#this episode…a real tragedy so i immediately thought of making it into art

[pamouche]

No matter what they won’t let us be together, Ming. I’m not going to break up with you. But if you don’t have me, your life will be so much better. But if I don’t have you in my life, I don’t know for whom I’ll live. What is it ? How long are you going to look at me ? I just wanna see your face clearly. So that I’ll know that I’m not dreaming. Joe. Finally, we are really together.

Ming…Joe. Joe. Joe! Joe, please come back to me. Don’t go. Joe, please don’t go.

MY STAND-IN. EP 11: LOVE IS MERELY MADNESS

[kiraridertime03]

We need to free the Weasel

A brief discussion about the way that Creature Commandos uses politics in its narratives.

Spoilers for it and everything else James Gun DC up to this point though, below the cut.

Also, it is a busy post, content warnings for discussions of white supremacists and cops, as it is necessary.

With the release of the trailer of James Gunn's Superman film, hype for his grand DC Universe has kicked into high gear, and for good reason. That trailer, no matter the quality of the final film, is a goddamn work of art. A piece of film that understands Superman better over the course of 2 minutes and 20 seconds than Zack Snyder did over the course of 3 overlong movies. That mixed with his solid back catalogue of Superhero films. However, slightly more obscurely, this universe has already started with the animated series Creature Commandos, and especially with the fourth episode, which released hours before Superman's trailer, shows the kind of skill and thought Gunn and co. are putting into this new universe.

At its front, Creature Commandos feels very... blunt, in a lot of ways. It's like The Suicide Squad but with Creatures! It's big and raunchy, being an animated series with blood and swearing and sex and whatnot. And, when it comes with its politics, some of the early villain's mooks are a bunch of weird incels, and one of the main characters constantly advocates for killing Nazis. It is a work that immediately shows its hand, making the type who would decry the wokeness of modern movies and games or whatever. However, with these early examples, it can feel like a bit too much, maybe. I love it, don't get me wrong, I'm the type to really enjoy blunt earnestness. Though, given the more comedic approach that many of these elements take in the early episodes, it can feel a bit like it's only there for the bit.

Where the series really starts to excel, though, is when it starts integrating its flashback segments. As a whole, even outside the point of this post, the flashbacks feel like a wonderful decision. A way of fleshing out our characters while giving each episode a distinct feel, justifying the series as, well, a series rather than just one long movie. However, here, I want to discuss some of its political ideas, and how they integrate. Because, for these, they integrate more thematically, being an undertone to each character's own story.

For the bride, her story is centered around this idea of the objectification of women. I mean, it makes sense. She was literally made to simply be the bride of Frankenstein, an object of his affection. However, as she gained her own independence, the masculine figure who feels he is owed her hand in marriage breaks out into a rage, harming her and the person she actually loves. This story is what gives her the cynical edge she gains in the series proper, giving her an interesting, sympathetic story while using the elements of said story to say something about how many men perceive woman. A strong enough parable that acts as an undercurrent for her character.

Then, we get to G.I. Robot's episode, a real tear-jerker of a thing about a silly robot character, the exact thing to set my brain off in all sorts of ways. Much of this story is designed to set up his tragic past, so that we can feel catharsis once he gets his big moment, then feel the tragedy when he gets brutally murdered. However, it again is saying a lot of complex things. Many have discussed the PTSD angle for GI, which I do see, however, in GI's story specifically, I see the way that the American state treats veterans. Like, think about it. This being who was forged and created for the purpose of making war, goes to war, then once the war is over, they are, best, used for spectacle on live TV (Where they are unable to properly adjust to the tone of peacetime, accusing the audience of being Nazis themselves), studied not to help them, but to make the next generation of soldiers even more efficient at their goal of warcraft, then thrown to the side when they are no longer useful. The man selling GI to the collector literally says he slipped through the cracks. It, again, is a wonderful metaphor that takes advantage of what GI is, and uses it to emphasize these issues in a more literal way. It is a lot easier to show a robot who was programmed in a specific way weird the room out than the rocky adjustments a veteran may have to go through. It then, also, shows the kinds of people who really benefit from this warcraft, those it appeals to. The collector who buys GI turns out to be a part of a White Supremacist group in America, a group of people who gladly use Nazi iconography, identify with it, and gladly push it. Those also happen to be the types who want to buy old war memorabilia. Obviously, not all war collectors are Nazis. But these are people who see this kind of might makes right ideology that America so often employs with its military, and latch onto it. GI, rightfully, finds this appaling, and kills them on sight. It is this wonderful moment from this delightfully twisted series.

However, even that could be seen as a tad blunt. Again, GI is very clear with his words, he doesn't hide much. So, where I see this series going from good to great is with Weasel's flashback segments. This begins when a lawyer, a member of a nonprofit, demands she see Weasel, as she is putting on a case for him. In essence, she states that, at least to her and her organization, he was unjustly prosecuted. To both Rick Flag and us, this seems absurd, as we have a lot of predisposed biases towards Weasel. You see, he is one of the few pre-existing characters in this cast. Weasel was previously seen in James Gunn's The Suicide Squad, though only briefly. There, as a member of the Decoy Team, he makes weird, gross noises, they make a joke about him having killed 27 kids, then have him promptly drown before the mission even starts (Though, in the post credit, it turns out he survived, because that's even funnier). Even if you hadn't seen that film (Which you should if you haven't), they reestablish all that in this series in the first few episodes, portraying him as a stupid, vulgar, violent creature who isn't worthy of rights. However, expertly, this is all a front.

In the flashbacks, we learn that Weasel only interacted with about 8 kids, a bunch of students left at an after school program. Contrary to what we had been told, he really just played around with the kids, chasing around a ball. They eventually get inside the school and, while messing with stuff they shouldn't have, start a small fire. However, some antics are afoot. While he is playing around, an old senile man sees this and, rather than asking about what's going on, decides to run back to his home, call the cops about what is a clear, if odd, misunderstanding, then grab his gun to try to take things into his own hands. And, as he does, shakily trying to shoot Weasel, he makes the problem of the small fire worse, shooting a gas canister behind them, turning the small fire into a school-destroying explosion and fire. Then, the cops show up. Many of the kids are already dead, seemingly, but one survived. So, as he pulls her out of the wreckage, what do the cops do? They start shooting. Throughout this whole sequence, the cops do nothing but shoot and get in the way of things. It all culminates in the final shots, where Weasel has dropped the kid after being shot. And, instead of either of them going to get the kid, they both pin Weasel down, try to pull him out. This leaves the young girl to be crushed.

This is a massive tragedy, a game of tragic misudnerstandings that gets kids killed. However, again, it does this by hiding its politics into a genuinely moving character based story to make them more effective. It is a story, in part, about our predisposed biases. I mean, the narrative literally sets this up. Characters around Weasel say things about him without him being able to have a say. Because he's a Weasel. Then, our characters make judgments based on what they believe and what they've heard from secondhand sources over what they actually see. Even when Weasel is his most violent (taking down Circe in episode 3), he does it to protect his teammates, and he doesn't actually kill her. In his backstory, characters make rash decisions based on their misinformed judgments in hopes of "protecting the kids," when all they are actually doing is harming them. They get 8 kids killed all because Weasel is a little freaky.

Then there's the cops themselves. It so masterfully uses showing rather than telling. The most it tells us is of the trail at the start, and again, this is moreso used as setup, playing into our dispositions. However, when it is time to actually depict the injustices, it shuts the fuck up. It doesn't just say that cops are bad with a couple of clear shitheads and moves on. It shows how cops are bad. Their only answer to this situation is violence. They don't actually serve their community, in this instance the children stuck in the fire, their only answer is to start shooting things. Because they have no other answer than state sanctioned violence. And they did this all with an episode about FUCKING WEASEL!

Now, imagine what they can do with Superman. It doesn't even have to be political, like these previous examples. However, to me, this shows that he can do what, to me, some of the best storytellers do. They weave every element of their story together with deliberate choices that strengthen each other. If anything, more than any well edited trailer, it is that that excites me about everything James is working on. Of course, he is doing this with a team, but James is the type to surround himself with smart people who understand these things inside and out. That one David Corenswet quote about the shorts proves that to me in shades. That's what gives me hope about these works. That they will be movies and shows that mean things. Which seems like a low bar, but hey, so many fail at it that it's kind of impressive.

[mudinyourshoes]

More thoughts on Novoland! I'm up to ep 9 and:

-Ji Ye winning the martial arts contest was brutal to the point of being hard to watch. Not just physically, but also emotionally. He publicly shamed his dad - I don’t think that was what he was aiming for but it was the result - and in the process made his rawest emotional wounds public. (Btw I’m sure he’s going to pay for doing that to his dad. His family sucks). And then he’s abandoned. Neither his family, nor his fellow soldiers, nor the servants of the king he (theoretically) just won glory for come to help him, even though he’s bleeding and staggering. The people in the stadium don’t cheer his victory; none of them help him either. Only Asule and Yu Ran cheer and only they follow and help him. He’s met Asule and Yu Ran two or three times! Their friendship and their kindness seem to me like pricks of light in an otherwise bleakly dark landscape.

-Yu Ran has a crush on Ji Ye. She could not stop looking at him. Asule definitely noticed her looking and I wonder if he’s clocked the crush or if he’s too young to understand.

-I do not ship Yu Ran and Asule. I’m surprised by this because I expected to ship them and to be heartbroken on Asules’ behalf, but no. I really like them as friends. They should be bff’s but I can see potential and room for romantic growth in Yu Ran and Ji Ye’s relationship and I don’t see it with Yu Ran and Asule. I feel like Asule needs someone who can match him in the “still waters run deep” department.

-The bit where Ji Ye is told that a spear is not like a sword because it can be drawn back but not sheathed?! Ominous, especially when taken with the advice that Asule was given in the first episodes - that the real sheath for his sword was his heart. Yikes for Ji Ye?

-The contrast between the king debating his advisors and ordering, like, 12 people around while trying to control the outcome of the contest and IMMEDIATELY losing control of it vs. Asule quietly interfering twice (once when he stops Ji Ye’s peers from beating him up and once when he orders his sworn brother to lose the fight) and controlling the outcome of the contest without anyone knowing. Also the king was fixated on the outcome of the contest (ie. short term gains) while Asule, in addition to trying to repay a kindness, was thinking about long term relationships and fostering the growth of Ji Ye’s potential.

-The entire display of Asule’s nascent puppeteering abilities makes me rabid at the thought of him being a king one day. No idea if it’ll ever happen, but if it does I will be frothing at the mouth.

-Asule’s confrontation with his uncle - where he does not reveal the orders he gave about the contest, but instead confronts his uncle about “kin slaying”. This. Omg. This is not a conversation about Asule’s sworn brother. This is Asule calling out his uncle for killing Asule’s adopted dad and also - I think - pointing out that if anyone has the right to be kin slaying it’s ASULE. Because I’m pretty sure, based on was he’s said about vengeance killing, that Asule would be within his rights to kill his uncle in vengeance for his dad. Omg wtf. THIS SHOW.

-I ship the soft spoken, peace loving general and the wise but terrifying Lady Su. The minute I realized they had some kind of star crossed lovers thing going on, I became convinced one or both of them were going to end up dead. Now I’m waiting for it the tragedy to unfold.

-Asule has precognition in his dream sometimes?

-Lady Su’s asshole son seems to think he’s about to have more power than the king. So…he’s planning on killing the king? Or doing something related to the Bare Teeth or the Heavenly Samurai that he thinks will give him more power than the king? I hope someone unleashes hell on him. Not even being Lady Su’s son can save him from my ire. Honestly, I’m kind of startled she’s that attached to him because thus far he has zero redeeming qualities and she doesn’t seem like a “love is blind” type.

[austajunk]

two more if you don't mind...komahina and hinanami :)c

KomaHina

-Whether I ship it or not

It’s been a long journey, BUT GODDAMMIT I LOVE THEM.

-Why I ship it or not

At first, I really didn’t ship them. I thought Nagito was selfish and I couldn’t empathize with him until I started getting more in the fanbase. I really just couldn’t feel Hajime being with him and was interested in other ships beforehand.

But when I saw the OVA and the end of the anime, strangely things clicked into place for me. I ship them because they have a longing to understand each other and thats beautiful.

-My opinion on their canon potential (chemistry, canon interactions, etc)

Are they canon? I’d say yes. Alongside HinaNami, I feel these two are actually canon. Sometimes I can feel so jealous at how this ship usurped all other ships for Nagito and Hajime, but I understand why.

They really do work for each other. As partners. As adversaries. They’re both two different broken people tormented by how this world has isolated them from their peers and their self worth (along with Chiaki, of course). Chapter One KomaHina is so interesting because it’s not exactly a lie. Nagito has an immediate interest in Hajime and wants to help him. There’s an innocence to Nagito at first, wanting to cheer Hajime up and come up with silly Ultimates for Hajime to supposedly be and Hajime accepts it and is truly distraught when the “real” Nagito surfaces. By the end of his free times, Nagito tries to confess to Hajime but… he pulls back. Because what if he does say he loves him? That he wants to get close to him? Will his luck cycle take Hajime away too? Will his Hope be lost to the world? He doesn’t know and he doesn’t want to know. And so we end on more longing and a bit of a tragedy.

Then we have them as adversaries. Nagito looks down on Hajime for being a nobody and lords being above him. But he’s always still yearning. “You’re a nobody so why do I still care about you?!” Nagito’s values and everything he truly believes in order to survive the harshness of their world is battling against his legitimate feelings for Hajime. He pushes Hajime away and mocks him and I really do think he does it to protect himself and that he is actually jealous of Hajime being more certain of himself and his identity despite not being special.

Then the OVA rolls around and finally, after a long day inside dreamland without Hajime, the time a figure that seems like him appears to Nagito and the walls fade away again. This thirty minute episode is so beautiful and symbolic, I can’t even begin to describe it. The walls come down and Nagito takes one look at just a thing that seems like Hajime and reminds him of him and knows he would choose an imperfect world as long as he is in it. He came back to him and Hajime was the first thing he saw when he woke up and he woke up accepting Hajime as he was. Not as Izuru Kamukura.

They’re so beautiful, y’all. I love them. 😭

-My opinion on fanon interpretations/fandom around it (Favorite widespread hcs, pet-peeves, etc)

Honestly I feel a lot of fan interpretations of them can be way off and are over eager to get to fluffy depictions of them. And that’s not what drew me to them. It’s their struggles and their yearning and fighting to understand each other and affirm one another. But the art and fics are truly beautiful and so are the fans. ^^

HinaNami

-Whether I ship it or not

YUPPPPPPPP.

-Why I ship it or not

This is probably the most wholesome ship I’m in love with. From the Human Chiaki meeting her first friend to the AI Chiaki learning to love and protect her classmates, I am in love with them!!! There’s something so wholesome and yet so daring about them together in both the anime and the games. The way that Hajime makes Chiaki daring to get closer to her classmates, the way Hajime learns to understand her and start wanting to make her happy. The way Hajime fucking cried as he realized that he would have to lose her in the fifth trial. The way they depend on each other and Hajime is just taken in by her courage and the way she looks forward.

The ending blows me away every time with their combined “NO, THAT’S WRONG!” as they carved out the future for themselves. Fucking beautiful.

-My opinion on their canon potential (chemistry, canon interactions, etc)

Hinanami, like KomaHina, is the only other ship from the second game that I consider to be canon. Because well, obviously their feelings are a big canon portion of the game an anime. There’s so much to talk about here just like with KomaHina, so I’m gonna try to cover why they worked so beautifully. While Hajime is a normie, it’s clear that he is lonely and isolated and stuck in his own world trying to get noticed. He wants to be someone so badly that there really isn’t any fun in his life. No friends. When he starts to feel camaraderie with his classmates in the first chapter of the game, he’s surprised at how they’re helping him to open up. But Chiaki is already like him as well. Her talent (and her status as an AI in the game) keeps her isolated and to herself, not wanting to dare to step out of that line like Hajime.

Both in the anime and the game, Hajime learns to depend on Chiaki a lot. I think he even idolizes her in the anime as she’s able to move outside herself, putting her on a pedestal and longing to be with her once their friendship grows. But he knows the Reserve course holds him back, not understanding that Chiaki truly loves him for being her very first friend. Not for what he could be in the future. It’s her same feelings, the simple feeling of wanting to reunite with someone you love and do something as innocent as playing a game you love with them that brings Hajime back to the surface of Izuru Kamukura. She proves that Hope is there and it is worth fighting for.

And what does Chiaki do when Hope and Despair are too much? When Hope isn’t enough? She is able to rebirth her classmates and bring Hajime back to fall in love with her all over again. And he did. And he has to lose her again. But those feelings are strong and powerful inside of him. To the point that in his moment of crisis, he truly sees her and all she is. They are still able to reach out to each other and draw the strength to squash Junko Enoshima for good. The future of the series is what they’ve created together.

When Hajime says good bye, he thanks Chiaki and it’s clear, his words carry the truth in them. He loved her and she loved him with all their hearts. And together, they pushed through.

It’s such a fucking beautiful story. I love it so much.

-My opinion on fanon interpretations/fandom around it (Favorite widespread hcs, pet-peeves, etc)

God the wholesome art and interpretations of this ship! The lovely fics of Chiaki living and joining Hajime again in the future. It’s all ours! And not to mention, the best of both worlds, KOMAHINANAMI.

Just yes to all of this!

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

please. i can’t do this alone.

Titans 3.01

thoughts! thoughts! thoughts! some red hot thoughts!

SPOILERS ahead.

