#this drawing isn’t perfect but overall I think I achieved the sort of feel I was going for

[myokk]

This couldn't be happening again.

He was so foolish, to believe that he could try and befriend someone new, and that things would be fine. How could he have done this to Eloise? Sebastian had long started to believe that he, too, was also cursed: somehow everyone and everything he touched turned to ashes and he couldn't bear to see the insidious tentacles of...whatever this was reaching out to wrap around Eloise as well.

Hadn't he done enough damage already? And yet...

He couldn't let go of his hold on her body, hoping against hope that he could do something to help her. He slowly turned her body around so that she was facing him, hands reaching up to cradle her pale cheeks as he whispered feverishly: please please you can't die please Eloise please it's going to be fine...

[petruchio]

i want to try to articulate my own dislike of mal in the grisha trilogy because i want to be clear that it doesn’t stem from a place of me having wanted alina to end up with someone else, nor would i really have been angry if she HAD ended up with mal if it had been written well, but i would like to take a stab at why i feel that it WASN’T. 

1. what was alina’s power meant to represent? this is honestly my main sticking point in the series as a whole. in my opinion, the way the “grisha power” is portrayed in the books is fundamentally antithetical to alina’s choices at the ending of the series. grisha power in the novels is portrayed as something innate, as something which is not separate from the self but merely an extension of the self, and as something which is essential for one’s health and, literally, lifeforce. “does the bird feel the weight of its wings,” etc., it is literally portrayed as something which is an essential part of one’s person. so -- this book is YA. YA, especially YA fantasy, tends to have some lesson to draw out to its young readers, some analog to real life meant to demonstrate something deeper. this begs the question then -- WHAT does alina’s power represent? what are its metaphorical implications? i think it’s crucial that she is initially only able to access her power when she LETS GO of mal and her unhealthy attachment to him. and at that turn in the story, she finds herself happier, freer, and healthier. so.... my question is what on earth are we meant to draw out of this, metaphorically, other than the idea that unhealthy attachment and obsession to others limits us and once we trust in ourselves completely we find our inner power? (i’d be fascinated if anyone disagrees or has different ideas about what the power and her ability to use it is meant to represent. but i have a hard time understanding it as anything else) we can further draw out some of the more literal metaphors -- regarding light and the sun. light which tends to represent joy, which reveals the unseen, which brings forth what is hidden. i think these are all pretty... on the nose metaphors. within her, alina contains this power to reveal what is hidden, to bring into the world joy and safety, and to bring balance to a world plagued by darkness. and her choice is to just... not? i just don’t think it tracks with everything else that grisha power is meant to represent.

2. what was alina’s arc meant to represent? this kind of ties into my larger issue with grisha power, but on a more individual level. you hear people justify alina’s choices by saying “she was a reluctant leader.” to which i say... then what was the point of the entire series? what did she learn? that actually her life was fine and she didn’t want to change it? i mean, power to her, but i again don’t think it follows with the portrayal of her discovery of her power (both her literal sun power and her ~internal~ power and strength) what was the point of having her have to “let go” of her attachment to mal in order to discover her power? what was the point of the line “there’s nothing wrong with being a mouse, unless you’re meant to be a hawk?” i just think these narrative beats don’t map on to her ultimate choice. 

3. the love arc of alina/mal is poorly written. in fact -- there IS no arc. she starts and ends the books in love with him. as a reader, i think this is one of the most uninteresting forms of romance to read. we have no sense of WHY she falls for him, other than the fact that they’re childhood friends which we are exposed to in a few flashbacks and stories about a vague “meadow.” but we don’t actually SEE any of this -- we basically have to take alina’s word for it that mal is amazing and perfect and he is the only person who sees her for who she “truly is” (which as an aside, i still don’t buy because again, if her power is something innate to her, he categorically DOESN’T see her as who she truly is and her whole person.) it’s hard as a reader to fall in love with a character if we don’t see the protagonist fall in love with them as well. plus, like i pointed out in her need to let go of mal -- in the start of the series, her attachment to him is framed as unhealthy and obsessive, as something she has to learn to let go of in order to become her whole self. i just don’t understand this metaphor, then, if the ultimate conclusion is that she was right to begin with.

4. i would like to draw a comparison here to the hunger games, which is a book i feel hits many of the same beats but does it (obviously perfectly) and justifies and explains katniss’ choices within the metaphorical and symbolic meaning and argument of the trilogy as a whole. i propose to break this down into three subsections and draw comparisons:

4a. the love interests. i guess mal is meant to be a sort of peeta like character, one who advocates for peace and sees the protagonist for HER not as a tool or a device. but again -- does he? i think this again ties into the idea of power as innate. none of katniss’ powers are necessarily innate to her. she’s not an amazing archer because she just happens to be so, or because she was just born that way. it’s something she learns and is forced into because of the poverty her and her family face, which again ties back into the larger social commentary of the series. she doesn’t become a symbol for the revolution because of some magical ~thing~ that she has, but because she is used and manipulated by the adults around her. but alina isn’t like that! she doesn’t learn to be a sun summoner because of the society she lives in, she just IS. she is also used as a symbol by the adults around her -- but because of her LITERAL power. so mal’s dislike of that aspect of her doesn’t read like peeta’s distaste for the capitol, it just reads like... he doesn’t like a part of her. then i guess you also have a bit of the gale mapped onto mal, as her childhood best friend. but i again feel that this is a poor analog. again with the distaste for the capitol vs. distaste for her grisha power. gale rejects katniss’ new life because it seems to him to represent the wealth and power of his oppressors. mal rejects it for apparently the same reasons -- but the power is represented as something internal to her. it’s different than wearing fancier clothes or living in a nicer house because of artificial social divisions. sure, the SOCIAL divisions between grisha and non grisha in the book are artificial. but she LITERALLY has a magic power. so again to my point about her power -- it just doesn’t make sense in context of how the power is described. 

4b. the villain. let’s imagine a hunger games where president snow is young and sexy and manipulates katniss by making out with her instead of just threatening those she loves. uhhhhhhhhhh. i just think this confuses the reader too much to be effective. once again, if this had been written a bit better i think it could’ve worked, but like. it wasn’t. there’s a reason people really thought they were going to end up together. in thg is that katniss is just.... some girl. she’s not snow’s only equal in the world, the one destined to balance his power, the only one who can understand his life and reality, his only immortal partner. again with the symbolism just not matching up to what seems to be the intention behind the story. okay, the darkling is evil. alina is good. so the solution is... kill him and stop using her own power? but the rest of the grisha and their powers are all fine? again, WHAT is the implication about power? it just doesn’t make sense.

4c. the choice at the end to live a peaceful life and reject the narrative which society has placed on you. this is where i think tgt really falls flat at trying to achieve and make a similar argument to thg. crucially, katniss’ choice is pretty metaphorically obvious. gale and peeta both hate the capitol, but have different opinions of the solution. peeta represents peace, gale war. (suzanne collins has literally said this.) katniss’ choice at the end of thg to live peacefully with peeta is a broader commentary on the nature of peace and the need to choose peace. but alina’s choice doesn’t read this way -- because in order to choose peace she literally has to deny a part of herself! a part of herself that is clearly an analog to finding herself in the series! 

these are all just some general thoughts about where i think tgt fails to really take on the implications of the power it seeks to portray. i think there are a lot of potential and legitimate criticisms of a lot of my points here, but i think overall it will always come back to the power for me. why was she sickly and sad before she discovered her power? why does she find joy and fun only once she is able to access a part of herself which she had repressed for so long only out of an unhealthy attachment to her childhood? if the power she wields is just too much for the world to handle, and same with the darkling, then why is grisha power portrayed as innate natural and essential? 

the realities of how power is portrayed in the grisha trilogy are why i ultimately believe her choice of mal and her choice to give up her power makes no sense and does not track onto the literal and metaphorical implications of the trilogy. 

[idkwhoiamanymorebutwtf]

IMMA DO A CHARACTER ANALYSIS (THAT IS MOSTLY HEADCANON AND DRAWING CONCLUSIONS FROM TINY THINGS WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT BE PROVEN WRONG IN THE FUTURE!) ON EACH MEMBER OF THE BLIGHT FAMILY AND THEIR DYNAMICS WITH ONE ANOTHER FROM WHAT LIMITED INFORMATION WE HAVE ON THESE CHARACTERS!!! OBVIOUSLY MY ANALYSIS ON THE BLIGHT SIBLINGS WILL PROBABLY BE MORE ON POINT THAN OF THE PARENTS.

Mrs. Blight: It seems very likely to me that Mrs. Blight likely comes from a high class background. I mean, both parents obviously hold some status, "Blight's only associate with the strongest witchlings", right? But Mrs. Blight in particular likely comes from a place of huge influence, even compared to her husband, as we can infer from her decision to make her daughter dye her hair green, which suggests inheriting Mrs. Blight's traits is ideal for their children which means Mrs. Blight likely comes from a higher up place on the social ladder. The glimpse we see of Mrs. Blight in the background of the flashback in Young Blood Old Souls can actually tell us a bit about her upbringing. Mrs Blight is sitting up straight and tall, a smile on her face (though she doesn't appear particularly pleasant even with that smile), her hair pulled back out of her face completely and into a neat bun. 

Mrs. Blight appears to have herself collected and well put together even from a very young age. I suspect her own parents were rather controlling judging both by her general appearance and the fact that she's sitting besides her future husband, implying the two were quite possibly pushed together by their parents at a young age (weather they were romantically paired up or pushed to become friends). I suspect Mrs. Blight is an only child. She has a clear obsession with status and keeping up appearances (she forced her daughter to dye her hair cause...'they need to match') and is willing to do whatever it takes to maintain that (she was the one responsible for threatening to get Willow rejected from Hexside). This is why I suspect that Mrs. Blight was an only child. Her behavior seems like that of somebody who's family legacy rests solely on her shoulders. Having no siblings would ensure that there was always the utmost pressure placed on Mrs. Blight and Mrs. Blight alone, which would explain her apparent perfectionism. On top of this, she supposedly has a bit of a rivalry with Boscha's mother, which further solidifies the idea of her being an only child into my mind, because in high class high pressure families, children often don't have the opportunity to form rivalries with outsiders because they're often fighting for attention and assets within their own families. If she does have any siblings, she's likely the oldest child and her parents' uncontested favorite, inheriting their assets and their legacy and all the pressure that came along with it. She appears to be have been a student in the oracle track. We all know that the track with the most potential is the abominations track, so for Mrs. Blight to be in a different track, I suspect she was quite the prodigy in oracle magic. She's almost certainly part of the emperor's coven. Mrs. Blight seems extraordinarily cold, calculated, and cruel. That satisfied smirk on her face during the flashback in Young Blood Old Souls, the lengths she goes through to control her youngest daughter in particular, the threats she made in Understanding Willow against a five year old she didn't even know? Mrs. Blight is cold and ambitious and fits right in with the emperor's coven. And while I have no doubt that for such a high status woman to be in the Oracle Track rather than the Abominations Track she must have been quite the prodigy, Mrs. Blight most likely wouldn't have gone into the Oracle Coven no matter how skilled she is in the subject because she needs to keep her status. She's almost certainly part of the Emperor's Coven, I believe. She's likely always stood out. Always been very impressive, very ambitious, very visible and in the public eye throughout her life judging by the way she carries herself. 

I don't think she loves anyone in her family. I feel like she and Mr. Blight were clearly pushed together from a young age and it was more a marriage of convenience than anything else. Two high class ambitious children paired up purely for their wealth and status. Her willingness to abuse and manipulate and hurt her youngest daughter makes me believe Mrs. Blight doesn't have a natural motherly love for her children. In fact, from what little we've seen from Mrs. Blight, it seems entirely possible that she may even have a personality disorder of some sort- specifically Npd. One of the biggest causes of narcissism is suffering from previous parental abuse of some sort, and judging from her treatment of her own daughter, it is very probable that Mrs. Blight may not have had amazing parents herself. Mrs. Blight seems to view herself as incredibly important judging by how she forced her daughter to dye her hair to look more like her and from how she talks down to those she thinks are 'below' herself. She's the type to take advantage of other's to get what she wants. She's cold and manipulative and self centered from everything we've seen of her. And she seems to do this very dangerous thing that's seen in a lot of abusers with npd where she speaks gently and with a smile towards her victim while manipulating and abusing them. As is common in narcissistic parenting, her children take on the Golden Child/Scapegoat roles with one child being seen as 'perfect' and are endlessly coddled while the other child is hurt and belittled and abused. This happens partially when the parent unconsciously projects onto their golden child, using them to reflect back their own ego, and partially as a conscience tactic to turn the children against one another, sparking rivalry and resentment and making it less likely for their scapegoat child's abuse to be taken seriously because their golden child isn't being hurt in the same way and isn't inclined to side with the abusive parent over their sibling. We can see something similar to this sort of dynamic among the current Blight siblings (Amity is literally a textbook scapegoat), adding more fuel to the possibility that Mrs. Blight may very well be narcissistic.

Mr. Blight: He seems like the less dominant personality between himself and his wife. In the small glimpse we see of him in that flashback, he's slightly slouched with messier hair than his wife and a disinterested expression. He appears to be mostly unconcerned with what's going on wheras his Mrs. Blight sits up straight gazing smugly at the scene in front of her. 

When we see the two in Understanding Willow, Mrs. Blight clearly leads the conversation with Amity, and their children all take on Mrs. Blight's hair color instead of their father's, even Amity, who was born with brown hair. The family pressuring their youngest daughter into dying her hair Mrs. Blight's color makes me think that Mr. Blight likely comes from a slightly less influential background from his wife. I believe he likely comes from a family that, while powerful, is less so than his wife's. He seems no stranger to high expectations. Mr. Blight was in the abominations track, the track which offers the best opportunities and seems to be held in a high esteem. In Understanding Willow he was also the one who brought up how Blight's only associate with powerful witches, and of course he was deemed of a high enough social standing to be an acceptable match to Mrs. Blight, who I read as being the heir to a very influential family. I do believe that Mr. Blight likely has siblings, though, or at the very least cousins on both sides who may be able to carry the family legacy. I say this because he can afford not to be as ambitious or perfectionistic as his wife. As I pointed out early, he's slouched over and appears disinterested in the small flashback we see him in,  and unlike with Mrs. Blight, Dana hasn't really mentioned anything about him or his past such as rivalries with other characters. I theorize that he was likely expected to do well and not embarrass his family, but that he had older or more promising siblings to carry their family legacy and thus wasn't saddled with as many expectations as his wife would be. I personally believe he's most likely in the abominations coven. This is in line with his upbringing as I picture it, him doing well for himself as there are clearly great opportunities within the coven and being part of it, especially if placed in a high rank, would be acceptable of someone with his stature, however as he was likely never faced with the same pressure as his wife and hasn't truly shown the signs of ambition she has, he saw no need to overachieve and may not have aimed for the Emperor's Coven like I believe his wife did. Overall, I doubt he's overly ambitious. He doesn't show the signs of a manipulative, overly callous, perfectionistic, or egotistical personality that he wife does leading me to believe he's in the category of "slightly above average, nothing special but satisfactory for his status". Mr. Blight clearly isn't a good parent, though. He was very cold towards his daughter in Understanding Willow, and while he didn't give me quite as bad of a feeling as his wife did, Mr. Blight certainly shared in her dissatisfaction. We haven't heard much evidence that he's overtly abusive to the same extent his wife is (in fact, we don't hear much about Mr. Blight at all except for him sitting next to or backing up his wife whenever she's being mildly interesting), however from what we've seen from him he's certainly not a very good parent either. I feel as if he's likely just mostly detached from his family. He'll monitor that they're achieving the appropriate amount and fulfilling the expectations that befall someone of their class and influence and voice his disapproval when they aren't, but mostly just kinda ignores his children, leaving them to their own devices or for their mother to deal with in any way she sees fit. This is reminiscent of the way I previously stated he was likely raised. Where he was expected to handle himself the way he ought to and not embarrass his family, and as long as he was satisfactory he will have been left alone in favor of his older or more ambitious siblings. He seems like the type of person who faced neglect as a child and is, as a result, generally cold and detached from those around him. It's possible that Mr. Blight, unlike his wife, is capable of love and does love his children, but that his own upbringing where he wasn't given much if any attention prevents him from being a good parent. He likely won't feel the need to pay any attention to the oldest two because their performance is satisfactory and he never learned how to give positive attention. "They're fulfilling our expectations, they haven't done anything wrong, why would I need to acknowledge them?" because from the way he handles himself I suspect his own parents wouldn't have much to say to him either unless he'd messed up (rich influential people are never good parents tbh, especially not in a classist dictatorship like the one they live in). On the other hand, he's likely mildly abusive towards his youngest. Not to the extent that Mrs. Blight is, but he won't be any stranger to weaponizing neglect and aiming cold disapproval towards his youngest when she 'acts inappropriately' as she's been known to, and of course he has been shown to back up his wife in her high expectations and abusive behaviors. 

I don't believe there's a specific mental health problem we can definitively attribute his behavior to (unlike how I said Mrs. Blight seems suspiciously similar to someone with Npd from what we've seen of her so far). Maybe Schizoid Personality Disorder because he seems very cold and detached from what i've seen so far and I believe he likely had an upbringing that was very much lacking in warmth and praise from his family.

(note that it's entirely possible neither of them will fully fit the criteria for the disorders I mentioned. Some people don't fit any specific disorder even if they are abusive and do have a specific cause for said behavior, i'm just using these disorders as a reference point for any of you who want to look more deeply into the kind of behaviors and backgrounds i'm suggesting for the two as my current interpretations and theories for how they were raised and who they are and how they treat their families fall in line with narcisistic personality disorder and schizoid personality disorder respectively)

Okay, now onto the characters we've actually seen more of and know more about!!!

Emira Blight: I know this goes against the trickster archetype Em and Ed both fit into, however I think she's by far the most traditionally impressive of the Blight siblings. I think she's certainly the most in line with family expectations. Emira is clearly a very talented person. She's very good with illusion magic and canonically gets high test scores even despite skipping classes. She's highly intelligent, and even moreso, she's very charismatic. Emira is clearly the leader between herself and her brother. She seems to be very convincing, can encourage other people (like when she got amity to use that fire spell to save them in episode 12 despite how she 'didn't actually think you could do it'),  and doesn't have much issue telling other's what to do (again, thinking back to episode 12 when emira kept ordering her brother around). That’s not even mentioning how easily she drew Luz in back during episode 7.

 On top of that, she isn't exactly the best person. I know everyone loves Emira. Hell even I love Emira, don't get me wrong. And I don't think she's purposefully a bad person. However she can be very cold and cruel, unempathetic and unapologetic. Again, Emira is very much CAPABLE of love and empathy, however it's clear that she often can't express these feelings or possibly has a weaker sense of empathy than other's do as a result of her parents own skewed morality. It's very clear that Emira has some sense of ambition too. This is revealed by her worst fear being stuck with Ed forever (it's very possible and assumed by most people that Em was lying about this fear but i personally find the implications that come with the possibility that she was being at least semi-truthful wayyy too interesting not to analyze that possibility.) I mean, if she wasn't lying about her worst fear, that has such big implications for her character. It's very obvious that Emira loves her brother very much and that the two are extremely close. She may say mean things to him sometimes because Emira's sense of empathy has been poorly developed (again, I don't think she's incapable of empathy at all, however as I said before, I really don't think she's had the opportunity to properly develop her natural empathy which is why her moral compass is so skewed), but Emira clearly does love her brother nonetheless and enjoy spending time with him. So why would her biggest fear be being stuck with him forever? Well, they're twins. They were conceived together and born together and raised together and still to this day spend all their time together. And twins who look as similar as these two do and spend as much time together as these two do aren't always viewed as individuals. Ed and Em are, in many people's eyes, just Ed and Em. A pair, a duo, permanently solidified as being one in the same. And this kind of thing is fine for some people. But Emira is intelligent and charismatic and talented. Emira could probably achieve any goal she could ever have in life. Given who her parents are and the kind of pressure they put on their kids, Emira probably very much has big ambitions. And for someone with big ambitions that she very much could achieve, being seen as "half of a pair" could easily grow very very tiring and very very concerning. Overall, I think Emira reminds me very much of her mother, and I feel like she's probably the 'favorite' child among her parents. It makes a lot of sense that their mother would grab onto Emira as a projection of herself. After all, Em looks a lot like her mother with gold hair, green eyes, and a small nose. Literally just like her mother even down to being the same gender. And personality wise they're both intelligent, both talented over-achievers, both not too caught up with morality. I feel like Emira and her mother are likely very close on the basis of Emira being absolutely perfect for the role of her mother's golden child. And I can't help but wonder if Em wants to join the emperor's coven. I mean, i'm fairly sure their mother is in it and if she's using Emira as a projection of herself, she'd want Em to follow in her footsteps, surely? Especially since the Emperor's Coven is the absolute highest coven a witch can join. That would explain why she learned that one fire spell too (i mean, amity would want to know it cause she's got a natural love of learning like the nerd she is, but emira clearly isn't all that invested in learning if her skipping classes and mocking the idea of  hanging out in the library is anything to go by, so i can't see em learning any magic she doesn't /need/ to know, and unless her plan in life was to join the emperor's coven, she wouldn't need to know anything not illusion based). I can't imagine Emira is as close to her father as she is to her mother just based off the differences in the two's personalities, but she'd certainly receive preferential treatment from him over her younger sister as well just off the basis of fitting better into the family's ideals. Again, I believe he's very distant in general and not one to offer much affection, but any praise he does give will likely be directed towards Emira (*maybe* ed too *sometimes* but praise from their father likely isn't a very common thing so while I don't think ed is really mistreated by their father, he still may not get very much affection just cause that's how their father is). And as for Emira's feelings towards her siblings? She definitely thinks of herself as being 'above' her siblings. Being better than them and this is probably because their parents think she's better than them. She's very close to Ed and loves him very much, so her feelings of superiority over him on account of being their parents' favorite definitely takes form in protective instincts when it comes to her relationship with Edric. She feels the need to guide and defend him, taking on a leadership role and creating a minor power dynamic in Emira's favor within their relationship in the process. Emira's relationship with Amity, on the other hand, is much worse than Ed and Em's relationship. In my opinion there's no question Amity takes on the 'scapegoat' role in their family dynamic, facing the brunt of their parents' abuse, which is likely the cause of Emira's distasteful behavior towards her younger sister. To quote an article I read, "Sometimes the ‘golden child’ is not so benign, and more often than not will take great pleasure in supporting the narcissistic parent in destroying the scapegoat child’s confidence and self- esteem." , because when a child with a relatively positive relationship to their parents sees their sibling being abused and gaslit by those same parents, they often grow to be on their parents' side and believe that the other child did deserve it or that they are lying about how bad things were. Emira Blight watched her sister be mistreated from a young age and when her parents said Amity deserved it...Emira believed them. To quote that article again, "The golden child learns very quickly that to gain the narcissistic parent’s approval, one must behave in this un-empathetic, judgemental, disgusting way. If they behave like the scapegoat, (concerned, empathetic, and loving) they will be treated like the scapegoat. The narcissistic golden child refuses to stand in the corner with the scapegoated child and have stones thrown at them. Instead, they unconsciously decide that one will fare better in this family system, and may even gain some approval, or feigned love and support if they take on the role of psycho bully." I mean, what normal functional human being thinks publishing their baby sister's diary all over school is a reasonable response to getting tattled on?

 Emira is a golden child. She herself isn't a narcissist in the same way her mother is, we see very clearly that Emira does have the capacity to love and empathize with people, even if her moral compass has been skewed by her awful parents, however her moral compass HAS most definitely been skewed, and Emira DOES participate in the abuse of her younger sister.

