#some of the information here will be plot relevant eventually but I have plenty of time to space it out until then

[vics-chrysopoeia]

C1AN2 - "Focus"

(I decided to rename those author notes to make it more clear what they are about.)

An "aether focusing instrument" or "focus" is an object with a complicated spell ("array") "written" in miniature, so the mage only has to copy it, instead of mentally assembling it from scratch. In art terms, it would be a free stock photo you can trace over instead of drawing looking at a reference (this would be what casting by looking at a spell book schematics is like) or just drawing by yourself (casting from scratch).

It is not an enchanted object. Enchanted objects affect and/or are affected by the spells placed on them and can be used even by people without a drop of aether on their bodies, if they draw their 'fuel' from the environment. Only magical people (mages, sorcerers, witches, etc.) can even understand how using a focus work and why it makes casting easier than using just drawn schematics.

Focuses can have as many spells as you can "write" in it without them collapsing into one another. The best materials for focuses are ones with lots of flat surfaces, like cristals, but anything flat enough will do in a pinch. Poor people might use cheap quartz, common rocks, sand grains, or even glass shards. If you "write" your spell in a non-flat surface, you better be good at adjusting for it when casting somewhere else.

Usually, focuses are embeded in something that makes them easy to carry/hard to lose, but still mostly safe from damage, like pendants, watches, wands, staffs, brooches, rings, belts, clasps and what-have-you. Wands and staffs are usually embeded with lots of small focuses at once for practicity, and those tend to be work tools that the person won't carry around all the time. If a police officer detects a hostile/illegal spell on your focus, they can pull you over and confiscate it (at best) or jail you (at worst).

Spells on focuses are also, obviously, inactive. The person using them has to know both where in the darned thing the spell is "written" and what is the portion they have to keep from copying to cast the active version (the "lock"). Usually, the lock is also what identifies the spell among similar ones that might be in the focus.

This is both for the safety of the owner (so they don't cast anything by accident, or so kids don't go activating their parents' focuses, for instance) and an anti-theft measure. The spells in a person's private focus are either too common and cheap to warrant the effort to steal and unlock them, or too complicated and full of locks, traps and weird recursions to be feasibly made safe in any less than some thousands of years (think of the locks as passwords - the more parts a spell have and the more locks the owner added, the longer it takes for you to test each permutation of the array to remove every lock without damaging the spell).

Oh, and finding the spells already "written" in a focus might be a deceptively difficult task, if you didn't "write" them yourself. Spells are aether arrays, and aether arrays can be either huge, spanning whole cities, or nano-sized. If a mage is capable of making them small enough in a big focus, pinpointing a spell becomes worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. And if you stack one spell over another by accident, they might collapse into a single one and create a huge, dangerous mess. This makes second-hand focuses a minefield, unless you know very well all that is there.

The obvious workaround would be cleaning the whole thing of spells before using it, even if it means that you will lose some good spells in that process, and it's what is usually done. The problem is, really expensive focuses are usually protected against being cleaned of their spells by anyone other than the owner, and this protection spell might not be removable even by the owner themselves (might be a manufacturer's add-on). Thanks to this, when they are sold or passed down, they lose a bit of their value, because you have to work with less storage (the value may drop less if the owner sells it with schematics for the spells already there, their exact location and their locks, so they are at least useful).

In case you are wondering how focus owners never lose where they "wrote" their spells… well, they do. Constantly. Which is why most focuses aren't "written" with more than one or two spells, and the ones in them are usually as big as possible or written in easily recognizable places. Or they just have a dozen copies of the same spell. Very few people need to store more than a dozen or so complicated spells for constant use in their life, so it is rare for a focus to be too loaded or to be written too small. It's usually done in the aforementioned expensive focuses (heirlooms, gems, particularly flawless crystals, etc.) to maximize their usage and reselling value, or in focuses belonging to people who create complicated spells for a living.

Considering all that, stealing a focus, then, only make sense if at least one of the below points apply:

it's not fancy or secure enough that it only responds to the recognized owner in a way you can't replicate or bypassyou have a way to deal with the locks it might haveyou don't have a way to deal with the locks but you can at least find the spells already in it and either erase them or work around themthe focus is high enough quality (or valuable enough) to warrant all that effortyou simply don't want the current owner to have the focus in their possession, you will either destroy or hide it foreveryou can evade for the rest of your life someone who is either very rich, very powerful, or much better at creating spells than you

So, yeah, focus theft is relatively rare. It's like jewel theft, in the sense that it mostly happens to rich people, and very rarely in a big enough scale to be noteworthy by the large public. The average person is as worried about being robbed of their focuses as you would worry about being robbed of your keychain. Impossible? No. Likely? Well, when was the last time you heard of a robber asking for your house keys and only your house keys?

In a pinch, the mage can just remove the inactivation part of the spell and activate it inside the focus. 9/10 times, it explodes the focus, and the spell may or may not survive intact enough to still work as intended. This is usually a desperate maneuvre to either do simultaneous castings in an emergency (it would otherwise need a long prep time) or to just destroy your focus if the aforementioned robber takes it, being yet another reason why they usually don't bother to steal them (just like your keychain will be most likely useless the moment the robber flees and you warn the police that they have your keys).

In The Green Star, which is set in the Belle Night universe and uses the same magic rules, Charlie does that as a desperation move. He needs to cast simultaneously multiple WILDLY complicated spells so he can teleport himself and Auguste a couple meters to the side and escape an ambush. His multiple cristal focuses embeded in rings explode. It doesn't hurt him because (1) vampire and (2) the focuses are very small, likely to not be huge losses in situations like this.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

truly like at any time in any story different elements will be prioritized or somewhat sacrificed for the success of another element / a weakness in one regard could be regarded as a worthwhile tradeoff or otherwise largely beside the point, and billions is so About its themes of like these continual conflicts between people and the ways they can wield power and the reasons that they do so. and characterization isn't prioritized ahead of that, and certainly sometimes it has to be that a strong or even particularly distinct sense of [a character] is weakened/sacrificed for the sake of Conflict Plot, but even as i'm aware that it's being here for the "wrong" reason to be here for characters in their own right, it's like, i think still certainly the theoretical ideal is for less of noticeable casting [characterization] aside and sometimes by "noticeable" it's also certainly like cmon and was that even worth it. and i mean, plenty of people Watch Billions Wrong. all the fans who think the show to them is "isn't axe cool." like, the answer is: no. and the show was never actually Just About Him As Some Character b/c, of course in the end no character is here to get like, an ideal emotional conclusion as their eventual resolution as beloved characters, the only resolution out here is how someone is either driven out or chooses to leave Because Of The Continual Conflict theme.

but anyways this is about further and hopefully all the more in depth / accurate words about how it's like "good god rian is thus far such a failure at having created a character" lmfao it is egregious. hypothetically if they just so happened to switch gears in season 7 and seem to actually create that sense of a distinct individual whose presence matters for being that distinct individual, great i guess. thanks for the season and a half of Not That, and that despite holding out for the end of season 6, it's now like, i cannot muster any investment in whatever this is, save for how we as the audience can be provided character material from taylor instead through any of these interactions. it's unfortunately similar to my arc back in season 4 of a trial period re: assessing wendy's character material with an effort to care, finding it all over the place and wendy's pretty terrible to people in general and obviously taylor in particular often enough, relevant here, which like godspeed i mean but not in a Fun To Dislike way even, and to me she's also not that fun to like, and then i'm most interested when her interactions w/taylor give us more material / information about them, so. ya hate to have those similarities.

anyways, i think a litmus test of feeling out how strongly there is A Sense of Character in material is whether it feels like what people are doing, or more especially, Saying, couldn't be swapped over to another character. like whether it feels like what someone has said couldn't have instead been said by someone else / feels recognizable and feels like it lends relevance to that particular character's presence in the specific scene or like, entire work. and that can just be like, Voice, but just more generally it's ofc like, overall personality, what we understand about this character's tendencies and motivations. and by and large with rian even when she's Doing Something it's her providing plot exposition / an impetus for taylor's subplot, and wherein especially in the business realm of like "oh btw here's a business opportunity that the tmc subplot will be centered around this episodeeee" that's rarely that Character Based. any given employee could provide it, and it's only become Less characterful when rian is the only employee with dialogue who's not winston, such that [idk? quant stuff?] is no longer a reason for rian (or winston) to be the particular person to pitch whatever business move. unspecified undialogued beloved tmc employee todd (i made that up) could be the one behind any and every episode's business plan. even if you believe rian gets a lot of them b/c she's just so talented (which, despite what billions creators say, i'm never thinking abt how amazingly smart everyone on the show must be, and this never interferes w/my understanding of what's going on. and i don't think we are operating from the same ideas re: Intelligence anyways (such as, a quantifiable metric that can be meaningfully compared as superior/inferior between individuals, even if you modify this concept like "well there are many different kinds :)" im sure this will come up again) that theoretical talent doesn't seem to be relevant to her as a character. other employees are also talented and get to pitch things to their boss. taylor does not seem to decide rian is [so literally them] on such a basis alone.

which. i mean we'll surely come back to it later too, but that rian's material in 5x05 through 5x07 was most Quant Duo and was prior to the entire thing that now seems to be her main thing, namely, taylor deciding she's [so literally them], and was As or More distinctly characterful than anything since, when she was also Supposedly getting more [mere plot device / character who doesn't yet truly matter] treatment and merely getting scenes about a dynamic with winston, which were interactions that did serve to elevate her personality. and then in 5x08, being annoyed with taylor also certainly elevates her personality, somewhat true in the "okay, brewing conflict ig" thread since, but where rian then changing her mind completely like haha well alright, if you're projecting, i guess i Will be all in on this job i plan to walk out of soon and be chill about having nothing going on outside work such that i may as well not leave the office and we'd better hope that each other's company is all the social enrichment we could possibly need, end remote work, time to get back to the office or how will we ever go for a walk or have a chitchat….anyways. all her interactions accepting her status as taylor's mirror / continuing that dynamic have much more by and large seemed to diminish / tamp down / opposite of elevate: lower her character. this could be at all on purpose, but it's not enjoyable in [rian's character material]'s own right. it's also not exactly fun and likable that most (or arguably all) of rian's interactions with winston are using and bullying him, but it's again more elevated and actually distinct at all. i'll be frustrated if it never goes anywhere like "being commented on, questioned, criticized, analyzed in the material itself" b/c it'll be pretty hollow otherwise, but it's still the most characterful thing she's got going on imo

already wearied by writing this out lmfao it's just not enjoyable. this funeral dirge. it's Not That Characterful when even in season 6 when taylor has two dialogue capable employees, anything rian puts forth could be pitched by winston, like it could've been sara, or even mafee sometimes, or todd from offscreen. winston not being allowed to operate even as The Default Quant seems more about the not so distinct character trait that rian is simply not winston, who is [autistic character] with it, and the writing is such that that means he's not allowed to even exposit when we can help it, and even "well, it's mathy?" can go to rian now. the gesture at "oh uh winston's thing is The Ruthless Capitalism Counterpoints" is unconvincing re His character when that's never been relevant before, or since, and indeed it seems like rian's just riffing making up some shit based on the very little info she has about him, b/c what she really cares about is it'd be funny to keep him around and antagonize him, and the only person who needs convincing of this is wendy, who also knows nothing about winston, and likewise also only cares about negatively judging his je ne sais quoi and making up shit about that b/c she can. even a gesture at "ohh rian's just so Insightful with True Understanding(tm) versus winston" is not really supported when mase carb exists b/c winston was the one person telling taylor to go for the oil divestment plan when this wasn't even merely about saying "yes the math alone tells me i can reassure you" and if he'd also been like "yeah fuck any ethics re divestment when we can make more money" he could've agreed with sara questioning it or quitting over it. he's also a markedly insightful character, like how he's also markedly Not aggressive or egotistical despite instead interpreting him otherwise….more about this later too possibly lol. it's Insightful even as quant kid 2 to know the only thing axe cap has going for it is taylor; to at all successfully adapt his approach For taylor after a very limited and skewed interaction w/them; to realize That's Something You'd Pitch An Investor; to suspect front running / other interference (wherein even if he didn't send an email, seems like The Problem may be not knowing if he'd be listened to and the Solution more encouragement/support, instead of being smacked down all the harder for sharing that he was in fact suspicious); to be the one person with a winning fight night bet; to understand why taylor's acting a particular way b/c of how they feel whether to support them or criticize them accurately enough that they even listen; that in general he seems to Get taylor as much or even more than the people they have relationships with that we get to see, or really, Anyone else; that he's even ahead of the curve on liking rian despite also being bothered by her as a potential replacement. i don't think his Actual Insightfulness is a complete accident on the writing's part, nor are characters maybe not nonzero times meant to be cluelessly wrong about winston, but. you could give him more of an arc or let him speak more ever. and that grievance aside, again, the fact that rian gets to be The Quant Who Talks / Exposits / Is Talked To so much more than winston is like, he Could be doing this, he's just banished for autistacity really, which does not make this So Characterful for rian.

and as inspired this post, rian helping taylor with anti axe conspiracies at the end of season 5 also doesn't feel like other tmc characters couldn't have been swapped in. we know wendy doesn't take winston seriously, and maybe for some reason she'd be suspicious of winston claiming whatever like moral qualms about taylor's supposed goings on, but i think that very very easily could've instead been winston simply supposedly letting something slip, and wendy immediately believing he's so Stupid as to do something like that, and not questioning it at all; she'd come up with Any [ascribing any negative quality to winston] on the spot to explain anything and not question it. winston, who also has no more loyalty to axe than rian does and probably already has more to taylor, is a great secret weapon for how Ignored he is, wherein it's really like, i don't even think if winston Had been the one who helped such that wendy even Realized after the fact and flipped him off b/c she's pissed whenever she realizes violating hipaa and enabling axe backfired, that she or anyone else would ever pay more attention to winston or believe him more capable or even theoretically valuable than they already do (not). i can say that, sure, maybe at this point after mafee's ditching the tmc niche b/c he just wants to hang out with dollar bill so bad, and is about to ditch taylor entirely b/c he just wants to hang out with dollar bill so bad and what's the point without axe's magic what reason could i possibly have for staying, and just previously fucked over tmc b/c axe said so without even bothering to tell taylor himself asap. but then truly there's also lauren here who like, if they don't trust her enough as their gf to at least not tell on them if they shared that plan with her, probably they could've just broken up sooner. wendy certainly regards lauren as capable and worth paying attention to, lauren is certainly capable of helping as employee and cohort here. the fact it's easier to believe that yeah, rian might for real instead choose to tell on taylor, does not then make this feel so "yep makes sense why rian's the character getting this role / moving the plot in this way." and the fact that taylor's material is commented on b/c they air their thoughts/feelings by whatever they're telling rian as mentorish advice is not really about rian being peak characterful there either, as though only she could've gone :I Uh Ok abt taylor saying whatever at any point.

even rian's input in turn is just all over the place when like, despite that one nyt guy's insistence she's not Taylor's Conscience or something when one week she's criticizing like "wow but dick move though, even if it's successful business" and another she's criticizing them like "yeah it's a dick move but it's the successful business one, so do that." and it remains puzzling where these Conflicts are even going, only for it to shake out like oh i guess ever since rian went "sure i was saying you're the boss and i'm the employee and i'll have a personal life, but now i'm like, fuck that personal life lol whatever" in 5x08 because uhhh, she also then expected the boss vs employee thing to go away too and be regarded as a peer? you were only promoted so much, despite taylor regarding her as and saying she is [so literally them], like, fresh out of undergrad and a bit offbeat out here and talented was not what made taylor thee most Very Characterful out here / not what distinguishes and defines them, even if ofc it's relevant….don't know if taylor Had taken the fall in the end of s5 that tmc would be fine with rian suddenly left helming it, compared to taylor doing so for axe cap a season into their introduction. i don't even know why we should believe rian's going to stick around indefinitely at the end of s6, or even if we're supposed to think she is, when last we heard she's willing to have no life outside work but also plans to just walk out and leave once she reaches some relatively low personal finance goal. and that's how you know there's some strong characterization: as so frequently seems to be the case with rian, at best it feels like i'm just kind of guessing at various motivations that Could be meant to explain why she wouldn't have already left. and also by now it's like, i don't have the motivation myself to care to Try to understand her anymore lol

and of course there's The Egregious Nightmare where like yeah yknow if there was one thing about rian i really felt makes her feel like a distinct character, it's: Being A Woman. there's no reason to think prince, who feels entitled to access to a woman's body at any time as a way to obtain his own sexual gratification, would have had any further qualifications to his quest there. "mpc employee" is also relevant there, but the only reason that particularly narrows it down is b/c you only have so many women there who have dialogue, woops. being twentysomething is also relevant to how prince is shit and telling us, as if we didn't already know, that his only conclusion can be his downfall, b/c he's a [central man]. in turn, if rian's just looking for convenient casual sex, the only thing making prince most convenient is you don't even have to leave at any point about it even if probably that would've been a mitigatingly better idea. even if you assume rian would've only had sex with a man, universal taylorsexuality aside, that really does Not narrow it down that much here, even if he needs to also have the capacity for dialogue. unless rian's paul revere line out of nowhere is supposed to be her announcing "i like em twenty, thirty, or two hundred fifty years older than me," and that's also supposed to be character relevant, like, gross. why not victor? ben? pretty make or break in that ep for rian's dynamic with winston to even Potentially include anything genuine, and if she hooked up with him for convenience and after they've spent the whole ep in duo mode and been meeting up outside work, that would have made a world of sense, but apparently if you think so you forget that he's too autistic to not be a sexual nonentity, cue the contrast in how rian reacts to taylor's expressed interest vs winston's back in the day. though i wouldn't necessarily say that her using winston for her benefit in a half dozen ways couldn't extend to casual sex, though even if that was mutually understood to be the sole purpose of such interactions, i can't imagine that this rian who will, in fact, also react to her dropped interest in their Shared interest by deciding that it's hers now, winston's input must have no value compared to her superior ideas, and furthermore she should hurt him with that and punish him for thinking he too gets to walk up to coworkers at a party and say anything, could be trusted to not turn on him likewise even if they get a few rounds out of it. or worse, but that's a whole other, if related, what if

getting distracted now pissed off as well at the seemingly increasingly likelihood they've dumped winston's character for the No Particular Reason they always could have done so, so glad for all the reassurance that dollar bill is back more prominently, and axe, oh and rian as bizarrely turning out to also be a prominent workplace bully consciously similar to the boss, but with a bit of a different style to that

anyways again it's like, what would have changed if we just hear that prince used some unnamed undialogued employee woman for sex? he could've talked with andy about it all the same even without our previously knowing or knowing exactly whom. you can even have an extra implied to conveniently entirely drop a glass for more Noticeability, but out of frame lmao. we don't even Need to have been shown nearly as much re its being rian for no reason, even if you assume that Dialogue is necessary or whatever, we could have only been informed about it later through taylor's being informed. and it's time to segue more overtly into: Political Lens On Abuse. is it that we could only go "well that's just normal and okay" unless we had dialogue from the woman that it's shit, actually, or rather, that it's a woman we supposedly already care about or something, and if it was some Unknown Woman we'd be like oh well she probably brought it upon herself / it's not a big deal if we can't get this dialogue of her like "wow this sucks." or really, being Shown her initial distress at the not actual recontextualization of things. wherein it's like, what does it actually do to just Present [tfw negative experiences where it's relevant a character is a woman]? what is it if, in Real Life or in Media, we think we have to externally See someone's freshest pain to potentially judge it as Real and Legitimate? meanwhile i Suppose it could be relevant to rian's apparent actually emergent character trait as "unusually clueless???" that for some reason she's like well time to proactively take responsibility for all this, like she took responsibility for taylor's feelings, and yet also both a) at all aware of the relevance of power differences such that this mere escalation of prince as [significantly older ceo you work for fairly public figure with political aspirations] which was already the case is obviously a problem to her, and for some reason she thinks being given hush money would serve to….give her more power in this situation (???) but also b) is Again apparently just taken off guard that prince does not regard nor treat her as a peer, so i can't even believe that this is simply rian kind of in denial about / trying to obscure or make up for her lack of power here kind of a whole tangent but it also overlaps with how rian Very Much does not feel like a character here when all that's relevant about her is "a young woman," in that also being so graced with getting to see any of rian pursuing [i'm dead set on hooking up with the worst person possible, which we have every reason to believe rian could and would be aware of but Apparently Not, with no particular appeal unless she's only after men who are also significantly older than her, and not even for the access to their potential power/resources] and then her dialogue about how "wow this sucks but i'll just take care of things then b/c it was on me lbr" also feels like effective "reassurance" from the material that prince didn't sexually assault her?? to the point that like, rian's own approach here of drugging someone she intends to have sex with is even now making it like, well that is….potentially to her advantage, you know, even when it's stimulants, and even when the person knows that's what's going on. again not…………..Great re: like. what ifs about like well i'm sure it's plausible Canonest Rian could see winston as a convenient source of casual sex, but. it'd then seem like sheer close shave luck if he wasn't hurt by such an arrangement, or again, simply the Approach of one

ugh anyways it's like. i'm not like surprised if the show thinks it's relevant to try to tell us "well prince wouldn't rape someone, but" but like, is it Actually. why "reassure" us that that didn't happen, why even give us anything beyond what rian says about it, even if she's still saying oh it was My Fault if anything? again, what prince expresses through words and actions (like also blaming andy for not being there instead, if she has a problem with it) that he feels entitled to Some woman's body for the purposes of his sexual gratification, anytime anywhere, Ever, At All. this does not at all conflict with someone who'd sexually assualt someone. he Also blames rian by expressing the idea that power is Deserved, thus a power imbalance is also a matter of intrinsic superiority and inferiority, entitlement and blame. sexual assault and just the less [there is precise and/or particularly established language for this] realm of behavior and attitudes that harm and use people re: sex is not all characterized by "was the potentially wronged party kicking and screaming? the whole time? as hard as possible? what about some tactical maneuver that could've been employed at the perfect moment? were they faking that ever? playing it up?" etc etc etc etc wherein even when supposedly we all agree sexual assault is wrong and bad, going Not That Bad(tm) and Victim Blaming about abuse is just like so "normal" lmao and i don't even just mean in the ways people think are Obviously victim blaming or minimalizing/denying.

there's also this question of like….is it also supposed to be some kind of Win here to have rian, again understood merely as A Woman, to pursue sex? or to even want to have sex? and/or is that also supposed to Reassure us about prince being But Not That Bad b/c again, unless someone was the Perfect Victim (who never exists and certainly never can be "proven") and in the Most distress putting up the Most physical fight at every single moment, well then nothing Too bad can have happened, right. like, the power imbalance here is what's relevant, how is rian's theoretical epic agency relevant? Are we supposed to go "yeah i mean that's kinda on her! should've known better!" and blame her a lil for prince's choices, thus taking responsibility off of him? if we are, that's like….this is just fundamental logic employed to justify abuse lol. the idea also that nobody's agency can be limited Unless They Let It, i.e., if they were negatively impacted by a power imbalance, actually that's an individual failing of theirs, thus proving they deserved it, really. backed up by what prince says that's just "yeah this is pretty much on you, should've known better" and that he can do what he wants because he can and he Does deserve his power relative to other people. that people think it's inherently Demeaning to even refer to someone's role in an experience as that of the victim, again because oh you're inferior if something could be done to you, because you Let it, it was your fault, you deserve it. that people who acknowledge that, in the context/framework of experiences relevant to them, they're victims / have less power, are supposedly Bringing It Upon Themselves with that attitude. and need to bootstraps effort and Act Correctly their way to being someone who doesn't deserve harm or abuse or the idea they're inherently inferior as that justification for that harm, abuse, that taking what you want from them. whereas the person wielding their power is the one Beset, Benevolent, Attacked, Hurt, Threatened here, of course, b/c the perpetual justification has to work such that They're correspondingly perpetually wronged. even owning up to one's superior power doesn't conflict with that when it's supposedly this great burden they take up for everyone else's own good, and Someone's gotta wield it, and you're the one messing everything up you see, so that's why they have to keep being in charge of you and insulated from your trying to ruin their life going "that was kind of a shitty thing, huh" such that you'd even dare imply the blame was Shared.

