#quite literally in the same segment might i add

[avichor]

who’s gonna tell jayvik stans that their final scenes were parallel to vi and jinx and vander as a demonstration of familial love and the lengths you’d go for it

[mdhwrites]

I'd like your thoughts on the segment of TOH fandom that attributes Luz' behavior to her having been bullied and ostracized in Gravesfield. Canonically there is nothing showing Luz being bullied or says that she was bullied in Gravesfield. Quite the contrary. Yesterday's Lie had Vee, who had been living as Luz for months, living a good life where she had made friends at camp and at school. She resented Luz' return and castigated her for not appreciating how good a life she had. The episode Thanks to Them had the guidance counselor ask Camila if she had been bullied in school to which Camila answered that she had. He then asked if she wanted Luz to struggle as she had. That question strongly suggests that Luz was not yet having any social difficulties beyond those of her own making and that sending her to camp would keep that from happening. When we see Luz back in Gravesfield HS she was having no difficulties dealing with other students and that some of her contacts with them were friendly and admiring.

So what are your thoughts on this insistence of certain fans that Luz had suffered this bullying and ostracization when the show itself not only doesn't support it but contradicts it?

Because it's necessary for Luz's character to function.

That's really all it comes down to. Luz is kind of monstrous if she has never actually known strife. She wants to be seen as the victim after all. She wants to be justified in abandoning her mom for her fantasies. For rejecting the consequences of assaulting people. Heck, that's still true in S3 where she needs to be able to claim that the human world would be some torturous hell hole for her so that her self martyring actually comes across correctly instead of someone going, "Oh, that sounds like a lot of work and might actually be dangerous so I'm just gonna stay home with my loving mom instead."

If her home life was good, was kind, was what we wish our home lives with a parent who will enable us to do whatever we want short of breaking the law... What the fuck is she doing? The audience insert, who goes entirely unquestioned in the show besides "Hey, you kind of messed up, go apologize," (which she doesn't do well all the time) is suddenly this whiny brat who wants to be enabled by literally every person in existence because she needs to be the most special person there. It's the antithesis of what people want "I just want to be understood!" to be about. She wants to be understood so you go "Oh, I get it, you keep being you," and never hold her accountable. Otherwise, she might not lie all the time because she might be willing to actually face the consequences of her actions.

It is a shift in Luz's character irreversible in its damage. You just cannot like the show in the same way when you have to admit that Luz is a self entitled little shit. And mind you, her normal archtype is of that sort. Danny Phantom and Randy Cunningham and even to some extent Kim Possible are all flawed teenage characters who are clearly growing. Who need to be better people so while they're protagonists, you're supposed to learn as much alongside them as from their example, if not more. You are meant to take from Luz by example though. She is meant to be the audience surrogate after all. And, you know, if she's unjustified in her actions... What does that say about you all of a sudden who connected so deeply with her?

That's all of why this can't vanish. I actually want to add onto your proofs though because people will go "What about her panicking during Knock Knock Knocking?" Yes, that is the ONE time we are ever given the idea for her being mocked for something and even that one... Well, she's worried about going too over the top. How much do we want to bet Luz came to school in her suit to ask the person she liked out like she was in some sort of soap opera? That's gonna get you reasonably laughed without a VERY specific sort of partner like Amity.

HOWEVER... That's the one time, a season and a half into the show, her actions imply someone who has been bullied. Otherwise, she is very confrontational, she does nothing to hide herself, she gives almost no shits about what anyone thinks about her besides "Fuck you, I am totally the greatest" everytime Eda doubts her. The closest before then is her worrying about Amity seeing her as lame but Amity is the only one she cares about for that. Even then, she never seems bothered by the fact that Amity is a bully. She is willing to stand up to her regardless. This is further reinforced by what she does with Boscha where she either just brushes her off during Once Upon a Swap or is entirely confident in confronting her in Winging it Like Witches. NONE of that is the behavior of someone who has been bullied, harassed and hurt by constant bullying. Add all the elements where she clearly could have found people like her but chose instead to chase more popular clubs like cheerleading and acting and it paints a REALLY bad picture of Luz.

It paints her as Liz Lemon from 30 Rock, or Goob from Meet the Robinsons. Both people who claimed the world hated them when the reality was that they were awful to reality, one being a bully and the other ignoring all signs of kindness and acceptance that was attempted to be given to him. This is far worse when you remember that Luz never appreciated her mom properly, like Goob, and also is genuinely an asshole to both King and Hooty for their interests, like Liz Lemon.

Luz is a bad person. But for the show to function, you cannot believe that. Once you do, it will only to start to collapse faster and faster as the contradictions pile on top of themselves.

So why not just twist the truth instead into the pleasant lie Luz is actually the archtype of the bullied nerd that the first episode tried to imply she was but then failed to ever deliver on? It's easier that way, even if it's dishonest. Luz wouldn't judge you for it, not so long as you didn't try to lie to her. Because all that matters in the end to Luz is Luz.

======+++++======

If the idea of a fact that's not well supported by the show being critical to a character functioning sounds familiar, it's because it's the same reason why people need Odalia to be pure evil. Both Amity and Luz need to use having been hurt by others to justify their own behaviors, even when their behaviors don't correlate in ways that actually support those excuses.

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[mar64ds]

I’d like to replay the game to have more cohesive thoughts but looking at some of the dialogue i’d like to give a small analysis on how undertale handles lovelessness in both a very clumsy way and very accidentally nice way. I made a whole video essay about Flowey’s lovelessness already, but I’d like to give some new thoughts now that I know I’m on the loveless spectrum myself

The negatives

While Flowey is a very important character to me and I will discuss the positives aspects of his character, there is no denying the game falls into some bad tropes and lines of dialogues.

In the pacifist run, Flowey only really talks about his lovelessness if you keep visiting him after the neutral ending or when he becomes Asriel.

In the neutral ending he seems to imply that love = care, stating he can’t really feel anything for anyone, which to him it means he doesn’t care. This is obviously false in general, but even the game itself proves him wrong over that fact, making it very clear that Flowey does care multiple times. (NOT talking about low empathy, which Flowey might have as well, I mean like… him not caring about killing people). However, this is not super well executed if there are A LOT of people that still see Flowey not feeling love as him not caring about anyone, and there are even people that think Flowey DOES feel love. While the story contradicts Flowey’s statement about love = care, it’s done in a way that the characters never really tell him that it’s okay to be the way he is. It’s never fully acknowledged that it’s okay for Flowey to be loveless, it’s mostly implied. Flowey is constantly seen as a tragic character or a cruel character, by the game and by the fans.

The game doesn’t really challenge the way that love is glorified. Love is seen as an inherently good thing in the story (LOVE is not the same thing, that’s obvious), the thing that ultimately makes you care about others, one of the main things that saves Asriel, it’s even stated to be the one of the things mosnters claim their souls are made out of. Quite literally a ‘love is what makes us human’ but with monsters. They even add a bit of a cruel line stating that humans don’t need love in their souls to remain alive, and this is not said in a positive way, it’s implying that humans can be cruel and still be alive.

In the pacifist ending, Asriel states he doesn’t feel love, which (in pacifist) he hasn’t really done before. Flowey is established early on to be a villain that doesn’t care about people and is willing to kill people over and over, but it’s only here where he states he didn’t really feel love when he was Flowey. Maybe you can predict so, but it’s never stated until this moment. Asriel speaks of Flowey as this sort of horrible monster and while this can be interpreted as self-deprecation and Asriel’s lack of understanding of lovelessness… again, the game doesn’t really make an effort to prove him wrong. It’s all reading between lines, it’s all things you can interpret and imply, but the game itself doesn’t go out of its way to tell Asriel he’s wrong for thinking this way. This scene is meant to make you really sad that Asriel is not going to feel love again, because that is something ‘very very sad and very very tragic’. And I feel like a lot of people don’t understand that while you can show the struggle of an identity, you can’t JUST show the struggle. Specially if you aren’t loveless yourself. If you do that, you’re just being insensitive, framing lovelessness as a horrible tragedy.

In a violent run, Flowey speaks more about his lovelessness. How he suddenly couldn’t feel anything for anyone, not even for his parents. This segment is worded a bit strangely too, again implying love = care. The obvious thing is: Flowey does not feel love anymore. He’s scared, he tries to feel the way he did before and is unable to, he doesn’t seem to really talk about it to his parents, he runs away and isolates himself. The events that lead him to find out about his reset powers happen as well. Needless to say, Flowey is very miserable. This in it of itself is not a problem, again it’s okay to show a loveless character that struggles with their lovelessness, you can make a good story and a good commentary with it. But AGAIN, the game doesn’t really challenge this, it doesn’t really do anything with it. This is just seen as Flowey’s tragic backstory that leads him to start his evil path. It’s NOT the reason why he’s evil, Flowey’s evil actions are more a reflection’s to the player’s. Unfortunately, the game also does not make this super clear because a lot of people still attribute Flowey’s evil actions to his lovelessness. Maybe it’s lack of media literacy, or maybe the game also did not try very hard to make you understand lovelessness was not the problem.

Finding out more about his lovelessness just makes the pacifist ending more cruel to me. Asriel really invalidates Flowey’s lovelessness, and it’s framed as a way that the game itself is ALSO invalidating Flowey.

The neutral?

From what I remember and from some dialogue I’ve read, while Undertale has a very obvious theme about love all throughout the game, love isn’t really mentioned as much as you’d think. The characters don’t really say ‘I love you’ to you or to each other, they have their own ways of expressing that they care about you and each other. Aside from that one Sans’ scene, they don’t have big speeches about love either. These are things you really expect in stories very centered around love but Undertale doesn’t actually talk about love as much as you’d think. They talk more about being kind to others, which is what we should be really talking about. Really, Flowey/Asriel seems to be the biggest emphasis in the game when it comes to love, but it’s all related to his lovelessness. This is both a good thing and not a great thing, neutral it is.

The positives

Undertale does something not many stories do and that is for the loveless character to actually remain loveless at the end of the game and for the extra content of the game to state over and over that Flowey cares about others and seems to have a pretty happy life. It IS a problem that this does NOT show up in the actual game, but it is good that canonically this is the character’s fate. Flowey still talks to Frisk and Papyrus and took care of Toriel when she needed it. He seems to be doing okay and he is not framed as an evil person just because he’s back to being loveless. He is okay! He is happy! Even if the game frames his ending as a tragedy, it seems they are rectifying that and stating that actually, it isn’t a tragedy and he will be okay.

Aside from that, while the game has issues in how it handles lovelessness, I can’t deny that a lot of it works really well for interesting and positive loveless metaphors and interpretations. Like I said, the problem is that the game doesn’t really explore them, but the themes ARE there. The glorification of love, the fact that because of that Flowey feels like there is something wrong with him and decides to isolate himself, the fact that he even thinks life is not worth it without love… the commentary is all there. Asriel not liking Flowey is a bit of a metaphor for how Flowey doesn’t accept himself, and that he needs to learn he doesn’t have to be Asriel to be happy again, he doesn’t need to feel love to be happy again.

It’s also super nice that Asriel says that Frisk should ‘go back with the people who love them’ and yet Frisk keeps visiting Flowey, implying that Flowey doesn’t need to love Frisk for Frisk to want to spend time together.

I don’t think Undertale is the worst story ever when it comes to how it handles lovelessness, while there are some harmful stuff I genuinely think it has one of the best probably completely accidental portrayals of a loveless character. Flowey was a very important character for me to realize that I was loveless myself, he is the ONLY loveless character that: 1) remains loveless at the end and 2) isn’t inherently evil- that I have actually seen on media. Most ‘loveless’ characters tend to either feel love again, or seen as evil or a tragic fate. Flowey, while flawed, is a huge difference from most loveless characters. He is very complex, he is very deep, he is very important to me.

Flowey is a really great character that might fall into some bad tropes, but he’s still a cool loveless character that helped me in my journey to understand my own lovelessness. Flowey doesn’t need to be saved, he doesn’t need to be Asriel and he doesn’t need to feel love. Flowey just needs to be accepted as Flowey, a little flower that doesn’t feel love, and that’s okay.

[tomwaterbabies]

ok. here's a list of things. im trying not to go too in-depth with my ranting here. firstly because i would literally just much rather gush about the og than spend MORE time on this trash, and secondly because my friends and i are already ranting about it lol

(keep in mind this is still VERY LONG. my actual full thoughts would be pages long if you could believe that)

but here we go. spoilers for the disney live-action pinocchio if that matters

the cgi is bad. as expected. immediately you see a lack of warmth and coziness in geppetto's workshop. and in place of the whimsical and creative clocks of the original, geppetto's workshop not only is a bad cgi set but contains 2 (TWO) scenes of... disney references... the clocks are a bunch of disney character references..................

weirdly emphasizes his love for his clocks. this is hammered throughout the film (i will come back to this)

geppetto has a previous dead son.

the fairy shoots a beam of light that bounces off the dead son's picture frame and into pinocchio. i think the implication here is that he has some of the son's spirit. this is never addressed further

the scene of him coming to life is the most awkward fucking imagery ever. they play up the comedy and the sense of wonder is just... lost (might have to go in-depth with this scene later when i compare some scenes from the og and this one)

she sings when you wish upon a star for some reason

the pacing, in general, is so terrible

there is a montage of pinocchio and geppetto living together. it's badly paced and awkward and i think they did it because of the cinema-sins level nitpicking that people do where they ask why geppetto sent him off to school on his first day of being alive

he has some weird super speed ability of being able to move his arms and legs super fast? this is used multiple times and i really dont understand why they made him like that

he does end up going to school but quickly gets kicked out for being a puppet. i dont really think this scene adds anything. there's a shot where he's on the ground super sad and upset while the teacher yells at him for being a puppet or whatever and the kids laugh... which i would definitely be into in a better movie. this will not be the first time a good concept is in this bad movie

he is less naive but they don't really do anything to fill out his personality. it feels like pinocchio is missing something. which he is

his voice acting is weird. not a bad voice but the actual line delivery is just... not always... good. kind of awkward. same with geppetto. most of the characters actually

btw jiminy is definitely more helpful here, but it isnt worth it

ive got no strings was such an insulting segment of trash and uninspired disrespect my brother and i started crying (another scene i would just have to breakdown)

this is where the love interest comes in. shes a little girl who controls a ballerina puppet. there isnt much to say. she doesnt do anything but give a lot of pointless dialogue. they dont get together at the end (she goes off to run her own puppet show after she gets stromboli arrested). im serious this added nothing

multiple new songs btw. they are not good

ok let me break down pleasure island in a few points

him going back to his house and then scooped up into pleasure island nonsense is quite literally a blink-and-you'll-miss-it transition

pleasure island is now more akin to a SUPER extravagant theme park. massive buildings, bright lights, and high-tech systems. and none of the original bite

no drinking, no smoking. this is not inherently bad if you have him experience something equally as terrible. but they dont. he drinks root beer (lmao???) and that's about it

so lampwick... a character representation of pleasure island as a whole tbh. he is not nearly as impactful as the og and is just. kind of There. less bite, more stupid dialogue to tell us what the characters are doing

The Donkey Scene. completely hollow. the visceral and harrowing experience of the original is completely gone. shots like lampwick's hands turning into hooves as he desperately claws at pinocchio is just Not There. laughable

the faceless dudes working at pleasure island are now vapor monsters. i think they did this to avoid the controversy of racism but holy shit what the fuck is this. just make them dudes...

not a big deal but he also gets wooden donkey ears and tail?? im not sure why they did that other than "haha he's made of wood" and it kind of goes against what i think helps the story when it's flesh/fur ears/tail like the rest of the human boys

ok moving on from pleasure island

so they find the empty house of geppetto. they learn that he sold all his clocks that he loved oh so much in order to buy a boat and look for pinocchio. this scene is so stupid. it's just characters going on and on about how much geppetto cares about pinocchio instead of just like... showing us that? why do they NEED to emphasize to pinocchio that geppetto loves him this much like just SHOW ME THROUGH ACTIONS

monstro looks stupid as hell lol

remember the original monstro? the gorgeous painting-like animation? thats nice. its not like that btw

the reunion with his father contains TWO SEPERATE MOMENTS of a possible tender moment but they trade BOTH out for comedy. there is no heartwarming reunion there's no profound forgiveness of geppetto it's just HaHa Funny!!! Funny Look!!! geppetto does mention he forgives him im just saying it was NOT done in a profound or emotional way

THE ENDING SCENE.

where to fucking begin with this. i suppose breaking it down works

so pinocchio Does Not Die. they escape monstro and instead geppetto is the one knocked out (i dont THINK hes dead like pinocchio was but im unsure). this is a stupid change because it is pinocchio's own sacrifice that makes it so profound

pinocchio... starts sadly humming/singing a tearful when you wish upon a star????????????????????? and this pissed me off because it dared try to use it for an emotional moment when they didnt do shit with the song in the first place. the message of this song is NONEXISTENT in this movie so having it here just feels so hollow and therefore insulting lol

and finally. finally. finally. we get to what is the best (worst?) example of "great concept in a bad movie" ive seen in all these pinocchio adaptions

pinocchio remains a wooden boy.

ah... You Are Mother Fucker. not only this but the scene... the dialogue... the message... the acting/animations/actions throughout it (even small gestures) are all things i so genuinely desire in a GOOD MOVIE

geppetto accidentally tells pinocchio in a moment of pride that a "real boy" couldnt do what he did. pinocchio's expression falls and geppetto immediately realizes what he said. he apologizes and tells him that if he made it seem like he wanted something more than him in the beginning that it wasnt like that at all. he tells him how much he loves him and that no matter what, he will always be his real boy.

the movie ends not at geppetto's home, but pinocchio and geppetto walking away from the sea. jiminy's narration comes on and he tells us that pinocchio may have been transformed physically, that it's up to interpretation, but that it doesnt really matter. because who he is inside is what counts, THAT is what makes him real.

