#there certainly are some similarities here between these 2 series at least in regards to this and 1999 specifically

[frameconfessions]

"This edited track matches the vibes of the computer entirely. You are chatting with normal people from thousands of years in the past currently stuck in a loop with no end in sight. There is some positivity mixed in, but it's mostly has a vibe of sadness and apathy. That's what i get, anyway." - a comment on this youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oaddn2eLIbE) that sounds way more like the plot of Homestuck than it should. Plus the whole doomed timelines thing certainly doesn't help. lmao

No, but that absolutely sounds like Homestuck. Computers that have a chat client which works through space-time and doomed timelines stuff? Yeahhhhhhh, I've seen this somewhere before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oaddn2eLIbE

[playedcrowd5610]

"Protective Programming" - Danny Phantom x Transformers

Summary: After some careful consideration, Laserbeak has concluded that Danny has a complete lack of self-preservation and it was up to him to keep the human safe.

Or three times Laserbeak “saves” Danny and the one time Danny returns the favor.

ANIMATIC INCLUDED WITH THIS STORY!!!

---

Notes

Set in a series where Danny finds Starscream one day and decides to start haunting the Decepticons. That's basically all the context you need but if you want more here is the rest of the series:

Haunting the Nemesis

Part 1: Chasing Stars

Part 2: Burning Rubber

Part 3: Adventures of the Decepticons' Pet Ghost Or Tumblr Master List

---

Laserbeak watched from his perch as the meeting between his master, Starscream and Knockout took place below him. Most mechs didn’t notice the bird-like mini-con when he was this high up, and Laserbeak preferred it that way. He could survey the entire room and gather data to share with Soundwave during later briefings.

The three were arguing about some new rules Soundwave was putting in place regarding their frequent disappearances from the Nemesis. Laserbeak sent a wave of amusement through his bond with Soundwave when Knockout gave an exaggerated, pained response, and Starscream waved his servo around in outrage.

Suddenly, Laserbeak noticed a movement out of the corner of his optic. He shifted his helm to spot the human — at least, that was what the others claimed he was. Soundwave wasn’t so sure and shared those thoughts with his mini-con. Either way, Laserbeak was uncertain how the human could have slipped past his guard; surely, he would have noticed an organic entering the bridge — or anyone, for that matter. His optics narrowed as they tracked the newcomer.

The human, or "Danny," he had claimed his designation was, stood watching the debate with a smile, clear amusement reflecting in his EM field. Knockout continuously tried to rebut Soundwave's points, claiming that racing helped him relax and made his servos steadier for surgery. Starscream agreed with a similar sentiment for his flying.

In response, Soundwave simply pulled up a graph of all their recorded but unauthorized absences from the Nemesis, displaying the incidents’ frequency. Laserbeak remembered Soundwave mentioning that Starscream was less of a problem, as he could fly to where he wanted to go, but Knockout often used excessive energon to power the groundbridge for joyrides.

Laserbeak continued idly scanning, reading their EM fields, mannerisms, and reactions, gauging whether he would need to intervene on his master’s behalf. Not that Soundwave needed assistance.

Then the human made a snarky comment toward Knockout — something Laserbeak couldn’t quite pick up. Knockout's field flared with anger in an instant as he spun to face the human, transforming his servo into a buzzsaw. He snarled a threat before holding it underneath Danny’s chin, almost pressing against the delicate human vessels required to fuel their processor to keep them alive. It was an immediate threat. If the human’s head was severed, he certainly would not survive the ordeal. 

Laserbeak’s programming seemed to kick in on instinct. One moment, he was observing from his perch; the next, he was dive-bombing Knockout, knocking the mech off balance.

Knockout yelled in outrage, retaliating by swinging his buzzsaw at Laserbeak, who easily dodged the clumsy attack and swooped toward the human. He extended two tendrils (designed for data upload and tasks requiring finer control) and Laserbeak wrapped them securely around Danny’s torso and shoulders, lifting him up and carrying him safely back to his perch.

Danny made a startled sound and looked up at Laserbeak in confusion, trying to reassure the mini-con that he was fine and that this sort of thing happened all the time. But Laserbeak wasn’t having any of it. His plating puffed up, and his wings flared. He wasn’t putting the defenseless human down until the danger of Knockout’s aggravated state had passed.

Humans were small, vulnerable, and easily squashed. It was a miracle that the species had survived this long. Danny had unwisely provoked a fight he could never hope to win. The Cybertronians in the room outclassed him a thousandfold — even Laserbeak could kill him with a drop from this height. As that thought crossed his processor, he tightened his grip to ensure no such accident would occur.

Danny’s behaviour seemed to convey a severe lack of judgment, possibly even a damaged processor. Laserbeak would request that Soundwave inspect him once the danger is cleared. Soundwave had already turned his visor up to face them, as had everyone else in the room. Laserbeak unconsciously pulled Danny closer to his frame, protectiveness radiating through his EM field.

Starscream said something in outrage about leaving the human with Laserbeak, while Knockout muttered something along the lines of, “Let the fragging bird do what it wants.” Laserbeak bristled, his optics zeroing in on Knockout’s buzzsaw. Sensing Laserbeak’s scrutiny, Knockout transformed the weapon back into his servo. “There, you happy?” he huffed.

With the weapon gone, Laserbeak’s plating relaxed, though he still held Danny tightly. In response, Danny chuckled. How could the human find nearly being decapitated humorous?

“Laserbeak,” Danny began, stroking one of the tendrils wrapped around him. Laserbeak snapped his optics to him. “I’m okay, see? I was just annoying Knockout. I do that all the time.”

Laserbeak was not amused.

Soundwave tilted his helm at the mini-con, sending a silent ping to Laserbeak’s system: //Laserbeak: Return.// Laserbeak denied the request, removing it from his HUD and sending back a pulse of protective energy through the bond, optics focused on the current danger in the room.

After a moment’s consideration, Soundwave powered down the monitor, turning back towards Starscream and Knockout before pointing at the door — a very obvious meeting adjourned .

Knockout left without complaint and a flick of his wrist, though Starscream looked ready to argue. But at Soundwave’s pointed stare, he reluctantly stalked out of the room. Once the doors slid shut, Soundwave’s visor tilted back up to Laserbeak and his charge, this time, he spoke aloud. “Danger: passed. Laserbeak: Return.”

Laserbeak gave Danny a final, tight squeeze before he descended, gently depositing the fragile human into Soundwave’s servos for his master to inspect. Laserbeak sent a ping to Soundwave requesting that the human be examined for possible processor damage.

Soundwave’s visor was fixed on Danny, running a diagnostic scan, and sent a ping back that he didn't find anything out of the ordinary for Danny's vitals. Soundwave then turned his helm back towards the human to address him. “Request: Avoid aggravating Knockout in a volatile state. Threat level: considerable.”

Danny chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it under control.”

Laserbeak fluttered close to him, trying his best to give a chastizing chattering from his vocalizer that he hoped would help the human seek sense. Danny simply turned around to pat Laserbeak’s helm affectionately. “Thanks for looking out for me, Laserbeak.” His field flickered with appreciation. 

-

After careful consideration, Laserbeak had definitively concluded that Danny had a complete lack of self-preservation and it was up to him to keep the human safe.

It always seemed that the human was getting himself into problems he couldn't possibly hope to get out of. In all of Laserbeak’s research and reconnaissance regarding the human race, he had concluded that the aliens may be easily breakable, but at least they had the common sense to not try and get themselves offlined every chance they got. 

This human must have been the complete opposite of his species. 

This realization was why Laserbeak currently found himself diving off the side of the Nemesis to catch Danny, who had stumbled straight off the edge of the ship. It was common knowledge that humans couldn’t fly, yet here he was, tumbling through open air as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Laserbeak’s field buzzed with alarm as he scanned Danny’s vitals, but somehow, the human’s heart rate remained steady — disturbingly calm, considering the predicament. Processor damage indeed.

When Danny noticed Laserbeak diving after him, he even had the nerve to smile up at the mini-con. Laserbeak squawked in exasperation, extending his tendrils as he swooped beneath the human, wrapping them carefully around Danny’s torso and limbs. He slowed their descent gradually, knowing he had to be gentle to avoid the organic's limbs detaching or sustaining an injury humans referred to as ‘whiplash.’

Laserbeak brought the human back up onto the ship, safely depositing him in the middle of the landing bay at the furthest point from any edge he could find himself falling off of. Laserbeak’s vents cycled heavily as he began running scans for injuries. The human seemed to have normal vitals for himself and showed no signs of distress or trauma. (At least from what Laserbeak's low-level scanners could find.)

Danny chuckled as he dusted himself off. “Don’t worry Laserbeak, I’m fine. Thanks for catching me,” he said with a laugh, completely unbothered. The mini-con huffed and puffed up his plating, finding it hard to believe the human could find any humour in his near-fatal fall. Perhaps he was more broken than he’d initially realized. He ran another set of scans to be sure.

But there was still reconnaissance to do, so with one last glance at the human, Laserbeak took to the skies, sweeping the Nemesis’ airspace to resume his patrol. He didn’t get far, however, before his sensors alerted him to movement. Danny was wandering near the edge of the landing pad again . 

Without hesitation, Laserbeak swooped down, catching the human before he could get within ten feet of the drop, carrying him back to the center of the platform and placing him firmly back on his feet.

Danny huffed in protest, but Laserbeak ignored it, flying off to resume his patrol, though he now kept a much closer optic on the human below. He wasn’t about to be caught off guard again.

Sure enough, Danny inched back toward the edge the moment Laserbeak turned away. Laserbeak swooped in before he’d taken more than a few steps, scooping him up once again and depositing him in the same spot. Danny sighed. “Really?” 

Laserbeak chirped in acknowledgment.

Danny paused, then inched forward again, testing Laserbeak’s reaction. Laserbeak immediately flew in front of him, nudging him back to the center of the platform, his EM field pulsing with irritation. The human only laughed and tried again, but each attempt was met with the same outcome. Laserbeak’s plating flared in frustration as he continued to intercept each approach.

Finally, Danny seemed to lose patience, deciding to make a full dash for the edge. Laserbeak lunched out his tendrils, grabbing the human and lifting him off the ground, keeping him suspended so he couldn’t try another attempt.

Danny sighed, resigned. “Alright, I get it. You win.”

Laserbeak decided that it was too dangerous for the humans to have any access to the outside.  He turned around taking the human with him and used his codes to open the bay doors, running a scan over the Nemesis to locate one of Danny’s caretakers. Starscream, the human’s primary caretaker, was currently indisposed, so Laserbeak opted for Soundwave, who was in the ship's control room.

Laserbeak swooped through the corridors and located the room quite easily. Soundwave turned to look at Laserbeak as he flew in with the struggling human in his grasp. With a soft huff of exasperation, Laserbeak unceremoniously deposited Danny onto Soundwave’s desk.

Soundwave looked between Danny and then back to Laserbeak a question mark appearing on his visor. Danny smiled up at him. “I think I’ve been grounded.” 

Laserbeak chirped in affirmation before he turned with a final flutter of his wings and headed back outside to continue his reconnaissance.

[ANIMATIC] 

Here is the animation I made for this scene! It's on YouTube under my art account "Raevo_Draws" Please check it out and leave a like and comment! (I will also link it at the end of the fic if you don’t want to pause your reading) 

-

Laserbeak sat on his usual perch above the Nemesis control room, waiting for his master to return when his sensors detected a shift, and he spotted Danny walking in. Laserbeak's optics brightened as he focused on the human, running a quick scan as he always did. But this time, he noticed something unusual — the vitals weren’t right.

Danny spotted him immediately upon entering, waving up at the mini-con, smiling without a hint of worry. “Hey, Laserbeak. Is Soundwave nearby?”

Laserbeak ignored the question, launching from his perch and swooping down towards the human. He stopped, hovering just in front of him, getting close enough to do a more invasive scan. Danny instinctively took a step back, raising his organic limbs in a show of surrender. “Laserbeak?” Danny’s tone was confused.

The mini-con chirped, his scanners working over Danny’s frame from head to toe. As he reached Danny’s torso, his sensors caught something: an anomaly. A viscous substance was leaking from a wound on the human’s side under his shirt. Laserbeak squawked in alarm, extending a tendril to lift the fabric. Beneath the shirt, he found bandages hastily wrapped around the area, and under that was a deep, raw injury that had been quickly and clumsily stitched back together with thread.

Laserbeak’s EM field flared in shock and concern. Danny was hurt, losing blood. He knew humans required their blood just as mechs needed energon, and without armor or plating, their bodies were easily compromised. The realization sent another spike of alarm through Laserbeak, and he leaned in to inspect the wound more closely.

Danny placed a servo on the mini-con’s frame, gently trying to push him back. “Laserbeak, I’m fine. See?” He said, gesturing at the rough patch job. “I already dealt with it.”

But Laserbeak let out a low, displeased huff. The injury was still leaking, and for a wound of this severity, the human should be experiencing more pain — or at least expressing it. Ignoring Danny’s reassurances, Laserbeak extended a tendril and lightly touched the injury.

Danny winced, pulling back with a soft hiss.

Laserbeak retracted immediately, his field radiating an apology. So, the human was in pain. He was simply hiding it, trying to wave it off to keep Laserbeak from worrying. But Laserbeak was undeterred. He wrapped a tendril loosely around Danny’s arm to prevent him from walking off while he considered what to do.

Laserbeak could bring Danny to Knockout, but he dismissed it immediately: Knockout rarely had the human’s best interests in mind and would likely not even know where to start when it came to an injury on an organic. Danny tugged at the tendril, impatience pulling at the edge of his field, but Laserbeak held tighter, determined to keep him in place.

This was beyond Laserbeak’s scope to address alone. Danny needed a more thorough examination. Quickly, he sent a sharp, urgent ping to Soundwave, requesting his master’s immediate return.

Moments later Soundwave glided into the control room, his visor flickering and field emanating concern through their bond from the frantic ping. Laserbeak dragged Danny closer to Soundwave, urgently pinging him requests to look over the injured human. 

Danny rubbed the back of his neck, field drifting towards embarrassment under the scrutiny. “It’s fine, really,” he began. “I patched myself up. No need to worry.”

Soundwave ignored the dismissal, scanning Danny’s injuries himself. His field displayed a brief pulse of concern before he reached down, scooped the human up in his servos and brought him closer to his visor.

“Assessment: insufficient treatment,” Soundwave’s said. “Injuries: pose threat to Danny’s health.” His field became a little lighter as he sensed Laserbeak’s worry. “Suggestion: Seek additional treatment.”

Danny’s field flared in — fear? --- but he tried to smother it down and waved dismissively. “I’m not going to a hospital,” he explained. “It’s not that bad. I’ll heal up soon, I promise. Really, I don’t need any more attention, this happens all the time.”

Soundwave tilted his helm, silently observing Danny for a moment. After a beat, he addressed the human again. “Solution: remain under observation.”

Danny’s shoulders slumped, but he nodded, reluctantly agreeing to stay under their watch for the next hour or so. Laserbeak, satisfied with this outcome, chirped softly and nestled at Danny’s side, his tendrils close by in case the human tried any more evasive moves.

As Danny settled in, Laserbeak’s optics flickered with a quiet intensity. He would stay right here, keeping vigilant, and make sure this reckless human didn’t suffer further damage on his watch.

-

Laserbeak had been acting strange lately, constantly hovering around Danny and scanning him for injuries every chance he got. Danny found it strangely endearing, even though most of the times Laserbeak had “saved” Danny, he had been perfectly fine. But from Laserbeak's perspective, Danny guessed that he was technically putting himself in mortal peril all the time. 

Laserbeak and Soundwave both seemed to have taken it upon themselves to always make sure Danny was in peak health. Even for just a little scrape, or if he was a little dizzy, he would be put on veritable bed rest until the two cons deemed him fit to leave their sight. He couldn't even sit up without one of them moving him to sit back down, and the worry and concern from Laserbeak’s field always guilted Danny into staying.

But right now, Danny grinned as the wind rushed past him, sitting comfortably on Laserbeak’s back as they glided through the sky, one of the con’s tendrils wrapped around his waist like a seatbelt. Laserbeak was doing reconnaissance around a small mining town (Danny didn’t think those existed anymore) but Danny asked to tag along. Soundwave deemed the mission safe enough for his two mini-cons to go, as long as they stuck together. 

Danny loved flying with the Cons, whether it was Starscream, Laserbeak, or Soundwave. The last one happened the least often with the amount of work Soundwave was swamped with. But Here, with Laserbeak, he could relax. The silent mech always scanning and observing everything around them.

“Man, you really get a good view up here,” Danny said, patting Laserbeak’s side as they flew. 

Laserbeak didn’t respond, not that Danny expected him to. The mechanical bird was focused, always alert, and that was something Danny could appreciate. He stretched his arms, taking in the view of the vast sky stretching out around them.

Then something shifted.

Danny felt it — an odd jolt in the air, like static electricity crackling around them. He frowned and looked around. “Uh… did you feel that?”

Before he could figure it out, Laserbeak jerked violently beneath him, his wings stiffening as if hit by an invisible force. Laserbeak screeched, his systems suddenly going haywire.

“What the—?!” Danny’s eyes widened. 

Suddenly they were dropping out of the sky, Laserbeak’s flight systems failing as they spiralled downward. Danny’s stomach lurched as they plummeted, the ground coming up fast to meet them.

Laserbeak was struggling, and Danny had no idea what happened. Was this an Autobot attack? He had never met one of them before but he knew they were the Cons’ mortal enemies. Maybe an EMP or some other Cybertronian weapon to scramble systems he hadn't heard about? 

The ground got closer faster. Danny desperately gripped Laserbeak’s wings and tried to slow their descent, hands grasping tightly to the metal of his wings. Danny was staring at Laserbeak, trying to figure out what was wrong, trying to make sure the mini-con wasn’t in pain. 

Danny was so focused on slowing their descent and checking the Con’s systems that he didn’t notice the large abandoned warehouse/barn they were hurtling towards. By the time Danny looked up it was too late to use his intangiblility. They crashed through the roof (luckily with a much-slowed fall) and landed on a pile of old, rusted tools and parts.

Danny had been thrown off of Laserbeak and landed a few feet away. He slowly sat up, his eyes adjusting and ears ringing. When he finally blinked his vision back into focus, he saw Laserbeak lying in a heap. The mech’s systems were clearly down — he wasn’t moving, and the glow of his optics had dimmed

“Laserbeak!” Danny scrambled to his feet, rushing over to him. “Hey, you okay? What happened?” He put a hand on the Con’s wing.

Laserbeak twitched, trying to lift his helm to look around, but his lights flickered and he collapsed again. Danny swore under his breath. Maybe he could try and reboot his systems? 

He glanced over and saw how one of the Con’s wings was crumpled and he had a few dents across his frame where they had hit the wheelhouse and then the ground. If only Danny had been more attentive, this wouldn't have happened. This may be out of his league. Laserbeak needed Soundwave, or Knockout, someone who knew how to deal with Cybertronian tech.

Laserbeak’s optics flickered weakly as he tried to scan Danny, his chirp sounding almost pained. “I know, buddy,” Danny sighed. “I’ll get you fixed up, we just got to hope that whoever shot you down didn’t see where we landed.” He sat down next to the mini-con and stroked a hand on his back between his wings.

He pulled out his phone quickly and opened up his contact for Soundwave, sending immediate pings and requests for pick up, along with their coordinates. Danny knew it wouldn’t be long before the Decepticon third in command would come for his mini-con and his sort of adopted human (that is, if he ever got the rights from Starscream).

“Help will be here soon, don’t worry,” Danny reassured in a quiet tone to Laserbeak. Suddenly, he heard something outside the abandoned building they were bunkered up in. He tensed and strained his ears to listen. Laserbeak must have sensed it too because his field flickered in fear. Voices . 

“Where’d it go? I know I saw it fall over here!” One voice said, sounding closer.

“You sure that wasn’t just a bird or somethin’?” Another asked.

“No way. Whatever it was, it was huge! And we nailed it with that zapper!”

Danny froze. Teenagers. It was just a bunch of teenagers. Of course, it was. A bunch of kids who had made some sort of EMP weapon for a school project or just for fun and decided to start shooting things out of the sky. Danny glanced down at the cowering mini-con next to him as they got closer and closer. Laserbeak couldn’t even move a winglet with what they did to him. 

So it was up to Danny to protect him this time. He was due a turn anyway. If they found Laserbeak, there was no telling what they’d do, especially if they realized he wasn’t just some wild animal.

Danny stood up, looking around for anything he could use to hide Laserbeak. There was an old tarp draped over some machinery. That would work. Danny pulled it off with a flick of his wrists and then draped it over the Decepticon surveillance drone, tucking the corners under his wings. 

Laserbeak’s field flickered with confusion and Danny stepped back to see how covered the Con was. Danny could see the tip of one of his wings and his flickering optics reflecting a little bit of light from underneath the tarp. It would work as long as they didn’t look too hard. “I’m keeping you out of sight. Just stay quiet and I’ll buy us time till Soundwave arrives.

“I think it’s in here.” 

Danny crossed his arms, standing as much as he could in front of Laserbeak, trying to keep him from view. The kids shoved their way in, even though the door had been clearly barricaded, the wood splintering easily as one of them shoved it hard with their shoulder. 

The kids were laughing as they strode in, not noticing Danny at first. One of them had a crowbar in his fist and another a bat. There was a third who was holding some strange sort of mangled tech that looked like it had been pierced together from bits of a junkyard (looked like something his parents would make in the early days.)

