#this is probably related to my most recent Revelation that was basically 'i. never expected to have my own life 🤨 huh! Well NOW What'

[ioannemos]

been thinking a lot lately about how my version of "body neutrality" was okay so far as it went but now that i think about it, it was kinda verging on "body irrelevancy" instead 🤔 like "yep my body sure does exist. anyway" and so now i'm trying to move on to ??? integration? like. "my body is an essential aspect of who i am"? claiming a sort of... ownership? or at least... idk. i've been making more of an effort to eat better food, get the right amount of sleep, and i'm gonna try pilates as a regular thing. also i've been thinking about piercing my ears a second time, trying to figure out what kind of clothes i'd feel more... idk, excited to wear? and if i want a tattoo. and what the heck i'm going to do with my hair

[juniperhillpatient]

Return to Omashu Re-watch

No thoughts, only mean teenage girls who could & would kill me

This is the episode where we get to see the formation of the Dangerous Ladies™ & it's exactly as iconic as I remember it. (To be fair, this is another episode that I've re-watched pretty frequently on its own.) The Girls Are Fighting & you should be scared!

So, Omashu has been taken by the Fire Nation & the Gaang are horrified. I think it's interesting that Katara & Sokka were basically like "Bumi is probably dead. Oh well, let's move on." Sokka is practical & always focused on moving ahead so it's not a surprising reaction for him but it's a little surprising from Katara. The trend for her character is to try to help everyone who might need it, & that would include a potentially lost or hurt Bumi. I'm theorizing that Katara's lack of interest in this project is a combination of her belief that Bumi is dead (although Katara is often more of an idealist) & her heavy focus on finding a new earth-bending teacher now. Also, this mission is personal to Aang. He's had so much taken from him. All he has left of his old life are Appa & Momo. So, of course, he wants to find the only friend he has left from the life he left behind.

Sokka's plan to fake 'Pentapox' is pretty funny & smart. Also, the Fire Nation guards yelling "PLAGUE!" when the earth kingdom citizens were heading toward them holding their hands out and groaning hit a LITTLE too close to home in light of recent years 😂

Azula's manipulative prowess is targeted at someone other than Zuko & Iroh & it's fascinating to watch. Azula's recruitment of Ty Lee is such a mind game. The audience is getting an ongoing introduction to an entirely new & much more dangerous type of villain than anything we had last season.

We would never see Zhao or Zuko subtly threatening someone the way Azula does Ty Lee, having the net set on fire at her show & the animals released then talking about excitement for the "next show." No, the other two main antagonists of the show thus far - Zuko and Zhao - are much more in your face. Azula could have ordered Ty Lee to join her, or she could have outright threatened to set her on fire, but she took a more careful and calculated approach. The only other character I could see taking a more subtle approach like this is Iroh.

In light of later revelations - that Azula believes "fear is the only way" to relate to people & that "trust is for fools" - as well as the knowledge that Azula does view Ty Lee & Mai as friends (I think this is shown clearly in their dynamic, but it's also proven by Azula's hallucination saying "your friends, Mai and Ty Lee") - I think that in a twisted way, Azula wanted this to seem like Ty Lee's choice. She didn't want to order Ty Lee to join her, she wanted this to feel like a friendship. Could she have understood that about herself or articulated it? I highly doubt it, but sometimes we don't understand our own emotions & motives. And of course - a disclaimer that this is my interpretation/theory.

Mai's recruitment is much more straightforward. Mai is miserable in Omashu. Her parents are busy doting on her baby brother, and she's constantly expected to act like a quiet good girl. She's bored, & she doesn't say it but probably lonely. Also - Mai loves violence. Mai's first encounter with the Gaang isn't even with Azula & Ty Lee, it's on her own, & she is excited to fight. Another interesting aspect of Mai's character is that she's 100% onboard right away with abandoning Tom Tom. I could see an argument that Mai was afraid to argue with Azula, but I don't buy it because there is no evidence for it. Ty Lee has clearly been intimidated into joining Azula, but we haven't seen that with Mai. So, I think that Mai just doesn't seem to care about her brother at all. This isn't a moral judgment on her by the way, just an observation.