(im summing it up and missing a few dialogue/acting moments but yeah)

screaming. crying. trashing around. i need to make it CLEAR that the only reason this whole ending is like this and is here is that they are taking what was presented in the og movie and expanding on it. i would LOVE this in the original movie yes, because i truly think that's where it belongs. but this fucking movie does nothing to be anything remotely as passionate and full of love as the original movie. it is heartbreaking to see this here

IN CONCLUSION:

disney remakes at the end of the day are about greed first. some will be worst than others. there are common trends that appear in various remakes, though not all trends appear in every single one. this movie has every single one of those trends. truthfully the worst ive seen and ive watched a remake that blatantly wrote a mental disorder that i have in the most offensive depiction ive seen of it (personally)

there is just no passion here. no love. the most i can say is that it does have sweet/good moments- specifically with small pieces of character acting and animation. but i cannot stress enough how minimal that is. it has a few good concepts but poorly utilizes them

it feels like it was relying on these moments to carry them through. but small moments like a genuinely sad/happy/loving pinocchio, as touching as that can be, will not actually mean anything or work when the story itself just isnt good. when so much of this movie is badly put together in every aspect. from writing to editing to animation to music to All Of It... terrible. disney doesnt care. not even about the history and art THEY made

tbh it's up to other people to keep the art alive. currently im working on my animated short (traditionally animated) and even enjoy my OWN work with pinocchio. including a sequel/continuation story idea that expands on the original's themes without being a piece of shit movie. if disney wont do it, we will just do it ourselves and/or find the people who still have the deep love and passion and All Of That for this piece of Art and Magic

[kay-is-dying]

Okay so I finally got to actually watch the whole Rhea vs Roxanne match from the beginning and here's my thoughts on it (mostly focused on the intricacies of the beginning of the match and unfortunately with nothing to add from the picture in picture segment. Be warned that this post is just me rambling for a long as time I'm sorry I'm longwinded. This is all kayfabe compliant btw):

That shit would have been OVER much faster if Rhea was taking it seriously from the top, but she wasn't and it's obvious from the beginning.

Once Roxanne Perez's done making her entrance, she starts stretching in the corner before the bell. It's a nervous tick more than anything else, but it's still smart, she's trying to stay lose, limber up before they get started. What's Rhea doin?

Posted up in the corner. She's not stretching she's just standing there—SITTING there really, almost lounging but just barely not quite that relaxed. Rhea's sitting there in the corner a little curled in on herself, but it's not out of fear, she's not cowering. She's coiled up like a snake before it strikes, bunched herself up like a lion before it leaps. The animal part of Roxanne's brain is gonna take all that human fear and anxiety that comes with basic knowledge of what she KNOWS Rhea's capable of along with the fear that comes from all the unknown that comes from never facing her and use it to see her as what she is, a predator ready to pounce.

And Rhea knows that. Is preying on it.

Then the bell rings. Me and Novel (@timeandspacenovelist) have broke down the sequence that comes next before the lock up pretty extensively here, but the summary is that Rhea pops up out her corner a little fast LIKE she's finally pouncing (basically to perform the same function of jumping at Roxanne to try to make her flinch), but then starts circling Roxanne in a slow, lazy prowl to psyche out her opponent even more. Perez is scared and anxious already but Rhea starts the match slow and steady both to show off how little she's concerned about it, how she's in control here and she decides when they start, AND to let Roxanne stew in it—to give her adrenaline time to make her heart beat just a little bit faster and make her hands a little bit shakier and give her already panic-struck brain more time to overthink about what Ripley COULD and MIGHT do to her. Then Rhea stops and spreads her arms and takes in the crowd for a second—

—again showing how she's not taking this match anywhere near seriously, if she thought Roxanne was a threat she wouldn't stop and leave herself open for an attack; now unfortunately Perez proves her right tho, and doesn't do the smart thing and try to take a shot at Ripley while she's busy showboating. Whether this is inexperience on her part or just fear (or maybe even smarts if she's considering whether or not Rhea's baiting her into taking the obvious shot just to put her on her ass when she tries), I don't know, but Rhea stops and turns to Perez with a smile right after, and briefly squats and sticks out one hand to coax her towards like one might call a child or dog towards them, beckoning her closer now that she's decided she's ready to begin the match.

They lock up, and Rhea doesn't even humor Roxanne for a full five seconds before bodily tossing her right out of the ring. She smiles and waves at her, beckons her to come back within the ropes again. Ripley's having a moment of pure cockiness—literally doing a little shimmy (the fucking stanky leg lmao) before she engages Perez again! a cat lashing its tail and wiggling back and forth during a hunt

—and when they lock up again Roxanne delivers the first punishment for her over-confidence, though it starts as a mild one that Rhea learns nothing from as Roxanne manages to slip behind her and get her arms around her, locking the hold in by locking her hands together, so Rhea can't just break free. This is of no consequence to The Eradicator however, and her solution is to grip Roxanne by one of her arms and just throw her across the ring again. The problem is, this is not Rhea getting her head seriously in the game. She's smarter than this, than just letting Perez get even a bit of distance. This throw is not a desperate move to free herself however she can. If she really wanted to Rhea could have used a little more effort and time and muscled her way out of that hold, reversed it, moved into serious offense against Roxanne, but she throws her instead. Ripley's just showing off and punishing Roxanne for daring to try something—but Roxanne shows her some consequences for that cockiness again, and thus the REAL back and forth of this match begins as Rhea and Roxanne start fucking around and finding out.

Perez gets her in a wristlock of sorts, it's not perfect control, she's not even really dragging Rhea around the ring like that, mostly just fighting to stay close and keep her IN the wristlock. Call it a bold statement, but Rhea just LETS her do this for a short while before proving she really could have got out of this probably at ANY point.

See, at first she and Roxanne just circle in the center of the ring intertwined like that while Rhea figures out how to get out of this while making Perez look weak, making herself look strong, and decides to go for some kind of suplex or another throw. She picks Roxanne up, but Roxanne twists out of her grasp and gets back on stable ground on her own two feet, then gets Ripley into that lock again, applying pressure and kicking at her legs until Rhea snaps. Rhea's pained and annoyed expression drops, and she makes a face that clearly reads as fed up and basically says "fuck it"; she regains control of the match by gripping Roxanne by the hair and forcing her to come closer to take the tension off her arm and then just slings her into the ropes, easy as breathing, and it seems like she could have done that whenever and just chose not to.

Roxanne recovers from that bounce off the ropes enough to duck under Rhea's arm when she takes a wild swing—and she tries to get back on the offensive but Rhea goes from simple control of the match to steer her way to victory to punishing her and showboating again, stopping her in the middle of a move and swinging her around by her legs before just dropping her, and when Perez tries to go for a roll up Rhea doesn't just resist the motion and stand her ground, she pauses to show off that Roxanne can't move her, and then picks her up off the ground by her neck like she's a toy. What happens? Roxanne gets to chop the shit out of her before Ripley does anything to her.

That's simple karma for Rhea dicking around during the match. Roxanne scores a second chop as well but Rhea halts her momentum before she gets a third with a string of brutal offense that puts Roxanne on her ass for a long moment that Rhea takes to just stand there while the crowd's cheers for her burst of violence taper off, before she starts bullying Roxanne around the ring to chants from the crowd that she both smiles at and brushes off, saying "oh I don't need your chants" in the middle of a pause from beating Roxanne's ass. Can you guess what happens next?

Roxanne gets one over on her again.

That's the rhythm of the whole match, Rhea fucks around, Roxanne punishes her for it, Rhea works to regain control of the match and gets it, but instead of ending it she starts showing off and sadistically beating Roxanne's ass for getting a lick in, Roxanne again gets some karma, Rhea has to fight to get control back, gets it and starts fucking around being a dick, Roxanne again lets her ass find out what stupid prizes u win when you're playing stupid games, Rhea lets her ass find out what happens when you fuck around and try your luck against Rhea Bloody Ripley, Rhea starts showboating, Roxanne gets a little momentum, Rhea gets her lick back, Rhea gets mean, Roxanne fights back, etc etc on and on they do this dance. One of the biggest instances being after the break, when Rhea pins Perez down and takes her sweet time degrading her and then goes to stomp her head in—Roxanne dodges that shit and the follow up kick though, and outside of a couple tag backs, successfully lays into Ripley for a full minute or two after that until she climbs to the top rope.

At this point Rhea's still fucking around though, so after clocking Roxanne to daze her when she's up there and stop whatever avalanche move she was about to hit (and therefore getting control back of the match), Rhea chops her in the chest, and it's mean and sickening on a couple different layers; one, its a chop, it doesn't damage your opponent much it just fucking hurts them so this is just her being a sadist, two, there's the characteristic sharp slap sound when she hits her but there's a specific awful meaty impact noise u can hear it you listen hard enough that lets you know she didn't just chop her in a way that'll sting her skin, that shit just sent a shockwave through her sternum to her entire torso, she hit her hard enough to vibrate her skeleton, and three, Rhea's got this slight dismissiveness in her delivery as well, the swing is almost lazy, she doesn't follow through the full motion of the swing and barely puts her body behind it. Just all around incredibly disrespectful in so many way, and she pays for that too. That chop hurts a lot but it's still a chop, it's not actually lowering Roxanne's hp very much. That brief reprieve from a REAL blow to the body or the head gives her just enough time to recover to be able to weather Rhea's follow up strikes when she goes to set up for the superplex, and then bounce her head off the turnbuckle and get back on the offensive, delivering a devastating hurricanrana off the top rope that leaves Rhea hurt BAD, to the point she doesn't recover for a while and is getting her ass for a moment there until Perez tries to follow up a drop kick (one of Rhea's signature moves mind you, which I think offended her pride enough to shake her out of her daze) that sent Rhea into the corner with a body slam and Rhea wakes up enough to counter that by catching her and putting her down with a facebuster sent from hell.

(side note: holy fuck, OW)

This marks the turning point of the match, marked by Rhea quickly going in for the cover and shouting for the ref to start counting as soon as she's on top of Roxanne, she's ACTUALLY trying to end this and secure the victory already. When Roxanne somehow through the grace of god kicks out, Rhea doesn't shout or scream or throw a real tantrum, she kinda just briefly runs her hands through her hair and huffs. She's still fairly calm and collected despite her visible frustration with herself—after all this is an opponent she should be able to beat easily, right?

Well actually, yeah. Right.

You see at the end of the day as good Roxanne is, Rhea's better than her. She is. And she knows that. She's just so incapable of respecting other people right now, she almost refused to believe she'd have to put in any actual work to beat her, as evidenced by her telling Cora she'd 'put down' Roxanne for her, not beat her. Rhea didn't see this as an easy match she saw this as an execution and almost paid for it—she doesn't really shake that mindset until Roxanne bounces her brain around her skull and knocks the wind out of her and then kicks out of a big move. Now Rhea's present of mind enough to begrudgingly acknowledge that this is a fight actually, and it shows. She's not worried about losing at all, but she's done acting like she can get the W without actually trying. After she confirms with the ref that she only got a two count, she gets to her feet, and she's making that face again. She's fed up, enough playing around, it's time to get her shit together and just put this kid to bed.

Rhea hauls Roxanne up and attempts her finisher (for the first time this match as far as I can tell), and Roxanne manages to twist herself around and fall out of her arms again, and kicks Rhea in the stomach to set up for her own finisher, but at the end of the day this is still Rhea Ripley the powerhouse, and she's still just tiny little Roxanne who hasn't worn Ripley down enough to make her stumble at Roxanne's meager weight of a buck and spare change, she's still just Roxanne who doesn't have the experience to have developed the speed to hit it fast enough to get around that, so Rhea just stands up out of the Pop Rox, dumping Perez off her back easy as ever. Dominik panics at the possibility of Rhea losing and distracts Roxanne for two seconds so she hesitates before jumping back into the fray, Rhea hits Roxanne with a headbutt that knocks her out dead on her feet (which I find really interesting actually, and helps my case more. Rhea headbutts Roxanne often during this match, at many moments where I would have expected a big boot. Rhea has never been shy about using headbutts when needed but this is so interesting because she's using them at times where she has enough space to go for a superkick if she wanted. A headbutt is dangerous, it can and on some levels DOES hurt you back, without hurting your opponent any more than a kick would-probably hurting them less. She's getting more self destructive. And she's always been one of the strongest on the lot but she's even stronger now and she knows it, to the point she feels like she doesn't need to utilize all that power she can put behind a kick.) and then before Roxanne actually falls to the ground from the blow Rhea yanks her close and hoists her up in the pumphandle position and then slams her through the mat in a gorgeous Riptide, and she finishes up in her iconic 🤌 missionary pin—

—knowing it'll get a reaction out of the fans and showcasing that yeah, she's back, and as dominant as ever. (after all her biggest opponents/matches were ended with that pin, and when that wasn't the case then she would use that pin just to show said dominance i.e pinning Sarah Logan like that while making direct eye contact with Charlotte that one time.) Thing is though, if Rhea actually tried that match could have been a near-burial. Roxanne isn't a real threat to Rhea as a wrestler rn, if Rhea would have wrestled her she would have won quick. But Roxanne can be dangerous as a plaything cause she's not a plaything, and that's what Rhea was treating her like, instead of the wrestler that she actually is. Roxanne's the mouse in the game with the cat here, and while mice mostly just want to get away from a threat and live to see another day, if they're cornered they'll start fighting to survive like any animal would, and Rhea spent a lot of this match getting her fingers nipped at. That hurricanrana was the little bite that drew blood

I called Rhea a cruel butcher on novel's post, and Roxanne the lamb. Roxanne was never going to kill the butcher and escape the slaughter, but congrats to her that through all the abuse she managed to kick hard enough to hurt and make Rhea put her out of her misery.

And of course, congrats to our Papi Rhea for proving her cleavers are still sharp.

As if there was any doubt.

