#the term just means ''looks more like an actual animal than anthropomorphic'' more than anything

[anarkhebringer]

I'm not showing the full thing since it's what I was referencing in my post about him yesterday, but I'm too proud of how I drew his head to not at least show this part off

[tanadrin]

The Gish Gallop was a term coined I think on the 2000s internet for a rhetorical maneuver where to buttress an argument you provide a ton of low-quality evidence; that the evidence is bad means it should be easy to refute, but the very large volume means it will take much longer to explain why it's all wrong than it did to copy-paste a bunch of links, and to a certain kind of very naive onlooker, it looks like the galloper is winning--after all, the one interlocutor has presented a ton of evidence! The second interlocutor has to spend so much time bending over backwards to refute it! Surely the first guy is more knowledgeable and authoritative. You aren't going to look at all that evidence yourself, of course--who has the time?

But listening to Dan McClellan talk about the Gospel of John this morning, it occurs to me that I don't think this is disingenuous. Not entirely. I think this is just the style of argumentation a lot of Christians (of a particular religious flavor) are used to. And I'm not just talking about in non- or para-religious matters like evolution. This is how Christianity understands the Bible.

This week's Data over Dogma is about the theology of John, and why it is non-trinitarian (because the Trinity is a much later doctrine developed as a kind of political compromise, maintained only because it had state backing) and does not actually identify Jesus with God (the theological developments are more complicated here; but suffice it to say it was not at all a given that "authorized bearer of the divine name" and "actually God" were the same being in 1st century Hellenistic Judaism, and indeed the distinction between the two had developed in Jewish thought precisely to avoid the awkwardness of anthropomorphic figures proclaiming themselves God in some of the older sections of the Hebrew Bible).

The funny thing is, there are a ton of passages in John that get trotted out as proof texts that Jesus is God. There are very good reasons in the case of each one to doubt that that is actually the correct reading; but of course, if you don't know anything about Greek, all you have are modern translations produced under the assumption of the dogma of the Trinity--mostly for devotional readers of the Bible who would be outraged if the Trinity wasn't in the New Testament--and you have been raised in a cultural and/or educational milieu where it is simply a default assumption about the way the world works that the Trinity is a timeless concept that has been in the Bible from the beginning, it sure looks like one side is spinning up tendentious arguments based on silly semantics that have nothing to do with the religion you learned as a kid.

But this exegetical approach (really, eisegetical) is common to many topics in traditional Christian theology. There are a ton of passages from the Septuagint that the Gospels warp to be about Jesus, even though, in their original context, this doesn't make any sense; sometimes even they're based on obvious mistranslations, like having Jesus ride into Jerusalem on the back of two animals simultaneously because you don't understand appositives. And you can poke holes in any individual bit of this exegesis, but psychologically having a ton of low-quality evidence for a thing is a pretty effective bulwark against thinking critically about that evidence; for every individual argument you knock down, the person you are arguing against is probably thinking, "yeah, but what about all that other stuff," even if they can't actually name all that other stuff in the moment.

And it's not mendacious! This is the stuff of true belief; this is how you get breathless Christian commentators saying the Bible couldn't possibly be written by human hands, because it so perfectly predicted Jesus even in the Old Testament--and the evidence they point to is, to anyone not steeped in traditional Christian exegesis, and especially to Jews who have their own exegetical traditions, absolutely barmy. Like really pants-on-head crazy stuff. But of course even now it is still being processed, in many parts of the world, through a two thousand year old tradition trying to reconcile it all and to normalize it all, and--to bring it back to discussions of evolution on the internet in the 2000s--I can't help but think of all those people who talk about the experience of thinking evolution was so obviously nonsense, because all they were exposed to was the fundamentalist strawman of it. When they finally sat down and began to read about it on their own, from unbiased sources--often with the intent of criticizing it--they realized how distorted their understanding was, and how limited their supposed outside view.

(If there are general lessons to be wrung from this situation, I think it's simply "beware of echo chambers." Social consensus in a bubble can make bad arguments feel much stronger than they really are, especially if you are not exposed to the actual opposing view. Be on guard against mistaking "quantity of evidence" for "quality of argument," especially if you're not gonna evaluate that evidence yourself. Also all religious traditions are fundamentally eisegetical, because in order to keep holy writ relevant to the community its meaning has to be constantly renegotiated. So, uh. If you want high-quality exegesis, ask an academic, not a theologian.)

[powerofmettatonneo]

Hi, i’ve been looking at your post, talking about it, and sharing it with some friends. Honestly i’d even say i’m a fan of you and your work despite how little of it there is right now. I have a couple question.

First, I was wondering if you had any other accounts that I could follow your work on, like twitter and such.

Second, I saw that you took classes in etholgy and talked about advocating for the personhood of animals. I mean, I know they’re smarter than we sometimes give them credit for. Take for example the recent study with scientist communicating with whales with their own language for the first time. But I was hoping to get your insight in what you mean by personhood of animals and thoughts on the topic. (And also table napkin thought on how anthropomorphizing can harm or help our understanding of animals)

Third but a little more obscure, is that you use humanity, personhood, and the being of « more human » a lot. I was hoping if you could expand on the differences of these terms and how they interact with one another.

Sorry for all the questions, just honest to god fascinated with your perspective of things and the topic in general.

Here’s the whale communication study I mentioned: https://globalnews.ca/news/10182116/humpback-whale-conversation-talking-to-aliens/amp/

Oh my gosh thank you so much for your kind words! This, AO3, and YouTube are actually my only accounts online that I post anything on, and I just use my YT account to reupload other people's deleted videos. I used to use Reddit but I'm trying to distance myself from that account since half a decade of hot take type comments starting when I was 15 isn't exactly the best look for anyone.

Your last two questions are linked so I'm going to address them at once. Human is simply the term used to refer to a member of the genus Homo. There's nothing all that special about it philosophically when separated from personhood, which is more or less the description of what beings do and don't fully matter morally. Speculative fiction and philosophy tend to equate it with sapience, which is more or less a meaningless term made up to separate humans (or worse, specific groups of humans) from other animals and make ourselves feel superior. There have been attempts to give it meaning, but nearly every definition uses traits that are found in at least one other species of animal and/or are not universal to every group of humans (with the notable exception of artistry but I frankly find it absurd to discount something's moral worth over that). As such, if we're going to approach the topic logically, then some animals at the very least have traits of personhood.

Language, for example, isn't exactly common in animals, but it isn't unheard of either. Bats, cetaceans (whales and dolphins), pinnipeds (seals and sea lions), elephants, songbirds (a group that contains crows btw), hummingbirds, and of course parrots all learn different "words" that they apply meaning to and then use. Cetaceans, parrots, and some songbirds even use something akin to grammar.

Ritual behavior has been shown in chimpanzees, dolphins, and elephants as they grieve for their dead.

Self-awareness, the trait most commonly held up as making humans special, is hard to measure due to the language barrier, but there is still some evidence for it in certain animals. The mirror test isn't perfect when it comes to discounting a given animal's self-awareness, but if an animal can identify itself in a mirror, it's hard to argue with the idea that it has a sense of self. Animals that passed include various dolphins, great apes, elephants, magpies, and even certain fish. Furthermore, an African grey parrot named Alex once asked a question about himself, being the first recorded instance of an animal asking anything, and bottlenose dolphins use names for themselves and others in their pod.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. I don't really have a definitive list of animals that I believe should be considered "people", especially given all the legal implications of that sentiment, but you've probably noticed that same groups of animals showed up again and again. Dolphins were there in all of the different categories, and elephants only failed the grammar category because they largely communicate using vibrations which work so differently from regular sound that they're hard to meaningfully compare to human languages. Parrots, corvids (crows and relatives), and great apes all have stand out members that showed up in two or three of the categories in the African grey, magpie, and chimpanzee respectively, and the other members of those families as well as whales are all intelligent and social enough that I am of the opinion that they all deserve certain philosophical rights and even legal protections. It's so easy for us to see personhood as a black and white thing that something either has or doesn't have, but like most things, it really is more of a spectrum.

To answer your "table napkin thought", while I won't deny that anthropomorphizing real animals can often lead to a lack of true understanding of them, the harm done by people trying to avoid doing so is both more common and so, so much more horrific that I hesitate to critique it too much. I mean, I have straight up seen very influential people say that acknowledging the extremely well supported fact that other animals are capable of feeling pain is "anthropomorphizing" them because one specific area of the brain that is partially responsible for processing pain in humans is only present in primates, and that of course can, and historically has, lead to horrific abuse.

I really don't mind all the questions! I love talking about things I'm passionate about, and this topic is certainly up there among the the things I care most about.

[automaticdata-sims]

The reaction to the Sims 4 Werewolves announcement has been ... interesting.

Like, I am psyched about the pack. I love werewolves and I feel like they’re underrepresented in modern media. So I’m biased.

But like ... people are complaining because the werewolves look like furries? Like, seriously, I’d rather have furry werewolves than the Teen Wolf werewolves of Sims 3. In my opinion, the more wolflike a werewolf’s wolf form is, the better. Sims 3′s werewolves were hairy humans with exaggerated underbites and prominent eyebrow ridges.

(Also, I don’t get the aversion to anything even vaguely furry-adjacent. Like, if you have issues with the sex stuff that’s one thing, but this is a rated T video game that will only have sex stuff if you have mods installed. If you have issues with the animal-looking people, though, you might want to look at your childhood, because at least 75% of the stuff you watched probably involved anthropomorphic animals.)

Also, people are joking about omegaverse because the pack description said you could become an alpha or whatever. Um, guys, the term alpha existed before omegaverse. It’s been part of werewolf lore for ... pretty much forever? Like seriously, any portrayal of werewolves that involves pack dynamics will have a character who is the alpha. It’s inaccurate wolf science, but it’s become part of the werewolf mythos. Just because the world “alpha” is there doesn’t mean it’s omegaverse.

It feels like the people complaining don’t actually like werewolf stuff. Whatever. I already pre-ordered it. Even if it’s a buggy mess on release like My Wedding Stories, the CAS and BB items are my jam, and I have been waiting for werewolves.

[duckprintspress]

What is a Story?

When Duck Prints Press put out our call for applicants, we asked everyone to submit “a sample of their work (between 1,000 and 2,000 words)… [that] must function as a short story.” When we reviewed the 100+ samples we received, we noticed many areas where writers commonly struggled. Based on what we learned, we’ve planned a number of blog posts to discuss these challenging areas, and we’ve decided to tackle one of the most frequent issues first. Many otherwise strong submissions lost points on our rubric line regarding “plot and events,” and specifically, they scored a 1 or a 2 because “the story has no plot (for example, is a vignette).” 

So, this begs the question, what is a story, and, of course, what isn’t a story?

(note that throughout this post, I use the word “narrative” to refer to any amount of text that may or may not be a story, and I use story only in a more narrow, specific sense.)

What is a story?

The answer is deceptively simple: a story is any narrative that has a plot. But...what is a plot? There are many ways to define a plot, but at its most basic, a plot has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and by the ending, something has changed. If, at the end of the story, nothing has changed, then it’s not a story. However, even if something has changed, it’s still not necessarily a story, because characters and time-frame also influence the definition. A narrative without at least one character is not a story. Likewise, a narrative time-frame, if it’s discussing events at a meta-level (“this happened, then this happened, then this happened”) may show that changes occur, but it’s still not a story - it’s an overview or an outline. The lines, of course, can be blurry - and where any given author, reader, or DPP reviewer draws the line between “this is a story” and “this isn’t a story” will vary. 

How is a story communicated to the reader?

To function as a story, the narrative must include characters. Now, character doesn’t necessarily have to mean person, or even require sentience, but there must be some point of view being explored, and if the character is an animal or an inanimate object, writing it as a character will require a degree of anthropomorphizing. The key aspect is that the character has some form of agency - some ability to interact with and influence their surroundings. This character will have a point of view and a perspective that affects how they perceive the story’s setting, and by the end of the story this character should have either changed themselves, or changed their surroundings, or changed their relationships. The circumstances around this character must be different by the end of the story than they were at the beginning - or else it’s not a story.

What is change?

As part of the narrative, one or more characters in the story must engage in some form of activity that results in the world around them changing. Writing advice most oftenly calls this “conflict,” but honestly? I hate that word. The classic couching of “person vs. self, person vs. person, person vs. nature, person vs. society, person vs. fate” as the available types of conflict is tired. Defining the only kind of change as conflict and specifically describing it as “x versus y” is to automatically get a potential writer thinking in terms of antagonism. While antagonism is one available type of change, it’s not the only, and while many pieces of writing advice point out that these “versus” constructions don’t mean enmity by nature...why not simply choose a less confusing construction, one that doesn’t require addenda to explain the existence of narratives that clearly are stories but are less “versus” and more “and” - “person and self,” “person and person,” “person and nature,” “person and society,” “person and fate.” I’ve opted to use the word change, because one of the clearest ways to tell if a narrative is a story or not is to look at the nature of the character(s) are at the beginning, and look at the nature of them at the end, and say - what’s different? Maybe they’ve built something. Maybe they’ve reached a new understanding. Maybe they’ve conquered a challenge. Maybe they’ve altered their perspective. Maybe they’ve learned something. Maybe, they’ve changed the world, or maybe, they’ve just changed a light bulb - but something has changed.

Before some writing snob comes at me and says, “okay, fine, we dare you to come up with a plot that doesn’t fit into the classic five conflict types” ...of course we can’t. That model functions because all stories can be shoehorned into it, as long as very loose definition of “conflict” and “versus” are used. But because it’s described in oppositional terms, a lot of writers get distracted by that terminology and think there has to be, well, a conflict, in the narrow definition of the word. And that’s clearly absurd - many of our favorite fanfiction tropes, for example, are fluffy and comforting and soft precisely because they’re not about conflict, they’re about harmony. Yes, “enemies to lovers” is wonderful, but so is “friends to lovers.” Two people going on a date that ends with a marriage proposal is a story: they started out as a couple and ended engaged. Something has changed - their relationship status. But to call that “person versus person,” while perhaps technically correct, is ludicrous. Now, to keep it interesting, there might be some “person versus self” - “I’m not worthy of this love, omg do they really care for me, oh will society give us problems if we say yes?” which is how it can be shoehorned into the “conflict” model. But be it ever so soft, and their love ever so accepted, and their faith in each other ever so steady - if there really is no conflict, just those two people meeting up and having a nice night and ending in a proposal...it’s still a story. To say it’s not a story because there was no conflict, only an advancement of their relationship...yes, a story like that is borderline to being a vignette or “slice of life” narrative. Certainly, if there’s zero sources of tension, it may not be a very interesting story, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a story. 

What else does a story need?

Honestly - not much. Don’t get us wrong - a story is stronger if it has a setting so that it doesn’t just take place in endless blankness. A story with multiple characters but no form of dialog (verbal or non-verbal) may be a little flat. A story where something changes but some of the introduced plot elements aren’t resolved will feel incomplete to a reader. A story without any negativity could be boring. Stories lacking these elements may not be good stories...or they could be amazing, and innovative, showing how a tale can be told without elements we usually consider essential! As long as something or someone has changed, and the story is told in a narrative, descriptive format that includes a character - it’s a story.

What isn’t a story?

Things that aren’t stories fall into two broad categories:

Narratives that have description, characters, dialogue, setting, and other story elements, but nothing changes. Examples of this are “slice of life” narratives and what, in fandom-parlance, would be called an episode coda or canon insert - a chunk of narrative deliberately meant to make a bridge between two established events but in which nothing can change because the surrounding events remain established. (A coda or insert might be a story, it varies.)

Narratives that are either entirely “show” (for example, a vignette) or entirely “tell” (for example, a synopsis),  These can also be seen as relating to time - either there’s little or no passage of time (usually the case in vignettes) or far too much passage of time (usually the case in synopses). Narratives like this may or may not include a character, but even if they do, they’re still not stories. Why not? Because any story that is entirely “show” and involves minimal passage of time is unlikely to result in change, and instead will be an extended description of a moment. And any story that is entirely “tell” and depicts a large swath are overviews - there’s no element to actually grab a reader and no reason the reader should care about this dry relationship of events. That’s not a story - it’s a history textbook.

Drawing the lines between these categories can be difficult, and to some extent will come down to taste. Anyone who says there’s a hard-and-fast rule in writing is a liar. Just because a synopsis or a “slice of life” narrative isn’t usually a story doesn’t mean they will never be one. But, in general, if you’re looking at a piece of work and you’re trying to determine if it’s a story or not, there are some signs that will strongly suggest it’s not a story:

There are no characters.

There is no setting.

Nothing has changed between the beginning and ending of the narrative.

The entire narrative is an extended description of a single person/object/setting.

