#plus like half of the shadow negotiation dialogue

[mortallycolourfulfun]

Ykw Joker's gotta be the flirtiest silent protagonist I've ever seen

[mittensmorgul]

Hello Mittens! Has anyone touched on how Cas could be feeling after finding out Eileen was brought back? Like, is he going to resent her/Sam a little for not bringing back Jack?

Oh gosh, I haven’t seen anyone discussing that specifically.

But Cas looked so concerned about her resurrection. There wasn’t time with Sam’s predicaments (telling Cas about their search for Chuck and Lilith, and Cas having a potential immediate, albeit dangerous, lead that ended up with Sam nearly dying, Cas engaging in a bit of shady negotiation to save his life, and coming away with Sam possibly having hit on a route to the solution to their problems... plus Cas’s interpersonal drama with Dean which is why he returned to the bunker in the first place... first question he asked when he arrived was “Where’s Dean?”... 

heck this started as a parenthetical, but it’s getting too long, so I’m breaking this up. :’D

So Cas seemed ready, since he was the one who walked away, to at least open a dialogue with Dean on his return. Even if it was Cas just laying down his conditions for returning (nothing changes if he takes himself out of the game, so he’s back to help, but they need to resolve their differences, much like Sam and Dean were at back in s9 post-Gadreel... with the whole “we can work together, but as for being brothers... >.>”), he seemed like he was prepared to face Dean right away, you know?

So why was Cas so hesitant by the end of the episode, when Dean finally returned from his “Drive to clear his head” that Sam told him Dean had gone on? Cas had tried to call Dean to tell him about Sam’s crisis, and Dean hadn’t answered. He apparently hadn’t even returned Cas’s call before he showed back up at the bunker and he’d had a six hour drive from Texhoma). Dean didn’t know if Sam was even okay by the time he returned, you know? And Cas would’ve told him that if he’d actually called him back. So Dean hadn’t returned his calls, even when it was directly about Sam’s health. What hope did Cas have, when Cas had been at least partly responsible for Sam being hurt in the first place, you know? Which was the accusation that led Cas to declare it was time for him to move on in the first place...

(yes I remember this was about Eileen, but it’s also about Cas’s state of mind and how he’s confined by the circumstances... this is all relevant to how Cas would feel about anything rn)

So he may have shown up at the bunker ready and willing to talk to Dean, to begin reconciling, but ~everything that happened in the episode~ made him doubt how well received any sort of personal reconciliation might be. Especially in the face of Sam’s revelations about Chuck.

Basically, Cas has backburnered A LOT of emotional stuff in this episode.

INCLUDING Eileen’s resurrection, and what clearly appeared to be some serious questions and possibly reservations about her being alive again. Sam’s “one time thing” comment didn’t seem to appease or encourage him, but again, they have more pressing things to worry about first.

Between the THEN scenes of this episode, and Cas’s reactions, the show seems to be at least putting forth the suggestion that Eileen might only be alive... because of Sam’s connection to Chuck. If the bullet Chuck had described as “intent” before was made of Sam’s soul, and it has created a “bridge” of sorts between them that have been enabling Sam’s visions into Chuck’s process and now even more directly into Chuck’s actual memories while his soul was “stretched” in this episode, what else might be traveling FROM CHUCK into Sam? We know the WOUND created by the Equalizer “goes both ways,” but it wasn’t Chuck’s intent that created the “bullet” that inflicted the wound, and both he and Sam continue to live with a wound from a gun that was supposed to deliver DEATH, and not just an annoying shoulder injury, you know? What has the gun actually fired here? Is that what gave Sam the power to make Eileen’s spirit flesh? Or was it actually Rowena’s spell? We just don’t know.

Even if it was a “one time use” spell, we truly do not know what this means for Eileen. Cas doesn’t know, because he hasn’t been told how Sam brought her back. But he did start with Eileen’s soul, standing right there, on the spot.

The spell wouldn’t have worked for Mary unless she was willing to leave Heaven. It wouldn’t have worked for Kevin unless they’d been able to find him again, and who knows where he is now. It wouldn’t have worked for Rowena because she is (we assume) in Hell. And most importantly for the purposes of your question, it wouldn’t have worked for Jack because he’s in the Empty. This particular spell required the spirit to be right there, you know? And it wasn’t. I mean, can you imagine Sam telling Eileen that no, he won’t use the spell to save her, he’ll just stuff her in the rock like they’d already agreed to, because he might someday need to use the spell for someone else? I mean YIKES.

Also, I suspect that when Jack does come back from the Empty, that it will be similar to how Cas returned from the Empty in 13.04. No spell required.