[panharmonium]

the other thing that i keep thinking about, especially now that i’ve been knee-deep in conversation about kakashi’s father for the last couple days, is the amount of politically/socially-charged context kakashi must be constantly navigating as a leaf shinobi, even though we don’t get to see much of it.  

the transformation of the hidden leaf village is obviously still a work in progress, and society never changes overnight.  we’ve heard at various points in shippuden about the still-present divide between hardliners like danzo and the (somewhat) more moderate senju line, and it’s clear that there are still plenty of reactionary/conservative forces at work in the shinobi world, which means there are absolutely still segments of the population who would view the kind of challenge that kakashi and his students pose to traditional shinobi values as a threat.  and back when kakashi first chose to reaffirm his father’s principles, i’m sure it was much worse - the way minato tells it, the entire village and the land of fire turned on sakumo, and it’s not like all those people just disappeared when kakashi finally allowed himself to recognize that all of them were doing something wrong.  they were still there.  they were his neighbors.  they were his colleagues.  he had to live with them.  he had to work with them - he had to work FOR them, even.  to this day, he still does.

like.  i am FASCINATED by the complexities of this situation, even though we barely see any of it.  just...thinking about thirteen year-old kakashi being a member of the Jonin Assembly alongside all of these grown adults who persecuted his father until the “great man who everyone looked up to” couldn’t survive it any longer.  thinking about teenage kakashi lost and “waiting to die” in the anbu black ops, but still breaking every rule to rescue little tenzo from a hardline conservative who tried to have kakashi assassinated.  thinking about adult kakashi, still a member of that same Jonin Assembly, still working alongside people he can clearly remember harassing and attacking his father for saving their lives, being asked to serve as a clandestine hokage under danzo’s nose, because foreign nations trust kakashi where they don’t trust the actual nominee, and then being nominated for real when danzo turns up dead (and having his nomination approved, i might add, by the land of fire, whose government officially blamed kakashi’s father for the damage that resulted from that abandoned mission years before).

we only get hints about the lingering controversy surrounding kakashi and his family via danzo and, occasionally, the village elders, but like.  kakashi occupies such a complex place in the hidden leaf village, because he’s become incredibly respected and renowned by many (if not most) of its residents, but he also spends every day of his life moving within a community where many (if not most) of the older people around him participated in a campaign of vicious harassment against his father, one that ultimately led to his death.  some of them may have had changes of heart after sakumo’s suicide - that seems like the kind of thing that might have shocked some people into reevaluating their positions, particularly given how respected sakumo was prior to that time - and some of them probably died later in the war, but we know there’s still a conservative faction active in the hidden leaf village, and some of those people are always going to be who they are.  and even the people who aren’t - even the ones who regret how they acted - it’s still so complicated!  how do you continue to live and work in that environment?  how do you navigate a history of being harmed in that way, when you still have to collaborate with and/or serve the same people who did the harming, some of whom likely view you with the exact same disdain they had for your father?

kakashi manages it, somehow, though i’ll bet he has complicated feelings about it, even if he keeps them to himself.  and that’s yet another reason why (if i can just take these thoughts on a slight detour to the present) i think kakashi’s relationship with sasuke is so vitally important, especially moving forward.  sasuke’s family was wronged by the village too, in horrific, unforgivable ways - the shinobi system swallowed itachi whole and sacrificed the entire uchiha clan on the altar of a mission, in exactly the kind of evil, inhuman decision-making process that sakumo and obito and kakashi said could never be justified.  the uchiha were victims of the same shinobi system that drove kakashi’s father to his death - the one that said “everything is acceptable as long as the task at hand is accomplished.  people are disposable in service to a mission.”  both sasuke and kakashi’s families fell to a cultural context that refused to acknowledge that it is never okay to sacrifice your comrades for a mission, a cultural context that embraced this belief to the point where even literal genocide became excusable.

if sasuke is ever going to really and truly Come Home, he’s going to need to learn how to navigate this situation.  not to excuse the wrong that was done, and certainly not to give up on getting justice for himself and his clan, but also to figure out, in conjunction with these important tasks, how to continue existing in an environment where so much officially-sanctioned harm was done to his person, and where so many people around him have at least a little bit of history of being suspicious of or uncharitable towards the uchiha clan, even though they obviously didn’t know about the impending coup or danzo’s extermination order.  

it’s an incredibly complicated situation, and even if kakashi doesn’t have all the answers, he can at least understand what it feels like to be in that kind of position.  he’s been navigating something like this for many, many years.  he’s the precedent, someone who can help sasuke wrestle with the perhaps unanswerable questions of how am i supposed to dedicate myself to a place that wronged me like this?  why should i protect people who hurt me so badly?  is there even a way for me to move forward here, if i can’t forgive the ones who took my family away from me?  can this actually be my home again, when i know what it did to my people?

kakashi has obviously managed to come up with answers to these questions that enable him to stay integrated in his community and keep building a future he believes in, though I doubt any of his answers are simple, and i’m sure there are some things that he’s just had to accept will never be fully settled in his heart.  it’s like what he says to obito in an episode i watched recently: “i don’t know anything for sure, either...i’ve thought that this world is hell, too...but...”  it’s the but that matters.  even in the face of confusion and complexity, kakashi has found a way to keep moving.  he’s learned to co-exist with the uncertainty and discomfort surrounding him, and to make his own meaning out of this life, regardless of how complicated his internal relationship with the village might be.  he’s found a way to keep his eyes trained on the light, whatever that light might look like for him, and even if said light is only, as gaara says, “the faintest glimmer.”  he has so much to teach someone like sasuke, who up until recently was responding to that same plea of gaara’s with a fatalistic “i shut my eyes a long time ago.  the things i seek now lie only in the darkness.” 

anyway.  i am just having Many Thoughts currently about the intricacies of the political and social context that kakashi is always navigating, even though he never says a word about it.  and i’m curious whether this family history will ever come up again in the last fifth of this show.  if i were going on instinct alone, i’d suspect that we weren’t quite done with sakumo yet - i feel like we barely even started with him, to be honest (and also - whatever happened to kakashi’s mother???) - but i should know better at this point than to try and predict what this show is going to do, so i’ll just wait and see.

[miserablesme]

The Les Miserables Changelog Part 1: Barbican Previews

Hello everyone! I'm starting out a blog which will look at my favorite musical, Les Miserables, and will discuss the various changes it has gone through over time (musically and lyrically). As it turns out, a LOT of edits have been made over the years so this will doubtless be a series with several parts.

This first part may well be the most difficult and will almost certainly be the most incomplete, as previews can be a time of extensive editing and experimentation. At least for the first few weeks or so, it's perfectly possible any one day of previews will be slightly different than any other day. However, I only have access to two audios from the Barbican Theatre previews of Les Miserables, meaning it's likely that lyrical variants exist which I have no way of hearing.

I am aware of the existence of a third audio which is fairly early in the run of previews, as the tape's master has told me that Gavroche's death scene is in its original form (I'll clarify that later). However, that tape has never been traded, and has sadly only been listened to by its master. I am also aware of a video proshot of the Barbican era that exists in the Royal Shakespeare Company library, but currently have no access to it. I plan to inquire about whether I can look at it sometime (though I'm not sure a blog like this is "official" enough to warrant it for research purposes). As such, this comparison only entails the two widely circulated audios from the Barbican run.

Now that we've gotten that cleared up, let's get started!

First, let's look at the opening "Work Song". In the earlier recording I have (let's call it R1), the beginning music (the same tune used, for instance, at the opening of "At the End of the Day" and "One Day More" and for Marius and Cosette's meeting in "The Robbery") stops. Then, a few moments later, the more familiar opening that leads directly into the prologue begins. By the time of the later recording I have (let's call it R2), the scores have been combined so that the first tune directly transitions into the second one.

Meanwhile, in R1 there is a sequence of lines that goes as follows:

I've done no wrong

Sweet Jesus, hear my prayer

Look down, look down

Sweet Jesus doesn't care

I killed a man

He tried to steal my wife

Look down, look down

She wasn't worth your life

I know she'll wait

I know that she'll be true

Look down, look down

She's long forgotten you

Most fans of the musical recognize the middle sequence of lines ("I killed a man" through "She wasn't worth your life") as no longer being lines in the show (for good reason, as we'll get into in a later edition of this blog). However, R2 keeps the lines. Instead, it deletes the third sequence ("I know she'll wait" through "She's long forgotten you"). I have no idea if this lasted only a few performances or made it all the way to the end of the Barbican run, or somewhere in between.

During "On Parole", specifically after Valjean is underpaid for his labor and sings about his frustration, R1 uses a variation of the "Work Song" theme which, to my recollection, is heard nowhere else in the musical. It can be heard here. By R2, it was switched to an in-tune version of the number with a unique opening. The musical retains that version to this day, but in case you can't recall it you can hear it here.

Minus an unintentional line flub in "At the End of the Day" in R2, the two Barbican recordings seem to use the same libretto and score from this point until "The Runaway Cart". At this point, R1 has a rather extensive scene leading up to Valjean saving Fauchelevent, which goes approximately as follows (the dialog is difficult to make out):

(VALJEAN)

Is there anyone here who will rescue the man?

Who will help me to shoulder the weight of the cart?

I will pay any man thirty louis d’or more

I will do it myself if there’s no one who will

We can’t let him die like that down in the street

Can you all watch him die and do nothing at all?

(FAUCHELEVENT)

Don’t approach me, Monsieur Mayor

The cart’s not gonna be holding

Not my poor mother would care if I should die

(TOWNSPEOPLE)

Don't go near him, Monsieur Mayor

There's nothing at all you can do

The old man's a goner for sure

Leave him alone

Most of that dialog is deleted in R2, so that it goes directly from "Who will help me to shoulder the weight of the cart" to "Don't go near him, Monsieur Mayor". I really like the idea of the original version; it seems reasonable that Valjean, having become a more trusted man, would expect the townspeople to help him. It's more meaningful that Valjean is good enough to do what's right when there's more time to establish that no one else is. Having said that, the original version did take quite a while and didn't really contain any relevant information that wasn't in the final version. I think the cut version as heard in R2 is a good compromise and retains the general mood and pacing to make Valjean's ultimate action satisfying (something that can't be said of later cuts, as will be discussed in a future edition of this blog).

Additionally, at the end of the number Javert refers to "the mark upon his skin" in R1 and "the brand upon his skin in R2 (as well as literally every subsequent performance since then to my knowledge). I have no idea if the "mark" line was a minor flub or was actually the original lyric.

"Who Am I?" is an interesting one. The musical content is identical in R1 and R2, but in R1 after his high note, Valjean shouts "You know where to find me!" with emotion so dramatic it sits right on the border between awesome and campy. By contrast, Valjean is totally silent after his high note in R2. Neither version would see its final day just yet, although the latter certainly has become more traditional over time. More on that in future editions.

From this point until "Master of the House" everything is the same between the two recordings. Roger Allam even comes in slightly late in both "Confrontation" scenes (making his line "-jean, at last...")! However, in the opening to "Master of the House" the following lines occur in R1:

(THENARDIER)

My band of soaks, my den of dissolutes

My dirty jokes, my always pissed as newts

My sons of whores

Spend their lives in my inn

Homing pigeons flying in

They fly through my doors

And their money's good as yours

(CUSTOMERS)

Ain't got a clue what he put into his stew

Must've scraped it off the street

Hell, what a wine

Châteauneuf de Turpentine

Must've pressed it with his feet

Landlord over here

Where's the bloody man

One more for the road

One more slug of gin

Just one more or my old man is gonna do me in

All of those lines would be scrapped in R2. Personally I prefer this shortened variant than the one that would occur much later. Sure, some fun moments get lost, but nothing that actually adds any substance or characterization to the musical (unlike the later cut, which I'll discuss in a later edition of this blog). Some have speculated that this is simply lost dialog due to a tape flip of degrading, given that future performances would retain those lines. However, there is firsthand confirmation that the cuts were in fact part of the performance. To quote Trevor Nunn on page 87 of 1990's The Complete Book of Les Miserables (a page which elaborates that "the cost of overtime incurred after three hours could be crippling at a time when Les Miserables was still trying to find an audience"):

"Cameron wanted major cuts, which would have reduced its length to two and a half hours. I resisted, refusing to discuss things on those terms... Some of the other proposed cuts - like the removal of the "Master of the House" scene-setting preamble - were tried out in previews and then restored as the scenes would not work without them."

From a historical perspective that quote is invaluable. As will be brought up in a later blog post (notice a pattern today?) the musical would in fact be cut much later to avoid overtime charges. When people like myself have expressed the opinion that these cuts come at the expense of artistic integrity, I've seen others defend them by claiming that the overtime costs never were relevant to Cameron and the gang until Broadway sales began to go down, and that if they were taken into account the musical may well be in its shortened form from the beginning. However, this quote proves that argument to be false. Right from day one, the crew was aware that retaining a >3 hour runtime would come with severe financial costs, but this was deemed a worthy sacrifice in order to tell the story they wanted told. Indeed, it sounds like Cameron Mackintosh was waiting quite some time to enact his infamous cuts! (Cameron Mackintosh valuing profit above art?! Crazy, right??)

But I digress. Going back to the musical, the "Waltz of Treachery" number is mostly the same. However, after Valjean's "It won't take you too long to forget" line, R1 has over a minute of wordless vamping which leads right into the rather awkwardly-placed "Stars" song. By contrast, in R2 this vamping (which is still a minute long, mind you) leads into a humming duet between Little Cosette and Valjean, similar to the duet right before the number. A nice little bookend that makes the scene feel all the more resolved. (Much later this duet reprise would ironically be scrapped again, though!) The remaining segment of R1's vamping now plays after this sequence in R2.

Minus some unintentional missed lines at the beginning of "Stars" in R1, the recordings seem to follow the same libretto right up until "One Day More". Here, R1 uses the following lines:

(EPONINE)

One more day with him not caring

(MARIUS and COSETTE)

Was there ever love so true?

(EPONINE)

What a life I might have known

(MARIUS and COSETTE)

I was born to be with you

However, by R2 this scene is in its current form:

(EPONINE)

One more day with him not caring

(MARIUS and COSETTE)

I was born to be with you

(EPONINE)

What a life I might have known

(MARIUS and COSETTE)

And I swear I will be true

And that closes act one! Going on to the second act, the opening barricade scene has a few changes. First off, following the opening notes, R1 features a rather odd tune bearing resemblance to "Do You Hear the People Sing" (which can be heard here) before transitioning to a more true-to-form instrumental reprise of "Do You Hear the People Sing?" By contrast, R2 goes straight from the opening notes to the true-to-form reprise.

Next, Enjolras proclaims "Have faith in yourself and do not be afraid" in R1, while in R2 he instead states "Every man to his duty and don't be afraid". It's unknown if this was an intentional libretto change or if it simply reflects a flub during R1. A later sequence uses the "Have faith in yourself" line, meaning he may have just sung the wrong line for that particular scene.

Finally, R1 includes the following sequence (at least I think this is how it goes, since the lyrics are a little hard to hear):

(PROUVAIRE)

And the people will fight

(GRANTAIRE)

And join with you

Who gives a speech in the square

Fortunately, R2 uses a much less clunky (though still somewhat so) sequence:

(PROUVAIRE)

And the people will fight

(GRANTAIRE)

And so they might

Some will bark, some will bite

This isn't quite its current form ("dogs" and "fleas" will soon respectively replace the two usages of "some"), but it's pretty darn close.

I've heard that the very first Barbican preview(s?) didn't have a finalized opening to "On My Own". Sadly there is no known audio record of this, so I cannot comment on what exactly it began as. As such, the next major change takes place during Gavroche's death scene. This honestly is probably the biggest of all the changes between the two recordings. R1 uses the following death scene (in the tune of "Look Down" right up until the "So never kick a dog" verse, which is in the tune of "Little People"):

How do you do, my name’s Gavroche

These are my people, here’s my patch

Not much to look at, nothing posh

Nothing that you’d call up to scratch

Some fool, I bet, whose brains are made of fat

Picks up a gun and shoots me down

Nobody told him who he’s shooting at

He doesn’t know who runs this town

Life’s like that

There’s some folk

Missed the joke

That’s three, that’s three

That one has done for me

Too fast, too fast

They’ve got Gavroche at last

So never kick a dog

Because he’s just a pup

You better run for cover when the pup grows...

By contrast, R2 uses a much shorter variant which is set entirely to the tune of "Little People":

And little people know

When little people fight

We may look easy picking but we've got some bite

So never kick a dog

Because he's just a pup

You'd better run for cover when the pup grows up

And we'll fight like twenty armies and we won't give...

This is much closer to its current form, although the last two lines are inverted (we'll get to that in a later edition).

We now fast-forward to "Dog Eats Dog", which while recognizable is very different from the number we know today. The chorus of R1 claims that "It's a dirty great sewer that's crawling with rats", which R2 changes it to "stinking great sewer" instead. I'd definitely say the revised lyric better captures Thenardier's and the sewer's grossness.

Additionally, regarding Marius' ring, Thenardier originally exclaims that he "didn't mean to waste it, that would really be a crime". By R2, the line changes to "wouldn't want to waste it", which I'd say makes a lot more sense.

"Javert's Suicide" has changed a lot. R1 features the following remarks following "Vengeance was his and he gave me back my life":

Damned if I live in this caper of grace

Damned if I live in the debt of Valjean

I'll spit his pity right back in his face

Is this the law or has sanity gone?

(I'm a little unsure as to how accurate the final line is.)

By R2, the lines have been replaced with the current ones:

Damned if I live in the debt of a thief

Damned if I yield at the end of the chase

I am the law and the law is not mocked

I'll spit his pity right back in his face

In R1, the "Where's the new world, now the fighting's done" line is absent, and there is nothing but instrumentals in the segment where it is usually sung. By contrast, it is sung as usual in R2. My guess is that an actress simply forgot her line in R1 and it was always supposed to be there, though I can't say for sure.

The final change occurs at the wedding scene. The singing which opens the number is repeated in R1. By contrast, R2 has it sung once and then done with, as it currently is (and as it should be in my opinion, since the music isn't particularly pretty and contributes nothing to the plot).

Later in the same scene, R1 includes approximately this exchange (again, it's quite hard to make out the exact lyrics):

(THENARDIER)

I was there

Never fear

Even got me this fine souvenir

He was there

Her old dad

*indecipherable* and fleecing this lad

Robbed the dead

That's his way

(MME. THENARDIER)

That's worth five hundred any old day

(MARIUS)

I know this...

By R2, everything between "He was there" and "Any old day" were removed, which makes sense given that they essentially just rehash what was already said.

