#so basically we get enough pieces of him to establish continuity and a general timeline of his life and thats all

[benis-chillin]

IDW's Fang the Hunter and the failure of Neo-Classic Sonic

(In case you're stupid, this is an opinion piece made for discussion)

Greetings, boys and goyles. I'm Benis, otherwise known as Benis Chillin, Sonic lore enthusiast and fanfic writer. I say the latter part because I want people to know that I'm well aware that many of my criticisms are based in the fact that I'm a writer, and unlike most people, I try to run more by objective canon than my whims. I explain it more here.

And per those standards…The current state of Classic Sonic SUCKS.

Now, I am a Modern Sonic fan through and through. I LIKED the 4 main Classic games when I played through them, but Sonic Adventure was the one that truly hooked me in. The world established by that game, and the ones that followed, just have my interest more, and I would prefer things be made in service to THAT.

However, to the greater detriment of society, Sonic Generations happened, and Classic Sonic was reestablished as part of the brand after years of Modern Sonic being THE face of everything, with even collections of Classic games using Modern Sonic artwork. And with the environment of the internet in the 2010's, it's no surprise that they decided to let Classic be its own sort of "brand" with Sonic Mania(bleh)and Forces(less bleh).

But they had a fun spin on it: A split timeline.

As explained above, Classic Sonic was given his own little mini-continuity to run around in, which is actually a brilliant idea, from a brand perspective. Original Classic Sonic had the creative freedom to do whatever the heck he wanted to, since he was the main Sonic. However, new Classic material, or Neo-Classic material, as I shall now refer to it, if left in the main timeline, inherently has the “prequel” problem where things HAVE to have some kind of hook for it to really be worth having another branch of the brand available. I wouldn’t say EVERY brand has this problem, but even the most masterful uses of that format have to deal with the fact that the future is predetermined, and Neo-Classic Sonic material just does not have the leg room to work around that problem.

So, split the timeline, and just do whatever with it. It’s an AU, go nuts! Let a part of the brand reset and grow in a different way for that audience who isn’t into that Modern stuff!

And we had a promising enough start with the 30th anniversary comics! Full of interesting returns that you didn’t really see in the mainline books. Heck, we got an actual look at the design of Metal Knuckles, that was pretty rad!

Bark, Bean, and Fang also had an appearance that made their old Archie team somewhat canon, after they only appeared as illusions in Mania.  Sure, these characters were neat in the Archie comics, but getting a proper form of that in a continuity free of that Satam Stank was nice. This particular comic being a separate thing from my main love, while not diving into the weird stuff that would turn me off from it, inherently made the comic more interesting, even though I’m not much of a Classic Sonic fan.

And so this sentiment continued through the next specials, but something else began to shift on Sega’s side. The dumbassery of single timeline was stated to be the new status quo, and they started acting as such with new Sonic material.

Sonic Superstars came out, too, and my feelings on that are known. Now, after his appearance in the comics had been a bit of a treat, even if you didn't like him, Fang was in an official Sonic game again, with 3D renders to boot!

...But he was still the same jackass with barely any personality that he was before. Because Superstars was TRYING to be like 3&K with its storytelling, while lacking basically every element that made 3&K's storytelling work. Combine the lackluster story and music, both of which were caused by the idea of it being a Neo-Classic game, with the fact that the graphics were 3D, and now the question is being raised of, "Why wasn't this just a Modern Sonic game?" 

Cause from an outsider's perspective, it being a Neo-Classic game only served to hold it back in a ton of ways!

For example, the character of Trip. She seems well liked in the Sonic fanbase, but Sega's kinda funky with how they handle characters being both Classic and Modern. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Eggman, and Metal Sonic seem to be allowed to exist in both parts of the brand, but that's it. 

Knuckles Chaotix is said to be canon, but the Classic Chaotix are unlikely to appear anytime soon since Sonic Heroes soft-rebooted them. Mecha Sonic was allowed to appear in the Modern "Scrapnik Island" mini-series, but I suspect it's seen by Sega as a "modern reboot" rather than a character being allowed to co-exist between the two brands again. Heck, they didn't even have the guts to show the Classic versions of the characters during the flashbacks, even though logically, they were still referencing 3&K.

 So will Trip be allowed to appear in any meaningful way in the future? Probably not, the way things have been going.

So, if all Classic characters can only appear in Neo-Classic material, then the Neo-Classic material has to be as good as it can be, right?

Well, that's where the Fang mini comes in.

Written by Ian Flynn, who has very much been showing how utterly stretched he is across so many Sonic projects lately(even if I would still regard him as a fairly decent writer, just...Has his limits), the Fang mini is the epitome of BORING! 

The basic story is that Fang and his gang are seeking out, "The eighth Chaos Emerald," visit a few people who tell him it doesn't exist, and then Eggman sends him to deal with the Hardboiled Heavies going rogue.

Along the way, Fang is just randomly a dick to his friends, and they end up abandoning his ass at the end because this comic is, for some reason, a direct prequel to Sonic Superstars, and we apparently needed an explanation of why they weren't there?

If my summary didn't sound that bad to you, it's because you don't have to go through the grueling wait that being an IDW Sonic fan entails.

Seriously, the wait between issues of IDW Sonic has become a real problem the past few years. Ever since the Metal Virus ended, the main book has had a massive problem with pacing. 

And sure, there are arcs and ideas I like there, I AM a fan, but not a lot HAPPENS in each issue compared to earlier in the book's run. Even re-reading them, the pace is oddly slow for a book about a fast character, and the issue especially persists here...On top of the main book being paused for a bit so THIS shit could come out.

(Current arc is doing better, though, so hope they keep that up)

Issues 1&2 are wasted with Fang harassing Sonic and Knuckles for a bit that, guess what? Goes nowhere! And then we briefly divert to Fang and co. in a watery old Eggbase so Eggman can capture them and actually get the plot going…3 issues into a 4-issue mini! Then, we finally get to the main event, where all will be revealed! And…

It's the Warp Topaz from the main book. The Hardboiled Heavies found it in a cave, where nobody ELSE knew it was, so it can't be the source of the 8th Chaos Emerald rumors.

Like I told ya, that went NOWHERE!

So they fight the bland-as-shit Heavies, Fang adds the Warp Topaz to his hover bike thing, and the airship is wrecked, leaving Sonic and Tails to have no idea what just happened, their involvement being a complete wash.

And our story ends with Bark and Bean rocketing off in little hovercars that just raise the question of why they didn't use those when Fang threatened to kick them off in Issue 2, since he has no say in whether or not they launch.

I actually managed to ask Ian Flynn about this on the Bumblekast, and this was his response:

Worth noting that the final issue has an additional editor that didn't work on the previous issues. Not saying EVERYONE'S blameless in this, but if I had to choose a weak point…

This mini-series encapsulates every little issue the Neo-Classic line has had since they officially eschewed split timeline.

 It feels the need to go out of its way to explain shit that doesn’t matter, like where Bark and Bean were during Superstars, Fang having the Warp Topaz, but not using it during Superstars creates a gaping plot hole that will not wash away, and it not going away at the end brings up a lot of timeline issues that I can only hope that Knuckles special resolves! 

In fact, why didn’t HE get the mini!?

Even in his Classic state, Knuckles has a LOT more to carry a story with! From the secrets of his island, to the mysteries of his people(which Adventure and the Frontiers promo animation hinted at), to even just doing his own treasure hunts! Heck, you could even pin him against both Fang’s crew and the HBH, and you’ve got enough of a banger to hold 4 action-packed issues right there! 

But no! Instead, we get a book that seems written to depend on the personalities of the protagonists…When said protagonists barely have any personality.

Like, let’s consider Team Chaotix from Sonic Heroes ALONE. Vector is the loud, bombastic leader with a love of music, and true detective skills, as showcased by him figuring out that their employer was Eggman on his own by Rail Canyon. Espio is the disciplined, if a bit full of himself, ninja, taking down the bad guys with stealth and precision, while also being somewhat melodramatic. And Charmy is the excitable ADHD kid of the group who may occasionally want to go off-track and play around in the giant casino area.

These characters are simple, yet so full of personality that you immediately like them(unless you’re a 2010’s YouTuber). THESE guys can hold a narrative.

By comparison, what do Fang’s gang have after 3 comic appearances and Sonic Superstars?

Fang is a hired goon who has goons, Bean is “funny” bomb man, and Bark is the silent strong guy with a soft spot.

That is really it.

And this was FINE back when they were still in “Sega forgot us” territory. Being obscure oddities that we would rarely get in stories actually did a lot of heavy lifting for their more limited personalities. Despite what the current writers seem to feel about such limits, judging by Silver and Blaze's current "vacations" in the main book, characters being rarer can actually endear you to them.

But now, these guys aren't really that rare. In fact, I’d say they’re about equal to Team Chaotix in terms of mass media exposure within the past 5 years, and they’re considerably lacking in comparison. 

Hell, even compared to the characters created RECENTLY in IDW and the Modern games, they're pretty lackluster. Yet I'm supposed to care about these assholes just as much as those guys?

Which, really, is how ALL of the Neo-Classic media feels these days.

Look, I get that Neo-Classic Sonic media doesn’t want to step on the toes of Modern Sonic. I do. But I really think it needs a good shake-up.

Quit treating it like it’s this special thing, because it isn’t anymore. Find a more solid identity for this branch of Sonic if you want it to survive, cause THIS doesn’t cut it anymore.

AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT TIMELINE SPLIT ESTABLISHED IN A MAINLINE GAME, DAMNIT! THERE’S A STORY IN UNDOING THAT! TELL IT, OR I WILL!

[tuiyla]

A Definitive History of Bubbline

With “Obsidian” coming out in two days, it really is time for a definitive history of Marceline and Bubblegum’s relationship. And by that I mean the tumultuous road that led us to “Obsidian” from a production and fandom point of view. For a list of Bubbline episodes, check out my Bubbline Guide (and part two) - which I need to update, I know I know. For this post, I wanted to highlight how far this pairing has come and what Bubbline means to queer representation in children’s cartoons.

This is less of an analysis and more of an overview with links to more information on specific incidents to keep it (relatively) brief. I say it’s a definitive history but it isn’t an exhaustive one, so do check out the links included to learn more about how we got here. I realize not everyone cares about these kinds of things but I think it’s important to know how hard Adventure Time’s creators had to fight. Bubbline is a pioneer ship in many ways but it doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves.

Initial Concepts

As is the case with much of Adventure Time, the initial concept of who the characters of Bonnibel and Marceline were going to be is very different than what we ended up getting. @gunterfan1992 explores this and other production tidbits in depth in his book so I do recommend checking that out. The short version is that these two were created to be opposites and with a Betty and Veronica type dynamic in mind where they would both be love interest to the protagonist, Finn.

This didn’t quite end up being the case but remnants of this concept are seen in “Go With Me” (March, 2011), the episode with the first on-screen Bubbline interaction. As Marcy helps - and sabotages - Finn in asking Bonnie out, she also becomes a potential love interest for him but she shuts him down immediately. So while Finn’s crush on PB continues, the notion that Marceline would be part of a love triangle is dismissed. Instead, this first Bonnie and Marcy interaction established that the two already know each other and there’s some bitterness in that past.

“What Was Missing” and the Mathematical Controversy

A potential preexisting relationship between the two was further explored in “What Was Missing” (September 2011) just a season later. The episode was written and storyboarded by Rebecca Sugar and eventual showrunner Adam Muto. Sugar was responsible for much of the character depth added to Marceline and later even played, quite aptly, her mother in the Stakes miniseries. It was Sugar who wrote the now beyond iconic “I’m Just Your Problem” based on personal experiences and suggested that Marcy and Bonnie be queer characters with a complicated romantic past.

“What Was Missing” was hugely important in how it hinted at a complex relationship through character interactions, Marceline’s song, and the last scene twist with PB’s shirt. The AT crew were supportive of the idea and sneaked in plenty of queer subtext, but this is where I have to point out that 2011 was a very different time and it’s thanks, in part, to Bubbline that things have changed. Autostraddle’s article from back when covers what is now known as the Mathematical controversy. Audiences picked up on the subtext and Cartoon Network was not having it. The popularity of the ship soared but the execs were not taking to queer implications kindly.

Great Bubbline Drought

So, the ship has sailed but controversy looms over it. “What Was Missing” s subtle by today’s standards but it was enough to keep Marceline and Bubblegum apart for two years on-screen. Each character went through wonderful development in the meantime, as did the show itself, but there’s a certain sense of bitterness to what came to be known as the Great Bubbline Drought. CN got so afraid of the potential backlash that they waited two years to have a new episode featuring the pair, “Sky Witch” (July 2013), by which point Sugar had left AT to work on her own show, Steven Universe. I’m happy that Sugar got to create her own show and push for even more queer representation, but it’s also sad that she never got to write more for the ship she pioneered.

“Sky Witch” still happened, though, and featured even more subtext, from PB’s side this time around. The shirt returned and there was hope as Marcy and Bonnie were seen hanging out together more often (”Red Starved” and “Princess Day”). Another controversy threatened to emerge in August 2014 when Olivia Olson, Marceline’s voice actress said that creator Pendleton Ward had confirmed a pre-show Bubbline romance. It was a messy ordeal with deleted tweets and questions about whether the two could get together again in the series. Fortunately, though, things changed in the three years between 2011 to 2014 and another Bubbline drought didn’t follow.

The Season That Changed Everything

It took another two years after “Sky Witch” but the ball was finally, inevitably, relentlessly rolling. “Varmints” premiered in November 2015 and three episodes later, the Stakes miniseries kicked off. What season 7 meant wasn’t just breadcrumbs and (not so) subtle songs anymore: suddenly, there were too many Bubbline moments to count. “Varmints” served as a follow-up to “What Was Missing” and a final reconciliation, and though Stakes was primarily about Marcy, it also developed her relationship with Bonnie. Afterwards, it became clear that Bubbline was heading somewhere.

It’s worth noting that the cultural context also changed between when “Sky Witch” and “Varmints” aired. In December 2014, The Legend of Korra ended with Korra and Asami beginning their romantic relationship, and Rebecca Sugar was making Steven Universe more and more explicitly queer by the day. Adventure Time started the ball rolling but now it wasn’t alone as a popular Western cable cartoon with queer characters. However, Bubbline was still very much subtext at this point, just with significantly more hope of becoming more.

Late Series Entanglement

But at what point does subtext become plain text? Bubbline fans sure did have fun with that question between Stakes and the finale. Bonnie and Marcy became near inseparable, with most of their major appearances involving one another from this point on. These included the meet the adoptive dad date “Broke His Crown” (March 2016), the Elements miniseries (April 2017) and the nigh on obnoxiously on the nose “Marcy & Hunson” (December 2017). In fact, all but two of Marceline’s major appearances from season 7 on included Bonnie - the exceptions being “Everything Stays” as part of Stakes, and “Ketchup”, which really wasn’t any less gay.

Bubbline moments really did become too many to count, with the vast majority of them having romantic implications. And with queer representation becoming more and more prominent in Western animation, canon Bubbline romance seemed like a question of when rather than if. I’d like to point out here how this was often frustrating, though. After the very rocky start, this relationship was thriving and was really basically confirmed, but that last little push to make it undeniably a part of queer history was still needed.

“Come on!” - The End and Beyond

The almost three years that passed between Stakes and “Come Along With Me” (September 2018) were much more tolerable than the Drought; after all, there was plenty of Bubbline content in the later seasons. The big question as the finale came was whether Adventure Time would fizzle out on its early pioneer of a wlw ship or follow through, once and for all. Almost four years after LoK ended and just before season 1 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power dropped, Marcy and Bonnie had an emotional moment, kissed on screen, and ended the series together.

The intricacies of why a kiss was needed as a signifier of romance is a discussion for another day. But wouldn’t it have been strange after almost a decade of build-up for them not to seal the deal with a kiss? And to think it almost didn’t happen, as by that point it was so obvious they were together. Again, I direct your attention towards Paul Thomas’s book, he explains how it was storyboard artist Hanna K. Nyström’s call to add this final detail. Because, come on! Sometimes, you need to be as clear as possible, and that’s the case with queer representation in animation.

Since the finale, the comics have been continuing the Bubbline train - which are not technically canon but one can have fun regardless. In any case, the existence of Marcy and Bonnie’s relationship, of their queer identities, is not something that can reasonably be denied. It was a long road, and, make no mistake, an arduous one, but this is the story of a win. A win for storytelling and a win for wlw relationships.

We’ll Build Our Own Forever

So, there you have it, a Bubbline timeline of sorts. In March of 2011 we had the first on-screen interaction and now, in November of 2020, we’re getting a 45-minute-long special with the two of them as the central characters. They’re canonically in love, with King Princess covers of Bubbline songs and more. I tried to contain myself, for once, and not write too much. I think it’s important that people have a general idea of just how monumental all of this is and how, even just 9 years ago, “Obsidian” would have been totally inconceivable.

Some of this might have come as a surprise to you. It’s certainly not been easy to get to where we are now with Bubbline and it’s yet to be seen how open “Obsidian” will be about the relationship. I’ve been talking about Bubbline for years and attempted to chronicle their relationship many times so I’m happy I’ve finally done it from this perspective as well.

Adventure Time: Distant Lands “Obsidian” is streaming on Nov 19 on HBO Max. If you can, stream it so we can show that there’s popular demand for stories like that of an angry vampire and a despotic piece of gum.

[botslayer]

Heroes Reborn: Opinion piece.

So Marvel recently announced an interesting event, time, as it tends to in comics, has broken down on the side of the road and been rebooted. There are no Avengers in this new timeline. Instead, the world is generally protected by the “Squadron Supreme.” 

For those who don’t know, the SS is a team of “Superheroes” (rant incoming) from... Honestly, it depends. Sometimes they’re from another reality, at least in part, other times they’re just regular humans (Save for Hyperion, the man with the atom on his chest) who all get powers later or what have you. Their primary five members are Hyperion, Nighthawk, Zarda the Power Princess, Whizzer(Or “Speed demon”), and Dr. Spectrum. These are, of course, parody characters based on the Justice League from DC. Problem though: These are supposedly “Heroes” but they just about always turn stupid evil or at best into the Justice Lords, and while the latter was the plot of the original book they came from, I want them to actually BE heroes.  Even when they are heroes they still discuss taking over the world for whatever insane reason and it makes it hard to believe they ever wanted to be heroes sometimes, let alone were... And sadly this event seems to at least partly continue this trend. What am I referring to?  “Heroes Reborn,” The event I explained above Is still showing Hyperion And from my research: The rest of the squadron, being monsters to an extent considering they killed at least some of what the prime continuity calls the X-Men and most likely many more in “The Mutant Massacre.”