meanwhile again epic "this is….maybe at all supposed to be self contradictory, right" moments to consider in that, in dollar bill's absence, nobody is bullying coworkers like rian is, namely, winston ofc, and she can finally realize like wow prince is shit? like, if you registered someone being shitty To Winston as someone still being shitty, you had a front row preview a long time ago actually, but since that's what you set up by doing it yourself….like Again that rian is disagreeing with and negatively assessing and setting herself apart as at odds with the idea that someone deserves power b/c they're better than you and thus should pretty much do whatever they want. while she has always, and will presumably continue so long as he's there, to understand that she has more power than winston (who she's introduced to when (a) like everyone else, she could negatively judge him immediately in that [wow just like irl re: he's autistic] way and (b) both bosses come over like hiii riannn bestiieeee ugh god winston would you just die already) and thoughtlessly use that for the sake of enjoying the immediate rewards of exercising power, like affirming your superiority, she couldn't get away with hurting someone if she didn't have some elevated status over them, she not only has the fact that winston will pull punches and try to roll with things himself b/c he likes her, but always had and continues to have those reasons that like, people afford her a more elevated social status b/c she's more "correct"/Deserving than winston is, their boss personally likes and professionally prefers rian, all their mega boss singled winston out as the one person he'd ignore and insult in the episode where he's trying to ingratiate himself to absolutely everyone else out here (again, see how often someone whose True Intentions / approach simply analyzed accurately would result in their being (actually warrantedly) judged negatively, will project whatever exact thing they're up to on to the people they're doing it to. people claiming i could have possibly hurt them make Me the real victim here at their mercy. i'm constantly under threat/attack from the people around me as i only think of other ppl's motivations/feelings/thoughts in terms of how they could possibly threaten my idea of myself as perfect and superior. winston deflecting my complaints about taylor and literally saying TAYLOR MASON CAPITAL with his chest had better stop sucking up to me as i tell this other employee i'd be dtf apparently that i'm already impressed with the loyalty and then trip over myself trying to get taylor to accept me as i was just complaining about them to their employees for some reason)

anyways, she uses him for various things, there she is in that very episode, displaying how she reacts to discerning romantic advances when she apparently thinks well of the person (again, another What Characterization moment when not only does rian's character seem more closed off for interaction with taylor (even if on purpose, not that conducive to "of course i'd be in love with you" type of dynamic) and not only has rian, up until her immediately previous appearance in 6x08, fundamentally misunderstood how taylor thinks of her / their dynamic with her, but also taylor and rian have rarely if ever seemed to have a single interaction that one of both of them didn't seem to be fairly miserable about) to the point that they deserve her active efforts to help them feel okay about it, apparently. that, because she's no longer interested in whatever she was getting from talking abt their shared media interest with winston, she now tells herself that winston's input has no value. that even when she just wants to use him as A Listener, he can't respond without her only interest in acknowledging said responses to be using it as setup for insults or otherwise diminishing / demeaning him. she clearly hurts him on purpose, for no other reason than she wants to, can, and seems to more outright enjoy it half the time, and while she's capable of being antagonistic/critical/sarcastic to or about other people, it's different with winston. she Will behave in this way, but only with winston, who Just So Happens to be the one person she Can treat this way: not because her values prevent her from knowingly hurting anyone over and over anytime for like a couple of years, Except for winston for actually no particular reason, but because out of anyone here, she has access to him and she can get away with treating him like that, he does not have the social power/status to stop it, no one will intervene with Their power/status as a fortunate stopgap, he doesn't have the power of numbers when either other people agree with bullying him, or accept the rules enough that they agree everyone's on their own / any given person simply has to learn how to do the correct shit to successfully become unbullied / stop deserving it / bringing it upon themself. was holding out for the potential that rian and winston's dynamic could be or become more reciprocal and genuine, but it's unilateral, on her terms, she's taking what she wants from him, she Can do this to him, she Can ignore him when he's expressing he's hurt and/or what He wants, she evidently does not truly have the principled stance that no one, including her, should operate that way, so she does. it's not fundamentally different from prince's shit, even if it's Not As Bad(tm), like how based on principle and general approach there's nothing truly drawing some line between prince feeling entitled to sex from women and the exercise of that entitlement through sexual assault, even if it's Not As Bad(tm) if someone who was taken advantage of also wanted to have sex or even initiated anything, and any "well but it could've been worse" or ideas like "well but they could've deserved it / brought it upon themself less" is beside the point, the point being that fundamental approach of entitlement as made possible by the exercise of power. what's Worse is beside the point of whether it's unacceptable and harmful in a fundamental way no matter what, it can always be imagined to be not that bad, or at least it wasn't worse, or if someone could be imagined to be more unimpeachibly deserving, or if someone's willing to perhaps just slightly mitigate what they do as a supposed, probably temporary concession while, again, not fundamentally changing the situation.

deeply wretched if it turns out that in the end rian's most consistent character trait is how plausible it seems now that she could get along well enough with dollar bill, the other standout workplace bully about to make a triumphant return, even though he operates more generally and rian hasn't exactly ever had a chance to be regularly loosed around other employees besides winston right next to her vs lauren and mafee in other areas and sara not even here anymore….and this kind of "she has the same principles but just executes that Workplace Bullying with a different style, while being similar enough to the boss to be judged as incorrect" similarity to bill being able to do whatever tf he wants out here while others are blamed for what bill does to them could sure be a Deliberate Billions Commentary choice. but it's still like, rest in fucking pieces if this is truly rian's strongest character trait

there's more to touch on but i've been at this for hours and i'm annoyed enough at billions for one day. honorary addendum about "seemed like something that wags is going impromptu dad mode but that never went beyond that ep." also hardly think i agree with rian's ideas about relationships expressed in that episode but that's beside any of these points and i really don't know why it comes up lmfao, also doesn't seem to go beyond that ep. does rian have a problem with stimulants use, will That come up, who knows. is her job now to hang around until prince's downfall (even if it's through some similar, but different, situation). or be available for taylor to tell the audience how they feel about some aspect of their life / themself by what they say to rian as Advice or Feedback. bkopps saying she's supposed to be a "major player" like when has she driven a plot besides being a woman available to prince. that winston, peripheral, disposable though he is, is Also pretty much always a plot device than someone Getting plots as a character, but he gets to feel like More of a character b/c he exists to add flair and the lack of a need to bear these Continual Drama Conflicts plots means he's not being pulled around by that as much. what winston does is contradicted by what other people say about him, but what rian does is contradicted by what other people say about her And what She says, like, great. everything about her seems Relative and just getting the real brunt of [billions sacrifices Character for the convenience of plot] or where rian was pushed into prominence with nothing more to do but be taylor enrichment until philip shows up to be more prominent and better taylor enrichment, like, extremely worthy to provide that lmao but it's like, is "similar to taylor" what distinguishes her? not the strongest, and not that distinguishing out here, and at this rate wendy may as well have been like "i'll mentor you" for as much as rian has in common with her. there's just like, nothing here lmao. bullying winston is her strongest most consistent motivation that's not contradicted by anything else except her thinking she's above that while wendyesquely unaware that she clearly is not, will only realize it if someone Besides the person she's wronged confronts her with it plainly, and who would do that on winston's behalf? and then probably get right back to it soon enough anyways. the fact that the most pertinent things rian seems to have going on is [billions misogyny moments, oops only so many women around here and whether this material that's inherently written around a central man, even to criticize him, is also written around insulating him from coming across as "That Bad"] and [abuse is super relevant to billions but does it always realize it] and [does billions realize what it's asserting an autistic person deserves here (abuse)] and all that's left is taylor projecting on her, which is great, taylor please tell us more about what you think about yourself or i guess that you notice work doesn't bring you ebullient joy like on the bachelor, you figure romance is the only path for that, and you figure you can only date someone proximate and acceptable enough through work….but it's again not really about the character projected upon, except that i guess she takes taylor seriously enough to accept this, which is also not that exceptional around here

anyways speaking of shell games where you lift the cup and there's nothing there, a season and a half in and there's nothing much more gained re: rian being a character except that it Could be interesting if some of that beloved conflict came from rian bullying winston, but no one's putting themself in conflict with it which is why rian can keep effortlessly doing it on a whim, and i'm sure that even if winston managed to get some kind of foothold beyond "clearly express that he's hurt by this" so as to create any consequence for rian, that'll be about how he's wronging her and suddenly everyone recognizes something out of line and dives in to immediately rectify the situation and what all, brilliant i'm sure, nothing unrealistic about how it's normal and chill to gang up on the autistic coworker in whatever ways but if they react to that hostility in turn in any way that causes problems for anyone, That's the issue. gotta preserve the existing power structure, that's so true for winston that he's not even allowed to speak without being resented. also like irl. again, sooo epic if they've written him out here while we're keeping rian around indefinitely to uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh idk but isn't she so acceptably normal and deserving. if billions doesn't come through with philip and taylor material what is the fucking point

(p.s. in copy/pasting this i noticed i suggested i'd come back around to Billions' Idea Of Smartness, in that suddenly characters have this flexibility re: acknowledging it or even conceptualizing it in any positive way when other people call winston a genius but only when ultimately questioning / contradicting this. or how i'm sure this could be considered some kind of "hmm questioning and criticizing what we value....what if someone must be smart i guess if they're really good at this one thing BUT they're sooo aggressive and annoying??????" like yes, that is a super common reaction to autistic people, as well as just asserting that same sentiment in supposedly more sympathetic ways like "oh autistic ppl just don't have that social/emotional intelligence :) just don't have the skills there that allistic ppl do :)" like get out of here w/that. wherein, similarly, if they boot winston off without ever having any Textual confrontation w/character's perspective or treatment towards him, i wouldn't count that as any critical analysis exercised with regards to how characters Or writers have thought about winston, certainly not successfully, can't even go "well but we the writers didn't say that it was Correct" like, except you kinda nonzero times did lmao, this is kind of your "this Is how to treat autistic people" commentary. and i don't even know that it'll be a Problem for rian's character that she agrees, even if winston is banished and she has to find someone new to bully, if she can. it would be one thing like, was waiting until all season 6 material was out like, well sure maybe rian's mean and unlikable, but there could still be this sense of A Character that makes this fun to follow. Except: No.)

[brachiosaurus-on]

Brachio, friend! Hello! How are you?

I know you are reading the High Republic books, and I have to wonder, has any of it given you the impression the Jedi of that time have a significantly different experience from the Jedi of the late Republic? I hear a lot of people implying that lately, but I don't quite buy it, and so I figured I would consult you.

Mon, friend! Hello! I'm well, thanks! How are you? I hope you don’t mind that I turned this answer into a bit of a rambling meta.

So, the short answer is no. Their experiences are a little bit different due to the circumstances outside of the Order being different, but I wouldn’t say that their experiences are significantly different until the Clone Wars start. The philosophy and culture within the Order is the same, and I can easily see the characters trading places or recognizing each other as Jedi. The biggest difference is the fashion.

I think that this perception may come from big differences in how they are presented.

The scope of the story is different. High Republic gives us a broad scope through several points of view; the Prequel Trilogy gives us a narrow scope through only a few points of view. The Prequel Trilogy only includes what’s relevant to either the fall of the Republic or Anakin’s fall (which eventually become intertwined themselves), and has a small cast of characters. High Republic has many concurrent and overlapping plots and subplots with twice as many main characters. The scope and focus of the stories are very, very different. You may have heard that High Republic suffers from having too many characters, which is valid, but the upside is that we get a very full picture of what’s going on around the galaxy.

The audience’s perspective is different. High Republic is told from the perspectives of Jedi who love the Order and enjoy the lifestyle. The Prequel Trilogy is told largely from the point of view of Anakin, who does not find the lifestyle fulfilling.

The structure of the story is different. The prequels are very plot driven and most of the story happens during important events; we see limited exposition, resolution, and downtime between major events. High Republic spends a lot of time in characters’ heads before, between, during, and after important events. There’s a much fuller picture of what these characters are going through and how they’re reacting to it.

The explanations of Jedi philosophy and internal workings of the Order are different. High Republic is very direct about explaining Jedi philosophy and internal workings, taking time to elaborate for the audience. The films primarily use Yoda to explain Jedi philosophy; Yoda does not elaborate and is intentionally indirect to encourage the audience to think for themselves. The films show some internal workings but are rarely explicit.

It’s also worth mentioning that the trilogies show us more ideal Jedi because they’re establishing & introducing the audience to what the Jedi actually are and using narrative foils for Anakin’s story. Because High Republic doesn’t have this burden, they have more freedom to write more relatable characters (slutty Elzar rights) with more common flaws.

Scope

In High Republic, the story is about the Jedi working with the Republic, all of the Republic. We spend time with everyone, and I mean everyone: not just the main characters, but the side characters, and the background characters too; the worldbuilding is very detailed. We see plenty of Jedi with differing skillsets, opinions, experiences, and the story gives the audience breathing room to get to know them. They have many moments that are irrelevant to the plot, but tell us more about the characters themselves. We bounce between several Jedi Masters, who each play a different role in the Order, several knights who each have a different experience, and several padawans who are at different stages in their training. We have a broad view of the Order. We also get into the heads of the Chancellor, the Nihil, different politicians, diplomats, civilians, scientists, business people, reporters, an event coordinator, I could go on; aside from the Nihil, characters outside the Order are working with the Jedi and operating in good faith. We also know that the heroes are in a game that they can win, we know that both the Order and the Republic survive this era.

The Prequel Trilogy gave us the same huge galaxy and world building, but we saw most of it in the background. It’s extremely focused on the plot and Anakin’s character; if it’s not relevant to the fall of the Republic or Anakin’s fall, it’s not included. Even some things that were very relevant to the fall of the Republic were cut in favor of things more relevant to Anakin. Because it’s mostly about him and we don’t get the perspectives of other Jedi very often, we have a narrow view of the Order. We only spend time with Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Mace, and Yoda even though there are plenty of diverse Jedi in the background that we never meet. We see diversity within the Order, we know other Jedi are doing other things in other places, but we don’t interact with them until Order 66, when they become relevant to the story. We rarely meet other characters outside of their interactions with the main characters. The outside perspectives we see are Sith Lords, Padmé, other politicians, the Naboo, the Kaminoans, bounty hunters, crime lords, and a few civilians. Most of the characters outside the Order are working against the Jedi or operating in bad faith. We also know that the heroes are playing an unwinnable game, the Order and the Republic will not survive this story.

Perspective

In High Republic the audience is spending a lot of time with the Order and mostly seeing things from the Order’s point of view; we bounce between several different Jedi who all find the lifestyle fulfilling in different ways and the story is about all of them. The primary viewpoint characters have a broad, positive, perspective of the Order. When we’re reading from Elzar’s point of view we see his satisfaction when he uses the Force, how much he cares about others, how much he gets wrapped up in his own issues; when we’re reading from Stellan’s point of view, we see how much he loves teaching, how much he relaxes when he gets a chance to teach, how much he loves Elzar, how much he cares about the Order, how he wants to help; with Bell, we see how much he loves his master, we see him grieving, we see him reach these milestones where he figures out what it means to be a Jedi and how it frees him from his pain. The main characters actively participate in the Order’s community. Even when the characters are frustrated or upset with the Order or other Jedi, we know that they still love them because we’re in their heads and we get the characters’ full train of thought.

In the Late Republic, the story is told mostly from Anakin’s point of view. We see his frustration with the Order, his longing to be with Padmé, his desire for more power, his love overshadowed by his attachment. We see Anakin’s respect for the Order clouded by his disillusion (spurred on by a Sith Lord) and we don’t see him look outside his own perspective. We see him finding the lifestyle unfulfilling and not committing to it. The primary viewpoint character has a narrow, negative perspective of the Order. Another big thing is that Anakin is a Jedi who didn’t grow up in the Order and doesn’t have that inherent trust in the community, so we the audience don’t have complete trust in the Order. We see more of Anakin’s point of view than we do of Obi-Wan and Yoda who do reflect a positive experience. In the films, we’re in the room with the characters, not in their heads. We have to deduce what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling; we do not have the characters’ full train of thought.

Structure

The High Republic books have much more spread out pacing. There’s more exposition and we’re already familiar with the characters before they’re thrown through the narrative and then we spend more time with them afterwards. We get their reactions to major events and we see them struggle through recovery. The Jedi in High Republic have time to catch their breath, they are not moving from crisis to crisis the way the Order is in the Late Republic, and we are shown the time in between crises.

The prequel trilogy jumps right into the plot. We’re introduced to the characters briefly and we get to know them as they move through the plot. We don’t see much aftermath of major events, and we don’t see the process they go through to recover. They move from crisis to crisis and we do not see the time in between.

Here’s a summary of the different structures: High Republic shows us Reath, Bell, and Stellan all grieve in different ways and come to terms with their grief, but the prequel trilogy shows us neither Obi-Wan nor Anakin coming to terms with their grief over similar losses.

Explanation

The High Republic authors explain the philosophy of the Jedi more explicitly within their stories; they’re very direct. They also elaborate on what they’re saying for the benefit of the audience. I speculate that they do this to clear up some misunderstandings...

In the films, George Lucas prioritized concision and used Yoda to inform the audience; Yoda speaks in riddles to encourage the audience to think about what he’s saying. He speaks indirectly and without elaboration. 

If you don’t have a background knowledge of Buddhism (or at least mindfulness), it’s not terribly difficult to misinterpret the prequel trilogy because there’s so little explanation. It’s also a little difficult to balance that within a film and there’s more room to do it in the novels.

Internal Differences within the Order

The most significant internal difference is the fashion: High Republic Jedi have fancy formal robes in addition to their day to day robes. My personal headcanon for why this is different is that as time went on and the golden age faded, the Jedi became busier, and didn’t have as much time for the fashion anymore (which is tragic, I love the concept art for their fancy robes) and by the time of the prequels we see it only in the Temple Guards, or the Order decided to dress less extravagantly to show greater humility.

We get descriptions of different career paths within the Order. This is probably where it seems most different from the Jedi in the Late Republic, but I don’t see any incompatibility. There’s nothing in the prequel trilogy or TCW to contradict the existence of these career paths, and in fact I’d say there’s evidence to support their existence. I’ll write a separate post about these because it’ll make more sense with examples and this is already quite long.

There are some other things that are different, but based on external factors. There’s one line about how Jedi don’t get killed in the field often, masters aren’t killed leaving a padawan behind, that it’s just not something that happens. I think it’s supposed to tell us about the time period, but then it happens at least 3 times, so I personally take it with a grain of salt. There’s one bit about how lightsaber dueling is primarily exercise because no one else carries a lightsaber and no Jedi would ever fight another (apparently Anakin missed that memo) but this is consistent with the culture shown in the prequel trilogy when they’re blindsided by Dooku’s betrayal.

[kiraofthewind]

Hello Writeblr

Hello, Tumblr. My name is Erika, or Kira. I go by either. She/her pronouns please. I’ve been worldbuilding a fantasy world for over 20 years now and writing as a hobby. I am now pursuing writing for publication and I anticipate releasing my first novel into the world late this year or sometime next year. ALL my books will take place in the world I’ve been developing, called the Pentagonal Dominion. My posts here will largely be about the worldbuilding relevant to all my books, or may be about the plot/characters of a book in particular. I currently have three books planned, but I have dozens more in my head I want to write eventually.

I call my subgenre “Rainbow Fantasy” because none of the currently-existing subgenre names really appeal to me. It embodies aspects of high, epic, dark, and queer fantasy, but leaves out some of the expectations. I will make a post about Rainbow Fantasy later.

Things you can expect in all my books:

-FANTASY

-Intense worldbuilding. I don’t skimp on this shit

-Did I say shit? Yes I did. I curse. A lot. My characters do too.

-Sex, too. My books are never full-fledged erotica, but they have erotic moments, and plenty of kinks.

-Queer characters. Cisheteronomativity was never a *thing* in the Pentagonal Dominion, so there are always LGBTQ+ characters in my world, living their best lives.

-A disturbing lack of humans. While the Pentagonal Dominion is *connected* to Terra, and there are humans who appear once in a while, for the most part, all my characters are distinctly non-human. The PD features 88 species of sapient people, some humanoid, and some most definitely not.

-Families, both biological and found/adopted. Parents who are still alive. Parents who are the heroes.

-An absolute RANGE of villains. I love writing villains, and I’ll always have one, but they range from sexist terfs who use men as chairs to wholesome fathers who are just trying to create a better world for their children.

Merchants of Knowledge and Magic (MoKaM), my debut novel, in the editing phase, is about an intersex asexual dragonfly-person, Calinthe (she/her), a merchant of knowledge. As a Mind elemental, she is forbidden from using money by the tenets of her religion. Instead, she travels the planes of the Pentagonal Dominion in search of secrets and information to trade. She is accompanied by her best friend, Zakuro (she/her), a merchant of magic. As a Godblood (descendant of the Gods), Zakuro can use magic. Specifically, she can enchant objects to ‘hold’ magic so other people can enjoy the effects. The plot focuses on Calinthe’s search for her boss’s missing demonic henchman, who Calinthe believes to have been kidnapped by the Ophidians, a nation of female supremacists who enslave anyone they don’t deem to be ‘a woman.’ As an intersex person, Calinthe risks her own freedom by venturing into Ophidia, though she has Zakuro’s illusionism powers to keep her safe.

Merchants of Light and Bone (MoLaB), in the drafting phase, is about a bisexual polyamorous lion-man, Amiere (he/him), a merchant of light with a big family. He carves sculptures out of crystals that glow for about 80 years once they’ve been mined. He has a wife Liesle (she/her) and a nonbinary, transneutral husband Su (he/him), who is a merchant of bone. The plot focuses on family dynamics and grief, as the story starts the day after one of Amiere’s daughters died in a freak earthquake accident… in a world where plate tectonics doesn’t exist and earthquakes have never happened. In fact, they don’t have a word for it, and they certainly wouldn’t call it ‘earthquake’ because they recognize “Earth” as being the mysterious land of Terra. Amiere believes the quake to be an act of the Gods, punishing him for being so proud of that daughter.

Merchants of Dance and Hedonism (MoDaH) is still in the plotting phase. I may make significant changes to it between now and whenever its finished. It follows agender, body-changing Tynan (they/them), an infant who hatches at the start of their book. Tynan has Godblood parents: A Mind Godblood father, and a Death Godblood mother. From their father, they inherited the power of knowledge. The moment Tynan’s mind came into existence inside, they knew about as much as an average 15-year-old. From their mother, they inherited the power of genetic manipulation. Tynan can change their body at will into anything they can imagine. They do not have a biological sex, since my world doesn’t use sex chromosomes, but rather multiple genes that turn on or off during fetal development. Since Tynan became aware before their sex was determined, and can change their body at will, they can choose what sex they want to appear as at any time. Tynan becomes a merchant of dance, an assassin, and is sent to kill Arria, a merchant of hedonism who is on a quest to end slavery in Ophidia. She convinces Tynan to join her, instead, though she has to tread carefully, because Tynan’s mother is a one-woman army who would shatter the six planes if she knew her infant baby was hanging out with a woman who sells sex and alcohol, even as a front for abolition.

[lany-d-flow]

A Note on Cherry-Picking: Some Concerns

As someone who is new to engaging in discussion with fandoms, there are plenty of perspectives, views, and original authorities (typically the writers/developers) for me to both observe and learn from. Having a space for fans to discuss the intent, the story of an artist’s work is an important part of not only understanding the message the artist wanted to tell its readers as they draw their conclusions, but also for fans to tell interpretations of their own. Not every story has a concrete, objective outcome for events and dynamics that unfolded in the plot. Some stories have an outcome, yet authors choose to be subtle about what happened and could choose not to specify their message in interviews and commentary, allowing readers to comprehend the story on their own until they eventually see what conclusion makes the most sense in the text. In other words, the canon outcome/the outcome intended by the authority of the text, the author. The result of this practice may cause fans to spend a bit more time reading through the text before connecting the dots, and perhaps sharing their own interpretation even if it is not the writer’s outcome. Such a practice is pretty much fine, if not encouraged to help folks gain some inspiration and use their own creativity for what could have been written.

I have some concerns about one either over-extending their interpretation or forgetting to use the main source and only using a supporting source, though. 

By this, I mean intentionally spreading their interpretations over one or multiple platforms as canon, even when the creator’s original work, continuity, and supporting texts would say otherwise. This is something potentially dangerous not just for new folks of the same audience, but even to the creator themself if the fan’s interpretations imply that the creator has a twisted mindset/agenda, which would very likely not be the case.