So... we still don’t know how Eileen has been affected by this spell, or if its results are permanent, or if like every other resurrection ever, there might be some... unexpected consequences...

This line on the superwiki (under the minutiae of the episode page here) is actually giving me some serious concerns:

Eileen still bears the marks and bruising she incurred upon her death in 12.21 There's Something About Mary.

I’m not even sure if that’s true (I try not to study horrifically killed women on this show for my own sake), but the possibility is a bit ominous, you know? It’s giving me unwanted 2.04 and 5.15 feelings that I don’t want to explore too deeply until I have to...

But Cas seems to have some similar reservations. I mean, everything could be fine in the end, but this is what has me worried right now. I don’t think his reservations will have anything to do with resentment that Eileen is alive and Jack still is not...

But I also think that will be in part at least because I am still thinking Cas... won’t be on Earth to be resentful of anything after the next episode...

Plot is about to barrel through all our current open questions like this, you know? Midseason finale, and a lot of our current open questions will be swept off the table, as usually happens in midseason finales. So I don’t even know that it’s something that will ever become an issue. I’m waiting to see the state of things after 15.08 airs, because things tend to look very different going into the back half of a season (and I don’t even know what to expect since this is the final season and I can’t even look back at patterns of the past to make guesses, you know?) We’re just gonna have to wait this one out. :’D

Ooh, a couple more things... we learned in this episode about the “Key to Death,” which apparently unlocks ta door to Billie’s library. I don’t know specifically what they might need in Billie’s library, but Dean has already been there once. If nothing else, it might be a less traumatic way to get in touch with Billie when they need her than Dean’s usual summoning method of killing himself... >.> Or we may never hear about it again... (but I doubt it).

Which reminds me that Billie herself might have concerns about Eileen’s surprise aliveness, but again, there’s bigger issues at the moment. And we’re 7 episodes in and STILL don’t have any idea what’s going on in the Empty, with Billie and the Shadow and Jack, which I think will render all the rest of these “who’s dead and who’s resurrected” speculation moot as soon as we see what they’re actually up to there. Or at least it’ll give us better questions to ask ourselves. :’D

[zenosanalytic]

HoXPoX #1-3: The Sun: Illuminating Menace

It’s yet another installment of me obsessing unnecessarily about the imagery in the first few books in the new House of X/Powers of X series, this time: Colors! The Sun! T H E  S U N!!

The Sun

The Sun and its colors often seeming to represent safety and power, and unsurprisingly it plays into other thematic elements, notably cycles.

HoX1 follows the course of the sun; both through a year, and through a day. Before the story proper we see a montage of the XMen planting strange purple flowers in specific places; on earth, earth again, the Moon, and on Mars. These images are broken up 4 panels to a page across 2 pages. On the first page panel 1 start with lush greenery, followed by color-changing leaves in panel 2, then bare white ground and nighttish skies in panel 3, and ending with red skies over bare ground with a lush green foreground in panel 4. Summer(Green), Autumn(Gold&Brown), Winter(White), and Spring(bare earth plus greenery).

The same pattern of vegetation and earth repeats on the second page(lushness, autumnal colors, bare earth, bare earth&new growth), continuing the seasonal symbolism, but adds to it the sun’s position: if the first panel it is off-panel to the left casting long shadows in a lushly forested environment(The Savage Land); the 2nd setting or rising behind a thin cloud over the Potomac in DC, bathing the scene in reds and oranges and purples(very vaporwave. I will show you),

the 3rd unseen off-panel, it may be over the shoulder or a night scene with an artificial light, while flowers being planted right-of-center in the bare earth by two pairs of purple-gloved hands are spotlit; the 4th rising on the left again, mostly blocked by a barren cityscape, as vines grow up the side of a nondescript office-building. This 4th panel then opens, on the next page set two weeks later, into one of the plotlines of the book; a collection of ambassadors meeting Magneto to discuss Krakoa(the new island-mutant nation) at the Krakoa embassy in Jerusalem.

This plot takes place over the course of a day: it begins with the sun at the same position, rising on the left, continues through a lush marshland scene to a sun-colored orange or gold Krakoa transit-hub, and ends with it setting behind Magneto, framing his message of a new mutant dawn(and non-mutant dusk). In the middle we cut to another plotline, Jean escorting a group of Xavier’s students to Krakoa, with the sun high in the sky and middle-panel.

