#the growing desperation feels like a major factor in the turning into monster part

[reitziluz]

EDIT: I GOT CONFUSED! i thought this was my other more neatly written and better thought out post of the same thing!! i'm so sorry, and please check out the other post if you'd like! link is here, hope it works i'm on mobile and it's Late for me gdhsjjfjf

the remembrance does not say they were similarly affected! the afflicted ones are miquella and trina. in the japanese translation, "their afflicted selves" is "oneselves that are frail and weak" and are stated to be unlike radahn. i get into this in another reblog chain, check the notes for the discussion if you'd like!

i don't subscribe there to have necessarily been a coherent intentional grand plan, and do not agree at all that miquella sacrificed everything for just radahn. radahn is only a small part of it. miquella would have done it even if radahn didn't exist. for malenia, for godwyn, for all the oppressed peoples, for the righting of all wrongs. i can see where your interpretation is coming from, but it is a bit more straightforward than what i tend to lean towards.

i do 100% agree that no matter the exact details, this is some prime tragic shit!

for radahn's skin and curse, it could have been the great rune. though none of the others went through a transformation like that just from the runes. it feels bit more likely the going mad was going mad with power. i've been considering possible influence of some outer god to be the cause of his curse, or possibly something related to Death. as you pointed out, all the carian kids do lose their bodies in one sense or another, but what i have been wondering is if there's any connection between radahn and ranni? ranni's corpse is grey and missing feet too, and connected to Death. but i don't really think that's anything, at least not yet. there isn't anything solid pointing towards there being a connection.

thank you for pointing out rennala and her sweetings, that is very interesting! i'm going to ponder that. and thank you for reminding me about the silver thing! though i think their loss of legs isn't just about circulation. albinaurics have ghostly fading limbs after all, so it's more supernatural. i need to look into it a bit more too.

i really need to catch up with my elden ring lore theorizing vids because man so like --

the people i follow seemed to settle pretty fast that the other part of the vow, what radahn is getting from it, is like. valhalla. eternal war. if even that, maybe he wants nothing and got mind controlled, end of.

and it just bugs me to hell and back like. what's the narrative satisfaction there. what is it saying. how does it play with the themes. there's so little to go on, and it leaves him feeling so disjointed. like of course there's no other answer, miquella just is the worst person ever and ~has manipulated him all along ooh~

and it just does not feel right. like the puzzle piece doesn't fit.

like miquella has Gone Wrong. no bones about it. but i just. things just make so much more sense if instead of someone Powerful and In Control, he's been scrambling for a long time from dead end to dead end, setback to setback. acting from pain, cornered in desperation as everything keeps getting worse, and oh if everyone just was more compassionate towards each other, if just they could --- like miquella feels like the kind of activists you see sometimes, who need to save the world and everyone in it but they can't and it breaks them.

and miquella has people genuinely following him. people choose to stay.

so. radahn. is there something if we assume that he's genuinely sworn to miquella.

first off, absolutely sick. why would the ostensibly likely most good hearted demigods out of the bunch do that? what would drive them to it? i lose my mind thinking about how nobody has healthy attachment here. i lose my mind thinking about how much it feels like miquella might have been isolated due to his condition.

point is. desperation. everything stinks of desperation to me.

what would radahn have wanted. and if he wanted something, why didn't he go miquella willingly.

i have been turning gaius around in my head for some time. cursed from birth, with an other half, a friend to messmer, an older brother to the lion. albinauric. one of the oppressed peoples miquella is trying to save.

is that enough? is his older brother figure so dear to radahn? did he change his mind, abandon a (sworn?) brother because he'd rather have war and whatever he was fighting for in the shattering? the man who learned gravitation magic so he wouldn't have to leave his beloved horse behind?

what would the story be. what else is there in the world.

does he just want to be a lord to be even more like godfrey?

miquella makes him look more like godfrey in their fight. he also looks kinda like serosh. serosh was there to hold back hoarah loux's bloodlust. the cutscene makes it look like radahn was about to freak out, but then miquella steps in and holds him (back?) but why would radahn want his bloodlust held back, when he's such a war guy? but what else is there?

... wait.

at the festival, radahn doesn't have feet.

he's not an albinauric. people suffering from scarlet rot lose limbs (though the asymmetry of malenia's legs feels pointed in contrast to the symmetry of albinauric fading...) but the rot makes you sickly pale colors, not the dark grey he's got going on (have i forgotten someone else that has gone his color from it?)

gaius was cursed from birth. an albinauric. the loss of legs starting from feet is so specific to albinaurics. what are albinaurics. why does the putrescent knight have albinauric-like legs. the putrescence oozing out of the coffin ships, the way shaman flesh easily melds bodies together, silver tears - wasn't there something about mimic tears and albinaurics, a theory(?) about them being related? what is going on with the albinaurics. is a curse something that is touched by outer gods? they are called by suffering, and suffering is how the dung eater is making curses.

marika's children are cursed (except, or maybe...?) radagon's children don't seem to be cursed. but gaius was cursed from birth. it's not limited to just marika's children, and radagon is marika anyway.

does any of this connect? resonate?

was radahn cursed?

had he lost his mind by the time he and malenia clashed?

is that why malenia had to remind him of his vow?

is he yet fucking another person, another SIBLING, who turned to miquella, seeking salvation?

did miquella vow to save him too?

i have fucking crumbs to go on and only second hand sources for them but that's only making me Lose My Mind more because i am in hell! hell!

what is the story here, miyazaki i just want to talk ---

[sailormoonandme]

Moon Tiara No-Action

I re-watched Sailor Moon episode 51 (that’s Sailor Moon R episode 5 btw) on a whim recently. It’s an episode that always left an impression on me due to Usagi’s triumphant return to action, complete with a new transformation sequence and attack (the Moon Princess Halation).  

However, upon rewatching it something chaffed in the storytelling for me.  

For context, at the end of episode 46 (and Sailor Moon Classic) Usagi used the Silver Crystal’s power to resurrect herself, her friends and Mamoru with no memory of their adventures throughout the season. In effect they were reset to how they were in episode 1 as Usagi wished to just be a normal girl, not a warrior.  

In an earlier episode Sailor Moon’s iconic tiara based attack abruptly failed, a problem she continued to have in this episode when she tries to rescue her friends.  

The monster of the week consequently retaliates, Usagi’s transformation broach shatters (reverting her to normal) and she is dragged down into a kind of void by the monster’s power. Luna tries to help but is dragged in herself.  

Through Luna’s exposition we learn that Usagi’s tiara and transformation have failed because deep down she still wishes she could be a normal girl. So long as she feels that way she cannot become Sailor Moon.

This leads Usagi to desperately question how then she is to save her friends.

The scene then cuts to a different location with Usagi cradling Luna.  

Now, I’ve consulted 2 subtitled versions (neither of which are the new official Viz translations) along with the Viz dub for this scene so there are some nuances but I will try to give you the gist of the rest of the scene.

Usagi looks down at the (seemingly?) unconscious Luna and essentially comments on how loyal/vulnerable (it is different across translations) she looks and how she gives her a hard time. She apologises for dragging her into this. Due to the context of the scene, the season and the series logically ‘this’ is referring to the specific situation of this episode, i.e. Usagi and Luna being lost in a void or possibly dead.

Queen Serenity then appears and informs Usagi they are in her mind/soul/heart (again…translations…). She gives Usagi the Silver Crystal, integrating it with her broken broach. She explains her desire to save her friends has essentially made it possible for her to have the Crystal. In the Viz dub this is explained as Usagi’s desire has formed the Crystal, implying it’s been formed for this specific moment. In both the subs I consulted she simply says her desire to save her friends has ‘protected’ the Silver Crystal, opening up the possibility that she was referring to the end of Season 1/episode 46 when Usagi initially used the Crystal to resurrect everyone. I suspect this was a mistranslation or something and the intent was more episode specific.

Anyway, the point is with the new broach Usagi can transform again (and is presumably more powerful), returns from the void with Luna and saves the day with her new weapon and attack.

So what’s the problem here?

Well, at face value there is at least 1, arguably 2 deus ex machinas in play here. I’m not that concerned about those because frankly…that’s just kind of the nature of this show. Story resolutions like that occurred before episode 51 and oh boy did they occur afterwards too. Deus ex machinas are arguably baked into the internal logic of the Sailor Moon show.

What had me more bothered was the resolution to Usagi’s internal conflict. The notion that her powers would fail her because deep down she didn’t want to be a warrior is fine, I get that. But it’s the idea that this is resolved because she very strongly wants to protect her friends. The problem with this is threefold:

In the first episode of Sailor Moon R, Usagi’s memories were restored by Luna and she was very much upset over that, and yet her powers worked just fine when she was rescuing Naru

In episode 50 when her tiara initially failed she was trying to rescue Mamoru along with her brother and father

She was trying to save her friends when her powers failed her in episode 51

The last one just doesn’t seem to add up on face value. But collectively all three seem to imply that Usagi cares more for Naru than her father, brother, lover and millennia long friends which is rather ridiculous.  

Is this bad writing? Perhaps. But in the case of points b)-c) I think it’s bad due to a failure of communication rather than the writers just not bothering with logic. Allow me to propose some explanations for the above. And with point a) I think it’s possible to offer up some logical explanations.

Usagi’s initial ability to save Naru might’ve just been a case of the ‘heat of the moment’ combined with disorientation and Usagi’s presumptions in that episode.  

Between the animation and the voice acting in the original Japanese version it’s clear that having her memories restored was not unlike awakening from a dream for Usagi. And she had her energy drained twice, which we know takes a toll on your mental faculties.

Additionally upon ‘awakening’ Usagi was IMMEDIATELY told by Luna that there was an immediate crisis at hand that urgently needed Sailor Moon.  

Not to take the Sailor Soldier thing too literally, but in terms of Usagi’s mental state this not unlike a soldier in a combat zone being abruptly awoken to deal with an immediate danger. Whatever dreams or insecurities were plaguing their mind would get pushed down or (temporarily) cast out entirely as they enter ‘combat mode’. Or if you like, this is not unlike a fire fighter awoken by an emergency. Only in this case the fire would be right on the doorstep of the firehouse. Forget thinking, forget feeling, it’s time to act.  

But it’s more than that because in context, Usagi didn’t know the exact nature of the threat she was facing in episode 47. I don’t just mean the exact type of monster-of-the-week. Rather she had no idea she was now dealing with another evil group with a host of monsters she’d have to deal with. In her mind she might’ve believed she just had to take out this one creature and then it’d be back to normal. In fact she didn’t know she was dealing with that until episode 48.

By episode 50-51, she’d met Ail and An and faced enough Cardians to know she was in for another ‘long haul’. So any optimism she might’ve held about this being but temporary would’ve been gone. Of course she continued to transform during these episodes*  

What gives.

Well…the human mind is a weird thing. What is at the back of your mind can be brought closer to the forefront under certain circumstances. It’s not the case that you feel just one way or another and this neatly determines how you act. If Usagi’s transformations are linked with her emotions, it’s entirely possible that her desire to protect innocent people and her friends in the heat of the moment was enough to prompt a transformation. But her desire to be normal was ultimately restricting her powers from working 100%.

As the Cardians continued to grow more frequent the ‘melancholy’ over her lost normalcy might have in turn grown stronger and thus restricted her powers yet more. Noticeably in episode 50, when Usagi’s tiara first stops working, she’s trying to protect her father, her brother and a (amnesic) Mamoru. The Cardians are in essence violating her normalcy in a MAJOR way in this moment and she’s not ‘dazed’ in any way as she was in episode 47 when she first dealt with a Cardian. In the context of that episode she was clear headed, aware that this was just the latest in a string of Cardian battles and there would inevitably be more to come. And they have not just interrupted her civilian life but the single most personal parts of that life, her family.  

Psychologically it’s not impossible for this to all coalesce into bringing Usagi’s desire for normalcy to the forefront of her mind, hence her tiara first stops working.  

Equally, in episode 51 Usagi’s civilian friends (Naru and Umino) were attacked by a Cardian and everyone’s plans for a nice day out were ruined too. Combined with the failure of her tiara last time, it’s easy to grasp why Usagi’s subconscious was interfering with her powers in this episode.  

This then brings us back to the biggest inconsistency.  

Usagi wants to be a normal girl and this holds her back from functioning as Sailor Moon and saving her friends.

However, wanting to save her friends is what resolves this problem and lets her function as Sailor Moon.

…Wut…????????????

Okay, well the first thing to consider is who is directly in danger here?

It is the Inner Senshi. Of course Usagi loves them dearly, they are her closest friends. But they are more than that, they are her comrades. Her fellow Sailor Guardians/Warriors…Soldiers.

In a sense they are living reminders that she is not a normal girl like she wants to be. Her friendships with them can function like normal people of course, but they were primarily forged through being super heroines.  

Of course, I’m not trying to suggest Usagi secretly resents her friends or anything. Rather I’m saying that if Usagi is weakened by her desire to be normal, that desire would be more prevalent in her mind when she has to be a soldier to fight an enemy to save her fellow soldiers. The whole situation is hitting her over the head with the fact that she is a soldier i.e. NOT a regular teenage civilian.  

This then brings us to the second factor. In real life, soldiers forge extremely powerful emotional bonds with one another due to their shared experiences. I think the falling into that void and realizing she had truly failed essentially made Usagi begin to re-evaluate her priorities.  

She wanted to be a normal girl, but now she was seemingly lost and her beloved comrades were soon to die to her desire to save them overpowered the former.  

But the dialogue across all translations is clear. It’s not enough that Usagi simply develop a new stronger desire, but outright lose the desire to be normal.  

And the key to that I think was in fact Luna. When Usagi saw how vulnerable she was, when she realized how difficult she made things for her and how apologetic she was for prompting Luna to share her doomed fate, I think Usagi’s desire for normalcy dissipated.

I say dissipated. I doubt it was ever really gone per se. Rather, I think Usagi came to a moment of acceptance. She accepted she wasn’t normal. She accepted she wasn’t going to be. She accepted she was a soldier. She might’ve liked to have been normal, but she was no longer subconsciously resisting her situation and grieving what she’d lost.**

It’s no coincidence that when Usagi admits she gives Luna a hard time and apologises for dooming her that Queen Serenity appears and gives her the crystal.

To sum up:

Usagi always wanted to protect her friends, but was subconsciously grieving her lost normalcy, a loss her friends were embodiments of.  

That grief compromised her power thereby causing her to be lost, totally fail her friends, including Luna.

This failure was the push Usagi needed to reaffirm her affection to her friends and accept her lost normalcy.

Her grief no longer blinding her to her desire to protect her friends, she gained access to the Silver Crystal and was able to fulfill that desire in that episode and all the ones after.  

I won’t lie to you, a lot of this was rationalizations on my part, especially the stuff prior to episode 51. In truth I think the writers just came up with the idea of Usagi’s tiara not working the episode before to justify her upgrade in episode 51. This explains the apparent discrepancies in episode 51 compared to earlier in the season.

However, I do feel that the ultimate resolution to episode 51 is narratively justified within the episode itself, just not as clearly communicated or as built up as it could have been.  

* But noticeably she never used her tiara implying it might’ve failed even earlier than it did.

Additionally episode 51 makes it a bit ambiguous as to whether being able to transform is strictly speaking linked with Usagi’s mental hang-up, or if it only affectets her tiara. It wouldn’t be illogical if it was just the latter. Transforming is akin to turning a switch, she just takes the broach and says the magic words. Actually using her abilities though, i.e. actively fighting, would demand she put more heart and soul into what she’s doing.  

For the sake of argument though let’s say that yes, Usagi’s mental hang-up could affect her ability to transform as well as her tiara attack.  

**We could extrapolate this all the way into the end of the series in fact.  

In the final moments of the very last episode Usagi is a civilian, evil has been vanquished and for good this time. She even knows the Black moon clan in the future are destined to fail.  

To all intents and purposes she really is JUST a normal girl…and yet she internally refers to herself as the soldier of love and justice, Sailor Moon.  

[cassandra1447]

Lucifer 5A Thoughts

Lucifer season 4 was great. It had a nice solid plotline, it had great character development for pretty much everyone, I actually thought the Eve-Lucifer-Chloe triangle was done both purposefully and realistically with reasons why all three of them acted as they did, and just generally felt like a breath of fresh air after the mishmash that was season 3.

I had few complaints - a few but not many. 

