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into-september · 3 years ago

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I’ve been reading posts in reaction to the Penalteam trailer, including yours, and I don’t want this to come across as salt or anything, but I think I finally realized my biggest issue with the conversations older fans of this show are having.

Not to sound like a boomer, but modern media consumption has evolved to rely heavily on binging, like Netflix originals that drop a whole season at once. This is the new standard, and I feel like that may have a hand in causing this problem:

People reaaallly want instant gratification. Miraculous airs about two episodes per month on average with hiatuses between seasons and a few in the middle. The show is currently renewed for seven seasons, and we’re only just finishing the fourth. Season five and six are in the works right now. When people discuss Miraculous, I think the biggest nuance that they’re missing is the stuff that simply has not happened yet. Obviously, there’s some things in the story that were clearly not planned for in previous seasons, but there are also things that were clearly planned way ahead of time, even from the very beginning.

I’m annoyed by Tom of Ass Truck as much as the next person, but I can’t help but agree with him on a couple of the comments he makes frequently. 1) pay attention to everything that happens and 2) just sit down and wait. Don’t complain about things that you simply haven’t seen yet. He’s a huge man baby about it, but if I were him I’d be annoyed, too.

The show takes a very long time to come out, but from the in-universe perspective, it hasn’t been a long time at all, and the story is only a bit over halfway over.

“This supporting character is underdeveloped” they’ve been steadily growing as a person from the start until now, but their arc isn’t done yet. “This character is being sidelined” it’s on purpose. It’s for an overarching plot line. It will be resolved at the end. “This new character has no appeal” they were just introduced. They haven’t had any development yet. “The writers clearly hate/don’t care about this character” just because they’re in a rough patch for plot reasons doesn’t mean the writers are cathartically torturing them for fun? “This character is irrelevant and I’ve never cared about them. Why are they suddenly getting focus instead of the characters I already like?” Because their story is really only just starting. “This change came out of nowhere” it’s been subtly building up for a long time. “They’re retconning development” the character is responding to the things happening around them. People don’t magically mature with no ups and downs.

I understand that the writers do stupid stuff that makes no sense on occasion, but a lot of the time I find that people have comically little faith in these grown, educated adults with jobs writing the story for a children’s cartoon. They say things like, “oh, the writers are way too stupid to come up with *the most obvious thing ever*” or “they suck at their jobs so they steal stuff from the fandom” and then the example is something that the fandom only came up with in response to a clear canon setup for the event, which was already written in advance anyways. They don’t sit down and think about what could happen next each episode like fans do, they write at least general plot points that span seasons.

What I’m saying is, I wish that when people complained about the story, they didn’t complain about things that simply haven’t happened yet. Think about it. Some of the most widely salted long-term writing things are clear setups for permanent change... in the future. The season isn’t over yet. The show is far from over, but everyone wants each problem solved in the episode it started from, and everything to happen at once. Each character needs to have one life-changing development in a short period of time. They need to get angsty, but not too angsty for too long, so they have to fix it fifteen minutes later. If a subplot is only referenced at a “convenient” time, it’s bad writing. The characters need to be nuanced people who mess up sometimes, but they can’t mess up too bad or else they’re bad people or the writers hate them. But if they do everything right then they’re Mary Sues and they’re the writers’ favorites who get away with everything. If the writers don’t read my mind and make the story go in the direction I’ve been imagining in my head, it’s bad.

I wish that big part of the fandom had a little faith in the story, especially the things that are obviously in progress at the moment. If only they considered how little time it’s been in canon and how long ago in real time the writers came up with it. If only they listened to Thomas exactly once and waited, paying attention to the subtle details in the meantime, for episodes to actually come out. For things to happen, change, become permanent, become the new normal, and start for the first time. Please don’t let the desire for instant gratification distract you from a show a long time in the making.

On the one hand: Yes, and I absolutely hear this, and I absolutely don't like that this season ended up being aired out of all and any order after the writers had gone and especially stated that this was the one where chronology counted. And as I hope I've made clear before (I mean, at least to people who follow me here), it's not that I think the show in general is poorly written, because it's excellent at being an episodic action rom-com.

But on the other hand: Zoé being introduced out of thin air and given a miraculous the very next episode will never be a thing that's going to "make sense in the end". Zoé's existence? Yes. Zoé being Vesperia? I'm sure. But the way she entered the story will NEVER be objectively good writing, and going by what we now know about "Penalteam", it wasn't a standalone accident.

I specifically complained about this because second only to Chloé herself (and arguably Adrien), Sabrina is the character who above all would have to prove herself worthy of using a miraculous. Not only because of Sabrina's in-series relationship to Chloé which by all logic would have to change by this development, but because the way the show has always treated Sabrina until now has been as "pitiful Chloe lite", an extended laughing stock to Chloé's comedy. But unless "Quilin" and "Kuro Neko" have some very unexpected things happening, that development never happened, and the girl who helped Chloé try to get Adrien taken out of school gets a miraculous because Marinette was running out of classmates.

The show is excellent at the singular episodes. But if it's going to make the claims at longer storylines, these longer storylines need some logic as they happen, not just explode all at once in the finale.

#miraculous ladubug #mlb meta #blah #storytelling

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remuscore · 4 years ago

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More human au things because I don’t know what to do with my life.

Logan’s life is kind of a lie. Well, more like a unspoken thing that they don’t correct people on. The woman who raised them is their aunt, not their actual mother despite them calling her their mother.

They don’t have a lot of memories of their childhood like I had said previously so they don’t know why they didn’t have their parents in their life.

Remus has spent days outside of the house without anyone noticing before Janus moved in. Now he can’t get away with anything.

If I were to ever make a storyline for my human au, one subplot would include Roman and Logan breaking up (and eventually get back together).

Patton does miss being able to talk to Remus and have him as his friend, but he’s worried that he’s waited too long to try and patch things up and if he tried to say anything now he might just make things worse.

Thomas does exist in this universe. That’s all I’m gonna say.

Remus came onto Virgil a little too strongly at first. Virgil made the mistake of laughing at one of his darker jokes and Remus was already mentally planning their platonic wedding where they became besties for life.

Sadly that has yet to happen and Virgil is actively avoiding him.

Because of Janus, Remus is included more in the household and he has a lot of stories where the others just go “???”

“Oh, yeah I’ve been hit by a car before when I was having a really bad trip once. I spent like 3 months in rehab because of that” “When was this??? Wtf???” “I just got back a few weeks ago???”

The only reason why stuff is complicated between Remus and Janus is because Janus sucks at communicating and neither one of them want to stop sleeping around.

#sanders sides #remus sanders #roman sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #janus sanders #it speaks #taco bell au

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there-must-be-a-lock · 4 years ago

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wings & the way down - part 4

Spencer Reid x Derek Morgan

Word Count: ~1870 this chapter

Warnings: None?

A/N: A wild subplot appears! Gang’s mostly here, so we get to the fun stuff soon. Nobody’s reading this on tumblr, really, but I still feel the need to apologize for the delay!

Catch up here.

Monday, January 6 - Derek

As far as first days go, it could be a lot worse. It’s still fucking exhausting.

They send the class president to meet him in the office, in the morning — blonde-haired and blue-eyed, straight out of a Colgate ad as she shakes his hand and introduces herself as “Jennifer, but my friends call me JJ.”

Derek doesn’t fully trust girls like that, the ones who are so traditionally pretty they think they don’t have to be nice, but she’s cool enough as she shows him to his first class and gives him a brief tour, pointing out where he’ll want to go for his next class. He’s already feeling a little lost.

People keep looking at him, and he wonders what they’re seeing.

JJ seems to know everybody; she greets almost everyone by name as they walk, introducing Derek in passing. Most of the kids smile right back. It makes Derek reconsider his initial assessment of her; mean girls don’t usually get that sort of genuine warmth aimed in their direction.

She invites him to eat lunch with her and her friends, but he has a meeting with Principal Strauss during lunch to talk about the student handbook, how he’s adjusting, and all the other fun shit.

“No worries, standing invitation,” JJ tells him.

“Tomorrow, then. It’s a date,” he replies, flashing his most charming grin.

She smiles at that — not the flirtatious expression Derek expected, more like she’s laughing at a private joke — before waving and heading off to her own class.

The history teacher, Ms. Lewis, asks him to stand and introduce himself to the class, and to “Tell us something about yourself,” which… yeah, he saw that one coming, and he practiced it in front of the mirror last night.

“Derek Morgan.” Not-too-bright smile; just casual enough to be cool, not cocky. “I just moved from Chicago. Psyched about the Vegas weather, not so much about the pizza.”

He has to do the same thing at the start of every class. He’s going to be repeating it in his sleep, at this rate, and the more he says it, the more disingenuous it feels, trying to boil his identity down to one neat sentence.

The English teacher, Blake, also asks him to say his favorite book, and Derek hesitates slightly. His instinct is to lie, say something cool and not quite as nerdy, but he catches himself and tells the truth instead. Nobody seems to care except the girl sitting next to him — dark hair, darker eyeliner — who raises a skeptical brow, like she doesn’t believe it.

At the end of class, though, Blake pairs him with Eyeliner Girl for a project, and she gives him a begrudging smile before introducing herself: “Emily. Glad I’m not the new kid any more.”

She scrawls her name and number on a piece of paper and slaps it down on the desk in front of him, saying something about meeting up later in the week, as she starts to pack up her stuff. Derek notices an enamel pin of a pansexual pride flag on her bag — between a Joy Division patch and a pin that says “Death Before Decaf” — but before he can figure out whether he wants to comment on that, she’s on her way out the door.

Most of the day is just a blur of new faces and names and trying to remember where the fuck he’s going. Strauss is brusque but sharp. The place is huge, but there seem to be a lot of girls eager to show him around. People have been friendly enough; the whispers he hears are curious, instead of vicious.

Derek feels a little bit like he’s got a spotlight on him every time he walks through the halls. At least here it’s a spotlight and not a bullseye.

He wasn’t nervous for any of his classes, or anything, but he’s definitely nervous before practice. He’s not sure whether Coach Rossi told the team anything about why he ended up transferring mid-year.

He’s braced for some hostility when he introduces himself to the team captain. “Hey, man, I know this has got to be weird, but—”

“Hey, apparently you can help us win some games,” the guy says, with a disarming smile. “Foyet. Glad to have you.” Derek breathes a little easier as they shake hands.

Coach Rossi, meanwhile, isn’t like any high school coach Derek’s ever met. They’re usually big and loud and kinda aggro, but Rossi’s quieter, deadpan, well-dressed. He’s got this unimpressed expression, like he has seen some shit in his day and is not going to be bothered by any amount of macho teenage posturing.

It feels good to be back on the court. The team’s not stellar, but fuck, it’s better than what he left behind, any day of the week. Derek’s in his element, here, and after a day of uncertainty, it’s nice to know he can still do this. By the end of practice, he seems to have won over most of the guys who seemed a little frosty at first, and that’s really fucking nice too.

He hangs back for a minute to talk to Rossi, afterward, to thank him and just touch base. Then there’s talk of uniforms and making sure he has a locker, before the next practice, and by the time he gets showered, the rest of the team is gone.

He doesn’t mind walking back to the main building on his own. It feels like he’s been smiling and shaking hands and working so damn hard to make a decent first impression that he hasn’t been able to properly breathe all day.

The school is mostly deserted, at this point — there are a few teachers still working at their desks, a couple students packing up. He gets a little bit turned around trying to find his locker again, wandering into an out-of-the-way section of classrooms near the auditorium before hitting a dead end. He retraces his steps and takes the right turn this time.

Then he hears an argument around the corner, unmistakable in the relative quiet. He winces, wondering if he should announce his presence somehow, but it doesn’t sound like the kind of thing he wants to interrupt.

“Look, I’m sorry,” a female voice is saying. “But every time I think about it… it’s terrifying. It’s easier for you, you’ve never—”

“You think this is easy?” another girl snarls. “Fuck that and fuck you. I told you, I’m not doing this. No fuckin’ way.”

With that, heavy footsteps stomp away, echoing down the hall.

Derek pauses for a moment, listening, but there’s no more sound; he waits a few seconds anyway before turning the corner, where one of the girls is still standing silently.

When she whirls, startled by the sound of his footsteps, he realizes it’s JJ.

It just takes her a blink to pull herself together at the sight of him; if he didn’t see the tears streaking down her cheeks, he’d almost believe it when she aims one of those Colgate-ad smiles in his direction.

“You okay?” he asks hesitantly. JJ nods vigorously.

“Totally! I think it’s allergies or something,” she insists. Right.

“Think I’m a little turned around. How do I get out to the senior lot?” he asks her.

“I’m heading that way, I’ll show you,” she says. As they start to walk, Derek can see her, out of the corner of his eye, wiping away tears discreetly. “How was your first day?”

“Not bad, can’t complain,” he says, shrugging. “Pretty weird being the new kid, but… what are you gonna do, right?”

JJ hesitates before saying, “Must be nice. Getting a fresh start, no expectations.”

That’s not the usual line. Most people say it must be difficult, having to start over where nobody knows him; most people ask if he misses home, and they don’t consider what he’s trying to get away from.

He doesn’t ask JJ what she wants to get away from — instead he says, “That’s what my momma keeps saying: I can be whoever I want to be.”

“So who do you want to be, Derek Morgan?”

“Just want to be myself,” he says, and she looks up at him with a small, sardonic smile.

“You make it sound so easy,” she mutters.

He laughs. “Yeah, fair enough.”

This time, her smile seems more genuine. JJ points him in the right direction and then ducks into the women’s bathroom, with a wave and a reminder that she’ll see him for lunch.

Derek heads toward the front door. He’s fishing around in his bag as he walks, looking for the keys to his uncle’s truck, when he walks right into somebody rushing out of the men’s bathroom.

“Fuck, sorry, are you —” He stops dead, still with an arm out to help steady the other person, because the other person is Spencer.

Spencer, who looks just as surprised as Derek feels. They lock eyes for a second, and Derek’s insides go on an entire fucking roller-coaster ride in one frozen moment.

“I thought you were in college,” Derek blurts out, half-laughing, but Spencer doesn’t look even a little bit happy to see him. He’s gone pale.

“What? No, still in fucking high school, last I checked.” His voice is bitter, and it cracks on the words. “I just take college classes sometimes.”

“Oh.”

“I thought you were visiting,” Spencer says, pushing his hair out of his face like he wants to be pulling it instead.

“I am,” Derek says, stomach sinking when he realizes Spencer still isn’t smiling. “For another six months.”

Spencer’s mouth drops open, and Derek has a visceral flash of sensory memory: those pretty pink lips brushing his cheek.

Spencer scowls. “So you’re — you go here. Fantastic.”

Derek’s too tired to pretend the venom in Spencer’s tone doesn’t hurt.

He snaps, “Did I do something wrong here, or did you just wake up on the bitchy side of the bed?”

Maybe not his most mature reaction, but. It’s been a long fucking day.

Spencer digs the heels of his hands into his eyes, for a second, and Derek can see the tension in his fingers. Then he exhales and it’s like all that twitchy furious energy drains out of him at once. He just looks exhausted.

His voice is low and croaky as he says, “I liked that you didn’t see me the same way as everybody else does.”

“So, what, you think that’s gonna change just cause we go to the same school now? What kinda asshole do you think I am?”

“The kind who wears a varsity jacket,” Spencer mumbles. His eyes are huge and hurt and soft, and Derek recoils slightly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Spencer shakes his head. “Never mind. Just — trust me, okay? You’re better off pretending you don’t know me.”

“I want to know you, though,” Derek says quietly.

Spencer’s phone is vibrating. He looks down at it and then gives Derek one more sad little half-smile as he starts to walk away.

“If you still feel that way by the end of the week, give me a call,” he says over his shoulder, already pushing the front door open. “But you won’t.” Before Derek can respond, he’s flipping the phone open and saying, “Hey, Mom. I’m on my way.”

When Derek collects himself and follows him out, Spencer’s already gone.

#moreid #criminal minds #criminal minds fic #spencer reid #derek morgan

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unfolded73 · 5 years ago

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I shipped Buffy with two different reformed mass-murdering vampires. I shipped Emma with a pirate who did a lot of crime (murder included) before he reformed himself. The Doctor was over 900 years old and a near-omniscient being compared to humans, but I shipped them in their 9th and 10th regenerations with Rose without too much concern.

These are fantasy settings, and it’s easy to see and understand how we judge these characters on a different scale than we do real people.

But whither sitcom characters? How real are they? On what scale should they be judged?

I’m gonna talk about the Schitt’s Creek finale under the cut, and also a recent Brooklyn 99 episode, Parks and Rec, and the Office. Please know that I do not discount anyone’s triggers -- they are real and valid. Nor am I trying to persuade anyone to like something they didn’t like. I just want to get down on paper where my head is at when it comes to sitcom ships in general and David and Patrick in particular.

It hit me Thursday when I was watching this year’s heist episode of Brooklyn 99 that a sitcom is its own kind of fantasy realm with its own rules and logic. Realism is sacrificed, to a greater or lesser degree, for jokes. In the case of the heist episodes of B99, this is particularly true. I think it was last year when Holt broke into Jake and Amy’s apartment and watched them sleeping for hours. This year, Amy hired an actress to pretend to be a therapist to Jake for months, and she spied on the sessions.