Its Power

The colors of the Noon-Sun -gold, yellow, orange, and yellow-white- crop-up in scenes of power and safety: the chrysalis-pods of the first two pages and their womb/birth imagery, the pupils of Krakoa’s central interface, the clothing the XMen wear, Lighting-eggs Krakoa provides, and far-flung Krakoan habitats. Jean Grey is consistently backgrounded with orange while on Krakoa, and Scott Summers by yellow when in Chicago(I THINK it’s Chicago judging by the architecture and city-layout, at least) negotiating with the Fantastic Four. In the dusk denouement of the embassy scene, when one of the Stepford Cuckoos(acting as Magneto’s diplomatic staff) reveals they have been reading the minds of the ambassadors, the background is a shining, golden yellow, as it remains when Magneto disarms a hostile, armed agent within the ambassadorial party, despite the dusky sun overlooking these scenes, revealed on the final pages.

In PoX 1, pale yellow-gold light bathes the Krakoa sanctuary as Mystique and Toad arrive back on the island from a secondary portal. The doorframe of and furniture-accents within Magneto’s home are in gold. Golden light cuts in from its windows, gilding the ground floor. Xavier, their leader and figure of authority, stands framed by a yellow-gold screen, drawn from below so that he towers within his frames. All but one of the mutants within the Year 100 section(The Cardinal) are dressed in yellows and, as the human-purists arrive on the scene of Cylobel’s capture, they are wreathed in a golden mist. The same mist backgrounds a frame of her telepathically warning Rasputin off from attempting a rescue, and a same-colored light shines reflected from Rasputin’s face as she determines to make the attempt anyway. Her explosive decimation of the lead sentinel is a wreath of fiery reds and golds, with a splash of deathly purple. The pattern repeats; with gold-yellows coloring laser-blasts, intimations of danger, and feats of enormous, violent strength. The imprisoning sphere in which Cylobel is ultimately carried away is a gold one, as the scenes of Rasputin rushing to save her, cutting down purists left-and-right, are filled with the gold-yellow mist. Finally, Nimrod the Lesser’s throne is accented in gold. In the Year 1000 line, the human-preserve sphere is yellow-gold.

In HoX 2, soft gold-yellow light bathes Moira’s sick-room at 13, when her powers first manifested. The next frame, her revitalized and healthy in youth, shows her running through a softer white light, happy, pursued by a faded adult figure dressed in a pale yellow-gold top. The final frame of the next page, the frame labeling her “ ...something new...” and a mutant, has a beige(light-brown gold?) background, and a yellow triangle-block shares the frame with toddler-Moira’s face of stoic disinterest and/or despair. In her eight life, Magneto’s throne is flanked by golden flame, and topped by a giant, golden squid. In the life where she allies with Apocalypse, they are surrounded in Red-Gold light and flame.

As should be apparent from the above, it does NOT only represent power and safety for mutants. Recall the Jean Grey subplot cutting the embassy story in half: that ends in a grove with Jean and Xavier looking on as Wolverine plays with three children in the grass. Behind Jean is the Orange of the sun as stated above(and possibly the Phoenix Force? Given that the Phoenix-Force manifests AS solar power&imagery it’s a connection impossible to avoid regardless of intent), and behind Xavier a beautiful, pale purple vista of the sun, midday and midpanel(though in the colors of dusk; foreshadowing perhaps?), filtering through the dense trees. This is a moment of happiness, love, and safety for the gathered mutants. But it cuts, in the page directly after, directly TO the sun, a jump-cut from close-up on a face to close-up or establishing shot of a ship, as a group of anti-mutant humans gathered from Marvel’s host of secret organizations approaches a space station in orbit near our star. The station is a Mother Mold: a self-directing, self-correcting, learning sentinel-factory. A knife at the throat of every mutant alive, yes, but also a final stronghold --a place of safety and power-- for these anti-mutant, human-purity fanatics and their AI allies. So the Sun comes to represent safety and power both for the heroes of this story AND for their enemies; again, the symbolism of HoX PoX is breaking down simplistic oppositional binaries.

Moving into the other books, we see Moira repeatedly associated with the color gold. In the fair ministory where PoX 1 opens and HoX 2 ends she is wearing large, gold, circular earrings(obvsl recalling the sun itself). In the final scene of this ministory, a series of exchanged closeups btw Moira and Xavier, gold/yellow is color behind Moira’s head as she speak with, and offers, the knowledge of her repeating life. Her lips in these panels are painted in a reflective bronze; not a direct reference to the sun to be sure, but a reflection of its light.

This could just be another connecting of the sun and its colors to power -what Moira is saying is an artifact of her mutant ability afterall- but, in that she’s sharing knowledge, it could also suggest that the Sun and Gold/Yellow can represent knowledge, as well. If that were the case, it would be another classical reference, with Apollo being both a Knowledge-God AND a Sun-God. And there’s some other evidence supporting that reading.