I was super hopeful about season 5. Guess what I binge-watched this past weekend?

Me:

Cue rant (under cut b/c there are spoilers aplenty and if you liked this season - please keep scrolling)

To be fair: I have only watched season 5 once. 

Unfortunately, I have no desire to watch it again. 

First of all, the lack of creativity.

Maze betrays Lucifer (again for like the 10000th time)

Michael being a jerkass - I’ll grant them his fear mojo, but could you have reached for any other concept than Lucifer vs. Michael? Or give him something more interesting than an ego-problem to fuel his evilness?

Ella’s boyfriend - look, there’s foreshadowing and there’s eye-rolling, damn it really, this guy is clearly only here to serve a plot point and he’s either going to be the victim or the murderer

Ella deserves a genuine good person and good relationship - WTF did you have to do that to her? There’s no point besides hurting her

It would have been better - and more surprising - if he had been a truly decent person even if the relationship ended up not enduring

And then there’s Chloe...and oh dear...

“Being a gift” consternation

Okay, yes Chloe is allowed to be upset and to be struggling with the divine side of things - in fact, I actually liked how they depicted that in Season 4

But in Season 4, when Chloe’s reactions hurt Lucifer, there’s a clear consequence. It’s part of why he turned to Eve, and there are a couple of excellent moments - the part where he confronts Chloe about neither being an angel like she wants or the devil like Eve wants for instance - that showed Lucifer was coming to understand himself and to stand up for his own sense of self to a degree

This time round, we get a lot from Chloe but little from Lucifer aside from him desperately wanting to be with her and willing to do just about whatever she wants to have that 

And unfortunately, whereas by the end of season 4, we definitely get Chloe seeing past the divine bombshells and remembering that she cares about Lucifer for himself - that progress is completely nullified by the “you’re a miracle” bombshell and I didn’t need to see that again

Also - WTF does Amenadiel’s spiel to Chloe about seeing Lucifer truly work on her anxiety over being made for Lucifer? Did I miss something? Chloe’s upset over this seemed to me to be because of a lack of free will - not that she didn’t know who Lucifer was. Why - when free will is such a major deal for Lucifer - was that not discussed? Why did no one - Lucifer for example - come out and say “Humans have free will. Period. You can choose to walk away from me or tell me to go, and I will. I don’t give a damn what my Father did or wants or intends. It’s your choice.”

The “I love you”

I do not get why Chloe doesn’t know if Lucifer loves her. He may have not used the three words but he literally told her the prophecy (his first love) was about her not Eve. Or what about “I would do it again”? Or any of the many actions through which he’s demonstrated that he cares about her, that he values her, that he loves her. 

And okay, maybe she needs those three words to be 100%, absolutely sure, okay. Then just ask him. How do you feel about me? What do you want from this relationship? Where is this going? You know, normal adult questions.

I’m not expecting Chloe to do emotional labor for Lucifer but if she needs something from him, she needs to ask him. I think that’s fair.

It also highlights a problem with Chloe’s empathy for Lucifer IMO - it feels like she’s once again so caught up in her emotional turmoil, she’s incapable of even seeing his. This is someone who literally just returned from thousands of years in hell, who has a family  had cast him out and treated him like the worst, has been vilified by humanity for millennia, and because of all of this has a low sense of self-worth and has come to believe that he’s a monster - love is something Lucifer literally hasn’t been shown in millions (billions?) and until very recently hasn’t been in a position to express love in return - and you expect him to drop an “I love you” nonchalantly?

Again, it’s okay to have Chloe focus on her emotions rather than Lucifer’s. But if I say something hurtful to someone - even if I’m under duress - it’s still hurtful. I still owe them an apology. 

The “not in relationship” evasion

Despite the fact that Michael lying was such a key factor in Chloe knowing he wasn’t Lucifer and Chloe clinging to the fact Lucifer doesn’t, Chloe doesn’t seem to make the connection that telling the truth to Lucifer is essential

One unaddressed factor from last season - Chloe lied to Lucifer and allowed him to think that everything was fine and that she wanted a relationship with him...and then on what he happily thought was a date almost roofied him (at minimum, who knows what was really in that vial).  Lucifer subsequently found out about the plan - so there’s a historical basis for her to lie to him about how she feels (in order to betray him) -  Chloe, he already thinks he’s unworthy of you, he’s already used to people he loves hurting him - you need to be straightforward with him

This includes not evading (or lying) about being in a relationship with him. 

At least she does eventually tell Lucifer she needs time & space I suppose

Mojo switching

Why? Just why? It happened and then it stopped. What?

Various other characters:

Linda:

Why did we only have like 2 therapy sessions? Why did Linda not get to do her job this season? Her sessions with Lucifer did help him grow - why the hell didn’t she help Lucifer & Chloe work through some of their issues

I don’t like having her plot this season revolve around children. It’s a personal thing I know - but it’s such a default plot device to use with female characters. 

Amenadiel

IDK about the timing of filming for this season but it felt really off-key to have a black man depicted as thinking the best way to make the world safer for his son to be aggressively trying to work with the police. Season 4 had an episode that dealt with the endemic racism in our justice system - why in the hell was that not carried into this season? Why don’t we see Amenadiel protesting or volunteering with a local group trying to address the systematic racism? 

Where the hell did the “reflection” thing come from? I never saw Lucifer’s mojo as reflecting, more bringing to the surface what someone already felt/wanted/knew. And even if I buy that - Amenadiel never had people behaving as if he was reflecting love before. Oh and for Lucifer’s mojo, for it to have a visible impact, he generally has to be intending it to (except for when he’s in his devil form). There’s a few examples in earlier seasons where there’s an indication there’s a low level field continuously but nothing like what Amenadiel had happen in the convent. And doesn’t that give Amenadiel two powers (time + love mojo) while Lucifer and Michael only get mojo? 

Maze

Oh look, Maze betrayals Lucifer again. Never seen that before. 

1 freaking episode with Trixie!!! And it’s also the only episode with Lucifer & Trixie and Lucifer being adorable with Trixie and then - oh, it’s not that Trixie likes Lucifer, it’s that she’s being paid by Maze to get information  (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

WTF does Maze believe Michael? He’s a lying liar who lies. I can’t believe Maze would be that stupid. 

God

Just no. 

Previous seasons seemed to be having the message that God isn’t responsible for your life, you are. Lucifer has a similar realization at the end of season 4. So why are you going to muck that up by making God an active participant???

Other things that bug me:

Lack of LGBTQ+ representation

The old-timey bit doesn’t count IMO - Lucifer gender-flipped characters at Trixie’s request so any LGBTQ+ moments aren’t genuine

Lucifer & Maze are attracted to men and women (no defined label - maybe bisexual or pansexual) but there are no moments where either of them actively show it (or someone of the same gender was obviously attracted to them); I think we get a single line about Lucifer having been with both men & women but that’s all I can recall

Is there a single non-hetero couple depicted on screen (that didn’t have to be gender-flipped)? Seriously. I’m asking. 

Ella’s treatment

Already talked about this - but it was blatantly obvious the boyfriend plot served no purpose for Ella herself, just was a way to get this character looped in for other plot purposes

Chloe’s horrible advice to ignore Ella’s internal alarm bells. I don’t - how - what - yeah, feeds into what I said earlier about Chloe being too wrapped up in her own turmoil to be able to see from even a impartial (let alone another’s perspective)

Azrael! Why do you not use this sweetheart of an angel who has an established relationship with Ella? If you had to do this terrible Ella + bad guy plot, then for heaven’s sake, at least give us Azrael to warn Ella? Or something? 

Lilith was good...but where is Eve? There’s not even a throwaway line of “Eve’s in Madagascar” or show some postcards she sent to Maze or have Lucifer check-in on her and say “Eve says hi” - does Eve still exist? It’s not like Eve understand about “being made for someone” and maybe help Chloe, right? 

The Mock-Lucifer show episode -

 if you have an episode in your show that’s parodying your show...it had better be because you work for a secret government agency and it’s being allowed b/c the government can claim anyone trying to blow the whistle got it from the TV show (Stargate fans out there?) - otherwise, no. 

I know Lucifer likes to use the case-of-the-week to mirror what’s going on with Lucifer and the rest outside of the case - but this is too blatant, to the point it feels condescending

I didn’t actually want to know the story of Lucifer’s ring. Officially at least. Leave me some mysteries please, something to speculate about with other fans, something to develop headcanons for, something to write fanfic about - the story itself was fine, but doesn’t seem necessary

Hell Repercussions

Despite Michael using it as an excuse why “Lucifer” was behaving weirdly, once Lucifer is back, there’s little to no indication of the impact Hell had on Lucifer - thousands of years, and he’s pretty much the same as the moment he left Earth

Could have had Lucifer regress somewhat because he no longer had any support structure, was among literal demons who aren’t good for socialization, and perhaps had to revert to a more violent and vicious version of himself

Could have had Lucifer return to being more hedonistic - which would have been a good point of tension with Chloe - because he was starved of anything good in hell and is now trying to soak in as much life as possible (music, drink, drugs, parties, maybe flirting/dancing)?

One thing I did like was Lucifer talking to a human in hell - could have done something with Lucifer trying to help humans who felt guilty for things which shouldn’t qualify for eternal torment - connecting with semi-decent humans in hell b/c he couldn’t go back to Earth and b/c he has more empathy for them now (although I would argue Lucifer has always been kinder towards humans than other angels - look at the very first episode and how he treated Deliah)

Did no one try to contact Lucifer in hell? Amenadiel could have visited, he could have brought letters or messages from the humans in the know...did no one think of that? To help ease Lucifer’s isolation even in the smallest way? It felt like - as soon as Lucifer left - everyone was just like ‘well, he’s in Hell now, that’s too bad.’

What I did like:

Dan

He’s struggling and he knows it, and he’s trying to be a better version of himself while knowing he’s deeply flawed

The scenes with Dan & Lucifer working a case together are some of my favorites 

While I do wish he had recognized Michael’s ploy - in light of his history of doing something morally questionable “for the greater good” and his current self-examination - his reaction makes sense to me. He’s terrified and he reacts very honestly and directly; I think Lucifer would far prefer Dan’s reaction of just shooting him to Chloe’s reaction that involved her lying to him and allowing him hope only to learn she planned on using his feelings for her to allow her to get close enough to use the poison (and send him back to hell). 

Lucifer & Trixie - loved it (up until the elevator scene at the end)

Lucifer’s very practical solution of marking Michael so they couldn’t be confused - brutal yes, but practical 

This turned out way longer than I thought it would. I could be wrong - I did only see it once so it’s entirely possible I’ve missed something or don’t remember something - and I know we’ve got more episodes to come that may improve the season.

But compared to season 4 which had a tight plot that worked in concert with the character arcs, my initial impression of season 5 is overwhelming disappointment. I expected better than I got. 

[drkandraz]

Why Hirohiko Araki Is a Great Writer

Note: add writing saying “I am only going to be addressing JoJo because 1) I have not read his older works, 2) His works before and including Phantom Blood lack what I am talking about here and 3)  I include JoJo spin-off manga under the “JoJo” moniker”

 As the man behind one of the most influential manga of all time, Hirohiko Araki is already a highly praised writer and artist. However, I believe what lies at the heart of Araki-sensei’s writing style is not explored often enough. What I think are the most important factors in the writing of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure are the extremes to which the author takes his creative freedom and his skill in writing relationships between people.

Phantom Blood is the most conventional part of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. It has a structure very similar to other shounen manga at the time: hero has a rivalry, rival becomes obscenely powerful, hero learns martial art to defeat rival, ally dies, other ally narrates, hero wins etc. Phantom Blood’s writing only succeeds in the outlandish concepts introduced throughout: vampires appearing as a consequence of mayan blood rituals with magical stone masks, vampires somehow sucking blood by introducing their fingers inside a human’s skin, the power of the sun channeled (or created) by breathing, medieval warrior zombies, people being cleft in half by chains… frog punching. What also comes out here is a hint of the strategic battles the series will come to be known for, with Dio’s defeat at the hands of a burning sword.

A lot of the quality of the writing comes in the relationship between Jonathan and Dio, two characters who could not be more polar opposites who supposedly die together. While Jonathan is a typical nice guy shounen protagonist, Dio is a somewhat complex villain; he is irredeemably evil, but not unjustifiably so.

The decision to change protagonists was in itself an unheard of prospect at the time, each part bringing its own atmosphere and self-contained storyline, facts which allow Araki-sensei to explore all of them at length.

In comparison, Battle Tendency goes completely off the rails. If Phantom Blood is a cautious dip into the water, then Battle Tendency is a cannonball jump right into the deep end. This is where JoJo starts going from typical shounen manga to a manga characterized by battles of wits and skill rather than of pure brawn; and this change is reflected in its protagonist. Where Jonathan was the perfect gentleman who would never face his enemy anything less than head-on, Joseph likes to screw with his opponents’ heads. To show this change in character, his first major fight is against an enemy comparable to Dio, who is taken out a lot more easily thanks to Joseph’s fighting style. The insanity present in Phantom Blood is taken up to 11: the vampires are mere distractions to the new Pillar Men, Nazis are turned into Cyborgs and Hamon now apparently works on bubbles.

The relationship built between Joseph and Caesar is perhaps the most natural growth displayed in the series until this point. Their friendship grows gradually and culminates not with perfect teamwork, but with a realistic ideological fight between the two, one that Joseph would come to regret for many years to come. Caesar’s death is one of the most natural and powerful scenes in manga history, from the desperate dedication he displays even in his final moments, to Wamuu’s respect for him and to Joseph’s desperate cry for his best friend.

Stardust Crusaders is the start of Araki-sensei’s complete creative control. Stands now allow him to explore any fun and interesting idea he has in battles and to make stands that fit with their characters. The change of the format from single story to monster of the week supports the author’s writing style of throwing ideas at the wall and expanding them to his heart’s content. However, the clunkiness of his inexperience with such creative control is obvious. He is obviously pressured to come up with cool designs and powers for the stands (some of which he will later forget). In the second half of Part 3, getting used to the concept of stands, he starts writing interesting and fun ideas for his battles, like the D’Arby Brothers and Vanilla Ice. The insanity is punctuated by the increasing number of musical references (from Captain Tennille to Oingo Boingo).

Sadly, the characters take a backseat for the duration of this Part. Except for certain minor moments between the Crusaders, the characters don’t really have arcs (except for perhaps Iggy and Polnareff). For this reason, Jotaro, Kakyoin and Avdol are often criticized for having little to no character, which is a fair point. Jotaro himself is more of a superpowered version of the most barebone characteristics of Sherlock Holmes.

Dio’s return recontextualizes Part One as a tragedy rather than a story of sacrifice for the greater good, as well as making Part Three more of a culmination of generations of fighting rather than another story about saving the world. Jotaro vs Dio is still one of the best battles in shounen history because of the weight behind every single action the characters take feeling like the climax of the story.

Diamond is Unbreakable, in contrast to its predecessor, is not in the least an epic story about cleansing evil. It is, for the most Part, a slice of life. Therefore, its stand users have abilities more suited to everyday life (Bad Company notwithstanding), or rather their own special needs. The town of Morioh truly feels like a real (albeit bizarre) place, with a community comprised of people with their own personal goals. The advantage of Part 4 in Araki-sensei’s writing style consists of the fact that the author is no longer chained by the needs of the lengthy story structure that plagued Part 3. He himself pointed out in an interview that he could always go back to continue Part 4 if he wanted to (I could not find the interview again, sorry. If you can find it or correct me, it would be most appreciated).

The character’s relationships in DiU are quite evidently better defined than in Part 3. The main crew of Part 4 is smaller and it never feels restrained to keep everyone around at every point in the story (like Part 3 was somewhat forced to). In this way, characterization and character relationships are better crafted within stories that emphasize only those characters and relationships. Jousuke is never forced to be the main character of an episode; rather, he only is when the story demands it, making for a much better experience. Of note are Koichi, whose growth is signaled within his stand’s abilities, Rohan, whose growth is exhibited throughout the series and within his spin-off series, Joseph, whose appearance is bittersweet to old fans, as the sneaky and crafty Joseph becomes senile and unable to do anything worthwhile and Kira, whose chillingly normal demeanor doesn’t betray his dark tendencies.