The entire narrative could easily be reworded into a sequence of, “thing one happened, then thing two happened, then thing three happened, then thing four happened.”

The narrative feels like a “pause,” or a “bridge” that takes place between two events that aren’t depicted in the narrative.

A central conflict or issue is introduced or described in details, but nothing is done to try to solve the issue.

Now, for the most important part of this discussion of what isn’t a story: writing something that isn’t a story isn’t a bad thing! Especially in fanfiction communities, we live for self-indulgent narratives that make us happy. We love to see those “moments between.” We live for a thought-out thousand-year history for some setting that didn’t originally have that much background. These kinds of narratives are fun to write, and especially when they’re part of an existing franchise, can be a delight to read. We are not saying that there is literally anything wrong with writing a narrative that isn’t a story. 

That said, Duck Prints Press’s applicant call specifically asked authors to submit a writing sample that was a story, with the eventual goal of selecting authors to write short stories for an anthology. Which is to say: there’s nothing wrong at all with writing “slice of life” stories, codas, canon inserts, vignettes, or synopses - it’s simply not what we asked people to submit in this specific case, and we’ve come to see that a lot of people submitted non-stories without an apparent understanding of the difference, and we wanted to explain that difference.

But, to everyone reading this: write whatever brings you joy, in as much detail or vagueness as makes you happy, and share it with whoever you want. Just also understand, that for many types of narratives, if you’re asked “is that a story?” it’s not. That’s not to create a hierarchy - they’re all equal as art forms, they’re just not the same.

Okay I kinda understand this in theory but what do these differences actually look like in practice?

In long-form works, it’s usually relatively easy to recognize what is a story and what isn’t. Almost every novel ever published has a plot, and has things change, and is therefore a story. (though there are exceptions - Wikipedia lists a few longer vignettes and, when done thoughtfully, it can be astonishingly effective.) However, in shorter works, it can be difficult to tell the difference - and, as previously mentioned, the lines can blur.

In the interest of giving an idea of what the differences are, here are a few examples I quickly cooked up to try to show you all, since I’ve done a lot of “telling” so far (this blog post: also not a story, ha!) and very little demonstration. These are each around 150 words, to show that even in a tiny word count, any of these narrative structures is a viable choice. (Sorry these aren’t high literature - I just threw them together for this post, so I’d have something that suited.)

(read more)

A story - a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, where something changes:

The door slammed open. Looking up from her embroidery, Victoria blinked as Margaret strode into the room.There was an air of expectancy that was inexplicable to Victoria; she grew more confused when Margaret approached and dropped to one knee.

“What are you doing?” Heart pounding, Victoria attempted self-restraint, but she couldn’t rein in her hope, because it almost looked like...it seemed like...but--

“Proposing,” announced Margaret, pulling a velvet-covered box from her pocket and opening to reveal an emerald set in a gold band.

“But you can’t!”

Margaret tilted her head to the side and frowned. “Why not?”

Objections occurred to Victoria, but examining them...she couldn’t think of a one that Margaret wouldn’t demolish with her usual brilliance. “You know what? You���re right. Who’s to stop us? And...I accept.”

And as Margaret slipped the ring onto Victoria’s finger, she knew: there could be no objection. Nothing had ever felt so right in her life.

“Slice of life” - a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, where nothing changes:

“What a day!” said James, dropping onto the couch with an exhausted sigh. 

“I know what you mean,” Tom agreed. He fumbled a hand across the cushion separating them, and James delighted in the simple comfort of threading their fingers together.

A beep, beep, beep sounded in the kitchen, announcing that the microwave had finished nuking their leftovers.

“You getting that?” asked Tom.

“It’s your turn!” James countered.

“But I don’t want to let go of your hand.” Tom gave his hand a squeeze, and a pleased glow suffused James’s chest.

It was Tom’s turn to retrieve their dinner.

But Tom was right - holding hands was wonderful.

“Let’s get it together,” James suggested. 

Hesitating, Tom remained still as James sit up and gave a tug on their joined arms, then he broke into a smile and rose at James’s side.

“I love the way you think.”

“I love you, too, darling”

And together - always together - they got their dinner.

“Bridge” scene, episode coda, or canon insert-style fic - a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, where nothing changes:

Arriving home after the battle, Sandy opened the rough-hewn door and shed her damaged armor. Her dented cuirass had left an aching bruise across her chest; she carried it to the smithy out back for repair in the morning. A gash on her thigh throbbed where an arrow had pierced the straps holding her greaves in places; she brought them to her leather-working station. Nicks and fissures marred her once-gleaming sword blade. All Sandy wanted was to collapse in bed, but resisted the pull of relaxation, because blood limned the damaged places red, and repair to the damaged weapon couldn’t wait. Taking a seat, placed her feet on the treadles that set her whet stone to spinning and set about polishing out every imperfection.

Yes, she was exhausted.

But her sword must be cleaned, and smoothed, and honed, and prepared.

Sandy must be prepared.

There would always be another battle to be fought.

Vignette, a narrative without a beginning, a middle, or an end, which may or may not have a character, and nothing changes and in which the emphasis is on showing, rather than telling (but, as in this example, a combination may be used):

The wind blew chill down the narrow mountain pass. All was silent, save for the rush of the breeze. All was still, save where gusts stirred the tall grasses and the branches of trees that reached, claw-like, toward the sky. 

Once upon a time, a stream had carved this cut through the cliffs, forcing its way through soft chalk and hard shale, leaving jagged stones that emerged from the steep pass walls like teeth. The stream was long dry, now, only water-smoothed stones strewn across the ground to show where it had ever been.

Once upon a time, travellers had traversed the dried-up rill bed, pounding down the dirt, knocking the rocks aside, leaving scars where their fires burned. They’d lived, and laughed, and explored, and sought...and left, never to return.

Now, there was nothing: nothing but the storm.

And all was silent.

And all was still.

And the wind blew, chill, down the narrow mountain pass.

Synopsis, a narrative with a beginning, a middle and an end, which may or may not have characters, and where something changes, and in which  the emphasis is on telling rather showing:

Emperor Xiang Zhen was born in 9884 to Dowager Empress Luo Zexi and the warlord Xiang Yijun. After his birth, there was a long period of strife. Those who supported Xiang Yijun’s claim to the throne battled those who still supported the Dowager Empress’s deceased husband Peng Zhenya. Eventually, the factions found common ground when Xiang Zhen came of age, and he was enthroned in 9902. 

With his reign came peace and prosperity. The arts flourished. Scholarship advanced, and many great Dao masters arose, using cultivation to rid the land of evil’s left by the long war. Xiang Zhen longed to join a Night Hunt himself, but he was trapped by his political position. He didn’t dare risk the fragile stability in the Empire. If something happened to him, the results could be catastrophic. So he studied, and ruled, and adjudicated, and endowed, and endured.

Xiang Zhen did as he must.

But, oh...he wished he weren’t alone.

I know this is long, so we’ll leave this discussion at this point. Hopefully you found it helpful, and please do let me know if you have any questions! Duck Prints Press is always here to offer support to writers, and we love getting writing asks!

[thecaffeinebookwarrior]

Monster of the Week: The Undead!

From spooky scary skeletons to the original zombies, let’s have a look at the undead who have risen around the globe! This will not include vampires (which I have already compiled a post on) or ghosts (which I plan to compile a post on.)

Note that many of these can best be understood -- or only understood -- in their original cultural context, and I encourage you to continue your research if the lore interests you.

Skeletons/Skeletal Creatures

I am, for whatever reason, enthusiastic about skeletons. There’s a drama to them. They look like they’re perpetually grinning, or grimacing, which makes them oddly relatable. As an artist, I’m always thinking about them as the framework for poses. 

More importantly, there’s one in all of us -- sorry if that made you uncomfortable -- which makes them a universally recurring being in global folklore. Let’s take a look at just a few.

Gashadokuro

Literally translating to “rattling skull,” the Gashadokuro is also called Odokoru (giant skull) or simply “the hungry skeleton.” That basically tells you all you need to know. 

These big boys (and I mean REALLY big) wander around the countryside at night. Their name derives from the eerie rattling noise produced by their giant skulls. As chill as this may sound, the Gashadokuro is not actually chill at all, and if you come across them they will not hesitate bite your head off. This may seem like a jerk move, since they don’t even have a stomach, but they need the energy of the living in order to sustain themselves.

Like most undead fellas on this list, the Gashadokuro has its origins in the real world. They are thought to originate from the mass-graves, usually of those who died under violent or inhumane circumstances, the supernatural byproduct of countless skeletons. 

The first Gashadokuro was thought to have originated after a specific bloody rebellion, in which the bereaved, sorceress daughter of a samurai summoned a giant skeleton from the mass grave of the rebelling soldiers and used it to attack the city. Queen behavior, if you ask me.

Santa Muerte

Image Source

Let’s conclude this portion with my favorite skeleton (excluding Baron Samedi, who doesn’t count, as he is often depicted as a man, or a man with a skull-like face), the goddess/folk saint Santa Muerte.  

I still have a lot to learn about the rich folklore surrounding Santa Muerte, but to my understanding, she was born of a combination of pre-Columbian Indigenous religions and Mexican-American folk Catholicism. 

Depicted as a skeleton in beautiful, feminine attire and considered to be embodiment of death, Santa Muerte is a healing and protective figure. She is beloved by legions of worshippers, despite condemnations from the Catholic church, and symbolizes a culturally positive relationship with death. 

Despite appearances, she is a life-affirming figure.

Zombies and Reanimated Corpses:

The Draugr

When we hear “zombie,” we don’t traditionally think of “Norse mythology.” And yet, the Nordics had their very own zombie mythos, boasting some truly terrifying undead.

It is said that they first emerge from their graves as little more than wisps of smoke and a stench of decay, before adopting a humanoid form that boasts superhuman strength, the ability to change size at will, and the ability to shape-shift. 

They aren’t mindless -- far from it. They boast an anthropomorphic intelligence, which makes them all the more dangerous.  

As to what drives them from their graves? Jealousy and bitterness towards the living. Relatable, honestly. 

The Jiangshi

(Note: I wish they were all as adorable as the one in this gif.)

This Chinese hopping corpse may have evolved into more of a vampire by Western influences, but it was originally far more zombie-like. And a unique zombie at that. 

Due to rigor mortis, the Jiangshi hops stiffly from place to place, holding its arms straight out. What’s even more singular is their origin. Try to guess. Go ahead, try. You won’t be able to.

The Jiangshi is what occurs when a bereaved family, lacking the proper funds to send their loved one’s body back to their ancestral land for burial, hires a necromancing corpse driver to reanimate the cadaver and guide it as it hops back to its resting place. They’d travel at night to avoid or minimize decay, either prodded by a stick or to the beat of a drum.

Other ways to create a Jiangshi include improper burial, suicide, or possession.

Looking upon a Jiangshi is said to be bad luck, and presumably very unpleasant. However, the real problem is their insatiable appetite. 

But fear not: if you see an unhealthy looking fellow hopping towards you with pasty, possibly decaying skin, you can protect yourself with mirrors, the hooves of a black donkey, or the wood of a peach tree. They can also be scared off by the sound of a crowing rooster, though that would require a bit of planning, and the cooperation of the rooster in question. Which, knowing roosters, is unlikely. 

Haitian Zombies

All legends of the undead have roots in real tragedies, but this one is particularly upsetting -- and the source of the zombie legend in the Western world today.

The enslaved people of Haiti believed that death would set them free, sending them back to an idyllic version of their homeland unburdened by colonialism. But only if death came naturally. Suicide would turn them into mindless husks, carrying out the drudgery of their captors. A haunting parallel to the practice of slavery itself. 

The concept was introduced to a contemporary audience by the 1932 film White Zombie, which sees a white “voodoo master” (who clearly didn’t know anything about the actual Voodoo religion) using witchcraft to create obedient slaves. He eventually uses this (ahem) “”voodoo”” on a white woman to try and force her to fall in love with him. 

With the term “zombie” in public consciousness, it became an applicable allegory for all of society’s ills, and can now be used to refer to anything from mob mentality to consumerism. But few are as haunting and as disturbing as its origins.

Videos on zombies: 

The Origin of the Zombie, from Haiti to the US

Where Zombies Come From

100 Hundred Years of Zombie Evolution in Pop Culture

Best Contemporary Zombie Movies*

*That I know of. Will update with more.

Night of the Living Dead - Though White Zombie introduced the term, it was arguably this film that popularized zombies as we know them today, particularly as an allegory for herd mentality and consumerism. Its successors, including Day of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead, prove similarly influential. 

The Evil Dead Trilogy - Established that zombies can be fun, while also serving as an allegory for various societal problems. Also features undead that are refreshingly ravenous and evil without necessarily being mindless.

The Re-Animator - These days, the average zombie movie pushes the bounds of creativity is “make ‘em faster!” The Re-Animator’s take on the genre, however, would make Mary Shelley proud. Based loosely on the Lovecraft story, “Herbert West - Reanimator,” the films greatest triumph is its ability to have fun with its grisly premise, and compel the audience to have fun, too. It’s also a cautionary tale about why it’s important to be careful while getting a roommate. 

Shaun of the Dead - I’m not kidding. This film is great, and shows that you don’t need a serious tone to be heartfelt, scary, or provide a thought-provoking social commentary. Way back when I was a sixteen-year-old college freshman, I turned up to class as a zombie cheerleader, and my psychology professor recommended Shaun of the Dead to me. She’s a woman of impeccable taste, and it did not disappoint. 

28 Days Later - Before Cillian Murphy gave us Tommy Shelby, a gangster so pretty he could give Al Capone a sexual identity crisis, he was proving his mettle in the zombie-addled UK. For 2020 reasons, watching him wander the abandoned streets of London with a questionable haircut feels very topical. Add a stellar performance from Naomie Harris, and there’s a reason it sent me into a bisexual panic it’s considered a modern classic of the genre. 

Little Monsters - An egregiously underrated flick, featuring a kindergarten teacher (who happens to be, you know, Lupita Nyong’o) protecting her class during a zombie outbreak. A must watch if you want a zombie movie with a powerhouse lead, a happy ending, and perhaps the most badass kindergarten teacher in cinematic history. 

[zaph1337]

Monster Hunter Rating 21: Khezu, the Blank Stare

When I reviewed Basarios, I made a joke about how the devs likely gave it human teeth over sharp teeth because the latter might not give children nightmares, but I don’t actually think that the devs ever intended Basarios to be more terrifying than any other monster in the game. This monster, however, is literally the stuff of nightmares, and I’m not misusing “literally” here. This may be the longest review I’ve written yet, so buckle up. Time to get spooky with Khezu!

(How it appears in Monster Hunter 1)

(How it appears in Monster Hunter Rise)

Appearance: I think there’s been a mistake here; last I checked, Capcom wasn’t making Silent Hill games. Seriously, this thing would fit right into that series, and not just ‘cause its phallic neck lends itself well to metaphors. The pale, veiny skin, the leech-like mouth, the complete lack of eyes...Khezu’s unlike any other monster in the series because it’s the only monster that’s meant to be horrifying to look at. It’s got flabby, tattered wings and gecko-like feet, but its main characteristic (other than the head) is its tail, the tip of which can open up into a suction cup that allows Khezu to stick to ceilings.

Obviously, Khezu’s an abomination that came from a really dark place in someone’s mind, but that’s just it: Khezu is a monster that appeared in an MH developer’s nightmare either before or during the production of the first Monster Hunter game, and said developer (I don’t actually remember who) decided to put it in the game. I learned of this from the Twitch streams of a streamer called DuncanCan’tDie, who’s a huge MH fan that’s on great terms with Capcom. Unfortunately, I can’t find any other sources for this claim, but I don’t think he’s lying for a few reasons; firstly, like I said, he’s on great terms with Capcom. He’s friends with some people who work there, and he even has a tattoo designed by someone on the MH team he called “Kaname-san” (who didn’t actually give him the tattoo, but drew the design that a tattoo artist used) and the only person who could go by that name is Kaname Fujioka, the man who literally directed several MH games, including the first one, and who was the art director for Monster Hunter World. So yeah. Duncan and Capcom get along great, and if he was spreading false rumors, they’d probably know about it.

The second reason I believe Duncan about Khezu’s origin is that someone once came into one of his streams (and I was there at the time) and started spouting “lore” about two monsters that looked like they could be related, but actually weren’t. Duncan flat out told this person that what they were claiming wasn’t mentioned anywhere and asked for sources...which the loregiver did not provide. In fact, after Duncan started getting on their case, I don’t think they said a word for the rest of the stream. Duncan believes that this person was just making stuff up to sound like they knew a lot about MH and weren’t aware that he was an MH expert, and I doubt that someone who would call someone out on that would do the same thing, especially if he had a reputation to uphold.