Edric Blight: Edric, like his twin sister, is very talented. He has high test scores, good grades, and is very talented in illusions. I will admit he's not quite as intelligent in the traditional sense, not quite as ambitious, etc. Overall Edric isn't quite as perfectly suited to his family's ideals, and whats more, he seems to have more capacity for empathy than Emira does. His moral compass is still skewed, don't get me wrong, but it isn't because he doesn't care when he upsets people, it seems more like he doesn't really realize when he does something hurtful. Edric seems like he just wants to have fun overall. He does what seems entertaining in the moment without putting much thought into what he's actually doing and the possible complications that can arise from his actions. Edric is impulsive and doesn't fully understand social cues and so he doesn't really get it when he does something wrong. I feel like this is probably, at least in part, due to his heavy reliance on Emira. She's charismatic, intelligent, etc, at luckily for Edric they're a pair. Edric never really needed to rely on his own common sense because Emira is the leader in their dynamic. She makes the choices for both of them and Edric just kinda follows along without really thinking about it. Edric can't really function on his own.

 Tbh I think that plays into his worst fear of being alone. He needs someone else there to guide him because Edric  never needed to think or act on his own. I actually feel like his dynamic with Emira is what saved him from being a target of their parents abuse and put him in the 'golden child' role instead of the 'scapegoat' role. He's a good person, but his obedience and compliance outweighs that. He does what he's told to do by his sister or by his parents and he doesn't stop to think about or object to it. That's what keeps him from being a target of his parents, he doesn't question his mother or her delusions and by nature of just how much time he spends with Emira and how reliant he is on her, they've become functionally one entity in the eyes on many people, which makes Edric look satisfactory in his parents' eyes when he otherwise may not be. He gets good enough grades not to be a problem, he's compliant enough not to be a problem, Edric isn't a problem, he doesn't challenge his mother's delusions and managed to incite the protective instincts of his twin sister by emotionally clinging to her like he did. And i'm not sure if this is intentional or not. I mean, he won't have done this consciously no matter what, but I wonder if there was a subconscious motivation to become so reliant on her as a survival strategy living in the environment they do or if the protection it lends him is just a convenient result of their closeness. Either way, I feel like Ed literally can't survive without Em. She's his shield against being targeted by their family and his guide through navigating the rest of the world. He's really got no capacity for independence. I feel like Edric is headed for the Emperor's Coven too simply because I think Emira is. As I established before, he cannot function without his sister's guidance,  Ed wouldn't be able to handle being in a different coven from her. And of course their parents would probably want him to join the Emperor's Coven because that's the highest honor a witch can have, right? And he's got enough blind obedience and magical talent to be a member. He likely won't reach any position of influence due to his lack of leadership skills or true critical thinking abilities, but there's no reason Edric wouldn't be able to at least get into the coven. I feel like Edric's relationship with their parents is very similar to Emira's. He's adored and praised by their mother because he subconsciously managed to camouflage his way into the role of a golden child. This is reflected both in how Amity said most people saw BOTH Ed and Em as "perfect" and with how Edric calls their mother "mom" instead of going with more formal terms, which I kinda...can't see their younger sister doing with their parents. Again, like with Emira, I feel like he'll have a less close but not bad relationship with their father. Ed and Em will likely see their father as the type who's a little distant and has trouble expressing himself but still loves them and is a good dad in the end. Because Ed and Em don't have the same experience as their sister does. They won't be talked down to by their father, he won't weaponize his coldness against them, Ed and Em may even get an occasional pat on the head from their father when they do something particularly impressive because they're the golden children and are 'perfect' in the eyes of their parents. I also find Edric's relationship with his younger sister interesting though. He's not a bad person, his sense of empathy is dampened because he doesn't UNDERSTAND when he hurts people, not because he doesn't have the full capacity to CARE when he hurts people. When he's mean to Amity it isn't because he's cruel or callous, he's just messing around and doesn't realize he's going too far because his understanding of the world is almost entirely based around Emira, and if she doesn't think they're doing anything wrong, surely they aren't. Ed's just trying to have fun, really, and he thinks that Em's motives and feelings on the matter are the same, not realizing she's got slightly more malicious intentions than he does. That's the difference between Ed and Em in their relationship with their sister. He really is just messing around and trying to tease without realizing how cruel it can be.

 Edric doesn't realize he's hurting anyone and isn't trying to be malicious whatsoever while Em is very aware that her actions are hurtful and does them maliciously, she just doesn't grasp how morally fucked up that is because she's got awful parents who think abuse is perfectly okay.

Amity Blight: And then there's Amity. She's clearly the scapegoat of the family, there's no question there, really. And it's pretty clear why she was picked for that role. Well, actually, there are two reasons. The first being birth order. Ed and Em were born first and already had claim on the "golden child" role by looking so much like their mother and seeming so pliable to her will. And, well, narcissists often do need somebody to lash out towards, and that next born child is a perfect target. Especially given Amity's auburn hair was a clear source of displeasure to their mother. It's only natural that Amity be the immediate scapegoat.  And there's a third reason she STAYED the scapegoat. To quote an article I read, "The scapegoat has the empathy gene, and they know how to love. They can put themselves in someone else’s shoes, and feel their pain. This ability to feel the internal pain of others is what drives them to speak up about the abuse from the narcissistic parent towards both the ‘golden child,’ and themselves. It is not clear as to why the scapegoat child is more sensitive to the feelings of others and has more empathy.". That's why she continued to be the scapegoat throughout her life. Because Amity Blight has ALWAYS had very strong morals. At a young age we see her befriend Willow and acknowledge Boscha and Skara as "mean", showing that even as a little kid, Amity didn't have the same moral handicap as her older siblings and parents. We see even at the beginning of the show that Amity has a very strong sense of integrity. That she doesn't lie or cheat and, that she hated Luz for cheating, hell she even canonically lost all her respect for Lilith when Lilith cheated, which is a very strong sign of morals. We see, once again in early episodes BEFORE befriending Luz, that Amity regrets coming across and cold towards Luz, who she thought was a bad person at the time. For fucks sake, she even happily reads to little kids in her free time. 

Amity has a very strong expression of that 'empathy gene' scapegoats often portray. I mean, hell, i'm always going on and on and on about how Amity's strongest trait is her integrity, right? Well, "The scapegoat has integrity. They never back down on this integrity" according to an article I read. And it's just painfully fitting of Amity. Another thing that's VERY common of scapegoats is that they will often publicly question their parents. they consciously reject the narcissistic parents beliefs and values. They question the narcissist. They decide to treat people respectfully whenever possible and hold a clear distaste for their family's behavior. We see Amity do just this. When her parents told her to stop being friends with Willow her first response to their classist bs was basically "hell no" until she was literally forced to do as she was told. She expresses a desire to "have somewhere to go", she blatantly goes against her family's will by befriending Luz and Willow, she was certainly disobeying by discarding Boscha as a friend. Amity's got the clear awareness that her family sucks and that too is a scapegoat trait. Amity's one biggest flaw that makes her a target in her family is her capacity for empathy and integrity and respect. Her refusal to play into her family's delusions when she doesn't have to. Common beliefs that scapegoated children face include the idea that there's something disgusting about their physical appearance (Amity dyes her hair because her mother made her feel so awful about her natural color), that if they aren't being productive they're worthless (Amity's obsession with working hard and being the best is obviously very unhealthy, look at her behavior in I Was A Teenage Abomination, that was a fucking MELTDOWN.), that if they disagree with those around them they'll be rejected and exiled (She let Boscha and her gang pick on Willow despite the fact that Amity herself clearly didn't enjoy it because she was scared to openly disagree and I think it's pretty obvious where she learned to be so compliant from), etc. Out of everyone in her family, I feel like Amity will have the worst dynamic with her mother. Ed and Em may be abusive siblings due to their positions as "golden children" and her father may be cold and controlling, but honestly I don't think anything can compare to how horrific narcissistic parents are. Her mother will likely belittle her constantly with awful verbal insults and constantly raising expectations that she can never fully meet. Of course narcissistic parents are also master manipulators. Look back at Understanding Willow where this awful woman spoke so pleasantly, as if she wasn't being abusive and awful. I have no doubt this woman will absolutely try to gaslight her daughter nonstop and convince her that she deserves to be abused. Which is just horrible. Amity's father, on the other hand, I feel, will likely be much more straightforward. He'll be much colder in general than his wife, but that's honestly a good thing with abusive parents because he probably won't be as obsessive in his gaslighting or as trying to come across as a loving parent. He's abusive but at least he'll keep their interactions short and professional. Then there's Ed and Em. They seem to have this inability to empathize with the intensity of the pain and abuse their sister's put through. If they could they'd stand up for their sister or at the very least they wouldn't partake in the abuse themselves. "most of the narcissist’s children turn a blind eye, look the other way, and allow for the scapegoated child to get pecked and pecked and pecked, until there is literally no soul left to peck at.", and of course these parents will convince the golden child(ren) that the scapegoat deserves to be abused or even that they're lying/exaggerating. That they're unhinged, mentally ill, overly emotional, manipulative liars, etc, and if this sort of thing is happening in the Blight household (which I don't doubt), then that's probably one of the big reasons Edric and Emira are so cruel to their sister. 

I mean, I can’t help but feel like their lines of “It’s for her own good” and “She needs this” to try and convince Luz that posting Amity’s diary all over school was appropriate behavior...sounded a lot like a gaslighting parent. In fact, so did their annoyance when Amity got upset at them for reading her diary, the way they kinda brushed it off and said “Looks like mittens killed the fun- again.” as if they didn’t just hurt their sister. And it’s really no question who they got that kind of behavior from.

[illfoandillfie]

Happy end of May and start of June! Thank you so much for my reading last month! June is my birthday month (sun Gemini, moon and rising scorpio if that helps). And I’d love a heart compass reading with the gravity falls tarot deck and whatever Oracle deck you think fits best with it or whichever one you want. I’m not picky. I just love gravity falls. 🥰 you’re amazing for doing these!

Oh happy birthday for later this month! Also I’m SO GLAD you asked for the gravity falls deck lmao i love that show soooooo much and i never really use the deck cause it’s only the major arcana (and i tend to avoid fandomy decks if people don’t ask for them) but it works well for this type of reading since you only need a couple of tarot cards

Okay so the heart compass spread is about a situation that is effecting you at the moment, as it pertains to your heart. The first card is asking about what the situation is and you got the High Priestess. There’s a couple of ways I can interpret this so take whatever resonates most. Firstly, the high priestess is related to intuition and mystery and the future as yet unrevealed. This could be an indication that what is currently effecting you most is a feeling of uncertainty regarding your future - be it a specific area (work/school/love/etc)or just general anxiety about where you’re headed. But the high priestess also symbolises knowledge, intelligence, wisdom and education. Idk if you’re in college or working or whatever but it could be related to the studies you’ve done/are doing or ones you’re thinking of taking up. If you’ve been considering a change in career path or about furthering your education in some way - getting the next level of degree or learning a new skill like life drawing or a language, etc. 

The second card is how you’re feeling about the situation and you got the Star which is good because the star is all about hope! There might be uncertainty involved but overall you’re hopeful about where you’re headed and the situation as a whole. In the tarot deck, the star comes after the tower so it’s a card of rebuilding and the first light after darkness. You know everything isn’t perfect but there’s faith that one day your situation will be close to perfect, or at least happy and where you want to be. 

For your oracles I chose to pull cards from the Numerology deck because they each have a clear meaning and the four oracles are meant to be words that go with the situation. I’ll talk about how I see them connecting but you may pick up connections I don’t since you’ll (hopefully lmao) have a better understanding of what the reading is referring to. You got: Completion, Healing, Teaching and Learning, Personal Growth.

First off, teaching and learning obviously ties in quite closely with that high priestess and her connection to knowledge and education. This could be a case of you as student or teacher. Personal Growth can also relate to that idea of wisdom and education - everything we do in life can serve as a lesson of some sort - and this situation may relate to a desire for more experience in a particular area. The High Priestess is also traditionally a keeper of knowledge and so it may be a case of seeking out something that will further your understanding of yourself or your work or another aspect of life. Healing and Completion are a little harder to connect, but again, they may mean something to you that I’m not seeing. Completion may indicate that something involved in this situation is coming to an end and it’s interesting we got it and also the star which is like the first steps of a rebuilding cycle. This could also be where healing comes into it - if you’ve had a bit of a hard patch or been effected by illness, healing combined with the star could be a sign things are going to pick up again soon. It could also indicate that whatever knowledge you gain and whatever personal growth you achieve in relation to this situation will help you heal from your past. 

[readingsbylibramc]

birth chart reading for @goryglory19

hello! welcome to your reading. I’m gonna give you a quick overview of what I’m going to analyze about your natal chart. feel free to ask me anything if something isn’t clear, of course. you’ll find out your dominants’ influence on your persona, your physical appearance, impression on others and the way you approach the world; your ego, identity, the real you; your reactions, your desires, inner emotions; your way of expressing your feelings, your mind and ideas; your desires and approach to love; your energy tank, instincts and temperament; in-depth analysis of each house with their rulers and analysis of heavy aspects; love life + soulmates/karmic partners interpretation; your relationship with your friends; your family life; your approach to career and work in general + possible jobs suggestion; your style, fashion sense analysis; life purpose and past life description; basic transits’ analysis to describe your current mood and, last but not least, your secret skills, how to make the most out of your soul and manifest what you desire based on your birth chart.

🦋 chart shape, dominants

your chart is a locomotive shape. this means that you're a very ambitious person, with a lot of energy. pluto has a big influence on you, and your life revolves around understanding your feelings, transformation and emotional growth. the empty part of your life is what you have to develop, hence your family, financial life, your self-esteem and also your communication and thinking style.

your dominant planets are the sun, mars and jupiter. you are definitely a very charismatic person, it's easy for you to draw attention to you as you have a strong presence. you probably have a very bubbly personality, but you are also quite competitive and motivated to achieve your goals.

your dominant sign is aries. you may have a reputation for being impulsive and straight-forward. you don't like beating around the bush, especially when people purposely get on your nerves. on the other hand, you're very loyal and generous when it comes to your loved ones. you're very opinionated, and you always wanna make sure that your voice is heard. you're proud of yourself.

your dominant element is fire. you have a warm heart, even though it may be covered by your confidence and independence. in fact, you always strive for the first place. people may be intimidated by your presence, as you're a serious competitor. thanks to this competitive nature of yours you may be very positive and optimistic, making you a good and supportive friend/partner.

🌎 ascendant in leo, 5° / 1st decan ruled by the sun

you’re an extremely confident and bright person, or at least you have a very strong aura around you that makes you look like you are. you have exceptional charisma and presence, in fact this is usually a celebrity placement! you surely don’t go overlooked. you naturally always try your best to make people feel at ease, and you mostly succeed thanks to your warmth, which makes you even more attractive. you probably like being recognized, and you may want to be famous. in fact, you like being in the spotlight and loaded with compliments and appreciation, they incredibly boost your self-confidence. your charisma may sometimes be too noticeable, resulting a bit dramatic; you may gesticulate a lot, imitate voices… basically, you would do amazing at acting, for example. in fact, most celebrities have a leo rising, or leo placements of any sort. you’re very playful, you most likely look younger than you are for your personality. you may also be a savage, and you’re most likely good at jokes of any kind. you appear as a very bubbly and outgoing person, yet you may be quite secretive. you don’t open up easily, especially about family / private matters. especially with your water influence, you’re very picky when it comes to trusting people. in addition, you’re a perfectionist; you care a lot about everything that revolves around you, from physical appearance to your job, you want it all to be perfect. that can cause you a lot of stress, as you always want to seem at your best state, you despise being seen as weak or unprepared. physically, all leos have beautiful hair. you may have curly, perhaps red or dark hair, or at least it’s very thick. you may also get tanned easily, an olive skin tone or any kind of warm undertones to your skin. you may have full, plump lips, or at least they have a defined cupid’s bow. you may also have pretty long eyelashes and big, watery eyes.

leo ascendant square taurus mars: you easily come off as more assertive and arrogant than you actually are. this manifests both in your face and in your words. you could say things impulsively, and sometimes you're too blunt and hurt people's feelings. you don't do it on purpose, though, there's no malice behind your acts; it's just your natural way to express your opinions. on the other hand, you probably have a very strong charisma to you that makes you look very captivating and bold. people see you as a leader, and hence they could get intimidated by your presence. to cope with this placement, you can try controlling yourself and your words before speaking. I'm aware that it's a way to vent your anger, but you can find another way that doesn't hurt others.

🌞 sun in pisces, 28° / 2nd decan ruled by neptune and pluto

this is the most intuitive pisces decan. you understand people’s thoughts just by looking at them, it’s like you’re staring at their souls. in fact, you’re extremely empathetic, you probably find yourself being a psychologist for your friends. or maybe, you’re actually a psychologist. you’re easy-going and you have great social skills; I don’t see you being extremely extroverted, but you don’t mind hanging out with your friends. you’re amazingly creative and imaginative, you have the ability to picture your ideas. this is an amazing talent, in fact most artists have pisces placements. the downside to pisces is that I’ve noticed that, since they know they’re vulnerable, they have the tendency to lie. they don’t do it out of cruelty of course, it’s a sort way to protect their ego. you could want to be seen as bolder than you are, hence you could struggle with identity crisis, especially during your teenage years. you have your own morals and beliefs, but you could feel influenced by others to change yours. luckily, this is something that gets better with time, as you start being more aware of your persona and you start loving yourself. you're most probably a very complex individual; after all, pisces is the most 'confusing' of all the signs. you're a sort of chameleon; you act differently based on where you are and who you're with. you could be a savage with someone, an introvert with someone else. you may even feel as if there's something wrong with your mind, as you just wish you could be like others. you should focus more on pisces' positive traits, though; you're extremely compassionate and considerate. you're emotionally intelligent, and this mutability of yours could make you succeed at many different jobs in your life, as it's very easy for you to adapt to and master new things. if you work hard, you can surely succeed in anything you want.

pisces sun square cancer jupiter: this is a hard aspect, which could make you feel even more proud of yourself due to your fire dominance. you may feel like the universe is constantly against you, especially with your pessimistic pisces sun. you may feel unlucky, or even overindulge in things you like to cope with sadness or anger. you may have the tendency to overeat, buy useless things etc. you go from having a low self-esteem, to even looking very bossy without even realizing it. you struggle to keep your identity balanced, even though you might have not been aware of it at first. to achieve fortune and joy in life, you need to work hard for it. to do so, you have to learn your karmic lessons in this lifetime, which probably revolve around family issue and their impact on your interactions with others.

🌙 moon in taurus, 19° / 2nd decan ruled by venus and mercury

the moon is exalted in taurus, so it's definitely a good placement! you're very peaceful, you try to avoid conflicts when you can. this placement makes you crave stability, whether it's financial, in love etc. you must be very stubborn, as taurus is a fixed sign. this placement, paired with your imaginative leo energy, makes you settle on making your ideas concrete, and it's very beneficial. it makes you capable of achieving any goals in your life. you're also very artsy, and you may fancy particular art styles. you have a good eye for aesthetics, and you care a lot about the looks of your house, body, clothes etc. you have excellent concentration, and that is another thing that helps you achieve your goals and make your ideas concrete. last but not least, you're amazingly patient, and that makes you a great friend. probably, they vent a lot of their worries to you, as you're also a great listener.

taurus moon conjunct taurus mars: you aim for greatness. this is where your strong desire to be the #1 comes from, pretty much. you're very proud of yourself, and you don't like to acknowledge your mistakes. you always want to look like you have your life together, even in certain moments when you feel lost. I would say that this is a sort of self-sabotaging mechanism, as you can literally go as far as forcing a smile if it shows the world that you can stand by yourself. overall, I would say you deal with your emotions in a very 'child-like' way; after all, mars is pretty self-centered. you tend to preserve yourself more, unless someone really special to you is involved. you're also very honest, you speak from your heart. while it's a positive trait, you may be too blunt and ruin your relationships because of that. you're both smart and fast, hence you may get annoyed when people mishear or misunderstand your words.

🗣 mercury in pisces, 10° / 2nd decan ruled by neptune and the moon

you have the potential to be very focused on something thanks to your taurus energy, but your heavy neptune influence may interfer in that. in fact, you probably lose yourself in your own thoughts very often, starting daydreaming instead of doing what you have to do. you’re very creative and artistic, and you’re also able to fully convey your emotions in your words, even though it may be perceived as confusing sometimes. that’s because not everyone is as empathetic as you are. on the other hand, you may have the tendency to lie, or just being confusing in any way. you may not always express what you want crystal clear, as you want to able to modify the story just in case you encounter some hardships. also, you never truly express your feelings, probably out of fear. probably, the way you elaborate your thoughts is also influenced by your family and the impact they had on you. you’re always vague, and you keep your private matters for yourself. pisces is a mutable sign, so you may also find yourself changing ideas often, your mind wanders from one thought to another. you are very intuitive, and you may even have some sort of psychic talent. you could do well at reading tarots, birth charts etc. your voice is probably naturally loud, it's hard not to listen to you. also, since your mercury is squaring pluto, you could be quite impulsive sometimes and say things you actually don't mean. you could argue often with others due to this trait of yours, you get defensive very easily. on the other hand, you most likely have a nice sense of humor at least.

pisces mercury square gemini saturn: this placement gives you limitations and lessons regarding the way you think and talk. it may be that you’re too shy to approach others and to say what you think, so you just don’t try. otherwise, if you actually take action and try to overcome this problem, you could get into trouble. that’s probably caused by the fact that you don’t really pay attention to your words. you’re quite straight-forward, and due to your fire energy you always seem as if you’re up for a fight. you may be particularly pessimistic, or maybe you lack confidence in social interactions due to these problems, which could be possibly caused by your parents, or perhaps interfer in your relationship with your family. in fact, you may argue quite often with others, and misunderstandings are also common. this is something that gets naturally better with time, but in order for it to happen you need to take action. you may for example start speaking with others more at work, anything that allows you to challenge your mind and voice, in order to make you gain experiences and become a master at it. many celebrities, once they mastered this hard aspect, got loads of success. you can do that too, you just need to work on it.

pisces mercury square sagittarius pluto: you may become a bit manipulative. you probably don’t even realize it, though, as you have the ability to make people do what you want them to do. you probably love being right, especially during arguments, and you always manage to be so thanks to your skills. your words are like knives for others, they can truly cut deep through their ego. you’re direct and blunt, as you just say what you have in mind with no filters. you can develop a provocative attitude without even realizing it, which can obviously cause you conflicts. you need to be more careful about how you communicate your ideas, otherwise you could seriously damage other people’s self-esteem. on the other hand, if you acknowledge your flaws and work on them, this can actually turn into diplomacy. take advantage of your interest in your inner self to find out how to be a bit more gentle in choosing your words.

❤️ venus in aries, 13° / 2nd decan ruled by mars and jupiter

with venus in aries, loving you is an adventure. you enjoy fun, exciting relationships. you're the type who's looking for a risktaker, even dangerous partner. you hate boredom, and this may be your weakness regarding this placement; that is, once the relationship starts getting more serious, you feel as if it's going down, when it's actually the opposite. hence, you just run towards a new adventure. this placement may even give you the reputation of being a player, but I don't think it's your case based on your others placements. you have to understand that relationships can get boring, but that's not necessarily a red flag. it just means you two are starting to feel comfortable together. you also enjoy physical contact, therefore cold partners are a no no for you. you need someone who's affectionate yet bold, and that would spoil you with attention and gifts. you enjoy the little things about love, such as remembering your anniversary or even giving you small presents, especially if they're homemade (like breakfast, poems etc.). you also try to avoid flaky people, as you don't like making relationships seem too light.

aries venus square cancer jupiter: you come off as a very positive, happy-go-lucky person. you're extremely friendly, and this makes you be good at social relationships. you may have lots of friends, or at least you have the potential to make many if you opened up and talked to them. yet, while this energy gives you positive vibes, some people may take advantage of that, as you could easily be mistaken for naive. people can try to dominate you unconsciously (sometimes even on purpose) not only in relationships but even in friendships. aside from that, I don't think this placement causes you many problems. you may have the tendency to procrastinate and not work. you could be quite lazy and get easily distracted, as you're constantly with your head in the cloud. yet, thanks to your taurus energy, you still manage to find some motivation to do your work.