“You guys lost?” Danny asked, his tone ice-cold. The three teens’ eyes all snapped to him, all going stiff for a moment. 

One of the teenagers, the leader apparently, smirked. “We’re lookin’ for the thing we shot down. Saw it fall right around here. Big metal bird or whatever.” He slurred, waving his hand to the side. Danny added likely intoxicated to the mental list.

Danny’s eyes narrowed. “There’s nothing here. So how about you turn around and leave.”

The leader scoffed, stepping closer. “You gonna make us?”

Danny clenched his fists. The last thing he needed was to get into a fight, but he wasn’t about to let them get anywhere near Laserbeak. “Yes, I am, kid. Now get out of here if you know what's good for you.”

There was a beat of silence before one of the teens made the mistake of grabbing Danny’s arm, trying to shove him out of the way.

In a flash, Danny twisted, phasing just enough to throw the kid off balance and send him tumbling into the dirt. His crowbar clattered to the ground next to him. The others hesitated, clearly unsure whether to keep pushing or not.

“Last warning,” Danny said, his voice dropping low. “Leave. Now.”

The group looked at each other before the leader of the group stepped closer again, brandishing his bat. Danny smirked at the weapon and when the kid swung it Danny grabbed it, easily wrenching it from his grip. The kid stumbled forward and made an angry noise, turning back around to try and punch Danny in the face, who easily dodged, causing the kid to trip over his friend who was still trying to get up. They both ended up in a heap. 

Danny held up the bat for them to see and then snapped it in half, throwing both pieces to the ground next to them. “Like I said, time to leave.” Danny glanced over at the kid holding the EMP-type thing. “And leave that here.” The kid dropped it and started running for the door, leaving his two friends. Danny winced as the piece of tech broke into many places as it landed. 

The other two kids glanced up at Danny and back towards their friend who just left and scrambled to their feet, leaving their weapons as they booked it towards the door. “That guy’s crazy,” one of the kids called out. 

Danny sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Damn kids.” He turned back to Laserbeak and gently lifted the tarp off of his head so that Danny could see him. Danny then patted his side reassuringly. “They’re gone,” he said softly. “You’re safe now. Just hang on, okay?”

Laserbeak’s optics dimmed, his wings twitching slightly. Danny stayed by his side, keeping watch over the warehouse entrance, not planning on moving until help arrived.

A few long minutes passed before Danny finally heard the sound of a familiar engine rumbling in the distance. He smiled faintly as he heard the sound of the colossal mech landing harshly in the forest and the heavy steps of him getting closer to their location.

Danny looked up to see Soundwave poke his helm in the opening the teens made when they bashed open the door. Danny laughed lightly at the thought of the tall mech crouching down that far to see them. His visor flickered as he scanned the scene.

“Hey, Soundwave,” Danny called tiredly. “Took you long enough.”

Soundwave said nothing, his silent presence enough to reassure Danny as he finally relaxed. The backup was here. Laserbeak was going to be alright.

And for once, Danny had been the one to protect him.

---

Notes:

Thank you so much everyone for all of your support! It really means so much to me. This has been by far one of my largest series and projects and there has been so much content made! And even though it is a small part of the fandom and will not really score that big! Those of you who stay and continue sharing amazing comments and support me really make my day. <3

Here is the [ANIMATIC] link again for those who want to check it out! Please consider liking and commenting, maybe even subscribing so that I might get the chance to make something like this again in the future!

---

Find more here: Tumblr Master List

[waitingforsecretsouls]

Encouraging people to check out reddit user Genghis/Kazoo’s asoiaf meta. Even if you end up not agreeing with some stuff, it offers interesting new perspectives (compared to popular/accepted fandom opinion on the issues in question) and certainly revitalized my interest in the asoiaf lore, so you might find it thought-provoking or just plain fun nonetheless! Some of my favourites include:

1. Mance Rayder woke the Others on purpose, to gain personal power and further the interests of an Asshai'i conspiracy . What it says on the tin, an alternate perspective on Mance and the Others both that fits GRRM’s stated goals for the series as well as its themes far more than the popular ‘everyone vs the (maybe not completely evil) Others’.

2. The Stallion's Revenge: How Mirri Maz Durr Ruined Everything. If you have strong Mirri opinions the title might sound a bit inflammatory, but basically the meta deals with the true nature of Azor Ahai and the way Mirris well-intentioned but ultimately utilitarian prevention of his incarnation in Rhaego led to a far worse alternative, because prophecy in asoiaf cannot ever be useful except in hindsight (and no, it does not involve Dany as Azor Ahai or the ‘Great Darkness’).

3. The Grey King = the Pearl Emperor = the first Hightower: Decrypting the mythology of the Grey King, GEOTD, Oldtown, and the Seven . Connecting some dots in the Dawn Age lore between the Great Empire of the Dawn, the Ironborn, and the Hightowers/Oldtown, all highly relevant for the series plot-thread regarding...the Ironborn, Azor Ahai Reborn and Oldtown.

4. Invasion from the Deeps, Part 2: Beyond the Eldritch Apocalypse. Similar in flavour to the above in that it examines the Dawn Age history of the Ironborn and why the connection to some sort of fishy precursor race or a sort of ‘Deep Ones’ is misguided, particularly regarding the series endgame.

5. The Jade Compendium and why Lightbringer is a genuine goddamned superweapon . What exactly is the deal with Lightbringer and why is it so dangerous? Hint: It’s because it’s not three adolescent dragons. You’ll wish it was as tame as that.

6. Brightroar, the Black Bazaars, and a Big Boom: A New Theory on Who Sold the Lannisters Their Sword and Blew Up Valyria. An investigation into one of the most consequential events in asoiaf history, with a side dish of explanation as to the above-mentioned ‘Asshai’i conspiray’.

6.5 Lightbringer "went critical" and caused the Doom of Valyria. With an    addendum of Lightbringers potential involvement.

7. How Sam the Slayer is being forged by the narrative into the ultimate weapon against Euron. Predictions regarding Sam and the Reach and Euron. Or: Why the Reach is doomed to become part of Sams tragic backstory (...2!) and fuel for his at the least significant contribution to Euron’s defeat in the series climax.

8. Ten reasons nobody should trust the Azor Ahai prophecy. Arguably a bit ‘basic’ after all that, but a valuable little summary nonetheless, since it’s far from  the universally agreed upon perspective (despite the fact that GRRM is not subtle about it).

9. The Bloodstone Emperor and Azor Ahai both sound eerily similar to Ineluki the Storm King from Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. More Azor Ahai ‘lore’. If you’ve read some or all of the previous theories you’ll probably already have seen it come up, but here’s a salient collection of their parallels.

10. Euron is definitely Azor Ahai reborn. I had to put it on the list, despite the fact that it will have appeared in multiple of the theories listed above. I just love the core-concept of it. So. much. ’Euron’ endgame material for real.

11. No, the Five Forts aren't the Wall of Essos. Another deconstruction of a widespread fanon and it’s implication for the series endgame.

12. Qarth is the Gnostic false Eden, and Highgarden an imitation thereof. The First Men originated in Qarth. Moving away from my beloved Ironborn, an interesting theory about the origin of the First Men!

[gb-patch]

Ask Answers: May 15th Part 2

And here’s the next part of the long answer set of the day!

When will OL: N&F take place? Beginnings and Always took place during summer breaks, will now and forever take place during a fall break or will the characters be going to school at the time of the events we play through? 

It takes place over all of the fall season, so school will be happening in OL2. Some events do take place in school, though many times events only start after school is already out for the day, haha.

Hey!! I have kind of a weird question?? I’m sorry if it’s been answered before and I just haven’t seen it but is OL 2 taking place during the same years as OL 1? I’m just curious, thank you for such amazing games!!! 

It’s a similar time frame, but not 100% exactly same.

Do you have any idea when the demo for now and forever will be available? 

Hopefully this fall! But that’s not a guarantee.

Okay the crime show in Step 2: Growing up. Long blonde hair, police station, crime series? Was it The Closer? Because I’m the same age as MC and Cove and my mom was constantly watching that when I was 13. 😂 

Haha, yeah! The Closer and, to a lesser degree, Medium were the kind of shows I was referencing there. My mom also used to watch those back in the day.

Hey um this might be an odd question but if the setting of OL: N&F is  fall/autumn, what country or city will it take because my mind tells me it is either Poland or Canada. Also I can't wait for the game I am hyped 

It’s set in the USA again. We’d like to be able to have cameos and that’s easiest to do if the OL games take place in the same country.

Is it possible for the PC of OL to have non-seriously dated other people in the in between years even if they’ve had a consistent crush on Cove? 

You can causally date Baxter in Step 3 if you get his DLC and then ultimately choose Cove in Step 4. If you mean off-screen people, it doesn’t really come up, but you can certainly headcanon that. The game never says Cove is the only partner you’ve ever had.

Is there going to be a Kickstarter for Now and Forever as well? For like voiced names and stuff again? Didn’t find B&A until after it was released and I’d really love the opportunity to hear my name in the game 🥺 

Yeah, we are gonna have a Kickstarter with getting a voiced name as a reward! Though, it will be more expensive than it was for OL1. I feel bad to raise the price but we realized too late the first time around that it was being super undersold for the amount of work it took, aha.

Do you know how much the remaining DLC for OL will cost? (Step 4, Derek, Baxter) 

Step 4: Free

Wedding DLC: $2.99USD

Derek DLC: $4.99USD

 Baxter DLC: $4.99USD

Has an artist for the new position been picked yet?! I'm super excited for the new game! 

We did fill that spot. Thank you so much for taking the time to apply!

hmmm what would it take to get each of the XOXO jerk squad to feel the need to hug you? 

They’d have to first like you a fair amount, otherwise the most you’d get is maybe a pat on the shoulder. If they were attached, they might hug you if you broke down crying or if you gave them super good news.

Unless it’s Shiloh, of course. If you want a hug you only have to ask!

May i ask how the Derek DLC will work? I believe that there aren’t any memories in step 4 and doesnt derek’s dlc take place during that step? So will the dlc add memories? Thank you! 

Derek’s DLC will add five Moments to Step 2 (a new page will appear on that screen if you get the DLC). Then in Step 4 you’ll have to choose between playing the default epilogue or going through the Derek romance story.

Is the pc version on itch,io different from the steam version? Like an offline one or something? 

Steam has achievements, but that’s about it. Both can be played offline, if you prefer.

I've been wondering this for awhile, what determines if cove winds up with a ponytail in step 3? I've done multiple runs with different MCs with varying hairstyles. Or does it have to do with a particular moment in step 2? 

I’m afraid I can’t say exact choices that determine things. But generally it’s preference based options in the Step before that decide those things.

Any Floret Bond updates? 

No, the artist had to leave the project and it’s been on-hold. I’m not sure if I want to try working just with what we have or replacing it all entirely. The design is a bit too specific for us to easily find someone who could mimic it. Hopefully we’ll work things out later, though.

In step 3 is Cove's plan always to stay in sunset bird? 

Yeah. He is never ready at 18-years-old to make a big life change.

I love your content! If it's alright to ask, you answered in a previous ask about how Jeremy was too particular with what he likes his types to be romanceable with just any MC and it's sort of got me wondering.. What /are/ his types and/or preferences and such? Sorry if it's a lot! 

Jeremy likes stubborn jerks and will not date someone who’s sweet or even generally a decent person, haha.

uh, excuse me if you said this somewhere before, but how will step 4 be actually? Will it he like an actual step and have moments and dlc and all? Or will it be more like a long epilogue of some sort?

Will the step 4, the wedding and extra routes dlcs be paid too? Im just confused, sorry if im asking too much

Step 4 is only an epilogue, so it’s just a long series of scenes one after the other rather than a collection of Moments you can choose from.

The Step 4 epilogue is free, the wedding DLC, Derek DLC, and Baxter DLC cost money.

i’m not sure how much of the wedding dlc you have planned already, or if this would be to spoilery, but what kind of wedding traditions will be included? i keep thinking about how flustered cove would get over a garter toss & was wondering if we’d see a scene like that haha. obviously no worries if it’s not included, i’ll enjoy literally anything cove related 

I don’t know for sure yet, haha. Right now we’re focused on the parts before the big day. We’ll see how many scene alterations we can include for the wedding itself later on.

Hello! Firstly, thank you for creating such an amazing game like OL, and I couldn’t be more excited for OL2! Out of curiosity, are you looking for any writers to come on for OL2 or are you all pretty much set in that department? Just thought I’d shoot my shot haha but I’m still excited regardless ^^! 

We will be hiring writers for OL2 later this year! Thank you for the interest.

Will we be blessed with a spin-off Yandere Cove, like XOXO Blood Droplets? 

Sadly, no. It’s a shame but there’s not enough time to keep making OL1 bonus/spin-off content.

How is Q pronounced?

I’m afraid Q’s full name hasn’t been publicly announced yet so I can’t answer here (Q and T are the first letters of the names for the new LIs in Our Life: Now & Forever).

Question; is the steam version getting a Mac update?  I purchased the dlc there thinking it had Mac support without realizing it and just wondered if I’d need to refund it to purchase on itch.io 😭 

I’m really sorry, you will need to get a refund from Steam. We do hope to have it there for Steam eventually, but have no idea of when it’ll happen. Apple requires special notarization to be an officially accepted app for their devices. We don’t have that. Steam requires having that, Itch will let you release it as an non-notarized third party app. That’s why Itch is the only place that has the Mac version right now.

would you mind posting outfit sheets for Cove in every step? it would make things a lot easier for us artists. it would save a lot of time spent looking for references 

I think we did do the earlier steps when they were finished way back in 2019 (this game took a long time to make, aha), but we can probably repost them sometime!

In our life n&f, will we be able to get into qprs/will there be more options in regards to having deep platonic relationships with the love interests? Because as an aroace individual, it would be great if there could also be emphasis on platonic love so that it's more aspec inclusive. 

It’s a little hard to say at this point. There may not be things like a wedding DLC for OL2 and so the relationship for platonic and romantic feelings might not go as far as it did in the first game. We’ll kind of have to see how much we can do based on timeframe/budget constraints that will only be set near the end of the year. But we will be keeping things like that in mind at least.

hi! i really really like your game and im absolutely in love with it! i cant wait to try your other games like xoxo droplet and future OL NF :))

during the step 3 erands moment i got curious, which fudge flavor is his favorite? it seems like he likes all of them, but which 4 do you think he would like best?

also i noticed that in some playthroughs cove would let me give him a piggy back ride, and in some he wouldn't, how come?

how does your choices affect cove's interests or looks? i replayed the game without changing any choices but i got cove to look different, is it just random?

thank you!

Cove’s favorite flavors are ones with nuts and that are fruity! But he appreciates them all. Whether or not you can give him a piggyback ride depends on if your MC is fit/large enough to hold a muscular 6-foot-tall beach boy, haha.

Cove’s appearance does depend on choices and it’s generally tied to choices that are preference based rather than emotion/action based, such as which key chain you pick in Step 1.

Is it possible for cove to reject MC's proposal at the end of step 3? 

Nope. He’ll always accept.

hi! i was wondering how heavily the side characters will be featured in the our life wedding dlc? obviously it'll be cove & mc focused, but i was thinking it'd be sweet if we could take lizzie dress / suit shopping or dance with cliff at the wedding or something. 

The side characters are there about as often as they are in normal events. So, it’s clearly focused on Cove but he’s not the only person you have any meaningful moments with.

When will responses be sent out to applicants? 

I’m afraid we don’t send responses out to all applications, only ones we’re interested in offering the position to. Not everyone likes rejection emails and the amount of applications is too high to contact them all to say we’re not hiring them. We post updates on the job page when a position has news. Right now we’ve filled every role that was open.

Is there also going to be the option to keep your relationships with the love interests platonic in Our Life: Now and Forever? That's something I really appreciate in Our Life: Beginnings and Always

Yeah! OL will never force you to end up in a romantic relationship with someone.

I was wondering, in the Step 3 Happiness moment, what are the different fishes Cove can compare MC to? I got "you'd be a paradise fish, because being with you is paradise," but my friend got "you'd be an angelfish." Are there more variations? 

He says paradise fish if you’re a couple, angelfish if he’s just crushing, and then a royal dottyback/queenfish/emperor tetra (based on your gender) if he likes the MC platonicly.

Hello! So, in one of the Step 3 DLCs, Cove's arm was gone. I think it was to show him putting his arm behind his back. But if that wasn't the case, did it get yeeted? 

Thanks for letting us know. That was an error we tried to fix a little while back. When did you make the save file you were playing? If it was older that might be why it happened. Or maybe the error wasn’t fully fixed after all.

Asking for your opinion, but do you think Cove would at all be into ABBA? Because all I could imagine during the car trip in step 3 was him and the MC belting to Mamma Mia. 

Haha, yeah, there’d definitely be some ABBA songs he was into.

So throughout the game, Cove can develop different interests depending on the player’s choices; does this mean that he can have different careers in Step 4? Or his is line of work in adulthood never mentioned at all? 

He can have different career paths in Step 4!

Hi!! I'm so so sorry if this has been asked before but I just acquired knowledge about the so famous nsfw dlc for OL and nearly chocked on my bubblegum 💀💀💀 So, my real inquiry is if that specific moment will have any kind of impact at some point of the fourth step OR if it will just be treated as a side-story-ish “what if” scenario.Also, is there any chance there'll be something similar for Step 4? Haha jk,,, unless 😳Questions apart let me thank you profoundly for making the best visual novel I've ever played 😭 Really really looking forward the epilogue and OL2 💕 Have a nice day 

It’s just a bonus side story that’s fully separate from the main game.

It would be nice to have one for Step 4 too, but I sadly don’t see us having time to actually do it. I don’t know, if people are still asking for more OL1 content several months from now it might be doable and worth doing.

I'd just like to ask, when is Baxter's birthday :0 -- I'm really curious esp with their zodiac signs so ;w; 

I don’t know, haha. Maybe I’ll come up with one someday.

Please help!! I bought the Step 3 DLC but I still have no idea how to get to where you can propose to Cove - any tips? 

&

How do I get the option to propose to Cove at the end of the game?

You can click HERE for a discussion on that.

I love that Miranda and Terry are getting together! I'm curious if you have canon sexualities for them? Also just wanted to say how much I love OL and how much joy it brings me everytime I play it <3 

Terry likes ladies and Miranda likes dudes!

ngl Step 4 Terry's design reads like y'all see trans guys as their assigned gender more than you see them as men to me (a trans guy)... like maybe if he isn't heavily dysphoric, I could see it, but everything you've said about him doesn't line up with that. Even then, immediate warning bells go off in my head looking at him. I wouldn't have touched the game if I saw him ahead of time.

I’m sorry you aren’t comfortable with the way the design looks. The situation with Terry is that he’s now open about who he is, but the body he was born with is still physically the same. He only came out recently as an adult and hasn’t gone through any treatments/procedures yet (his chest is flatter because he wears a binder). However, even though his body hasn’t transitioned at the point Step 4 happens, no one treats him as anything other than the guy he is. Having a trans character who’s identity is supported/respected from the start is what we’re going for in this case. But what we’re doing with Terry isn’t the only trans content we’ve ever had/ever will have in the future.

how would baxter react to bae pyoun and vice versa? and can you please detailly explain both love interests personalities from our life 2: now and forever? i was just curious, sorry for dumb question!! 

I imagine it’d be pretty opposite experiences, haha. Bae would initially think Baxter is pushy and thoughtless, but would quickly realize, oh, he’s instead a soft, considerate boy. Very cute. Baxter would first be struck with the impression that Bae is charming and gentlemanly, but then would realize that, no, he’s a sarcastic asshole. And I’m afraid we can’t reveal the personalities for the next game yet.

Sorry if you've already answered this, but I have a question about the patreon exclusive moment you're working on. I was wondering if it's mainly going to be CGs or if it's mostly character sprites + backgrounds with some CGs.

Either way, thank you for doing the Lord's work and not only making Cove, but making this bonus moment as well 😌😌😌

It’s mostly sprites/backgrounds with two CGs!

—– —– —– —–

Thank you again for the interesting questions everyone :D

We released a new FAQ! It answers common questions and we’ll keep adding more to it. Please check there before sending an ask. FAQ   Also, if you prefer to just see the main posts without all the asks/reblogs, feel free to follow our side account instead: GB Patch Updates Blog

[phenomenalcosmicpowers]

MY LITTLE PONY: A NEW GENERATION (G5 Movie) THOUGHTS

It’s finally here. The beginning of Generation 5. Though before I get into the movie in some detail I’m going to reiterate one more time what G5 means for my content and a non-spoilery summary of the movie.

Again, I will say that the movie nor will the G5 series coming later have much of an effect at all on any of my blogs. The revelation in Secrets of the Dragon’s Tear that life itself is also magic means that a world that implied to have no magic for years would mean the extinction of all life (Perhaps resulting in the wasteland we saw in the Season 5 finale). There may be something I’ll probably do at some point on a certain different blog. But even then, that may likely be a one-time thing and probably come around the time the series is starting to air.