Its Light

In HoX 1, when we see Krakoa’s IT-information team, Cypher and Sage, in Krakoa’s “interface room”, they are dressed in yellow, Krakoa’s interface is a wall of yellow-god eyes, and a pale yellow-gold light source sits in the corner. When Scott confronts the F4 in the same book his comments, all referencing “knowing” in some capacity(“What would life be without little surprises?”, “you’re a smart man, Richards... I know you know...”, “It’s upsetting, I know, but new beginnings demand a wide berth”), are all backed in yellow-gold, as is Reed’s final response to him(“then I think I have a problem with that”), and Sue’s later comment after the potential conflict is resolved(“...what are all of you thinking?”).

In HoX 2, 4th-Wall Moira wears her sun-earrings and, in the first panel where we see her speaking directly to the audience about her abilities, a golden cloud halos her head. A soft, gold-yellow light infuses all the scenes of her at Oxford. The mask of Destiny, Mystique’s partner and lover, is gold, and her power is precognition.

In PoX 1 the usb Mystique gives to Xavier is accented in gold and the screen behind Xavier is that of a computer; an information-device of some kind. As Xavier places the usb in it, golden light bathes him from below, from the machine(though Xavier’s dialogue her is abt “making a better world” and what mutants “owe” to it; a stereotypical power dialogue). As Nimrod the Lesser and his court obliquely(and comically) discuss placing Cylobel in the mutant archive, their dialogue is framed in gold.

Ok so, those are my arguments. I could probably add to it but this is already YUUGE, so I figure I’ll stop here. There’s also some interesting stuff going on with other colors, notably purple, I’d like to get into later, but we’ll see as I move on with the series(which I havent had time to yet what with Wintereenmas and everything X|) If you read this, I hope you liked it ^u^

[howlingmoonrise]

Dear Yuletide Author

Hi! Thanks for signing up for Yuletide despite the hell year it’s been, I hope you have fun with your assignment!

I ramble a lot so everything is below the cut. Obviously you don’t have to follow any of this (though I hope you’ll respect my squicks) but hopefully this will help you out!

general things i like

so much pining. all the pining. pining everywhere plz.

continuing from above, PINING. i mean it. i prefer a thousand times over idiots in love who are having a hard time wrapping their minds around it than an already established relationship.

either gen or romantic is fine! what really does it for me is the development of the relationship, platonic or otherwise. it’s all about the growing intimacy and understanding and character dynamics and interactions and developing trust and finding kinship and growing respect for the other and subconsciously learning to lean on the other over anyone else and--

i love love love enemies-to-reluctant-allies-(to-maybe-friends?)-to-lovers and bickering pairs in general! it’s so much fun and it gives us so many opportunities for character and relationship developments okay i’m a slut for that shit

sticking to the original characterizations and the tone of canon is a definite plus!!!

“missing scenes” and “what if” canon-divergent situations are excellent, as are continuations from where canon left us depending on the fandom! more details on the sections for the respective fandoms i GUESS

casual intimacy is super fun, especially when adapted to the character dynamics. a bickering pair being casually comfortable adds a whole new depth to it, enemy dynamics makes is hilarious since the other half would have zero clue as to how to react, a pair that is already comfortable with each other that they do stuff without communicating is so intimate, mix and match however you like!

fun tropes i enjoy (a bit romance-leaning but if you’re not into that then some of these can probably be adapted): fake dating, accidentally got roped into x and shenanigans of all sorts keep happening, misunderstood confessions, groundhog day au, one or both the characters having stupid levels of denial while technically in a relationship and just not realizing it like What Do You Mean We’re Dating??, that sorta thing.

TROPE SUBVERSION ALL THE WAY!

--

general things i dislike

kidfics. babyfics. next gen fics. pregnancy fics, or even pregnancy discussed in the fic is a major squick of mine. the one exception i make for kidfics is for kids already existent in canon and even then it depends, but no babies or children otherwise please.

future fics/time skips in general, actually. what i enjoy is the relationship development, so huge time skips make me feel like we missed way too much

angst is... mrrmf. it really depends on how it’s done, but usually it feels like it’s angst for the sake of angst instead of giving the fic some actual meat.  as a result of this, i’d pass at least on most content with major character death, sexual abuse, self-harm, gender/sexuality angst, the like. beyond that, feel free to go ahead!

hard AUs are a bit ugh to me. by this i mean AUs that rely heavily on setting, such as high school AUs, harry potter AUs, that sort of thing. i DO however enjoy stuff like soulmate AUs and alternate canon AUs, depending on the concept and on the fandom. more details in their own sections if you enjoy writing those!

i heavily dislike things involving cheating/infidelity, sickfics, and genderbending of any kind is a bit ehhhh for me, as are concepts such as ABO. hard pass on stuff like dysphoria and deep diving into mental illnesses and disorders, too.

script-based or roleplay fic is not really my preferred format, i really enjoy prose instead of nearly all dialogue!

stuff with bigotry in general, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc as well as discussions of it is a pass in general. it’s not a HUGE squick but i’d rather not see it if possible

discussions and thoughts on gender/sexuality. if you’re gonna make them gay/bi/etc, make them gay/bi/etc, no exploration of it added. delving into the psyche of it is a hard pass.