Well, I thought as I watched the episode with no particular feelings, that’s horrible. Like, a truly heinous act that a real-life Jake would be justified in divorcing a real-life Amy over. So why don’t I feel bad?

The answer, of course, is that I don’t judge these characters on the scale that I judge real people. Like Killian Jones and his bloody past, Amy Santiago gets a pass from me because she exists in the context of the fantasy realm of Brooklyn 99 where people do stuff like this. The heists are another level of fantasy above the level of the actual show, where even more ridiculous behavior is allowed.

I always struggled to ship sitcom characters beyond a certain point. I truly love Jim and Pam, Michael Scott and Holly, Leslie and Ben, Andy and April. I’ve even read a few Jim/Pam and Leslie/Ben fics. But I never was tempted to really get into the fandom of Parks or the Office because it seemed there was a limit to what I could feel about sitcom characters. I didn’t deeply interrogate why, other than a vague sense that the silliness was holding me back. But I think it’s more than that. I wasn’t acclimated to feeling deep emotions about people whose characterization would be subservient to the joke. Leslie Knope is often a ridiculous person because it’s funny, and that kept me from being all in with her and Ben.

Then came David Rose and Patrick Brewer.

As ridiculous as the Roses are, I think Schitt’s Creek probably does less sacrificing of character for the sake of a joke than the other shows I’m talking about here, and paradoxically that makes it harder when they do just that. Nonetheless, I’ve always graded them on a curve. If I were judging Moira Rose on a real-person scale, I’d probably think that her bone-deep selfishness is irredeemable, and that her kids should probably cut her out of their lives. If David were a real person -- like if he and Patrick were people in my actual life -- well, I’d think they might be in for some rough patches in that marriage just because they are so different and David also has a pretty wide selfish streak.

So finally we come to the finale and the happy ending.

Do I wish that the handjob subplot hadn’t been part of the finale? Yeah, I do. It would be nice if everyone could have uncomplicated feelings about the finale of a show that we love so deeply. But does it tarnish my love of the show or of David and Patrick as a couple in any real way? No, it doesn’t. David’s behavior (not stopping it, the thumbs up to Stevie behind Patrick’s back, the gentle joke in his vows) is kind of shitty. But David Rose is not a real person, and within the fantasy realm of the show, it fits into who he is. (for me, I hasten to add. ymmv.) Within the fantasy realm of the show, we are expected to hand-wave certain situations, and I think I pretty much do that here. I think I’ve been doing it for the entirety of their relationship. So I love David and Patrick as much as ever, and in the fantasy realm of Schitt’s Creek, they are going to have a long and happy marriage. And for me, that’s what matters.

Anyway, that’s where I am. I’m gonna go put my mask on and do the grocery shopping and then come home and hopefully write some wedding fic. Love y’all.

#sc s6 #schitt's creek #schitt's creek meta #.#..#b99 spoilers

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intheseautumnhands · 4 years ago

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Um! Kliego, and.... your favourite other TUA ship (lawd, I'm suddenly hoping that you ship kliego lmaooo, sorry if you don't :'))

Hah, it’s fine! I’m into pretty much every single Hargreeves ship to some extent. Klaus/Diego* is not super high on my list to be honest, but I’m definitely still into it overall! I think it’s just fandom saturation more than anything that puts it lower down, because I do think the dynamic could be of interest.

* (I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I cannot use smushnames. I don’t begrudge anyone else use of them, they don’t bug me *that* much, but typing them feels so awkward.)

Choosing a favorite is honestly harder because I just want to ship all of them but I will... I dunno. Maybe RNG stuff I’ve written lately to pick. XD

Gonna cut since I’m already rambling before I even put in the questions, whoops.

(Also, two-days-later A: Hi I fell asleep in the middle of this and then barely touched my computer yesterday. Sorry!)

Klaus/Diego:

when of if I started shipping it: I walked out of my first viewing singing the song of my people at every single combination possible (Not even walked out, I watched over several days, it only took the first. not even half a season.) (The song of my people is, of course, I Ship It by Not Literally.)

my thoughts: Again, it’s not my #1 ship for the show, but I definitely could see it. I like that, of all the possible combos that could have hung out during the time between leaving home and the show, they seem to have the least amount of active vitriol and bitterness. It opens up interesting windows for that time period, as well as means it’s among the ships that need the least foundation work to get to somewhere decent afterwards. It makes it an interesting counterpart to some of the more actively difficult combinations, which I like especially in a poly context (because I am me and everything happens in a poly context).

What makes me happy about them: Again, the possibilities during the time gaps! And the general sense of... friendliness? It does feel like they’d have a lot less to get over than a lot of the pairs and I like it. (granted I think Klaus in general, while he has plenty of issues, seems to have less of them with his siblings specifically than most, so that’s playing into it, but I also see Diego as probably the one with the most after Vanya, so that’s interesting in and of itself.)

What makes me sad about them: I’m just sad for all these children growing up in their shitty, shitty childhood. And by sad I mean I want to read a lot of things that make me want to cry. Either as children but also I’m down for adults unwillingly letting the conversation drag around to their trauma too.

things done in fanfic that annoys me: Klaus is snarkier, more clever, and a lot stronger, mentally and physically, than I feel like a lot of fic gives him credit for. I think that goes for a lot of fic in this fandom, but since it’s one of the biggest ships and he’s in it, I feel like it shows up a lot for K/D. I’m not a big fan of them being really close as kids, either, which comes up a lot; my headcanon for Diego being pretty distant from all his siblings is strong enough that it takes a lot of set-up for me to accept anything else. (Awkwardly getting close in late teens as both of their ‘get me the fuck out of here’ drives get stronger and stronger is easier for me to see than close-as-kids.)

things I look for in fanfic: Tropes! The writers for this ship give me all the tropes. I want to marinate in it. I’m also kind of into general ‘it was casual, then whoops, I caught feelings, now what??????’ for them, because I could see it. Other than that, like... look, if it looks like it’s interestingly written or has an interesting concept, I will read it. I’m not super picky in this fandom, if it’s Hargreeves-centric and doesn’t bitch at shippers in the tags I’m in to at least give it a try.

My kinks: Uhhhh. Hmmm. I haven’t actually read a lot of kink fic for this ship or considered it, but I feel like I want mutual sadism/masochism.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: Honestly my hope is for most of the characters to end up without another major romantic plot. I’m here for canon Allison/Luther but hoping the rest of them just... don’t. Especially since I don’t see them going for two sibling ships and that’s really all I’d want to see. If not that, both of them with new characters would be my preference, because there’s no one actually in the show I’d be down for. Maybe if they somehow warp the timelines around enough to bring Patch back, but even then, eh, just let me have family stuff.

My happily ever after for them: In general as characters, my ideal endgame for both characters is in healthier places than their start point, still clearly working out their shit, and on good terms as a family. As a ship: I feel like both of them would get bored eventually by any kind of ‘and then they went and got a happy domestic place to live and nothing exciting ever happened again’, even if it might be nice for a little while, so... active, somehow. Either they end up somehow finding some kind of active hobby to screw around with together, and enjoy flirting with each other while they do it, or like, I don’t know, get bored one day and accidentally buy a business just to have something to do and find they get weirdly invested in running it. (Maybe, like, a restuarant or something else that’s really high-stress. Or maybe the gym Diego boxes at goes for sale and he doesn’t like the look of the most likely potential buyer and buys it himself before he realizes he has no idea how to run something and has to slink back home and let Klaus laugh at him. Shit, I want that fic now.)

who is the big spoon/little spoon: This assumes either one of them are capable of sleeping totally still which honestly I don’t see. They both seem like the kind of people who flip around in their sleep and wake up five times a night. So, they both take it in turns and also sometimes just end up in weird sprawled positions, either on top of each other or really far from each other.

what is their favorite non-sexual activity: Honestly, I feel like joking around and talking together would probably be it. I could see road trips, too.

Uhhhh I RNG’d things I’ve written lately and I got Ben/Allison. Nobody else writes that but it’s the tiny ship of my heart so I’m gonna do it anyway. I’m sorry, my random teeny ships are what you sign up for when I get to choose. >>

when of if I started shipping it: On like my third rewatch Allison’s little “I miss him” while she’s watching the cameras burned itself into my brain and I have wanted more for the two of them ever since.

my thoughts: I just! Look it’s pretty much canon that everyone loved Ben, but something about his snarky-but-because-I-want-you-to-do-better-and-I’ve-given-up commentary with Klaus and Allison’s alternating defensive and concerned mode -- I just want them to team up together to despair everyone else’s problems and try to figure out how to help (and often failing; I feel like in a general sense, they’re both better at pointing out the problems than actually fixing them on their own). And I feel like they both get prickly in ways the other would understand and be able to deal with easier than most of the family.

What makes me happy about them: I feel like this just blends into the thoughts above. I love the potential for how they might interact, and the potential for them to call out each other’s shit (and probably everyone else’s).

What makes me sad about them: Everything about Ben in canon is sad! Even the happy things are sad!

things done in fanfic that annoys me: There are exactly two fics for this pairing and one is me and one is PWP smut, which just isn’t super my thing. So uh. there needs to be fic to annoy me. Please write fic specifically to annoy me, oh no, don’t throw me into that briar patch. (That said, in general, I feel like both of them get their sharper points filed down a lot in fic. They both have their pointed sarcasm and their moments of outright lashing out, and I want to see more fic deal with that.)

things I look for in fanfic: Again, I say, please let fic exist. Also, I badly want a proper AU of Ben surviving and running off to Hollywood with Allison. I did not do it justice in my tiny thing.

My kinks: I want switchy powerplay with an emphasis on play -- competitiveness and teasing and wrestling. Also younger or AU Allison who hasn’t yet tried not to use her rumors for everything not trusting anyone but Ben enough to gag her, because her voice is her best weapon.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: Please please give me an Allison/Luther endgame. Ben I have no feelings on -- I still stand by not wanting any other romantic subplots, really -- but I am rooting for Allison/Luther in canon no matter how many others I ship them with.

My happily ever after for them: Possible in canon, as characters: Allison figures out how to balance ‘not using her rumors at all’ and ‘rumoring everything always’; Ben gets brought back to life and gets to be happy. As a ship: Honestly, connected to the family and both doing their own, fulfilling, non-superheroy things. Allison can act and Ben can get a chance to figure out what he wants to do, because I feel like even if he’d survived that would’ve been hard for him.

who is the big spoon/little spoon: Especially if we’re going with some semblance of canon and Ben’s died and come back, he’s the little spoon, because being wrapped up in someone else is comforting. But also just any kind of cuddling is welcome.

what is their favorite non-sexual activity: Judging everyone. No, I kid. Sharing and discussing books and movies, maybe. Ben passes along books he liked* and they watch movies together and Allison dissects acting choices and they both debate themes and ending of more ambiguous stories. They are loud movie watchers if they stay home to watch things, and go have loud debates over coffee after if they go out. *(I actually have a whole tangent in a fic that got cut out that I want to reuse for this fact, specifically about Ben having a slightly masochistic Lovecraftian phase in his early teens and passing it on to Allison, and Allison in her 20s thinking that if it fits either of them, it’s her, because she gets in people’s brains and rewires them and they forget what she’s done to them, and if either of them could make people go mad, it’s her.)

#spikeymarshmallows #asked and answered

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merry-melody · 4 years ago

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umbrella academy s2 thoughts

Or you can read here if you prefer. Formatting’s probably easier there and this is like 4k, so be warned.

So, was not much of a fan. (Wasn't surprised to learn none of the S1 writers were retained into this season, either!)

I feel like it's a little early for this show to be separating the siblings into New Lives, considering how little they interacted throughout the first season.

I would have liked more childhood flashbacks, having an additional Reginald subplot in a show stuffed with seven (or six and a half) leads seems a choice when it didn't link into the siblings in any meaningful way.

It also made all the siblings curiously less sympathetic, as Diego and Luther in particular, but also Vanya and Klaus to an extent, are berated for showing any kind of effect of their upbringing; but without much 'showing' of said upbringing (or emotional impact at all from the last season - Vanya's obviously out for that own with the hackneyed amnesia plot; Diego is completely over Patch's death - and Grace's, for that matter, although she does at least get acknowledged; and Klaus for some reason seems to have stopped seeing ghosts 99% of the time.)

I'm very mistrustful, as I mentioned in my S1 notes, that the show will in any way support Reginald's abuse, whether it be the siblings furthering their patterns of copying him without learning to recognise and address this; or by some kind of time loop casuality bullshit.

This season didn't really allay that, just with the general tone - the line Vanya had about sarcastically saying he was loving, or Five calling him 'no boy scout' just seem tonally a very different vibe from S1, like there were already aspects of that where it felt like none of them except Klaus really acted like they'd been raised by a guy who outright harmed them so much as a tough Professor type; and here it seems to double down on that idea.

Five in particular was almost his father's yes man to an extent, he had several lines about how right their father was; although it was intriguing to see Diego reference how Reginald may have become even worse after Five's disappearance with that 'golden years' remark.

I was intrigued by the lizard reveal, though.

So, Luther wise...hmmm.

Also, on shallow notes, the hair and fashion was really lacking from last season, like apart from Allison/Emmy who looked lovely in the 60s clothes (and Five, Ben and Vanya, who remained pretty much the same), everyone looked worse (even Luther had a little Tintin grown out hairdo going on!)

Didn't love the toilet humour, either, but again, YMMV.

He was a little more likeable than S1, I appreciated how he acknowledged his own failings (which iirc, no one else but Vanya really did all season, and since she didn't recall hers at the time, there wasn't as much emotional impact) - although the cocked gun lessened it a little, lol. And the return of that lovely musical score during, too, nice touch.

It was good to see at least two scenes with him and Vanya interacting, and for them to return to the Five/Luther duo.

It was also interesting to see how Luther, like all his siblings, projects his own feelings onto others, (like his first instinct being that Vanya's pulling some 'bullshit game' when obviously, Vanya was pretty upfront when she lost it; whereas it was Luther who was the one scamming her into the hug-n-choke.)

I liked them bonding over Five being an asshole, too.

(Although I think once again, the lack of trust between the siblings was almost contrived, like Luther in particular seems genuinely pissed off that Five didn't, what, let them all die in a fiery death? I get that they grew up in an environment that promoted mistrust and that they don't really seem to understand their own powers or each others, and Five never explains when he makes a mistake, anyway, but I'm just not sure what Luther's ideal outcome here was.)

I'm clearly an asshole also, because the 'Rooming House for Solitary Men' sign made me laugh every time they showed it.

I feel like some of his characterisation was unsubtly telegraphed (although that's a complaint over all, not just him specific) - like they decided 'sensitive' was their key word there, and just jam in everyone referring to him as that rather than showing it. (...Is Luther sensitive? Like, not dragging him, I'd just not pick that at all for him as a description.)

I also didn't much enjoy the pairing of him and Diego, like to be honest, it was never a pairing even from S1 that I was particularly fascinated by, it's such a well-worn dynamic; and while at least they weren't bickering over numbers, the dude bro banter ('women, amirite?!') and matching lack of IQ (I never thought I'd say Diego seemed dumber than cracking a raw egg to posture, and yet...) was just kind of lowhanging fruit.

I also feel like the goon for Jack Ruby stuff seemed inserted purely for plot contrivance to link to JFK.

(This is also a universal complaint, but I really felt for the actors doing promo, like they come up with all these well thought out explanations about why their characters are making these choices, but the work doesn't really show up in the writing or what was shown onscreen. IIRC, Tom Hopper was talking about Jack Ruby as a replacement father figure and how it's Luther's first stab at independence in terms of supporting himself; and there's this whole thing of Ruby saying he treated Luther like a son, when really, he's in like, two scenes and Luther is very clearly a paid goon. Which isn't to say that's not supporting yourself, a job's a job! I just felt like it didn't really go anywhere.)

I liked the idea that he's the only one who looked for their dad; I liked him still eating his feelings, funnily enough, it's just a good character note.

I don't particularly have investment in him and Allison one way or another yet - I don't care about the moral indignation; I just feel like when they're together, it seems one part them being smug about the others, one part yearning based on the same plot as S1 (she's moved on but seems to want to keep Luther as her back up guy.) Like, I'd love to see those two actually interact over something based on their disparate characters (what would Allison have said if she'd heard Luther's little defense of the Feds to Five?)

There's also a return to that odd juxtaposition from S1 of Klaus' drinking with Luther taking drugs cheerfully and to no effect. (I'm not expecting a DARE commercial, it's just all over the place in tone. That, and I thought Luther 'waSN't ReADy for THaT!')

(This isn't Diego specific, either, but they also do that thing I hate in TV, where they purposefully reference someone specifically in the episode before they rereturn, and Diego got the short straw on that one with the Pogo mention apropros of nothing, so we know we'll see Baby!Pogo shortly.)

Diego: Again, lots of telegraphing. (Do you think the writers want to get across Diego has a hero complex? I wasn't clear after he cat leaps through dimensions, stops a mugging, obsessively stalks JFK, and almost everyone he meets literally holds up placards mentioning 'DIEGO HAS A HERO COMPLEX'.)

Diego got a lot more time onscreen, which is a plus, but the haircut combined with his role as plot monkey made it a neutral point.