The Dangerous Ladies Vs. The Gaang has to be one of the most exciting fights we've seen so far. Everyone's different styles are showcased & it's just amazing to watch. I think it's super interesting that Ty Lee almost kicks Sokka & Tom Tom off a building. She was ready to murder a baby & it's only cartoon logic & luck that she didn't!

Speaking of ready-to-murder - I'm fascinated by the different Fire Nation characters' approach to fighting Aang. I can't recall Zuko ever trying to kill Aang. He's been set on the whole "capture" thing. Zhao spells out to Aang that he won't kill him because it would just trigger a new Avatar. But there's no argument I can see that Azula is not trying to kill Aang during their fight in this episode. She is actively shooting fire at him, again & again. So, does she know that if he dies a new Avatar will be born? If Zhao knew, I have to assume Azula does. Of course, she does kill him (sorta) later, but we'll analyze that when we get to it. For now, I'm just saying that this is interesting. Azula is capable of a fighting style that doesn't go for the kill, or Zuko would've died during their last encounter. But, she chooses to go after Aang by shooting him with fire which would kill him if he failed to block or dodge her attacks. Super interesting to me.

Anyway, Aang's conversation with Bumi is very interesting to me. We learn about three of the apparent eighty-five 'jings.' Fighting is positive jing and retreating is a negative jing. Aang knows this, probably from his teachings with Gyatso, but Bumi explains that there's a third jing - neutral. I'm not sure how I feel about the argument that "doing nothing" is sometimes the best call. Bumi is a very interesting morally gray character. I understand what he was trying to say, & what the narrative was getting at, but still, Bumi abandoned his people when they needed him. I have a feeling I'll come back to the quote: "Your teacher will be someone who has mastered neutral jing. You need to find someone who waits and listens before striking." For now, though, those are my thoughts on the episode!

[true-blue-megamind]

What Makes Hal a Great Villain?

Okay, I’m saying it upfront: this one is going to get a little dark and very real.  Potential triggers for harassment, stalking, sexual predation.  Nothing graphic or heavy, of course, but if these are especially highly sensitive subjects for you, please proceed with caution.

Also, SPOILER ALERT for anyone who has not yet watched the animated awesomeness that is Megamind.  (If you are that person, the DVD is on sale on Amazon, and the movie is available to stream on NowTV.  Go watch it.  I’ll wait.)

We all know Megamind is an awesome protagonist--multi-layered, relatable, and surprisingly complex-- but, truthfully, his antagonist is just as interesting.  In fact, when compared with other animated villains of the early 2000′s, he’s by far the most memorable... and the most terrifying.

Many may question my assessment.  I mean, let’s be honest: this guy doesn’t exactly look like the face of evil.  But make no mistake: Hal, who later becomes Titan, is an extremely scary person.

I don’t want to leave readers with the impression that this character is one-sided, however, so before we get started on just what makes this fellow complete nightmare fuel, let’s look briefly at a few of the other reasons that Hal makes a fascinating Bad Guy.

One of my favorite things about Hal’s character arch is that it defies expectations.  Superhero comics have a long tradition of Average Nobodies who somehow receive extraordinary powers and go on to save the city.  Or the world.  Or the universe.  You get the idea.  Many comic book fans, upon watching Megamind for the first time, probably expected Hal to do the same, but he doesn’t.  In fact, he goes rogue, choosing to use his newly-obtained gifts for wanton destruction.  Thus the film inverts the established trope.

Like the protagonist he faces, (and is thankfully conquered by,) Hal is complex, and his true nature reveals itself slowly.  I’ve heard some people say that they actually felt a bit sorry for him in the first scene he appears, as he awkwardly tries to express his feelings to reporter Roxanne Ritchi.  At first he seemed like nothing worse than a socially inept and sexually frustrated nerd.  Only as the move progressed, and the aforementioned viewers saw his creepiness more clearly, did they begin to revile him.  One of the many clever things about the movie is that the gradual development provides audiences with the experience of slowly getting to know the characters.  While Megamind is the somewhat anarchical Goth who worries you a little at first, but whose heart of gold has you loving him once you really understand him, Hal is that guy you really, really regret talking to at a party.  You know, the one who quickly starts sending your internal Creep-o-Meter off the scale and persistently follows you around for the rest of the night.  This is, indeed, part of what makes Hal disturbing; just like real villains, he hides in plain sight, wearing the guise of an ordinary fellow.