That said, just because I’m continuing with mainly G4 content doesn’t mean I disapprove of G5. In fact, my non-spoilers thoughts on the movie is I think it is a good start for this new generation. There are questions I have that I’m not sure will be answered (Though many of those questions are the same ones I had in my Trailer/Preliminary thoughts) quickly enough. But the movie is structured well enough, in fact it’s probably a better movie as a whole compared to any of the movies G4 had (The 2017 movie, Rainbow Roadtrip, and all 4 Equestria Girls movies). As the 2017 movie was fun, but it jumped around a lot, sometimes scenes transitioning too fast. And while Rainbow Roadtrip may have been this on purpose, the entirely slice-of-life story taking up a long length… made it something of a less interesting plot to follow. It feels like some of that special could of been cut to at least a two-parter length and keep the same beats they hit. And while i have a soft spot for the 3rd and 4th Equestria Girls movies, I’ll always say a full-length pony adventure feels better suited for what I want to see out of MLP then spin-off movies with high school movie cliches and weird pony/human world shenanigans.

So movie-wise I’m not a G4 purist. It’ll take some time to see how Gen 5 compares to Friendship is Magic when we get to the series. As I feel it’d take a lot for it to surpass G4 in my mind. But I’m going to try to be as fair as possible and judge on it’s own merits. The implied connection to G4 by referring to G4 being ancient Equestria is going to naturally get the staff and hasbro pressured by fans to tell us what happened in-between the generations. Because that’s the trap they put the writers in when they made it so they want to try to say it’s in the same universe. That’s the double-edged sword Hasbro chose to have, trying to appease the G4 fanbase and keep at least some of them around. But at the cost of questions both nitpicky (Such as character design being inconsistent) or actual honest questions that need to be known (Why did magic disappear, and what happened to the Alicorns) for some of us to truly see this as the same Equestria.

After the break, I’ll have more spoilery thoughts

Even for a brief moment, it was nice seeing the Mane 6 and 2D animation. The former because of course those are the ponies many of us that saw all of G4 loved. And the latter, because while the animation wasn’t bad in this movie. I’m one of those who’d prefer to have 2D animation in an animated film. As in most cases aside from Pixar, it’s just a strong preference of mine. If this had the animation of the 2017 MLP movie but otherwise everything else was generally the same here, I feel that would of have been great.

I wish they didn’t have to have Sunny’s dad die off-screen, as he seems like he could of been a compelling character. And not to mention if perhaps he has any connection the “ancient” days in any fashion. But *sigh* I get it, it’s an old trope where part of the character’s offscreen growth is not having their parent(/s) around.

On a side note there’s quite a few times during the beginning of the movie that somewhat foreshadow what happens to Sunny later. 3 times where she had a fake horn and wings on her. Once in the flashback, then 2 separate times when she’s doing her protest where she has her own costumed wings and horn. As well as the helmet and mechanical wings.

Also, there’s no way around it. Some of the discussions this movie are going to get quite political. (Namely one part of Sunny’s song that could be seen as having a double meaning of a jab at Trumpsts regarding “Building your wall”) From the very premise in the early times, we know that the inspiration for the story was last year’s Black Lives Matter protests. Which honestly, I do support the message they’re going for. Having an anti-racism message to tell kids from the very beginning and making a focus on it is important when in G4 it only got briefly touched upon in Bridle Gossip and the Heath’s Warming Eve play. Although it certainly rose up to some form of prominence with Season 8 and onward. Still, while you can argue if G4 executed the anti-racism message well. it does come with something of a problem that the series finale left Equestria in the least divided it’s ever been.

And personally, I feel it’s a terrible interpretation of time to say “Well, it’s a realistic take. Racism has existed for years in our world. Same should go for the ponies” and while yes, racism is still rampant in today’s world. That said, that ignores that if we went from The Last Problem to the start of G5. There’s a huge difference between our world and Equestria. There is no ancient civilization that we look at like “Yeah, those were the golden days of world peace” when normally the “Golden age” was reserved for the high classes of Ancient Greece or Rome. It was most decidedly not perfect, with slavery rampant and wars for the sake of expanding an empire. While if you look at The Last Problem’s Equestria, you not only have peace between the three main types of ponies. But you literally have non-pony citizens in Equestria. You can see a dragon handing off a flower to a pony which can imply cross-species romantic relations. With the Friendship school still going strong, and was the reason that the world was saved in The Ending of the End. While perhaps it may be too glowing to say that future is perfect for everyone even in-universe. It’s certainly a hell of a lot better outlook then comparing to how we view even the so called Golden age of ancient civilizations. The Last Problem’s Equestria implies it looks to ally with every country outside of Equestria, not conquer them.

So it should still be a valid question on just how this world collapses to the point it gets to where G5 is at the start. I at least assume that it’s not the fault at all of any of the Mane 6 nor Twilight. Or at least I hope it isn’t, as I’d rather the MLP fanbase not have to deal with a The Last Jedi Luke Skywalker situation. (Where after the joyful end of the original trilogy, things go wrong as Luke almost murders the son of one of his best friends and his sister despite trying to hard and succeeding at redeeming his father who at that point in the canon was a galaxy-wide known ruthless mass-murderer.) I assume we’re at a point where everyone of the Mane 6 sans maybe Twilight are presumed dead. And even in Twilight’s case, there’s a chance that G5 decides to say that G4 overestimated the whole Alicorn immortality thing. Though I wouldn’t put it past Hasbro to have some event where the Mane 5 of G5 meet the Mane 6 in some special event whether that’s a a Season finale or a sequel movie/special. Where either the Mane 6 return in a limbo situation similar to the Pillars at the end of Season 7 or Time travel gets involved. They may even string us along on answering just what in the heck happened until they involve a meet-up with the Mane 6 in that way. Though I hope they don’t, I’d really like the beginning of the series (Or I guess this supposed special coming up in Spring supposedly?) starts to answer some questions. G5 should get a chance to stand on it’s own, but I hope the writers are actually well aware there will be so many questions people have and address them in the show. A cynical part of me feels like they’re likely to string us along until at least the Season 1 finale.

Onto the characters for a bit. I think Izzy Moonbow was absolutely the most stand-out character in the whole movie. She was energetic, funny, and aside from “The pegasi are bad news” she along with Zipp and Sunny were the most averse to the way the world was. She was already the most popular due to the tennis ball memes. But now it feels like she legit stands on her own and most certainly deserves to be the most popular character of G5 thus far. Behind her in a bit of a surprise to me was Zipp, who I thought would be mainly a Rainbow Dash-expy. Though she really helps out Izzy and Sunny in Zephyr Heights. Despite having Twilight be my favorite pony from the very beginning of G4 all the way to the end, I didn’t feel as strongly about Sunny for some reason. So she’s in the middle of the pack, she could grow on me later. I just don’t know if I click with her as much as I did with Twilight. As for the last two, while I don’t hate either of them. Either one could be the lowest of the 5 for one reason or another. Pipp (Although I will say she's probably my favorite character design out of the 5) feels like she doesn’t do a whole lot in the movie and it takes until she’s forced to be an outlaw because the other choice was to get imprisoned like her mother was. So she may come off as quite pretentious, though it’s arguable Rarity was the same way early in G4. But she definitely grew later. Could be the same case for Pipp. And as for Hitch, he has shining moments in the film. But what might hurt him is the fact he was such a bad friend to Sunny up until the campfire scene. “I’m the last real friend you have. You really want to lose me too?” is not a healthy friendship. Hitch may have been Sunny’s friend the longest, but it definitely feels like Izzy connected immediately. I don’t know if this show will get into shipping any of the main characters between each other mid-show, but if they do. I hope it’s between Izzy and Sunny currently, cause Hitch and Sunny just gives bad vibes even with Hitch getting better later.

None of the songs I felt were particularly too special. Though I think the closest was Sprout’s “Danger, Danger” song that has similarities to Smells Like Teen Spirit in some parts of the song since I tend towards more rock/metal-esque music.

I touched upon it earlier, but there’s perhaps a stand-out reason for why the G5 movie outdid the 2017 MLP Movie. They have the typical “Our heroic group splits after a sad moment before coming together again for the climatic good end” in Sunny seeing that that the two crystals don’t instantly bring magic back, and when Twilight left the group after an argument that happened with Twilight trying to take a pearl. They perform the same purpose in the movie. But the crystals not working, crushing Sunny’s hope for a little while works better into the story. Where as Twilight’s part frustratingly brought the sea pony scene to an end too quickly and/or doesn’t feel right of Twilight to have done that. It felt forced in the 2017 movie, but works out in the G5 movie. Especially since a part of it is that it’s not the crystals themselves capable of bringing magic back. But it’s the journey going after the crystals that brings the ponies themselves their magic back.

Just a small note on dictator Sprout, he tries to cause a war. Though admittedly the film seems to treat him as a joke the entire time despite his seriously evil ambitions. With the only repercussions is he gets a wishy-washy answer on if he was a good sheriff from his mom. I don’t quite know how I feel about that yet, but I wonder what they’ll have in mind for Sprout given his actions. He and his mom are the only ones that feel like a true antagonist. Though they seem to be ok with things fast when the magic comes back.

But anyway on to the ending, we see that Sunny becomes an Alicorn. Which I guess with no other real Alicorns around, I guess it makes sense to alicornify her since she’s the real leader behind what united the leaders of each type of pony again. Though there is of course this weird thing where her horn and wings don’t seem like as much a part of her body compared to very obvious connected wings on Twilight when she got hers. Sunny keeps her horn and wings to the end of the movie, and has colored streaks in her hair. Though I do wonder if that;s truly permanent. If it is permanent, I suppose at least they got to have a headstart and have it established at the end of the introductory movie rather then have it shock people at the end of a shortened 3rd season. I still feel like Twilight had well earned her alicornhood considering that besides what she did in the series. She has a whole childhood and time as a teenager learning under Celestia. Which had to mean something, and I’m not sure Celestia just leaving her to live the rest of her days with her friends in ponyville was that. Sunny has no doubt been trying countless time to try to spread friendship throughout her life even after the tragedy of her father’s passing. So there’s no doubt she’s been through a lot, and may indeed be worthy of being an Alicorn at this point. Though in terms of screentime before Alicornhood it's definitely a lot less then Twilight had. And it is at least nice to see that it is possible for non-unicorns to become one. (The only case of that we sort of got was a children's book that may or may not be canon that implied Cadence was a pegasus before she ascended)

Though you have to wonder if the visual differences such as Sunny’s alicorn horn and wings, the cutie mark only on one side (Yes I know that’s how it was normally in the MLP generations before G4. But a distinct visual difference between shows is still noticeable even if the context of G4’s cutie marks on both sides of the flank was about it being easier on the puppets for Flash), and how animals can have wings or weird round shapes such as those bunnies when G4 has normal looking animals. There’s enough striking visual differences for any nitpicky G4 to say “This isn’t the same Equestria”. And if someone tries to say maybe some sort of evolution happened. That’s still trying to put a little too much real world logic on this fantasy world. And evolution tends to take millions of years to have such dramatic changes. Not 1000 years or so, there should still be normal looking animals at this point and time. And these small details are probably going to be the things most ignored but nonetheless can build a case that this isn’t the same Equestria. Even if they touch on the important questions like how magic disappeared and what happened to the Mane 6, there will be details they make different that will add to the case that this is it’s own universe if it doesn’t quite matchup with what was remembered about G4. There will be fans who will be that nitpicky to call G5 out of continuity for small details like that. That is again the trap they put themselves in when they decided to try to say it’s the same Equestria.

All-in-all though, I think that’s at least a good enough chunk about my thoughts on the movie to end off here. If there’s something I missed or something from the movie you’d like me to give a particular opinion about or elaborate on something feel free to ask me here. G5 is indeed off to a good start, just I will be along the many hoping some questions get answered sooner then later. And I’m not sure I’m confident in getting anywhere until a Season finale or a 2nd movie. And it’ll be a year before the series starts proper (Though again I guess there’s a 44 minute special coming in Spring to try to hold us over). But I could definitely see G5 finding it's own following, now there's just the inevitable clashes between some of the more vocal fans of each generation bickering at eachother. But hoping there will be enough that take the movie's lessons on divisiveness to heart and be able to enjoy both even if there may be preferences.

[duketectivecomics]

You might've answered this already and I just didn't find it, but one thing that always perplexed me about Duke was how old he was in comparison to the other Batkids. It's obvious he's younger than Dick and Babs, and I pretty sure he's younger than Jason and Cass, and older than Damian, but I cannot tell if he's meant to be Tim and Steph's ages, younger, or older. Could you help me?

You’re all kinds of good here, anon!!! I answered a similar ask abt the Order of Adoption but didn’t dive into specific ages on that post BECAUSE well they didn’t ask lmaooo but ALSO:

Comic ages are very fluid usually! While Years™️ might pass in the canon proper, or while time seems to slow to a crawl, having a character’s age outright stated is something that occurs very rarely for most characters, if at all!

Because it’s always much easier to have a floating age range to work and play around in! It’s easier to keep a character Perpetually 12 or 16 or 25 or mid-40s or- you get the idea. SO, with that in mind. Let’s do our Best to Break Down What Age Duke Might Be Currently A N D how it might interact with the Other Batkids!

(Warning for a Very Long Post, lots of issue citations, and a LOT of comics terminology regarding specific runs/events/continunity. I’m gonna try to keep it as clear/concise as possible ofc but plz keep these things in mind! If you’re not at least marginally familiar with Bat-Comics, you might find yourself feeling a little lost here!)

So from the Zero Year arc we see a common Trend that plays out pretty consistently with Batfam comics: a Life-Changing Event Occuring while the protag is Young™️.

(Batman (2011) #30)

With how Duke is drawn in these particular issues, and given the trends of the past, I’d place him in the 8-12 range. The historic precedent being ofc that that is the same range that canon usually places both Bruce and Dick at for their Tragedies™; the more benign reason being that he... just very much Looks to be drawn in that Range. He’s very clearly an Older/Prepubescent child here.

Fast Forward to his Next Appearance in the Endgame arc and-

(Batman (2011) #37)

He’s definitely older! He’s wiser! And he’s giving Batman a fistbump lmao. Again, no strict age given here BUT, since they condensed each Robin to a Year or Two tops with Bruce (its n52 and its fucked up is what it is), we can assume it’s been at least 4-5 since Zero Year (which would mean if we go off the age range I proposed for that year, then theoretically he could be anywhere from 12-16 here, and I think that tracks pretty well. Not Perfectly and Certainly Not so well with Pre52 continuity ofc, but I’ll talk about that later!)

In We Are Robin, while its not stated Directly In The Text, it IS given as an Informational Tidbit that Duke is 16 (specifically this can be found at the end of issue #4)! (Sweet sweet canon confirmation FINALLY)

We know that WAR takes place Fairly Soon after Endgame (almost immediately, give or take a month or two given that Duke’s been placed in a few foster homes at this point and has racked up Quite A File) now, again id like to remind y’all that while this is a NICE starting point to have, keep in mind that comics are fluid and this may be retconned slightly/ignored in later stories bc Keeping Duke 16-ish is in DC’s Best Interest at the moment. (Having Relatable Teen Characters afterall is a Good Marketing strategy™️. And the longer they can Keep them Young, the Better)

With that in mind let’s take a moment to Highlight the fact that Duke and Damian have crossed paths at this point AND the storylines that have occurred during this year that were meant to be in conjunction with one another!

Because Prior to Endgame, Damian had Died! And just a year (in real, meat-space time) before We Are Robin, he was resurrected and had begun his “Year of Atonement” in the Robin: Son of Batman maxiseries. Midway through both this series and WAR (and, we can assume, midway thru this “Year” for Damian) the Robin War begins/ends and we see at least one major Moment between these two boys who will soon call one another brothers:

(Robin War #2)

Given that R:SoB is followed up VERY quickly by Teen Titans Rebirth (in which Damian celebrates his 13th birthday), we can conclude that Damian would be 12 during this time (well, 12 and 1/2 to play it safe lmao). That being said, this Confirms about a 4yr gap between Duke and Damian! (One Batkid down at least! but he’s the key to the others so put a pin in him!)

As We Are Robin draws to its conclusion, DC was releasing another arc that would eventually flow into the Rebirth Era, by the end of which, Bruce would approach Duke with an Idea (which involves Bruce becoming Dukes temporary guardian & as he states Many Times “Trying Something New” with Duke).

And thus the Rebirth Era begins, and Duke began his Year of training (most directly encapsulated by the Cursed Wheel arc in the All-Star Batman run:

(All-Star Batman #1 (back-up story))

Bruce introduces Duke to a training regimen that Alfred has named “the Cursed Wheel”. It encompasses all the training Bruce and the other bats have undergone and condenses it down into color-coordinated segments that will take Duke a Year to Complete.

It can be assumed that by the End of this Year Duke will somehow miraculously still be 16, despite, again, an entire ass year passing.

There’s one story that takes place mid-year in All-Star Batman, and the Cursed Wheel is meant to be capped off by Duke’s first Official Day as the Signal (in the titular Batman & the Signal ofc) BUT, near as I can tell after this story, Dukes age is not brought up again. So until they DO bring it up either in Batman & the Outsiders or whatever future run Duke becomes involved in, we can assume DC will be working with the idea that he’s meant to be in that 16-18 range from here on out (ie still a minor).

But, dear anon, you might be saying “okay, that’s cool, but how does that relate to my question abt how he falls in with the other Bats?” You’ll have to be a little patient with me here, but I think I may have cracked the code!

Keep in mind I’m gonna be addressing both the Post-Crisis to Flashpoint Continuity (ie mid-80s to 2010 in comics history) and the N52-slash-Rebirth Era (2010-Today). Its generally agreed by fandom and DC alike that these points of rebooting &/or Major Events constitute the era of “Modern” comics, and that everything from the 80s-on might more or less be canon on some level, even if not All of it is.

(Plus, most of fandom usually likes to borrow elements from both eras and much more rarely from stories before it, SO-)

Lets do a quick rundown of how everyone who’s Closer to Duke’s Age, Relates to each other first, age-wise:

Given that Jason was 15 when he died, in A Lonely Place of Dying its established that Bruce had become increasingly reckless since his death, and by the end of the story, Tim has stepped in to fill Robin’s shoes (he states that he’s 13 during this story btw). Pretty soon after, Stephanie Brown is introduced & established to be about a year older than Tim (wish I could pin-point a specific issue BUT, i unfortunately haven’t read any Tim OR Steph-involved comics that predate No Man’s Land... Besides the aforementioned Lonely Place and Young Justice technically, but im working on remedying that soon!)

NOW, during the No Man’s Land event, Cassandra is introduced, and pretty soon into her Batgirl run, its revealed that she’s around the same age as Jason (or at least how old he Would Have Been, had he not died.) Now, given that Jay has an August bday and Cass has a January one, fandom sometimes likes to play around with the idea of one being older than the other (OR even speculating/placing them in an AU as twins/siblings, given that Lady Shiva (Cass’ mom) was a Possible Candidate to be Jason’s biological mother but that’s a Whole Other Thing i wont get into here.)

The point being, Cass, in this era of comics, IS slightly older than Tim and Steph. At Tim’s start as Robin, their ages could either line up like: Tim-13, Steph-14, Cass-15 (being a few months ���behind’ Jay), then Jason at 15/16 (depending on how soon Tim filled the role after Jay died in April) OR Jason-15/16, Cass-16/17 (in this case she’d be a few months ‘ahead’ now instead)

So brief detour to talk New 52, however! Because Tim, Steph & Cass all got switched around from where DC originally left them prior to the reboot! Now I haven’t read much of them in this era, other than Batman & Robin: Eternal, so my Understanding of their current ages is Spotty at Best. The general consensus seems to be that while before N52, Stephanie had been attending her first year of College (& doing VERY WELL i might add), with the reboot she was set back a few years alongside Tim to a vague Late-Teen state (so 16-18-ish, instead of a Very Clearly Established 18/19). Cass is probably the worst off for this reboot, given that B&R:E basically constitutes her new origin for the new continuity, and does nothing to confirm her age (all I really know is that she’s a Vague Late-Teen too... Probably? Maybe?), given how much they infantilize her, and subsequently how fandom in turn has taken to infantilizing her too, theres a semi-popular fanon that places her Younger that Tim and Steph. And I, for one, propose that we ignore that bc its Weak Sauce my dudes.

Some fans chose to ignore N52 continuity due to this vagueness, and will stick to the ages established before the N52/Rebirth reboots. But its something to keep in mind regardless bc we’re all obviously going to pull from what’s most familiar to us!

But WHERE could we place Duke with regards to them, then? Because them being “Late Teens” is certainly much too vague to work with!

This is Where Damian is the key!

Because Damian is one of those rare exceptions to the Reboot Rule. His story flowed almost seamlessly over from before to after. While he was made a Robin at the age of 10, he continued to grow and learn even after the universe was being rewritten to suit the whims of DC editorial. 

If we choose to ignore how everyone else’s ages and origins were swapped around, and stick with the growth that was presented before the reboot, then we can draw some interesting conclusions!

Firstly, though Stephanie also had Died and subsequently Returned, she hadn’t lost much, if any time, from the Ordeal. At the start of her Batgirl run, she is enrolled at a Gotham university and making headway with a more firm foot in the Batfamily (even to the point that she and Damian spend a few issues bonding. At this point in time, Damian is definitely 11, and again, Steph can be assumed to be 18/19 during the course of her run. We’ll assume 18 for clarity’s sake.)

So, then when Damian is 11, now our line up is as Follows:

Dami - 11, Steph - 18, Tim - 17, Cass 19-21 (the range depending again, if you subscribe to Cass being either older/younger than Jason).