To make matters worse, some might choose to take singular moments, phrases in text and supporting texts, and creator comments out of context to support their narrative, even though taking a look at said scenes in proper context would help readers see otherwise. But this actually is not limited to the interpretation-spreaders alone, as one who understood the proper message/canon outcome of a work could also use the previously mentioned sources to support an incorrect interpretation of the creator’s work, even if this was not their intention in the first place.

I have especially seen instances of this in a fandom I actively participate in. While the actions of few do not represent the thoughts of many, I believe it is still important to make a distinction of this behavior, to not only help understand what could be a negative influence on the media you appreciate, but also to hold those who want to support the creators’ work to a higher standard, that we may stay true and respectful to the creator’s intent, the context of a text and its key moments, and instead of pulling quotes out of a paratext alone, using them to support an argument that’s using the text to make a more cohesive case.

So, I would like to focus on a specific logical fallacy that connects with what I am talking about, and use examples of this fallacy that could be seen in fandom.

Definitions

To start, I’d like to define some key terms related to what I have previously mentioned. These would be paratext, epitext, and of course cherry picking. @themelodicenigma has written comprehensive work on the subject of paratext and epitext, and cites a text named The Peritext Book Club to define these terms:

The concept of paratext was defined by Gérard Genette as common elements provided within a book (peritext) and elements outside of the book that refer to it (epitext); these elements can affect individual, as well as cultural, perceptions of a text (1997, 4–5). Peritext includes elements that surround the body of the text, such as the foreword, table of contents, index, and source notes. Epitext refers to communications outside the text that can also influence whether and how the text is read. Examples of epitext include book reviews, interviews, author websites and letters, and critical literary analysis. [source - pg. 2] (Gross - Peritext Book Club).

Another way to define paratext, as also mentioned in Enigma’s work, is that of which supports and communicates something about the text. In other words, what the paratext states is an analysis of what one can understand from the original text. Although there is a chance that paratext can have some extra information about a story for worldbuilding purposes, what it generally states about scenarios is what we should be able to discern from the text itself. Therefore, if one wants to strengthen their case for why something is as the author intended, it’s usually best if you analyze key moments from the text, followed by usage of a paratext. However, this is not always done, and we will look at it later.

The other key term is cherry-picking. If we want a good definition, we can refer to the Oxford English and Spanish Dictionary:

Cherry-pick(ing): Choose and take only (the most beneficial or profitable items, opportunities, etc.) from what is available.

This is a common logical fallacy, often used intentionally or unintentionally in practice. Typically, when one wants to prove their point, they will find a source of relevance or semi-relevance that says what they want to hear. Then, they will cite that source as the ultimate Word on what is true, whether or not that is the case. Also, this fallacy can also invite confirmation bias to the user, making their case more fallacious than intended. The problem with this fallacy is that it most often does not address the full context of what the statement is about in the first place. There is also a chance that the source and quote cited are either not officially proven, taken from an outside source that may not be relevant to the topic, as well as taken out of context and warped to the user’s meaning so that their narrative may be supported. If one wants to determine the strength of the source used, they need only check the source cited in the first place and read the material themselves. From there the reader can determine how valid the source actually is to the topic, and continue to point out to other readers why that source is not entirely valid and does not cover the full context of the topic. We can actually see this fallacy in practice with any form of text, whether it’s a paratext, epitext, or the text itself. This is why it’s important for us to fact check what we are telling people and cover the original text when we are making our case.

Unfortunately, some folks in fandom circles end up cherry-picking sources when discussing media--video games, movies, TV shows, books, music, artwork, and so on. Engaging in one particular fandom recently, there is an ongoing debate that fans themselves choose to keep ongoing. Even with texts, paratexts, and epitext(s) supporting one side of the argument, there are plenty of attempts to ignore what the plot of the story ultimately gave us, leading some to attempt to refute what the text gave us and what the creators intended by taking any conceivable scene, line, and written text from the text, paratexts, and epitexts out of context to support their narrative. If one wants to tell whether or not an argument is cherry-picking, they can:

1) find the original source 

2) get the rest of the information from the original source, then…

3) discern the context of what’s actually going on in the first place, and see if what the original user was talking about actually lines up with the intent of the creator/original source.

However, this practice is not restricted in this type of scenario alone. If a group has found the answer themself, they could make a case using the original text to discuss what’s going on. However, I have found that there are many instances where only quotes from a paratext and epitext are addressed. So while paratexts and epitexts may support what the user is trying to claim, the user overlooked the main text in the first place. This could raise the question of, “Did you actually look at the scenes in the text?” or “did you NEED to use those supporting texts in the first place?”

And really, I am addressing two sides of this to set a better standard and show that we are not always free from fallacy. It is not necessarily our intention to use a logical fallacy like cherry-picking, but besides twisting original intent it can end up weakening our arguments for questions about the text because we did not actually bother to address the original scene. The text is supposed to provide the full context and cover what grounds it needs to. Using a paratext and epitext alone often don’t cover the full context of a text since they simply provide some support. It’s important to correspond supporting texts to the original media also, not just because of what’s mentioned before, but simply because that’s another important part of preventing misconceptions.

So, I want to provide some examples of how I’ve seen this fallacy being used that’s caused me to raise concerns. Hopefully by the end of this, you’ll understand where cherry-picking ends up being used and how we can do better to stray away from it. For reference, I will try to refer to epitext as “paratext” to avoid having to use both nouns in every sentence. But if the only paratext in question is something like an interview, I’ll use “epitext”.

And yes, I will be specific about the game and characters. I thought about being vague by making the subjects indirectly about the characters, but I do not think my point would be as effective that way. Ultimately, the intent still remains the same, so here goes.

Media to Observe

Game: Final Fantasy VII/Final Fantasy VII Remake

Book: Final Fantasy VII: On The Way To a Smile

Movie: Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete

Paratext(s): Ultimania Guidebook, Interview(s)

Topic: The Nonsensical LTD between three characters (Cloud, Tifa, Aerith)

Examples

Claim: Cloud is obviously in love and prefers Aerith over Tifa because he is miserable and pining for Aerith in Final Fantasy VII Advent Children and avoiding Tifa and their family. We saw him away from his family in the beginning of the movie, and we saw Aerith appear in his head and ask for forgiveness from her. He must be asking her to forgive him for having a relationship with Tifa!

Response: 

Types of Media/Text to observe: Movie, Game, Book.

Watch the movie and draw your interpretation. Then, check the prequel of the movie (In this case, On The Way to A Smile). Find any guidebooks and previous texts lining up to this continuity. In the case of this moment, there is a book and game that take place before the events of the movie. In the game, Aerith died and Cloud feels guilty about this. Later in the game, Cloud breaks down due to an identity crisis when he believes Tifa lost faith in him being real, and later in the story Tifa enters his subconscious. In this moment, as we help validate Cloud’s memories, we find out the reason Cloud did everything he did before the events of the game was for Tifa to notice him. After validating the truth of Cloud’s memories and the two of them revealing they indeed held feelings for each other, we eventually reach a scene where, before the final battle, the two of them confess their feelings for each other (will come back to this later). After the game, we have a text that covers the limited point-of-view of the game’s characters, one of them being Tifa. We learn from Tifa’s story that Cloud has tremendous guilt for not being able to protect Aerith. However, this actually is NOT THE ONLY REASON for Cloud’s guilt. In the book and movie, we get information that a new disease is spreading. Finding out there is no cure, while caring for a child with this disease, Cloud’s guilt starts to build up even more. The last straw for Cloud is when he himself contracts this disease. Ultimately, feeling guilty for not saving an important friend, feeling guilty for not being able to find a cure for the child he and Tifa care for, and receiving it himself makes him feel so worthless that he believes the best way to handle the situation is to stay away from his family, that they may not see him suffer and eventually die.

Feeling guilty for Aerith is definitely intentional by the creators and it does represent her importance to Cloud. However, when one chooses to take that one piece of writing and interpret it as the one and only reason for why Cloud is behaving the way he is, then try to interpret it as romantic, that completely neglects the full context for why he was straying away from the people he cherished. Cherry-picking one person and posting that narrative on platforms may make an audience feel inclined to take that as fact, that is why it is important that we look at the rest of the text for Cloud’s behavior, because his internal conflict revolves around failure, guilt, anxiety. Specifically, failure to protect the people he cherishes, and this does not have to be--and is not--romantic to be true. And as if this was not enough, eventually the movie received a more fleshed out version that added another very important person that Cloud feels guilty for: his close friend and comrade, who also ended up being the first love of Aerith.

Also, this is a case where you can use the paratext to support your argument against this cherry-picking. TheLifeStream contains a “3N” Interview, where the three main creators of FFVII Advent Children provide commentary about the movie. In one of the questions, Scenario Writer Kazushige Nojima has this to say about Cloud’s behavior:

At the end of FFVII, Cloud saved the world and was on the way to a happy ending but, in the two years towards AC, he returned to the way he was in the past. What happened to him?

Nojima: Cloud never had a boring personality in the first place so when he started living with Tifa and started out his job, the peaceful life that he had never experienced before made him anxious. During that time, he also contracted Geostigma so it’s to protect the ones precious to him or not, he had to face death and ran away.

Nojima: Even though it’s become peaceful, Cloud has lost many people precious to him. And from Cloud’s background, it was the first time he was in a “peaceful” environment. He’s a character that likes to think about what’s going on around him often.

Here, we are given some context on Cloud’s anxiety and guilt. Context that, in other words, is relevant to the narrative of On The Way to a Smile and FFVII Advent Children as it provides ground for another aspect of Cloud’s guilt. If what was mentioned was not enough to make Cloud feel guilty, he feels anxious for getting something he never had before: a peaceful, happy life with his family. It’s pretty easy to recognize that anxiety is not going to help with Cloud’s aforementioned problems, and all of these issues come together to tell a story about a life after conflict, and handling inevitable issues that will arise regardless. It is important to recognize all of these themes and not just cherry-pick one, because it not only misleads the audience, but also reduces the impact of the message the writers wanted us to tell us.

Claim: The Director of the game in an epitext (an interview) said, “When Cloud is around Tifa, a bit of his true self emerges. There is no other source that says this, and it shows that Cloud is only himself when he is around Tifa.

Response:

Types of Media/Text to observe: Games, Paratext.

Source for reference. Director Tetsuya Nomura’s comment:

In a similar fashion, we made it so that the way Cloud talks is dependent on who he's talking to. While talking to Aerith he stands taller and tries to act cool, with Tifa he acts more like himself, and with Jessie you can see his annoyance. Specifically with Aerith he overthinks things and ends up acting a little strange.

There are several different translations of this comment, with the sentence in question varying between “...a bit of his true-self emerges”, “...he loosens up a bit”, or “...he acts more like himself”. While there is some truth to this statement and is well-observed by one of the creators of the game, the interpretation of this epitext is generally taken too far, and doesn’t cover the full context as to what constitutes Cloud’s “true self” in the first place. This is where it’s necessary to look through the text. In this case, the text is a video game.

The truth in this statement stems that Cloud feels most comfortable around Tifa, and generally does not try to put up a facade around her. From here, one should observe traits that represent Cloud’s “true self.” When we see this side of Cloud’s character, we can observe that other characters also see through his facade, and while Cloud tries to keep distance from other characters, either fails to do so or starts to loosen up around the distanced folk. A better way to read this epitext is to take it symbolically, and see how Cloud’s loosened behavior is toward Tifa, then observe how he interacts with others. The bit of Cloud’s “true self” more or less refers to the traits of his true self’s behavior, as the game follows a plot where Cloud made up a false identity that prevents the truth of his memories from connecting with himself. Tifa is the only one who can help Cloud with this, Since this has not yet taken place in the game--which is a remake of the original game--it’s not exactly best to assume the epitext means that Cloud’s true self can consciously choose to come out around only Tifa or whenever he wants.

Similarly, there is a quote from a paratext that says Aerith “melts Cloud’s icy exterior.” This has been cherry-picked by some to tell readers that only Aerith is capable of making Cloud lose his hard-edge. Once again, if we look at scenes within the text itself, it’s pretty easy to see that Cloud’s “rude” and “icy” remarks are not constantly shown throughout the text. What this quote means is that Aerith does a remarkable job at making Cloud be a better individual to those he interacts with in communities along with his friends. It’s best to care more about what impact these characters have on Cloud than trying to perpetuate a narrative that every single one of Cloud’s moments with Tifa and Aerith are romantically motivated, whether or not they are (More often, they are not).

Claim: The Writer stated in an epitext (interview) that things would have gone better with Aerith. This is proof that Aerith was the intended couple and the one that Cloud deserved, but instead Cloud had to have Tifa as a secondary choice.

Response:

Types of Media/Text to observe: Book, Epitext, Movie.

Link to Source analysis and translated comment from FFVII Scenario Writer Kazushige Nojima:

‘Episode Tifa’… first off, there’s the premise that things won’t go well between Tifa and Cloud, and that even without Geostigma or Sephiroth this might be the same. I don’t really intend to go about my views on love or marriage or family (laughs). After ACC, I guess Denzel and Marlene could help them work it out. Maybe things would have gone well with Aerith, but I think there is a great burden from Aerith.

It is important that readers themselves read the epitext in question, as this statement is a cherry-picked sentence from a writer’s entire interview comment taken out of context. In this epitext, the writer is talking on the premise that the relationship between Cloud and Tifa has friction even without the events leading to the movie. He gives some thoughts, hoping that Cloud and Tifa’s foster children can help them work out the issue causing friction between their foster parents--in this case, Cloud’s guilt. After this, the writer gives a hypothetical possibility that, “Maybe with Aerith things would have gone well, but her responsibility is a burden, I think.” In other words, the writer is giving nothing more than a hypothetical outcome that was never in the written text, and thinks that maybe if he wrote out a relationship between Cloud and Aerith there could be a great outcome, but he also uses a keyword: “maybe.” Not only is he speaking on a hypothetical, he is also not stating objectively that Aerith and Cloud are best for each other. This is something a writer has to think about as they write their story, as what they would love to see may not necessarily be the best way to strengthen their story. Ultimately, this epitext should be treated as commentary that can leave some room for one’s own interpretation. But it does not change anything that has happened and will happen in the text.

Claim: Cloud loves Tifa because it’s stated in all of the paratexts relevant to the game, the Ultimanias. Every Ultimania that refers to Cloud and Tifa confirms that they are in love with each other. Therefore, Cloud and Tifa are the canon endgame couple.

Response:

Types of Media/Text to observe: Games, Book, Paratext, Movie.

While this statement does hold truth, it is still an example of cherry-picking; this is simply pulling quotes/referring to words in a supporting text without actually looking at what happens in the text and continuity. Specifically, any scenarios in the text that focus on Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. This is not the best way to tell your audience that the creator wrote the two folks as a canon couple because it’s not looking at the original text. As mentioned before, a better approach is to refer to scenes in the text, analyze them, and then use paratexts to support what you found in the text. As a matter of fact, take a look at the scenes in the text that make people question the canonicity, and if able, actually discuss how one of the scenes is not what some people try to deem it as (in this case, a rejection).

There is one scene that comes into mind that focuses specifically on Cloud and Tifa. Dubbed the “Highwind scene” by fans, the day before the final battle, all the other characters go to their homes to remember their main reason for fighting, leaving Cloud and Tifa with each other. They then talk about how they do not have any other place to go to or call “home.” After questioning if their mission is actually being noticed by outside forces (figurative language for, “is this fight really worth it?”) they recall their past experiences and, depending on Tifa’s affection level, give implications for what they did that night. All paratexts referring to this moment state it as a moment where Cloud and Tifa realize the depth of the feelings the two have held for each other. For the sake of transparency, I will list the quotes from several paratexts here:

When Cloud proposes that the group separates temporarily, she (Tifa) remains behind at the airship and communicates her feelings together with Cloud. The next morning, she departs for the Northern Crater along with her companions, who returned.

“Words aren’t the only thing that tell people what you’re thinking.......”

-Said to Cloud, when he is at a loss for words while they’re alone

Pg. 27 of FFVII Ultimania Omega, Tifa’s profile.

She communicates her feelings together with Cloud in the final stages of the story, and in AC and DC they live together.

Pg. 33 of Crisis Core Ultimania, Tifa’s profile.

Cloud and Tifa, who remain, reveal their feelings for each other and clarify them together.

Pg. 118 of FFVII 10th Anniversary Ultimania

Words aren’t the only thing that tell people what you’re thinking...

--Prarie: What she said to Cloud the night before the final battle when he said there were many things he wanted to talk about.

Pg. 195 of FF 20th Anniversary Ultimania File 1: Character Guide

I will cut the quotes here, but if you’d like to see a much deeper analysis on this nonsensical debate, along with these quotes and the original JP text from the paratexts, check out Squall_of_SeeD’s essay here on TheLifeStream.

Now, these all reference a very intimate moment within the game...

However, in the game there are two outcomes depending on how you treated Tifa in Disc 1 of Final Fantasy VII : One where Tifa says that words are not the only way to express your feelings, and another that does not give the same implications, instead follows Cloud saying they should get some sleep. It is the latter scene that is labelled by some as “a rejection scene,” leaving some to interpret the outcome of Cloud and Tifa’s relationship as “up to the player” whether or not Cloud ends up with Tifa. Disregarding continuity that says otherwise about the previous statement, it is important that we look at what happens in both scenes. Both Cloud and Tifa sleep together no matter what, and Tifa asks Cloud to let her embrace this moment. After this, both scenes have the two wake up and confirm that they have each other, even if no one decides to come back. Not only do the duo’s friends return, they also catch a glimpse of the duo sharing the night. Depending on what scene you get, the reaction from the crew is different, with the “good” one having Tifa collapse in embarrassment and Cloud and crew rub the back of their necks in embarrassment. With the “bad” one, Tifa walks away in frustration, while Cloud rubs the back of his neck in embarrassment. After analyzing these scenes, then you can use the paratext to support your case that regardless of the scene the player got, this was a special night for Cloud and Tifa. The depth of which they take these feelings is what changes, not their feelings for each other, as we know based on previous scenes in the game (Lifestream sequence, Cloud’s “very personal memory I have” as his reason for fighting, etc.) that the two have not only held feelings for one another, but also they made their feelings aware in some form during the Lifestream sequence, with Cloud’s sealed up secret wish revealed to us that he wanted to protect Tifa and wanted her to notice him while Tifa reveals to Cloud that she spent the last 2 years after Cloud’s departure from their hometown thinking about him, hoping to see some mention of him in the press. The big issue with claiming the Low Affection Highwind scene as a rejection scene/canon scene is that it does not provide any evidence in the game’s narrative that everything Cloud thought of Tifa and did for her is suddenly thrown out the window, especially when, despite the difference in what happens between the two scenes, a special moment between them is still shown on-screen. If this was not enough, continuity of the game has this pair, as previously mentioned, deciding to live their lives together and eventually care for foster children, forming a family of their own. If one is going to talk about the canon outcome, it is important to bring things full circle and use the text and paratext together instead of referring to paratext as the Word of God, as being a material that supports what you can already discern from the text, it is the reverse. What this claim all comes down to is the potential to become oblivious to what the text offers. Some folks may be new to the fandom, and seeing people throw around quotes from a guidebook could leave the new fans confused if one does not address what the paratext is supposed to do and how much authority it holds over the text, as if the paratext holds more authority than the text, which we know is not the case.

Conclusion

Without going through every single argument involved in this debate, I believe the examples above give an idea of what this fallacy is, how it can be identified, and how it is not doing justice to the creator’s work. The same concepts apply to any other media, and are likely practiced, intentionally or unintentionally, by fans of said media. What is important is for us to understand how to set an importance of the relationship between the paratext and text, then act accordingly for understanding the context. By doing this, we can minimize the chances that sources are being cherry-picked for the sake of spreading a warped message. OR, in some cases, corresponding sources to a main source being cherry-picked without actually referring to the main source. From here on out, let’s try to take the rest of the cherries off the branch instead of going for the prettiest pairs alone.

Special Thanks

@themelodicenigma

For reviewing my rough-draft and providing constructive feedback on the ideal approach for a topic like this. If you haven’t, I recommend checking out his essays and analyses. He has written exhaustive work on the concept of Canon and subjects of canonicity. Along with that, he also wrote about the subject of paratext, epitext, and Japanese epitext so quite a bit of inspiration from this post came from his work. Seriously, go check out this guy’s blog!

[sokkathebluewolf]

Is there any character that you originally wrote as a super minor character, but you’ve ended up changing your plan so that they have a larger role?

This is honestly a really funny question, and I really hope you’ll enjoy the answer.

When Gladiator started out, I decided I’d be too bored writing about bland and flat soldiers with zero personality or depth to speak of. Canon did feature a few Fire Nation soldiers with personality, but they weren’t all that fleshed out and virtually had no identity, so in a sense, I decided to rebel by actually giving my soldiers a little more relevance than that.

But it wasn’t meant to be a TON of relevance, you see... it really wasn’t. So when Captain Sokkla (that’s how everyone used to call him xD) suddenly became a hit with readers, I wondered if maybe I should expand his role even more than I had during the early arcs of Gladiator. He had no name for a long time in the story because he had no name in my head either, then it turns out the name I picked for him had a really cool meaning (as in, the guardian lion statues frequently seen in Chinese culture) and I had no idea xD it’s ironic how many amazing things came into place for Rui Shi to slowly but surely become the most popular of my OCs, as well as one of the actual main characters in the story. He’s subtle in many ways, and he’s never seeking to hog up attention... but the man’s definitely outgrown his initial role and become a most incredible character I’ve loved working with over the years.

Of course, if Rui Shi’s role wasn’t meant to be as big as it’s become, it’s probably pretty obvious that Song was also intended to have a supporting role, even if she had some moments of prominence in the early stages of the story here and there. A lot of the idea of giving Song a new life in Gladiator came from my lingering grumpiness at canon for not giving the poor girl a better resolution, so I wanted her to be more important, and treated better, in my story. Then, everyone started shipping her with Rui Shi and why lie? I enjoyed the idea of those two interacting right off the bat. Figuring out how to get their romance started was tricky, but damn, it’s been worth it. And I’m just going to come out and say it: Song is literally a breakout character. For the majority of Part 1 she was mostly a supporting character, with the occasional moments of relevance indeed, then she grew more important through Part 2, and that importance has only continued to escalate and rise higher as we come closer to the end of Part 2. From starting off as a maid and healer for Sokka, she’s honestly become one of Sokka and Azula’s best friends, and I’m not even going to talk about how absolutely CRUCIAL she’s going to be in Part 3. Much like her soulmate Rui Shi, this girl’s gone the distance and I could not be prouder of her for it xD

Next! I think I could lump in all of Azula’s guards along with Rui Shi, to a fault (despite he’s obviously the most important of them). Most of the guards didn’t even have names for a fairly long time, but I slowly grew to use them more, especially in the Festivals, and I just needed them to be individualized and relevant as they are. Of course, not all the ten guards are easily individualized yet... but they’ve all become near and dear to my heart over the years, that much I can confirm, and they’re definitely going to become more than nameless, faceless soldiers in the future, for they have some very important roles to play in the story by the end of Part 2 and eventually in Part 3.

Shoji also, of course, gained more relevance as the story progressed, to the point where I finally set him free from the confines of his desk for the first time in chapter 201 xD He’s a really fun character to write because of how innocent, sweet and good-natured he is. Giving him a bit more content to work with, including as good as becoming Haru’s foster brother (yes, Ran’s basically adopted Shoji by now x’D), made me very happy because he deserves the relevance, for sure.

The last one I’ll bring up... is Rei. Oh, my sweet, pure, wonderful Rei. She definitely could compete with Shoji in the contest of the sweetest characters in this wild story xD But of course, Rei’s role so far has been minimal and nobody really understands why I love her so much. To focus on your question, though, I pondered the idea of making her Zhao’s illegitimate daughter since the moment I came up with the character, back in chapter 138, but over the next months (heck, years, probably) I wondered if I should scrap that whole idea and just make her a regular maid with no further relevance than that. But when the time came to really plot Part 3 properly, to ponder if there was a role this girl could play by then... I was completely blown to bits by the possibilities, and I literally spent DAYS just plotting, not writing a single word, so I could unravel her future role in the story, which is just one of the many things I can’t wait to write already. Rei will breathe a lot of life into Part 3 as long as I do my job properly, and I guarantee she’ll be so much more important than I EVER anticipated she could be, back when I first came up with the character.