Which brings us back to the scary part.  Even before he gets superpowers, Hal is bad guy deep down.  He’s a creep and a stalker.  He harasses Roxanne at work and keeps pestering her for a date no matter how many times she says no.  Either consciously or unconsciously, he assumes that she’s shallow, and that once he has a muscular body and a bevy of godlike abilities, she’ll fawn on him.  The idea that he himself might be the problem never seems to occur to him.  In fact, he seems to feel that she will then owe him her affection.  This is because, even before becoming Titan, Hal appears to have an overblown sense of self-importance and an unrealistic concept about what he deserves.  (I go into detail about that in an earlier post, Megamind and Identity, which you can read here.)  The fact that he doesn’t get what he feels is his right seems to have created a deep-seeded bitterness in him that rises to the surface once he obtains power.

But Hal really is the problem.  His combined possessive harassment and complete lack of empathy are exactly why Roxanne neither likes nor trusts him.  And she’s right to feel that way.  Almost immediately after gaining his powers, now feeling that he is above society’s rules, Titan begins revealing just how terrible of a person he really is.  He uses his supervision to spy on Roxanne while he and Megamind (disguised as Space Dad) are in the park, and that must not be the only incident because he later tells Roxanne: “I know everything about you.”  This is just before he grabs her off of her balcony, without her consent, and begins throwing her around like a rag doll, terrifying her and putting her life in real danger because, apparently, he thinks she’ll be impressed.

Yeah.  This guy is pretty much human garbage.

Once he finally understands (more or less) that Roxanne really means it when she says she’s not interested, Hal/Titan reveals himself to be a man-child.  He  begins by using his abilities for selfish and criminal reasons, essentially stating that he doesn’t feel heroism is worth his time.  When he learns that Megamind has been dating Roxanne, (albeit in disguise,) he reacts with violence.  This is because Megamind, like Hal himself, is an outsider: unpopular, unwelcome, and considered unattractive by most of the population of Metro City.  In Hal’s mind, this revelation highlights the fact that none of these factors were the cause of Roxanne’s rejection, leaving only he himself to blame.  (In fact, the movie contrasts Megamind, who, although imperfect, respects Roxanne’s wishes and intelligence, with Hal, who basically views her as an object to be won.  Again, you can read more about that in Megamind and Identity.) Hal can’t handle that.  He can’t accept it.  So instead he turns his rage on the city as a whole.  (This is despite the fact that, deep down, Hal knows he is the problem, hence why he rejects his identity as Hal and fully embraces the new one as Titan.  That’s illustrated by his final line before abandoning Roxanne on Metro Tower: “It’s Titan, not Hal!”)

Hal abuses his power, and society suffers as a result.  Even then, however, Hal/Titan still tries to lay claim to Roxanne.  He accuses Megamind of “stealing his girlfriend,” and later tells Roxanne: “Let me guess, after seeing how awesome I am, you’ve come to your senses.”  All the way to the end, Hal still can’t quite seem to accept that reality is not following his design.

If the idea of a man who lets power go to his head, objectifies women, won’t take “no” for an answer, and reacts violently when denied what he feels he’s owed sounds familiar, that’s because it is.  Humanity has a huge problem with these sorts of behaviors, ranging from sexism and sexual predation to unfeeling abuses of power.  The Sarah Everard case in London, and the fact that several officials essentially blamed the victim, asking why Sarah was walking home alone rather than asking why some guy felt he had the right to attack her, is the most recent well-known testament to this, but it’s sadly far from the only one.  A.J. White said it best in his YouTube video, The Terror of the Incel Superman, when he expressed that news archives are full of stories about women being murdered by the sort of overgrown boys who can’t accept their refusals.  And although men of that sort do not have the ability to fly or shoot lasers out of their eyes, some of them do rise to social and political power.  They are Hals. 