Finally, there's a subtle difference in the epilogue, specifically during the "Do You Hear the People Sing?" reprise. In R1, the ensemble sings "They will live again in glory in the garden of the Lord". R2 replaces the word "glory" with "freedom", and that word remains the one used to this day. I suppose "freedom" is more appropriate for the context of peace and prosperity. To many, I'd guess that "glory" conjures imagery of knights, battles, and the like; just the kind of violence that the characters wish to move away from! I have no idea if this was why the writers changed the lyric, but it's my hypothesis.

Towards the end of the show, the chorus in R1 sings "Even the darkest moon will end and the sun will rise". By R2, this is changed to "the darkest night". Makes more sense to me, since moons aren't known for being particularly dark!

And that just about sums this part up! If I missed anything feel free to let me know, as my goal is to create a changelog as thorough and complete as possible. I plan on making more parts in the near future covering all the changes that have been made in the show up until this day (discounting concerts). Any feedback and constructive criticism is very much appreciated.

As a side note, both for this project and my own enjoyment, I want as complete a collection of Les Miserables audios as possible. I already have most of what's commonly circulated, but if you have any audios or videos you know are rare, I'd love it if you DMed me!

Until the turntable puts me at the forefront again, good-bye...

[imaginariaextraordinaire]

Considering how #MeToo in South Korea has been a conversation about the way institutions and systems have failed survivors of sexual assault, bold move of The Devil Judge to make the case in the live court show to be one of sexual harassment.

Writer Moon Yeo-Seok packs a LOT into the storytelling in this episode. First of all, Yo-Han doesn't want this case to be on the live show, but he's effectively forced to take it on. It becomes clear that the judicial system has no interest in upholding women's rights, but is more than willing to use the topic to engage in power play. Yo-Han is being made to preside over this case of sexual harassment because his enemies hope to put him in a weak and defensive spot.

The case is this: A leading male actor is accused of sexual harassment by other actors and technicians. He's a serial offender. We're shown how he uses his position as a senior to threaten, intimidate and harass women who are lower than him in the professional hierarchy.

I thought it was quite interesting that the show chose to make the harasser an actor. It feels like a pointed statement about the industry's internal sexism. However, it's also worth noting that the reason the public prosecutor picks this case is not because he thinks he can win the case because there is evidence backing the allegations. The reason he's confident of winning is because he has other dirt on the actor.

When the actor is being questioned by the prosecutor, the prosecutor says he has evidence of the actor's deviant sexual preferences. We're not told what exactly these preferences are, but the threat of this information coming out is enough to convince the actor to admit to the sexual harassment charge. Sexual harassment is the lesser evil — because society has accepted and normalised it.

So the prosecution's case (as well the actor's admission) are both mired in deceit and falsehood. Which tells us that even if the allegations are true, it isn't enough to report sexual harassment and getting justice for victims/ survivors has little to do with the truth of an allegation.

What The Devil Judge shows us is that cases of sexual harassment are weapons and in this case, the target isn't the actor, but Yo-Han. In an effort to make Yo-Han deliver an inhumane sentence, the prosecutor says that since the actor has admitted to sexual harassment, he should be castrated. The argument is that castration will ensure there are no more victims, but the actual intention is to force Yo-Han's hand. In a previous episode, Yo-Han had brought flogging as punishment out of the medieval ages into the present; the prosecution suggests he's taking a leaf out of the same book with castration.

In an effort to argue against castration, the actor's lawyer says that the punishment is too severe especially since South Korea is a country with a low crime rate. The other judge — a woman — points out that the reality of those who live in secure bubbles of privilege is not the same as the lived reality of the poor. She reminds him (and the audience) that statistics and official narratives don't necessarily reflect the lived reality and institutions like the judiciary are supposed to look out for the underprivileged and marginalised.

Which is a point well worth making, but it's ironic that all these excellent explorations into the normalising of violence, the role of institutions and the concept of justice itself send the issue of sexual harassment to the sidelines.

Even when we return to the subject of the case, the focus is on the actor and the question is what would be justice for him. What he's done and his victims recede into the background. There's no discussion of restorative justice or reparations. Instead, all that anyone seems to care about is the dick, both literally and figuratively.

Ultimately, Yo-Han arrives at a solution that is punitive enough to satisfy the unforgiving public without seeming barbaric. He outsources to America. Yo-Han's solution is to ship the abusive actor off to a prison in Texas. Yes, the Lone Star State of the United States of America.

We're also told that the person who found this Texan prison and negotiated the prisoner-exchange deal is not Yo-Han but his niece, the wheelchair-bound teenager who is studying computer engineering in Stanford (she's a distance-education student). The whole complicated process shows how institutions fail women in South Korea. For anything close to justice, the guilty abuser has to be shipped to another country — in South Korea, he'd get away with bribing people and securing parole — and it's quite obvious that this is an exceptional situation for which credit is due to not to government institutions, but one individual woman's intelligence, resourcefulness and privilege.

The segment where Yo-Han delivers his verdict would have been hilarious and a really clever bit of satire if it didn't include a video in which American prisoners say they're waiting for their Korean inmate. The implication is that the Americans are going to sodomise the crap out of him, which is not just demonising homosexuality, but it also shows that to The Devil Judge, justice means continuing the cycle of abuse by reducing the abuser to a victim. Needless to say, the guy who makes our Korean abuser shudder in horror is a leering Black man, neatly combining racism and homophobia in a single shot. It's disgusting, unnecessary and completely lacking even a hint of nuance.

Episode 5 ends with Yo-Han handcuffed to a chair and Soon-Ah forcibly kissing him. It comes quick on the heels of the trial, which suggests the show is trying to make the point that women can sexually harass men too — a tired, hackneyed and idiotic argument because it ignores the tiny detail that our existing socio-cultural structures empower men and disempower women. But let's set aside sociology and cultural studies and just stick to what's happening in the plot of The Devil Judge.

In an earlier episode, when the housekeeper was telling Ga-On about Yo-Han, she'd mentioned there was a maid who fell in love with Yo-Han and that Yo-Han had made her jump off the second floor. It seems Soon-Ah might be that maid (or maybe she's related to that maid?) and that she's nursed an obsessive crush on Yo-Han.

Ergo, present-day Yo-Han being kidnapped and handcuffed to a chair. All for Soon-Ah's pleasure, thank you very much. To really bring that point home, Soon-Ah calls Yo-Han "young master" and then plants a very un-chaste kiss on his person.

Is this kiss supposed to be hot? I've no idea. What is definitely unambiguous is that the kiss is not consensual. Yo-Han is clearly not feeling it and the lack of response isn't bothering Soon-Ah in the slightest.

In earlier episodes, Soon-Ah has been the protector — like when she punishes the foundation's director for groping the server — so it's particularly disappointing that the writer chose to make Soon-Ah an abuser in order to establish her villain identity. I really liked the idea that Soon-Ah is the actual power behind the all-powerful Social Responsibility Foundation. The reveal was reminiscent of the reveal in Vincenzo, except in The Devil Judge, this charade felt far more credible and convincing. For Soon-Ah, a young woman in a patriarchal, male-dominated and conservative society, an old man as a figurehead would mean doors opening easier and other men taking her company seriously. The facade of the old man as the director and Soon-Ah being ignored by most people showed that seedy, sleazy men trust other seedy, sleazy men.

I was quite looking forward to this scheming, ambitious woman going up against Yo-Han, but the end of episode 5 has reduced Soon-Ah to a misogynist stereotype. I'm hoping that the next episode will add some nuance/ dimension to Soon-Ah, but as of episode 5, she's the incel's wet dream. And that is disappointing af.

[thequibblah]

directors cut for WTRF? 🥺👉👈 not biased at all obviously just objective third party asking for a directors cut hmmm hmmmmm

literally how could u do this every other word in that fic is an easter egg i can't shut up about..... bestie u are about to have regrets

one thing u should know is that 90% of things in this fic have real-world equivalents and its not even like....... hidden equivalents. serie primo = serie a, for instance. this trend is going to continue and i won't apologise <3

fun fact i named the bar the Bar and the drinks after shapes because i was too lazy to come up with something actually clever

this bit

I’m grinning to myself by the time she approaches my table.

was a very intentional fakeout and if you read this and thought "she" would be lily, feel free to sue me for emotional damages

the biggest conundrum of this AU was, how are jily not going to have met in school when magic exists? the solution was, of course, having multiple magic schools. but i couldn't let one of them have hogwarts, that didn't seem fair. i know i did sort of let lily have it..... but i felt more comfortable making hogwarts a university so there was a legit reason why james wasn't there and in gryffindor (if he'd gone he absolutely would have been)

once solved, i did the fun thing of naming them! ottaline gambol's was easy, i just scrolled through the list of ministers for magic and picked a progressive one. peverell hall was a whim, made all the funnier when lily's reaction is:

Much was made at Otty’s — one of the more progressive magical schools, named for one of the more progressive Ministers of Magic — of schools like Peverell Hall and St. George’s. The latter, I know, is chock-full of pureblooded elite. Peverell Hall is supposed to be slightly better, but still.

dang, it's gonna be funny if she ever finds out james is a descendant of the guy it's named after

fun fact, i included this because peter's question was a real thought i had when reading bond and free, your inspiring writing knows no limits:

The first thing you conjure in Walking Wombat is a yellow quill... “Why yellow?” Peter asked. Eddie gave him a strange look. “Why not?”

i realised i'd put jily in the same conundrum they had in tis the fucking season here:

It’s only then that I remember she’s just bought us drinks. I turn back to my triangle. “Oh, shit.” I suppose I can pawn it off on one of the others.

...but of course the resolution is rather different, and i do so enjoy a james with no filter (aka default james)

I briefly lose control of my brain and my tongue. “Is it too soon to say I’m in love with you?”

by the way, no-filter james will be a theme. wild things sure do run fast but not as fast as this boy runs his mouth!

also, another interesting challenge here was making sure james has a reason to be the way he is in AU. i love playing around with james's childhood/background and seeing how that affects his character while (hopefully!) staying true to who he is. i did that in ttfs by having him move around a lot and not meet the marauders until after the flashback timeline, which is why he's less of a git — he doesn't have the level of comfort in a social setting that canon james has with hogwarts, which is basically his playground from day 2 of first year lol

here, james was probably a fkn nightmare all through school, but of course he gets a big ego check when his quidditch career is derailed. i imagine his years in italy as a continuation of that humility lesson.

I will fully admit I used to be a cocky prick. This is what comes of being a kid who grew up with everything. But one useful thing that the whole fiasco four years ago taught me is humility. I’ve learned how to ask nicely for another chance.

and so much of writing him in wtrf is juggling that typical confidence with the insecurity/fear of losing something he's invested so much in (and has seen slip away before). it's really new to me, because typically i give lily uncertain life circumstances, but i suppose it's both of them in this AU.

the car thing was... i swear didn't start out as smutty, it was purely because i wanted a way to establish lily as muggleborn in a world where the connotations of not having magical parents is very different. more to come on that!

also, come to think of it, by this metric...

I’m now in dangerous territory, since that adds another impressive action to her running tally.

...i think james is already in love with her LOL

this bit:

The street is considered indecent and the downstairs hallway would have our landlady come running at once, so if it pleases Your Honour, we would recommend the sitting room sofa.

...was actually because in draft one lily was a lawyer, but then it was funny enough that i didn't want to take it out, but NOW i realise it makes it sound a little like she's addressing james as your honour, which.... hm. but anyway, we move on

Marc Bolan begs us to get it on through the stereo, vocalising my thoughts exactly.

the song here was initially "you shook me" (h/t @keepingupwithpotters) but i chickened out because zeppelin is SO horny dfjkhgkjs

also, it gave me so much joy to read everyone reacting to lily thinking about her ex (the general vibe was "who the fuck is this guy!!! ew!!!!") — rest assured (or, unassured??) that he has a part to play in all this. anyway, this is one of my fave lines:

He’s just a person, and there’s such a relief in sleeping with James and not the myth of a guy.

because as any come together reader knows....

Just James. Just James. It was never just James.

wtrf lily will learn!

literally the whole world knows i'm obsessed with needle drops that have no subtlety at all, but this one...

We just laugh, tangled together in a sweaty heap, as “Heaven Is in the Back Seat of My Cadillac” plays through the car’s speakers. “On the nose, isn’t it?” James says, sitting up.

...was pure luck, because i was looking up the top hits on the uk singles chart for the week(ish) this scene takes place in so that i could find a song that would realistically play on the radio, saw this, and was like omg the stars really do align

i feel like the thing i enjoy most about writing romance is the importance i get to place in noticing/looking/observing (and sometimes, not noticing!). it's just such a powerful but simple writerly tool, and god knows i am obsessed with pithy descriptions anyway, so this bit i am especially happy with:

James is already waiting, leaning against the car with his hands in his pockets. I feel as though I’m seeing him for the first time, the faint light of the flickering streetlamp catching him in profile: the strong slope of his nose, the hard line of his jaw, the curve of his smile. He studies the facade of our building with open curiosity, and I wonder what he’s looking for.

(one can only imagine james's train of thought in this moment. perhaps "ah. here lives the future love of my life"?)

“Thanks,” she tacks on at the end. I tip my head to one side in confusion. “For what?” “For, I don’t know. Being nice.” She laughs awkwardly. “I don’t do this very much.”

it wouldn't be a quibblah original tee em without some discourse to come about the nature of romantic/sexual relationships, would it? one thing i enjoy about this AU ("one thing" i say as if this isn't the billionth thing in a list) is that i get to write a romantic lily who's squaring that romanticism with what she perceives as the culture of the times. (this is a bit of a staple in all my characterisations of lily, but it is not often paired with casual sex, the complication of all complications!)

oh this bit literally wrote itself like i didn't even pause to think just vomited it out:

In the morning — and it must be early still — the sun streams through Lily’s sorry excuses for curtains with aggression that cannot be ignored. I crack open an eye to find myself sprawled out across her bed, quite literally spread-eagled. She’s attached to my side like a barnacle. Or a very pretty barnacle, anyway.

i'm especially proud of james's voice in this story. i don't often write first-person fic and i was worried how it'd turn out, but i think james as a character/narrator typically colours his own 3rd-person narration so strongly that it ended up a smoother transition than i'd feared!

also i just. i can't resist throwing in comic relief and i hope that this whole segment was a gentle enough preparation for the awkwardness that followed LOL

All of a sudden, the balcony door bursts open. I nearly drop the mug. “What the—” Mary pokes her head around the corner, sporting a righteous smile. “Morning, handsome.” Over her shoulder she shouts, “He’s on the balcony!” I blink. There’s a sound from inside the flat, as if something very large has just been dropped. Then a swear. “Oh, shit,” I say, realisation dawning, “you weren’t looking for me, were you? It’s so loud out here—” Mary cups a hand around her mouth and stage-whispers, “Lily was frantic.” She’s quite violently yanked back, and Lily herself appears in the doorway, slightly out of breath. “Should’ve checked the balcony first,” she says, and closes the door before Mary can insert herself into the space again. “Hi,” I say, which is agreed-upon best practice for greeting a woman you’ve just had fantastic sex with and ideally would like to have sex with again.

to this day i don't know what lily dropped. let's hope it wasn't expensive!

Captained the under-17 English squad at the World Cup some years back, Serie Primo’s lead goal-scorer of last year… Only an injury in what should’ve been his first season at Puddlemere mars his record. I wince reading about it and comparing it to a heap of press clippings. James Potter was hurt, and Puddlemere didn’t fancy paying for him not to play, so they shipped him off to Milan.

(you cannot imagine how much pointed interrogation of my brother it took to gather this intel.) i constantly worry that i've got dates or timelines wrong somehow — you might notice i tweaked under-17, which used to be under-19 until i realised that made no sense (even though in terms of its career importance i would much preferred it to have been u-19.... anyway). i also found out that u-17 football squads don't actually have captains but i said fuck it on that count.

but obviously i started writing this AU for the sports possibilities, only to discover i'm going to have to interfere a great deal with the Timeline (you shall see in future instalments).

god i really went through the whole fic. like i reread the whole thing to do this. here u go clare jfbghjfd

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “Customer Service.”

Guys, I know I am a little later than usual because I was trying to execute this one well, but I wanted this to be nice and Funny. I suggest reading it because it was fun to write and maybe it will make you smile. :)

Have a great day guys! 

The Galactic Assembly members stood in council, hundreds of projected holograms stood at attention as nothing more than smoke and light upon the bridge of the UNSC Harbinger.

Commander Vir stood at attention ramrod straight pristine grey uniform pressed to perfection shoes polished to a shine. He clasped his hands lightly behind his b at shoulder width planted firmly on the ground silhouetted by the starfield towards his front.

“It was spotted on a routine patrol towards the edge of the system.” The Rundi chairwoman began pressing her long tapering fingers together before her chest, “As far as we can tell there was only one, but that doesn't mean more aren’t on the way.” 