💥 mars in taurus, 12° / 2nd decan ruled by venus and mercury

with taurus mars, you may actually despise working too much. you love challenging your mind, but you're kind of lazy. you'd rather stimulate yourself through your hobbies and interests rather than using school / work, which are quite stressful for you. you need to find something material and concrete to motivate you and make you assertive. you could study just because you need a good grade, or maybe work just to get paid. you don't really do it with interest, as you care more about nurturing your passions than responsibilities. you're not really into conflicts; you'd rather be peaceful with everyone, as you find it a waste time to argue with someone. most taurus mars tend to be quite passive, yet I don't think it's your case. I imagine that with your heavy aries and leo energy, you've got a hot temper. you may try to avoid conflicts, but once someone gets on your nerves it's over for them. you're very unpredictable from this point of view, it's hard to decipher you. you may be more verbally aggressive than physically, though.

🏡 houses

your 1st house is in leo. with this placement, you care a lot about your persona, both physically and also mentally too. yet, you may start feeling like you need to be perfect at all costs to be accepted, especially during your early years. for example, you may be the type to follow fashion trends to look cool, and you may subconsciously force yourself to like them. you need to understand that you should enhance your individuality, and ask yourself who you are. it’s not all about who you are outside, the inside matters even more. you’re free to stand out, but make sure that you do it in a comfortable way for you, or it will start becoming toxic as time goes by.

your 2nd house is in leo. your self-esteem depends on matters like money, possessions, as well as your influence on others. you may feel confident when you’re praised and spoiled with compliments and material things, you may enjoy being in the spotlight as it increases your self-confidence, even though you’re quite shy so you don’t feel very at ease. you feel confident when you’re able to earn money and you’re financially stable, and hence you probably felt guilty as a child to ask your parents for money for example. you probably love luxury, you aspire to become very wealthy, live in the house of your dreams, etc. you could also dream of becoming famous. and actually, with this placement, you could make money from leo-related matters, and hence being in the spotlight, creativity (especially theatre / drama), comedy, etc.

your 3rd house is in virgo. you’re very precise and polite in the way you express your thoughts. you’re probably very careful to grammar, vocabulary etc… you love looking and being knowledgeable. you’re more of a logical type rather than an intuitive person, you hardly ever do something only out of curiosity. you’re very cautious about the decisions you make, and hence it could take you some time to finally choose something, but that’s because you just don’t want to regret anything. you think deeply about your choices, and most of the time they turn out to be right. you’re strongly opinionated, but you may be a bit too harsh when you express your ideas. sometimes you could even hurt someone, as you’re extremely honest. you don’t like sugar-coating your words. you’re also very intelligent and hard-working, and you can’t stand messy things. you’re probably very neat, you like having schedules and you may even keep an agenda / diary where you keep track of your appointments and other things you have to do.

your 4th house is in libra. your physical home was probably very pleasant and beautiful; you may have a conventionally beautiful family, or at least they’re particularly attractive and charming. your house may also be very well-designed and elegant, doesn’t matter how big it is. you probably see your parents as ideal, they are your role models and you look up to them. perhaps, it could be that you felt misunderstood, maybe your parents were a bit materialistic or lacked empathy, but overall you had a great childhood, you have a good relationship with your parents and siblings if you have them. it could also be that you dated lots of people when you were a teen, or at least you had lots of friends. you certainly have lovely memories of your early years, and your parents most likely have a good relationship too.

your 5th house is in scorpio, with also your pluto being here. your hobbies most likely include self-expression of any kind, anything that you consider private is told through your creativity. also, with scorpio in this house, you may as well be attracted to darker hobbies like astrology, tarots… possibly, you may be into thriller or even into horror. you may also like psychology, criminology… this type of things that are able to stimulate your mind in some way. you could possibly want to be a risk-taker, deep down. also, you want to become a master in what you like, and hence you tend to go extreme to become perfect. you may dedicate a lot of your spare time to your hobbies, for example, even if you have to work. your romantic relationships may be very intense, you could attract particularly jealous or even obsessive partners in your life. some of them may be painful, but they’ll be essential to become mature and grow up into a better, wiser person. in addition, I see you as the type of person who doesn’t like showing off their partner. you probably keep both your love interests and hobbies personal, you only talk a little about them to your close, trusted friends, especially with your pluto in this house that makes this energy even stronger.

your 6th house is in capricorn. usually, people with a capricorn 6th house are very responsible and work-oriented. they generally don’t leave much space to fun and amusement. you have a strong sense of duty, but thanks to your pisces influence you don’t overwork yourself. you’re able to find balance between work and hobbies, and that’s obviously great. yet, you may sometimes procrastinate in your day-to-day life. that can possibly cause you issues in your career; you may be indecisive about your future path for example, or you could even not be much precise in your work.

your 7th house is in aquarius, with also your neptune conjunct the descendant. you do like the idea of marriage and love, yet you need your space as well. you don’t want to feel committed in a relationship, it would be suffocating for you. that could make you appear as emotionally cold or detached, when you’re really not. you just care a lot about your personal growth, especially after your turbulent childhood. perhaps, you could even attract mentally unstable partners, they could be a bit moody for example. you may meet your future spouse in an unexpected situation, or perhaps you could meet them online through social media or a dating app. neptune is also here: you’re hopelessly romantic, to the point that you almost look naive. you’re not simply looking for a partner or spouse, you’re looking for a soulmate; someone you can literally communicate with just using your eyes, someone that knows how to make you feel even messier on the inside. you like to nurture and feel nurtured in a relationship. your ideal lover would be sensitive and empathetic, yet still with a sort of rebel vibe to them. this placement is indeed very lovely, but it has its downsides too, of course. the problem is, neptune makes you idealize your crushes/partners way too much, to the point that you create an image of someone in your head that turns out to be the opposite at the end. you ignore your partner’s flaws, as they seem perfect to you. neptune also attracts 'broken’ persons, so you may be prone to find yourself people with any kind of illness or addiction. you also have the tendency to fall for people who may hurt you because they’re unavailable, either physically or emotionally. you could possibly also crush on celebrities, movie characters etc. that’s because you’re more the type to fall in love with love, rather than with the actual person.

your 8th house is in aquarius, with also your mercury and uranus placed there. you could possibly have an unexpected yet barely painful death, or perhaps someone in your life has died / will die all of a sudden, you may often experience scenarios of this kind. possibly, you could even die due to electricity, and or at least it will be a very fast death, I don’t see it being violent or turbulent at all. or maybe, you’re surrounded by unpredictable events of loss of any kind in your life. that is, it could also happen with your money. it’s important not to risk too much with this placement, especially with gambling, or you may end up getting in serious problems. you’re fascinated by the occult, and you may even be/been able to talk to dead people. you’re very intuitive, and it’s easy for you to read through people’s words. you may as well have prophetic dreams. you're extremely blunt and straight-forward, you may actually hurt people with your words. you probably lack diplomacy, and you're very realistic. the thing is, you speak the truth, but not everyone can accept it. you speak fluent sarcasm, and that could annoy people who don't understand your sense of humor. you're probably good at lying, and even manipulating people. you may often make others change their mind just with your own words, but be careful not to use this skill to hurt others, or you'll only experience a sense of guilt and overall the bad sides of it. on the other hand, you're an extremely captivating speaker, you'd be successful at anything that involves the use of words and voice. you're truly intuitive, and it's easy for you to understand when someone is being honest or is lying to you. last but not least, you're very secretive as well. you're probably the type to know everything and anything about others, while you remain a mystery.

your 9th house is in pisces, with also your venus and the sun sitting there. this is definitely a nice placement! the result is that you’re probably extremely open-minded and imaginative. you hardly ever have have prejudices, you don’t judge a book by its cover. you’re extremely opinionated, and combined with your virgo 3rd house you’re constantly looking for the truth. you hate it when people say something wrong for example, you can’t help but correct them. you could also be religious and believe in a god. philosophy, literature and poetry are also a part of your many interests. in addition, you’re most likely also into foreign languages and cultures. you could travel a lot, or perhaps with your pisces in the house cusp you like travelling with your mind. you probably literally create stories in your head, you’re extremely imaginative. a good advice would be not to waste this talent of yours; you could actually make your fantasies concrete and express them through creative outlets: books, drawings, songs, choreographies… basically, it would be a waste to only keep them for you. you may also learn about more creative topics rather than school subjects. you may be the type that likes making new experiences regarding love, and you often date your crushes. yet, you feel too limited in a relationship. you don't enjoy committing to someone if that someone isn't perfect for you, you're only completely loyal to the one you consider your true love. you can't give up your freedom, your thirst for adventure and experiences for someone else. basically, your ideal partner would be a risk-taker, someone loyal but not too clingy, that is down to go on a road trip in every moment. someone impulsive, that could help you stepping out of your comfort-zone. you may also find yourself being attracted to unavailable people; that is, you could fall for people that are already taken, or maybe they're physically unavailable, e.g they live abroad or in another city in general.

your 10th house is in aries, with also your moon and mars conjunction placed here. with your 10th house cusp in the energetic sign of aries, you need a career that allows you to be independent, you probably prefer working alone than in groups. or perhaps, you actually aspire to become a boss, a ceo, someone people look up to, and if you work hard you may actually become an influential person in your work place / field. you aspire to be successful and you want to be wealthy thanks to yourself only, and you may actually develop some good luck in your career life. your future job may also require something related to physical action, and hence you may have to move a lot for your job, perhaps you may pursue acting to include something creative that also requires you to move. the sun here also makes you gain a reputation for being responsible and mature, you have a strong charisma and you probably seem very put-together to others. the moon here also points out that you'll feel emotionally connected to your job, you're a very hard-working person and you'll invest most of your efforts in your career.

your 11th house is in taurus, saturn is also placed in this house. you could possibly attract people with taurus traits, and hence your friends could be quite stubborn and possessive, but also very loyal and responsible. they could possibly be wealthy, and they could have some artistic, creative interest and / or talent just like you. you may have some trust issues, you’re careful about who you trust, and hence you’re quite cautious about who you befriend. your long-term goals include financial stability, you may be quite materialistic as you enjoy wealth. yet, I assume that thanks to your water placements you’re not as work-focused as other earth placements, you actually also value emotions and feelings too. I feel like you probably have very big goals and dreams that you want to come true. yet, it may take you a while to achieve them. with your heavy saturn and 10th house placements in your chart, you're probably have to work harder than others to get what you want, but you can be sure that once you put in the effort, the universe is going to repay you double.

your 12th house is in cancer, with also jupiter placed here. you’re an extremely spiritual and intuitive person. you may be attracted to dreams, religion, astrology, spirituality… anything that can wake you up, spiritually speaking. you may also be particularly talented at reading birth charts, tarots, even talking to spirits. you may have prophetic dreams, or you could even have deja-vus. the 12th house is also the house of fears, so having cancer here indicates that you may be afraid of your childhood, emotions, past memories. perhaps, even of your home environment or directly of your parents. it’s a part of your life that you’d rather keep secret. you may also have some escapism tendencies, such as oversleeping, overeating… or perhaps, you could easily develop addictions, so be careful to that, as you’re particularly sensitive to drugs, alcohol etc.

❤️ love life, soulmates

in love you attract capricorn, leo, virgo, scorpio and pisces placements and/or traits. your future spouse will most likely have leo and virgo traits or placements, maybe a leo-virgo cusp. they’ll be very similiar to you: secretive and hard-working, but also with a warm, loyal heart and a hidden insecurity to them. you may meet them at work, or perhaps even abroad. perhaps they could be foreign, or maybe you're going to meet them on vacation. your children will most likely have strong scorpio traits: they’ll be very smart and intense, but also very sensitive deep down. also, they’ll be extremely intelligent and more mature as time goes by. they’ll also have a tender side to them, but that is often overshadowed by their seriousness.

👶🏻 family life

your father is a very fiery, impulsive person, with a short-temper. he could have even been quite violent with you during your childhood, and he might have a bit of a childish behaviour, even though I don't really think it's your case thanks to your libra ic. deep down, he’s actually kind of insecure with his role as a father, but he may hate to admit it. he may have aries, cancer, libra or scorpio placements in his chart. your mother, on the other hand, is slightly more submissive. she’s mostly a peaceful and emotional person, even though she most probably has a passive-aggressive behaviour. she could be conventionally beautiful, or at least she likes taking care of herself. she may have libra or taurus placements in her chart, as well as pisces and capricorn. if you have siblings, they’re probably very peaceful and intelligent. they may also be very kind, as well as organized. their rooms probably look immaculate. they could have virgo or gemini placements in their charts.

📊 career

you’re a very ambitious person, and hence I don’t see you being the type to scrap projects. especially with your aries midheaven, you’re motivated to complete your works in order to show that you’re able to succeed, you want to be the best in what you do. I can also see you being a good therapist, psychologist, possibly even a doctor of any kind, even though I’d avoid practical and boring jobs if I were in you. your strong venus energy struggles to be cold-minded at times, and hence working in a stressful environment could be dangerous for you and for your mental health, as you may absorb others’ negativity and stress. actually, I feel like the most suited career for you would be something that allows you to be in charge, to be your own boss as you know what’s best for you. you may also do well with a creative career; you may become a writer, a dancer, a singer, a stylist, a model, an actress... anything that isn't too practical could be good to you, and if it allows you to express your creativity it's even better.

👚 fashion sense, style analysis

you probably love clothes that can show and enhance your body. you may love wearing crop tops, skirts, bralettes, shorts... anything that leaves a part of your body uncovered, yet that still looks elegant and classy. you could also enjoy baggy clothes, paired with fancy accessories and heels. for colors, you go from wearing bold colours like red, burgundy and neon, to darker shades like black, dark blue etc. you probably also love neutral shades, like kaki, beige and so on.

👁 past life, life purpose

in your past life time, you didn’t have a specific priority. you just enjoyed wandering with your mind and creativity, allowing yourself to relax with your friends. you used to depend on someone else, not really on yourself. this lifetime, you need to establish your independence AND solid boundaries, not just those you used to daydream about. don’t be afraid to let your inner child out; go to amusement parks, binge-watch netflix, date your crushes, have an hobby, play videogames… you could also play with actual children. anything that brings fun out of you, and that puts a genuine smile on your face. yet, don’t forget that this lifetime of yours revolves around accomplishing your goals.

🤔 major transits analysis / september 4

transit leo moon is currently in your 1st house conjunct your ascendant. you could be feeling particularly needy of affection in these days. you want to be around your loved ones but you're also particularly sensitive, therefore you could get angry easily and overall you're more impulsive, so beware of possible conflicts with others.

🧿 manifest what you want, secret skills

the best way for you to manifest is idealizing and acting at the same time. you have both energies combined in your chart, which is great actually! I’d suggest you to first picture what you want in your life, and then do something concrete to manifest it. for example, let’s suppose you want this gucci bag; first, think about it deeply. then, you could try going into a gucci shop and just walk around, maybe even touch that bag. you’ll get results if you believe it! it’s also great to write and read/listen your own positive affirmations, such as 'I love my gucci bag’, 'the gucci bag my mom gave me is amazing’ and so on.

this is the end! thank you again for booking a reading, hope it resonated with you :)

- libramc xx

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: Towers of Midnight ch 1

A wind passes through an apple orchard, and the world is changed.

Chapter 1: Apples First

Dragon chapter icon – does that mean we get to see Rand post-Dragonmount? I am… very curious.

Though apples in this story just make me think of Perrin, what with his entire family buried beneath the apple trees.

But first, the Wheel, and the wind.

Crisp and light, the wind danced

That’s a marked shift in tone from how the wind has been introduced in the last few books, as a darker and more violent or vicious force. It is entirely possible that I’m overthinking this. But the wind has always felt like something of a binding thread in the whole idea of ‘the Dragon is one with the land’ and it would be fitting for the wind to change as Rand does.

Then again, it does accelerate somewhat in the next paragraph or so.

Are we starting off in Seanchan? That wind sure does get around.

These were towers meant for war. By tradition they were unoccupied. How long that would last – how long tradition itself would be remembered in a continent in chaos – remained to be seen.

That’s an excellent line. It reminds me of another one from an introductory wind sequence: Trade slowed for winter and wars, and the Dragon Reborn, but it never really stopped, not until nations died. I’m not sure why, really; there’s not a huge amount of similarity there beyond an abstract concept of socioeconomics phrased in a particularly lovely way, but there you go.

Beyond that, though… how long tradition itself would be remembered in a continent of chaos is applied to Seanchan here, but it also touches on a rather central theme of the series overall: the tension between past and future, the weight of story and tradition, of myth and legend, against the inevitability of change and the passage of time.

The wind continued eastward, and soon it was playing with the masts of half-burned ships at the docks of Takisrom.

I like the contrast here between playfulness and violence, between caprice and destruction.

The Fields of Peace were aflame

Well that’s… an image. Okay. Damn.

Semirhage really did do her work well. She may be dead now but before she died, I think she made a pretty solid case for herself as one of the most effective Forsaken. Throwing an entire continent into utter chaos, even while helping that empire bring chaos to another continent? Driving Rand across the last of his own thresholds? You could even argue that her death was itself a triumph, because in pushing Rand to the point where he was willing to kill her, she achieved precisely what she needed to.

I mean, Moridin’s nihilism certainly played a role in Rand’s ‘none of it matters’ on Dragonmount, but Semirhage played a rather starring role in getting him there, and for that she deserves some villainous accolades in whatever terrace of hell she’s now decorating to her tastes.

Eventually, the wind encountered another continent, this one quiet, like a man holding his breath before he headsman’s axe fell.

Well. Depending on the exact timing of this – and I certainly have my guesses – that’s… exactly what’s happening. The land waiting, breath held, for the Dragon to decide its future. Salvation or destruction. And so of course the wind arrives to bear witness.

By the time the wind reached the enormous, broken-peaked mountain known as Dragonmount, it had lost much of its strength.

No, I’m not having emotions about wind, you’re having emotions about wind.

But…yes. Because by the time Rand reached Dragonmount, so had he, for all that he held more power than ever before (but power is not strength; the last several books have been a testament to that). Rand is the wind and the wind is Rand and the land is one with the Dragon and the wind both represents that and carries it outward and I just love how this is done.

I love how this sense is created of everything looking towards Dragonmount, and of this silence as the world holds its breath to learn its fate, as the whole dance that’s been spiralling out from Rand at its centre for so long now pauses, draws back towards that centre, and it all turns on the edge of a decision, a perspective, a single choice alone on a mountain that represents at once death and rebirth.

Hi, I’m Lia, and we’re like two pages in and not even done with the wind sequence and I’m already having a Situation about it. Anyway, what else is new?

An orchard of apple trees rather than a grove of olives at the base of Dragonmount. I mean. That works too.

Two figures stood there: a youth and a sombre man in his later years.

Tam? And Rand?

Oh wait no.

Hang on, Almen Bunt? As in, the NPC cart driver from all the way back in The Eye of the World? Wow. That’s some true dedication to conservation of characters right there.

The boy of thirteen had golden hair from his father’s side.

Uh oh, you’d better keep an eye on that one, Almen; sounds like a potential future protagonist and possible long-lost scion of a royal line you’ve got there.

And during the night, every single one of [the apple trees] had shed their fruit. Tiny apples, barely as large as a man’s thumb. Thousands of them. They’d shrivelled during the night, then fallen. An entire crop, gone.

Damn it Rand. (But also… how appropriate. Apples for innocence, and all of them lost).

‘I don’t know what to say, lads,’ Almen finally admitted.

I think in this situation, ‘…fuck’ would not be inappropriate.

So their storehouse looks about like a grocery store’s shelves during lockdown. No grain, no fresh fruit, probably no toilet paper.

Almen’s determined to make the best of it, but it’s hard to make the best of ‘cosmic shenanigans turned to possibly destroying the world with a stray thought because there really is only so much pain a person can stand and when that person happens to be tied to the fate of the world, things get a bit dicey’. But best of luck to you, Almen. Hold on a few minutes and things might get… better.

In all his years, he’d never seen anything like this. This was something evil.

And yet it’s caused by the one who is meant to be the champion of all that is good and bright in the world. He never turned to the Shadow, but with what he had become by the time he reached Dragonmount… he didn’t need to.

I like the way we see this, as well, not just by watching Rand directly in the latter half of TGS, but also in these brief thoughts and viewpoints of complete outsiders, who really don’t know what’s going on. I like that, from that perspective, there isn’t even any doubt. That it’s so obviously something evil, something wrong, something terrible. It serves to highlight just how far wrong everything had gone. Because watching Rand, book by book, you see it happening, but it’s slow. Gradual. So easy, a step at a time, to justify and understand. But then you take a step back and look through a pair of eyes with more distance and see only what he is now – or rather, what he was right before that realisation – and that realisation is terrifying.

The land is dying all around them and at the centre of it is the Dragon Reborn, who is one with the land and yet dying himself even as he lives. Who, at this point, no longer wants to live. And so the land obeys his will. It’s a slow suicide of a world because the weight of that world is too much for the one who has to carry it.

Staring down those neat, perfect rows of useless apple trees, Almen felt the crushing weight of it. Of trying to remain positive.

Rand your nihilism is contagious. Well. Moridin’s nihilism. Which sort of proves the ‘contagious’ point.

I like this as well, that Rand’s own despair is mirrored and echoed not just in the land, but in the people who inhabit it. Like a very slightly less literal wind; the wind is the land’s version of ‘something that reaches everywhere, far beyond where it originated’ and this despair – for now – is the more metaphorical.

This is it then, isn’t it? He thought, eyes toward the too-yellow grass below. The fight just ended.

Well. Yes, very possibly. But not quite in the way you might think.

This is so well done: the way you can tell precisely where we are in Veins of Gold by the thoughts and despair of a single farmer. The way it shows so clearly the reach of Rand’s… self? Effect? I can’t think of the right word, but it’s like how we see the wind brushing across Almen’s shirt, and now Rand’s despair brushing across his mind. Land and Dragon, and it’s all tied together.

Maybe it was time to let go.

He felt something on his neck. Warmth.

Oh no this is beautiful.

It just tracks so perfectly to Veins of Gold, and none of that even needs to be shown. And you can see the precise moment where that despair (‘none of this matters!’) turn to hope.  Which is entirely the point, in a way: it may just be one lonely broken hero on a mountain finally trading despair for hope, but it touches everything. He may be alone and unwitnessed, but the entire world feels it. The sun, the wind, a change.

And I think part of what I love about this is that it’s not dramatic. Neither the despair nor the warmth. Instead it’s this soft almost aching gentleness, because that’s all any of it is. It’s not a battle or a dramatic pronouncement or a cheering crowd or a display of power. It’s just… a thought. A shift.

A gentle warmth rather than a… well, a force of light, if you will.

Which serves as the perfect contrast, really, to one of Rand’s darkest (for all that it was blindingly bright) moments. At Natrin’s Barrow he shone with all the cold brilliance of the Light’s power bent on destruction; all light and nothing of warmth. Now, though, in the moment that truly matters, the moment where everything changes, it’s as simple as the sun emerging from behind the clouds, a warmth on the back of a farmer’s neck, a quiet, unseen but all-encompassing realisation that there is something left to fight for.