At any rate, there’s quite a fair share of characters who went the distance and completely shattered not just my expectations but who broke out of the plots I used to imagine for them. They’ve all outgrown their initial roles to varying degrees (Shoji, despite he’s more important now, won’t be as much of a main character as someone like Rui Shi, for instance, despite his role has indeed expanded plenty). You see... sometimes you have to enforce plot by any means necessary, restraining whatever wild ideas you get if they’ll derail your overall plans. But sometimes you have to cut yourself loose and let ideas run away with you... because who knows? Could be letting some characters gain life of their own is exactly the element you needed so your story could truly move forward in the right direction.

As an added note, Kino, the poor forgotten boy whom I did NOT forget xD was actually meant to have a prominent role from the moment I came up with him (as a fun factor in the South Pole, as well as a useful source of information for the Tribe before Zuko and Suki arrived), but... hehe, much like Rei and Song, this guy’s going to be much more important than I planned initially, even if I did plan for him to play a big-ish role from the start. I didn’t list him with everyone else because he was intended to be important all along, but he still became a much more relevant character than I expected once I plotted Part 3 better and certain possibilities came to life through his character. So he’s a case of “important who became even more important” rather than “supporting or background character who became essential to the story”, unlike everyone else I’ve listed here. There’s definitely a few others who suit that first category, and there’s probably more of the second one too, despite I can’t think of them right now... but thanks for the ask anyway, and I hope your curiosity has been sated, if just a bit :D

[popculturebuffet]

The Legend of the Three Caballeros: Mt. Fuji Whiz and Thanks a Camelot Reviews: Thank God, No Daisy (Comissioned by WeirdKev27)

Saludos amgios and welcome to the final sprint of THE RIDE OF THE THREE CABLLEROS. If your wondering if this is a bit soon.. that’s because it is. While I planned to do the episodes as is before.. this bottom half of the series so far has been so good I couldn’t bare waiting days to get to the next episode just as things are getting really good, especially after the last episode’s cliffhanger. So today, I intend to FINISH the series, with an epilogue next week for my look at the cabs as a whole via a top 12 moments list. Plus i’m already excited for the next retrospective, so there’s that. And yeah Kev’s funding ANOTHER one and you can too.. serioulsy just shoot me an ask for any solo episode or arc you wan’t covered. But now’s not the time for shameless plugs, it’s the time for adventure and to sew up a cliffhanger! So come with me after the cut for some ghouls, ghosts and arthur won’t you?

PREVIOUSLY ON LEGEND OF THE THREE CABLLEROS:

And now the conclusion...

Mt. Fuji Whiz:

First off... let’s talk about the episode titles for the series since I don't think I have yet. 

It has bothered me for the ENTIRE run of the series how terrible most of them are. There all a pun of some kind on something involved with the episode.. but out of 13 episode titles the only ones I like are World-Tree Caballeros, No Man is an Easter Island, Stonehenge Your Bets, Nazca Racing and Thanks a Camelot. And most of them fit the theme of the episode with the exception of Stonehenge: World Tree is a clever pun they couldn’t NOT use, no man fits the theme of the episode as bad as that episode is, Nazca Racing is just another good pun and fits the race at the end, and thanks a Camelot while a very simple one, fits the story of that episode, i.e. everyone's dissatisfaction with Arthur’s training. More on that later. Point is the rest are just.. really cringe inducing puns. And I do LOVE a good pun.. but that’s a GOOD pun, not obvious ones about a “pyramid life-crisis” or a play on gee whiz in 2018 for god’s sake. And the finale title is just.. really awful as they gave up entirely and named it after square dancing for HOPEFULLY no adequate reason. And look the series is a comedy first with the action second, pun titles would be fine.. their just so bad it sucks all the pun out of them. See what I did there? THAT’S a pun. And not even a great one, but it’s still better than this. It feels like the titles were an afterthought and it’s obnoxious. and frustrates me every time I have to type them out. And with only four episodes left I had to get it out sometime. 

So moving onto the actual episode we pick up with the ending of last episode: Death killing the Cabs and Team Sheldgoose. And as we see shortly. he wasn’t bluffing. We pick up with them in the underworld in a dmv line. My god.. it’s even worse of a beaurcrcy than Beetlejuice. Feldrake informs the cabs where they are and Donald, being Donald, dosen’t have the patience to wait in line with the bilions of souls down there, especially since the take a number thing gave them a number that needed to be printed on both sides.. and their at 4. Good gag though. So Donald storms out the moment he sees and exit and our boys head into the city of the Damned. Sheldgoose meanwhile decides to do his best Karen and demands ot speak with the manager.. whose another Sheldgoose it turns out. Uh-Oh.  After the credits our boys explore the city and hoping not to get hit with more ghost cards, find shelter in a little tavern owned by none other than Clinton Coot, Donald’s Great-Grandpa and father of his grandmother Elvira Coot. Clinton initally mistakes the boys for their ancestors, and is disapionted in meeting donald, but once he learns their the ones that inehreted his Cabana, he’s exastic to meet and learn about them. We also learn he had a collection of fragile frontiersman figurines.. which cleverly, are all various versions of Scrooge from life and times. His second cowboy outfit from the side story “The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff”, his prospector outfit from “Terror of the Tranysval”, his klondike prospecter outfit and him finding the goose egg nugget from “King of The Klondike” and him bitterly hauling a sack of his loot into town from the same story. Also some palet swaps of all but the last one because animation is expensive. Panchito.. destroys them all while putting down his pIzza. “NOTHINGS BROKEN”. Clinton then invites the boys to have a sip of his memories, literally he drains some out and despite their relcutance the cabs take a chug.  They reveal prettty much.. every nagging question about the cabana. Clinton, after finding out about his ancestor Duego Duck, the original cabs version of donald, Clinton traveled the world and the 7 seas, everybody’s looking for something.. and he was looking for every trace of the cabs, and their mysterious ally, who we know as Xandra. He gathered all of it, hence the massive collection of books and magical treasures in the cabana, eventually finding their hidden lair and building his cabana on top of it, founding New Quackmore with Sheldgoose’s own great grandmother.. who betrayed him and took the institute from him. His consolation prize was finding Ari and the atlas but he couldn’t open it like the boys and is curious what they found. I absolutely love this and while I feel Clinton’s history would’ve worked better as an overaching mystery, there were seeds for all of this planeted throughout the season, with Sheldgoose being in charge despite the name and Clinton being involved, Shelgoose’s mention a sheldgoose has always been president, and the tease last episode. Still would’ve liked MORE exploration and build up to this , but what we got was facenating upgrading Clinton from a footnote on the duck family tree, to a throughly loveable character: A guy who was so fascenated by his ancestor’s adventures he became an adventurer himself and who lovingly catalogued eveyrthing the guy and his friends ever did.. and had some heartrending reasons why we’ll get to. 

 As Jose leads in with not what but WHO, and likely tells clint about their adventures, a clever way to get that exposition out off screen, we cut back to the world of the living. Xandra is beating herself up, if not literally over things, and while the girls just suggest going to the underworld via zoom point, Xandra points out that won’t work. There’s only one way in: Charon, the greek ferryman of the dead.. and she realizes that’s exactly how, while the girls try a seance.  I’ll just cover the séance stuff now. The girls hold a séance to summon the boys, finding some unfinished business (A piece of said pizza) and having ari dress like a fortune teller because eh why not. There’s some good gags and stuff, but it’s mostly plot irrelvant, only hurting Panchito’s brain at first, then summoning him just as their about to fight a Tengu, with humphrey eating the pizza finsihing the buisness. Not a bad plot at all and certainly refreshing after all the Daisy nonsense last episode, but nothing really important.  Meanwhile let’s also get to Xandra’s subplot, which is both mroe relevant and funnier and again i’ll be covering all at once for convience. Xandra finds that the horn to summon Charon... is now a sax.  Huh so THAT’S what pamela anderson’s character CJ was doing when she was introduced on baywatch. 

Anyways turns out Charon’s reinvented the old boat and since Xandra’s an immortal he offers her a free ride. It’s now a cruise ship with him as the captain, voiced by voice acting legend Jim Cummings who does a fantastic job. The reasonings also brilliant: he wasn’t getting many WILLING souls with his creepy old setup, so he reinvinted things and now has a packed house, plenty of coins and a nonstop party. He even gives us an add for the buisness... this whole thing is fucking amazing and deserves to be praised and is the series at it’s best: taking something mythic and giving it some wacky but still clever tweaks. Xandra eventually gets annoyed as he isn’t going into the city so she can’t look for the cabs and takes the wheel, cursing her to be the captain now, but she just uses that to get in and finds clinton who agrees to guide her to the boys... we’ll get to where he guided them in a moment. 

And that moment is now, Clinton tells the boys there is a way out, but it involves fighting the Tengu, which is misdentified as a falcon despite, even as someone with only a surface knowledge of yokai, I knew it’s modled after a crow, or at least some versions are as it turns out.. and so is the one here so how did they screw that one up?

Point is they need to get past it, and are on a timer as when the Creepy combination of jack skeltington and that moon from Majora’s mask that’s in the sky sets and night ends, their stuck. But first they run into a guard who says they have to fill out paperwork.. and his superior is intend on that, his superior being unsuprisingly sheldgoose, who got the gig since his family runs the afterlife. Oh goodie the rich also somehow run death....

But Donald decides FUCK PAPERWORK, throws it in the air and they run for it with Sheldgoose sicing the tengu on them, which looks awesome by the way. Panchito disappears as mentioned before just as they get a plan but returns in time to free his friends and they triumph.. only for Sheldgoose to not take this lying down and summon his entire family to kick their assses. So both sides power up: having learned the trick from clinton earlier, the cabs inflate.. part of their bodies while sheldgoose forms a voltron style fusion made up of his ancestor’s heads.. with the caveman as the crotch. 

So a fight insues that’s fluid and beautifully animated, and Xandra even arrives to provide backup, with Charon relieving her because he’ could loose his five star rating. I hear you man I struggled just to get my island up to a four. So it becomes a gorgeously animated and awesome fight with Clinton joining inn, finally able to be one of his heroes. He also reitarates something he told donald, that it’s not the journey.. it’s who you take it with and part of his love of the cabs was never having companions like that. Donald takes it to heart and our heroes take their leave, Clinton finally having achieved his lifes’ work. They decide to see japan because why not. Maybe they’ll run into hannibal there. 

And to tie things off, Shelgoose and Feldrake, whose spent the etnire epsidoe still in the staff depsite being dead and...

And find.. a demonic version of Donald in a devil costume, from that short with the devil and angel Donald's.. okay I have some questions. 

He sends them back and we’re out

Final Thoughts for Mt. Fuji Whiz: One of the series best. It’s well paced, has an amazing concept and both sideplots have some form of relevance while being utterly hilarious, especially the charon one. Seriously best bit character of the series calling it now. Already headcanon him as part of the ducktales universe. Along with a lot of this actually. IT’s good stuff and despite the series falts episodes like this prove why it really needed, and still needs, a second season. 

Thanks a Camelot:

Our heroes return to the land of the living with Xandra and to the Cabana, and while Donald wants to relax a bit, Xandra being an ass shoots that down. Though her reasons are valid: Feldrake has been stepping up his game with every scheme.. which is true. HIs last two schemes, not counting his post mortem one, only BARELY didn’t kill them and actually did kill them, and him too but that wasn’t on purpose. They need some good old fashioned hero training so Xandra’s taking the to king arthur and camelot, which of course are still around, to get it and since his training involves leaving everything behind, they leave htier weapons and other stuff behind including their amulets.. which haven’t come up since but are now since their important to the finale i’m guessing and they’ve been wearing the whole time. The girls are tagging along too as they want to document things because the plot says so but their entertaining so fine and leaving Ari and the Bear to guard. And the barrier.. more the barrier.  So with our heroes off Feldrake decides they need to strike and Sheldgoose has a plan to get around the barrier to get Humphrey’s spark: hide inside a cake and have humphrey so overcome by his desire for cake he comes to them. Feldrake is unimpressed but it works.. and even better as he drags them in.. but apparently while Feldrake’s protections are keyed to our heroes bloodline.. coot’s only extneded to feldrake. Which makes sense: he was friends with a Sheldgoose and probably didn’t consider her an enemy till he’d already set the spells, and cleverly, and i’d forgotten this till writing this review: Sheldgoose has already BEEN on the Cabana grounds once and to the doorstep, in the first episode when he visited the yardsale and in the finale of the second when he showed up to give Donald his check. So the show even showed it.. we just didn’t think about it or assumed having the ring meant he couldn’t now. But nope Sheldgoose is inside and Humphrey’s knocked out. 

Back in merry old Camelot, I apolgoize for having a deficit of spamalot and Monty Python refrences, our heroes meet King Arthur, voiced by former star of said spamelot John O’ Hurley, who I was going to give a good treatment and go into his career.. then I found out he’s VERY conservative, pro trump even post riot and generally kind of an ass in how he conducts himself soooo instead a hearty

Does a good job here, still a weasel fiesta. So King Arthur trains our heroes.. via motivational statments, trust falls and what not with his knights who get the same traning, one of which is Gallhad, a frog voiced by the same guy who viced Kermit on muppet babies. Yayyyyy. The girls wonder off, finding Merlin, whose busy with spells and such and clarfying which one is which. They give him june’s phone as Merlin has a video game addiction but Arthur forbids it because well. he has a problem why wouldn’t he.  Ruined Todd Chavez’s life it did. I mean it’s exceptional now but it took a bit of living on a drunken horse with serious issues couch. 

Anyways, Donald soon gets fed up because.. hes Donald. And because.. Tony kinda leans on the more classic constantly angry donald in this one, since he DID help write the lines. It’s not BAD mind you.. but I prefer the melding of his comics and shorts self other works did, the smug ego and everyman desperation to be noticed and liked from the comics mixed with the ego but also tons of rage of the shorts. Kinda like how Daffy had his own egotistical smartguy version merged with his screwball version for the Looney Tunes Show.. which i’ve been rewatching lately. Even better than I remember, highly underated. 

My point is this Donald, as we approach the end .. isn’t for me. He’s just not as intresting as the cloudcuckoolander panchito or the smootha nd wise jose. He ballances them well, being the more direct angry one to panchito’s unpredicablity and Jose’s smooth compemplation. He’s not BAD, and i get why some would prefer this one over Ducktales, as he’s more in line with his classic characterzation.. but I just prefer a more nuanced Donald and this one isn’t it. He spends most of the series either complaning, pissed off, or pining for an ungreatful she demon. There’s not a lot of notes compared to Jose or Panchito, as Jose isn’t just a ladies man or a charmer but a fairly smart guy who has pretty damn good plans and Panchito isn’t just spacey but, kind brave and with his own moral code. They just got more fleshing out as things went and Donald didn’t and it’s disappointing. 

So Donald gets fed up with the training, and calls out it’s only motivatoinal, with the other cabs agreeing, if more tactfully, and the knights.. also agreeing, pointing out King Arthur dosen’t even do his own goofy self motivational exercises and abandon him.. at the worst possible time as the girls conjur up a super powerful magical dragon. So the knights leave him to it and Arthur is too cowardly to face it. So the Cabs do what he won’t and charge in to defend the holy grail, called the grail of immortality here for ..r easons, and fight the dragon.. and Arthur joins them, inspired to finally get his groove back and gives the knights a rousing speech and even reconclies with donald. So our heroes fight the dragon and nearly die, before the rest of the round table pitches in, and the girls find the dragons scroll and impulsively burn it.. which destorys it. So the day’s saved, and Arthur apologizes to everyone and decides to give the boys proper combat training as thanks. Also we get a really funny bit with Merlin, who throws the phone into the fire.. and much like the dragon, apparenlty it was tied to the employee who activated it because he suddenly and horrifcly burns up. PFFT. Dark but beautfiul

But of course what about the Sheldgoose subplot. Well I saved that for now to cover it all at once SO: Sheldgoose pokes around, being annoyed by a dart board of his face and what not and tries to find something to fish the spark out with... but Ari finds him and proves to be entirely useful, beating Sheldgoose down into the treasure chamber and getting inot a fight with him. Sheldgoose holds pace.. until Humphrey wakes up and with the odds against him they throw him out. Meanwhile Feldrake zaps a dog that was going to get peed on him but when sheldgoose is ejegted is surronded by dogs and clearly didn’t escape as he dosne’t want to taklk about why he smells to sheldgosoe. He is ABOUT to berate him for failure again.. but Sheldgoose points out he swiped something more important: The amulets. 

Proving once again Sheldgoose is the real power in the team. 

Final Thoughts on Thanks a Camelot:  This was a fun one. While finding out about John O Hurley was... unfortunte.. he does a decent job and the episodes a fun take on camelot with, as usual , really excellent gags, pacing and a hell of a fight scene with a dragon. Good stuff as usual

NEXT TIME; It all ends! It’s a visit to some yeti’s before one final dance betwen good and evil and one last set of episodes for this retropsective! Be ready! 

[guide4cj]

season 1

1.01 pilot - obviously the setup for the series, should not be skipped

1.02 wendigo - direct continuation from the plot, further establishes sam and dean’s characters/relationship

1.03 dead in the water - optional, but continues to establish dean’s character, including some sweet moments between him + a mute kid with insights to dean’s trauma re: his mom’s death

1.05 bloody mary - optional, but has a scene near the end that explores sam’s guilt regarding jess’s death (it just depends on how invested you are in that part of his character on whether or not you’ll wanna watch) 

1.06 skin - the beginning of the winchesters vs. the police side plot, dean’s first public “death”

1.09 home - sam and dean return to the house their mom died in for a case, john appears briefly at the end (so tw for jdm :/)

1.10 asylum - optional but has some good moments for sam

1.11 scarecrow - first appearance of recurring character meg who becomes a huge part of the series, also one of my favorite hunts from s1 personally

1.12 faith - dean’s first actual death, reaper lore, huge foreshadowing for s4

1.13 route 666 - optional, but provides background information for dean regarding relationships and love, features cassie robinson my angel

1.14 nightmare - very important to sam’s character and the s2 finale

1.15 the benders - optional, but one of my top five s1 eps; no big lore dumps, but the monsters are human, and it’s interesting to see sam and dean deal with that

1.16 shadow - return of meg and john

1.18 something wicked - flashbacks to childhood that establish john is a shitty parent, overall a very emotional episode

1.19 provenance - optional, but features a character named sarah who is the first character sam really has an attraction towards since jess’s death (she also makes a brief return in s8)

1.20 dead man’s blood - first introduction of vampires, john is here, very important worldbuilding which sucks because like i said, john is here

1.21 salvation - penultimate ep of s1, john is here too :/  but important for the plot

1.22 devil’s trap - season finale, bobby’s first appearance i’m pretty sure (and he’s their real dad and i love him), obviously very important

season two

2.01 in my time of dying - dean is dead again, john dies in this ep, generally an important episode (though this is true for all first eps i guess)

2.02 everybody loves a clown - first appearance for ellen and jo and ash whom i love, dean and sam deal with their grief over john dying

2.03 bloodlust - optional, introduction of gordon who shows up again (he eventually tries to kill sam and dean, this ep is the setup for that. there’s some commentary on humanity and when a monster isnt a monster etc but i don’t think skipping it will cause too many issues. it just depends on your interest in this based off of the desc i guess)

2.05 simon said - spiritual sequel to 1.14, introduces a character important to the s2 finale, continues to explore sam’s psychic abilities, etc

2.06 no exit - optional; the return of jo and ellen. viewing depends on your interest in them i guess.

2.07 the usual suspects - sequel to 1.06, dean vs. the cops again, which is a pretty important part of his character overall imo

2.08 crossroad blues - optional, but has a lot of lore for demons and crossroads, foreshadowing/set up for s3 (plenty of the lore can be picked up without this ep/will be repeated but i like this one, personally)

2.09 croatoan - prequel to 5.04 ! poetic cinema. apocalypse vibes

2.10 hunted - optional. continuation of 2.03, with the introduction of another character similar to max from 1.14 and andy from 2.05 who will be important to the s2 finale, but if you aren’t interested in gordon then the recap for the s2 finale will cover it

2.12 nightshifter - continuation from 2.07, more winchesters vs. the cops, introduces victor my beloved

2.13 houses of the holy - optional, has some commentary on the way sam and dean view religion that continues from 1.12 and adds perspective to s4 but not exactly necessary

2.14 born under a bad sign - optional, but kind of an important episode for sam. spoiler is that he’s possessed by meg and there’s some uncomfortable scenes regarding what she makes him do while possessed (and is one of the reasons i dislike her) 

2.15 tall tales - optional bc i feel like i’m listing too many as essential :( it does introduce an important character (the archangel gabriel who is masquerading as a trickster) but i feel like the eps he appears in after will have sufficient enough recaps covering the events of this ep to catch you up

2.18 hollywood babylon - extremely optional this ep is just very comforting to me for some reason. dean and sam are working on a horror movie set that ends up having real ghosts and it’s just fun

2.19 folsom prison blues - optional, but the next thrilling installment in the winchesters vs the cops. victor from 2.12 returns. i like this ep a lot but if you aren’t interested in this subplot it can be skipped

2.21 + 2.22 all hell breaks loose - two part season finale. actually i won’t spoil this for you but it is important (just like with the first eps of every season i think finales will always be relevant)

season three

3.01 the magnificent seven - deals with fallout from the s2 finale, explores the hunting community a little more. introduces ruby, an important character

3.02 - introduction of lisa and ben (who are important to s5/6)

3.03 bad day at black rock - optional, but introduces bela my beloved (maggie twd). continues gordon’s plot from s2 as well

3.06 - optional, the return of bela (my beloved)

3.07 fresh blood - optional, the finale to gordon’s plot

3.08 a very supernatural christmas- optional, but there’s some childhood flashbacks and in general it’s a cute episode and i typically hate christmas eps skjfnskjn

3.10 dream a little dream of me - dean talks shit about john and in general talks about his feelings and it hurts me

3.11 mystery spot - the return of the trickster/gabriel (still not revealed as an angel), dean dies 100+ times, it seems dumb but is important

3.12 jus in bello - winchesters vs cops again! victor returns

3.13 ghostfacers - optional. i have no good reason for you to watch this im just obsessed with it

3.15 time is on my side - penultimate ep, deals with a lot of dean’s feelings, bela returns/this concludes her arc

3.16 no rest for the wicked - finale, dean dies :(

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “The Wrath of Conn.”

Lol, I couldn’t resist. Anyway this is for the multitude of you Conn groupies who wanted a little something form his perspective. Well cue a couple pages of him sort of being an asshole. But also it is totally plot relevant so there is that. 

Hope you all enjoy. This was actually kind of difficult to write, and I had to re-write it at least once :) 

The ship was a strange place now, months had gone by without his presence, and without his connection to their thoughts, and in that time, things had changed. Conn wasn’t entirely sure he appreciated it, but only because that meant he had to re-gather all the information he had originally collected on his human crew members to begin with.

It had been a difficult few months, the most difficult the ship had ever experienced. Conn wasn’t exactly displeased at that fact considering that it was the collective fear and horror from the Cannibal incident that had finally broken him out of his Coma, but he was also displeased to find that things had changed somewhat. Conn didn’t lie change, especially the change that he saw within the Commander. The only person aboard the ship that he could actually communicate with mind to mind.

Well actually scratch that, there were a few others he could speak with, but currently the weighed about fifteen pounds and had language ability so rudimentary it was like trying to talk with the dog. 

Regardless, the last few months  had absolutely ruined what tentative trust the two of them had garnered. 

After returning to the ship, and after putting the Commander into a sort of psychological coma to deal with shock, a HAZMAT team from earth had been called to deal with the issue. Ensuing autopsies had proven that the crew had, in fact, been eating each other despite their being plenty of food left in storage. The remaining survivor, who the commander had been forced to kill in self defense was one Captain Everett Malaney Ex UNSC officer and current freelance ship contractor for both tourist and colonist divisions. By all right he had been an upstanding decision. 