“What do they want?”” The Finnari councilman began 

“The Burg have no lover for the Galactic Assembly.” The commander began, reaching out to grip the railing before him one handed, with the other still held stiff behind his back, 

The Drev representative rumbled deep in his chest spear-butt clattering loudly against a metal floor, “And what quarrel do they have with the assembly.”

There was a momentary silence on the bridge.

“Commander.” The Rundi chairwoman prompted.

Commander Vir lifted his chin stepping back to once again place both hands behind his back pacing a few steps this way and that eyebrows slanted in an expression of worry, “I am afraid that would be my fault, General.”

There was a shuffling about the council representatives.

He turned on his heel and came to attention before them, “Our last encounter ended, and honestly begun, on poor terms. It was towards the beginning of my tour, and I was unaware of their particular…. Quirks. Young and naive with an unfortunately uncontained bravado I am afraid I may have offended their leader. He saw it as an insult to his honor, and determined to kill me only after torturing the members of my crew which he had captured.” 

Surprise.

“Of course, I wasn’t about to let my crew die for a mistake I had made. As it turns out the enzymes found in human saliva is particularly problematic for their species. The outer slime which lubricates their carapace and keeps their bodies from breaking down is particularly sensitive to the enzymes I mentioned earlier. None of us could have known what was going to happen.” He turned another tight circle  “As a precursor for some of you who may not know, spiting at someone in human culture is seen as an act of defiance or an insult. Thinking he was about to kill m crew, I had no particular respect for him. Of course my actions had greater consequence than I originally intended. He was dead within minutes, and the rest of my crew was able to escape.” He trailed off at this point though his expression remained serious.

The Tesraki council member chuckled slightly, “As I recall, they withdrew from negotiations shortly after, and all commerce between our people and there's immediately ceased despite our best efforts. Of course, no one blames the commander, the Burg were breaking intergalactic tretis agreements by implementing the use of force without the approval of the GA.

“Even so.” The Vrul began, “This does not bode well for their sudden reappearance.”

“I have some dealings with the Burg.” There was a short pause as Commander Vir turned to the side, looking on as his guest, an envoy, Lord Celex of the Celzex. The cute, fuzzy little creature with colorful fur, large feet and big eyes, never ceased to make any human in visual distance wish for a cuddle, but the Commander managed to restrain himself.

“Lord Celex?”

The fuzzy little creature rocked slightly on it’s large feet big mournful eyes sharp with anger. Commander Vir tightened his hands behind his back expression still very serious.

“The Burg are a proud race like my own. If they plan on attacking, they will not be dissuaded by diplomacy” his piggy little ears twitched lightly, “Though they can be pushed to make rash decisions using their pride as a point of attack.”

There was a slight slithering noise as the iotin representative coiled her snake like body about her feet, “And what are the chances of a preemptive strike.” 

The Rundi councilwoman sighed, “Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do. Our code of laws restricts us.”

“Don’t fire unless fired upon.” the commander muttered under his breath before raising  his head, “And can we be sure they plan to attack…..”

The Gibb representative shifted, “I am afraid not. Our scans indicate that the ship is heavily loaded with weapons and an unusual amount of persons. I wouldn't place our safety in hoping that they do NOT plan to attack.”

A chorus of muttered agreement rose about the room, “We should at least attempt contact with them. Commander Vir, I would have you do the talking accept for your….. History…. With the Burg.”

“A wise decision.” The Commander acknowledged adjusting his cap, “Chairwoman, that leaves first contact up to you.”

The chairwoman didn’t look altogether excited over the idea, but adjusted her ceremonial robes, “Hail the burg ship, begin transmission.”

Commander Vir, in accompany with lord Celex turned his attention to an additional hologram that began to materialize at the side of the room. The Burg were everything that the Celzex weren’t at least when it came to looks. Where the Celzex were cute enough to make any human squeal like a five year old with their big eyes pig ears, colorful fur and large feet, the burg were ugly as sin, centipedes on steroids with too many legs, to many antennae and covered in a gelatinous layer of slime. Their coloring ranged from brown to puke green and mustard yellow at the legs. 

When they spoke, their language was primarily clicks, hisses, and chattering gurgles made look even less attractive by their segmented mandibles.

“Hail, Burg, please acknowledge, you have entered restricted GA airspace. State your business.”

The uggly creature chartered and gurgled under the sound of the translation, “I have simply come as an envoy to the galactic assembly.”

Commander VIr leaned close to lord Celex quietly whispering, “That is a load of horse shit if i have ever heard of it.” Lord Celex snorted in agreement

“That is quite a collection of weapons for a simply envoy.” The chairwoman offered.

“Can you blame us. We are heading into hostile territory and had no idea of what you might do to us.”

Lord Celex shook his head, “Something is wrong here. The burg do not negotiate or have ENVOYS the words literally do not exist in their vocabulary. Specifically their culture is very insistent on holding onto grudges.. To let a grudge go is seen as the height of dishonor, and in their case it is death before dishonor.” 

Commander Vir tapped hsi chin, “So is there no chance they are here to be diplomatic.”

“It would not even cross their minds…. “ Lord Celex continued as the two of them watched the Burg avoid, change, and costrue his words in the most obvious way possible, but just barely veiled enough to make any action by the GA look excessive or even aggressive. After all, what he said was just words.

They couldn’t even reject him from entering the system with his weapons considering other members of the GA were allowed to do the same, most notably the Humans and the Drev whose ships were packed with as much weaponry as was possible and sometimes more than was practical.

“Let me convene with the council before a decision is made, but we will return to you shortly.” The chairwoman switched off the comm and was retransferred back to the rest of the council.

“He is lying.”

“And quite obviously I might add.” pointed out the Tesraki, clearly not very impressed.

“Lord Celex, tell the council what you were telling me.” Commander Vir urged 

Lord Celex took  the floor doing as told finishing after a moment with, “This is most certainly payback for previous dishonor. While their weapons are not as powerful as the humans. I suspect that they may take such dishonor by leveling an entire city if they have to.”

“Is there now way to restrict them from the system?”

“No, I am afraid not. We only have speculation, and no concrete evidence.” The chairwoman muttered, “Despite how certain we are. There is nothing we can do until they actually give us reason, and that rule may well be putting innocent lives at risk.”

The Bran representative scuttled a little bit in place, “Unless there was a way to make them strike first, out here where they are not a danger to civilians.”

An Iotin representative laughed, “That would require us goading them into attacking without breaking any laws in the process, and all of it on purpose.”

The room was filled with a mirthful laugh, and the entire council looked at the commander who was grinding in that wolfish way that humans had, quite predatory and VERY unnerving. He twisted his hands around cracking his knuckles, “Goading people without breaking any laws.”

He rolled his neck cracking that too, “That just so happens to be my specialty.” The expression he had was a stark contrast to his early seriousness, and the change was almost unnerving.

“You think you can get him to attack you first, without actually breaking the rules of engagement, or the rules of diplomacy.”

The human crossed his arms over his chest, “I can goad him into attacking me without breaking a sweat, ma’am. The key is over politeness, and complete bureaucracy. I guarantee you give me a few hours with this guy and I can crack him, maybe even less.” 

The council looked at each other interested, “And when they do attack.”

“My ship could take it, but I would appreciate if someone was around with an energy shield of superior quality. I would rather no one die in this effort.”

“Very well, commander. We give you leave to do as you must, but I must withdraw from the council before I see anything more.”

“Understood, chairwoman.” The human responded before grinning and rubbing his hands together a mischievous smile crossing his face.

Commander Vir sat in the Captain’s chair Lord Celex at his side, “Prepare for audio transmission” he was given the go ahead with a raised hand.

“Start transmission.”

“Chairwoman?” 

“Hello, this is Adam from the internal department of intergalactic nuisance. Is this the Burg captain speaking?”

There was a purse on the other line, “Where is the chairwoman.” The voice was clearly annoyed.

Commander Vir threw his legs over one arm of the chair lounging like he owned the entire universe, “Oh yeah, the council.” He kept his voice as informal as possible, “They were super busy and have a bunch of important things to do. Something about methane acquisition and internal sanctions on biological waste disposal. They generally send all the unimportant things to me.” Around the bridge humans had hands covering their mouths while lord Celex was nodding in approval.

There was a chattering growl over the line, “Unimportant!..... Waste disposal! This is outrageous. I came here on a diplomatic mission-”

He was cut off, “Of course you did, very important I am sure.” The human said lying the sweetness on thick, “Very important. We here at the GA department of intergalactic nuisance take the blurg representatives very seriously.”

There was a roar from the other end of the line, “WHAT did you say?”

“I said we take the burger very seriously.”

“THe BURG.” “That's what I said.”

“NO YOU DID NOT.” Humans about the room were openly smiling now. Commander Vir was grinning smugly as he crossed one ankle over the other making himself very comfortable, “Yes, that’s exactly what I said. The bug is an important priority to our department.”

“BURG.”

“It is very hard to hear you when you shout like that, sir.” 

The silence that followed was practically brimming with rage, “I demand to speak with a member of the GA. This is outrageous.”

“I am afraid we cannot do that right now, the GA is in session. Something to do with internal budget for the acquisition of branded paper clips, but I might be able to transfer you to the GA higher department of minor diplomatic inconveniences… please hold.”

He motioned to one of his men, and suddenly the other line was cut filled insteady with the tinny notes of easy listening jazz, abominable anywhere outside of elevators. The humans around the room were snickering.

They could still hear the burg though he could not hear them, over the line cursing and demanding to speak with someone though the line continued to play music. They waited for a good half an hour and just as the Burg was about to pick up, the commander made a motion.

“Hello this is Adam from the higher department of minor diplomatic inconvenience.” 

“Finally! I demand to speak with the GA.”

Commander Vir dropped the call.

The Burg cursed in outrage and tried calling back. Commander Vir picked up.

“Hello this is Adam from the higher department of-” “I KNOW WHO YOU ARE!.”  the Burg shouted, “And I commander of the Burg demand to speak with the GA.” 

“I’m sorry, who are you?

“The BURG commander.”

“The Burger?” 

They had to turn down the volume to the intercom as the Burg went and lost it. Commander Vir dropped the call for the second time.

He called back.

“Hello, this is Adam from the-”

“I DEMAND TO SPEAK WITH THE GA.”

Adam let a pause drag on for a long minute, “I am sorry, who is this?”

“THE BURG COMMANDER.”

“Oh, yes, I am sorry our department doesn’t deal with requests to speak with the GA, I am afraid I will have to transfer you don't to the lower department of under-minor diplomatic inconvenience.” Before the burg could say anything he was, once again, put on hold with the same tinny easy listening jazz poorly projected over the intercom. The Burg was having an absolute conniption on the other end of the line.

They didn’t make him wait as long, but still made him wait.

“Hello, this is Adam from the lower department of under-minor diplomatic inconvenience.” 

“Adam, I have already spoken to you.” The Burg growled.

“Who is this.”

“THE BURG COMMANDER.”

Adam shifted in his seat, “Please relax sir, But I assure you I have never spoken with the burger commander….. Is this a prank call?” 

“BURG, it’s pronounced BURG. THIS IS NO JOKE. And is EVERYONE in your department named Adam?”

“I am the only Adam in the entire department. I have no idea who you were talking to but it wasn’t me. What are you calling for?”

“I NEED TO SPEAK WITH THE GA.” He was screaming now barely comprehensible.

“Oh I am sorry that is a matter for the internal department of intergalactic nuisance.”

“I JUST SPOKE WITH THEM.”

“Please hold.” 

If anything could be said based on what was over the end of the line, something was getting destroyed all to the soundtrack of easy listening jazz elevator music  more than two thousand years old but somehow dated another century by being so horrible.

“Hello, this is.”

“ADAM I know.”

“I’m sorry, who? There is no Adam in this department. My name is Mr. Burg.”

“ARE YOU MOCKING ME?”

“I don’t even know who you are, sir please what are you calling for?”

“I am the BURG COMMANDER CALLING TO SPEAK WITH THE GA. I HAVE SAID THIS BEFORE.”

The human tapped his fingers on the chair arm, “Mmmm Mr. Burger, we have no record of your interaction.”

“BURG, it is BURG not BURGER not BUG nog BLURG, but BURG.”

“”I know what my name is sir, no need to get angry. Let’s just take a deep breath and try to relax. What did you say your name was?” 

“I AM THE COMMANDER OF THE BURG SHIP, OF THE NATION OF THE BURG, AND I DEMAND TO SPEAK WITH THE GA REPRESENTATIVES ON THIS INSTANT.”

“I am afraid our department doesn’t deal with demands.”

“THEY TOLD ME TO COME HERE.”

The commander hummed tilting his head slightly to the side, “That was likely when you were asking to speak with the GA and now it has turned into a demand, so I am going to have to transfer you to the Lateral Department of mid-major intergalactic diplomatic annoyance.” He went to put the Burg on hold, but he didn’t get that far.

“I WILL NOT BE TRANSFERRED, I WILL NOT BE PUT ON HOLD, LET ME SPEAK TO THE GA OR I WILL BLAST YOUR MINUSCULE STARSHIP INTO A BILLION MOLECULES.” “Was that a treat?”

“YES IT WAS.” 

“Begin holographic transmission.”

Commander Vir stood from his seat hands resting behind his back, “Commander of the Burg, I am Commander Adam Vir of the GA / UNSC fleet. And I will have you know that a threat to a GA spaceship in GA restricted airspace is a violation of the interspace tretisand allows me to detain your ship under restriction until such time as the GA decided what to do with you.” “ADAM the creature spat.”

The man was able to maintain a straight face, “Yes?”

“It was you the entire time.”

The human shook his head looking confused, “What do you mean the entire time. The entire time of what.”

“SPeaking with the diplomatic….. Whatever….. IT WAS YOU.”

“We don’t have a diplomatic department of whatever. As far as I know there was no one else in the GA with the same name. You must be mistaken.”

What happened next was almost expected, but not quite. All of the anger pent up in the Burg Commander snapped. He screamed demanding his ship to fire upon the UNSC Harbinger, an action that found immediate response with  the Rundi Command ship appearing form cloaking and covering the Harbinger in their their own energy shield. The Burg’s attack bounced off their shields and deflected back into space. The Crew felt nothing more than a slight rumble through the hull of the ship.

“”Tell The GA to deploy grappling field.” The commander ordered pointing towards one of his Comms techs who immediately sent the request.

It wasn’t more than a moment before their ship was grappled,their weapons decommissioned, and the council had reappeared as holograms aboard the ship.

“Less than two hours commander….” Someone said in awe, “How did you break them so quickly.”

The man simply smiled, “Unhelpful customer service is a bitch guaranteed to drive anyone into a rage.”

[mooosicaldreamz]

Have you listened to folklore yet?? Can you do commentary on all the songs??

it’s time.

THE 1

This song has a funny vibe in comparison with “I Forgot that You Existed” - it really sets a tone of calm, quiet vibes in comparison to the more bombastic stuff on Lover. Also this song is kind of a banger. It has a very gentle rhythm, like I’m in the sun in the woods and I’m in my hammock. I have a hammock now and I’m considering moving into it. “It would’ve been fun / if you would’ve been the one.” Also I love the “I had this dream you’re doing cool shit” - so fun, so sweet. Taylor said a curse word.

CARDIGAN

This song is proof to me that this album was produced by a Dessner because it has the same repetitive piano that I would say is a hallmark of National songs - it sounds a lot like “Light Years” to me. That song is, by the way, an absolute banger. This song? Fun! It’s an interesting metaphor, and an interesting way of saying the point of the song. And I think it’s much more grounded than some more old school Taylor metaphors of like fairytale stuff. “Tried to change ending / Peter losing Wendy.”

THE LAST GREAT AMERICAN DYNASTY

As we ALL KNOW, this song is about Taylor’s wonderful little house wherein the great Fourth of July celebration took place all over Instagram in the Red era. I googled it and it’s semi-biographical! I think it’s clear that Taylor is making commentary on her life on the Cape just as much as she is telling the story of this person, Rebekah Harkness. It’s an interesting piece of self-awareness to compare herself to an oil heiress who caused quite the stir in a segment of the world that is full of big stirrers (ie the Kennedys who I’m pretty sure she was neighbors with somewhere down the beach). I’m intrigued. She is having fun.

EXILE (FEAT BON IVER)

This will sound like absurd hyperbole but between Bon Iver and Taylor Swift, I’d be hard pressed to name two artists who have fucked up my life more. Getting to hear his beautiful baritone without layers of distress like he’s been rolling with lately is a gift. Thank you to Taylor Swift. “I can see you staring, honey / like he’s just your understudy / like you’d get your knuckles bloody / for me.” VIBEZ???? ARE WE VIBING????? I AM VIBGIN!!!!!! “Those eyes add insult to injury????”” BANGER!!! IT’S A BANGER.  THAT BREAKDOWNN!!!! LET’S ROLL!!!! LET’S GET FUCKED UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m PUTTING THIS ON SO MANY PLAYLISTS!!!!!!!!!!