--

if you’re going for nsfw

kinks

moderate sadomasochism, uncommon forms of bondage (plants, stuck with strange substance or in awkward position, the shadows from p&tf as restraints, etc), choking/breathplay, xenophilia and tentacles/alien genitals (shadowplay in p&tf for example), moderate degradation, edging/desperation play, ladies topping and calling the shots, bloodplay/knifeplay, long hair dragging over skin, sharp nails/claws (charlotte la bouff, morticia), lowkey cannibalism imagery and hunger, biting, ladies stepping on body parts with their heels on

squicks

scat, vomit, praise kink, daddy/mommy or baby kink, vore, forced feminization, pet play, wound-fucking, abuse, abo, anything involving pregnancy at all

--

PRINCESS AND THE FROG

i am 100% aware this is a weird-ass pairing but gods, the possibilities. it has so much potential. there are few things i like quite as much as a villain and a good person developing a strange sort of kinship with each other >u> this doesn’t have to mean a romantic development, if it’s not your thing! as i said, for me it’s the building understanding and reluctant respect that i really love, far more than the actual romance.

ideas, ideas, ideas. i’m aware this is a rare relationship to either portray or ask for, so i’m gonna try to give some more concrete-ish ones for you to build up on if you have no clue as to how to approach this. 

we could have canonverse with charlotte dealing with the shadowman in some other, unrelated matter while the main plot is occurring, making him feel somewhat guilty about the whole marriage plot with laurence-turned-naveen. cue introspection, or even an entirely different outcome.

or a post-canon sort of hades&persephone plot (please no actual hades and persephone au though), with charlotte curious despite herself and tempted to listen to a shadow/dead/whatever!dr facilier when she’s the only one that can hear him.

in a continuation from above, OR her being dragged Beneath with him in a freak accident and then charming him into helping her back to the surface/living world (very, veeeeery reluctantly on his part, at least at the start, he might have even be thinking of tricking her but then change his mind when the time comes to do it).

i think dr facilier wouldn’t be sure how to deal with charlotte’s particular brand of personality and good humour, and it’d throw him off his rhythm a lot - that sort of thing is always super fun to write.

soulmate au in canon would work pretty well, but with this pairing? you could even do a FULL AU, keeping only basic stuff like the shadowman thing to her normal bougie self; it’s one of her charms. (and their personalities, of course). stuff like charlotte thinking that she wants one thing (her prince-slash-one-true-love, etc) while keeping getting drawn to him time and time again could work on pretty much any era or setting. vice-versa for him, thinking he wants to be rid of her but coming to realize he’d actually miss her if she were to be gone. OR, charlotte deciding she wants this sullen manipulative bastard and manipulating HIM into taking her out and hanging out with her would be hilarious.

if you wanna do nsfw, i have only one major request: charlotte calling the shots/topping. i think this arrangement would be in character for both of them (dr facilier would prob also enjoy having someone else do all the work lol) considering her go-getter attitude, but keeping in mind his manipulative personality i’d be more comfortable if she had some control over what was happening. ASIDE FROM THAT, d’you know what would be fun? a little darkness, and by that i mean consider dr facilier’s shadow joining in on the fun. shadows would also be an interesting sort of constraint. also i know i said charlotte calling the shots, but she can be constrained by the shadows while being amused by it or being used to it (implying it’s not the first time that they’ve used it in bed play and that it’s therefore negotiated), or charlotte could team up with the shadow to do it to facilier instead. charlotte using her nails and facilier being a bit of a sub/masochist would be excellent!

(actually in general it’d be really fun if there was some complicity between charlotte and facilier’s shadow in general, nsfw or otherwise. the shadow being wrapped around her little finger is an excellent concept, especially if facilier isn’t too fond of her just yet OwO)

--

THE ADDAMS FAMILY

oh boy. let me just begin by saying that this really isn’t my usual kind of pairing, by sheer virtue of them being perfectly happy and established in canon. HOWEVER, they’re goth and they’re odd and they’re kinky and they’re delightful to watch interact (i’m familiar with the movie canon featuring anjelica and raúl and a few (few!) of the comics, so idk about other dynamics) and so they’ve managed to creep their way into my blackened little heart.