He hesitated, then turned weary eyes toward the sky. Sunlight bathed his face.

I just… I love that such a simple statement can carry so much weight behind it. It’s the mark of an extraordinarily well-crafted plot point, that this is all it takes to invoke all its effect, and to convey that effect so perfectly. We know what this means, and it’s neither subtle nor heavy-handed; it’s just… right.

And I still can’t get over how perfect it is that we’re seeing this through the eyes of an utterly random and otherwise unimportant character, because that’s the whole point. That’s what Rand, finally, realises he’s fighting for. The chance for people – any people, random people, villagers and farmers and merchants and monarchs alike – to just live. And so of course we see this through the eyes of, to borrow another chapter title, just another man. Because that’s all any of them are.

The apple trees were flowering.

Oh.

I’m.

This whole scene is just hitting the exact tone of gentle yet powerful beauty-in-simplicity, little-things-that-mean-everything that just gets me.

The apples fell and famine seemed certain and yet here they are, flowering once more, a second chance. A rebirth, if you will.

OH NO OH NO HERE HE IS I’M NOT READY FOR THIS

Almen spun to find a tall young man walking down out of the foothills.

Coming down from the mountain like a benevolent wind and bringing flowers with him like the Aiel and the Nym of old, bringing life back to the land like a goddamn messiah and it’s all done so gently and I’m fine.

‘Ho, stranger,’ Almen said.

I don’t even know why this gets me but it does. Stranger, and yet he is the centre of everything. The centre of everything, and yet at the end of the day he is just another man, another stranger.

It’s been a long time since Rand has walked unrecognised. Maybe that’s it.

‘Did you… did you get lost up in the foothills?’

Well. That’s one way to put it. But the point is: he found his way back.

Or his way forward.

Or something.

‘No. I’m not lost. Finally.’

I’m FINE, this is FINE.

Maybe what really gets me about this scene is that it’s hard to remember the last time there was a scene involving Rand that wasn’t overshadowed by pain and desperation. And now it’s… yes, the pain is still there on some level, but it’s like this weight has been lifted, and so the gentleness of this scene stands as a – well, not sharp because the whole point is it isn’t – contrast to everything that came before, and it’s only in the absence of that pain and despair that you realise how heavy it was.

‘There’s nothing back there of use.’

Except for everything.

‘There are always things of use around, if you look closely enough. You can’t stare at them too long. To learn but not be overwhelmed, that is the balance.’

Ah. And so at last he understands. The importance of balance, but also in this specific circumstance which, I think, is in reference to his memories of his life as Lews Therin.

Because at last, at long last, he has accepted those. He has learned to accept them without losing himself, without fear of losing himself, without feeling as if it is an existential struggle, as if he must keep a barrier between them, as if accepting those memories means accepting that fate.

But now he understands: that he can remember, and learn, but still move on, move forwards, grow. Try again, try differently. Have a second chance, informed by but not bound to the doom of the first. To be himself, but to accept the entirety of what that means. Who he was, who he is.

The man’s words… it seemed they were having two different conversations.

It’s okay, Almen, you get used to him.

Perhaps the lad wasn’t right in the head.

No, see, the thing is, he finally is.

‘Do I know you?’ Almen asked. Something about the young man was familiar.

‘Yes,’ the lad said.

Okay, I love this? On so many levels.

Because sure, there’s the literal: Almen has in fact met Rand before, and Rand answers honestly. And then there’s the next layer down: Rand is the Dragon Reborn and therefore known to most at this point, and he answers that honestly as well.

But then there’s this sense of something even more figurative, less tangible. The Dragon is one with the land, and Rand stands as the Light’s champion and the land personified and the centre of the fight and the wind that brings the apple trees to flower. He’s a part of the world and so Almen knows him, as all know him, as all will know him, even those who have never met and never will meet him.

And finally, I love that Almen has to ask. That there’s still this sense of anonymity, for all that it’s threaded through with a familiarity deeper than any acquaintance. That Almen looks at him first and sees a man, a lad, a stranger, rather than the Dragon Reborn: saviour and destroyer, rather than a monster or a madman or a force of nature. That they’re just two strangers in an orchard, and yet they’re not.

Honestly any kind of play on names and naming and identity gets me every time, and when you combine it with my other fictional love of the space between humanity and divinity and monstrosity, you get a very happy Lia.

‘Gather your people and collect those apples. They’ll be needed in the days to come.’

I mean, for projectile weapons you’d be better off sticking with Aludra’s fireworks, but sure.

‘Gather those apples quickly. My presence will hold him off for a time, I think, and whatever you take now should be safe from his touch.’

There’s just this almost startling and yet utterly peaceful sense of calm to him, that we haven’t seen since… honestly ever. Calm and accepting of who and what he is, and for the first time since he left the Two Rivers, not fighting himself in some way. And what a difference it makes.

It's also remarkable how differently it comes across compared to the icy emotionlessness he surrounded himself with after Semirhage. Because that, too, was conveyed as a perfect calm – but there was a wrongness there that’s lacking here. It’s only a few lines of dialogue, and yet it’s so clearly different.

‘I do know you,’ Almen said, remembering an odd pair of youths he had given a lift in his cart years ago. ‘Light! You’re him, aren’t you? The one they’re talking about?’

HE FINALLY REMEMBERS HIM AND IT’S AS THE BOY RAND AL’THOR FIRST, RATHER THAN THE DRAGON REBORN. I’m sorry, but everything about this just gets me. That for once, he is the person first, and the role second. That the true recognition is of a boy from a dusty road.

It's a lovely kind of irony – rather than cruel, for once – that it’s only after he truly comes into his power and accepts it and stops fighting himself and his role and everything he was and is, and is finally ready to face the world as the Dragon Reborn as the Dragon Reborn is meant to be, that he is at last recognised as human by a stranger who sees him.

Meeting those eyes, Almen felt a strange sense of peace.

Well that’s new. And a welcome change. How long has it been since people looked at him and felt anything but fear, or saw him as anything but dangerous?

‘It is likely,’ the man said. ‘Men are often speaking of me.’ He smiled, then turned and continued on his way down the path.

Peaceful and wise and making his way through the orchard like the wind, knowing and acknowledging but not forcing his place in the world. A force of nature still, but this is worlds away from ‘I am the storm’.

He just… is. And he understands that. And accepts it not begrudgingly, or out of duty, or despite the pain it causes, but entirely and unreservedly and with the understanding, at last, of why.

‘Where are you going?’

The man looked back with a faint grimace. ‘To do something I’ve been putting off. I doubt she will be pleased by what I tell her.’

I would bet actual money that means he’s going to see Egwene, and I had to laugh at how even this new wise, calm, peaceful Rand is fully recognisable as the boy from Emond’s Field in this moment. Because those two are never going to be anything but at least a little exasperated with one another at all times, and it’s such a perfect childhood-friends-turned-sweethearts-turned-basically-siblings dynamic and the faint grimace really sells it. (I would not be remotely surprised if there is name-calling. ‘Woolhead’ and ‘stubborn’ will likely be thrown around)

But it also serves as a reminder that, for all his newfound wisdom, Rand is still human. Which... even that little touch is perfect, in this scene. To ground him, just a little. I just love everything about this entire chapter.

Almen thought – for a moment – he could see something around the man. A lightness to he air, warped and bent.

WHERE ONCE THERE WAS DARKNESS. Because he is who he is meant to be now! The champion of the Light in truth! There is finally light to Rand, in more ways than one, and it’s really kind of surprisingly beautiful.

Everything is different, even if no one but Rand will understand why.

I still just love the way such an absolute change came not from a battle or a crown or a display of power, or even an achievement, but purely from… himself. So much played into creating that moment, yes, and so much was focused on it, but ultimately it was just Rand, alone on the mountain of his suicide and birthplace, coming to terms with himself and seeing something in the world worth saving.

And I’m struggling to express precisely why I like that, but I think it’s something about, I don’t know, the power of the individual, I suppose? The way something so existential can come from something as simple as acceptance? The way nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed, and the cause of it all is finding a purpose, a reason, a last decision to choose a chance at hope over the certainty of despair.

I mean, so much of epic fantasy is about the magic and the power and the politics and the battles, about everything taking place on a grand scale, about the fantastical. But sometimes you also get moments like this, where balanced against all of that you still see the importance of just… a person, and a choice.

Next (ToM ch 2) Previous (ToM prologue pt. 3)

[alazyamateurgamedev]

Inaugural Post

I’m going to ramble a bit about some basics of game design on a far too philosophical level, but I think it is something to consider if you are considering game design.   I end up feeling like this is something developers end up ignoring when they develop their games. For this particular rant, I’m going to focus mostly on video games, since by and large, they don’t have to involve other people, which makes the overall experience much different.  So as I refer to gaming below, think mostly of video games, but I also think it still applies to all kinds of game design.

First of all, games are, by my definition at least, a form of art.  This is at the core of a lot of my musings about gaming, and it supplies the main challenge in making something good.  Sure, they have an extremely technical requirement in terms of making it, but it is still basically a form of art.  I’m sure a lot of people who don’t get gaming would say “Oh its not art!”, but really the goal with a game is to achieve some sort of emotional response (IE Fun, joy, fear, etc) or possibly intellectual response (IE “Let me stop and think about this), and that is all I think any artist who is trying to achieve. In this particular case, I am defining an artist as anyone who creates some sort of creative work, and can include art, literature, music, movies, architecture, etc.  Medium is not important in this context.

Now, I am also going to focus on the idea that a game designer wants to try to a) Share their game with anyone interested and b) make money.  Now, there are many reasons to make art, and some of them don’t involve public exposure, for example, painting or drawing as a form of therapy.  If that is the case, this discussion isn’t targeted at you.  In completing your project, you have hopefully achieved what you wanted.  So if you are designing and building a game for some personal reason with no real intention of exposing it to the public, then this does not apply to you.  However, I presume most people who publish a video game are trying to achieve something else like making money, accolades of people, or just sharing something they think is fun.  The first two may seem self-serving, but I don’t think it is wrong.  You should get credit for the work you put into something.

Because it is a form of art, that makes creating something “Good” much, much more difficult.  In engineering, you can pretty often easily define “good”.    Your basic goal with a non-artistic product (say a refrigerator) is to make something that does what is expected (It keeps the inside cold at a fixed temperature), and mainly to do it for a profit.   So, you can define your general goals pretty easily, and then test against them to know “Hey I did a good job” or “It does a bad job”. Things like “Does the temperature stay constant while it is running?” “Does it stay on?” and “Do the doors fall off if I open them too much?” are all things you can define and test against.  This is a bit of an over-simplification, as the appearance of your fridge is quite important and subjective and also because it isn’t always easy to define what parameters are acceptable, or how to define the parameters, or how to test for them, but hopefully that doesn’t happen to you as an engineer, or if it does, that is why you are paid the big bucks.  

Now, this long-winded explanation leads to why gaming is hard to design.  At the core of almost any game is the idea that it should be “fun”. But it is extremely hard to define “Fun”.  What is fun? As a baby, sucking on your toes could be considered fun, but most of you probably do not consider it fun now.  Some people think hiking or running is fun, but I do not.  So fun is different to different people, and different to the same person at different times.  This means you have an impossible to define goal post when trying to design a game, at least from an engineering standpoint.  I bring this up, because this is probably why you see major AAA game publishers publish substandard products, and sometimes why you see Kickstarter funded games take 3 extra years to develop (more on Kickstarter in future rants). For a software company, the company’s goal is to make money, and so to make a profit, they will need to sell enough copies of the game to cover the cost to develop it.  Part of that cost basically boils down to time, since it costs money to pay employees, and the more time you take to develop a game, the more it costs the company, and the more copies they need to sell.  

This is just an educated guess (I’m lazy, so I’m not going to do any research on this, but I’m sure it exists), but I expect many of the “Terrible flops” were actually the company defining some sort of timeline for the game’s development that ended up not working out. They either skimped on Quality Assurance (QA, also known as testing) and the game didn’t work right, or they skimped on development, and so the gameplay just wasn’t good.  Sometimes, it is just a flawed design, and you figure that out too late, and you’ve already sunk a ton of money and time into the project and need to decide what to do about it.  Do you go forward with a crappy design or do you go ahead and release a substandard product in hopes that you can make some of your money back?  Most larger companies will choose the latter, because they need to stay in business.  A handful do not, and they are interesting cases:  Blizzard before they merged with Activision and Valve.  Both were notorious for not releasing games quickly, and I think you can see the polish in the Diablo and Warcraft (But not World of Warcraft) series, as well as the Half-Life series.  I made the possible mistake of playing Half-Life Alyx before any other VR game, and its beautifully defined controls have spoiled me as compared to other similar VR titles.  However, I’m pretty sure they worked on that for ages before releasing it as perfect as they could.  However, they have loads and loads of cash and can wait.  Looking at Cyberpunk 2077, to me that looked like they ran out of testing time, and thus why it was such a buggy launch, despite the delays, and they were forced to launch.  Finally, I expect the entire lack of tangible Diablo 4 news is because they think they are missing some major component to make it what they want it to be.

My overall point on all of this is that it can take time to develop something fun, especially something that can be as complex as a game.  And on top of that, a game has technical challenges that other forms of art do not.  Not only do you have to create a fun system, but you have to make it work, and do it in a visually and acoustically engaging way.  So not only do you have to make the Art, sounds, story, gameplay, but you also have to make sure it all works right.  There are some ‘shortcuts’ you can take, like using established game engines (Like the Unreal Engine or Unity) so you don’t have to invent from the ground up, but that both adds cost and a possibly restrictive framework to work in.  

Now, you are probably asking why am I rambling about all of this?  This goes back to what I was originally rambling about, which is why are you making a game.  You are probably aiming for your game to be well received, and either make some money off it, or at the very least, get good reviews and encouragement.  So my point is if you wish to be successful, please make sure your game is, at the core, fun.  If, after you make it, you look back on it and think “I would never play this.” Or “I’d be bored with this after two minutes”, you probably didn’t do a good job. Most of this blog will probably revolve around this idea of what is (and isn’t) fun, so I hope you’ll keep reading it. If you take anything away from it, I think you should aim to make a game that is fun to the audience you want it to be fun for, but just remember that the more restrictive your audience, the less successful game you probably will have, and really to make sure your game is, in fact, fun.  

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Nudge

Zuko gets Azula a therapy dog to help her cope with and recover from a battle with depression.

Azula whimpers softly to herself. She is surprised that she still has it in her to even do that. She lies in bed. For how long she has been there, she isn’t quite sure anymore. The days have begun to blend but she can’t bring herself to get up. She knows that she should. She wants to, but she just doesn’t have it in her. The energy had left her a long time ago. And the motivation had left before that.

When all of her accomplishments had fallen down around, shattered and rendered fruitless and when her goals had diminished with them, she began finding it hard to get up. If everything she does only crumbles away, then why should she do anything at all?

She doesn’t have anyone to do anything for either. She certainly doesn’t want to do anything for herself.

So she lies on her side, mostly motionless and staring at the arm she has outstretched in front of her. She should bathe or, at the very simplest, eat. Lately she hasn’t been able to muster up the willpower to do that either.

Azula takes a very deep breath and sits up. For a fleeting moment she thinks that she is going to leave the bed. She urges herself to do so, there are so many things that she needs to do; fix herself a meal, eat it, fix herself a bath, undress herself, actually take her bath, dress herself.... And those are only the little things. She also has to make something of herself again; maybe she can attend one of the council meetings Zuko has invited her to or she can rekindle her friendships or try to make new ones… There is just so much to do. Her head begins to spin thinking about all of her options. It spins and whirs until her burst of energy dies away and suddenly she wants to do none of them again. When she comes back to herself she realizes that she has simply been staring at the back of her hands.

She thinks that she has been doing so for hours. She rubs her hands over her face, wondering what the hell is wrong with her? She doesn’t know what sort of person can lose so much time doing something so stupid. She lets her body drop back onto the mattress and bunches herself up. She tries not to weep again, but she can’t keep herself from it. She feels so useless and so foolish.

She feels like there isn’t really a reason for her to be...around anymore. She lets her body flop back onto the mattress and presses her head into the pillow.

.oOo.

Another day slips by. She still hasn’t brought herself to move and her stomach is pleading for food. She longs for it just as furiously, but if she can’t even walk down the hall, how is she supposed to cook? The servants have stopped doing it for her after weeks of her letting it go to waste. She doesn’t have the strength to ask them to resume again.

A knock at her door causes her to jolt. Zuko doesn’t wait for her to answer. “I have a surprise for you!” He declares, much too joyfully for her tastes. He wanders over to her window and draws the curtains. A beam of sunlight falls directly upon her.

She rolls onto her side with a dissatisfied groan.

“You don’t have to get up. This surprise will come to you.” She can hear the smile in his voice.

The foot of her bed dips as something launches itself at her. Despite the warning Zuko had given, she gives a small start. She feels a snout nudge against her neck. Azula forces herself upright. The dog is so large that it is level with her face. It nudges her cheek with its nose. It sits there staring at her with its tail wagging wildly.

She must admit that it is a pretty dog; sleek and black with deep brown and loving eyes. Its tail is long and slim and its ears are short and floppy. She notices a patch of white on its chest and paws.

Azula hesitantly reaches out, pausing halfway.

“Go on,” Zuko coaxes. “He’s really friendly and he’s been specially trained to help you.”

Azula bites her lower lip as she carefully strokes the dog’s dark fur. He leans into her, his head resting against the crook of her neck.There is a warm flutter in her chest. It is the first time that anything has managed to cut through her prolonged numbness. Even if it is a very faint feeling. The dog’s tail begins to wag more intensely; it is her only warning before he gives her cheek a rather wet lick.

Her face bunches up and she rubs at her moist cheek with the back of her sleeve. “No stop it!” She shouts as the dog continues its merciless licking. She thinks that she might have smiled, at least for a flicker. She repeats her demand and the dog relents. He drops back down and rests his head in her lap, awaiting more pets. She runs her hand over his head.

“Well, do you like him?” Zuko grins.

“Why?” She asks.

“I know that you were getting lonely, I figured that we can start with animals before people.” Zuko explains. “Your doctors mentioned that they’ve noticed that patients with pets tend to recover easier than patients without.” As if he knows that he is being talked about, he sits back up and perks his ears. “Kaiyuki is the first dog that they’ve trained to help with the recovery process.”

Azula eyes the dog. His tongue lolls out as he pants happily.

“So, do you want to give him a try?”

He leans into her again and this time she puts an arm around him. She must admit that this is the most activity she has done in a very long while. She nods.

Zuko’s smile widens. “Great. I can help you take care of him if that’s too much right now.”

Azula thinks it over. “Okay.”

“He likes walks.” Zuko tries. “If you feel like it, I can have the servants cook breakfast while you take him on one.”

She could use the fresh air… Kaiyuki yips happily. Azula stays in place for a while, trying to muster up the energy to move. The dog is patient, he only springs off of the bed when she finally brings herself to swing her feet over the edge of it.

Her legs are stiff from having laid down for such a long time. “Where is his leash?”

“He doesn’t need one.” Zuko answers. “He’ll walk right by you.”

The sentiment is nice. Evidently, she likes the idea of having a companion next to her that can help her sniff out threats and take them down if she can’t manage it. She lets her hand rest on Kaiyuki’s back as they slowly make their way out of her bedroom.

.oOo.

It is quite a beautiful day out. Really, it is the perfect day to re-enter the world. The sun caresses her skin like a familiar and long forgotten friend. Its rays welcome her back to the outdoors. She inhales deeply. Dragon maple, marigold, and a pungent hint of paprika fills her lungs. The air is so clean, it makes her lungs feel healthy. It makes her feel healthy overall.

She watches Kaiyuki leap up and down, bouncing all around her in excited circles. She wishes that she can achieve that level of enthusiasm. One level at a time, she reminds herself. She buries her hands in the excess fabric of her robes, it is only then that she recalls that she still hasn’t gotten dressed. Her face colors. Though no one has made any remarks regarding her haggard appearance.

Azula slowly treks the carefully paved garden path until she reaches the turtle-duck pond. She wants to sit down but, all the same, fears that if she does, she won’t be able to force herself to stand again.  So she remains on her feet and observes Kaiyuki dipping his neck to take a drink. He laps at the water and then paws at her feet. She thinks that, that might be her cue to move.

She lets him lead the way and tags along as he takes her under an arbor of firelily. Everything is so bright and vivid. So lively. She passes one of her serving girls. The girl dips her head, “it’s good to see you out and about again, princess.”

“Yeah.” Azula replies.

The girl bows again and carries on with her task.

Azula finds herself a seat on one of the stone benches beneath a dragon maple. Kaiyuki leaps up and sits on her lap. She strokes his fur until Zuko hands her a bowl of noodle soup and fruit tart topped with rose petals.

Her stomach rumbles softly, at the prospect of a much needed meal. She takes a spoonful of soup and savors the way it warms her throat and belly.

“Feeling any better?”

She holds her hand up with her pointer and thumb spaced slightly apart. “A little, I suppose.” That is a bit of a fib. In just over an hour she has felt a spark of motivation, a dash of hope, and a touch of embarrassment. It is the most that she has felt in ages, much more than she had expected to feel again. Just having felt something again lifts her mood even if some of the emotions weren’t wholly positive.

She takes a bite of her fruit tart, the flavor is rich and succulent, like a silk on her tongue. The warmth and texture suggests that it is freshly baked. She has another spoonful of soup. “It’s good. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She holds out what is left of her noodles for Kaiyuki to lap at.

“You’re going to spoil this dog, aren’t you?” Zuko laughs.

“Possibly.” She replies.

The dog looks up at her with cheerful eyes.

.oOo.

The first week is the hardest. Getting up in the morning is such a task and it takes very much prodding from Kaiyuki. In only those few days he already seems to know her so well. He knows when tough love is required and when he just needs to lay with her. For the first few days, he has to nudge her awake, poke and prod at her until she can no longer sleep. She is thankful for it; she doesn’t feel so lazy and useless when she is up and about.

Gradually, Azula requires less pestering to leave her bed. She finds that she is able to muster the drive to do it herself. She has Kaiyuki to feed and walk. It is a small purpose in life, but a purpose no less. Someone needs her. Someone thinks that she has value. Even if he can’t vocalize it.

He doesn’t need to, the way his tail thrashes about when she hands him his food dish and water bowl or when she tells him to go fetch. Just making eye contact with him, brings his tail to life. She just wishes that everyone would be that happy to see her.

It takes her a very long time, at least by her standards, to resume her firebending regime. Three months exactly. Like most things, it is a process. For the first month, exercise comes in the form of a leisurely walk with Kaiyuki around the palace gardens.

They help her, perhaps, more than she is aware. Servants and guards wave to her, surprisingly kind and lacking judgment. She supposes that it is because, despite all of her wrong doings, she has treated them well. Compared to her father’s treatment of them, she was an absolute delight to be around.

As they get used to seeing her around again, they occasionally stop to ask her if she is doing well or if they can get her anything. She doesn’t know any of them particularly well, but it is nice to talk to people again.  

By month two her languid strolls become jogs and runs. Kaiyuki can use the excitement and she needs to get herself back in shape for her more strenuous firebending routines. It is frustrating, at first, to find herself tiring out so quickly, but Kaiyuki is a distraction from that.

It is in the middle of month three that she decides it is time to get back to firebending. It takes more mental preparation than she likes to admit. She prepares herself for dreadful disappointment and painful frustration.  But once she has a routine going, it sticks.