I apologize if I spent a lot of time talking about that, but I didn’t want people getting on my case because they couldn’t find anything to support my claims. But in conclusion, I believe that Khezu truly was born of a nightmare, and that’s awesome. It makes the Silent Hill comparison even more fitting since the enemies in those games are basically projections of the protagonists’ psyches. Disturbing enemies are much more effective if they scare(d) the people who created them, and Khezu is certainly disturbing. Because of that, as well as its ominous origin, I’m giving it a 9/10.

Behavior: Khezu mostly inhabit caves, jungles, and swamps due to the need for their skin to be moisturized, though they usually only leave caves to hunt, which they don’t have to do very often due to the plentiful fat beneath their skin, which also keeps them warm. Their favorite hunting strategy is to ambush their prey from a location usually concealed by darkness, which is made easier by their extendable necks. However, their reliance on darkness, as well as their preference to dwell in caves, has made them completely blind and reliant on their other senses; despite not having visible nostrils or ears, Khezu have great hearing and a very good sense of smell. Back to hunting, while they need to subdue larger prey, smaller ones, like Kelbi, are slowly swallowed whole...which is apparently something you can actually witness in the games, according to TV Tropes (I normally stick to the wiki and what I already know for resources, but I went to the “Monster Hunter / Nightmare Fuel” page while searching for another source for Khezu’s origin as a nightmare). As if this thing needed to be more disturbing, it doesn’t always kill its prey before it tries to swallow it, so the Kelbi you can see it eat is constantly struggling as the Khezu swallows it bottom-first. That’s...that’s messed up. But it gets worse.

Practically every monster in this series isn’t any more intelligent than what we consider a normal animal to be. Aside from Lynians, which are people, the smartest monster I’ve talked about is the Velociprey, which might not be as smart as, say, an irl crow, which is very intelligent by the standards of nonhuman animals. What I’m getting at here is that most of the monsters in this series don’t really take any sadistic pleasure in killing and eating prey; they just do it to survive. But Khezu is different. In several MH games, including Rise, the first time you go on a quest to kill a specific monster, the gameplay is preceded by a cutscene that shows off how powerful or intimidating that monster is (and in Rise’s case, you also get a poem). Here’s Khezu’s intro, and I want you to pay attention to what Khezu does from 0:24-0:30:

That’s right: this thing “looked” right at the monster it was going to eat, and smiled. That isn’t just me anthropomorphizing it, either; I’ve seen what Khezu looks like outside of that cutscene, and even with its mouth closed it has a neutral expression, so it smiling actually means something, and considering the context, it’s obvious what the devs wanted us to take from it: Khezu likes killing. It enjoyed the prospect of swallowing that monster whole while it was still alive and struggling, which means that this is the first monster I’ve talked about that we can definitively say is evil rather than just an animal. Rather fitting for a living nightmare, I would say. And if you thought all that was disturbing, I have some...unfortunate news. I hope you aren’t eating anything right now, ‘cause this next part is just gross.

Y’know how some wasps lay their eggs inside other bugs so the eggs have incubation they can eat when they hatch? Well, uh...Khezu do that, too. And they’re hermaphrodites that, from what I can gather, don’t need to mate, so any adult Khezu is capable of injecting another monster with its “whelps” (not saying that Khezu are always “pregnant,” just saying that any of them can be). And you know the really crazy part? After everything I said about Khezu, there are still people in the MH world that tame them and keep them as pets. Why would you want to have a slimy, flabby, sadistic, parasitoid, 14-to-40-foot abomination as a pet!? God, people are so freaking weird.

EDIT (05/07/2021): My older brother reminded me that I forgot about one of the odder aspects of Khezu; when you enter a fight with a Main Monster, its battle theme plays (don’t know if every monster has a unique theme, but several do, to my knowledge), but Khezu has no theme to speak of. I don’t know if this is true in every game, or even if it was intentional at first, but it’s still both funny and eerie at the same time. There’s no background music until you get in a fight, so if you somehow tick off a Khezu without seeing it, then it can sneak up on you. “But Zaph, the moment a monster enters ‘fight mode,’ it roars! So the Khezu will give away its position!” See, you’d be right about that if it wasn’t for the fact that, according to TV Tropes at least, Khezu’s roar sounds just like wind--howling wind, yes, but wind all the same. I don’t know if there’s any howling wind SFX in the areas where Khezu live, so for all I know you’ll still be able to identify it in a hurry, but just imagine what that’s like in-universe! Imagine that you’re walking around in the Frost Islands or something and hear a chilling wind from out of nowhere. Unless you’re an experienced hunter, you’d likely have no idea if that was a Khezu or not, so you wouldn’t know if it’s too late to run or not, or even if you should run at all. Going back out of universe, the details I just described are very nice touches to a monster that was already horrifying in behavior, so I’m bumping the score here up from the 7 I initially gave it to 8/10.

Abilities: All of the “Flying Wyverns” I’ve talked about so far have had a lot of trouble with the whole “flying” part, and Khezu are no exception; they’re better at it than Diablos and Gravios, but they still need to flap really frantically to stay in the air. They’re great at jumping, though, and their gecko-like feet allow them to scale walls and stick to ceilings, something that their tails also allow them to do. Khezu are Thunder-element monsters capable of discharging electricity in a manner of ways, including shooting balls of it from their mouths and emitting it all around their bodies. Since Khezu like to spend time around water, their attacks are even more dangerous, as everything near them will likely be wet and therefore more conductive. This also applies to Khezu themselves, which may be why they stick their tails onto the ground before discharging electricity; they ground themselves so that they don’t shock themselves. Finally, Khezu saliva is very dangerous; we don’t know if it’s electric or acidic, but anything that gives off smoke when it touches something probably isn’t good for your health, which is why owning a pet Khezu is so dangerous; their drool can literally kill you. 7/10.

Equipment: Most Khezu weapons are as interesting as you’d expect them to be, considering the monster they’re made from. Most of them have a horror aesthetic, like this Great Sword called the Khezu Shock Sword:

I just noticed that the skin is actually stretched over the blade, rather than being what the blade’s attached to. Gross, but I never expected Khezu weapons to look pretty. There are also weapons which emphasize the monster’s electric aspect, like this Gunlance called the Full Voltage:

It still has Silent Hill vibes due to its “rusty hospital” aesthetic, and looking at it long enough reveals little details it inherited from Khezu. Speaking of hospitals, there are a couple of weapons based off of syringes, such as the Khezu Syringe, which is a Light Bowgun, and a Lance from MHFG that’s literally a giant hypodermic needle, but I didn’t want to show those off in case they triggered anyone with needle phobia. The last weapon I’m gonna show will be very familiar to those of us who’ve played the Rise demo a lot: the Insect Glaive known as the Bolt Chamber!

I like the green tube running from the sac between the blade and the shaft of the glaive; according to the Bolt Chamber’s in-game description, it uses that “pulsating device” to steal energy from its targets. If you mentioned that to me before I grabbed its image for this review, I probably would have asked how it did that. If you then pointed out the mouth at the glaive’s end, I would have thanked you for cursing me with the knowledge of its existence. Seriously, I’ve used this thing probably more than 20 times, and until I saw this render, I never noticed that. As for the armor, here’s the Blademaster Khezu Armor from MHGU:

The male armor here is almost identical to the one from Rise--which sadly doesn’t have any pictures on the wiki yet--and yes, it does look like the main character from Assassin’s Creed. The female armor, on the other hand, looks almost like a nurse’s outfit, especially with that metal thing on the woman’s head with the cross. The more I look at this equipment, the more I feel like they wanted people to think of Silent Hill, and if so, that’s pretty cool. I’ve got another armor set to show you; the Gunner version of the Khezu R Armor from MHGU:

Jesus, is this an armor set or a medical emergency? I can’t imagine bandages are very effective at protecting your body from physical damage, but thankfully it looks like most of them are just covering actual armor...meaning that the people who designed this stuff in-universe wanted the people wearing it to look like they were in an accident. Not sure I get why, but I’m not here to--actually, I am here to judge, so never mind; it’s gross. Also the female set has Khezu mouths as arm coverings, which is someone’s fetish, I’m sure. The equipment as a whole is macabrely interesting (TIL that macabrely is a real word) and calls to mind a fascinating horror game franchise, so 8/10.

Final Thoughts and Tally: I figured that Khezu was gonna be interesting, but I didn’t know how far the devs would take the horror theming. Everything about this monster is creepy; it looks disturbing, it acts even worse, and its equipment makes me feel like I need a tetanus shot just from looking at it. But that’s not at all a bad thing...unless you’re really squeamish, in which case you were likely cringing this whole review. I’d apologize, but you made the choice to stick through ‘till the end. 8/10.

[bestworstcase]

farran rereads lost lagoon: chapters 3-4

- a shot-put ball, according to my cursory research, weighs in the neighborhood of 6-16 pounds. leila howland expects me to believe that princess “hoisted an adult woman 70 ft into the air on the daily with nothing but a pulley and raw upper body strength” rapunzel has a hard time picking up a shot.

anyways

- rapunzel thinks about how she used to talk to herself in her tower when she was isolated (and lonely) but stopped once she came to corona, and this girl looked like she was talking to herself, and it gave rapunzel this weird sense of familiarity! now what in the world could that mean? its so subtle i can’t quite put my finger on it.

again, romance novel.

less sardonically - i will say that tts cass has never struck me as an especially lonely person. yes, rapunzel is quite possibly her first ever close friend, but cass also appears to be on pleasant terms with her coworkers and has at least one or two friendships or mentor-type relationships among the guards (stan and pete). animals in tts are anthropomorphized enough to qualify as humans, and cassandra is unequivocally friends with owl and fidella. she is friendly if not friends with at least one coronan citizen (monty). she’s utterly unfazed by crowley’s crabbiness. she’s able to get along with the pub thugs. in vardaros she befriends vex with ease and makes herself right at home among the citizenry at large. there is zero friction between her and lance - at most she rolls her eyes when he’s being ridiculous. and out of the main cast, cassandra is the one who seems closest to varian in s1 - like, she has actual bonding moments with him. 

THE POINT BEING, cassandra may not have a lot of close friends, but she is nevertheless personable and demonstrates the ability to adapt herself to suit a variety of social environments. maybe i’m projecting here - i have very few close offline friends because my preference for in-person socialization is for it to be very casual - but taken together this doesn’t scream ‘lonely person’ to me. it instead says ‘person who finds social fulfillment in a wide net of friendly acquaintanceships’ and possibly also ‘person who finds close, emotionally intimate relationships worthwhile but very demanding to maintain, and so seldom or never seeks them out.’

this, absolutely, a very subjective reading of her character - it is just as plausible for cass to be someone who is socially competent but feels inwardly unfulfilled until rapunzel comes along. but even in that reading, this implication that cassandra is as deeply lonely, as thoroughly isolated in corona as rapunzel was in her tower is baldly absurd.

- i think i will have more thoughts about how arianna is characterized and the relationship she and rapunzel have with each other later in the story. for now it feels rather mechanical, and like arianna exists in the story to facilitate cassunzel happening.

- cassandra comes across to me like she has an anxiety disorder written by someone who doesn’t quite know how to convey how that feels? she catastrophizes: what if rapunzel thinks cass attacked her? will she get in trouble? but then she stops to make snide comments about rapunzel’s security detail ‘[falling] down on the job’ and concludes with an impressive amount of certainty that rapunzel isn’t going to make a big deal of it, after all. that… isn’t how anxiety works?

then, immediately, she finds a note from her father scolding her for slacking off—making it clear that she is indeed in trouble, like she feared—and her response is to scoff and throw it away. zero concern about being in trouble. zero worry about the consequences she might face for refusing the pointed “offer” of being rapunzel’s lady-in-waiting. like… this isn’t anxiety. i’m positive it’s meant to convey anxiety, but it comes across as cassandra just being… melodramatic and rude and grumpy. like a teenager. it’s unpleasant. and it bears very little resemblance to tts cass, who expresses a clear and consistent anxiety regarding the security of her job and the looming threat of a convent.

- secondly: “Friedborg reported that you missed your afternoon duties AGAIN. Please be advised that this is unacceptable. The queen is looking for a lady-in-waiting to serve Princess Rapunzel. It would be a great opportunity for you, and you must show the queen how prepared you are to train her in the ways of the court.” i am 100% convinced that howland thought cass was rapunzel’s age or younger. if friedborg is effectively cassandra’s direct supervisor, and she is reporting absences to cassandra’s father instead of addressing this with cassandra directly, the only explanation that makes sense is that cassandra is not of legal age.

- “Ladies don’t wield weapons, lead military strategy meetings, or race on horseback. Ladies do needlework, flower arranging, and hairstyling.”

sighs.

i am not going to argue that corona, in any incarnation, isn’t culturally sexist. it is. there are no women in the guard, no women in trades, no female business owners in the vein of monty or xavier or feldspar. besides rapunzel and arianna - who as the monarch’s spouse has very little in the way of actual political power - there are no women in the upper echelons of the government. besides cassandra, the only gnc women around are criminals. cass is denied even a chance to join the guard for no evident reason, even though her father allows eugene - a man he openly despises - to take the tests and then begrudgingly hires him when he passes. no one sees an issue with this, even though cassandra is demonstrably overqualified.

however.

howland makes this cultural sexism explicit text, and she does so in such a way that it implies something pretty horrifying about the already pretty horrifying corona-saporia unification backstory.

i am talking, of course, about general shampanier. you know, the female saporian general whom herz der sonne married when the two kingdoms were unified. the female saporian general who personally dueled der sonne for hours, according to under raps. the female saporian general who, forget military strategy meetings, led an entire goddamn army. i will accept the possibility that shampanier did not ride horses, because rapunzel’s return suggests that saporians have some sort of cultural objection to that. but this book predates rapunzel’s return by a large margin, and it isn’t canon anyway, so odds are the general shampanier of this story rode a warhorse at some point or another in her illustrious career of being the general of an army!!!

this woman - general shampanier - became the queen, the wife of arguably corona’s most historically important king, at a defining moment in coronan political and cultural history. tts and lost lagoon would both have us believe that this was a romantic, peaceful union between two people and two nations, but a few hundred years later - this. ladies don’t fight. ladies don’t belong in the war tent. ladies don’t ride horses. cass takes these things for granted as facts of life. but general shampanier did all of those things, and she did them extremely well, and she became corona’s queen.

WHAT HAPPENED?! WHAT HAPPENED TO SHAMPANIER’S LEGACY?

how did corona go from a warrior-queen to this, in just a few hundred years? the most plausible answer is that the background radiation of sexism and, perhaps, anti-saporian bias was powerful enough to unravel any cultural impact she may have otherwise had, deep enough to render her an outlier, an aberration, an exception to the rule that women do not act like that.

even arguing here that ‘lady’ specifically means ‘noblewoman’ doesn’t add up - because, again, general shampanier became THE QUEEN. you don’t get more noblewoman than that!

it feels unfair to judge this book with details added in season 3—such as the fact that shampanier is evidently not buried with herz der sonne—but this total lack of a cultural impact from general shampanier, queen of corona, feels very telling even without taking those tidbits of extra-textual information into consideration.

and good god, saporia hasn’t even properly entered the narrative yet! this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg!

*deep breath*

moving. on.

- continuing the theme of cass being a child larping as a guard recruit: she has a closetful of weapons which she maintains to the exacting standards of the handbook, but skips out on her job to “train” in secret because evidently she’ll do ANYTHING to get on the guard except, you know, demonstrate a modicum of responsibility with the job she has now.

- moreover while i think cartography is a neat hobby for cassandra to have, it… doesn’t make a lot of sense if it’s part of some nebulous plan to ~prove herself worthy~ of being on the guard. like, cartography straight up isn’t a relevant skill, and while knowing the countryside could certainly be helpful for guard work in the event a criminal goes to ground in the wilderness, it’s like… it’s like if i applied for my current job, which is in software/tech support, by focusing an intensive amount of energy on teaching myself spanish. fluency in spanish is a useful skill and one that i could turn into an asset within the bounds of my current job, and it might be the deciding factor in me getting hired over someone else with equivalent experience and skill in computing and tech support (which is what the job involves) because, yes, some of our clients are ESL spanish-speakers. but it’s—there’s a disconnect. if i were in a tight competition to get this job i would be pouring my time into sharpening my programming skill and polishing up a portfolio of relevant work. i wouldn’t be devoting hours upon hours to learning spanish. right?

on the other hand—if cartography is a hobby cassandra is passionate about, and she’s 16 or 17 or 18 and she really likes the idea of being on the guard and really feels like she can do it and is bored with her dumb teenager job and desperate to get her dad to make her a guard without actually grasping what being a guard entails or the kind of work it involves or what she actually, realistically needs to do to have a shot, then… yeah, skipping work to play pretend with her weapons and convincing herself that her favorite hobby is totally going to prove to her dad that she’s ready to be a guard!!! makes perfect sense. it’s no different from tts varian tunnel visioning so hard on this fantasy of ‘i’ll surprise my whole village with hot running water and then my dad will be proud of me!!!’ that he neglects basic safety measures and accidentally blows the whole system up. it’s not realistic. it’s a fantasy. it’s play.