THAT BEING SAID, my absolute biggest wish for this fandom would be pre-relationship. i don’t mind if canon is twisted a bit for this, considering that they presumably met and proposed on the very same day, so it’s definitely a bit hard to work with. perhaps some shenanigans with the funeral itself? or gomez has a date/fiancée already and so there’s some juggling of priorities here while he’s absolutely falling over himself in order to continue looking at that gothic vision of a woman? or an old family feud, or them just being downright useless at knowing how to deal with proper romance (on morticia’s side, i’d imagine she’d only grow more stoic and be at a loss of what to say. on gomez’s side, it’s probably his first time being speechless, or he’s not speechless but he’s flirted so much in his life that he doesn’t know what to do with these actual literal feelings, what the hell is this and how does he show he actually means it this time??), or morticia has a long string of dead fiancés black widow-style (i think she and debbie would have gotten along great if given the chance okay), or a soulmate au where they don’t realize it’s each other right away, or morticia amusedly pretends to be dating gomez before they know each other to get him out of a bind, or they’re somehow roped into someone else’s shenanigans and don’t know how to react to each other (my money is on either ophelia or cousin itt putting them in a bind), the sky is the limit!

if you’re more comfortable writing established, however, casual intimacy or smut are the best! give me a moment of respite where they are just comfortable basking in each other’s presence, or when they’re separated for a moment at an event or something and the longing is burning all the way across them until they come back together again (y’know, in the good old way of the script). for smut, morticia being a mostly stoic dom maybe? (though yes, i know she’s very much into being tied up and tortured, i can’t really see her as a normal sub unless it’s really something languid and drawn-out - she doesn’t really read as someone who spends a lot of energy doing things others will do for her). they’re both definitely into pain and bondage too; morticia conflating arousal with hunger would also be really interesting to see (think praying mantis or lady spider who is actually very invested on not taking off her partner’s head, but who dreams of it all the same. gomez is, of course, very much into it). something lowkey macabre would be amazing.

things i’d like to see for this fandom in general are:

morticia being her stoic vampiric goddess of a self

gomez being completely twitterpatted for her as usual

burning sultry glares/staring across the room

overly passionate hand-kissing

creepy/gothic atmosphere

you know, like canon. (with non-existent or minimal kid existence, though)

references to horror stuff/general creepiness like sudden lightning, casual poisonings and dealings with death, dracula references, etc, like the movies would be super fun, as campy as possible! half the greatness of the movies come from these imho

--

MONSTROUS REGIMENT

i have a confession to make: it’s been a while since i last read it, and so i fear i won’t be as helpful in giving ideas/dynamics for this fandom as i was in the others. 

i have one request - apart from what i’ve already rambled on about above - and that is for at least polly to be portrayed as female (or close enough, although not quite non-binary). to make it clearer: i usually see them both as female, even if not female-presenting (it’s funny because as i was writing this i actually kept writing about maladict as “he” so frankly it’s whatever, i definitely prefer “maladict” to “maladicta” at least in terms of names though) but chaffing to fit the roles that “female” comes along with, especially with maladict and the expectations for female vampires. i’d rather the fic not have gender or sexuality exploration, since like i said above i think it detracts from the meat of the stuff - if you want to see maladict as male, write him male with male pronouns (keeping the female vampire backstory if you’re keeping it canon, otherwise it wouldn’t really make sense). if you want to make her female, write her female with female pronouns. i’d pass on they/them pronouns though. i don’t particularly care either way outside of polly however, just don’t delve into the psyche/introspection of it please.

if you have different views on their genders and it would make you uncomfortable to write female polly or non-they/them maladict, then that’s fine with me as well! these are just my preferences, and i thought i’d elaborate on them since the fandom has many perspectives on this topic. 

with that out of the way, on to more interesting stuff!

what’s good: their interactions. oh dear loki, their interactions. they have my favourite dynamic in the whole book, and they’re weirdly comfortable with each other (especially since polly lowkey threatens maladict after kicking the other dude in the nads, in my view that moment probably got his undead little heart skipping a beat (do vampires have beating hearts on discworld? i haven’t read enough discworld to remember this)) and they understand each other the best out of the rest of the squad. maladict teasing polly and pretending to be cool before polly catches on to him is absolutely hilarious, and i absolutely love maladict trying (and failing!! horribly!!) at being smooth. also polly blackmailing people left and right is absolutely fantastic.