After Part 4’s gleeful atmosphere, Part 5 dives right back into the horror-inspired roots of JoJo. Giorno Giovanna, Dio’s son, is a far more dark and cunning figure than Jousuke. Indeed, Giorno and the rebellious cell of Passione he becomes part of are a reflexion of past characters painted in a new, more sinister light, fitting with the new Mafia theme. They are a family, led by Bruno Bucciarati just as the Part 4 gang was led by Jotaro, but because of their jobs, they live in a world almost completely devoid of the fun antics of DiU. However, their relationships are just as well developed: Abbachio and Giorno’s one-sided rivalry is resolved organically, Bucciarati and Giorno’s hatred of immorality is what binds them together and Fugo’s “betrayal” is completely in character for him etc. As a villain, Diavolo is well written insofar as we recognize that his main attribute is his megalomania and his relationship with Doppio is magnificently fucked up in the best way possible.

The fights in Part 5 are brutal bouts for survival. The enemy stand users are trained assassins who will stop at nothing to get their revenge on The Boss. What makes this change even more effective is their motive for chasing the gang, the murder of their “family members” at the hands of Diavolo. Therefore, each ability is more valuable than each of the ones in Stardust Crusaders, since there are just a lot less of them. Each stand is that much more developed and consistent in its use (with the exception of King Crimson, but I’m not going on that rant right now) On the other hand, the concepts introduced for them are just that much more insane: a turtle in which one can enter by putting a key in a hole in its back, a stand that dehydrates everything at long range, a stand that can put zippers on anything etc.

Part 6 is a much more plot focused arc. The whole part focuses on Jolyne’s search for her father’s memory and stand discs with the help of Stone Ocean’s gang of reluctant helpers. This gang feels less like a pseudo-family, more like a bunch of people chasing their own goals and helping each other along the way. This, by the end of the story, is what will bring their demise at the hands of Pucci, Dio’s best friend. Despite this, I can’t say they are not well-written characters. Foo Fighters’, Weather Report’s and Pucci’s characters and arcs particularly are very compelling.

Within this story driven part, the villain of the week format just does not fit anymore. This is why, despite their great ideas and executions, a lot of villains from Stone Ocean are made forgettable especially by the ending, which left almost no hope for a direct continuation to be made. In many ways, it can be said that one of Araki-sensei’s strong points eclipsed the other one completely.  The creative freedom which used to be a leading factor in why the series was so great was now taken to too many extremes (Looking at you, Heavy Weather and Bohemian Rhapsody) which detracted from the story more than they added.

On the other hand, the reboot Part 7 brought was exactly what JoJo needed, in my opinion. Now that stands had been grounded as more akin to abilities than the ghosts they were originally, there was no need to keep them as anything more than representations of the user’s skills. The bizarre nature of JoJo was also given almost complete freedom with the abolishment of continuity and concepts like stand arrows. Instead, Araki-sensei introduces pseudo-scientific and pseudo-philosophical concepts that fit in perfectly with JoJo. To explain the level of insanity, I will summarize the premise of SBR in one sentence: two men, one crippled and the other with the power of ball hamon, compete in a cross-country horse race in 1880s USA, while fighting dinosaurs and the president using powers granted by Jesus Christ. While the stand battles in the middle section are almost as forgettable as Part 6’s, it matters less because the most important aspect is the development of our two main characters.

The characterization in Part 7 is the best it’s ever been in JoJo. Johnny’s hopeful nihilism contrasts perfectly with Gyro’s playful jackassery. The main cast – now smaller than any that came before it – only consists of two characters (if we don’t include the very well written reccuring side characters). Every character gives a feeling of having their own agenda, while also each contributing to one side of the battle between Johnny and Gyro and President Valentine. Interestingly, Funny Valentine is probably right from an ideological stand point, which is an unexpected turn out from a mostly childish manga up to this point.

Part 8 brings Steel Ball Run’s ideological musings into the 21st century with a return to Morioh. Araki’s style has retained its mature edge, but shifted them into science-fiction territory. The characters retain the moral ambiguity found in Part 7. Jousuke would do anything for Yasuho, even torture somebody. Yet the familial aspect that had long been missing from JoJo returned in full force with the Higashikatas and their rival pseudo-family, the divided Rock Humans. This makes Joubin a perfect antagonist despite his seemingly underpowered ability.

The bizarre atmosphere of JoJo’s fourth part returns with the Shakedown Road and the Milagro Man arcs which have almost nothing to do with the overarching plot of the series, but enhance the sense of a world existing beyond the characters. The battles in JoJolion are realistic and brutal to the extent not even Vento Aureo was willing to go, despite the relative bizarreness of the enemies’ stands.

This is how Hirohiko Araki’s writing style changed over the years from simple and restrained to bold, philosophical, dark and bizarre. The overall mundanity of Hamon was slowly replaced by stands and other special abilities, allowing the author to indulge in outlandish ideas that complimented the intelligent, consistent and thoughtful structure of his battles. To conclude, I believe Hirohiko Araki is a great writer because of the balance between his strange, out there ideas and his calm and logical understanding of his concepts (with a few exceptions), combined with his ability for writing strong and believable arcs and relationships for characters.

Edit: If you want more details about the first four parts of JoJo, I wholeheartedly recommend Super Eyepatch Wolf’s videos on the subject, as he can go into much more detail in those.

[nickarmstrongfilm]

Nurturing Nihilism In Paul W.S. Anderson’s Shopping (1994)

Paul W.S. Anderson is a filmmaker who has spent his career leaning into the artificiality of our cultural obsessions. If this is not evident enough from his countless film adaptations of video games — starting as early as his sophomore film, Mortal Kombat (1995), moving onto helming the majority of the massive Resident Evil franchise, and continuing with his upcoming Monster Hunter adaptation — then it should be clear from his heavy utilization of special effects. The majority of his work is also characterized by apocalyptic conditions, whether it be historical or fictional. In his debut feature Shopping (1994), the only one of these preoccupations that was not already in tact is the reliance on special effects. It is likely that this was due in part to budgetary constraints, this being his first ever film, however the fact that the film presents itself as a post-apocalyptic vision of teenage revolt without relying on the visual elements that denote a dystopian future in many of the film’s influences (including Blade Runner [1982] and A Clockwork Orange [1971], as Anderson mentions in the film’s audio commentary). Beyond being limited by his budget, it feels as though the film recognizes its present (1994) as the dystopia so many other films envisioned occurring decades later.

To establish its barren setting, the film opens on a series of shots depicting industrial buildings, pumping out fire and gas that saturate the screen. No humans are seen in this opening montage, we see nothing but acres and acres of metal until we’re introduced to Billy, who is being let out of prison. It is not clear what he had been locked up for until he is greeted by his partner, Jo, who immediately helps him steal a car. The film centers around these two characters, as well as their group of teenage friends, as they take part in the acts of “joyriding” and “ramraiding”, which respectively mean stealing vehicles for the fun of it, and driving said vehicles into the doors of a closed store with the intention of stealing from them. The common thread in all of their activities, though, is that they are forms of rebellion. All of the film’s teenage characters participate in smoking, stealing, drinking coffee, listening to techno and living recklessly, in general. The film depicts an intersection of nihilism and capitalism that is punctuated by all these actions, and what the film investigates is what purpose rebellion might serve within that intersection.

While many of these activities are unique to the film’s teenage characters, when we are introduced to the figures that embody everything they despise — such as Billy’s father, or really any authority figure — we see that they smoke cigarettes and drink coffee as well. Billy criticizes his father for “sitting on his fat ass and smoking all day”, when the only thing that differentiates the two of them is that Billy rebels in more public ways. Anderson co-opted a negative review of his film that called it a “reckless orgy of destruction” in the film’s marketing, but the film’s message becomes most clear in the many moments of reflection that come in between its very high-octane action sequences. It feels as though the cold, metallic landscape that these characters live in is what breeds despondency in relationships between humans, thus inspiring its younger citizens to destroy and rebel. However, it appears that it is not the desire to rebel that disappears as these characters grow older, but rather the publicity of the rebellion. Ever since it has been public knowledge that smoking causes cancer and, ultimately, death, the act of smoking has been a private act of rebellion that is fetishized in popular culture. It is a rather dystopian idea to consider that there is a product that neatly packages death with a warning that you should not buy it, and yet, it has been a staple in our society for decades. It feels as though everyone smokes in hopes of cutting their life short, and its feels like Billy (and the rest of the teenage characters) act the way they do in fear of growing up to reach that point of defeat.

“these will kill you” “I’ll take the chance”

The film is notably set in the ‘90s (“It’s the ‘90s, sex isn’t safe anymore,” Billy proclaims to Jo) but is not set in any specific city, despite begin a UK production. The film’s blanket depiction of capitalism’s effects on youth activities feels as though it intends on capturing the zeitgeist of the 1990s as it pertains to the UK, as well as the dominant North America. Though in raising that question of where rebellion fits into its intersection of nihilism and capitalism, the film also interrogates whether or not genuine connections have a place in that society. Billy and Jo spend the majority of the film’s runtime together, sharing a series of quiet moments in between their acts of rebellion. One moment that sticks out is an extended conversation the two of them have on top of a car they’ve stolen, in which Billy reflects on how he is too afraid to go back to prison but ultimately too afraid to escape the life he’s built for himself outside of it. It feels as though the two of them give each other purpose where nothing else does, and that love is the only pure thing that gives them a sense of excitement. However, their rebellion against their capitalistic landscape — that values metal over human connections — intercepts the purity of their love as well. If it wasn’t already clear from their most intimate moments taking place on stolen vehicles, against cold metal, it also manifests in their expressions of love. For example, Billy gives Jo stolen items as gifts, as tokens of love. Even in their need to disrupt capitalism, there is a reliance on materialism that feeds into a culture that ultimately doesn’t care if they live or die. Their relationship is never clearly defined, which is no doubt a result of viewing monogamy as a cornerstone of a life they’re so desperately trying to find a way out of. So when the couple end up crashing their vehicle through a line of police cars at the end of the film, laying dead in their car in front of a neon sign for a store called “RETAIL LAND,” it feels as though they’ve chosen to end things on their own terms instead of admitting defeat against a world that is unattainable to them, yet stares them right in the face as they fade away into the flames of their demolished vehicle.

If there’s any moment that could be considered an early tell that this is the work of Paul W.S. Anderson, it’s a moment that takes place during the film’s first car chase between Billy and Jo and the police. While the chase takes place, Billy drives the car and Jo casually plays a car chase video game in the passenger seat. We cut between shots of the stolen car they flee in, as well as the car within the video game that is marked “OFFENDER”. To a lesser extent, video games could be a contributing factor to their desperate need for excitement within the rather desolate landscape that they live in — especially if you consider that video games are mass produced by the same capitalistic institutions that are responsible for that landscape looking the way it does. Of course, as I mentioned up top, video games are of particular interest to Anderson, and it makes sense that the majority of his films — whether they’re video game adaptations or not — are set during the apocalypse. It is especially exciting to me when you can look back at a director’s debut film and see that the groundwork has been laid for the rest of their career, and that one particular sequence feels like Anderson’s career in a nutshell: from the artificiality of video games, to its apocalyptic conditions, to a general lack of direction for its characters. In Anderson’s own Pompeii, he uses digital 3D filmmaking to depict the genuine events of the destruction of Pompeii in 79 A.D. In many ways, that film’s doomed romance and the fragility of its central location matches Billy and Jo’s relationship in Shopping. Even Anderson’s Soldier (1998), in which Kurt Russel plays a genetically engineered soldier deemed useless by its makers, feels like an apt continuation of Shopping’s capitalistic society that moulds citizens only to push them out. What feels most appropriate to talk about in Anderson’s career, however, is the undercurrent of corporate evil in his Resident Evil franchise that tracks Alice’s (played by his wife, Milla Jovovich) reckoning with her identity in the face of an apocalypse that was directly created with the intention of killing everyone who wasn’t in line with the corporation’s values, especially since it does all of this through the lens of the artificiality of video game action.

In making a debut feature, it feels as though relying on your influences is a rite of passage. What tends to mark the work of a talented up-and-comer is engaging with the influences that you are employing, and as a dystopian depiction of our present, the film feels much more thoughtful than any of its influences. What feels most telling about a film like Shopping taking influence from a canonized classic like Blade Runner — and perhaps he is merely turning subtext into text, depending on how you look at it — is that it takes what feels like a staple in futuristic production design and tones it down to highlight all the modern elements of a vision we don’t anticipate becoming a reality until decades in the future. Ironically, Shopping’s 1994 feels closer to our 2019 than Blade Runner’s 2019 does. As for dystopian futures that drive teenagers to violent rebellion, ostensibly just for the sake of it, the film has a lot in common with Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick’s film leans further into post-modernism than outright dystopia in his depiction of a futuristic Britain, although as he depicts the film’s antihero Alex DeLarge descending into rebellion and ultimately being manipulated by the government into reaching a point of conformity that Shopping’s Billy and Jo would wince at, it feels as though it hinges on a boring sense of edgy nihilism where Shopping would instead probe and more deeply consider what feeds its characters nihilism and how it affects their personal relationships.  In spite of these more obvious influences on the film, I couldn’t help but recall Edward Yang’s Taipei Story (1985) with regards to the film’s central relationship. Yang’s film is an intimate portrait of how one woman navigates her work life and personal relationships in a rapidly shifting Taipei. The film’s main character, Chin, desperately tries to advance her life and find success while her boyfriend, a former baseball player, dwells on his past successes that he strays further and further from. I’m reminded of the film’s employment of sunglasses and cigarettes as a solace for Chin in a landscape that quickly shifts and remains powered by masculinity that refuses to change along with it. As stated above, Billy and Jo tend to avoid labels within their relationship, but it feels as though it is Billy who holds the most influence within their relationship. The nuances of their relationships and actions lie within their view of violent rebellion as their only viable place within their society, and how it is Billy’s masculinity and fear of conformity that keeps him from fully embracing his relationship with Jo in the way that she seems to long for. The fact that they are cornered into the outskirts of what capitalism deems a functional society is what forces Billy to make the decision that ultimately kills the two of them.

What feels most dystopian about these films that place equal focus on an alienating location as it does on its characters is that we are constantly shown a setting that advances without its citizens in mind, and as a result, we see our characters struggle to find purpose and are ultimately blocked off from feeling included within their own home. It’s for this reason that the teenage characters in Shopping insist on accelerating their youth, and the only tools they have to do so are handed to them by society. It is through these normalized and fetishized gateways to death that capitalism fosters nihilism within its youth.

[ganymedesclock]

Do you think lion sharing fits the storytelling theme of VLD? If the clone theory is true then there are 7 people who can be Paladins. Thats 2 extra people who have no definite role in the team. What can they do for the story if they're not Paladins?

First part of this I have a beef with:

Not every role requires a Lion to be important. Think about how much Coran does, in every conceivable factor of the team’s life, to keep things running smoothly. His job is hard and super demanding! As the main guy doing maintenance on the castle he’s singlehandedly responsible for their survival on many occasions. And yeah he goes on missions and fights, too! He’s under enough stress that in s4e4 we see him turning to questionable brain worms just to try and keep up.

Kolivan? Olia? You think these people and their entire rebel organizations- who were pulling most of the weight during s4e5 and s4e6 especially after Voltron was incapacitated on Naxzela- are meaningless?

You can’t even go, “but Clockie this is a spaceship battle series” because everybody else has spaceships and weighs in on space battles! Hey remember when Allura (not bonded to a Lion) led the entire population of a Balmera (also, not bounded to a Lion) and took out the Drazil robeast? The entire rebel fleet’s not gonna stand around scratching their noses the next time Voltron gets attacked by a monster.

This is a very prevalent fandom attitude, and it bothers me a lot, especially because it treats Lance’s discussion with Keith in s3e5 as insecure bellyaching and not an incredibly solid and astute point: this is not a participation game, this is war.

This means no, they are not going to always have everybody conveniently lined up with the right colored Lion. Sometimes people are going to have conflicting objectives as Keith did in s4e1. The team can’t afford to just stick it out for the one person they want to be Black Paladin. Having multiple candidates who can jump in and rotate as needed is just plain smart tactical sense.