I also think Castaneda got the short straw on some of dialogue this year, oof, that Luke Skywalker 'it's a great reference' dialogue felt a bit try hard.

(Sheehan also took a body blow later with the 'Sexy trash!' one, ouch, like that felt very Designed to Retweet/Gif.

No one's topped S1 for blatant exposition yet, though: 'You haven't been sober since you were a teen! Not since you started taking drugs to block the ghosts out.')

Randomly, I liked the decent English accent he pulled out of nowhere. And again, David Castaneda I believe, mentioned Patch's death, so it's neat that he thought about the impact of her death on his character, even though it wasn't evident in the plot.

As I mentioned up top, I think Diego kind of suffered from the same thing Klaus did last year, where upon he seems to be the only one who recalls they were actually brought up in an abusive environment; and yet here the focus seems more generic to Diego's a baby (right down to constantly talking about 'bad guys' like a three year old) who has masculinity issues about his mean pop (who tbh, seems to be presented as entirely correct in labelling him a fuckwit, since he behaves like one pretty much all season: 'We chop off his trigger finger!')

(Also there's that contrived Batman style ethics that came up with Luther last year, where they're like 'We can quip over bodies and we grew up literally murdering people', but for some reason, Diego won't 'kill a man before he's committed a crime' (he can stalk one, and cut off his hand, though?)

Likewise, there wasn't a ton of interaction between him and Allison, like in S1, I enjoyed how they kind of overcame their initial mutual dislike with small moments of bonding; whereas here he has to be prompted to talk to her (and that was an adlib, which again, means the actors were considering something the writers overlooked.)

Last year I talked about how much I enjoyed Diego's character and how they walked a very fine line between him combining his desire to be the stereotypical macho figure with his innate sensitivity, so naturally this season we get him butchified to a factor of ten ('I'm the man, here!' 'You're a big pussy!') and almost zero interactions with Klaus, the person besides Grace who brought that out the most last year.

(What happened to those two, last time we saw them they were pretty much the closest in the family besides the Allison/Vanya link; here, Diego's almost contemptous. Has he levelled up in his mind now he's bffs with Luther?) I wanted to find the scene with him and Ben endearing, since we get so few interactions with Ben and any one besides Klaus, but it wasn't even that personally linked to them beyond 'Remember our one specific memory? Anyways, lolz, u should keep Klaus' body, idgaf.')

Allison Allison I think suffers from a lot of the same problems as she was introduced with - like Vanya, her powers are kind of linked to a lack of control in a way that the guys aren't; and a lot of her development is offscreen.

I actually really enjoyed the episode focusing on her, though, I thought it was one of the strongest of the season.

Her husband got a bit OTT with his catchphrase - where Diego's was 'JFK', Ray's was very clearly ' the movement!' and I found it odd how easily all the siblings but especially Allison gave up on returning to their own time and committed to another relationship built on lies (albeit this time of omission - baby steps!) but I kind of like that, like that's Allison, kind of co-dependent and self-deceiving.

Really, I feel like Allison's more interesting when they plunge into her darker side, I was riveted in the 'more!' scene, as well as the 'I heard a rumour you killed your brother'.

I think it's especially important as she's a WOC, which this season focused on more, like, it's very important not to fall into the common writing trap where the guys are allowed to be vindictive or needy or selfish and the women are there to be the moral guidance (for the same reason, I also loved the Five/Vanya stand-off); and that goes double for the model minority bit.

I was worried that they'd fall into the trap of Allison needing to be twice as good not just with how the sit-ins were portrayed but also generally (she speaks seven languages! She makes extensive notes on the state of race relations with specific regard to Dallas in the 1960s!) and once more, it seemed like Emmy Raver Lampman was trying to put across a more interesting read on Allison in terms of how isolated she was from any awareness of oppression in the outer world, first in the Academy and then through being a powerful celebrity and the contrast that creates for her in Dallas which didn't quite get met by the writing/direction.

It was great to see how she got to become part of a community in a way the others didn't, also, and particularly being protected by the beauty shop ladies when she arrived; like, the imbalance of genders as well as races in the Academy genuinely made it refreshing to see.

(The relapse is also very up and down in tone, like they make attempts at pathos, but it's also accompanied by the Styx soundtrack/60s light effects...)

Klaus and Ben - Probably my least favourite aspect of this season.

There was a bunch of telling not showing (Klaus' three year sobriety being expressed in Ben's expository sentence and that .5 second shot of him turning down a joint) and once you remove the biggest impacts on Klaus' character (the addiction and his power) without explanation, you're basically left with 'Klaus causes problems for himself for comedic value.'

I don't really care about who fights well or which powers are developed (didn't read the comics, don't plan to) but it seems to be like the best portrayals of superheroes show the powers as metaphors for their lives - Vanya struggles to control her emotions, Ben feels powerless, etc. If you take away the powers, you take away the reasoning behind the character.

Why is Ben pretty much the only ghost (particularly when in S1, they seemed ever-present)? How or why did Klaus learn to summon them in the alt-apocalypse?

I liked the scene of Klaus interacting with Ray before they find out he's married to Allison, that was cute.

I also liked seeing him interact with Vanya and Allison (there was an interesting shot where Allison says she has a life she worked for, and Klaus smiles - is that because in contrast, he doesn't? I'd have liked them to acknowledge the link between cults and celebrity, tbh, those two have a lot in common. Or is it because she isn't using her power and neither is he?), and I thought it was cool to note how when the group are reunited, they fall into a power structure right away.

Like, right away, Klaus sells out Vanya and Allison to the guys ('It's usually Vanya!' or mentioning how Allison's being 'involved in community politics'.) Likewise, everyone kowtows to Five, then Luther, over the rest (like when Five says they won't go with Vanya to the farm) and no one speaks up for Diego in front of Reginald.

I want to give the others the benefit of the doubt and say they were kind of shitty to Klaus in particular in this season because they were in a group, because it's a huge downgrade in compassion (especially since Allison was like, covering him with a blanket when they're alone.)

Like, I get sibling culture, I have 'em, but I feel like when you're bringing possible 'seizures' up, you're sort of skirting what's then played as comedic (Luther dragging him, the 'check please' line), especially Diego's: 'He's probably having an overdose.' (Kinda seeing why no one rushed to join Team Zero.)

Like, he and Klaus do just kind of seem contrivedly not communicating - I would think after the isolation, you'd crack through boredom if nothing else.

Ben's kind of an odd duck - I feel like with Steve Blackman's comments, he's supposed to be this philosophical voice of reason; but tbh, he seems as self-involved as Klaus, and if anything, they mirrored each other (that line in S1 about Klaus being cowardly plays a little differently after the revelation 'He was afraid to go into the light'...) rather than separating him into his own person.

I mean, I don't want Saint Ben (or St. anyone!), but Ben does kind of irritate, like it's not like he even particularly gets much wit or personality in his lines (and I doubt Justin Min would be short of inspiration there, so it does seem to be a writing choice) or they give him much warmth or concern (I still like that shot of him walking off in the sixth episode of S1, though - where is he off to?!) In S1, we do at least get to see him panicking and how helpless he must feel that he can't alert the others to danger etc. He doesn't really offer opinions that offer a personal philosophy beyond 'Stop being a junkie' (he was willing to shut off Grace - was that to tick off Klaus for taking the opposite opinion, or is he super pragmatic generally?) or 'Admit it, Klaus, Luther's Okay!' (Again, is this nostalgia for the other siblings, or what? It would have been nice to have Ben interact with all his siblings, considering they included the whole possession plot for less than necessary stuff like 'Ben kisses a girl!' and 'Vomit shenanigans!')

I just feel like his personality was kind of an afterthought still, and it made his sacrifice for Vanya, touching as it was, feel a little unearned.

Why doesn't Klaus tell Ben he wants to go back for Dallas for Dave? Why doesn't Ben tell Klaus he wants to go back to San Francisco for Jill? Was Ben in Vietnam? How come he's gone from using Dave as A Reason to Get Clean to a 'fling' - dark reading of Ben, tbh, like does he want Klaus clean purely for his own gain, and now he is, Dave's of no further value? What does Ben think Klaus is looking Dave up for - he says it's 'selfish', does he literally think Klaus is just there to hook up with Dave pre-death? It's hard to parse whether Ben has a low opinion of Klaus in particular or whether he, like the rest of them, has kind of adopted to a point Reginald's views - it was neat to see a comparison of the two there.

The possession stuff was a cool parallel, as well, if underused on the whole - Ben's happy to take advantage of Klaus' body despite his clear ambivalence and then outright refusal; Klaus is happy to take advantage and have sex with his own cult followers.

The cult stuff was even less strong, imho - I said last year how I'd enjoy a darker reading of Klaus, as S1 I felt sometimes was unfair to the others in that we see them being impatient with him; but never how his addiction would have impacted upon them negatively; but here, there's no real exploration of Klaus' narcissism or manipulation (in fact the plot seems to play out exactly the same as Allison's in S1 - we start with all the action about why they pursued fame etc. dealt with offscreen, and begin when the lead has already tired of it all.)

I mean, Klaus is self-destructive, as we saw in S1, but here it's an odd combination, like he's at once both cowardly of physical harm (in a way he wasn't really in S1, even post-Dave, so it doesn't seem to be in reaction to his death) but also running a cult for the attention, but the attention is presented as negative almost exclusively throughout.

Like, I'd get it if it was an interest in money and the finer things in life, even, you could make an interesting point there (and iirc, Robert Sheehan and I think Emmy Raver Lampman have) about how while the Hargreeves were abused, they were also 'spoilt rich kids'; and reflect on that; but it's literally just there for gags.

There's no real explanation for the cult itself (they literally just regurgitate pop culture references) or an exploration of Klaus as a con artist (again - here's where you could show some kind of progression in character, whether it's forward or backwards, and use the powers; and have Klaus working as a shady medium, but nope, it's physical comedy only.)

You could delve into his refusing to even tell the others about Ben's presence, but that's handwaved as much as ever (Five didn't go 'Huh, well, Ben was there when the Soviets came...') not just from the other siblings, but also Ben and Klaus themselves.

‘Cause I could see how Klaus would feel guilty about saying that, regardless; but then Ben's all 'Well, I was chicken to go anyway'

It might have been a little more affecting if Ben's motivation for possessing Klaus wasn't Jill, a character we know exactly zero about, but talking to his family; not to mention a lot more sympathetic towards Ben himself. As it is, it plays more like he's petty and jealous Klaus gets to be alive, rather than frustrated that Klaus is essentially silencing him.

And again, that's fine, maybe that is Ben, he stopped aging at 17, after all, but I'm not sure what the point is of a plot where we don't really get to see much exploration of either character.

Like, what did we learn about Klaus from this specific sub-plot? We knew in S1 he felt guilty that Ben died young, and that he was happy to allow his siblings to believe Ben is gone.

Likewise, Ben? We knew in S1 he was envious of Klaus being alive, and bitter that his position was so powerless.

It was nice to see the teenage actors (did they dub Teen!Klaus??? Odd.) post Ben's death, but it kind of didn't resolve much, really - it seemed like Klaus was supposed to be bullshitting about the 'golden light' and whether or not you can just...'go' whenever you please, but then it seemed like it turned out to be true?

(Might want to have mentioned that, then, like I get he's a Hargreeves and therefore a fail at interpersonal relationships, but you'd think it wouldn't take a smart guy to figure that if your brothers already toying with self-destruction in his teen years, it might not be the most genius move to additionally allow him to believe you're trapped in the 'real torture' of berating him endlessly solely due to his advice; if for no other reason than your one link to humanity is then going to keep up the booze and drugs that blocks you from his presence.)

I was inclined to like the Dave subplot a little more than I did last season, just because something was happening at all (and we got some tiny semblance of Dave's personality, even if it was basic as hell - he likes hamburgers!), but I feel like the Dave recasting thing really stretched credulity.

I would guess it was written backwards, in terms of if Dave was the clearly fully grown adult we saw in S1 a mere five years later, why wouldn't he just go 'Oh, thanks for the tip, dude, I'll avoid all that military jazz'? And why wouldn't Klaus just be like 'Fuck it, can we not just...date now?' Aha, we could make him a little younger, chuck in a Mean Uncle, throw in some manufactured conflict, and zow-pow!

It definitely wasn't the most contrived plot ever or anything (or even on this show), but I did feel like it's weird that again, via the cult, we're kind of asked to see Klaus as this expert manipulator of people, when he seemed almost purposefully stupid here (like, even compared with Luther and Diego.)

Why act as if the only chance you'll ever have to see the guy in the same timezone as you is right that second in front of his crazed uncle? Why say you've tried everything when you met the kid three times (once instigated by him, and I have to say, it's sort of odd, like Klaus is just drinking throughout, like you'd think this would be the one opportunity he'd take to truly and honestly engage without that) and basically just asked him twice, and in the least convincing way possible.

Shoot him in the foot! Burn down the recruitment office! Use your international platform and pull with local government to influence your huge movement towards stopping the war in Vietnam!

Like, if what you're going for is that Klaus is defeatist and unimaginative, fine, but I'm not sure it's not just that they kind of didn't write beyond the circular 'telling him only made him sign up sooner' casuality because it's so Tragic.

(Also, I feel like they're overplaying the iconography of those damn dogtags, like at this point, Klaus looking sadly at the dog tags has still probably had more screen time than Dave himself.)

I liked the scene with him and Vanya facing off?

Five I think didn't really get much more development than S1, he drives the plot forward, but not much else. In fact, in S1, he probably was more interesting, in that he interacted with all of his siblings and showed moments of vulnerability and care (knowing Claire's name, telling Luther not to waste his life, asking Klaus if he was okay) and got to properly react to his siblings' deaths.

Um...it was cool to have two of him?

It was nice and kind of ambigious where he lied to her about the cause of the apocalypse, like you could go by what he said about how he wanted to avert her anger, or you could wonder if it's a rare moment of kindness in his old age, lol.

I also loved it when he said to Luther about whether he could talk to her 'without squeezing her to death'.

I found Sissy probably the most interesting of the new characters (probably her and Lila more so than Lil!Dave and Ray, tbh.)

Vanya I probably have the least to say about. I was satisfied with how they portrayed the culpability of the others, particularly Luther, without erasing Vanya's part in the apocalypse. (I really, really hope this'll end the endless discourse on her emails book now, that got tired fast.

I could also do without the endless 'lolz, Ellen Page was so bad at playing straight they had to write Vanya as gay'. Ellen Page is pretty convincing as an actor - I bought her raping Rainn Wilson in 'Super', for god's sake, I doubt 'heterosexual' is a challenge.)

The amnesia plot was pretty cliched, and it did mean we didn't get so much actual interaction between the 'real' Vanya (so to speak) and her siblings but I really enjoyed the dream sequence of her in the academy.

#the umbrella academy #ua meta #meta #s2 #i didn't love it #to warn you #luther hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #ben hargreeves #allison hargreeves #diego hargreeves

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bumblekscript · 4 years ago

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from Liam B.: Why was it chosen that Sally had to see somebody else, Monkey Kahn in order to realize that she wanted to be with Sonic again? How does the time progression in that scenario work?

Questions answered by Ian Flynn and Kyle Crouse

Episode link

Ian: I feel like we’ve covered this before, but with Sally’s personal arc, where I came on, Karl Bollers had aimed to have Sally be very damaged by the year in space type of thing, which led to the infamous slap that he wrote and, that, was built, that’s where I had to build back from, so what I wanted to do first and foremost was to patch things up between Sonic and Sally as friends so that they could return to an equal footing there was a lot of baggage between them, I wanted to unpack that first before trying to rebuild anything else. Another thing is that Sally has been the focus of a lot of bad relationships within the book, pre-reboot, and I wanted to give her a romantic angle that allowed her some control, this time around, the Geoffrey St. John thing was creepy to be kind, and the Sonic angle was kind of preordained, it was from the mentality of “here is the lead male here is the lead female: they have to be together” and they are fun in that odd couple sort of way, but it never felt like it was earned, it was this is the trope this is what you do, and of course Sonic gets the girl, well, okay, what does the girl get? What does the girl want? So the subplot of her investigating other romantic interests was to give her her own autonomy and her own life and her own relationships, Khan factored into it because that was the story arc that was approved, that we were going on and to help redeem his character who was umh not a fan favorite at that point I guarantee you

Kyle: [laughs]

Ian: To help illustrate his change in character, we had Sally show some interest because she saw the heroism within him, and by through her eyes seeing his redemption and his turn around, it became a little more palatable to the reader that this guy who was a jerk beforehand really had changed. There’s a whole issue with her and Bunnie that kinda discussed this and why she is interested in anybody, so that was, kinda the thinking behind it, was to let Sally have a life outside of Sonic, see where it took her, and she went a certain direction and found that no, she was interested in Khan but it was for kinda the wrong reasons, and it helped clarify for her that yeah, she really did want to go back and try to patch things up with Sonic, and that way the romance is built and it is grown and it isn’t just “here, they are together because we say so”

Kyle: Is Monkey Khan a Star Trek reference?