That is exactly what makes this character so especially scary.  Unlike more farcical supervillains, he is based upon something that truly exists.  Preternatural abilities aside, Hal is terrifying because he is very real.  Let’s just hope our world will see more Megaminds willing to stand up to them. #BeMegamindNotHal

[frosteee]

Undertaker & Ciel’s Relationship (so far)

I’ve mentioned before in previous posts, and other people in the fandom have talked about it also (way before me, so I’m tagging on lol) that UT doesn’t see the Phantomhive twins as individuals, but simply members of the Phantomhive family. 

That got me thinking about how UT has treated O!Ciel so far, leaving R!Ciel to the side for now. 

Talking with @frederickabberline​ got me to realise that, aside from maybe one or two exceptions, UT refers to everybody by some title or other, usually their job (e.g.: ‘Mr Butler’ for Sebastian, ‘Earl’ for O!Ciel). And when he does refer to someone by name, which is exclusively or pretty much exclusively the Phantomhives, he always attaches that last name. 

For example, most recently, when addressing Frances, even though she married out of the Phantomhive family and became a Midford, UT still addresses her as ‘Lady Frances Phantomhive‘. It’s as if the man is incapable, or unwilling, to personally recognise anyone who is not a Phantomhive.

In our discussion, frederickabberline mentioned that this detachment could be a deliberate/subconscious act for UT to protect himself from further heartache. His glee at other’s expense, leading to very, very problematic comments, could also be an extension of this. Still not excusable, but it’s an explanation.

So, how has this mindset affected his relationship with O!Ciel so far?

The Phantomhives are interchangeable to him (AKA The Amorphous Blob of Phantomhives)

On the surface this can be seen as a good thing. After all, to favour one twin over the other for x reason, as Lizzie acknowledges to herself, is inherently selfish and unfair to the other person, no matter how much of an honest or natural feeling it is.

UT does not have such a preference. When he meets O!Ciel in the Chapter 131 flashback, he calls him ‘Little Phantomhive’ and cannot tell whether he is the younger or elder brother, before stating that he doesn’t care which, not because he likes them equally but because they are Phantomhives.

As far as he is concerned, the twins are mere parts in the amorphous, ever-growing Phantomhive blob. They have no identity outside of being Phantomhives, the same as Frances. He had no special bond with either twin because the only connection between them and himself that mattered was their family name.

If UT was interested in getting to know either twin as a person, like the opportunity he had in the Ch.131 flashback, he would have attempted to seriously differentiate the two. 

While he does ask which twin O!Ciel is, he does it as a rhetorical question, a joke, and then immediately follows it by dismissing the question altogether as he has already decided it doesn’t matter.

More unsettlingly, it appears UT is so disinterested in the development (physical and otherwise) of the individual Phantomhives, that to his eyes they are unchanging. Though UT does remark on O!Ciel’s small stature a few times, this is spoken like/treated as a joke more than an observation from interest.

[There are very rare exceptions to this, but I’ll get into those later.]

This is shown when he responds to Frances commenting on his lack of visible aging by stating that she still looks as if she was ‘born yesterday’.

Even Vincent, whose death UT has lamented the most openly, even shedding tears, is not exempt from this treatment at all. He is no less ‘a Phantomhive anyway’ than his children/relatives, I realised (thanks to frederickabberline again!). 

Yes, UT regrets his death, but whenever he has brought it up it is always in the context that he can no longer revive him because his bones were burned to ash. (x and x). He never says anything like ‘He was a dear friend, how could I have failed him’, ‘He was a good man, why was he given such a death?’, ‘We had such good times together,’ - something to indicate an attachment to Vincent as a person.

And then, immediately following his lament, UT once more depersonalises Vincent, just like he did the twins, by stating that at least “the ‘Earl of Phantomhive’ is still with us”. It always comes back to that, as if it’s the only thing keeping him from wallowing in grief for those individuals.

As long as one Phantomhive is alive, he can deal with/suppress/channel his grief of personal losses into a goal which will keep him from losing more, and dwelling on what he has already lost.

Even when he comments on how much he dislikes the Phantomhive Watchdog work, while he mentions O!Ciel he talks about the ‘karma’ or ‘fate’ than hangs over every Phantomhive, the things every Phantomhive Watchdog deals with. 