WHICH MEANS, If during Robin War Damian is 12 (and a half) THEN We’ve got an age line-up that Potentially looks Like This:

Dami -12(and 1/2), Duke - 16, Tim - 18, Steph - 19, Cass - 20-22 (And Obvsly Jason, Babs & Dick at their varying Older Ages than everyone here)

and im just now realizing i Didnt include Harper in this line-up, but thats bc she’d also throw a big wrench in all this.  I’d personally throw her in with being Steph’s age, but I’m pretty sure she was supposed to be either that, or between Steph and Cass (again, since its N52, i believe Cass was/is assumed to be Younger than Steph, but that contradicts the assumed following of pre52 canon that we have for the above line-up, obvsly, and so we ignore that lmao) 

All this to say, however, that canon and fandom is what you make of it, and if you want to wiggle these ages around a little, you’re more than allowed! God Knows i usually like to skew the Tim-Steph-Cass age group to be a tad older than this in my own fic writing, and I like to have Duke start as a Robin at 14/15 instead of 16, but that’s just bc I like the dynamic potential it could bring with them being Definitively Older that him, and thus in a more secure place to be Mentoring him right alongside Bruce & the others.

But you might see these age ranges and want to do something Different (say, making Tim, Steph, Cass, & Duke all the Same Age at 17 instead! And that very well tracks with how current comics kinda looks right now!) and you’re absolutely valid to do so! Because again, comic character’s ages are meant to be fluid, not fixed!

And at the end of the day, its all about wanting to see these teen heroes kick serious ass haha

[omegangrins]

A Rant on the End of Tremors 7: Shrieker Island

As the main man said,

Throwing caution to the wind because this blew up elsewhere.

If you can do it with Justice League, fuck it, let's do it for every shitty movie we've got.

While we're at it, can we change the ending of the 7th Tremors movie so *MAJOR FUCKING SPOILERS* Burt Gummer doesn't die or at least bring Jamie Kennedy back, or Marvel style recast Jon Heder, so he dies saving his son instead of a random-ass person who could have easily saved themselves. Or cut the forced montage of Burt clips at the end so his death is at least ambiguous. Seriously beyond pissed about that one. THAT is no way for him to go.

I would also like to point out that the next Tremors *HAS* to be titled Tremors 8: Ouroboros and bring everyone back for Burt's funeral . Otherwise, what's the fucking point?

I have feelings about it, people. *FEELINGS!!!*

One of my favourite childhood memories is picking out Tremors 2 from the local gas station's movie rentals and forcing my parents to watch it. I was probably 5-6 at the time.

Let's say that it's been a lifelong love affair ever since. It took me another 10 years before I even watched the 1st. Probably why I hold good sequels in such high regard.

I didn't even know about the 1st until it played as a trailer in front of 2 and never thought to watch until years later. That's a testament to its filmmaking if I ever knew one.

So seriously, that's how they chose to kill off one of the most well known and prolific characters in a movie/TV series known around the globe? With an unnecessaryily needed death and a montage of clips from all the other movies that are obviously better than this one.

And I'm saying that as someone who defends Chibnall/13th Doctor...

...and I'm fucking fuming because THIS is how you *actually* destroy something people love and hold dear to their hearts. It's like the ending of Game of Thrones. His shitty ass death has made it a loooooot harder to rewatch. And they are one of my favourite series!!! Not flawless but fun. But I will defend every other movie and all the episodes except this. Honestly I'll still defend 7/8ths of this one as well.

Like I said, it's easily fixed too. Fucking vice versa swap out Jon Heder for Jamie Kennedy, who the movies have been building up for the last two, and have Burt save his son in front of his old flame. Boom, you won't even need the montage of clips cause you can just have Travis and his mom reminisce about Burt instead. Show not tell. I don't even care he died by Graboid (although in all honesty, I've allways wanted El Blanco to take him down or Burt kills himself from the PTSD. It would have AT LEAST MADE SENSE. Hell, the best would be a heart attack to callback Val's "Yeah, Burt, the way you worry, you're gonna have a heart attack before you get a chance to survive World War Three.". But none of us ever get the best death.). And it's not even about Burt sacrificing himself to save a nobody. Cause that could work too. BUT YOU NEED TO BUILD THAT SHIT UP. Not just fucking drop it like it's hot.

Like I said too, the first 7/8ths ain't bad but it's an entirely different story than a swansong for a hero.

It's all about some billionaire scientist/cowboy hunter dude who likes to get his jollies off hunting the biggest and the baddest who ends up inviting people to this island so they can hunt down Super-Graboids he designed for shits and giggles. But then some Shrieker-fy....

And the pretentious douches come and die one by beautiful one while Burt tries to save them anyway and it's all spectacularly dumb fun until it comes crashing down in the final 10 minutes. Fuck, they should just cut the last 10 minutes. Then it's a perfect little Tremors ditty.

#RELEASETHE7THTREMORSWITH10MINUTESFROMTHEENDCUT

This isn't even about Jon Heder either. He's just doing his job. Hell, do what /u/VoiceofRonHoward pointed out.

"It is clear that Jon's character was just pasted in over Jamie's, the artifacts of the father-son relationship are all over it. They should have gone full Marvel and just replaced Jamie with Jon and acted like nothing happened."

CAUSE FUCK YES!! The only time a story sucks is when they don't commit. Commitment makes all the difference. Now, I'm pissed double-pissed they didn't do that instead since Heder and Kennedy are similar in terms of white-boy-ness.

Even Michael Gross agrees:

"Yes, yes. Now I can't presume to speak for Jamie [Kennedy]. My understanding was they asked him and he said no. And so that's why they went with somebody else. So I had nothing to do with that decision. I just heard the stories. I missed him for that reason. You begin a relationship with the character, and you want to continue it....

...As you build a relationship with this son, we had two, it would've been nice to have three, but that was the hand I was dealt."

One of my favourite bits of Tremors lore comes from the 5th too so it's not like I hate sequel changes out of hand:

"This is a warrior dance. Our ancestors hunting the lnkanyamba and the Impundulu.

"What's that?

"Impundulu. It's what you call the Ass Blaster.

"Ass Blaster.

"Yes.

"Yes.

"Hey, you know, you make Ass Blaster sound good.

Primitive cultures fighting Graboids, Shriekers and Assblasters. I just love that thought.

Hilariously, my meta opening to the 8th movie would be a flashback to 10,000 years ago and a Neanderthal-like Burt Gummer teaching others how to drive Graboids off cliffs like they did with mammoths.

Thank you for giving me the space to rant. Cause fuuuuuuhhhhhhhhuuccck!!!

Here's Michael Gross' own words from his AMA that prove the people making Shrieker Island didn't know their shit.

"The Tremors series is one very close to my heart and I want you to know how appreciated your continued effort is for your core fan base.

My only question would be were there ever any studio decisions made for Burt that you refused to comply with? Or was everybody pretty much always on the same page on what to do with the character?

Thanks again for your dedication.

- Josh"

"Thanks for the kind words, Josh. As regards the first four films, with Wilson and Maddock as the writers, we were very much on the same page. 5,6, and 7 were a bit different, because there was a 13-year hiatus between 4 and 5, and we had to refresh our memories while "reinventing" the franchise for a new audience. I will give you one example: in an early draft of Shrieker Island, a new writer wrote a draft where Burt threatened to shoot one of the bad dudes, and I had to tell him—this is true—"Burt never intentionally points his gun at another human being."

And his own thoughts on Burt's "death" and how to bring it all back together again.

Universal and the director [came] to me with this idea, and they said, 'This could be emotionally very powerful, if we have to say goodbye to this man after 30 years. And I hemmed and hawed, and I thought about it a little bit. And I said, 'You're absolutely right about the emotional gut punch this can be.' And I said, 'You're going to hurt a lot of people's feelings.' And I said, 'But I thought this franchise was over after four. So I could certainly live with it being over after seven.'

"What we negotiated -- well, it wasn't really a negotiation, we all agreed on this -- is that we kind of left the door open. >!Because although Burt is gone, we never see a corpse. We never see his remains. Everybody assumes he's gone. Is he buried somewhere? Is he unconscious somewhere? We never see Burt dead. We see Burt gone. We see Burt not returning. What does that mean? Has he been knocked out? Does he have amnesia somewhere? Does he wander off? Is he in a kind of coma? So yes, the way it ends is pretty profound."

"As regards to the end of Tremors 7, let me just say that while people ASSUME Burt is gone, we never see his remains, do we? Just sayin.'

"The only reason he has become the main character is that everyone else in the original cast moved on to other things. I NEVER thought of him as the central figure, but it just worked out that Michael Gross, like Burt Gummer, was a "survivor." :0) "

"No one would like to see it more than I!!! One of my greatest regrets is that so many other cast members fell away over time. Reba was on to other things, Kevin said no to a second, Fred said no to a third. I would LOVE one last go with all of them, but it is not up to me. :0( "

"There are no guarantees, but for those who wonder aloud if this is the final film, I will say what I have said before: SALES drive sequels, Show biz is 5% show and 95% business, so if this latest addition to the Tremors franchise, sells well, [Universal] will follow the money, and Universal Pictures Home Entertainment may will be back for more."

/u/ActorMichaelGross, the bell has been rung and the song sung. Get the producers on this ASAP!!

I was also the first person to discover the symbolic foreshadowing of Stumpy's end with Earl's sleeping bag in the original movie.

Let's just say, I really *really* love these movies. So if anyone knows anyone, hook me up to the producers of this series and I'll Justin Lin in the Fast and Furious out of this shit.

Since I don't think it's good to critique without proposing either, I say we can make up for this fuck up with the next movie. We'll call it Tremors 8: Ouroboros. After the snake which eats its own tail.

We find out Burt faked his death to get the Proudfoot Corporation to let down their guard and when everyone from the previous series comes back for Burt's fake funeral they give him ever loving shit for being such a paranoid whack-job that he would fake his death to fool a government agency. Why would he do this? He found an old photo of Hiram Gummer with a Graboid warning on the back and asks himself why this valley, why these things, why allways me? And we find out, it's not Burt. It's that lifestyles of extremes will end up in places of extremes. Burt and the Graboids are survivors of different species. Sure the Proudfoot Corporation IS using Mixmaster to combine Graboids, Shriekers, and Ass-Blasters into one super creature for the military but it pales in comparison to Burt looking at his life and wondering in shame how many ancient giants like himself he has killed. And with that, he actually dies, and we keep the ball rolling with the rest of the characters trying to stop what they allways thought was just another one of Burt's crazy conspiracies.

That's why it's Ouroboros. Everything comes back around. We could end/start the movie with Grady, Earl, and Jodi opening a Monster World in Perfection Valley a la Desert Jack's Graboid Adventure. I don't know. I'm fucking trying harder than the people they paid to do this already.

It ain't perfect but I'm building on sand here so changes are gonna get made.

Like if the makers of Tremors notice this,

Then DM me because fucking A you guys need some help.

[justimajin]

A Lone Wolf’s Howl ☾ Part 1

⇾ Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

⇾ Genre: Angst, Fluff, Action, Eventual Smut 

↳ Werewolf AU

⇾ Words: 4.1k

⇾ A/N: This is the prologue for the series, but since it ended up being too long I changed it into a full chapter instead. 

⇾  Moodboard Part 1 Part 2

The softwood slowly creaks; footsteps dragging themselves along the floor before coming to a complete stop. Shallow breaths are intermingled with the daunting ticking of the clock behind the door, a hand clutching tightly around the clothed piece of metal and raising it up high. 

One second passes by. 

Another second passes by. 

The ticking increases tenfold, strangely becoming a countdown as the hand approaches the doorknob. 

A harsh breath is sucked in when the knob twist and the door come slamming open, heart pounding furiously against your chest and a pointed tip meeting the edge of dark eyes on the opposite side. 

You let out a terrifying scream.

A hand shoots out, clad entirely in black and seeking to muffle the incoherent wails you let out.

“Y/N it’s me!” The familiar voice seeks out to only reassure and your screams come to a halt, eyes tracing over the man’s features when the guarded black umbrella falls flat onto the floor.

“What the hell Jungkook?!” Life suddenly fills your eyes again and a heavy hand is placed over your heart, “You scared me!”

“Why are you even screaming?” He holds down his ears, “I thought I was going to go deaf!” His eyes move along the long-discarded umbrella on the floor, reaching out and plucking it up, “And what’s with this? Were you trying to kill me?” 

Jeon Jungkook – lord of meme faces, ruler of the infamous white shirt and jeans combo, and undeniably, your best friend. He truly drives you semi-insane with any opportunity he can snatch up, but you can’t deny that everything is the same if he isn’t around. 

“You came to my apartment in the middle of the night looking like that!” You gesture to his entire black attire, the hood over to cover his face as small droplets of water stain your carpet, “I thought you were a thief or something!” You harshly whisper, slamming the door he’s managed to leave open shut.

“A thief?” He dead-pans, looking offended, “Like anyone would want to rob you after hearing a scream like that.”

Your jaw drops down, mustering up some words for your own defence. “I-I didn’t mean to scream…” Your eyes drift over to the umbrella in his hand, wondering if you had truly overacted, “…and maybe I shouldn’t have used the umbrella, I was just scared an–“

Time seems to freeze when your eyes are suddenly darting all over him – to his evidently blood-shot dark eyes and his ruffled black locks, to how he almost looks like he was dragging his soaked self inside. “Jungkook?” 

Your voice is no longer rambling in a thunderous echo but shimmered down into a gentler tone. He quietly sniffles and your eyes widen, moving closer to examine him more carefully now.

“You know, I came this late for a reason.” He lightly chuckles, but it comes out too strained and you frown. 

“Was it…” You choose words as if you’re walking on thin ice, not wanting to hurriedly jump straight onto the idea right away. Jungkook sighs, staring at the ground and silently shakes his head. 

That’s all you need for confirmation. 

“Again?” You plant yourself down onto your couch and Jungkook follows you, sinking down. “But you said it was comfortable being around her.” 

“I know but she was just-” He grimaces, features scrunching up like he had eaten something sour. He shakes his head again, a long drawn out sigh escaping his lips as he brings his hands over his face, “I don’t know, just forget it. It’s over already.” 

Yet you wonder if it could so simple as that. You don’t mean to nitpick anything in regards to your best friend and his relationships, but it isn’t the most pleasant experience to see him spiral down into the same repetitive process only to be hurt over and over again. It also doesn’t go past you on how similar it is every single time – he falls for somebody, he introduces you to them and they seem nice, alongside with the additional bonus of him being happy, only for you to find out that he’s broken up with them just as quick. 

It’s utterly bizarre and a smile never appears when you see your friend go through spikes of bliss and heartbreak constantly. “Hey, Jungkook…” 

Glancing up at you, the red cracks in his eyes and the dark circles lining the underside of them are practically all you can see, but you clear your throat and stand up straight, “These girls…I don’t know much about them, but do you think that maybe…just maybe…it’s time to cut some corners?” 

He stares at you for a moment and you’re expecting something – words convincing you otherwise, hope that things will work out next time, anything that’ll give Jungkook some satisfaction that what he’s doing is right and that eventually, you’ll come around to seeing that too. 

But he simply sighs, shaking his head with a lopped smile, “I think you’re right.” 

That’s when he slumps down, looking like he was wrapping himself into a ball of sorrow and pity. Somehow, he’s also managed to look even more defeated than before and it serves to only make you feel horrible that he’s having to go through all this alongside your sprinkle of thoughts on the matter. 

An idea quickly works through your mind, a lightbulb flashing over your head when you take in his still soaked attire and shrunken form, “Do you want to take a shower?” 

He immediately perks up at that, wide eyes staring at you and the urge to laugh is repressed down into your thoughts. Jungkook has always this weird tendency of being clean a hundred and ten percent of the time and you know he needs something like that right now to keep him away from his overthinking, “You’re in desperate need to wash off the remains of the day and not catch a cold, my friend.” You’re already in the process of grabbing a towel, tossing it over to him. “The same door to your left.” 

Sliding off the couch, he eagerly heads towards the bathroom but pauses in his tracks. “Wasn’t your shower tap not working?” 

“I had it fixed! It should be up and running now.” You follow after him, poking your head in the vicinity and smiling at the squeaky-clean tap before you, “They even polished it.” 

“Whatever you say.” He tosses the towel over his shoulder, one hand on the door, “I’ll be out in a couple of minutes.” 

Nodding, you walk back to the kitchen and place your hands on your hips. Eying down your kitchen, you knew it was only a matter of minutes until Jungkook was done and for you to initiate your plan of action in the time being. As if practically screaming to you, your sight brings you over to the giant empty cabinets and handfuls of instant ramen drowning the parts that weren’t void of food, as well as piles of trash still on your counter that you had proclaimed to have taken out. 

It’s certainly not the ideal circumstance to have after a heartbreak, so with a huff, you snatch up the brown wallet on your counter. 

“Y/N?” 

The sound of your name pulls you out of your determination spike and it comes in the form of a distant echo, “Jungkook?” You swiftly walk back to the bathroom, only to see him standing there dressed in only a towel with crossed arms. 

You wonder why he didn’t have the decency to at least pull some clothes on but following his direction of sight, the supposed functioning tap comes into view with only mere drops of water leaking out. “I thought you said you had it fixed.” Jungkook retorts annoyed, sighing and leaning against the door frame when you can only flip between looking at the tap and him with bewildered eyes. 

“I did.” With a huff, you reach out and attempt to adjust the knob to start some flow of water, but to your own dismay the water supply completely cuts off. 

Jungkook snorts from behind you, “Liar.” He watches you struggle for a good amount of time, twisting and turning at the knob carefully before slowly growing impatient and trying to roughly yank it to work. Eventually, you grow dismayed and instead start praying that it’ll function, making Jungkook wonder if it was too soon to get excited about a shower. 

“Here let m-“ Before he can even interject, a giant gush of water shoots out and hits you straight in the face. Staggering back at the alarming speed of the water, you reach out and shut it off the supply. 

You simply stand there for a moment, absolutely drenched with pools of water collecting beneath your feet and listening to the loud obnoxious laughter of your so-called ‘best friend’ right beside you. 

Jungkook has his hand against his mouth, form leaning over and shaking from seeing you get completely drenched without him even doing anything. Perhaps it was the whole mayhem of the situation or the fact that his laugh only seems to be growing louder by the passing second, but the water is soon directed towards him with a mischievous giggle. 

His eyes are huge, like they were still processing what you had just done, “You do know you’re the one that has to deal with this afterwards, right?” 

Jungkook scoffs, “I wouldn’t have to deal with it if someone got it fixed properly.”

“I did! The guy even told me that it should be working fine if I just turn it like this and– ” 

You freeze when the water freely starts pouring out at a normal pace as you turn the knob the other way around. “See?! It does work!”

Glancing back at Jungkook, he covers his face as his form shakes again, not trusting his own voice at all. With a slight roll of your eyes, you wave him off and hurriedly leave the bathroom, “I’ll be out for a while, try to hurry up!” 

Jungkook hums, occupied with still trying to understand if the tap was really going to work properly and you gather your discarded wallet before leaving your apartment. 

***

The air is chill and cool when Jungkook steps out of the bathroom, dressed in a long black hoodie and dark jeans, the ends of his hair completely soaked with drops of water. He glances back and forth, hugging his arms when he’s no longer in the comfort of the steam but eyes not catching any glimpse of his best friend. 

“Y/N?” His words are tossed into the silence of the apartment and they only echo back to him in the form of a response. Closing the door behind him, he walks into your living room and darts his eyes around, but again you are nowhere to be found. 

Suddenly the door comes barging open and he jolts, witnessing you with multiple grocery bags hanged on your arms. 

Your eyes instantly light up when they land on him, “Oh! You’re done?” 

Jungkook nods and shuts the door behind you. When he turns around, he sees a large decor of snacks - from chips to popcorn, to gummy bears and chocolate. 

“What’s all this for?” 

You giggle, “It’s the ‘I’m not feeling so well so I’m going to drown my sorrow in food’ starter pack.” Grabbing a bag of popcorn, you toss it over to him, “I brought the plain kind, I know you don’t like the caramel since it gets stuck in your teeth and lowkey looks like you have decaying cavities.” 

“It does though!” Jungkook huffs, already in the process of opening the bag and throwing some into his mouth, “Also the hardst to bruth ot.” 

His cheeks are completely filled with popcorn and you laugh, “How about talking once you’re done eating?” 

He nods, not really being able to speak and you drag all the bags over to your couch. “Movie or video games?” 

You point to the abundance of DVD’s you have stored away as well as the console he leftover in case he was bored. Swallowing down the remaining popcorn, Jungkook points to the most obvious one. “Overwatch. You have yet to beat me in that.” 

A groan escapes you, “That’s because you always use the strongest players!” 

Jungkook shrugs, sitting down on the couch with you, “Sounds like a pretty lame excuse for not beating me.” 

You frown and Jungkook snickers, already logging on with his eyes glued to the tv, “I’ll beat you this time, just you wait.” 

The game starts up and immediately your eyes lock onto the screen before you, zeroed in and consequently in battle with Jungkook’s character. Explosives are being thrown, bullets being fired and health packs getting acquired - all during just the beginning. Although you’d hate to admit it, Jungkook’s a pretty good character and his reputation of being unbeatable always shines through no matter what you do. 

Accepting your ultimate defeat, you glance over to see Jungkook’s field of vision completely engulfed by the white screen, his fingers racing against the controller and buzzing with excitement. It seems like the perfect gateway, so you take it upon yourself to slowly open the door. 

“So....” Your character is currently coaching in an unknown area, away from attackers, “Was she like Jieun?” 