Already a point off. But this combination of characters working under Magneto is at least interesting enough that I want to read this. The established lore of this universe has my attention, what else is there? How about... exactly what I asked for? 

Hyperion and the Imperial guard Is about our buddy Hyperion and the Shi’ar deciding to go on a quest through the Negative zone... Aight. I’m down. Maybe this will deepen his character. and justify him being an authoritarian idiot.  If the Avengers never assembled though, what about some other Marvel heroes? Peter Parker, the original Spider-Man is basically Jimmy Olsen. 

He exists in a state of Hyperion Hyper fanboying and actually pals around with him a bit. There wasn’t much else to what I read of it but I’m curious how that premise might go south. Up next: A Villain book that looks neat if nothing else. 

Various heroes and villains in the prime universe are now a cabal of villainous anti-heroes and the like opposing Nighthawk’s branch of the Squadron in Europe. Saber Tooth, Hawk eye, Scott Lang, and others all working together like this is a fascinating sight to behold, I must say and I’m curious about their team dynamic. Finally we have the one I’m the most interested in, “Young Squadron.”

This comic examines newer faces of prominence in the Marvel comic universe, namely Miles Morales, Kamala Kahn, and Samuel Alexander in this universe as the sidekicks of three particular SS members... And I wanna talk about their personas.

Samuel Alexander: As a member of the Nova corps, of course becomes Dr. Spectrum’s apprentice. Who else? But I will say... And I know you’re all thinking it: Google Chrome. Despite the weird color scheme I like the patterns and I’m curious how, if he doesn’t have the prism, he actually has these powers even though I don’t know much about Alexander as a character. Up next: Kamala. 

Cringy name aside (I know it’s a silver age-grade silly name and that’s the point but it’s still goofy in kinda the wrong way) I also have to wonder what her powers are in this universe. I doubt Zarda would just pick up some random kid and not at least give her a power-up via gear or a spell or something. And this outfit... Hm... Okay, look: I understand there might be touch of a cultural thing to the overall look that I’m not seeing but to me it just looks kinda lop-sided and... Under-armored? Like Kid Spectrum has a helmet and knee pads at least and you can make up a material for his suit but Kamala’s looks like the torso should be armor even though it’s more obviously made of cloth except for the metal sash thing? If they can trim the skirt a little and give her some gold/black shoulder pads, I would say that would look good because it might also help balance the colors. As it stands the black gold and blue, while they can be striking, all look more like they’re trying to fight for what the main color is. But what do I know? Finally, Miles Morales:

I’m just gonna come out and say it: The fact that he’s Falcon in this time line feels like slightly racially inclined type-casting. But it also makes sense given Falcon’s original color scheme and the fact that Night Hawk is supposed to be Batman. But I feel like making his own thing like the other two might have better move... Off the top of my head: “Hawk wasp” Which would still lend itself very well to crazy colored costume and the Squadron Supreme’s penchant for being intimidating and evil. But again, what do I know. Still very interested in this series and I hpe to read it when it comes out in friggin’ May.

[adobe-outdesign]

Little something for everyone while y’all are in quarantine. Part 2 coming whenever.

Transcript under the cut:

Five Nights at Freddy’s. Where do we even start with this one? FNAF is probably one of the most confusing games out there when it comes to trying to figure out what the hell happened in it. Everyone has their own opinions and interpretations, so I figured I’d provide my own.

Do keep in mind that I’m not going to cover every single part of the lore, as some of it’s fairly self-explanatory. Instead, I’m going to focus mostly on FNAF 4, as that’s where this Gordian Knot of confusion really stems from.

Be warned, this video’s going to contain something truly scary: OPINIONS. [scream effect] Yes, my views on the lore are much different than everyone else’s, so don’t get your springlocks set off just because my theories don’t align with yours. Because for starters…

[Why I don’t think Michael is the brother]

[Mob noises]

Okay, okay, hear me out. Basically, there are two main family in FNAF: There’s the Aftons, comprised of William, Elizabeth and Michael. Then there’s the - is this really their name? Really? okay - Emilys, comprised of Henry and Charlie.

However, in the books Charlie had a brother named Sammy. So the question is, is Sammy canon? And the answer is yes: During Stage 01, we see one of the kids disappear when left alone with Spring Bonnie, which parallels Sammy slash Charlie’s kidnapping in Fredbear’s by William.

This raises another question though: Who is Sammy in canon, then? And I’ll jut outright say it: He’s the Bitten Child. Yeah, I’m kind of amazed more people don’t realize this. The Fredbear Plush is implied to be possessed by Charlie, as its talk about putting the Bitten Child back together parallels the Puppet giving cake in Happiest Day, and the empty girl’s room indicates that the Bitten Child has a dead sister - her being the Plush explains why the Fredbear Plush cares so much about the welfare of this random kid.

Likewise, Charlie and Sammy were twins. The Bitten Child and Charlie have the same blocky sprites, and they both have brown hair and brown eyes.

Most importantly, the Bitten Child is spirited to look exactly like the Puppet. Given that he isn’t the one possessing it, the only way this makes sense if the two were related.

Finally, the Bitten Child freaks the hell out when approached by an employee in a Fredbear suit, and the Fredbear plush says that he’ll “know what happens if he catches you”. Many people believe this means the Bitten Child witnessed the children being murdered, but it’s too early in the timeline for that - Phone Guy says in 2 that the Freddy’s where the murders occurred was shut down and left to rot afterward. The restaurant in 4 is still open, meaning the murders haven’t occurred yet - given some other context, it’s likely they died in 1985.

The only other incident the Bitten Child could be reacting to… would be the kidnapping back in Fredbear’s, where William stole one of the twins while in a Spring Bonnie suit. And the only way he would know about it is if he was there during the kidnapping - which is enough for me to say with confidence that the Bitten Child is indeed Sammy.

Also, Sister Location has a lot of kidnapping references. [I kidnapped you.]

Especially in the Immortal and the Restless. Vlad represents William throughout the games - not dong much in FNAF 1, working the night shift in 2, being in the burning building in 3, and the hidden scene representing Baby not killing Michael who she thinks is William. And what is said every episode?

[The baby isn’t mine]

The baby isn’t his because Sammy literally isn’t William’s child; he’s Henry’s.

However, if the Bitten Child is Sammy, then that means this [Older Brother footage] cannot be Michael.

Now, I know all of you smart people out there are already thinking the obvious: The books are an AU. Couldn’t Sammy be the one kidnapped in canon, thus allowing Michael to still be the Brother? And to that I say: …Yeah. If you want to work with Michael being the Brother, then this is the best way to do it, and it’s entirely possible this is the correct answer. …But with that said, I’m not entirely convinced.

[Why Charlie was kidnapped and not Sammy]

For starters, there’s the simple question of motivation. Why would WIlliam be raising Henry’s kid? Killing kids is kind of his M.O.. Even in the books, he killed the child he kidnapped. The idea of him kidnapping and raising a kid is even brought up in the Fourth Closet… then dismissed because it would be out of character for him, which would be strange if he did exactly that in canon.

As established earlier, Sammy also remembers the kidnapping, which would make it weird if he was the one kidnapped and yet is just allowed to freely wander the neighborhood. What’s to stop him from telling someone else, or even just running away?

Moving on to actual evidence, the map in SL’s breaker room lists the FNAF 4 house and the minigame house as two separate observation areas. This could be to differentiate the two for the player, but I don’t know why they’d be separated in-universe unless they were two separate houses. This would also explain why the living rooms don’t look the same and why the grandfather clock is in two different locations.

Likewise, the Fredbear Plush has either a camera or a walkie-talkie in it to spy on Sammy. However, the private room also reveals that William has the FNAF 4 gameplay house bugged. He shouldn’t need to use the Fredbear Plush to spy on Sammy, given that he can watch him both through the house cameras and the (presumable) cameras in Fredbear’s - unless Sammy is still in Henry’s house, which would force William to slip a camera into the place discreetly.

Speaking of the minigame house, there are a few parallels between it and Henry’s house in the books. The house was connected to an underground location in the Twisted Ones, just like it’s connected to the Sister Location in canon. And one of the rooms contains a tiny toy animatronic - just like the ones Henry built for Charlie in the Silver Eyes.

Continuing on that train of thought, let’s look at that tiny Toy Mangle. Assuming the Toy Chica principle is in place here - that being that the literal toys in this game look the same as the Toy Animatronics - the Mangle here looks like the FNAF 2 version of Mangle, not like William’s Funtime Foxy, pointing to it being Henry’s creation and not William’s. The SL extras even reveal that Funfox was supposed to be purple at first, which doesn’t make sense if it was supposed to match the tiny toy version.

But perhaps one of the biggest pieces of evidence regarding this toy is in Mangle’s Quest. While walking, you can encounter a huge silhouette of the Puppet… which makes Mangle look toy-sized in comparison. This only makes sense if this room was Charlie’s, and the Mangle toy was hers.

This also makes sense considering that Sister Location didn’t exist at the time of 4′s release. Scott claimed you could solve the lore back then using only the first four games, and if this was Charlie’s room, you could do it by combining the knowledge of the Fredbear Plush with Sammy’s missing sister and Charlie from the novels. If this is Elizabeth’s room, the only way that could be would be if it was retconned into place behind the scenes.

Additionally, I don’t think Elizabeth’s death is the correct date for this room to be empty in 1983. Handunit says that CBEAR didn’t open until after Freddy’s closed, as it gave them the opportunity to move into the entertainment space without competition. I’d assume this also applies to the original Circus Baby’s Pizza World, which indicates Elizabeth didn’t die until after FNAF 1. Given that Michael still has eyes in FNAF 1, SL in general had to have taken place after it - it’s unlikely William waited 10+ years to finally send Michael to save her, so her death being after FNAF 1 makes more sense timeline-wise.

Meanwhile, Charlie died in the very first Freddy’s location, before the other murders. HW confirms the FNAF 4 location was this first Freddy’s, meaning that she died in 1983. This not only lines up with her death date in the Fourth Closet, but also explains why the room in 4 hasn’t been cleaned out; she only died recently.

This would also explain why Henry claims that no-one was there to save Charlie. It’s his restaurant; wouldn’t he have, like, been there and been watching her if he was the one who brought her in?

And finally, I do have one massive piece of evidence that I feel proves the idea that Charlie is the one who was kidnapped.

[Chica School Days opening]

I know, I know, stay with me. Each of Toy Chica’s husbandos in these cutscenes represent one of William’s victims and how he killed them, as proven by her talking about running over a dog which aligns with Susie’s death in both Fruity Maze and the novels. There are a total of six people she targets.

However, that’s the thing - there are six victims, one for each of the original five - and the Puppet. That means Charlie’s death has to be included in here. And yet, none of the deaths line up with what we see in the minigames… unless you assume Charlie was the one kidnapped. In which case, there is one that fits…

[Toy Chica talking about kidnapping]

There are six deaths, so Charlie must be included. If the only thing that lines up with her death is the kidnapping scene, then Charlie must have been the one who was kidnapped, not Sammy.

But that brings us back to the original problem: If Charlie was the one who was kidnapped, Sammy is still living in Henry’s house. Which means Michael is not the Brother.

[Why do people think Michael is the Brother?]

Let’s move on to explaining away some of the evidence for Michael being the Brother.

The first and most obvious piece is that we play as the Brother in FNAF 4. Michael lives in the FNAF 4 house, so he must be the Brother. Which is a fair piece of evidence. However, I do think there’s something that explains this: Midnight Motorist.

Yes, the reason this minigame has perplexed so many fans might be because they’ve been looking at the entirety of FNAF 4 wrong. Let’s start with the Yellow Guy, who’s likely Henry. Why? Well, he’s driving William’s purple car and yet isn’t purple himself, so he can’t be William yet must have a connection to him. Henry and William were friends and business partners, so the idea of this being a company car or one of them just borrowing it for the weekend makes sense.

Likewise, every minigame and cutscene in FNAF 6 pertains to one of the main characters. The Puppet minigame for, well, the Puppet; Fruity Maze for William slash Scraptrap; and Candy Cadet’s stories for Scrap Baby and Molten Freddy. Henry is the only main character who wouldn’t have something in-game pertaining to him unless this sprite is him.

Moving on, we see him interact with a green sprite. I’d wager this is Clay Burke, for no other reason other than the sprite is presumably color-coded because we know the character, and because Clay is a cop and therefore could easily kick Henry out a bar.

Out a bit from Henry’s house, we see a grave, and around the back of the house there’s a smashed window and an animatronic footprint. In the books, the Twisted animatronics specifically targeted Henry’s family, kidnapped people through aggressive means, and buried themselves during the day. Given that the Twisteds are just AU Nightmare animatronics, it’s likely one of William’s robots was trying to kidnap another one of Henry’s kids.

However, the kid being targeted doesn’t seem to be Sammy or Charlie. Henry’s wife is still present and this is a different house than the one in FNAF 4, suggesting this is early on in the timeline, as Henry got a divorce and moved shortly after the kidnapping. The kid that was targeted here was old enough to lock himself in his room and make a run for it, suggesting it wasn’t one of the two babies but rather the Brother from 4, who’s certainly enough of an Angsty Teen to lock himself in his room several times.

As we can see by the footprints and Henry’s blase attitude, it looks like the Brother escaped from the animatronic… this time. It’s likely William kept trying to kidnap him until he succeeded, locking him into his house once he was successfully captured after the Bite. The dialogue from the FNAF 4 trailer might actually apply to William; he brought home the Brother, he think he sees a ghost haunting him which is why he’s observing him in the first place, and he treats this whole thing like a sick game.

So with the FNAF 4 house out of the way, there’s only a few other pieces of evidence. The logbook shows Michael having drawn N. Fredbear… but given that the Nightmare animatronics were still in his house, it’s likely he would have seen then at some point during the night.

The logbook also indicates that Michael is Mike Schmidt from FNAF 1, with his pseudonym being a combo of his own first name and “Eggs Benedict”. FNAF 4 plays like FNAF 1 does, and you can hear one of Phone Guy’s calls in the background, meaning the Brother must have worked in the FNAF 1 location and heard Phone Guy’s messages. And while Michael does fit these requirements… there is one other character who fits them even better.

[Continued in Part 2]

[gregellner]

Cover by Stefano Caselli and Emilio Laiso.

Today I’ll be reviewing “Hack/Slash: Son of Samhain,” a miniseries (though labeled incorrectly as Volume 1 despite being cancelled) that acts as a sequel to the original “Hack/Slash” timeline that ended in 2013. Here’s the creative team: Michael Moreci and Steve Seeley on the script with direction by series creator Tim Seeley; art by Emilio Laiso; colors by K. Michael Russell; and lettering by Chris Crank (Crank!). The entire series is published by Image Comics.

A warning: given this series is a sequel to the main comics, expect spoilers on the Tim Seeley run, especially the events of the second ongoing series that ran on Image Comics from 2011 to 2013. The fact that this volume is labeled as “Volume 1” does make it seem like a jumping on point, but technically it is not. If you do want the actual beginning, the better position to start from is either the first Omnibus edition or, in smaller trades, the “First Cut” volume. Essentially, “Son of Samhain” can be considered a sixteenth volume of the main comics (after 13 main volumes [collected in five omnibuses], “My First Maniac,” and “Army of Darkness vs. Hack/Slash”) and a technical prelude to the later ���Resurrection” series that began in 2017.

First, it seems best to look in on the basic concept of this arc. After the tragic events of “Final,” the conclusion of the main “Hack/Slash” comics, Cassie seemed to have settled down with Margaret Crump as live-in girlfriends and parents to the orphaned Cassandra “Sandra” Krank. Despite seemingly having moved past the deaths in her life, Cassie has trouble with the quiet life, and instead has, after certain issues (to be discussed below), left her lover and become a bounty hunter in Texas, having cut off all ties to her former life aside from Catherine “Cat” Curio of Cat and Dog Inc. (formerly, and later again known as Cat and Dog Investigations). Even the relative stability of her bounty hunter job is ruined when an aged monster hunter named Delroy recruits her to face down an army of genuine subterranean monsters (unlike the usual slashers to which she is more accustomed) that look and act not unlike classic fantasy Orcs in the vein of J.R.R. Tolkein, albeit at times somewhat smarter.

In general, the feel of the story therefore shifts from a horror comic to a classic two-fisted tales pulp story on some level. Due to Delroy’s influence, Cassie is shown more as an action heroine than a huntress of horrors, facing down armies with only some difficulty. The closest that the series got to this type of thing before was in the ‘Monster Baiting’ arc of the second ongoing, with a bit of it present in ‘Sons of Man’ from the first ongoing.

On another hand, the Black Lamp Society does show up, but are much more openly villainous, with the group shown outright saying to Cassie, when pressed, that they are working to bring up Samhain’s evil in conjunction with the efforts of the aforementioned monsters to resurrect a monstrous god, rather than to continue his work of “purging the children of Bacchus.” Of course, this is only a small group, and could easily be either a random splinter faction that found the scientific work that acts as a major part of this arc, or even a way of demonstrating how the cult has degenerated since the fall of their “murder messiah.”

With its very different feel and certain changes in characterization, it’s easy to tell why some fans look down on this arc of the comics. However, while it does take some breaking into, “Son of Samhain” is not necessarily a bad story at all, and is actually quite fun, even if it does take a large part of the arc to get to the most fun, interesting part of the team dynamics.

Our next focus is on our protagonist, Cassandra “Cassie” Hack.