His autopsy had shown that advanced scurvy including kidney failure was the main reason for his monstrous appearance, bruised skin, thinning hair, infected gums and so on. As for the behavior of the crew, it could only be put down to some sort of exaggerated mass hysteria when people realized they would likely die alone in space billions of miles from home in the blackness of space.

Commander Vir had been….. Ok at that point,  but the subsequent venture into a border-world prison had shattered his already cracked composure.

Conn was the only one who had been able to experience the fall from the man’s own perspective. Watching inside his head as he careened into a psychological spiral that had eventually brought them to the earth for treatment. 

Generally conn would have said that he totally didn’t care about anyone’s mental status, and he still would say the same upon being prompted, but this was something that needed to be taken care of and it needed to be done quickly. It wasn’t his fault he was the only one who would truly be able to handle it.

So there he floated in the darkness of early morning, down the hall and towards the mess hall, a ghost town in the early morning devoid of both the sleeping crew-members and the skeleton crew who were off working at their perspective jobs.

He could sense five minds on approach to the room. Three rudimentary and childish minds, and one completely alien guided primarily by smell and hearing. She was the one to  sense his first, with that powerful nose of hers. She didn’t like his smell, it was a burning and caustic thing that made her uneasy, and generally caused her to sneeze.

The next to notice were the spiderlings underdeveloped noses that were already almost as good as the dogs. They were strange creatures to be sure and Conn wasn’t sure how he thought about them.

Tendrils billowing at his back he floated into the room. 

With a whine of agitation, the dog lifted her head from where she had been grooming one of the spiderlings cradled between her two forward paws. Her tongue was still out from where she had been dragging it down the monstrosity’s back. Finally recognizing that he wasn’t going to leave she went back to her grooming. The soft scritch scritch scritch sound of her tongue on fur echoing around the room. She hadn’t originally known how to feel about the spiderlings, but they did smell oddly like Adam, and they looked enough like puppies that she could almost ignore the fact that they had extra legs.

He floated a bit closer to where the commander was sitting alone at one of the tables pen in hand making soft scratching noises as it moved across the paper.

Clinging to his back, like some sort of grotesque backpack, was another one of those little monstrosities. This one’s name was Glados, and Conn was almost sure that she was entirely a creation of anger and hatred aggressively protective of the commander even more so now that they considered his current psychological state.

Conn was only halfway across the room when the scratching of the pen slowed.

Adam paused, and Conn listened as a chill went up the man's spine. He could feel something watching him. And Conn marveled at that fact not entirely sure how the human could know that he was here when he had made no noise. Glados turned her head and hissed at him, but Conn flicked at her with his mind making her shrink back with a whimper.

Setting down his pencil, Adam turned slowly in his seat.

His expression registered absolutely no shock upon seeing Conn floating towards him. On the surface, he looked older as if he had aged ten years in the past month. He was slightly disheveled too hair mussed over his head, skin pale, with dark circles under his eyes. Everything about him seemed washed out.

“Conn.”  The man said, his voice echoing about the room. It was soft, flat, and uncharacteristic of him.

Conn paused glancing through the man’s mind to get a good look at the paper. His vision wasn’t so good in the dark confines of the ship. Generally his species spent much of its time in the direct light of stars, so much of his world was seen through other people’s heads. He saw the sketchy line drawing of a zombie head with hesitant crosshatched marks of shading.

:”Still haven't bothered to tell your therapist about that?” Conn projected into his mind.

He felt a sudden flash of anger in the man before it faded away dimmed as soon as it had come. That fact made Conn displeased.

He didn’t like the man without some sort of passion, and if he couldn't get happiness he would have settled for anger.

Not that he cared of course.

“No…. I haven’t.”

“Why not?”

“You should already know the answer to that.” The commander said turning back to his drawing, “Go on, I know you’ve already looked.”

Of course Conn had taken a look. 

“Why do you insist on getting over this yourself when someone payers her a truckload of cash to help. It seems stupid and prideful.”

“Keep going.” The man prompted.

“Well consider now that I am here you no longer have privacy, so there is no reason to try and hide it anymore.”

There was a deep sigh, and the man tilted back his head. Inside Conn could hear his inner monologue urging his anger down. Conn couldn’t understand what kind of privacy invasion this was, in fact he should have seen this coming, but he still didn't want to explain himself to the strange creature and it’s freaky black eyes.

“Why do you want me to explain myself when you can just read my mind anyway. Why do you need to hear it from me.”

“I don’t need to hear anything, you need to hear it.”

The man paused setting down his pencil and turning again to look at Conn, one of his eyebrows was raised and the expression he had taken on was almost one of a disapproving father, which was a strange expression on a man that spends most of his time in the mental headspace of a 12 year old.

“Why do you care.” 

Con kicked his feet a little causing himself to float upwards towards the ceiling, “ I don’t care accept for your constant inner pity party is putting me off my relaxation time. I did just wake up from a coma after all, and the last thing I want is to have to deal with your dysfunctional thoughts invading my snooping. You see it is very difficult to dig up juicy secrets on the rest of the crew when your ‘oh woe is me’ attitude keeps breaking into my concentration.”

Another little spark of anger, this time a little stronger.

yes , that was good, better to have to moving out and being destructive that way than moving in. However, the human locked down his troughs with an angry twist of his lips, “Will it get you out of my head.”

“Alright.”

“What do I need to do.”

“Nothing really. I am going to say something to you and you are going to respond, that’s it.”

The human hesitated his chin lowered a bit, but eventually he sat back arms crossed, “Ok seems easy enough.”

“Bitch”

The human frowned, “Hold on.”

“Bitch.”

“Hey,” Another flash of anger, “What the hell kind of statement is that.”

“Whiny pathetic bitch.”

The human stood, “Hold on, I said I would play your game, and then you just come at me with insults.” That little spark was growing inside his chest heating up nice and warm. Conn could almost feel it as if it was his own. He liked the sensation. Human emotions were so fun to feel, so fun to play with. They gave him physical sensations he was physically incapable of having.

“Whiny- pathetic - bitch.” he repeated 

“You know what Conn screw you and the horse you rode in on because I have no idea where you are getting this.”

“Really. Someone once told me that actions speak louder than words and here you are moaning to your therapist about how hard your life is, and how hard it is to sleep and how hard everything is wa wa…. Wa.”

The human thrust a finger at him, “You shut your trash mouth. I am not going to be shamed for getting myself help. What I had to go through was rough, and I wasn’t ready for it. I could sit in the corner and cry about it, but here I am getting help holding myself together, so you can just shut up.”

“Doesn’t seem to be working.” “What the hell is that supposed to mean.”

Conn held out his hands to either side, “Look around Commander. Here you are sitting alone in the dark at three in the morning drawing pictures of cannibal zombies. I mean honestly you have gone and lost it. If you really wanted to get better you would probably tell her that you keep seeing him when you look in the mirror.”

“Fuck you Conn. I needed time, I STILL need time, and I will TAKE all of the TIME I NEED.”

If he could have cracked his knuckles he would have. This was fun, “No you can’t. You have a job to do, and by acting like this you are letting the entire crew down.

“Id let the crew down more if I took over not being ready.”

“Then why aren’t you ready?”

The human stepped forward right up in his face. The spark had lit into a flame fanned. The anger was billowing outwards, “I think I deserve to feel like shit for a little while. I watched a man die.”

“You mean the man you killed.” Conn went on smuggly 

The human was even closer to him now, chest to chest, “I DID-NOT-KILL-HIM. I survived. That man may have deserved what he got and maybe he didn’t, but no one died and made me GOD so it's not my place to decide.”

“You didn’t help him though, did you.”

“No, I didn’t, but why was it MY job to help him. Me against an entire prison. The guards weren't going to stop them, they hated that guy just as much as the rest of us, and while we are on the subject. YES I wanted him dead, any normal person would. I’m not a saint, I’m not perfect and yes I have those sort of thoughts. In fact, I got what was coming to me; my punishment was the beating I got. Anyone who blames me for any of that can go right to hell.” The flame was roaring nice and warm now. It was anger, and it was making both of them feel light. Blood ran through their hands and into their heads. 

It felt sort of nice to be mad.

“Oh please, if you really believed that, you wouldn't feel so guilty.”

The human snarled. The dogs and the spiderlings on the floor had retreated under a table, but Glados hissed along with him. “You think I feel guilty because of HIM, no. I feel guilty because I didn’t live up to my own standards. If I really am who I thought I was, I would have helped him no matter what, but I didn't and that's why I am frustrated. I am not the man I thought I was, and that PISSES ME OFF.”

Conn floated a little closer two dark eyes looking into one green one, “You know who you remind me of?”

“Oh please tell me more, I am DYING to know.”

Conn paused allowing the tension to build, “Mr. Everett.”

The room had gone very silent. Glados stopped growling, and her little ears went back, “Take…. That…. Back.” The human hissed in a horse whisper.

“Make… me.” Conn whispered back 

He watched from the Commander’s peripheral vision as Glados crawled across the floor and under the table. He was getting into dangerous territory, but that was no matter. He would manage just fine, “Come on, just look at his career, mirrors your own now wouldn't it. I can just imagine it, the ship goes dark and poor little Adam Vir loses his mind and starts eating the crew.”

A vein was pulsing just above the man’s good eye, “I would not.”

“I wonder what the Drev taste like. I mean Sunny is small enough, you could probably catch her and chop her up into bite sized pieces if you really wanted to.” 

‘I said SHUT UP.” “Why should I!”

The man lifted his hands as if he was going to choke Conn, but held back balling them into fists, “I would never do that, and I don’t give a damn what you say. I would keep my cool, and we would find a way out because that is what we always do.”

Conn shrugged intentionally and quite completely blowing him off as if it was nothing.

“You know it’s just sad. You trying to justify yourself.”

“What do you want from me Conn. Why are you her. Does messing with people get you off or something. Is this some kind of sadistic pleasure for you?” 

There was silence in the room for a long moment. 

Waffles whined below the table, and the spiderlings chirped nervously along with her.

“No Commander.” His voice lost it’s edge, he let it slip take on a more distant quality inside the man’s head.

“These thoughts aren’t mine…..” The human looked on in confusion, the flame in his chest pausing.

“They’re yours.” The flame was snuffed blown into smoke which rose into confusion on his face. He took a step back.

“What are you talking about?”

“None of those words were mine. I stole them all from your own head. All of the insults all of the illogical assumptions.” He grinned, “they made you mad, didn’t they because they didn’t make sense.”

The man just stood there mouth agape jaw working furiously though no sound came out

“You argued pretty heavily with me didn’t you. Thought I was being some sort of asshole….” Laughter, not that he could make the sound, but inside the man’s head he could sound like anything, “I’m not the asshole, Commander...you are. Calling yourself names, doubting yourself. Personally my opinion is that if you are allowed to do it, than I am. I mean if it’s inside your own head than you must believe it.”

“But I don’t.” the man whispered 

“Than what do you believe commander?” He waited there, knowing the answer but watching as the human struggled to find it inside his own cluttered head. Parts of his subconscious doing its best to hide the truth, but then he snagged it. Just a tendril, but it was enough.

He sighed deflating, “I want to feel normal again, I want to get back to work. I wanted someone to be angry at me, someone to yell at me like I won't shatter. I want them to tell me that I am NOT doing as well as I could. I want people to expect MORE from me not less because less means that they believe in me less. Even if I can’t reach it, I want people to honestly believe that I can because maybe if someone believe it, it’s true.”

“You feel like people have been making excuses for you.”

He threw his hands in the air, “Exactly. They’ve been going so easy, they've been so nice, but that's not what I want… It’s not what I need. I know it sounds stupid, but I want someone to come in here and tell me to my face that I need to do better because they'd be right. All the doctors and all my friends they think they are being supportive, and they are, but that’s not what I need. I need expectations.” 

Conn crossed his arms, “Fine, do better. Get off your ass and get back to work.”

He sighed, “it’s different coming from you.”

“Why?”

“Because You know exactly what I want, but you're probably don’t mean it. I don’t need platitudes Conn.”

More laughter. He liked the sound it was fun, and it was a great way to mock people, “Platitudes. Do you honestly think I care about your feelings enough to give you platitudes. I am being honest. I think you’re being a selfish asshole sitting here all alone in the dark coloring when you have a job to do. Do better.” The man was glaring at him again. That little spark in his chest had come back easier than it had before, Conn reveled in the feeling of his anger.

“What do you want Commander, right now what do you feel right now.”

“Probably the desire to strangle you.” Conn didn’t even bother flinching.

“You don’t really want that.”

He sighed in annoyance, “Fine, I don’t want that…. I….” Conn waved a hand trying to prompt him on. Conn could feel it, a sort of buildup of emotion inside the man. Physically it felt like a cap on a shaken up bottle filling his entire body up till just under his head, like he was trying to keep his face out of the water in order to avoid drowning.

“You now what, honestly I’M PISSED OFF. IT’S NOT FAIR DAMN IT. If I could just…..”

“Come on….” Conn coaxed.

“If I could just, clear it all out then maybe I’d feel better, but I have to act all civilized because of my rank. I have to be in control.

Conn waved a hand dismissively and motioned around the room, “Well go on, no one is stopping you.”

“Not on the ship.” The man hissed in return.

“It’s your ship isn’t it. Look around, Commander what is the worst you could do, break a couple of chairs bust the coffee machine , nothing you couldn’t pay for.”

“What if the crew sees. 

“Screw them.” Conn said, “everyone will be better off if you get a little destructive now versus not doing it and being a lot more destructive later.”

THe man held his eyes for a very long moment, “It won’t be pretty.”

“I’m inside your head, I have seen plenty of things that aren't pretty.” 

There was silence for a few seconds before.

“You should probably step back.”

This time Conn did as directed floating back and high watching as the man turned on the spot. His head was bowed, his hands curled into claws at his side. He watched from the sky as one dog and three spiderlings slunk across the room and hid under the salad bar.

He allowed himself to feel the buildup as the man’s hands began to shake uncontrollably, his breathing grew heavy, blood rushed into his face and neck, and then, the cap burst from the bottle….

WIth a scream of anger, almost inhuman the man lashed out with his prosthetic leg kicking the table. The power was enough to snap some of the bolts holding it in place and it hit the floor on it’s side with a crash. Chairs went flying along with creative curses Conn would have to save for later. Silverware crashed onto the ground. Lights hung from exposed wires. Metal screeched as it was dented. Paper was rent and scattered about the floor like confetti. 

Minutes passed by followed a reign of destruction so impressive Conn admitted he actually underestimated what was going to happen. 

The commander  stood at the center of the room surrounded by carnage. His hands were bleeding. He tilted his head back towards the ceiling screamed again and fell to his knees breathing hard. There he went quiet and Conn could feel as the last bit drained from him, dripping onto the floor and dissipating away.

The red faded from his neck and face, and with an exhausted sigh he flopped onto his back one bloody hand resting on his stomach, the other resting on the floor as he stared at the ceiling. Conn floated over, adjusting the gravity field so he sunk to the floor, and lay down as well. Their heads were side by side, though their feet were going in opposite directions.

They lay like that for a minute.

After a few moments, There was a soft shuffling on the floor as waffles slunk from under the salad bar crouched close to the ground, her tail sweeping fast and slow to the ground her ears back.

She scooted closer to the commander, whimpering and yawning with agitation.

The commander patted her ears as he stared up at the ceiling, and she lay against him in the crook of his arm. 

Noise down in the hallway, along with the sound of rushing feet and a group of humans charged onto the deck carrying an assorted array of weaponry. They paused in the doorway to the mess hall from two doorways looking both worried and confused spotting the commander lying amidst the carnage.

“Commander wha-”

The man held up a finger, “SHHH…. Shhhhh.” 

The humans went quiet looking between each other with confused expressions. Dr. katie poked her head around the door frame and glanced around the room, then with tentative steps she walked quietly into the room and towards where the commander lay. She didn’t say anything but paused, then shrugged and slowly lowered herself to the ground, adjusting herself till she was flat on her back staring up at the ceiling. The other humans looked between each other in surprised confusion, but one of the marines shrugged walked forward and lay down on one of Conn’s other sides resting his hands atop his stomach in silent contemplation.

Following their baser social instincts, the other humans followed until, one by one, he was surrounded by an array of human bodies all staring up at the sky in deep contemplation. Conn reached out to them feeling their solidarity to their commander, and then connected the two together allowing the Commander to hear them for one brief moment.

There was silence and then, inside his head.

“Thank you, Conn.”

“don’t mention it.”

...

“Conn.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t EVER try that on anyone else.... ever again.” 

“You have my word, Commander.” 

 Whatever..... its not like he cared.

[writingithink]

All The Skies Pairing: Ten x Rose Rated: T Wordcount: 6,740 Summary: After accidentally bonding, the Doctor and Rose start their honeymoon.

Notes: This is for Day 1 of @timepetalsweek !!  I used two of the prompts, the picture prompt and 'dancing'. It is a follow up to my fic, In Case You Don't Stay Forever. There's not really a 'plot' for you to feel lost in if you don't feel like reading that as well. Thank you so much @hey-there-juliet for betaing!! (& honestly, convincing me that I could totally make up this planet). I own nothing (aside from mistakes).

READ IT ON AO3!! --> a copy/paste link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25379095

“Here we are! Neghlyvryn!” the Doctor announced, opening the TARDIS doors with a flourish as he stepped outside and into a city square. Banners and streamers were everywhere. Crowds of people (well, aliens) were just starting to form. He couldn’t help a smug smirk - he’d gotten it right. Good.

“Blimey, it’s hot!” Rose exclaimed, having just stepped out behind him.

He turned to watch as she fanned herself, barely taking in the festive atmosphere.

“I told you it would be.”

“Yeah, and I dressed for summer, too, but here we are! How are you wearing your suit right now?!”

“Superior temperature regulation,” he explained as he gave her outfit a once over (and then a twice over). She looked great in anything, that was a given, but the pink tank top and tiny denim shorts she currently had on were particularly flattering (even if the amount of skin they revealed would likely distract him all day).

Rose’s discomfort and irritation were still the most prevalent emotions he could feel across their bond, but a bit of pleasure and happiness shot through. Still, she wasn’t smiling.

“Well lucky you. What’s the temperature right now, anyway?” she asked.

He squinted up at the sky and did a slow spin.

“About 27 degrees.”

“I’ve gotta change. Maybe see if the TARDIS has some sort of fancy clothes to keep me cool,” Rose decided, turning around.

“Roooose,” he whined, “it’s the morning! And it’s only going to get hotter. If we wait too long, it won’t be safe for you to play Jikltaii unless you decide to wear an enviro-suit!”

She glared at him over her shoulder before turning back around and crossing her arms. “And just how much hotter is it gonna get?”

“Errr, somewhere around 34 degrees, give or take. This is the Rhibelini Festival! It’s like their summer solstice, except it only happens once every fifteen years when their three suns align.”

Shoulda mentioned three suns when I was gettin’ ready, Rose grumbled over the bond as she finally walked up to him and took his hand. “Alright then, let’s get goin’. But we better get somethin’ to drink before we play this game of yours.”

The Doctor nodded enthusiastically, almost skipping as he led them away from the TARDIS. 

This would be their second full day as a bonded pair, and while he still hadn’t had time to properly research it, he had been able to meditate and construct some barriers that would actually be effective … on his end, at least. Since Rose had been asleep during his meditation, they hadn’t been able to work on hers (however her telepathy even worked to begin with). So while he still got plenty from her end, he was able to keep a majority of his less relevant trains of thought from bothering her (and while he could have tried to keep things more private, it didn’t exactly seem fair). Plus, he loved being bonded to Rose Tyler, accident or not.

“So, tell me about this Jiggle-Tie thing we’re gonna do,” Rose prompted as they entered the queue for a street cart, fanning herself with the bottom of her top.

For a moment his eyes zeroed in on her belly button before he made himself look away, focusing instead on the line of people - which was already long now, so he could hardly imagine what it would look like later in the day.

“Jikltaii,” the Doctor repeated, “with a ‘K’. It’s kind of like paintball, but with sling shots. And it’s kind of like capture the flag, but there’s three teams. You see, the Neghlyvits believe that their planet was created when the three sun goddesses reached a truce after fighting amongst each other for billions of years. Each sun’s name corresponds to a goddess; Rhiza, Beltof, and Iniya. Each goddess has a color. Red, or rhiz, for Rhiza. Then there’s orange, or belti, for Beltof and yellow, or iniv, for Iniya. Three teams, three colors of paint.”

“Sounds fun.”

The line was moving slowly, and Rose finally began to take in the surroundings with a hand over her eyes to keep the suns out. He dug through his pockets until he found a pair of her sunglasses, handing them to her and feeling a wave of gratitude across their connection.

I love you, he couldn’t help thinking.

It was getting a little embarrassing. By his count, he’d now told her this 26 times telepathically since she woke up (verbally only twice, so that would make it 28 times total).

I love you too.

At least she always said it back, projecting enough affection to dispel his embarrassment.

“So, what happens when you win at Jikkle-Tie?” she asked.

“Mmm, well, Neghlyvryn is an incredibly peaceful planet, and their culture obviously emphasizes compromise. This festival is called Rhibelini - an amalgamation of all three goddesses names - because this is the time when the goddesses renew their truce. So the team that wins a game of Jikltaii’s corresponding color determines what flavor of frip everyone eats at the end.”

“Frip?”

“It’s an ice cream-type treat,” he explained, swinging their hands together as the queue moved forward.

“That’s good. I’m definitely gonna need some, runnin’ around with a slingshot in this heat.”

“Yeah, I think that’s the general consensus.”

Eventually they reached the front and the Doctor ordered four waters, two kivries, and a couple poofs (each cut in half). He also got directions for the closest Jikltaii field.

“I’m not hungry yet,” Rose informed him as he handed her a kivy and a water before putting everything besides his own kivy into his trouser pocket.

“I just didn’t want to wait in line again. Imagine what it will be like once midday comes around?”

Ugh, fair.

“So this is like a soda, yeah?” she asked, after guzzling half the water bottle and then dumping the rest over her head. The Doctor couldn’t help but follow a few droplets as they trailed down her neck. Temperature was now not the only thing he needed to regulate.

“Yup. Very fizzy. Hey! Fizzy Kivy! It rhymes! Look at that!”

She laughed, her entire mental presence much brighter now that she’d cooled down a bit. They both opened their bottles before beginning to walk towards the field.

“Oh! ’S like- like lemon and somethin’ else …”

“Like lemon and cucumber,” he scowled, eying the bottle with disdain.

Rose took another sip. “Not so bad.”

“Blegh. Do you want mine, then?”

“Not right now,” she giggled before coughing and then sneezing after getting fizz up her nose.

And he knew she was fine, but the Doctor couldn’t keep himself from stopping and rubbing her back … just to make sure.

You’re sweet. 

See, it’s rumors like that that make Absorbaloffs from Clom think that they can do whatever they’d like, he couldn’t help but think. He immediately regretted it, as Rose began brooding about everything her mum had been through. Tea yesterday had gone quite poorly.

“Sorry,” he whispered, taking her hand again and quickly getting them to the Jikltaii field.

Once they’d paid - credits! He loved credits. So much easier than keeping track of specific currencies, even if he still didn’t quite understand the ins and outs of money - the attendant, a native male with fiery orange hair and the pale blue and brown speckled skin typical of most Neghlyvits, immediately began to divide everyone into teams.

“Iniv team,” he told Rose before turning to the Doctor. “Belti team.”

“B-but I want to be on Rose’s team!” he complained.

“Nope. Everyone’s divided by colors. Your hair is kind of orange.”

“But we’re on our honeymoon!”

A burst of affection came through the bond, though it was hardly noticeable over how hilarious his bondmate thought he was being. She could really do with being a bit more interested in their romantic endeavors.

Sorry .

I forgive you, the Doctor projected.

“May you lovingly cover each other with paint,” the attendant drawled before handing them each their appropriately colored paint balls and sling shots.

“And I suppose they’re on Iniv team, then?” the Doctor queried, pointing at the two aliens next to them - both green, covered in scales, and having no hair to speak of.

“Yes.”

Figured. Maybe he should have dyed his hair before this. Or worn a wig. How was he supposed to know that teams were chosen this way?

Rose sent a mental image of how he would look as a blonde. Ew. Nope. Not even a wig. Next time Rose would have to dye her hair. He already knew she looked fantastic as a brunette, he’d seen pictures.