MY TEARS RICOCHET

LET’S GET EMO !!!!!!!! You know, just recently I was discussing with Lynne (or myself? I talk to myself about Taylor a lot) about how she’s gonna go on her like farewell tour when she’s 50-60 or whatever and it’s gonna be all these low-down sexy baller mixes, like when Cyndi Lauper did her greatest hits cover release (it’s a banger!). This album is just an excuse for her to sing in her low register. God, I’d die for her. I love how sad this is. I have too many favorite lines. “I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace / ‘cause when I’d fight, you used to tell me I was brave / And if I’m dead to you why are you at the wake?” ALSO “And you can aim for my heart, go for blood / But you would still miss me in your bones.” OKAY HONEY!!!!!!! This is a clear Supercorp song. Since I know this is why you are asking. Start here for fic titles.

MIRRORBALL

Oh, okay, Taylor went to the woods and listened to Ryan Adams, Bon Iver, and just fucked around and made shoe gaze pop? What kind of talent!!!! Her last album was premium pop. Why is she like this. This song is very interesting. It’s very sweet. The phrasing on “tallest tiptoes / highest heels” oh my God. I love this song. I might cry.

SEVEN

Another absolute National-style production, God, we are living in my dream world on this album. “I’ve been meaning to tell you / I think your house is haunted / Your dad is always mad and that must be why / And I think you should come live with me / and we can be pirates.” WHAT A JOKE. WHAT A JOKE!!!!!!! What a beautiful portrait of childhood. There’s a scene in Spring Awakening (the musical, I can only assume now that Taylor is a big fan), where they talk about playing pirates when they were younger and now everything is tragic. “Are there still beautiful things?” It shouldn’t be that easy bro.

AUGUST

This, like “Seven” is an Antonoff production, which is just vibes. The dreaminess. We are vibing. As much as I am inclined to hate the line, “August slipped away like a bottle of wine” it is phrased so well and delicately that it comes across more dreamy than wine mom memey. I also just want to say that I bought the OG vinyl and the “meet me behind the mall” vinyl and after hearing the song that it comes from it’s a vibe. This is obviously a teenage romp song, which is really great because obviously Taylor wrote about being a teenager in love when she was a teenager and wrote about like, the classic world-ending Romeo and Juliet style fairytale. But this is….”meet me behind the mall.” Which is such an adult perspective on what being a teenager is. It’s so wonderful to see that artistic depth in an artist we’ve literally watched grow.

THIS IS ME TRYING

I feel like this is the depression song that should have been on Reputation but was so out of step with the rest of the album between it’s thunderous anger / thunderous oh-shit-I’m-into-this-dude that they couldn’t work it in. And it doesn’t quite vibe with Lover either…this whole song is GREAT. It’s very depression 101. It makes me cry also. “They told me all of my cages were mental / so I got wasted like all my potential / and my words shoot to kill when I’m mad / I have a lot of regrets about that.” I LOVE the way she sings “I have a lot of regrets about that.” Also “and it’s hard to be at a party / when I feel like an open wound.” Absolute banger.

ILLICIT AFFAIRS

I feel we should give this song the true banger status because Taylor wrote a song about a girl who is the other woman and it’s empathetic. God, we love progress. This song also does a good job of being about the other woman, but also has a little more universal appeal. I know when I heard this I was like, “oof, okay, I don’t miss being 16.”  The word mercurial is used in this song.

INVISIBLE STRING

Not to get too emo about it, but this song is adorable and it’s messed up that she wrote it. The idea behind it that I think must be fairly common for people who are in love, that their lives have unique crossover moments, and there’s this hope/want to believe that you were always going to end up in this place because of all those connections? That’s kind of a complex thing (imo) to express. And she WROTE IT!!!! God. If I were Joe Alwyn I would cry every day.

MAD WOMAN

The fact that Taylor would ever attempt to make me believe this is not about Scooter Braun is insane. I love this song. Proof of concept that you don’t need to yell to show how mad you are.

EPIPHANY

This song is sad. But very interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her write anything like this. I think the back half of this album is a little more experimental.

BETTY

I’m not sure what I’m expected to say here. I know that this song is not actually gay. But I don’t care. It’s country twang from a boy’s perspective and you know what? We’re taking it. We are taking it for ourselves. But also, I love that she chose to write this weird “teenage love triangle” set of songs and that she chose to write none of them from like, her perspective? Right? “August” is James cheating on Betty, “Illicit Affairs” is the other woman, and this is James…when Taylor was 17 she would have written this song from Betty’s perspective. And that’s what we would have got. There’s real growth in storytelling here, and a real interest in expanding the canon of what she’s writing about. It’s really great to see an artist do that. Also the way she sings “The worst thing that I ever did / was what / I did to you.” This whole song is a masterpiece. I hate her.

PEACE

I just learned that Joe Alwyn is a Pisces. I am A PISCES. TAYLOR!!!! WE COULD BE TOGETHER.

I love the “I talk shit with my friends / It’s like I’m wasting your honor.” This song is so adult. She’s in like. Real love bro. BRO. I AM HAPPY FOR HER. BRO!!!!!!

HOAX

I am interested in why this is the last song on the non-deluxe version of the album. I don’t have a lot to say about this but that it reminds me of Wuthering Heights. Also if you wanted to get emo this is probably a good SC song.

[uthseikoashx-inflamedme]

Personal favourite HP (&FB) fanfictions (but unfortunately it’s mostly GGAD)

posted: 08-10-2020 edited: 08-24-2020

(really sorry for the mistakes! fanfics are better i swear)

I read several HP and FB fanfics during the last few months, and in order to sum up my favourite ones, here is this post. It’s entirely and obviously personal, and to be honest, it’s more something which is more supposed to help me than recommanding something to you

But I truly think those fanfictions are great, so if you didn’t already read them, you may enjoy them!

I might update it every now and then, by the way!

(most of them are already quite well-known though, sorry)

Put Your Guns Away, it’s Tea Time (52k) and Put Your Curse in Reverse (276k) (from the It’s Tea Time serie), written by ellizablue :

A very lovely, funny and well-written story which follows Albus Severus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy, Harry and Ginny Potter, the rest of the Potter-Weasley family and all of the surrounding people after the events of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

It’s technically canon-compliant - the author created an amazing story based on HPCC - and did it so well! I admit I was a bit disappointed about HPCC when it had been published, but It’s Tea Time “fixed” all of the things I was confused about.

Albus’ and Scorpius’ relationship is adorable, both of them are interesting characters. Harry and Ginny are amiable and attentive parents, they protect people they love. James Sirius and Lily Luna are also great - and to be honest, all of the characters are refreshing, complex, ect. I could talk about it throughout countless of pages. So many themes are brilliantly treated. I still didn’t read the third opus of the series!

(if I should recommand one only series of HP fanfictions, I would recommand this one)

Several fanfictions written by meanwhiletimely :

Illumine (10k) :

In Prague in 1914, Albus Dumbledore goes to a Gellert Grindelwald’s brillant speech. The political discussion between Albus and Henry Potter, how Gellert is able to enthrall a breathless crowed, Gellert’s and Albus’ very special and intense relationship, the wonderful Christian imagery and parallels, the description of the surrounding world and the ambiance, Gellert’s speech... It is quite marvellous, well-written and perfectly bitter-sweet - more bitter than sweet though. Eventual smut, very good, but imo, it cannot be considered as the very heart of the text, even though the sexual tension is omnipresent. I can't help but read it oftenly, and everytime I'm amazed - it might be my favourite GGAD fanfiction in fact. Brilliant.

Extreme Incantations (10k) :

In order to find clues about the Elder Wand story, Albus and Gellert try a “decadent, degenerate, deranged” ritual. A lot of smut, but again, their relationship and their psychology are absolutely central. I loved how they are portrayed, loved to discover Gellert’s thoughts and point of view. Again, it’s brilliantly bitter-sweet - even quite heartbreaking. Like Illumine, I have so much more to say, but I’ll stop here and just say: if you are interested by Summer of 1899 fanfictions, you could be delighted to discover it.

The Seer in the Tower (2k5) and Collateral (3k) are as great as Illumine and Extreme Incantations. In the first one, Tom Riddle meets Gellert Grindelwald after 1945 ; in the second one, Gellert and Ariana talk thanks the Resurection Stone. Light Bringer (10k), which sums up the Summer of 1899, is also amazing - incredibly painful, hopeless and horrendous, and Gellert Grindelwald is definitely not a good person - but still amazing.

Thirty-Five Owls (11k) by Letterblade :

After 1945, Albus and Gellert sent letters to each other - and I will add nothing more about the plot. A quite famous fanfiction - published in 2008 - and rightfully recognised as a brillant one. Beautifully written, the tag "Everything Hurts" is accurate, constantly breathtaking. I loved more than everything else the end - overwhelming, and yet so simple. Even canon-compliant, what more could we ask? In a nutshell, an unmissable work.

White (2k) (M) by Vandrerska :

“The story Gellert Grindelwald would tell if somebody took the trouble to ask.”, or a magnificiently well-written 1st person POV fic with Gellert talking about Albus and 1899. Here is the same vibe we already have in Thirty-Five Owls, but with the benefit of a heart-to-heart conversation between Gellert and the reader directly. Needless to say that both of the hearts involved in the conversation are broken. I love how it is written (but it is no surprise, well-crafted angsty texts like this one own my heart). 

nobody else but me (5k) by Roflskate :

After meeting Percival Graves and starting a correspondence with the very head of MACUSA's Department of Law Enforcement in 1926, Albus Dumbledore thinks he's finally ready to move on from Gellert Grindelwald. Well, if you saw Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, you know he's not.

I'm fond of the plot: the way we, as readers, already know how that story is doomed to end, is the very heart of the text - and speaking of the end, I loved it - just like Thirty-Five Owls, simple and heartrending. Again, bitterness is back. Beware of the manipulation and the very questionable consent, it's literally the plot.

(btw, this work inspired this post: GG as Hogwarts teacher/librarian before FBaWtFT: where are the fanfics? (if someone wants to write it please i will be pretty happy))

(In every bloody fanfiction I recommend Albus is suffering, sorry about that) (and it's not going to end with the next fanfic) (suffering is inherent to the character though so)

The Trial of Albus Dumbledore (51k) by Aurora_xx :

In this post-FBCoG AU, Albus Dumbledore is questioned about his relations with Gellert Grindelwald. But before his trial, he unknowingly took Veritaserum. To be honest, I felt it first as a “satisfying” AU: people we don’t like became a bit ridiculous, people we like get through (well, mostly).

Nonetheless, it’s more than that: the trial scene is incredibly tense, the consequences are terrible, and we want to see what's going to happen next. Moreover, the character development is suprisingly remarkably well-done - Vinda Rosier has an amazing backstory, for example; Newt and Newt’s friends are also very likeable, complex, etc. We love to hate Travers, Grindelwald is a character we eventually support (for specific reasons, mostly because he’s powerful, self-confident, rather hilarious and badass, but also a bit more human than we could think). And all we want to do is taking care of Albus.

It’s definitely a really pleasant fanfiction - but not an “easy” one, there are a lot of hard themes and very tense scenes, etc. This story is still considered as a WIP, though the five first chapters are already enough. 

Three fics of mautadite :

A Metaphor for Change (1k) (M) : I will just rewrite the summary here, so: "Five things Albus could not bring himself to say to Gellert. (One of them is a lie.)”. I really liked it, it is angsty - but the sweetest way, the very sad way.

To Be Great (0.3k) (G) : What Albus and the Sorting Hat said when Albus put the Hat on his head for the first time. Really a relevant and sharp character study. Again, I felt a hint of a sweet kind of angst. I wonder if I am the only one, you tell me.

Love Letters (6k) (E) : Scenes of Gellert’s and Albus’ life from 1995 to 1899 - often conversations, so say hello to well-crafted relationships between mc and other characters. Here comes the angst again (I think the author writes Albus and Gellert that way - or maybe, the characters are meant to be suffused by angsty undertones). The fact that we go back in time hurts a lot, because every smile they have are perverted by our knowledge of what happens next - the happiness won’t last, and really, it hurts. Canon compliant.

GGAD works of verivala (bloodtroth on tumblr)

Many short one-shots, from fluff to angst - sometimes droll, sometimes soft, often painful, quite always (a bit or a lot) bitter-sweet. You might at least find few of them interesting.

Grindeldore one-shots (22 works)

Grindeldore requests (5 works)

Grindeldore prompt fills (38 works)

L’Indiscible (190k) by Neaniver279

This one is a French one! Deux ans après la fin de la guerre, Percy Weasley - profondément meurtri par la mort de Fred, de laquelle il s’estime responsable - est renvoyé par une mystérieuse potion au 25 décembre 1975. Plusieurs élèves de Poudlard attirent son attention et son affection, voire un en particulier, Sirius Black.

Un pairing très inhabituel qui fonctionne bien ; un Percy Weasley passionnant - faillible, perdu dans ses doutes et sa culpabilité, mais avec une répartie, une malice et une sensibilité hors du commun ; des Maraudeurs et des jumeaux Weasley attachants, avec une personnalité définie et nuancée ; une idée originale géniale, car si le voyage dans le temps ouvre des portes à une nouvelle palette de réflexions et d’expériences pour Percy, il permet aussi d’intégrer un mystère et de la tension autour de la potion, l’Indiscible.

Pas d’underage, mais une relation prof-élève tout de même - tout du moins, pendant un segment de l’histoire. Intéressante, touchante, très drôle, amère, complexe et pathétique. WIP.

Thanks for reading, I hope it had helped!

Thanks to all of the authors also! You are brave, tenacious and doing an amazing work. Thanks a lot! :)

(And of course, beware of the tags, if you are triggered by specific content - homophobia, blood, hospital, violence, explicit sex scenes, manipulation, death, etc)

08-24-2020 edit: Thirty-Five Owls, nobody else but me and verivala’s works added. 02-18-2021 edit: White and mautadite’s works added.

(08-24-2020: i’m also currently interested by Kierkegarden’s works, an already quite inevitable GGAD author, I might add some of them later)

[mochuelovelli]

Fix-It AU for the Moonvasion Arc!

I would like to preface this by saying that this is gonna seem real fanfic-y and for that I am sorry. I want to bullet point some ways to change some aspects of S2 from Whatever Happened to Donald Duck?! onwards.

Whatever Happened to Donald Duck?!:

The segment that shows the McDuck/Duck family tree has Donald Crossed out not because he is captured but Lunaris PLANNED to kill him before going to Earth once he would basically tortured him for information

Donald is tripped by Lunaris which makes him land on Penumbra, allowing him to sneak the device under his hat as it falls off without Lunaris noticing. After Lunaris explains his plan he throws Donald and the scene transpires as normal, save for Don attaching the clamp to Lunaris and finding the remote. 

Lunaris still ends up getting the upper hand and punching Don away but he reveals the remote and presses it. Only for it to, of course, get broken on impact and the rest of the scene transpires normally.

[Here is the biggest change]The rocket DOES end up exploding. It makes it to Earth's atmosphere but of course the bullet hits one of Scrooge's satellite and rickashays back to the moon again. Upon realizing he is going to crash, Donald jumps out but just in time as the blast from the pod knocks him semi-conscious.

Last shot is him falling toward a crater and shows Donald gaining conscious only for him to see he is falling into the moonmite's mouth but doesn't reach beyond making a groan and the scene cuts to black with the jaw snapping sound (alternatively it can just cut to black as he falls)

The Jones Scene ends with Scrooge saying the same line about not paying Donald bills. Only he also adds once closing the door, "Fallacious tightwad, I ain't payin' for some leeching city counselor. I'll find that lad a proper therapist when he gets back. One that doesn't have an arachnoid infestation." *cue spider coming to crawl on Scrooge's face before he chucks it off*

Webby's line is cut down to "Well I guess there really wasn't some big mystery to solve." But the kids' lines stay the same frome there on.

Scrooge gets only Donald screaming "Uncle Scrooge!" before the audio cuts to audio to one of Mrs. Crackshell-Cabera's novelas due to the satellite being damaged(does that make sense? No but neither do moonpeople). You could probably make a suggestive joke here about cruises and Scrooge's line can stay the same. The camera pans up as the line is delivered still but it is just a shot where the moon is in focus. That or it's the satellite falling instead.

Happy Birthday, Doofus Drake! until Moonvasion:

(know it would be a pain in the ass, but I think it be cool to edit the intro to remove/replace Donald during the time he isn't shown in an ep. Though I guess they don't change the intro until season 3 so yeah. Mainly wanted to give the illusion that he is "missing" to scare anyone under 8 that "oh no maybe he is GONE gone just to be a prick

The Golden Armory of Cornelius Coot!