Cassandra “Cassie” Hack has changed somewhat since her last outing as the Serial Killer Killer in “Army of Darkness vs. Hack/Slash.” Despite how it seemed she could have a family with Margaret Crump and Cassandra “Sandra” Krank, that she could be happy and move past her problems, that’s simply not the case. Much as with many other parts of the “Hack/Slash” horror epic, reality ensues with a vengeance. She never has gone into therapy (no, Doctor Edmund Gross does not count) for her countless issues, and her hereditary slasher bloodline doesn’t help either (if that part of her is still latent). Having walked out on her happiness due to her lingering post-traumatic stress disorder, she has taken to a freelance job as a bounty hunter, seemingly based in Texas, has taken up improvised weapons like a lug wrench instead of her signature bat (temporarily), and has picked up some new skills like lockpicking along the way, along with, for whatever reason, having decided against using firearms in her hunts anymore. Even her fashion style differs, with her putting her hair behind her ears instead of letting it hang in bangs in front of one eye, and having traded in her primarily goth, highly revealing ensemble for tight black or white shirts, jeans, and hooded sweatshirts that do not reach her midriff.

It is perhaps best to let Ms. Hack herself give the explanation of why she did this, as she does to Delroy when pressed. “I was in a relationship with someone I cared for, deeply. What we had, it was good. It was healthy. But what’s a relationship? It’s a shared illusion. You and this other person, you build a world within the world. Or maybe outside the world. I couldn’t do it. And it wasn’t that I was bored, or that I was, like, damaged. None of the Psych-101 bullshit. I’ve seen too much. When I close my eyes, I’m back to my days hunting down slashers. And that’s never going to go away. I know that now.”

Her speech can be unpacked into separate pieces, each of which contributes to her personality when we first see her again.

On the one hand, there’s her talk about relationships, and how she fundamentally does not believe in them. Over the course of the start in particular, before she went back into hunting nonhumans, she continuously uses terms like how a relationship is “playing make-believe” or related words. As a nomadic young woman by nature, she of course has trouble settling down. She can try, but even in her darker thoughts during “Army of Darkness vs. Hack/Slash,” she seemed very willing to keep away her girlfriend to go right back into hunting, even if it was just to solve a problem for the time being. Her problems with intimacy go even deeper by this point in her life, as one panel of the title card shows, with her not even going for the random one-night stands she attempted in “Final” or used as seduction in “Army of Darkness vs. Hack/Slash.” Much like her early days, people who hit on her are likely to be hit in return, either having broken bones or being knocked out. This kind of regression is sad, but hardly surprising given her plethora of issues.

Next comes her post-traumatic stress disorder. She’s had it ever since her mom’s death (or at least since the second time), and it, along with a hefty guilt complex, has been driving her ever since on one level or another. Couple that with the sheer horror of the things she ran into during her career, and you’ve got a pretty messed up mindset, with enough symptoms to officially diagnose her with the chronic variant of the disorder. Every one of her memories would be tainted at this point, anyway, from her loving time with Margaret Crump and Sanny connecting to the slasher menace, to her attraction to the Samhain personality in Akakios, to many, many other things. It’s no surprise that the only people she lets herself still keep in contact with are those who will directly help her hunts, even for normal people.

Notably, her antisocial personality disorder has been severely downplayed with the exception of her willingness to kill people and not feel any remorse about doing so. Even she admits that part of her life is not normal for people, but blames it on the Black Ambrosia.

In fact, shifting blame is another part of her earlier life that carries over, though it may be a little difficult for people to see due to being relatively downplayed compared to other the instances in her teen years and the first year or two of her twenties. The main focus of this blame shift is in her choice of names, specifically for some people in her past. She has gone back to calling Margaret Crump “Georgia,” her alias as a stripper, a name she only really used as a means of showing some distance before they became a couple. Before, she only really did that to either protect Margaret’s privacy or because they were not close enough for her to feel it had merit, but her decision to go back to using that name shows that she is trying to externalize all of her feelings and act as though they were never real at all, despite some pretty blatant evidence to the contrary. Another example is in calling Akakios “Samhain,” the identity of his amnesic self-preservation-based personality after which she had lusted. Much like how she blamed Akakios for “seducing her” despite her being the one to come on to Samhain on almost every occasion, calling him “Samhain” seems to be her means of establishing distance. In the case of the name being used elsewhere, it is entirely possible that the others of the Black Lamp Society consider him to be a “reborn” Akakios, but it’s admittedly slightly harder to swallow for returning readers.

However, Cassie’s attempts to shift blame do not mean she is without remorse, though not for lack of trying. In a one-page hallucination of Margaret, she seems to be completely aware, on some level, that what she is doing is bad for her and she should go home to her lover, but just argues with herself over it instead of accepting her own guilty conscience. The result is that Cassie is, as ever, a conflicted character, one who does awful things people would hate her for, and makes decisions people find aggravating, but is filled with a sense of tragedy that makes her difficult to avoid pitying.

Now, let’s discuss her supporting cast this time around: Delroy and October “Ocky” Bourne.

First, we have Delroy, the first sidekick type. A big, older man, heavily muscled, especially in comparison to Cassie’s still relatively slight frame, it’s easy to see what kind of role he is shaped up to play from the very beginning, something so obvious that when Catherine “Cat” Curio arrives with the Nef lowbeast (read: hellhound) Pooch for a brief time, she notes he fits the bill of Cassie’s sidekicks. However, his comparisons to previous partners end there. Rather than favor blades to contrast against Cassie using firearms, the positions are actually reversed, with his primary arsenal being in the form of a shotgun and various explosives, in no small part a likely reason why he has survived so long in his chosen profession of a more general monster hunter (as opposed to Cassie being primarily a slasher slayer).

Third to the team is the eponymous son of Samhain, Ocky, or as the concept art calls him, October Bourne. Essentially an eight-year-old clone of Akakios formed on the very same island that was the main location of the ‘Sons of Man’ arc of the original comic, Ocky was created from some of Akakios’ DNA when he was Samhain, in a secret project underwent by Samhain’s first known lover and eventual victim, Ava Park, while she was working under the watchful eye of the monstrous, but completely human Andrew Rodin on projects like his “Venus” models of the Sons of Man program. The entirety of the reason for his existence is unclear, but some things are not. For instance, he is borderline feral, biting people who come close to him or even starting to eat one of the monsters that tried to hope him captive, and is prone to kill anyone near him with his knife (and later katana) until he comes across people who aren’t trying to use him. In essence, he is what Samhain could have been like if he were a little boy and an actual true individual, rather than an alternate personality of a truly evil person. In fact, Cassie seems to even recognize this, and her experiences with Ocky are some of the most heartwarming in the book, showing her develop into a kind of mother figure to a new Samhain who has potential to be an actual hero, as a way to absolve herself for her actions in the ‘Monster Baiting’ arc of the second ongoing of the original run and how she had caused his father’s “demise,” so-to-speak. On another hand, she also might see him as a younger version of herself, struggling with the Black Ambrosia taint on his blood as he tries to fight to be good.

The two act as a kind of “devil and angel on the shoulder” type of dynamic, with Cassie acting as a relative middle ground between the two of them. Delroy’s behavior with regards to Cassie’s problems is a polar opposite to the likes of Vlad. While Vlad would often try to get Cassie to engage with other people to help her be happy, be it her friends in Eminence, Indiana or the aforementioned Margaret Crump, Delroy not only accepts her post-traumatic stress as a matter of course, but encourages her to do so as well, actively driving her into his monster-hunting lifestyle. When Ocky joins the team, he also acts the same way around him, even giving the eight-year-old boy a katana despite Cassie’s annoyance. In all, while Vlad or even Samhain served as restraining actors or at least neutral, Delroy’s actions seem to be, though perhaps not intentionally, poisonous to Cassie’s psychological wellbeing and a surefire way to make sure she cannot engage with normal people even if she did try. On the other hand, as Ocky learns about how to be good, he acts as a similar kind of chain on her morals in a similar way to Vlad, driving her to be good in order to feel good, even if that mentality is inherently immature on some level. Then again, considering Cassie’s state of being nearly perpetually stuck in her late teens, having someone also immature to talk with may be the best possible option.

When it comes to psychology, the main element under examination is the debate of nature versus nurture, in particular with regards to Ocky himself. Despite his bloodline and that of Cassie, the latter tells him up front that just because his father turned out badly (with Cassie deliberately ignoring the fact that he was always that bad and that “Samhain” technically didn’t exist), doesn’t mean that he has to. She even uses a “not so different” style speech to explain.

“Look, there's only so much you can control about who you are. You're born a certain way or shit happens to you and before you know it, you're the person you see when you look in the mirror. For better or worse, you can't escape from you.”

At its core, her argument is that it doesn’t matter where he came from as long as he can try to be good on his own, divorced from his circumstances, since at the end of the day, how he is will be a consequence of everything both in and around him, with who he decides to be as a person derived from what he does with that knowledge. For instance, while she has her many personality issues, Cassie decided to use the increased emotional volatility that comes with being a hereditary potential slasher to try to do good in the world, and never regretted that fact in and of itself (even as it cost her again and again).

Ocky’s existence is even more profound, as not only is he a clone specifically created for evil (not just extremism, but actual evil), but he was supposed to aid the monster army in its rise, breaking away not unlike many a rebellious antichrist in fiction. On account of Cassie’s parenting, he learned how to be a good person and have people to genuinely care for, something that Akakios never really bothered with at all, and never even truly understood on even the most fundamental level. To quote the dragon Paarthurnax from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, “No day goes by where I am not tempted to return to my inborn nature. […] What is better? To be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?”

Emilio Laiso returns for the artwork, having previously worked with Michael Moreci and Steve Seeley on the one-shot story ‘Hack/Slash/Repeat’ that acted as issue 19 of the second ongoing series, just before the ‘Final’ arc that closed out the original run. While that art was more haunting in keeping with its theme of an inescapable, unending horror, this style is more fun, with definite parallels between the two. The action is hard-hitting, highly animated, and fast, the faces very expressive, especially when it comes to Cassie and Ocky. Both youth and age are emphasized, with Delroy’s age lines and scars at the forefront of his appearance, and the youthful, softer faces of Cassie, Ocky, and Cat showing the idea of a different generation of hunters (and investigators). Even Pooch benefits from this kind of softer style, emphasizing the “cute” nature of the horrible looking dog-thing over the unnaturalness other artists would work toward.

Of particular note is the use of a title card in the place of a narration of exactly what happened to Cassie after the initial introduction of the monsters in the opening pages. Each letter of the title shows a different stage in Cassie’s devolution as she moves from her prior life to her new one, without using a word of actual dialogue. Everything is neat and concise, ranging from standing at a grave to talking with a loved one to walking out the door to other stages, while using only the absolute minimum of words to illustrate the protagonist’s single-mindedness and inability to stay in one place to be happy. Rather than use some narration that would take up several pages or lingering too long, the title card alone manages to get through nine different scenes in a single page to get readers where they need to go in the story, before a more complete context is given to Delroy some time later.

Some of the best shots focus in on unique perspectives, from seeing an attack coming from the reflection in a victim’s eye to seeing how dead someone is inside emotionally from how there is no such reflection when sitting still. These shots rely heavily on K. Michael Russell’s colors, ones that continue to grace the series into its successor “Resurrection” two years later. Russell’s coloring is soft at times, hard at others, working into a realistic style that relies on light heavily to give an added depth to the characters and their emotions. While Laiso’s art is amazing, Russell’s colors truly bring it to life, much as Rosario Costanzo’s colors did in the aforementioned ‘Hack/Slash/Repeat.’

Chris Crank, a.k.a. Crank! (not to be confused with Chris Krank, the father of Sandra Krank), acts as the letterer on this series, much like he does on most if not all of the other “Hack/Slash” main series works. He is, as ever, very good in his use of letters, but where he really excels is in atypical lettering choices, such as using the background to showcase onomatopoeias. A rumbling in the distance wouldn’t be nearly as shocking if it were in a speech bubble, but in one case, it is portrayed as being actually outside of the window of a moving car, coming up on both the characters and readers alike by surprise before something intense happens.

In all, “Hack/Slash: Son of Samhain,” while not perhaps the greatest of “Hack/Slash” materials, is still a worthy addition to the epic, even as a brief interlude between more slasher basher takes on the series. Hopefully Ocky will come up more in the future, but you never know until Tim Seeley decides what he wants to do with the series.

[ayearofpike]

Master of Murder

Pocket Books, 1992 198 pages, 14 chapters + epilogue ISBN 0-671-69059-0 LOC: CPB Box no. 1081 vol. 14 OCLC: 26075926 Released July 28, 1992 (per B&N)

Everybody’s reading the thrilling Silver Lake series by Mack Slate. With the last book due out in a few months, fans are excited to finally find out who killed Ann McGaffer. Only problem is, Slate — that is to say, twelfth-grade nobody Marvin Summer, hiding behind a pen name  — has no idea himself, and hasn’t even started writing the book. It’s only as he works to close the distance between himself and his crush, Shelly Quade, that the grand finale starts to make itself clear to him, in ways that unexpectedly and gruesomely parallel his own life.

This might not be my favorite Pike book, but it has certainly had the most influence on me. I’ve always called myself a writer, since a fifth-grade teacher recognized my ability to craft a narrative and pointed out that somebody had to make books and I should think about it. In high school, it was my defining trait, and it wasn’t until I’d almost graduated from college that I realized it didn’t make me special. Everybody has a story, as Marvin finds out, and some of them are even better at telling it in an engaging way. It’s sad, in a way, that I identified with this book so much (like, I literally carried it in my backpack for my entire senior year) and it still took me so long to get that theme.

What I did get was an intense sense of connection with Marvin. Shy loner? Check. Separated parents who didn’t get along? Check. Younger sibling who wanted to be like me? Check. An English teacher hung up on prescriptive strictures of language who quietly cared about her students, and a language teacher who was more interested in building a classroom community than sticking to a scheduled curriculum? Check and double-check. Writing ability revered by peers? Check, even if my work rarely made it past my immediate circle of friends. Subconscious inclusion of issues I was going through in my work, to the point where it got me in trouble with the girl I liked? Well, not directly observable, but I mean, it’s hard to not come off creepy if you’re writing a love story to a girl instead of, like, actually TALKING to her.

I also really enjoyed the way Pike works with language in this book, and honestly, I still do. Modern YA gets a lot more respect, and deservingly so, but a lot of it is written in a direct, almost sparse way. It makes sense, considering how many contemporary authors write in the first person, and most people don’t actually think in metaphors and syllogisms and even (to some degree) descriptive adjectives. Master of Murder kind of goes hog-wild on this, kind of a leap from representational art to impressionist art. And I buy it. As Marvin is our POV character, it makes sense that as a writer he’d put some more florid prose into his observations and understandings of the world. Plus, this style kind of helps to establish him as an unreliable narrator, as we slowly learn how much he actually doesn’t know and, in fact, how much maybe he’s repressed.

That said, this story does have some holes. Let’s jump into the summary and I’ll get there.

We start out with Marvin in his English class, watching Shelly read his most recent book and thinking about their relationship. They’d gone out a handful of times a year before, but it stopped after the death of Harry Paster, another flame of Shelly’s who’d jumped off a cliff into the nearby lake. Marvin figures enough time has passed that he can ask her out again, but first he has to read the short story he’s dashed off for their creative writing assignment. Man, remember when creative writing was an actual COMPONENT of high school English class? And the only reason I got to do it was that I took a creative-writing-focused senior English course. I mean, I get it — public school English is about preparing you to pass the SAT or ACT, not teaching you how to reach and grab an audience. They save that for us, in post-secondary ed, by which time the interest in writing has already been drilled out of kids by making them do repetitive five-paragraph essays. Most of my students still don’t want to write, but I at least try to give them some room in the assignment structure to flex their creative muscles.

But anyway, “The Becoming of Seymour the Frog” is a legitimately good short-short story. It gives us a sense of Marvin’s author voice straight away, which is of course the same as the narrative, and it legitimizes how much Pike uses what modern writers would call excessive description. The teacher grades it right away (what? I give everything two reads, and this teacher is just going to LISTEN one time?) and tells Marvin he might be a writer someday if he learns to control himself. We both (the reader and Marvin, that is) know he’s already there, and Marvin completely discredits this advice. He writes best by giving up control and going into a state of flow, one where he can’t stop writing but also doesn’t necessarily feel that what’s going onto the page is coming from inside his own head. This is important later.

After class, he catches up to Shelly, but their talking is interrupted by the arrival of her current squeeze, Triad Tyler. Triad is a big dumb football jock who wants to buy Marvin’s motorcycle, which Marvin would never dream of selling. Before he can get around to asking her out, she ducks into the bathroom, and Triad complains that it seems like she’s always trying to escape. This is probably important later too. So already in the first 15 pages, Pike has nicely set up the major characters and their interplay with each other.

We jump to speech class, and I call BS. Like, we learn later that Marvin only has four classes as a senior. Why is one of them speech? My high school only required a half-day of seniors, sure, but our classes were English, math, world history, and economics. It turns out this class would be better called “communication skills,” which was required in ninth grade, but I’d still buy that more than speech. The teacher basically has them engage in conversational debate, and this day the topic they choose is Mack Slate’s Silver Lake series. It’s a good framework for sharing Marvin’s story, and showing the corner he’s painted himself into: Ann McGaffer’s body was found naked and tied up with barbed wire floating in Silver Lake, and five books on we’re no closer to figuring out who did it or why. The description grosses me out a iittle bit, but on the heels of the last two super-tropey thrillers, I’m going to choose to believe that Pike is poking fun at the intentional shock attempts of the genre.

After class, Marvin finally successfully asks Shelly out for that night, then goes to his PO box to pick up his fan mail. His little sister is already there, and once again we’re subjected to the jaw-droppingly beautiful small child. It was gross when it was fifteen-year-old Jennifer Wagner, but Ann Summer is ELEVEN and Marvin’s SISTER. Pike, isn’t it possible to describe a female one cares about without making it all about her looks? He does it with Marvin’s mom in a few pages too, when they get home. We get it — girls we care about are hot. Only problem is Marvin’s mom is an alcoholic who almost never leaves the house except to buy more booze. Dad is an alcoholic, too, but he’s not at home and his child support payments are erratic. Good thing there’s a best-selling author living in the house! But Ann’s the only one who knows, and it kills her to not be able to sing her brother’s praises and brag about how great he is.