as you can probably guess, i’d love some canon-verse interactions. perhaps alternate scenes or what-ifs of canon events, or even extra scenes during the ongoing plot of the book. OR, post-book, once they have their own squad of little lads and have to figure out how the hell to handle that, or shenanigans where they have some sort of mission or official event elsewhere and resolutely stick together because “if i have to deal with this then so do you”. or some hilarity with maladict desperately going after every coffee grain available so he doesn’t just bury his face on polly’s neck because she smells so good but that would be an awkward conversation to have and he’d rather die (again) than admit to that. 

what else? AUs! feel free to completely tear apart the canon discworld, though i’d request polly remain her ass-kicking clever self and maladict an awkward vampire. maybe maladict has to deal with diaphanous underwired nightgowns. maybe polly has to deal with diaphanous underwired nightgowns. vampire politics? satirical awkward dracula au? maladict failing horribly at being a vampire (failing at being a female vampire or trying to pass at being a male vampire and failing at that, too)? they’re all great! 

what matters to me is their banter and the way they keep falling into pace with each other, regardless of the way they begin. a good dose of sardonical pratchett-style humour would also be welcome ;)

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thank you so much for staying with me this far! i hope you have a grand time this yuletide, and that you enjoy your own requested fic as well!

[talestoenrage]

Persona 5

Last night, I finally finished Persona 5, and...it wasn’t as good as Persona 4. Now that I have all the available facts, I finally think I can fairly unpack my reasons why. Behind the cut, for anyone else who’s still working on it and doesn’t want spoilers.

The first thing to note is that I am a huge Persona 4 fan. It’s not a perfect game (but then, nothing is); it starts off very slowly, its once-lauded LGBT content is actually not good in the cold light of day when LGBT content is (however slowly) becoming more common in video games, and it has a long, LONG day that is just...awful. Misogynist and transphobic as hell. But overall, it’s a hell of a game that I recommend to almost anyone, even with those caveats. It’s also a game that’s almost 9 years old, so why do I think it’s better than the sequel that came out this year?

Certainly, Persona 5 has a lot of gameplay improvements. There’s more variety in combat, with new types of attacks and status effects you can inflict and have inflicted on you. Adding guns as another piece of equipment gives everyone in your party additional options. Most importantly, the social links the current Persona games rely on for their flavor have added gameplay benefits, as different ranks will grant you useful skills in and out of combat, at a pace that lets you naturally integrate the new options rather than being overwhelmed by them. And the negotiation system with the enemies (imported back from the base SMT series) means that what you fight can matter beyond “this is their weakness/XP gain/possible item drops.” In every measurable way, combat in 5 is better than 4. Even the dungeons are improved, because the set designs stand out better than 4′s randomized crawling. Plus if you do want random dungeon crawls, there’s a whole huge area that calls back to Persona 3′s Tartarus. The best of both worlds, right? The problem is that while combat in 5 is a great improvement, combat is not what I loved in Persona 4 anyway. It was the writing and the story.

If you haven’t played Persona 4, the main plot revolves around a series of murders in a rural Japanese town. After the first two, the main character and his recent friends discover another world, and that it’s connected to the murders so far. When a third person goes missing, they save them, and then decide to work on stopping any further murders and figure out who’s behind them. On its own, this is a workable plot that stands out among JRPGs for being decidedly small scale. You aren’t setting out to stop an evil empire or find your missing father, but it’s a worthy goal, and the fantastical elements explain why you can’t just go to the police about it.

What makes the game sing is the writing for the other members of your group, and for the social links you make to gain power. Your party is a bunch of teenagers, and sometimes they’re, well, shitty in the way teens so often are. They care for each other and stick their necks out, but they’ll also crack inappropriate jokes or be insensitive because they’re still learning how to act like adults. It occasionally goes too far (see Teddy), but mostly it felt believable, as did any of the romance scenes if you choose to date any of your classmates. On top of that, with the exception of the main character, you gain team members by saving them from their own Shadow, which stands for the parts of themselves they don’t want to admit are real. Sure, you beat them when they become the boss, but then the character in question has to accept the parts of themselves they don’t like to admit are there, something that all of us have.

Meanwhile, the social links do the heavy lifting of making the town feel like a real place. Sometimes you’re doing real work to improve someone’s life, sometimes you’re just there for them when they hit a snag and need to process it. But it’s a reminder that outside of the fantasy elements of going into the TV world and fighting weird creatures, you live in a town with “real” people that have real problems. That’s not quite what your team member’s social links are about, but instead it’s about someone who has admitted they have issues...and then you have to help them work through that. Admitting they have a problem is just the first step, not the solution.