“It’ll be fine,” she consoled him as the attendant began a speech about the rules.

Apparently you weren’t out as soon as you were hit - you just took a two minute time out and at the end of the game they would figure out which team had the most paint on them if no one captured any flags.

“I want to be on your team,” the Doctor pouted.

“I think it’ll be more fun this way. Winner owes the other one a favor,” Rose smirked. Several thoughts flashed through her head at once, and he caught images of him painting her toenails, folding her laundry, cooking her dinner and a few that were decidedly X rated that she probably wouldn’t need to use a favor to cash in.

Good to know.

Still, he didn’t fancy folding her laundry.

“You’ve got yourself a deal,” he decided. They shook on it. “What happens if Rhiz team wins?”

“We’ll call that a tie. Each owe the other a favor.”

Before he could argue that, it was time for the teams to move out to their respective starting points. He could have continued over the bond, but his team mates were vying for his attention as they talked strategy. 

It was just as fun as he thought it would be (though being on Rose’s team would have made it more fun). In the first fifteen minutes of the game, he didn’t see his wife anywhere. For a moment the Doctor worried that she had been assigned to guard their flag - how boring - but she was broadcasting much too much enjoyment and general competitiveness for that to be the case. Then he saw her head peeking out from behind a paint-caked wooden partition.

He ducked down, carefully keeping cover until he was right next to the barrier before he quickly jumped over it, shooting her twice before he landed clumsily on the other side.

“Ooof!” She may have said it aloud, but he was the one who had just landed hard on his bum. Really need to figure out how to turn off that part of the bond. “You alright?”

“I’m fine. Not as fragile as you lot. No bruised tailbone.”

“Good,” Rose said, crawling over to him and giving his shoulder a squeeze. “Still, I’ll probably need to check it later.” 

If they weren’t telepathically connected, her meaning would have been made quite clear by the way she nipped his ear. 

“Oh,” he squeaked, looking around to see if anyone was watching them as she climbed onto his lap. Then she was snogging him, and the Doctor really didn’t care if they were spotted. She was so warm and soft and the way her mind was caressing his was one of the best things in the Universe, he was sure of it. He groaned, pulling her closer, wanting more of something, though he wasn’t sure what and-

Loads of something wet and sticky ran down his head.

“Gotcha,” Rose whispered before she sprang to her feet and ran off.

The Doctor sat there for a moment, slightly dazed, trying to manually redirect his blood flow. Honestly, what kind of tactician was he to have overlooked the fact that Rose Tyler plays dirty? Apparently the answer to that question was: the kind of tactician who really wants to snog Rose Tyler. He shook his head, got up and regained his bearings.

It’s on, now, you minx, he sent across their bond.

All he got for his trouble was the telepathic equivalent of laughter.

“Friendly fire?” Uriit, one of the women on his team, asked when they ran into each other near a ropes section of the field.

He looked down at his shirt to find it smeared with orange paint. 

“Something like that,” he answered, scratching the back of his neck and giving his ear a tug.

Throughout the rest of the game, the Doctor purposefully projected the most random things he could think of to Rose over the bond, hoping to distract her. Rambling lessons about tea cultivation, pocket dimensions, the War of the Eternals, different library cataloguing methods throughout time and space. Anything. The problem was, she wasn’t getting nearly as distracted by his thoughts as he seemed to always be by hers.

So he gave up that plan and set his sights on capturing the Iniv team flag as if the planet were at stake. This got him a five minute time out for attempting to mess with the sprinkler system.

In the end, team Rhiz did end up winning but no one caught any flags.

“Did you have fun?” Rose asked him as they sat at a picnic table eating their rhizit frip (berry-ish and minty, possibly the best frip flavor anyway, though they all sounded good to him).

“I would have had more fun if we were on the same team,” he sulked.

“I’m sorry. Next time I’ll wear a wig, yeah?”

He shrugged. While the thought of her in a wig intrigued him, it didn’t fix today’s Jikltaii mishap. This was supposed to be their honeymoon. You can only play Jikltaii on your honeymoon once, after all.

“Rubbish,” Rose told him, “and you know it. Mum’s busy plannin’ a wedding as we speak. We’ll have another honeymoon before ya know it.”

“Oh.” The Doctor sat up straighter, suddenly much more interested in his frip and the topic of wigs. “I didn’t think of that. How many honeymoons do you think we could have?”

“Depends how many times you wanna get married,” she smiled, tongue between her teeth. He was certain that if he snogged her he’d be able to taste her rhizit frip. It probably tasted much better that way.

Later.

“But we don’t have any frip on the TARDIS,” he informed her, moving to sit on her side of the bench.

“Could get some.”

He blinked.

“Didn’t you just tell me the other day about how time doesn’t pass in your pockets?”

She reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out his kivry from earlier, still cold and fizzy.

“I hadn’t thought you were paying attention,” he admitted.

“I just tune out the technical parts.”

Rose finished up her dessert as if this wasn’t important information. Maybe for her it wasn’t. She was Rose Tyler so of course she wouldn’t have to learn new things about herself.

“Sooo,” the Doctor began, leaning his back against the table and stretching his legs in front of him, “earlier, when I was telling you all of that stuff and you didn’t get distracted …?”

“Kinda like havin’ the telly on in the background.”

Well that wasn’t very flattering.

She rolled her eyes. “I pay attention to the important stuff. And the interestin’ bits. But you’ve gotta admit, it’s kinda like you were playin’ the history channel.”

Fair enough.

“What would you like to do next?” he asked, hopping up off the table and grabbing their frip containers to take to the rubbish bin.

“Well, first things first, we definitely need to change.”

“Both of us?” He frowned, furrowing his brow. What was wrong with his suit?

“Doctor, we’re covered in paint.”

“Oh,” he relaxed, taking her hand and leading them toward the exit. “That’ll be dealt with in a mo’.”

To leave the area, everyone had to go through a small blue outbuilding. The Doctor watched Rose look around and saw the moment she noticed all of the drains in the floor.

“Wait-”

Water sprayed down on them. It lasted only a minute, and then the doors on the other side slid open.

“Better?” he asked as they stepped outside.

“Well, ’s better than disinfectant. And so refreshing right now.”

He closed his eyes and tilted his head toward the suns. Yup, about 31 degrees. He looked down at his suit - paint free (and drying very quickly).

“I still wanna change,” Rose said. They were walking hand in hand back toward the main city square. The crowds were dense around them, full of locals and tourists alike. The Rhibelini Festival was an intergalactic traveler’s must see. At least, that’s how the magazine had described it.

“You read about this in a magazine? What happened to them being dull?”

The Doctor huffed. “There wasn’t anything else to read or do at the time. We were trying to infiltrate that shady corporation on Arelenia II and I was sat in their waiting room. Had to blend in. Everyone else was reading those magazines they leave all over the place. In fact-” He dug into his jacket pocket “- here it is!”

“Why’d you take it?” she asked, grabbing it before attempting to read the cover page and walk at the same time.

“Well, it boasted the 250 must-see places for the experienced intergalactic traveler - that’s me. And I hadn’t been to some of them. I wanted the list. Also, the Geri Corporation committed many major human rights violations, and made me wait for almost an hour, so … they owed me.” He put his arm around Rose and led her to the side of the street before stopping and taking back the magazine. Should have known better, really. Rose Tyler and her magazines.

“Yeah, ‘cause they’re not dull. They’re full of interesting stuff, and short for when you don’t feel like readin’ a whole novel.”

“The ones you read are always about clothes and makeup and gossip.”

“Useful, useful, funny.”

She may have him there - but he wasn’t going to admit it verbally. Her smug telepathic presence was enough, ta. They started walking again, Rose finally taking the time to people-watch.

“Those outfits, are they for somethin’ specific?” she asked, nodding toward a group of native girls wearing the traditional festival clothes - bralettes and asymmetrical skirts in yellow, orange, or red.

“Nope,” he replied, turning her attention to another crowd that had a mix of natives and tourists, most of whom were wearing the same basic outfit. Even a few men wearing the traditional skirt (though cut differently).

“It’s called a high-low.”

“What?”

“The skirts the girls got on. High-low.” Rose let go of his hand and placed hers at her mid-thigh. “High,” and then dropped it past her knees, “low.”

“Why would I ever need to know that?” the Doctor asked, puzzled.

She simply rolled her eyes, took his hand, and dragged him towards a row of shops. He tried to ignore her unflattering thoughts about men and shopping and blokes in general, figuring that he really wasn’t a man or a bloke so she couldn’t be referring to him. He hoped so, at least.

“I like their outfits, think I’d like to get one,” Rose told him as she began peeking into the shop windows.

“Okay.” Much better than going back to the TARDIS. More … festival-y.

So he tagged along behind her as she entered a boutique, hanging back when she went up to the counter and examining a display of hair accessories.

“Hello, I was wonderin’ if you could help me find a, uhm, traditional festival outfit,” Rose asked the clerk. The Doctor raised an eyebrow and turned his head to look at the racks of said apparel that were plainly visible.

Yeah and are YOU an expert at the sizing here?

Deciding that she really must know best, the Doctor quietly left her to it, exiting the shop and letting her know telepathically that he’d be just outside. Outside was much more entertaining anyway. Buskers had begun playing, and there were pop up stalls, and all sorts of things to look at and do.

Would be better once Rose came back, though.

Still, couldn’t hurt to get the lay of the land. Have something planned for once she finished. It ended up being over forty-five minutes before Rose told him she was leaving the boutique, and he was down the other end of the block! That right there was some decent range. Eventually they were going to have to properly test how far apart they could telepathically communicate, but that could wait. The Doctor ran down the street, weaving between groups of tourists, before skidding to a standstill.

She was absolutely stunning.

The festival set she’d chosen was yellow - of course, really - with a gold (or iniyama) sun clasp at the centre of her bralette, and two tiny red and orange suns on each side near her arms. The skirt had a whispy white under-layer visible in the low part with little gold starbursts dotted around it.

If the goddess Iniya was real, he was certain that she would look just like Rose at this moment.

“Oh, Doctor,” she flushed before placing a hand on his cheek, pulling him down and kissing him. Unfortunately, as soon as he tried to deepen the kiss she pulled back.

Later.

He was getting tired of that word.

“C’mon, there’s activities this way,” he said, grabbing her hand and dragging her up the street.

“Hold your horses,” she laughed. “I’m gettin’ kinda hungry. We should eat those sandwiches you got.”

“Oh! Right! The poofs!”

“Poofs? Really?”

“Yup!” he told her, popping the ‘P’. 

It didn’t take long to find a picnic table - they seemed to be everywhere - and settle in with their food and another bottle of water. He wondered if he’d gotten enough.

“Huh. ’S like a fruity cold cut,” Rose commented after swallowing her first bite.

“Reminds me of blackberries,” he agreed. Definitely a better flavor combination than the kivry. He shuddered at the memory. Could still kind of taste it, even after the frip.

They were quiet, quickly eating the poofs, and then off back toward the fun. The Doctor glanced behind him as he led her through the crowd and was thrilled to see her smiling. Her mental presence was bright and happy and really, this was so amazing and such a great day. He should probably marry Rose Tyler as often as possible, so that they could keep going on honeymoons.

She laughed. “Y’know our life is travelin’ around, right?”

“Oh, but this is different! This is romantic traveling. Newlywed traveling.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Don’t you want to keep marrying me?” he asked, stopping in the middle of the street and pulling her closer.

“Mmm might do. Still, honeymoons generally last ‘bout a week. And we’ve got another wedding comin’ up. So how ‘bout we see how it goes.”

He kissed her, and once again she didn’t allow their tongues to even get a tiny bit involved.

Later.

Worst. Word. Ever.

He tilted his head back and let out a groan before continuing on until they reached the games area.

“It’s almost like a carnival!” Rose exclaimed, wandering over toward a water shooting game where winners could potentially get some chintzy star jewelry. “Gonna win me a bracelet?” she asked with a cheeky smirk, cocking her hips to the side and raising an eyebrow.

“As you wish,” the Doctor said with a mock-bow, walking up to the booth and picking up a water gun.

The game was rigged. Should be illegal, that. Ended up having to play six times just to get one dinky plastic bracelet, and the rhizala (metallic red) paint was noticeably chipping. He handed it to Rose with a frown.

“I love it,” she told him, immediately putting it on.

And the strange thing was that he could tell that she meant it.

“But- but it’s so cheap and they wouldn’t let me pick it out myself, so I couldn’t get the gold one, and-”

“I love it ‘cause you got it for me. And I’m keepin’ it forever,” she whispered in his ear before kissing his cheek.

Well. That was okay, then.

The next games stand they walked up to had a big banner atop it that said ‘Grizchootinki’ and appeared to be bobbing for apples, except the fruits were definitely not apples.

“How ‘bout I win you something?” Rose suggested, pointing at the stuffed toys hanging above the water barrel. She attempted to pull him toward the stand, but the Doctor would not budge.

“Why play that game when we could do this?” he blindly pointed to the stand across from it, then looked to see what it was.

Face painting.

Ehh …

She raised an eyebrow but still allowed him to take them over there, all the while not saying a word about how closed off he’d made their bond. Honestly, Rose had much more restraint than he did and he wasn’t sure how she did it. Still, he was grateful.

Or not. Once they got to the booth he noticed that his wife had a rather wicked gleam in her eye.

“Oh, you look wonderful!” the artist told Rose. “I have the perfect iniyama pattern for you. It will match your outfit so well!”

“Thanks,” she smiled, “but if you could do him first? He was super excited to come get his face done up.”

How had he gone so long without realizing that she was evil?

“Of course! Have a seat! We’ll have you looking more festive in no time. Definitely beltofana paint for you,” the artist said. Before he knew it the Doctor found himself seated, getting his face painted.

And it took ages.

“Alright, let’s see it,” he announced as soon as it was finished, pasting on a smile he really wasn’t feeling.

Oh, don’t be a baby.

Must have let the barriers slip while being tortured. Not surprising. (Also, it was incredibly hard to block the bond - it definitely did not want to be closed. Really had to get to that research).

You’re how old, now? Rose’s smile, at least, was genuine. And she wasn’t laughing (except in his head) so he must not look too ridiculous.

“No, wait until you’re both finished. It will be better if you see together.”

During his face painting, Rose and the artist had chatted. Once they found out that he and Rose were on their honeymoon, they got ideas. So he leaned against the booth and watched as she got her face painted. And it really did look lovely on her. But of course it did. Everything did. Weeeell, most things. To be fair, some things were designed to not look good on anybody - dinner lady uniforms came to mind. Even then, she was the best looking dinner lady of all of them. Though the rest were Krillitanes. Eh, still.

I love you, Rose’s telepathic voice rang in his head. 

And he’d been trying so hard all day to not keep saying it after this morning’s slightly insane overuse of the phrase, but now he wasn’t sure how he’d ever stopped saying it.

(Multiple marriage proposals may have had something to do with it).

I love you, too. So, so much.

Waiting to be able to touch her until her face was finished became incredibly difficult. But he managed. Barely.

(There was a brief moment where he sat on the ground next to her and rested his head against her hip, but he didn’t like the knowing look the artist gave him and decided to go back to leaning against the booth).

Then finally, finally she was done. 

The artist brought out a mirror from behind her booth and set it up for them to look. And as much as he hadn’t wanted to admit it, they had done a spectacular job. Both of their faces were decorated with intricate swirls and stars, the patterns somehow mirroring each other. The Doctor had a feeling that if he were to somehow overlay just the artwork, it would become one piece.

“This is so great!” Rose exclaimed. “Thank you so much!”

“Oh, it was my pleasure. Now, the face paint is waterproof. It will fade naturally within the next week. If you need it removed before then, there is an alcohol solution that will speed up the process. I do sell it, if you need it.”

He was positive that he could easily make the solution himself on the TARDIS, but with Rose’s mental nudging he ended up buying some from the artist when he paid for the painting. He also left a very generous tip.

“Alright, so tell me,” she said out of seemingly nowhere as they walked away from the booth.

“Huh?”

“Tell me why you don’t want me to win you a stuffed, er, whale thingy.”

“It’s a star whale. They’re actually extinct. Funny thing about star whales-”

“Doctor.”

With a sigh he turned toward her, dropping her hand and rubbing the back of his neck. “You’d be bobbing for choots.”

“And?”

“They taste like pears,” he informed her.

“So? I’d be the one bobbin’ for ‘em.”

“Yeah … but …”

“But?”

“Then you’d taste like choots.”

Rose burst out laughing, her amusement apparently so great that she could hardly remain upright. It really wasn’t that funny. She just laughed harder.

“Stop it! You’re going to hurt yourself. Really, this is completely unnecessary. It’s almost suns-set! Ever watched three suns set at once? Rose! Stop laughing!”

She pulled herself together slowly, wiping a tear from her eye.

“I’m gonna bob for choots.” 

This obviously wasn’t up for debate, so bob for choots she did. And her game obviously wasn’t rigged like his had been. That or the game attendant with the wandering eyes was giving his wife preferential treatment. The Doctor glared at the adolescent until the boy looked properly terrified. And Rose had really only gotten enough choots to win a medium sized star whale, but the kid handed her the big one before sending them on their way.

“Ya didn’t have to go all ‘Oncoming Storm’ on ‘em,” she informed him while handing over the giant toy. Honestly, what was he supposed to do with this right now? He may have bigger-on-the-inside pockets, but they required the object to at least be pocket sized before going in.

“He was leering at my wife,” the Doctor muttered, trying to see if he could slowly squish the star whale into his jacket pocket, and failing.

Rose shook her head before swatting his hand away from his pocket. “Let’s just go back to the TARDIS and drop him off.”

“Him?”

“Don’t you think he looks like a boy?”

“I’m not sure star whales have genders.”

“Well, it’s your star whale, so whatever you want. Whatcha gonna name ‘em?”

“I … haven’t given it any thought. I’ll get back to you on it. We’ll have to be quick if we want to stop back at the TARDIS and catch the suns-set. Which I do. You’re going to want some sort of jumper or something anyway. It gets chilly once the suns go down,” he told her, finally managing to hold her hand and the stuffed animal at the same time.

It ended up being slow going. He could hardly see past the star whale, so Rose had to lead them and she was much more polite while walking in a crowd than he was. Also they had to walk. Couldn’t run with the star whale. Once they made it back to the TARDIS, the Doctor opened the door and chucked the stuffed animal into the console room.

“Aww poor star whale,” Rose pouted, as if the stuffed animal had feelings.

“Sammy is fine,” he assured her. “Now go fetch a coat, quick, or we’ll miss it.”

“Sammy the Star Whale?”

“Yes. Love me some alliteration. Now off you pop!”

Rose bit her lip, glanced in the TARDIS and then back to him. “It’d take ages for me to find something that looks good with this outfit. I don’t think we’ve got time.”

He wanted to tell her that it didn’t matter, that she’d look good in anything. But he had a feeling it wouldn’t make a difference. She already knew he thought that, after all (not to mention it was now likely being repeated). It mattered to her, though, and she was right - the way she could dither around the wardrobe room, it would take ages.

“Alright, c’mon then,” he said, quickly grabbing his coat off a nearby strut and then her hand after locking the TARDIS. “I’ll keep you warm. Run!”

They sprinted through a few back alleys before he found a fire escape that didn’t look to be on the verge of collapse, and they ended up atop a grocers. The sky was already turning a deep orange as he fanned out his coat on the roof for them to sit on.

Rose cuddled into his side, lying her head on his shoulder as they settled in to watch the three suns set on Neghlyvryn. Orange slowly faded into pink and then purple, and six of the eight moons became visible.

“Can we hold hands and watch the sky together, forever?” he asked her, leaning down to kiss the top of her head,

“Forever is a long time to watch the sky, dontcha think?”

“Oh, but not just this sky. All of the skies.”

“All of ‘em?”

“Yeah,” he breathed into her hair.

“Well, that’s alright then,” Rose decided.

“Good.”

Then he realized that they were finally alone, that later had finally arrived. So he kissed her. And she tasted like choots, but it was okay. Well, it wasn’t okay, but he could get past it. Kind of.

Without much thought or planning the Doctor tipped them both over and he was on top of her, tongue exploring her mouth as if it was uncharted territory (and it kind of was, since he had never thought to actually map it the previous times they’d snogged). Rose moaned, pulled him impossibly closer, wrapped a leg around his hip, and he forgot all about mentally charting her mouth.

He was finally able to touch all of the tantalizing skin she’d had exposed all day, teasing him.

I love you, he projected across the bond and he didn’t care how often he told her. She needed to know.

I love you, too.

And maybe he needed to hear it. Just a bit.

He ran a hand up her back and felt her shiver … and then shiver some more.

When he pulled back, Rose was gasping for breath and still shivering.

“Sorry, here,” he said, helping her to stand before picking his coat up off the ground and wrapping it around her before holding her close.

“Y’know you’re not exactly warm, right?”

Actually, he’d forgotten. But really, after snogging Rose Tyler he felt like he was on fire , so-

Oh. Right.

“C’mon, I know just the thing!” he told her with a grin, letting her go and then taking her hand to lead her back down from the roof. 

Soon enough they were back in the city square, where three gigantic bonfires had been lit, surrounded by many smaller fires. The entire area and surrounding blocks we covered in red, orange, and yellow paper lanterns in various star shapes. It was quite warm.

They made a beeline towards the closest big fire.

“This is more like it,” Rose smiled, giving him a peck on the cheek before leaning her head against his shoulder. “Is it just me, or is the fire … glittery?”

“Nope, not just you. They call it ‘bip powder’. It’s also what’s making it smell like incense right now, instead of your usual wood-burning-smell.”

“I like it. We should get some of that, too.”

“Could do. But when do we ever have fires?” He looked down at her, furrowing his brow.

“In the TARDIS library?” Rose reminded him, complete with telepathic images of his own ship.

“Ohhh the TARDIS wouldn’t want bip powder in her grates. It’s … messy … and- and … the smell reminds her of hippies. The TARDIS is not a fan. I was talking about fires outside of the TARDIS.”

Even as the words fell out of his gob, he knew that his bondmate wasn’t going to buy it. Of course not. And it wasn’t really lying, so much as saving face, but none of that could be accomplished with a permanent telepathic connection.

“Don’t need to be in your head to know you’re full of it,” Rose informed him with a light smack to his bottom. She was still smiling, though, and her mind felt calm and happy and warm next to his, so at least he hadn’t upset her.

I don’t think I want you touching my bum in public, he lightly scolded her telepathically.

Says the alien who spent most of the day trying to shove his tongue down my throat?

“I did not!” the Doctor exclaimed, offended.

“Whatever you say.” Rose rolled her eyes and then her attention was taken by the music starting up. It was whimsical and cheery, but with a steady drumbeat that could be felt through your feet. And all at once, everyone started dancing around the fires, the locals doing a specific number with some tourists trying to copy it while others just did their own thing.

She took both his hands and pulled him into the dance, quick to catch on to the different stomping patterns and waves of hands. He was happy to follow her lead. Happy to dance with her. Happy to make this day last as long as he possibly could. Against the background of the fire, Rose looked even more like a goddess.

Doesn’t have to end. We’re on our honeymoon.

Visions of hotel rooms and many things that distracted him from dancing, nearly causing him to trip, flashed across the bond.

“Right you are, Rose Tyler.”

This time he knew better than to interrupt the dancing, dragging her off to the next great idea. They didn’t stop dancing until they reached the furthest bonfire, having moved through the square in a winding line. The dance wasn’t over, would go well into the night, but Rose’s feet were beginning to tire after being on them all day.

So as much as he wanted to run to the nearest hotel, he didn’t. They walked slowly, and she drank the last of their water, listening to the music and watching the seemingly unending dance.

When they eventually found a hotel - the Doctor didn’t feel like stopping to ask for directions - the lobby was empty of other guests, only a lone receptionist sitting at the desk.

“Hello, do you have a reservation?”

“No, no reservation. We’d like to book a room.”

The receptionist blinked.

“I’m sorry sir, there’s no rooms available. We’ve been fully booked for the festival for years.”

“For years? Really? Suppose that makes sense. Do you know of anywhere else in the area-”

“Everyone’s been fully booked for years.”