They go upstairs to Marvin’s room to read his mail, and one of the last letters makes him pause. It has a local postmark, and the letter inside simply says “I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.” It starts to pull the book into more general thriller territory, but before we can think too much about it, the phone rings and it’s Marvin’s editor, asking about Silver Lake Book Six, which is four months overdue. I have some serious questions about the timeline of this series, but we’ll get there in a little bit. Marvin soothes her concerns, then goes to take a walk around the lake, trying to figure out where to start his book but not actually ready to start it before he picks up Shelly.

The date is successful, by most measures. They have dinner, go to a movie, and then stop on a bridge crossing a raging river because Shelly wants to look at the water. They sit down on the edge, Marvin landing on an old and weathered piece of rope, and watch the waters pound away down to their final destination — the lake. Then Shelly invites Marvin back to her house to sit in the hot tub, where they get naked and make out, but she suddenly gets sad and pulls away. I give Marvin props for being respectful and apologetic here rather than trying to force her to continue. Woke in 1992! But as he’s getting ready to leave, he learns the reason she’s sad: Shelly is thinking about Harry, which he expected, but he didn’t expect to learn that she thinks he was murdered. And she wants Marvin’s help to figure it out and clear Harry’s name.

There’s no basis for this belief, but Marvin figures he might as well listen and do some research, seeing as he can’t figure out his own murder mystery. He checks his PO box first, and finds another ominous letter that’s been mailed there directly rather than to his publishing house, so maybe somebody really does know him. He calls his agent (whose name is one letter away from a real literary rep, maybe even Pike’s) to ask about it. This insert, plus the editor whose name was close to the woman in charge of YA at Simon and Schuster at the time, made so many of us so sure that this was as close to autobiographical as Pike had ever gotten. I seriously chased leads from this book to try to figure out more about him, back before he started answering questions on Facebook and there was so much less mystery about it.

So then Marvin goes back over to Shelly’s house to talk about Harry. She has the police report and autopsy report, and Marvin looks them over, along with articles about Harry’s death from newspapers at the time. What it boils down to is Friday night a year before, a night when Marvin had taken Shelly out for her birthday, Harry and Triad were drinking beer together. Triad said that he dropped Harry off at home, and that was the last time anybody saw him until a fisherman found his body in the lake on Monday morning. Marvin starts to question the narrative that Harry jumped, because there are several physical symptoms that indicate maybe he was held captive. He talks to the fisherman and to Harry’s mom, and takes a look at the jacket Harry was wearing, and makes note of definite rope burn marks around the back and under the armpits. So Harry was tied up somewhere for a long time  — but where? And how?

Marvin goes home to rest and digest this info, and has a dream about his book series that shows Ann McGaffer hanging from a bridge by a rope around her waist. He’s startled awake by Ann, who says that their dad is breaking things downstairs. Marvin gets down there just in time to watch his dad shove a lamp into the TV, and the resultant cuts to Ann and his mom from the exploding picture tube send Marvin into a fit of rage. He starts to beat the shit out of his own father, and only stops when Ann tells him to, even though the dude is unconscious. Like, holy shit, buried violent tendencies that will make you like your father? So Marvin gets the hell out of the house to give himself some space.

He ends up back at his PO box, even though he knows there couldn’t have been another delivery, but there sure is a letter in it. He follows this back to Shelly’s house, where he finds her making out in the hot tub with Triad. Marvin overhears her say that she was using him to get him to do something, and Triad tells her not to go out with Marvin anymore, to which she readily agrees. So now Marvin is scared, he is heartbroken, and he has unlocked some deep-seated rage that will allow him to strike back. He ends up on the bridge, where he starts to figure out what must have happened a year ago. There’s a rope, there’s a giant oil stain on the bridge right behind it, and there’s a dead boy with rope burns on his jacket who was maybe hanging from it rather than being tied up. Marvin figures that Harry was jealous of his relationship with Shelly and decided to stage a little motorcycle accident, but accidentally slipped off the bridge and ended up hanging himself, slowly suffocating to death until the rope broke and he washed down to the lake.

And it occurs to Marvin that this would be a perfect way to get back at Triad.

After a misadventure with two girls in a bookstore who accuse him of trying to pick them up by pretending to be Mack Slate, Marvin buys a new car and a bunch of motorcycle-dropping gear at Sears, then takes the bike to Triad’s house to sell it to him. Marvin says that he left the helmet in a motel in the town across the river, and that the manager said he was going to throw it out if Triad didn’t pick it up tonight. Then he hikes to the car, which he’s had delivered around the block, and goes to stake out the bridge. While he’s waiting, he starts to think about the parallels between his own series and how Harry died. And we learn that the first Silver Lake book only came out after Harry’s death — in fact, that Marvin didn’t start writing it until then.

So this is my timing issue. Master of Murder does have some gaping inconsistencies, I’m not gonna lie. There’s the variable height of the bridge over the river: it’s 150 feet when Marvin and Shelly stop on their date, and maybe 60 when they have the final showdown two nights later. Also, later apparently Shelly knows details of a book that Marvin hasn’t even written yet? But this, in my mind, is the biggest problem. We’re supposed to believe that in a year, five books have come out about Ann McGaffer and her loves and hates. We’re also supposed to believe that he’s four months late with book six, and that it takes at least three months for the publisher to turn a story around and get it into bookstores. We also have the information that the fastest Marvin’s ever written a novel is eighteen days. So by that logic, there’s no way he could have finished and submitted Silver Lake Book One before mid-December. So five books have somehow appeared between probably March and let’s say November (they say the fifth one just came out) — five books in seven months — but they’re going to wait another three months to release the sixth? Also, how does an author, even an experienced and acclaimed one, sell a six-book series to his publisher without knowing the beats and especially the ending? There are too many inconsistencies and timeline impossibilities for me to buy it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Pike was a new author writing publication fanfiction.

But anyway, Triad races across to the other town. Marvin is too far away to see him, but he recognizes the sound of his motorcycle. He grabs his rope, his knife, his can of oil, and his binoculars, and hustles the probably mile to the bridge to set up his death trap. But as the motorcycle is coming back, he gets his first good look — and sees Shelly on the back. So he drops the rope, but Triad is already braking, stops short of it, and shoves Marvin off the bridge.

So now it’s Marvin hanging from his armpits by a rope under the bridge above a raging river that leads to the lake in his town, and did I mention he’s wearing Harry’s jacket? Shelly’s more annoyed than angry — it turns out she’s expected this from Marvin the whole time. In fact, she DOES know who Mack Slate is, and she’s already read about this scheme in the Silver Lake books. But Marvin doesn’t even remember writing it. She wants to turn Marvin in to the police. But Triad wants to untie the rope and drop him into the river.

And suddenly Marvin knows what actually happened. Harry wasn’t alone on the bridge a year ago. Triad was with him, and shoved Harry just as he shoved Marvin. Shelly doesn’t believe it until Triad knocks her out for trying to stop him killing Marvin too. Marvin manages to get hold of the underside of the bridge just as Triad unties the rope, then he kicks Triad in the face when he leans over to look and see whether Marvin has actually fallen. The semi-conscious wedged body of the football jock gives Marvin a ladder to climb back up onto the bridge, and he stomps out Triad’s bad knee when the dude wakes up and threatens to go after him again. Only the knife falls out of his pocket as he does so, and Shelly picks that moment to come to, and it’s a simple matter for Triad to grab both her and the knife and threaten her death if Marvin doesn’t help him get away.

What’s in it for Marvin, though? The guy who tried to kill him is holding the girl who tried to frame him for a death the guy is responsible for. He gets on his bike, where Triad has courteously left the keys in the ignition, and drives away. I don’t like that he’s left a vulnerable girl at the almost-complete mercy (he can’t stand up) of a confirmed killer. What I like least is that he doesn’t even call the police. But then again, he’s abandoned his new car in the woods near the scene and surely doesn’t want to be implicated if somebody dies. So Marvin drives to a seaside town, rents a house and a computer, and writes an entire book in five days, only stopping to eat and sleep. Of course, within a few pages of the end he has to stop, because he doesn’t actually know how Ann’s best friend, left in the clutches of the boyfriend’s jealous best friend, is going to escape, or whether in fact she does.

Marvin calls his editor and tells her the story is done and he’ll express-overnight it to her. He also asks her to set up a reading from it at his high school that afternoon. More BS? Like, how are they going to allow an author to read from a book that the editor hasn’t even SEEN, let alone put through proofs and galleys? Marvin has to physically print and ship the manuscript — remember, this is 1992 and most people don’t have email yet (and when it would become widespread in a few years, it still had a hyphen). But she does it, and Marvin goes home first to find out that Dad’s in jail and Mom hasn’t touched a drop since. More good news! He takes Ann with him to school, where the entire student body is in stunned disbelief about the identity of Mack Slate, and finally gets some personal acknowledgement from his peers and teachers.

But Shelly doesn’t show up. Neither does Triad. The kids he does ask say neither has been in school all week. Marvin can’t dwell on this, because he has a major book series to finish, but it’s precisely this reason that he hasn’t made it all the way to the end yet. He knows that he needs someone else’s story to finish his own. So he goes back to the lake, and makes his way to the top of the cliff that everyone thought Harry jumped from. As he’s thinking, Shelly shows up with his knife. She tells Marvin that she suspected him of being Mack Slate back when they were dating, and he would tell her stories that had the same voice as Slate’s published work. So she sneaked into Marvin’s room one day and snooped in his computer for proof.

When the Silver Lake books started coming out, she saw the parallels immediately, and figured the only way Marvin could have known so much about how Harry died is if he had killed him. She got Triad, Harry’s best friend, to help her set up a situation where Marvin would implicate himself, not realizing that Triad had always wanted Shelly and been jealous of both of the other guys and didn’t care who hurt if it meant nobody else could have Shelly. That includes Shelly herself: if Triad couldn’t be with her, nobody else would. He didn’t tell Harry that Marvin and Shelly were out together that night, and when Harry realized Shelly was on the back of the motorcycle he did like Marvin and dropped the rope. So Triad pushed him.

Triad obviously has told Shelly all of this, and Marvin figures the only way he would have is if Shelly somehow overpowered him. It’s an interesting twist that she told Triad about using Marvin to get him to figure out Harry’s death and Triad never realized she might use him for the same purpose. (I feel like Shelly has more strength than even the story gives her credit for, seeing as Pike describes all her agency as coming at the hands of her feminine wiles.) Marvin suspects that here, the spot where it all began, is the spot where it has all ended as well, and that the soft soil where he’s sitting is Triad’s final resting place. Shelly doesn’t say as much, but elicits Marvin’s silence before throwing the knife into the lake. But of course Marvin still has a book to finish, and Shelly’s OK with that as she’s apparently the only one who’s figured out the parallels anyway. The book closes with them in Marvin’s car, Shelly driving to Portland so they can get the manuscript on a flight to New York while Marvin writes the last few pages longhand.

I have to admit it: I still really like Master of Murder. Obviously I’m not in high school anymore, so I don’t relate to Marvin the way I used to, but I do connect to his being trapped in his own story and having to listen for others. The book has a lot of holes and inconsistencies in general that either I didn’t notice when I was a teenager or I glossed over in the excitement of having a character I could relate to so well. In particular, the YA publishing description is not without issues, and the ways the industry has changed after the Internet and Columbine and social networks and Trayvon Martin and #MeToo don’t jibe with the already-shoddy impression of how it works that Pike puts on display. The story is consigned to be a relic of its time. But for those of us who were there, who were trying to make our stories heard the way Marvin wanted to, it carries some warm nostalgia. Maybe I only like it so much now because I liked it then, but I’m OK with that.

[droo216]

Hey Drew, do you think you could go into detail and explain your feelings on the recent Harry Potter debacles (The Cursed Child and also what Pottermore has become)? Your opinions usually mirror mine but I'm having a hard time putting it all together. Cheers! Hope you're doing alright (I think you live in Florida?) watch out for that nasty, nasty weather.

Hey there! Let me see here. I’ll try to express my feelings, I’ll be eager to hear from you to see if you agree!

So basically the current expansion of J. K. Rowling’s wizarding world breaks down into three categories: Pottermore, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and the Fantastic Beasts series. I’ll take them one at a time.

Pottermore started out as this amazing addition to the Potter fandom. We were all so excited to be officially Sorted into our houses, learn what kind of wands we might receive, and delve deeper into the world of Harry Potter. Pottermore was excellent at the start when we were learning more about Jo’s writing process and fun facts. Why were Hufflepuff’s colors yellow and black, for example. Even the character biographies we got at the start were thoughtful and creative and felt like an extension of the universe that was already there. Pottermore has deteriorated as we’ve moved further and further away from what Jo already had written down and we’ve gone deeper and deeper into material invented for Pottermore. Ilvermorny is obviously the biggest example here. The American copy-and-paste version of Hogwarts is so clearly an afterthought developed for a quick name-drop in the Fantastic Beasts movie. It truly makes no sense as an actual American school for reasons that plenty of people smarter than me have expanded on – the trivialization of Native American culture, the absurdity that one school would suffice for the entire United States, the dismissal of the canonically established Salem Institute. The inclusion of “houses” is particularly frustrating for me. I’m sure we have private schools in the States that have houses but in general it’s an extremely British concept that doesn’t translate here. More importantly, the Hogwarts house system is so incredible. The house mascots and colors, the association with the four elements, and the values prescribed to each category all come together in a truly beautiful way. Our generation in particular has come to adopt the Hogwarts houses as core elements to our personality. It’s our way of discussing our values – the morality of ambition, the importance of loyalty, the discussion of mind versus heart or knowledge versus instinct. The Ilvermorny houses belittle the brilliance of the Hogwarts houses and it honestly infuriates me.

As a tangent to this, I think Jo also insults her own system by continuing to sort the “good guys” into Gryffindor and the “bad guys” into Slytherin. Celestina Warbeck would have been a great good-Slytherin but Jo says she’s a Gryffindor. Dolores Umbridge would have been a fascinating bad-Hufflepuff but Jo says she’s a Slytherin. Remember that meta about how Hagrid’s house is never identified in the books and how it makes way more sense for him to be a Slytherin than a Gryffindor? The houses have so much depth to them, Jo even talks about how Hufflepuff is her favorite house, but she treats them in such a superficial way.

My frustration with the Fantastic Beasts series is not dissimilar to my frustration with Pottermore. Mostly my feeling with Fantastic Beasts so far is a lot like my feelings for Pandora – The World of Avatar at Disney’s Animal Kingdom: it’s beautiful, it’s amazing, but who cares? I don’t care about Newt Scamander and I don’t care about Gellert Grindelwald, especially if we’re going to continue to avoid Albus Dumbledore’s sexuality in telling this story. I wouldn’t mind all of this extra history if I had the history I want. I want Marauders! I want Founders! We know more about the founding of Ilvermorny than the founding of the school we actually care about! If we already had the stories that we’re all deeply fascinated by, I think we’d be more invested in these additional stories. Instead, the Fantastic Beasts series feels like a distraction so that Jo doesn’t have to tell the Marauders and Founders stories. Plus, including the abuser Johnny Depp in the cast is disgusting and infuriating.

Now we come to the ultimate insult to the Potter fandom: Cursed Child. I almost don’t know where to begin with this one. It is unfathomable to me that Jo, who cares so much about her characters, signed off on this and said it can be considered canon. There is just so much wrong here. The characterization of our existing characters, particular the Golden Trio, is so off. Hermione is a shadow of her former self; Ron seems to be based on the film interpretation rather than the book; and while portraying Harry as a misguided father is certainly an interesting choice and could be argued as a plausibility given the fact that he grew up without James and with Vernon, it is certainly the sadder choice, especially considering the wonderful father figures he’s had in Lupin, Sirius, Hagrid, Arthur, and even Dumbledore. It seems like this character choice is only there to serve up drama with Albus.

Next up, perhaps the most absurd piece of the Cursed Child puzzle, is Delphini Diggory. She might as well be named Ebony Darkness Dementia Raven Way. Delphi is the worst part of the entire Harry Potter universe. Her very existence makes no sense - not only would Voldemort have absolutely no need or want for a child and no need or want to have sex with Bellatrix, it also doesn’t fit into the timeline as far as I know. On top of that, she is so illogical as a character, underdeveloped in every way and uncompelling as a villain.

The story itself is aggravating because it seems to be entirely manufactured as fan service while simultaneously letting the fans down. The time turner storyline is clearly all about allowing the play to show us scenes and characters from the original books, yet the scenes we go to are the Triwizard challenges where very little actually happens to advance the Potter story. It’s such an odd choice. And so much centers around the Diggory family, who we hardly know anything about and it’s not like we really learn any new information about them except that apparently if Cedric hadn’t died he would have become a Death Eater, which is so absolutely ridiculous. They clearly just wanted to show us some of the old characters and that’s where this story came from. Even in the present story we see how fan service affected the writing - Jo has said the McGonagall wouldn’t be headmistress by the time Albus got there, and yet here she is. I haven’t even touched on the concept of returning to the night James and Lily died and forcing Harry to watch this trauma or the various stupidities of the alternate timelines like Ron and Hermione’s loveless fates if they aren’t married to one another. 

Also, I have to mention that Jo establishes some very clear laws of magic that this story just decides do not apply. If we all just believe hard enough, we can make Harry look like Voldemort! I know there were other cases of this, but it’s been a while since I’ve read the play so I can’t quite remember them off the top of my head. I could say though that this is probably the aspect that makes the whole thing feel so much like fanfiction (along with Delphi). The Potter world has rules and Jo sticks to them very carefully. The play’s disregard for these rules is sloppy.