1. one episode in, and this season already looks set to give me everything i want. its abandonment of plot and storytelling conventions as it goes from one point to the next at breakneck speed; its cheerful bastardisation of iconic storylines from the comics; the ‘as-you-know-bob’ clunky exposition on one end and extremely restrained, subtle explorations of complex character dynamics on the other; endless shots of neon bleeding into black and blue corridors, shadows and silhouettes; my delight in seeing it celebrate and deconstruct the dark nolan-y batman aesthetic at the same time; my bafflement that it’s so fucking goddamn obsessed with the batfam when it’s supposed to be about the TITANS; kory just... saving every overburdened, clunky scene that she’s in by her sparkling charisma. just... *chef’s kiss*. muah. my show is back, in all its glory.

MY SHOW IS BACK, Y���ALL!

1.5. i mean... this show is so artful and weird and not afraid to go absolutely bonkers in exploring its characters’ psyche, but can just about barely stage a passable comic book fight when every tom dick and harry and their new streaming services can deliver ones that are far more exciting. i love this show with every atom of my body.

(there’s something to be said about rooting for the underdog as well. a pleasure in finding something to love about what other people dismiss. but! enough navel gazing! i have fictional characters’ navels to look at! metaphorically! and maybe literally!)

2. i expected jason’s death to come about pretty early in the season as soon as i heard rumours that red hood was showing up, but for it to happen in the first five minutes of the first episode... that’s a record. 

(well. “happen.” still don’t know what exactly went down there.)

2.25. GOD. jason is such a tortured and tragic character in this show, used and passed around by people with alleged good intentions, never really fitting in anywhere. he’s veritably bleeding vulnerability and the need to belong, the need to be known, and yet the tragedy is that his death proves that nobody in his life knew anything about him at all; that they only saw the flimsy walls he put up to protect his soft core, and thought that that was all there was. that they say they loved him, but blame him for his own death. 

dick is flabbergasted that jason can read, though we know from last season, from what jason revealed to rose, that he has a love for plays and music. barbara is quick to dismiss his actions as ‘impulsive’. bruce has no idea that his supposed son was building his own little chemistry lab right under his nose, and beyond that, no idea that jason needed structure, stability and validation beyond being left alone in a huge house with a treasure trove of dangerous weapons. kory thought his decision to fight the joker was from not learning and growing when the guy tried to kill himself last season and nobody apart from dick even tried to talk to him about it! did you consider that he might still be suicidal? especially after the titans admitted to having “given up” on him because he was just “too hard”?

2.5. the one thing that’s been consistent across all three seasons (so far) of the show is the unreliable narrator trope. there’s a reason why the characters’ dismissals of jason’s actions as impulsive is so repetitive; why jason’s death is a mystery dick feels compelled to solve. it’s a flailing attempt to know his brother much too late--but with red hood, maybe he gets a second chance, just like he got one with the titans. this is what jason’s arc has been building up to. this is ‘death in the family’ but more fucked up in some ways. it didn’t linger on the death because the death wasn’t the point. the joker isn’t the point. everything that came before it is.

this way it will also make perfect sense that the red hood’s main enemy becomes the titans rather than batman.

2.75. goodness knows what’s going on with jason’s little chemistry project. at first i thought he was immunising himself to joker gas or something, but maybe it’s what passes for lazarus pit juice in this universe? 

anyway, it’s pretty impressive that jason learnt all of that from a college chemistry textbook. STOP BRINGING UP THAT HE READ SOMETHING, DICK--

2.8. i’m glad that dick doesn’t immediately sink into self-loathing and guilt and tries to investigate jason’s death while also acknowledging how he failed him. it’s like he actually learned something from the last two years! 

anyway. more about dick later. 

3. oh how i love titans!bruce. a lot of characters had a lot of Opinions on his reaction to jason’s death in this episode, but again, i ask you to consider that they’re unreliable narrators, and this universe’s bruce is a product of how it shaped him. bruce wayne has become a phantom to himself--an artifice borne out of vigorous discipline and crushing self-denial. 

bruce has been batman for a very long time, and without a robin for much longer. (dick must be... in his early thirties? so he was robin for about, say, 10-12 years according to the timeline of the show. that still makes bruce pretty old when he took on his first robin.) things have... calcified (possibly parts of his brain). the personal cost and the collateral from the mission he’s taken up for most of his life is too much to countenance; it has to be a war, and war requires sacrifice. 

on some level bruce knows that’s a lie. he’s so goddamned alone. what’s he going to do? sit down and cry? who’s going to listen to him now? oh, is he going to just stop being batman? who’s going to stop gotham from consuming herself then? he’ll just have to forge ahead, do better next time, maybe he’ll be firmer with them, or kinder with them, or notice more things, or train them harder, or spend more time--

3.25. don’t get me wrong: titans!bruce is an asshole and a half. his roster of potential robins was honestly bone-chilling. the fact that there’s a twisted root of compassion makes it more disturbing. 

3.5. alfred’s dead! it must’ve been pretty recent, because i could’ve sworn that dick tried to call alfred in the very first episode of season 1, or at least considered calling him... 

what a devastating double-blow for bruce then, losing his father-figure and his, uh.... son-figure so close together.

4. i don’t know about barbara yet. i mean, i like her, but she had so much clunky expository dialogue to deliver this episode, and for an episode that was named after her, she only showed up halfway through it. but i like the weight of history behind her interactions with both bruce and dick and her compassion to bruce before he cruelly crossed a line. i also like the implication that she and dick have been in touch recently, and that she didn’t immediately try to guilt-trip dick about some perceived abandonment. it’d be too repetitive.

4.5. there’s also a sense that she ran interference for dick a lot whenever there was something Too Big and Emotional for him to confront directly, and i like and appreciate that character beat.

5. dick, my man! it really does feel like a substantial length of time has passed between the end of s2 and the beginning of s3... kory’s got a new costume, they’ve become celebrities in SF, working missions together, and dick’s actually smiling! genuinely enjoying his work and having fun with it for possibly the first time in the entire series! it’s really a far cry from the fractured, dysfunctional mess that they were at the end of the last season.

i just hope this doesn’t mean that they’ve magically reached a resolution off-screen to all of their fucked-upness from last season, and that the repercussions--for gar in particular--are actually addressed on screen. 

5.25. i mentioned this briefly above, but it really is so refreshing that dick doesn’t wallow in guilt and self-loathing after jason’s death; he acknowledges his and the titans’ failure, is able to admit to barbara honestly that he’s not doing great, and is actively trying to reach out to bruce to make sure he’s ok, is trying to investigate what made jason seek out the joker on his own, and is probably the only person not immediately buying that it was jason’s recklessness that got him killed. i love that dick is finally beginning to trust his instincts or just employ them at all after years of guilt and paranoia and self-loathing. we love some positive character growth!

5.5. another thing i love? the bruce-dick interactions on this show. every scene they’re in together is so fraught with tension, both of them holding themselves back, their emotions on a whipcord-tight leash. dick wants to reach out to bruce, is even somewhat familiar with this brand of denial in the wake of grief, but wants barbara to make the first move because he genuinely does not know how to get bruce to open up. his instincts are right, and wonderful, and genuine, but his expression has been smothered by years of trauma, emotional and physical self-discipline, and what i suspect is poorly treated mental illness. 

it takes a lot for him to finally explode at bruce at the end of the episode--in a way he hasn’t done even when his only opinion of bruce was ‘fuck him’--and it’s all the more startling for how subdued he’s been through the episode, how much he’s been holding back his emotions for bruce’s sake. love it.

5.75. it sort of hurts my heart to see the flying graysons poster in jason’s room. there are a few implications:

a) jason settled into dick’s old room despite living in a giant mansion with dozens of other rooms he could’ve used

b) he didn’t take down dick’s poster--not when he moved in and was idolising him, not when he moved out of the titans and was sort of hating him. i wonder if the reminder of what dick was before robin--that he was forged out of unspeakable tragedy--gave jason the connection to dick that he so desperately wanted in real life

c) dick moved right back into the room and slept on the bed that was now jason’s. grief can be so quiet and piecemeal sometimes.

6. i spy the beginnings of actual arcs for both gar and kory! i just hope that with the move to gotham their stories don’t fall to the wayside...

6.5. i’ve known tim drake for less than ten minutes but if anything were to happen to him i’d kill everybody 

7. this review has gone on for too long and i am tiRED. however, before i leave: i miss some of the dedication-to-aesthetic that titans season 1 used to have. remember how the first few episodes didn’t really feel like a superhero show but something out of gothic horror? there was something gorgeous and raw about that, about open landscapes and the road and creepy buildings looming up at the end of it. moving to titans tower in s2 really ruined a lot of that for me, given its ripped-from-architectural-digest aesthetic, all smooth and clean and artificial. 

i hope that we really explore gotham’s hellscape in interesting and innovative ways instead of camping out in the batcave all the time and indulging in the show’s unending love for long corridors, neon backlights and silhouettes.

8.....

9.  wait, fuck, HOW CAN I FORGET ABOUT HOT PSYCHIATRIST GUY (TM)??? NONE of you prepared me for his return! NONE OF YOU! i gasped! i got up and did a happy dance! 

listen, titans writers, if you’ve had a peek at my titans s3 wishlist, please go ahead and give the other items on the list a go too, thankyouverymuch.

[superman86to99]

Superman #85 (January 1994)

Cat Grant in... "DARK RETRIBUTION"! Which is like normal retribution, but somehow darker. On the receiving end of Cat's darktribution is Winslow Schott, the Toyman, who suddenly changed his MO from "pestering Superman with wacky robots" to "murdering children" back on Superman #84, with one of his victims being Cat's young son Adam. Now Cat has a gun and intends to sneak it into prison to use it on Toyman. She's also pretty pissed at Superman for taking so long to find Toyman after Adam’s death (to be fair, Superman did lose several days being frozen in time by an S&M demon, as seen in Man of Steel #29).

So how did Superman find Toyman anyway? Basically, by spying on like 25% of Metropolis. After finding out from Inspector Turpin that the kids were killed near the docks, Superman goes there and focuses all of his super-senses to get "a quick glimpse of every person" until he sees a bald, robed man sitting on a giant crib, and goes "hmmm, yeah, that looks like someone who murders children." At first, Superman doesn't understand why Toyman would do such a horrible thing, but then Schott starts talking to his mommy in his head and the answer becomes clear: he watched Psycho too many times (or Dan Jurgens did, anyway).

Immediately after wondering why no one buys his toys, Toyman makes some machine guns spring out of his giant crib. I don't know, man, maybe it's because they're all full of explosives and stuff? Anyway, Toyman throws a bunch of exploding toys at Superman, including a robot duplicate of himself, but of course they do nothing. Superman takes him to jail so he can get the help he needs -- which, according to Cat, is a bullet to the face. Or so it seems, until she gets in front of him, pulls the trigger, and...

PSYCHE! It was one of those classic joke guns I’ve only ever seen in comics! Cat says she DID plan to bring a real gun, but then she saw one of these at a toy store and just couldn't resist. Superman, who was watching the whole thing, tells Cat she could get in trouble for this stunt, but he won't tell anyone because she's already been through enough. Then he asks her if she needs help getting home and she says no, because she wants to be more self-sufficient.

I think that's supposed to be an inspiring ending, but I don't know... Adam's eerie face floating in the background there makes me think she's gonna shave her head and climb into a giant crib any day, too. THE END!

Character-Watch:

Cat did become more self-sufficient after this, though. Up to now, all of her storylines seemed to revolve around other people: her ex-husband, Morgan Edge, José Delgado, Vinnie Edge, and finally Toyman. After this, I feel like there was a clear effort to turn her into a character that works by herself. I actually like what they did with Cat in the coming years, though I still don’t think they had to kill her poor kid to do that -- they could have sent him off to boarding school, or maybe to live with his dad. Or with José Delgado, over at Power of Shazam! I bet Jerry Ordway would have taken good care of him.

Plotline-Watch:

Wait, so can Superman just find anyone in Metropolis any time he wants? Not really: this is part of the ongoing storyline about his powers getting boosted after he came back from the dead, which sounds pretty useful now but is about to get very inconvenient.

Don Sparrow points out: "It is interesting that as Superman tries to capture Schott, he at one point instead captures a robot decoy, particularly knowing what Geoff Johns will retroactively do to this storyline in years to come, in Action Comics #865, as we mentioned in our review of Superman #84." Johns also explained that the robot thought he was hearing his mother's voice due to the real Toyman trying to contact him via radio, which I prefer to the "psycho talks to his dead mom" cliche.

Superman says "I never thought he'd get to the point where he'd KILL anyone -- especially children!" Agreed about the children part but, uh, did Superman already forget that Toyman murdered a whole bunch people on his very first appearance, in Superman #13? Or does Superman not count greedy toy company owners as people? Understandable, I guess.

There's a sequence about Cat starting a fire in a paper basket at the prison to sneak past the metal detector, but why do that if she had a toy gun all long? Other than to prevent smartass readers like us from saying "How did she get the gun into the prison?!" before the plot twist, that is.

Patreon-Watch:

Shout out to our patient Patreon patrons, Aaron, Murray Qualie, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Dave Shevlin, and Kit! The latest Patreon-only article was about another episode of the 1988 Superman cartoon written by Marv Wolfman, this one co-starring Wonder Woman (to Lois' frustration).

Another Patreon perk is getting to read Don Sparrow's section early, because he usually finishes his side of these posts long before I do (he ALREADY finished the next one, for instance). But now this one can be posted in public! Take it away, Don:

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow​):

We begin with the cover, and it’s a good one— an ultra tight close up for Cat Grant firing a .38 calibre gun, with the titular Superman soaring in, perhaps too late.  An interesting thing to notice in this issue (and especially on the cover) is that the paper stock that DC used for their comics changed, so slightly more realistic shading was possible.  While it’s nowhere near the sophistication or gloss of the Image Comics stock of the time, there is an attempt at more realistic, airbrushy type shading in the colour.  It works well in places, like the muzzle flash, on on Cat Grant’s cheeks and knuckles, but less so in her hair, where the shadow looks a browny green on my copy.

The interior pages open with a pretty good bit of near-silent storytelling.  We are deftly shown, and not told the story—there are condolence cards and headlines, and the looming presence of a liquor bottle, until we are shown on the next page splash the real heart of the story, a revolver held aloft by Catherine Grant, bereaved mother, with her targeting in her mind the grim visage of the Toyman.

While their first few issues together meshed pretty well, it’s around  this issue that the pencil/inks team of Jurgens and Rubinstein starts to look a little rushed in places.  A few inkers who worked with Jurgens that I’ve spoken to have hinted that his pencils can vary in their level of detail, from very finished  to pretty loose, and in the latter case, it’s up to the inker to embellish where there’s a lack of detail.  Some inkers, like Brett Breeding, really lay down a heavier hand, where there’s quite a bit of actual drawing work in addition to adding value and weight to the lines.  I suspect some of the looseness in the figures, as well as empty  backgrounds reveals that these pencils were less detailed than we often  see from Jurgens.

There’s some weird body language in the tense exchange between Superman and Cat as she angrily confronts him about his lack of progress in capturing her son’s killer—Superman  looks a little too dynamic and pleased with himself for someone ostensibly apologizing. Superman taking flight to hunt down Toyman is classic Jurgens, though.

Another example of art weirdness comes on page 7, where Superman gets filled in on the progress of the Adam Morgan investigation.  Apparently Suicide Slum has some San Francisco-like hills, as that is one very steep sidewalk separating Superman and Turpin from some central-casting looking punks.

The  sequence of Superman concentrating his sight and hearing on the  waterfront area is well-drawn, and it’s always nice to see novel uses of his powers.  Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman does a similar trick quite often on the excellent first season of Superman & Lois.  The full-bleed splash of Superman breaking through the wall to capture Toyman is definitely panel-of-the-week material, as we really feel Superman’s rage and desperation to catch this child-killer.

Pretty much all the pages with Cat Grant confronting Winslow Schott are  well-done and tensely paced.  While sometimes I think the pupil-less  flare of the eye-glasses is a cop-out, it does lend an opaqueness and mystery to what Toyman is thinking.  Speaking of cop-outs, the gag gun twist ending really didn’t work for me.  I was glad that Cat didn’t lower herself to Schott’s level and become a killer, even for revenge, but the prank gun just felt too silly of a tonal shift for a storyline with this much gravitas.  The breakneck denouement that Cat is now depending only on herself didn’t get quite enough breathing room either.

While I appreciated that the ending of this issue avoided an overly simplistic, Death Wish style of justice, this issue extends this troubling but brief era of Superman comics. The casual chalk outlines of  yet two more dead children continues the high body count of the  previous handful of issues, and the tone remains jarring to me.  The issue is also self-aware enough to point out, again, that Schott is  generally an ally of children, and not someone who historically wishes  them harm, but that doesn’t stop the story from going there, in the most  violent of terms. In addition to being a radical change to the Toyman  character, it’s handled in a fashion more glib than we’re used to seeing  in these pages.  The mental health cliché of a matriarchal obsession, a la Norman Bates doesn’t elevate it either.  So, another rare misstep  from Jurgens the writer, in my opinion.   STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

I  had thought for sure that Romanove Vodka was a sly reference to a certain Russian Spy turned Marvel superhero, but it turns out there  actually is a Russian Vodka called that, minus the “E”, produced not in Russia, as one might think from the Czarist name, but rather, India.

While it made for an awkward exchange, I was glad that Cat pointed out how  her tragedy more or less sat on the shelf while Superman dealt with the "Spilled Blood" storyline.  A lesser book might not have acknowledged any  time had passed. Though I did find it odd for Superman to opine that he  wanted to find her son’s murderer even more than she wanted him to.  Huh?  How so?

I love the detail that Toyman hears the noise of Superman soaring to capture him, likening it to a train coming.