Ian: I don’t think, I’m pretty sure he’s all Journey to the West

Kyle: Oh, okay. Okay, that does a little more sense now

Ian: I mean, they did have the extremely hand fisted Trek reference, in that one really, really bad issue but

Kyle: [laughs]

Ian: I’m pretty sure he’s meant exclusively to be a nod to Journey to the West and a very broad swath of eastern folklore

Kyle: Ah, okay, yeah that is definitely a product of, like, 90′s nerdiness

Ian: Yeah

Kyle: Where adult nerds at that time were into stuff from like the 70′s and 60′s, so yeah the books in the 90′s tended to like have a lot more other comic book references and Star Trek references and things like that, but, no references to the actual, you know, game material, no we can’t have that [laughs] so, yeah, it’s just kind of funny to think about the differences between nerds writing stuff back then and nerds writing stuff now where the nerds now are actually into the product that they’re writing instead of, just writing something and then throwing in the things they like on top of it

questions can be asked at: [email protected]; On Twitter @BumbleKast; Comments section on any YouTube video; Through Ko-fi support; Patrons can post on Patreon page and the Q&A channel in the Patreon-exclusive Discord

#Ian Flynn #Kyle Crouse #Archie Sonic #Sonic the Hedgehog #Sally Acorn #Monkey Khan #bumblekast #bk300920

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atamascolily · 5 years ago

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The cover for Junior Jedi Knights #4: Anakin's Quest has Anakin and Tahiri on Dagobah with Ikrit and Artoo while a giant spider looms in the background. Because goodness knows that a series ostensibly about Jedi training can't have our heroes stay on the same planet for more than a book at the time! That would be... boring. And since Dagobah is a Movie Planet we haven't visited yet in this series (or in Young Jedi Knights, iirc) - it's time!

This book is written by Rebecca Moesta, co-author of the Young Jedi Knights books with Kevin J. Anderson (and incidentally, married to KJA), so I assume there will be some continuity between the two series. Let's find out!

(cut because this got super-long)

Anakin's restless. He tries to meditate, only to see Palpatine and Vader in a vision. Tahiri wakes him up. Apparently, this is a running theme through the series?

Tahiri was off exploring with Tionne which sounds very interesting, and they found holos and written records but Tahiri's more focused on having to wear shoes. LOL. This sounds fascinating and I wish we could see more of this! Oh, and apparently Ikrit told Tahiri that Anakin needed her?

“… and so I told her that I would bring you with me and we could start training again right away. Well, aren’t you going to say anything? Tionne is waiting for us.”

Patches of mist still clung to Anakin’s mind.“What? Who?”

Tahiri giggled.

“Tionne. You know-long silver hair, big pearly eyes, Jedi historian? The one who found me on Tatooine?”

“Yes.. I know who Tionne is,” Anakin said, his groggy mind not catching her point.

“Well, she’s waiting for us. Ikrit is with her. We’re starting lessons again right away.”

YEAH TIONNE!

Ikrit was obviously as pleased to see Anakin as Anakin was to see the little Jedi Master. He climbed nimbly onto Anakin’s shoulder and draped his tail around Anakin’s neck.

“I think he’s glad to see you,” Tionne said in her beautiful musical voice.

“We all are.”

The breeze blew around them and stirred the white vapor so that Tionne’s fine silvery hair looked as though it might have been spun from the mist itself.

“So what are we going to learn tonight?” Tahiri asked.

She sounded excited. She grinned at Anakin.

“I’ve been begging Tionne for three months to give me more lessons, but she wouldn’t. She said I was too young to study all the time and that I needed to take a break.” Tahiri snorted. “As if I wanted to take a break from studying the Force.”

Ok, so there's been a time skip between story arcs. Good to know. I love Ikrit and Anakin having a bonding moment, and Tionne doing stuff! Yeah! But what was Tahiri DOING if she wasn't studying??

Tionne said nothing. She lit a torch that she had brought with her from the Great Temple and then winked at Anakin as if they shared a secret-that sometimes it was best not to answer Tahiri, that it was enough just to listen.

Did I mention I love her?

Tionne closed her eyes halfway and Anakin could sense the Force flowing through her. Then, to his amazement, the ground mist wrapped itself around her, spiraling and climbing upward. The mist wound itself like a vine around her arm and the base of the torch.

Finally, the mist circled the tip of the torch in a glowing white halo. As the fire burned away the water vapor, more mist drifted up to join the hazy ring. Anakin found himself fascinated by this display. It wasn’t until Tahiri said, “Wow!” that he realized it was over.

“Now it’s your turn,” Tionne said. “This may be a bit new and strange to you. It might surprise you how hard it can be. You’ve practiced lifting objects before, heavy things and light things. But mist is not an object.”

THIS IS AWESOME. But I can't help notice that this is a Dagobah book, and so this skill is inevitably going to come in handy later on.

Suddenly, there before him, through his half-open eyes, he could see it: a small, transparent, but perfectly formed tree. Then, beside his tree he saw a misty replica of the Great Temple appear. Tahiri had added her own mist picture next to his.

Amused, Anakin let the mist flow again. This time he decided to form the shape of his father’s ship, the Millennium Falcon. Within seconds Tahiri made a little X-wing fighter to hover beside the Falcon. Then her craft shifted and became a misty light - saber with a ghostly blade. Anakin let the Millennium Falcon flow and transform into a second phantomlike lightsaber beside Tahiri’s.

The two energy blades drifted toward each other and crossed. Anakin and Tahiri both made a misty streamer shoot out from the point where the “lightsabers” touched, as if the clash had released a crackle of energy.

Aww, this is so good! But then Anakin slips and Palpatine's face shows up in the mist, and we cut to Anakin sitting in Luke's office with Artoo. Ouch. Anakin's cold and shivering and Luke feeds him soup and MY HEART.

Hey, a continuity nod (with Dark Empire, of all things):

“Is it-” Anakin swallowed hard. “Is it true that my mother was touched by the Emperor before I was born?”

Luke Skywalker pursed his lips. A frown creased his forehead.

“A clone of the Emperor touched her,” he said carefully. “That clone was a copy of the Emperor’s body.”

Anakin angsts. Luke tries to calm him, but to no avail. Anakin asks how Luke learned about his own dark side, and Luke brings up the Dagobah cave. Anakin insists on going. Luke says he's too busy to take Anakin, but Anakin insists. Luke says Anakin should talk to his parents.

The next day, Anakin and Tahiri use the Force to unload the Lightning Rod. I can't help but think about Master Yoda making Whie and Scout use their muscles in Dark Rendezvous. I suspect he would not approve. There's a boy in an extra shipping crate.

Anakin opened his mouth to say something but was too stunned to find the right words. As usual, Tahiri saved him the trouble.

“Hi, what’s your name? What planet are you from? I’m Tahiri, and this is my friend Anakin. What are you doing here? Do you always travel in a box?”

“I am Uldir.” The boy’s voice squeaked when he spoke, as if it couldn’t decide whether it was high or low. “I have decided to be a Jedi. Take me to Luke Skywalker.”

I'M HOWLING.

Anakin frowned.

“It doesn’t really work like that. I mean, I don’t think anyone just decides to become a Jedi. But I’ll take you to him.”

“And if you really plan to become a Jedi,” Tahiri added, “you’d better start calling Luke `Master Skywalker.’”

This subplot is NOT GOING TO END WELL, but I'm sure this happens ALL THE TIME at the Academy. Poor Luke.

“Excuse me, Master Skywalker,” Anakin said, entering the large, echoing chamber. Anakin always used his uncle’sformal title when Luke was teaching. The Jedi Master turned off his lightsaber and looked at Anakin. Luke’s tall, violet-feathered student stepped back to wait, still holding her own glowing blade.

Nice character note from Anakin. And yes, that's Brakiss, isn't it? Who else would be "violet-feathered"? Or maybe it’s a random alien, LOL.

[[Calling it now: Brakiss is going to twist/corrupt Uldir and use his pain and frustration over not having the Force against the Jedi, isn't he.]]

“I’ve brought someone who wants to meet you,” Anakin said, indicating Uldir. “He came in on the Lightning Rod with old Peckhum.”

Surprise showed on Luke Skywalker’s face.

“He’s a stowaway,” Tahiri supplied helpfully. “His name is Uldir and he wants to be a a Jedi.”

Luke’s eyebrows went up. If anything, he looked even more surprised than before.

“Hello, Uldir,” Luke said in a soft, serious voice. “It’s not an easy thing to become a Jedi. But if you think you can do it, I’ll test you later. I need to finish this lesson first, though. I’m sure you’re tired and hungry after your journey. Anakin and Tahiri, please show our guest around. After he’s had a chance to clean himself up a bit in one of the rooms, make sure he gets something to eat, and then bring him to my office. “

Have I mentioned how much I love Luke recently??

Uldir reveals he's a military brat, moved around a lot, and has lived on Coruscant (he's kinda snarky when Tahiri introduces a turbolift like it's a big deal and I love it). Uldir's rebelling against his family by trying to be a Jedi instead of a shuttle pilot. All three of them bond over droids and travels. They go to the cafeteria and Uldir eats a lot. Uldir is described as a "teen", so I guess he's 13-15ish, compared to Anakin (11) and Tahiri (9)?? I really love cafeteria scenes so it's nice to get one here - all hustle and bustle, full of aliens, food, and love.

Tahiri and Anakin try to let Uldir down gently, and it goes nowhere. Uldir insists they accompany him to his meeting with Luke. It goes poorly.

“If being a Jedi is that glamorous, why shouldn’t everyone become one? “

Uldir put his hands on his hips.

“They don’t have what it takes,” he said. “No guts, I guess. No guts, no glory.”

“And you have what it takes?” Luke Skywalker asked.

The sturdy teen threw back his shaggy chestnut hair and squared his shoulders.

“Yes, I do.”

Luke Skywalker closed his eyes and drew in a calming breath

I feel you, Luke. I feel you.

Luke tries to let Uldir down gently, but it doesn't take. Uldir vows to stay, lies about his parents Luke is not amused.

Luke fixed him with a stern look and frowned ever so slightly.

“If you want to stay at the Jedi academy, don’t ever lie to me,” he said in a soft voice.

But he gives in because Uldir clearly has parental issues and Luke’s a softie, so they make a deal:

“All right, Uldir. If your parents agree, I’ll let you study for a while at the Jedi academy. But everyone here has a job to do. We all have assignments: teaching, taking classes, unloading cargo, cooking. If you’re willing to put in an honest day’s work, you may stay at the academy and attend lectures and classes and learn about the Force. If by the end of three months you have learned enough about the Force to lift a pebble or light a flame, then I will accept you as a full-time student-if you still want to be one.”

Luke calls Uldir's parents, and they agree, but hilariously admit they were afraid he'd joined some pirates. I think they are relieved it was the Jedi instead.

More Jedi Temple stuff:

Anakin Solo stood on top of the Great Temple, panting from his climb up the outer stairway. The late-afternoon breeze dried the sweat that trickled down his forehead. From this high above the ground there was a wonderful view of the surrounding jungle and the river not far away. But Anakin had not come for the view. He had come to be alone. To think-or maybe to brood. There was no railing around the platform on top of the pyramid, but Anakin was not afraid of falling.

He knew how to use his Jedi powers to keep his balance. He sat at the edge of the stone platform and removed his shoes, in the hope that going barefoot would give him at least a little of the positive bubbliness that Tahiri always seemed to have. He waited a minute to see if he would feel any different….

Hey, somebody remembers there are steps on the outside of this thing! Anakin watches lightsaber practice from his perch. He's so absorbed that he doesn't notice Ikrit at first.

“I guess I should have noticed you. I mean, normally I would have. It’s just that I’m not really myself right now.”

There was a long pause. Finally Ikrit asked, “Who are you, then?”

Anakin could sense that Ikrit wasn’t making a joke. It was an honest question. Anakin searched in his mind for an honest answer. He sighed.

“That’s just it: I don’t know. I always thought I did. I mean, I’m a kid whose father just happens to be one of the hottest pilots in the galaxy, whose mother is the leader of the New Republic, whose twin brother and sister just happen to have more Jedi potential than anyone else at the academy under the age of sixteen, and whose uncle also happens to be the most powerful Jedi Master alive.” Anakin grinned at his own words. “You know-I’m just an average kid.”

Anakin angsts about his vision and repeats his desire to go Dagobah, because of Luke and Yoda. Ikrit perks up. Cut to:

Planetshine from the orange gas giant of Yavin streamed in through the narrow window slit of Master Luke Skywalker’s chambers at the Jedi academy. The night air was still warm and Luke had pulled aside the heavy curtains to let in the soft breeze and the spicy scent of jungle flowers. Although he had been lying down for at least an hour, sleep would not come. He relaxed and let himself enjoy the beauty of the soft light. Somehow, when the furry white form of Jedi Master Ikrit appeared on his windowsill, Luke was not surprised.

Ikrit says that Anakin needs to go to Dagobah. Luke agrees.

“Anakin needs more time and training than I have to give him,” Luke admitted. “When Yoda taught me, he had no other students, but I have so many to train it could be months before I can break free to take Anakin to Dagobah.”

Luke thought for a moment.

“I might be able to send Tionne with him. She could leave sooner than I could.” He sighed. “But I’m not certain she can help Anakin face this test. She’s a wise Jedi, but she has never come face-to - face with the dark side in the same way I have… and as Anakin has.”

“I will take the boy to Dagobah myself, if you will permit it,” Ikrit said.

DELEGATE, LUKE, DELEGATE. That's what other people are there for! To be fair, Luke is still getting used to having Ikrit around. Ikrit says he's going to take Tahiri and Anakin in the Lightning Rod with Peckhum (of course!) and Luke sends Artoo along for the ride because Artoo hasn't suffered ENOUGH, LOL. But first he has to call Han and Leia and make sure they're okay with him sending their son into potential danger (unlike, say, the last book?)

Han namedrops Zekk, who's been helping Peckhum with ship maintenance. Han and Leia agree, mostly because Anakin insists. Our heroes embark on the journey.

“This is really kind of cozy, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s a shame we couldn’t bring Uldir along. He looked kind of unhappy when we told him we had to go away for a few days. Do you think he’ll be all right?”

It's fine, kids. I'm sure Brakiss will take care of him!

Peckhum is surprised that Ikrit is a Jedi master and can talk. Ikrit asks what he thinks Jedi masters look like and Peckhum doesn't say "human" but you can tell he's thinking it. Ikrit provides some backstory about how he saved his villages' harvest with his Jedi powers even after he was teased for not being useful earlier. Meanwhile, Uldir has stowed away AGAIN because that's what he does??

Uldir figured it was easier to apologize afterward than to get permission to go along.

Yes, this is going to go well, isn't it.

Dagobah hasn't changed. Apparently Luke sent Artoo along because Artoo is familiar with the place? LOL. Anakin still can't understand Binary, which is annoying. Peckhum lets Artoo land the ship and the droid lands in the swamp and the ship falls into the water. Peckhum is annoyed and we have some excellent Artoo sass: "this is the best place to land"!

Peckhum insists on staying with the ship, but at least Anakin and Tahiri have Ikrit for some competent supervision this time! Tahiri refuses to wear shoes on principles, but caves when Ikrit reveals that Tionne packed knapsakcs for them, including "a pair of buttery-soft leather boots". Oh, Tionne. The narrative doesn't say, but I assume they're Chanel. They are going to get ruined in the muck, but 10/10 for style.

Dagobah is buggy! Ikrit tells Anakin and Tahiri to use the Force to steer the bugs away, and it works. Artoo starts to lead them to the cave. They end up rescuing Uldir, who fell into the swamp because he didn't look before opening the cargo doors and jumping out. Now he's being attacked by some sort of furry snake monster. He throws algae but it doesn't go away. Anakin realizes the algae is food, and uses it to lure the creature away while Tahiri fishes Uldir out with a vine. Tahiri injures her foot and Uldir is patronizing about her injury and about Ikrit.

Ikrit makes them stop and listen to a lecture on the Force, which annoys a restless Anakin. Ikrit says he's going to let each of the kids lead them back to the ship. Tahiri and Anakin have no major disasters, but Uldir nearly leads them into a butcher bug web - an invisible, razor-sharp silken mesh. Ikrit leads his chastened charges back to the ship.

Cave trip, take two! Ikrit is riding on Artoo this time. Tahiri is wearing the boots, and surprised to find that she likes them because they have flexible soles. Go Tionne! Uldir continues to be a jerk.

“The way Uncle Luke explained it,” Anakin went on, his eyes rolling up and to the side, “the cave works kind of like a mirror, to show you what’s inside your own mind. He said he learned some really important things about himself that day.”

Uldir snorted.

“You mean you needed to come halfway across the galaxy and go into a cave to figure out what’s in your head?”

Their argument is interrupted by a storm, so they all take shelter "beneath the gnarled roots of a massive tree". Anakin is struck by how much the roots resemble a spider. Kid, do I have some news for you...

Ikrit can apparently make fire with the Force! I guess this is where Anakin gets his torch from the cover. Ikrit senses danger. Uldir is dismissive when a spotlight sloth shows up. I kinda hope the reason we don't see him on the cover is that he gets eaten. Of course the spider shows up then and captures the sloth, paralyzing it and eating it. Anakin is a city boy, and he's so out of his element. Uldir is also a city boy, but he decides to look because he thinks he's so cool, and his gagging noises draw the spider's attention.