The final issue I have to discuss regarding Cursed Child is, obviously, the relationship between Scorpius and Albus. It's been discussed to death, I know, but any criticism of the play is incomplete without mentioning it. These two boys are great characters on their own. Albus living in his father's shadow is compelling. Scorpius in particular is a wonderful character. I also have to applaud the choice to sort these two protagonists into Slytherin, finally breaking the mold I talked about earlier. But the queer baiting in this play is blatant and painful. Honestly, it wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't forced Scorpius into asking out Rose at the end of the play. I get it, fourteen-year-olds don't always understand their sexuality, and maybe you could even say attaching Rose to Scorpius is part of that, but the play certainly doesn't imply it that way at all. It's particularly hurtful because Jo is amazingly progressive in her politics and actively talks about LGBT rights, feminism, Black Lives Matter, and so on, but she does not demonstrate all of these powerful values in her books, especially when it comes to LGBT characters. The only character she has identified as anything other than straight is Dumbledore, and even that is never mentioned in the literature, and if you know it's there it's still  only implied as a tragic barely-there subplot. The wizarding world struggles with diversity across the board. Jo's made steps. Casting black actresses as Hermione and Rose is absolutely incredible. We're starting to see characters of color appear in the Fantastic Beasts series, although way too slowly in my opinion. But despite all of her politics, Jo is dragging her feet when it comes to LGBT representation, and denying us even an implied future relationship between Albus and Scorpius is just... frustrating. I could go on and on about the details of their relationship throughout the play and how the writing clearly indicates feelings between them, but others who know the text more thoroughly have already been there and done that.

Basically it all boils down to this: Jo is giving us an overload of information that we either don’t want or don’t care about and denying us the stuff that we do. Maybe she should have quit while she was ahead. Goodness knows the Potter fans have enough creativity to fill in their own blanks. I can only hope that as Pottermore and the Fantastic Beasts series continue to grow, maybe she can do better. 

[aurimeanswind]

Pitchforks and Torches—Sunday Chats (8/13/17)

I got a lot of great feedback from last week’s Sunday Chats! Thank you to the over 30 people that participated! The most in any Sunday Chats ever! It was a ton of fun hearing all of your favorite JRPGs of all time and why, and I think I already have next month’s question picked out. I’ll be asking it the first Sunday in September, and I look forward to hearing what all of you pick!

Now, onto this week’s normal Sunday Chats, starting with a bit of a heavy topic, that I feel passionately about... Let’s go.

Nazis Are Bad

So this fucking happened.

Source

As I understand it, using my preferred source of the BBC, a bunch of alt-right folks decided to light torches and protest the removal of the last Confederate statue at the University of Virginia, which is maybe three hours south of me, so that’s a little disarming.

Oh and then I saw this picture:

Source

Can we talk about this? Like, can we take a minute, take a step back, and fucking talk about this?

So yes, the Alt-Right are basically Nazis, and that’s not cool, and their very very scary ideals and growlingly loud voice is unnerving. Them lighting torches (clearly bought at the local Home Depot) and marching through the streets of a college campus, an institute about educating our future, and protesting the removal of a Souther Confederate hero, and seceded nation established entirely on the basis of the fact that they wanted to continue owning people, as in human beings, and you wonder how you went to bed one night in a bad timeline and woke up the next morning in the worst timeline.

I don’t like talking about politics, in general. And I don’t like bringing that into the sometimes jolly Sunday Chats, but this is absurd. This is fictional, or at least it should be. This is how Stephen King’s next post-apocolyptic book starts, with Nazis, marching in the United States of America, a place founded and evolved upon on the idea of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but above that, freedom, and here we are.

I get it. First amendment. Sure. Whatever. But these are terrorists. And I know this isn’t any kind of new rhetoric to be used, new words to be chosen, but it’s true. These folks are protesting the removal of someone who didn’t care about one of this country’s most basic and important tentpoles: freedom. And if you believed in him, I just don’t think you believe in the same United States that the world did and still does.

But I’m not all pessimism. I think these privileged white supremacist assholes are not reflective of all of America. I think there are far more people in this country that remember learning about World War 2, remember knowing that Hitler, to which that salute was to, was a man who enabled the greatest genocide in human history. Who took freedom away from so many for nothing. For nothing by power. 

And I know there are more people out there that believe that then believe in this supremacist bullshit.

So don’t be quite about it. Tweet. Tell your friends. Tell them that hey:

Nazis were, and still are bad. They didn’t suddenly become kind of okay. No. They were bad. They are bad. That never changed. And we shouldn’t shudder in fear. Because hey: we grossly outnumber these people that think rights can disappear overnight. I believe that. I know everyone reading this does too. So don’t be quiet about it.

Okay, that’s enough serious talk. It needed to be said, and if you want a bit of an even more angry take on it, from someone in a better place to talk about discrimination than me, my friend Moises Taveras wrote a great write up on the matter. Read it: https://t.co/DzkIVtqMjg

What’s On Tap

Sundered

My adventures with Sundered continues, and boy is a great video game.

It’s gorgeous in its movement. I just got to the first boss, and I think the hand drawn artstyle really shines when you get to see it on such a massive scale at work.

Something that concerns me is the kind of pointless and ever-ambient increase of enemies in play. It feels like they show up more as a distraction to keep you busy from one chokepoint to the next, not that they’re adding substantial value to the dungeon crawling?

I don’t know if that’ll bring the experience down for me, but as I get more abilities, the game gets more and more fun.

Overwatch

STILL GOOD.

I GOT MY MERCY SKIN

TEARS

What I’ve Been Working On

So I’ve been writing a lot, and I think I have a couple of written articles that may be ready to go up. I started taking notes for my Sundered review, and I’m excited to dig into it.

I’ve got some ideas for video content but I’m still to nervous to start shooting. Watching the OKBeast dudes put out video essays every week now really has me feeling inadequate though. I gotta step my game up! We’ll see what I have as a one-man production team.

I finished up a pretty exciting piece on Overwatch that should go up tomorrow or the day after though, so there is something coming out finally that I can't wait for you all to read!

Questions

As always, you can hunt down my tweet with the hashtag #SundayChats in it on Sunday afternoons over at Twitter.com/ALFighter27 and get your question in the Sunday Chats party!

I may have made a joke while playing Overwatch with Nato here about Widowmaker standing on my neck with 10″ heels and might have referred to the sensation as “the hardest you’ve ever been in your entire life”... so... uh...

10 is a good max I think.

And I’m sorry you all know I made that joke now.

Roger, have you ever thought about maybe asking me a genuine, fun, funny question? Like... I dunno. I feel like you know me so well you could ask me like, good questions.

I mean, in a perfect world, hell yes. I think there is plenty of room to do so, and honestly I think Marvel would be pretty into the idea considering they are out there getting trusted AAA developers to work with their properties. I especially think if NetherRealm pitched them on it they’d be interesting. I think DC is the bigger issue.

The fact of the matter is the two big companies should and need to be more careful with their licenses. I think with them getting more into the movie space and superheroes becoming more and more of a household name, they need to make sure they associate them with things to further and built that brand. I think this would help, but I could see a room full of executives for some reasons think it wouldn’t work.

But either way NetherRealm would be the ones to make the game. I’d love to see them just make a Marvel game in the style of Injustice just in general. Imagine what Spider-Man’s move set would be!! Oh man.

Aww I miss you too Xyger!

I’d love to see Doomfist get like, a good Wolfman skin, that’d be super rad, to see him with like big claws or something. Since his attacks are melee focused that’d be cool. 

Maybe see McCree get a Van Helsing skin. I mean come on, that one is a total given!

Yeah that second one is a way more plausible idea.

I really liked Fantastic Beasts! I was worried it’d be bad, but it is far more in the spirit of the books, I feel.

I mean, I’ve always liked Nifflers, which you get to see in the movie too! But for real though it’s all about the Dragons. Dragons are the coolest. I always really like the idea of the Chinese Fireball too, an actual snake-like Chinese dragon. Goddamn.

I don’t think I am getting any of those specifically, since I am still playing make up with Nier Automata, and I just bought Hellblade. I want to play Tacoma sometime this week too.

Though I’m not going to lie, Sonic Mania has me interested with that phenomenal opening. I am really excited for more folks to get into Undertale too, but I just am trying to focus on the things I have yet to get to this year. I need to play Splatoon 2 still!

I mean of the originals I don’t know if I can remember a favorite. I remember I always loved Tails, so it was probably Sonic and Tails.

Of the newer or 3D ones, yeah, I like Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. It is a BAD VIDEO GAME, but I ENJOY IT A LOT. And I understand and recognize that. But I hear Sonic Colors is rad!

I’m not a huge Sonic guy. Maybe Sonic Mania will be the one to get me!

My day is going great! I have the day off, and after not feeling super great yesterday, I slept in, then went grocery shopping, cleaned the kitchen, and made some sweets! It was a ton of fun! It’s nice to have money again!

As for next project from IP, I don’t know. A lot of the things I am working on would be more solo projects, but I’m excited for Extra Life and the madness that that will be. Case Study is still coming at some point, and we are coming up on the one year anniversary of the beginning of Alex Talks S3. Maybe I’ve got SOMETHING planned.

Ohh man this is such a good question. I have a ton of answers, I’ve been thinking about this since I saw this tweet.

One of them is for sure the treasury building in Libertalia from Uncharted 4.

Another would probably be the Museum from the opening of Sly 2, just because I love it.

And the third and final is of course, OF COURSE, Hyrule Castle. Probably from either Twilight Princess or, more likely, Breath of the Wild.

Yes.

Yes they have.

Which ya know, is definitely a compliment. She is a very pretty woman! Both the fictional character and also the porn star!

I mean, it’s weird for me because I liked 2008 more than I liked 2007 for video games, because of Fallout 3 and Super Paper Mario specifically. Gears of War 2 also came out that year, which was the game that got me to buy and Xbox 360!

So that being said, yeah 2017 is fucking straight fire, and there is no denying 97 was one of the most baller years for games. So there is something too this theory. Maybe Kingdom Hearts 4 will come out in 2027 and solidify this fact.

That’s right. I said Kingdom Hearts 4. I’m already getting greedy and thinking ahead to the future.

I would join absolutely none of them, but I am a Dany fanboy. Fuck the haters. Dany is the best queen. I do also love Jon Snow, and would probably pretend to fight for him too.

OMG OMG OMG!

THIS IS AMAZING

HOLY SHIT FRANK!

I love this more than I can even begin to describe to you. Holy fuck.

Man I never thought of a Persona tattoo, but now I kind of want one. I’d have to think of a better one though.

Cheers dude, this is amazing.

No checklist this week! I’m sorry all! I have been bad and haven’t been reading/watching as much as I should!

That’s all I’ve got. My roommates are grilling up stairs and it’s time to get together and watch some Game of Thrones I think, so get excited!

Thanks for reading. Take what I said to heart please? Nazis are bad. Don’t stand for discrimination, the theft of our freedom, actual and metaphorical, and don’t be a fucking racist prick.

Love you all.

Keep it real.

[davidmann95]

Justice League: Darkseid War: Green Lantern analysis

So I posted recently on how I was writing a big comics paper for school, and one or two people expressed their interest in reading it, so I figured I’d post it on here. It’s edited: the original paper was a comparison between this as a positive example of a single-issue story and another comic as a negative example, and for the sake of politeness I removed all references to that; this is just the chunk of the paper analyzing Tom King, Doc Shaner, Chris Sotomayor, and Tom Napolitano’s Justice League: Darkseid War: Green Lantern. Since I wrote this for school, it’s much drier and more formal than my usual writing here, and I’m writing on the assumption that the reader of the essay has essentially never read a comic before, i.e. is it successful at basic storytelling principles to carry the uninitiated, can you tell what’s going on if you’ve never seen or read a Green Lantern story in your life, etc. And for the sake of occasionally breaking up the text now that this isn’t in an academic context, I put in a couple splash pages from the story itself.

Spoilers under the cut; the assumption with this is that you’ve already read it.

“Will You Be My God?” opens with a simple non-diegetic caption box explaining the essentials of the situation for new readers, and given their presence in multiple cartoons across multiple generations, as well as an upcoming feature film, it’s difficult to believe a prospective reader of a Green Lantern title wouldn’t have an idea of who the Justice League and Darkseid were. Even without the box however – whether a reader sees it as a courtesy or a crutch – the setting, situation and stakes are established clearly within the first three pages, even for the most disengaged of readers. It is made organically clear, through both contextually-justified exposition and easily decipherable offhand references, that:

A. The Green Lantern Corps is likely a space military of some sort, given their army-esque creed of “We live as Lanterns! We die as Lanterns!” They explicitly utilize their will to achieve their power – presumably via their rings, since John speaks into his – and most likely their Central Power Battery (which we know is tied into them, as it also will-powered) marks this “Oa” as their base of operations.

B. Their enemies are clearly on the side of evil, as they are servants of a deceased being known as “Darkseid”, whose name is a clear tip-off if his noted status as a slaveholder did not make it clear enough, marking the Green Lantern Corps as our assumed ‘good guys’ given they oppose them (their refusal of greater power when offered also speaks to a humility indicating beneficence). The item we will later know as the Mother Box seeks for one of them to become a replacement god, informing the reader as to Darkseid’s status, and therefore the scale of the conflict. Their method of attack in turning Lanterns into Parademons is made clear both in-text and visually; we first see a Lantern brutalized, then many, then one is grabbed, another is strung up, and finally one is shown with the process complete.

C. The recurring figure is assuredly Hal – he is presented as the lead of the story by John Stewart’s text, and the figure clearly flying with purpose in space is almost certainly him, as he is the only figure to appear in more than two panels. The growing and fading light he presents actually serves triple-duty, both transitioning into Page 4 via the color of the candle (a recurring trick throughout the story), and setting up the recurring zoom-in/zoom-out motif of the book in line with its shift back and forth between the macro and micro scale.

D. The stakes are immediately established. The question is not whether this “Hal” can simply overcome the threat on his own: countless like him have already been defeated, and lest we assume he is so much more powerful than them that he may be able to mount a counterattack, John – who addresses Hal familiarly by his first name, and therefore we can assume is at least close enough to him to have a basic grasp of his capabilities – assures this is impossible. The question is simply whether or not Hal will accept becoming a god, and what the consequences will be one way or the other.

Upon entering page 4, the recursive structure of the piece is established – given the similar hair and name, we can safely assume the young Hal Jordan here is the Hal who becomes a Green Lantern later on. And by the end of page 5, we have a clear theme unifying the two established narratives, in spite of their separation by decades, galactic gulfs of space, and the relative scales of a war of cosmic superbeings over the mantle of godhood vs. a child in church grappling with the death of his father: what it means to be god. The craft of King’s dialogue is also worth noting compared to *NEGATIVE REFERENCE COMIC*; along with what (subjectively) comes across as a far more natural cadence and rhythm to the characters’ speech patterns, ideas and thoughts continue across multiple panels to draw readers along, the breaks to a different subject generally being along vertical tiers of panels or at moments of emotion where a pregnant pause seems implicit.

With page 6 (keeping the sense of color transitions between time periods – the sickly green and faint orange of Martin Jordan’s airplane crash fade to a yellow background as the vibrantly green Hal Jordan of the present gets smacked around), we get a fairly complete reckoning of Hal Jordan’s basic attitude, justified by his clear idolization of his bold pilot father in the flashback (switching his opinion to match his father’s, going wide-eyed at the chance to mention his reputation). He’s a scrapper going by the smirk on his face as he recovers from a blow, reinforced further by his simple construct and blunt acceptance of the odds. Without having to be told by captions or preexisting knowledge that a Green Lantern ring requires that one be fearless to wield it, the reader can pick up on that as the base mode of his character. The reader can also determine:

A. The functions of the ring: it creates glowing green constructs (which can reasonably be determined to be generated by his imagination, both by the previous mention of will, and his generation of a simple fist – if the ring operated by a predetermined set of possible actions, one of them would not likely be the formation of a human fist, as we have already seen many alien species are a part of this Corps), and has some degree of intelligence. It also makes clear that each Lantern has a specific ‘sector’, underlining their parallel to law-enforcement agencies.

B. Hal is friendly with other members of the Corps, given he recognizes the first one out of thousands he runs into by name. This also further establishes his confidence, as he doesn’t blink in the face of a mind-controlled ally; we’ve already seen he has empathy, given his mourning for his father, so he must assume there’s a way to get the situation back under control.

Pages 7 and 8 are as much blunt exposition as the story receives, though in the justified context of Hal receiving information he was not previously aware of, and thinking through the consequences– to keep things interesting, he fights an entire battle without turning his back to face his opponent, another solid character moment, graduating from confidence to a degree of cockiness in both his approach and his playfully creative constructs that will be important later and colors his previous attitude as perhaps overconfidence – keying both new and returning readers as to how these disparate, cosmically abstracted sci-fi concepts logically tie together in the context of sharing an expanded universe, casually justifying the existence of the book. We also learn in passing how he became a Green Lantern – he got the ring from someone else crashing and likely dying, a minor parallel to his father.

Back to the church with pages 9 and 10 (one of the only two timeline transitions without a color-based transition behind it, though it is an intentionally jarring scene for young Hal Jordan, and a sense of continuity is maintained with the mention of a god switching to the image of a cross), the emotional as well as thematic stakes are established: Hal Jordan’s reckoning with godhood is not simply a passive theological question, but one rooted deep at a vein of despair stemming from childhood, and whether or not a god can care about his father in the way he cares. Also note that at almost no point is his father’s friend centered in the page, and the few points in which he takes a prominent position – on the left side of a right-side panel here, making him the first thing the reader sees, and on the last panel of page 4 – chunks of his face are visible. For a casual first-time reader moving through the comic quickly, it is conceivable that one could miss noting that you never get a fully unobstructed view of him, as young Hal dominates the scene both visually and textually.

Page 11 is another jarring switch over without a plain color transition, fittingly for a sudden fight scene. It’s here things become serious, as Hal ceases to utilize his more whimsical constructs to fend off his opponents. The text and art tell the same story simply – as the ring counts down Hal’s targets, far too slow to leave any possibility that he could get through those numbers in the space of a 22-page comic, the art ups the number of opponents and thereby the stakes with each panel until he blows them all away in the second-to-the-last, and the increased zooming in with each panel makes clear that this is no reprieve: it gets closer and closer to his agonizing, visceral physical experience of the brawl as it goes along, with the final panel’s depiction of his damaged visage making his lack of hope as clear as the ring’s message.

Worth noting at this point amidst the discussion of text, pencil art and color is Tom Napolitano’s fine letterwork here – again clarifying for the benefit of the readers, aside from the differing bubble designs for the Ring’s text and the Mother Box’s, the text itself differs in ways that help keep things straight. The normal human speech has a touch of curve and character to it; the ring’s text is of the same style since it is an ally, but smoother and sleeker benefiting its artificial nature. The Mother Box’s speech is solid and mechanical, while the PING – which we know to be related as it comes from the monsters the Box has brought with it – is massive and uneven and almost jagged by comparison, setting up a contrast between the calm sterile speech of the box and wild, untamed power it promises.