I  quibble, but there’s so much I don’t understand about the “new” Toyman.  If he’s truly regressing mentally, to an infant-like state, why does he wear this phantom of the opera style long cloak while he sits in his baby crib?  Why not go all the way, and wear footie pajamas, like the lost souls on TLC specials about “adult babies”?

I get that Cat Grant is in steely determination mode, but it seemed a little out of place that she had almost no reaction to the taunting she faced from her child’s killer.  She doesn’t shed a single tear in the entire issue, and no matter how focused she is on vengeance, that doesn’t seem realistic to me. [Max: That's because this is not just retribution, Don. It's dark retribution. We’ve been over this!]

[shirlleycoyle]

How 9/11 Became Fan Fiction Canon

Every fictional character you can think of has experienced 9/11 in fanfiction.

A Clone Wars veteran with two lightsabers is on United Airlines Flight 93 and prevents it from crashing. Ron and Hermione get caught up in the chaos as the towers fall. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her friends watch the attacks unfold on TV from Sunnydale. We have spent 20 years trying to process what happened on 9/11 and its fallout, and that messy process can be tracked through the countless, sad, disturbing, and sometimes very funny fanfiction left across the internet.

Many of the fanfics written in the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks seemed to directly respond to the news as it happened, processing the tragedy in real-time through the eyes of characters they loved. In the absence of a canon episode where Daria Morgendorffer paid respects to those lost, writing fanfic about these characters also experiencing trauma helped fans cope.

One YuGiOh fanfic published on fanfiction.net in May 2002 could have been ripped exactly from what this writer experienced that Tuesday morning. “It started as a normal day,” user Gijinka Renamon wrote. Yugi and his friends were in school, where their teacher informed them of the attacks and sent everyone home from school.

“After reading people’s 9/11 fics, I decided to write my own, and put a certain character in it. And Yugi and his pals were my first choice,” the author's note reads, explaining the connection they felt to United flight 93 and the World Trade Center attacks. Given that they lived in Pennsylvania, and “it’s close to New York, I felt really sad about it.”

Stitch, a fandom journalist for Teen Vogue, told Motherboard that this reaction to 9/11 is not at all uncommon in fandom.

"Fandom has always been a place that positions nothing as 'off limits,'" she said. "Historical tragedies like the Titanic sinking and atrocities like… all of World War 2 show up regularly across the past 30 years of people creating stories and art about the characters they love. So, on some level, it makes sense that 9/11 and the following 20-year military installation in the Middle East has joined the ranks of things people in different fandoms turn into settings for their fan fiction."

Reactions depicted in a handful of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfics published in the weeks after the attacks ring a little truer to the characters. “Tuesday, 11th September 2001,” written by Anna K, almost echoes the lyrics from “I’ve Got a Theory,” one of the songs in the musical episode that aired in November 2001. “We have seen the apocalypse. We have prevented it. Actually, we’ve prevented quite a few. So we know what they look like,” they write, before taking a darker turn. “They look a lot like…New York today.”

Killing demons and vampires doesn’t phase the Scooby Gang, but when preventable human death is brought into the picture, it’s gut wrenching.

“What am I supposed to do…When I can’t do anything to save the world?” Buffy cries  into Spike’s chest, watching the attacks unfold on TV in a fanfic the author described as being “about feeling numb and helpless.”

In “Blood Drive,” Kirayoshi writes about Buffy and her friends saving a van full of donated blood meant for victims of the attacks from a group of thirsty vampires. One Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic even takes a blindly patriotic turn, where noted lesbian witch Tara McClay helps Xander hang an American flag from the window of the magic shop to make Anya feel better.

Experiencing 9/11 as a young teenager was overwhelming not just because of the loss of life. Almost immediately after the event itself, it was as if the entirety of American culture re-oriented itself towards an overtly jingoistic stance. As we get distance from the attacks, seeing the tone of television and movies from the early 2000s is jarring, and some have gone viral on Twitter. In the world of pop music, mainstream musicians like the Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, were blacklisted from the radio while Toby Keith sang about putting a boot up the ass of terrorists. On the Disney Channel, a young Shia Labeouf reading a poem he supposedly wrote about the events. The poem concludes with the line, "it's awesome to be an American citizen."

In a world so completely saturated with this messaging, it is not surprising that fanfic authors started including 9/11 in their work so soon after the event. Even The West Wing had a strange, out of continuity, fanfic-esque episode where the characters reacted to 9/11. In some cases, it made sense that the characters in the stories would be close to or a part of the events themselves.

"For characters like John Watson or Captain America, the idea works to an extent," Stitch told Motherboard. "In the original Sherlock Holmes works and the 2011 BBC series, Watson had just returned from Afghanistan. For Captain America and other Marvel heroes, 9/11 was something that was addressed in-universe in The Amazing Spider-Man volume 2 #36. Technically, 9/11 is 'canon' to the Marvel universe."

In “Early Warning: Terrorism,” a fanfiction for the TV show Early Edition in which a man who mysteriously receives tomorrow's newspaper, predicting the future, avoids jingoism, but tries to precent 9/11 from happening. This fanfic remains unfinished; it’s unclear if the characters successfully prevent 9/11 in this retelling.

Largely in fanfic from the era just after 9/11, when many young authors were trying to emotionally grapple with it, the characters don't re-write or undo the events themselves. It's this emphasis on the reaction to tragedy that colors the fanfiction that features 9/11 going forward.

Although fanfiction authors have been writing about 9/11 consistently since soon after the event, whenever that fanfiction reaches outside of its intended audience, it looks bizarre.

A screenshot of a Naruto 9/11 fanfic on the Tumblr subreddit comes without any context, or even more than two lines and an author's note. It’s impossible to suss out if this falls into the category of sincere fanfic without the rest of the piece or a publication date, but modern-day commenters on the Reddit thread see it as classic Tumblr trash.

Screenshot from r/Tumblr

“Bin Laden/Dick Cheney, enemies to lovers, 10k words, slow burn,” one user joked in the replies, underscoring the weirdness of Naruto being in the Twin Towers by comparing it to a What If story about Cheney and Bin Laden slowly falling deeply in love.

It’s hard to tell how much of the 9/11 fanfic and fanart starting a few years after the attacks is sincere, and how much of it is ironic, and trying to make fun of the very concept of writing fanfiction about 9/11.

A 2007 anime music video (in which various clips, usually from anime, are cut together to music) that combines scenes from The Lion King with Linkin Park’s “Crawling” and clips from George Bush’s speeches immediately after the attacks feels like the perfect example of this. Even the commenters can’t seem to suss out if this person is a troll or not.

There’s no way that My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic 9/11 fanart could be serious, right? Especially if the description pays tribute to “some of the nation's most memorable buildings,” and features five of the main characters as child versions of themselves. The comments again are split between users thanking the artist for a thoughtful remembrance post, and people making their own headcanon for why Twilight Sparkle is surreptitiously absent from the scene.

Screengrab via DeviantArt

There’s Phineas and Ferb fanfic that combines a 9/11 tribute concert with flashbacks to Ferb being rescued from the towers as a baby, written on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. It jumps from introspection to lines like, “‘Quiet Perry the Platypus. I’m trying to listen to these kids singing a 9/11 tribute.’”

The author's notes make it more likely that they meant for this to be a tribute piece, but it doesn’t quite make sense until watching a YouTube dramatic reading of it from 2020, fully embracing the absurdity of it all.

“For me, 9/11 is synonymous with war. It completely changed the course of my life," Dreadnought, the author of a Captain America fanfic Baghdad Waltz that sees Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes fall in love over the course of the war on terror, told Motherboard. "It’s the reason I joined the military, and I developed deep connections with people who would go on to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq. These very much felt like my generation’s wars, perhaps because people I graduated high school with were the youngest folks eligible to serve at the time.”

Dreadnought told Motherboard that although they didn't deploy, their career has kept 9/11 and the trauma from it in their mind. After seeing that people who fantasize about Steve and Bucky getting together seemed particularly interested in reading fanfiction that related to 9/11, they decided to try their hand at it.

"I had to do something with all of that emotionally, and I’m admittedly a bit emotionally avoidant. So I learned through fic that it’s easier for me to process those feelings and the knowledge of all the awful stuff that can happen in war if I can turn it into something creative," Dreadnought said. "Give the feelings to fake people and then have those fake people give the feelings to readers!"

To Dreadnought, who is a queer man, the experience of researching and writing this was more cathartic than they first expected, especially as a way to navigate feelings about masculinity, military culture, and queer identity. But they said the research they did, which included watching footage of first responders at ground zero, was what helped them finally process the event itself.

"It was like a delayed horror, and it was more powerful than I expected it would be." Dreadnought said. "When I was eighteen, I was pretty emotionally divorced from 9/11; I just knew I wanted to do something about it. So coming back to it in my 30s while writing this fic, it was a very different experience. Even the research for this story ended up being an extraordinarily valuable exercise in cognitively and emotionally processing 9/11 and all of its second and third order effects."

Fanfiction that features 9/11 provides an outlet for people who still grapple with the trauma from that day. But Stitch warns that the dynamics of fandom and how it relates to politics can also create fiction that's less respectful and more grotesque.

"With years of distance between the stories written and the original events of 9/11, there seems to be some sort of cushion for fans who choose to use those events as a catalyst for relationships—and Iraq and Afghanistan for settings," Stitch said. "The cushion allows them room to fictionalize real world events that changed the shape of the world as we know it, but it also insulates them from having to think about what they may be putting into the world."

The tendency of turning these events into settings or backgrounds for mostly white, male characters to fall in love has the unintended effect of displacing the effects that the war on terror has had on the world over. Steve and Bucky might fall in love during the war on terror, but they would also be acting as a part of the American military in a war that has been criticized since it started. Fanfic writers in other fandoms have come under fire for using real world tragedy as settings for fic before. In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake Supernatural fanfiction about the actors Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki going to the island to do aid became controversial within the fandom. There have also been fics where characters grapple with the death of George Floyd that is written in a way that displaces the event from the broader cultural context of race in America.

"A Captain America story where Steve Rogers is a 'regular' man who joins the US Army and 'fights for our freedom' post-9/11 is unlikely to deal with the war’s effect on locals who are subject to US military intervention," Stitch said. "It’s unlikely to sit with what Captain America has always meant and what a writer is doing by dropping Steve Rogers into a then-ongoing conflict in any capacity."

After enough time, “never forget” can even morph into “but what if it never happened?” A 19k+ word Star Wars alternate universe fanfic asks this question, wondering what would have unfolded if someone with two lightsabers was on United Flight 93. This fic, part of a larger fanfic series with its own Wikia, considers what would have happened if Earth was a military front in the Clone Wars.

In this version of events, a decorated general who served in the Clone Wars is able to take back control of Flight 93 before it crashes, landing safely and preventing even more tragedy from happening that day. In the end, all of the passengers who made harrowing last calls to their loved ones before perishing in a Pennsylvania field survive thanks to the power of the Force, and are awarded medals of honor by President Bush.

Twenty years after the attacks, it’s painful to think about what would have happened if people got to work 15 minutes later, or missed their trains that morning. There weren’t Jedi masters deployed to save people in real life, but for some of the fanfic writers working today, the world of Star Wars might feel just as removed as the world before September 11, 2001.

Fiction serves as a powerful playground for processing cultural events, especially generational trauma. The act isn't neutral though; a decade's worth of fanfiction that takes place on or around 9/11 shows how our own understanding of a traumatic event can shift with time.

How 9/11 Became Fan Fiction Canon syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[tristala]

To Distant Lands...

It has been quite a journey.

I have been a fan of Adventure Time for over ten years. But it wasn’t a great start.

Foolish 12 year old me disliked it at first glance just because I wasn’t used to the art style and didn’t take it seriously. I ignored it for almost a year. Then on one faithful day in my tutor’s house, I watched the newly aired episode Mystery Train with her kids.

I was... charmed by it. 

This new kind humor spoke to me and I... actually wanted to see more of it. Of course at first I was in denial for a bit but I got over that quickly. So from then on whenever I see it play on Cartoon Network I wouldn’t skip it anymore. I began to look forward to more episodes until I noticed that this series had an overarching plot.

The episodes that I thought were one-shot had purpose. Not all of them are great but they were satisfying for the most part. Like pieces of a puzzle being slowly formed over the years. When I got used to going online I started watch every single episode until I got to the latest. I would wait every week for a new one to drop.

Not everything was all sunshine and rainbows however. Around the mid seasons I thought that the plot was dragging, that the writing became pretentious in some episodes. I began to lose my love for it after 3 years by that point. So I just became a casual viewer.

It took 2 years for me to get back on going crazy over Adventure Time again and by then I was already 18 years old. But I was never ashamed by loving cartoons and my peers were also obsessed with this show so I had no problem getting back on track.

I know that they use storyboards to tell their stories and that writing was secondary. It’s a very risky way of creating a show. But for some reason it kind of works with a show Adventure Time. 

A world were the unpredictable happens, a world were your own imagination is the limit. 

The songs were always such a treat. They may sound simple but that’s what makes them so memorable and heartfelt. They capture the moments where the situations are laid out. The way they were made sounded on the spot and incorporated what the characters felt at the time has a touch of realism.

I will forever be astounded with the way they incorporated Jake’s powers. The ways the spells, the jokes and the characters work and being alive. The Land of Ooo has infinite possibilities. I love all of that jazz.

But what I love most about this show were the characters and their relationships. 

Sure they’re zany but the situations they find themselves in still felt real no matter how ridiculous they got. There were moments when everything suddenly just made sense and I just began to feel for them.

Marceline was a character that I felt infatuated with the first episode I saw her in. It was when she was ‘helping’ Finn ‘woo’ PB into going to movies with him. I was like “Who’s this vampire chick and why is she so fun?” 

Yeah I liked her, but I never thought that I would fall in love with the immortal known as The Vampire Queen.

Marceline is just a tragically beautifully written character. And the show has done something I never thought they would do: Address how being an immortal affected her and other people.  

This silly looking cartoon has tackled topics regarding existential crisis and put with a lot of thought on it and I live for that. What Marceline felt when she lost the people she loved over the years, how messed up her whole situation was. She didn’t know what to do and instead dedicated her life in killing vampires because she wanted to protect the memory of only one person she had left who couldn’t even be with her. It was so heartbreaking. 

Never had my younger self thought that Marcy would have relationship with Simon. When I saw the still image of them when I was about to watch Remember You I was psyched. Many scenarios were flowing in my head before I clicked the play button. I thought I was ready but I was so wrong. That episode was the first episode that made me cry watching this series. Afterwards I always looked forward to Simon and Marcy interactions. 

I felt the utter hopelessness when Simon was declining onwards to becoming the Ice King we’ve always seen but never really known. 

But even in his maniacal state, there was a semblance of the Simon who loved his Betty and Marcy with all his heart. It could be called hopeful but it could also be cruel. And that is the beauty of this tragedy.

Immortality will mess anyone up and they all cope it with different ways.

Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum is another immortal but had different priorities. She already had a goal set in mind and went through with it with almost no hesitation. She committed numerous acts with questionable morals in mind. She pushed everyone away and just focused on her kingdom. In her own way, she was winging it. 

Her way of thinking clashed with Marceline and it was all the wrong timing for them. Her closest friend’s care for strangers was already almost nonexistent and she herself was too stressed. 

In the process of finding their purpose and having the weight of responsibilities on their shoulders and just living, these two have lost themselves and are just so tired and broken.

This is one of the main reasons why I ship Bubbline. They are so different yet they understand each other in an unspeakable level. The lost moralities they had were slowly gained when they found each other. And it wasn’t even immediate. There were so many ups and downs with their relationship and it took them centuries to figure it out. Even in the present they’re still figuring it out but now they are healing and that’s what matters.

And let’s not forget the titular characters.

Finn and Jake’s brotherly bond is one of my most favorite things in all of the fictional media I have consumed. Because going through reincarnation together and being with each other for all eternity is literally the definition of their love not knowing any bounds.

Together Again was the perfect send off for Adventure Time. And while they’re brotherhood isn’t flawless like Jake not always being the best role model but he’s always there for his brother and Finn would do anything for the people he loves. They have went through so many things together, good and bad.

Their bond is unbreakable.

Finn’s breakdowns in losing his best friend was so painful to watch and I cannot help myself but cry for what these brothers have lost. I know people have to let go but maybe we don’t have to “let go” let go, you know? So imagine my surprise and delight when Jake decided to join his brother and said these very words:

“Because it’s great being alive with you.”

That sentence broke my soul into a million pieces and restored it at the same time. I just bursted into tears the second I heard that. It was so simple yet one of the most touching lines I have ever heard in my life.

This show had so much heart that it’s overflowing. The bonds that these characters have for each other. It has brought me so much tears of sadness and joy. It broadened my imagination for the unknown. The creativity of this series is absolutely outstanding.

I was the same age as Finn when the show started so you could say I grew up with him and the show. I wasn’t young enough for it to be a part of my childhood but it was there for me till I reached adulthood. And I think that it’s much better that way. It did help me grow up and let me see that there are a lot of things that while everything stays, they still change. 

Adventure Time’s had a lot of messages strewn over its seasons and always had a melancholic vibe to it. 

That’s life... and that’s okay.

It may get ugly and terrifying but Adventure Time has told me to just live. 

Sing, dance, cry and laugh. Something simple as hanging out with family and friends has so much meaning in the grand scheme of things. Life goes on and things will seem to be familiar yet foreign at the same time. Linger on nostalgia, but also appreciate what’s happening in the present and look forward to what will happen in the future.

I am so grateful to have been on this wonderful adventure.

Like what they always said: 

The fun never ends.

[ganymedesclock]

So... What do you think about revisiting Danny phantom in general? Revisiting the fandom I've noticed a lot of fanfic that have Danny's parents finding out his deal rather violently, or generally having more violence/angst than the original show..