The spider starts uprooting random vegetation and is getting close to the tree. Artoo gets stuck. Uldir runs away and Anakin and Tahiri rescue Artoo. The spider rips the tree away and throws it in the swamp, and starts chasing them. Artoo yanks on the spider's stinger and the spider retreats and goes back to destroying vegetation. They find Uldir, and Ikrit says he's convinced the spider that it's no longer hungry. The spider stabs the ground and plants its legs. Anakin realizes the spider is going to become a tree!

(I love this, by the way. The gnarltrees themselves are in ESB, but I couldn't remember where the gnarltrees = knobby white spiders thing came from... turns out their first appearance was in KJA's Darksaber! To give KJA credit where it's due, he's pretty good at coming up with characters and neat ideas, he's just not so good with description or execution.)

Conveniently, they end up right outside the cave. Uldir doesn't think it's important.

“You know, maybe your uncle was just in a thoughtful mood that day. I don’t think he could have learned anything in this cave that he couldn’t have learned if he had spent the day flying or swimming or climbing trees.”

LOL, nice try, Uldir. Uldir and Tahiri want to go in, too. Ikrit says sure, but one at a time. Of course, Uldir goes first, and doesn't see anything. Tahiri has a vision of her parents on Tatooine. Her mother is barefoot, lol. She also sees her grandfather (a Jedi) pursued by stormtroopers on a diffeent world and she sees him die. I have so many questions, but keep in mind this was 1997, and Lucas didn't insist on a celibate Jedi Order until 1999.

Then it's Anakin's turn. He sees a vision of a Light Jedi fighting a dark figure, only to discover--wait for it!--that both faces are his own. Cut to Ikrit making a fire as they discuss their visions.

“As different as you are from one another, my young students,” Ikrit rasped, “the things you each saw in the cave are not as unlike as you might believe. And for each of you, the lesson is much the same. Your learning and heritage mold you. No one is either entirely good or bad. Your parents, your experiences, your past and your present all combine to make you the person that you are.

“We each contain the potential for great good or great evil. We each hold the shadow of darkness… and the flame of light. Our destinies are not set, and life offers no guarantees. It is the choices that you make… that will determine what you become.”

After that inspiring moral, Anakin says, Welp, let's go home now, but Ikrit says there's one more thing. Artoo takes them to the ruins of Yoda's old house. Ikrit is so depressed, his fur turns black. Turns out Yoda was Ikrit's old master from his story at the beginning! Wow, what a twist! Good for Yoda!

Peckhum is grumpy about having another passenger, but they make it work. Tahiri is relieved to be barefoot again.

“I’ll have to remember to thank Tionne for thinking to send those boots for me.”

And she did.

What a great character moment. Oh and I guess the mist manipulation wasn’t actually useful on Dagobah after all, huh?

Back on Yavin 4, the kids scrub the Lightning Rod to remove all the Dagobah mud. Tionne hugs everyone. Luke looks relieved (probably didn't want to have to explain to Uldir's parents that their son stowed away YET AGAIN, lol).

Anakin, Tahiri, and Uldir each had a long private meeting with Luke and then with Tionne. In fact, there was so much talking and meeting and hugging that at the end of a few hours, Anakin was convinced that there was no one left who hadn’t already talked to everyone else. But he was wrong. Anakin was still in his uncle’s office when Ikrit showed up…

Uldir has a rare moment of self-reflection:

“Do you think I’ll ever become a Jedi?” he asked.

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence.

“Maybe,” Tahiri said. “I don’t really know enough about how it works.”

Anakin shrugged.

“It’s possible,” he said. “Even Jedi Masters can make mistakes."

Anakin and Tahiri vow to do what they can to help Uldir. They genuinely want to help, but there is no way this is going to end well. Uldir goes to get more river water, convinced if he dresses the part of the Jedi, the rest will follow while he's gone, Luke, Ikrit, and Tionne show up and congratulate Anakin and Tahiri. And that's... pretty much this plot arc in a nutshell - Uldir missing the point/missing out, while Anakin and Tahiri get stuff. Ow.

So I admit my expectations going into this book were SUPER-LOW, but even though the plot was mostly predictable, I loved all the continuity nods and there were lots of great character moments--and there were a few bits that surprised me, too. Overall, the writing is definitely a step up from previous installments, and none of the adults are idiots. Tionne gets some cool stuff to do and takes care of Tahiri, and Luke and Ikrit are also great. And the Uldir plot is handled realistically and sensitively, even though I *know* it's not going to end well. I enjoyed reading this, and would definitely do it again.

#star wars legends #junior jedi knights #anakin's quest #jedi academy shenanigans #book reviews

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tomeandflickcorner · 4 years ago

Text

Umbrella Academy Rewatch 1x08

1x01 1x02 1x03 1x04 1x05 1x06 1x07

The race is now on, as Allison attempts to find Vanya, in order to warn her that her boyfriend, Leonard, is actually Harold Jenkins, a convicted murderer who is believed to be the man who will bring about the apocalypse.

As Allison drives out to the cabin that had belonged to Harold Jenkins’ grandmother in the hopes that she can find Vanya there, she remembers an event that had happened a year ago. She had been putting her daughter, Claire to bed and had just finished telling her a bedtime story about some of the exploits of herself and her brothers when they were still involved with their superhero stuff with the Umbrella Academy. Particularly a time when they stopped a bank robbery. When the story is over, Claire kept insisting on hearing another story, but Allison insisted it was time for her to go to sleep. When Claire started to get demanding, Allison ended up using her power on her, by saying ‘I heard a rumor that you’re really tired, and what to go to sleep.’ This ended up getting Claire to back down and go to bed without a fuss. Unfortunately, Allison’s now-ex-husband, Patrick, had witnessed this, and is clearly not happy.

Okay, so... is this the incident that resulted in the courts stripping Allison of her custody to her daughter, mandating that she had to take court-ordered therapy sessions before she could get visitation rights? If so, that’s really stupid. It’s possible I’m just not getting it, but why exactly was this such a big deal? I don’t get if. It’s not as if she was using her powers to force Claire to get her beer while she sat in front of the TV all day instead of taking care of her kid, or anything neglectful like that. She was getting her kid to go to sleep. I think we can all agree that kids that age need a consistent sleep schedule. I’m fairly certain any mother in the land would have done the same thing if they were in Allison’s shoes. Was there more to this story? Was their some sort of concern that Allison using her power on Claire would have caused her permanent brain damage? Was it a case of X-Men-esque paranoia? I believe, in the X-Men comics, a lot of people feared the mutants on principle simply because they had out-of-the-ordinary abilities and therefore persecuted the mutants. Did the courts have similar prejudice against Allison going on? I don’t understand!

Regardless, this incident has ended up being traumatic to Allison, as she’s now sworn off using her powers ever again. And this is driven home when we hear Allison’s memories of other times she used her power on others. Some seem pretty innocent. Case in point one moment when she used her power to get someone (probably Claire) to like broccoli. Eating vegetables is important, after all. But with others, I can see why Allison is feeling like she was abusing her powers. For instance, there were apparently times she used her power to force someone to be her friend, land an acting role, or even got someone to love her. Yeah, I can agree those examples are pretty bad. Eventually, Allison makes it to the cabin, But when she gets there, nobody is home. Which makes sense, since Vanya and Harold/Leonard are still at the hospital following the incident the night before.

Speaking of which, we then switch over to them. Harold/Leonard wakes up Vanya, who had been sleeping in the chair next to his hospital bed. Vanya is surprised to see he’s already dressed, and even more so when Harold/Leonard announces he’s leaving. After all, he probably still needs to be observed one more time before being officially discharged. But Harold/Leonard states that’s not necessary, as the hospital just wants him to come back tomorrow so he can be fitted with a prosthetic eye. Vanya, upon being reminded that he lost an eye, starts to apologize, but he waves her apology off. They then head off. But on the way, they’re stopped by a nurse, reminding Harold/Leonard that the doctor hadn’t discharged him yet. Vanya is momentarily confused by this, as that statement has contradicted what he’d told her, but Harold/Leonard insists that he’s ready to leave, so he simply signs the voluntary discharge papers. Before they leave, Vanya asks about the three other men that had attacked them, who were also brought into the hospital after being injured by Vanya’s power explosion. The nurse informs her that two of the men were DOA, but the third man was still alive, though in critical condition.

Back at the Umbrella Academy mansion, Luther wakes up with a massive hangover from his night of drinking at the rave. He is shocked to find that a naked woman is lying in bed next to him, indicating that he brought someone back from the rave for sex. Klaus then swings by Luther’s room and proceeds to simply be a typical brother, good-naturally teasing the flustered Luther for it, especially when he realizes this was Luther’s first time with a woman. Klaus then gets serious, telling Luther that they’re having a family meeting downstairs.

When Luther makes it down to the kitchen, Klaus pours him a cup of coffee, which Number 5 (who is clearly feeling better) promptly steals. Ghost Ben is also there, but of course, only Klaus is aware of that. While Klaus voices his awareness that Diego and Allison are absent, he nevertheless begins the meeting, informing his brothers that he managed to make contact with Reginald last night. Luther is confused, reminding Klaus that he claimed he hadn’t been able to conjure up anyone in years. Klaus admits this is true, but states that he’s now completely sober. He goes on to inform Luther and Number 5 that Reginald wasn’t murdered but that he committed suicide in order to trick them into getting together again. Luther, however, refuses to believe it, accusing Klaus of playing games again. Until Pogo enters the room and confirms Klaus’ statement, also admitting he and Grace had assisted with the suicide, with Grace’s programming being altered so she wouldn’t be able to administer first aid on that fateful night. Reginald had believed that, if the Hargreeves Siblings had banded together to try and solve the murder mystery, it might inspire them to want to be a team again, so they could save the world. Luther is incensed over this bombshell, especially since he was still feeling hurt over the revelation that his mission on the moon had been meaningless all along. He berates Pogo for not saying anything sooner, despite watching him search for answers. Pogo is visibly remorseful, but tells Luther that he had only been honoring Reginald’s dying wishes and that he had no choice. This isn’t good enough for Luther, though, and he storms off, telling Pogo that there’s always a choice. Number 5 also teleports off to think, leaving Klaus alone with Ghost Ben.

Sometime later, Vanya and Harold/Leonard return to the cabin. Harold/Leonard attempts to reassure Vanya that what happened to the three toughs wasn’t her fault, and that she had acted in self-defense. Vanya is still shaken up, though, stating that she shouldn’t be able to do something like that. It’s clear that, while she is starting to accept the fact that she does have powers, she’s upset that she can’t control them, with them only exploding out of her when she’s not trying to use them. Harold/Leonard consoles her, stating he’ll help her learn to control it.

While all this is going on, we also get the subplot with Hazel and Agnes. They did indeed run away together, but are now stuck in a traffic jam. Hazel grows morose when he sees that Agnes’ road trip has three years worth of sights in store, with her happily stating they have time to see them all. After all, she doesn't realize the apocalypse is supposed to happen in just two days.

In a curious coincidence, Allison is also stuck in the same traffic jam. Why she didn’t stick around at the cabin is anyone’s guess. She ends up driving past the same restaurant where Vanya’s powers went haywire, seeing the police are there investigating the incident. As Allison glances over at the crime scene, she notices Vanya’s scarf hanging from the restaurant's sign, making her realize that Vanya had been there. So she gets out of the car and ducks under the police tape to investigate. Allison is immediately stopped by a cop, Sergeant Cheddar, who is investigating the scene. She tries to question him about what happened, but he insists that she simply read about it in the paper tomorrow. Although, Sergeant Cheddar’s tune completely changes when he recognizes her. It turns out Sergeant Cheddar and his wife are huge fans of Allison’s movies. (Remember, Allison is a big movie star.) Taking advantage of this fact, Allison tells him that she’s actually going to portray a cop in her next movie and is looking to do some research on law enforcement. She asks if she can shadow him for the day, as it could help her develop her character if she could witness him in action for the day. Sergeant Cheddar, being a huge Allison Hargeeves fanboy, agrees to this almost instantly.

Meanwhile, Diego is still in his jail cell. He is visited by Detective Beeman, who informs him that they’re transferring him to upstate that afternoon. He also states that he does believe in Diego’s innocence, knowing that he wasn’t the one who murdered Detective Patch. However, that’s not enough to get the suspicion against him thrown out, since Diego was placed at the scene of the murder, and people on the force had witnessed the two arguing on more than one occasion. Detective Beeman then reaches out to shake Diego’s hand, wishing him luck. After they shake hands, Detective Beeman walks off, leaving Diego alone with the key he stealthily slipped him.

Back at the cabin, Vanya is practicing her violin, getting ready for her big concert. As she’s practicing, Harold/Leonard secretly consults Reginald’s journal, which includes Reginald’s notes on Vanya’s powers. The notes reveal that sound can help activate Vanya’s abilities. This is further illustrated in a flashback, where Reginald, during a training session, managed to get Vanya to shatter a wine glass simply with the sound of a tuning fork. Taking advice from this, Harold/Leonard takes Vanya deeper into the woods and instructs her to try and recreate the scene last night. Vanya then thinks back, remembering the men laughing, the sound of them kicking Harold/Leonard and the rumbling of the car engine and a dog barking nearby. Instantly, Vanya realizes that it was the sound of the car engine that did it, as that sound ended resonating in her mind to the point where it was the only thing she could hear before her power unleashed itself. She finds the whole thing terrifying, but Harold/Leonard insists that its extraordinary. He then convinces Vanya to try and tap into her powers again, getting her to focus on the sounds of nature around them. Such as the wind chimes hanging from the cabin nearby, a squirrel in a nearby tree and the water rushing along a creek. Harold/Leonard tells Vanya to focus on one sound in particular, with Vanya zeroing in on the sound of the water in the creak. This results in Vanya’s power manifesting again. Harold/Leonard is ecstatic, but he sees Vanya is starting to panic, so he calms her down, informing her that her ability is tied to her emotions. Vanya is confused how he knows this, as she doesn’t know about Reginald’s journal. Harold/Leonard is able to cover up his slip up by claiming he made a lucky guess, going on to ‘theorize’ that Vanya can convert the sounds around her into energy when she is feeling strong emotions. Vanya accepts this explanation and kisses him. Though she has to push him out of the way when a tree branch falls towards them,

Of course we also get a reminder of how dangerous Vanya’s power can be. In another flashback to her training sessions with Reginald, Young Vanya not only shattered all of the wine glasses, she also ended up cracking Reginald’s monocle. Which also apparently left a cut along his cheek. Reginald seemed almost fearful of the raw power she possessed, as he announced their training sessions were over for the time being.

We then cut back to the Umbrella Academy mansion. Klaus is in his room knitting something when Number 5 walks in, trying to wrap his head around things. He starts to discuss with Klaus his confusion about something that he can’t figure out. He only learned about the approaching apocalypse by travelling to the future. But Reginald, who can’t travel in time, clearly knew enough about it to know to kill himself a week before it happened. Number 5′s musings are interrupted when Diego rushes in, having just escaped from jail with the key he got from Detective Beeman. He informs them that Allison may be in danger, as he knows she went off to track down Harold/Leonard alone. They search for Luther, locating him at a bar, still drowning his sorrows. Diego tries to offer him some comfort, telling him that their father lied to all of them. But Luther just wants to be miserable, stating he’s done with all if it- with Reginald, his brother and the whole family. He states that if if the others want to save the world, they’re welcome to try, but he’s going to stay put and keep feeling sorry for himself. Until Diego tells him that Allison headed off on her own to find Vanya, as Vanya’s boyfriend is a convicted murderer. The knowledge that Allison was in danger pushes Luther into action, with him telling Diego he should have led with that detail.

Elsewhere, we see that Cha-Cha has managed to get free from her handcuffs. She heads right over to Griddy’s Donuts, but finds the place is closed, with a sign from Agnes on the door informing customers that she’d decided to close the doughnut shop. Angered, Cha-Cha breaks in to search for clues on where Agnes and Hazel were going. In doing so, she finds a brochure for some bird sanctuary. And then, for good measure, she blows up the building by turning on the gas burners and leaving a lit candle behind.

We then cut back to Allison and Sergeant Cheddar. The latter is questioning Mr. Luntz, the guy who survived the incident with Vanya’s powers the night before. Mr. Luntz reveals that it was all a setup. Turns out, Harold/Leonard had actually paid them to pick a fight with him, saying he wanted to impress his girlfriend. But they had gotten drunk and got a bit carried away. Allison cuts in, asking Mr. Luntz about the description of the guy who paid him, also showing him the picture of Vanya on the back of her copy of Vanya’s autobiography and asking if that was the girlfriend. Instantly, Sergeant Cheddar realizes that Allison had lied to him and confronts her over it. Allison apologizes for lying but explains that it was the only way she could get answers, and that she’s trying to find her sister, who might be in trouble. While Sergeant Cheddar still isn’t happy, he seems to understand Allison’s reasons. But before they could question Mr. Luntz further, the nurse stepped in, stating they’d have to come back later so they could run more tests on the injured man.