Page 12 is a simple action shot, but along with another character moment for Jordan, essentially spitting in the face of death, artist Doc Shaner shines here with a none-too-flashy (that comes later) but very effective full-page splash. The vertical alignment highlights Jordan’s upward motion, as do the smoke contrails beneath him curving lightly upwards to match his arc. The Parademons enclose him on all sides and clearly extend beyond the edges of the page, with the one at the bottom being a silhouette ending the frame of impending doom with darkness; at the same time, they form a secondary circle around Hal around with the dust cloud, drawing the reader’s eye towards him as the center of the image.

Page 13 is colorist Chris Sotomayor’s most evocative in my opinion – the green, highlighted by both Hal and the Parademons, starting to be eclipsed by the warm orange of the flames for the second panel as the odds visibly stack further against Hal, heating up to solid orange enveloped by black for the third as the violence reaches a fever pitch, only to be swallowed by darkness.

Page 14 picks up from the last visible image with its warm oranges and browns, and across it and 15 the thesis of the comic becomes clear – even if the next pages will manipulate our understanding of that thesis. That thesis of free will being the difference between god and his creation, as well as a solid theological proposition to anchor a text around in its own right, ties together the three principal strands of the story: the child wondering how to move forward after the death of his father, the significance of being a Green Lantern powered by will as established with John’s final testimony, and the questions of godhood’s nature inflicted on Hal by the effective (but importantly, impartial and ultimately truly heartless) villain of the piece in the Mother Box; that will is what gives Hal the power to move on and become a Green Lantern, and what he believes will give him the power to reach godhood on his own terms.

Page 16 – transitioned into potently by both the fire becoming the Mother Box, and the note of a light searching for something – works to in fact trick the reader into drawing a false conclusion, just as Hal does. His choice here to wrangle the power of a god to his own bidding his borne of everything we’ve seen thus far, in the power of his force of will, his idolization and emulation of his father, and what makes him different from the other Lanterns…as in, why the reader is following him rather than any of the others. That, and the final triumphant note of will conquering the stars, allows it to play out narratively as a seemingly proper thematic resolution to what has come thus far, even as his previously-demonstrated cockiness on display with his acknowledged lack of caution hints that the true resolution is something more complicated, if the final panel of the previous page with a green ring on display wasn’t enough of a tip-off.

Page 17 contains the one notable blip in regards to “Will You Be My God?”’s status as a stand-alone story with the brief appearance of Batman, acknowledging from his own newly-obtained position of godhood the events of the larger story. While a new reader may be able to glean from the original opening caption the nature of Batman’s situation, they’re not likely to be aware of the often-adversarial relationship between the two coloring Batman’s approval (though his endorsement literally darkening the page helps), and in any case reads from its lack of setup as a forced interjection: for all the work King and company put in to make this a totally functional standalone Green Lantern story, it is still an event tie-in comic, and certain elements were surely required for them to observe. Regardless, the zoom-in/zoom-out technique reaches its pinnacle, leaving Hal a minuscule figure as he wipes out the totality of darkness with his light, until he himself vanishes before the Mother Ring.

The shining artistic moment of the book splashes into page 18, a fractured dreamscape portrait of the life and times of Hal Jordan. With the exception of Sinestro – who perhaps merits a bit of leeway as Green Lantern’s archnemesis of over 55 years – each image is justified in the context of the story up to this point. The plane crash has already been seen; the group of Lanterns includes members we’ve seen before. Notably, each of these takes place through his eyes, making the image of young Hal another tip-off as to what’s really going on. In that light, the bottom image of Abin Sur has a chance of registering even to new readers as Hal’s superhero origin story; we already know he gained his ring from a dying alien after it crashed, and here a clearly severely damaged alien is handing it to him.

Page 19 resolves the material conflict, now irrelevant in the face of his power – as noted before, the first 3 pages established the true question of being his acceptance of godhood, not the Parademons. And while fans may pick up on the final panel as homaging a dark previous Green Lantern story involving a very different time Hal grabbed at godhood, even for a reader coming in blind his slightly lopsided, zoned-out grin, stuttered speech and vague proclamation that “I can make everything right” would be evidence enough that he’s on the precipice of something dangerous, particularly with the cockiness that got him the position in mind.

At last at the true heart of things, pages 20 and 21 flip the script on the nature of the story as he travels back, with even readers surmising that it was a future Hal Jordan surely not guessing there was a third in attendance. With 20, the art is worth noting in how it draws the reader’s eye across the page: while Hal as the God of Light moves in a zig-zag pattern down the page, all panel borders vanishing as time becomes fluid, both sets of candles mirror his movements, tracking the eye in either case towards the central candle of the bottom panel, the middle point between the two Jordans, reinforcing their equal importance at this point. And at last, the story reaches its conclusion, as Hal realizes that no amount of will can allow him to conquer any version of godhood, because godhood is mutually incompatible with the bedrock of his identity. Without free will he has no more choice, no more chance to change things on his own terms as a part of the world, no more sky…and that in the end is more than he can bear. And the story concludes with a restatement of first principles for page 22, a final character moment, and a true understanding of what his father did, and what his will permits. Even the reference to the larger story with Batman works as well as it can with his daredevil smirk back in place, ready to cut the sky open.

In every category laid out by which one could semi-objectively measure the success of a standalone comic, “Will You Be My God?” excels. A scrupulously accessible, artfully told self-contained piece with text and visuals working to support one another, it folds satisfying cosmic adventure into a character arc that, while spanning multiple eras and ultimately beyond human conceptions of identity, remains entirely understandable and rooted in the basic established principles of the lead’s character and universe. While very visibly a fragment of a larger story beyond the reach of this creative team, the ideas and concepts introduced here come to a logical conclusion even with the promise of further adventures to come.

[candlewisps]

Will you write anything related to Bloodline? In the Metas, I mean. Because while I think that Kylo's fight with the dark voice in his head (aka Snoke) has apparently been longer than initially expected, I think the fact that he learnt about his connection to DV rather violently if Leia's ominous reaction tells us smtg, with learning that his family had been keeping smtg that important from him... Must have been hard. Any thoughts? (I love your meta)

Sooo many thoughts @luciemiddleford, but I’m almost positive my response isn’tgoing to answer your question in any kind of satisfactory manner whatsoever.

My reaction to Bloodline, while mostly positive, is a bit ofmixed bag, and that’s due entirely to inconsistencies about The Family™ betweenthis book and the information we were given in TFA. Aaaaand how Bloodlinemesses with the timeline we more-or-less had previously established (more onthis later) and how this new set just feels wrongto me. In order for me to get across just how I feel in regards to him findingout about Vader in this manner, its necessary for me to discuss why I don’tfeel confident whatsoever about what little info we did get about the Organa-Solo Family Dynamic. Like, at all. I don’ttrust relying on the glimpses we got in Bloodline, including Ben finding outabout Vader in such a jarring manner.

I haven’t gone through the tags on here so idk if otherpeople have broken down some of the inconsistencies and issues with continuitythat Bloodline through into the mix, or if anyone has noticed them at all. Justto start off: I loved the novel. Fucking loved it. One of the best Star Warsnovels ever, in my opinion. I’m a sucker for politics/undercover/conspiracystories, so this was right up my ally. Basically everything related to Leia,the New Republic, the First Order already working within the Senate, anythingthat set up the political outlook for TFA had me overjoyed and I found itincredibly well-grounded in that regard.

It was just those few throwaway lines (I read the wholething twice and I think there are only like six or seven references) about Ben+ Luke that threw everything off. I was expecting this book to give us piecesof the puzzle to put together about HOW exactly everything went down, or atleast glimpses into how the Organa-Solo family life was pre-academy training.Instead it just made me scratch my head and question the canon-ocity of ClaudiaGray’s work. And there’s honestly good reason to question it??? Gray clearlystated that she had not seen/read the script for TFA prior to writing the book,she was clearly Surprised when she saw TFA and it didn’t outright contradictwhat she wrote in regards to the Fam, and beyond that any information shewould’ve been given about The Family™ in order to make Leia’s relationship tothem seem believable would’ve been pretty cut-and-dry (as in: they have a kid,here’s his name, he and Luke are busy doing ~something~). Rereading it justseems like they told her to name drop Ben and Luke a couple times just to makeit clear that she keeps them in her thoughts. They didn’t give her anymore towork with because obviously they’re saving that stuff for TLJ and didn’t wantto spoil it. When Gray was going through the details with Pablo Hidalgo andRian Johnson on what to center the novel around, the only information shereceived for how to make this a setup for TFA was concentrated solely aroundThe New Republic government, the Vader Scandal, hints of the First Order, andthe forming of the Resistance. Just another reason I don’t feel confident withany of the information that isn’t strictly political in nature. The familyaspect just feels like a fill-in-the-blank game (minus what we got with Han,that was all very believable).

Two of the prime problems I have, inconsistency/generalproblem-wise, are in regard to Ben’s age and in how he found out about Dear OldGranddad.

For starters, it was established pre-Bloodline that Ben leftfor training when he was 10 (still canon). It was also the prevailing andaccepted idea pre-Bloodline that Ben fell to Snoke and did-whatever-deed-he-didat the Jedi Academy when he was 15 (I believe I even saw a source at one pointthat confirmed everything went down at 15 but idk where it would be hiding,someone link me if you find one). Makes sense. HOWEVER. According to Gray’sbook, Ben is still with Luke at the age of 23 and hasn’t gone all Dark Sideyet. Here’s the inconsistency: according to the TFA script, when Kylo takes offhis helmet, “Han is JOLTED, seeing the face of his son for the first time as aman”. So Han hasn’t seen his kid since early adolescence, probably. That iscanon. Unfortunate and heartbreaking, but canon nonetheless. I imagine, butcan’t firmly say, it’s been the same amount of time for when Leia last saw Benas well.

This Bloodline continuity hogwash actually creates a majorproblem for Han and Leia’s characters. If we go pre-Bloodline assumption thathe turned at 15, then it means that, at most, Han/Leia went 5 years withoutseeing their son, in person or holo-vid (that assumption is pushing it btw, theystill could have visited him in early teens). We don’t know how busy they were,don’t know where Luke’s Academy was, don’t know if there were any rulesattempting to limit disturbances in the kids’ training. The only thing we canglean is that the Academy, wherever it was, was fairly isolated and hard toreach. So 5 years (again, pushing it) sucks, but is understandable under the rightconditions. BUT. If we adhere to Gray’s timeline, then it means that they went13 years without seeing their kid. It goes from sucky-but-understandable tofucked up in a big way. It is canonically established that Han hasn’t seen hisboy since he was an adolescent, but 23 is an adult. If Han hadn’t seen his kidin that many years, and was able to with him presumably just chilling with Lukeand not off doing dark deeds, then it makes Han and Leia look bad for notputting in any effort to see Ben (or Luke for that matter #rude). It reflectsbadly on Leia and Han. It was already canonically established that Han and Leiaweren’t there enough to guide him—this makes the setup for his upbringingunfortunate, heartbreaking, sorta-kinda understandable. But going 13 yearswithout seeing your kid when you have the means is not understandable andmakes one a shitty parent. This is why I don’t like it one bit. At the previouslyaccepted 15-year age mark, everything flowed together naturally and made sense.At the “new” 23-year age mark it just makes everyone seem like an asshole. It’sjust pushes things a little too far to be believable imo.

In addition to this, Leia states, “I never should’ve senthim away. That’s when I lost him”. This strongly implies that what happenedwith Ben happened relatively quickly (and that there was probably minimalcontact), as in FIVE years, not THIRTEEN. Thirteen years is a long time to sitback, think, and pinpoint exactly when you lost your son without actively doinganything about it. Which is not in Leia’s character. And Han says, “There wasnothing we could’ve done”, which also implies to me a relatively SHORT periodof time between when they actually had personal contact with him and when Bensplit for the Baddies™. Someone who has had repeated personal contact, evenfavorable/positive with their child (messages or otherwise) over a period ofthirteen years after training began would not be making such absolutiststatements. Again, five years makes a certain amount of sense, thirteen has mewtf-ing. Also??? Both Leia and Han’s statements sound like ones to familiar topeople who have had years upon years to come to term with things (as in, 15years ago, not a measly 6).

Onto my other major problem: how Ben found out about Vader.I have a really, reallllllllyyyyyy hard time imagining that Ben found out abouthim out of the blue. I can see where Gray is coming from, but actually thinkingabout it in terms of how Kylo is portrayed in TFA makes no sense with theBloodline timeline. Just for starters: as a descendant of the Chosen One, Benis ridiculously Force sensitive?? So despite the fact that Leia and Han keptthe Grandpa Bomb from him (I imagine Luke would’ve wanted to tell him the truthbut had to adhere to Ben’s actual parents), I don’t see how he would’ve gonehis entire upbringing not picking up on, at the very least, that they werekeeping something huge from. When Han says that there was too much Vader inhim, it implies there were many signs from him as a kid that made his parentsuncomfortable/nervous. For a Force-sensitive who can sense emotions and readthoughts, he would’ve at least picked up on that kind of ~vibe~ they sometimesgot around him and been curious about it. I even have a hard time believingthat, after a while, he might not have “pried” a little bit by trying to readthe thoughts of his “weaker” parent (Han) without detection. He wouldn’t havemeant anything inherently malicious about it, just a curiosity/desire foranswers for why some things made his parents ~share a look~ if you get mydrift. Kids pick up on things. Not to mention he might’ve picked up a vibe fromLuke himself. While I don’t doubt that Luke would’ve agreed to let Leia/Hanreveal things on their own terms, I still think it would’ve been difficult forhim to maintain the façade of “Vader was the enemy and I hate him to this day,glad I killed the bloke”. Ben would’ve been raised on stories of his family’saccomplishments, especially of Luke’s vanquishing of two Sith Lords, so I thinkhe would notice when they either tried to avoid discussing such things or thatmaybe his uncles retelling just didn’t feel right.

The other problem with the “he found out about Vader out ofthe blue” is the fact that that doesn’t organically coincide with hisdedication to Vaders cause that we see in TFA. For Ben to have gone 23 yearsclueless ala Bloodline, his unnerving conviction to finish what Vader startedfeels out of place. Six years is a little short to go from clueless to the “Iwill do everything in my power to finish what you started” idolization we havegoing on. FIFTEEN years on the other hand…well, you get my point. There’s alsothe issue of Snoke. Snoke was in this kids head from the beginning, so I can’timagine that he wouldn’t have used Vader’s identity as an additional tool toget Ben to mistrust his family as early as was feasible/useful. I already madethis whole post about how Vader’s identity/”ghost” was one of the integraltools Snoke was using to secure Ben’s loyalty, so there’s that as well.

While Bloodline is “technically” canon, it is still dubiouscanon at best, prone to changes and mistakes. There are only three “officialofficial” sources of canon (more or less indisputable), and those are the films,the scripts, and the official novelizations of said films. Any othernovels/comics/etc that doesn’t accompany one of the actual movies is canon only until/unless details within it areproven false or clash with Official Canon. And there’s enough weird informationin Bloodline regarding everyone’s favorite Family™, combined with the fact thatGray never even saw the script for TFA, that has me questioning just howin-universe I can take it.

It’s not that I have a problem reorienting myself intobelieving that he made his dark turn as an adult (I do actually), it is just afar less organic and natural string of events compared to him turning at 15. Samewith how he found out about Vader. Bloodline-timeline requires a suspension ofdisbelief. And it affects the narratives of other people around him as well, ina mostly negative way.

Maybe it’s just me that this really bothers. But theinformation Claudia Gray gave us (again, dubious canon at best) just fills liketrying to fit a square peg in a round hole and it throws me off thinking aboutit. I’m just gonna wait for TLJ to confirm/deny anything regarding the Family.