I’m assuming you’re sending me this ask because of my recent burst of Danny Phantom art, so, it’s probably not a surprise to say I’m doing a certain amount of revisiting myself, and certainly not about to shame anyone else for it. It was a very dear cartoon to me in many ways and left some enduring hallmarks on my own writing, and I can absolutely understand people feeling the same way.

That said, as someone who’s been in this fandom for a while, albeit quietly- there certainly is a thread of macabre interest in fandom spaces, one I don’t always know that I agree with, especially when it comes to the Fentons.

My personal verdict on the Fenton parents specifically is I think they are not handled fairly by canon. This is a problem that Danny Phantom as a show shares with Fairly Odd Parents, though I would argue the Turner parents in FOP are quite a bit worse at this.

Roughly, I think how the Fenton parents are canonically depicted suffers from a phenomenon that affects many parts of the show: DP, as a series, has a bit of a sense of confused priorities between comedy and drama, and as a result, what’s 'real’ in-universe and what’s “just supposed to be a joke”. The kind of humor that DP tends to spring for is exaggerated or shocking behavior- it also tends to be a humor that hinges on the idea that other people are generally inconvenient to the main character. So humor-characterization is inconsistent here- Jack is negligent until it’s more inconvenient to depict him as overbearing (see: Girl’s Night Out and other cases he desperately wants to bond with Danny) he’s a recluse only loved by his wife until it’s more inconvenient to depict him as having an active social life (Masters Of All Time and that he and Maddie are going to a themed party so they’re dressed ‘weirdly’ in public)

A big victim of this is Jack’s sense that ghosts aren’t people and his desire to dissect them. Because here is the thing: it’s all talk, in the worst way. It hinges on the idea Jack- someone who knows enough of what he’s doing that along with Maddie and, in the past, Vlad- ripped two different holes in reality hard enough to permanently alter someone’s relation to undeath- has never seen a ghost before the series as he says in Mystery Meat.

The series has a big problem where it hinges on the Fentons’ inventions and expertise but also wants to treat them like idiots constantly. And if you notice how much I’m talking exclusively about Jack- that’s part of the problem. Maddie, in many ways, outside of episodes that throw her a bone, despite constantly being told by people she’s too good for Jack, is really treated as an extension of Jack. Masters Of All Time even suggests that her choosing Jack in the first place was just a path of least resistance between her two college friends, and she’d have married whichever one stuck around. 

The Fentons are not respected as experts, so Jack is given his ignorant line about dissecting a ghost. The Fentons need to remain exaggerated, ridiculous, an inconvenience to Danny- so they threaten his alter ego and point guns at him, but this is funny and not serious and not a reason to be worried about them as parents, because they are not on Danny’s level. Nobody is ever on Danny’s level. There is literally an episode called The Ultimate Enemy. The antagonist is an evil future Danny. The only person who could ever be Danny’s ultimate nemesis is Danny himself. 

And when the series stops milking the Fentons for jokes about how they’re so stupid and how Jack is an idiot and Maddie married that idiot but even she doesn’t respect him even though she loves him and dutifully follows him everywhere and god how can these people care about ghosts they’re so ignorant and out of their league- 

-then it kinda shuffles its feet awkwardly and goes, yeah. the Fentons love each other, and love their kids.

Yeah, Jack has framed photographs of Maddie, Jazz, and Danny on his personal workstation.

Yeah, in Mystery Meat Jack was seriously debating walking away from his lifework because it upset one of his kids. 

Yeah, every time in canon the Fentons find out Danny’s secret they’re immediately all in supporting him.

Yeah, even not knowing it’s Danny, Jack has an amiable conversation with him in Million Dollar Ghost and the ghost containment units designed by the Fentons get some jokes about that they’re a little cramped but they aren’t horrifying prisons of inhumanity- and as soon as Danny Phantom the ghost boy has a good point, Jack lets him go on purpose. 

Yeah, Jack is a competent ghost hunter who can take on Skulker and win as well as beat down the giant lake monster Skulker brought with him in Girls’ Night Out and would do this in a heartbeat, no jokes and no sidetracks, because that monster just chewed on his baby boy and nobody does that to his baby boy.

Yeah, Maternal Instinct is an entire episode of Maddie throwing hands with (or deceiving and manipulating) literally anything she thinks was responsible for getting Danny in this dangerous situation.

...And then the series says “but that’s not funny! Here, have jokes about the Fenton Stockades, that exist and have spikes and Jack wants to put his kids in them for time out, when the spikes apparently don’t hurt given Jack is not injured for being put in there. Here, have a joke about Jack attacking Jazz with a vacuum cleaner because he gets hellbent on the idea she’s possessed for no good reason. Here, have an uncomfortable joke about how badly Jack Fenton wants to vivisect a ghost while it screams. Funny funny funny. Why- why are you flinching?”

It basically creates a comedic situation where the show is constantly winding up like it’s gonna punch you- with the idea that the Fentons are bad parents and this has consequences for Danny and Jazz personally- and then laughs in your face if you flinch. It’ll never actually punch you- but it will sure keep swinging its hand really close to your face and laughing at your reactions.

This is, I’m just gonna say- one of the worst elements of the series, this weird relationship it has with “hahaha are we depicting an abusive family or not? ;)” where its actual point is that Jack Fenton is a person who should be shamed for being overzealous, for caring about this niche field, because nobody cares about ghosts! (unless the entire premise of the show does) Nobody wants to think about ghost science! That’s LAME! (unless Vlad does it)

So I think ultimately this creates a polarizing experience in the fandom. What part of this information do you take?

Do you take, say, my personal approach, which is: 

“Hey, so it’s pretty clear and consistent that the Fentons love their kids and wouldn’t hurt them. The Fentons are nice people. They can be obsessive or headstrong but there’s nuanced and salient ways to examine this in the basic framework that they care, both about their family specifically, and in general- and while I think they can have flaws or conflicts with their kids, and with ambient ghosts in the world, I really don’t think they’re in danger of torturing a sapient entity in their basement and it frustrates and annoys me that canon ‘makes a joke’ of them doing these things because it thinks they’re so incompetent that these things are not really malicious actions, when- whether or not you successfully shoot them, it takes a certain kind of person to point a weapon you know is dangerous at something that looks, and talks, like a fourteen-year-old, especially when you’re a parent who has probably at least once in your life worried about something happening to your kids, and the ghost of a teenager means something happened to someone’s kid, in a general sense.

So my end conclusion on the Fentons is I think they are being depicted in a kind of metatextual bad faith, that they are not cruel or malicious people, and in my personal take or understanding on the series, I’d massively dial down those elements, and if any remain, take them seriously as problems they have in their relationships with other people.”

Or do you take an approach more rooted in,

“If the Fentons are shown to be negligent parents they are negligent parents, I’m going to examine and depict them as that, and I find this very hard to forgive, so it’s going to have real and nasty consequences.”

Both are basically valid. The place where I tend to get a little uncomfortable is twofold:

First, I think sometimes people just really want some fictional tragedy to either create or consume, and to that end, you aren’t going to get much juicy drama out of the Fentons being reasonable people. This isn’t evil or unforgivable, but for me, it’s definitely my least favorite fannish content to create or consume. I’m no fan of angst for angst’s sake, and I feel like there’s enough misery and heartbreak in the world that I’m not interested in wallowing in it unless it’s got something interesting to say.

Second- and this is a point I’m gonna be saltier: A lot of abusive Fenton fics that refuse to forgive them for the poorer-taste jokes the series makes, simultaneously give Vlad a blank check, when he has done targetedly malicious things to Danny. 

Now- do I also have a more sympathetic read on Vlad, and feel like canon also gives him a bad rap? Yeah! But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say, “I can’t forgive the Fentons for stuff that was tagged onto them because canon thought it was funny, but I’m gonna editorialize Vlad’s depiction to lionize him as the ideal parent figure for Danny to run into the arms of.”

And the main reason I get so worked up in this, is I feel like Jack in particular (when Maddie is characterized as subordinate to Jack, following his cues, etc., and that’s its own demon) is... characterized as kind of a mocking caricature of traits that I personally recognize as an autistic and ADHD person.

Because the reality is? In many practical ways, I am Jack Fenton.

I like a bunch of weird stuff people find unacceptable or gross, like bugs

I’m hyperlexic (that means I talk, a lot)

Scatterbrained, forget words or where I left something or, sometimes, to do something important

Passionate and excitable including and especially in situations where it’s not normal, or expected, to have this much energy

I absolutely can forget birthdays, even for people I love dearly that mean the world to me! It’s horrible! There’s almost nothing I can do about it! My brain refuses to hold onto this information reliably and no amount of caring fixes it.

And being this way, living like this? My worst nightmare has always been that people think I either don’t care or that I’m just too much of a stupid, flippant buffoon to get right.

The thing about Jack is he’s “a person like me” and he’s “a person like me” who was designed to be a joke. We’re clearly expected to view him as untrustworthy, stupid, just like a big dumb dog of a man who barks in the wrong directions, who sometimes, when it counts, fetches a stick like he’s supposed to. Good job, Lassie. You got little Timmy out of the well.

And I am going to say with certainty and confidence that feeling like this is how people see me is the most unbelievably crushing feeling I have ever experienced in my life. That my excitement and passion means I’m unprofessional, stupid, don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s nearly painful for me, as an adult, to watch Danny Phantom because the show can never get off Jack’s case. And the few times it does, he hauls overtime arduously to make a difference, to help, to build something that will protect others, to put his own life on the line to stop hostile ghosts.

And immediately, then he goes back to being stupid stupid dog man. ha ha. why does his wife love him? no wonder his kids don’t ever want to be seen with him. no wonder his best friend is trying to kill him and he doesn’t even know, the big idiot.

(never mind that we see a scenario where he does know. and admits he would’ve forgiven Vlad anyway. but he can’t forgive Vlad hurting Danny.)

So to rein in this wild tangent: I’m not saying all must love Jack Fenton and despair. I’m not even telling people to hide their angst. If I have a sincere request, it’s this:

If you’re inclined to thinking of Vlad as a cool, troubled, complex person (as I do!) and are haunted by the implications of The Ultimate Enemy specifically for Vlad, that when Danny lost everyone else in his life that Vlad really genuinely tried to help, and was not gloating and happy and victorious to have Danny as his protege, and when that went badly, he was haunted to the end of his days by not having been able to help-

-but immediately turn around and think Jack is just a rotten awful person who’d absolutely hurt his own kid in spite of canon to the contrary (when there’s just as much, if not more, canon of Vlad being willfully hostile)

It might be good to examine why you’re feeling this way, and if this might not come down to the fact that even when canon has people call Vlad a desperately lonely fruit loop, it has a lot more respect for him than it does for Jack, and this isn’t because it’s actually taking a stance against any of the qualities it gave Jack that someone might find disagreeable- it’s because Jack’s just “a big old fat idiot nobody likes, right?”

and that’s... not something comfy to buy into.

[thefriendlyfrog]

Too many thoughts on SPN 15x17, “Unity”

Welp, I don’t usually do this, but this episode was so great and packed with so many good parallels and callbacks I couldn’t help it! Meredith Glynn is such a great writer. So, let’s begin. Lots of spoilers under the cut.

The first scene opens up to Amara living life to the fullest in an Icelandic hot spring (I’ve been to some in Iceland and would 10/10 recommend – don’t bother with the Blue Lagoon, though). My eyes were immediately drawn to the super recognizable cover of Murakami’s “Norwegian Wood”. Now, I haven’t read this book since, like, high school (now realizing that was a DECADE ago), but I do remember the general plot and themes of the story (I should really reread that again, it’s a good book). Basically, the story is recalled by our narrator and protagonist Watanabe at a later point in his life as he is reminded of a time of life when the Beatles’ song “Norwegian Wood” plays. I don’t want to spoil the whole book, but basically it is a coming of age story that is steeped in themes of regret, sex, love, and death (among others, it really is a literary treasure trove!). Skip the next paragraph if you don’t want “Norwegian Wood” spoilers.

In short: Watanabe’s best friend from high school commits suicide which haunts him and his friend’s girlfriend, Naoki, for the rest of their lives. Watanabe and Naoki become close and romantically involved, but she leaves for a sanitorium. Watanabe wants to be with Naoki despite her telling him that she doesn’t think she can love anymore (she described herself and her high school boyfriend as soulmates). Watanabe later meets Naoki’s opposite, Midori, a lively girl who Watanabe grows close to and is also interested in. Watanabe essentially doesn’t move forward as he is waiting on Naoki while having Midori waiting on him. At the end of the story, it is revealed that it has always been Midori and he realizes he wants to be with her.

I thought that this was an EXCELLENT pick for Amara to be reading. It really sums of a lot of surface and not-so-surface level themes in Supernatural. Wondering if there is a parallel between Dean and Watanabe about sort of idealizing a life (with someone) that isn’t meant to be while ignoring love in front of you? Would love to hear all of your thoughts.

Moving on (I’m skipping through parts of the episode to just focus on some key observations)! Amara tries to convince Chuck to fight on behalf of this world and wants to show him some of his creations. So, she brings him to Heaven to see his ‘first children’ (i.e., angels). She also refers to angels as having prefect angelic devotion which immediately made me laugh because our fave angel Cas is really devoted to Dean humanity and not Chuck. Ahh! This whole episode just kept pointing out how special Cas is.

And then, callback after callback began. Amara brings Chuck to the bunker so Chuck says, “Is this a trap?” which made me think of episode 9 (“The Trap” by Berens). This was almost immediately followed by another callback when Chuck says, “You can’t hold me here forever,” to which Amara replies, “I can hold you long enough.” Um, Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets (12x10, Yockey), anyone?

Ishim: “You can’t hold me here forever.” … Lily’s powers are wearing off as Ishim approaches her until Cas stabs Ishim in the back with his angel blade. Cas: “You held him for long enough.”

Like, COME ON! Almost verbatim.

Skipping forward to Dean and Jack’s adventure to visit my favorite hippies, Adam and Serafina (like seriously, they were fantastic characters!). Adam refers to himself as, “…first dude off of the assembly line,” which is similar language that has been used to referring to angels in the past (again, invoking Castiel?)

Then Dean assumes the woman is Eve but they both just shake their heads and chuckle, “I’m Serafina,” I’m definitely not the first one to point this out but… the First Man being in a near-lifelong romantic relationship with an angel named Seraph Serafina?! Uh, yeah, ‘nuff said.

Serafina also mentions that she saw Jack when she and Adam were, “…sipping mushroom tea on the Hanging Gardens of Babylon,” which made me wonder if there was some sort of connection with Glynn’s season 14 episode, “Byzantium” (14x08), which is the episode Cas makes his deal with the Empty. Babylon was a fortress of the Byzantine empire (not going to lie, my historical knowledge about the Byzantine empire is preeeeetty limited).  

I also loved the whole speech by Serafina to Dean: “I mean, just think of everything that has had to happen to get Jack to this place, to this moment. Baby, it was meant to be,” Dean, of course, is upset by this because he is probably thinking that this was all basically predestined, and he has had no free will. However, he just needs to wait a little while longer until Chuck tells him to his face that he has never been able to control Cas since he laid his hand on Dean saving him from Hell.

Serafina also heals Adam’s wound and it is, of course, super reminiscent of Cas healing Dean (although, even Serafina doesn’t directly touch Adam when healing him – it’s, once again, unique to Castiel). Obligatory hand squeal: HANDS!!!! Wow, they are not even trying to be subtle about the whole hands thing. It is so IN YOUR FACE begging for the audience to notice it.

Adam then mentions how much power is in his rib: “But this puppy? Is packing enough punch to create LIFE. Or, in your case, destroy God.” Well, at this point I think we can all be pretty certain that in the end it will NOT be used to destroy God, so will it instead be used for creation? Excited to see how they defuse Jack’s supernova bomb next episode.

Rounding off Dean’s vignette is a heartbreaking scene with him and Jack in the Impala. Dean says, “I don’t know how to explain it. When I learned about Chuck, it was like – it’s like I wasn’t alive. Not really. You know, like, my whole life I’ve never been free. But like, really free. But now, me and Sam, we got a shot at living a life…But now we have a chance. And that’s because of you.” Again, this is before Dean learns that Cas’ actions were made of his own free will, and from the sounds of it, Dean’s connection to Amara as well. I also immediately wondered if Jack bringing Dean some sense of freedom was what Cas saw when Jack showed him “paradise”.

Moving on to Sam’s vignette: Sam remembers that Sergei mentioned the Key of Death was in the bunker (how did he remember this, wasn’t he unconscious at the time? A little disappointed Cas didn’t get to provide that little fact but I’m also glad that Sam actually served a purpose this episode and was a bit more front and center). They find the Key of Death and there is an inscription in Latin on the box:

Viator mortalis, cave, quoniam scias Clavem Mortis pensare graviter. Il tamen desideres ut introeas illum abyssum obscurissimum artis opus est tibi porta.

Okay, fair warning: I took Latin for 4 years but it has been awhile so my translation is super not perfect, but I figured I would take a stab at it because the subtitles were wrong at times and Google translate is not perfect. I translated it as something like this:

Mortal traveler, beware, because you know the Key of Death should be considered seriously. However, if you want to enter the darkest abyss, this work of art is the gate/door.

Honestly, there were a few words that I couldn’t find the right conjugations to and I know this isn’t 100% accurate, but it gives you the gist.