If this sounds more like a review of Persona 4 than 5, I can understand that. But I needed to unpack what I love about 4 first, because if I’m going to say 5 isn’t as good, I think it’s only fair to explain what I love about 4 and why. And the main stumbling block for 5 is a combination of writing and, to a lesser degree, a mixed translation job.

The translation isn’t terrible-I don’t think it will spawn any memes online due to particular lines. But some subtlety is lost, and lines that should hit harder lose impact because the sentence structure doesn’t work as it should in English. It’s hard to say if it’s just a case of being too literal or being rushed for time, or some combination.

But even with better translation, the writing just falls flat. 5 raises a lot of questions with its central premise, where your group “steals” the hearts of bad people to make them change and be good, but it’s resolutely uninterested in answering half of them. It will tell you all about the mechanics of how you do it and what happens to the person, but it doesn’t want to deal with the ethics at all for half of the game, and then when it comes up, it’s a half hearted ‘were we doing the right thing?” when people start saying bad stuff about the Phantom Thieves. Are all the villains you take down engaging in truly reprehensible behavior? Yes. Are they largely insulated from official control? Yes, and for reasons beyond general “looking the other way,” since the final human villain is revealed to be covering for everyone you fought before. But there’s never a conversation where your group, the people actually altering people’s personalities, ever ask themselves if it’s okay to be making such radical changes, or asking if you are returning them to normal versus changing a “normal” person into a different version that didn’t exist before. And even the half hearted attempts to question it get shot down by your character’s mouth piece, the fame whore, whose very questionable motivations for wanting to continue are ALSO never questioned, except very briefly near the end. I didn’t need the game to tell me I was wrong for what I was doing, but I at least wanted a discussion, even if it ended with “this may be a bad thing, but we need to do it because no one else can touch them.”

Perhaps the social links would have saved it, but almost all of them outside of the main party ones end the same way. You get up to rank 7 or 8, find out there’s a road block of someone being bad, and then you get a request to change their hearts. Rinse and repeat. This throws the question of how ethical your behavior is into even sharper relief, and adds in the issue of making every resolution to the social links be “I did magic, and then they figured out I was a Phantom Thief, but it’s okay because they said they would keep my secret.” The first few times, I found it charming. The 10nth time, I felt like I might as well stop pretending and just tell anyone who asked “Yeah, I’m one of them. Want me to change some guy’s head? I got my magic gun I can use.”

Most of the party member social links don’t involve that, but most of them also fall flat. Ryuji’s is just there, Ann involves helping her realize other models can be mean and she’ll lose out if she doesn’t put more effort in, Yusuke is having art block, and Haru needs to learn how to manage a corporation she unexpectedly inherited. None of them are offensive, but they’re mostly boring. Only Futaba (trying to reacclimate to society after being a recluse for years) and Makoto (mostly forgettable but she slaps another girl and then challenges a would be pimp to a street fight, which was great) stand out, or seem like you actually do anything to help other than be there as they talk it out on their own.

Then there’s the framing device, where you’ve already been captured and are telling a prosecutor the story of how you came to be the Phantom Thieves. It intrudes every time you hit a certain point in the plot, and whenever you start a new social link. It didn’t take long at all for me to roll my eyes every time it intruded to remind me I wasn’t ACTUALLY in May, I was just RECOUNTING what I did in May. Plus its plot hook of “someone betrayed you to us” was blunted when the person who did it joined my group last and was literally blackmailing us to quit after pulling “one last job.” Gee, wonder who could have sold us out to the cops? The shitty teen detective who talks about people as vermin? I’M SHOCKED. 

Now, I will give 5 credit, it has two solid plot twists. The first is when the framing device resolves (assuming you don’t get the bad ending), and Akechi shoots you...only to be revealed that your team was actually paying attention, realized he was lying, and used what they knew about the Metaverse to trick him into shooting a dupe. It wasn’t worth the hassle, but it was nice to see the group not be idiots. The second, that Igor was actually a fake as well and behind all the trouble, was more genuinely surprising, but it did make the voice change that we’d assumed was a weird miscast into a clue that we’d missed. 

The final boss fight being about pulling out a giant spirit gun and shooting a god in the head was goofy as hell, but unintentionally so, which is unfortunate.

Would I recommend Persona 5? With reservations. Along with all the issues I’ve noted, the game feels too long for the plot it has; I was close to 150 hours when I finished, and even taking out the grinding I did at different points, I felt like I went through a lot of filler dialogue to get there. Plus the opening to 5 is, if anything, even LONGER than 4. You show up in town on the 9nth, and it’s not until the 18nth that you have full control over your actions, with multiple mandatory tutorial sections.

At least the music is still great.