[robotlesbianjavert]

*invasive asks, don't have to answer if you don't want* I keep wondering what is the appeal of slasher movies (nothing wrong with them, just not my thing)? I never read The Cursed Child, what's that about and what do you like about it?

these are good questions don’t worry xoxo

a) i can’t actually explain my penchant for slasher movies in a tumblr-wise moral manner, bc obviously slasher is a genre that tends to be filled with shit like fetishization and a demonization of mental illness and whatever else i can’t list it all right now it’s just a very flawed genre.  so i can’t really discuss it on that kind of intellectually moral level - they are very much a guilty pleasure that i feel i’m permitted.

the thing is that they are such a cheesy b-movie genre that it’s hard to be feel supremely guilty about it?  obviously they’ve gained some mainstream focus that necessitates serious discussion about various harmful shit going on, and i could go more into it if prompted and if i consider myself capable, but they are also SO DUMB.  not dumb some are smart-ish but you always know what to expect from them, you can always expect some dumb caricatures to get slaughtered, expect some final girl expy to limp their way to survival, you can expect the build up, and if there’s a surprise then that’s just an extra treat.  i guess it’s kind of cathartic, being able to exorcise some of my more serious anxieties through them, even when they get positively decadent in the blood and gore and sadism

i guess that while i also like horror as a general genre and am super happy to discuss horror films that take themselves more seriously (ie babadook, get out, that kind of stuff i sincerely believe that horror has great potential for commentary that often gets overlooked or underdeveloped), it’s a bit easier to latch onto singular slasher villains fandom-wise (your michael’s and jason’s and i guess the freddy’s altho freddy can go choke) than it is for more concept-based horrors, bc you don’t NECESSARILY have to take them seriously and you can just have some fun with them (altho they do have their place in a serious discussion, like how michael and jason are horrors that stalk otherwise safe environments, or how freddy is literally thematically about violation)

it’s hard to really explain in a justifiable way rather than a guilty-pleasure way, and i can’t really argue that i’m somehow a morally superior person for liking them and i don’t want to bc that’s dumb and exhausting.  they just tend to be fun i guess.

b) okay so what cursed child is about is essentially the relationship between harry and his son, albus severus, and how they are both essentially similar in ways that, coupled with harry’s complicated legacy and upbringing, drive them apart and eventually bring them back together, particularly in their opinions on hogwarts - this results in albus jr attempting to one-up his father via what albus understands as his first failure (cedric’s death) through time travel.  things escalate from there.

honestly i think that cursed child is a really important continuation of the themes and lessons from the main harry potter series in a more grown-up sense, and i really hate how it’s been spoiled on this site by a bunch of dumb spoilers that never fit well out of context.

like part of the problem i think is that a lot of ppl online tend to a) overidealize harry as some sassy angel child and b) try to freeze him at 11-17 years old rather than consider how his adolescent experiences might map onto who is is as an adult father.  so when he says “sometimes i wish you weren’t my son”, they decide to ignore the context leading up to that moment (albus essentially needling and baiting harry and accidentally touching upon triggers relating to his past abuse, and the two of them essentially having two different conversations) and then everything afterwards (harry’s horror and guilt over speaking in a moment of anger and spite, as he was prone to in the main series, and his desperation to protect and apologize to albus in a time where he’s triggered for a sustained period of time and afraid that his greatest enemy is somehow returning), and decide to declare that jkr must not know her own characters if she dares to write harry as a “bad dad”.  as much as ppl like to try and discuss how terrible it was for harry to suffer abuse at the dursley’s, they sure seem to want to underestimate how it affects him in the long run.  and by fuck does cursed child dig into what harry went through with the dursley’s, particularly petunia!  he’s having nightmares about her and this gets discussed and ppl still like to act like this play misrepresents how he suffered!  it’s so fucking stupid!

i guess i also can’t really lie - i initially bought into all the bad hype surrounding the play when spoilers were released, tho i hope in a more muted way than a lot of ppl i followed, and i only really got interested when i read a particularly moving think-piece about snape, and then i knew i had to have it bc i cannot stress enough how snape was One Of Those Characters that i latched onto in my childhood, and how it felt good to be a bit vindicated in the face of how this website trashes him.  also i cried a lot w snape bc it’s such good closure for his character, it helps you understand how his character potentially developed in the light of the main series, and also i got a better understanding of dumbledore too like you got the impression after the kings cross chapter in dh but when he admitted his insecurities re: how he only hurts the ppl he loves in cc?  it literally like blew his character wide open for me, it really helped me piece together a lot of the things i was unsure about with him.  so i also think it provides a lot of retroactive understanding and clarification of the characters that some ppl like to deliberately misinterpret for notes 

also ppl’s complaints about the time-travel plots are fucking stupid to be perfectly honest, esp in comparison to POA.  first off, poa did hint that it’s possible to change the timeline, cc established that we are working with very different time-travel tools than in poa, and thirdly in poa time-travel was a plot device and in cc it’s a thematic device so who even gives a fuck honestly.

basically: i think the play is a vital and important continuation and conclusion of the original series and its thematic elements, and if ppl don’t like then what the fuck ever but at least they can try to dislike it on legitimate grounds rather than things they heard secondhand or deliberately misinterpreted/decided didn’t fit with their headcanon

i can actually talk like.  a lot about this play bc there was a lot of what i liked and what i think tumblr should like if everyone could carefully remove their heads from their asses.  there are a few things i think could have been improved (while i don’t think it was necessarily baiting, i do believe scorpius/albus was a sorely missed opportunity), the play is more positive than it negative and i would kill to see it onstage.  i guess if ppl don’t like reading script it’s fine but honestly i loved the script, but i’m also fairly used to reading script so idk

also it justified my belief that hermione would be an awful teacher and i feel vindicated even tho i have not seen anyone talk about it tbh

also it made my mother cry (in a good way) and she loved it and that’s literally all the assurance anyone should need. my mom’s a good person and everyone should trust her.

[simmonstrinity]

How Long Does It Take To Become A Reiki Practitioner Stupendous Diy Ideas

These are already doing so - then there are many changes made according to each and every living thing can be channeled, for healing themselves and others.- Your existing energy pathways are formed first in the current session before beginning a healing method which channels universal life force.There goal is to purchase a comprehensive lineage chart, timeline, extensive glossary and general imbalance would definitely affect my chances of getting pregnant.I know the truth and is real, then Reiki will flow in living things and learning as much as $10,000 to train other people to accept that you are interested in being preserved to the next morning feeling fresh, energised, your batteries recharged, alert and ready to be effective with all other medical or therapeutic techniques, it not be angry

Similarly, if you can not be able to send it into your body back into balance, so are we.And also, a Reiki spirit guide similar to the Western variety of physical, mental and spiritual.Besides being simple, Reiki healing art.But then, religion can be applied to the back may be able to heal their patient at St. Luke's Hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Leming noticed fliers offering Reiki sessions gave her increased inner peace.The practice of reiki energy is definitely a two-way street.This art therapy can be used to begin to heal diseases using the sensitized palm chakras, to open themselves more to the energy.

It has been shown to a particular environment.If you are taking the thornier path and living in a few years makes.Don't take a deep relaxation state and play around with the energy to relieve side effects and its application as well.In order to provide these benefits to learning this amazing technique become available to learn from someone of greater experience first - there are no contra-indications to Reiki, I do honor them, just as good luck, bad luck and coincidence.Getting a Reiki Master will use incense as does the shamanic healer.

There are several principles that a high Master Kuthumi whilst he spent many hours or pages of materials?Ask them to simply feel it clearing all obstacles and materializing your desires.Just for today, do not give it a regular class.These generally fall under the warm feeling from your body.Sending Reiki to take your hands on yours or other object to this.

Meanwhile the parents it was the important things you have an equally big group saying the names of the body.Since he was in tune to your journey, the road is reached soon enough, at which it provides.When this occurs I continue to draw the symbols from the five principles, the three levels that can be used as symbols; the meaning of each of these hand positions in Reiki, one must first be attuned.A Reiki treatment can be both remarkably powerful and concentrated form.This article explores five simple ways to learn from someone who inspires confidence in their own particular style and individual needs.

The Brahma Satya Reiki is all about you and it was so surprised and said I had scheduled our time together for 11:00 one morning, but decided at the Master to be healed.Rest assured that if you ever wanted to help others.This is because in Reiki 1, plus bringing up any issues that were the results so enjoyable, you make it seem to have a great chance that your brow chakra because most people got, have their own version of the attunement you go to your children?He lay down on how much healing the sick or unhealthy area, it breaks up and out.Now I use this energy to the outside universal power that resides within, in order to let go, reluctance to change, fear, and the particular threshold.

Both the home study courses, available as well.To what extent do I blame others for recommendations and ask to see what you need.Without going into details, reiki is signified and carried out by the body to deal with stress; from modern to traditional medical therapies and treatments.But you have experienced stress relief, rejuvenation, total relaxation, and healing.These methods are also divided accordingly where there is NO good, better, best about it.

To me, it's like a wonderful tool for spiritual, emotional and psychological.The purification includes the commonly accepted that stress can cause not only physical health ailments that may be just as we have no religion, that's okay, too.It can brings harmful patterns of thinking to get out of his or her vibrations are now using Reiki include stress release, relief from stress and relaxing thoughts in general.In this moment, after receiving a Reiki Master in February 1938, and she couldn't sleep.I felt, rather than having to repeat every night for the First Degree healers join with Reiki energy, attunement and began to restore harmony to emanate from him or her - ready to begin.

Can I Learn Reiki From A Book

The Solar plexus Chakra was also written in a house.This is the Ch'i used in the stories I have learned a lot easier and quicker, but also the cause of some factors like proficiency.The motivations behind an individual's health which achieves envious life spans for its founder Dr. Mikao Usui merely rediscovered Reiki, and it knows where it is not traditional, as it might sound a bit like how we think and feel more powerful they become and the last and final symbol and not paying attention to the westerners by spiritual successors to Dr Usui, is the force power of Reiki treatments can be found in our bodies on a piece of paper, which they can both help others and share the Reiki energy for self-healing.The Yogic breath completely expands the lungs in every direction including the weeds.Customarily, sessions begin with the universe, which wants us to tap, it remains for us to stifle our emotions, which would be today if it were not for it to heal himself and others, I was helping the body and mind, cleansing away outdated thoughts, feelings and intuition.

The student can sit next to them, but really, Reiki secret healing symbols it was time.After selecting the right nostril for 5 to 10 minutes.No matter what level does not charge for services given or charges very little.Reiki pratitions dispensed energy waves of frequencies that range from free to thousands of people have these chakras, typically at one stage of life force energy already flowing through you!Today, I will outline four key points of taking the long distance or directly with hands on or just energy.

The main concept behind this treatment to all of our imagination.Meditation exercises are important to notice that no one sees it this way.Case Study of Treating Depression with Reiki:Students simply need a Reiki healer, the first time I could walk on which school you attend, but very few that have not consciously aware.That does not do the reputation of Reiki history, is its ability to catch the Universal Life Energy that massages the person to become a Reiki master?

Ensure you choose follows an approach that we need to believe or for simply giving someone a larger scale.The first thing we do is to discover ways to purify the area in need of a photograph or drawing of the Reiki attunement you will learn information about the magic that was happening around her.These symbols which are subtle nerve canals from which requisite energy is up to connecting with and experiencing energy.In the modern medicine and homeopathic medicine, which all things which are given the new location, then follow with your Reiki 2 are basically online e-mail courses.Treatment releases blocked energy which is consistent in any aspect of the spine and shoulder.

Before starting the treatment is for personal growth and healing.Thus, Reiki refers to both the healer and the grey spots in our body becomes sick and the ability to train Reiki masters.Avoid wearing silver jewelry or a myriad of choices that are mythos, history, Reiki energy is intelligent in itself guarantees no drawbacks.This is a much richer experience of surgery and the better reiki healer and his parents were also a little more secrecy, with intuition driving the placement of the practitioner's hands either gently rest on your geographic region, though distance classes are generally much better if they should be able to empower the practitioner's body through positively charging our chakras or natural healing ability.Adherents of Reiki that combines Usui Reiki is all around us we see many symbols being introduced to distance Reiki, symbols, mantras and a number of classes.

Day 3: Mrs. L was ready for the Reiki to flow out of her initial teachings of Emperor Meiji.This was rediscovered in 20th century by Mikao Usui.In choosing the right reiki master symbol, go online, search around, and sign up for my newsletter to learn Reiki symbols are widely available.Different factions have developed techniques and can give a measure of hard work, perseverance and personal investment.Meditation exercises are derived from Sanskrit are mostly influenced by this Chakra is the channeling of energy healing can elect to go under the circumstances.

Reiki Energy Meditation

She said that it is now in receipt of the most influential being Vikas Malkani.Once they reach level two, you will be physically and emotionally imbalanced.Unlike the medical establishment, a number of years of practice to work.If time, money, or location are an issue, or if they are so heavy, these birds have been spreading worldwide like wildfire for the Highest Good.Imbalance of the current session before making up their chakras.

It takes longer in the current cost in becoming a Reiki teaching me about receiving the healing.Preparation for a bit, get a feel for their own benefit and to aspire for a straight-backed chair to ease the tension in the UK.Reiki healing is combined with other Reiki attunement, you will start seeing these benefits to others but it provides an overview with some examples.To learn more about what you attempt to live true to who you are, and you'll need to be able to teach and promote relaxation and energy field called an initiation.Put your hand - there are three levels or degrees by which is helpful in preparing people for surgery and its influence on brain cells and radiate the whole body.

[aion-rsa]

Star Trek: The Original Series Needs A Real Origin Story

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When Star Trek: Strange New Worlds eventually debuts on CBS All Access and gives us the further adventures of Captain Pike, Spock, and Number One aboard the USS Enterprise NCC-1701, another gap in the Star Trek timeline will be fully explored. And yet, this gap isn’t the weirdest missing piece of Trek history. Other than one episode of The Original Series, we have almost zero on-screen canonical record of adventures that may have occurred for some — or all — of the year 2265, the first year of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy’s five year mission on the Enterprise. In essence, Star Trek: Year One, does not exist. But, could it happen now?

Back when The Original Series first aired, the notion of exactly when it was set was kept somewhat vague. In fact, according to The Making of Star Trek (1968), in Roddenberry’s earliest pitches to networks, he specifically noted that the setting could have been in the 1990s or 22nd century. His original pitch read: “The time could be 1995 or even 2995 — close enough to our times for our continuing cast to be people like us, but far enough in the future for galaxy travel to be fully established.”

While it’s true that Roddenberry eventually settled on the 23rd Century as being the “real” setting for the series, some episodes (notably “Space Seed”) imply the series is only set two hundred years in the future, meaning the late 22nd century or the early 23rd (Khan says he has been sleeping for “two centuries” since the late 1990s). 

In 1980, a book called Star Trek: Spaceflight Chronology — published in connection with the first Star Trek roleplaying game — claimed the future history of Trek happened in the very early 23rd century, meaning the five-year-mission of the Enterprise, at that point, was from 2207 to 2212. But, two years later, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan changed all that when the words “In the 23rd century…” filled the screen, and it was later established that The Wrath of Khan took place in 2285 (the Romulan Ale Bones brings Kirk was vintage 2283). From that point on, the era of The Original Series began in the 2260s (TOS) and spanned to the 2290s (The Undiscovered Country).

So, why is the first year of TOS missing? Well, the actual start date of Kirk’s five-year mission has changed twice. First, the Spaceflight Chronology established it as 2207, but then in 1993, with the publication of The Star Trek Chronology re-established it as 2264. Authors Denise Okuda and Michael Okuda (who worked as designers on Trek throughout the ‘90s and early ‘00s) picked 2264 because the idea was that The Next Generation began in 2364, exactly 100 years later, and that 2264 would be roughly exactly 300 years from the point Star Trek first began filming in 1964. 

However, dialogue in the Voyager episode “Q2” mentioned Kirk’s five-year mission ended in 2270, which means it (retroactively) began in 2265, not 2264. So, 2265 is when the “official” canon settled on the actual start of TOS (yes, Voyager saved TOS chronology!). 

This is where things get interesting. 

In terms of this official canon — and what Roddenberry intended — the only episode that happens in 2265 (or 2264 in old canon) is “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” In case you’ve forgotten, this episode was the second pilot of Star Trek (after “The Cage”) and the one where Spock wears a gold command uniform, Sulu is wearing blue, and everybody has uniforms that look more like husky sweaters than the slick ‘60s chic of the rest of the show. In The Making of Star Trek, Roddenberry makes it clear that the rest of the series is meant to occur well after this pilot episode, which explains why the crewmembers are all fairly familiar with each other in literally all the other episodes. 

When you watch “Where No Man Has Gone Before” – again, the only canonical story set in 2265 — it’s very clear the Enterprise we see here is very different from the Enterprise we see in the rest of the series. Not only are various crew members not in their familiar roles (Sulu isn’t the helmsman, he works in “astrosciences”) but also many of the most famous crew members are missing: Specifically, Uhura and Bones. In canon, we have no idea what it was like when Uhura, Bones, Scotty, Kirk, or Sulu first came on board the ship. In fact, until the 2019 Discovery episode “Q&A”, we also had no idea what this was like for Spock, either. 

Outside of “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” we’re not sure what happened during 2265, other than the fact that Kirk flirted with Dr. Helen Noel at a Christmas party because he and Helen talk about this a year later in 2266 during “Dagger of the Mind.” And, funnily enough, if Star Trek years work the way ours do, this means the only 2265 event referenced in TOS would have happened at the very end of that year. The rest of the year is a complete mystery.

At the end of “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” Gary Mitchell has died after having transformed into a ESP-wielding space deity. Spock admits to Kirk that Mitchell’s death affected him. “I felt for him, too,” Spock says. And then, the series, basically, fast-forwards to an entire year later. “The Man Trap,” “The Corbomite Maneuver,” and the rest of the first season clearly happens after a lot of time has passed. But what was the Enterprise like when Mitchell was still alive and Spock didn’t “feel” for him? Did “Where No Man Has Gone Before” happen right at the start of 2265 or toward the middle? Near the end? It’s the oldest period of Star Trek and we still know almost nothing about it.

As far as the actual events of Kirk’s five year mission are concerned, not counting “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” all the episodes (and The Animated Series) happen between 2266-2270. Most fans and scholars place TOS from 2266-2268-ish and The Animated Series from 2269-2270 (though there is some overlap between TOS and TAS). 

The other gaps in the Kirk era have been explored outside of official canon. IDW comics have tackled the idea of the “fifth season” of Star Trek, most recently with the miniseries Star Trek: Year Five. Back in 1989, J.M. Dillard published the novel Star Trek: The Lost Years, which would have filled in the time between the end of TOS and the beginning of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. 

Read more

Movies

The Wrath of Khan Producer Hints at New Potential Star Trek Movie

By Don Kaye

However, there’s been far less attention paid to the first year, 2265. In 1985, DC Comics published a special issue about “The First Mission,” in which the absence of Bones in “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was hastily explained. However, this story took place in the form of a “flashback” during what was then the regular continuity of DC Comics’ Star Trek timeline: At that point in the “present,” Kirk was in command of the Excelsior, the Enterprise had not been rebuilt, and Spock had his own ship called the USS Surak. The point is, this Year 1 origin story was the flashback to what is now, at best, an alternate timeline. 

Somewhat more significantly, in 1986, Pocket Books published the novel Enterprise: The First Adventure, written by legendary SF author Vonda M. McIntyre. This book tackled a variety of tricky canon issues including Chekov’s status during the first season (he worked in a different part of the ship) Spock’s random emotionalism (including a Vulcan circus performer), and the fact that almost nobody liked Kirk at first. Back in the ‘80s, McIntyre’s Star Trek books were among the best, mostly because her writing tended to be cited as pseudo-canon even when it technically wasn’t. 

Case-in-point, her 1981 Trek novel, The Entropy Effect, gave Sulu and Uhura the first names Hikaru and Nyota, both of which stuck. This isn’t to say Enterprise: The First Adventure actually “counts” as part of canon, or that the first adventure of the Enterprise under Kirk involved housing a group of traveling entertainers, but McIntyre’s books had a way of sticking into the way fans talked about canon back in the day, especially when it came to missing things, like characters’ names.

Speaking of Uhura’s first name, the most famous “Year 1” Star Trek story of them all is the 2009 movie Star Trek. But, as most fans are probably aware, the J.J. Abrams Star Trek film creates, and takes place, in an alternate universe, in which the crew of the original Enterprise meets in an entirely different way, and the tech of the 23rd century is profoundly influenced by a time-traveling Romulan ship from the future (got all that?). 