Sam then visits Death’s library and finds the Empty there, killing people (?) to get in touch with Death, whom they hasn’t been trusting as of late. We learn that Death’s plan is to assume the role of New God and restore the world back to order, bring back rules. The Empty is wary because they don’t know if they can trust the promise of being able to go back to sleep. Trust issues, the Empty says, because of “your busted-ass friend in the trench coat,” another subtle-not-so-subtle mention of Cas. But why, exactly, did Cas give the Empty ‘trust issues’? Was it because he woke up in the first place? Because he has ‘traipsed in and out’ of the Empty without dying?

We also learn that only Billie can read Chuck’s Death book, and, this may be a crack idea but… maybe Cas should be able to read the book because he was the one that killed Billie and made her Death in the first place? Seems like Cas might have a connection to Billie. It would be cool if Cas were the one to read Chuck’s book.

Finally, we learn a bit more about the Empty, and how they can’t go to Earth unless summoned. Hmm…

Flash forward to Amara and Chuck in the bunker. Amara tells Chuck, “It’s not too late, brother,” and, if you’re like me, you finished that sentence with “it’s never too late (to start all over again)”. So many great Destiel songs out there, but “Never Too Late” takes the cake for me.

Amara and Chuck decide to become one, become ultimate balance. Chuck extends his hand and Amara grasps it as she is absorbed into Chuck. I don’t even know if I really need to say this, but… HANDS! (Destiel is already canon to me but if the show is going to make it more explicitly canon for the audience, it’s going to be through hands as I know people have been shouting about for several seasons now).  

To finish, let’s talk about that kick-ass scene with TFW 2.0 at the end of the episode. We find out that Chuck’s real ending is to have Dean regress and give in to rage and kill everything he loves, probably ultimately leading to his own death. Woof, what a tragic ending (tragedy ≠ good ending). So, we’ve got to subvert that which Dean does after a heartfelt plea from Sam (“You would trade me?”). I enjoyed how much Dean looked back at Cas during this exchange, especially after Sam tells Dean that Eileen will die again. The parallels, the connection.

Honestly, I’m not sure why Cas and Jack were in that scene other than to have some meaningful glances exchanged between Cas and Dean and because TFW2.0 is together in the next scene. But… whatever, more Cas so I liked it.

And finally, the scene that had me shaking with VINDICATION.

Cas to Chuck: “What, you consumed your sister?” Chuck: “We came to an understanding, so spare me your contempt Castiel, the self-hating angel of Thursday. You know what every other version of you did after ‘gripping him tight and raising him from perdition’? They did what they were told. But not you. Not the ‘one off the line with a crack in his chassis’” (Cas looks back at Dean after a moment)

Okay, so let’s break this exchange down. So much satisfaction with just a few sentences. Bravo, Ms. Glynn.

“We came to an understanding.” Didn’t Michael and Adam say the same thing after they decided to share equally in their bond and vessel? Callback #1.

“…self-hating angel of Thursday.” Ahh, it’s been so long since we got mention that Cas is the angel of Thursday. The last time was, what, when Crowley says it to Cas back in season 6? By the way, it was totally meant to be that Supernatural will finish off the series on a Thursday. Callback #2 (ish).

“You know what every other version of you did after ‘gripping him tight and raising him from perdition’?” This is the second time the show has repeated Cas’ first line to Dean near-verbatim in two seasons. You know, just in case the audience forgot Dean and Cas’ infamous first meeting (which I am like 99% sure we are going to get hella callbacks to next episode). Callback #3.

“They did what they were told. But not you. Not the ‘one off the line with a crack in his chassis.’” Again, Chuck is closely paraphrasing what Naomi said about Cas in season 8:

8x21 “The Great Escapist” – Naomi: “You're the famous spanner in the works. Honestly, I think you came off the line with a crack in your chassis. You have never done what you were told. Not completely. You don't even die right, do you?”

Callback #4. Seriously, Glynn packed four callbacks into such a short time period. Wizard.

My only *criticism* of this final scene is that Dean and Cas didn’t seem to react too much to Chuck’s news about Cas always having free will (although, I think Cas already knew this, but it is news and confirmation to Dean!). I highly suspect that will come next week, though. I’m SO excited (and also terrified) for next week. We are definitely going to be getting a lot of Cas next episode. Misha, in an interview, mentioned that we would get Cas’ ‘chapter’ in 18, and I’m wondering if this will be the true Cas-centric episode? I don’t know, maybe the Cas-centric episode was “Gimme Shelter” but I was expecting more of a “The Man Who Would Be King” kind of Cas-centric episode.  

All in all, 10/10. I keep reading and seeing things that are galaxy braining me, so it has been super fun reading all the meta and reactions to this episode.

Three episodes left. Get your tissues ready for Cas’ death (oops, is this even a spoiler at this point?) next episode. And remember, “Nothing ever really ends,” and “The end has no end,”

[impalementation]

have you ever written your thoughts on the bathroom scene in seeing red? do u think it was the right thing to do?

ah geez. someone asked this once a while back and i demurred, mainly because i don’t like courting discourse. i just like analyzing things. but whatever, here are my thoughts. under a cut for obvious reasons.

i think the the basic summary of my feelings is: (1) intellectually, there are a lot of reasons the choice makes sense. i think it clearly fits with the season’s obsession with violation and control, as well as the ambiguous consent in the spike/buffy relationship. spike’s tendency to conflate love/sex and violence, and romanticize that conflation, is a pretty central part of his character. i kind of suspect anything less than sexual assault would have felt on some level like chickening out. like not biting the bullet of a lot of ideas they had been playing with for a while, both in the season and with spike himself. i can also see how the unsettling realism of the scene fits into the season’s “horror of mundanity” ideas. (2) morally, i can see the argument for really wanting to make it clear that the negative sides of spike’s character should not be romanticized. i can understand the writers being frustrated that they were trying to depict an unhealthy relationship, but having many members of their audience excuse it anyway. but (3) emotionally, i hate watching it, and unlike many other things that i’ve hated watching on the show, i don’t feel like the show makes it fully worth my while. either in the immediate or long run. watching the body is painful as fuck, but it’s an artistic sort of pain. or to compare to other media, the movie irreversible is famous for depicting a long, graphic rape with a nauseating degree of realism. but again, i feel like the movie makes that unpleasantness worth my while.

it also makes me really uncomfortable to know how terrible that scene was for marsters to film. i think there’s some degree of discomfort to be expected in making art, and i think it’s fair that if actors and writers and etc have signed contracts that they be expected to fulfill them. for instance, i think the writers were within their rights to stick to their artistic vision for the season even though it made gellar uneasy at times. but if you’re at the point of putting your actor into the fetal position between takes, and sending them to therapy, that crosses a line for me. maybe not legally, but certainly ethically. it would cross a line even if the content was something that didn’t seem like it “should” have that effect on an actor. it especially crosses a line considering my above observations about feeling like it wasn’t fully worth it.

but i’ll also say that every other suggestion i’ve read for what they should have done instead has left me unsatisfied. so i have some sympathy for the writers. i don’t think biting would have worked at all, symbolically. spike has just never been depicted as caring all that much about buffy’s blood. his character conflict is not about seeing buffy as food or not. it’s between loving in a possessive, boundary-crossing way and loving in more noble and selfless way. and rape is the ultimate in crossing boundaries (also the ultimate in love/sex-as-violence). it also fits much better as a parallel to warren, given that it’s “real world” the way a shooting is, and given warren’s near-rape of katrina in dead things. i know that people disparage whedon and noxon for adding the attempted rape part after not feeling like the scene was intense enough as-is but…i can’t lie. i see their point. or i understand their instinct, at least.

i think, however, that there may have been a way to execute the idea that left the audience more artistically satisfied. buffy’s injury is just so contrived, for instance. and the commercial break is pretty crass, even if it’s a standard tv convention (put an ad break on a character in peril!). and those things leave you with a feeling that the subject isn’t being handled in a particularly respectful way, which leaves you with the feeling that it wasn’t actually artistically necessary. also, while i do actually think that the scene fits with buffy’s season six arc (specifically, the assault and the gunshot wound both emphasize the fragility of her physical body/existence, which she has spent the season treating somewhat carelessly. the fact that she shoves spike off is important for showing the tragic necessity of having respect for one’s physicality in that way, and that buffy is at a place where she does, and unambiguously would no longer welcome something like being shot.), i think the writing could have made that aspect much stronger and more obvious. which would have helped in making the scene feel more worthwhile.

so i think—and again, this is only speaking 100% personally—my ultimate attitude is that the content of seeing red (all of it, not just that one scene) was more or less the “correct” thing to do, but the episode should have been a masterpiece in execution. an a+ instead of a b+. it should have been irrefutable. it should have gotten the attention and care that the very best episodes of the show got. it should have been stylistically incredible from start to finish, with character motivations so believable and clear that all you can do is be awed by the tragedy of what happens. instead of feeling like the writing took a knife to your stomach and then asked you to be impressed at how shocking it was. it should have made the actors as proud to have accomplished as once more, with feeling. and yeah, maybe that sort of effort wasn’t possible at that time because of outside constraints, maybe everyone was worn out. but i don’t think it’s an unrealistic thing to want considering the standard the show had proven itself capable of working at. basically, for all that i understand (and even respect) the choice creatively, and can analyze a ton about it, and can see how it’s a product of the same boldness that led to many things i loved in season six...i also can’t help thinking that they shouldn’t have done it unless they were willing to commit to doing it with more consideration. both for their actors and their audience.

[dogbearinggifts]

Before and After: Why Vietnam is Core to Klaus’ Character Arc

I love Klaus. 

I have ever since I read the comics. When watching the show’s intro for the first time, I actually cheered a little when he appeared onscreen; and each subsequent episode only served to further convince me of the perfection of Rob Sheehan’s performance. It goes without saying that he’s easily my favorite Hargreeves sibling, and I have no complaints regarding the abundance of Klaus fanart. 

That said, I still have some quibbles with how he’s portrayed in fandom. 

I don’t believe fans get his character wrong—not at all. He’s kind and empathetic, strikingly intelligent and a world-class idiot, funny and tragic, delightfully inappropriate and in desperate need of a hug. All of these traits are upheld and celebrated in many fanworks I’ve seen. 

However, some fanworks tend to gloss over the fact that the Klaus of the first four episodes is a very different person from the Klaus of the final six. His kindness and empathy, and the depths of tragedy he’s endured, only come to the fore in the latter half of the first season. In the first half, many of his more admirable traits remain hidden beneath a layer of selfishness and an appetite for drugs that can never be sated. Yet I’ve noticed that in fanworks, his characterization in the latter episodes is often retroactively applied to his characterization in early episodes, resulting in an amalgamation of traits that fails to capture just how deeply his time in Vietnam broke and refined him. 

Klaus Before Vietnam

We meet him as he’s leaving rehab, joking with everyone from his fellow patients to a sour-faced leader who tells him to stay sober. Even before he buys drugs in a back alley, we know he has no intention of taking this advice. When we see him being revived from an overdose not too long after, it’s expected. We knew he would do this. He didn’t take rehab seriously while leaving; why would he take it seriously once he’s out? The biggest surprise in that scene is his high-five with the paramedic, which doesn’t establish his reckless attitude so much as widen its scope: A medical professional has just snatched him from the jaws of death, and here he is, laughing and giving a high-five. An overdose isn’t enough to scare him sober. To Klaus, it’s just another high. 

It’s established early on that he suffers from PTSD, and that his heavy use of drugs and alcohol is tied to this—both as a form of self-medication and a means of shutting his powers off. However, we don’t learn this until after we’ve seen him picking through his late father’s study in search of cash or valuables, still wearing a medical bracelet from rehab. When Allison catches him in the act, rather than expressing shame or changing his tune, Klaus brushes off her pointed question about the bracelet and cracks a joke at their father’s expense: “Thank Christ he’s not our real father so we couldn’t inherit those cold, dead eyes!” And when Luther orders him to return the valuables he stole, Klaus rolls his eyes, does as he’s told, and accuses Luther of being too uptight. 

On the one hand, this is Reginald Hargreeves he’s insulting. A man who bought seven children and proceeded to abuse and degrade them in order to mold them into highly effective crime fighters. A man who wouldn’t allow his own children into his precious study for reasons that are almost certainly idiotic and myopic, and who couldn’t be bothered to look up from his work to bid them goodnight. It isn’t just that Reginald is a worthy target of these insults—it’s that he’s earned them. Klaus is merely paying his due. 

On the other hand, the man can’t be more than a few days dead. None of his other siblings seem particularly upset about his passing (not even Luther can muster more than a grim determination to learn the cause of his death) and Diego especially shows little respect for this particular dead man. Even so, none of his other siblings use their father’s death as a chance to steal his possessions. Both Vanya and Diego’s financial situations would greatly benefit from the sale of their father’s stolen valuables, and neither are particularly fond of him, but Klaus is the only one who steals his possessions. None of his siblings joke at Reginald’s expense, and none of them dish out the number and quality of insults Klaus heaps upon him. His antics are humorous, but they are also presented as the result of an all-consuming addiction and as a coping mechanism for an as-yet-unnamed traumatic experience. 

A key to his character—if not the key to it—is his tendency to hide his pain and fear behind jokes and laughter. We see it first when Allison finds him in the study, and he jokes about how he knows Reginald is dead because if he wasn’t, none of them would be allowed in his study. That line tells us a lot about Reginald, and a lot about their childhood—but it has the ring of a joke, so the full significance doesn’t sink in immediately. It surfaces in other, smaller lines as well, such as when he tells Five that “My longest relationship was—what, three weeks? And that was just because I was getting tired of trying to find a place to sleep.” The picture it paints of his time on the streets is grim, but once again, it’s delivered in a lighthearted manner. I don’t think this is because Klaus isn’t capable of being serious, as Five and Luther imply when kicking him out of the van; rather, it’s a coping mechanism. Klaus turns his pain into a joke and hides behind the humor so he won’t have to confront it. While this enables him to keep his darkest emotions at bay, it has the unfortunate side effect of making him appear carefree to his siblings—making drugs look like an attractive option when Luther learns his Moon mission was a farce. 

Throughout the first four episodes, Klaus is repeatedly confronted with the costs of his addiction, and repeatedly decides to continue paying that cost. I’ve already mentioned the opening sequence, where only the presence and expertise of a paramedic saved him from death by overdose*; but in the second episode, Pogo confronts him and all but states he knows Klaus stole the box and did away with the contents. His threat is veiled—“If the contents were to be returned, the guilty party would find themselves absolved of all consequences”—but considering Klaus was homeless for an unspecified period of time prior to this, I think it’s safe to assume Pogo meant to say, “Find that journal, or you’re out on the streets again.” Despite this, and despite Ben’s earlier cajoling to live a more healthy lifestyle, Klaus simply sets about searching for the journal. The thought of giving up drugs to avoid situations like this in the future doesn’t seem to occur to him. 

Another significant moment of confrontation comes in the motel, where, after hours of brutal and ineffective torture, Hazel and Cha-Cha coax him into telling them everything he knows about Five simply by grinding his pills into the carpet. Here he is, taped to a chair, physically weakened by constant torture, lack of food and water, and ever-encroaching withdrawals. He’s lasted ten hours without telling them a thing, yet when his drugs are threatened, he betrays his brother almost immediately. From the tears he sheds and the defeated tone with which he delivers the news, it’s clear Klaus loathes himself for what he’s doing and despises his own weakness. Yet when he escapes the motel with their briefcase, his first thought is of pawning it for drugs. 

There are, however, hints of the good man beneath the addiction. Klaus has no desire to speak to the man whose torture made him an addict by age 13, but when Luther intimates that learning Reginald’s cause of death is important to him, Klaus attempts to contact their father anyway. He gains nothing from this, but he does it anyway because having that piece of knowledge is important to Luther and he seems to want to give his brother that peace of mind. When Pogo tells him to search for that journal, Klaus doesn’t argue or storm out of the house; he instead searches through the dumpster. And when Five offers him $20 to pose as his father to gain information about the glass eye, Klaus puts more effort into earning those $20 than many people put into earning six figures. It’s clear that it’s not just the money he cares about; he also has a desire to please his siblings and help them get what they want. Arguably, his primary motivation in each of the last two situations is selfish (having a place to live and access to valuables with Pogo; getting money from Five) but he puts more effort into those things than might a person working from pure self-interest. 

How he speaks to the ghosts offers another clue. It’s true that he would rather ignore Zoya Popova than ask her how she died, and that he only speaks to her at Ben’s urging; but he doesn’t demand she hand over whatever information she has and then continue ignoring her. Instead, he addresses her gently and as an equal, tells her she has a beautiful name, and listens to what she has to say, despite his obvious revulsion toward her death wound. When the other ghosts chime in, he only tells them to shut up when they’ve crowded him and all begun telling him of their grisly deaths in rapid succession. Reginald likely taught him to see the ghosts as a tool to exploit, but when Klaus is forced to speak with them, he never treats them as anything less than human. 

Now, I’ve heard some fans argue that his handling of the scene just before Eudora’s death is further evidence of his selfishness, because rather than stay and help or run back when he heard gunshots or even warn her that Hazel had a partner, Klaus simply made a run for it. I disagree. Klaus, in that situation, was an unarmed hostage, weakened by torture, withdrawals, and what seems to have been an entire twenty-four hour period without food or significant amounts of water. Had he attempted to use the martial arts training it seems all of the Hargreeves kids received, his movements would have been sluggish at best—and while some styles do teach moves to disarm an opponent with a ranged weapon, those moves hinge on the element of surprise and rapid action. Klaus would have been capable of neither. Warning Eudora that Hazel had a partner would not have given her much of an advantage, as Cha-Cha could have shot her as she was turning around; even if she managed to turn before Cha-Cha could fire, nothing would have prevented Hazel from retrieving his dropped pistol or simply lunging at her from behind. Klaus’ attempted warning likely would have urged Cha-Cha to shoot sooner than she did, and would have urged Hazel to take action as well. As for why he didn’t turn around when he heard gunfire? It’s not clear how far he managed to crawl within those few moments, but ventilation shafts are incredibly noisy places to be. It’s entirely possible he couldn’t hear the gunshot over the sound of metal echoing against metal. Yes, his focus upon boarding that bus was on the briefcase and the drugs he intended to purchase from the sale of whatever it contained, and it’s certainly fair to condemn him for not being more concerned over her fate, but I don’t think it’s fair to condemn him for ignoring Eudora’s death when he likely didn’t know she had died in the first place. 