- the only time cassandra brings up eugene’s criminal past in tts is to mock him for being a loser. like. literally. the plot of fitzherbert pi kicks off when she calls him a “two-bit hood” and then when he fires back that flynn rider was a LEGEND!!! she fires back “key word being was. and… what is it you do now?” and that’s the only time she brings it up. granted this is 6-7 months into their relationship but… still, frankly i never got the impression that “former thief” was anywhere close to the top of cassandra’s list of reasons for hating eugene. he’s just a dick. she doesn’t like him because he’s a huge selfish jerk and she warms up to him after her starts behaving better.

- rapunzel goes to the ty lee school of flirting. just… laugh really hard at everything your crush says even if it’s not funny.

- despite my… intense and rapidly growing dislike for how cassandra is characterized in this book, her experiencing an actual physical reaction when rapunzel enters her space without permission is good. it’s about the boundaries. it has always been about the boundaries, and rapunzel crossing them, and the intractable messiness that arises from that.

- in fact: how many times does rapunzel cross boundaries in just this one little scene? oh, let me count the ways!

1 - when cassandra goes to shut the door, rapunzel ducks under her arm to enter the room. (eugene attempts to enter as well, but cass succeeds in blocking him.)

2 - missing or ignoring cassandra’s first “go away” hint about only playing individual sports.

3 - missing or ignoring cassandra’s second “go away” hint (“I let the silence get awkward.”)

4 - arranging cassandra’s invitation to the feast of elodie the great with the captain beforehand, so cass can’t use him as an excuse to decline.

5 - missing or ignoring cassandra’s obvious discomfort with this news, taking cassandra’s attendance at the feast as a done deal, and skipping straight to asking cassandra to sit next to her.

6 - in response to cassandra’s very diplomatic signal of not wanting to do that (“I sit wherever I’m assigned”), she declares that she’ll make sure cassandra is assigned to sit next to her.

7 - touching without permission, which makes cassandra flinch.

all of which results in cassandra making what she considers to be a “tactical surrender.” and then shutting and locking her door, because she feels so rattled. as i recall, lagoon is actually a lot mellower on the boundary violations front - and rapunzel actually learns better over the course of the story, which is probably the biggest reason that lost lagoon is not canon and cannot be canon to tts - but it feels worth writing this sort of thing out because, well. it is one of the dead horses i keep clobbering.

[ramblingguy54]

Amphibia’s Season 1 Finale: An Emotionally Charged Climax Of Brilliance

For those who haven’t watched Amphibia yet, or are only halfway through the series, I’d highly recommend not reading this post on the events of Season 1′s finale. This is an episode that should be experienced blind, rather than having it spoiled for yourself, unless you really don’t mind at all whatsoever.

No matter how many times I’ve re-watched Amphibia Season 1 on Disney+, I gotta say its finale was easily up on my list of top moments from animation back in the 2010′s. Amphibia starts off with some pretty simple straightforward slice of life stuff throwing in a nice mix of drama and comedy. Although, as the series has progressed, Amphibia’s storytelling makes it clear we’re in for a bigger shift with dramatic writing once Season 2 rolls around in the future. This last episode of Season 1, Reunion, gives me the impression it could very likely be transitioning into heavier stuff, like Gravity Falls did, when it’s second outing steps up to the plate eventually. Season 1′s finale has seriously impressed me with what it managed to accomplish in its themes that were set up as early as its first episode. We finally get more insight into what Anne’s daily routine with Sasha must’ve been like before she was suddenly dropped into this crazy lovable world of anthropomorphic frogs. What I really appreciate about this backstory is it reels us in just enough with seeing Anne and Sasha’s chemistry. It doesn’t do a big exposition dump about what good friends they are, rather Amphibia just simply shows us first hand. From the get go it’s made crystal clear that Anne and Sasha are very close, seeing how Sasha stands up for Anne when someone tries to steal her food on a special day no less.

Or else you can forget about coming to my awesome house party next week.

Happy Birthday, girl!

Like, extremely close given how happy these two are to see each other. Anne & Sasha’s interaction here is safe to say they go way back before their current school year. Almost as if, they’ve known each other since they were younger.

“Sasha’s been my friend since Kindergarten. If she says it’s fine. It’s fine.”

Anne’s piece of dialogue here makes it evident how much she cares/trusts about Sasha as an individual. Even enough to allow her in doing morally questionable stuff highlighted with this brief montage spotlighting Anne’s passive behavior towards Sasha’s dangerously impulsive attitude. Time and time again Anne willingly goes along with Sasha’s mentality of, “Do whatever we want.”,  because in her eyes that’s what being best friends is all about. Giving the other what they want regardless of the moral implications around whatever their actions are. Not to mention, when you take that into account that Anne has been around Sasha since preschool, it’s equivalent to putting your foot down on a family member. Anne doesn’t want to hurt Sasha, considering she’s like the sister Anne never had, being an only child and all. That further establishes emotional weight for something Anne fears to lose out on, which Sasha takes advantage of greatly.

Anne, this isn’t cute anymore. We’re meeting up with Marcy right now! End of discussion...

“Heh! She’s persuasive, right?”

Look, if a friend likes a pencil case, you get it for them. If your friend likes your new shoes, you give them to her. And if her friend wants you to steal a crazy music box from a thrift store, even if you really don’t want to, you do it okay? Because if you don’t, they might not want to be your friend anymore...

Sasha’s serious verbal abuse has made Anne completely twist around the very concept of what a healthy friendship basically is, overall. For whatever the reason at some point, be it the very school environment they both grew up in or personal family issues, Sasha has become an extremely toxic influence on Anne’s important decision making and it painfully shows here in her self-esteem. This kid has made it second nature for herself to never be honest when a friend is doing something that she internally deems highly questionable in moral terms, since she’s so afraid of permanently losing those who claim to care about her own well being. Anne believes it to be a “golden rule” that if you’re openly honest with your close friends, it will only lead to failure in a nutshell. This is honestly one of the strongest elements of Amphibia’s storytelling on how it explores the human condition of real friendship. It’s not sunshine and rainbows, but an honest reflection of who you are as a person. Those you choose to let into your life for better influencing yourself, also reveal your true nature as an individual. These particular lines from the episode, Flood, Sweat, and Tears, sets the mood into motion that vital theme its story centers itself around.

Sharing a room doesn’t make you best friends. Being honest with each other does! 

In fact, if you ask me, you’re better friends now than you were before.

Seeing how greatly Amphibia explored this statement means a lot to me, since I myself have struggled with passive aggressive behavior plenty with my own friends. There were social experiences I went through in my childhood that made me bottle up how I genuinely feel a lot, so being honest with my own circle of close friends was a serious challenge for me. While I have come a long way in the improvements of being more honest with my pals whenever something is bothering me, it’s still a never ending struggle I deal with on a daily basis, considering it’s much like second nature to me. This significant moment hit all the right chords for me in showing that beauty of human connections, by taking the good and bad people can experience in dealing with their own differences.  Anne’s journey to better understand what real friends are and stand up for herself is a very empowering one to see occur, as she continues to come out of her shell, while putting her foot down when more immoral shit starts to hit the fan. Another giant step forward for her own independence comes to light in the tenth episode, Toad Tax, when Anne wanted nothing more than to be respected by the towns folk, instead of being openly called a monster and getting severely alienated for it, too. Which, again, it really shows just how much Sasha’s manipulation has had a grip on Anne, given she first thought that by joining the Toad force that she’d garner their respect. However, that idea was nothing more than a deeply shallow belief, which would’ve made the town more afraid of her rather than love and accept her. 

All I wanted was this town’s respect, but just because these people treated me crumby, doesn’t mean I’m gonna do the same to them. I’m done with this. I don’t care if they’ve broken the law, you can’t treat people like this!

In a very jarring contrast to Anne, Sasha is a more two faced individual with her own motive for getting herself, Anne, and Marcy back home by any means necessary. To put it bluntly and harshly, Sasha is a real bitch hilariously to the point where she is the sole reason why Grimes minions become more competent, due to throwing out fake compliments to help their lack of motivation, since his intensity as their ruthless leader was backfiring greatly. It’s priceless to see a villain’s cold blooded behavior ironically be a big detriment to their rule of power, as other works of fiction have shown it to a “positive” influence on their minions, where a teenage cheerleader blonde archetype has to patch things up.

You lot are without a doubt the most useless group of toads I have ever seen!

Just try saying nice things for a change. Get them to love you and they’ll do anything for you.

That actually works?

Ooooh, it works alright. Trust me.

Sasha’s already cold and calculating manipulation is influenced in return by Grimes heartless nature. Sasha & Grimes combined make for a deadly combination for one Hell of antagonistic duo, but that’s not to say this series doesn’t add layers to this complicated girl. While she is a very toxic verbally abusive person, Sasha isn’t without her own humanity either. Besides lying about being the only human in the world of Amphibia, Sasha genuinely is concerned about reuniting with each of her friends and not just for keeping them underneath her thumb in a controlling fashion. The voice acting here from Sasha’s VA really helps elevate that idea there’s more to her than how she acts.

Hold on for a little longer girls. I’m coming for you and when I find you we’re gonna get home, but first I think we’re gonna have some fun with this place.

By the time Anne and Sasha reunite by the finale, both have changed. Anne for the better and Sasha for much worse. Anne has become more selfless and free to make her own choices that she feels morally comfortable with doing, while Sasha is out to kill Hop Pop, due to his vital actions in earlier episodes, for encouraging more Frogs to rebel against the Toad’s rule of power through fear and violence. Sasha doesn’t view Hop Pop as as an equal living thing, but another obstacle that’s keeping herself, Anne, and Marcy from their one way ticket home. She strongly believes that killing Hop Pop, to keep the other Frogs back in line from having a voice of their own, will allow them a better chance to get back home with help from Grimes. Sasha knows to an extent the terrible thing she’s trying to help Grimes commit, however she still only views Hop Pop as not an equivalent human being, but an already figurative dead frog for them to dissect in their biology class. 

So you’ve probably already noticed the Toads in this valley have one job. To rule over the Frogs. And lately those Frogs have been stepping out of line.

Sasha is a serious fucking jerk, but a well intent extremist on wanting to get everyone back home, who doesn’t fully grasp the full context of what horrible atrocities she’s helping Grimes commit through doing this attempted murder.

Anne, what are you doing? Are you really gonna risk your life for these...talking frogs? We don’t even belong here. Don’t you wanna get back home? See your family?

Yeah, but...

Then put your sword down, now!

END OF DISCUSSION...

There we go, that’s my girl.

There that wasn’t so hard was i-

WHAT THE HECK!?

For someone who’s Anne’s best friend, you sure don’t know her very well! She brave, she’s smart, and most of all she’s not gonna be pushed around by a bully like you!

I think I’ve had enough of you, squeaky toy.

Anne, what are you doing!?

Something I should’ve done a long time ago. Standing up to you!

Thanks for believing in me, Sprig.

Can I just say that I love how they don’t try to pin blame on Anne for being consistently manipulated by Sasha? While Anne most certainly needs to stand up and not allow Sasha to abuse her like this anymore, Sasha is the sole person responsible for making Anne feel so insecure, who needed to be put in her place. It was very important for them to make that clear who is at fault here in this situation more than anyone and Sprig was perfect for telling off Anne���s abusive friend. Can’t begin to describe how cathartic it was for seeing that bitch get hit in the face for trying to once again pull on Anne’s emotional baggage. That highly noteworthy moment aside, there is a really interesting exchange between Sasha and Grimes showing how warped Sasha’s definition of friendship has become over the years she’s grown up with Anne in school.

You’ve given me plenty of advice, now let me give you some. Stamp this out. Make her yield. Fail and nothing will ever be the same.

Not gonna happen...

So, taking into account everything that I’ve covered at this point, this makes for a wonderful climatic finale to a slow burn where previous episodes have emotionally prepared Anne for facing down the very person who’s been hurting her most of all. One of her closest friends, who’s been like a symbolic sister in the past to Anne, but has turned into this very hurtful person with a seriously warped idea of an “affectionate” friendship based on similar ideas of control as seen with Grimes. While Amphibia has plenty of comedic shenanigans in its storytelling, there’s always been this dramatic undertone centered around Anne and Sasha’s views of what relationships are all about for what each one has based their ideals on. This Disney series is centered around gaining new bonds, while looking at old ones in a much different perspective, as seen with Anne and Sasha’s falling out.

Anne, you don’t have to do this.

Yes I do...

Anne vs Sasha is an important key moment that the finale nails on every possible level, given each side here has something lose, if the other one wins this duel. These are old friends, or rather family in a sense, standing up for what they think is the right moral thing to do and you can feel this high stakes tension every second as its building up to their swords finally clashing again against one another. Reminds me a lot of the Star Wars battles where it’s not necessarily remembered so much for the fights themselves, but the emotional weight that is carried in every moment which is happening between its characters and I applaud Amphibia for taking inspiration in utilizing that trope of writing.

Much like how DuckTales (2017) handled its amazing Season 1 finale, Amphibia’s writers know the most crucial element to focus more than anything are the characters themselves and what they’re feeling, rather than making it a big flashy battle of epic proportions. Granted, that’s a nice icing on the cake and all, but the real meat should always be in how you’re executing the important themes you’ve introduced from the start. In Amphibia’s case, it’s the tragedy of friendship turning into something nasty with Sasha treating Anne poorly and breaking apart their once stable lives, due to that very nature which dropped them into this world where they have to now fend for themselves.

There’s so much powerful heartbreak emitting from this one pic here and hoo boi we haven’t even gotten to best part, yet. It’s delightfully angsty and shocked the Hell outta me when first watching this episode. Fuck, it still does quite frankly knowing the people behind this show had the guts to go that far dramatically.

They’re just slimy little frogs, Anne.

They don’t matter!

They’re not just Frogs. They’re my friends!

After Anne finally beats Sasha the entire castle starts exploding, due to Wally misinterpreting her on not blowing up Grimes base. Here’s where the most heart wrenching scene comes in as the cherry on top of this intense finale to Amphibia’s first season. As the castle is falling to pieces, Sasha almost falls to her death but Anne catches her in time, despite just fighting her tooth and nail seconds ago to save the family she was trying to kill for her selfish reasons. There’s a crap ton of symbolism here in this poignant moment of characterization for Anne & Sasha’s current state of friendship now. All of this is topped off by the music piece, Lean On Me, being poetically woven into it.

The Plantar family is doing everything in their power to hold Anne up equivalent to how they’ve made her into a better individual than she ever was around Sasha. While Sasha is putting all of them in danger as a figurative ball and chain that, besides holding them back from staying alive, is also keeping Anne from becoming the best version of herself she can be. In these last moments, I’d like to believe Sasha finally put it together in her mind just how much she’s royally screwed everything up. Not just what she attempted to do with Hop Pop and most likely the rest of his family, but how seriously disrespectful she was to Anne for who knows how many years of their friendship when Sasha started abusing her. Sasha was most likely feeling a ton of self-loathing and terrible guilt before making this shocking pivotal decision next in saving Anne and the Plantars’.

Hey Anne...

Maybe you’re better off without me...

Like, on one hand it can be simply viewed as Sasha simply saving these people from dying, too. However, I’d prefer to make it darker for the sake of heavy angst and say she was committing suicide, as well. Sasha realized in these last moments, before thinking that she was going to die a painful death, how shitty she was to Anne. Sasha’s abusive behavior is what started this whole story in the first place. If it wasn’t for Sasha, none of them would of ended up in the world Amphibia to begin with, but it needed to happen for Anne to become better about who her real friends are and maybe this rough experience would even help Sasha, too. We’ll just have to see what awaits for Sasha’s character arc in Season 2′s future. As it stands now, Anne may have a lost a dear friend, who was basically like a sister to her years back, but gained something even better.

A family and terrific friends who care deeply for her.

Hop Pop, you three are my family. I’d never let anyone hurt you.

Thanks for taking the time read this very lengthy post of me gushing about this powerfully bittersweet finale. Can’t wait for Season 2!

[that-shamrock-vibe]

Disney+ What To Watch: My Top 10 Favourite Modern-Day Disney Classics

#3. Lilo & Stitch

Of all the movies I have talked about so far, this movie is the one that has shocked me the most with how much I enjoy it and how high it is on this list.