And for it, Azula finds that she feels much better about herself. Even though she isn’t yet on par with her old self, she feels surprisingly good.

When her mood lifts high enough, she finds herself teaching Kaiyuki to jump through flaming hoops and over flaming beams. She teaches him to strike and attack when she makes certain gestures.

It is easier to train when she isn’t alone. It is easier to train when Kaiyuki picks up on her frustration and pounces on her, licking reassuringly at her face. It is easier to train when Kaiyuki fetches her a waterskin and reminds her to drink it. It is easier in general, with Kaiyuki around.

.oOo.

“He’s just so fluffy!” TyLee exclaims as she wraps her arms around Kaiyuki.

“He’s helpful too.” Azula replies.

It is the first time she has spoken to TyLee in ages. This time TyLee doesn’t look at her with fear nor loathing.

“What does he help with?” TyLee asks.

“He’s a therapy dog.” She replies. “It really depends. Sometimes he does little things like fetching me water while I train. Other times he’ll bring me my medications or…” she hesitates “He’ll encourage me to get out of bed. If he can’t help me then he usually gets Zuzu for me.”

TyLee’s expression dims. Azula has forgotten that she didn’t yet know just how bad things had gotten for her.

“Are you okay?”

Azula runs her hand over Kaiyuki’s fur. “I’m doing much better.”

TyLee smiles again. “That’s good.”

“Thank you.” She takes a seat upon her favorite bench and pats the spot next to her. TyLee fills it and Kaiyuki leaps up and finds a place on her lap. “How has it been with the Kyoshi Warriors?”

“Oh, it has been amazing!” TyLee gushes. “I’m learning so many things and going to so many new places…”

Azula’s tummy tingles; and what has she been doing? She has been making progress, sure. But she isn’t accomplishing anything at all. She is still nothing compared to who she used to be. She stares at her palms as TyLee continues her cheerful chatter. Kaiyuki pokes his snout at her chin.

TyLee brings her story to a halt. “Are you still okay?”

Azula clears her throat. “Yes. Sorry, I do that sometimes...Kaiyuki has to...uh...pull me out of it.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m just thinking again...” She trails off.

“About?”

“Zuko is the Fire Lord, you’re a Kyoshi Warrior traveling the world, Aang is the Avatar, his friends constantly do incredible things, Mai is the Fire Lady. And me? What am I doing?” She inquires, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Recovering.” Zuko’s voice answers from behind. He huffs as he sets down a crate.

Recovering. That just isn’t good enough for her anymore. She wants to do something again. To matter again.

She swallows and says as much.

“You do matter.” TyLee says softly. “You definitely matter to…”

“Kaiyuki.” Azula fills in. She slings an arm around him.  “Do I matter to you?” Last she checked, TyLee was still fuming. She knows that Mai is.

TyLee nods. “You matter to me. We’re going to have a lot to talk about when you’re in a better place. But you matter to me.”

“I think Mai kind of misses talking with you too.”

“Lies are supposed to be believable, Zuzu.”

“It’s not a lie.” Zuko shrugs. “We can be angry with you and still care about you.”

Azula swallows and her stomach lolls again. She has never had that before. She can only manage a little nod. “That doesn’t change that I haven’t accomplished anything.”

“That’s not true, you…”

Azula cuts him off, “everything important that I’ve done is null. And none of those things were good anyhow.” She falters. “Everyone around me has done something unforgettable and I haven’t. I’ve fallen so behind.” Her grip on Kaiyuki tightens and he burrows himself against her. “I’ll never catch up.” She adds more to herself.

“Actually, I think that I have something for you to do.” Zuko’s lips curve up.

Her brows furrow and she looks up.

“You’ve trained and taken care of Kaiyuki. Do you think that you can do the same for a baby dragon or two?”

“I thought that…”

“Nope, Aang and I found two dragons. We’re hoping to bring the dragon population back. But Aang has Avatar stuff to do and I have Fire Lord duties.” He pauses. “Unless you have something that you’re not telling me about, I think that you have time to help with our dragon goals.”

Azula smiles. “I think that I can do that.”

“Wonderful.” Zuko grins. He motions to the crate. “Happy birthday.”

Azula’s belly flutters again. She’d forgotten her own birthday. She pries the lid off of the crate.

“When it hatches, Kaiyuki can help you keep the baby in line.”

Azula laughs for the first time in ages. “If he can keep me in line, then he’ll have no problem with a dragon.”

“You’ll let me pet the dragon when it hatches, right!?” TyLee asks.

Azula nods again, this time with more enthusiasm. For the first time since her defeat, she feels hopeful--optimistic even. “Thank you, Zuzu.”

.oOo.

Azula tucks herself in and waits for Kaiyuki to curl himself up next to her. She holds him close. She kisses him atop his furry little head. He means the world to her, truly. She can’t imagine that she would be doing quite as well if Zuko hadn’t found him for her. It has only been a little under a year and she has made much more progress than she had in all of her years in that institution. Maybe she will be able to talk to her mother soon.

She sleeps easier knowing that she will wake up to Kaiyuki. She sleeps easier knowing that she will wake up to rekindling relationships. She sleeps easier knowing that she will wake up to a newfound purpose.

She closes her eyes and nuzzles her chin against Kaiyuki’s head.

And when she wakes the next morning, she feels reinvigorated. For once, Azula doesn’t want to go to stay in bed. For once, she again rises with the sun.

[mediaeval-muse]

Video Game Review: Assassin’s Creed Unity (Ubisoft, 2014)

Genres: action-adventure, third person, open world

Premise: Blaming himself for the death of his adoptive father, Frenchman Arno Dorian joins the Assassins during the French Revolution in order to seek redemption. Learning that his adoptive father was a Templar Grandmaster looking to promote peace between the Templars and Assassins, and that his birth father was an Assassin (killed by Shay in Rogue), Arno must investigate the Grandmaster’s death and contend with a changing Templar Order, while also sorting out his romantic feelings for Elise, the Grandmaster’s daughter. In the present, the Assassins contact the unnamed Absergo employee and recruit them to their cause, using Arno’s memories to find the body of a sage, which may contain traces of First Civilization DNA.

Platform Played On: PC (Windows)

Rating: 3/5 stars

***Full review under the cut.***

I am evaluating this game based on four key aspects: story, characters, gameplay, and visuals. I will also be evaluating the Dead Kings DLC. 

Content Warnings: violence, blood, body horror

Story: Assassin’s Creed Unity primarily follows Arno Dorian, an Assassin operating during the French Revolution in 18th century Paris. Following the death of his biological father, Arno is adopted by Templar Grand Master de Laserre, who keeps Arno in the dark about the Templar-Assassin conflict. Thirteen years later, de Laserre is murdered following Arno’s failure to deliver a message in time. Arno joins the Assassins to seek redemption and learns that de Laserre was trying to make peace between the Assassins and Templars, but many did not share his vision. Arno must therefore track down de Laserre’s murderer with the help of his Assassin mentor, Pierre, and Elise, de Laserre’s daughter with whom Arno is in love.

There were several elements to the main story I liked: the idea of star-crossed lovers dropped in the middle of a murder mystery during the French Revolution was intriguing, and I liked that the crux of the conflict was a reigniting of the centuries-old Assassin-Templar conflict. However, none of the “crumbs” of the mystery felt particularly engaging; Arno would track down figures which were introduced then eliminated, and even the bigger characters (Robespierre, Germain, etc) didn’t have enough charisma to carry the plot forward. Given the premise, I would have liked to see more emphasis placed on Arno’s emotional journey, since his guilt and romantic turmoil seemed to be more fruitful areas to explore than the larger mystery. I would have liked to see more flashbacks to his memories with his adopted father (like Edward’s flashbacks in Black Flag) to make the mystery feel more personal, and I would have also liked to see more tension between Arno’s Assassin loyalties and Elise’s Templar leanings. The closest we got, in my opinion, to some satisfying interiority were some ghostly figures whenever Arno visited Versailles (good, but infrequent) and a really nice trippy sequence when Arno first joins the Assassins.

I also think this plot felt different from the previous Assassin’s Creed games because there wasn’t a lot of focus on the First Civilization. Arno encounters a Sage - a figure we were introduced to in Black Flag - but there isn’t a lot of focus on First Civilization artifacts or power. It’s not an unwelcome change, but it was different.

The French Revolution was a wonderful choice for a historical backdrop, though I wish Ubisoft had done more (narratively) to make Arno feel entangled with the world. As the game stands, the French Revolution feels more like a set piece - the background is there, and Arno interacts with some historical figures, but the plot itself doesn’t necessarily need to be set during the French Revolution. I would have liked to see the setting be integrated into the main plot more, perhaps by having the Assassins and Templars be more involved with historical events.

The present-day plot which usually serves as the frame in Assassins Creed games is almost non-existent, which made it feel like a distraction rather than an integral part of the story. Most of the modern stuff was just voice-over, with an anonymous Assassin guiding the faceless and voiceless “Initiate” to comb through Arno’s memories in search of a Sage. Periodically, the voice would alert the Initiate that Abstergo was onto them, and the player would have to take Arno through a series of rifts which featured anachronistic obstacles. Personally, I found these parts more annoying than anything, and they didn’t really come together to form a plot of their own, like in previous installments.

The Dead Kings plot was pretty basic. Arno was tasked with finding a manuscript in exchange for passage out of the city. Along the way, he discovers that Napoleon Bonaparte’s subordinate is trying to find an artifact of the First Civilization, which is hidden in a temple under the church. There wasn’t a lot to set this plot apart - it did the job, and I enjoyed myself, but it wasn’t particularly memorable.

Overall, I think Unity’s plot is mainly hurt by its open world setting. The world is so expansive and full of stuff that it detracts from the main narrative; because players can pick up or put down the mystery of de Laserre’s death, it’s easy to forget about it, making it feel less consequential (or, at least, not very urgent).

Characters: Arno Dorian, the PC character, is a charming protagonist with a lot of likeable qualities. He isn’t really a fan of how the Parisian Assassins are more like a cult than a brotherhood, and he’s witty and sassy while also holding onto admirable ideals. I wish Ubisoft had given him a better plot, though I did like that they didn’t overwhelm him with grief and guilt to the point where he was broody. He mostly had a light outlook on life without downplaying the seriousness of the conflicts around him, which made him a fun character to control.

Elise, Arno’s love interest, had a lot of potential. She was independent and highly competent, and I liked that Ubisoft didn’t make her into someone in need of saving. I wish she and Arno got to work more together and that they had had more scenes where they talked about their pasts, but I guess that would have been too sappy for the target audience. Without spoiling anything, I do have mixed feelings about how her story ended. On the one hand, I think it demonstrated a real character flaw that Elise struggled with throughout the game (I like characters to have actual flaws); on the other hand, she didn’t deserve that.

Other characters were a mixed bag. Pierre, Arno’s mentor, was pretty gruff and grumpy, and I didn’t get the sense that the two were particularly close. I wish more was done to cultivate that relationship, especially given Pierre’s arc. Other Assassins were too uptight to be interesting, and the bad guys weren’t charismatic enough to be intriguing. I did like the Marquis de Sade, but that’s because he’s Extra in fun ways. Leon, a child thief in Dead Kings, was also fun, mainly because he played off Arno well.

Gameplay: Unity differs a bit from its predecessors. While the core doesn’t change - players still need to use a combination of stealth and combat to navigate an open world and achieve goals - Unity introduces skill trees and upgradable weapons/equipment. To improve Arno’s abilities, weapons, and gear, players must collect money, earn “Creed points” (awarded for doing impressive things like ledge assassinations or perfect parries), and gain “sync points” (awarded for completing missions). In addition to collecting money from chests, Arno can upgrade his base at the Cafe Theatre to gain a steady income, though there aren’t any widespread economic mechanics, such as the forts/strongholds in Assassin’s Creed 2 or Black Flag/Rogue.

Unity also infamously introduces “helix credits,” a type of currency that players can acquire by paying real, out-of-game money for. Helix credits unlock abilities and upgrades faster (or else just access exclusive content from the online store). I hate this concept just based on principle, so I spent a lot of time exploring the map and unlocking every chest until I built up enough money to purchase legendary equipment.

Weapons themselves were easy to pick up and use, with familiar things such as the hidden blade, one-handed swords, two-handed weapons, pistols, berserk darts, smoke bombs, poison gas bombs, and the like. New weapons included the phantom blade (a silent projectile), the guillotine gun (a gun/blade hybrid gained in Dead Kings), and the introduction of long-arms (such as halberds). I found most of these weapons easy to use, though I did have to get used to the fact that the hidden blade is not selectable as a primary weapon - Arno uses it automatically when doing a stealth kill, but draws his sword or other weapon whenever the player engages in combat.

In terms of movement and stealth, I liked that Arno’s animations were more inspired by real parkour, but I did find it harder to move precisely in this game for whatever reason. I often got stuck on a ledge or wasn’t able to change direction very fast, all of which caused me to fail missions or get killed fairly quickly. I also didn’t like that Ubisoft removed the ability to whistle and draw enemies to a hiding spot; while there were haystacks and structures to hide behind or in, enemies wouldn’t walk by them very often, making them difficult to use for ambushes or stealth kills.

Side quests/activities included a range of things, from “Paris Stories” (quirky missions where Arno had to go kill someone or steal something), to Murder Mysteries (in which Arno had to search for clues and arrest the correct culprit to achieve unique weapons and armor), to “Nostradamus Enigmas” (riddles which led to different landmarks and rewarded Arno with keys to the legendary armor beneath his base). I personally found these fun, even if a lot of them weren’t memorable. They did their job and provided some entertaining little narratives, so I can’t complain too much.

Unity also introduces a lot of coop multiplayer missions, which can be completed with other players or on your own. Players can form or join “social clubs,” which are mainly just teams of gamers, or search the internet and complete missions with strangers. While I liked that the coop missions were able to be completed alone (they were harder, but not impossible) and I was able to play some missions with a friend, I did not like that most of them required players to replay them 3 times in order to get all collectibles and rewards. For a completist, the coop missions will be repetitive, and at times frustrating if there’s a locked door you can’t access without upgrading your skills.

In terms of collectibles, Unity primarily has money chests, cockades (which unlock color schemes for Arno’s outfits), newspapers, artifacts, and nomad points (which can be used in the companion app). Other than the money, I didn’t find the collectibles very rewarding - I didn’t have the companion app, and I didn’t much care for new color schemes or armor/equipment.

Dead Kings introduces tricorns as collectibles while also inserting a few “Franciade Stories,” Murder Mysteries, and “Suger Enigmas,” all of which resemble their counterparts in the base game. The enigmas in Dead Kings were a bit harder than those in the base game because the answers weren’t necessarily in or around landmarks; players have to really pay attention to the map instead of relying on the database for historical clues. I also found it annoying that players could get accidentally stuck in Dead Kings; if you start the DLC unintentionally, you can’t return to the base game until after you complete the first mission. It really sucks if you’re underpowered or just want to experience the narratives in order.

Visuals: Unity is a visually stunning game, with a lot of beautifully-rendered environments, character designs, and the like. The streets of Paris feel like they are inundated with chaos, with crowds of shouting people moving past walls papered with posters and defaced by graffiti, while the interiors are detailed according to the social class of the inhabitants. Arno can wander into a poor person’s home, empty save for the basics, or a rich person’s, decorated with gold and elegant paneling. I very much enjoyed exploring the world and seeing landmarks such as Notre Dame overlooking a rich, vibrant world.

I also really liked Arno’s outfits, all of which captured an 18th century aesthetic. Arno can wear a number of coats, hoods, pants, belts, and bracers, all of which feature a blue, white, and red color scheme by default. I liked that the color scheme wasn’t based around white, as in previous games, as it made Arno feel more part of his world.

In terms of animation, Unity is really buggy, even years after release. Characters would float in the air or get stuck in odd places, but even so, I didn’t find it difficult to complete the game. I did really like that Arno’s combat animations were inspired by fencing, and his kills were fluid and elegant, almost like a dance.

Final Verdict: Although Assassin’s Creed Unity attempts to bring a new kind of gameplay to the franchise and includes some charming protagonists, the difficult controls, lack of engaging plot, and introduction of microtransactions make it merely an average installment in the series.

[armsdealing]

@neotropical​ said:  3, 6, 10 & 25 for charles 13, 14, 15 & 38 for marce

CHARLES.

3. how do they position themselves in a group? do they like to be the center of attention, or do they hang back at the edges of a crowd?

charles prefers to stay in the background, and preferably, not a part of the group at all. he dislikes crowds, hates drawing attention to himself more than necessary (since he's the sort of person that commands authority just by manner of physical presence), and he'd rather be on his own. if he must be part of some group, though, he'll stay in the back, let people focus on anything but him, only provide his input if it's absolutely necessary.

6. what are they like in motion – in different environments, and in different activities? what causes the differences between these?

so this question is a bit vague. but as a general rule of thumb, charles moves very gracefully, much like a feline. he's an animal shapeshifter, and some animal characteristics rub off on him, so despite his size, he moves as though he wouldn't be able to stumble even if he tried to. he's quite casual and lax about his mannerisms, but also purposeful. when he's working, he's completely in that moment, seamless in a way that can almost be absorbing to look at, and when he's sparring or training or fighting, there's a lot of decisiveness to his every movement too. basically, charles in motion is completely devoid of self-doubt or awkwardness, even when he moves in a sluggish fashion. this wasn't born randomly; it's a result of his mutation, his physical skillset, his experience and his overall personality.

10. what energizes and drains them most?

charles is an introvert. so circling back to the initial question — people drain him the most, and that's why he does not like being around them. he does not like having to talk at length, and does not like being the center of attention. any kind of socialization, when prolongued, really tires him. and when i say any, i mean any and all — even romantic interactions. after spending a certain amount of time with a significant other, he needs some time for himself, to decompress. none of this is personal, really, he just gets overwhelmed easily and that sensation can trigger his dissociative episodes.

similarly, what energizes him most is being alone. he likes to exercise too and that keeps him physically energized. likes to occupy his mind with work and solving problems, even small every day problems like fixing people's appliances. he seems lazy sometimes, but he's got a curious mind and he likes to keep busy in some way.

25. what do they need and want out of relationships, and how do they go about getting it?

when it comes to friendships and romantic relationships, charles is very practical. he wants maturity and he needs patience and he needs space, and little more than that. naturally, he gravitates toward independent, autonomous people. charles doesn't do well with clinginess, with insecurity, and emotionally demanding relationships and people that need a lot of reassurance about his feelings toward them. his love languages are acts of service (doing things for you, helping you when you need it, defending you, etc) and physical affection, and he's not one to put into words how much he cares — you might not ever hear it, or you might hear it very rarely, and you need to be okay with that. and if you're not okay with that, then that is fine, but that's what you need to keep in mind if you aspire to a relationship with him of any sort.

he's pretty straight up about this. he will never mislead you and he will be honest about his terms and how he functions, and he's a very "what you see is what you get" type of person. if he notices that any of this makes you unhappy, then he will simply end the relationship in the most cordial but straightforward manner possible.

MARCELO.

13. how do they greet the world — what is their typical attitude towards life? how does it differ in different circumstances, or towards different subjects? why do they take these attitudes, and why do they change? how do these tend to be expressed?

overall, marcelo is pretty optimistic. he would much rather focus on the positives and the things that go right, rather than the things that go wrong. he's also very aware that the world is a shitty place full of injustice and bigotry but he firmly believes there's ways to make it better and it's just a matter of putting in the work and helping those around you (and those that need it most) and being constant and vigilant. it's often not easy but it's what must be done. marcelo is always striving toward progress, he believes almost every problem has a solution and those that don't one can be alleviated in some form. overall marcelo makes an active choice to believe in goodness and that most people are good — even if that good is very relative, or it doesn't abide by conditions such as laws. morally speaking, he's a well established neutral good, leaning toward chaotic good.

this attitude doesn't tend to differ from person to person or the circumstance. sure there's times his mood may waver and his view of the world may become less benevolent but once he recovers he goes back to believing this. the source of this belief is his love towards others, and the love other people have for him. and his realistic views on the world come from his own experiences, the experiences of those around him. so there's a certain degree of "caution" to his optimism, he believes in keeping one (and those around you) safe from harm above all else too.

it all ends up expressed in the things he does, how he acts toward others. marcelo shows his caring disposition very freely, he's a very helpful person, very quick to smile, very quick to defend others. kindness is a choice and he makes that choice every day.

14. what do they care deeply about? what kind of loyalties, commitments, moral codes, life philosophies, passions, callings, or spirituality and faith do they have? how do these tend to be expressed?

well, i think a lot of what i said above can also apply here (maybe im just too stupid for these questions!). but — marcelo's loyalty lies with his family (the reyes more so than the marconis, really), and with his friends/loved ones. all of these loyalties were choices for him, and not something he considers himself forced to — something he wants to do, rather than has to. his life philosophy is more or less what i described above. spirituality or faith is a more complex matter; in his canon verse he was raised catholic and as he's gotten older he's become less and less inclined to believe in it especially following traumatic experiences such as the deaths of his parents. he is still spiritual but his religion, his personal relationship to god isn't really a source of comfort anymore, he does not practice it and he spends a lot of thought on it but not much comes from it because it's a complex problem.

in contrast with his "loyalties" and "moral codes", which color every aspect of his life, his religion — or lack thereof — is much more of a private affair. he does not talk about it and it's one of those topics that are simply off limits. this answer would be no doubt different if i was talking about Nueva Religión's marcelo, but this applies exclusively to canon marcelo only.

15. what kind of inner life do they have — rich and imaginative? calculating and practical? full of doubts and fears? does it find any sort of outlet in their lives?

marcelo is creative and imaginative but there's a sense of practicality to how he thinks. he is the kind of person that needs organization, structure, and order not just outwardly but inwardly as well. so his thoughts follow a very rational pattern, a calculating approach. it's no surprise he enjoys planners, flowcharts and spreadsheets. he's a perfectionist; a precisionist that likes to make effective use of every portion of his time.

in a way, the sheer whirlwind of activity that characterizes his life is the outlet. marcelo is very confident on this level, he's at his best when he's focusing on something (be it getting a choreography perfect or reorganizing his closet) and not having something to do is when he begins to feel unhappy or unsure. because there's a lot of unresolved concerns festering inside his mind, but he does not think about them much unless he really has to.

38. is there anything they wish they could change about their worldview or thought processes? what, and why?

sure. i think he would make himself less tightly wound when it comes to the things that affect him, the deep things he does not share with just anyone; he wishes he could voice them out loud and ask for help with them, and that asking for help didn't feel so difficult. he wishes he could be vulnerable more freely. this is something he might be able to achieve over time, or it might remain unsolved, it depends on how things unfold.

[zetalial]

Further thoughts on Star wars: episode 9

So the overall experience was a positive one - I was hooked into the film from the first scene. Not all of it was amazing - it’s far from my favourite Star Wars film - but I sincerely enjoyed it.

(warning: spoilers)

I had heard Palpatine would be back and he was! At first, I was a little wary about this choice as his defeat in episode six seemed like a good conclusion to him already but honestly he reeled me back in with his line - a callback to revenge of the six - “the dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural.”

In this movie he reveals that Palpatine has been hiding in the shadows, somehow reborn through some sort of dark power on this legendary planet of the Sith. He is almost certainly limited in strength though as he hasn’t left in the past 20 or so years and has simply sat there, doing what he does best: manipulating the minds of powerful but emotional people in order to reel them into the dark side. 

He created Snoke and with him the First Order and he’s been manipulating Kylo Ren. He offers Kylo Ren power, to build a great empire and become the ruler and Palpatine reveals hundreds of spaceships all with the power to destroy entire worlds. Still, there is opposition in the form of what remains of the Resistance and the Last Jedi, Rey. 