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, Klaus did exactly what police officers want hostages to do in situations like that: He left. He got to safety and allowed the trained officer to take over. Eudora knew the risk she was taking in that situation, and while it’s certainly not fair she died (I for one would have loved to see more of her, and she didn’t deserve a sudden end like that) she ensured Klaus made it out alive—which had been her goal from the beginning. 

Klaus in Vietnam 

Admittedly, we don't know much about these ten months. However, based on what we see from Klaus’ flashbacks, and what we know of history, we can extrapolate—and since these ten months gave us the kinder, more empathetic, more outwardly-focused Klaus this fandom loves, I intend to do just that. 

Dave is the reason Klaus stayed in Vietnam, and he is absolutely crucial to understanding the complex effects his time at war had on him. But because Dave is front and center to all this, and we don’t see much else regarding Klaus’ service, I feel as though other factors aren’t brought up as often as they should be. So I’d like to address some of those other factors before I discuss Dave and his relationship with Klaus. 

When Klaus was swept up into battle, it’s clear he had no idea what he was doing. He’d never been to boot camp; how could he know anything? But this is where his experience in Vietnam would have differed from his experience in the Academy: Reginald made him go along on missions with his siblings, even though at the time, his power would have seemed of little use. I believe Reginald did this in hopes that he would discover some of his more combat-ready abilities, but this strategy backfired, as it seems Klaus spent these missions watching his siblings fight from the sidelines. The men he served with, though, would have done their best to teach him everything he should have learned in boot camp. His teachers likely would have been impatient and more than a little grouchy because—to their minds—he should have known it all before he arrived and he would have seemed forgetful; however, Klaus seems to be a quick study, so I believe he would have caught on fast. 

But these men wouldn’t have helped Klaus succeed out of the goodness of their hearts. No, they would have taught him what he needed to know and made sure he could put it into practice because, at some point in the very near future, their lives could very well depend upon his expertise on the battlefield. For the second time in his life, Klaus would have been a part of a team that he didn’t choose to join. For the first time in his life, he would have known his contribution was absolutely essential. In the Academy, Klaus was able to sit back and watch his siblings do most of the work while he chatted up a few ghosts; his siblings may have even preferred it on some missions, as they all believed his power was useful only in a handful of situations. In the Army, he would not have had this relative luxury. The lives of his fellow soldiers would have depended upon him every bit as much as his depended upon them. Klaus would have been needed, he would have known he was needed, and I think he rose to the occasion. 

And I don’t believe he was anything close to an outsider there. I’ve spent a fair amount of time around service members, and the one thing many of them share is gallows humor. In a war zone, you have to find something to laugh at, or you’ll crumble. When it comes to jokes, nothing is sacred and the inappropriate is often welcome. If you’re sitting there, saying “Wait, that sounds like Klaus’ sense of humor,” then you’ve caught on. Klaus’ siblings might roll their eyes at his tales of waxing his ass with chocolate pudding, but the men he served with would have found his misadventures riotously funny. Remarks that earned glares and dismissal from those who grew up seeing him as little more than dead weight would have earned him admirers and friends in Vietnam. 

Dave is the only other soldier we meet, and he is the first to see Klaus after he appears in the tent. He’s the first to speak to him, the first to offer some words of comfort, and the first person Klaus seems to fall head-over-heels in love for. Aside from that, we know little about his character, but one thing is clear from the disco scene: Dave was absolutely infatuated with Klaus. 

All this might seem like little more than set dressing, but consider it for a moment. Reginald treated Klaus as a perpetual failure, calling him his “greatest disappointment.” His siblings treat him as an occasionally useful nuisance at best, but it’s clear his addiction has taken a toll on those relationships, eroding trust and causing them to search for an ulterior motive in every interaction. Before he meets Dave, he has given himself over entirely to the downward spiral, intending only to remain as high as possible until his eventual death, and Klaus knows it. He tells Hazel and Cha-Cha that none of his siblings will notice he’s gone—likely a result of his addiction sending him out on the street in search of drugs, where he might remain for weeks at a time. He later tells Five and Diego that his power is “pretty much useless…I’ll just be holding you back.” He cries before he gives up everything he knows about Five, as though ashamed of his own weakness. When God tells him “I don’t like you very much,” he sighs and says “Yeah, me neither.” Klaus might mask his pain with humor, but that pain includes low self-esteem and a deep-seated sense of self-loathing. 

I said before that we don’t know much about Dave, but I like to think we can extrapolate a bit anyway. When he seeks Klaus out on the bus, I like to think it wasn’t just because he found Klaus attractive, but because that was just what he tended to do. I’m of the opinion that Dave Katz was everybody’s friend, or he tried to be; that he was the one who would be there to offer his fellow soldiers a helping hand or just a few words of encouragement. This would have made him popular within his unit, and deservedly so. 

And this man, the one who treats everyone well and tries to make an impossible situation seem less hopeless, who seeks out a total stranger just because he looks nervous and tries to put him at ease—this man is completely in love with Klaus.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Klaus thought himself unworthy of that love. 

He didn’t stay sober in Vietnam. Drug use was common among soldiers in that war, and people on both sides died in some pretty horrific ways. Seeing the bodies would have been bad enough; seeing their ghosts walking around and begging for help would have been almost unbearable. But I think he took a different approach to getting high while serving. Prior to Vietnam, Klaus overdosed often enough that it was no longer frightening to him; after spending the money he got pawning the box, he comes home in a drug-fueled haze and, upon waking, looks for something else to sell, having used up all the drugs he bought the previous day. In the States, Klaus had few responsibilities to uphold, and few reasons to avoid bingeing. 

In Vietnam, however, people depended on him. He would have had regular duties in addition to fighting, and he would have needed to be in a state sufficient to perform them. So I think he learned how to pace himself. Rather than deciding to sober up, I think he determined how much he needed to use to make the ghosts disappear, and how much he could use without impairing his judgment to the point of endangering others. I think guilt may have been a part of it, too: If Ben’s “I know you’re better than that. And Dave? He knew it too” remark is any indication, it seems Dave knew about Klaus’ addiction. And it seems he joined Ben in urging Klaus to get clean. Klaus likely would have felt he couldn’t get clean, not with mutilated ghosts everywhere he looked, but I think a part of him wanted to. I think he wanted to show Dave he was better than that, but even if he hadn’t been in the middle of a war zone, he’d been an addict for most of his life. Maybe he felt like it was too late to pursue recovery. This would have sharpened his sense of self-loathing, but from all we can tell, Dave’s love remained constant. 

Klaus After Vietnam

We get our first clue that a dramatic shift has occurred when Klaus reappears on a bus and breaks down in tears; our first hint that something terrible has happened comes moments later when he screams, throws the briefcase, and curls up in the fetal position in full view of passerby. This moment is often referenced as the tearjerker it is, but rarely do I see it compared to his previous excursion on a different bus, where—having just escaped a solid day of starvation, torture, ghosts, and PTSD flashbacks—Klaus hugs the briefcase to his chest and laughs as he joyously wonders what might be inside. This is our first signal that Klaus is more open to his emotions and more honest with them. Rather than push the trauma aside and crack a joke to his seatmate, Klaus weeps openly and unleashes his helpless anger once the bus has stopped. 

Immediately after returning to the States and to his own timeline, Klaus rapidly spirals downward. I believe Dave’s sudden and traumatic death had much to do with it, although it’s made clear that PTSD also plays a role. He’s always lived recklessly with little apparent care for his own life, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s toyed with the idea of suicide in the past; but it isn’t until after his return from Vietnam that he becomes so indifferent toward his own impending death. When a paramedic revives him from an overdose, he laughs and gives the man a high-five; when he briefly dies at the rave, his only words on the subject are “Oh. Well, that’s a relief.” I don’t think Klaus is actively suicidal here—that is, I don’t think he intentionally pursues his own death—but I do think he figures that, well, if he drinks himself to death or one of those vets cracks his skull, it’s no loss. 

With that in mind, Diego’s observation that “You’re luckier than most. When you lose someone, you can still see them whenever you want” probably saved his life. I think Klaus has spent so much of his life trying to keep the ghosts at bay that he forgot, for a while, that his power could actually be an advantage. Until Diego said this, I don’t think the notion of using his powers to contact Dave occurred to him; I think he was so overcome with grief and self-loathing that he didn’t even see there was another option besides numbing the pain.

That said, I don’t think his decision to sober up was entirely selfish. He does directly benefit from it, yes. He gets to see Dave again, tell him all the things he never got to say. Just seeing his face would probably have been a relief. But as Ben later implies, Dave likely encouraged Klaus to give up the drugs—and I think Klaus probably wanted to, on some level, if only to prove that he was everything Dave thought he was. So when he flushes his stash down the toilet, I think he’s doing it with the knowledge that this is what Dave would have wanted. He knows he’s condemning himself to long hours of painful withdrawals, but I think he also knows Dave will be overjoyed when he not only gets to see him, but gets to see him sober. 

The Klaus of the first four episodes never would have done this. This was a man who had been drinking and using since he was thirteen, who had almost certainly taken advantage of his siblings to feed his drug habit, and who likely only attended his father’s funeral because the Academy presented a veritable buffet of valuables to pawn. Drugs drive him to steal, they drive him to betray his family, and he chooses to continue poisoning himself to keep from having to see the ghosts that haunt him. 

If Klaus met Dave in any other context, he may not have chosen to forsake drugs to be with him. The Vietnam War was an ugly conflict, and it’s understandable that Klaus wouldn’t have wanted to face it sober; but it also forced him to become a person others could rely on. The other men in his unit depended on him every bit as much as he depended on them, and Klaus would have been very much aware of that. Now Dave is relying on Klaus to facilitate their reunion, and Klaus is rising to the occasion. He is needed, he knows he is needed, and he does what he must to ensure he doesn’t let Dave down. 

We see him rising to the occasion multiple times after he chooses to get clean. When Luther is drunk and distraught and chooses to run out in search of drugs to forget his pain, Klaus runs after to try and keep him from destroying his own life the way he destroyed his. When Allison needs a blood transfusion, Klaus volunteers immediately. When he sees Vanya locked in the anechoic chamber, he sets about trying to make Ben corporeal so he can attempt to free her; and when his siblings are beset on all sides by Commission henchmen, he pushes his newfound power as far as he can and manifests Ben to save them. 

It’s worth noting that he at first gives up in most of these situations. When he’s searched a seemingly endless list of places without success, Klaus decides to head home and weather the withdrawals there; and when the lights and noise become torturous, he crawls across the floor in search of that single pill. When Pogo assumes he’s still high, he runs upstairs in search of drugs; and when Luther makes him the lookout, Klaus goes across the street and gets a burrito instead of watching out for his siblings. In each of those situations, he gives up and nearly returns to old habits when—and only when—it seems he isn’t needed after all or is otherwise unable to help. Luther rejects his urging to go home; Pogo rejects his blood; his siblings reject his help. Yet in each of those situations, it soon becomes clear that he either is needed or that he can contribute to a solution in some other way. 

He also empathizes far more readily than the Klaus we met in rehab. When he sees Luther stumbling around the living room in a drunken rage, he does joke at first, but immediately tries to comfort him when he realizes the gravity of the situation. He assumes Vanya might be frightened by her newfound power, as he is by his; and when he learns Reginald’s death was a suicide, he sheds a few tears on the man’s behalf. This is the man who abused and degraded him, caused him to develop PTSD from quite a young age and refused to see his drug and alcohol abuse as a cry for help, who scarcely even acknowledges he has just died—and Klaus has enough empathy to recognize what a dark place he was in prior to his death, and mourn for him. 

Again, the Klaus we met in early episodes would not have done any of this. That Klaus would have stayed home and gone right back to drugs instead of going after Luther. If he did offer his blood for Allison, he would have turned Pogo’s rejection into a joke before going off to find drugs. He likely would have crumbled under the strain, rather than pushing himself as far as he could to try and help his siblings—because this Klaus genuinely believed he had nothing of value to contribute and that it was best if he remained sidelined while his more combat-capable siblings took care of business. This Klaus has fought alongside men he came to know as friends, alongside a man who loved him wholeheartedly and unconditionally, and he did his best to keep them safe without once accessing his powers. The old Klaus likely would have laughed at Reginald’s announcement of his untapped potential, dismissing it as another ploy to scare him into doing the dishes or a twisted carrot-and-stick approach to keeping him clean. The new Klaus has already discovered and cultivated his potential to be a good soldier and a good friend; the thought he might have more potential where his powers are concerned simply never occurred to him before Reginald mentioned it. 

And that brings me to the biggest change those ten months wrought in him: Focus. Prior to Vietnam, Klaus’ focus was primarily on himself. He acted for the good of others on occasion, such as when he tried to conjure Reginald for Luther or when he helped Five gain information on that eye. But by and large, Klaus lived to feed his drug habit. Drugs were the most important thing in his life, and everything else—from the trust of his family to the safety of his siblings—was an afterthought at best. His was a selfish existence, motivated only by the ever-present lure of the next high and the looming threat of withdrawals. 

When he returns from Vietnam, the shift in focus is clear. Ben’s constant urgings that he pursue a healthy lifestyle for his own good fell on deaf ears, but a single reminder from Diego that his power will allow him to reconnect with Dave convinces him to pursue sobriety. Rather than return to the safety of the Academy and allow withdrawals to take their course, Klaus pushes through the pain and searches for a brother he believes to be even more vulnerable than he. And rather than cave to mounting pressure as he did with Hazel and Cha-Cha, Klaus discovers and uses a power he only suspected he might have. Before Vietnam, Klaus’ focus on his own solace and pleasure caused him to stagnate in the belief that he was next to useless. After Vietnam, Klaus’ focus on the safety, well-being, and peace of mind of those he loves leads him to push at boundaries he thought unyielding, and to discover new capabilities he never would have believed existed. 

Klaus’ time in Vietnam was horrific, that much we know. He spent ten months walking through fire, and although Dave was at his side, the pain it left him with will never really leave. But the same fire that left him with scars also refined him. It’s going to take some time for all the impurities to rise to the surface; battling addiction is a process that grows easier with time, though still a lifelong one. But it is a beginning. His true self is starting to shine through. 

*********

*Unless you’re of the mind that God would’ve sent him back, had he truly died. I tend to think his death at the rave was the first time God has decided to revive him rather than letting him stay, since everything about the afterlife seemed like a surprise to him; however, there’s no way to know God wouldn’t have sent him back had he died in that ambulance. 

[aire101]

Ferrum Chapter 2

Here’s chapter two, and my apologies for how closely part of it follows Episode 1 of SAO.  After this the story probably won’t follow much of the shown canon at all, though I will probably bring in SAO characters for the boys to interact with eventually.  But in SAO everyone has the same starting point.  But with the world being as complex as it is, I doubt I’ll ever really need to follow episode events or dialogue this closely again.  Though I might get the boys involved in the Level 1 boss battle, we’ll see.

Also, please excuse any incorrect computer/programming/gaming jargon.  I’m doing the best I can. T_T

------------------

Peter was a masochist.  That was really the only explanation for his current situation.  The person had even offered to go their own way before Peter had opened his big mouth and tied them together for the next few hours.

Peter knew it wasn’t really Mr. Stark, he did.  But the avatar looked exactly like the Tony Stark that Peter remembered— before the space starvation and the new stress lines of living in a post-apocalyptic earth.  And he sounded just like him.  He had the same weird humor that fluctuated wildly between arrogance and self-deprecation.  He got Peter’s stupid science jokes and the laugh he gave when Peter growled out “FINISH HIM” during a fight with a boar was painfully familiar.  Several times he had to stop himself from calling out the wrong name, and each time left him feeling like he was repeatedly prodding a gaping chasm of a wound.

“You ok, Ki— uh, sorry… Tor?”

And then there was that.  All in all, it was a perfect recipe for emotional disaster.

“Yeah, sorry… my mind wandered off a bit there.”

“In the middle of a pvp and monster spawn zone might not be the best place for that you know.  How does this game even handle respawns?” asked Ferrum, striking down another boar with a swift horizontal strike.  It taken a bit of trial and error for them to get the hang of activating the sword skills, but once it had clicked they had made quick work of the low level spawns in the area.

“You know, for someone who managed to snag a limited release of this game you know surprisingly little about it,” responded Peter.

“Yes, I known, I’m an enigma.  Humor me and explain please.”

“We’re supposed to respawn in the nearest town I think.  Given the bugs we’ve seen so far though I’m not sure I’d want to test that at the moment.  Might be one way to initiate a logout though?” said Peter.

“I’d rather not risk it, and I’d suggest you do the same until we hear from an actual GM,” said Ferrum, sheathing his sword.  “That being said, we’ve been out here several hours now, wanna head back into town and see if anyone has heard anything?”

“Sure,” said Peter, also putting away his weapon.  They stood in the middle of a clearing with expansive views.  Most of the beasts in this area hadn’t been ones to initiate conflict, and they would have plenty of forewarning if anything headed in their direction.  So for a moment Peter allowed himself to just relax and take a proper look around the area, marveling at the beauty and complexity of the world Argus had built.  Off in the distance he could see hills disappear into the haze of the the horizon and cities raised atop impossible pillars.  In a field not too far from them there were a couple other players likewise looking out, taking in the beauty of the glistening waterfalls and towns painted in oranges and reds as sunset came over Aincrad.  