As we hear later, he is resentful of the path the Phantomhives walk, their inability to rid themselves of it (by listening to him/heeding his warnings), and the Watchdog life in general, so he doesn’t care about the effects on Ciel, but the effects the ‘chain of fate’ has on the Phantomhive family and their legacy.

This more recently extends to his statement of ‘I didn’t want to lose anymore Phantomhives’, which is as blatant an explanation as you like. It confirms where his mind has focused all this time.

UT regularly teases/dismisses Ciel regarding the trauma of his past.

@frederickabberline​ kindly shared with me the moment where UT describes the ‘proper’ method of killing that Jack the Ripper probably used, to O!Ciel, using O!Ciel as a prop - even though he had a human dummy to use for this purpose.

He may as well have whispered “I know what you did three years ago!”. He’s even gesturing to the boy’s abdomen/stomach area with his ring hand! With his phrasing, and the Japanese text confirms that he literally refers to “steal[ing] the precious thing”, he echoes R!Ciel’s ‘Who stole the candy from my tummy?’ message. 

Oh yeah, and he does this while knowingly allowing O!Ciel to sit on the coffin with his dead/bizarre doll twin inside!

Thankfully, O!Ciel doesn’t catch on, but Jesus Christ, UT!

If UT truly cared about O!Ciel’s emotional well-being, just cared about him as an individual, why would he reference one of the most painful moments of O!Ciel’s life in such a sneaky, tactless manner, even if he knew he could get away with it here?

He does it again in Ch. 24, where UT doesn’t even hide what he’s talking about under the context of a different subject, like he did in his first appearance. Here, after remarking that dead children are commonplace in the underworld, he directly tells O!Ciel “The Earl knows that very well, doesn’t he?”.

JESUS CHRIST, UT!

He doesn’t consider O!Ciel’s feelings at all. He cares about his own amusement at O!Ciel’s expense, which extends to basically anyone else. But O!Ciel is a Phantomhive, part of the family UT is so concerned with/attached to he is literally trying to overturn the law of death for them to continue living.

But as I outlined earlier, UT does not care about any of the Phantomhives, at least the ones currently living and the previous Earl beyond the fact that they are Phantomhives. 

Therefore, he does not consider O!Ciel’s trauma, or care to know about it. He didn’t care to know how he was different from his twin, they were all  the same to him, so why would he care now?

Even if we consider that this black/gallows humour is UT’s personal way of coping, anyone with an ounce of tact would still not do this in front of others who they know such humour will hurt. Maybe UT has too many screws loose to care, or he is so detached he simply does not have room for it in his head.

UT does advise O!Ciel to take care of his soul, as he only has one - which considering his history with R!Ciel (who is still chilling in the zero gravity float spa coffin in the room somewhere), makes sense. But he’s still speaking to O!Ciel as a Phantomhive.

While UT is very well aware of O!Ciel’s contract to Seb the demon, and aware of the danger O!Ciel has placed his soul in, he later contextualises this as the result of O!Ciel holding the same ‘great power’ as his ancestors, which leads to them forgetting the importance of their lives/their souls.

So again, it’s about the Phantomhives as a whole, and how O!Ciel is repeating the same mistakes as his ancestors. He isn’t concerned with O!Ciel’s feelings here, even though he is clearly re-living that traumatic event front the past.

The final, and most damning, is UT’s attitude towards O!Ciel when the existence of R!Ciel is revealed. He reacts to O!Ciel’s obvious disgust, grief and terror with a shrug and exasperated “What? How can you not like this? Does it really matter if he’s alive or dead?”

UT is so detached from O!Ciel as a person, and detached/disinterested in general from human feelings beyond his own - consciously or otherwise - that he cannot fathom how the twin of the zombie twin he brought back might have an issue with what UT did.

UT is projecting, I think, his own feelings/expectations onto O!Ciel in this scene. Easy to do, because he had detached himself from the boy personally. If UT were in O!Ciel’s shoes, he would be delighted, because at this point that it does not matter to UT in what form such and such returns, human or bizarre doll, just so long as they do, and that it will be as if they never died.

And this comes before the revelation that R!Ciel’s dead body was ‘watching’ him the whole time!