At first, the only real good takeaway from this movie is Stitch as a character, with both how cute he is and the surprising take on the traditional fish out of water story.

However, as I have gotten older and been able to decipher the hidden and deeper meanings of these movies, I have to say the true meaning of family that runs throughout this movie is very heartening and very true to life particularly for a Disney animated movie.

Especially when you consider that this movie came out during what could be known as Disney’s second “dark times” after the 80s where the Renaissance had finished and Disney was trying to go in a different direction with very mixed results, this is definitely the shining beacon in the murky waters of Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, Home on the Range and especially Chicken Little.

Not only is the animation styling unique to the movie and, a lot like Moana and Princess and the Frog, animates Hawaiian natives in the styling of how they actually look so that they can’t look like any template design for any ethnicity. But the way in which this movie incorporates land, sea and outer space and makes them all feel like land, sea and outer space.

Lilo & Stitch is not shy of delving into the real-life struggles of depicting how a family in these sisters’ position live and get by. Nani struggling to find work because she spent her formative years as the guardian of her young sister, Lilo having a very damaged upbringing because she lost her parents young and, because she is an outsider who sees the world differently to everyone else, she doesn’t fit in with the other girls her age. She seeks solace in the fact there is a fish who controls the water and must be appeased but also recognises that she is troubled.

It’s then clearly fitting that a recently created alien crashlands in their neighbourhood and crosses paths with them. Stitch is like Olaf in the sense that because he has only just been created he has no real morals or ethics and, because he is an experiment designed for destructive purposes, has very high anger management issues.

However, what I love is as much as the movie focuses on Lilo and Nani’s relationship and particularly Nani’s struggle to keep them together, it also explores Stitch wanting to feel like part of a family and the parallels to the famous story of the Ugly Duckling.

Honestly one of my favourite parts of this movie is the “Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride” montage when David is trying to cheer up Nani and Lilo and all Stitch wants to do is be involved and be a part of the fun. Honestly one of the sadder moments are when they’re making sandcastles and Stitch sees the three of them enjoying the fun and tries to emulate it himself...I can relate rather a lot to looking in from the outside.

I mentioned that a recurring theme with this list would be outsiders and both Stitch and Lilo are definitely outsiders, but this movie shows how that’s not exactly a bad thing as them being outsiders is what brought them together and by the end of the movie it is essentially a family of outsiders but more functional a family than most traditional nuclear ones.

Stitch is adorable, not only does he have that newborn innocence but because he doesn’t really talk until towards the end of the movie and mostly communicates in noises...very relatable by the way...he is even more likeable because of the fact we effectively see him mature throughout the movie so that by the end, when he stands up to the Grand Councilwoman, not only does he earn that moment but again it is just so cute that he can talk like a human and, I know others have tried but, no one can do his voice like Chris Sanders.

I don’t know why but, watching the movie on Disney+ for the first time since getting my dog, makes me compare my dog to Stitch and how my dog would act if he was more anthropomorphic or of alien origin like Stitch,

Lilo and Nani were very well established in terms of their sisterly bond, it is clear that Nani works her butt off in order to not only provide for the two of them but also to ensure they stay together. I mean the fact that Nani reduces herself to working at that fake luau place just to makes ends meat speaks volumes to how much she cares about her sister.

But I also enjoyed whenever they argued or quarrelled because, at the end of the day, they’re still sisters and sisters fight. Siblings fight, regardless of if one is the primary care giver or not and the fact you see the explosive rows, the fallout and the two of them making up afterwards just shows a fully-realised family unit.

It’s also a strong statement to the sisterly bond that Nani doesn’t give in to her “womanly urges” and gets with David despite the many, many times he offers. Yes, it maybe would make life easier to have another source of income and immediate support network in the family, as established at the end when they actually get together, but throughout the movie the amount of times he asks and she rejects is all for legitimate reasons. They’re under scrutiny from social services so adding a new relationship at this point would not be good.

As for our alien antagonists, this was the first time that Disney Proper animation had featured aliens in their movies, because Toy Story was 1) Pixar and 2) Featured toys not actual aliens.

But I really enjoyed these aliens, while they are all clearly of different species, not knowing the species and simply focusing on who they are as characters was really fun. the Grand Chairwoman looked like an authoritarian figure, both Jumbaa and Gantu looked menacing Jumbaa looked goofier than Gantu so of course Gantu was the bigger threat than Jumbaa.

Pleakley is a revalation for Disney Animation and yet it’s played up more for laughs then anything else. It’s not just that he enjoys dressing up like another somewhat famous alien from American Dad! but the fact he specifically enjoys dressing like a woman...Disney had it’s very first transsexual character on their hands and yet he’s never been promoted as strong LGBTQ+ representation for Disney.

I absolutely loved the inclusion of an Elvis Presley soundtrack to this movie. The fact you’re combining a Hawaiian setting and a sci-fi space theme with the music styling of Elvis is very clever and it works so well. Also Gareth Gates’ version of “Suspicious Minds” is still a favourite of mine.

One thing that always sticks in my mind was the lead up to this movie particularly in the ad campaign of having four teasers beginning with iconic scenes from the four most iconic Disney movies of the past decade being hijacked by the at the time untested new character followed by different snippets of his own movie before releasing a full trailer.

It is one of the best examples I know of a successful PR campaign as it gained a lot of interest for the movie.

I also really really enjoy the longevity of this franchise. As I said, this movie resides in that Post-Renaissance era which was very hit and miss for fans, but the fact that we not only got three direct-to-home sequels as well as a progressive spin-off series akin to the Aladdin and Hercules animated shows. But I have seen that there are other recent animated shows about the titular characters and Lilo & Stitch is even getting a direct-to-digital live-action/CG-hybrid remake...who would’ve thought this movie would have such strong legs.

If for no other reason, I can whole-heartedly say that Lilo & Stitch is a reason I am thankful for Disney+ as it has re-energised my fondness for this movie, I mean I always loved Stitch and always will, but over the years I have managed to revitalise my love for the movie on multiple levels.

So what do you guys think? Post your comments and check out more Disney+ What to Watch Top 10s as well as more Top 10 Lists and other posts.

[eldritchsurveys]

752.

Does your best friend bother you more than anyone else? >> --- Who is your best friend? >> --- Do you like someone right now? >> No. Do you even think you stand a chance with this person? >> --- Do you consider yourself truly happy? >> I don’t think of “happiness” as a constant state of being. It’s an emotion like any other -- you feel happy for a period of time, and then you return to baseline or you have a different emotion. So, yeah, sometimes I am happy. A lot of the time I’m something else (or nothing). Feeling one emotion all the time at the expense of others would be awful no matter what the emotion is.

How often do you cry? >> Relatively often, lately. It’s like once you decide to stop berating yourself for having feelings, you start just having them randomly and shit. I teared up watching a youtube video yesterday and it took me a couple of minutes to figure out that it was probably the effect of the music used in the video (he used a lot of that kind of “dramatic emotional moment” music that they use in movies to cue to your brain that you’re supposed to have An Emotion right now). Are you emotional? >> I mean, yes, I experience emotions... What is the worst thing you would do for 10 million dollars? >> No. Have you ever had/do you have an eating disorder? >> No. Have you ever cut/burned yourself intentionally? >> Yep. What do you think of people that do? >> I don’t have an opinion about other self-injurers? We all just tryna survive. What’s your opinion on drugs? Have you ever done any? >> I don’t have an opinion on drugs. Like, in general, I don’t have sweeping opinions on any broad subject like this! It doesn’t make sense to me and I am constantly frustrated at being asked what I think about a general concept as if my thoughts shouldn’t be based on contextual information and a basic understanding of nuance. Anyway. Yes, I’ve done drugs. Have you ever noticed the hidden adult jokes inside of kid shows/movies? >> Sure. Do you want to be famous? Why? >> Not at all. Because included amongst my highest values are my privacy and my ability to live my life on my own terms as much as possible. Also, it just flat-out doesn’t seem like a healthy way to live.

Do you sin often? >> Dude. What are your views on God? >> I don’t have any sweeping views on the concept of divinity. My opinion about the Abrahamic God specifically varies based upon what we’re talking about -- what holy text, what cultural interpretation, what sort of human-divine relationship, etc. What do you think happens after you die? >> My working interpretation is that the specific network that I think of as my consciousness will dissipate and that energy will rejoin the general concept of “consciousness”, from which every specific instance of consciousness arises. So to speak. Also, my body will decay (provided I’m not chemically processed and shut up in a metal box), worms will eat me, etc etc. Are you afraid to die? >> Yeah. But my feelings about death are more aptly described as, like, “holy dread”, or the kind of fear that is part-and-parcel with a strong feeling of awe and wonder. If you had the chance, would you want to know the date of your death? >> Fuck no, dude. Have you ever felt that you weren’t good enough? >> Yep. Do you have any siblings? If so, are you jealous of them? >> --- Do you have a good relationship with your parents? Why or why not? >> I don’t have any relationship with them. Because one abandoned me at birth and the other one flat-out doesn’t like who I am as a person.

Are you always wanting more? >> Sure. Hunger is one of my defining concepts. Do you make good first impressions? >> I don’t think I do, no, because I’m not interested in following certain social conventions that people expect me to. That’s not to say I’m rude, but when you refuse to shake hands, you don’t stare in people’s eyeballs, and you don’t smile at literally everything, people get tetchy. Do you feel bad for obese people, or do you just laugh? I am so unimpressed with this question. <-- like.... what the actual fuck. What would you do if you were obese? >> What do you mean, what would I do? Am I supposed to be doing something specific just because I’m fat? Like, you know, hate myself for existing in a way that isn’t acceptable to the society I live in? Bloody hell. Are you ashamed of your past? >> No. Do you miss your past? >> “My past” isn’t a real thing, it’s a story that my brain tells itself. There’s nothing to miss. Do you have a song lyric that describes where you are in life right now? >> If I did, there’s no way I’d be able to think of it right now. Who are you closest to in your family? >> --- Do you ever open up to people? >> Ever? Maybe. It’s always a possibility, if not a probability. Do you consider yourself guarded? Why or why not? >> Absolutely. Because I’m post-traumatic, that’s why. Are you an honest person? >> Sure. Do you like animals? >> I mean, I don’t actively hate animals or anything. I don’t have any specific feelings about the existence of other creatures on the planet.

Do you think doctors prescribe medicine too often? >> I wouldn’t know. I think that’s an opinion people assert when they are following an anti-meds agenda, but it’s not necessarily grounded in provable fact. Are you a control freak? >> I have tendencies. Do you enjoy getting drunk, or do you feel like you’re losing all control? >> No. I enjoy the buzz from a certain amount of alcohol, but anything beyond that is uninteresting and often annoying. I don’t feel like I’m losing control, exactly, I just feel logy and tired and irritable. Also, headaches. What do you think happens when you go into a coma? >> I assume it varies. Do you think the internet is dangerous? >> The potential for danger is always present when interacting with other people in any context, including digital.

Name all the social networking sites you use: >> Tumblr and Facebook are the only ones I use. Do you think anyone truly knows who you really are? >> “Who I really am” isn’t a concept that I find useful. People learn different things about me, are exposed to different personality traits and idiosyncrasies at different times, and filter all that knowledge through their own perceptions and biases and understandings. There is a different version of me for every person that perceives me, including myself, and all those versions are part of the intersocial network that forms the concept of “me”. (I’m sure if I lived completely alone in the middle of nowhere and had no contact with any other humans, my concept of myself would grow into something completely different -- it might grow even more fluid and less anthropomorphic, because the concept of the self is reinforced by our interactions with others.) Have you ever given anyone the chance to really get to know you? >> Sigh. Do you block people out of your life when they start to get too close? >> I don’t know, people getting close isn’t a situation I’m too familiar with these days. Who do you think has the most pressure to be good-looking; guys or girls? I think both experience a lot of pressure in very different ways. It’s not a contest. <-- Do you care what impression you make on people? >> Sometimes, depending on the person. Most of the time I understand that a lot of it is out of my control, unless I’m willing to do some things I really don’t want to do. Do you think TV is too much of an influence on today’s youth? >> I think That’s Complicated(tm). What do you think people would do if all the computers crashed? >> Like, if all computers stopped working at the same time? How... would that even happen, is my question. Unless something happened to the grid in general, or something. Any wide-scale breakdown of digital infrastructure would have immediate negative repercussions in this part of the world, though, I can wager that much. Honestly, do you say racist things? >> I can’t think of anything racist I’ve said in recent memory. Aside from your general “white people” jokes, I guess. I try to keep those to a minimum, though, because most of the time it’s just... unnecessary. Do your parents put way too much pressure on you? >> --- Has anyone you loved ever died? >> Sure. Do you think people overreact when their pets die? >> I don’t think people overreact at all. I think it’s the appropriate reaction, to be upset and to grieve. I think my disconnection to pets is stranger than normal people’s connection to them, which is why I’m always self-conscious about my detachment. People don’t like it when you don’t have feelings. Do you know who you are, or what you want to become? >> *gestures in frustration at my earlier ramble about selfhood* Do you have your future mapped out? Or are you just taking it day by day? >> I find the concept of planning out one’s future to be a little silly, although I understand it’s a perfectly reasonable and healthy thing for a human to do. It just... doesn’t work for me. The only stretch of time I can be confident of is the present, and even that’s questionable sometimes. What are you going to do now? >> I think I might go out for a short walk now, the temperature’s at a good place. I wish I could go somewhere specific -- a park would be incredible right now -- but I can’t be getting on public transportation for non-essential purposes. And I can’t go to the convenience store... Guess I’ll just... walk down the sidewalk and then back *shrug* (This would be a great time to have a dog to walk.)

[the-desolated-quill]

Okay, Enough With The Live Action/CGI Hybrids - Quill’s Scribbles

So the trailer for the upcoming Sonic The Hedgehog movie came out...

Do I really need to say it? Everyone and their mums have already said it. Hell, you’re probably saying it right now.

Sigh. Okay. Fuck it. I’ll say it.

Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?!?!

The trailer itself is shockingly bad. It looks bland and generic with almost nothing in common with the games. The jokes are forced and painfully unfunny (why are the people in the airport more concerned that the ‘child’ in the bag isn’t James Marsden’s rather than that there’s a fucking child in the bag in the first place?!), Jim Carrey is being his usual obnoxious self and is plain and simply a terrible choice for Doctor Eggman (isn’t the whole point of Doctor Eggman that he’s supposed to, you know, look like an egg?), and the soundtrack is utterly cringeworthy (Gangsta’s Paradise? Really?!?!). But that all pales in comparison to by far and away the biggest problem with the trailer. And I think you can all guess what that is. 

Yes I’m of course referring to the noticeable absence of Team Chaotix. An artistic decision so despicable, it’s practically a hate crime. For shame! Everyone knows that Charmy Bee is the best character in the franchise and yet they don’t have the guts to put him in the movie! Fucking philistines!

...

Oh yeah, and Sonic the Hedgehog looks like a monstrous abomination concocted from the fever dreams of Doctor Frankenstein and Walt Disney.

It’s hard to know where to start when talking about just how grotesque and disgusting this CGI Sonic is. He looks like what your computer would produce if it caught pneumonia. What I especially don’t understand is why they veered away so heavily from the original, iconic design. I mean...

I don’t know about you, but I’d honestly have no problem if the movie just kept this look from the games. Hell, I think even giving him realistic fur would be pushing it. This is perfectly fine. I could totally see this design working in a movie. Instead we get the secret love child of Gollum and Papa Smurf.

He just looks so weird with human proportions. The leg muscles, the two eyes, the human looking teeth. Apparently the filmmakers wanted this Sonic to look as realistic as possible. Because when I pay to see a movie about an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog that can run at supersonic speeds, that’s my first thought. ‘Is it realistic?’

... Jesus Christ.

But of course the main problem with this live action Sonic movie is that it exists in the first place. When it was first announced, I assumed in my naivety that it would be an animated movie. Because that would make sense, right? There have been movie and TV adaptations before and they were all animated. Imagine a big budget computer animated Sonic movie. That would be really cool. But it was not to be. In Hollywood’s infinite wisdom, they decided to go the live action route because... Actually why did they choose to go the live action route? Well that’s what I hope to address in this very Scribble.

Live action adaptations and remakes are nothing new of course. Disney had tried it a few times in the past with movies like 101 Dalmations, there have been other live action versions of animated or illustrated characters such as the Grinch and the Cat In The Hat, Garfield, the Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks, and there was of course the infamous Super Mario Bros movie, which answered the question of what it would be like if the Mushroom Kingdom took place in the same universe as Judge Dredd. But this is the first time live action/CGI hybrids have been huge money spinners. Disney struck gold back in 2010 when Tim Burton’s version of Alice In Wonderland made a billion dollars at the box office and now the company is mining through their back catalogue of Disney classics and giving all their movies the live action treatment. Initially I was okay with this because in the case of Alice In Wonderland and Maleficent they were at least trying to reinterpret the original films and put a new spin on them, but now they just seem to be copying the movies verbatim. Making live action remakes just for the sake of making live action remakes.