A huge amount of the rebellion hinges on Voltron’s massive firepower and unique properties, and on it as a symbol of hope. S4e1 and s4e2 are showing us that as the paladins get more confident and capable, they’re pursuing solo missions more often and in greater detail- and these things are incredibly important. Keith was investigating a profoundly worrying undercurrent in the empire, and if he hadn’t been separate from the team he wouldn’t have been able to hone everyone’s focus in on Haggar’s battleship in s4e6. If Pidge hadn’t been off on her own in s4e2 they wouldn’t have basically doubled the size of their fleet with Olia’s rebel alliance.

But if they’re the only people who can possibly work their Lions at all, that puts the rebellion in massive danger. It means any time they’re doing anything, there’s a gaping Voltron-shaped hole in their defenses. This has been an issue since even before the Lion switch- look at s2e6! An entire endangered population nearly died because Keith wasn’t there to pilot Red. And that’s not ragging on Keith.

Logically here nothing is gonna take these people’s protagonist status from them. It isn’t like, if the clone Shiro theory is true, then Shiro and his clone are going to have to have a fistfight over the Black Lion and the loser is banished evermore. 

And personally, I think that ultimately the initial introduced formation was introduced for a reason. Black may have seen potential in both Keith and Shiro but Shiro spoke to them in a way that Keith didn’t and it wasn’t just because Red got to Keith first and claimed dibs. I think that what we first saw was a kind of ideal, optimized match.

However, the Lion bonds are not a glorified locking mechanism- the Lions are sentient beings. By developing an intimate relationship with Shiro and his mind, it stands to reason Black is going to come to care about the same people. That means that Black, like Shiro himself, is going to make decisions with the welfare of the entire team in mind and not just “whose butt is in my cockpit, is it Shiro, if not, Sorry No Heroics Today”

Especially since Black in the past arguably led to some of this trouble by prioritizing their paladin’s wishes over the team’s wellbeing- remember, Black willingly carried Honerva towards the rift and let Zarkon hide her from the rest of the team.

And Black, when choosing someone who was a reflection of their heart, who mirrored who they were as a person- chose Shiro. Shiro, who’s charismatic and a natural leader, yes, but also comes to the cast burdened heavily by personal regret and the idea that he caused harm to others without meaning or wanting to.

This tells us pretty clearly that Black feels at least in part personally responsible for what happened with Zarkon. And the part they would most likely feel guilty about was helping him against the team.

So if anything... Black connecting with other people besides Shiro, and not sticking it out for him and staying unresponsive- would make perfect sense as a remorseful being that’s desperately trying to do right by these people they’re trusted with.

You can say very similar things for Red towards Lance, and Blue towards Allura. Red- the loyal, the driven, the self-sacrificing, is stated by Allura to have connected with Lance not only when Lance supported Keith connecting with Black, but also reached out and did what he could to help ground Keith from the deeply upset place he was operating out of.

Red obviously selected Lance to be Keith’s right hand because Keith was at a point where he needed someone who would connect with him and help him focus- who would reach out to him if he started spiraling downward. Because Red- the most powerful and most vulnerable of the Lions- would know that Keith alone and emotionally compromised is a death sentence.

So Red grabbed Lance, because Red knows Lance will worry about Keith as much as he does.

Blue looking to Allura? Blue is a nurturer, a guiding soul, and not one worried about Lance because she knows that Lance is not only in good hands, but he’s good hands himself- “worrier” is not Blue’s nature. So Blue takes to herself Allura, who, at this point, is highly upset, who feels like she desperately needs to get out and do something, but who Red- her father’s Lion- turned down.

(because Keith and Allura, while they work together, can facilitate some pretty bad ideas in each other as seen in s2e6 and Allura would be unlikely to reign Keith in as much as she’d be more likely to go down with him)

So instead, Blue invites Allura to come into her arms, to have more of a front line role and support her team but also to be nurtured a little because at the end of the day Allura is young and walking off some incredible heartbreak. And Blue’s dual nature is that she is someone who seeks to nurture her paladin but also someone who encourages her paladin to nurture others.

The Lion switch makes sense as long as you consider the Lions as sentient entities who are also reacting to the situation. And taking that and applying it to Lion sharing... people can have multiple friends. Lance bonding with Keith doesn’t mean Hunk means nothing to him any more.

Each of the Lions might have one person they prefer, but they don’t hate the others. Especially because refusing to connect with anybody but their bonded paladin would hurt that paladin sometimes- Shiro probably would’ve been much worse injured if Black hadn’t let Keith in to protect him in s2e1.

I personally think that each Lion has one champion- notice how in vlogs and otherwise, Keith has never been called the Black Paladin- “Paladin Of The Black Lion”, maybe, but there’s that element of detachment and evasion. And Keith still wears Red’s colors when he wears paladin armor- and that’s meaningful.

However, as the whole team grows closer together, they don’t just have one configuration for success. I wouldn’t be surprised if ultimately we’re headed for something where all of our major players (the original five plus Allura plus, if clone theory, clone Shiro) are going to be able to potentially work with any Lion as needed. After all, they’re building skills to work with each other- it makes sense that with the team getting used to, say, Pidge, and Pidge’s mentality and way of viewing the world, each of them are going to be better equipped to understand Green, and Green’s mentality and way of viewing the world.

[clr-flr]

bubbuh lol

PART 1: THE BASICS

What is your full name? Maestro Bubbuh T. Guhm PHD of Rubbishry III

Where and when were you born? I was born in a fairy circle before things got STANKY MY BOY

Who are/were your parents? (Know their names, occupations, personalities, etc.) They were hawkers. Not much to say about graves.

Do you have any siblings? What are/were they like? I’m the sole special one child.

Where do you live now, and with whom? Describe the place and the person/people. I live in my machine shop, a very respectable business. I host my little robo-mate Castor in various spaces there.

What is your occupation? I’m a master-of-all trades, but I’m a specialist in weapons engineering. I can be swayed into most jobs for the right price.

Write a full physical description of yourself. You might want to consider factors such as: height, weight, race, hair and eye color, style of dress, and any tattoos, scars, or distinguishing marks. I’m very tall, taller in my power heels, strong and efficiently built, dirt with a bit of dried blood colored - clay maybe? I like my pauldrons sharp, my sunglasses sharp, my stilettos sharper. I’m a fan of feathering scarification. Got my hair in my top knot like the warriors in those old VHS things I’ve found. It’s hot.

To which social class do you belong? Same as everyone else in the age. Surviving.

Do you have any allergies, diseases, or other physical weaknesses? Monthly bleeding, that fucking sucks. Good for war paint, though.

Are you right- or left-handed? Left handed. Or right handed. Versatility!

What does your voice sound like? Saucy. With a hint of spice.

What words and/or phrases do you use very frequently? New ways to string curses together.

What do you have in your pockets? Nutz.

Do you have any quirks, strange mannerisms, annoying habits, or other defining characteristics? No, of course not. ;^m

PART 2: GROWING UP

How would you describe your childhood in general? Birds.

What is your earliest memory? Birds, big gloves, then the Big Stink.

How much schooling have you had? Not much, Big Stink happened too fast.

Did you enjoy school? I probably might’ve IF I HAD GONE.

Where did you learn most of your skills and other abilities? On my own, tinkering, a few mentors here and there. Pulling things apart and putting them together - experimenting - experience.

While growing up, did you have any role models? If so, describe them. Me, me and uhhhh……maybe my good old jizz lump boy.

While growing up, how did you get along with the other members of your family? Who knows? Been a while.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? Fuck if I know.

As a child, what were your favorite activities? Whatever.

As a child, what kinds of personality traits did you display? I don’t fucking remember!!

As a child, were you popular? Who were your friends, and what were they like? Dude…Probably.

When and with whom was your first kiss? Shit…Doesn’t matter.

Are you a virgin? If not, when and with whom did you lose your virginity? I don’t remember that shit either. Shit don’t matter.

If you are a supernatural being (i.e. mage, werewolf, vampire), tell the story of how you became what you are or first learned of your own abilities. If you are just a normal human, describe any influences in your past that led you to do the things you do today. Hah - I’m just a human. We have aliens and robots and cyborgs and radiation fuckers roaming around these days, but I’m not one of them. I’m this way because of my situation. That’s all.

PART 3: PAST INFLUENCES

What do you consider the most important event of your life so far? The end of civilization. Fuck yeah.

Who has had the most influence on you? Fuck you, me.

What do you consider your greatest achievement? Being alive.

What is your greatest regret? Pass.

What is the most evil thing you have ever done? That’s a matter of opinion…

Do you have a criminal record of any kind? In reference to what?????

When was the time you were the most frightened? When I thought I didn’t get my wings perfect on my eyeliner.

What is the most embarrassing thing ever to happen to you? Associates’ failures that make me look bad, of course.

If you could change one thing from your past, what would it be, and why? I can change things now in the present, so why linger on things I can’t change??

What is your best memory? The ones I’m having now.

What is your worst memory? Worrying about potential futures.

PART 4: BELIEFS & OPINIONS

Are you basically optimistic or pessimistic? I don’t think either is necessary, or even useful. I work on a reactionary basis.

What is your greatest fear? I’d rather not divulge that. So in a way, that gives you some insight.

What are your religious views? There’s lots of spiritual uprisings these days that are pretty...interesting. But I don’t follow any.

What are your political views? Politics don’t survive here. If you mean in lawful morals - I guess I could go that oldies tabletop alignment route and say maybe a chaotic neutral.

What are your views on sex? It’s sassy.

Are you able to kill? Under what circumstances do you find killing to be acceptable or unacceptable? It’s always acceptable and required in a majority of cases. I won’t do in in rare exceptions when people give me a reason not to.

In your opinion, what is the most evil thing any human being could do? Brainwash them into false hope to drain them of their ability to fend for themselves - especially to sustain their own survival at the expense of dumbasses. I get it to an extent, but save some dumbasses for the rest of us, asshole.

Do you believe in the existence of soul mates and/or true love? That survive long enough to get to that point?? Hardly.

What do you believe makes a successful life? Living.

How honest are you about your thoughts and feelings (i.e. do you hide your true self from others, and in what way)? I’d like to think I’m genuine enough.

Do you have any biases or prejudices? Who has time for that, really?? It doesn’t really matter anyways. We’re all equally fucked.

Is there anything you absolutely refuse to do under any circumstances? Why do you refuse to do it? I refuse to be a savior or a hero to mankind. I probably could, but fuck that shit. Not my job.

Who or what, if anything, would you die for (or otherwise go to extremes for)? I dunno, a spaceship to planet of sexy aliens made to worship and bang me?? That’d be nice.

PART 5: RELATIONSHIPS W/OTHERS

In general, how do you treat others (politely, rudely, by keeping them at a distance, etc.)? Does your treatment of them change depending on how well you know them, and if so, how? I shoot first and ask questions later. If they make it past that point, they’re probably a fairly good resource of something or another. I generally treat everyone at that level the same. I guess Castor’s more like my personal butt-boy though.

Who is the most important person in your life, and why? Me, because, well, look at me.

Who is the person you respect the most, and why? Fucking look at me.

Who are your friends? Do you have a best friend? Describe these people. Blobulon the jizz parasite is a pretty cool dude. I always forget his real name. But he’s one of the goopy parasitic aliens that helped cause the Big Stink, what a guy. We’ve known each other a while. Cactus I run into off and on. Loves drugs. Pretty reliable chemist. Castor has a nice butt and a lazy eye, other than that I can kill him with a push of a button so I have him under my heel so there’s that.

Do you have a spouse or significant other? If so, describe this person. Does my right hand count? Dildos. Castor’s weener and butt? If not, nope.

Have you ever been in love? If so, describe what happened. It was a misty summer morning, I groggily rose from my bed, half nude. I stumbled into my bathroom - head pounding from the night before. Then I saw him. My reflection.

What do you look for in a potential lover? Didn’t I already describe my physical build??

How close are you to your family? I don’t remember where their bodies are dude.

Have you started your own family? If so, describe them. If not, do you want to? Why or why not? No because fuck that shit.

Who would you turn to if you were in desperate need of help? My ass, it’s very wise.

Do you trust anyone to protect you? Who, and why? My vagina, it’s super flexible and strong. Kegals, bro.

If you died or went missing, who would miss you? The universe would be missing a star.

Who is the person you despise the most, and why? I don’t have time to waste thoughts and energy on useless fools.

Do you tend to argue with people, or avoid conflict? I tend to fuck them up and move on.

Do you tend to take on leadership roles in social situations? I usually have to, but not by choice.

Do you like interacting with large groups of people? Why or why not? No because of mob mentality. That shit’s rough.

Do you care what others think of you? I care about what the most important person thinks of me: my ass. He has opinions. Strong ones.

PART 6: LIKES & DISLIKES

What is/are your favorite hobbies and pastimes? I enjoy a good tinker, a good shit, sleeping upside down, anal beads, sharpening heels to a deadly point, and smacking Castor’s head so his eye falls out of place.

What is your most treasured possession? My antique hall. I collect pre-stink artifacts and refurbish them to working condition. I guess that’s my all time favorite pastime.

What is your favorite color? Who cares.

What is your favorite food? Crickets.

What, if anything, do you like to read? Anything with tanks or monkeys.

What is your idea of good entertainment (consider music, movies, art, etc.)? I love those uh...I guess genre?? Of media...Kaiju stuff. Big monsters or robots wrecking shit or saving things. In video games, comics, movies, shows - any of it. Love it.

Do you smoke, drink, or use drugs? If so, why? Do you want to quit? I smoke and drink. I don’t use drugs regularly, but I use them casually. Why not?

How do you spend a typical Saturday night? When’s Saturday?

What makes you laugh? Other people’s misfortune or clumsiness.

What, if anything, shocks or offends you? Disrespect towards me specifically. Expect violence.

What would you do if you had insomnia and had to find something to do to amuse yourself? Have sex until I pass out probably.

How do you deal with stress? Just busy myself with work or go scavenge - do something productive.

Are you spontaneous, or do you always need to have a plan? A little of both.

What are your pet peeves? People fucking things up for me by being idiots or directly putting my life in danger through incompetence.

PART 7: SELF IMAGES & OTHER

Describe the routine of a normal day for you. How do you feel when this routine is disrupted? There’s no routine, so it’s fine.

What is your greatest strength as a person? Just one??

What is your greatest weakness? I’d say it’s actually the inability to form strong alliances. I keep people away which keeps my net from growing and it only holds me back. Oh well.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Having a dick would be nice.

Are you generally introverted or extroverted? Introverted I guess. 

Are you generally organized or messy? I’d say a weird version of organized. I like restrained clutter - it looks confusing to keep others at bay but everything does have a place.

Name three things you consider yourself to be very good at, and three things you consider yourself to be very bad at. Living, being hot, and business. People, riding horses, singing.

Do you like yourself? Oh, I don’t know, take a wild guess-a-roonie.

What are your reasons for being an adventurer (or doing the strange and heroic things that RPG characters do)? Are your real reasons for doing this different than the ones you tell people in public? (If so, detail both sets of reasons…) Because if I don’t I’ll die. That’s pretty much all there is to it, I’m surviving after a huge apocalypse, if that wasn’t clear.

What goal do you most want to accomplish in your lifetime? Nothing big really. Make a giant mecha I can pilot.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Even sexier than now and with bigger delts.

If you could choose, how would you want to die? Burning to death in radiation or acid.

If you knew you were going to die in 24 hours, name three things you would do in the time you had left. Just one thing. Have sex with a man for the entire 24 hours, so long that he dies in the process. Taking you down with me baby.

What is the one thing for which you would most like to be remembered after your death? I climbed these garbage mountains in 7 inch heels, fuckers.

What three words best describe your personality? Bitch, Ass, Fuck.

What three words would others probably use to describe you? Prick, Dick, Dong.

If you could, what advice would you, the player, give to your character? (You might even want to speak as if he or she were sitting right here in front of you, and use proper tone so he or she might heed your advice…) Stop.

[renaramblesaboutcomics]

Wednesday Roundup 25.9.2017

Okay, so I had another huge comic week, and looking forward this might be the last time that really happens for a while since at least three of these issues are here due to previous delays. and I’m trying pretty desperately to cut down on comics I’m subscribed to now. Which just emphasizes the fact that this week made it SO much more difficult to declare that because there was so much good.

... There was also some hilarious outrage on my part, too, so if you’re here for that you will not be disappointed.