The Doctor frowned, then had them check the database just in case he did have a reservation - sometimes time travel could get around these things, tiny circular paradox. But they didn’t. Not anywhere in the city.

“Would you like to book a room for the next festival?”

He was about to say no, but then Rose said, “We’d love to. Honeymoon suite, if you can.”

Once everything was settled, they were back on the streets, still hotel-room-less for the present.

“What good did that do us?” he asked. “We’ve a room, but not for 15 years.”

“Yeah, and we’ve got a time machine, and apparently countless other honeymoons to go on. Can do the festival again, and next time we play Jikltaii I can wear a wig.”

“I love you.”

She grinned and pulled him down for a kiss. “I love you, too.”

“Still, what do we do now?”

“May not have a hotel room, but we still have the TARDIS.”

“But that’s not honeymoon-y. That’s- that’s where we live.”

“I think we can still manage to make it honeymoon-y,” Rose smirked, as a bunch of very graphic scenarios filtered into his mind.

They ran back to the TARDIS.

They didn’t make it past the console room.

They didn’t even really make it out of their clothes.

[littlepurinsesu]

V Watches MagiReco - Episode 8 Review

*Spoilers for Magia Record Anime Episode 8*

Okay, I was not expecting to enjoy this week’s episode as much as I did! :O From the anime’s pattern so far, I was fully expecting a slower episode with less action as they introduced the next main character (in this case Sana), but this episode had a lot of deviations from the game that did a lot of good, in my opinion!

Lots of positive things to say again for this review ^0^ And no, it’s not just because of that Kanagi “cameo” (even though there WILL be at least one paragraph of me screaming about that LOL you have been warned) xD

I think the slower pace of this episode gave us a really good chance to see how the main characters have adjusted and truly integrated themselves into their new lives. We see Iroha starting at her new school, Felicia starting her part-time job at Banbanzai, Tsuruno visiting to deliver bento boxes for Iroha and the two going to school together... so many small details that seem unimportant to the plot but really give us a good picture of the characters’ new lives and relationships. And that’s really important stuff. They seem to have taken a longer time and really drew out the introduction of this new Rumour rather than immediately rushing into the next one, and this gives the main cast some room to breathe and just be themselves, and also gives the audience a sense of some time having passed as well.

It was also really nice to see Rena back! Seems strange to me that Momoko wasn’t with her, but I was starting to worry that Momoko’s team would be forgotten and pushed to the background, so I was quite pleased to see them still popping up every now and then. The episode also gave us some quality Iroha and Rena bonding, which is kind of bittersweet when you consider that both of them either don’t have friends or always find themselves somehow isolated from the crowd. Rena is still a prickly little tsundere, but seeing her waiting for Iroha and giving her more information and talking with her really put a smile on my face :) I really want Rena and Iroha to be able to make more friends, and it’s super cute when the new friends are none other than each other ^^

Also, the thing about Kaede is really interesting. I’m sure this is an anime-original plot point, but I’m wondering how this is going to tie in with Sana’s arc, or any other part of the Main Story. Rena confirms that Kaede hasn’t actually disappeared; she still comes to school, but rushes home immediately after and doesn’t talk or reply to anyone. We also see her at home with all her plants at the beginning (cute!). I’m guessing she’s still traumatised from that Doppel experience and hasn’t figured out what’s going on, so is too afraid of getting close to her friends in fear of hurting them? Whatever they’re planning, I hope it has some relevance to that post-credits scene in episode 5 so we get some closure to what actually happened and the scene won’t seem so “cool but random” lmao.

Alright imma get this out of the way. (Feel free to skip this paragraph if you’re not interested in hearing me gush about my queen.) K A N A G I I Z U M I. If anyone reading this has been following my past MagiReco posts or knows anything about me at all, you’ll know that I’m absolute trash for Kanagi Izumi xD My best girl may be Iroha, but Kanagi is a character I really admire, respect, and adore. Anyway, I saw the official MagiReco Twitter account post about a Kanagi rate-up banner and was hella confused but excited because my queen was not supposed to appear until... at least until Tsuruno is captured by the Magius and Felicia and Sana have returned. So I guess it makes sense that it was in the form of a “mysterious person on the phone” rather than an actual debut, but gosh as soon as I heard her voice I almost lost it AHHHHHHHHHH （♥>ｏ<♥） This eases any fears I had of her being cut from the anime (I would have hunted down the studio if they made that decision LOL); not only is she not gonna be cut, but they gave her a surprise, mysterious, early introduction, too?!?!? YASSSSS (ᗒᗨᗕ)

Yachiyo’s phonecall with Kanagi is a surprising change to make because Kanagi’s presence is really “not very relevant” at this point, but I guess they really wanted to show how big the Wings of Magius' influence is. As Kanagi says, they’ve taken most of the girls from the East by now. I’m wondering what anime-onlys would feel about this scene, since they probably have no idea who Yachiyo is talking to. If anything, it would probably add to the mystery surrounding Yachiyo (which I hope the anime goes into soon). I was a little conflicted at first because I really wanted Yachiyo’s first contact with Kanagi to seem like a “we haven’t spoken in ages but desperate times call for desperate measures” kind of thing, because with this scene, the next time they "openly” contact her won’t have that same impact. But then the more I think about it, the more I think this might actually be for the better. Kanagi’s introduction into the cast won’t feel like such a “random” thing (like, “oh wait, who are you and since when were you so important?”); Yachiyo has been in some degree of contact with her and she was “there" all along. So yeah, a good change in retrospect, and I’m never gonna say no to seeing (or hearing) more of Kanagi so I’m all for this change either way LOL

Okay enough rambling about Kanagi (OTL I’m so sorry). Felicia working at Banbanzai is just SO CUTE!!! She’s like a cute little gangster omg those glares and “HUHHH?!?!?” (I’d be scared too, Iroha) xD I think the character that’s gotten the best portrayal in the anime so far really is Felicia. And also the reveal that the reason for her getting into a fight and being sent to the police station was because she was defending Yachiyo and Iroha? CUTEEE OMG I LOVE THIS CHILD!!! She also has a really good sense of fashion hehe :D

The little snippet in there with Ui, Touka, and Nemu may seem a little out of place, but I was actually quite relieved to see them. Every week the anime is throwing new characters at its viewers, so I was worried that anime-only viewers wouldn’t even remember who Touka and Nemu are when they’re eventually revealed to be the Magius. I think it’s good to keep drilling them into viewers’ minds so as not to lose that “OMGGG” factor when they make their proper debut. Also it’s adorable how Ui throws teddy bears in their faces to stop them from arguing LOLLL

The radio show was a really good way to not only sneak in tiny “cameos” of other girls (I think it was Rika and Kanoko this week), but also give a nice picture of life in Kamihama. There’s a sense that Iroha really is a part of this city now, and it’s such a nice feeling to see everything “falling into place;” we’re no longer in those inconsistent and uncertain “introductory” episodes anymore, even though we still have one more major character to bring in. And the laughter coming from the phone is super creepy--cute, but in a really creepy way. All the illustrations for when they were talking about the Rumours this week were also really, really well-done. I have nothing much to say about them except “sasuga Inucurry” haha xD

I really was expecting Madoka and Homura to appear this week, but I guess we may have to wait a little bit more for that >_< BUT Tsukuyo did appear again in her “civilian” form! Iroha chasing her into that building was also a really nice change the anime made; some things really need to be animated for full impact, and I’m loving these minor changes and how much more they add to the characters and atmosphere! Anyway, Tsukuyo seems a lot more menacing here compared to her dine-and-dash incident in the game lmaooo, and I wasn’t expecting a Witch battle!

Speaking of Witch battle, I think this might be one of my main letdowns with this episode: I just really want to see Iroha fight more. I appreciate that she’s proactive in seeking answers and brave enough to jump into these situations despite knowing that she’s weak, but she hasn’t really contributed much in battles so far except a few Connects and using her Doppel. I want to see my girl Iroha go all-out and kick ass with her arrows!!! But it was nice to see the rest of Team Mikazuki showing up so quickly; there’s a real sense of them being an actual team now, and they’ve always got each other’s backs! It would have been nice if the rest of the team got to fight as well rather than Yachiyo taking all the spotlight, but at least Yachiyo was super cool haha (as usual). But the battle clearly isn’t the point of this episode, so I won’t pick on it too much :)

By the way, that Mami appearance was super random. When I saw the ribbons and flowers, I almost thought she was going to appear as Holy Mami for a second. At least we know she hasn’t lost her head just yet ;) The appearance was random, but from what they offered, at least we know that Mami is still either in Kamihama or coming to Kamihama regularly to investigate, and while she was suspicious of Iroha in the past, she went out of her way to help her this time, which was a nice touch.

Anyway, now that Iroha has finally replied to the mysterious messages, we might really get to meet Sana (and Ai-chan) next time! Maybe Madoka and Homura, too! But yeah, this episode is a prime example of one where not much seems to happen, but a lot actually does happen and there’s plenty to pull apart and discuss when you really think back on it. Clearly Kanagi took half my attention and feels this week, but I’m definitely having lots of warm and fuzzies seeing Team Mikazuki doing normal, everyday things together. Seeing Felicia added to the OP was expected but still a treat (the way she bobs around on the spot is SO CUTE!), and I can’t wait for the family to finally be fully formed!

(Also, Yachiyo looks gorgeous in anything she wears, seriously.)

[gavillain]

Mother Knows Best: A Tale of the Old Witch by Serena Valentino Review

Serena Valentino's villain series is... interesting. I really loved Fairest of All when I first read it, then A Beast Within was disappointing and cluttered, then Poor Unfortunate Soul was awful and weighed down by an over reliance on Valentino's OCs and running plot, then Mistress of Evil was literally the worst Maleficent thing I've ever wasted time on, and then The Odd Sisters was "no payoff” incarnated into a single book. I had skipped over Mother Knows Best (which is actually the fifth novel in the series, set before The Odd Sisters) originally because I'd been burned by Valentino before and didn't like Gothel enough to give it a try. But my friend said it was actually on the better end, and I'd already suffered through the rest so, hey, might as well complete the series.

Before I say what I thought of the book, I need to address my opinions of Tangled and Mother Gothel in general. So I like Tangled. I don't love Tangled. I think it's on the better end of Revival era Disney movies but on the lesser end of Disney movies on the whole. It really took me until the Tangled TV show to come around to liking Rapunzel and Eugene as much as I do, and I definitely feel like the show made me appreciate the movie Tangled more than I did at first. Likewise, my feelings on Mother Gothel are about the same: one of the best villains of the Revival era but one of Disney's weakest overall. My issue with Mother Gothel is that, though she was basically the last real Disney villain, it doesn't feel like the writers were that invested in making her a character in her own right. Unlike Dr. Facilier one movie earlier, her motivations are only told to us by the opening narration and she gets only two very short scenes from her point of view. For the most part, she exists only as she pertains to Rapunzel, just there to fill the role of Rapunzel's abusive mother without having much character of her own. And having my default Rapunzel story in my head being Into the Woods (the stage play, btw, not Disney’s compressed film version) with a really complex and nuanced Witch character, Gothel was never satisfying. As a result, I feel like Gothel was always ripe to be filled in with more information to flesh her out and make her feel less like a stereotype and more like a character. As a result, I ended up loving this book. Well, okay, my bar for Valentino books at this point is super low, and this one cleared the bar so I probably am grading it on a curve. Don't love it as much as Fairest of All, but it's an easy second place in this series. I had a good time reading it, and I got sucked into Gothel's character and struggles. Here's the thing: if I liked Tangled more then I probably WOULDN'T like this book because it takes a sledgehammer to Tangled's film lore and also gives very little room for any of the TV show events or characters to exist. That said, I find the book's original ideas to be engaging and fun, and I think they're cooler than the movie's. A quick plot summary (spoilers ahoy): Gothel and her two sisters Primrose and Hazel are the three daughters of the witch Manea, the queen of the Dead Woods. Gothel and her sisters are set to become real witches by Manea sharing her blood with them. However, Primrose detests how evil their mother is and the wicked things she does, and she tries to rebel. This leads Manea to try to kill Primrose. Unwilling to let her sister die, Gothel burns her mother's magic Rapunzel flowers, causing Manea to crumble into dust by rapid aging. Gothel and her sisters attempt to move on with their lives and pick up the pieces, but Gothel's sisters soon become terribly ill following Manea's spirit coming back for revenge. The three Odd Sisters arrive under the pretense of helping in exchange for Gothel sharing Manea's magic books with them. However, despite all of Gothel's efforts, her sisters succumb to their illnesses and die. Gothel is devastated, and the Odd Sisters give her a spell that puts her to sleep for centuries. Gothel's undead servant Sir Jacob keeps her alive as she sleeps by using the last surviving Rapunzel flower. When Gothel awakes, she becomes obsessed with reviving her sisters. However, when the armies of Corona storm the Dead Woods to find the Rapunzel flowers, Gothel flees with her sisters' tombs and one single Rapunzel flower and goes to live in a cottage far away. She lives there peacefully with her cook Mrs. Tiddlebottom for a time, but eventually word gets out about the remaining flower and the Coronans come for it. Gothel, desperate for the flower to keep her alive and one day possibly revive her sisters, goes and kidnaps the princess whose hair now has the flower's power. Gothel names the child Rapunzel after the flower and leaves her to Tiddlebottom to raise and take care of whilst she studies her witchcraft to revive her sisters. On Rapunzel's eighth birthday, Tiddlebottom walks in on Gothel and the Odd Sisters trying and failing to use Rapunzel's hair to revive Hazel and Primrose and interrupts the ritual. The Odd Sisters wipe Tiddlebottom's memories, and Gothel decides to whisk Rapunzel away to the tower until her hair is long enough to complete the spell. However Gothel, having no interest in being a mother, has the Odd Sisters place Rapunzel in an enchanted sleep where she would dream of living out her days with a loving and doting Mother Gothel. After ten years, Rapunzel's hair is finally long enough and she awakes from her decade long slumber, blissfully unaware that her life had all just been a dream. The events of the movie happen and Gothel dies, her ambitions unfulfilled. Maybe a not so quick plot summary XD It's a fairly long book, and a lot happens, as you can see. The flower is no longer a single mythical sundrop hoarded by Gothel, but, rather, a breed of flower cultivated by the witches of the Dead Woods. Gothel doesn't even TRY to be Rapunzel's mother, and most of Rapunzel's childhood is nothing more than a dream. And there's a lot of extra lore with the witches. So, what I like MOST about this books is everything up until the destruction of the Dead Woods. The Dead Woods is a decaying forest where the neighboring villages are ordered to turn over their dead to. If a village tries to hoard their dead bodies, then Manea sends an army of the undead to slaughter their village. The setting is very macabre and gothic, and its got a great Halloween feel to everything that takes place in this setting. It's creepy and fun, and Gothel's mother Manea makes for a great villain despite her limited appearances. I'm not super fond of Primrose or Hazel, and I feel like they're kind of generic in personalities, but I do like Gothel having someone she cares about THAT much. And Primrose being the one disturbed by Manea's evil leaves Gothel plenty of room to be kind of enthralled by it in a way that makes her stand out nicely. In fact, Gothel is fittingly really good in this book. Her personality is not really the one we saw in Tangled, but the book explains that the movie events are Gothel trying to put on a motherly act after having not done anything for a decade. And, to be honest, I like her personality in the book more than the movie version. She talks more like a person than a stereotype, which is nice. She's not just some vain woman, but someone smart and cunning who is not without compassion but who will tolerate and commit any depravity as a means to an end. I found her to be a fun and engaging villain protagonist. I also appreciate that while Gothel never gets to become a full out witch with powers because Manea never completely the blood ritual, she's constantly surrounded by witchcraft and necromancy and her lack of magic is actually an important plot point and disadvantage that she works to overcome. Again, something I always felt missing from Movie-Gothel was magic and witchcraft so I appreciated this book giving it back without contradicting the movie. While Poor Unfortunate Soul and Mistress of Evil both had the problem of their focus villains being only supporting characters while Valentino's OCs were the main characters, Gothel in this book is fully and completely the point of view character outside of a hand full of chapters. Valentino's OCs don't get in the way as much in this book. The Odd Sisters kind of do get annoying and in the way at a few points (a lot of the recounting of the movie events are literally "The Odd Sisters watch Tangled with wacky commentary"), but they're not as bad here as they are in some of the other books. We don't find out in this book, but in The Odd Sisters, they're revealed as Gothel's half sisters, so there's a bit more relevance to them here than in, say, Maleficent or Ursula's stories. So, yeah, overall a pretty good read, imo. Maybe not the best thing in the world, but I'm glad I went back and grabbed this one. Gave me a new appreciation for Gothel. Also, you gotta love these covers under the dust jacket with the alternate faces.

[bustin-a-hazelnut]

So basically @neopoliitan‘s last post has made me feel very strongly about the Amaranth family (the kids especially), so I now need my own post to sort out all the new information.

Let me begin by saying, I used to believe based off this post, that the Amaranth family only boasts five children; today’s comic proved me wrong. I went on to get some clarifications, and well...

Two times more kids - two times more fun, am I right?..

Needless to say, I did some further searching, and this post basically turned into my personal masterlist of Amaranth children. Those are mostly personal opinions and/or speculations, but again, my feelings in regards to them are strong & plentiful. Without further ado, naturally, the list opens with our beloved girl:

1. Akane Amaranth, 19

The oldest of the brood & really needs no introduction from me. A well-deserved favorite of Rain’s fanbase, among other things working on gradually rescuing her sister’s from their toxic household. As of late, her character arc has been (much to my joy) associated with William Lincoln’s, whom I assume will play a part in this encounter. The type of person he is, I wouldn’t put it past him to voice some unsavory truths to the face of Akane’s parents, with unpredictable consequences. With her own emotions & experiences in the mix, as well as the actual purpose of the visit, Akane’s got quite some development ahead of her. Not great for her - but a treat for us as viewers.

Her name in Japanese means “deep red, dye from the rubia plant”.

2. Miyako Amaranth, 18

Having been neither introduced nor mentioned in the actual comic, still a personal favorite Amaranth of mine. She’s gotten a great characterization from another Rain’s fan ( @infinitree )  here, which was approved by Neopoliitan. I don’t loose hope for her to make an appearance & shine somewhere in the future posts.

Even though she may not be too relevant for the plot right now, I see great potential for an inner, personal character arc with her. The idea for her character, from what I can tell, is that she’s always coped with her parents’ harshness & constant demands by becoming more withdrawn, apathetic, to the point of neglecting her own needs. Having gone so far down that path has damaged her in more subtle ways, than outright abuse - she’s basically traded it for neglect, and internalized it to the point of not caring enough to defend her needs & individuality, & eventually sorta loosing herself. This is actually rather dark, when you think about it, but I do believe there’s hope for Miyako. Her connection to her sisters, especially Ayano, whom she’s got a deep bond with, is a sliver of her identity that hasn’t been taken from her. It can also become the reason for her to find herself again & start caring more. She is in a strange place right now, and not in a good way, but I have faith in her.

Her name in Japanese means “beautiful” & ���night”.

3. Nanako Amaranth, 17

Much like Akane, needs no introduction, having been a part of the plot for quite a while. Just as her elder sisters, this girl has all of my love, especially for her friendship with Tobin, even though the “wicked poo” line did play a part as well (which I Refuse to treat as anything other, than a reference to TTGOT S2 AU & Alanna Snow). It would be hard to guess by her upbeat personality, that she had to withstand more of her mother’s abuse, than possibly any of her siblings. This encounter is going to be a challenge for her, but I believe, that over the course of her life outside home, she’s gained the means to hold her own. She’s part of a team, a valued & great friend, a warrior, a huntressd & living proof, that neither what you’ve suffered, nor the people who’ve hurt you define you. She is going to overcome this, I have no doubt.

Her name in Japanese means "vegetables or greens".

4. Kasumi Amaranth, 16

A bit of a mystery at our hands, this one. No appearance or mention in the comic, no wiki page & the search through @neopoliitan came up dry. Her mention at Akane’s wiki page is the only indication of this girl’s very existence. There is little more to do than wait for further information on her, but as far as theories go - I wonder if she could exhibit a less positive personality, than her siblings? So far, all the Amaranth children we know of, that got somewhat characterized have exhibited different traits, yet, despite their home situation, I would describe all of them as well-meaning gals, even with their share of quirks & struggles. It’s not unreasonable to assume, that at least one of them would be affected more severely by their toxic parents - and have it shape them into a somewhat troubled person.

Her name in Japanese means “mist”.

5. Akiko Amaranth, 15

Her arrogant demeanor & the status of her father’s protege could lead to mistaking Akiko as someone who’s “sided with the abuser” in their family (a parallel to Whitley Schnee, someone who copes with abuse by submitting to his father). Another characterization post, however, suggests that she is actually far more than meets the eye. There’s this duality in her - outward brightness, determination & desire for leadership, wich is exactly what her parents expected; & hidden intent to use her future position for good, refusal to reject her sisters, who’ve been cast aside by her mother. This kind of characterization is an honest to god breath of fresh air - ambition & confidence, that is treated as a positive thing, not a sign of corruption. By Neo’s own words, she’s like a “good Whitley”, which is a fantastic character concept. I’m looking forward for anything she could have up her sleeve.

Her name in Japanese means “bright, sparkle” & “autumn”.

6. Sakura Amaranth, 14

Another kid we know virtually nothing about - and so far there isn’t much to theorize from. Sakura’s placed near her mother & appears relaxed, suggesting she isn’t in Yukiko’s bad graces. My two main guesses of why could that be are - either she’s just naturally inclined to obey & accept her parents’ way of seeing things; or she’s learned how to bypass them in her own ways. I find the second guess to be more interesting - while she can’t run away like Akane & Nanako, but can’t be up to her parent’s standards the way Akiko is or detach herself like Miyako, she could’ve developed a great ability to lie & manipulate, perhaps even in malicious ways, like shifting the blame onto her sisters in case of a screw up. I know this is really far-fetched, and I’m honestly just having fun coming up with those ideas at this point. One more option is her being a fave of Yukiko for some personal reason & therefore spared from mistreatment. 

I also find it interesting, that other than Nanako, who is shown gradually dyeing her hair throughout the comic, Sakura is the only one not to share the natural Amaranth hair color so far. Who knows if it’s just a reference to her name’s meaning, or some symbolism, like her not sharing the family values deep inside, but not letting it show in her demeanor... Idek, I honestly meant for this to be shorter.

Her name in Japanese means “cherry blossom”.

7. Natsuki Amaranth, 12 

She displays a strong, blunt personality from her first seconds on screen & strikes me as kind of a tomboy. I can’t imagine Yukiko being tolerant of such demeanor - and I can easily see Natsuki fighting back relentlessly against her reign. She probably took Nanako’s place as a punching bag not long after the latter left, and now her relationship with Akane parallels the one latter had with Nan. By the way Natsuki immediately gets to the subject of leaving, it’s clear how much this life affects her. It probably greatly exacerbates her naturally blunt personality - she’s got no time for affection or chatter, getting away is priority number one. I’m not sure how much of it is Natsuki’s “normal” character & how much - emotional damage from her parents, but at this point, it is hard not to assume the worst.

Her name in Japanse can mean “vegetables or greens” & “moon” or “summer” & “hope”. Interestingly, the name is considered unisex, though more commonly used by women.

8. Ayano Amaranth, 9

Getting close to the end here, and moving on to the actually small children of the fam, Ayano is a welcome change as an example of an Amaranth daughter, who’s actually getting to be a kid more (again, according to a previously established characterization). I particularly love the idea of her & Miyako being mutually close - it’s hard to tell which one of them needs it more. It’s also good to know, that Miyako’s efforts to shelter her haven’t been in vain & she actually seems to be okay around her mother, despite having a personality, that would naturally grate on her. Then again, kids can be rather perceptive, so maybe Ayano instinctively holds back her more unruly side in Yukiko’s presence & reserves poking & prodding for her sisters. She may know something isn’t right deep inside, and adjust her behavior, so as not to become another target for her mother.

Her name in Japanese means “of color; from love”.

9. Hana Amaranth, 6

Another mentioned-only character, with no face attached yet; at the age of six, I’d be glad to know that she is kept away from the family’s shenanigans & simply enjoys being a kid. Not much to theorize from here - will have to wait & see if she’ll make an appearance, and what her place in the family hierarchy is going to be. 