Trim down the Bigtime C plot like a LOT. Maybe end that original scene with Ma Beagle by having Bigtime lean on something (statue, standing on some "moss") and fall down to the caves. 

The cart scene with Bigtime still happens but that cut back from Launchpad and Della doesn't happen until after Della yells at Launchpad when she is flying. (So not the scene where Louie is kicking rocks)

Maybe cut the scenes where Bigtime is bragging about "finding a name for himself" and just have one scene where he ties up the boys and saves his family but they argue and waste time til Della and Webby come back. The end where Ma says BT is welcome back is cut as well, she just says it and then complains about the popcorn

After the scene with LP, Della and Webby, the camera pans up to the sky so a transition to the moon happens. Transition zooms out to reveal Penumbra looking at the Earth with her spear, before she turns upon hearing the moonmite screech and readys herself.

The moonmite is then shown crawling up from a hole at first by itself before Donald's torse is revealed, his hair is a bit longer and feathers are ruffled. Penumbra stands down and looks a bit more open before asking "Did anyone see you?" 

Donald just says no before hopping off, of course falling along with the equipment he brought. The shot is focused on Penumbra looking towards Donald's silhouette as he gets up.

She then asks "How's the leg?" To which the camera cuts back to Donald and we see him in full view, his model is similar to when he is on the island only way less beard and his hair isn't quite as long yet. But the most notably difference is that his right leg from the knee down is now a golden prosthesis. Don responds with "Fine, thanks for making it for me."

Penumbra turns back as Donald is shown to clumsily put the equipment on a nearby table and says "I couldn't have forgiven myself if I let Della's brother die." Donald nearly falls over again before she turns to face him and asks if he is ready to which he nods before they turn and the camera reveals the broken Spear of Selene. Penumbra's voice is heard then saying "Then Let's get you home." Before the ep ends.

The Richest Duck in the World!:

Everything is the same except when Penumbra calls, She says "This is LT. Penumbra calling for her friend Della Duck!-" [Della's Line] "All of your defense satellite just went down for some reason. Della-" Familiar quacking can be heard and Della even questions it before Donald's voice comes on. "Della!" "Donald!" Della parrots as she grabs the SATCOM box. "There's going to be an invasion! He's coming for the kids!" Episode ends the same from here.

[I'll make a second post l8r since I planned this to come out before 10 and it's already almost 1130 so yeah. Literally all these changes are basically to set up a bit of a stronger connection between Della and Donald (as well as giving Donald more screen time) by having the twins mirror each other a bit more. I personally headcanon that like Donald, Della is unlucky as well but in a different way. Where Donald has bad luck everyday of his life which mostly comes in the form of physical harm (secondly it would be emotional harm), Della's bad luck comes in the form where she is just as "lucky" as the rest of her family (maybe discounting Louie) but while she enjoyed 20ish years of adventuring relatively unscathed, she then crashes on the moon after a freak storm happens and is stuck there for over a decade. To me, her struggles on the moon in Whatever Happened to Della Duck?! And The Golden Spear! really showcases her bad luck, almost as if the universe decided to throw the biggest karma bomb at her all at once. But just like her brother she is fuelled with determination and love for her family in order to survive anything, she just has to do it all by herself (another thing which is worse for her bc she doesn't have them) at that point. And it isn't a one and done thing, it's something permit as she now is literally 11 years behind on parenting and the show continues to show her stuggle with that. By having Donald lose his leg and have a journey back to his family that's quicker than Della's (along with having company from nearly the beginning) it parallels that unluckiness the Duck twins have. It also can serve as a plot for future eps (well fake eps lmao). 

Ik that this au wouldn't have been possible as Disney would be really anal about having one of their mascots have a total design change. Unless they really wanted to milk having characters with prosthetics for park days or whatever, maybe it wouldn't be THAT big of a deal aside from some fluff articles. I realize though, it might overshadow Della's trauma so ideally I would hope to figure out or map out an ep where it would be addressed along with some other family issues.] 

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 256: Fucking Superb You Funky Little Hero Eggs

Previously on BnHA: Aizawa and Mic’s frankensteined best friend Shirakumo, better known to us as Kurogiri, had his memories briefly restored through the Power of Friendship, and was all “YO Y’ALLS BETTER GO CHECK OUT THOSE HOSPITALS” before his head started steaming like a tea kettle and he randomly fell asleep. Aizawa and Mic were all “!!” and Aizawa was all “(ಡ ﹏ ಡ)” and Mic was all “Aizawa are you crying” and Aizawa was like “NO!!!” and then they left the prison and Nao called HPSC Lady who called Hawks and was all “eck-chay ethay ospitals-hay” because Hawks, as you recall, is still a secret agent and all that. Anyway so Hawks was all “EUREKA!!” in his head which doesn’t really add up but hey, and then the chapter ended with Dr. Ujiko dancing in sadistic glee as he watched Tomura get all mad scienced. It was pretty freaky. I could use some wholesomeness right about now so let’s see if this chapter will deliver.

Today on BnHA: Class 1-A shows off the fresh skills they learned during their assorted internships, such as “determination”, “enhanced search techniques”, and “becoming a literal blob of acid.” The Wonder Trio is a particular highlight, and All Might is all “my little baby off to destroy people :’)” as he watches Deku shred a robot to pieces using Blackwhip. We then cut to Aizawa and Mic, who may or may not be planning some rogue vigilante style investigations of the whole Noumu thing, or maybe they’re just brooding, but either way they’re interrupted by Mirio and Tamaki who come running in to get them to stop Eri’s quirk from going haywire, which, yikes. The chapter then ends with All Might handing Deku a notebook full of DETAILED, CATALOGED INFO ABOUT THE PAST SUCCESSORS AND THE FUCKING SIXQUIRKS. We just have to wait two more weeks to find out what that’s all about. 2020’s got some fucking zip to it so far huh.

so it’s about a quarter past 7 right now and it’ll be a miracle if I can have this recap up by 10pm tonight. surprisingly the wait for this chapter didn’t really bother me, but this Sunday/Monday release schedule is really doing a number on my punctuality. but anyways we’ll figure it out eventually. if memory serves, there’s about a 90% chance that this week’s jump will also be a double issue, so that gives me another extra week to get my shit together lol

(ETA: so that wasn’t too far off actually! I think a three-hour turnaround time isn’t bad for 3000 words lol. and actually it was more like two hours of reading/blogging and one hour of editing/photo cropping. anyway so in all likelihood either Sunday or Monday night releases will become the norm, depending entirely on how busy that particular Sunday is. not quite the same as getting the chapter on Friday and having the whole weekend to ruminate over it but we will adjust!)

anyway, so I’m somehow remarkably unspoiled for this chapter despite it having been out for nearly a week and a half at this point. so that’s something! let’s see what we’ve got here

yaaaay my babies

All Might was offering free cotton candy, yes? I didn’t expect we’d cut right back to this lol, but you sure won’t see me complaining. I want to see what everyone else learned during their internships, and also what with the break and the last couple chapters being Tartarus-focused, it’s been about a month since I last saw my little hero eggs, and of course I missed them I’m only human

omg

did the original dialogue really reference Skynet. Horikoshi truly gives no fucks about copyright. like one or two episodes ago the anime made some copyrighted reference which you could clearly hear in the Japanese but which the English subs hilariously glossed right over. I’m trying to remember what it was now. damn. anyways we millennials can never resist a good pop culture reference, facts

OH MY GOD AOYAMA

THEY’RE EATING THE COTTON CANDY

TOKOYAMI EATING COTTON CANDY IS THE GREATEST THING TO HAPPEN IN 2020 THUS FAR. LET ME TELL YOU, WE REALLY NEEDED THIS

SHOUTO EATING COTTON CANDY IS THE SECOND BEST THING TO HAPPEN IN 2020. IT WAS VERY CLOSE

I STALLED FOR TIME SO MUCH AND I STILL DON’T KNOW WTF TO SAY ABOUT AOYAMA’S NEW ATTACK OH MY GOD. JUST. I DON’T KNOW YOU GUYS. THIS BOY IS REALLY OUT HERE SLICING ROBOTS IN HALF WITH HIS BRAND NEW LASER PENIS. THE AMOUNT OF FUCKS THAT HORIKOSHI GIVES IS IN THE NEGATIVES I DON’T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO SAY

OH ARE YOU STILL GOING

is... what’s... ldkfj okay nothing to see here guys just the naked invisible chick getting all friendly with Aoyama’s beam boner. just manhandling his sparkle shaft. there are children reading this manga. I mean, they’re already mentally scarred from all the dead dogs and child quirk wine and whatnot, but still at what point do we put our goddamn foot down

anyway so somehow she’s redirecting his laser beam?? I guess with her light refracting quirk skills?? great job Hagakure with your help Aoyama can finally shoot lasers at stuff that’s behind him. you’ve mastered the power of making it so that he doesn’t have to turn around great job truly an internship well spent

“now I can yank light and warp it!” you go girl now you can whip that thing around like it’s a fucking fire hose I guess

YOOOOO MINA!!

THIS GIRL LITERALLY COATED HERSELF IN ACID AND DID A FUCKING BARREL ROLL AHHHHHHHHH. NOW THAT’S MORE LIKE IT, NO OFFENSE TO CAPTAIN DISCO DONG AND COMMODORE “I CAN DO EVERYTHING A MIRROR CAN DO” BUT THERE ARE UPGRADES AND THERE ARE UPGRADES, AND LET’S FACE IT, THIS IS THE REAL DEAL HERE

AHAHAHA I LOVE ITTTTT

is it too late for Mina to actually change her name to Acidman. what is she calling herself now again?? Pinky?? come on Mina strike some fear into the hearts of your enemies

and now All Might and the others are applauding. I don’t see Shouto’s cotton candy anymore. boy fucking inhaled that shit

oh wow, they interned under Yoroi Musha? if memory serves me, and I’m honestly not going to bother to check right now, isn’t that the samurai dude who somehow beat Ryuukyuu in the billboard charts? not that I’m still salty about that, oh wait I absolutely am but anyways

OH MY

IS THAT SOME KIRIMINA CONTENT UP IN MY PANELS. hot damn that is some cute fucking shit. Mina better not get any undue hate for this. everyone please remain calm this cute interaction does not threaten your ship in any way (unless you want it to in which case have at!!) and we can all have fun if we just play nice you guys

lmao All Might

“WE’RE ALREADY ON PAGE FOUR AND THERE ARE TWENTY OF YOU, WE DON’T HAVE ALL FUCKING DAY CHILDREN”

so Satou and Ojiro learned how to punch harder and stuff. again, it’s fine, we can’t all be Acid Men. but meanwhile they interned with some lion guy named Shishido whom I INSTANTLY LOVE so that’s badass. only one character away from Shishida though, but that’s Horikoshi for you

OH MY GOD

BLAH BLAH YES ENHANCED SEARCH TECHNIQUES ZZZZZ BUT FUCKING LOOK THOUGH AT THE FLASHBACK OF HIM YEETING THEM, YESSSSSS. THE OLD WAYS HAVE NOT YET BEEN FORGOTTEN, GANG ORCA YOU ARE THE HERO WE DESERVE

meanwhile Sero, Kami, and Mineta learned how to literally kill people with their quirks flkdjsflk

(ETA: btw I really love that Mt. Lady’s internship emphasized teamwork. now there’s someone who’s come a really long way her own self. anyway I stan and she had better join the other two in the the top 10 real soon. come on BnHA society get with it.)

damn Mt. Lady what the fuck. “if you guys work together you can suffocate and electrocute villains to death with ease!” the government’s plan really is working huh; these children have become bloodthirsty, ruthless killers in a shockingly short period of time

anyways so Iida as we all recall learned how to be more footloose and fancy free, and meanwhile Kouda learned “smooth communication” from Wash, the literal washing machine man whom I also don’t still harbor a grudge against for inexplicably beating my dragon queen in the hero polls, and once again that is a lie because fuck you Wash! you’re adorable but fuck you!!

man this is taking forever why are there so many kids in this class. for anyone wondering why Horikoshi doesn’t focus on class 1-A as a whole more often and leaves them as supporting characters, this right here is why. I love these children to death but we would still be stuck in the basement arc. oh my god I just shuddered

Tokoyami mastered “improvement on all fronts” because I guess he kind of peaked at flying when it came to new moves huh. that’s fine for now

and Kiri mastered “making baddies lose the will to fight real quick” which sounds like some bullshit you’d write while desperately trying to pad your hero resume, except that it’s accompanied by this convincing panel of him chomping a steel bar in two or some shit which YIKES

can confirm, if some demonic rock man came trotting up to me and snapped off some railing from some stairs and fucking snapped it like a twig with his GIANT FOSSILIZED DINOSAUR TEETH, I’d lose my will to fight pretty quickly too

and Ochako and Tsuyu learned “determination” smdh. Horikoshi did you fucking fall asleep towards the end of this segment or what

WHO IS MAJESTIC OMG

excuse me did she just create a bunch of fucking dynamites. is that what those are. is my girl encroaching on my young son’s turf. because if she is, ENCROACH, MOMO, ENCROACH! FEEL FREE TO FUCKING IMPINGE, EVEN!! god, and I know I was bitching just a moment ago about these “lessons” becoming increasingly vague and intangible and motivational poster-y, but I read Momo and “predicting and acting efficiently”, and my thoughts immediately ran to Nighteye and Mirio’s fighting styles, and I was like “YESSSSSSSSS” because, I mean. YES, though

meanwhile Kacchan has learned...

this fucking -- I swear -- YOU LEARNED WHAT YOUR FUCKING HERO NAME IS GOING TO BE YOU TROLLING PIECE OF SHIT. oh my god. Katsuki I swear to god I will take your internet privileges. NO SRIRACHA FOR A WEEK UNLESS YOU TELL ME WHAT IT IS

oh for fuck’s sakes

don’t mind him he learned boom with five b’s and three oo’s what did you all do this week. and somehow Todoroki learned how to be even more fabulous

so All Might’s looking on in pride and giving Endeavor some mental props, and waiting for Deku to go do his thing too

sdfkj he’s thinking about the day he gave Deku THE HAIR and that “[it] feels like ancient history now.” DOESN’T IT THOUGH?

OH MY FEELS

“you don’t look back at me anymore... and you don’t need to.” oh Aizawa’s dry eye has spread to me now huh. must be those January allergies. and that’s some nice bloop there kid. great jorb

someone tell All Might he’s not allowed to look on at Deku with this much fatherly love without giving me at least a week’s notice in advance

sigh. now you’ve done it you two I’m going to become a big cat blob of feels right here and it’s all on you. you did this

oh my god a whole big panel of reactions from the other kids and I’m ( ˊᵕˋ )

lol Kacchan can’t agree with anything even if it’s a compliment. and lmao, who the fuck was that who was all “TODOROKI FINALLY YOU’RE A FAST FUCKING HIMBO HUH!” like they really went and put that “finally” in there, like they were so fucking tired of Todoroki Shouto and his LANGUID FUCKING PACE all the fucking time, GOD, FINALLY SOME SPEED BOY WE WERE DYING OUT HERE

Mineta being happy for Deku also warms my heart, ngl. we’ve gone almost an entire chapter with Mineta not doing anything even remotely perverted, can it be, has Horikoshi finally chilled the fuck out. or did I just jinx it we shall see

also love how Deku is just reduced to an inkblot here and it still is him beyond any shadow of a doubt. and poor Sero, you are also being impinged on huh

lmao Mineta’s just socking Deku in the solar plexus out of comradery and Deku’s fucking vomiting on reflex and not even paying the slightest attention wtf

I love this panel there I said it

so he’s going over and thanking Ochako for “that time” and says he’s using Blackwhip a lot better now. I assume he’s referring to when he first unlocked it and went hog wild and she was all “smh” and went and hugged him to put an end to that nonsense

oh, right!!!!