Image’s Black Magick, DC’s Detective Comics, DC’s Harley Quinn and Batman, Marvel’s Immortal Iron Fists, Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, DC’s Nightwing, Image’s Saga, IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dark Horse’s Zodiac Starfore: Cries of the Fire Prince

Image’s Black Magick (2015-present) #8 Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott

Have I mentioned lately how Nicola Scott may be the most gifted artist in the industry in a while? Not since last month? Well we are definitely well past due time!

Story: Things are ramping up as the Hammer’s members increase their numbers and keep close watch on Rowan while Rowan settles things with her partner only to be manipulated once again by the terrifying forces of these unknown entities with that creepy AF girl with the stitched up mouth. That is a lot of stuff being unpacked in one issue and yet the moving parts never feel like they’re incongruent or taking away from each other. Seeing Rowan’s familiar watching the Hammer members, seeing Rowan struggle to be more open with her partner, and then seeing her old demons (literally) beginning to come to her work and haunt her there (literally and figuratively) all feels like it moves perfectly together.

I just really wish we didn’t have to do a “gay scare” which is a bit disappointing from Rucka, honestly. Haha get it Rowan was worried that her partner was onto her for being a witch and he just was mad because he thought she wasn’t coming out to him and it’s just all a good laugh. Or at least I would be laughing if either Alex or Rowan were confirmed queer women and so it isn’t just that he’s well meaning but oblivious while... literally taking away the possibility of representation. 

Maybe this will be corrected later in that very way! Who knows, I’ll be relieved if it is, but until then it feels like an unnecessary marring of what is otherwise a great story I’ve been enjoying.

Art:  I mean... just look at it! Nicola Scott is... arguably the best artist in comics right now. Her work is phenomenal and nothing presents that fact more than just how expertly she manages the medium in almost any way and how it adapts based on the type of story she’s writing. It’s very special for an artist’s style to work as well in a bombastic, colorful superhero comic then turn around and hit the perfect contrast of noir and witchcraft narratives. And all of her characters are distinct and especially her variety of noses, it’s simply gorgeous.

Nicola Scott very well may be the best artist in the business right now and any comic company that doesn’t snatch her up for major titles is foolish, honestly.  

DC’s Detective Comics (2016-present) #965 James Tynion IV, Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira, Adriano Lucas

Well, it’s weird to say but if there was any issue for me to read before I took a short break from ‘Tec I am so glad it was this one. Which has all the makings of a backhanded compliment but we’ll see where I take it. Probably will seem like a backhanded compliment but I’m going to try to swing it toward positive.

Story: So I’ve been pretty sure I was going to drop ‘Tec for the upcoming storyline and then jump on again later for the next one, similar to how I did for the Monster Men crossover event, but I was really curious about Tim’s return and more specifically about the context of Tynion bringing Tim back which made me pretty excited for this comic. I love Tim Drake of old and reading this issue reinforced the fact that this current Tim Drake is the Tim of the 90s that I fell in love with -- the dork who loved Batman and Robin so much he put his life at risk to save the legacy of his heroes. And while this issue culminated mostly in a “slideshow” of Tim’s retconned retconned history bringing us back to the Tim origins from “A Lonely Place of Dying”, it actually felt really loving and refreshing to see the character I grew to love so much back in action. 

I don’t care one bit about this Evil Future or Mister Oz or literally anything else going on right now. In fact I find that whole crossover tedious enough I dropped Superman a while back but I really did feel like I needed this reminder that we’re supposed to be reading this Rebirth Tim as the Tim we knew and cared about in the past. And that made this issue on its own worthwhile to me. 

Art: Eddy Barrows is an excellent artist, through and through. The coloring’s fantastic, the art itself dynamic. Even with a familiar storyline and setup that we’ve all read before, he manages to find ways to make it read as unique and new through subversive angles and set ups. I really enjoyed his take on everything from Tim’s past. But even great artists sometimes fail the Batmanequin challenge. Which is, can anyone tell who the Batboys are apart from each other when they’re all the same age. The answer is no. His Tim looks identical to his Bruce to his Jason to his Dick and most of the time to his Damian and we’ve really got to change that at some point or else there will be a singularity of Batboys and we will all be sucked into an artistic blackhole and not in the fun way.

DC’s Harley Quinn and Batman (2017) #4 Ty Templeton, Rick Burchett

After this issue there’s only one issue left and in all honesty.... it’s about time we had some real emotional direction actually driving this comic because I’ve been asking for the last few issues “where is any of this going”. And since I all but refuse to watch the animated movie sharing a similar name, it’s that much more confusing for me trying to figure out what exactly this is all culminating in. 

Story: Like I said, we’re finally getting some real tension in this issue as we have Harley confronting Ivy, it becoming more and more obvious that Ivy has a genuine problem with rejecting her own humanity for the sake of becoming as much of a plant as possible, and we also get that emotional catharsis of Ivy at least somewhat confessing that Harley is the only person she cares about. And it’s obviously a deep and intimate form of caring. She’s pained by the potential of Harley’s rejection and offended at the assumption that Harley would think of herself as anything less than her partner. But this comic, like all of comic canon, just refuses to give us THE WORDS. I’m so tired of partner being emphasized instead of girlfriend. I’m tired of cared being acceptable substitution for love. And I’m REALLY tired of Harley and Ivy only being portrayed as sexy and into each other in a way that’s meant to be attractive to guys. I’m not a guy. I’m a woman who likes other women. And I would like for this relationship, if it’s to be real on any level, be treated respectfully and given canonicity. Maybe we’ll get that next issue. I’m hoping, but since next issue is the last I’m not exactly expecting much. 

Dick and Bruce are... still fun? I guess. It’s not really their story and I’m not sure why Batman’s even in the title at this point. His addition to this story culminates in a “not really”

Art: I gave Rick Burchett’s first two issues a hard time, especially compared to the guest artist for last issue, but this issue really had him stepping up his game and reminding us all why he’s been working with these characters and especially this style for the past twenty or more years. He really nails it... though it still has that edge of lacking refinement that we might see in something other than a digital first comic, the colors are really enhanced, the character and background art more detailed and controlled, and just overall this was a very pleasant looking and well laid out issue. Great work all around

Marvel’s Immortal Iron Fists (2017) #5 (of 6) Kaare Andrews, Afu Chan, Shelly Chen

We’re beginning to near an ending for this miniseries and I am growing an ominous, horrible feeling that I am desperately hoping is completely off base and unfounded outside of my constant apprehension of trusting comics too much. But we’ll get into that.

Story: As we left off last time, it was the culmination of all the storylines that we had seen building up in Immortal Iron Fists before then, Pei and her friends, the popularity drama that was the school dance, Danny’s feelings of responsibility and pride, the ten scrolls of Mara, and the strangely backward advice of the babysitter that Pei had been receiving throughout. And it all came down to a climactic battle with Danny and Pei finally at long last fighting side by side, both as the Immortal Iron Fist.

But suddenly there can only be.... one? And to save the world and inherit her responsibility as the Immortal Iron Fist, Pei had to choose whether or not she would take the dragon’s heart straight from Danny himself and use his chi to defeat Mara and his legion of demons. Which, of course, Pei refused and chose instead to sacrifice her own chi so that Danny could save the world.

This apparently erased Pei from reality and everyone’s memories in one solid swipe and sent her... to hell?? Where Brenda, who was in the storyline that brought Pei into the comics but has not been a factor through all of this miniseries, is a zombie champion fighter who saves Pei and her classmate that’s been in the coma because Mara was planning to use his body for his resurrection and also the popular girl, Danny’s girlfriend for an issue, an the babysitter are all daughters of Mara who are responsible for all this chaos. 

And I genuinely feel like there’s been a lot of missed opportunities in the previous four issues that would have allowed this to be set up more. And that’s what is leading to the worries I mentioned in the opening. As far as I’ve seen, in Defenders or the solicits for Immortal Iron Fist, Pei has not been allowed to make much of an impact outside of Andrews’ runs. And.... I would really hate that a series that has sold e SO hard on Pei and on a new spin on Danny Rand to be a series that gives Marvel an easy out to erase those very things. 

We have one issue left to go so I suppose we’ll have to wait and see in that regard.

Art: It’s still good art, still all-ages, but I’m starting to grow the opinion thanks to @secretlystephaniebrown and mine’s insightful talks that comis with cute art and lots of slapstick are pretty much utilizing a certain style to undermine dramatic writing or consequences in fear of being genuine. Or, in terms, bathos. And I really hope that’s not the intentions here because the relationship between Danny and Pei are genuinely sweet and good and if that’s the intention I really hate that comics don’t have the confidence to be dramatic fully in heart. 

Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2015-present) #23 Brandon Montclare, Natacha Bustos, Tamra Bonvillain

I’m worried about my favorite adorable team of superheroes. How can there be a Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur if there is no Devil Dinosaur? But also... is this the inevitable end? Are there not more adventures to come of our favorite world class genius and dinosaur? According to solicits there’s more for Lunella but is there more for the friendship that warmed our hearts? Are any of us truly ready to say goodbye?

Story: Legitimately I have no idea what’s going to happen next with this comic because it seems like Lunella is sidekick hunting for the next couple of issues, so the real question is how ready did this issue make us to move on from the loving friendship between a girl from Yancey Street and her bumbling dinosaur? Honestly, compared to the majority of the tight and loving writing of this series, it doesn’t feel like this conclusion was something we were very well prepared for. Sure, Moon Boy and Devil Dinosaur are something we know of vaguely from other comics, but the anticlimax of the goodbye, and just how obvious it was that neither Lunella nor Devil were ready for it made the profound loneliness of this move feel so dissatisfying. Especially when Lunella returns to a doombot empty base instead of going home and emphasizes the strangeness even more. 

I’m hopeful that this is set up, but I’m always on high alert for books like this that could easily be canceled by Marvel and worried about ending on a note I really wouldn’t want it to.

Art: As always, the art for this book is gorgeous and the coloring is fascinating and eye popping. The cooler hues this time around really helped with the more subdued and sadder tone of the comic which made the actions toward the end not only more disconcerting but plainly just more heartbreaking. It was an excellent choice and incredibly subtle but effective. This is a creative team that truly understands their crafts more than the vast majority of people in the industry today, and that’s saying something since quality is not exactly in short supply in recent years. 

DC’s Nightwing (2016-present) Vol. 3: Nightwing Must Die Tim Seeley, Javier Fernandez, Chris Sotomayor

So I don’t.... really have any surprises in the works for those of you who follow my main blog at @renaroo who got to witness me liveblogging my experience reading this comic yesterday, but I’ll just put it definitively on the record here: Uh. Not a good effort here, guys. And this is officially the last thing written by Tim Seeley this gal is going to be picking up. Which I’m getting really tired of saying about writers who handle either one of my main two DC dudes -- Dick or Terry. Can we just... have anyone... care a little more? A bit?

Story: Okay so there’s about three plots going on at the same time during this comic and I’m going to address them in the three and then talk about the One Issue That Doesn’t Fit after. So four parts: The Robin Story, The Baby Story, and The Batman Story, and then The Good One. The way the plot is laid out you could argue that these three are interwoven enough to deserve going in a linear basis but I would argue no not really. Please take note that the title of this storyline according to the trade cover is “Nightwing Must Die”, a callback to the climax of Morrison’s run on the original Batman and Robin (2009-2011) series titled “Batman and Robin Must Die”. No, I’m not nerdy and observant, this thing is determined to hit you over the head with this allusion at every turn. 

The Robin Story: Damian who has basically been forcefully emancipated from Bruce and sent to live across the country with the Teen Titans rather than ... idk just be sent to Gotham Academy which is a boarding school anyway, is pissed because internet forums have declared that the original Robin -- aka Dick -- is the best Robin and Damian sucks. Why Damian suddenly cares about 4Chan is beyond me but here we are. Now, despite there being an overly long and obnoxious storyline in Batman and Robin (2011-2015) called “War of the Robins” where Damian already went through this and beat up all his predecessors sans Dick because they have an actual relationship, or the entirety of “Robin: Son of Batman”, or the huge storyline “Robin Wars” where there were 30 Robins including Duke Thomas all over Gotham and something I didn’t pay attention to about the Court of Owls and Lincoln March -- this is a useless subplot that makes no sense for the characters or relationship that has already been established by Damian and Dick here. That’s what I’m saying. 

Because this story isn’t interested in getting Damian right or doing him any service. This is dedicated to Dick in... about the worst way. And the weak motivation for getting Damian in Blüdhaven in order to reinact the events of “Batman and Robin Must Die” are so contrived that there’s really this feeling of “we need Damian in Blüdhaven come up with an excuse later” instead of it being something organic. For example: Damian is quick to bring up his concerns that Dick staying in Blüdhaven and starting a new life with Shawn is because he’s trying to become Batman of his “own franchise” and that he’s abandoning the rest of the family. This is really disconnected from the motivation of “who’s the best Robin” and would make more sense on a character level if Damian went to Blüdhaven of his own volition because of that concern to begin with. He feels pushed out of the family, and with Tim’s death he’s upset and surprised by Dick’s seeming abandonment of everyone else. Including him. The Robin with THE most abandonment issues this side of Jason Todd. Why not bring up something along the lines of “you haven’t been home since the funeral”. That would contrast the themes of family, Dick and Damian’s relationship, and Dick’s supposed worries about personal responsibility all at once. 

This isn’t how that was handled and I am suspicious as to why. because we had to have that awful, ugly -- for me personally inexcusable -- panel where Dick tells Damian that he knows no one can balance being a superhero and having a secondary identity because Bruce sucks at it SO BAD that he now has the “burden” of being a father to a bunch of Batkids which he follows up with “And the one I think suffers the most from this is you, Damian. His only real son.” 

So. You know. Fuck themes about nonconventional families and adoption I guess. Tim Seeley, go kick your own ass because you don’t even deserve the ass kicking from me.

It might seem like I’m being harsh but this one moment is SO hugely stupid and never brought up again or refuted later to the point that not only is it gross on a real world level, it actually REALLY weakens the theme of families and the such through the rest of the story specifically because there’s now this big ugly turd of a plot thread looming and never dealt with. 

Professor Pyg and Doctor Hurt are back from Dick and Damian’s time as Batman and Robin and theyve made a bunch of disgusting Dollatrons specifically of Damian and Dick, or Robintron and Deathwing. This actually matters a lot less to the story than you might actually think because Robintron and Deathwing don’t have a relationship outside of being made to believe they’re Robin and Nightwing and one ultimately kills the other once they remember this. It’s symbolic because the Robintron was in Dick’s original Robin suit and Deathwing was in the New52 Nightwing suit do you get it do you get it do you get what they’re trying to say here it’s clever. Anyway. 

The symbolism on a meta level is pretty on the nose “The New52 Dick killed the innocence of the old timey Golden Age Dick la da da” but in story we don’t really have Damian go through an arc or actually develop as a result of this matter and neither does Dick. Does Dick feel like his identity as Nightwing has killed his relationship with Damian? With his other family? With his idealistic self? It doesn’t... seem like it. Dick just kind of... punches Doctor Hurt after he decides that tragedy doesn’t define him... or something. It was from the hallucinations and like a whole issue later from Deathwing killing Robintron. And then Deathwing and Doctor Hurt kill each other by stabbing and falling rocks. Both ways in which villains have NEEEVVVEEERRRRR returned from the dead from before so I’m sure they’re gone forever.

So the Robin Storyline as a whole? it kinda comes to a conclusion with a genuinely nice two page spread where Dick and Damian talk about missing each other and missing their time as Batman and Robin. Dick even confesses something that would have brought all these storylines together rather nicely if it was done correctly: when Bruce came back to be Batman, Dick thought of staying as Batman, too in order to stay with Damian and train and raise him. But ultimately he thought, at the time, that he wasn’t old enough or ready enough to take that responsibility. 

Dick was not ready to be a father but now he looks back at himself and who he is now and is ready for another go, with Damian or with his own children in the future. ... EXCEPT that reading of how the themes would play out are completely undermined and broken beyond repair by having Dick say that UNBELIEVABLE comment about how Damian is the only REAL son to Bruce and that the “Batfamily” aren’t a unit like that. Therefore the Robin Storyline doesn’t really have a conclusion. 