Spies within the First Order, inform the resistance of Palpatine’s existence and seeking him out and destroying him is the Resistance’s new objective and the plot of this film. 

Despite, my initial reservations, I think it’s pretty good. Episode 9 is not just the end of a trilogy of movies after all, it’s the ninth and this sets up Palpatine as the overall villain, a perfect representation of the evils of the Sith. Now, I don’t think a sequel trilogy of films needed to be made and with the end of this trilogy I can honestly say, I’m not sure they added all that much to the Saga - their themes were mostly the same  and I don’t feel like they really added all that much to the overall world. They have functioned broadly as remakes of the original trilogy and largely played it safe, I think. That said, the presence of Palpatine as the one pulling all the strings really pulls the whole thing together and makes it feel more a part of this same epic story. (Honestly, the amount of fanservice for the original trilogy is perhaps a bit much and as a Prequels fangirl I kinda wish there had been a couple more nods to it though I’m aware that they were a long time ago in the timeline.)

So: Rey. In the last Jedi we got this pretty striking theme of how you don’t have to be born special or important with a secret backstory to become a hero - a Jedi. This film, decided to give Rey an important parentage but spins the message pretty effectively into your parentage not defining you. It’s revealed that Rey is Palpatine’s granddaughter whom her parents gave away to protect her before being killed by him. Palpatine plans to use Rey for her to fall and succumb to the darkness and for his spirit to be born anew inside her as she takes the throne as the Galaxy’s empress.

Heh. the Last Jedi received an astonishing amount of hate. I don’t think it’s fair but Star Wars fans are ever so picky and didn’t appreciate it trying to subvert their expectations with twists like Rey having no backstory, Luke having had moments of weakness and being an exile refusing to take up the call, new force powers, Snoke being defeated, and... okay much of the resistance stuff was a bit weak. I thought it was cool how Po had a daring plan of getting a codebreaker and trying to turn off the shields in a risky endeavour only for that plan to just fail which was a subversion that actually really caught me by surprise and helped me to become genuinely invested in the remaining plot though.

Err, anyway, again the resistance stuff wasn’t nearly as interesting as Rey’s stuff. I liked how again she just did whatever she wanted and the others just kind of followed her around, repeatedly talking about how this was their final hope while Rey was just having her own internal battle with Kylo Ren.

The force bond from the Last Jedi continued to be important as Kylo uses it to track down and repeatedly fight Rey. Kylo Ren’s motives are a little weird as he’s leading the First Order but I’ve never really been convinced he really wants to be emperor - he seems to be angry that Rey is on an opposite side to him and wants her to rule beside him just like their ancestors Vader and Palpatine. The real issue though is that he believes he can’t be redeemed for evils such as killing his father. He and Rey are so different though.

We see Rey use Force Lightning and destroys a ship and she think she’s killed Chewbacca - a clear foreshadowing of her heritage. Later, in a fight against Kylo Ren she manages to steal his Red lightsabre and stabs him lethally with it, again nearly succumbing to darkness. Still, she has great propensity for good and evil as she heals the damage she inflicted, calling Kylo by his given name, the name he feels himself unworthy of: Ben. 

She runs away and nearly gives up entirely but for Luke’s ghost calming her down and telling her to have hope and she heads to the Sith Planet to face Palpatine once and for all. Kylo Ren is having his own crisis and flings away his Red Lightsabre as he has a vision of his father forgiving him. Then he heads to the Sith Planet too, to help Rey defeat Palpatine. 

(It’s kinda cheap how after so much work to find the planet, she just discovers another beacon to lead her there but whatever. Yeah, a lot of the plot just happens with fights and meeting people and I’m not sure it really all needed to be there, it’s close to just filling time between them important plot of the conflict between Kylo, Rey and Palpatine. The resistance comes in force at the end to fight but the exact same scenes could’ve happened without any more resistance stuff than what we got in the Last Jedi. Threepio loses and regains his memories, Finn meets some more former stormtroopers, Po has an old friend who... exists. They get trapped in a hole, Chewie gets captured and saved again, there’s a spy working for the resistance and it’s Hux who just gets killed. They get a different ship with another funny little droid. Stuff happens but none of it adds all that much - the hope the resistance was spreading was there at the end of the Last Jedi. )

But the Rey and Kylo stuff was good! 

Palpatine tempts her to kill him, an act borne of hate would lead to him being able to take control of her and he’d be reborn inside of his descendent to form a new empire and so we have Rey being tempted with darkness while her friends above her are dying, overwhelmed.

But she stands strong and the resistance rallies with people coming to help. And Kylo comes to save her and he fights with Luke’s sabre while she fights with Leia’s. Finally, the two of them have come together on the same side to fight evil.

But Palpatine sees their powerful bond and uses Force drain, suggesting that this was his plan all along - that their bond was special and with it he has achieved great power, allowing the Sith to be reborn. He force lightnings the entire resistance flee, and it seems all hope is lost as Kylo Ren falls.

And yet, Rey draws on the power of all the Jedi, calling them to her, asking for strength and the hear her plea and empower her and she finds the strength to stand and wield her lightsabre. Palpatine says he is the power of all the Sith and Rey confidently replies that she is all the Jedi and she overcomes him. Thus the Sith are defeated once and for all and overhead the Resistance defeats the First order.

Kylo Ren appears and it looks as if Rey is dead.

But finally she wakes up and they just stare at each other. And they kiss. I though I would hate it... but I really loved this moment - despit ethe stangeness and the conlfict I loved this soft moment where the show that they love each other and this love is a bit of what helped them to overcome. And if you didn’t like it Kylo Ren dies immediately after, passing into the force. Did he sacrifice his life force to save Rey?

Honestly, I wish he hadn’t died, I liked how the two became closer and how Kylo Ren was starting to find redemption through Rey. But it’s an echo of Vader who he tried to emulate for so long. Just like him, he managed to redeem himself and defeat Palpatine.

We close with a shot of Rey on a desert planet - Tatooine, I think. She buries Luke and Leia’s lightsabres in the ground and sees their ghosts smiling at her at she wields a lightsabre of her own - a yellow one. When an old woman asks for her name, she calls herself Rey Skywalker - not literally descended form them but part of her all the same. 

-

So that’s the film and yeah it’s a very traditional battle of wills and a fight between good and evil. There’s not super clever plans, just dedication and hope that helps them to prevail over evil. there’s some funny moments and some reveals and plenty of cheesy lines but nothing too challenging. It has hints at exploring deeper things - Rey and Kylo’s kiss, Palpatine’s corrupt influence, Po and Finn becoming leaders of the resistance, more former stormtroopers, a spy with morally dubious motives, the secret Sith planet in general, plus some of the learning Rey’s done of the jedi order. But none of this is really explored as it’s kept safe.

Rey buries lightsabres at the end but wields her own but is she training the next generation? How did the Resistance call out for help/ I would have loved to see individuals going out of their way to fight but all we see is their massive army appearing. This film has got some charm but it keeps things simple. The force isn’t explained it’s just willpower and hope that prevails over evil. 

That said, i did enjoy the film and I enjoyed Rey and Kylo Ren and Emperor Palpatine. 

[midnightiscoming-kasabian]

Kasabian's Serge Pizzorno: 'I think there'll be a social media rebellion'

Kasabian guitarist Serge Pizzorno talks to Sky News about new solo project The S.L.P, as well as his plans for the band.

By Gemma Peplow | Photo: Neil Bedford

Serge Pizzorno's shaggy shock of jet black hair, once instantly recognisable, is now sharp-fringed and shaved, a striking leopard print dyed into the back in a style worthy of Instagram dreams, should he be so inclined.

He's not, really. While Kasabian and his new solo project, The S.L.P, have social media accounts, documenting every detail of his personal life, online is not for Pizzorno. It has to be about art, otherwise what's the point, he says. So the hair (definitely a work of art) does feature on The S.L.P's Instagram, along with his promotional shots, but these are about as close to a selfie as he gets.

Sitting in his publicist's office in north London, the singer is softly spoken, considered, a different character to the man with the swagger you see on stage. He is discussing social media and dating apps, the idea of "presenting that perfect version of yourself" online.

"It's to my detriment, because I probably overthink it, but I think there has to be an artistic voice to it or I'm not bothered," he says. "I can't just be, I don't know... just normal photos. That's not me. When other people do it, it's fine because whatever, that's their thing. It's probably not the way you should use it if you want to get massive, but I don't care."

Basically, don't expect to see eggs on toast breakfast snaps or "Friyay" glass-clinks on Pizzorno's social media feeds any time soon.

"I just don't care for that. My privacy is very important to me; my family and my home, my world, that's sacred. Someone called it the fourth dimension, where we've opened a world where you can see into people's lives in an insane way, where you're literally letting the whole world see exactly everything you do. I don't know about that for me. I like to keep that, that's mine."

This insane way is the inspiration behind Favourites, the first single from Pizzorno's debut solo album as The S.L.P, which features Mercury Prize-nominated rapper Little Simz.

As a father to two young sons, is social media something he worries about? Pizzorno is confident we will come full circle.

"I think people will look back on this place and where we've got to, and go, 'What were you thinking? What? You did what?' I think there'll definitely be a rebellion against it and it will go back to people having their own lives and thoughts to themselves."

Pizzorno channels his own thoughts through music. When Kasabian decided to take a break after 2017's For Crying Out Loud, their fifth consecutive number one album, sixth overall, the plan was to "just be quiet for a bit". After more than 20 years together - stadiums around the world sold out, Brits, NME and Q awards in the bag, a Glastonbury headline slot ticked off - they felt they needed time off.

But Pizzorno has discovered he doesn't do relaxation very well. Certainly not your fortnight-in-the-sun-type relaxation, anyway. Anyone who has ever been in the presence of his best mate and Kasabian frontman Tom Meighan, the hyperactive stream-of-consciousness yin to Pizzorno's very chilled yang, will know he is a man who is always on the go; never able to sit still, or keep quiet, for long. But it turns out it was Pizzorno who needed something to keep his brain occupied during the break.

The Kasabian radio silence - temporary, he assures - brings us to The S.L.P. Starting out as some "spare music on a hard drive", the project has transformed into an album, released at the end of August, and a tour in September.

"We realised we've, Kasabian, not had a summer off, ever," says Pizzorno. "So we decided, let's just take a year out. Just be quiet for a bit, with the band.

"I suddenly thought, I'm gonna go mad if I don't do anything. So, I had this music in a hard drive…"

Fascinated by the idea of alter-egos and different personas, the album has a "meanwhile concept", he says, excitedly. "It's a sort of comic book thing where it's like, 'Meanwhile, in the Batcave'... and there's Batman and there's Bruce Wayne. There's me in the band and meanwhile, I've got this as well. I love that world.

"I had these three bits of 'meanwhile music', I called them, and I thought, well, they'd make a great beginning, middle and end to an album. All I have to do is fill in the gaps... with, whatever I wanted really. It's all come out of necessity, I suppose. The timing was right."

The result is The S.L.P. album, an 11-track record book-ended by the tracks Meanwhile... In Genova, and Meanwhile… In The Silent Nowhere.

Recorded and produced by Pizzorno at his studio The Sergery, set up at his home in the Leicestershire countryside, the album comes from a mix of influences, everything from hip-hop to psychedelic-funk and trance.

In parts, it is unmistakably the Kasabian writer and guitarist's work, but at other times completely different. While the Favourites opening riff would not sound out of place on the band's third album, West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, second single Nobody Else sounds like it should be played as the sun comes up in Ibiza. Not bound by the ties that come with being one of the biggest UK bands of the 21st century, Pizzorno says he felt free "to just see what it could be".

"I love making, I just like creating... If I've not had a day, if I've not made something in the day then I feel a bit… I don't know, I just freak out a bit. I mean, it doesn't necessarily have to be a song. Just, you know, an idea, or a drawing or a video. It's at the forefront all the time and that's kind of where I feel like, 'yeah, I'm all right now'."

The S.L.P. has "opened up another part of my brain", he says. "I think that was the thing, it was the freedom of not having to consider 80,000 people in a field. It's like, 'Ah, this can be a different thing'."

Inevitably, solo work has invited discussion about the end of Kasabian. But Pizzorno says his sideline has helped him see the band from "a new, fresh perspective… [and now] I'll know exactly the kind of way we need to go with the next chapter.

"I've just gone down the rabbit hole and I've collected a few new treasures and I've bought them back, you know?"

Taking time out, being careful not to saturate, is important, he says. "I think it's healthy. And every now and again there needs to be a storm in the harbour, man... It would be nice if people are going 'what's gonna happen?' or, 'Is that it, was that the last time I'm ever going to see them play?'

"So then, the story begins again, which I think is a good place to be, to keep everyone on their toes - including the band, I mean me included, everyone."

Formed with Meighan and their mates Chris Edwards and Chris Karloff (who left the band during the recording of second album Empire) while they were still at school in Leicester in the 1990s, Kasabian rose to fame with the release of their self-titled debut album in 2004. Fifteen years later, they are one of just a handful of those early-noughties indie bands left standing, undoubtedly one of the biggest British bands of their era.

It is no mean feat, and yet it is easy for the successes to become normalised, says Pizzorno.

"Being together for so long it's amazing how the achievements are expected," he says. "Oh, sold out the O2 again - I mean that's a massive thing; two, three nights. Or headlining Glastonbury, five number one albums.

"There's these mad facts that you don't... process [at the time]. But when you think, you go, f***, that's massive... It's an incredible place to be but..."

It comes with certain pressures?

"Kind of. Yes and no. I mean... because we got where we got I think it sort of doesn't really matter now. It would have been more pressure if we'd not achieved what we wanted to.

"We just sort of... rolled with it, really. It's all about new ideas, and new things and new albums. Changing. We've been afforded the luxury of being able to experiment and people going with it. So yes, it's been quite a ride, I've got to say."

Kasabian, he reassures once again, is "safe and sound" and his band mates have all been supportive of The S.L.P. "They've been so sound about it all. I've been blessed."

With the album finished, now all he has to do is think about performing live.

On stage with Kasabian he is the guitarist and backing vocalist, taking the frontman reigns only occasionally for the odd song. The S.L.P. live show will be quite different.

"In my head I have an idea of what I want the show to be but converting it, that's going to be an interesting thing. I know for sure that I don't want it to be anything like... it's going to be a completely different show to a Kasabian show."

He pauses: "I want the outcome to be the same in terms of... euphoric connection. A place for everyone to come to lose their minds. But I want to get there in a whole different way. I'm coming at it from a different angle. It's a different sport."

The album features the collaboration with Little Simz, who was "so good; it was a real honour to work with her", and slowthai, another rapper and 2019 Mercury Prize nominee.

"These [are] young, British artists that I think are at the forefront of music and to get them on the album was amazing," he says. "Moving forward I'd like to do that more. I think those two especially because I'm just a big fan of what they do."

I ask about his life in Leicester. Or more specifically, his recent appearance alongside pal Mark Ronson on Gogglebox, and why viewers were taken to a sofa in east London rather than his Leicestershire home. (Full disclosure here: I too am from Leicester, and it's not often we get to see the city on the telly.)

"Maybe next time," he laughs. "It's a very proud city, isn't it? We are very proud of our city. It's weird, isn't it? That home thing, that Leicester thing."

I last spoke to Pizzorno back in 2016, for the city's local paper, as Kasabian were heading out to play their beloved Leicester City's stadium, the King Power, for the first time; a lifetime's dream fulfilled to celebrate the club's 5,000-1 Premier League win.

Pizzorno, Meighan and Edwards have all remained rooted in Leicestershire, never swayed by the lure of celebrity, and always do their best to champion the city and put on special gigs for their fans there.

"I think [being in Leicester] has only helped us," says Pizzorno. "It's nice to be on the fringes, on the outside, and still be outsiders. I think it's important for artists to be on the outside.

"It's a mad old place. But I love it… I just feel like I learn more being there than I would anywhere else. I think you get more of a sense of the world. It can be a bit of a bubble anywhere else. I've got a lot of my friends who I grew up with and they always make me laugh, fascinate me, and their stories are amazing. I feel more connected there than I would anywhere else."

Kasabian want to inspire children from Leicester, from other less recognised towns and cities, he says.

"I feel like we were kids from a little place outside of the centre, and we had these dreams and we had this intent to try and communicate this message with the world and bring as many people together as possible. I want to show that you can do some mad stuff… I think it's important to show the next generation of kids coming up. Especially in our home town."

I ask how Tom is. He grins. "Tom's Tom, you know. There's only one. He's an amazing man. You can only be that good at something if… well, he's just Tom.

"We don't occupy the same orbit… we're not smashing into each other. If you had two Toms…" He makes a whooshing sound. "That's why it works. And it's been like that since 1997. I mean, like any family, there's arguments and there's fights and there's shouting. But that's a very small percentage of the best time ever. You know, like any normal Christmas Day. We've all got madness in our families. But we've got mad love as well."

After more than 20 years together, a seventh album in the pipeline, now all fathers, a bit wiser, definitely more grown-up, it would seem Kasabian have overcome any hurdles that might cause a band to split. Is this it forever now?

"Yeah, I'd like to think so. You know, bar anything major. You never know what's round the corner, but we do feel like we've come too far now.

"There's not many bands that have been sort of big in two decades. You know, that's always the thing, if you can move into the next decade and still be around… if we're making relevant music and the live shows stand up and have still got that energy and bring that carnival like no one else can, we'll be around for a long time."

Serge Pizzorno's debut album, The S.L.P, is out on 30 August. The S.L.P tour starts in Glasgow on 5 September and finishes in Paris on 17 September, and includes two dates in London.

news.sky.com

[joanndromeda]

December 31st is the one day that sort of naturally forces us to put forth a fair amount of reflection about ourselves, whether we want to or not. Is it the one time we all truly find clarity? Or the one time we all actually forgive ourselves? I don’t know. Despite so many circumstances destroying me, and leaving me feeling like I’m standing on just one leg with all my other limbs severed, I really, truly can’t believe I made it to this very last day.

The new year is so important for all of us. Obviously, we don’t change overnight. But we’re allowed 365 new days for rebirth, healing, love, and redemption.

I have important personal goals for myself. Goals that are better for my overall health, goals that are manageable, and most importantly, goals that I can measure quantitatively. As part of the laws and principles that govern human behavior, goals are difficult to achieve because the consequence is not immediate. We aren’t immediately rewarded for our attempts. And we, understandably, want immediate results. If they’re not there when we put forth the first effort, of course our response-effort dwindles in an instant.

That’s what I’ve learned this year: goals require us; they need us--our time, our passion, our patience, our effort--to be a tangible reality. If you don’t have the minimum of these four disciplines, your goals will be hard to achieve.

But that’s what these 365 new days are for. As the earth reaches its final centimeters around the earth, we become intrinsically blessed with a new, year-long beginning.

This time, I want to make sure the goals I have for this coming year are measurable and have some sort of intervention or end-product plan, not something vague that I think I could just check off like a grocery list. Bigger goals--traveling and applying for my master’s, etc.--are already written out and in the planning phase on another platform. The goals listed here are all things I want to work on so long as I’m living and breathing. Goals that can be adjusted according to my life circumstances. Goals that are relatively manageable to pick right back up if/when I become sloppy and inconsistent about meeting them. Goals that I can pretty much work on for the rest of my life and one day, hopefully, turn them into a natural part of my lifestyle. In no particular order:

Less social media: social media is the biggest offender when it comes to having yourself compare your own life to others when you don’t want to. As long as I keep comparing my productivity and success to others, my sense of self-worth will always remain stagnant or drop. I was scrolling feed after feed way too much this year; it became an unconscious and automatic behavior. Now, open windows for social media: during my lunch break, one hour max after work, and ~15-20 minutes before my nightly routine. Free spaces will be dedicated to self-care, leisure activities, projects, and relaxation.

Stable sleeping schedule: as I’m getting older, 6-7 hours of sleep just isn’t working for me anymore. Especially for the kind of job my work entails, a major antecedent for my mediocre job falls back to my hours of sleep. Now, a minimum of 8 hours of sleep for all work days; weekends are excluded. Bedtimes will be enforced by means of a schedule, and all alarms will be set up and active for the five days of work. As I’ve learned from my field, antecedent interventions are always the most preferable.

More fruits and vegetables in diet: personally, I did a solid job including vegetables whenever I found time to cook and making a fruit smoothie for about 70% of opportunities for breakfast this year. Now, continue with the fruit smoothies because they’re healthy and convenient. Just more protein powder intake, so stock up when container is only about 1/4 full. Replace granola bars and crackers with fruits at least 50% of opportunities. As for vegetables, continue cooking with the same ones I enjoy eating. This time, they will substitute for at least 40% of carbs, as long as the amount of carbs on my plate still meets the daily nutritional intake and satisfactory satiation. Treat-yourself meals and eating out are obviously exceptions.

Cleanse face every single night: I find the main reason for all my acne this year was due to not cleansing my face consistently each night. I have the necessary products and done my research for what works for my skin; my discipline is just lacking. Now, cleanse each night as part of my nightly regimen. Each week, alternate between AHA, BHA, AHA, and BHA again, totaling 2 nights of AHA and 2 nights of BHA. In addition, tamanu oil as a nightly spot treatment, and rosehip oil mixed into moisturizer for the mornings.

More art: more art means more opportunities for practice and improvement. I completed half of my sketchbook for this year (originally hoped for full completion by end of the year). I feel that if I’m going to apply for my master’s, I’m going to have little to no time for myself to draw or paint. Start now while the free time is available, abundant, and opportune. Now, complete at least 2 art pieces per month. One must include watercolor paint. To maximize opportunities, use leftover pages from 2 old sketchbooks I own for inspiration, drafting, and doodling. This will also help me overcome artist’s block and my habit for clean perfect sketches. As of writing this, half-filled sketchbook will be completed by next June and new sketchbook will be solely dedicated to inking.

Spend more time with mom and niece: As my mom is aging and I’ve become more removed from her life, I see myself becoming more and more confused and intolerable to typical behaviors of older folks. I’m finding myself treating her like a child and being the grown-up in most of our interactions. As for my niece, I want to fill her still-malleable brain with science, the arts, and adventures with her aunt before her life becomes consumed by friends, relationships, puberty, and her own established interests. Now, each time mom visits, ask her what she would like to do while she’s here. If mom has no suggestions, find one opportunity to take her somewhere. Could be her favorite pho restaurant or Bath & Body Works. Doesn’t have to be over the top, as long as I maximize opportunities to get to know mom as she is aging, and what I can do to care for her well-being during this transitional period. For niece, make her summer vacation a meaningful and memorable time with her aunt. Dedicate my undivided self to her at least 4 different occasions during her break. Will be in the form of going to a museum, traveling in a different city, watching cartoon marathons, doing paint projects, etc.

Save money: I definitely don’t think I had any crazy spending frenzies this year. Definitely some impulsive purchases here and there, but certainly not a lot to be a point of concern. My only real issue was not having any real long-term goals this year, so I wasn’t really saving for anything. The money was just sitting there the majority of the time, and when the money was just sitting there, I found excuses to spend it because I felt I wasn’t being productive with it. Mainly food, drinks, and things for my room and wardrobe. Not a lot of useless and wasteful spending. Now, stick to my money-saving plan written out on my other platform. Because I actually have serious plans this coming year (and the next), I should be more mindful about my money.

[betweengenesisfrogs]

Toward a Critical Re-Evaluation of Homestuck, or: A Prayer for Andrew Hussie

(aka Off-the-Cuff Homestuck Thoughts #7)

This might be a manifesto.