“I have to give them credit.  When I first heard about their plans for this game I was a bit dubious on whether they would actually be able to deliver on the promise.  Concept art looks great, but actually being able to code a full sensory experience into an application?  And create an entire open world with that data?  I mean, I had thought about the concept before, but the technology needed to do it always made me a bit uneasy…  It would be way to easy for someone to use it in ways it shouldn’t be,” said Ferrum.

“What changed your mind then? I mean, since you’re here now?” asked Peter.

“…I don’t know,” muttered Ferrum, sounding distinctly unsettled with the admission.

Peter opened his mouth with a joke on the tip of his tongue, something to lighten the suddenly uneasy mood—

When the deep toll of a bell rang out from the Town of Beginnings, rolling through the air with the tone of a death knell.

“Huh, wonder if they’re finally about to make an announcement?” said Peter.  “I’m surprised it took so—”

Suddenly a white light enveloped him.  In those seconds he felt nothing, completely stripped of sensory.  Just as he felt himself starting to panic, the light released him and was gone as quickly as it had came.  He found himself and Ferrum once again standing in the center of the plaza of the Town of Beginnings.  All around them seemingly every one of the 10,000 players were similarly being teleported into the square.  

“What the hell?” said Ferrum.

“I don’t know.  Pretty sure they should be able to make announcements across the whole game regardless of player location.  Maybe its an opening event?  Would explain the theatrics of it,” said Peter.

The whole square was a buzz with nervous confusion as people tried to figure out what was going on, then Peter heard someone call out above the crowd, “Up there!”

Peter looked up, and above the square there flashed a single red polygon with the word WARNING.

The sky turned red as more and more polygons spawned proclaiming ‘WARNING’ and ‘SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT.’

Peter wanted to think that maybe they had found the bug.  Maybe they were announcing a fix or instructions for the players…

But even without his spidey sense, something felt wrong.

Then the sky began to bleed.

“What is that?” asked a player to the side in horrified awe as the blood-like liquid began to coalesce into a more solid state.  Within moments it formed into a hooded figure wearing familiar blood red robes with gold trim.

A Game Master— likely an a real one this time.

The crowd of players all began to mutter speculations about the figure or the possibility of an event.

“I have bad feeling about all this.”

Peter jumped.  He had forgotten about Ferrum at his side.  He looked over at the older looking man, taking in the tight lines around his mouth, his eyes darting around the area taking everything in, but not straying too long way from the god-like figure of the GM in front of them.

Peter wished he could reassure the man like he had earlier in the day, but Peter was suddenly very aware that in this world he was no different than anyone else.  Just as vulnerable, just as powerless… What had originally been a main draw for him was now a very real weakness.  

“It would be way to easy for someone to use it in ways it shouldn’t be…”

They were absolutely at the mercy of this monolithic system…

“Attention Players… Welcome to my world.  My name is Kayaba Akihiko.  As of this moment, I am the sole person who can control this world.”

And whoever controlled it.

“Son of a bitch,” muttered Ferrum, a look of horror on his face.

“I’m sure you’ve already noticed that the logout button is missing from the main menu,” Kayaba continued.  “But this is not a defect in the game.”

A shiver traveled up Peter’s spine.  A stone of cold fear formed in his stomach.  Surely not… surely someone along the way would have noticed something so horrendous in the code…

“I repeat— this is not a defect in the game.  It is a feature of Sword Art Online.”

“But how… how can he keep us here?  Surely someone on the outside can still get us out?” asked Peter.

“It’s the hardware, Kid.  He’s fucked with the user client hardware that everyone’s brains are wired into,” growled Ferrum.

“You cannot log out of SAO yourselves.  And no one on the outside can shut down or remove the NerveGear.  Should this be attempted, the transmitter inside the NerveGear will emit a powerful microwave, destroying your brain and thus ending your life,” said Kayaba.

Immediately Peter ran through all the specs on the hardware he was privy to during his time as Tony’s intern, and came to the same conclusion Ferrum already had— this mad man was not lying.  He had disabled the safety mechanism that would keep certain powerful data bursts from frying someone’s brain.

Data bursts such as an autosave or a death respawn.

“Unfortunately, several players’ friends and families have ignored this warning, and have attempted to remove the NerveGear.  As a result, two hundred and thirteen players are gone forever, from both Aincrad and the real world.”

“Two hundred and thirteen…”

Peter turned around to see Ferrum looking on with eyes wide, his right hand grasping his left wrist as his left hand gave small spasms.  

That motion was intimately familiar.  The similarity  was uncanny…

“As you can see, news organizations across the world are reporting all of this, including the deaths.” Multiple program windows opened, most featuring various news channels running live, corroborating what Kayaba was explaining.    “Thus, you can assume that the danger of a NerveGear being removed is now minimal.  I hope you will relax and attempt to clear the game.

But I want you to remember this clearly.  There is no longer any method to revive someone within the game.  If your HP drops to zero, your avatar will be forever lost.  And simultaneously, the NerveGear will destroy your brain.”

So he was right— it was both the autosave and respawn functions that had been weaponized in the headset.  The more he thought about it, the more angry he became.  The man had taken glorious innovations in technology—some of it pioneered by Mr. Stark himself—and twisted it into a personal hell for all these people, some of them undoubtedly children.  As if the world hadn’t been dealing with enough tragedy over the last few years.  He wanted nothing more than to punch Kayaba directly in the face with every pound of his spider strength.

But he couldn’t do that.  In this world, he was just like everyone else.

With great power comes great responsibility… but without that power, was that responsibility still his?

“There is only one means of escape.  To complete the game,” Kayaba said, bringing up a digital layout of the floors of Aincrad.  “You are presently on the lowest floor of Aincrad, Floor 1.  If you make your way through the dungeon and defeat the Floor Boss, you may advance to the next level.  Defeat the final boss on Floor 100, and you will clear the game.”

The crowd, which up till now had been mostly muted in shock, finally began to shout and rumble in confusion and denial.  And from the sound of things, this monologue was just about to wrap up.  When it did, all hell was going to break loose.

He had some choices to make, and fast.

“Finally, I’ve added a present from me to your item storage.  Please see for yourselves.”

Shit.  What now?

Peter swiped down to access his storage, feeling distinctly as if he were walking into a trap.  Out of the corner of his eye he could see Ferrum doing so as well.

An item labeled ‘Mirror’ had been placed in his inventory.

“I’m guessing this mirror is the ‘gift,’ though now I’m wondering if he programmed the auto-drop or did it himself, and if he’s aware of my… status,” whispered Ferrum.

That’s right.  Ferrum was a GM, however that had happened.

“Do you think you could—”

But he didn’t get to finish his question, as at that moment everyone in the plaza began to shout as they were all consumed once again by white light.

When it receded, everyone had changed.

Some looked younger, most looked older.  Quite a few people around him looked to have changed genders completely.  Peter glanced back down at the mirror in his to see his Thor-like appearance gone completely, and instead his true face reflected back at him.  

So that was the purpose of the all too thorough calibration he and Ned had gone through.

“Kid,” said a shocked voice at his side.  

Peter turned around towards Ferrum, wondering who had been behind the meticulous avatar of Mr. Stark…

Only to see that Ferrum was completely unchanged.  Perhaps being a GM had made him impervious to the magic of the mirror?

“Underoos… what are you doing here, kid?!”

With those heartbroken words, Peter’s carefully constructed walls came crashing down.

. . . . .

Peter couldn’t think.  He certainly couldn’t speak.

He could vaguely tell that Kayaba had continued with his closing speech, but he couldn’t tell you what he had said.

All he could process was Mr. Stark’s face in front of him, and the name that only he had ever uttered to him.

It was impossible.  He had seen the body—the horrific scorching where the universal energies had burned through him, the life support system shutting off, the brightness leaving behind a cold husk in a metal suit—

Peter’s whole body flinched when he felt that familiar hand rest on his shoulder.

“Kid!  Are you with me?  We need to get out of here.”

In the time Peter had spaced out Kayaba had disappeared, and now the whole crowd was devolving into a panic.  People were screaming in terror and rage, several had broken down into sobbing messes on the ground.

He wanted to do something— anything to make this better.  Tell people that it was ok, they would figure this out.

But more than that, he wanted someone else to tell him that as well.

Finally he brought himself to focus on what Mr. Stark was saying.

“What do you mean we have to go— where else is there to go?” asked Peter.  “We can’t leave the game, we’ve tried—”

“Not the game, we need to get out of town.”

“What— why—”

“We can talk more later, follow me,” Mr. Stark said before running down a nearby alley.

After a few minutes they stopped, and Mr. Stark started flicking through his user interface.

“This is a fantasy RPG… you can’t tell me there are no helmets…”

After scrolling for a while, he tapped an item on the list and spawned a basic metal helmet and quickly placed it on is head, before continuing to run out of town.

“Mr. Stark!  Wait!” cried Peter.

“Don’t shout that kid, otherwise the helmet is pointless!” Mr. Stark called back.

“Ferrum… why are we heading out of town?  Its about to be dark and the only safe zone we know is here!” shouted Peter.

“The people back there are panicking, Peter.  It won’t be much longer before they start turning on each other, looking for someone to take it out on.  Between my face and the fact that some saw me in GM robes earlier I don’t want to chance hanging around for someone to put the pieces together.  Not to mention this area’s resources are going to be swamped before we know it.  Resource management is built in to the Cardinal system to maintain balance and encourage player movement and activity.  There won’t be enough to go around.”

“But if we die on the road the resources we need won’t really matter!” yelled Peter, pulling to a stop.  “There’s only so much they can do to us in town, it’s a No PVP area.  Lets just find an inn on the outskirts of town and spend the night.  We need a better plan than just running out of the safe zone at twilight.”

Mr. Stark had pulled to a stop when Peter had, obviously unwilling to leave him behind.  He looked down the alley, obviously wanting to continue on, but after a moment his shoulders dropped in an obvious show of concession.

“Fine, lets go to the outer ring and find a place,” said Mr. Stark.

As he turned and started walking away, Peter allowed himself a moment to take in the familiar gait, the way Mr. Stark always walked with his back straight and his head held high, as if he were always prepared to walk onto a red carpet, even in his most destroyed workshop clothes.

He could recognize every familiar mannerism from their hours pouring over suit tech and web formulas.  In retrospect, perhaps that as much as his face was why he had latched onto the man to begin with.  

But the billion dollar question still remained… how?

Hopefully once they found a room to bunk in, he could work out what the hell was going on… preferably before he had a complete emotional breakdown.

[starrysplanet-blog]

{How “Daria” Guided Me Throughout My Teenage Years?}

           It is weird knowing that on September 16th, I will no longer be a teenager. It has felt like an eternity of being like this. I can safely say that I was no ordinary teenager. I still have my virginity, have never smoked, drank or done drugs. Some would probably shrug me off as boring or not very adventurous. And perhaps a part of this is true. Yet, if there was one cartoon that I could relate to and continue to relate to despite having passed my High School years and going onto university. That would be none other than ‘Daria’. It may seem typical nowadays to say “Daria is my spirit animal” or “Oh wow! I���m like Daria!”. Especially writing this on Tumblr where every girl says it. Personally if I was being realistic, I would say that I am more of a Jane Lane but I like to refer to myself as Daria’s and Jane’s love child at times. I was so used to shows for teenagers that aimed itself around sex, drugs, alcohol, smoking, relationships, and fitting in. That I became so self-conscious of my own being. Before turning 16, I was introduced to none other than Daria. Daria and I met unintentionally as I was at Best Buy and the DVD cover intrigued me. I had asked my mother if she ever watched it and she said ‘yes’ and offered to buy it for me. Something that I gladly accepted because I am obsessed with cartoons, television shows, and films. I knew nothing about Daria so I was in for a treat. Being home-schooled throughout High School made matters worse because I felt like a lot of teens my age were out adventuring and experiencing things that I was missing out on. Yet Daria changed my perspective. Here is how Daria guided me throughout my teenage years...

{The Unusual Protagonist}

     I feel like it is safe to say that Daria is an unusual protagonist. She isn’t easily bought through shallow experiences nor doubts her self-worth through what is the social norm. She sort of hates the world and how it views her as a whole. She is often misunderstood and can be perceived as ‘cold’, ‘careless’, and ‘miserable’. Assumptions that are challenged throughout the cartoon and are constantly debunked. These assumptions are mostly debunked in the episode ‘Misery Chick’, which is the season one finale. When a former football player Tommy Sherman returns to witness a goalpost in his honor. Whose fame is made clear by his habit of crashing into goalposts and waking up from an induced coma just in time to win the states championship. He is immediately revealed to be an unpleasant person who irks both Daria and Jane. When Jane notes, ‘Maybe he won’t live that long’ after Daria notes that it annoys her how he will be seen as a hero for the rest of his life. Tommy Sherman is ultimately killed by his own goalpost. This incident shakes up everyone and Daria is given a surge in popularity due to being called ‘Misery Chick’. Everyone relies on Daria at some point in time in the episode to cope with what exactly happened because they believe that Daria understands perfectly how they feel because she is miserable, all the time. Along with this, Jane ignores her due to being disturbed by how her words became true. An act that saddens Daria because she is her friend. This episode is valuable to Daria’s character development because the end sequence humanizes her. It makes us see Daria for who she is and not the fact that she seems miserable. Daria proves herself to be a self-aware protagonist who knows how others perceive her. She knows how everyone in this episode has seen her. And she sums it up in a brilliant quote, “You know what I have been hearing? ‘You know how I feel, Daria. You’re gloomy. I knew I could talk to you Daria. You’re always miserable!’. Tragedy hits the school and everyone thinks of me. The popular guy died and now I am popular because I’m the misery chick. But I’m not miserable, I’m just not like them.” This quote is amazing because it shows that Daria accepts the fact that she is not like them. She clears up the assumptions of being careless, cold and miserable. She does care because she doesn’t want to be considered the Misery Chick or lose Jane as a friend. She’s not cold because despite everyone running to her for advice due to this assumption, she is never rude or distasteful. And she’s not miserable. 

       Daria’s self-awareness becomes a main focal point of a lot of plots. While other characters can be mindless or shallow. Daria is usually always aware of what is going on and what is happening. She is able to read her family’s situation like the back of her hand. While Daria may seem like she is rejecting the social norms purposefully or trying to be different. She is, in fact, not. Her actions are caused by her not wanting to become like her mother or father nor does she wish to become like her sister. She is perfectly content in where she stands and doesn’t feel the need to change it. This makes Daria relatable, especially when she experiences situations that are common for a teenager. The pressures of fitting in, social norms, insecurities, introverted awkwardness, crushes, uncertainty, and stress with school. Daria isn’t the typical protagonist who has a wide circle of friends. In fact, her only real friends are Jane Lane and Trent Lane (who she has a crush on). Daria is easy to be open to, shown by how everyone opens up about their feelings to her, every once and a while. Especially Trent. Daria isn’t perfect and she proceeds to prove this time and time again by acting embarrassing around Trent. Saying things that can come off wrong. Putting off others. And being too realistic to the point of unreasonable consequences. Shown in Season 2′s first episode ‘Arts ‘N Crass’ where Daria and Jane are forcefully placed in an art contest. Deciding to work together as Daria will write a poem and Jane will paint the art piece. They decide to take a more realistic approach of teenage life by bringing awareness to eating disorders. This immediately disapproved by the school staff and is forced to change. Standing their ground, Jane and Daria deliberately destroy their own creation to avoid it being used against them in the art contest, as it was already being put it against their wishes. 

       Daria is someone that is not going to rush her life. When Daria finally is adventuring into college, she applies to two different colleges. When she is rejected from one, she is not disappointed. A quote that has always stayed with me throughout my life from Daria is one where when asked what her goals in life. Daria responds with, “My goal is not to wake up at forty with the bitter realization that I wasted my life in a job that I hate because I was forced to decide on a career in my teens.” A common fear for mostly every teenager. While Daria looks forward to her future, she is not really grounded in her path. 

       Not to mention that compared to Fashion Club & other characters, Daria sticks out with her unusual fashion choices that she wears simply because she likes it. There is no other exact explanation. 

{Daria and Jane’s Friendship: Female Friends Done Right}

        It is common to witness female friendships in cartoons and television shows circle around the usually girly things. Boys, fashion, drama, and people they dislike. Daria and Jane are the complete opposite. Usually conversing in their bedrooms or over pizza about deeper conversations, common interests, and their thoughts about the world. The neat concept of it is that you get two different outlooks in a similar perspective. Jane is more humorous while Daria is more blunt. There is rarely any petty drama between Daria and Jane as they have a well understanding of each other. They are not easily torn apart or separated. Their sense of humors and teasing are well-balanced and it rarely feels awkward. While they have their differences. It is not uncommon to see Daria and Jane get along almost perfectly in every episode. The cartoon introduces Daria’s crush about Trent, almost immediately. And while this seems like it would be an issue in Daria and Jane’s friendship as Trent is Jane’s older brother. The cartoon does the complete opposite and has Jane being completely supportive of it. She even reassures Daria that everything is cool when Daria freaks out over acting like an idiot. The show shows that Jane and Daria are great friends by showing the typical drama between female friends with the Fashion Club. How Quinn and Sandi are willing to backstab each other at any point in time, Tiffany is clueless and basically tells Quinn and Sandi what they want to hear, while Stacy is the innocent bystander who focuses on fashion than the drama. While they spend time competing, Daria and Jane spend time seeing each other as worthy equals. It shows that sometimes you just need that one special person. It is no wonder why when Daria and Jane had a big fight and unfriended each other over a stupid boy, Mystik Spiral came to the rescue with the great song ‘Freakin’ Friends’ that helped them realize how they were being. (I tend to ignore the seasons with Tom Sloane because Trent and Daria were meant to be together! Damn it!) 