Damian’s going to go back to San Francisco and still get pissed at /b/, there’s no family unit for anyone to reflect on, and.... the baby storyline:

The Baby Storyline: I could sum this up with one gif. I really could. I’m not going to but because I know this is only entertaining to hear me yell for an extent, have the gif anyway:

Now I’ll go into what actually bothered me about this storyline. Because this is tied to Dick’s relationship with Shawn and their pregnancy scare alone, and we see Dick freaking out at the possibility of the immense responsibility he may be stepping into, it actually genuinely had the potential to be a huge deal, a big game changer, something that actually would have developed both their characters and really questioned what they would be doing going forward with their lives. Would they both give up their costume lives? Would they move from Blüdhaven if they’re not defending the streets and it’s a terrible part of town? Would the baby have superheroes in its life from an early age?

It doesn’t matter because in what could probably be the weakest fake out ever, Shawn’s not pregnant she’s just... apparently not as regular as she once assumed. Which, hey, I hear that that happens fairly often for my fellow uterus havers and you know what? They’re young adults in their first serious relationship so I actually get the freakout from both of them. 

But it doesn’t end up meaning anything other than Dick screams at Damian a few times that they have to save his “girlfriend AND baby” and for some reason Damian just goes with it because Damian of course has never before in his life ever shown signs of jealousy and concerns about conditional love. 

The biggest problem beyond the fact that this plot’s resolution is a huge PSYCH spitting in everyone’s face is that... what... was the tie-in here? 

Was it JUST the drama of “PHEWWWW dodged that bullet, now let’s go give Sandy a makeover”? I guess so. 

Because if this was actually tied to the plots of the storyline it would have ended with at least one speech from Dick to Shawn, to his monologue, or to Damian that back when he returned to being Nightwing because he feared being too young and to unprepared to take responsibility for raising Damian, he had been wrong. He’s not ready because no one is, but he has a relationship with Damian that proves that he’s more than ready to be a father then and now. That he might not do it Bruce’s way because he didn’t like Bruce’s priorities, but he would find a way to balance all the aspects of his life and so can Shawn.

But that would require this story to... care about Shawn’s character more. 

I actually like Shawn? I want to see more of her and I think there’s a lot of potential there, but at the end of this story outside of genuinely good moments, like the time with her and Deathwing where she tries to soothe him, she’s... just a damsel to be rescued? Just a possible babymomma for tension?

If she was more than that, then the plot would have given her more to do once she joined Dick and Damian. Like even ONE scene of her and Damian playing off of each other in the aftermath would have done wonders, made her more than just an attachment for the advancement of Dick’s character, but we get more development for Deathwing and Robintron than for the potential love of Dick’s life.

Kidding. DC would never let Babs and Dick have actual meaningful romances outside of each other anymore. Just like DC will never let them have meaningful romances with each other!

So this was a trip into a cul de sac of disappointment. 

Also condoms condoms condoms condoms condoms boys and girls. Wrap it before you tap it. 

Or be a lesbian. But that’s my answer for everything.

#Shawn Tsang deserves better #Hollatchagirl

The Batman Story: Oh, Bruce. How your shadow lingers large over all things that have nothing to do with you. 

This is the “actual” plot. The one about Shawn being kidnapped and it all ending up being a plot by Professor Pyg and Doctor Hurt to relive the “Batman and Robin Must Die” storyline because....

Well. That’s the problem.

Doctor Hurt, as much as I really wasn’t a fan of that storyline under Morrison, served a very specific purpose. He was the antithesis to Dick when it came to Bruce’s legacy. Dick was his ward but also Bruce’s light and when he ascended to becoming Batman he took most of that with him and grew into the cape, so to speak. He embodied the detective work that Bruce taught him (finding the clues in the mantle that found the secret door), he embodied the friendship (taking his place as Batman on several superhero teams), and most importantly he embodied the head of the family. Alfred gave him advice, but Dick kept the Batfamily together as best he could, specifically by raising Damian as Bruce had raised him. And none of it was easy. 

Doctor Hurt worked as a villain to Dick’s Batman because he embodied the worst of Bruce’s darkness. The strange and forgotten stories of the past, the psychological horror, the devilish iconography. Those things that were Gritty McBadBat about Bruce were never things that Dick was going to embody as Batman. And that’s why Doctor Hurt and him battled, basically over the heart of Damian: Robin, the partner, the son, the future of the cowl. 

I didn’t like “Batman and Robin Must Die” because rather than have a huge statement about choosing the direction for Batman’s future by having Dick battle and defeat Doctor Hurt and his continuity drag, Morrison literally deus ex machina’d by having Bruce travel back through time and save Dick and Damian and basically take control immediately. It was such an anticlimax to both Dick and Damian’s arc even though Morrison tried to play it off as being the culmination of Dick and Damian and everyone else looking for Bruce plus Bruce’s “Return of Bruce Wayne” storyline. It’s messy and just feels like “whatever” at the end. 

I don’t like it here because .... Dick’s not Batman. He and Damian aren’t partners. Neither of those things have been factors for either of those characters for six years now and, I hate to break it to everyone here, but at least one of them was “dead” for at least three of those years anyway. 

Doctor Hurt is a Dick Grayson villain, but he is not a Nightwing villain. And the attempt to make him one here fell incredibly flat. 

Also why was Professor Pyg there? Does Professor Pyg now know Dick and Damian’s secret identities too? Was that throw away line about him building dollatrons for Hurt meant to tell us that no only Hurt knows the identities? How is that much better? Why does everyone know Dick’s identity and he doesn’t care? Why doesn’t Damian care that the random Robintron knows his full name and who his father is? Why doesn’t Dick? If only Hurt knows then how did Pyg brainwash Robintron and Deathwing? If Pyg didn’t why did Hurt need Pyg to brainwash them for this since he apparently already knows how?

This story basically sacrificed all logic within the story itself to tie-in Dick’s time as Batman, which he doesn’t want to go back to and isn’t  even tempted to go back to throughout the story, purely to justify having the Bat as part of the cover logo still. That’s it. 

The Good One: There’s a one shot at the very end of this volume, #21, that’s definitely filler in between storylines but is actually the best thing in this entire volume. Probably the best of this run of Nightwing I’ve read and... apparently will ever read since I’ve paid my penance and given Seeley’s turn a chance. It’s a classic team up between Dick and Wally with a pretty inventive villain named “Timebomb”. It’s funny, has a lot of heart, the coloring isn’t muted garbage, and it features some high stakes without losing its sense of fun. It’s a good issue. I would actually implore fans of Dick and Wally to pick it up. It does a great service to their friendship.

Art: The art is good, the entire “Nightwing Must Die” part was colored in this muted, pasty way that basically made all backgrounds feel like they weren’t a part of the scenes and made all humans look dead or undead as it were to the point that Dick and Damian -- both canonically characters of color and occasionally colored to match it -- have the same pallor of the rotting corpse faces sewn onto Robintron and Deathwing.

The exception is the blue used for Nightwing’s costume and gear and for Shawn’s hair because.... idk. I guess we’re supposed to guess that they’re important to the comic or something. 

No seriously, I love the art but they have to buy some more markers. I appreciate that you can only do so much when supplies are low but c’mon.

It’s a joke I know it’s a style choice I just don’t like the style.

But I emphasize again, the art is good. I just personally would go for the last issue’s coloring more than the main storyline’s. 

Image’s Saga (2012-present) #47 Fiona Staples, Brian K. Vaughn

The real question comes to be... will Saga ever have a truly bad issue? I doubt it. Like at this point I’m not really sure what a bad Saga issue would even look like, but I think there’s absolutely no doubt that mediocre issues or issues that were more build up for what is to come can exist. Again, I give backhanded compliments here but I mean them... in the best way possible? Never mind, these cold opens are hard.

Story: We don’t progress too awfully much in this issue. The Will is captured by a vengeful victim’s wife who means to torture him by making him suffer and forcing him to see the very people he loves die.... until money gets involved and suddenly like everyone else she wants to capture Hazel and company to make the big starbucks. But, strangely for Saga, for the first time in this series we really don’t.... go anywhere with this issue outside of what’s taking place with the Will’s torture. There’s no scenes exploring what’s going on with the other groups, there’s no narration from future Hazel, we’re left with the Will, his past we haven’t seen yet, and his current circumstances. 

Now this could make sense, the jumping around Will’s past is in place of jumping around the stars, and how could Hazel ever know what’s happening to the Will here, but it just all feels like a departure from the near omnipotence of Saga’s story before. And mostly it just feels like a setup for explaining how we get all the characters gathered for the next part of the story. And that’s.... not as cool as it could be. 

It’s definitely a weaker entry for Saga overall, but that’s like saying a TV show with 100 episodes may have some that aren’t perfect.

Art: Fiona Staples’ art continues to be the star of the series, but perhaps because of the restraints of the setup, this isn’t the most visually creative or wildest design ideas she’s had in this series. The reveal of the shrew woman’s face felt.... anticlimactic compared to some of the truly out there examples of aliens unlike anything I’ve ever imagined before and it made the pause for the joke “my husband was nearly as beautiful as me” feel like... “have you seen what some of the other alien species look like????”

Likewise the backgrounds of both the flashbacks and of the room Will’s tortured in are not as wild as we’ve seen before, but I have to say the creative idea of the floating prism in space kind of makes up for it because that was creative and visually awing. Again, much like the story itself, the art only suffers because in comparison to the rest of Saga I’m only kind of blown away and not totally blown away. 

IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2011-present) #74 Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, Cory Smith, Ronda Pattison

Man we are just in the forest for transitions in storylines right now. Nothing is bad but nothing is standing out and I was expecting much the same with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles considering that we’re on Part II of the Trial of Kraang, but you know, it wouldn’t be TMNT if they weren’t continuing to surprise me.

Story: So this is a court drama because if there’s one thing that TMNT is dedicated to it is DOING ALL OF THE THINGS and apparently court drama hadn’t been checkmarked yet so here we are. And as someone who really genuinely likes the minutia of continuity and rules and regulations of different worlds and the way laws work in different universes, I found things fairly compelling. Not the least of which because of the smart use of characters and how they fit into their roles -- especially Donny and Professor Honeycutt both working as the prosecution. Don, after all, is the sci-fi heart of TMNT and him being in the thick of this as Kraang is the most “his” of their roster of villains makes perfect sense.

We mostly hit the same beats you’d expect from a court drama -- an unfavorable judge, slimy defense attorney making things hard for our prosecutors, the prosecutors pull a surprise key witness, and all in the background we have the unraveling of victims and friends trying to deal with the uncertainty of the situation while also.... fighting an interdimensional alien war. Hm. Okay so that last part is pure TMNT shenanigans but the drama of the story is really structured and punctual.

Which.... basically means that this issue is something like 80% dialogue with little tiny bits of action to give the other three turtles and their friends something to do while Don and Honeycutt hold down the fort. And if you’re prepared for that going in, you’ll probably find the case as interesting and the way facts are being retold and manipulated fascinating, but if you’re not then it’s probably going to be a bit of a slog compared to the ninja action you’re usually used to.

Art: TMNT’s art is always so shockingly good that it’s hard to comment on anymore. I really like how varied and interesting alien designs are with people not afraid to be gross by “human standards” when making things. And I like that the turtles manage to be simple so that they stand out in every setting without feeling out of place, and still have enough variation and ranges of emotions that there’s no confusing them with each other when the masks are off. It’s very good art and that should always be applauded. 

Dark Horse’s Zodiac Starforce: Cries of the Fire Prince (2017) #2 Kevin Panetta, Paulina Ganucheau, Sarah Stern

I have been on the edge of my seet for a few months now, waiting for news on when the next Zodiac Starforce was going to be coming out and, at long last, the answer came. It was today! And there was much rejoicing. From me. Because I’ve absolutely fallen for this team book.

Story: We learn more about the titular Fire Prince and honestly that’s where a lot of my apprehensions come into play. In the original comic series, the Starforce was comedic at times but its drama was never undercut by it. Relationships were taken seriously and the threat to the girls was certainly serious, particularly from their own goddess and from Cimmeria. So when the first half of this issue was spent with the Fire Prince and making his powers known but also having him laughably dance around and prove to be a bit of a sadsack and not even comparable to the last threat of Cimmeria -- having been imprisoned and shamed by her himself -- it was a little worrisome. The threat after a huge battle like last time shouldn’t really be followed up by something we’re directly told is lesser. And that fed right into the lesser fights too, with Savannah undercutting Alice’s threat by having to make a joke of why they were fighting and remind her of the fact that she even was a threat to the Starforce to begin with. I know I’m throwing this word around a lot lately but it feels like bathos -- like fearing the sincerity of the drama so going for a joke instead. And that wasn’t something I really remember happening in the previous volume.

That all said, the one thing always played straight and the risk that is never dampened is honestly the one that remains the most important overall, and that’s the relationships between the girls themselves. Lily and Savannah’s romance and Savannah’s obviously very supportive mother, Molly and Emma’s close friendship, everyone’s concern for Kim -- it’s all great stuff and taken seriously throughout which is why I still have a lot of hope and expectations for this series. It’s just so nice to see a book that’s so supportive and intent on emphasizing the importance of female relationships.

Art: The art for Zodiac Starforce is beautiful and popping, but it also has a very serious control of its style so as to not be cartoonish beyond the point of feeling the danger or concern for things within the story. Even so, there were a few things that felt off model this time around. It’s mostly nitpicking, but there was something different about the way Emma’s hair was drawn, specifically when she was Gemini, and there were a few times where Alice and her goons seemed to look very different from how I remembered them. but overall I can’t emphasize enough that it’s a beautiful book and really does capture the feeling of being a Western Magical Girl team story. 

There was a lot of good this week in a lot of different ways but when I think of what I enjoyed the most I have to absolutely give it to Black Magick. This book captures a unique style and tone of two things I sincerely love -- noir and witchcraft -- and is really doing something special with them in the modern age. And those are the kind of daring choices -- much like doing a mostly black-and-white comic when almost all comics stick to high definition coloring -- that really capture my attention and help any book stand out in a given week. So that absolutely must be my Pick of the Week, even with some of my harsher criticisms sent its way.

And, once more, I am in a bit of a financial crunch for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which being the medical bills I’m paying for my dog, Eve, who experienced a catastrophic dog fight and underwent surgery recently. On top of that, I have exactly a month and a half to pack up everything I own and move halfway across the country again which is not helping those financial crunches I mentioned before either.

As such, I really would appreciate if you enjoy my content or are interested in helping me out, please check out either my Patreon or PayPal. Every bit helps and I couldn’t thank you enough for enjoying and supporting my content.

You could also support me by going to my main blog, @renaroo, where I’ll soon be listing prices and more for art and writing commissions.

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The Reading Canary: Chaos Sucking

by Robinson L

Sunday, 29 March 2015

Robinson L tears into the second and third books of Patrick Ness' "Chaos Walking" trilogy

Uh-oh! This is in the Axis of Awful...~

Patrick Ness began the Chaos Walking trilogy with The Knife of Never Letting Go, which our esteemed editor reviewed here. I can't be bothered to give a synopsis, so please read the review if you need filling in on the particulars of New World, the characters, Noise, etc.

I don't have much to add to Kyra's assessment of Knife, except that the phonetic spelling coupled with the first person narration really, really bugged me.

Anyway, Ness followed up Knife with book two, The Ask and the Answer, and rounded out the trilogy with book three, Monsters of Men. Since my primary issues with the two books are very different, I'm going to structure my analysis differently for each one. I'm also going to spoil the hell out of both of them, but I won't claim to do anywhere near as good a job of spoiling them as Patrick Ness did by writing the blasted things.

The Ask and the Answer

At the end of

The Knife of Never Letting Go

, Todd and Viola arrived in Haven only to find it taken over by Mayor Prentiss. The Mayor arranges for Viola to receive treatment at a local medical facility, but hides her location from Todd, making further contact with her contingent upon Todd's cooperation. Todd reluctantly goes to work for the Mayor, at first to assure Viola's safety, but as time goes on he begins to identify more and more with the role, even as the things he does grow more and more horrific.

After a brief convalescence, Viola escapes Haven (by now renamed New Prentisstown) and joins the Answer, a partisan group led by the head healer, Mistress Coyle. Though repulsed by the Answer's terrorist bombings in Haven/New Prentisstown, Viola throws her lot in with them to resist the Mayor's tyranny.

There's actually a lot of promise to this book, and Ness works that potential to a certain amount of success. This is simultaneously the book's biggest strength and its ultimate downfall. First off, let's look at what Ness is doing right before we examine how and where it all goes wrong.