I forgot about those!! looool Horikoshi’s 2020 resolution is to make everyone Spider-Man now huh. hey everyone guess what I LOVE THIS

oh my god this wholesomeness

I fucking can’t?? yo I’m seriously living for this? I don’t get why some people think Deku inhibits Ochako’s character growth tbh. or that her story is becoming all about him. if it is, then it’s in the same way that Bakugou’s is. Deku keeps inspiring her to be better, ain’t nothing wrong with that. yes she has the crush, and she’s honest with herself and in tune with her emotions enough to be aware of it and to acknowledge it, but she refuses to be distracted by it. I actually really like that, because it shows that romantic feelings can actually exist and not be the central focus of a character’s story or their development. and I think the fear is that it somehow will become the focus, but so far I haven’t seen that happening, so it seems unwarranted to me

anyway

shit’s cute

oh no Mineta’s doing something weird I fucking did jinx it I’m sorry guys. it’s a fucking fistbump dude relax

so All Might seems to be dismissing them now, and he’s saying something about how he reordered (?? rescheduled, maybe??) class so that Aizawa can watch later. that’s nice. he’ll need something to cheer him up, and if Acidman can’t do the trick I don’t know what can

and now we’re cutting back to the dorms!! dorm shenanigans yessssss

oh no shit wait

these are not playful dorm shenanigans these are depressed Miczawa shenanigans to bring me down. nnnn

but Aizawa fucking knows something is up now, shit. that’s right son your babies are in danger

KLJKLGLKSH

okay (1) HOW HOT IS AIZAWA THOUGH HOW DOES HE ALWAYS DO THIS

and (2) is “have a karaoke contest” code for “fuck shit up” or what. son of a bitch, having these two so personally invested in the Noumu arc now is such an unexpected and wonderful gift

MIRIO NO

(ETA: but you all know Aizawa was about to say “I’d go and fuck shit up” though.)

I LOVE YOU BOTH BUT THEY WERE HAVING A SEXY ANGSTING MOMENT, MIRIO CAN YOU NOT READ THE ROOM!! DO YOU NOT SEE THEM BEING ALL ANGSTY AND DARKLY CONTEMPLATIVE!! YOU TWO OF ALL PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW WHEN LOVERS ARE BONDING OVER THEIR ANGST WHICH ONLY THE TWO OF THEM UNDERSTAND! FUCKING GODDAMN

NO!!!!!

[SLAMS HANDS ON TABLE] HORIKOSHI I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU LAY ONE FINGER ON HER PRECIOUS HEAD

NOOOO MY SWEET BABY GIRL

oh my fuck that sweater is the cutest fucking thing and this girl has had no shortage of cute outfits let me tell you. BUT ANYWAY SHE’S SCARED AND CRYING NOOOO. holy shit her horn is fucking huge now I don’t feel comfortable with this at all, and Nejire is Best Mom for not giving a single fuck and holding and comforting her regardless of the risk, I love her so much

OH THANK GOD

PALPABLE RELIEF. boys I’m sorry it was wrong of me to yell, you did the right thing interrupting their sexy brooding

BREAK ROOM AHHHHH THE SCOOBY SQUAD LIVES AGAINNNN

it means you constantly amaze him!! you have so much potential he doesn’t even know what the limit might possibly be! don’t act like you don’t love it. or stop being so suspicious and trying to look for the hidden meaning and just accept the praise for what it is. you did good. now ask him if he’s heard any news about Best Jeanist :/

!!

that’s right, he was researching and making faces a while back, are we finally gonna find out what all that was about??

DSLFKAJSLDKFH

HE MADE A NOTEBOOK FOR HIM AHHHHHHHH HE KNOWS WHAT HE LIKES THIS IS AMAZING

DOES HIM GIVING HIM THE INFO IN NOTEBOOK FORM MEAN IT’S UP TO DEKU WHETHER OR NOT HE WANTS TO SHARE THIS INFO WITH KACCHAN. HMMM. OBVIOUSLY HE WILL, BUT THAT’S A REAL POWER MOVE THOUGH, DAMN

“PAST SUCCESSORS / QUIRKS” EVERYONE, THIS BOOK CONTAINS THE SECRETS OF THE SIXQUIRKS. AND THE PREVIOUS OFA AVATARS. THAT’S FINE I’M JUST GONNA. ...I’LL BE FINE. FOR TWO WEEKS. FUCK

shit. well I know it was coming, that’s another reason why I didn’t feel particularly rushed to read this chapter lol. I kinda wish I’d had the foresight to save the Korean scanlation though, just to compare. ah well it’s probably still lying around somewhere

and lol and here’s the bonus page, and this one I did see floating around tumblr haha

I’m not sure how the three smartest kids in class are all present and yet not one of them had the foresight to consider that maybe, just maybe, this could be a bad idea. let’s let the kid with the combustible sweat handle the mochi I’m sure it’ll be -- [everyone immediately dies]. anyway so that’s some good friendly advice from Horikoshi there. happy new year friends!

[weatherman667]

Samurai Jack:  Battle Through Time is Like Rampage the Movie

But, Rampage is a terrible movie, right?

Rampage was a FANASTIC movie.  Unfortunately it was made by people who don’t understand how to make a good movie.  The core of the Rampage movie was the relationship between the Rock, a former special forces come anti-poacher who settled down to take care of a gorilla he saved.  That gorilla is George, who has an incredible amount of personality, and the two communicate by sign language.

They add a third character, the self-described cowboy.  The two hit it off, as they both hate people, but want to do what they can to stop the Rampage.

They then add a fourth character, the strong black female who doesn’t do anything other than tell us how strong and black she is.

Oh, okay, yeah, she does a couple other things.  She plays a scientist defector from the evil corporation.  The great insight she brings up from defecting from the evil corporation?, that there MIGHT be a cure.  You see, she left too early, and now doesn’t know for sure, because... drama.  She’s also the one to disarm the evil corporate execs because obviously the fickle scientist should be the one to disarm her, rather than the literal ex-special forces standing right next to her.

They also add a long introductory segment to prove how evil the evil executives of the evil corporation are.  Here’s where you have to trust in your audience to believe that it’s yes, an evil corporation.  Either that or a evil government experiment or something strange and unknown, likely from space.

So, they had the fantastic story.  The Rock, George, the Cowboy, and the fact George is mysteriously growing, and raging.  He has to fight over the sudden urge for destruction in his own core.

They then keep adding more and more movie clichés until it became a terrible movie.

Samurai Jack did the same thing.

No, it’s not a terrible movie.  It’s still a great game, but they did keep adding more and more standard video game clichés to undermine the true greatness they had.

Let’s start with Jack, who is a quintessential East-Asian Ascetic Warrior.  He is the son of an Emperor, which gives him a literal divine mandate.  He completely eschewed the material, valuing the immaterial instead.  The only thing he valued was his sword, which is quintessential samurai beliefs, aka Bushido.  Even the clothing on his back was expendable to accomplish his mission.

While his quest was to stop the evil that is Aku, he would stop to help every single person along his way.  One of the big things that happened in the timeslip between S4 and S5 is Jack coming to the startling conclusion that those he had saved were not safe.  Aku took pleasure in coming back to destroy those that had been saved, and quite frankly, would arbitrarily kill across the entire planet.  He became depressed over the impossibility of his quest.

The resources in the game are Skill Fire, Bushido Fire, Kiai Fire, gems to upgrade skils, and... gold.

The only real thing the gold is useful for is repairing his equipment.  Everything else can be easily acquired in-game.  Or could be.  All they would have to do is have those with weapons that need ammo to... drop some of the ammo upon death.  It makes a lot more sense for Jack to gather the ammunition than it does to be picking up a hundred gold coins.

Okay, you could also use your gold to buy healing items.  The primary healing items are given to you by the Scotsman’s Daughters, which seems to be the only really thing they do in this game.  They are Hot Water and Haggis.  Haggis is a good joke, but... is the primary healing item throughout the game.  Which, I like, but it could be a rare item you can only get from the Swamp level where you (mild spoiler), fight a brainwashed Scotsman.

Now for Hot Water.  Why HOT water?  Why are you carrying Hot Water with you as you wander the earth?  It could have been Water, which would make sense.  It  could have been used to make tea, one of the only material things Jack seems to value, but you never once make tea in the game.  They could have gone the Dark Souls route and given you a water skin or horn or gourd, (in that order?) that you get so many swallows of water from.  Then, if you want to replenish it you can do it from, say, streams.

In theory the healing spots in the game are points of serene tranquility that help you recenter yourself, but in practice they are just sparkly dots left random places.  The reason they are placed in certain places is that... you need healing there.  Because the came is poorly balanced.  It’s so poorly balanced that they even have serene tranquillity sparklies IN BOSS ARENAS.  And you randomly stumble through them in the middle of the epic battle between good and evil.

A third thing Da Samurai does is... combat training.  Now, for those who didn’t watch Samurai Jack, you have some explaining to do.  But, Da Samurai is the complete opposite of Jack, and is largely a way to reinforce how wonderful Jack is as a paragon of the Confucian warrior.  At the end of his episode he is humbled.  In the game he literally calls Jack Sensei, because he humbles himself before Jack, and he is the one to give you weapons training.  This is something they could have just done through practice.  Whenever you swing your weapon, or maybe kill someone with your weapon, you gain... to keep with the other upgrades, Weapon Fire, AKA weapon experience.

Da Samurai could appear between levels, and leave his functionality the same, but instead of giving him, what was it?, $3,540,000,000, just have his ability to acquire stuff be dependant upon time or fortune.  Since the primary thing you get from completing a mission with a good score is gold, fortune sounds like a great idea.  It would be a way of including Karma into the game, to round out the other spiritual qualities Jack acquires throughout the game.

This way there wouldn’t be a reason to do the standard video game response of steal as many weapons as possible and sell them to the vendor, which would leave the spiritual qualities of the weapons.  That the only weapon that lasts is the one divine gifted to you, but even in loss there is still enlightenment to gain. And I absolutely love the fact that most weapons in the game aren’t more powerful, but more durable.  This was fantastically done.

i know this is a lot to ask from a game done by a new video game producer on a game obviously done on a budget, but I can dream, can’t I?

[titusmoody]

Ranking the SM64 levels

3 Bob-omb Battlefield: I’m starting the list with my third favorite because I can explain every other level in terms of this one. This is easily the most impressive level in terms of design. SM64 sorts its levels into “chunks” that connect in various ways. The exact borders between chunks and how finely we chop the level up into different chunks doesn’t quite matter. I find I like chunks better if they 1) interconnect so you can get to multiple different chunks from wherever you are. Bonus points if the game uses the Y axis to create some one-way connections like Bob-omb battlefield’s bridge that spits you back out near the beginning of the level if you fall. Extra bonus points if you can use some precise jumping to get around those limitations. 2) Has its own distinct element, either visually or mechanically, like the little area with the mounds when you climb up the very first ramp in Bob-omb battlefield. 3) Contains a pretty clear “first star route” to one specific other chunk, like the path up the ramp at the beginning, or the mountain “weenie” that you can see a path to when you get beyond the chain chomp and bridge. 4) There are at least a couple chunks that the first star route doesn’t touch at all, but you can still see. Both the area with the stumps you can run in circles around as well as the floating island you can see from your ascent up the mountain are good examples. The only reason this isn’t #1 on my personal list is because it is focused mainly on beginners who have literally never encountered a 3d game before. Climbing the mountain and freeing the chain chomp are both great, and the mountain contains plenty of opportunities to get up faster using more difficult jumps. On the other hand, it uses the wing cap and fairly precise cannon aiming, the first and second least fun things in the game. 

Now, onto the worst levels:

15 Dire, Dire Docks: While swimming isn’t as awful to control as I remember it being when I was a kid, it’s still not great. This level uses currents to suck you towards death pits in a couple places, which isn’t fun. A few of the stars either include or are mostly built around having you navigate the weak end of the current, and there’s just nothing good about it. Plus, what’s the deal with water levels having segments connected only by lengthy narrow tunnels? Probably a loading thing, but it doesn’t help the design. The not-underwater part of this level is only used to make you do cycle-based pole jumping which is even worse than the death currents. 

14 Tiny-Huge Island: Eh, this was such a creative idea for a level that I don’t begrudge it for not working. This level has chunks that only connect if you are the appropriate size, which is a good idea. Around half the things you need to do to get the stars are pretty good, too. However, big mario is just too big. If you turn at the wrong time you go into sliding down mode and there’s never a platform big enough for you to get your balance before falling off the mountain to your death. The level also feels a little unvaried. The chunks aren’t distinct and reuse the same few elements throughout without getting more challenging as you progress along the “first star route”. 

13 Tall, Tall Mountain: This is one of two linear levels in the game, and is by far the less interesting. SM64 approaches linear levels as spirals upwards. In this case, around the mountain. I think there’s only a single place where you can take two different routes up. There’s not a lot to say. The platforming feels perfectly fine throughout the ascent. The slide is the most well-hidden place in the game, and I might have gotten frustrated looking for it if I hadn’t seen speedruns. This may have been ranked a little higher if it weren’t for the star that requires the most precise cannon aim in the game.

12  Cool, Cool Mountain: It’s a neat idea to start at the top of a level and be asked to descend in various ways. I think the problem is that too much of what you’ll actually be doing is trying to precisely control your slide down the same stretch and jump away at exactly the right place.

11 Rainbow Ride: This level isn’t structured like any other in the game. There are two points where the main path branches--once into three and the other time into two--but none of those branches reconnect, so it’s more like a path with a few self-contained sections off of it. I like the platforming quite a bit in this level, but don’t like how disconnected everything is from everything else. The main problem, though, is that the main path consists mostly of waiting around on a magic carpet with nothing to do but the occasional trivial jump. The difficulty of the platforming this late into the game means that deaths will happen, and it’s really a detriment that there’s no way around waiting on the carpets.

10 Lethal Lava Land: This level gets credit for being exactly what the game needed after the first set of levels + the first boss. Going into the basement for the first time and encountering a completely flat level is a big surprise, and the tiny safe paths surrounded by lava make the level look extremely perilous. The level is actually pretty tiny, which leaves each chunk with only enough space for one (1) thing to do. The interior of the volcano sure does add a lot, though. It’s like a miniature Tall, Tall Mountain with only a couple of stars.

9 Hazy Maze Cave: This level is pretty okay. The clumps are separated from each other by corridors and doors, which is why it seems like a “maze” but if you smushed them together the layout would be pretty typical. The clumps might be the most varied between each other, too. And this is the only level that contains a mini-level that unlocks a different cap. 

8 Shifting Sand Land: The pyramid is cool. Having successive stars where you’re asked to: get to it, explore the inside, then find the secret entrance with a boss is unlike anything else in the game, and it’s neat. Things aren’t as interesting outside the pyramid, but there’s just barely enough there with enough variety to keep things fine. The outside is probably about as good as Lethal Lava Land, and the pyramid is vastly better than the inside of the volcano.

7 Jolly Roger Bay: Okay, I lied a little bit about Shifting Sand Land. In Jolly Roger Bay, there is one star you get by swimming into a sunken ship and hitting something that makes the water drain out. And if you’re thinking about it, that must mean that the ship was resurfacing. Sure enough, when you go back in for the next star, there’s a ship on the surface now! I think that is a little like the pyramid situation, though not quite as cool. This one ranks higher because it’s the only other level outside of Bob-omb Battlefield that feels like a playground where you can basically do anything that seems fun without penalty and if you do well, you’ll be rewarded. Unfortunately, it does the same long, narrow tunnel thing as Dire, Dire Docks. It’s also too easy to be particularly interesting, but of course with its placement in the game, it should not be any more difficult. 

6 Thwomp’s Fortress: Most people’s second level, I assume. Does a good job at establishing patterns so that you know that Bob-omb Battlefield isn’t just a fluke, the whole game is that way. It’s a little on the small side, and the platforms that retract into the walls result in a lot of deaths that feel cheap for being so early in the game, but aside from that, it’s all pretty solid. 

5 Wet-Dry World: Like with Lethal Lava Land, the game knows exactly what to hit us with to open up a new area after a boss. The goals become a lot less obvious here. There is no obvious “path” that leads through the chunks, so you’re mostly on your own. On the other hand, this is another level that doesn’t punish you for doing things wrong, it’s just more picky about rewarding you than earlier levels. 

4 Snowman’s Land: More linear and more punishing than Wet-Dry World, SM64 knows when to break its established rules and when not to. This level does pretty much everything right. I particularly like that they brought back the “bullies” from Lethal Lava Land with the added challenge of ice physics, the hidden area in the igloo, and using the penguin as a shield against the wind. 

2 Big Boo’s Haunt: This one uses the normal level approach to make the level feel like a real place. The separate, self-contained rooms would be too limiting, but the connections between the first, second, and third floor and the doors between rooms, plus the balconies make it just as nicely interconnected as everything else. In fact, the balconies in particular are clever real-world examples of ways that actual places have similar designs to SM64 levels. Most of the game is openly and even proudly abstract and artificial. The tension between realistic spaces and interesting level design is still being played out in games today, but here in 1996 we already see that Nintendo already knew what they were doing.

1 Tick Tock Clock: Here’s the other linear level. Based on the criteria I laid out right at the beginning, it seems like a linear level couldn’t be placed this highly, but although I’ve only mentioned “platforming” in passing so far, that really is the absolute core of the game. You run and you jump. If those two things didn’t feel good to do, SM64 would be a bad game regardless of how great the level design is. Tick Tock Clock gives you nothing but opportunities to run and jump well. If it’s like any other part of the game, it’s like being outside the castle right when you start, while you’re figuring out what the controls are. Only now, you already know how to do everything you need to do to beat the game, and you get a chance to do a lot of it.