{It’s Okay To Be Different}

       I feel like the main message with Daria is showing how it is okay to be different. Daria isn’t alone, miserable, or unhappy because of her differences from the world she lives in. She ends up getting into a college that she liked, she has a loyal best friend, she ended on good terms with everyone (including her own sister), and she may have a relationship with Trent in the future. Every character has a message within themselves. Quinn is a warning to girls to not be so attached to your looks that you become fearful of not having anything more to you. Jane shows that you don’t exactly have to have a good or healthy family life to become an awesome human being who can find a passion and work hard to get into a college that you want. Trent shows us that it is okay to be slower than others in development and not have a certain idea of who you want to be. Helen & Jake are examples of two people who have never left their generation point of views and are miserable due to their lack of will to adapt. Brittany shows that someone can be gullible and arrogant yet also lack self-worth and not be able to make a decision that would better themselves. And Kevin shows that Kelso really did this character better! Jodie shows a different side to Daria as her and Daria could never be friends due to how similar they are, yet how easy it is to ignore her personality when everyone focuses on her skin-tone and how diverse she is. With the character designs, clothes, personalities, hobbies, and interests. These characters almost feel real and can make everyone feel like there is one character for them to relate to, one way or another. It didn’t have to be interesting with the concepts of sex, alcohol, drugs, and smoking. Nor make it seem overly entertaining to party. It makes you feel like it is okay to not be extroverted or have a large circle of friends. 

      And this is why Daria will always be my favorite cartoon of all time and helped guide me through my teenage years. As it helped me focus on more things than my appearance and what I could give. 

[singedsun]

Midsommar

We made it to a showing of Midsommar this afternoon. I have a lot of thoughts but I know horror movies aren't everyone's thing, nor has everyone that wants to see it had the chance yet. So I'm just going to stick my initial thoughts behind a cut.

If you have seen it, I'd be really interested to hear what other people thought.

Here's my short but hot take: Midsommar is not a good horror movie. Midsommar is no more a horror than an episode of Hannibal was. Are there elements of horror? Absolutely. Hannibal though was a dramatic crime procedural with horrific and gory elements.

Midsommar is the dramatic, fantastic and horrible story of grief.

That doesn't make it a horror movie.

Sure, the way our genres are created, movies (or television) with murders and gore get classified as horror based on exactly how those are examined within the film. Their either murder mysteries (this isn't that), crime procedurals/thrillers (definitely not) or horrors. So this is technically speaking, a horror film. But that's absolutely not the tale it's telling us.

Our main character begins the movie, not just with a shitty boyfriend who wants to dump her, but also with a sister who has killed both herself and her parents. That is absolutely the most horrific part of this whole movie. That a mental disturbed young woman kills herself and takes her parents with her, while elsewhere, her older sister has to live alone with that knowledge, with that earth shattering loss. That is the sort of tragedy that wrecks a person. And for Dani, our protagonist, she has no real support system. There is no one (aside from a once-mentioned therapist) that's capable of sitting with her while she's in pain. Her boyfriend, who wants to break up with this BEFORE this happens, isn't quite shitty enough to do it afterwards. So Dani's stuck in this limbo of grief where she can't get through it properly on her own, and there's no one able to help go through it with her.

Dani goes to Sweden with her boyfriend and his friends, one of whom is from this small Swedish commune. They go in mid-July, to what is a mid-summer festival. Part of this particular event hasn't happened in 90 years. Though there's some great world building behind this small commune, we only see a portion of it, so the extent of what's yearly and what's not is not well explained to the audience. Not that it matters.

I think the take away of the commune itself is that communities are going to community. We're taking about a tribe out of time with the modern age, despite some of it's members participating in it as a kind of Rumspringa (an 18 year long potential Rumspringa lol). What I'm saying is that the customs of this tribe while they present the "horrific" elements that make Midsommar a horror movie, they're not really presented that way. They're presented as well-preserved and fervently practiced beliefs of this small commune. This is a tribe doing what the tribe would do whether there were outsiders there (for the most part) or not.

The actual horror of the movie, is Dani's grief. She's constantly on the edge of a panic (I think panic, maybe anxiety) attack because she's going on this trip having not even begun to work on the grief she's dealing with from losing her sister and parents. Then, to make matters worse, she arrives at this commune where everyone processes things as a whole. They share, they process, they breathe, in unison with their members. They want people to feel whole as a member of their community.

The friend, Pelle, who is from this commune even posits to Dani whether or not she feels 'held' by her boyfriend. Knowing that of course, he's not capable of supporting her in the way he means. He is not home to her, he is not support, he is not love. Pelle tells her about the loss of his own parents when he was younger in order to explain that this community, this tribe of his, supported him like a family would when they were gone. Of course, we can suppose by the end sequence that his parents likely choose to be burned alive as part of their tradition, but we see immediately after the way the whole community feels that pain, that grief. Immediately, the whole of the tribe feels both the pain of those dying and the grief of those that have lost loved ones. The pain and the grief both are a shared experience.

And maybe it's a little less horrific by knowing that through this drastic scene of death, that Dani's grief begins to heal through what is a shared experience by the people who have accepted her as one of them. As family.

Midsommar is BEAUTIFUL on screen. I wish for an artbook because the detail in the embroidery and in the art and paintings is just phenomenal. The sound too, like for Hereditary, was pretty amazing. Ari Aster's use of both sound and visual storytelling is so slick.

And while some of the parts of the movie, as I said, are gory. They're presented almost remotely, distantly, even when we're up close to the blood. They're presented as set pieces, neat and clean and separate from the filth and guts that usually accompany such scenes. It's not supposed to be gross. Like with Hannibal, it's supposed to be a presentation. It's death by way of pageantry. I think it's presented that way because that's the way the community views it too. It's ceremony and celebration, it's ritual, it's holy. And that can't be horrific.

I've heard people talk about how there's this like mounting dread in Midsommar. I'm not sure that's how I felt though. I felt the tension, sure. I think if you sit with Dani, she's feeling real and visceral grief through almost the whole movie. But the end isn't horrific for her, it's relief, it's release. That's freedom and it's not horrible. It's beautiful.

[tjkiahgb]

Episode Recap: 3.06, “Cookie Monster”

Well, another week running a humorous (in theory) Andi Mack blog. Can’t wait to make jokes about what happens on the show this episode.

Let’s just check the episode title.

Nice, nice. Sounds funny. Lighthearted. I can do something with this.

*cracks knuckles*

Well, let’s get to work--

Oh? Children and guns. Ok. That’s... that’s a little dark.

But, I mean, I can probably still make this fun if I--

Ah, real life tragedy. Ok then.

Well, I certainly hope there’s at least another storyline in this episode that’s like, some kind of wacky, weird Invasion of the Body Snatchers type homage? I could definitely make jokes about that.

*crosses fingers*

Our episode begins with Andi, Bowie, and Bex at Bex’s place playing the Andi Game, which is where you just say stuff you know about Andi.

Bex is wiping the floor with Bowie by knowing lots of things about Andi like that she doesn’t like any condiments. None? How do you eat french fries? How do you eat tortilla chips? Dry? Who lives like that?

Bex taunts Bowie for losing. Bowie says it’s not fair, Bex and Andi have spent way more time together. I agree, the game is rigged. Just wait until they play the “How much do you know about The Renaissance Boys?” game. Then it’ll be Bowie’s time to shine.

Bex asks whose fault it is that Bowie hasn’t spent more time with Andi and Bowie’s like, it’s yours.

Which is such a valid point that Bex chooses to immediately ignore it and move on.

There’s a knock at the door and Bowie goes to check who it is. Turns out, it’s a tiny old lady whom Bowie refers to as “Mom.” She calls him “Steven” and they hug.

Bex tells Andi that Bowie’s actual first name is Steven. His license that one episode said Bowie, though, so did he change it legally? Why? “Steve Quinn” is a great name for a guitarist. It’s one of those names like Eric Clapton or Jeff Beck where you’re like, “That’s such a boring name, they have to be a good guitarist. They let the guitar do the talking.” Calling yourself “Bowie” is trying too hard. I guess that’s why The Renaissance Boys failed and Bowie’s stuck teaching guitar to some weird father/son duo in the back of a small record store.

Bowie’s mom, Cookie, goes around giving hugs to everyone.

Andi asks if it’s true Cookie lives on cruise ships. Cookie says yes, it’s like living in an apartment where your neighbors serve you drinks in coconuts. And, might I add, you also get the added excitement of knowing that one day your apartment building might sink into the ocean and drown you. So there’s that, too.

Cookie sees the mess they’re living in and offers to make the family dinner.

And dinner she makes, whipping together this...

...out of the stuff she had in her suitcase.

The family tries to figure out how this happened and Cookie says she never goes anywhere without a roast chicken, which is maybe the craziest thing anyone’s ever said on this show. I’d take it metaphorically except she really did literally have a chicken in her bag, otherwise where did this one come from?

And what was her plan if everyone had already eaten a nice meal? Leave the roast chicken just sitting in her suitcase with her clothes? Open the bag every now and then and pick at the meat like a vulture? Her neighbors on the cruise ship must hate her. “Oh God, here comes that lady that smells like chicken all the time. Just give her a coconut drink and she’ll leave you alone.”

Anyway, the family is so amazed to see food not served from a box, they don’t question any of this and sit down to eat.

At school the next day, TJ finds Cyrus in the hallway to ask him if he wants to hang out that weekend with his friends.

Cyrus is delighted to learn TJ has been talking about him to his other friends. I feel that. It’s just nice to be talked about, even if you’re not there. It’s why I leave every party by yelling “Later, suckers!” real loud and smashing a vase.

They agree to hang out and Cyrus calls his mom to let her know he’s been a topic of discussion.

Meanwhile, Buffy and Jonah walk to school. Buffy tells Jonah she likes his skateboard so he gives it to her.

They talk about going to the skate shop that weekend and have a fun time bantering back and forth until Principal Metcalf pounces on them and takes away the skateboard.

He can smell children having a nice time in his vicinity like a fun-killing bloodhound.

At Bex’s house, Bex and Bowie return to find Cookie has rearranged the furniture. Cookie asks if they love it and they don’t have the heart to tell her they don’t.

Bex wants to tell Cookie she’s not a fan of her coming in here and moving everything around without asking but then Cookie shows up with cookies like some kind of bribe and suddenly Bex can’t remember what upset her in the first place.

Out in the desert, TJ and his friends ride dirtbikes to off-brand rock n’ roll when Cyrus shows up.

TJ introduces him to his other friends, Lester and Reed.

Hold on one second. Lester? What in the world?

No one’s named their baby Lester in 150 years. In fact, I don’t believe in such a thing as a kid named Lester. Lester is the kind of name you only get as a middle aged adult. You wake up one day after turning 45, you realize you’re caught in a dead-end sales job, your hair is thinning, your face is getting droopy, and your dreams are unrealized. Then you check your wallet and see your ID has changed and it now says your name is Lester. And you accept that. You know why? Because you’re a Lester, and that’s what Lesters do. (Apologies to anyone reading this whose name is Lester, but, in my defense, I don’t believe you exist.)

I’ll tell you what Lesters don’t do: ride dirtbikes to off-brand rock n’ roll songs. Something’s up with this guy.

Anyway, TJ invites Cyrus to ride a dirtbike but Cyrus says he fears everything and that makes Reed laugh. Then Reed wishes to laugh more and he’s like, “Dance, clown!”

And Cyrus is like, I make observational humor. Reed laughs, appreciating that line from a meta-perspective.

Eventually they get Cyrus to try riding and TJ teaches him the in-and-outs of dirtbike usage.

Cyrus rides around on the bike and tries to make it up a hill. After a few failed attempts, and with encouragement from TJ and the others, Cyrus does something physical without hurting himself.

He does lose his shoe, though. However, as Cyrus notes, that’s really his brand at this point. He’s got lost shoes all over the county.

Andi returns home and finds her parents have become pod people.

Cookie has swaddled them and they no longer wish to live outside their cocoons. They want to change the channel but can’t, so Bowie calls for “Mommy.”

This episode’s got an aggressively strange energy to it.

Cookie tries to trap Andi in her web of motherly comfort, but Andi runs off before she can.

Over at Lost Art Skateboards...

...the one-stop shop for all your skateboarding and tattoo needs, Jonah and Buffy check out skate decks.

Buffy notices that Jonah doesn’t ever say “Docious magocious” anymore. Jonah feels like he grew out of it. I might argue there’s no age where docious magocious was ever a reasonable thing to say, but I guess we have different opinions on that sort of thing.

Buffy says she actually used to like when he said it. Jonah’s surprised because she used to make fun of it, but that’s why Buffy liked it.

Buffy spots the tattoo parlor connected to the skate shop and they go to check it out. They see a man there getting a tattoo and don’t immediately recognize him.

Yep, definitely not the profile of anyone they’ve ever seen before.

They talk about how crazy it is to get that many tattoos and whaaa--

It’s the principal?!

Jonah and Buffy run away like they just caught him chopping up a body in the woods.

Andi talks to Celia about her Cookie problem. See, Andi loves everything Cookie does, but everything about what’s she’s doing around the house feels weird and off-putting. Agree wholeheartedly.

Celia decides she’ll go check the situation out.

Back in the desert, Lester and Reed set up watermelons.

Cyrus has a question: are these watermelons for a watermelon eating contest? Love it. Love the thought process.

You ever just want to take a Saturday to go out to the desert with your bros, ride some dirtbikes, and then just chow down on watermelon? And preferably, chow down on that watermelon in some kind of competition of speed? I know I do.

I have a different question: whose job was it to lug three large watermelons out to the desert on their dirtbike? Lester, right? Freakin’ Lester.

Reed’s like, we aren’t eating the watermelons, we’re shooting them. Though, they could eat them after. No need to let perfectly good watermelon go to waste.

But the point is, the watermelons have to go pppffffghhttt first.

Or however you spell that. I feel like I’m missing some S’s in there?

And the only way for the watermelons to dopely go pppfffghhttt is to shoot them. Cyrus wants to know how they intend to shoot them and Reed shows him a bag. Cyrus’s face drops. Why?

Because inside the bag is Grandpappy Reed’s antique revolver from during the war. Not that Reed’s grandpa fought in the war. He also went out to the desert to shoot watermelons. It was a difficult time in our nation’s history and he needed to blow off steam.

Anyway, Reed’s Grandpa handed it down to his son, and then Reed stole it from him, and now it’s here, making Cyrus uncomfortable.

Cyrus goes to TJ to ask if he knew about the gun. TJ did. Cyrus says he’s leaving and he wants TJ to go with him, but TJ can’t bring himself to leave.

So Cyrus heads off alone.

Well that was a deep and dramatic moment. I wonder how we’re going to proceed from here.

Oh.

Andi finds her grandmother wrapped in a blanket, covered in food crumbs, and watching TV. Cookie made her a cookie and Celia was roped in.

Andi wanders into the kitchen and finds Cookie attempting to cut Bowie’s hair. She screams “No!” in panic.

She forces her other grandmother to drop the scissors, then pulls her away from the hair.

Bowie quietly watches this happen, then, without saying anything, reaches down, grabs a lollipop, sticks it in his mouth, and starts happily sucking on it.

Aggressively strange energy in this episode, man. Aggressively strange.

Andi talks to Cookie, who explains she’s being like this because she doesn’t get to see her family a lot so when she does, the mom thing kicks in. Plus being excited to meet Andi and all that.

Cookie says she has a gift for Andi. It’s a picture of Bowie as a baby eating dog biscuits.

This somehow answers and raises so many questions at the same time.

Bowie walks out and asks Cookie if she’s really leaving, and Cookie, like an old mariner, says yes, the seas are a-calling.

Andi and Cookie share one last hug before parting.

At school the next day, Jonah and Buffy dread running into Metcalf.

They hope to avoid him for the entire year. But they should know better than to show fear, because they emit a fear scent and that brings Metcalf right to them.

He admits it was weird for him, too, to run into them. He asks if they want to know about his tattoos and of course they do. He explains they’re all prison based. Or not. They’re based on him just wanting a tattoo. Or other stuff. I don’t know. We’re running out of time in this episode and gotta wrap things up so there’s no time to really get into it.

Metcalf’s like, guess you think I’m pretty cool now, huh? And Buffy’s like, no, you’ve ruined tattoos for me, thanks.

And Metcalf’s like, oh.

Then he rolls down his sleeve and runs off before Buffy and Jonah can see him cry. Buffy and Jonah fist bump in celebration of ruining Metcalf’s day.

Wow, way to make me feel bad for that lunatic.

Cyrus and Andi head to Metcalf’s office. Cyrus has come to tell him about the gun. He’s worried TJ will hate him for this.

Andi argues he could very well be saving TJ’s life.

Cyrus finds the courage to go in, but Metcalf meets him at the door. He invites him in and Cyrus finds a police officer waiting for him.

Cyrus wants to know if something happened, but Metcalf tells him everyone’s ok. The officer just has some questions. About the gun.

And you know the gun is a serious issue because even the police in this town don’t carry them.

Cyrus says he came in here to tell about the gun, but he’s surprised to find they already know.

Cyrus admits to being there and wants to know if he’s in trouble but the episode ends before we can find out.

So many questions up in the air:

1. Will Cyrus be in legal trouble just for being in the vicinity of a gun for a few seconds?

2. Who told them about the gun?

and, most importantly,

3. What kind of person names their child Lester?!

Come back in two weeks to find out the answers, Macketeers.

Except for the one about Lester. The world may never figure that one out.