Themes and Style

(Warning: The following section contains possibly triggering content in brief discussions of domestic violence, violence against women, and political terror)

It has happened throughout history: peoples who go to war tend to become mirror images of their enemy[1]

The tendency of two sides in an armed conflict to grow increasingly similar in the atrocities they commit against each other is one of the major themes Patrick Ness explores in

The Ask and the Answer

. Every attack by the Answer provokes Mayor Prentiss to implement another crackdown and increasingly draconian methods of social control … which in turn provokes the Answer to even greater acts of terrorism.

The other major theme Ness tackles in this book is corruption, how good people become party to political oppression, torture, murder, even wholesale massacres. By throwing in with Mayor Prentiss, Todd quickly finds himself on a very slippery slope, with each barely excusable but apparently necessary infraction leading to another, slightly less conscionable one. By the end of the novel, Todd has put a group of the local sentient species (Spackle) to work in a concentration camp, branded them with metal bands, branded the human women left in Haven/New Prentisstown as potential allies of the Answer, and helped torture women suspected—on no real evidence—of collaborating with the Answer

[2]

. He hates his job at every step of the process, but he's just about able to convince himself of the necessity of each step, helped along by classic apologist rhetoric courtesy of the Mayor, such as “Surely truly loyal women would be happy to make such small sacrifices to protect law and order” (I paraphrase, but that's the gist of his argument).

Judith L. Herman, author of

Trauma and Recovery

, makes the point that in cases of both domestic abuse and political kidnappings, perpetrators employ intermittent acts of kindness and “gifts” as part of the process of breaking their victims. Ness neatly illustrates this principle early on, with the Mayor using just such an application of strategic mercy to gain first Todd's cooperation, and then the people of Haven's.

The narrative in this book is split between Todd and Viola—fortunately, Viola's narration can actually spell, which significantly cuts down on the reading problem I encountered in the previous book. Even Todd's portions have gone down from literally painful to just occasionally irritating, either because Ness has eased off on the “creative” spelling or just because I've grown desensitized to it.

So to sum up: the book has good, well-observed discourse which deals with important contemporary issues, and even the spelling has upgraded to “tolerable.” And I couldn't effing stand it.

Presentation

My first major problem with

The Ask and the Answer

is that Ness employs all the grace and subtlety of an industrial sledgehammer in putting his points across. By page 100, even a functionally brain dead reader will understand how the Mayor is shaping Haven/New Prentisstown into a police state and shaping Todd into a model enforcer, how Mistress Coyle is just as bad as Mayor Prentiss, and how each atrocity by the one provokes a bigger atrocity by the other. Ness has made all his points crystal clear, but he takes the following 415 pages to beat them even further into the reader's skull, just to make sure. I can appreciate the points he's making, and under other circumstances would applaud him for making them, but I resent being bludgeoned by them.

My second major problem is that the themes Ness is playing with pretty much necessitate his main characters (especially Todd) acting absolutely horrible for 90% of the book—and spending most of the remaining 10% passive victims of forces beyond their control. As a reader, I can just about understand Todd's actions, but I still find them incredibly alienating. Perhaps there are authors who can write a good person who spends the majority of the story doing exactly what the reader desperately wants them not to do and still have it be engaging and not off-putting—if so, Patrick Ness is not among their number.

Part of the issue, I suspect, is that I came into the novel expecting an action adventure story with a dystopian setting, like Scott Westerfeld's

Uglies

or Suzanne Collins'

Hunger Games

. The latter two work as action adventure stories by carefully balancing out the dystopia's horror: even

The Hunger Games

at its grimdarkest, understands there are some places it must not go, so it doesn't. Ness dives recklessly into that dystopian horror, but still insists on retaining the action adventure elements: good wins over evil, the heroes emerge scarred but not permanently damaged, and no matter how badly they behave they never cross the

Moral Event Horizon

. The two styles clash horribly, and if there was any hope of Ness pulling off the “Todd becomes police state enforcer” scenario, making the series also an action adventure story drives the last nail into its coffin.

I'd probably have given up on the book early on, but the last damnable thing about Ness is that he's so masterful when it comes to tension that one can't stop reading—in that highly manipulative, almost drug-addicted mindset: “I don't want to keep doing this but it's so hard to make myself stop.” As it was, I frequently had to take a break from reading to cuss out Ness for feeding me this dreck.

The book has other problems. Early on, Ness introduces

two

young women who manage to feel like essentially the same character despite taking diametrically opposed reactions to Viola's arrival (one becomes instant Best Friends Forever while the other despises Viola and only helps her out of principle) and serve the exact same function in the story: get fridged in order to prompt Viola to action. Is it any less skeevy when a female character is fridged to further another female character's story instead of a male's? Somehow I doubt it.

At the climax of the novel, Mayor Prentiss also kills his son Davy, because Ness was worried he might be getting too subtle. Davy, of course, was in the middle of an awakening process and had almost become human, and his murder, along with sending the melodrama up to eleven (yet again), cut short a potentially interesting and enjoyable character arc. Looking at it that way, I suppose Davy had to go before he brought up the novel's enjoyment factor.

Davy's death is arguably the emotional high point of the book, but here Ness' “creative” spelling comes back to bite him in the arse. We have Todd the narrator standing over Davy's body, listening with tears in his eyes to the other's dying confession, and casually mentions hearing an “explozhun” in the distance. At that point, any pathos Ness had managed to achieve evaporated in a puff of abject silliness, and the whole scene instantaneously degenerated into unintentional hilarity. I'm given to understand, the technical term for this is “bathos,” or, if you're a fan of TV Tropes, “Narm.”

Final Thoughts

As one last method of annoying me, Ness spends the bulk of the book having Viola and Todd questioning each other's motivations for working for a despot and throwing in with terrorists respectively, and questioning each other's loyalty into the bargain. This ties into the theme of enemies in wartime becoming mirror images—with each side treating the other's atrocities as unforgivably monstrous while excusing its own atrocities as regrettably necessary. And it is equally alienating.

It also bears the distinction of playing to the cliché romance trope of misunderstandings cropping up between the lovers to cast doubt on their respective commitment. In other words: insufferable from two directions at once.

Nothing could make up for the excruciating alienation of the first 450+ pages, but I have to admit the ending, where Todd and Viola reconcile, agree to save each other like they always do, and proceed to lay a righteous smackdown on the Mayor is both sweet and greatly satisfying. Not good enough to be cathartic, but probably the best Ness could realistically have managed at that point.

In terms of sheer unreadability,

The Ask and the Answer

is the worst book of the trilogy, though it does have hands-down the best climax. It's probably the worst book in most other ways, too, but its awfulness is spread out over a space of 515 pages. There's no one moment where the reader stops, and—after double- and triple-checking to make sure that yes, they really did read something that abominably wrongheaded—says, “You know, I was with you more or less up to this point, but this part right here ruins it all.” For that, we shall have to look elsewhere …

Monsters of Men

In the final installment of the trilogy, Todd releases Mayor Prentiss to fight off a vicious attack by the Spackle. Meanwhile, a scout ship containing Viola's friends Simone and Bradley arrives on New World to prepare the way for the colony ships. Todd and Viola forge a reluctant alliance between the Mayor, Mistress Coyle, and the two scouts to protect the humans from the Spackle, and eventually secure peace. Naturally, this proves a difficult task, and divisions among the three groups constantly threaten to ruin the whole process.

What I Liked

I found

Monsters of Men

exponentially less excruciating than

The Knife of Never Letting Go

and

The Ask and the Answer

. There is some amount of the protagonists (especially Todd) doing bad/incompetent stuff when they should know better, but unlike in the previous book there's a lot of other things going on, most of which aren't nearly so alienating.

I scored this from the library on audio, obliterating any concerns over spelling, although I did catch the guy narrating for Todd's pronunciation of “reckernize” a couple times. Listening to the audiobook may also have helped with the difficult bits, as they went by quicker and with less active participation on my part.

The three narrators all do a terrific job. Nick Podehl (Todd) took a little while to grow on me, probably because he does such a swell job of nailing down Todd's voice, and spelling aside, Todd's narrative voice is definitely an acquired taste. He does a fantastic Mayor Prentiss, though. I'd always imagined Prentiss speaking with an affably evil, faintly patronizing tone; Podehl's Prentiss is straight-forward and conversational, which arguably works even better.

Angel Dawe (Viola), apart from narrating like a pro, has a thoroughly lovely voice. The pleasure of listening to her is only marred towards the middle, when Viola develops an infection, and her dialogue is interrupted with constant fits of coughing.

Rounding out the cast is MacLeod Andrews narrating for the Return, a Spackle whom Todd saved in the previous book, and the only survivor of the Mayor's massacre. Andrews plays his role well, adopting a faintly unworldly voice which conveys the character's alien nature quite well.

For the last installment in a series with such a propensity for mowing down supporting characters,

Monsters of Men

actually has a fairly low body count among the characters we're supposed to sympathize with, and many of the most likable supporting characters do, in fact, survive. Moreover, I can think of three specific scenes where I was sure Ness was setting up to kill off Bradley, Lee, and Angharad respectively, and in the end none of those things happened. I find it kind of nice when an author can fake me out that way.

The last compliment I'm going to hand out is for the world-building. The Spackle are still a bit more human than the sci-fi hardliner in me would prefer, but Ness does a fabulous job of fleshing out their society. For instance, they refer to themselves collectively as the Land, and their leader is the Sky. This confused me at first, trying to differentiate between people and geographic markers, but then the Sky refers to the time of the first war, when “we were a different Land under a different Sky”—which is beautifully poetic if you ask me.

What I Disliked

You remember what I said about a surprisingly low bodycount? Well of course, Ness had to balance that out somehow, and being Ness, his solution naturally rates approximately 80 MegaBrooks on the

predictability scale

. No points for guessing that the only semi-reasonable authority figure in this book dies, only to be replaced by one of our young protagonists.

And while Ness aptly demonstrates how warfare is always the product of some combination of misunderstanding, misinformation, prejudice, paranoia, and demagoguery, sometimes he seems to be saying that it can still be necessary. Many people will agree with Ness on this point, but I don't and it bugs me. A lot. If warfare is predicated on lies and behavior which is the height of iniquity in all other circumstances—then surely there are other ways to find solutions to the issues warfare is supposed to resolve.

Then there's all the bollocks about leaders and followers. As might be expected from the villain of the piece, Mayor Prentiss has a very elitist view of human nature, insisting that most human beings deep down really want to be led—people like himself and Todd and Viola and a few others are the exceptions, the ones born to lead instead of follow. This is how he's able to control large groups of men through their Noise, and how Todd occasionally does the same to one or two at a time. Even after he's semi-reformed, Mayor Prentiss still believes a benevolent dictator who shapes the people's will through their Noise is the best kind of leader.

The problem is that the text bears him out on this point. With a rare handful of exceptions, the people of New World really do behave like sheep, unquestioningly throwing their support behind one charismatic leader or another. The only amount of independent thinking they ever display is deciding which charismatic leader to align with. In short, they behave

exactly

like the born followers the Mayor describes. Sure, controlling them through Noise is bad, but controlling them through demagoguery is only bad if it's evil people like the Mayor and Mistress Coyle doing it.

Speaking of the Mayor, though, Ness actually does something very interesting with him during the middle third of the book. With the help of the scouts—Simone and Bradley—Todd and Viola force the Mayor to help them try to make peace with the Spackle. Nobody trusts him, of course, and Mistress Coyle vehemently insists that he must be up to something.

But Mayor Prentiss really does seem to be helping out and genuinely seeking peace. After a while he starts talking of having been “redeemed.”

[3]

Todd doubts this, and a couple times tells the Mayor flat-out “yer not redeemable,” but with a little less conviction each time. It gets to the point where Todd chooses to save the Mayor's life over Simone's.

There comes a time when the main characters have got all their problems pretty much sorted out. They've made peace with the Spackle, with the fate of Mayor Prentiss being the only major sticking point; the political situation among the humans has died down—Prentiss is still around, but the colonists will be able to deal with him when they arrive in a few weeks; Viola has recovered, Todd has a new father figure; all-in-all, things are looking up.

The interesting thing would be to stop there; Ness has things approximately where he wants them anyway, and sorting out the remaining loose ends will entail some tough decisions with no easy answers. It leaves us with the question of the Mayor, the terrible ghoul built up over the course of the first two books, now redeemed like Darth Vader, and inconveniently alive following his redemption, unlike Darth Vader. What is his place in society now? What manner of punishment will the Spackle and human communities impose upon him for his atrocities? How much punishment

should

they impose? How will he reconcile those atrocities with his own conscience?

Well yes, Ness

could

do that. Or he could have Mayor Prentiss yell out “Surprise! I really was evil along! And now I'm going to restart the war and try to get every single human being on this planet killed off in glorious battle! Muahahahahahahaha!” and have Todd and Viola et al. reply “Ahhh! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” and proceed to stop him, though only after a dully predictable climax involving a forest fire, a flood, and retreading territory Ness has already covered amply over the course of the book. Which is precisely what he does.

As a humanist, I reject the notion that any human being is beyond redemption, so I admit I'm biased. But that objection aside, having the Mayor prove a villain in the end is exponentially less interesting from a narrative perspective. The previous two books built up Mayor Prentiss as horrifyingly powerful and completely devoid of redeeming virtues. Fair enough, I could name a couple billion such villains from literature, and Ness does a better job than many of making his villain believable and threatening. Such characters exist to be righteously killed off in one fashion or another, and they're deliberately kept unsympathetic so the reader can cheer unreservedly when they get their fatal comeuppance.

However, when an author deliberately raises the question “is this villain redeemable?” there are only two ways things can go. Option #1 “No,” tells the reader absolutely nothing, does nothing to enhance the story, and goes nowhere. It's the worst kind of lampshade hanging: drawing attention to a stock trope while simultaneously playing that trope by the numbers and completely failing to do anything new or interesting with it. Option #2: “Yes,” on the other hand, leads immediately to the question “What then?” This opens up a vast field of questions and possibilities to explore, as illustrated above.

So, of course, Ness goes for Option #1. He does throw me a halfhearted bone by having the Mayor magnanimously commit suicide to spare Todd from murdering him. I'll admit that's better than nothing, but it still comes directly after the Mayor's own acknowledgment that he's “not redeemable,” and,

as our esteemed editor has pointed out

, having a character make amends immediately before nobly sacrificing their life is a lot easier than having them live with the consequences. In short, it's a cop-out.

The big climactic conflagration set off by the Mayor's return to form is tediously predictable. The Spackle turn against the humans again, but their leader comes around just in the nick of time to stop hostilities from flaring up again. Both Spackle and human characters have to relearn the lessons they spent the last four hundred effing pages learning in the first place.

[4]

Todd, Viola, and the other named characters run around putting out fires. Lots of characters whom we neither know nor care about die in the ensuing fire and flood, and Haven gets destroyed and it makes no difference. Todd and the Mayor have a showdown that—apart from taking place on a beach instead of Haven city hall—is a recycle of their battle at the end of

The Ask and the Answer

, bringing nothing new to the table.

For decades, action-adventure readers have been conditioned to expect a big, apocalyptic climax and final clash of good and evil, and to have a villain who's thoroughly evil, although the option of one last altruistic gesture immediately before they die has grown increasingly popular in the last ten or twenty years. It would've made for a much more original story to have the surprise twist be that the plot ends at the point where the characters had things mostly worked out anyway, with no big catastrophes or confrontations, leaving Todd and Viola et al. with the thorny question of what to do with a reformed but still troublesome Mayor Prentiss. And yes, that is counter-factual criticism but frankly, I'm beyond caring.

All this was irritating, but it was hardly unexpected. Indeed, as I've just explained, it would've been surprising if Ness

hadn't

thrown all that stuff in, cheap and annoying as it was. Unfortunately, there's more. Much more.

Minority Warrior

The following section covers aspects of the book which gave me pause. While they don't offend me personally, I suspect they might offend others—notably those who don't share my privilege—and I feel it behooves me to give fair warning.

Many people have objected to the fact that, in Ness' universe, human men have Noise but human women do not. Towards the end of

Monsters of Men

one character says that women probably do have Noise, and they have to figure out how to access it. At no point does Ness ever explain why Noise manifests so radically differently in women as opposed to men, and one is forced to assume it must be because women and men are so fundamentally different as to be practically two separate species. Which, um, they aren't.

