of The Haunting Of Hill House but came away feeling it fell short of 1963’s The Haunting, the first and still best adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s classic ghost story.

First off, a definition of terms (which will explain my enthusiasm fade):  In order to work, a ghost story must take place in the audience’s head.

That is to say, the reader / viewer must be left with two equally possibly yet mutually exclusive possibilities:  There are such things as ghost, or the haunting is purely psychological in the mind/s of the character/s.

Even in stories such as the original novel or the 1963 film where the possibility is presented that at least one of the characters is mentally unstable and is either imagining / causing the manifestations, the book / movie / series must never come down concretely in either camp.

To make it purely psychological turns it into a drama about mental illness, the make it supernatural moves it from the realm of “ghost story” into “monster movie” where the monster happens to be a ghost.

A ghost story doesn’t have to be scary, simply…haunting.  Portrait Of Jenny is a bitter-sweet romance that despite a lack of spookiness remains a bona fide ghost story.

(Ghost comedies such as Topper, Blythe Spirit, Ghost Busters, etc. are a different genre entirely akin to leprechaun / alien comedies where a fantastic being disrupts the lives of the human protagonists.)

This version works well, even though it doesn’t maintain the high level it starts with.  The family dynamics are well done, the performances excellent.

For the first couple of episodes the series tries to walk the line, raising the possibility and eventually confirming that mental illness runs through the family that moved into Hill House, but the moment the ghosts begin manifesting themselves, it paradoxically stops being a ghost story and becomes a booga-booga story).  Virtuosity for the sake of virtuosity also works against the production, occasionally dragging audiences out of the story to admire how clever the film makers are.

It also gets a little too convoluted and overly melodramatic towards the end, however (ghost stories work best at their simplicity.

And it is not an upbeat ending but a really horrific one as the family in question literally consumes itself.  

This version inhabits a godless universe, and the apparent “good” ending is really a terrible one of eternal damnation (albeit not in the Christian sense).

I recognize and appreciate the level of craftsmanship that went into this, and recommend it to people who like scary stories.

But it ain’t what I’d call a ghost story, and it sure ain’t what Jackson would call one, either.

. . .

SHE-RA AND THE PRINCESSES OF POWER

I'm not the target audience for She-Ra in either incarnation.

That being said, I watched episodes 1-3 and 12-13.

It looks good to me.  The story was familiar, but like old B-Westerns it's the kind of genre where familiarity breeds affection, so no complaints there.

Pacing seemed slow, but the design and animation was good, voices top notch. Clearly a heavy anime influence.

Really liked the wide range of physical types and acknowledgement of LGBT characters. Lots of fun with the various interpersonal relationships and characterizations, especially Swift Wind, the smartass flying unicorn.

They did a really good job with this show and the characters seemed more like real teens than the previous incarnation.

. . .

THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS

Well, this one I can recommend whole heartedly and without reservation.  

Joel and Ethan Coen have shown a remarkable penchant for period films and a strong affinity for Westerns in the past, and this anthology film offers a dazzling grab bag of good / off beat stories that range from the ridiculous to the realistic, though a couple of them are Westerns by location only as they don’t really rely on any of the themes that define the Western genre. 

The stories are:

“The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs” -- a hilarious send up of old Hollywood Western clichés starting with the quintessential sing cowboy trope and spiraling into full bore craziness from there.

“Near Algodones” -- a would-be bank robber has a really bad day.  Despite its dazzling editorial style, one of the more conventional stories -- and yet it manages to evoke both classic Buddhism, the crucifixion, and the ultimate sardonic joke all in the last 30 seconds.

“Meal Ticket” -- a Twilight Zone-ish story about a backwoods impresario and his limbless performer, told almost entirely silently except for quotes from poems and dramatic works and the occasional song.  While it makes good use of its Western locale, there’s really nothing in the story to tie it to the West; it could just as easily occur on a Mississippi riverboat, the back alleys of White Chapel, or the slums of Mumbai.

“All Gold Canyon” -- based on a story by Jack London, it’s a look at how hard and demanding a prospector’s life could be (with a virtually unrecognizable Tom Waits as the grizzled old prospector).  The Coen Brothers use their location to the fullest advantage, recreating the feel of what such land must have felt like before the first settlers moved in.

“The Gal Who Got Rattled” -- the longest, most realistic, and most bitter-sweet of the stories, set on a wagon train heading to Oregon, and focusing on a young woman who is definitely not the sort who should be making such a trip.  While we can look back from our safe vantage point in the 21stcentury and recognize the Indian Wars were the direct result of rapacious land grabbing by Western settlers, this story does an excellent job of showing just how terrifying it would be to sit on the receiving end of a tribal attack.  The ending is a morally complex one, well worth pondering, and especially ambiguous given the nature of the story’s framing element.

“The Mortal Remains” -- weakest of the stories, but salvaged by strong performances.  Another Twilight Zone style story, and if you didn’t guess the ending by the one minute mark I’ve got a bridge in Florida made of solid gold bricks I’d like to sell you.

. . .

AMERICAN VANDAL

Yowza!  This is one of the best series I’ve ever seen, and it’s perfect in damn near every way.

On the surface it’s a parody of various true crime documentary series, especially Netflix’ own Making A Murderer.  It’s told from the point of view of two students in their high school’s audio-visual club who make a documentary about an act of vandalism directed at the school’s teachers and the student who is blamed for it.

Of course, as they investigate, they turn up evidence that the accused student did not commit the vandalism, and in their pursuit of the truth uncover several more secrets on their way to the big reveal.

At first blush, the makings of a solid show.

But what co-creators Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault manage to pull off with this is nothing short of astounding, a fun parody of a genre that raises interesting questions about both the genre they’re parodying and the issue of truth and guilt, while on top of that adding an incredibly complex yet easy to follow overlay of conflicting characters and emotions.

They get every single detail right, and even seemingly throw away lines / scenes / characters get fleshed out in amazing and unexpected ways (for example, one extremely minor character, with no significant dialog, who appears only briefly on camera as comic relief in one or two early episodes is later revealed to be severely alcoholic, and in recalling his earlier appearances, one realizes the character must be suffering through a genuinely hellish existence).

Dylan, the accused student, starts out as a character of fun and amusement, a high school goofball of Spicoli proportions, only to come to a sad and ultimately terrifying end as he realizes just how dumb and dead-end his life is.

I cannot praise thise series enough.  Very rarely will I look at someone else’s work and say “I wish I had done that.” American Vandal is one of the rare exceptions.

The series has two seasons, the first involving Dylan and the vandalism of the teachers’ cars, the second involving a food poisoning incident at a private school the original two students are invited to investigate.  Season two is very strong but lacks “the shock of the new” that season one provided; it’s high quality and entertaining, but not as compelling as the original.

. . .

© Buzz Dixon