“Huh?” Jungkook’s eyes briefly flicker, before his character is suddenly going on a shooting rampage, “Kind of. She was less interested than Jieun was.”

“Less interested?” A frown surfaces on your face. Typically the problem was that the girls were too interested, not the other way around. 

He sighs, “Yeah...seemed like the only time she wanted me around was when her ex-boyfriend was nearby.” 

“Ouch.” You scrunch up your features and Jungkook gives you a stiff smile, eyes focusing back onto the game. “At least she was better than that anime obsessed girl. You know, the one that used to dress up in cosplay all the time.” 

“I actually think that was a kink Y/N.” 

“Oh.” Your eyes widen and Jungkook glances at you, chuckling when his eyes take in your expression. 

“Though she was better than the one who was secretly stealing my stuff all the time. I found three of my good hoodies in her closet Y/N, three!” Jungkook exclaims, pausing the game and turning to you with three fingers held up, “I couldn’t believe I was dating a thief.”

Pursing your lips, it finally clicks in, “Ohh right, right! Didn’t she steal your timberlands too?”

Jungkook looks at you like a puppy that’s just been kicked and you muffle down the laughter by covering your mouth. “Sorry, just remembered that.” 

“No, it’s fine…” Jungkook pouts, silently staring at you, “I have dated a lot of weird people, haven’t I?” 

“Hey don’t look at me. I’ve been questioning your choices since day one.” 

“And that’s why you’re my annoying best friend.” 

He mischievously grins and you scrunch up your nose, “At least I don’t have some anime cosplay kink or steal your stuff.” 

“You’re right, I think you’re ten times worse than that.” 

With a frown, you snatch back the bag of popcorn you had been consuming and Jungkook immediately protests, “Oh come on! Those were for me!” 

You smile, pooping one kernel into your mouth “So what did happen after that? Ex-boyfriend girl didn’t want you around anymore?” 

Jungkook pauses the game and raises his head to look at you from the ground, where you’re standing with a puzzled look and stuffing piles of popcorn into your mouth. “It’s not you.” 

You blink when Jungkook turns, serious eyes boring into yours and lips pursued, “It’s me. I’ve lost too much time because of this relationship and I think its time we both take a step back so I can find myself again.”

The room resonates into dead silence as Jungkook continues to stare at you. The clock ticks in the background and within only a mere handful of seconds, you burst out laughing. 

Jungkook slumps down with a sigh, eyes drooping in exhaustion, “Well I’m glad one of us got a good laugh out of it.”

“How– “ You cough, attempting to clear your throat, “How were you able to stay serious through all that?”

“That’s the thing, I didn’t!” Jungkook flaps his sleeves in the air, eyes wide, “I kind of just stayed quiet and expected her to eventually stop, but that didn’t work. She kept going on and on about me stopping her from ‘finding herself’.” 

“What does that even mean?” 

Jungkook groans, pinching the bridge of his nose, “Between the two of us, I still don’t know.” 

A snicker leaves you as you make your way into the kitchen, placing your elbows down on the counter with the bag facing you and happily chewing down. Jungkook exasperatedly watches you when you shift the bag closer to yourself and you grin, laughing until your eyes catch onto a wave of movement. 

It’s like a bright flash – the piercing scream you let out and the hysteria that emerges when you jolt back. “J-Jungkook!” 

Jungkook is up like the speed of light, at your side and eyes racking all over the floor, “Y/N!” His hands are on your arms, “What happened? What is it?” 

A shaky finger is pointed in the direction, a string of quivering mumbles pouring out of you, “I-It’s there.” 

Jungkook follows you and lets you go, carefully approaching your directions when your mind is spinning in a frenzy. You don’t know what it is or where it came from, but the flash of fur and large eyes staring back at you is enough to bring shivers down your spine. 

“Here?” Jungkook whispers, now crouching down on the floor. With a silent nod, he keeps searching around until his eyes finally capture onto the source of your screams. 

“B-Be careful.” He continues to stare, making you feel every second that was ticking by until he does the exact opposite of what you want and reaches out for it. 

A long drawn out sigh escapes his throat, looking to you with an impassable look, “Really? This is what freaked you out?” 

His fingers are curled up around its long tail, the small being frantically moving around in a desperate attempt to escape from his clutches and you cover your eyes with a hiss. 

“Don’t pick it up Jungkook!” 

“Hmm?” Jungkook coyly smiles, inching closer to you and letting you get a wonderful view of the creature. He waves it around, making you cover your entire face, “Like this?” 

“Oh my god, Jungkook stop!” You’re glued to the wall, barely peeking through the narrow gaps of your fingers. 

“Then stop being so scared of them Y/N, they’re not going to hurt you.” Jungkook reaches over to the window, letting go and watching the mouse scurry away. 

“How do I stop being scared when you pick them up like that?!” A heavy hand is placed over your heart when the little creature is no longer within your field of sight. Jungkook chuckles, a smile quirking up at his lips. 

“You know mice get hunted right? Cats, snakes, owls, wolves…” He shakes his head, “The list could go on.” 

You scrunch up your features, “Wolves eat mice?”

“Uh yeah, it’s pretty common.” He points over to the console, “Do you want to keep playing now that you're not screaming at the top of your lungs?” 

Rolling your eyes at him, you plant yourself down in front of the TV and gestured for him to join, “Come on, I still have to beat you.” 

***

Night draws in when the hours begin to spin, the sky swirling with a shade of ink as both of you remain slumped on your couch. After continuous attempts at trying to beat Jungkook at Overwatch, a defeated you eventually decides that his title was too unbreakable and out of your radius to beat, so he had insisted you dim down your mood with a movie. He lets you pick whichever one since he’s forced you to watch countless Marvel movies for him and you decide to choose one that involved action somehow so he isn’t bored to death. 

Your eyes are glued to the screen for the majority of the duration, eagerly fixated on the storyline when you feel Jungkook shift beside you. You don’t pay attention to it, assuming that he was getting impatient with the build-up of the story and simply waiting for some action scenes, but then he shifts again, this time bumping into you. 

“You good Jungkook?” You crane your neck back, trying to capture a glimpse of him, “The action scenes are coming soon, they just need to figure out who the murderer is.“

Jungkook doesn’t respond to you, instead, he keeps his head down and occasionally clenches his fists. You raise an eyebrow, lifting the remote to pause the movie and then turning around. “Jungkook?” 

He looks up with wide eyes, taken by surprise, “Oh sorry, I didn’t hear you.” He shifts again, letting out a low cough, “Do you mind if we postpone the rest? It’s getting really late outside.” 

You smile, watching him stand up and fix his hoodie, “You sure this isn’t an attempt to get out of watching one of my movies?” 

He chuckles, “It might as well be since they don’t know it was the director.” 

Your jaw drops, “Wow, spoiler alert much?” 

“At least ask me beforehand if I’ve seen the movie.” He puts on his shoes, reaching down to tie the lace, “Then you’ll get no spoilers.” 

You roll your eyes after he finishes, spreading his arms out to give you a goodbye hug. It’s quick and sweet, before he’s hurriedly out the hallway of your apartment and waving at you. 

You wave back at him with a smile, watching his form quickly disappear among the staircase leading out. The moment he’s out of sight, the door shuts and you lock it tightly. 

Turning around, your void eyes shift over to the clock, observing the large hand slowly moving to reach the twelve, so close to striking midnight. Your fists clench, calculated steps walking over to the dim curtain before sliding it back completely. 

The gleaming moonlight greets your eyes, the full moon rising among the dark red sky and creating a beautiful path to follow. The light shines down onto you with full force, like it was igniting a brewing fire once the flash of silver sparks up in your eyes and spreads. 

A smile curls up on the corner of your lips. 

[aros001]

Going in blind: Watching season 3 for the first time. Random thoughts.

Episode 1: I know in the original series She-Ra was the sister of He-Man so I'm curious how much of that will be carried over to this series. Not saying He-Man has to make an appearance, same as how Batman didn't need to show up in Teen Titans. That was Robin's story, not his, and similarly this is Adora's story, not Adam's. Regardless, it makes sense why Hordak was so annoyed with the baby Adora in Shadow Weaver's flashbacks. To SW, there was something different and special about the baby, but to Hordak, whom seems familiar with the world before Mara separated Etheria from the rest of the universe, including Eternia potentially, Adora is just another "First One" child like he's seen many times before. Special in comparison to those who only know Etheria.

Great clap-back from Catra to Hordak, and not entirely unfounded. It's debatable how much he actually cares about conquering Etheria. He has others leading his forces in his war yet all his focus is on his portal creation.

According to Entrapta, productivity of the Horde is up 400% ever since Catra became Hordak's 2nd in command. I wondering how much of that is Catra's direct doing? Is she genuinely just that good of a commander? Is it because she's properly delegating and Scorpia has been handling most of the load? Or is this just because it's in comparison to Shadow Weaver? Entrapta said Catra's focus on First Ones' tech has been greatly aiding them and SW definitely focused more on magic, which was an aid mostly to herself since everyone else in the Horde seems to fight only with weapons and technology. And most of what she saw of SW while she was Hordak's 2nd was her being obsessed with bringing back Adora rather than fighting the war.

Episode 2: Let's see... Hordak's easily an adult and Entrapta is...[checks google] late twenties, early thirties. Oh good, then let's sail this ship!

But yeah, that was a heck of a backstory for Hordak. This reminds me of a video by a Youtuber named Savage Books comparing the villain Steppenwolf in the theatrical and Snyder Cut versions of Justice League and how, while he still wasn't a great villain, just a small addition made him a much better villain, that being a failure in his past and the desire just to go home. And in this case, Hordak is the much better, or at least way more developed, version of that. One of many clones of Hordak Prime but having a defect that labelled him a failure and had him cast out to Etheria, a "backwards world" as he's called it before. If he can conquer Etheria, perhaps by building a portal that'll bring forward Prime's army, he believes that'll prove to Prime that he is not a failure and that he can return home to rejoin his forces. Just this bit of backstory adds SO MUCH to Hordak, including new insights on his past interactions, and keeps him from being a flat character like theatrical version Steppenwolf. His lack of tolerance for failure makes sense when he himself is trying to prove that he's not. It gives him compelling motivation to want to conquer Etheria beyond just power and greed. Not motivation you're meant to agree with but one you can still understand.

I like the story with Huntara too. It's a nice little tie-in to something Adora was talking about with Glimmer and Bow last episode. Adora defected from the horde, not because she was different but rather very much in spite being very much like every other soldier there. She wanted to believe Shadow Weaver may have at least some goodness in her too and now we have Huntara as a fellow defector who realized the evils of the Horde, even if she chose to stay out of the war entirely after.

Episode 3: I legit thought Catra stabbed the goat lady for a second.

After Scorpia asking her why don't they just stay in the wastes I'm seeing a bit of a parallel between Catra and Hordak. They've both found a place where they can be the top dog, where they can do and have basically anything they want; her with the wastes and him with the Horde. They can be happy. ...But there's still this pull they're feeling to somewhere else. Catra back to the Horde and Hordak back to Prime. Because they feel they have to prove something; prove that they're not failures. They could be happy but they can't let go.

And that scene between Adora and Catra at the end. That was such a great line read from Catra's actor. "She left me for you. Everything that's happened is because of you." I got chills.

Minor note: While I'm only judging off the Mara hologram, which didn't have color, I do think the She-Ra outfit looks better with pants than shorts like Adora's She-Ra form. I think it makes it look sleeker, if that makes any sense.

Episode 4: Catra's spiral has turned into a drill and its taking her down as far as she can go. Though something I had to a laugh a little at myself over was that my biggest "Catra, no!" reaction wasn't to her wanting to open the portal but rather when she lied to Hordak and said Entrapta let the princesses in. She was actually a positive influence on Hordak's life and Catra with one move just destroyed that relationship and all progress Hordak had been making.

I'm guessing there's going to be some kind of long-term effect from Shadow Weaver continuously siphoning off Glimmer's magic. The woman is basically a parasite and the magic she uses is very different from the kind Glimmer does. I can't believe it never occurred to me that since Shadow Weaver trained Glimmer's father there might be a connection there between the two of them later in the story. While we don't know about anything that might've happened after she left, SW clearly had enough affection for Micah still to not kill him. I could see her trying to take Glimmer on as a student later like she did him.

Episode 5: There is something kind of hilarious about it being Scorpia's jealousy of Catra and Adora's closeness that causes her to be the first one after Adora to pick up that something is off.

11 is my favorite of the Doctor Who Doctors so naturally I'm comparing all this to the crack in Amy Pond's bedroom wall. Whatever goes in gets forgotten about and basically never existed. Though does that mean Bright Moon isn't going to remember the Horde? Basically that entire place got sucked up in the collapsing reality. There shouldn't be at war anymore because their enemy literally no longer exists.

Adora and Catra had their own little Star Trek 3 moment there.

Adora: "If we don't help each other, we'll die here!"

Catra: "Perfect! Then that's the way it shall be!"

Catra's just so far down her spiral she doesn't even care about getting her own win, just so long as Adora doesn't get one, despite just minutes ago clearly loving having Adora back in her life and on her side, to the point was trying to resist remembering the old reality. Her "perfect" world was them together again but when given the chance (another of many. I love those cuts to their past woven in there) she slapped the hand away.

I'm sure I'm wrong but I'm starting to theorize Madam Razz is actually Mara and just at some point went kind of crazy and started thinking as and Mara were two different people.

Episode 6:

"You are everything I ever wanted in a son. This... This is everything I ever wanted in a life. ...But I've got responsibilities, Van. And...I have to...go now."

-Superman, Justice League Unlimited: For the Man Who Has Everything

That was my favorite episode of JLU, where Superman is trapped in this world that isn't real but still perfect in every way, and the only way out was to give up everything he'd ever wanted, including a son he remembers watching grow up, even if it never really happened. With a similar premise, this definitely helped elevate Angela up a bit for me, whom I was kind just meh with before. I didn't dislike her but I didn't really care much for her either. This episode gave her a lot to work with though, with the heavy sacrifice she made. Not just saying behind to pull out the sword but just simply forcing herself to accept her husband is gone and not coming back. I was right that they wouldn't remember the Horde, but I definitely didn't think of the full effects of them never existing. They never exist, Bow never becomes a rebel instead of a scholar like his dads wanted. They don't exist, Micah never dies in battle against them. Glimmer gets to grow up with her father in her life. Everyone, most especially Angela, has to reject everything they would love to be real in favor of what actually is.

I'm guessing we're going to have Shadow Weaver taking advantage of this situation, trying to act like a teacher and mother-figure to Glimmer now that she's basically a orphan.

I talked before about how Catra and Hordak seem to have a parallel between them, especially regarding failure. Catra seems like she has a very hard time accepting her own failures and mistakes and thus why she more or less uses Adora as a mental scapegoat for all of it. Nothing is ever really her fault, it's Adora's, or Shadow Weaver's, or Hordak's. It makes for a great moment when Adora finally punches back, both literally and figuratively. She's not going to accept responsibility for Catra's actions anymore. She gave Catra every chance to make the right choice and she didn't, so now she has to finally live with the consequences. Heck of a glare She-Ra gave Catra at the end. Very much a "If I ever see you again..." and it certainly scared Catra, at least for a moment.

Now, someone go save Entrapta from Beast Island!

Season 3 verdict: Easily the best season thus far. I know this was technically the second half of season 2 but even in comparison to the full season 1 there was just so much that happened in this, so much that got revealed, and so, so many moments of emotion or tension. Weirdly I feel kind of disappointed that Hordak Prime is probably going to come in now and be the new big villain. I really like our Hordak's motivation and Prime seems like he might just be the generic conqueror for power that Hordak seemed like he was going to be at first. Not saying those types can't work. I love All For One from My Hero Academia and Frieza from Dragon Ball. Those guys are pure evil and selfishness, but they also have a captivating presence/charisma to them.

Naturally, since I bring her up the most out of all the characters, I'm very curious to see what happens with Catra now. She's basically nuked every positive relationship she had with anyone. Entrapta's gone, she threatened Scorpia, Hordak's not going to trust anyone including her anymore now that he thinks Entrapta's betrayed him, and Adora firmly sees her as an enemy. She has no one (those under her direct command don't count) and it's entirely her own fault.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/PrincessesOfPower/comments/o0trfz/going_in_blind_watching_season_3_for_the_first/

[demonfox38]

Competed(ish) - Monster Hunter Rise

In life, there are times Where you must slay other beasts To protect your own. 

Haiku time, bitches.

So, "Monster Hunter" games. I've heard good things about them, but I've personally struggled to cut into them. I first experimented with the series back in the early 2010s with a copy of "Monster Hunter Tri" through my GameFly subscription. (It seems like they're still operational, which is quite surprising to me!) Long story short, I didn't have the time or patience to get into it through my rental period, so I bounced out of the series. Given a scratched track record, what helped me stick through "Monster Hunter Rise"? Was it just having the time to explore the games, or did this game latch onto some inner weeaboo hook?

Hey. Sometimes, it's just about making sure I make the most out of $65.00 USD.

"Monster Hunter Rise" is Capcom's 2021 release of its "Monster Hunter" series in which you…well. Hunt monsters. Pretty obvious, right? This game takes place in Kamura Village, an idyllic Japanese town known for its weapon forging and sweet shops. You, the newest village hunter/idiot, are charged with helping to defend the village from being overrun by monsters. That's it. Nothing deep. Just you, your yokels, and your various animals driving other animals away.

Look. I'm gonna be honest. This isn't a game you play for plot or deep characters. You're here to do the "Shadow of the Colossus" thing, but without the artsy veneer. And good luck doing that!

To say this game is abstruse is an understatement. I mean, it tries to teach you about your game loop and your weapon usage, but damned if I didn't have to spend an hour or two on YouTube just to get my bearings. There's a lot you have to manage. Your equipment. Your buddies. Their equipment. The needs of the people. Your stamina. Your health. Your maps. What monster's going where. What's it doing? Why's it doing that? How should I kill it? And that's just going solo!  (No, I didn't do multiplayer. I was feeling cheap. Also, my modem and router were dying a slow death. That's been fun to fix over a holiday weekend…)

I did enjoy the game's attempt at making the game feel like a multiplayer title, even when I was playing alone. The inclusion of Palicoes (cats with human-equivalent intelligence) and Palamutes (knife-wielding dog mounts) is particularly helpful. Palamutes, while not as technical as Palicoes, did give me a break while traversing the terrain and provided some additional speed with item usage in battle. The right kind of Palico can save your ass. Personally, I was fondest of those with Healing and Gathering personality sets. I think Fighting types also have their uses, but I struggled to see the help that Assist or Bombing types provided. But, I'm sure every player has their favored type.

Outside of "Shadow of the Colossus," the other game I kept thinking of while playing was "Devil May Cry." Why? Well, they're produced by the same company, for one. But, for another? I expected a game with such a pedigree like "Monster Hunter" to feel a little more elegant and polished when I started it. Instead, I was lucky to understand battle pacing, never-the-less combos. "Devil May Cry" is a game series where I start feeling like a pro and end feeling like a pro, but with a few more tools under my belt. With "Monster Hunter Rise", I started feeling like a clod and ended without a drop of sweat on my brow. Such development can be frustrating, especially if you don't have the time or any real reason to commit to the game. But, there can be fun in figuring out, "Hey, I can do this!" or "Well, I can abuse this terrain/endemic life to gain an advantage."

Really, really could have used a better targeting system, though. Sometimes, it felt better not to use it at all.

While it did take me some time to feel like I was competent at anything in game, I think my first turning point was fighting Aknosom, a fire-spitting crane. I finally slowed down enough to learn its movements, guard against its attacks, then smack it around when it was done acting up. Additionally, it helped teach me about the importance of stopping to heal status effects, as well as how to kite around it to recover the most health possible while keeping engaged in battle. Groan it up, but it's certainly analogous to a "Dark Souls" experience. Easier, but similar.

Additionally, of the pre-credit matches, I enjoyed fighting Barioth, Khezu (who is still a songless fight, by the way!), Somnacanth, Bishaten, and Magnamalo (the pre-credit final boss.) While they all had their own status effects, I found it easy enough to avoid their more irksome attacks by being aggressive with rolling and keeping close and to their backs/sides. Also, I enjoyed using wirebugs to zip in and smack them on the face when they had finished their attacks. Those little goobers are great! Takes a hot minute to use them smoothly, but man, when you can, it makes punishing so much quicker.

The hunts I tended to avoid the most were those that had creatures with poisoning capabilities. Seriously, poison sucks in this game. Keep antidotes stapled to your ass at all times. I also had some difficulties with heavily plated dragons, but I suspect using a hammer would have mitigated that. Something to test another time, I suppose.

Also, I can't say I got too much into the Rampage side of this game. I mean, it's okay? It's a Tower Defense mode. Nothing too taxing. However, I didn't feel the need to grind for a different reward set. What I saw was just improvement stickers to slap on pre-existing equipment. It seems like the kind of thing that would have unique rewards associated with it, but I didn't see anything that compelled me to stick with it outside of a couple of experimental battles. I'm sure it will eventually offer something unique. Just didn't need it.

I think the best I can do with this evaluation is help you get a step into the game, should you want to play it. And really, it's mostly about the play. If you're looking for a novel story, unique characters, decent voice acting, or the next video game soundtrack to get stuck in your head, this isn't really the game for you. (Although, "Cold Blues and Flaming Reds" is a banger!) It's really just about fighting cool monsters and attempting to be cool while doing it.