When Bradley begins manifesting Noise, it quickly transpires that, big surprise, he has the hots for Simone, who for whatever reason isn't interested. Lee also has a hopeless crush on Viola, as if you hadn't figured that out long since. Ness uses their conditions to explore unrequited love, just as he's previously used the Noise to explore frustrated erotic desire.

The thing is, the only characters depicted as experiencing unrequited love are male. The only characters depicted as experiencing erotic desire are male. Viola desires Todd emotionally, and he reciprocates, and I think there's a brief allusion to Todd thinking about her sexually, but no hint that Viola might have such thoughts for herself.

It smells faintly of Nice Guy Syndrome, as does Viola's conversation with Simone, encouraging the other woman to give Bradley a chance because “he's a good man.” Maybe I'm paranoid or getting off on playing More Feminist Than Thou or both, but I think it may be telling that Ness has Viola appeal to Simone in terms of a rational assessment of his good character, rather than his desirability as a boyfriend or lover.

And getting back to that low body count among the sympathetic characters, arguably the most prominent sympathetic character to die in the book is Simone herself. Simone is the leader of the two-person scouting party; strong and competent and resourceful and pretty damn cool. And the thing is, once both she and Mistress Coyle are dead, the only female character of any importance to the story is Viola. Next runner up is Todd's

horse

for heaven's sake. Contrast this with the six prominent, sympathetic male characters who also survive to the end. Bit of a gap, there.

I've also seen Ness criticized for failing to consider homosexuality in the earlier books. In

Monsters of Men

, two of the most prominent sympathetic characters had same-sex Love Interests—both of whom were fridged earlier in the series, so I'm not sure Ness is scoring many points there, either.

Text Bomb

Getting back to the climax, the Mayor throws himself into the sea and dies, and Todd and Viola share a joyful embrace on the shore, knowing that whatever happens now, everything is going to be okay. And then the Return shows up and semi-accidentally kills Todd.

Excuse me, my melodrameter just overheated again.

…

Okay, that's better. My first thought on reading this was that it had to be the single most gratuitous bit of sensationalism Ness has ever written, and keep in mind this is

Patrick Ness

we're talking about.

Then he launched into a tortuously drawn out

[5]

scene between Viola and the Return. Like the rest of the series, it's all overblown and takes five times longer than it ought to in a mishandled attempt to enhance tension. But for all that, there's some decent character development for both Viola and the Return, and it does serve to underline many of the trilogy's themes. It even manages to tie in Todd's murder of a helpless Spackle fisher in

Knife

—the Return absorbed Todd's guilt for that act through his Noise, and now he bears a similar guilt for a similar murder.

Not that any of this was strictly necessary. Ness had already explored those themes quite satisfactorily, and Viola's and the Return's character development basically amounted to relearning lessons they'd already learned. The sequence added nothing new, but it did sharpen the recycled material.

Yes, it was inane and drawn-out and dumbed-down and more melodramatic than Russell T Davies on steroids, acid, and meth all at the same time, but coming out of the sequence I grudgingly admitted that it was more than just Patrick Ness indulging in yet more cheap sensationalism.

… And then he pulled a J. K. Rowling. Turns out, Todd's alive.

What the f***?

What the f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***ing f***?

Over on my livejournal, I coined the term “Text Bomb” to denote a development so unexpected and so ridiculous or awful or both that the reader's brain initially rejects it as impossible. In those terms, Todd's resurrection at the end of

Monsters of Men

is a Thermonuclear grade Text Bomb.

Mere words cannot describe the head-banging inanity of this move, but I'm damn well going to make them try.

I believe a number of people found Harry's resurrection in

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

a cheap cop-out, but in my view, Todd's is much, much worse. My reason is that Rowling had long since squandered any thematic coherence she might once have had. Harry's death and resurrection are equally meaningless because there are no themes to

Deathly Hallows

, just Stuff Happening.

Whereas Patrick Ness knows how to carry a theme. Sure, he's hamfisted and his repertoire consists almost entirely of cheap tricks, but as Dan pointed out somewhere in the

Girl Books for Girls series

(I believe it was Part Four) the thing about cheap tricks is that they do work. It's the crassest, basest way to say what you have to say, but it gets the job done.

Harry's return in

Deathly Hallows

has no thematic consequences—it's just Rowling wanking. Todd's return in

Monsters of Men

goes back and nukes all the thematic and character development Ness poured into the preceding scene. The whole thing—the emotional high point of the book, and probably the series—instantly implodes when the linchpin which gave it its driving force (Todd's death) is pulled away. In that one moment, the entire trilogy lapses into farce.

Admittedly, Ness puts together a pretty good excuse for why Todd seemed dead without actually dying, but this does nothing to address the thematic mess Todd's return leaves in its wake. If Ness really felt he needed to include all that development for Viola and the Return he should have had the guts to give his scenario the conclusion it demanded and have Todd stay dead. If he truly couldn't bear to kill off his protagonist, then, as I've already pointed out, it would've been perfectly plausible from a thematic perspective to cut the action off after the Mayor's defeat and not raised the prospect of killing his protagonist in the first place.

Ness chose neither option; he went ahead and wrecked his own discourse instead.

The Canary Says

The Ask and the Answer

is an excruciating read, constantly alienating the reader and dragging out its points

ad nauseam

.

Monsters of Men

is enjoyable if occasionally irritating, but its ending—when compared to the quality of the rest of the book—is one of the worst affronts to good literature ever published.

Maybe I'm being too harsh with Ness. He's obviously trying to be sophisticated and engage with some pretty complex ideas. In my view he sabotages himself by his heavy reliance on repetition and on sensationalism and grandstanding, but perhaps I give him too little credit. I found

The Ask and the Answer

just shy of unreadable, but people who are less bothered by protagonists doing wrong will probably have an easier time of it. And while the conclusion to

Monsters of Men

is a narrative travesty, people without my peculiar sensibilities may find it highly enjoyable despite its technical failings. If I really liked Todd rather than feeling mostly indifferent towards him, I'd probably cheer his resurrection even though it undermines everything Ness was trying to say.

Maybe I'm being too harsh with Ness, but I don't care.

I'm not here to be fair, I'm here to be judgmental

, and these books got right up my nose. My advice: stay away.

[1]

Nonviolence: 25 Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea

, by Mark Kurlansky.

[2]

The Mayor's method of interrogation is essentially waterboarding, and it is unambiguously treated and referred to as torture.

[3]

Granted, he attributes this to Todd's influence as if he were some sort of secular effing Messiah, which I didn't much appreciate.

[4]

Having to learn the same lesson over and over again is realistic, and I expect it's possible to depict this process in narrative fiction without being incredibly fecking annoying, but the task is beyond Patrick Ness' abilities.

[5]

What did you expect? Short and to the point?Themes:

Reading Canary

,

Books

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Young Adult / Children

~

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https://ronanwills.wordpress.com/

at 19:51 on 2015-03-30I was initially kind of surprised to see this in the axis of awful, but then I read your actual post and thought back to my own experiences with the books and it's perhaps not that surprising.

I read The Knife of Never Letting Go more than six years ago, loved it and ran out to buy the other two. But I found The Ask and The Answer's relentless pacing and breathless prose so exhausting I felt like I had to take a break before tackling Monsters of Men.

That break kept getting longer and longer, and now the book is sitting on a shelf in my room, unread. Now that I know where the story ultimately goes, I'm kind of glad I didn't bother.

I'm willing to bet that if I went back and reread the first two books I'd probably be far less taken with them- it's been long enough that my tastes have changed significantly, and at the time I was young enough that "it turns out that both sides are just as bad as each other" still felt interesting and somewhat revelatory. When the same theme comes up in fiction now (the example that comes to mind immediately is Bioshock Infinite) I find it trite and not at all useful or worth saying.

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https://thatcharacterdies.wordpress.com/

at 01:07 on 2015-04-02On the subject of making a story about how both sides are committing terrible acts without making your protagonists monsters or completely passive- I think perhaps the best way is the noir approach. In other words, have your protagonist be basically decent, but caught up in the world of powers far beyond them, and thus unable to enact more than a little change. A good example of this would be John le Carre- take The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Lemas is more or less trying to be an okay person, but his attempts can't compare to the ruthlessness of the powers he's caught between. Of course, there's a reason le Carre tends to have downbeat endings, and noirs tend to be bittersweet or downers.

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https://francessmithsite.wordpress.com/

at 21:53 on 2016-02-19

Is it any less skeevy when a female character is fridged to further another female character's story instead of a male's? Somehow I doubt it.

I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I can see what you're getting at, but I don't think it's useful or even possible for a work of fiction to treat every character as equally valuable, for want of a better word, and everyone's story as equally important. Any attempt to try is likely to result in a shapeless, bloated mess. You have to decide whose story it is, and then you have to render everyone whose story it isn't subordinate to the person whose story it is.

To take the example that you've given, it sounds like the two young women are introduced solely for the purpose of getting killed later on in order to motivate Viola. And, to be honest, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. If he had introduced them, developed them over several volumes, brought you to care about them and then killed them off in a perfunctory manner like poor Lian Harper then that would be something to complain about, to be sure, but I've always felt the real problem with fridging was not that it kills women but that in doing so it disrespects both the characters, the care and attention that other artists have put into them, and the love that they have inspired in the fans. None of which applies when the victim is a redshirt, and all of which conversely can apply when the character dies in a thematically valid conclusion to their character arc (looking at you, Adrian Tchaikovsky).

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Robinson L

at 22:30 on 2016-02-19Okay, good point about the difference between killing off an established, long-running character to motivate another character as opposed to killing off a walk-on. (I may be misremembering here, but I thought I heard somewhere that the original Woman in a Refrigerator was always intended to die to motivate her boyfriend - the Green Lantern - to do something or other, but was still given a good whack of development so that the reader would feel her loss along with him.)

I'm not entirely convinced, but no counter-arguments immediately spring to mind. If somebody else wants to take up the argument, I may or may not agree with them, but I'll let the point stand for now.

I mean, it can also be skeevy if a) female guest and walk-on characters are frequently stuffed in the fridge to motivate the main characters, or b) the tone of the piece gives the implication that this death is especially tragic or heinous because the victim is female, but these aren't always the case.

That said, introducing a character, and developing them just enough to make the reader mildly invested in them as such, and then killing them off to motivate a main character is often a cheap-shot. In this case, from what I remember, there were plenty of other potential motivations for Viola to take the actions she takes. (Another case in point:

The Night of the Doctor

.)

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[recentanimenews]

The Fickle Warmth of Flames: An exploration of Farnese in "Berserk", Part 1

As we’ve spent the past week revisiting the events of the season in Berserk, it’s worth looking back at one of the most fascinating characters in Miura's epic, Farnese!

  Overcoming childhood trauma is a major theme in Berserk and Farnese's painful process of moving past her personal tragedies has been one of the most closely observed in the series. Her circumstances are unique among similarly afflicted characters as, where most suffer from active abuse, she was the victim of severe neglect. Growing up in the lap of aristocracy, her experiences reveal that wealth is not an absolute aegis against suffering. Both Guts and Farnese spent their youths similarly lost and directionless, but where Guts’s endless procession of battles provided him with valuable tools that allowed him to eventually grow, Farnese languished in the confines of her family’s mansion. This disparity is brought to the into painful focus during their encounter in the first season, but for part one of this multi-part feature we'll be looking at the factors that created the Holy Knight.

    Early this season we were treated to one of its most visually captivating episodes retracing Serpico's experiences growing up with Farnese before the events of the Tower of Conviction. Sh was daughter of aristocracy with a mother who was entirely absent and a father whose rare visits to the household were marked by authoritarian demands. Farnese loved her parents and, in seeking her father's approval, thoughtlessly capitulated to to his demands. Fearful of earning his disfavor but unable to earn his recognition, she toiled in agonizing loneliness within their mansion. In the absence of her parents, her reign over the household was absolute. With little context as to treat others with compassion, Farnese directed her pain downward by abusing the staff, but rather than eliciting some sort of reaction her mistreatment resulted in fear and resignation, deepening her isolation and changing nothing.

    Farnese first met Serpico by saving from a slow death of exposure in the winter cold. Lacking understand for her own motives behind her compassionate act, she contextualized her actions as a transaction by demanding that he become her servant in exchange for her generosity. Serpico’s willingness to remain and accept her sadistic treatment was the closest thing Farnese had experience to friendship but the only way she knew to deepen their intimacy was to turn her abuse into tests of loyalty, forcing Serpico to defend her honor in a series of duels, punishing him when he refused to raise a stir by definitively winning, and even tasting his blood to affirm some sort of connection between them.

    Serpico is tragically ill-equipped to help Farnese, armed only with his fondness for her and sense of kinship. Growing up alongside her, he comes in understand the causes of her behavior but has no means of helping Farnese pull herself out of her dark hole. Detached almost completely from his own emotions, he can’t act as a role model from which Farnese can learn to articulate her feelings in a nondestructive way. Their shared blood and different social standing also leaves him in a double bind, unable to reciprocate her increasingly romantic advances but fearful of spurning them and driving her into complete isolation. All he can do is leave her to stumble in the dark as she seeks to retrieve some sort of meaning from their relationship.

    In the world of her home, Farnese’s worst inclinations were rewarded while her rare opportunities to show charity were met with silence. When confronted with fear and pain, she had no support structure to cope with her emotions and would throw herself into the source of her fear. When her window was broken by a lightning-felled tree, she ran out into the rain and began destroying the garden along with the storm, seeking to become the cause of her distress rather than become its victim.

One of her most formative moments occurred as a small child, before she had even met Serpico. When the screams of burning heretics outside their estate kept her up at night, she ventured out and, tragically, was provided with a torch and met with cheers when she lit one of the pyres, offering an emotional affirmation she had been unable to find within her own home.

    That single event marked the beginning of her fascination with fire. Farnese experiences a feeling of warmth while watching flames which becomes a refuge during her moments of distress. When her father ordered her to get rid of her ragged stuffed bunny, a precious memento from the only vacation they’d taken together as a family, Farnese remained obedient but opted instead to burn it, watching over the fire in the winter cold until it finally died out.

The turning point in her life comes as the result of another of her father's orders. He arranges a marriage between Farnese and a member of the royal family. Unable to even raise an objection before her father, she asks Serpico to run away with her. Farnese had, for the first time in her life, truly laid herself bare, both physically and emotionally. The romantic connotations of her requests were more than implicit, yet she was met with rejection. Even worse, Serpico was her only friend and confidant in the world. His decision represented a form of abandonment which drove a wedge between them, but still she relied on him absolutely. Despite how deeply painful it was to grow up in isolation, the unknown of the world outside was too frightening for her to face alone. Without Serpico, she couldn’t imagine leaving her gilded cage. Doomed to become just another commodity in her father's endless dealings robbed of her only confidant, Farnese could only retreat to her flames.

Her desperate act saved her from the arranged marriage, but the way she grasped Serpico amidst the flames implied that, in that moment, she had chosen death over the uncertainty of her future.

Despite the immense cruelty of her actions, Farnese is still a frightened and lonely girl who could never work up the courage to say no to her father. Miura plays out her plight delicately to display that her abuse is born from her own torment and an ignorance of emotional communication. The events of her childhood might seem like the origin story of a villain in another context, but even the worst monsters in Miura's world are all essentially human. Farnese is a fundamentally compassionate person and Serpico's recollection of their relationship is bookended by evidence of this. Sent off to a monastery after the fire, Farnese was later chosen to act as the figurehead of the Holy Iron Chain Knights, who seek out and execute heretics. During their travels, Serpico is reunited with his mother, tied to the stake.

  After he unthinkingly calls out to her, Farnese once again saves Serpico's life. Now suspected of consorting with a witch, Farnese knows the only way out of the situation is for Serpico's mother to die at his own hand. Once again, she contextualizes her generosity as a transaction, demanding he burn his mother renew his vow of loyalty to her, but she doesn't release the torch when he grasps it. Together, they lower it into the pyre, and she remains with him as it burns, refusing to allow Serpico suffer alone. 

Returning from the past, we'll explore Farnese's relationship with her religion and how her encounter with Guts changes the course of her life in part 2! Until then, tell me what you think of Farenese. Do you believe she's beyond redemption or will she find atonement among Guts's group?

---

Peter Fobian is an Associate Features Editor for Crunchyroll and author of Monthly Mangaka Spotlight. You can follow him on Twitter @PeterFobian.

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com