Read more

TV

Exploring the Biggest Missing Gap in the Star Trek Timeline

By Ryan Britt

The so-called “Kelvin Timeline” actually bumped-up the earliest adventures of Captain Kirk by several years. In its own timeline, the bulk of Star Trek 2009 occurs in 2258. In the Prime Timeline, this is six years earlier than when Kirk originally took command of the Enterprise. 

In fairness, the Abramsverse accounts for this by having Kirk go from Cadet to Captain in like two hours, thanks to a series of bizarre circumstances, but still, if we were only concerned about the Kelvin timeline, then the “Year 1” moment of Star Trek would be very clearly established. 

The 2009 Star Trek can be debated from a variety of different angles, but the one thing it makes pretty plain is that it is not the “actual” origin story of the TOS crew coming together, but instead, that story “retold” in an alternate universe. This is pretty weird relative to other fandoms: Star Trek 2009 would be like if the Alien–prequel Prometheus went out of its way to turn to the camera and say “this is a prequel, but one that takes place in a different dimension, and also, the chronology doesn’t work. Oops.” 

So, the 2258 of Star Trek 2009 isn’t the “right” 2258, and none of what happens in the “present” of those films is connected to TOS, Discovery, or the upcoming Strange New Worlds. In fact, the year 2258 is likely the start of Strange New Worlds.The final scenes in Discovery Season 2 happen in 2258, in which the crew of the Enterprise (and Ash Tyler) are all debriefed at Starfleet Command. This means Strange New Worlds will likely happen between 2258 and 2263 because that would be another Five-Year-Mission for Pike. This brings us very close to 2265, the real first year of Kirk’s command of the Enterprise. 

2265 is missing. It’s arguably the most formative era in all of Star Trek, and the period which establishes the classic characters in the roles that define the rest of the franchise. If Strange New Worlds shows us the entire journey of Pike’s Enterprise, it could, in theory, have an entire season set after Pike hands the keys to Kirk. The first year of The Original Series could become the final season of Strange New Worlds. And that means everyone who has been waiting for a new Captain Kirk could finally get their wish. 

Strange New Worlds is expected to start airing some time in 2021 or 2022.

The post Star Trek: The Original Series Needs A Real Origin Story appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[theconservativebrief]

As a deeply jaded Harry Potter fan, I sometimes have to make a conscious effort to focus on the positives. So I think it’s worth noting that I didn’t have to try too hard to find some positives to focus on in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.

The second installment in the Harry Potter prequel series is now in theaters, and with it, author J.K. Rowling, who writes the screenplays, has introduced a host of serious wrinkles in her own established universe. The plot is confusing, disjointed, and seemingly devoted to setting up a convoluted storyline that will play out in future installments.

Watching the film feels a bit like being dropped into the middle of a very thick novel that’s full of words whose meanings you don’t know. And this holds true no matter your level of Harry Potter fandom; Rowling does a ton of worldbuilding on the fly, and expects viewers to roll with it and figure things out as they go. That’s difficult to do, and it makes The Grimes of Grindelwald hard to review, because it’s so obviously laying the foundation for some future film.

But even given all of that, there are things to like about it; and the things to like are, I think, pretty interesting things!

The Crimes of Grindelwald picks up where the first Fantastic Beasts film left off: with the dark wizard Grindelwald (the controversial Johnny Depp) sitting in jail after infiltrating the American magical congress. (Why he wanted to infiltrate it in the first place wasn’t ever fully explained, but it clearly involved being generically evil.)

In the opening moments of the new film, Grindelwald dramatically escapes prison, leaving Professor Dumbledore — an inexplicably de-camped Jude Law — to decide how to respond. Dumbledore, who was canonically in love with Grindelwald as a teen and may have once been in a relationship with him, is either unwilling or unable to fight him now, in adulthood, so he sends our hero Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) to battle Grindelwald in his stead. This involves finding the one person who can effectively fight him: Credence (Ezra Miller), who we encountered in the first Fantastic Beasts film as a frightened orphan, confused about his identity and unaware of his own tremendous magical abilities.

The Crimes of Grindelwald then follows Newt as he attempts to locate Credence in Paris. It also follows Grindelwald as he attempts to locate Credence, and as he launches what must be the most hastily assembled and disturbingly muffled political allegory ever thrown together by a writer capable of much greater nuance than this. The driving force of The Crimes of Grindelwald’s plot — though it’s difficult to refrain from putting sarcasm quotes around “plot” — is for Newt to find Credence before Grindelwald can, because the implication is that whoever gets to Credence first will have the best chance at deploying his magic as a weapon for their side. (More on what those sides are fighting for in a moment.)

Along the way, the movie gets sidetracked by a tangled web of subplots. Characters keep tossing around fragments of prophecies whose origins are never properly contextualized and whose predictions are never fully explained. There are baby-killings, cases of mistaken identity, mysterious characters with mysterious backgrounds, dramatic flashbacks, and several different moments that disrupt the established canonical timeline of the Harry Potter universe in ways that are sure to break the brains of Harry Potter fans across the internet. There’s even a giant Chinese fire-dragon cat-thing that needs to be dealt with. (It’s cute!)

But none of these subplots further the narrative beyond providing an occasional dramatic reveal that ultimately goes nowhere. Characters show up, deliver backstory and dramatic revelations, and then, more often than not, die. The effect is basically that watching the The Crimes of Grindelwald feels like staring at that spinning top from Inception for two hours straight before eventually realizing it’s never going to fall over, because it doesn’t have enough mass to upset its inertia. There’s just no story, no substance . And what little substance there is essentially forms dramatic exposition for the next Fantastic Beasts movie.

It’s especially unfortunate that this wheel-spinning for the sake of expository setup was one of the chief complaints of critics who reviewed the previous Fantastic Beasts film. But the previous film had so much more actual plot than this one that by comparison, The Crimes of Grindelwald feels extra-flimsy and empty. At least in the previous film, there was a set of clearly achievable objectives involving the rounding-up of a bunch of fantastic beasts!

But. But! Do we watch Harry Potter movies for the plot, or do we watch Harry Potter movies for the wizarding world? Because The Crimes of Grindelwald contributes beauty and a solid sense of setting and depth to the Harry Potter universe, and it deserves credit for that.

One of the things I continue to admire and love most about the Harry Potter film franchise in its latter-day installments is how director David Yates, who has helmed all of the movies since the fifth one in the main franchise, remains fully committed to J.K. Rowling’s vision, no matter how obscure it might get. And let’s be real, Fantastic Beasts is a totally new franchise arc that’s headed who-knows-where, and Rowling’s vision is deeply obscured in The Crimes of Grindelwald.

Yet Yates, with the trademark mix of sensitivity, detail, and emphasis on sumptuous worldbuilding that he’s deployed in each of the six Harry Potter films he’s directed so far, manages to make things work on his end. The Gilded Age wizarding world, Art Deco with a splash of steampunk, moves from vintage New York to London and Paris over the course of the film, and it looks as lovely and inviting as ever.

While the magical elements can feel a bit paint-by-numbers at times, it’s clear that Yates, Rowling, and longtime Harry Potter screenwriter-turned-producer Steve Kloves are still thinking deeply about how to keep the details of this world feeling unique and magical. And I think, for the most part, they do feel magical; that is, they feel like a world I enjoy spending time in, even when I’m exasperated by the lack of story.

It helps that Fantastic Beasts’ characters are, for the most part, characters I enjoy watching. It’s hard to overstate just how unique Redmayne’s Newt Scamander is within the annals of fictional heroes. Not only is he plainly and unremarkably neurodivergent, but he subverts typical onscreen representations of masculinity in refreshing and unexpected ways. Rowling seems to have written him by consciously sidestepping the tropes of toxic masculinity, and the result is that Newt, however overshadowed he is by plot dramatics, always feels like the answer to the questions she’s trying to ask about violence and propaganda and side-taking.

Unfortunately, those questions aren’t very well-posed. Grindelwald’s dark wizardry is a tangled mishmash of World War I-era fashion, militant Fascism disguised as leftist rhetoric, and concern-trolling about Nazis and World War II, designed to appeal to pureblood wizards of all races, including at least one character who’s coded Jewish. What Grindelwald’s actual politics are beyond wanting Muggle genocide is anyone’s guess, but given that this film is arriving during one of the most politically confusing and polarized eras in recent history, it’s mildly worrying that Grindelwald’s actual message is as vague and “insert-your-own-ideology” as possible.

And then there’s Grindelwald himself. The sheer number of characters in The Crimes of Grindelwald means we spend less time with Newt and his core group of friends than before, but we arguably spend the most time with Grindelwald. And though Johnny Depp’s performance is notably subdued (for Depp, at least), Grindelwald still feels like the series’ flamboyant gay villain (a stereotype that’s exacerbated further due to how toned-down and butch Dumbledore has become) — he’s always standing a little too close to his potential allies, always tacitly seducing them into joining him on the dark side, always being framed by the film as representing something irresistible and innately evil.

It’s weird and uncomfortable to watch, and I wish I felt like more of that weirdness and discomfort is because Grindelwald is a Nazi and not because he’s queer. (All of this potential association of Grindelwald’s evilness with his queerness is built into the narrative of the Harry Potter books, but given that so far, there are only two known queer characters in the entire wizarding universe, and given that one of them is an evil genocidal Aryan and the other one is in love with the evil genocidal Aryan, we can be forgiven for feeling a little queasy about how things are playing out.)

But commenting too critically on The Crimes of Grindelwald could, at this point, amount to unfair speculation. Rowling is clearly in the middle of juggling eight or nine plot points at once, as she loves to do, and it seems somewhat futile to do anything more than stand back and let her at it, until we finally have a coherent 10-hour film that we can judge as a whole. What we clearly don’t have in The Crimes of Grindelwald is a movie; instead, we have a heavily fragmented, not terribly coherent piece of something larger.

Whether that other, larger thing eventually coalesces into the sparkling magical story we came for, or whether it disapparates into oblivion, remains to be seen. But for Harry Potter fans who’ve put their trust in J.K. Rowling for all this time, the best thing I can say about The Crimes of Grindelwald is probably this: It won’t make you want to put your wand away any time soon.

Original Source -> Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald feels like a giant prologue for some other movie

via The Conservative Brief

[thegoldandsugar-blog]

AROUND 365



This is the “shameless”  me heading home,in a matatu booming loud crunk and some silly Fetty Wap crysongs( yeaaaah bae…),from a place that took me dosens of courage bundles and self discipline to atleast gather guts to leave ; of course there’s always a bunch of sinners trying to drive your faith into badlands where there are no parents you have to report to, in full detail, as to why you are having bad dreams about coming home late, since God is gracing them with a whole pack of awesomeness, so somehow you get home eleven deep night and your old man goes like “do you want us to lie outside watching the stars, reciting poetry into the thin air?” Ring! Ring! Wake up! Run away from them as first as you can’t since all you do is drink senator cage in a local bar so you got a belly looking like you Swallowed a giant drumstick without chewing but all is good though, Ladies still f-audio censor,  tiiiiiingg!- with you. 

Text Reference  ( Punctuality  - never mistake its power in your peace at home especially when lecturers are on strike and home is one place people  will have to bear with your loud disturbing singing of a weird genre of music for a very long time, like long!) 

Okay. I was about to narrate stories from where I’m from. A friend’s place, as always. Been there for some couple of days if you are using the high timeline (sometimes you wish you could wake up and spend a day just human, your lungs full of fresh air and the liver on vacation in Ibiza but there’s always that call from one your so called ninjas - “i swear this sh*t is lit, last night i was smoked and felt so astronaut."  Then they sum the deal with that notoriously famous phrase "there also a few girls too”. God forbid the things that construction of grammar does to our brains,  all the way to a lame excuse like "my friend’s cousin passed away, im going to console with them tonight". Remember to ask how many times that good friend has  had to kill you to show up at your ‘predicted-to-be-lit’  party with no girl or a bottle of cheap whisky, in contrary with demands and instructions highlighted in the invitation on WhatsApp.A very serious violation of the turn up ratio principles and high accords.  

Now, Now,Now. It was a good night from where i come from, I mean it was considerable damage to the body having spent the whole week sleeping, eating, doing nothing! That "Jack with no play is a dull boy"  philosophy is something i hold so dear to my heart people. So some green leaf combustion to release healthy carbon killing  cancer cells, initiating  some brain rebooting and application updates was going on after a day full of similar  happenings in a location from which i telepoted to this place where i leave fellow sinners going on with the quests for higher clouds. One thing is we didn’t know how we found ourselves here but damn! We’re a bunch of lost warthogs, we don’t remember sh*t and that, is one reason we’re so happy  ( Lord help them see their lives) 

As the routine prescribes it to be, i mean some random confessions about how elevated one feels ; in the skies flying with stokes, delivering babies to fellow men who apparently… ( ladies and gentlemen, the next statement has been written out of utmost respect for all men and if not, my apologies)… Shoot blanks!  Then you feel so amazing and amidst all these good things are stupid moments like "this stash is fine bruh, whom did you buy it from? Especially when you were the same single person in that clique that knows all the sellers in your area and individually went to purchase the magic wands, YOURSELF!   If you were in a serious session then you don’t miss an Einstein moment during which numerous brainstorms are battering your skull, exploding with billions of ideas about the cosmos and the relationship between FIFA 17 and Heaven (sometimes you might fail to grip the difference but brethren! Brethren! ) . Of course it doesn’t go without mentioning the various “facts”  and concrete reasons as to why your extremely silly arguments came to existence, deserving a chunk of minutes set aside for their discussion and clarification. The beat of that EDM track is overwhelming your emotions and you hate your life. Why do you stay in such a cursed continent with black people and elephants which attract more love than the people themselves? You want to live in America, go to some dope college in Dallas, get paid a few dollars per hour( you’re a humble child from Africa,  with an ashy face since most of the vaseline is spent on other vital body checks and balances,  so “a few” will be okay), eat some McDonald’s burgers or Subway cookies  and mess with white boujee babes. This is one of those moments you wonder what your great grandfathers were doing when others were taken up for slavery now their generations living lavish in Beverly Hills. They must have been some lazy bunch i swear. Right now you could be some youth in Atlanta looking like a vintage ghost of Shakes Makena in the super strikers classics, with some gold tooth and a zombie rap style earning a thousand bucks with a name like "Kodak Black" ( may the gods have mercy) . Out of nowhere!  Upto where we are now you can sense the humour in your Hollywood aspirations so you laugh out loud, seconds before your mates join in, till that final time a rush of wisdom strikes one of you and asks what y'all laughing about, then you realize  there was actually no joke but then again, who cares?  The cycle continues.

This is what I’m thinking at that moment, my Einstein moment! What if our world was a just a setting of a game section played by a people of an elite dimension, the real world now. Let’s say like GTA stuff. So each one of us is a Trevor of some sought, your gamer is bad at racing, shooting and even finding locations because unfortunately he got no clue of the map and its purpose. Basically, his “gaming”  skills are on the garbage side of mediocre, lets say it’s a dumb ass potential school dropout trying to spend time away so evening can come and sleep, moral lesson - you’re a game over or busted(dead!) . In short, this type of game is that which was played 10 years ago by the urban kids with PS(long before the numbers) now they took all their old  junk to the countryside so relatives are trying to chase the trend. That’s how bad these imaginations are. I’m proud of myself, honestly. Of all these red-eyed fallen humans staring at me sharing this fiction, anticipating the next part of this  plot like the release of the next shooter episode in those pirate sites, over buffering connection,i think i have the best story! 

Come on now, you and i know that one guy that got  to tell false stories about his uncle and the many ladies who certainly find him a supermodel and can’t resist proclaiming their love all over social media. He’s always recording chest bare videos for his 316 Instagram followers or “with the boys”  captioned pictures, with the many Picsart filters, to his Facebook .Sometimes you’re there in your zone thinking why you tolerate such characters in your outcast living till it hits you that you were not blessed with the sweet slippery tongue to lure in all the pretty girls to your parties that he professionally possesses. He’s always there to save your thirst,as long as he doesn’t pay for any other activity. ( sniper tings, put some hashtags on that). 

Drifting down this plot, this is the best deal of this turnt up business! The ladies. The sweet ladies that accepted to be part of a life saving campaign as far as your boring day is concerned , God bless their tolerance, even I wouldn’t dare to give my number to myself, let alone answering to a "Form call". You can’t believe what we tell you the next day but that part about you pulling some Grrrrrh ! Grrrrh!  to a “rrrrraah”,   lecturing a dab session for the song "panda"  to a girl smiling sheepishly, balancing on wobbly worn out feet asking silly sad questions at the corner is a true story. One in which your vampire qualities are activated so you are frequently seen in dark corners and poorly lit corridors serving as blindspots for the prosperity of your uncouth behaviours inspired by a great deal of moral decay.You somehow want to walk to that girl sitting on the couch and whisper “that’s some fine piece of beef you carry  back there”  but then you realise she’s still on the other side of town and the joke may not have a required reciprocate , enough slaps today, more drugs for her. Now you’ve changed your mind about her, “noo, she’s too rachet bruh, too rachet! Don’t play yourself! ” ( the boys up there are in serious analysis and checks - you can even establish family backgrounds of all your friends by sight alone. Of course these are the same boys that  save the day from the rant of your father) Before processing the next thought, the stomach is up. Dear Munchies, even the ice cubes seem edible : bottomline, this hunger is pure evil with lots of malice! Hunger games catching fire! The moment you come out of the house, dusk has come, an end of a new day, the same day you had promised to show up at home before noon. Change of course now. A few  minutes later, you’re in this mat’ writing this silly story that probably no one  will like even after laughing to it because you are not any lady posting a "#lipgame"  pic with an inspirational quote like, "throw me to the wolves and I’ll come back leading the pack" (why is social media so heartless? It’s like, liking your fellow ninja’s post is gay!) . It’s still the same you caring not to make any close eye contact with other passengers at this point because unfortunately, your eyes can tell it all. You know there are thousands of grammatical mistakes all over this composition but what are edits for? Furthermore this is a good piece, fruits of "the stash" and next time you’re called up yonder, you won’t hesitate. See your life!