Now other studios are trying their hand at, the most notable being Pokemon: Detective Pikachu. Here’s a picture of the original Pikachu:

Cute, right?

Now here’s a picture of the live action Pikachu:

Can you see the problem here?

(also why the hell is Ryan Reynolds the voice of Pikachu? I honestly can’t think of anyone more inappropriate for the role. It’s like casting Samuel L. Jackson as a Powerpuff Girl)

The fact of the matter is some things just don’t work in live action. Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokemon work in their respective universes because they’re animated creatures in an animated world, and their anatomy and design fit that world. In the real world, it just doesn’t work. Pikachu looks strange and kind of creepy in the real world. The same is true of the other Pokemon. Jigglypuff looks utterly adorable in the games and animated show with its spherical body and cartoon eyes and you just want to take one to bed with you and cuddle them like a teddy bear, but in the real world it looks fucking scary!

I wouldn’t want to cuddle that thing! It looks like it would go for my throat given the opportunity!

The same is true of Sonic. Paramount’s attempts to make him look more ‘realistic’ just makes him look incredibly alien and out of place.

Another example I like to bring up is the film Christopher Robin. Now we all know Winnie the Pooh. Silly ol’ bear. Charming, cuddly and endearing, right? Just look at him.

How can you not fall in love with him?

Now here’s the live action version:

When I first saw the trailer, I was utterly creeped out. He looks like something out of a horror movie. Add to that that they got the original voice actor from the Disney cartoons to reprise the role, and Winnie the Pooh pretty much became the source of all my nightmares for the next couple of weeks. That lovable voice should not be coming out of that... thing.

It’s a pattern that repeats itself over and over again. Look:

Charming and lovable.

Weird and unsettling.

Creative and fun.

Photoshop disaster.

Sweet and likeable.

Fetch my crucifix and holy water.

Emotional and expressive.

So ‘realistic’ to the point where he looks like he has the emotional range of a teaspoon.

Now I recognise this largely comes down to subjective opinion. If you like these CGI redesigns, that’s great. More power to you. But I know for a fact I’m not the only one getting increasingly weirded out by these computer generated demons from Hell.

So why does Hollywood keep making these films. Well obviously in the case of Disney it’s because they’ve ran out of original ideas and want to make a quick buck by exploiting their audience’s nostalgia. (the same can be said of the Star Wars sequel trilogy). But what about other studios? Yes they’re financially motivated too, but there’s got to be more to it than that.

I think it’s largely down to the stigma of animated movies. Animation has become synonymous with children. When you hear the term ‘animated movie’, you automatically associate it with ‘kid’s film’. And ‘kid’s film’ is often used in a negative context. Like it’s somehow lesser than quote/unquote ‘proper’ movies. Live action suggests a certain pedigree. A sense of prestige. But that’s obviously bollocks. The quality of a film isn’t dictated by whether it’s live action or animated. It’s determined by the writing, directing and acting. There have been live action films made for kids and animated films made for adults. And I’m not talking about Sausage Party. I’m talking about Finding Nemo.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Finding Nemo? Isn’t that a kid’s film? No. It’s a family film. And that right there is the problem. You heard me say Finding Nemo, an animated film about talking fish, and you automatically associated it with a kids film. But the thing is Finding Nemo deals with some very dark and adult themes and its moral message of not being overprotective and allowing children to take risks is intended for the parents, not the kids. Obviously kids can still watch and enjoy Finding Nemo, but it’s the parents who are clearly the target here. The same is true of Toy Story 3. Children can still watch and enjoy it, but the film is clearly intended for people who watched the original Toy Story when they were a kid and are now grown up. When you stop and think about it, it’s really sad that family movies are associated with kids movies. Not that there’s anything wrong with kids movies obviously. But why do people assume that family movies are meant for kids? Why can’t they be adult stories that are also accessible to children? Books have done it. The Artemis Fowl series is kid friendly, but its tone, themes and style suggest the author has an older and more sophisticated target audience in mind. A Series Of Unfortunate Events is popular with kids, but it’s adults that get the full experience because of the way Lemony Snicket uses postmodern and meta-textual elements in the books, which would sail clean over the head of a kid reading it. The idea that a live action remake is somehow more ‘grown-up’ than an animated movie is just absurd. The original Lion King was very grown up, thank you very much. There are lots of bright colours and fun songs for the kids, but it also doesn’t sugarcoat the darker themes such as death, betrayal, corruption and abuse of power. Mufaser’s death isn’t going to be made any more impactful in live action. The animated version was more than heartbreaking.

Shifting the conversation back to Sonic, this is also intrinsically linked with another problem with Hollywood at the moment. Movie adaptations of video games. And again, it’s a similar problem. People, especially critics, view video games as being lesser than movies. Roger Ebert famously said that video games will never be considered art. But that’s nonsense. There have been loads of video games that could be and have been considered art. BioShock, for instance, which scrutinises and criticises both objectivism and capitalism. There’s the Mass Effect trilogy, which is often described as this generation’s Star Wars. The Last Of Us is widely considered to be a masterpiece by gamers and literacy scholars alike. Hell, the fact that Hollywood wants to make movie adaptations of video games at all suggests that games do in fact have some inherent artistic value after all. And it’s not as if I’m wholly against making movies based on video games. There are some games that could translate really well to films, Sonic being one of them. (I personally loved the Ratchet & Clank movie, for example. It’s just a shame nobody else fucking watched it due to the almost non-existent marketing). However there’s an inherent problem with translating video games to movies as opposed to, say, translating books to movies. In book to movies adaptations, studios are adding something. Visuals, sound, performance, etc. In video game to movie adaptations, they have to take things away. The most obvious is interactivity. Unlike movies where nothing is required of the audience other than to just dumbly stare at the screen, video games require the audience to actively control the story. Move the character, kill baddies, solve problems and stay alive. You are an active participant in the narrative. As a result, the emotional connection you feel with both the plot and the characters is often stronger than that in a movie because you have direct influence over what happens. 

Also video games have the luxury of being able to tell their stories over the course of eight to thirty to even a hundred hours of gameplay. There’s no way you could condense something like The Last Of Us down to a two and a half hour movie. There would just be too much lost. Important character moments and plot points that would have to be chucked in the bin. Yes things get lost in book to movie adaptations, but nowhere near at the scale of a game to movie adaptation. A possible workaround would be to make game to TV adaptations instead, but then we’re back to the interactivity problem again. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that movies are better than books or that video games are better than movies. I’m just saying they’re each individually suited to tell their own kinds of stories in their own unique ways, therefore translating from one medium to the other is often difficult. The Last Of Us would never make a good movie, and that’s okay. The game is still amazing and the story is still amazing. Its artistic merit isn’t lessened because it can’t be translated to films, in the same way the merits of a bike aren’t lessened because it can’t fly. It’s just not designed to do that.

I guess the point I’m making is there’s no one way to tell a good story. There are an infinite number of ways it can be done. So lets stop Hollywood’s obsession with pigeonholing everything into one format and actually explore the possibilities, shall we?

[strongheartmaid]

Tale as old as time [teaser section]

AN: well, not so much as a teaser as part of the “we’re finally in Greece after spending an ungodly amount of time in southern England trying to figure our next step (that and unpacking who’s who and who’s dating who)” plot.  Very much in progress as I��m constantly adding or reworking sections because I’m fussy with my writing. And yes, there is a reference to a particular Disney cartoon involving hockey-playing ducks. (Because, I like murdering canon like that)

“Everyone in one piece?" Lise called out to the girls as they finally found themselves in Sanctuary. The travel there had been brutal - Hera's Cosmos had altered it just enough that it had been sheer torture just trying to get in. Various calls of confirmation settled her nerves, but only just managed to do so. She still had to fight down the queasy, uneasy feeling of the wrongness that had settled into this holy place. (It was currently making Death Queen Island feel like a charming little vacation spot - of course, she planned on *never* saying that within Ikki's presence. That was something that would have the others wondering if she had a bit of a death wish). Alala glanced about before spying what she thought was a Saint in the distance, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly. "So, think Hera's been watching Isle of Lost Souls again?" she asked, turning her gaze to Ciri, a look of something swimming in their depths as she thought about what she would love to do to Hera. "Isle of.." Ciri started, her voice trailing off as she tried to recall why that movie title sounded so damn familiar. She promptly shot a stink eye at Alala once she recalled the movie in question - not one of her favorites. "Really? And if you must name the movie, it was Island of Lost Souls, Alala." "Are we really discussing horror classics from the nineteen thirties right now?" Eira asked as she peered around, trying to find something to get her bearings so she could go find the Temple of the Golden Ram. (And here she groaned - she really hated the cutesy names the temples of the Golden Saints had. What was wrong with just a simple "Temple of Aries" or "Temple of Virgo"? But no, Athena had to have titles like "Temple of the Virgin" and "Temple of the Golden Crab".) "I'll take the old horror classics over the more modern blood, sex and gore trite crap," Ciri answered. "I'll take horror tropes for two hundred, Alex," she teased Lise, knowing the other's fondness for that particular trivia show - and she knew enough not to even try to play against her when they were watching it. If Lise knew the category, she'd answer every question on the board. "This trope is commonly used by the cast to their complete detriment because bad things tend to happen to the heroes when they do this," Lise said absently, trying to send a pulse of her Cosmos to alert her lover, her soulmate to her being there. "What is splitting up?" Ciri asked, earning a slight but strained chuckle from the rest of the girls. "Please tell me you really aren't suggesting that we do just that," Rhosyn opined. She paused a moment when she saw Ciri's face and let out wearied and fully exasperated sigh at that. "You are," she said as she pinched the bridge of her nose, a pained expression crossing her features. Why was she getting the feeling that this was going to be a bad move to end all bad moves? "Quickest way to find the boys," Ciri said. "Send a pulse of Cosmos out to let us know once you found them," she continued. "Sounds like a viable plan." "A viable plan would be sticking together because we have no idea what the temperament of the Saints would be right now," Althaia countered, trying to act as a voice of reason - even if she knew she probably wouldn't be entirely successful at doing so. "I mean, for pity's sake, Shiryū's probably a dragon if Hera used their Cloths as the basis for her curse. Which means some of them are probably generic beasties because they don't have a specified animal, like Saga and Kanon for example." "Actually," Lise said, slanting her gaze towards Althaia, a thoughtful expression crossing her features, "because Kanon did a stint as the Sea Dragon Mariner, and since Saga is the Golden Saint of Gemini, ergo twins, so it's possible that it impacted the curse in such a way so that both twins are probably cursed to be sea dragons. But, this is just a guess, mind you." "Okay," Ciri said, holding up her hand in the shape of a t, capturing everyone's attention. "Before we go much further, let's try and figure out what we're looking at. If we go with the aforementioned theory that the curse pulls on their Cloths, that means Hyōga's a swan, Mū's a ram, Saga and Kanon are probably sea dragons if we go with Persephone's theory, Aphrodite's a fish and titans know what the curse has done to Shun." She slanted a Look at Eira. "Don't you even dare to start humming any music from Swan Lake." Eira just smiled, her pale emerald eyes twinkling with sheer mischief. "Nope, I was going to hum the theme from that one Disney cartoon Hyōga got me hooked on." Ciri gave her a flat stare as she quickly recalled which cartoon that had been. "Those were *ducks*," she said slowly, not quite believing that she was even having this particular conversation. "Ducks, Eira, quack quack, not honk." "Anthropomorphic alien ducks that played hockey and fought alien lizards," Eira said, chuckling. "Oh, to have been a fly on that wall during the pitch for that series." "Getting back on track," Lise said, crossing her arms over her chest, glancing between the small group. "As much as I hate the idea of splitting up to look for the boys,  Ciri did raise a good point. We can cover more ground if we split up. There's six of us and twelve temples, that means we cover two temples a piece." She took a small steadying breath. "All right, Eira, you'll take the temples for Aries and Taurus. Rhosyn, you'll take the temples for Pisces and Aquarius. Althaia, you'll take the temples for Sagittarius and Capricorn. Alala, you'll take the temples for Gemini and Cancer. Ciri, you'll take the temples for Libra and Scorpio. I'll take the temples for Leo and Virgo. Sound good?" The girls silently looked amongst each other and as one nodded. "Good luck and Godspeed," Lise said as she began the slow trek to where the temple of the Holy Lion or whatever the hell of a fancy title Athena gave it was - after this, she was never going to complain about her husband's realm again, at least that didn't require her to climb a gods be damned mountain! Leo came before Virgo in the zodiac so she was hopefully bound to run into the Gold saint, Aiolia, first. A minor wince crossed her features as she realized that meant he was probably half lion and half man due to the nature of Hera's curse. Well, hopefully more man than lion but her luck was never that good.. Of course, she just had to jinx herself as a raging cosmos was fast approaching. She barely had time to call on her sacred cloth in defense before it was upon her. She raised her staff in a defensive pose, barely keeping the being from landing on her before it leapt backwards, landing in a crouch, looking all the world to be getting ready to pounce again. She took a steadying breath, keeping her staff grasped tightly in her hands, her knuckles turning bone-white with the strength of her grip. She swallowed harshly as she studied the being before her - both lion and man in some unholy mixture. Well, at least she had found one of Athena's eighty-eight Saints, or rather one found her in this case. "Leo Aiolia," she said, her voice calm and steady despite herself, "stand down." The beast cocked his head as he stared at her before he slowly settled down. "You're not Hera," he said, his voice rough, raspy. "I'm not sure if I should be insulted at being thought of as my aunt," Lise muttered under her breath. "No, not Hera. Lise DeAvaon," she said, "or Persephone. I'll answer to either." She shrugged slightly, her eyes watching him to see what he would do next. She sent a small pulse of Cosmos to Ciri, alerting her to the fact that she found one of the Saints but not to come just yet. She needed more information before she'd drag the other girls to her location. "You came by yourself?" Aiolia asked, tilting his head in the other direction. "No, I'm not that insane to think I could handle however many Saints that have been afflicted by Hera's curse on my own. There's five others with me," she said, giving a small huff. "Which others?" Aiolia asked, still studying her - unused to seeing Athena's sister in her Holy Cloth, or rather, unused to seeing Athena's sister period. It was rare that she ever ventured into public like this, preferring to operate behind the scenes - which was probably one reason that Shun (or Hades, whichever, it was still hard to wrap his brain around that little fact - some year, he was going to have to have Mu sit down and explain it to him in terms that he could clearly understand) adored her. "Oh for the love of grandmother Rhea," she groaned softly. "My older sister Artemis, Rhosyn, Eira, Alala and Althaia." Aiolia gave her the flattest look he could manage given his new facial structure. "Eira. You brought Eira with you." "Well, she is Mū's girlfriend, which is something we still wonder how the bloody hell happened," Lise answered with a mild shrug. "And she's bonded so she felt his Cosmos change so you really think she wouldn't be coming?" Aiolia just stared at her. "Woman," he began slowly. "Think about her sense of humor for a moment. Now, look at me. Need I say anything else." Lise blinked a moment, her mind running over what he just said and what she knew about Eira. "Oh no," she groaned, burying her face in her hands. "I am so, so sorry, Aiolia." He reached over and patted her head. "I'm surprised she hasn't already started with the jokes." "Well.." Lise said, her voice trailing off for a moment. "She did threaten to hum the theme to the Mighty Ducks cartoon." "The what?" Aiolia blinked, confusion in his gaze. "You never watched Disney cartoons?" Lise answered, arching an eyebrow ever so slightly. Aiolia blinked a moment, trying to wrap his brain around what Lise was getting at and immediately groaned when he remembered catching an episode when he was visiting Hyōga during one of the rare quiet moments before another Holy War would begin. "Hyōga's a fucking swan. He go honk not quack." "Wow, that is frighteningly similar to what Arty said," Lise said, amusement lacing her words. Aiolia cast his gaze heavenward. "Lovely," he said. "So, moving on. The girls all right?" he asked, tensing a moment as he felt something approach. "As all right as one can get when your bonded one is currently appearing to be a petting zoo person," Lise answered, her pale gaze drifting about, trying to figure out where the new pulse of Cosmos was coming from. "I make no promises of not swatting at Eira if she makes one Lion King joke," Aiolia said, stepping slightly in front of Lise in an attempt to protect the young goddess from the impending threat - he couldn't quite get a good read on the Cosmos with his condition fouling things up. "What about Kimba, the white lion then?" she asked innocently, batting pale blue eyes. "We do not talk about Kimba," he snarked. He let out a minor relieved sigh when he saw who it was. "Well hello, lunch," he said, his voice full of innocent teasing. Aphrodite merely raised one hand and then one finger in response to the teasing. He peered around Aiolia to spot the young goddess that was being hidden behind him. "That's not Athena." "Her younger sister, which you should have remembered," Lise huffed, sticking her tongue out at the Pisces saint. "I only helped hook you up with Rhosyn. She's here by the way." Aphrodite was grateful that his changed appearance meant she couldn't tell how badly he paled at that pronouncement. "Here? As in here in Greece or as in she's actually in Sanctuary?" "Well, she's supposed to be checking out whatever fancy name 'Thena gave the temples of Pieces and Aquarius," she said, shrugging slightly. "And I know, I know, I already got lectured from Aiolia about bringing Eira with me." Aphrodite felt his left eye twitch. "That woman is a menace to one's sanity." "That woman's dating Mū, and she's worried about him." "I still want to know how the hell that happened," Aphrodite muttered. He had always thought Mū was married to his job as both Gold Saint to Athena and as the Cloth Blacksmith - but well, that theory had been all shot to hell when he accidentally (well, maybe not so accidentally - he had planned on dragging Mū with him and the others to lunch) entered Mū's temple and found him with Eira. There was not enough alcohol in the world to have dealt with those scarring mental images. "You and just about everyone else," Lise said, idly shrugging. "But that's neither here nor there at the moment." Aphrodite's expression softened as best it could and he made his way over, placing a hand on the young mortal goddess's shoulder. "Truth now, how you holding up?" he asked gently, concern welling up for the young woman. Lise swallowed harshly, the tears finally streaking down her cheeks as she finally broke - something she hadn't been allowing herself to do because she knew she had to be strong for the others. "Barely." Aiolia glanced at Aphrodite and the two shared a silent conversation, ending with Aiolia nodding and sending a small burst of his Cosmos towards where he knew a particular Bronze was hiding.