Returning to the cabin, Vanya announces that her concert is tomorrow, and she wants to practice her violin a bit more. Upon hearing this, Harold/Leonard gets a bit petulant. He tries to coax Vanya to practice mastering her powers some more, as they already had a breakthrough and Vanya mastering her powers is important. Vanya counters this by stating her music is also important. Harold/Leonard instantly backs down, but he doesn’t seem to happy as Vanya steps out to practice her violin. While she’s occupied, he quietly steps out. So, when Vanya is done with her practice session and comes back inside, she finds that Harold/Leonard is gone. Immediately, she starts to panic, searching the cabin for him frantically. In her panic, she has a flashback to a point in her past, most likely after Reginald started to grow fearful of the magnitude of Vanya’s powers. One evening, Reginald had brought Young Vanya down to a chamber deep beneath the mansion and placed her into a soundproof cell, telling her she needed to stay in a controlled environment. Once she was sealed in, he left her down there for an undetermined amount of time. To try and settle her nerves after that flashback, Vanya starts to practice her violin, simply focusing on the sound of the violin.

Meanwhile, Hazel and Agnes have arrived at the bird sanctuary. Hazel, still mulling things over, asks Agnes what she would do if she knew she only had two days left to live. Agnes replies she’d choose to be anywhere Hazel was. Which is just too sweet! I can’t with these two! Anyway, Agnes notices that Hazel seems distracted about something and she asks him what’s going on. Hazel tells her he can’t really explain at the moment, but there’s something he has to take care of before he can join her. He tells her to go enjoy the bird sanctuary and that he’ll come back for her as soon as he can. So, after sharing a kiss, Hazel drives off, with Agnes watching him go. Of course, Hazel may have made the wrong call in leaving Agnes alone, as we see Cha-Cha is already on her way to the bird sanctuary.

Back at the hospital, Allison and Sergeant Cheddar are waiting to question Mr. Luntz some more, but the nurse comes out to inform them that he’s gone missing. She had taken him out to for x-rays, but he disappeared. Sergeant Cheddar states he’ll call it in, in case anyone spots him. Allison then asks the nurse if she’d seen Vanya and the nurse confirms she had been there that morning. Allison realizes that Vanya and Harold/Leonard had been there when she’d stopped by the cabin earlier and decides to try going back. Sergeant Cheddar instructs her to not go anywhere, as Harold/Leonard might be dangerous, and they have a missing person to boot. But Allison chooses to not listen to his instructions and heads off anyway.

She arrives back at the cabin while Vanya is still playing her violin. And Allison immediately notices the lights and rocking chairs out on the porch. are swinging from side to side, as they’re being manipulated by Vanya’s powers. Allison quickly heads inside and finds Vanya, who is surprised to see her sister. Allison is equally surprised when Vanya tells her of her newly discovered powers, but she pushes her amazement aside to focus on the more important task of getting Vanya to safety. She tries to break the news to Vanya about who her boyfriend really is, telling her that Leonard Peabody doesn’t exist and that he’s really Harold Jenkins, who murdered his father when he was 13 and spent 12 years in jail as a result. Vanya, of course, doesn’t believe her. Allison tells her that the proof is all in the police file, which is waiting in the car, also telling her of the whole murder shrine of the mangled and defaced Umbrella Academy memorabilia they found in Harold/Leonard’s house. She goes on to try and reassure her sister, saying that she can understand how it must be a lot for her to take in, but that she loves her and wants to be there for her sister.

Understandably, Vanya has an emotional breakdown. She’d fallen in love with Harold/Leonard and can’t believe any of this stuff about him could be true. Not to mention the revelation that she’s had this power all her life and never even knew it. At that moment, Allison remembers an old childhood memory of hers. One that never really made sense to her, but now that she’s learned of Vanya’s powers, she’s able to look at it again with fresh understanding. It turns out that, while Vanya was being kept in that soundproof room when they were all 4-years-old, Reginald had told the other Hargreeves Siblings that Vanya was sick and had to be isolated. But then he brought Allison down there and instructed her to tell Vanya ‘I heard a rumor you think you’re just ordinary,‘ (It was at this time that Reginald also started putting Vanya on that medication, which we now can see was meant to nullify her powers.)

So obviously, Reginald had been so fearful of Vanya’s raw abilities, he chose to simply keep them hidden from everyone rather than continue to train her to control them, and had even manipulated Young Allison to assist him in his goal. And it kind of makes sense how nobody remembered that Vanya used to have powers when they were very young. After all this all went down when they were 4. Not many people can have clear memories of their life that far back. Anyway, When Vanya learns of this, she is understandably furious. But in her anger, she ends up blaming Allison, accusing her of knowing she had powers the whole time and choosing to keep them a secret because she didn’t want Vanya outranking her. Vanya continues her rant, declaring she plans on staying with Leonard, who was the only one who ever really loved her. As Vanya’s rage builds, the light fixtures around the house start to go haywire and eventually explode, and Allison’s attempts to calm her down only enrage her further. In sheer desperation, Allison elects to use her powers to calm Vanya down. But before she can complete her statement, Vanya lashes out with her bowstring, which ends up slicing through Allison’s throat.

The moment this happens, Vanya’s rage vanishes, being replaced by horror over what she’d just done. She dashes forward to catch Allison as she falls to the ground, clutching her heavily bleeding throat. As Vanya cries out her apologies for hurting her sister, Harold/Leonard returns to the cabin. He takes one look at the scene before him and seems to figure out what just happened. So he grabs Vanya and physically drags her away, telling her that they have to get out of there, during a deaf ear to Vanya’s cries and sheer reluctance to leave Allison bleeding on the floor. In the end, however, Harold/Leonard manages to drag her away and he drives them away from the cabin, driving right past the body of Mr. Luntz, who he must have killed to keep him from blabbing. By the time, Luther, Diego, Klaus, Number 5 and Ghost Ben make it to the cabin, Allison has lost consciousness and appears dead. And so the episode ends on that cliffhanger.

Final Observations/Questions:

Is Allison going to live?

What’s going to happen to Vanya? Will she get away from Harold/Leonard?

While I do understand Vanya’s fury, it wasn’t fair of her to blame Allison for what happened. Allison was just as much a victim as Vanya had been. Thy were toddlers at the time. Of course they wouldn’t question what Reginald was telling them. And I believe Allison was telling the truth when she said she didn’t understand what happened that night until now. And the fact that they all forgot that Vanya had powers at the age of four is also believable, since they were still very little back then.

What exactly did Reginald do to get Pogo to go along with everything he did. It was clear from his facial expressions that he wasn’t happy with what he was doing to Vanya, but he still went along with it. So what kind of psychological hold did Reginald have on him?

#umbrella acedmy #umbrella academy 1x08

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nadziejastar · 5 years ago

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It's funny that Organization Rehash was somehow more treacherous than the first one when part of the idea behind Xehanort putting his heart into all of them was to get around that problem

I know! The way the Seekers of Darkness were handled pissed me off so much! Most of them were ruined. The whole point of Xemnas completing Kingdom Hearts was to put Xehanort’s heart and mind into all the original members so that they had no free will. They would literally become another Xehanort. Being a Nobody was not enough to Nort someone. KH3 got around this in the most lazy way possible by saying that they all just joined the True Organization by choice. How lucky for Xehanort, right? This is a relevant post I’ve done about this subject. I’m actually surprised I haven’t seen more people complaining about this egregious plot hole. I brought it up before on a different forum and some fans would just make the dumbest excuses, I swear. “Saïx only had a small piece of Xehanort’s heart in him!” (LOL.)

Ok, so what difference did it even make then? Why did it even matter that he, along with Xigbar, had yellow eyes and pointy ears all along? Weren’t they supposed to be different from the other members? Also, what’s the point of vessels being “raw material” for the X-Blade? Why was Xehanort conducting mind control experiments? Why go to such lengths to show Axel grieving about how much his best friend had changed, if Xehanort’s heart had literally no significant influence on him? God, even Xemnas was treated more respectfully than Saïx was because of this. I actually liked his dialogue at the end about how being human must take incredible strength. It was one of the most memorable lines in the game for me.

How did Xion ever become a Seeker of Darkness? Her switching sides was laughably easy. Roxas and Xion’s dialogue was just so atrocious. I was embarrassed while watching all the scenes with them. Also, if Saïx was supposed to be the one who brought back Roxas and Xion, why are we supposed to take pleasure in his boss fight again? It was treated like Roxas and Xion were getting revenge and it was supposed to be enjoyable to clobber him. Then Roxas and Xion felt pity for him afterwards. And Roxas even acknowledged that he knew Saïx helped to bring him back before their fight. How did he even know that? Well, because his dialogue was written so that the audience could know. Since all of this was shoehorned in at the last minute, Saïx’s redemption happened off-screen. So Roxas had to fill us in on why he was there. It was all so forced, just like the Subject X info dump.

The game totally wanted to have its cake and eat it, too. They wanted Saïx to betray Xehanort so he could be Lea’s innocent ice cream-loving childhood friend in the epilogue (which was his intended role in the ending all along). But they still wanted to treat him like a villain for Roxas and Xion to clobber. The problem is that both of those things clash very badly. They’re not compatible with each other in the slightest. You can’t do both. His redemption didn’t feel convincing at all because of this. And his scene at the clock tower just made it seem like he had no excuse for his actions from the previous games. Why the hell is he all friendly NOW when he was previously trying to kill Axel?

I did see a lot of complaints about how all the villains got “redeemed” at the end. They spent the whole game being evil, then they act all nice to Sora after they’re beaten? Why? Well, it was extremely obvious to me that they were supposed to be possessed.

Their actions would have made perfect sense if Xehanort had simply been controlling them the whole time. Then of course they’d be grateful to Sora for releasing them. A big pillar of darkness gets expelled from them after they’re defeated, then they act totally different. Gee, I wonder why? Larxene actually acted confused after she was beaten. She did NOT act like she was in control of herself prior to this.

Furthermore, once she became aware of herself, she was horrified. She looked like she felt violated. Like she had something done to her without her knowledge or consent. I don’t think for a second that Larxene signed up to be a Seeker of Darkness.

I also found it interesting that she spoke as if she weren’t already that geezer’s heart tank. Once Xehanort’s heart is implanted, it’s supposed to gradually take over the person’s heart. Maybe Sora just needed to defeat members like Larxene, Marluxia, and Luxord. They’d go back to normal afterwards because they were not Norted for that long. They had yellow eyes, but their ears weren’t even pointy.

I also think they became vessels by being turned into Nobodies again, so it made sense that they faded away after their battle. They’d be recompleted. But Terra and Isa were supposed to be different. They needed to have the power of waking used on them because their hearts were lost like a decade ago. And neither of them were Norted as Nobodies, either. Saïx shouldn’t have faded away after his battle.

Marluxia also did not act like he was aware of himself beforehand.

He also said his heart was remembering how to feel. I’m sure he was supposed to have a different backstory than what he has now to explain this.

He was all grateful to Sora after being defeated. This makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever unless he was being totally controlled.

Luxord and Sora were acting like old pals after their battle. Luxord never seemed like a bad guy, anyways. He gave Sora a wild card and then said he’d like to play a game with him. I think Marluxia, Larxene, and Luxord were done a tremendous disservice by making it so that they were self-aware for the whole game. But Isa by far came out the worst because of this. He was utterly decimated beyond repair. His whole character revolved around being possessed. That was THE most important thing about him. It was the ONLY thing that could excuse his actions and allow Lea and Isa to go back to being inseparable right after the final battle. Since he was possessed, they didn’t hold back making him as nasty as possible. Now it’s biting them in the ass.

Braig joined Xehanort to wield a Keyblade. And he actually doesn’t fade away after his defeat like the others. I don’t think that was a coincidence. It’s probably because he became Norted as a human. He wasn’t a Nobody during his boss battle.

I’m also 100% sure it wasn’t a coincidence that he just happened to “pretend” to commit suicide after his defeat. That was no doubt the original end planned for Braig ever since Days and BBS. He was always haunted by the things he did. I think he was especially haunted by what he did to Isa, which was why he always had such a bone to pick with Saïx. If he was a Nobody, then his suicide wouldn’t have even mattered because he’d just be recompleted afterwards, anyways. Sora and Riku’s reaction only made sense if he was fully human when he fell off that ledge.

I will never ever forgive KH3 for its treatment of Isa (and Lea, since Isa was a HUGE part of his character). I’m still heartbroken and angry over it. Isa was treated like a plot device—he only mattered because he brought Lea’s REAL best friends Roxas and Xion back. He wasn’t treated like he mattered as an individual character. He didn’t get a real backstory that showed his pain, how he became Norted or his close relationship with Lea. All this did was make me hate Roxas and Xion in KH3, even though I really liked them in 358/2 Days. It was just so unfair that they got ALL the spotlight at Isa’s expense.

It was always, always implied that Axel had a VERY sad backstory. He was NEVER EVER comic relief. Not at all. He was the most serious character. His canon backstory was a joke for how poorly it explains his behavior in Days and KH2. He was actually an apprentice all along? And suddenly the only thing that mattered to him was two kids that the story went out if its way to show never even came CLOSE to understanding him?

Not his REAL best friend who became an organization member alongside him and who would understand his suffering? It was heavily implied they were both lab rats. I couldn’t believe Lea even blamed Isa for getting Norted. And apparently all Saïx had to do was admit he was jealous and things are instantly patched up between them? God, it was such a slap in the face as a fan. I felt personally insulted by Isa’s “redemption”.

Now, it was obvious that they tried to limit the amount of physical contact Lea showed Saïx after his defeat. And they also tried to limit the amount of genuine emotion they were allowed to show at all times. This happened on the clock tower, too. Lea wasn’t allowed to cry for his friend. And even when Saïx admitted he was jealous, he HAD to follow it up with something snarky. He wasn’t allowed to bond with Lea in a genuine manner. I noticed all of this right away. It made me laugh to see how stilted their interactions were.

Apparently Saïx was putting on an “act” the whole time because he was afraid to show his true feelings, I guess? They’re just gonna write off all of his past deeds that way, instead of him being ya know…Norted? Wow. And to top it all off, they tried to make Lea and Isa’s whole relationship revolve around some stupid random girl, which pissed me off so freaking much. It definitely came across like KH3 was extremely paranoid that they might seem gay. So they did everything possible to make their relationship lack genuine emotion and intimacy, destroying it in the process. The handling of their subplot went against all the most important themes of the series. It was utterly pathetic.

And yet Lea was still holding Saïx in his arms. And it was still pretty intimate from a physical perspective. In fact, Lea shows more intimacy with Saïx in this one single scene than Axel had with Roxas in all of their moments put together. Guess that’s why they had to throw in all the other stuff. To “balance out” more tender moments like this.

The way Lea smiled at him is how I always imagined he would look once he finally rescued Isa. They said “See you” (”Mata na” in Japanese) to each other in a pretty intense and personal way. Especially in the Japanese version. Saïx said it so softly he almost whispered it to Lea. This was obviously something pertaining to their original backstory.

Roxas said “Mata na” to Axel when he was going back to Sora in KH2FM. This made Axel cry. “Mata na” had a LOOOOT more meaning to Axel than it did to Roxas. You see, Roxas was saying it in a casual way, like most would say it. See you later. It was as simple as that. But I think “Mata na” was Lea and Isa’s way of saying they’d see each other again in the next life. Just more evidence that Axel was really crying because he wanted to see Isa and was remembering their promise. Roxas really couldn’t fill the void of Isa. That was the impression I got from that scene.

People probably would have been very accepting of Lea having strong feelings for Isa. But I think Square/Disney were terrified people would be grossed out if Axel had those same feelings for Saïx. KH3 just sent very conflicting messages due to this identity crisis. Lea was holding his arms out like he could still feel him there after he faded away. It looked VERY similar to when Xion faded away in Roxas’s arms. This demonstrated that Lea had extremely powerful feelings for Isa. The thing is, this was never properly SHOWN in the story. There was all of this implied intimacy between them, but it wasn’t able to be explored in-depth after BBSV2 got axed. And so, KH3 wasn’t allowed to show them being too close because there wasn’t enough time to properly differentiate Isa from Saïx.

And this ruined their relationship. We saw almost nothing to understand why Lea would feel so attached to Saïx or why Isa changed so much since they were kids. All we saw was Saïx being evil and a very short scene of them as kids in BBS trying to sneak into the castle. The audience has little reason to care about this relationship or empathize with Lea’s affections for Isa. They didn’t get enough development. There was no way that Saïx was written as Axel’s best friend if THIS was how the resolution was going to be handled. Their story was incomplete. The way it was handled in KH3 was a complete and utter joke.