So, here! First, take my hunting prep loop:

Gather items earned from quests/subquests from the previous hunt.

The quest maiden in the town (Hinoa; shrine maiden sitting around and eating dango) gives you single player quests. Her sister in the hub (Minoto) gives group assignments.

Manufacture new weapons and/or armor for your character.

You'll be looking for an old, grumpy dude who's hunched over (Hamon).

Most of the stuff you can get for weapon creation will get dropped for you somewhere between 1-5 kills of that monster's set. At least, that was what it felt like for me. Khezu equipment took the longest to get, but I think I just had some bad luck there.

Try to use the tree page as much as possible to determine what you'd like and what you need to make. This helped me visualize when I needed to recreate a weapon to get something new through a unique branch. Icons with arrows over them can be reversed to a previous state. Icons with a treasure box on them indicates that you've got this particular weapon in storage.

You can make upgrades to armor and weapons as well, if you'd like! I didn't find it necessary, but some people may want to beef up their stats.

Manufacture Palico/Palamute weapons and armor from scrap and/or unneeded materials.

This'll be the kitty to Hamon's right (your left, if you're facing Hamon.)

You can trade for scraps in the event that you have some piece of a monster that you don't anticipate on using. But really, really make sure you don't need an item before you scrap it. I learned that the hard way regarding Electro Sac scrapping.

Hire at least 1 new Palico or Palamute until a total of 15 is reached. (It'll help you with a subquest later on.)

You'll do this from the Buddy Plaza, which is in the exit opposite of the hub area. Find the kid in the forest playing with a puppy (Iori).

I personally had 2 of each Palico personality type, but you can pick whatever you'd like. Really, really get some healers, though!

Check Palico/Palamute training progress.

It'll be another Palico by Iori (without a hood).

Check Meowcenary progress.

I can't say I really needed the items from this, but it did help me make some unique pet armor!

This will be the Palico in the blue robes and hood by Iori. You won't see him for a bit, though.

If possible, reassign lowest-leveled companions to training duty, then highest to Meowcenary tasks.

Don't interrupt the Meowcenary tasks, at the very least.

If it's been 5+ hunts since you last checked, climb up a tree in the Buddy Plaza to check the Cahoot's nest. If there's two golden eggs, take them.

Create, purchase, and restock items.

Honestly, I only bought trap-making materials from the shop (umbrella dude with a seal taped to his face by the name of Kagero.)

Pet/feed the Cahoot.

Okay, this is optional, and the rewards it triggers can be a pain in the ass to bag. But, pet the owl anyway, idiot.

You can call your owl by dicking around with your D pad.

Accept your quest of choice and subquests from one of the quest maidens.

Cook Motley Mix.

You can do this in the multiplayer hub or in Kamura proper, but I just go to the Kamura proper location. You're looking for a green-clothed gal (Yomogi.) Sit at her counter to her left.

You can cook on the battlefield, but you might as well have the dango lady/Palicoes make your food for you. You can get bonus tickets to improve your Bunny Dango's stats this way!

Eat Bunny Dango.

There are multiple pages of dango you can buy, so don't feel like you need to stick on the first page.

If you see a dango about training your buddies, get that! Might as well help your dudes out, right?

Also—I know the dango lady rants about my character just eating meat and fish, but really. Dango's not healthy. There really should have been some sort of alternative customizable foodstuff for this. Like, I dunno. Sushi?

Depart.

As for control tips:

Don't rush your inputs. Flailing around will leave you open to getting batted across a field.

Try a lance as soon as the game will let you. I recommend this weapon for newbies because its combo system is simple. It's X X X for low attacks, A A A for upper attacks, and R to guard. Learn to target certain body parts using this, and you can handle pretty much any other weapon afterwards. I wouldn't stick to it forever, but it's good for grounding yourself.

Cut off tails; bash in heads. I can especially recommend using great swords for the tail chopping. It'll give you something additional to harvest!

Use items on your Palamute to gain mobility while vulnerable. This is particularly helpful with sharpening your sword or healing up! Press A when you're near your dog to get on it. Press B to dismount.

Rations/steaks heal stamina. Stamina helps you move and attack quickly. It's the yellow bar. Under the green bar. Which is your health. I hope you saw that one, at the very least.

You can auto-craft some items. Absolutely set this up for potions and antidotes. You want that shit ready to go as soon as you touch its base items.

Sheathing your weapon is Y. Using your selected item is also Y. Make sure you know what state you're in when you hit Y (i.e., weapon in or out.)

To select your items: Hold L, then tap Y or A to scroll left or right through the item wheel. Release L on the item you want. Tap Y to use it. This seriously was a pain in the ass for me to learn, so I'm putting it down here. (You can use the L + a control stick to use an item, but I always ended up using stuff accidentally that way.)

Use wirebugs to zip in and hit monsters. It's a bit putzy to do (ZL + ZR while your weapon is sheathed, then X to hit the monster.) But, nailing this will help you lower their defenses against being ridden and get in a good combo starter.

Hold the minus button to warp. There's no penalty for doing this, so get yourself back to your base and restock. You can't do this while you're in active combat, however.

Your time remaining is the clock in the upper-left corner. Try to keep your monster kills in under 15 minutes. You can usually bag three monsters in a go, but it's up to you whether or not the fight is worth it.

Put some time in the Training Arena. It's past the Buddy Plaza, which is the exit past the armor shop. It's a free place to practice comboing, so take your time here to figure out how you'd like to move going forward.

Honestly, you may want to wait a few months for this game's price to drop down and for updates to settle. It's a hot property as of writing this very second (Memorial Day weekend of 2021), but with that heat comes a financial cost. If you've got a buddy who's really biting to play, then go for it. If you're a people person, you might really like the multiplayer! Otherwise, it may be difficult to feel like you're getting the most out of this game.

However, the value of this game really can't be captured in video or audio, as much as I relied on videos to get into it. It's not an Hour One enjoyment, either. It's more about hitting Hour Twenty and finding out that you've become this brutal, beautiful acrobat, despite everything standing in your way. But, "Devil May Cry" takes less work, and "Shadow of the Colossus" scratches that arty itch more, so take the pride I have in my progress with a grain of salt.

Also, I very much hurt myself playing "Devil May Cry 3" and "Shadow of the Colossus." (Don't force yourself to fight bosses for and hour and a half straight, kids.) At least I didn't hurt myself playing "Monster Hunter Rise!" Just battered my dignity for a bit.

[littlemisssquiggles]

i now a lot off ppl n the fndm dont like rg caz they think there a big difference btween a 15 year old an a 17 year old but i think that ppl overlook that oscar smart 4 his age and i wouldn't be shocked if like ruby he got to skip a few grades but i get the feeling other would still see rg as a problem even if oscar was the same age as ruby or even if it was 2 year age gap and it was just a year or a few months

*insert the world’s longest exasperated groan right here* With all due respect anon-chan but…I really don’t want to get into the whole 2 year age difference with Rosegarden topic again since, pardon my language here, but I am honestly fucking tired of seeing it as a legit popular complaint against the ship.

Mind you, this has nothing to do with you, fam. I’m not lashing out at you personally.

It’s just that regarding the topic at hand, I’m just REALLY, REALLY fed up of seeing this dead horse being beaten repeatedly by all the antis who make it their mission to constantly harp on Rosegarden and its shipping community for it.

Oscar and Ruby are two years apart. If Ruby just turned 17 as of V7 then surely Oscar is on the cusp of turning 15 at some point, probably closer to V9 or so. If we’re looking in terms of grades---well I’m from Trinidad and Tobago and our education system actually reflects more of the British school system where instead of grades with pre-school, elementary school, junior high school, high school and then college/university, what we have is pre-school, primary school, secondary school and then university will be our tertiary form of education, more or less.

At their current ages from the show, if Ruby and Oscar were in my country, they will both be in secondary school. At age 14 going on 15, Oscar will be in Form 3 (and entering the stage where he is supposed to be choosing subjects for CXC exams) whereas Ruby will be in Form 5 (getting ready to take the CXC exams).

Either way, Oscar will be in Form 3 and Ruby will be Form 5. Ruby will be two forms higher than Oscar. That still doesn’t erase the fact that they are still only two years apart. Just 2 and ONLY TWO.

Do you want to know why I absolutely despise the two year age gap argument against Rosegarden anon-chan? 

Because it’s all completely hypocritical. It is hypocritical that certain-certain folks take such strong issue with the 2-year age gap when it comes to the Rosegarden pair but are perfectly fine with it when it comes to the more FNDM-favoured pairs such as Whiterose, Lancaster and Nuts and Dolts. Particularly Whiterose since that is the ship that people seem to THINK Rosegarden is fighting a shipping war against when in actuality, as a Rosegardener, I could care fucking less about entertaining any foolish nonsensical shipping war with anyone. 

Again, pardon my use of profanity here. That’s just to express how much I am done with this shit and hearing about it when it comes to my favourite RWBY ship.

While Ruby may be two years older than Oscar, she is also two years younger than Weiss, Jaune and Penny. It’s the same age difference no matter how you spin it. Yet it’s a case where the age gap is only problematic for one ship while being fine for another and that’s the contradiction that irks me.  

And y’know what else? You’re actually right about your last statement. The problem that certain-certain folks have with RG ISN’T even about the age difference. It isn’t the real issue and don’t think for one millisecond that it is. Because regardless of whether or not, Oscar was only one year younger than Ruby or one year older than Ruby or even the same age as Ruby---it wouldn’t really matter to certain-certain folks since the issue isn’t really about the age of the characters.

The REAL issue is that certain-certain folks just don’t want Ruby to end up with OSCAR. These people ship Ruby with someone else particularly a certain-certain snow angel, who according to them, has known Ruby longer than Oscar and therefore is entitled to end up with Ruby over him.

Yes, I shit you not, that is an actual claim that I’ve heard against Rosegarden in favour of another certain-certain ship…despite the show never really portraying that particular relationship to be romantic of any kind.

Bottom-line, certain-certain folks feel threatened by the RG ship since the showrunners seem to kinda, sorta, maybe, most likely want to develop the relationship between Ruby and Oscar beyond a friendship or at least they wish to hone in on pushing Ruby’s connection to this our little freckled farm boy to be a lot deeper than the relationship she has with other character and to those certain-certain folks, that’s a problem for them because in their heads, they want the showrunners to only focus on Ruby hooking up with their favoured partner for her…regardless of the series never really portraying that relationship they like to be romantic of any kind.

And THAT is the TRUE conundering conundrum we are in as Rosegardeners. Dealing with these certain-certain folks and their shit.

I’m sorry anon-chan but for future reference (and that goes for anyone else who might be reading this response post) do you mind not bringing up the so-called age gap issue with Rosegarden to me please ^^);

I’m fine with other topics just not this one since I’ve had enough. In the past, I’ve answered similar questions and inbox messages on this same topic and I’ve honestly reached a point where I no longer wish to discuss it at all on my blog.

It’s nothing against you or anyone else who may still wish to talk about this subject. This squiggle meister and squiggly Rosegardening Pinehead just doesn’t want to anymore since…how many times as a Rosegardener do I have to repeat the same information and set the record straight for the same none-troversey as Red Letter Media would put it.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the Rosegarden pair and wanting to  see them be endgame as an adorkable young couple. Certainly not because of their age difference. 

Because if Ruby and Oscar can’t be an “alleged” couple because they are two years apart then neither can Ruby get together with Weiss, Jaune or Penny since the gap is the same.

I don’t even want to hear anyone dare mention the Ozpin issue since that’s been debunked too in the show in the Lost Fable episode from V6. So really there are no real arguments that anyone can make against RG that hasn’t already been debunked by a) the fans who pay more attention to the development of the pair in the story than the antis, b) the showrunners and/or c) the actual story in the series. 

So the people who keep making a hullabaloo about it---making the same ole noise over the same ole things honestly need to stop. They are embarrassing themselves at this point and it sickens me to see their half-hearted arguments and claims against RG pop up on the tags on social media when I’m trying to enjoy my ship.

Or rather, I’d just need to stop listening to anything the antis say which I have. Or at least I’m trying to. This round for V8, I don’t know about other Rosegardeners, but I want to avoid the discourse like Neo in the Matrix.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2020)

[orangerosebush]

“How does one describe Artemis Fowl?” Artemis Fowl, Book 1, Page 1.

Although this quote from the first series sets the tone of Artemis being a character who is loath to be understood, what with how he “delights in not talking” about how it is he perceives himself to truly be, I want to attempt to answer this rhetorical question. After all, the quote serves as a bookend for the series — both the first and final book contain it.

In answering this question, I want to not answer “how does one describe Artemis Fowl?” but rather, “what is Artemis Fowl?” — the series, that is. I think now is a good time to answer this question, what with the first cycle of the series, the Artemis Fowl saga, being complete and the second cycle, the Fowl twins saga, beginning. In short, I want to ask: what context surrounds the book series being published? What are some important themes to the series? And what gives the book series its spark?

I first have to start this video essay by admitting that I was wrong in another essay: “A look into the role of Irish mythology as inspiration for Colfer's depiction of the People: an essay”. You can find this on fanfiction.net or on archive of our own under works by mentosmorii, by the way. The synopsis I provided for the essay is as follows: “Although Colfer has stated before that he has drawn from his knowledge of Irish mythology, he has never stated specifically which myths informed his writing. As someone with a bit of a background in Irish mythology, I have made a guess at some of the sources of inspiration, explained a couple of references within the series, and analyzed a few characters as having connections to Irish history/mythology.”

A lot of the content in that essay is correct, I feel I should say. However, an area where I misstep is here: “ Eoin Colfer has been asked about the influence of Irish mythology on his writing during various interviews, and his response is usually a sort of permutation of the above answer — ‘I grew up reading Irish myths and legends, [and] I… put… a spin on them’ (Colfer). He admits that he was influenced by Irish mythology, and this admission of influence is usually enough to get interviewers to move along to the next question. I’ve looked through many of the interviews that he’s done, and I think I can say with confidence that there is not currently any interview available in which an interviewer presses him to be more specific and point to the myths and legends in question by which he was influenced. In all likelihood, I think that this is because once Colfer confirms that he did, in fact, take inspiration from Irish mythology, the interviewers think of pop culture Celtic mythology and move on”.

The assertion that I made that was incorrect is about the interviewer moving on due to a lack of visibility of Irish myths. However, you also have to look at when the first book was published, which was in 2001. During the 90s to the early 2000s, Ireland was going through something called the “Celtic tiger”, which essentially means that there was an international market that was becoming quite interested in Irish culture, leading to the development of a new, commercially successful Celticism. Cormac MacRaois (pronounced: cormick Mccreesh) estimated, at the time of writing in 1997, that there were at least thirty books dedicated to the retellings of mythological tales on the children’s shelves of Irish bookshops, alongside a burgeoning quantity of contemporary fantasy drawing upon mythological sources for its characters and themes” (Irish Children’s Literature and Culture: New perspectives). Furthermore, in Mary Donohue’s unpublished 2003 MA thesis entitled “From Wexford to the arctic circle, a cultural journey”, she remarks that in a video interview, Colfer mentions that he had initially planned to publish a collection of Irish myths and legends, but that he abandoned this plan when he realized how many good collections were already in print (Donohoe, 2003, p. 24).

What I want to point out is that although the series was published at a time when there was increased interest in Irish mythology, it is interesting that Colfer deviates from the fairy tale and leans into the futuristic. What do I mean by this?

In many ways, the Artemis Fowl series, at least up until book 8, is more of a sci-fi than it is a fantasy. Which is a bold claim for me to make, I know!

However, a quote from book one in which Root is talking to Foaly as the LEP tries to plan how to get Holly back summarizes this seemingly paradoxical analysis of the series quite nicely: Science is taking the magic out of everything.

As Anna Bugajska (pronounced: ah-na boo-guy-ska) states in her essay "Human Magic", "Fairy Technology" : The Place of the Supernatural in the Age of Cyberculture, which is about the Artemis Fowl series: “Fairies deprived of natural wings use their artificial counterparts. Dwarves are practically walking machines. Invisibility is achieved by ‘shielding’. Artemis uses ‘human magic’ to heal a fairy [the sprite in Ho Chi Minh whom he gives a serum to help her alcohol dependence], but must rack his brains to escape ‘fairy technology’. The convergence point comes at the search for a Booke of Magick and at a failed Ritual performance…  In the world where fairies rely on blasters and bio-bombs to take out their enemies, is there any place for good ol’ magic? Or is it by any chance homogenous with “man-made magic”, that is technology?”.

The fact that the people seem to rely more on technology than on magic is important to the parallels that the series establishes between humanity and the fae — in many ways, the two societies are two sides of the same coin. In many ways, you could even take Root’s comment about “Science taking the magic out of everything” as the same sort of thing your boss, or teacher, or any older person, really, might say when presented with new technology that they don’t quite yet understand. It seems like their society also suffers from the same anxieties older humans have about technology progressing and leaving previous generations in the dust.

The fact that the book series seems to be more of a sci-fi than a fantasy is important for two reasons, the first one of which is discussed in Elizabeth Parsons’ essay “Fowl Play: Artemis Fowl, Sitting Ducks, and politics for children” and the second of which is discussed in Patricia Kennan’s essay “Contemplating Otherness, imagining the future” . The first perspective, Parsons’, which I do agree with, is that the book brings up parallels between the People and humanity that suggest that the fairies are just as guilty of the environmental issues and social injustice that they like to critique humans for. The second perspective, which I do not necessarily fully agree with but that I find interesting, Kennan’s perspective, is on whether or not Artemis Fowl series “feels” Irish because of this emphasis on the sci-fi over the myth.

Let’s first address Parsons’ argument. Parsons argues that there is no real, discernible difference between the two worlds that share the planet — “Technological advances drive humanity’s destruction of the earth’s surface as much as they [drive] the spread of fairy civilization underground” (Parsons). In fact, Parsons points to the enormous sum of gold at the center of the conflict in book one as evidence that the People are not as innocent of this kind of environmental destruction as they would like to think. After all, you cannot mine gold from the earth without having some kind of negative impact on the planet. Whether it’s from how you might destabilize the ground as you mine, or the pollutants you may release, or even the effect that comes with removing the gold from its natural place in the earth, you cannot escape the fact that Faeries likely also have a history of troubling environmental impacts to answer for. There is also the fact that fairy society is *extremely* developed and industrialized. Just as how the presence of gold presents the question of how the People acquired that wealth, the technology the people have presents the question of how did they develop said tech. You can’t go from a building the wheel to building a neutrino gun — there was likely an industrial revolution in which the People engaged in unclean energy practices as they developed their understanding of how to engineer. And this concern is supported by the text!

In book one, Holly is talking about two mechanical wing types that the LEP uses — the older models called the Dragonflies and the newer models called the Hummingbirds. The book says the following: “Holly unhooked a set of wings from their bracket... Dragonflies. She hated that model. Gas engine, if you believe it... Now the Hummingbird Z7, that was transport. Whisper silent, with a satellite-bounced solar battery that would fly you twice around the world. But there were budget cuts again.” (pp. 50-51).

Perhaps the People may like to argue that they are more environmentally evolved than humanity, and sure, they are, but they’re far from being as innocent in the exploitation of earth than they’d like to think — they still use gas engines, after all!

But that’s just from an environmental point of view. Socially, there is also little difference between the progress of the People and humanity. Honestly, in some aspects, the people are farther behind, what with how Holly mentions being the first woman to be hired to her position even though the book opens at the start of the 21st century. And although Holly understands that others assuming she is less capable on the basis of her gender is both illogical and prejudiced, she herself falls into similar lines of thinking in books 1 and 2. She certainly makes some unkind assumptions regarding how she thinks her coworker Lilli, an attractive woman, was hired because the recruiter fancied Lili. Which, knowing the rather old-fashioned beliefs the LEP higher-ups have regarding women, could be the case! Yet the way she specifically talks about Lili makes it clear she does not see a potential ally against mistreatment in the office — Lili is someone who, in unkind moments, Holly privately kind of sees as an acceptable target of workplace gossip. And Holly, to be fair, grows out of this mindset by the final book — she still doesn’t like Lili, but she’s matured past the point of engaging in making harmful assumptions about her coworker.

And beyond this, Holly also in book one falls into patterns of making assumptions about the various different groups of fairies in Haven. For example, she implies in her first encounter with Mulch that his rapscallion behavior and petty crimes are kind of linked to the fact he’s dwarf. And she certainly doesn’t treat him well in book 1 — she zaps him when he makes a move to pick-pocket despite the fact the situation could have been de-escalated with initial action other than violence. Again, she moves beyond this way thinking by the final book. Yet the society the society she lived in, no matter how much she values things like justice and equality, still influenced her to make judgment calls that either are solely about another person’s identity, such as her comments about Lili, or that tie someone’s behavior to their identity, such as how she links Mulch’s behavior to the fact he is a dwarf. Holly isn’t the problem — the society is.

This is why you have Mulch’s later quote that “I’d rather trust a bunch of humans not to hunt a species to extinction than trust an LEP consultant” (177). Here, the first book kind of hits you over the head with the message: both of the societies, human and fairy, have issues of inequality and environmental abuse built into them. They both suck!