[another-stupid-writing-blog]

Powers, Magic Systems, and Some Other Elements - How Do They Work and What Are The Rules?

ANOTHER LONG POST!

(This ties into that multi-part project I was talking about earlier)

Sympathetic Magic

The basic idea: Life imitates art. Create a piece of art or entertainment and wha-BAM! It just might become real.

The specifics: I was planning to keep these rather vague, as I mainly planned it to be used by the villain in Part II, despite it being a neutral background religion in most of the story. What is known is that it doesn’t work 100% of the time, much like any religious magic, and can happen completely on accident, as was the case with the dev. In-universe, the Church of Sympathetic Magic believes that in order for it to work, a sacrifice back into the elements is required (ranging from a bowl of milk left on the porch to a human body buried without embalming), and the more outlandish the request, the greater the sacrifice needed. Art accidentally granted reality can have stuff added to it, but additional sacrifices are needed for any of the add-ons to become real. It is unclear whether Bard songs count as sympathetic magic or plusibo effect.

Magic Stones/Metals

Spirit Crystal- Found deep underground, these clear-to-azure crystals constantly sap energy out of whatever’s touching it, and manipulate the energy as directed. These directions can be out loud, internal, or digital, but a spellcaster still has to be touching it, even if the energy is coming from something else. A spellcaster can only manipulate energy within sight range, and their instructions only work if they can understand and visualize the physics behind it- or how nature or technology could do something similar. Energy spent without direction is lost to heat. Crystals are commonly used in weaponry to deal both puncturing and burning damage while draining mana, all in one move. They’re also used by hospitals to immediately cauterize wounds and by gyms as a way to burn fat. Scientists can’t find living cells anywhere on them, but philosophers endlessly debate on whether or not they are alive.

Creation Stone- These green, funky-shaped, rounded-edged rocks are found on the same layers as Spirit Crystals. They constantly sap energy to convert into matter. They also need directions, and one essentially needs to know how to sculpt an item out of its base elements. (More specifically, one needs to know the elements being summoned, and a detailed anatomy/geometry/biology of what they’re summoning.) This material must rise out of the stone itself. Most of those who summon living creatures actually cheat- The body already knows how to build itself, and the soul contains a copy of this information. Ergo one only needs a soul or scrap of an existing creature and some spare energy. This makes these stones popular among hospitals as healing devices, and among governments as cloning devices. Persons simply holding the stone in their hand without intentionally summoning anything tend to receive skin growths. Pure energy with no instructions, out of a battery for instance, results in ash.

Hellmetal- Found only around the same layers as Hell, this crimson metal is stronger than steel. It can also be used to manipulate physical matter in a number of ways, including movement, reshaping, heating, and conversion into other matter. Much like the stones, it saps energy to do this, and defaults to heating itself. As for instructions, movement and heating only require the same knowledge needed to do so with spirit crystals. Reshaping requires a detailed anatomy/geometry of whatever you’re reshaping and whatever you’re reshaping it to, but not the elements. Any size differences result in density differences. Matter conversion requires knowing the elements in both whatever object you’re converting and whatever you’re converting it to, but not the anatomy if it remains the same shape. Demon pitchforks are made of this metal.

Brimstone- Found only at the same layers as Hellmetal, it looks like jagged, reddish-brown stone when found unaltered, but like a yellow crystal when cut and polished. Unlike the other materials, it does not sap energy, but allows the caster to store energy inside it and retrieve it later. The caster need only know that they can do that, and will themselves to do so. If it is cracked or broken while energy is inside it, the energy will be released outward from the damaged area as kinetic energy. In Hell, the uncut version is as common as dirt.

Ghosts/Spirits/Souls/etc.

(Sorry if I over-explain this part. These are just really nebulous terms for me and have way too many different meanings.)

Ghosts in this work are made (at least mostly) of electrical energy, and are the life force of all creatures. They’re the “software” of both the mind and body, and contain the genetic information of the original body. They also contain the memories and personality of their original self, and are separated from the body upon death. While the body sleeps, or is dead-but-still-revivable, chunks of the ghost may be found far from the body, but still attached by a string of energy. Computers and machines also have souls, but these do not contain genetic information unless specifically stored in the data by the programmer or the user.

Ghosts can float around, go through some walls, as well as see, touch, and fuse with other ghosts, living or dead. Willingly or not, they can enter new bodies that lack a soul. They can also use magic stones, intentionally or otherwise. Ghosts can split themselves into smaller portions, allowing fusions to be undone and powers to be passed on to living successors. Due to containing instructions on how to build their previous body, they can make new bodies using creation stones.

Ghosts can only go through air, conductive liquids, and conductive solids. Dry wood, most types of stone, plastics, and EM fields are all impassable. Ghosts can be resisted by other ghosts. A body is only usable on its own if it can conduct electricity, has fully functional movement hardware, and can sustain itself. (In other words, a freshly-dead/freshly-created corpse or a robot is fine, but a completely rigormortised one or a skeleton is unusable without a magic stone.) Using a magic stone actually spends the energy that the ghost is made of, and ghosts can completely destroy themselves (essentially dying again) by casting too hard. This also happens when trying to summon a new body without using angelbone or otherwise outside energy.

Ghosts cannot be seen, heard, or felt, except by other ghosts and devices specifically designed to see them. They cannot move objects without the use of a magic stone, and cannot feel objects that they can pass through. Objects they can’t pass through can be used as weapons against them. Their energy can be manipulated, and even spent, by magic stones even when they are not the caster. If they are completely spent, they lose consciousness forever. This also happens if they are completely ionized, meaning plasma and fire can also hurt them.

Astral Projection

Through thorough practice, one can cause their ghost to awaken during sleep without waking the physical body. They can then allow a chunk of their ghost to, while still attached, float away and do ghosty things. Ghosts of two sleeping persons can fuse, but this fusion is ripped back in two as soon as both bodies are awake.

Fusion

When two ghosts fuse, the fusion has the combined stats, size, lifespan, and abilities of both creatures. (Essentially, a human and an animal result in a tall anthropomorphic animal, while a human and a human result in a “double-human” or a giant.) They will also have the personality traits of both, and conflicting traits may result in inner conflict. In a physical body, certain abilities may still result in certain weaknesses. For instance, a harpy’s flight ability results in a weakness to physical damage, while a dryad’s tough wooden body results in a weakness to fire.

Prayer

The rules depend on exactly who a person is praying to and what the desired effect is.

On the surface, one praying aloud to God or to the angels may result in them hearing said prayers, as Earth is always monitored by Haven. Whether or not they respond depends on the severity of the situation, whether or not the desired result aligns with their goals, and whether or not it is within their power as fully-biological creatures.

Praying aloud to the spirits of the dead can also result in those prayers being heard, as nearby ghosts can still see and hear the living. Their response also depends on circumstance, personal preference, and what power they have as a ghost.

Praying silently or without response can still grant oneself a boost in strength, endurance, or confidence, due to the power of belief.

The Undead

Zombies- The result of a magic user attempting to repair and revive someone after they are already dead and spoiling. A zombie has no memories if their brain was regrown. Even when they do, a zombie has a completely different soul, and is incredibly sick, often to the point of acting like a feral or rabid animal. Zombies have compulsory cannibalistic tendencies due to being deficient in nearly all of their nutrients. They foam at the mouth, and can spread their sickness to living beings. A living person infected with the disease will show all of the symptoms except for the rigormortis and cannibalism. A similar disease can come from radiation, causing RadZombies.

Revenants- The result of a waking ghost using a Spirit Crystal or a chunk of Hellmetal to inhabit their old body after death. Has the sentience and physicality of a person, the appearance, smell, and eventually movement problems of a zombie, and the energy limit of a ghost. Immune to bodily pain but still weak to attacks that ghosts are weak to. The body can also be damaged to the point of being unusable.

Puppets- The result of a ghost using Spirit Crystals or Hellmetal to move around a dummy or a pile of gunk. Often mistaken for a golem. Destroying the body does little to inconvenience the ghost.

Golems

The result of a summoner knowing the biology of a creature but not the elements. Has skin, bones, muscles, etc. but they’re made of weird materials like mud, clay, slime and/or silicone. Can either stay alive for many years or for only a few minutes, depending on the abilities and priorities of the caster. Golems also range from fully-sentient synthetic humanoids to barely-alive killing machines, based on these same things. Has a soul, but may or may not have a genetic code.

Biological Powers

These are moreso writing rules than in-universe rules.

A biological power can be either

A) Based on a real-world animal, even if not operating the same way (for example, electricity or regeneration)

B) Based on already-established fantasy elements (such as having a type of magic stone be part of their body) or

C) Justifiable through science-babble. (For instance, “this creature shoots fire by expelling flammable gas and then igniting it with an electric shock”)

Technology

Must either be

A) Based on something that already exists in science or sci-fi

B) Combining science with an established fantasy element, or

C) Justifiable through science-babble.

Time Travel

Much like in Homestuck, stable loops, retcons, and offshoots are all possible. Retcons can only be achieved through sympathetic magic. Stable loops are achieved by extensively studying (or ignoring) what one already did, and then going back and doing it. Offshoots are created by intentionally changing something or by trying and failing to complete a stable loop. There is no alpha timeline nor are there doomed timelines in the traditional sense.

Retconned timelines will be remembered by some and forgotten by others, seemingly at random. Characters created through retcons will not remember times when they did not exist. Offshoot timelines are only remembered by the time traveler.

[amrynth]

Like the Tide

For @kumeko​ for Sparkle Sparkle 2019.  Happy Sparkling!

Also on Ao3

By the end of her shift, Haruka was prone to mopping along corridors in the back with her headphones on and her head down.  The aquarium was closed at that point and she’d already done her portion of the front of house and moved on to back.  It was easier to work head down, following walls and corridors and only really knowing where to go based on door frames that opened with her keycard and door frames that rejected her card.  So, when she pushed through a partially open door without needing her card, Haruka didn’t think much of it or even notice the restricted personnel sign.

She had, as Makoto often liked to tell her, her head in the clouds.  Haruka insisted this couldn’t be accurate because she was trying to keep her head down this time, otherwise she was never going to afford to fix the engine in her car.  Not if she got fired again.  

The pattern of light on the ground she was mopping changed.  It had been solid from the fluorescents overhead; the behind the scenes part of the aquarium wasn’t quite as fancy as the front with the environmentally friendly, aesthetically pleasing lights and wide windows with a view of the bay.  But now there was the dance of water reflecting light onto the floor and Haruka stopped her mop.  This wasn’t part of her usual routine.  

Haruka lifted her head slowly to look where she’d ended up; half the room was a typical space set up for studying the very large tank that dominated the room.  The other half of the room was a glass wall separating her from the tank that made up the second half.  She watched the water ripple at the top of the tank, the way the grid guarding the top of it was set several feet beneath the surface and even above that it was lit artificially rather than being exposed to the open air.  Quarantine?  Was it a tank with invasive species inside?  She didn’t see anything moving inside  so maybe nothing was set up yet and it was all in preparation for a sample that was going to get moved into the tank soon.  

Something shifted in the corner of the tank and Haruka lifted her hands to lower her headphones from where they covered her ears.  She moved down the wall of glass between her and the water, trying to move to where she could see into the dim corner better.  

From the darkness the shape sprang at the glass, making Haruka jump.  It was bigger than she’d anticipated, longer than she was tall and just as wide.  In fact it was entirely too human shaped in most aspects, other than the long tail that made up over half its- her length.  Haruka almost dropped her mop, staring at what was, for lack of a better term, a mermaid trying very hard to intimidate her.  The mermaid was faintly blue-green from head to toe, the color concentrated on her tail, shoulders and hair and lightening to a pale mint on the more human torso.  Her hair, turning the darker green of a deep ocean toward the ends, floated in loose waves along her shoulders.  Now that her initial scare hadn’t chased Haruka off, she was looking at the human with blue eyes.

Haruka lifted a hand and pressed the palm against the glass.  She had her cart with her, when she was done in the room she would clean the glass to get rid of any fingerprints.  But she wanted to know if the mermaid was intelligent, she certainly looked that way.  This was a very small tank for a creature, intelligent or otherwise, of Haruka’s size to be stuck in.  Inside the tank, those blue eyes were moving from Haruka’s face to her hand, the broom, and up to the grid covering the top of her tank.  Even if she didn’t respond to Haruka’s hand, it was clear from her expression and her eyes she was intelligent, sentient.  And that wasn’t just the same anthropomorphization Haruka tended to give all her adopted strays at all.  

After a long consideration of the hand pressed against the glass, while the figure in the tank drifted slowly closer, she pressed her hand to the same point on the other side of the glass.  They remained that way for a moment, time seeming to hold still, Haruka’s eyes going from where their hands met to find those of the mermaid.  She smiled.  She felt hopeful that maybe, as human in appearance as half of her was, the gesture would communicate that she didn’t mean any harm.  

In the water, the mermaid’s hands moved, creating purposeful gestures as her eyes watched for Haruka to recognize them.  Haruka followed the motion of her hands and appreciated, not for the first time, elegant fingers and delicate wrists and a ridge of spine along her lower forearm that terminated in a frill of fin.  She was trying to talk to Haruka in sign language and she wished she understood.  

“Wait a second, let me look…”

Haruka help up one finger and turned to consider the room behind her, looking to see if there was, say, a primer on how to ask in sign language if someone needed help.  Of course there was nothing of the sort so she pulled up her phone and looked up a few signs.  

She knew her hand signals were, at best, probably childish and Haruka kept looking at her phone and then back to the mermaid as she signed them.  “You.  Happy?”

The mermaid watched her hands, head canted to one side as she tried to make sense of gestures that were little better than a toddler’s.  Slowly she repeated what Haruka had said, elegant hands making the gestures clearer and much more like those she had looked up on her phone.  Haruka copied her, hoping that she understood what she was asking.  She knew she didn’t have the finesse (yet) required to ask the mermaid if she was a captive, if she wanted to be in a tank smaller than the closet in Haruka’s studio apartment.  

After a moment, the mermaid shook her head, hands moving to say more than Haruka could follow.  She paused and signed with slow, exaggerated motions that even Haruka was able to understand.  “Not happy.”

Haruka had the mop leaning against her shoulder and neck so her hands were free to move and to navigate her phone.  She frowned when the mermaid made herself clear and had to turn to her phone to try and ask in a concise way her next question.  A few steps and she was standing right at the edge of the tank and kept sneaking glances at the mermaid.  She was, perhaps, the most beautiful thing Haruka had ever seen.  It was a shame anything was trapped in a tank like this, particularly if it was sentient and knew it was trapped.  

“Want. Help?”  Haruka tried to be more deliberate in her gestures, more precise to make her meaning clearer.  