Her very existence to me raises a question of why Yukiko would choose to have another child, when there is no need for a specifically male heir, as Akiko has been selected for that role. We get to know, that she has no actual love for her children - so what could drive her to have more? Family’s reputation, desire for more control, or perhaps Aka Amaranth comes into play at last? He’s been barely mentioned here due to my lack of knowledge about him, but judging by his appearance on the poster, he is about to play a big role in this arc. Gonna have to wait and see. 

Her name in Japanese means “flower”.

10. Baby Amaranth, ~1

A literal baby, basically raising the same questions as Hana did a paragraph ago. I’m going to spare this one from my dark theories & let her chill for now, observing the reunion from a safe distance. Being a 10th child is no piece of cake even in most benevolent of families, so let’s all just give her a break for now. She’s still got all the time in the world to grow up & eventually develop her personal brand of the Amaranth Badassery. 

[kakuzhu]

so, canonically, kakuzu had four partners preceding hidan during his time in the akatsuki, and he killed all of them. the anime/video game (I don’t know which anymore) showed one of kakuzu’s partners before he’s killed by a pretty purposeful looking blast from kakuzu. I have no idea which partner this was and I’m too lazy to figure it out even though the information is out there, because I’m making up my own order of how kakuzu killed his partners. while I actually think the idea of kakuzu blasting his partner just to be a jerk is hilarious and I’m going to take inspiration from that, it’ll be for his third partner in my canon. whether or not this aligns with the anime interpretation is of no consequence to me. similarly, the anime implied kakuzu’s main motivation for killing his partners was to take their hearts. while I am choosing to use this as a reason for one of his partners, I am not going to follow this for all of them, as I dislike the implication kakuzu was not already prepared with 4 extra powerful hearts already, nor do I think he would’ve been that interested in all of their hearts. 

I totally ignore the video games’ akatsuki recruitment plots, with the exception that kakuzu was one of the earliest recruits, because the timeline was just weird for it. it was definitely a fun sequence to watch though. 

I have no idea when hidan was recruited into the akatsuki, and basically all we know about it is that hidan was the most recent recruit before tobi. I make the (huge) assumption, therefore, that hidan was recruited anywhere between the latter half of the blank period to shortly before or very early on in part II. I say this is a huge assumption because, of course, this may not line up to other hidan players’ timelines, as well as the fact that this assumption is what I built the timelines of all the other partners around. obviously, I am happy to discuss more specific timelines should I write opposite hidans should it be relevant (or if you’re bored and wanna talk about how fucked the timeline is), but for the purposes of my canon, this is the assumption I am rolling with. 

kakuzu had partners one through three during the first half of the naruto timeline and further back, to the near-inception of the akatsuki. I headcanon kakuzu was one of the first members of nagato’s akatsuki, which in turn was created sometime after the third world war. the third world war is stated to have happened 10 years before the start of the naruto series (from what I’ve read, anyway), which means that, at maximum, each partner lasted an average of about 3 years each before kakuzu killed them. of course, less irritating partners were killed after a longer period of time, while more irritating ones were killed more quickly. in addition, depending on when the akatsuki was actually formed and when kakuzu was recruited in relation to that, the average would, obviously, lower. 

kakuzu’s fourth partner was assigned to him through the entirety or most of the blank period, which itself spanned 2.5 years and would be the maximum amount of time kakuzu spent with this partner. this would, of course, be cut short depending on when hidan was recruited.

actual brief descriptions of each partnership and their manner of death are below the cut. 

partner one: like all akatsuki members, kakuzu was not particularly enthused to be assigned a partner. notably, kakuzu was extremely vocal about wanting to operate alone, and was noticeably frustrated when pain did not acquiesce. therefore, kakuzu’s first partner had the serious misfortune of being assigned to an already pissed kakuzu. to further exacerbate matters, kakuzu had not worked with anyone else for decades prior to this, and he also considered his partner incredibly weak, so he was already not going to play nice in the first place. of course, believing his partner that weak was probably neither a fair nor accurate assessment---all akatsuki are strong, and kakuzu was probably too angry to give a reasonable evaluation.  regardless, because kakuzu was all too aware that pain could kill him without much trouble, kakuzu forced himself to put up with his first partner. kakuzu vehemently complained that his partner, however, was far too slow and dragged their progress too much, that kakuzu had to cover for him far too often, and was more or less a liability. kakuzu complained about his first partner to pain and to his partner himself, as well as disparaged him and undermined him at every opportunity during akatsuki meetings.  as one would expect, this began to wear and grate on kakuzu’s partner. while he started out the partnership as polite as can be expected, hoping to make the best of it, he quickly began barking back at kakuzu and often challenged his every move. kakuzu actually hurt his partner multiple times during their time together as well, which did not improve their relationship. whether or not this was purposeful remains to be seen---kakuzu has never specified either way---but most likely, while there were plenty of accidental incidents, the majority of them were totally on purpose.  that said, kakuzu never actually laid a hand on his partner physically. they fought a lot, and at times they sabotaged each other in battle in hopes to get rid of the other, but there were no explicit attempts at harming each other otherwise.  essentially, the only thing that stopped kakuzu from blatantly striking his partner down was the fear that pain would kill him in retaliation. thus, kakuzu suffered through his first partner for about 3.5 years. eventually, however, kakuzu’s impatience and rage overtook his self-preservation instinct; kakuzu brutally murdered his partner using his threads and made sure to make it painful. 

partner two: following his murder of his first partner, kakuzu was ready to run for his life, perhaps disappear for a few years until the akatsuki as an organization blew over. of course, before he could do that, zetsu tracked him down and, in combination with pain’s telepathy, informed him there will now be a meeting. upon joining this holographic meeting, pain confirmed with kakuzu that he had killed his partner, and then proceeded to go on a long-winded lecture on akatsuki guidelines and expectations, essentially telling kakuzu off in front of the rest of the akatsuki.  and the end of it, however, it was clear kakuzu was not going to be killed---but kakuzu still took this as a firm warning. he assumed there would be no other chances, and begrudgingly resolved himself to keep his second partner alive.  luckily, his second partner was much easier to get along with than his first. she was direct and practical and rarely complained. while she was not particularly prodigious, kakuzu could not explicitly complain about her skill, as she was better than his last, and she did not seem to mind the extra work of hunting bounties or additional mercenary work. they also traveled mostly in silence; they knew almost nothing about each other than their fighting skills, which was to both of their preferences. they really only spoke when in reference to business or to battle strategy---and kakuzu also had to admit her strategies tended to be sound. jobs were done with clearly laid out plans. kakuzu’s partnership here was likely the most efficient and amicable out of all of them---for as amicable as kakuzu could be. regardless, despite his general distaste for partners and working with others, kakuzu had to admit the arrangement with her was tolerable. he figured, ultimately, this was a small blessing; it would be easier to stay in pain’s better graces.  thus, as it happened, her murder, while by kakuzu’s hands, was more or less an accident due to unpreparedness on both their parts. the pair of them worked together successfully for over 4 years. however, during a commission they took, they were overpowered, and kakuzu was cornered, and his partner was captured by the enemy. understanding that they were partners, the enemy ninjas threatened to kill her if kakuzu did not surrender.  of course, kakuzu held little sentimental value to her, although he did think it would be a shame to lose such a partner. as it was, having been surrounded and with his back against the wall, kakuzu launched an array of indiscriminate, violent attacks against this small army using his mask jutsus. there were no survivors---including, of course, his partner. while, again kakuzu thought this was inconvenient to lose such a tolerable partner, he also reflected that, if she was so weak as to be caught like this and be put in a compromising position, then death was the least of things she deserved. uselessness never did sit right with kakuzu. 

partner three: as with his first partner, kakuzu was told off for killing his second partner, but was not killed. however, pain did observe that, if kakuzu tried, he certainly could have saved his second partner and both of them could have escaped with their lives. kakuzu only shrugged to this; he didn’t care about her, nor did he much care that the akatsuki would have to spend resources finding a new partner, nor did he really respect any of the burdens that came onto the akatsuki due to his own impatience.  this apparent lack of appreciation for their troubles prompted pain to drop kakuzu with other random pairs of akatsuki during the search for his third partner. now, instead of having to deal with one person, kakuzu had to deal with two, and there would always be at least one that would be mocking kakuzu about his public scolding from pain at some point or another. because it was often two against one as well, kakuzu could not as easily pursue bounties. this was clear punishment, and kakuzu did not appreciate being treated as a child by a boy decades younger than him---threat of death and the fact that he had little room to talk besides.  ultimately, kakuzu was assigned a third partner, although this time, zetsu regularly checked in to ensure he was still alive. kakuzu was now pissed---not explicitly because his partner was unskilled or weak, which were not true, but because he was being monitored wherever he went. he assumed that his role in money matters was about the only reason he had not been kicked out of the akatsuki yet (if not killed), which meant that he had some modicum of importance in the organization. if this was true, then he certainly did not enjoy being babysat. kakuzu tried to negotiate (i.e. demand) zetsu stop being sent after him to ensure he was not murdering his partner, but this was to no avail.  kakuzu tolerated this for the shortest out of all his partnerships during this ten year period. kakuzu, frustrated and petulant, killed his partner with a blast from his masks during a skirmish after less than 2 years. while it was obviously on purpose, kakuzu only said that perhaps his partner was too slow and did not explicitly claim responsibility. he was incredibly flippant about the entire ordeal, and was not interested in answering for it in any fashion. this kill was obviously a challenge and pushed kakuzu’s boundaries with the akatsuki. when kakuzu was once again not killed from losing this partner, he essentially lost almost all respect for akatsuki policy and began operating more as he pleased, although he did stay within akatsuki regulations and continued to bring in money for them, which was likely one of the only reasons he was able to maintain his position. 

partner four: kakuzu’s fourth partner was the strongest out of all his partners to date, and most likely was an attempt from pain to supply kakuzu with such an overpowering partner that kakuzu could not easily kill him. kakuzu, recognizing pain’s irritation with kakuzu, simply took this as a challenge. and, unfortunately, his partner’s strength also served to interest kakuzu for his heart, which meant kakuzu even had a sort of reward at the end of it if he figured out an expedient way to do away with his fourth partner.  in the meantime, this was around the time kakuzu became somewhat more lazy about fighting. while he still valued money and strong opponents, for those he deemed weak or not worth his trouble, he typically ordered or allowed his partner take them. if pain wasn’t going to kick him out for killing three partners, then kakuzu would not going to go to the trouble of trying to fight weaklings for paltry pay. pain could do with that as he willed.  this fourth partnership was very uneasy. pain made it clear to kakuzu’s fourth partner that kakuzu killed his previous three partners, and that he should be on his guard---but, of course, he was certain he was strong enough to handle kakuzu. kakuzu’s partner, of course, was confident that he could, because all strong rogues always so confident in their own skills regardless of what they do or don’t know about their opponents. their day-to-day was frigid at best, with kakuzu usually electing to stay silent save for grunting orders and his partner acquiescing often enough but making it clear that he was ready to fight at any point. it was a tenuous partnership to be sure, and neither of them really trusted going into battles together in any capacity.  eventually, kakuzu killed his fourth partner as well and, as originally intended, took his heart. while it was a tough fight to be sure, his partner did not fully appreciate the strength of kakuzu’s threads, which was ultimately his downfall. kakuzu successfully harvested his heart, then proceeded to report to the akatsuki himself that he had killed his most recent partner. he even implied pain should supply him a stronger partner so kakuzu could have another free heart---or, perhaps, to save resources, just let him work alone. 

of course, we all know that didn’t work out. eventually, pain assigned kakuzu an immortal in hidan, successfully giving him a partner that would stick. this, in combination with their opposing personalities, is likely why kakuzu is so disparaging to hidan at all times---because he’s pissed he lost the war of attrition---but, ultimately, the pair of them worked well together in combat, so apparently there was something decent that came out of it.

[kiyye]

how does one get into homestuck???

Short answer??? Just go to http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6 and start reading!!!!!!!!!!!!! You click the link that says “Enter name” to go to the next page and then keep clicking there.

Longer answer. Homestuck is a webcomic. Depending on what you’ve heard/seen around the internet, it often seems like some huge beast of a thing surrounded by years of fan culture, and that’s partially what it is, but at its core homestuck is also just a story. And a GOOD ASS story in my opinion (but thats coming from someone who’s read it 5 times through and thinks about it on the daily so uhhh im maybe not the most objective critic here??? but gOD I LOVE IT). Homestuck is long, but I know plenty of people who archive read it and love it just as much as I do, so I promise you will be able to get through the whole thing. (If you have not heard anything on the internet about it, either negative or positive -- dont worry about it and start reading!!!!!!!!!)

Another thing to remember is like. Homestuck is a story that in some ways you kind of need to take and make yours??? Personally I would advocate for reading every single bit of it and taking in as much as you can, plus reading bonus content like SBAHJ and the paradox space comics, but again thats coming from me, the most obsessive human being on the planet. I know people who didn’t make it through the troll acts, or skipped over the dancestors, and the story is still meaningful to them. So just read what speaks to you and don’t worry about being a bad and evil fan if you dont want to find every single dialogue option in the minigames. Some people can just sit down and read the whole thing, some people have to take it in small chunks. You can probably guess which kind of person you are based on how you usually read things.

So about the first few pages. I remember when I started reading it I was honestly confused because I thought I had missed some kind of background lore that would explain the things that were happening in the first act or so. But let me tell you: No, there is no required reading pre-homestuck (the author has done other webcomics and there are lots of callbacks to those as well as pop-cultural references and shit, but nothing plot important). If you start at page one, which I have linked above, and then keep reading, you may be like “what the fuck is happening right now, what is a sylladex?” You are supposed to be confused! Just persevere my dude.

Lots of people try to summarize it and do a shitty job because its not something you can easily summarize. But here’s me taking a crack at it? Homestuck is a webcomic about four kids who play a (fictional) game which turns out to not actually be just a game. Originally, it was a forum based text adventure, where fans (real people) would submit commands (for example, “Enter name”), and those would then inform the direction of the comic. The first act is largely comprised of quirky events occurring in a generally mundane setting. It’s just set on regular old earth, but for some reason people have video game-esque inventories, and john keeps fake arms in chests and does all kind of whacky shit. It’s charming but not particularly dramatic. From there, more colorful and complicated events unfold, eventually leading to ALIENS and huge epic flash animations and big bad villains. Shenanigans are had along the way.

This is probably a needlessly long post but I love homestuck on a deep, deep, unexplainable level and I very much want it to feel accessible to new readers!!!!! Here are some other helpful links to help you out if you really want to Get Into The Comic (and the fandom):

Before/during reading:

The homestuck wiki, an essential

This is the mspa “new reader” introduction page. It suggests starting off with problem sleuth but I personally dont think thats necessary. I jumped right into homestuck and was fine.

If you want to save this post, here is some post-reading or maybe during-reading material! I think half of these get linked in the comic but they’re some of my favorite homestuck supplements:

Dave’s blog. Know who dave is first, then this whole masterpiece is fair game

Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. Same comment as above.

If you’re craving that good good homestuck content, paradox space is a bunch of standalone comics made by artists and fans. its dead now i think but it was a cool project that kept me alive for a summer or two

And uh just off the top of my head, here’s some relevant fandom reading dirk reading for when you’ve consumed all that and you’re sad and desperate for more. These are post-reading -- Come back to these after you finish the comic: Theatre of Coolty. Theatre of Coolty (The Movie). Detective Pony. (I’m so sorry that those are all dirk things). As for non dirk things, there’s Hiveswap, which you can find on steam, and loads and loads of fan videos on youtube that you can get lost in for hours.

I HOPE THIS POST IS HELPFUL TO YOU and i would highly, highly encourage you!!!!!! to read homestuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you’re just looking to start and this is all the information you need, GO FOR IT and pls message me any anecdotes you have because i crave the experience of getting to read it fresh all over again and i Will live vicariously through you. If you have been debating over reading it but you’re not sure if you want to, this is a wonderful post.

Happy reading from a big huge homestuck nerd!!!!!!!! :D :D :D

[wanderingstoryteller]

Guild Wars 2: Random Trivia About the Crystal Desert

Hello, fellow lore nerds! I’ve been a busy little Branded this past month: getting back into my college routine, doing a bit more creative writing than usual, and engaging in a fun-but-exhausting new activity my sister calls... “socializing”.

Still, I wanted to find time to cover PoF around here -- I’ve had a couple little side projects cooking, and with Path of Fire just one day away (!!!), I was planning something extra special for you guys. It was gonna be a beginner’s guide to the continent of Elona: background information about the region, its history, inhabitants and whatnot. To make sure everyone’s on the same page, and knows the backstory going in.

Oh, it would have been magnificent. If only Arenanet hadn’t beaten me to the punch by doing the exact same thing, but way better and several days early. 

It put me in a bit of an awkward position. What’s a lore nerd to do when his purpose has been fulfilled? With whom do I share my bounty of knowledge? 

And then I realized what I had known in my heart all along... I don’t need a reason to share pointless trivia about a world I love. To share pointless trivia is its own reward, I say! So, rather than step on Arenanet’s toes by doing the same thing they did, I decided to build on top of it. Because Arenanet’s post, as well-written as it was, didn’t dive into what makes Elona such a fun place to hang around in -- its depth. So many smaller details, not central to the story, but adding that extra layer of uniqueness crucial to making a setting memorable.

So that’s my mission here: show off the more obscure plot elements that make Elona such a cool place to be. Things I hope to see touched on, even if it’s just in a bit of throwaway dialogue. I hope y’all enjoy, and if all goes well, tomorrow I’ll be seeing you on the first ship to Amnoon!

The Junundu

To start with something vaguely relevant: a while back, you might have noticed that the Wurms on the Tarnished Coast were looking a little... different. That turned to be because of a really weird bug, which swapped out the Jungle Wurm model for something else. A model just added to the client.

What is it, you ask? Turns out it’s one of the most feared beasts in all of Elona: The Junundu Wurm.

The Junundu are massive, hardy creatures, one of the few living things able to survive in the Desolation. According to Elonian legend, Palawa Joko tried to tame them, turn them into beasts of war for his conquest of Vabbi. But he failed, so he set them loose across his kingdom. Over the years, though, others have had better luck. During the events of Nightfall, the Sunspears were able to tame a small group of Junundu and use them to cross the Desolation safely. 

Yes, this is the reason I got so excited by the idea of mounts. Who doesn’t want to ride an enormous, all-devouring Sand Wurm? I’d name her Kirby.

The Abandoned Superweapon 

The Crystal Desert is filled with ruins. Before Joko took over, the Elonians were constantly trying to settle the place, drawn to Augury Rock and the possibility of Ascension. Some were killed by the Forgotten protecting the place, but at least one colony destroyed themselves. A civil war broke out over the Crystal Desert’s dwindling resources, and in desperation, one side created a weapon capable of wiping out the entire settlement. Under unknown circumstances, the weapon was activated, and both sides of the conflict ceased to exist. 

What happened to the weapon afterward? Well, for a couple centuries, it just sort of... sat there, in the middle of The Arid Sea. An armed, perfectly functional superweapon, forgotten by everyone. Even Arenanet themselves forgot about it for a little while -- the quest content about the relic had to be cut from Prophecies due to time constraints. And so, for another two centuries, it sat. 

Don’t worry, though -- it was eventually recovered by the Durmand Priory and stored in Special Collections, alongside other lost relics like the Holy Grail, Zhaitan’s tail and Ogden Stonehealer. Tyria is safe... for now. 

Teleporters

You modern Tyrians are spoiled, what with your newfangled Asura Gates and fancy shmancy Waypoints. Back in my day, we had to walk to our destination, and we walked uphill both ways! Unless, that is, we were in the Crystal Desert. Then we kind of had it covered. 

While one Crystal Desert colony was busy constructing the most devastating Indiana Jones reference of all time, another was busy revolutionizing desert commerce. Using magic, they figured out how to transport objects instantly between one point and another -- the same technology found in asuran Waypoints, centuries before the asura were ever encountered on the surface. They spent years constructing a network of these “Teleporters”, making life in the area much easier for anyone that knew how to activate them. When their great work was complete, they proceeded to suddenly and anticlimactically die out, just like all the others. 

Tragically, with nobody left to repair them, the technology behind the Teleporters degraded with time. They now stand as little more than a pretty addition to the desert scenery, and a lasting reminder to us all that humans aren’t nearly as dumb as the asura keep insisting we are. 

Ancestor Trees

Ventari wasn’t the only centaur with a love of nature. Elonian centaurs, like the Veldrunner and Losaru prides, were staunch nature-lovers themselves. In fact, much of local centaur culture revolved around their so-called “Ancestor Trees”. 

According to centaur mystics, the spirits of centaur elders would congregate around these places. Eager to teach the next generation, these spirits blessed the fruit of these trees, imparting their knowledge and wisdom on those lucky enough to get a bite. Somewhat rare, being magic and all, they were highly sought after by Elonians, and vigorously defended by the centaurs.

Most Ancestor Trees were burned or abandoned during Nightfall, when Abaddon’s forces attacked and enslaved many of the centaur prides. At least one survived with help from the Sunspears, but I’m interested to see what happened afterward. Have Ancestor Trees flourished across Elona once again, or has Palawa Joko chosen to uproot them once and for all?

The Order of Whispers

Wait, who let these guys in here!? They aren’t Elonian! 

...Or at least, they aren’t Elonian anymore. 

In the modern day, the Order of Whispers is dedicated to defending Tyria from the Elder Dragons. But few know that this wasn’t their original purpose. The Order of Whispers was originally based in Elona, founded by Turai Ossa himself. Their mission? Guard Palawa Joko’s tomb at all costs. Ensure that he never rises to threaten Vabbi again. And stop anyone who tries to set him free. 

They were good at their jobs -- so good, in fact, that almost nobody outside the Order even knew where the tomb was. But all good things come to an end, and the end came in Nightfall. With Abaddon poised to break free of his prison, the Sunspears needed a way to stop him. The problem? That final climactic battle was going to occur at the Mouth of Torment, smack-dab in the middle of the Desolation. No living thing could cross that sulfurous wasteland intact. But there was one being that knew how they might be able to manage it.

Palawa Joko would tell them. He would tell them all about the Junundu, and how they might be tamed. But first they had to set him free. The Order didn’t like it, but they knew it wouldn’t matter in the end if Abaddon wiped them all out. So the deal was made, and Joko returned. 

A hundred years later, the Order was fleeing for their lives. Vabbi, Kourna and Istan had all surrendered to Joko’s forces, and at long last, his enemies were being purged. To survive, they hopped on a boat and fled to mainland Tyria. There they found a civilization under siege on all sides, and a new purpose. 

But with the path to Elona open once again, I can’t help but wonder... what do they make of their first, greatest failure? And do they plan on setting it right?

The Mordant Crescent

The Sunspears might have freed Palawa Joko, but they didn’t like him very much. The feeling was mutual -- Joko knew the Sunspears would defy him when he made his play for Vabbi, and that’s exactly what they did in the end. Unfortunately, they failed, and for their failure, they suffered the worst of Joko’s wrath. Joko had them hunted mercilessly, one by one, and the hunt was led by an order of his own: the Mordant Crescent. 

Ever a fan of irony, Joko formed the Crescent exclusively out of traitors to the Sunspear Order. He had a lot of them on-hand after the conquest of Vabbi. Many in the Order believed their cause was hopeless, and so defected to the winning side. Some did it for power. Some did it for immortality. Some did it to protect their families. Joko didn’t care about their motivations. As long as they were willing to hunt down their former allies, he would accept them.

All members of the Mordant Crescent are powerful necromancers, and granted far more autonomy than Joko usually allows. This is by design -- Joko already has plenty of mindless minions to go around, after all. What he wants out of the Crescent is something far more dangerous: Heroes. Wandering adventurers that protect Joko’s interests on their own initiative, with the same cunning, creativity and determination that had always been employed against him in the past. 

Much like us? No. Exactly like us. Like the rest of Elonian culture, we too have been reforged in Palawa Joko’s image. 

Tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen, we travel to one of the richest settings in the history of the Guild Wars franchise. For those of us that have been there before, it’ll be a nostalgia trip like no other. And for those of you who have never had the pleasure, I hope this post gave you a little taste of why I’m so excited. 

See you tomorrow, and may the Six Five bless you!