Holly, I think wakes up to this fact at the end of book 4 following the fact that Sool and the council valued money and power over bringing Opal to justice for her murder of Root. After this, she has a more nuanced perspective on ideas of justice and what means to want justice. A line that sticks out to me is from book 8 when she’s thinking about what she wants for Opal. She brings up the fact that at one point, she would have wanted Opal to suffer as she had. However, what Holly wants by the 8th book is for the suffering to stop, period. She doesn’t want to seek justice by humiliating or hurting Opal, what she wants is Opal to no longer be capable of hurting others. And this doesn’t mean that Holly no longer hates Opal, because she unequivocally does. But the cycle of Opal hurting others, the LEP hurting Opal, and then Opal coming back to enact vengeance again, and again, and again, is something that Holly wants to end. She no longer wants to engage in this cycle.

To circle back to my original point, this is why the series relying on sci-fi more than the more magical elements of fairy society is important: by showing us fairies that evolved past the role they would fill in myths, which is more nature-based, Colfer is able to talk about technology in human society, both good and bad, and human society itself, both good and bad. This different depiction of fairies and a more sci-fi plot was what made the story stand when it was being marketed, but it is also interestingly a point of criticism that is invoked when talking about whether or not the story “feel” Irish.

This is the second point of criticism that I discussed earlier is in Patricia Kennan’s essay “Contemplating Otherness, imagining the future”. She doesn’t think blending sci-fi and fantasy is negative — that would be an uncharitable reading of her essay. She even states in the essay that, “the most successful writers of science fantasy, however, have been able to stretch the parameters of both kinds of minds [the fantasy and technological], a feat to be admired”.

She talks about the blending of both mythic and realistic narratives, as well as that mixture’s popularity in recent Irish children’s science fiction. This idea of hybrid forces, the fantasy and the realistic, is attractive, she suggests, because of the chaos contained in their tension in the narrative. It’s for the same reason, perhaps, that fiction containing elements like vampires, that straddle the boundary between night and day, alive and dead, animal and human, is popular, as they contain interesting and allure characteristics while also being horrifying and repulsive.

(Side note: the idea of “otherness” and the human and the magical intersecting is very interesting as an aesthetic when one considers that one of the most influential vampire novels, Dracula, was written by an Irish author and that many of the aesthetics associated with Dracula also fit neatly with Artemis — this further underlines that he straddles the line between good and bad, human and magical, technology and fantasy in the way he seems to be a hybrid of gothic literature aesthetics dressed up in a modern, sci-fi package. I’m gonna end my sidenote here).

However, Kennan points to the plot and setting of the story as perhaps being why the series does feel very grounded in its Irish roots. The essay quotes Celia Keenan, saying: “all sense of the national and local have been eradicated [from the series]. Speech rhythms are entirely mid-Atlantic. No Hiberno-English or Wexford uses are evident. Landscape has become virtual”.

In some ways, I can see her point. Artemis Fowl is a very James Bond-type series in that it tries to invent settings rather than borrowing from existing reference points to place itself. A good example of this would be the fact that Fowl manor and Artemis’ school, Saint Bartleby’s, never are placed concretely within specific locations in Ireland. There might be a sense that Saint Bartleby’s is near Wexford or that the manor is near Dublin, but what proximity might mean (such as showing neighbors, classmates, and descriptions of the setting) is often avoided: the main characters and settings that are explored are often more international, such as Minerva and Spiro being French and American respectively, and the series often taking place in Haven or locations related to it. However, I think that there are at least some references that make the book still feel grounded as being Irish —  I go into this in my other essay, but I can recap. There are specific references to Irish mythology and history, even if things like modern Irish history, side characters beyond the Butlers and Fowls that are Irish, and slang or dialect specific to different parts of Ireland aren’t referenced frequently.

So to summarize this point, the series does play with the trappings of a James Bond series in the sense that the setting bounces around enough that perhaps Ireland isn’t at the center always, and I think that this is a function of how Colfer writes sci-fi instead of something that destabilizes the sense of the where and when of the series. For instance, a big example of pop culture that Colfer references is the Matrix, albeit in a sneaky way. Celia Keenan (who is also quoted Kennon’s essay) wrote the article “Who’s afraid of the bad little Fowl?” which serves as a book review and a look into whether or not one could call the series ‘art’. When talking about references the book makes to pop culture, she writes: “It is possible that the film which has most influenced the ‘‘Fowl’’ books is The Matrix (1999). It depicts two worlds, the computer-controlled world of the matrix itself in which humans function as duped slaves, and the world of human resistance fighters who, like Colfer’s fairies, have been forced to create an alternative home called Zion, in the bowels of the earth. The term ‘‘recon unit’’, echoed in Colfer’s LEPrecon, figures in the Matrix. Colfer actually parodies quotations from The Matrix on a few occasions. For example, in The Matrix one of the characters says to the hero, ‘‘Buckle your seat belt, Dorothy, because Kansas is going ‘bye bye’’’; likewise, Root says to Artemis, ‘‘Hate to tell you this, Dorothy, but you ain’t in Kansas anymore’, in Artemis Fowl: the Arctic Incident (p. 63). Another Matrix quip—‘‘never send a human to do a machine’s job’’ (Wachowski, 1999), is parodied by Mulch: ‘‘Tell Foaly not to send a Mud Man to do a fairy’s job’’. In this instance, the narrator emphasizes the cinematic origins of the quotation: ‘‘‘Oh dear,’ thought Artemis, rubbing his brow, ‘Hollywood had a lot to answer for’’’(Colfer, 2002, p. 208).”

The creators of the Matrix, the Wachowski sisters, were pretty influenced by a philosopher named Jean Baudrillard (pronounced: Bow-dree-ard), even if Baudrillard didn’t particularly think their work was grounded in his theory. Baudrillard was undeniably a smart man, but he was also kind of a prick. Make of that what you will. But for those who aren’t familiar with his work or the Matrix itself, these works deal with themes of technology, reality, and the future of our society. To go back to Artemis Fowl, I think the series engages with these themes through both the allusion to Matrix and through the themes of the series itself. Although the series of Artemis Fowl many not engage specifically with many of Baudrillard’s theories, it does engage with similar philosophical concepts about sci-fi and the self.

One particular example of this is how the series (maybe unintentionally) engages with Gilbert Ryle, who was a British philosopher, and his concept of ‘mind-body-dualism’; Ryle came up with the idea of human existence being the tale of ‘a ghost within a machine’, or our sense of self-existing in a separate, physical shell. To simplify, this essentially points out the fact that what we view as being our “us”, our personalities, our inner thoughts, our perception of ourselves, is often separate from our bodies — when I think of who “I” am, I think of my “mind” rather than “body”, and this is exactly what the dualism Ryle pointed out gets at.  Often, sci-fi seeks to explore what if this barrier dissolved — such as what if with the evolution of the mind, there was also an evolution of the body, and whether this could be achieved through things like AI, cyborgs, and so on. To go back to Anna Bugajska’s work, she wrote an essay entitled “Artemis Fowl: Posthumanism for teens” that tackles this within the series.

Which admittedly is a bit of a mouthful of a title! It sounds complicated — and it is, it definitely is.  

But it is interesting. To go back to the idea of transformation and Artemis Fowl, the series deals with this theme quite a bit. To quote Bugajska: “What naturally could develop into a coming-of-age cycle, swerves into the direction of a transformation, calling into question human nature and individual identity in the age of the morphological freedom, mind uploads, bioengineering, and hybronauts…[the series explores ideas of transformation as a result of a desire to seek previously unaccessible power, but it also explores the idea in the context of the mind and body becoming one in how an impact one must result in an impact of the other].

A prominent example of those who went too far in their quest for [transformative] perfection are Briar Cudgeon, an LEP officer, and Opal Koboi, a genius pixie inventor. Cudgeon, embittered by professional conflict, sought the cognitive enhancement through the use of drugs. As a result, “the tranquilizer had reacted badly with some banned mind- accelerating substances the former acting-commander had been experimenting with. Cudgeon was left with a forehead like melted tar... Ugly and demoted, not a great combination” (Colfer 2003a: 77). [In this case, his desire for power causes his downfall, such as how he tried to enhance his abilities past his limit with the mind-accelerating drug that ended up reacting with the tranquilizer. However, this is also an example of the barrier between the body and the mind dissolving, as Cudgeon’s internal ‘ugliness’, such as his hunger for power, deceitfulness, and disregard for others’, is reflected in his physical form through his overindulgence in substances he uses to try to get around his natural limits.]

In the case of Opal Koboi, we can observe a conscious attempt to transform from one being to another. She has her pointy ears operated upon to give them human shape. What is more, she implants in her brain a human pituitary gland to provoke the secretion of the growth hormone (Colfer 2005: 173–174). She even goes as far as extracting substances from various animals to enhance her magic (Colfer 2011a: 263, 270). All these attempts in the end cost her her sanity (Colfer 2012: 36) and her magic powers, which is especially well visible in the fourth book of the cycle, Opal Deception (Colfer 2005: 329).

On the other hand, the changes in identity must necessarily be reflected in the alterations of at least some parts of the body. Thus, Artemis’s father, a former criminal boss, loses his leg [as he undergoes a sort of transformation after the deal Artemis holds in order to rescue his father from a hostage situation. Beforehand, he might have been a cruel, distant father, but now he has changed. He has become a new man, and in doing so, his body has been altered as well in the loss of a leg and the gaining of a prosthesis] (Colfer 2003b: 80–81). Artemis himself, as he grows from a calculating rationalist to a globally-responsible, empathic man, earns a few body modifications. And although he does not seek them, he does not attempt to get rid of them, instinctively hoarding as much of the “fairness” as he can get. For instance, in The Lost Colony, where Artemis and his friend Holly Short of the LEP travel through a time-tunnel, first his fingers are switched, then he swaps an eye with Holly, and finally he steals some of the fairy magic, which grants him limited healing and regeneration powers. He also gains three years during the travel: in his own time he has to pose as a seventeen-year-old (Colfer 2007: 371)”.

In essence, you have both people seeking to perfect the body in order to match the goals of mind, such as Opal trying to steal new types of magic, and then you have Artemis switching eyes with Holly, representing a more benign example of the body changing to match the mind, as switching eyes represents that he has literally switched perspectives and can see things through her eyes as a result of their friendship. And in the end of the series, you also have Artemis being reborn into a clone — he has changed so much from his self at the beginning of the series, it is like his past self is dead, and his moral rebirth is reflected literally in him being given a new body free of the constraints of the mistakes he made before his passing, such as kidnapping Holly or endangering Butler on multiple occasions.

This I suppose covers most of the grounds that I wanted to in this essay. I talked about the context of the book series being published, the themes, the characters, and the philosophical questions posed by the text.

I don’t know if answered my original question of “what is Artemis Fowl?” — I think I’ll always have something to say about the series. But this puts words to a lot of thoughts I’ve had, and it’s nice to at least have it all there, I suppose. Thanks for listening, and if you have questions, leave me a comment here on on the ao3 version of the essay [x]-- or send me an ask!

[windermeresimblr]

Medieval Paper Dolls: Let’s Go A-Viking

So, this week we’re taking a detour to Kattegat, or wherever your preferred Viking fiction locale is. While the Vikings technically aren’t medieval, they were active in the early medieval period. Also, those apron dresses. There’s also not a great deal of meshes that can work very well as Viking clothing, so the looks this week are a bit limited, stylistically. So, we have our “before” picture, with Alun and Joyeuse still dressed in very fashionable early medieval clothes. Nothing that couldn’t be worn in Viking-controlled areas--perhaps York?--but still nothing that screams “viking.”

Menswear in the Viking period wasn’t that drastically different from menswear in France or Italy or England. Their only real change was that their hosen were actually trousers, because Scandinavia was not a very warm climate. (They were often wrapped closer to the legs with strips of fabric or leather ties in order to keep warmer.) Additionally, all possible waterproofing precautions were taken--cuffs were either wrapped or sewn shut to avoid snow getting in, for example. So poor Alun doesn’t look that much different in his first picture. 

Where the Vikings really stand out are hats and hoods. Again, Scandinavia is very cold and it is a truth universally acknowledged that if you don’t wear a hat when it’s cold outside, you get very cold, very quickly. So numerous hats and caps and hoods have been found, with something to suit every Viking’s taste. Skullcaps, hoods, and hats very similar to Santa Claus’s have all been attested to. I put Alun in outerwear for this look; the trimming on the poncho he’s wearing is supposed to mimic the rather shaggy homespun cloak some Vikings wore. (@simlicious has the best patterns for shaggy, shaggy fleece.)

And because it wouldn’t be Viking without swords and shields somewhere in the mix, here’s Alun ready to charge off a longboat and cause havoc. No, he’s not wearing a helmet; it’s uncertain how many Vikings wore any sort of head protection at all in battle. Watch your head, please, Alun.

Women in the Viking period wore a simple tunic over their shifts, like most women throughout the early medieval world, but it’s what they wore over the tunics that’s interesting. The hangerock, or apron dress, was either a sideless ‘jumper’ or ‘pinafore’ type garment or an actual strapped overdress. It was pinned at the shoulder with brooches. The style is rather similar to the traditional Russian sarafan. (There’s also evidence that a third style, which was a length of fabric wrapped around your back and sides but left open at the front, was worn with a modesty/warmth panel pinned over it to allow for nursing. It’s certainly more practical than having to unpin your whole dress when the baby’s hungry.)

Vikings loved beads and ornaments of all kinds, and women frequently decorated the fronts of their apron dresses by stringing beads and trinkets between their shoulder brooches. Of course, the Sims doesn’t allow for this, so Joyeuse has to stick with “only” wearing a necklace. But they wore necklaces, too, so she can’t be that put out.

Because it’s rather chilly in Scandinavia--do I really need to repeat myself with this?--lots and lots of overlayers were worn. Shawls were very common, especially among the higher-status women. While I’ve opted to put Joyeuse in a triangular-fold shawl, you could also use a more classic blanket-style shawl. Anything that covers the shoulders but gives your Sim some freedom of mobility should work. 

Viking women also wore headscarves or head coverings, just as their non-Viking counterparts. However, there’s not a lot of evidence for what kind; there’s a suggestion that the majority of the hair was covered, at least for married women. Once again, marital and social status is determined not only by the cut and quality of your garments, but also what you’re wearing on your head.

Of course, there was always the option to wear a really kick-ass cape if you were cold or a shawl just wasn’t enough for the occasion. There was also an option for a frontless coat that could trail on the ground behind you; mesh issues unfortunately did not let me demonstrate that look for you today. (I did change Joyeuse’s head covering for this picture, just because I saw this hair on Ifca’s blog and immediately thought “VIKING!” without much regard to whether it was historically accurate or not. I just love that kerchief so.)

(And did you really think I’d leave you without a shield-maiden battle couple picture?)

Now, go do some more shopping! 

Alun

Tunic 2 by @murfeelee

Boots 1 by @murfeelee (Off Duty)

Boots 2 by EAXIS (Movie Stuff Pack)

Hat  by Venus Princess (Doom Acc. 1)

Hair 1 by Ifca

Hair 2 by Ifca

Sword and shield by Severinka

Alun’s short cape, belted tunic, hosen, and “tunic sleeves” can be found in part two of this series.

Joyeuse

"Hangerock" 1 by DarkNighTt

“Hangerock” 2 by NataliS

Shawl by Ersch Sims (the long one, nos. 3 and 4 in the pictures)

“Treasure Necklace” 1 by @murfeelee

“Treasure Necklace” 2 by LeahLillith

Kerchief Hair by @danjaley (the Nurse kerchief)

Headscarf Hair by Ifca

Joyeuse’s “kirtle,” shoes, and cape can be found in part two of this series.

Poses

I went for a more dynamic look this week, courtesy of @danjaley​‘s conversation poses. I got a little tired of them looking unhappy.

@studiok2sims made the pose Alun is using in the weapons picture; super talented as always! You can find similar sword-wielding poses in the Swordplay posepack.

Joyeuse is using a pose by Paranoia or Drunkard in HER weapons picture. (Pose no. 26 from the big medieval posepack, to be precise.)

[threelivesthreeworlds]

anonymous asked   :    Hate that fanfiction/drama reviews misunderstand Yehua & Lian Song. Yehua is commonly portrayed as selfish/insensitive (regarding his past mistakes), which undermines his real personality. Western audiences also obsess over physicality, which bypasses the beauty/innocence of the romance. Sorry for ranting. I can relate to Lian Song, depression-wise.  (1/2)

Hey, same depressed anon here. Given that most other sites on this series follow those painful tropes, you guys are really a breath of fresh air in the fandom. I especially love(and am very relieved) how Lian Song is turning out completely different to people's assumptions about him. I know I can count on you to preserve my interpretation of the characters.  (2/2)

     (ADMIN RO)   :   We the admins have largely been unable to find a lot of fanfiction prominently featuring Yehua or Lian Song in general on our side of the fandom, but we’re sorry you’re having a bad experience with portrayals! 

     As a person who does occasionally take initiative to portray these characters in fan-derivative formats, however, I do think that Yehua has his insensitive and selfish sides. It’s the way he’s raised from a very young age, which manifests itself even so early as when in their childhood, Sujin used to come sit at his desk - he literally obliterates her out of his peripherals and just regards her existence like a brush rack. 

     That tunnel vision came from, most likely, Tianjun’s philosophy on raising future sovereigns, which is that to be the perfect sovereign Yehua’s supposed to be largely emotionless and weigh pros and cons and gains and losses over feelings. There’s also a lack of, presumably, a lot of social interaction that isn’t based on either academia or politics. Strategically, I think Yehua’s thought process, even applied to love and feelings, is very much “this is the best thing to do in this scenario, and therefore the right thing,” and I think only when the results come out badly is when he realizes it may not have been the right thing, and even then he may not understand necessarily where he went wrong.

     So, I think it’s reasonable in the aftermath of his mistakes for him to do badly. And at that point in time his primary goal was to hold on to Qian - given that he had already lost her once. So, understandably, a lot of it doesn’t come out until later. Now, is this still in fact, selfish? Yes. Is it for more complicated reasons than just Yehua is a Selfish Person and the Worst? Also yes. It’s really a balance, and I’m sorry that your reading material has not been hitting that balance.

     As for the topic of physicality - that is different between the couples of each book, I think. As a writer, one of the big rules I personally follow is that anything that goes into the final cut of the draft has to have meaning. It has to matter in some significant way, and the same goes for affectionate or sexual scenes. Now I don’t know how everyone else views it, but viewing it from this perspective, I think the physicality of the relationship, specifically for Yehua and Qian - it’s an “in,” if you will, to their romance, the same way Yehua moving to the fox cave and integrating himself into Qian’s life and taking her on walks and cooking her food is an “in.” 

     Their love is very much a “walking along with you for a while and suddenly realized we love each other” kind, and for Qian, because she’s been going at it alone for so long and because she has had her trust broken before, she definitely needed to get used to the idea of having someone, of loving someone, of existing in the same space as that someone and regarding him not as an outsider but as family, as someone she loves and trusts and can rely on. And so narratively, the physicality becomes important. It becomes sort of the symbol and metaphor for intimacy, for trust, for, bridging their gap and both getting used to and putting down their defenses in regards to loving each other. I always say if the romance is good and well-structured, then the physicality can only add to the depth and meaning of that love. I think in this instance, Tang Qi is very much successful. 

     Thank you very much for your kind words regarding our interpretations of the characters! On this blog we are always trying to fill in character motivations as deeply and three dimensionally as possible while not obliterating their flaws. It’s nice to know that we are succeeding, at least to some degree! 

     (ADMIN LIN) : Now that Admin Ro has addressed Yehua, we’re going to get into the nitty-gritty of Lian Song. Jk jk. We don’t quite know what you’re referring to when you say painful tropes in reference to Lian Song. If it’s how he is portrayed as a playboy - that is in fact not a fandom creation, TQ herself has explained that he is in an author’s note of Lotus Step’s and how it differs from the typical brand. 

Admin Ro is kind enough to do the translation of the author’s note for me. 

Also, I'm not trying to speak up for Lian San, but I'm curious - have you all forgotten he's a playboy? From the start his character setting has never been The Good Man, so, to everyone who asks why he's flirting with her with no intention of marrying her, flirting with her with no intention of marrying her is completely normal for him. Have you all forgotten the beauties that come and go in Yuanji Palace? He has always been the not assertive but not refusing and definitely not responsible Third Highness ahahaha.

For a playboy to go for a beauty that's his type without any care is an easy thing. To debate and consider her interests for a long time is the real action that's different from his usual behavior. This action shows that he feels differently about this person. If they were fighting for a day of pleasure, then what's the difference between Cheng Yu and the beauties that pass through Yuanji Palace?

         However, if you meant there was other interpretation of him out there, we’re definitely sorry you’ve seen those. He definitely does struggle with depression-like feelings, although the mentality also ties to Buddhism, so we believe it’s a mixture of both that the author is showcasing with him. As someone who suffers a similar form of depression, he’s a refreshing take on it. It’s not the typical sad-depression, it’s just an emptiness but still existing and still doing things, even if he switches through 3 million hobbies on any given day. 

        Now mind you, majority of which we talk about Lian Song on this blog takes place during Lotus Step and 50,000 years predating what you’ve witnessed in the variations of him in the dramas. Those are still valid parts of him. Especially regarding Cheng Yu, which James Li (Lian Song from both dramas) has said in an interview their relationship is something like 50% friends and 50% lovers. 