There was no hesitation in the mermaid’s response, moving toward the glass and nodding fervently.  

“Help.  Help.”  She repeated the gesture at Haruka, then swam up to push and rattle the grid keeping her in the tank.  

Haruka gazed at her, then switched from the browser on her phone to her contacts, scrolling for the one person she could rely on to help.  It was fairly late so she let it ring through once, waited long enough to clean her handprint off the glass, and then dialed again.  

“What is so important you’re blowing my phone up?”  The voice on the other end of the line was heavy with sleep.

“Hi Makoto,” Haruka put the full power of a smile into her voice.  

“No.”  The other side of the conversation hung up.  

Stubborn, Haruka dialed Makoto again.  It wasn’t until the very last ring that Makoto picked up, sounding less sleepy than before.  “Okay.  Yes.  I’m awake.”  

“Have I told you how delightful you are today Kino-san?”  

Makoto made a noise on the other end of the line that was somewhere between a laugh and a snort and a sound of disbelief.  “Stop.  What’s up?”  

“Do you think you could bring your truck to the aquarium?” Haruka asked, cutting to the point rather than trying to flatter her friend.  

There was a pause, then the sound of movement that was probably getting pants from the laundryheap.  “Is this anything like that time you needed a favor at the zoo?”  

“No-”

Makoto interrupted her, picking up where she’d left off.  “Because if you get fired again for, I don’t know, trying to free the penguins-”

“Look there was a perfectly good excuse for breaking that animal out, she was being-”

“-You’re never going to afford to fix your engine, is the point I’m trying to make.”  

Haruka frowned at her mop.  She quite liked her job actually, cleaning up after people wasn’t the most glamorous thing in the world, but at least she was cleaning up after crowds that mostly consisted of small children experiencing wonder.  And scientists who were trying their best to keep the oceans diversely populated.  But there was days like this where she found out at least one of them was doing something that seemed sketchy on every level.  It was just like the zoo, when she’d found one of the snakes was being experimented on and she’d packed it home, cared for it, and then found a safe, happy home for it.  

“Makoto it’s really important this time.”  

There must have been something in her tone of voice that made the voice on the other side of the phone pause.  Makoto sighed.  “Okay, but you’re going to owe me.”  

“By this time tomorrow I might be working for you full time,” Haruka said, but she was only partially joking.  

“Okay.  I’ll be headed there in a few minutes.  We’re not setting a whale free or anything, are we?” Makoto didn’t sound as though she thought this was outside the realm of possibility.  

“No, not a whale,” she assured her.  

“Mmm.”  Makoto wasn’t entirely convinced but hung up on her anyway.  

Haruka looked up from her conversation to see the mermaid watching her with interest.  She appeared to have neutral buoyancy, just floating and moving slightly with the lightest movement of her tail.  After searching on her phone for a few words she needed, Haruka waved for her attention, smiling again.  

“Friend.”  

The mermaid canted her head so Haruka repeated the sign and pointed at herself, not sure if she hadn’t understood what she was trying to convey or if her signing was too sloppy.  

“Friend help.”  The mermaid took a moment to sign back, combining words they had already used.

Haruka nodded.  Yes, she was going to help her.  She narrowed her eyes and looked at her phone again, struggling to make a complex enough sentence to ask her next question.  Or rather, to ask her questions in such a way the mermaid could answer in simple yes or no.  

“No water, death?”  Haruka had to repeat herself, clarifying her gestures to get her question across to her mermaid.

The mermaid frowned at her, playing with a bit of long, green hair that had trailed over her shoulder.  Her eyes were moving quickly, looking at Haruka and the room behind her.  Was she considering her options?  

“Help.” Haruka signed hoping she would understand.  Getting the mermaid out of the aquarium would be difficult enough, getting her out in a truck capable of holding water was going to be even more difficult.  Not that they had access to that, Makoto’s truck was pretty basic, that meant it wasn’t a waterproof bed.  

After another moment’s consideration, the mermaid indicated 3 and then a gesture Haruka didn’t know.  She tried hunting it up, then searched for words to do with time.  Three hours.  

“Three hours.”  She signed back, repeating a little more awkwardly.  

On the other side of the glass, the mermaid tilted her head and gently corrected the motion, getting Haruka to repeat herself until she had apparently done it to her satisfaction.  Then she smiled and Haruka forgot everything she had been trying to learn to say with her hands.  When the mermaid smiled, time stood still and Haruka couldn’t hear much other than the soft lap of water and the singing of an angelic choir.  

Oh boy.

Haruka was startled from her reverie when her phone buzzed and she nearly jumped out of her skin.  Just Makoto texting to ask which gate she should pull up to.  How long had she been staring at the mermaid?  Haruka flipped through her browser to figure out how to tell the mermaid she would be back, and then returned to her cart out in the hallway.  She made careful note of what room she had been in and the restricted access sign she hadn’t seen when she’d first gone in.  

She took a moment to text Makoto the best gate, along with a message that she needed to at least make sure her work could pass inspection for the night.  Also could Makoto perhaps get her mad scientist friend to hack the security system so maybe none of them would spend time in jail.  Haruka cruised through the rest of what she should have mopped, grabbing garbage and otherwise making sure it would pass a cursory inspection.

And then she jogged up to the ground level to meet up with Makoto out in the staff parking lot.  

“What is all of this about?” Makoto asked, phone in her hand.  “Ami’s not a mad scientists by the way.  She’s just really really smart and I have no idea what she does.  But she’s on cameras, we’re basically ghosts.”  

“Do you think we can drive to some secluded beach in three hours?” Haruka asked.  

“If you got me out of bed because you want to go on a drive- Haruka you have a bike even if your car isn’t running.  I have to be up to open the bakery in a few hours.” Makoto sounded more than a little exasperated.  

“And, assuming we’re not all in jail tomorrow morning, I will be right at your side burning muffins.”  Haruka was gratified that Makoto laughed at this statement.  “But this is important.  Back the truck up this way, I’ll direct you.  We can do it in three hours, right?  Way less, right?”  

“You’re not driving, I can do it in one hour.”  

“I could do it in half.”  

Makoto got into her truck and didn’t dignify this with an answer.  

Haruka helped her back into a space as close to where she would guess the tank was.  “You okay to wait here?  If someone comes by let them know you’re on a drop off.”  

“That’s only going to work so long,” Makoto said, leaning out the window to talk to her.

“I’ll be fast.”  Haruka spoke with confidence, grinning at her friend.

Haruka jogged again, finding the staff entrance that would get her where she needed to go.  It wasn’t a long hall, counting doors and corridors until she found the one that said restricted access and correlated to the door she’d accidentally slipped through earlier.  She texted the door number to Ami who was, as far as she was concerned and despite what Makoto said, a mad scientist.  A few seconds later the door clicked and Haruka was through.  

The upper part of the large tank the mermaid was far less interesting than the lower part- if you didn’t know what was in the tank.  It was much harder to make out what was below the surface and the grid from above and there was little more up in this part of the building but tank controls and monitors.  

She was tempted to glance at the security camera, trusting Ami had taken care of it, but kept her head down just in case.  Not that she was easily confused for anyone else in janitorial coveralls anyway.  She was the tallest on the janitorial staff, lean and angular and blonde.  Haruka kicked her shoes off, rolled her pants up, and dropped down to where the grid was preventing the mermaid from attempting to escape, gasping at the cold water.  She knelt down, one pant leg soaking up to the knee.  There wasn’t anything to be seen with the light reflecting off the water, so she wove her fingers down into the grid.  Immediately, soft fingers touched the ends of hers, weaving to meet them.  

Haruka grinned and got back to her feet to climb out of the tank.  Now that she was certain she had the right tank, she operated the machinery ro raise the grill and open the top of the tank.  Almost as soon as it was open, the pale, green-blue shape of the mermaid was emerging from the water.

“Hi.  Can you hear or, I don’t know.  Talk?” Haruka asked, getting the grid far enough out of the way she could kneel down where the mermaid was climbing out.  

“Yes.  But once I am out of the water it is best if I do not try to talk.”  

“Here, take my hands.  I’ll help you up and then my friend has a truck and we’ll get you out of this place.”  Haruka offered her arms and found them soon very wet and very full of mermaid.  She was colder and lighter than Haruka had expected, skin the same temperature as the salt water in her tank.  The mermaid wrapped her arms around her shoulders and her tail wound down around one leg so that Haruka could still walk.  

She stopped just long enough to close the grill and shove her feet back into her shoes.  This was the part that worried Haruka the most, walking through the building with a mermaid in her arms.  Just regular janitorial work.  That it was long after business and working hours was to their benefit, as they didn’t pass a soul.  

“The hell is that?”  Makoto half stepped out of her truck but then got back in and started the engine.  

Haruka pulled the blanket from behind the seat and, with Makoto’s help, put it on the seat so that the mermaid could cover most of her tail with it.  She almost looked human- strangely dressed perhaps and a little more green than the standard variety, but human.  

“Um, so you can see why we needed to bust this one out, right?” Haruka asked.

She settled in the passenger seat so that the mermaid was between them and the least visible from either window.  Still damp and cool, the mermaid leaned against her side and watched the window, her breathing shallow but steady.  

“Yeah.  And the timeframe.”  Makoto glanced at them from the corner of her eye and smiled at the security team member who was manning the booth.  Once past, she adjusted her rear view mirror.  “You know, he smiles just like my senpai.”  

Mostly the ride was quiet, the streets rather empty now that it was past the time most people were still out.  Once the aquarium was closed, there wasn’t a lot of reason for anyone to be out this far.  The whole truck grew tense when flashing lights started to come up behind them, but Makoto pulled to the side of the road and they passed right by.  

“I think I might be sick.”

“If you’re going to be sick switch places with me,” Haruka said, glancing over at Makoto.  

“I’ve got this.  I don’t trust you with my transmission after what happened to yours,” was the retort.  

Haruka was about to let Makoto know that if her transmission had been built to the specs she wanted, it would have done fine with the way she changed gears.  And it would be, someday.  If she could keep a job.  

When the mermaid was determined missing, would she still have a job?  She had been more interested in making sure Makoto wasn’t going to get traced to this but it would be obvious when Haruka wasn’t clocked out at all that she was a person of interest in the specimen’s disappearance.  Maybe most of the aquarium didn’t even know about her.  

“What do you think, good beach?  Should we go further?”  Makoto pulled to the side and checked the map on her phone.  

Haruka looked at the mermaid leaning against her.  It had been almost an hour and her breathing was more shallow, her skin clammy and wan.  Although she’d said three hours, Haruka thought maybe that was an overestimation on her part.  

“I think this will do.  Once she is back in the water, everything will be okay.  Right?”  Haruka caught the mermaid’s attention.

The mermaid blinked slowly at her and nodded.  

They turned off the highway and made their way down toward the beach.  The mermaid picked her head up when the car door opened and she could hear the ocean, her blue eyes turning intense.  

“Come on, almost there.”  Haruka slid one arm under her tail and the over behind her back, leaving the blanket behind in the cab of the truck.  

The beach was virtually empty and Haruka just walked out, thigh-deep, into the water with the mermaid and lowered her into the water.  Still holding onto one of her forearms, the mermaid breathed a deep sigh when she touched the ocean water, then smiled up at Haruka, her brilliant and time-stopping smile.  

“I ought to tell you something,” she said, her voice soft enough that Haruka had to lean down to hear her.  Instead of saying anything, the mermaid leaned up and kissed her on the cheek.  

Haruka dropped her, stunned by the soft, cool lips on her cheek.  

“My name is Michiru.”  

There was something she was supposed to say but Haruka just put a hand on her cheek and stared at her, at a loss for words.  Makoto came to her rescue once again, throwing a rock in their direction.  

“Tell her your name, dummy!”

“Haruka.  My name is Haruka.”  

With a flip of her tail, Michiru was gone.  Haruka was left at the shore with a cool spot on her cheek and one last time-stopping smile.  

[anti-kin-cringe]

Am I the only one that has noticed the horrible ageism among the community? I can't be 15 and otherkin without getting constantly questioned and invalidated, it's fucking annoying. Just let me be, let me grow and develop, and discover myself in my own time, don't try to fucking rush it and make me feel like shit for being young. I hope I'm not alone on this

I do understand what you mean. Unfortunately, a lot of older members of the community can be rude or condescending to younger members. I know a lot of it probably comes from them being tired of the misinformation that a lot of newcomers or young people fall victim to, and sadly they take out their frustration on those young people sometimes.

I think all of us have heard the “hmm, you’re pretty young. are you sure you’re not just [x]?” response before. A lot of the time, those older either forget what it’s like to not be in the position they are now with their identity, or assume that people under a certain age are always uninformed, both of which lead to problems. Questioning is a great and necessary tool of understanding ourselves, especially with these identities, but it’s important to remember that it takes time to come up with answers, and it takes time to know if you’re even asking the right question.

To our greymuzzle friends: Someone new to understanding their identity is probably not going to have those detailed, well-explained responses to all your questions. That’s the kind of fuller, deeper understanding of self that is only really possible after you open up to your nonhuman feelings. Before then, someone may have done enough research, enough introspection to have a basic understanding that they are, potentially, such-and-such a creature. But they might not be sure yet! What someone new to the community has just done is put on a label that they truly believe, at that moment, fits them, but that’s really more the start of their journey. They might correct themselves later down the road, or they might be right about themselves even if they can’t fully explain it, but they can’t get there at all if they don’t open up to the feelings and give them a name. And this may be the hardest bit to swallow: they aren’t actually obligated to give you their life story and personal identity. That can be extremely personal information that you do not have an automatic right to know. All you really need to know is this: do they know what the otherkin community even is, what it means, and so on? and do they truly believe that what it means applies to them? From there, you can talk to them, and watch them figure themselves out on their own. You’ll find people naturally open up more about themselves when they feel safer and comfortable doing so, when they actually trust the other, older members of a community. They may find that they jumped the gun too early and anthropomorphized an animal to match their personality traits because they got excited, or they may find that everything they thought initially truly was indicative of something nonhuman and they just didn’t have the words at the beginning to explain why.

To our young friends: A lot of the questioning is left over from the days where people would “grill” you on your identity to see if you really knew yourself and what you were talking about, essentially to “prove” you were really otherkin. Now, we’re certainly making strides away from that culture, and I can’t really say I’m sad to see it go. Good riddance to that, in fact. But--everyone should stress healthy (HEALTHY) questioning and skepticism. There are certain phases of mind that pretty much every adolescent goes through, such as believing you’re more mature than anyone else your age or that you’re the only one not like anyone else (I say this because that’s what I experienced, and true I did turn out to be otherkin but I also heard the same from a whole lot of people who didn’t). There are certain logic traps that newcomers and young people are more prone to falling into, such as assigning human personality traits to animals or going off of one lone experience from a few years ago that has multiple explanations (and sometimes these turn out to be correct! But it’s more side anecdote than anything in my own experience). So sometimes the older community members see that and get a little aggressive in countering it. When an older member tells you to take something with a grain of salt, remember to take what they say with a grain of salt. They aren’t you, after all, and it may be that you know what you feel, but simply can’t explain it in “satisfying” terms yet--and that’s okay. You’ll learn.

But also to our greymuzzle friends: They can only learn if you give them the space to do so. I can’t tell how many times I’ve watched multiple newcomers, generally young, have their experiences shot down because they didn’t explain it up to your standards. They said they had such and such a personality trait, and you said “be careful not to assign personality traits to animals”. They said okay, but I also have phantom limb shifts, and you said, “be careful, the mind can be tricky and fool you into having limbs when you really want them”. They said okay, but I also experience mental shifts, and you said “be careful, those sound like normal human instincts and activities.” Instead of acknowledging the potential of those experiences, many of which are the same ones you talk about experiencing yourself but are somehow above the questioning of, you gave the impression that nothing a young member of the community will ever do could possibly be right. Remember your own words. Everything we feel is subjective, and not a single one of us knows with 100% certainty. No, not even you.

I often wonder if there would have been a difference in the response from older community members had I been younger when I entered the community. My first explanation about myself, looking back on it now, was “weak” by some greymuzzle standards. I explained things vaguely, I talked about feeling “connections” as part of my identity. And I wonder, if I had been under 18 instead of above, if, when I talked about feeling connected, I would have been told, “otherkin isn’t about a connection with something” (even though I knew that, “connection” was partly the best way I could explain some things at the time), “are you sure you really identify AS, not with?” (yes, even though I couldn’t fully say why at the time), “that was pretty vague, have you done any research?” (yes). If I had been 16, 15, 14, 13, and walked in bright-eyed and confused and said for reasons I couldn’t fully explain I knew I was drawn to this at first and then realized I was this without ever experiencing a real middle questioning stage in between, would you ever have truly accepted me?

-Silent