Since the ending sequence of Homestuck in April 2017, and even well after the establishment of a canon aftermath for its main characters and the confirmation that there will be a further Epilogue, I've seen a sentiment among Homestuck bloggers and the Homestuck fandom that I find very frustrating, one that persists well into 2018.

The sentiment goes something like this:

"Homestuck is a meaningless work by a flippant, irreverent prankster (Andrew Hussie) who dropped his commitment to the story at the last second, and made fun of his fans for expecting there to be a meaningful ending. Furthermore, he continues to harm and belittle his fandom in the creation of Hiveswap, and only continues his work on Homestuck-related projects to exploit his audience."

Not only is this idea wrong, I find it disingenuous at best, malicious at worst, and actively detrimental to an understanding of Homestuck as a work. While it comes from an understandable frame of mind - the feeling of disappointment many of us felt at the end of Homestuck's pretty short and to-the-point Act 7 - it actively ignores the main reason *why* that ending came across as disappointing at first glance. Namely, it ignores the role serial storytelling - a necessity at that point in Homestuck's existence - played in creating misleading impressions of where the story was going among fans. Furthermore, it completely ignores how well the story arc of Act 6 Homestuck generally works when taken as a whole.

It demonstrates a very shallow understanding of Andrew Hussie as a storyteller, conflating his in-story persona with the actuality of a creator who demonstrates nothing but work ethic and commitment to his creation.

It ignores what actually happened with Hiveswap, which is that despite a frankly horrific set of circumstances that nearly prevented it from being made, Hussie was nonetheless able to gather a small team to create a game studio that delivered on every promise it ever made to Kickstarter backers and created a pretty solid, fun, and novel adventure game, with more installments and a rich evolving mystery on the way.

Finally, this interpretation completely misunderstands the way the idea of narrative is being used in the ending of Homestuck, not as a cudgel to beat off fan desire for thematic completion, but as a tool for delivering a thematically powerful narrative that draws parallels between the specter of Lord English and the way stories themselves are used as tools of oppression.

Homestuck isn't perfect, and neither is Andrew Hussie. But by and large, this popular perception of him is flat-out wrong, an exaggeration of whatever flaws he brought to the creation of Homestuck, and contributes to a misunderstanding of its ending. Indeed, I'd argue it is, in some ways, part of why Homestuck has rarely been acknowledged as a significant work of art. To understand why Homestuck is important, first we need to be able to acknowledge what it achieved.

Here's a daring notion: overall, Homestuck was and is pretty damn good.

Here are some reasons.

1) Being Forced To Tell the Story Serially Over a Slow Drip Messed With the Experience for the Reader

I can hear the bristling now. "I hated the ending," I can hear some of you saying. "It left me cold and unsatisfied, and damn it, that's an objective fact. Who are you to take that away from me?"

Actually, I'm not trying to take that away from you. Like, you're allowed to have been disappointed. I just want to point out that it might be a better ending than you gave it credit for, and explain why it came off the way it did. If you're interested in hearing me out, read on. You should know that initially, I was disappointed, too.

But after rereading Act 6 and the whole narrative leading up to that ending? I changed my mind. Rereading, I found it pretty satisfying, making a great deal of sense, capitalizing on major themes, and delivering a meaningful ending for most, if not all characters

I'll talk more about *what* I think the narrative is doing in a bit, but here's why I think it was misread, by me among many others.

Serial reading fucks with the quality of a story experience. I feel like this is a pretty uncontroversial statement. The problem with serial storytelling is that stories build on themselves, drawing on themes and ideas from earlier on to make a powerful build-up to moments of catharsis. This is the nature of story and character development. However if you're getting a story as little bits and pieces, it is much more difficult for this to happen. You lose track of these threads.

More dangerously, it's very easy to develop a set of expectations around a narrative while it's in pause mode. Little moments - intended to be part of a larger flow of ideas - completely dominate one's thinking for as long as they hold the stage. This is a common thing in fandom, especially webcomic fandoms, who deal with the slowest-drip narratives.  Again and again I've seen expectations generated during webcomics' hiatuses lead fans to disappointment with the results, simply because those results have nothing to do with what was expected during one of those moments of downtime. El Goonish Shive, Sluggy Freelance, Gunnerkrigg Court - I've seen it in webcomic fandoms again and again, that the dashing of narrative expectations seemed like a betrayal of the story when read at a drip pace, but made perfect sense when viewed as a whole story.

This is not a problem Hussie was ever unaware of. Here’s an excellent discussion (among many) from one of his early Q&As that takes on the problem in detail:

The longer I do this the more I'm struck by how radical the difference is between the experiences of reading something archivally vs. serially, both for the reader, and the author if he's prone to sampling reactions frequently as I do. For the reader especially, I think the experience of day to day reading is so dramatically different, they might as well be reading a different story altogether.

The main difference is the amount of space between events the reader has, which can be filled with massive amounts of speculation, analysis, predictions, and something I guess you could call "opinion building", which can have both positive and negative effects. On the positive side, these readers become more closely engaged with the material than archival readers can be, zeroing in on details and insights which might be overlooked otherwise. On the negative side, I think that excess mental noise the space between pages allows can potentially be a bit suffocating, and put a strain on the experience the material was intended to deliver.

The archival reader always has the luxury of moving on to the next page, regardless of how he reacts to certain events, and thus can be more impassive about it. That internal cacophony isn't given time to build, and if there are reservations about a string of events, whether due to shocking revelations, or questions over the narrative merit of something, or really any form of dissatisfaction, all he has to do is keep clicking to see how it all fits together, and can make a more complete judgment with hindsight.

He goes on to discuss a specific example of how this played out for the readers:

The recent pages [the start of Horrorstuck] had me particularly conscious of the nature of serial delivery. [Eridan's betrayal] was rolled out over the course of a weekend, first with Feferi, then Kanaya. When Fereri dies, this registers as one extremely dramatic event. Cue the waiting, speculating, worrying and all that. When Kanaya dies a day or so later, it registers as a second dramatic event! Again the scrutiny begins which the space allows. Is this all too much? How do I feel about this narrative turn? Is this setting a trend for a bloodbath? Does that serve any purpose? The reader projects into the future, does a little unwitting fanfiction writing in his head, and may not like what he sees! All this activity becomes the basis for opinion building, which is sort of the emergence of an official position on matters, good or bad, which is only able to flourish in the slow-motion intake of the story. That official position can be a very stubborn thing, especially when it's negative, and seriously textures the way additional developments are regarded. It's really hard to shake a reader off an entrenched position on a matter, even when it was formed with an incomplete picture.

Reading the same events in the archive is quite different. Very little of that inner monologue takes shape. And while the events are still shocking, and the reader may raise his eyebrows a mile high, he then simply lowers them and keeps reading. In fact, because of the reading pace, I would suggest these two deaths actually register as only ONE DRAMATIC EVENT! One guy snaps and kills two characters. In the flow of straight-through reading especially, it is quite startling, tension-building, and can only serve to propel the reader into further pages, at a pace which suspends the experience-compromising (augmenting??) play-by-play.

Hussie would return to this topic again and again, including here and here and here and h8re.

This is in incredibly valuable insight for anyone who creates stories over the long term, especially  webcomics. You may or may not agree that Homestuck's finale is well-executed, but I think it's hard to escape the fact that the response to Homestuck's ending, indeed, to most of Act 6, was hugely influenced by these factors. Why? Because the experience of Act 6 and 7 was more affected by hiatuses and the speculation problems they create than any other part of Homestuck.

It's hard to remember these days, but one thing that Homestuck was known for from about 2010-2013 was its absolutely preposterous rate of updates. I'm pretty sure that *was* the initial fuel for the fire that made Homestuck a huge fandom. What other website could you go to see a huge chunk of a story drop on you so regularly? No other webcomic had people using Update Checkers, programs designed to check the RSS feed of Homestuck and tell you within the minute that it had updated so you could check it out before your friends spoiled everything to you. What other webcomic ever needed such a thing? But the first era of Homestuck fandom was predicated on the idea that the comic would update every couple of days, sometimes once a day, sometimes *multiple times in the same day*. No wonder it got so huge so fast. It was an experience unlike almost anything else out there.

Around 2013 this began to change. Homestuck began having large hiatuses, the famous "pauses," and though Hussie indicated the story was working its way towards the finale, it ultimately took until the 2016 anniversary to complete.

Interestingly, it's around 2013 or so that we started seeing frustration with Homestuck break out into a large phenomenon, with many people arguing that the comic had stopped being good, and it's after the largest of these pauses, the Omegapause before the end of Act 6 and Act 7 updates, that we had the famous ending backlash.

The fact that very few people seem to have considered this in their analysis of whether Homestuck is good or not is absolutely staggering to me.

Given these factors, we would expect to see some of the enthusiasm taken out of the Homestuck fandoms during these periods, and strong opinions on where the story should go next, and, lo and behold, that's exactly what we see. The common sentiment is that Homestuck "stopped being fun during Act 6." Well, yeah, it's a lot less fun to have a comic that updates rarely than a comic that updates with loads of content very, very often. That doesn't necessarily mean the content got worse. And yet I see no one asking if this altered our perception of the story.

2) Serial Reading Problems Are Worsened In an Experimental, Twisty Story

This hiatus problem was exacerbated by the nature of Hussie's storytelling. I'd describe his writing style as "affectionate teasing": testing and pushing readers' boundaries, aiming for strong emotional reactions, constantly working to defy and mess with expectations, but ultimately working towards a rich character-based story. Hussie's work whiplashes between humor, horror, worldbuilding, action - it's intense and disconcerting at first, but once you get familiar with it, you see these that all these elements build toward a coherent whole.

I'd argue that this storytelling style is *uniquely* well-suited to long-form reading and endangered by drip-feed reading.

Because when you read piece by piece, you experience whiplash slowly, and that’s not everybody’s kink. Pieces that are meant to work together take on a different tone when read on their own. As discussed above, continuous events seem like separate events when read on their own, and this creates a *false* expectation of where the narrative is going. Furthermore, it's not as much fun to be teased or messed with in slow motion. The expectation that there will be satisfaction and resolution disappears when the current update is all you can think about. This, not a deficit in storytelling, is what created the feeling of "Homestuck’s not fun anymore." But it was the same affectionate, gently teasing storytelling as ever. But this only comes out when the work is re-read.

This is exactly what happened in Act 6 Homestuck. Events seemed like they would go on forever, when in real story terms, they went on for moments. Take the notorious Trickster "arc" (I can't even call it an arc - it’s more of a sequence if anything). Today it's remembered as an unendurable gauntlet of Hussie pushing buttons. The reality of it is, though, if you read through it, it's like Hussie pushing buttons for all of five minutes, like half a chapter from a novel. Literally all it is is: The Gang Gets High on Magic Candy > They Do Stupid Things > Blackout. Mostly it's an excuse for some serious character development *afterward* as the Alphas discuss the bad decisions that led them to this place. It may or not be perfect, but it's definitely a lot more reasonable when you see it's a quick tangent.

Act 6 is full of things like this: events remembered as horrible slogs that are really quite brief in retrospect.

This is brought home when you consider that events in Act 5 – hell, even Acts 3 and 4 – also brought on strong negative responses from the fandom - it's just that they were quickly buried under a story that was quickly moving on to other things.  Here are some strong fan outrages from those days I can name off the top of my head:

--This interlude with the trolls is too long, nobody cares about the trolls, Hussie has abandoned the human kids --Nobody cares about troll romance, switch back to the kids --Jade hasn’t been seen onscreen for ages --Vriska’s creation of Bec Noir shows that she is too powerful a character, she will never face comeuppance --John is dead again and Vriska killed him??? --Killing Feferi, Tavros and Kanaya? That’s too many deaths --I thought Feferi was supposed to unite the troll races! You’re telling me that’s not going to happen? --Kanaya is dead??? Fuck that --Scratching the timeline? What, Hussie, you’re going to reset everything and ruin the story? --Equius should have gone out with more dignity, this is a betrayal of his fans --Nepeta shouldn’t have been murdered, this is a betrayal of her fans --Gamzee used to be cute, now he’s a murder machine, this is a betrayal of his fans --We never found out what happened between Gamzee and Karkat? Why won’t the narrative switch back and tell us? --Nobody cares about Doc Scratch --Nobody cares about these stupid Ancestors, switch back to the trolls --Vriska is DEAD? This is a betrayal of her fans

And so on. Reading Hussie’s old Formspring archives is a graduate class in this era of Homestuck fan frustration.

And yet today Act 5 is universally remembered as brilliant, thought of by many as “the time when Homestuck was great.” In my book, while Act 6 does take on different themes than Act 5 (focusing more on the protagonists’ psychology and failures), and thus may not be to everyone’s taste, the biggest difference between the two is that during Act 5, the twists and turns of the story were thought of as part of a unified whole, because the story was barreling along too fast for these complaints to stick around for long.

Given that Hussie has always been aware of the challenges of serial vs archival storytelling, I feel like the relentless output of the first five acts was in part an attempt to mitigate those problems. As if by shoveling content into the mouth of the behemoth, he could propitiate the ravenous fandom horrorterror and thereby stave off the descent of the Infernal Internet Speculation-Expectation Monster that was prophesized to devour all.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t stave it off forever, and lo, in 2013 did the IISEM descend with its glistening tentacle teeth, IA, IA, IA! CHOMP CHOMP.

It astonishes me that in some quarters folks talk about the 2013-2016 pauses as if they were something Hussie wanted, when by all evidence he tried desperately to avoid them up until that point. I don’t need to explain that these hiatuses had to do with restarting the whole process of creating Hiveswap and building a game studio from scratch, right? I don’t need to explain that he got screwed over and these were circumstances outside his control, right? Let’s assume we’re on the same page there. If not, I suggest you look into the matter before assuming these hiatuses had anything to do with creator apathy.

After a certain point, Hussie faced a difficult choice. Unable to keep up the rapid-pace storytelling, he could change the storytelling to make it suit a serial reader, or he could focus on making the story the best it could be for an archive reader.

I think he went for the better option: aiming for the archive reader. If you’re going to argue that he should have put the emphasis on the serial reader: which serial reader are we talking about here? The one who started following in Homestuck in 2010, like me? The one who started after Horrorstuck, and viewed it, but not the end of Act 5, as a complete whole? The one who joined during late Act 6? How the hell would you decide that? Whose experience is the one to privilege?

The only option that really makes sense is to aim for the version of the story that will be around the longest and experienced by the most people: the archive that is the complete story of Homestuck.

Ultimately, I don’t think he could have changed his style of storytelling anyway, and to do so would have been to lose the combination of humor, madness, and surprises that brought us all to Homestuck in the first place. Forced to reckon with a difficult situation, he focused on making his kind of story the best that it could be, and I think Homestuck is better for it.

Given his awareness of the problem as expressed above, I’m sure Hussie knew proceeding over the long term would stoke a lot of resentment in the fandom. But he went ahead and did it anyway, because his goal was not to live up to a certain set of expectations. His goal was to tell what he saw as the best possible version of the story. I have an immense respect for him for that.

3) The Last Pause is the Deepest (or: Omegapause Killed the Character Development Star)

The final hiatus problem I want to point to is that in terms of the narrative arc of Homestuck, the final pause, the Omegapause, came at the most inopportune time for readers to get a sense of the conclusion of that narrative.

Basically, many character arcs in Homestuck were concluded *before* Collide and Act 7. Before the Omegapause. Indeed, Hussie brought many long-running arcs to an end in a very satisfying way during the “conversation” sequence before the final fight, from Dave’s long-needed conversation with Dirk about Bro to Rose’s finally getting to meet and befriend Roxy, to Game Over!Terezi and (Vriska’s) reunion. In narrative terms, Collide was not the climax, even if it might have been perceived to be. The climax was the Retcon sequence preceding the conversations – the desolation of Game Over, our surviving protagonists’ despair, then victory in the form of negotiating with the Denizens, representatives of Skaia, to create a timeline in which victory may take place, both in game terms and emotional terms. The conversation before the final battle showed us an emotional victory – victory in game terms was really just icing on the cake, or an echo of that emotional victory.

The trouble is, having a long pause before the final battle sequences created the false perception that the conversation was merely the prelude to the climax: that, in fact, the climax had not yet taken place. For us serial readers, it was easy to conclude that there was further character development to come.

Well, in some ways there was, and in some ways there wasn’t. Dirk and Dave got to have another big moment in Collide that drove their themes home, while Rose and Roxy had basically already done their thing earlier and just got to fight alongside each other. Meanwhile Vriska and Caliborn’s arcs really culminated in Act 7, and some, like John’s and Ret-Terezi’s, were complicated and continued by the Credits aftermath and probably won’t be brought to a final end until the Epilogue. There’s a degree of variation, which I enjoy. Collide does serve some functions: characters who were at an emotional distance from each other (for instance Jane and Jake), got to fight alongside each other and start building back their friendships.  Overall, though, the bulk of emotional entanglements got resolved in that conversation, making the Retcon the load-bearing piece of Homestuck’s climax.

This is why the Omegapause was the most dangerous pause: because it built up an expectation that things would further develop from there with new entanglements and complications, instead of aiming towards a tying-off of plot elements into a conclusion.

I remember what *I thought* the post-Omegapause sequence was going to be: a showdown between the kids and Lord English as he entered the game session through Bec Noir, Spades Slick and Lord Jack. I expected there would be a twist, and I expected one or more of our protagonists would die. I was thrown for a loop when I realized the story had basically been almost over, with no last twist, no “secret final battle” of kids vs LE in sight.

But as I reread the ending of Act 6, I realized: that would have been so much stupider than what actually happened. The fact that the kids don’t directly face LE and Vriska does is one of the most brilliant parts of the ending, and on the reread I rapidly fell in love with the Homestuck’s conclusion. What had thrown me off was the fact that I developed my expectations during a period where it looked like we were further from the end.

But in retrospect, Hussie had been saying all along that we were very close to the conclusion – it was just, at that moment, very easy to get the wrong impression.

Rarely do I see anyone taking anything like this into account.

I do think we could have benefited from more character development after the pause, if for no other reason than to overcome these problems and make the victory feel a little more grounded, and I do feel like certain characters (Jane comes to mind) got more limited and abbreviated endings. But these are minor points for me in the overall arc of Homestuck’s narrative, which in my experience establishes its conclusion very, very well.

4) Homestuck’s Ending Is a Glorious Queer Gnostic Account of Escaping from Narrative Oppression (and Yes, Virginia, it Has Character Arcs)

Okay, so I’ve written a lot about *what* I love about the ending of Homestuck elsewhere, going on for pages and pages, which you can read here and here. For now, let me just attempt (as absurd as it is) a quick summary.

Homestuck in Act 6 parallels many different motifs to drive home the idea that escaping from Lord English’s domain is an escape from a cosmic oppression, and serves as a metaphor for escaping and defying real-life oppressions and hegemonies. These motifs include Gnosticsm, queer identity, pluralism, and a metafictional examination of the controlling role of the narrative that is Homestuck itself.

Gnosticism is an ancient early alternate version of Christianity that posits a false reality created by a false creator, the Demiurge Yaldabaoth, who rules over human beings but whose domain it is the Gnostic’s quest to escape. The Demiurge styles himself a Lord God (often the very same one from Judaism and more mainstream Christianity) and an artist but is in fact incompetent and limited in comparison with the true harmonious reality. That he was able to create such a false world was a cosmic accident caused by angel-like beings known as Aeons, who existed perfect symmetrical pairs until an asymmetry caused Yaldabaoth’s creation. Sophia, the asymmetrical Aeon is our path back to that perfection. Furthermore, the false world is the world of flesh and matter and material things, while the true world is the world of ideas, symbols and archetypes, a place of divine Platonic form. By knowledge (gnosis) we become our true selves and are set free. Gnosticism is anti-authoritarian, anti-patriarchal, and devoted to each human being’s quest to connect to the divine on their own terms.

Gnostic motifs proliferate everywhere in Homestuck, especially Act 6, from such chat handles as GardenGnostic, TimaeusTestified, and TipsyGnostalgic to basically everything about Calliope and Caliborn, including and especially their role in the finale. Act 7 depicts Caliborn as trapped within the realm he is created, destined for power but ultimately doomed to it, destroyed in the perfect moment where Calliope, his counterpart, brings his domain to an end.

Caliborn’s realm is the sequence of time loops and set of worlds that brought Lord English into being, but it’s also the narrative Homestuck that depicts those events and worlds. He complains about the narrative Homestuck, argues with its author, and tries to make his own version, just as a demiurge would. (Secretly, because of his cosmic influence, he’s more of an influence than he realizes. He places limits and boundaries on these worlds in the form of the narratives he perpetuates, and is obsessed with sexist ideas, exploitation, and themes of masculinity, importance and power. That the heroes escape this realm in which he has control is also them escaping these narratives that have been placed upon them.

This is the sense in which Dave says “we don’t have arcs.” As I’ve said elsewhere, it’s not Hussie rejecting the idea of giving his characters meaningful stories (this is largely a false impression generated by the Omegapause weirdness), as shown by the fact that Dave himself has one of the best, strongest arcs in the whole story. What Dave means, and what Dave’s arc is about, is that he had to let go of the false ideas, false narratives placed on him by the world (Lord English’s world, the Demiurge’s world) in which he lived. He did this by understanding the abuse he suffered from Bro (a Caliborn-esque figure) was wrong, and by overcoming his internalized homophobia to realize the value of the relationship he’d found with Karkat.

This is a frequent motif in the final pages of Homestuck. Queerness is represented as a way of escaping the patriarchal, conservative God of the Demiurge, and that these revelations about Dave appear in parallel with the final departure from the domain Caliborn controls is no coincidence. Queer relationships and identities build in the ending of Homestuck into what Hussie tongue-in-cheek called “the gay singularity.” This growth in queerness is represented as growth toward meaning, and further queer figures like the non-binary Davepeta appear as idealistic mentors to teach our heroes to understand their cosmic circumstances.

At the same time, the growth from a material world to a world of ideas is represented as the heroes taking on God Tier identities that embody aspects—ideas that are literally the building blocks of the universe. To know yourself as an aspect is to know who you are, and by knowing who you are, you become an idea that is divine. This all takes place at the same time characters grow towards queerness. To know your own queer identity is also to become divine.

And, at the same time, the characters leave the narrative. Everything that was Caliborn’s – his worlds, his time loops and influence— is left behind by the characters as they move into the realm where they are heroes, leaders, and gods. They pass through a door that resembles the weapon that he used, that is his narrative, the weapon shaped like the symbol of Homestuck, the weapon that *is* the narrative Homestuck. It is a weapon against him because he stays behind, on the other side of the door. Lord English can never leave. He’s in the dark pocket of the black hole forever. Caliborn enters a realm that appears to give him power—but he never comes out. He’s trapped by his own limited idea of who he is and what the world should be.

This is a fantastic, culturally resonant, and very Gnostic ending.

And as to Vriska—I’ve seen many people say that Vriska’s retconned revival gives her too much power and agency, but I actually think it strikes the perfect balance. The story understands what she wants. But it’s not on her side. I have a lot more to say about her (perhaps l8r), but here’s the most important thing: Vriska can’t leave, either. She gets what she wants: the ultimate fulfilment of her identity as The Hero. She gets to Kill the Bad Guy. But at a cost she is incapable of recognizing. Like Caliborn, she never gets to go on to be a fulfilled, happy patron of the new universe. She is always on the inside of the door, stuck inside Homestuck. And the fact that we’re asked to observe her breaking off her relationship with Terezi to go out in a blaze of glory? The fact that we’re asked to compare her to another version of herself who’s let go of her ego, whose bond with Terezi is the most important thing in her life? The fact, that in her eyes, she comes up better, but in ours, she comes up short? How incredible is that?