#kingdom hearts #KH #KH3 #kh larxene #kh marluxia #kh luxord #kh saïx #kh isa #kh axel #kh lea

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eighthmnth-blog · 5 years ago

Text

-------------- and he shall be levon ( and he shall be a good man ) and he shall be levon ( in tradition with the family plan )

and i oop

none of this is going to make sense. im really really tired. ive been in a hot car all day sldjskld baking. crispy. now im going to sleep before work,,, but wrow hi im r, im way too excited to be here. this intro is ?? too long but after all these years ive never learned how to stfu. i COULD have done this sooner but i also turned my brain off last night and watched baby driver for the first time and wow 10/10 would recommend sdksjdlkas i dont have discord because im living in the stone age but im available via tumblr ims if anyone wants to plot --- ill prop make a proper connection page 2mmrow,, just fuck him up. honestly. ruin him. take out the trash.

basics

[ luke hemmings. twenty-three. cismale. he/him. | muse 4b. ] levon by elton john just came on the radio and it made me think of august ferland. they’ve been in sundance for their whole life and they’re currently an administrative assistant. if you’re looking for them, try by the sheriff’s office, locals say they’re there a lot. [ r. she/them. 20. est. ]

SUBPLOT if someone asked who sundance’s bad seed is, most people would say muse 4a. always getting in trouble for one reason or another, muse 4a has just never been one to follow rules. maybe that’s why muse 4b, the sheriffs child, is so drawn to them. muse 4a and muse 4b have been hooking up pretty casually, but muse 4b’s soft nature is causing them to fall for sundance’s baddest seed while muse 4a is only interested in hooking up. will muse 4a break muse 4b's heart? what would the sheriff say if they found out?

nonsensical ramblings

the world is black and white as a child. a young august planted in front of one static plagued television, soaking up the world of cops and robbers. a mop of blond hair and a missing front tooth, beaming proudly “ MY FATHER’S THE SHERIFF “ , a hero in the boy’s mind. black & white. good versus bad.

then comes middle school, high school, and everything thereafter. it’s living under a microscope. small-town living & dealing out the law don’t tend to equate to a private life. sometimes august knows people’s business before they do —- other times the positions are reversed. it wasn’t the easiest of days, far from the romanticized lifestyle often portrayed on screen. the chill of cold shoulders never fades over the years. children told to steer clear of the ferland boy lest they find themselves under sundance’s watchful eye. the SHERIFF’S SON, an undesired spotlight. as the years come and go, he wonders how he once wore that title with pride.

they made an angel of him. almost golden. of course, the teenage years are a rocky patch for anyone. the spark of rebellion, even he wasn’t immune. eighteen and sneaking out with his father’s pistol, shooting cans and bottles --- until he puts one single bullet through a neighbor’s window. that summer spent wasting away under a scorching sun, completing mundane tasks to earn enough to pay for the replacements. it’s out of character for him, but they write it off as a minor scare --- a teenager. no one was hurt, so all’s well that ends well. right ?

he tires of daily life. the yearning for something more never dies, it just lays dormant. only rarely given a breath of life. he grows exhausted of the endless pestering and gossip tucked in church pews. of the polite smiles and polished image. ‘ when will you settle down ? find a nice girl ? are you going to take over the station ? look at how much you’ve grown. ‘twenty-three years too long in sundance.

he knew the names before he saw them in ink at the station. his father’s endless rants, the population that put grey in his hair. miscreants, that august was explicitly told never to associate with. words that fell on deaf ears and then he goes the extra mile. he can’t help but feel a hint of shame, but never enough for him to put a stop to the sneaking. the town’s bad seed --- the sheriff’s greatest adversary and the cause of most, if not all, of his migraines. then there was august, like a moth to an open flame. it must have been some ultimate form of karma when he realizes something’s changed. the rules of the game aren’t so simple anymore, there’s more at stake. just like that, he’s damned them all. the heart wants what it wants, and now he’s cast as the fool. play with fire, get burned.

1% more brainpower used here ( background broken down simply )

his aesthetic is that feeling you get when all your extended family ask about your dating life at the family barbecue. vague ??? maybe so, but it triggers something in me.

he’s dumb, and a tad naive lbh, but this is august.. the sheriff’s son if that hasn’t become,,, really obvious. in the brief readings i did beforehand, it seems like small-town sheriffs can sometimes have a bit of a spotlight on themselves and their family so i kind of envisioned him as being borderline lonely in his youth due to the fact people don’t want to find themselves under the microscope by being friends with the sheriff/’s family. i think the whole sheriff thing has been a big,,, oof in his life. there are probably places he can’t go because his dad arrested the cook in the back or things along those lines.

he’s bored. he has a wifi connection. if his family didn’t think he wasn’t going to get glimpses of the outside world and want to get the fuck out of dodge then idk my dude.

he works as an administrative assistant at the station,, so he’s mainly handling the paperwork and stuff, but id imagine he's a bit of a jack of all trades in the field. takes calls, but also probably gets sent out for the really shitty jobs like the old lady who calls ten times a day for nothing, or that she’s getting calls from scammers :))) but he ain’t going out arresting anyone or doing anything serious. just the “my cat’s in a tree” bs and getting coffee.

in the public eye, he’s probably a real golden child. volunteering, going to church, helping out wherever he can. does he have a genuine interest in any of that ? absolutely not. but it reflects well on his family and on himself. he has a reputation to upkeep. he only went up to high school education-wise, and in a town that probably isn’t too fast crime wise, he has enough free time to be active in the community.

i dont know what suffers more his brain or his heart

n sync vc: bi bi bi

before my dumbass forgets, he does have a good relationship with his parents,,, when he’s not being a fucking moron. follow your heart?? not good advice for him. his mom is currently abroad. aug probably gets his desire to run from her, she’s currently teaching english abroad. he’s v proud of her tyvm. his dad?? yeah. i mean obvs aug isnt very honest about EVERYTHING. he’s gotten good at telling white lies, but he still loves his dad. he’s also an only child so all eyes on him rIP.

i have a shitty pinterest board for him HERE there's barely anything there but yknow

he’s currently being sized for his clown shoes

thats all folks

#sundanceintro #im LATE #i spent all day driving my little brother to overnight camp in ?? the middle of nowhere #this is so messy

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momestuck · 6 years ago

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Epilogues: Candy, chapters 6-13 [the rest of Epilogue 2]

I’m told that there are 40 chapters, and a postscript, in Candy - and also that it’s split into 8 individual ‘epilogues’ within that, of varying length. ‘Epilogue 2′ began with chapter 4, featuring Rose and Kanaya. So I kind of cut it off in exactly the wrong place. Oops!

Anyway I’m going to split these up by Epilogue section from now on. This one covers the rest of Epilogue 2, which mostly concerns shipping, and processing of feelings.

Here are the irons in the fire at the outset of chapter 6:

Gamzee is back! he claims to be setting out on a ‘redemption arc’

Terezi is in space somewhere looking for Vriska, but set to return at some point, and not all that happy that Gamzee’s back

Dirk has perceived some bad news. And briefly spoken about it with Jane, though without explaining anything.

But that’s all Epilogue 1 stuff - old hat!

Rose has suddenly recovered from her illness, and is patching things up with Kanaya

Jade has attempted to push Dave and Karkat to admit they’re into each other, but really just made things worse

Jane attempted to run for President of Earth C - to the trepidation of the Karkat, who hyperbolically suggested this would amount to troll genocide - but abandoned the idea

That’s all interesting but let’s talk about money! This is something I didn’t pick up on in the last post:

KARKAT: OK, SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT. YOUR PRIORITIES ARE: NUMBER ONE, THE ECONOMY, WHICH LET ME REMIND YOU IS BUILT ENTIRELY ON INFINITE, FAKE MONEY THAT WE CAN MAKE AS MUCH OF AS WE WANT.

Elsewhere, Jane’s megacorp and stocks are mentioned.

One wonders why, given the machinery to manufacture just about anything by means of alchemizer, the forms of money, stocks, and corporations are retained... what sort of productive and reproductive labour is regulated and mediated by these markets? Or are they merely acting out the vestigial forms of capitalism as a bizarre drama...

As for the consequences of an infinite money supply, let’s not get into the ‘modern monetary theory’ debate on a Homestuck post, maybe.

on to chapter 6+

This is a Jane chapter. It opens almost immediately with economic discussion; Dave apparently once accused Jane of ‘neoliberal corporate welfare’ for trying to bolster the ‘struggling locksmith industry’ rendered unnecessary on a planet without crime.

She’s visiting Jake, who’s probably my least favourite Homestuck character (who’s not an alpha troll). About Dirk... Jake (Jane says) seems to still have a bit of a thing for him, and Jane, meanwhile, still “has no idea why she can’t get [Jake] out of her system, even after all these years.”

The reason Jane cancelled her run was, it turns out, because Dirk said ‘cancel everything’. She gets drunk, very quickly... and hits on Jake, who is completely oblivious to her advances. She speaks of wanting to abandon business to raise a family, which Jake himself notes is something rather new for her (though the whole traditional gender thing she does isn’t lol)

Jake/Jane isn’t a ship I have any sort of opinion about, honestly. Dirk/Jake’s terrible collapsing relationship was kind of interesting but yeah, here’s a thing. What even are heterosexuals though? “I want to clean your giant house and have a lot of children”... incomprehensible!

One thing I will give credit for is the narration: it creates pretty strong images of like, these characters as fully embodied people, being intimate in like, subtle physical ways. that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense... whatever lol. it works

chapter 7

...brings us back to Gamzee. fittingly, i’m listening to the friendsim soundtrack as i read this, and i just hit ‘take me to clown church’.

anyway since this whole story basically seems to be an exercise in developing ships along the lines of ‘A is into B, B is obvious to their advances’... Roxy’s hot for John now I guess? or at least, so Callie thinks. she insists they’re all going to be ‘very, very happy’ despite her disappointment.

anyway, then we get Gamzee saying a bunch of casually misogynist stuff to John about Roxy. in this context, basically two interpretations are shown: a shallow ‘oh he’s redeemed now’ attitude from Roxy and Callie, and a ‘oh god i hate this person keep him away from me’ attitude from John. Gamzee’s repulsive qualities are underlined by the narration (from John’s perspective): he’s unhygienic, he’s casually misogynist (which seems like a new element, and rather out of keeping with the gendered-but-somehow-theoretically-not-patriarchal Alternia)...

chapter 8

Rose and Kanaya chapter. Jane’s possible presidency is once again the subject of discussion. Jane apparently wanted to apply some kind of anti-troll eugenics policy, and tried to bring Kanaya on board - and got told to fuck off for it. Our two good lesbians agree that, if Karkat were president (and Dave running the economy), things might have worked out ok...

We are briefly introduced to a new character, a jadeblood troll called Swifer Eggmop. Her character archetype, we are directly told, is ‘1920s newsboy’.

We bear witness to an egg hatching (in prose, anyway). This particular baby grub out closely resembling Vriska... which Kanaya says is because she comes from a slurry based on the original 12 trolls. Rose notes this would make Vriska the troll’s Ancestor, which raises an interesting question of whether Ancestors still exist as a social concept on Earth C. Anyway, Kanaya wants to adopt baby Vriska, which can only be a fantastic idea...

KANAYA: There Are Two Things Of Which I Have No Doubt

KANAYA: That You And I Are Going To Be Happy For The Rest Of Our Lives

KANAYA: And That We Are Never Ever Going To See Vriska Again

I think we can safely assume that neither of those things are true. The emphasis on ‘happiness forever’, voiced by multiple characters, is interesting... also the turn towards reproduction.

I went to uni with people who have kids now. Heck I have friends who have a child (who they are trying to spare from gender)... but for most of my social circle, which is to say almost entirely 20-to-30-something trans women, even the idea of adopting is incomprehensible? It’s somehow weird to think of ‘wanting kids’ as the narrative of 20-something year olds...

Kanaya is right. Vriska is dead, and despite everything, she died a hero. Vriska was a complicated figure of contrasting extremes; her heroic actions were matched in scale only by her monstrous ones, and since no one had actually witnessed her end, it was impossible to say which side the pendulum swung and judged her death—Heroic or Just.

It would be a fitting memorial for her and Kanaya to raise a version of Vriska who would be given every chance to make good on her noble characteristics. A true, symbolic redemption arc. Something about the thought appeals to Rose’s taste for the dramatic flourish. It would be proof that this was all worth it in the end: the destruction of multiple universes, the death of Kanaya’s friends, the circuitous rites of suffering experienced by the nearly infinite splintered versions of every being to inhabit Paradox Space...

Once again, the notion of a ‘redemption arc’ enters the narrative explicitly, directly echoing fandom discussion. Unlike Gamzee, this is studiously neutral on the Vriska Question: steering exactly between ‘Vriska did nothing wrong’, nor ‘Vriska is a monster’. Regardless... I think it’s probably safe to say that everyone’s prophecies are wrong and we haven’t seen the last of the ‘true’ Vriska.

chapter 9

More of Jade trying very hard to ship her friends, to the discomfort of everyone involved. Jade kisses Karkat, and Karkat explicitly names what she’s doing as sexual assault, a violation of boundaries and consent - Jade attempts to convince him that no, it was really Dave who kissed him!

This prompts a long monologue from Dave in which it’s obvious that he has put some thought into kissing Karkat. Point seems to be: they sure are into each other but Jade’s intervention is not at all welcome. At least I hope that’s the point. I would prefer not to see Jade vindicated by the narrative.

Anyway, other things of cultural note: grub spaghetti is apparently still eaten on Earth C. I always thought it was implied that ‘grubs’ in Troll food were like, actual troll babies, but maybe they’re just ordinary (for certain values thereof...) bugs bc I don’t think Kanaya would stand for that.

chapter 10

The ‘Jane running for president’ subplot has largely disappeared, because what we’re really here for is... shipping! This time, a John/Roxy chapter. I think they call it Roxygen or something? Terezi explains the ‘pair the spares’ logic of the ship (dequirkified):

TEREZI: Um, yeah John.

TEREZI: We are not idiots. We can all do the math on this.

TEREZI: It’s not like you were going to fuck your human mom or human sister.

TEREZI: And you are “not a homosexual,” which takes Strider dick out of the equation.

TEREZI: And Kanaya is the only girl troll left, and she lesbian married one of the two remaining eligible human females.

TEREZI: Oh and Jake is a double threat. A human dad with a human dick!

TEREZI: So by a process of elimination, of *course* you were going to “fall in love” with Roxy.

Equation of ‘dick’ with ‘male’ there terezi but whatever... (god is this fic going to get into the question of what a ‘nook’ and a ‘bulge’ is...)

(lol i’m calling it a fic...)

Anyway, my position on this one is: Roxy/Calliope was a fine ship worth upholding, and I do not see any reason why anyone would be into John. Though I may be biased on that front.

Terezi also brings up the Calliope question. John is trepidatious on that front.

There’s an interesting line from Roxy here, when John tries to assure her she doesn’t have to wear makeup:

ROXY: john...

ROXY: do u ever think about like

ROXY: gender???

JOHN: ???

JOHN: uh. not really, i guess?

JOHN: but i don’t think girls should feel like they HAVE to wear makeup just because they’re girls.

ROXY: lol

ROXY: thats not what im getting at

JOHN: what do you mean then?

JOHN: are you, like...

ROXY: like what

This is where I’m conscious of the ‘trans character’ tag on this one.

They talk about adulthood, as a performance that they do not feel ‘ready’ for. At that point Dave shows up, clearly aflustered after Jade’s intervention:

DAVE: anyone can be a dude if they really want thats part of the beauty of living in this brand new world with none of the baggage our old world had like gender and sexuality and relationships only involving a very specific number of people

chapter 11

So yeah now to pick up the torch on Dave starting to understand he’s gay. here for this

DAVE: theres a metric fucking ton of shit about to come down on me because i dragged my heels on doing some serious self reflection

JOHN: is this just some more stuff about...

JOHN: being gay?

DAVE: maybe yeah

DAVE: ok definitely yeah

DAVE: its 110% about being gay

JOHN: i thought you’d already worked all that stuff out?

DAVE: turns out it takes a long time to figure out your sexuality after a childhood filled with repression and abuse

nice to see it named as such i guess

the dialogue in the last couple of chapters has been really good. i’m getting properly drawn into this, the characters feel extremely well-realised. threads which were long latent are finally being made explicit.

Dave is struggling with very abrupt self-realisation: he definitely has feelings for Karkat, he has complicated feelings for Jade, but the ‘simple’ solution of just entering a non-mono relationship both is not feeling ‘right’ to him. John isn’t really able to help... he’s gonna talk to Dirk.

This chapter does a lot, I really like it, but at the same time I’ve not got a tremendous amount to add to it.

chapter 12

in our latest chapter of ‘homestuck but they fuck now’, Jake and Jane did that - while up on various substances, including at least alcohol and the trickster lollipop. Jake is having second thoughts but when he tries to back out, Jane looks sad, so he decides to go for it. This can only end well.

Also damn I guess someone on the team thought ‘what would it be like to fuck while high on the trickster lollipop’ so uh, that’s a thing now.

chapter 13

Back to the Strider boys. There’s a heavy intro...

Dave and Dirk don’t talk that much about the heavy stuff. They don’t need to. Dave can hear his brother’s voice in his head.

Not, like, literally. That would be insane. But Dave knows what his bro is like. Dirk, or a version of him, instilled in Dave a way of living and thinking that would, for better or worse, persist far beyond the first thirteen years of his upbringing.

Yeah huh.

Can’t believe Rose and Kanaya have the dubious honour of being the most ‘together’ characters in this.

Anyway in this case Dave still feels like he needs to talk to Dirk - who we know has gone awol, for some mysterious reason. He meets... Gamzee, who says some religious clown stuff, and offers Dave a redemption arc (really running this joke into the ground huh), but Dave brushes him off. Then he finds a fembot that Dirk was working on, with a note.

We don’t get to read the note yet. I would guess that’s the end of epilogue 2.

Sure enough it is.