         There is also the serious, decisiveness in which you see when he’s advises Yehua on things. Then there is suggestions Lian Song makes to Yehua, such as the ones that lead to Yehua “meeting” Su Su a second time, this being in his human form. His advice with love is odd, but it’s never done out of his understanding of situations. And his understanding of love, which is shaky at this point in time and that neither admin can say what it is exactly yet in Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms or Pillow Book, because we haven’t had time to sit with him in either timeline beyond him being melancholy over Cheng Yu when she won’t look at him during Bai Feng Jiu’s sword case and earlier in the novel having been making the saber for Cheng Yu that required some help from Donghua Dijun. 

          As it comes to physicality in reference to Lian Song and Cheng Yu - their love story is a bumpy trail, that we still don’t know the full extent. However, if there is any more sexual tension between them, it won’t be appropriate to adapt that aspect of them as it’s a heavy tension. And they are required, by the universe in the future, to have a child. So, once again, Lian Song is not misinterpreted when it comes to these aspects. This doesn’t take away from the romantic elements - sexuality and romance can coexist. They most certainly do within all the couples of this series, these two however are currently the most prominent of the couples so far. 

[mydearjonah]

The Magnus Archives & MBTI Part 1 -- Jon & Martin

Hello. When I was a depressed 19-year old, I hyperfixated on the Meyers-Briggs personality typing system in an effort to solve all of my interpersonal problems.(1) It didn’t work, but ever since then I have been cursed both with deep, useless knowledge and searing, useless opinions. In the hopes that sharing my terrible burden with others will allow me to one day find the rest I so desire, I would like to introduce you today to what is, as far as I can tell, the first dedicated MBTI typing post in this fandom.(2) 

The hyperfixation ran deep, so I am trying to make this as intelligible as possible. If you so desire it, this is a great general resource for typing. If you have opinions or thoughts, PLEASE share them. Much like a fear avatar slurps up people’s trauma, I am sustained in part by healthy, albeit occasionally heated, debates over MBTI types. You should have seen the time I typed Kanye West on Reddit.(3) 

Jonathan Sims -- INTP  Confidence Level: 90% Certainly (at the very least): IxTx

It is easy and tempting to type Jon Sims as an INTJ. After all, he certainly fits many of the stereotypes: bookish, awkward, out of touch with his feelings and his environment, with a tendency to come off as overly critical. I am not saying that this typing is necessarily wrong, but I do not think that it should be taken for granted.

Jon is clearly an introvert and a thinker (IxTx). It is tempting to type him as an intuitive as well, but I caution against this and suspect that it is an example of intuitive bias. Certainly I do not believe that he has the kinetic knowledge and energy of an ISTP – he hasn’t done a single damn thing in this entire podcast to make me think that he has any higher-level grasp of Extroverted Sensing (Se), the function an ISTP uses most confidently to interact with the outer world – but, if INTJ is in consideration, ISTJ should not be written off.

ISTJs and INTJs use the same auxiliary function, Extroverted Thinking (Te), to interact with their environments. Te is often characterized as being cold, clinical, unfeeling, and pragmatic: essentially, how Jon comes off in the early series, especially S1. The difference between them is their dominant function, or their primary way of existing and processing information. ISTJs are led by Introverted Sensing (Si), which is best conceived of as a “web” (haha) of past experiences and sensory details that a user can access when making decisions. INTJs are led by Introverted Intuition (Ni), which is a largely unconscious and abstract style of pattern-sensing which feeds a user insights about the world around them. For Jon, I think that fair arguments could be made either way for dom Si or dom Ni. Does Jon rely more on what has come before (ISTJ) or what may come next (INTJ) to guide his thinking? It could be either, in my opinion, and it is especially difficult to tell because the Beholding itself is an EXTREMELY Ni domain. As the series progresses, Jon’s choices and behavior are colored so thoroughly by his patron that it is difficult to separate evidence of natural Ni intuition from plain old Beholding intuition.  

So, with this in mind, why have I typed him as an INTP of all things? It all comes down to the INTP’s inferior function, Extroverted Feeling (Fe). Your inferior function is the thing that you use but aren’t very good at – it tends to be what gets you into trouble. Fe is best understood as a natural awareness of other people’s emotions as well as the privileging of group values over individual values, so inferior Fe users tend to be sensitive to other people but not super great at actually interacting with them. It is tempting to type Jon as an IxTJ because he comes off like a high Te user at first, but it’s pretty well-established at this point that he’s projecting that persona due to his insecurities. This, in my opinion, is classic inferior Fe. He knows that there is a broader group expectation for his behavior in his new position, but he is (a) too out of his depth to project it naturally and (b) not savvy enough to find a middle ground so he overcompensates and comes off like an asshole. So many of his interpersonal problems stem from this same issue. He clearly cares deeply about group values, other people, and their opinions of him but he struggles to read social situations well and is then caustic as a defense mechanism.(4) So much of his emotional growth has been about him being softer and kinder, even as he grows more monstrous, and to trust others, especially Martin… that’s an inferior Fe narrative.

Once you’ve nailed INTP as his type because of the inferior Fe, I think that everything else falls into place. INTPs lead with Introverted Thinking (Ti), which is a logic-based, internal system of categorization, and they interact with the external world through Extroverted Intuition (Ne), which is a creative, abstract, “idea machine” approach to environmental analysis. In essence, INTPs are logical, systems thinkers (Ti) who basically try out new ideas by throwing them at the wall and seeing if they stick (Ne). I think that describes Jon far more accurately than the IxTJ approach, which tends to be far more reserved and calculated.

Martin Blackwood -- ISFJ Confidence Level: 70% Certainly (at the very least): IxFx

I have found Martin to be a particularly challenging character to type. After a great deal of thinking, and some helpful input from @twinliches, I have gone with ISFJ. 

Martin is an introvert whose primary mode of interaction with the external world is through Extroverted Feeling (Fe). He cares primarily about the group and is sensitive to its dynamic, he has a good read on other people’s emotions, and he is able to easily maneuver through interpersonal situations to his own benefit and the benefit of those he cares about. But what is this Fe working conjunction with? As a prominent Fe user and an introvert, Martin’s only two options are to have dominant Introverted Sensing (Si), which would make him an ISFJ, or dominant Introverted Intuition (Ni), which would make him an INFJ. So, does Martin rely on a “web” (badumtssh) of past experiences to connect with others (Si), or is he using a more unconscious, forward-thinking intuition to do so (Ni)?

It is extremely tempting to type Martin as an INFJ, but, honestly, I think that do so is an example of intuitive bias. His actual choices – how he moves through the world and comes to conclusions, the way that he relates to others, the things that he fears – strike me far more as dominant Si than dominant Ni. Although he may not always broadcast it, Martin is shrewd and observant when it comes to interpersonal relations, and his grounded, real-world knowledge of how people are acting, how similar situations have played out in the past, and what details others are missing is what allows him to so consistently outmaneuver the big bads. A Ni user may come to similar conclusions, but they just don’t get there in the same way. Martin is also invested in maintaining social harmony by providing a sense of stability, which is a classic ISFJ move. INFJs are more likely to promote social harmony by using their Ni insights and Fe people skills to actively influence group dynamics for what they believe is the better. Martin doesn’t really ever do that – instead, he works to make sure that everyone is taken care of, whether that means bringing them tea, dragging them out to lunch or for drinks, or sacrificing himself to the Lonely so Peter leaves Jon alone.

I anticipate that one potential criticism of my Martin typing will be in regard to the inferior function. ISFJs and INFJs have different inferior functions: ISFJs have inferior Extroverted Intuition (Ne), which means they can struggle with open-endedness and have a tendency to catastrophize, and INFJs have inferior Extroverted Sensing (Se), which means they struggle with being in touch with their physical environment and can overindulge in sensory activities. People with inferior Se often have difficult relationships with their physical forms, and Martin’s canon and fanon body image issues certainly fit the bill. But inferior Se users are not the only ones who struggle with their bodies, and, overall, I don’t think the INFJ’s broader function stacking fits Martin as well as ISFJ does. Plus, I think there is just as much, if not more, evidence for manifestations of inferior Ne from Martin.

To wrap it all up, here is my final Martin take: Martin is an ISFJ who, if he knows anything about the MBTI, thinks that he is an INFJ. He was probably accurately typed on whatever popular test he took, but he read some anti-Sensor bullshit that included a hackneyed portrayal of Si, thought “I’m not boring and conservative… I can’t actually be an ISFJ! I must be an INFJ.” For a time, he even has “INFJ” in his Twitter bio. Sometimes he wonders if he’s mistyped because he doesn’t totally relate to the stray descriptions of Ni-Se that he comes across… but he figures that, if he is, he’s probably actually an INFP. He really likes their whole aesthetic… artsy, sensitive, caring, intuitive, and his favorite poets are INFPs. What he’s really vibing with here is their Si-Ne, which he can relate to… because as an ISFJ, he also uses those same functions! If post-series Martin is alive (and living happily with his husband, Jonathan Blackwood-Sims, of course), I bet that his increased self-knowledge and confidence will allow him to solidly write “ISFJ” in that online bio. I want that for him. And for all of you ISFJs out there, too!

On a personal note, I also really love ISFJ Martin/INTP Jon in the context of the ship. ISFJs and INTPs use the same functions, just in a different order! They can connect by sharing their Ti and Si thoughts and insights. Jon can help Martin develop his Ne, and Martin can (and already has!!) help Jon develop his poor inferior Fe by giving him an example of a much stronger, far healthier one. It is just *chef’s kiss*

Up next: Jonahlias, Peter, and Gertrude!

--

(1) The actual answer to my interpersonal problems was therapy and life experience. Who knew!

(2) If I’m wrong, let me know. We all know how useless the Tumblr search function is, and I also couldn’t find anything indexed on Google besides the Personality Database. 

(3) Kanye West is an ESTP, btw. 

(4) I’m not saying that Fi users don’t do this, but I think you tend to see more & genuinely meant “I don’t give a fuck” from them because they’re operating a little more on their own wavelength. I’m not sure if Jon knows himself as well as a Fi user, even an inferior Fi user, does.

[consummate-deviant]

I reckon I’m gonna talk about Hordak for a minute

So, I feel the need to talk about Hordak.  This is, perhaps, not unusual.  Once upon a time ago, writing stupidly long pseudo-essays about characters I rather liked used to be my thing… and it’s still a bug that bites me from time to time.  The timing certainly seems right!  Homeboy has been the topic of conversation lately, thanks to the recent release of She-ra season 4, and the manifold feels associated with it.  I’m fond of Hordak, as it were, so I don’t mind sharing my perspective on the subject, since there’s some confusion as to his appeal.  

The two stances I see taken on Hordak most often, by those who don’t like him, I should specify, are as follows:

A.) He’s an irredeemable villain who has done terrible things, and I don’t see why anyone would like him.

And

B.) He’s a lame, nonthreatening villain.

I’m not going to be engaging with mindset ‘B’ quite as much as with mindset ‘A’ in the following post, in part because the reasons why he’s so lame and nonthreatening are kinda tied to what I’ll be discussing by implication, but mostly because my response to mindset B can be summed up with the following: “You are not wrong, at all.  However, that’s literally the entire point of his character, so while you aren’t wrong to be disappointed if you were hoping he would be a more measured, megalomaniacal sort, it’s also not a failure on the part of the writers, since his lack of suitability for the role he was trying to play was always going to be what his story was about.”

Mindset ‘A’, though... well... that’s a bit tricky.  Ultimately “irredeemable” is a personal value judgment.  The threshold a character must cross before one audience member feels they no longer deserve forgiveness can vary quite wildly from another, and while trying to pass one’s personal opinion off as an objective fact is something of a pastime on the internet, I am- and I cannot state this emphatically enough- NOT your dad… probably. At least, I hope to god…  Look, odds are really good that I’m not your dad, so… you do your thing and shine like the crazy diamond you are.  I probably can’t change your mind, and considering I don’t even know you, it’d be kinda creepy if I thought I could! What I can do, though, for those genuinely curious how anyone could consider him redeemable, is share my own perspective on the character, and why I think redemption is the direction the story is going, based on how I’ve read the text thus far… So I’m gonna do that.  Let’s go over Hordak as he has appeared in the She-Ra reboot.

Part I: Season 1 Hordak

Now see, when we kick things off, I totally get where both the ‘A’ group and the ‘B’ group are coming from.  Hordak, as he appears in season 1, seems ruthless, intimidating, and single-minded.  Hordak doesn’t carry the conflict in season 1, serving as more of a background presence while Catra and Shadow Weaver, who have a more personal investment in the central narrative, do all the heavy lifting of antagonizing the heroes and angsting.

This keeps the attention off of Hordak, which is precisely how he likes things.  When people aren’t going out of their way to interact with him, then it’s easy for him to control what few interactions he does have.  That’s what season 1 shows us: Hordak, when he has perfect control over his own narrative.    Every scene that features him is shot with a low angle, often with his form either concealed in shadows or with his face partially out of frame.  When he speaks, he’s always calm and distant… but calm in that ‘he could totally fly into a rage at any instant’ way that keeps people on their toes.  Pragmatic, taciturn, perfectly measured and groomed,… pretty tall!  By any metric a reasonable person can measure a competent, intimidating villain, Hordak circa season 1 seems like he’d pass the test.

Part 2: Season 2-3 Hordak

Here’s the thing... though... about season 1 Hordak... that we learn pretty quickly when we transition into season 2:  Season 1 Hordak is a massive fraud.  Like, seriously, he’s a fabrication created out of necessity to hide a single, prevailing truth:  Hordak is an awkward dork who is kinda terrible at being an evil overlord.  

I’ve seen some people describe Hordak’s season 2-3 character development with the expression “You thought I was Ozai, but I was actually Zuko this whole time!”  Now, I like this expression fine.  I’ve borrowed it a time or two in the past, but with regard to Hordak, I prefer to phrase it like this: “You thought I was Emperor Palpatine, but I was really the Wizard of Oz this whole time!”  The former expression gives someone an idea of the tropes of the character pretty well, but the latter does a better job, I feel, of showing the relationship between season 1 and later seasons with Hordak.  Hordak is a competent, unflappable, all-seeing leader… hey, hey!  Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain! Hordak’s past… as a mindless clone created to lead other mindless clones in a mindless clone army… has left him laughably unprepared for the task of leading others.  He’s smart, like, in a general bookish sense, but he has no charisma, no interpersonal talents to speak of, and doesn’t really seem to have any grasp of how to motivate his underlings, save to reward talent with promotion.

Out of necessity, Hordak keeps his true self buried underneath multiple layers of protection.  The first layer is the season 1 illusion: Delegate direct command of his soldiers to a single adjutant, interact with that adjutant just enough to keep them in line, and remain in his sanctum all day, like the geeky shut-in he is.

The first layer is pretty nice, and seems to have bought him quite a few years running the horde… but what happens if, say, some uppity Force Captain decides to pester him with personal status reports… or some absent-minded inventor decides to raid his lab for a six-sided hex driver?  Personally interacting with his minions for too long will reveal the illusion he’s been hiding behind!  Well, fear not... This is where the second layer of protection comes in handy.  

Yes, Hordak’s second layer of defense: blustering, shouting, and intimidating.  Threaten them with dire consequences for bothering him, let them visit the planet with nearly-enough-atmosphere for a few seconds… do everything in his power to frighten them so badly they never want to directly interact with him again.  What should happen if this second layer fails him, though? They learn of the most terrifying secret in Hordak’s entire arsenal.

...There is no third layer…

Nope. If a minion is plucky enough to peak behind the curtain of his grand illusion, and then bold enough to stand their ground at the explosion of hot air that follows… he has basically no follow-up left.  One of my favorite nonverbal scenes in the entire series is the moment where he realizes that his screaming is having no visible impact on Entrapta.  There’s a look on his face that seems to say ‘What the hell am I supposed to do now!?’… like, it’s clear the dude has never needed a third step to scare someone away before.

Ah, but you, my savvy reader, have no doubt cottoned on to the error in my argument thus far.  Establishing that Hordak is an awkward, introverted nerd doesn’t really change the fact that he built the Etherian horde.  The fact that he’s not especially competent doesn’t change the bad deeds his committed!  Well, rest assured, you beautiful person who can claim no paternal relation to me, I agree!  However, characterizing Hordak like this goes hand in hand with the other big reveal of season 3: his backstory.  

Now, cards on the table, I’ve been taking Hordak as he comes, and up until this point I didn’t really have any strong idea of whether they were going the big-bad or redeemed-bad route with him.  It wasn’t until season 3, when his origin was revealed, that I genuinely began to suspect that the redemption path was where the writers were headed, because it re-frames his actions in a subtle, but pretty important way.

With no Horde Prime, when one looks at Hordak, they see a man who orchestrated a corrupt and oppressive system for his personal benefit, who holds others in disdain due to self-aggrandizement, and is motivated by a desire to be seen as greater than everyone else. That is a character who would be very hard to convincingly redeem. While I’m loathe to raise the specter of Steven Universe discourse here, it’s a lot like the notion of redeeming the Diamonds… and, while I have no strong feelings about that show one way or the other, suffice it to say I can at least see why their redemption is controversial.  

Horde Prime shifts the context of Hordak’s actions, though.  Now, Hordak is a man who perpetuates the very system he is, himself, a victim of, because it’s the only system he knows.  His conflict with others is born from the projection of his own self loathing.  Said self-loathing comes from his chief motivation, which is to be acknowledged as worthy by an authority figure who has no interest or desire in ever offering him that acknowledgment.

Such a character is still flawed and villainous, because of course it is. If a character has done nothing wrong, they don’t need redemption in the first place.  It’s a lot easier to accept the struggles of a flawed character if they’re a victim of oppression rather than its source.  To borrow the SU comparison one final time, the Horde Prime twist reveals to us that Hordak isn’t a diamond, he’s just another one of the countless gems caught in their system.  

By the by, does “perpetuates a system they, themselves, are victims of, suffers from conflicts born of projected self loathing, and desire to be acknowledged by an authority figure who has no interest or desire in providing said acknowledgment” sound familiar?  I hope so!  It ties into my final point of the day.

Part 3: Season 4 Hordak (aka “Hordak and Catra have basically the same arc”)

  Now, implying similarity in the character arcs of Hordak and Catra has, historically, been a fraught endeavor.  Even I, Hordak stan extraordinaire, felt that we needed to see a bit more of where the writers were wanting to take Hordak before we went and made comparisons.  Then season 4 happened… and guys… the subtitle of season 4 may as well have been “Hordak and Catra have basically the same arc.”

Well, that’s a bit of an oversimplification.  Catra had people she could perceive as her peers, which granted her a social circle outside of her direct superiors whom she could feel camaraderie with, which added a dimension to the emotional turmoil she felt, but in broad strokes it seems to be a comparison that the writers are inviting us to make.  Their alliance in season 4 is based around their commonality.  They motivate one another by feeding into the insatiable hunger both of them feel for external validation… in that regard, they bring out the worst in each other, and thus season 4 ends with both of them brought to their lowest point.

At the end of season 4, if the princesses had never arrived, and Double Trouble hadn’t been there to finally force her to confront the emotions she insistently projected onto others, Catra would have assumed the mantle she claimed from Hordak.  She would have ruled the horde, devoid of satisfaction or happiness, and any children she took into her numbers she would have treated in exactly the same way Shadow Weaver treated her, and the same way Horde Prime treated Hordak.

To escape that fate, she needed her chance to face the system that oppressed her, and then the chance to face herself… and only once she had done both, could she start to move forward again.  That’s why we see the start of her recovery in the final scenes of the season.  Catra did unspeakably terrible things- by the end of season 4 her atrocity count easily rivals Hordak’s- and not everything can be blamed exclusively on others, but we, as an audience, have seen enough of what made her the way she is… that’s why most of us are onboard with her eventual redemption.

Catra is, beneath all the layers of spite and illusions of who she thinks she should be, a sweet kid who ultimately wants to reconnect with a friend she fears abandoned her, and to be respected and appreciated by the authority figures in her life. Hordak is, ultimately, a hikikomori dweeb who, not too long ago, was content to spend the rest of eternity with his gamer girlfriend in his lab, pretending to put together a portal machine. 

The villain of She-ra is Horde Prime, and the system he put into place to feed his arrogance at the expense of those trapped within it.  For those inside that system, like Catra or Hordak, they don’t cross the line and become truly irredeemable until they are given a clear and unambiguous chance to escape from that system and change their life for the better… but refuse to grasp it.   Even then… sometimes it takes them a little while to see the hand being offered to them… and sometimes that hand is in the form of a fist.

In conclusion

Look, guys, I’ll be real with you… I made a play at pretending that I wrote this for some point or another… but I kinda didn’t.  When I get into a fandom headspace, words get stuck in my head, y’know? When they do, they buzz around like bees until I write ‘em someplace… so here we are.

I’m not so arrogant as to assume I can change anyone’s mind with my 4 AM word vomit about the emaciated bat villain in my favorite children’s cartoon.  This is just a thing I wrote!  Maybe if you agree with it it makes you happy, and if you disagree with it then it doesn’t get’cha too worked up!  I was gonna include Hordak’s relationship with Entrapta into the proceedings… but honestly, that would have doubled the length of this thing, and would have been kinda tangential to the point.  I may do a more shippy essay thing later on… but if there’s one thing I learned from the last time I wrote a bunch of these… it’s that planning them out never works well.  I guess if people wanna see it I can write it though.

Anyway, I’m rambling, so I’m gonna letcha go!  Thanks for listening to my TED talk.  Remember, villains are an artform, people are complicated, and hot cocoa is the best winter beverage.  I’m going back to fanfic writing until the next bout of insomnia!