Neither the Hero or the Villain, trapped in their own ideas, trapped by their own ideas, can ever be free.

It’s a pretty good ending, is what I’m saying.

5) Against Apathetic Lazy Troll Hussie

So, back to that perception of Hussie I discussed earlier. The idea that he’s a flippant, irreverent prankster who never cared about bringing his story to a good conclusion.

By now it should be clear why I don’t really buy that line of thinking.  The sheer effort put into Homestuck after the pauses began, the level of thematic complexity Homestuck was going for at the end—these belie the idea that he was apathetic or lazy or wanted to piss off his fans. What seems obvious to me was that he was committed. He devoted himself to driving towards an end he was personally satisfied with, whatever anyone else thought of it, and chose to accept the consequences of having to tell it over the long term.

I could see how it might be easy to get the impression that Hussie’s a very frivolous, thoughtless guy, when his in-story self is a ridiculous, flighty orange goofball. But come on. That’s mistaking the persona he uses for comedy with his actual self as a writer. Reading any interview, Q&A session, or discussion with him reveals how much thought he put into every moment of Homestuck, and above all, that he was committed to putting an incredible amount of effort into it from the very beginning.

He was also committed to challenging himself and bettering his work, whether that meant trying new experiments (flash games, new animation styles, splitting panels and dialogue, messing with formatting, letting the villains take over the website, etc., etc., etc…) or rethinking his work to take account of a larger, more diverse perspective, as we saw with the developing queerness and introspection of characters like Dave.

Yet he knew that not all experiments would be received well. He chose to accept that, to not wallow in the familiar but to take on new things regardless of in-the-moment reader reactions. As he put it:

I guess I just believe in sticking to your guns as a creator. It doesn't mean you completely ignore what people have to say or fail to take it under advisement, but pandering and caving into critics for fear of diminished appreciation is the wrong way to go. Staying the course with your vision doesn't mean you'll do everything right, but if included in that vision is serious, concerted exploration, you can only benefit as an artist. Adversaries to this cause should be regarded as villains.

There are two ways to do the "obstinate douche bag" thing as an artist.

One is in vehement defense of stagnation. Some artists I've encountered do this, and it's completely indefensible. It's as low as you can get, creatively speaking.

The other is in vehement defense of exploration. This is just the opposite. This is a posture everyone should strive for, and these artists are the ones people should be most inclined to offer their attention and support.

That's just how I feel about it, and I come from a zero-BS standpoint on it all. This isn't a job for me, and I'll never modify my approach to protect a bottom line. If it was just a job, I guarantee I wouldn't spend every waking hour doing it. It's kind of a strange personal mission I'm on, which I happen to make money from, and that's cool. People are welcome to come along for the ride.

There’s a deep, deep irony to me in the fact that some talk about Act 6 Homestuck like it was a stagnant period in Homestuck’s development, when in fact, it was one of its most creative and experimental periods. This is true both of its structural and visual experiments, where messing with form finally revealed itself to be central to Homestuck’s major themes, and of its storytelling experiments. It’s understandable that diving into the kids’ psychological problems was a shift, and not everyone was down with it, but the very fact it was a shift shows that Hussie was trying new things. It would have been easy for him to stay in a comfortable place doing the same things he did in Act 4 and 5, but instead, he began to ask different questions and take the story someplace new. And honestly? Act 6 took a long time to pay its full dividends, but I loved where we ended up in the end.

(What kept us from enjoying it in the moment? The pauses. Once again the pauses.)

But for me, the thing that most puts the lie to the idea of Lazy Hussie is the sheer fact of Act 6’s existence itself.

Consider how easy it would have been to drop Homestuck completely when things got rough in the middle years. Consider how many webcomic authors would have done just that. I can name many webcomic hiatuses where the webcomic never came back.

But Homestuck did. Not only did it return, it returned spectacularly, scorchingly, with the shocking and dynamic Game Over, with Caliborn’s claymations, with two spectacular, full-length animations, one of them lovingly-hand drawn. It returned with metafictional shenanigans and glorious queer Gnostic themes. Hussie kept going, and kept experimenting all along the way.

This is the furthest thing in the world from laziness.

And the same is true for Hiveswap. It astonishes me how much I’ve heard Hiveswap talked about as a debacle or a betrayal of its fans. Despite having horrible problems dropped on him, the sort that would ruin any other Kickstarter, Hussie spent the next few years working to make sure he met the promises he’d made to his fans. He did.

My dudes, Hiveswap is real. It exists. It delivers on every promise that was made about what it might be: it’s a fun, pretty, point-and-click adventure game telling a new story in the world of Homestuck. It’s creative and clever and updates an old style of gameplay by letting you put things on things to your heart’s content. It’s certainly more accessible than Homestuck, and not yet as structurally complex, but given future installments, there’s plenty of time for it to grow into something rich and thorny. And rather than see this idea go under, from basically nowhere Hussie worked to bring together a small, diverse team of queer artists and creators to make this thing happen.

Again, not exactly laziness.

That’s why it angers me when I see people calling Hiveswap (somehow?) a betrayal of Homestuck fans, or advocating pirating Hiveswap or demanding their money back because it doesn’t live up to some weird set of expectations they placed on it. Maybe during the periods of drought and ambiguous release dates, both for Homestuck and Hiveswap, it made a little sense to be skeptical of Hussie making promises, but now?

It’s basically spitting in the face of a creator who kept working in the most difficult circumstances, and the small, insanely hard-working team who made it possible, over something that they’ve handed to you exactly as you specified right on your doorstep in a gift-wrapped box.

I’m not saying you can’t critique Hussie or his storytelling. He’s definitely a weird dude with a lot of quirks (Which is perhaps the only kind of dude who could have made something as quirky as Homestuck.) I think it’s fair to say he hasn’t always communicated well with the fandom. But the reaction to him these days is totally, ludicrously, out of proportion, beyond anything that would be a useful critique.

A related question is whether Andrew Hussie is burnt out on Homestuck.

Well, maybe?

It’s certainly true that since 2013ish he’s stepped away somewhat from communicating directly with his fans. But 2013 is also the time when Homestuck fandom was at its most massive, its most full of infighting and meaningless arguments, and its most overwhelming to keep up with. I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to hear more of his insights, but it’s pretty understandable that he wanted to step back a bit under the circumstances. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s burnt out. I mean, he seems to be living his best life, posing glamorously with his fidget spinners and Minion t-shirts. Not exactly hiding in a cave. Rock on, dude.

If he is burnt out on Homestuck, though, that makes what he’s done with Homestuck and Hiveswap all the more impressive.  That he brought them this far, and wants to see them keep going and keep doing well, when he could have let them drop unceremoniously a long time ago. If he’s delegating some of the work to others, all the better. I can think of nothing better for an artist who’s burnt out and ready to move on than to find people he can trust to keep the things he started going into the future, and that, I think is exactly what we have in What Pumpkin, Viz, and Homestuck’s artistic team.

But even to assume that he’s burnt out is to presume a lot about his mental state from some very scant data. By many other indications, he wants to keep engaging with Homestuck. There’s an Epilogue to come—a capstone for those last few ambiguities surrounding the timeline, John and Terezi. And he’s getting the Homestuck books re-published with new commentary through Viz—so maybe that’s where he wants to have his conversations with his audience. And he’s still the creative director of Hiveswap itself. It’s very possible he’s not burned out—if anything, wants to keep building the world he created in Homestuck and seeing where he can take it next.

Ultimately, I think people’s ideas about Andrew Hussie say a lot more about their lingering feelings about the ending of Homestuck—a backlash brought on by the pauses he had to work with—than anything about Hussie himself.

6) The Conversation Around Homestuck

Homestuck is a goddamn triumph.

There are certainly critiques I could make of it. But they pale in light of what Homestuck is: is one of the most rich, genre-bending, experimental, character-driven, hilarious, innovative, metafictional, transcendent, optimistic works on the Internet—to say nothing of how it dwarfs much of the rest of literature.

Ultimately, I think Hussie was right: as an archive, as the story it is from beginning to end, Homestuck stands. It’s a rich, meaningful work with a meaningful finale, and it’s right there to be read by anyone who wants to read it. In that sense, Homestuck was and Homestuck is. It doesn’t really need me to defend it. Nor does Andrew Hussie.

So why did I write all this? Why did I write everything I’ve written here on this blog?

Well, mostly for Homestuck’s readers. For fans like myself.

Because I still see people who came away from Homestuck feeling totally burned and abandoned by its creator, when that was anything but the truth. Because I still see people who feel like they can’t escape an awful negativity about this comic, about the ending of something they passionately loved. I want them to see that it doesn’t have to feel that way.

And because I want Homestuck criticism to be better. Because I see prominent bloggers, some of whom I really respect, taking so little of this stuff into account. I want to see people talk about Homestuck’s place in literature, in internet culture, without discounting how circumstances shaped how it was perceived. I want to get away from a lazy cynicism—that cynicism everywhere online—about whether stories can be meaningful at all. A cynicism that Homestuck is the very antithesis of through its themes of transcendence and hope.

I think for some people, Homestuck is that weird old obsession they cringe at. The ghost of teenage fandoms past. Which is fine. It’s reasonable to want to move on. But it frustrates me when I see the same cynical, cringing attitude affecting how people feel—or feel like they’re allowed to feel without social stigma—about the work Homestuck itself. I’m not interested in cringe culture.

I frankly don’t have time for it when Homestuck’s as good as it is.

Don’t get me wrong, I want Homestuck to be criticized, too. I want to hear what its flaws are. I think that’s also an important part of the conversation. But don’t tell me it’s a pointless, apathetic work, that it’s just the product of laziness. Because we know better than that by now. Because we need a better conversation than that. Don’t tell me that Homestuck doesn’t have Gnostic themes. Tell me how it uses them, and how it could use them better. Don’t tell me Homestuck’s meaningless. Tell me how it strives to be meaningful—because it does, in every aspect of its storytelling—and tell me where it succeeds, and where it fails.

That’s the kind of conversation I want to have about Homestuck.

You may not agree with the things I’ve pointed to here—you may think that Homestuck’s ending is much more flawed than I do. But that’s totally fair. All I want to say is this:

If you were holding off from letting yourself enjoy Homestuck, or if you once enjoyed it and wish you could enjoy it again, or if the experience of the ending left you feeling disappointed and frustrated and burned out…

Give it another read, especially Act 6 and 7.

You might be surprised how much you like what you find.

[rkwon]

⯁ ROYAL SEPTEMBER EVALUATION: I’LL BE THERE !

A REFLECTION OF YOUR FEELINGS TOWARDS FAMILY PERFORMANCE: I’LL BE THERE BY JESS GLYNNE

( tw !! mentions of/implied corporal punishment and abuse )

once he’d decided who his performance would be for, what just kind of fell into place. he had wanted something a little light, upbeat enough to be a breath of fresh air amongst what will likely be an onslaught of emotional tracks, but deep enough to properly encapsulate the way he feels — to appropriately fill the prompt. the last thing he wants is for the coaches to be disappointed with his first evaluation as a trainee, to wonder why jisub had deemed him worthy of a contract. 

( at the same time, he knew the most important person to make proud would be himself, so he tries not to think about it too much. )

he can’t help but notice the parallels with standing on the mga stage when he walks into the room, stands in the centre with a row of impossible-to-read faces staring back at him. the lights don’t quite blind him or send a wave of warmth down his spine but he certainly feels equally as small with the world unfolding around him. the name of the song sits on the edge of his tongue, desperate to spill out so he can get on with things and stop thinking about how the coaches’ eyes don’t glisten under the light like mingyu’s always had when he’d practised for him. he doesn’t have his comfort blanket, his boyfriend’s fingers tucked between his own anymore and he’s scared. he’s far more scared than he ever had been on the mgas. perhaps it’s because back then, he had a purer motivation and if things didn’t work out, they would always be able to try again. now, he dreads to think what happens if he doesn’t do well. he’s heard stories, seen accusations that make his stomach churn and his life flash on the inside of his eyelids and he doesn’t want to find out if the rumours are true. he just wants to deliver a heartfelt tribute to one of the most important people in his life, someone who helped shape him into the man he is today, the man who got here. 

once he’s ready, he cues the music, adjusts his feet to just slightly apart to give him a more natural position. he doesn’t want to appear as nervous as he feels or feel his knees cramp halfway through because he’s been trying so hard not to move too much. even when the introduction kicks in, he feels his dancer body long to trace out a choreography, but instead, he sways to the quiet instrumental as he starts the opening verse. 

when all the tears are rolling down your face and it feels like yours was the only heart to break when you come back home and all the lights are out, ooh and you getting used to no one else being around

oh, oh, I'll be there when you need a little love, I got a little love to share yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna come through you'll never be alone, I'll be there for you I'll be there, I'll be there for you I'll be there, I'll be there for you oh, I swear, I got enough love for two, ooh, ooh, ooh you'll never be alone, I'll be there for you

his english leaves much to be desired normally, barely experienced in conversation let alone the nuances of each syllable, but a skill won does have is an excellent ability to ignore his lack of knowledge and copy sounds. with a love of japanese pop ( and usually, the japanese tracks of his favourite korean groups — kara and chichi come to mind immediately, but he doesn’t doubt there’s many more ) like his own, over the years, his improvement had been vast and whilst it takes from his singing a little having to initially worry about pronunciation, by the end of the three weeks he’s had to perfect this, he barely thinks about making the distinction between his r’s and l’s — especially with two of each in the titular lines that make the majority of the lyrics. 

regardless, this isn’t a test of his language skills, even a test of how well he can perform, but instead an evaluation of his ability to show emotion in his voice, expressions. it’s more than pinching his leg through his shorts pocket or forcing his voice to shake as he draws out the longest notes. maybe he shouldn’t have to truly feel the song deep in his bones to convey the sort of emotion they’re looking for, but here, at this level, he does and it’s lucky that won’s heart swells with love for his mother figure with so much freedom, so much comfort. maybe he’s a bit of a mummy’s boy, for someone else’s mother technically, but he wouldn’t change it for the world and he doesn’t think sujin would either. 

when it's friday night and the drink don't work the same you're alone with yourself and there's no one else to blame when you still can't feel the rhythm of your heart and you see your spirit fading in the dark

oh, oh, I'll be there when you need a little love, I got a little love to share yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna come through you'll never be alone, I'll be there for you I'll be there, I'll be there for you I'll be there, I'll be there for you oh, I swear, I got enough love for two, ooh, ooh, ooh you'll never be alone, I'll be there for you

he wouldn’t say it’s a flawless performance. he wouldn’t say any performance he completes is because there’s always room for improvement, otherwise everything would get boring far too quickly. he wouldn’t say either, however, that anything about it was inherently bad. he gently sways to the second chorus, just enough not to be rigid, to show how serenely happy he is to be able to dedicate such a beautiful song to someone he loves with his entire heart, but not so much that his voice falters because of it. stability is something he wants to achieve in every performance, consistency key in each stage and overall. as a dancer, he loves being able to tweak things each time, how every time he moves, he spots something new he could try to add a little extra something to his performance, be it more fluidity or an entirely new step altogether. with singing, he wants to be remembered as someone who is strong, and consistently so. someone who doesn’t overpower a performance but helps carry a melody with confidence. 

maybe he’s a little to conscious of how he’s moving, what emotions he’s feeling and isn’t focusing enough on just making all these things natural rather than trying to force them to be. 

when the bridge hits and the climax approaches, he lets go of everything else on his mind, closes his eyes and centres. 

when you're lost down the river bed, I'll be there when you're lost in the darkness, I'll be there I'll be there when your heart is breaking you'll never be alone, I'll be there for you I'll be there

his runs are nothing on the original and he has to cut off the length of the high note before it can truly reach its most difficult for his voice in order to jump into the final chorus. there are so many adlibs he loves that he has to miss because pre-recorded vocals weren’t allowed but perhaps it’s for the best. there’ll be other months, other chances for him to show off all the new skills he’ll learn here at royal but this isn’t it. this is a chance to show them how damn much he loves the woman who gave him a second chance — a new lease of life. he takes a deep breath just in time to belt the note out, moving straight into the chorus with a tone and strength fitting only for portraying the same passion the original holds. 

I'll be there, I'll be there for you (I'll be there) I'll be there, I'll be there for you (ooh, ooh, I'll be there) oh, I swear, I got enough love for two, ooh, ooh, ooh you'll never be alone, I'll be there for you, oh I'll be there, I'll be there for you (I'll be there when your tears are falling) I'll be there, I'll be there for you (I'll be there, can't you hear me calling?) oh, I swear, I got enough love for two, ooh, ooh, ooh (I'll be there when your heart is breaking) you'll never be alone, I'll be there for you, ooh I'll be there for you, ooh I'll be there for you, ooh you'll never be alone, I'll be there for you I'll be there for you, ooh I'll be there for you, ooh you'll never be alone, I'll be there for you

coming down for the outro, his eyes open slowly, a sparkle ( he hopes ) in them as he emotionally rounds up the song, thinking, perhaps this was just another emotional ballad in the mess of performances they’ll be watching today, no different to the crying another trainee will have done from start to finish or the anger in another’s tightened fist but it feels like the whole world to him — it feels like things are starting to fall into place, and he can’t wait to see what the future holds for him, mingyu, sujin and hyunwoo; his family. 

[sonipanda]

Aloha new brand! Not heard of this one before, but I am more than excited to be giving it a go! I saw these on the UKTights website, and thought why not?

Now I gotta say this is aimed for larger women (and men too), so I’m not gonna lie, I am quite nervous to try these. Even though they state small, I don’t think it will be the normal small size hosiery you get with other brands.

  About Miss Naughty

Miss Naughty brings a touch of glamour to an ordinary world. Creating stylish, sophisticated and sexy hosiery looks with affordable, luxury pieces. Our British hosiery design team has carefully selected the most flattering, easy to wear designs of garter belts, stockings, crotchless tights, fashion hosiery and more to create sumptuous styles with little fuss.

We offer all our products in plus sizes so any women can feel glamorous and look great in Miss Naughty hosiery. Our fabulous suspender belts and stockings are available up to size XXXL.

Our suspender belts and stockings collection are all key pieces that every Miss Naughty needs in their hosiery draw and at an unbeatable price for their superb quality. Whether it is for a special occasion or for everyday wear, customers love the ease and simplicity of our products and especially the handy sets they are arranged in, such as our stocking with satin wet look garter belt set. Not to mention the sexy look and feel achieved with every Miss Naughty product.

Miss Naughty Crotchless Tights offer something new to this popular style with the sheer crotchless tights featuring a beautiful gloss finish and the satin soft opaque crotchless tights offering opaque leg coverage with an open gusset design.

Every Miss Naughty girl loves fashion and our fashion collection continues to grown with the

hottest looks and styles. Miss Naughty Suspender Tights and Over The Knee Tights are

easy to wear, funky designs that are available up to size XXL.

Perfect for adding a cheeky twist to any Miss Naughtys’ fashion look.

Our UK based Miss Naughty team is happy to assist in any queries regarding product details or the reselling of our products. We hope you enjoy browsing our current collection. Look out for further collections to come from this exciting British brand.

  “You can have whatever you want if you dress for it.” – Edith Head

– taken from their website

The Spec

Colour: Black

Size: Small

Denier: 15

Materials: 85% Polyamide, 15% Elastane

Price: £16.99

Website: UKTights – Miss Naughty Deep Lace Suspender Belt & Stocking Set

  My Outfit

I kept it proper office-looking by wearing my shirt dress with a waist belt, stockings and then added my black courts (which I left at work).

I kept my hair up in a pony and just added small studs.

My Deets

Shirt Dress: New Look

Suspender & Stockings Set: Miss Naughty

  The Review

From The Website: What could be more enticing than a sexy pair of stockings when showing off your legs? Well, naturally, a suspender belt to go with it, and to show off the rest of you. This set comprises a pair of sheer, shallow-band stockings that have a slight, subtle glimmer to them, and a matching suspender belt with its deep band of floral lace, row of hook-and-eye fasteners at the lower back and its set of 4 simple ribbon attachments. Separately, these items are beautiful, together they are everything you need to add some spice to your wardrobe.

* 15 denier * Perfect set * Make you look sexy * Alluringly tempting * Feel beautiful * 85% Polyamide * 15% Elastane

  The Packaging: is pretty basic; model at the front wearing the hosiery with some information at the back, including hosiery care, sizing and the following:

“Dress up in this sumptuous floral lace suspender belt set with beautiful, 15 denier, plain top stockings. Miss Naughty… a little bit of glamour in an ordinary world.”

Features: Flattering Suspender Belt Rubbr clips with satin bow Length adjusting straps 15 Denier Sheer black stockings

    Getting Them On: so let’s begin with the suspenders first. I got them on (via the hooks) and the adjusted the straps so they sit a higher than mid-thigh length. I scrunched and rolled my stocking sup the leg to spot that it already had been snagged…

note that I was wearing hosiery gloves for them but took them off to hold the clasp properly

… Once I got both legs dressed, it was then clasping time and boy did I struggle! They would not grip on properly and kept popping off. I thought it could be one of the following reasons at first:

The straps are too short and it’s pulling too much

I haven’t clipped the rubber part properly

The little satin bows might be getting caught in-between it to stop it from gripping

The clasps are sh*te!

It took me a good 15 minutes to sort out the clasps and why they wouldn’t grip the stockings properly. I managed to get it done in the end and then was running late for work!

  On The Legs: so let’s start with the stockings this time and sum it up because I was too annoyed today. and you’re about to find out why:

The denier is great for that lovely sheer look on the legs, but the quality is what makes it look so cheap

The touch/feel of them were really rough (I think these are supposed to be a matte-finished) but it didn’t feel like it; they were really rough to touch and a very grainy texture

They snagged so badly on the legs; mainly at the back when I was sitting at my desk and a few dotted around the legs

The band isn’t too bad; it’s not silky so you would think it would be ok to grip on to

I have to admit the stockings kept wanting to fall down on the legs. They didn’t sit that flush against as I would have liked them to, which I suppose caused the following issue…

  Now with the belt:

Guess what? I counted 6 times that the clasps had let go of the front of my stockings throughout the day. I even lowered my straps so they sit mid-thigh and it still kept happening…

Words cannot describe the mood I was left in at the end of the day.

  The Toes & Ankle: so this area actually did make me smile as I didn’t encounter a single problem with it during the day. They were enough wiggle room in them, there was no pressure put on the toes during the day and they were comfortable. These aren’t reinforced but I didn’t end up with rips or holes at the end of the day.

Around the ankle area, I did find that these slipped a bit during the day, so I had to keep readjusting to make sure there were no crinkles gathering here.

  The Suspender Belt: not gonna lie but I am not liking the belt to these. The belt itself is a real nice one, but the clasps on it are really bad, to the point they can’t even grip stockings properly, I got home and then tried it with another pair of stockings with a different material at the top to see how well it holds … same thing happened. They just didn’t wanna grip on and stay up!

    My Thoughts?

Overall, these are ok but I don’t think I would be recommending for long-term use. They might be better on slightly bigger sized women (or men) – please don’t take any offence here! … But they certainly didn’t work for me.

The quality plays the biggest part, and that was pretty poor in my eyes. I would recommend a set like this if you’re looking for something cheap and cheerful – or maybe your 1st set if you’re just getting into the hosiery world.

The nicest thing was the deep lace suspender belt, but I wish thr clasps were metal against rubber so it grips so much better and doesn’t have that satin piece to it so you don’t have to faff around.

For those who wear this religiously like I do… I don’t think this would fly with us!

Miss Naughty Suspender & Stocking Set Aloha new brand! Not heard of this one before, but I am more than excited to be giving it a go!