Epilogue 2, taken as a whole

I quite enjoyed this, Gamzee sections notwithstanding. The prose is tight, the dialogue is hitting its flow, and a lot of relationships that were left vague in Homestuck proper are finally being given time to develop.

Obviously it’s kind of risky bringing in explicitly sexual themes, but I think they approach them in the ‘right’ way: focusing on the emotional meaning of relationships that now might - now we’re dealing with 23-year-olds - include sex, rather than just porn lol. It does slightly strain credibility that, in all their time on Earth C, none of them have made any meaningful friendships or relationships outside the core group of 8 kids and a handful of surviving trolls, but I can also understand the desire to focus on the already-developed characters. That’s a common problem for ‘endgame’ ships: in truth dating exclusively within a tiny friendship group is probably a recipe for disaster, but in fiction it makes a work manageable.

I am enjoying just how gay Homestuck has gotten. If Homestuck is the comic for Very Online kids who were around 13 in 2009 when the comic began, it’s somewhat fitting, because our cohort has, at least to a degree, done the same thing lol. Of course, that’s shaped by my personal experience of like, transitioning and moving to a friendship group that’s like 99% trans lesbians and bi women, but I suspect statistics would bear out the idea that more and more people are comfortable identifying ourselves as not-straight in some way. I could be wrong about that though lol.

Of course, it’s too much to hope that this trend - insofar as it exists! - is like, the beginning of the end for Gender as a system of social relations, violent exploitation and coercion - especially since periods of ‘more acceptance’ often seem to precede violent repression (c.f. Weimar Germany and then, the nazis; the period just before the AIDS crisis; much earlier, the construction of colonial/modern gender in the first place on the bones of less rigid gender systems...)

Anyway, let’s see what’s happened to old Dirk. I’m still wondering who the “trans character” is going to be, and how they’re going to handle that. It’s going to be tough to match fic like @rememberwhenyoutried‘s An Earth-Shattering Confession, but we shall see.

#momestuck

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nautilusopus · 6 years ago

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Serious non-troll: What if you like the cop-outs and the scrambled bullshit plots and the nonsense towers of half-constructed ideas? I agree that for example Nomura is a goddamn crazy person but I find his convulsions fascinating and want to see more of them.

i mean, you’re entirely within your rights to do that. it’s just frustrating that there’s visibly no effort put into any of it, and he’s just writing for the sake of what makes the trailer look good, and that’s been 100% to the detriment of the story ever since he’s started doing it

i’m not even inherently opposed to ridiculous convoluted bullshit. i’m one of those pretentious fuckheads that unironically likes End of Evangelion and thinks it made perfect sense, obviously, duh, with all its absolute nonsense of adam and lilith and rei being a god-analogue from absorbing both the white and black seeds and allowing shinji to dictate the ultimate outcome of third impact in the culmination of a couple of really fucking long and extremely obtuse character arcs. i mean, hell, i’m 38 chapters into a fic that is running off nothing but weird high-concept ideas of how reality and parallel universes work and abstract metaphor andsleep deprivation. in any other circumstances, i’m fine with convoluted batshit nonsense.

i think the best way to explain the heart of the issue is to look at what happened to the matrix trilogy. or actually wait this is tumblr, everyone’s in high school and would’ve been foetuses or something when Revolutions came out. homestuck, then. we’ll look at homestuck.

okay so homestuck. remember when that was as big as it was? initially, the big stumbling block was the slow pace of act 1 where john just kind of fucks around throwing glass at clown dolls for a while and if you weren’t into that kind of humour that was where the comic immediately lost you, but what ultimately got the ball rolling was [S] WV: Ascend. the general metric back then was if you weren’t hooked by that one, you wouldn’t like homestuck at all, and for many people that was the point of no return. the reason WV: Ascend was as big of a deal as it was is that we’ve been seeing a bunch of disconnected nonsense happening all over the place, and this is the first time we see our first major time loop actually closed, with the promise of a few more being set up. all that supposed joke nonsense we’d been watching the whole time? it actually mattered, surprise! from there, the narrative spends a lot of time introducing a lot of new concepts – we have captchaloguing and paradox slime, and time travel, and doomed timelines, and exiles and future versions of planets from a parallel universe the metanarrative being perpetuated by the author being diagetic and fuck knows what other things i’m forgetting about. and then, to throw you for a loop twelve whole other characters show up on top of that. so then the narrative needs to spend time establishing who these people are and what their relevance to the story is – which it does, by having them be active participants in the first arc as things go on. this ultimately culminates in [S] Cascade, where we see all these different concepts eventually tie into one another because they were deliberately set up to, and it’s at that point that you figure, well shit we’ve hit a point where all the time travel stuff has finally come to a head. and with it, you’d expect it to also bring all the character stuff to a head too, but instead hussie has an entire extra act to go so we can’t have that resolve yet.

so in the meantime, here are 20-ish whole other characters doing some other things. but we don’t have time to establish what’s effectively the silmarillion by now, so we have to speed past it, meaning we aren’t given a chance to care about these new people. but we can’t have a chance to care about them either, because we still have to tie all this into 5 whole previous acts that are meant to feed into this. at this point, homestuck is visibly collapsing under its own weight. character arcs are forced to fart around in circles because the status quo can’t change because we still need to make it to endgame with these character dynamics more or less intact. but that’s boring to read so we’ll do this entire “what if” thing and then retcon it all out of existence, and then have the fact that you can retcon things suddenly become vital to the resolution of the coming in place of anything we’ve already established previously – not the time travel, not the parallel universe with the trolls, not even the whole thing with the Scratch leading to the alpha kids being here in the first place – when the mechanic was only introduced in the first place to sloppily patch a story together that had long since devolved into infodumps that served to paint hussie further and further into a corner as he was forced to define his lore to get the plot to keep moving forward despite the fact that the narrative wasn’t focusing properly on the people that could make that happen anymore because the story had since switched focus from those people almost entirely.

and in the meantime the damn thing got eaten up by filler, and suddenly characters from that filler are showing up like they were totally relevant to the main story the whole time even though literally nothing they did in their own subplot had any direct bearing on the story at large, unlike the initial 12 trolls. why yes, Alternate Universe Calliope was a completely necessary addition to the story! didn’t you see our important sidestory thing where they do Stuff, and then her showing up in the climax to resolve some other things that are sorta disconnected from the main plot anyway?

not to mention the shipping. nothing ruins a story faster than throwing in a love triangle or eight, and then immediately invalidating all the character growth that happened on top of that anyway by having it literally never happen. not that it would’ve mattered anyway, because remember, we never actually got to have any of this really developed to begin with.

by the time we hit end of act 6, there’s been so many new concepts haphazardly stapled onto the story and so many threads brought up and discarded entirely when we already established back with [S] Cascade that the story works best when they actually do this and it is doable, that it stops being merely complicated and off the wall, and starts being spread too thin, incomprehensible, and ultimately no longer part of a whole narrative deliberately comprised of interlocking storylines. shit’s just kinda happening at you, and rather than getting to see parts of a text interacting as a result of them coming from somewhere for the express purpose of then going to somewhere, you’re just being asked to accept that, yup, that’s a thing that’s going on right now. neato. sure is some stuff happening and whatnot. and in the end, for all that posturing, it didn’t even do anything. in pre-cascade homestuck that wouldn’t have even been a full flash. a bunch of nonsense happens, and then They Fightan Good, and then it’s over and there’s not a single time paradox or meta-interaction to be found. none of the stuff they built up to over all these years mattered, and neither did any of the stuff they just threw in, either.

i’m sure you see what i’m getting at with this.

(also he treats the women in his stories like shit and quite frankly i’m sick of it and even more sick that people keep giving him a pass for it because it’s practically reached parody levels at this point , so there’s that)

i have no problem with convoluted twisty bullshit in and of itself. but it has to accomplish something aside from just existing, and nomura doesn’t do that. by his own admission, kingdom hearts wasn’t planned, and it shows really badly. characters and entire story mechanics and plot lines are introduced solely for the sake of introducing them. they don’t go anywhere or build to anything, because they can’t, because fuck we have to stall for kh3 shhhh just keep adding more soras and hopefully no one will notice. i think the last time any of this actually mattered was kh2, and even that had a lot of the issues i’ve mentioned here. as a result of all of this, the character arcs suffer a lot, and you’re left with nothing but a big ball of plot twists that goes nowhere, and a bunch of characters that only somewhat have anything to do with any of it.

i don’t feel like it’s overly nitpicky to find this kinda gross and seriously insulting of the audience’s intelligence. it’s just lazy time-stalling. i get that people sometimes really don’t care about stuff like narrative and character development and are just here to see riku punching mike wazowski in the teeth or whatever, but i think it’s disingenuous to pretend that these aren’t nonetheless important parts of a game’s construction – especially a studio that used to openly pride itself on selling games with a focus on story.

and the genuinely frustrating part is, no one cares. people are gushing all over everything square puts out because it’s square, so they know they don’t have to put effort into their stories. i’m well aware i’m in the minority for saying that these games are bad. but i also thought we were done with treating, “it’s just a video game, bro! why do you care so much about the story having quality as a narrative? this isn’t an english class!” as a valid rebuttal.

maybe i should’ve used the matrix trilogy instead. most people hate movies 2 and 3 for the weird “YOU’VE ALREADY MADE THE CHOICE/EVERYTHING THAT HAS A BEGINNING HAS AN END NEO” shit and the bonkers christ-allegory ending. i hate it because neo is about as interesting as the rock that cracked goofy’s skull open.

#asks #kangdan horfs #do i put this in the discourse tag even though its's not vii?#squid alienates kh fans #that's a tag now #hamsteak #Anonymous

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thedrunkenminstrel · 6 years ago

Text

Malk’s top ten ships

So @parttimebetawarrior did it and I’m nothing if not a copy-cat so I decided to be a pain in the butt and write a thing about my favorite fictional ships. Come to me tomorrow and this list will probably change and jumble around, but they’re still relationships I love from stories that helped me out.

So check it out if you want.

10)Yukiteru Amano/Yuno Gasai

Future Diary has a lot, and I mean a lot of problems. The girls are all fetishized to an uncomfortable degree, and a lot of the diary powers only make sense upon multiple readings viewings, and there are points of it that are just interesting drags.

But the relationship between Yuki and Yuno, as deeply unhealthy as it is (deliberately so) is a fascinating story of two terrible people falling in love. Do either of them deserve love? Maybe not? Does love make them better? Absolutely not. But they still need it in a world that has been cruel and awful to them, and maybe that’s the only thing that matters. Especially to a pair of broken, horny teens.

Plus they actually bang, and when was the last time that happened in a manga?

9)Rock/Revy from Black Lagoon

Two for two in unhealthy ships. Revy is a gunslinging berserker who has never known a peaceful life and Rock is a brilliant but repressed office worker who gets dragged into the crime-ridden streets of Roanapour. It’s a classic story of people from different worlds coming together like you see in movies like Titanic or Romeo & Juliet.

What makes Rock and Revy different though? Well, violence honestly, and each character’s relationship to it. Revy both disdains Rock’s previously peaceful lifestyle and is envious of it. She respects and even loves Rock in her own broken way, but can’t get over his naivete and his privilege that keeps him from understanding why she would do something like graverob. Rock knows he should be horrified and disgusted by what Revy does, but finds her and her way of life incredibly seductive.

8) Shirou Emiya/Rin Tohsaka from Fate/Stay Night

Yeah yeah, I’m tsundere-loving trash, what do you want from me? These two are great together though, and they compliment each other both in a relationship and combat, and it’s fun to see Shirou’s cool-headedness and dumbass bluntness bounce of the much more self-aware and insecure Rin.

And they respect one another, though for Shirou that respect takes some earning. There’s a journey here of both of them learning and becoming better people, as they fight through the insanely complicated world of Fate. Plus, Shirou grows up to Archer. He ages well. Good going, Rin.

7) Gomez Addams/Morticia Addams from the Addams Family

Ah finally, a healthy one. They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky, they’re a functioning family unit. For all the weirdness of the Addams and how much people are freaked out by them, they’re undeniably healthy: endlessly loving and romantic to each other and equally doting on their… less healthy children. They do them and they’re happy, especially when they’re doing each other, and that’s what a good relationship’s all about.

6) Kobayashi/Tohru from Dragon Maid

Another anime with a lot of problems, namely in its loli and shota shit, but the relationship between Kobayashi and Tohru is something that makes the show more than worth it.

People argue about the sexualities of the character so I’m just going to say that I see Tohru as a lesbian and Kobayashi as bi. Much like the Addams, what makes this relationship work for me is the combination of the fantastic and the domestic. Tohru is a dragon with cosmic powers that cooks steak for her career woman girlfriend, and despite being a bit of a grump, Kobayashi is fascinated and engaged with Tohru, even though Tohru needs to learn to turn it down. There is a genuine tenderness to the relationship and a message of not just understanding each others’ differences, but learning to love them.

5) Peter Parker/Mary Jane from Spider-man

Okay, this relationship has been through its rough patches: retcons, a miscarriage, and that godawful ‘smoker’ subplot, but there’s a reason people keep going to these two: They work so well together.

People say Gwen Stacey is the best Spider-man girl, but they forget that Gwen’s hatred of Spider-man kept her from ever being able to love Peter Parker in his fullness and kept Peter from being able to be honest with her, but Mary Jane is the one who could take Spider-man and Peter Parker as a whole, noble, messed-up package.

Peter Parker, the self-obsessed nerd and Mary Jane the empathic party girl complement and teach each other. Mary Jane can understand and be there for Peter in a way others can’t, and Peter can bring the quiet intimacy she can never have in her life, though admittedly that comes with the stress of a superhero husband.

4) 2B/9S from Nier: Automata

And back to my horrifically unhealthy ships. Nier: Automata’s a heavy game, dealing with existentialism and the cycle of violence. I’m pretty sure I’ve talked these two to death time and time again, but I love repeating myself so:

2B and 9S are creatures created for violence to do violence, specifically for a repetitive, cyclical war and have been defined by that their whole life. Through that entire thing, what have they had except for themselves? When you factor in the violence and resentment that has a weird parallel with a lot of real life relationships, you get something that feels raw and violent, but nonetheless filled with love and pain. That’s what the world is after all: it’s cruel and filled with pain and everyone is going to hurt you, even the one most important to you. But there’s hope and there’s love and we can keep going for that.

3) Kraft Lawrence/Holo The Wisewolf from Spice & Wolf

Spice & Wolf gets a reputation which, while not entirely undeserved, has more to do with its marketing than the content of the show. It was a show that surprised me so much the first time I watched it. I didn’t realize a romance show could be like this. I didn’t know fantasy shows could be like this. I didn’t know anime could be like this. It was so down-to-earth and subdued and, despite its fantastic setting, real.

Then there’s Lawrence and Holo. While Holo’s definitely a magical girlfriend who comes out of nowhere, it avoids the anime cliches. She doesn’t bring Lawrence into a world of adventure or save him, but rather they enter a partnership, and in the most brutal terms, that is what a relationship is. It’s a level of maturity that permeates the relationship that I love. There is friction and dire points, and the characters screw up, but in understandable ways, and they work to amend it. The anime isn’t above some ‘hurr durr I walked in on her naked’ nonsense, but the two handle it like adults rather than like overactive cartoon characters. Lawrence himself will also actually flirt back with Holo and comment on her ‘nice tail’ ho ho ho. It’s nice to see a male lead in an anime that’s somewhere between completely agency-less and a predatory creep.

In any case, if you haven’t seen Spice & Wolf, please see Spice & Wolf, it’s the best romance anime made.

2) Okabe Rintarou/Makise Kurise from Steins; Gate

Hot damn, where do I start with these losers? I’ve made no secret that I find a lot of parallels between these two and my own relationship, an abrasive nerd who shows affection by being verbally obtuse and somehow has managed to gather a group of friends through some weird force of personality and a charming brilliant girl who gets easily flustered by the teasing, but also enjoys terrorizing the other party as well. I love the model of bickering made out to be flirting, and it never feels more genuine than here/

Beyond that, they’re just purely lovable people and their entire progression of romance just feels, again, real. They feel like real people feeling real emotions. They’re not as mature as Lawrence and Holo, but they do care and grow and ultimately, the show becomes about what you will do for the most important person in the world to you, as well as understanding what makes someone the most important person in the world to you.

If you haven’t watched Steins; Gate WATCH STEINS; GATE

1) Minato/Aigis from Persona 3

I played Persona 3 during a very hard time in my life. So that probably influences stuff, but boy. These two, guys. These two.

Minato and Aigis approach life in a weirdly similar way. Aigis has just entered into understanding what life is and Minato is a step away from the ledge at the point where they meet. Aigis is single-minded, and Minato is detached… it seems at first that the relationship is superficial, and later it is.

Being close to Minato hurts Aigis numerous times, including the most painful final time, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have done it or that it was worthless. Persona 3 is a game about how life will hurt you, but life is still worth living. That’s Aigis’ last lesson to learn by the end of the game. She ends up fighting not for the world of humanity, or even her friends, but for one man she found. And you don’t need to save the world to find meaning in life. All you need is something simple, like someone to take care of.

And damn are those not some of the best words ever put in a video game.

#Malk Muses #long post #long long post

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