Again, it’s unclear whether UT is simply bonkers and doesn’t care anymore or if he’s genuinely unable to focus on anything other than his end goal to acknowledge how messed up it is and how it’s hurting O!Ciel.

Exceptions to the rule

So far, I can point to two incidents that deviate from the usual detached manner in which UT deals/relates to O!Ciel.

The first comes in the Campania arc when UT entrusts his treasured funeral lockets to O!Ciel. Ch.64.

The look UT gives O!Ciel is important, and it is the first of two key moments which could lead to their relationship changing perhaps for the better. He looks surprised, shocked, and the light/roundness/look in Ciel’s eyes give him a more innocent, childish look. 

The close up between them indicate that they are really looking at one another. Or, if this is purely UT’s POV, he is really looking at O!Ciel.

I couldn’t swear to it, but this could indicate that finally, UT is seeing O!Ciel as a little boy, not merely an extension to the Phantomhive legacy, and that this reassures him enough to entrust his most treasured possessions - the last remaining pieces of the people he cherished - to O!Ciel. 

This, and his expression as he tells O!Ciel that the item is his treasure, is the first time UT shares anything personal with O!Ciel, and they share a connection for a moment, after so many years - many more for UT - of being detached/distant from one another.

The second time comes exactly twenty chapters later (may not be relevant, but I just noticed that) in the Weston Arc, where UT remarks how O!Ciel is different from his ancestors for saving Harcourt in from the rampaging bizarre dolls instead of just himself, as his predecessors would have done.

This is the first time UT acknowledges something about O!Ciel’s personality that makes him himself, and not merely an extension of the Phantomhive family or another Phantomhive making the same old mistakes on the same old path. UT seems pleased to see this.

Of course, these incidents happen before the whole ‘Hihi, your dead brother’s corpse was by your side this whole time, Earl!/’Your dead brother is a zombie, why aren’t you happy?’ event, in which he describes the twins as ‘mirrors of each other’, which harkens back to his inability/disinterest to tell the twins apart and all the issues that come with it.

UT himself

It’s difficult to say at this point whether UT is aware that how he is acting/what he is doing is wrong. If he knows that how he is treating/has treated O!Ciel is not the way the child of the family he cares for so much should be treated, and whether he justifies this in his own head (’ends justify the means’ type thing) or whether he is too insane to care anymore.

He does not deny to Othello that he has a few screws loose, so there’s that at least as far as self-awareness goes. He has likely been severely traumatised by the losses he suffered in the past, and whatever else we can theorise about his reaper past, and has done all he can to prevent more - event to the point of alienating and depersonalising the members of the same family he once deeply loved.

Whatever the case, I think enough groundwork has been laid for there to be a conflict later down the road on this point, focusing squarely on how he has viewed the Phantomhive family members for some time, the twins included. 

Conclusion 

While he has remained largely detached from O!Ciel and only interacted insofar as it suits his goals and his obsession, there have been moments where UT and O!Ciel have shared a personal connection where UT was forced to see O!Ciel as an individual. An individual deserving of more attention and care - PROPER attention and care - than UT has been willing to give in a long time because he has been so focused on his own goals and his own wishes for the Phantomhives.

He may for the first time actually start to consider what is truly best for the twins, instead of simply what he wants.

How he responds to this conflict within him between a newfound personal care for O!Ciel and the goal he has been working so ruthlessly towards for years is definitely interesting to think about.

It could completely throw off-balance how he has thought/operated for so long, and bring back painful memories and force him to confront ugly things about himself that he has either been too blind/mad or single-minded to acknowledge. 

He might question a lot of things he’s done, his current plan even, and maybe consider working with O!Ciel and allies rather than separately from them, as he has always done. He might realise that his detachment, disinterest, and depersonalisation are flaws rather than self-protection, that do more harm than good, and realise he needs to change.

Funny, when he goes on so much about how little the Phantomhives change and how it always comes back to bite them - UT is guilty of the same, in his own way!

Anyway, I’m sure his and O!Ciel’s dynamic and relationship will change, possibly quite dramatically, soon! 

What do you guys think?

[edwardslostalchemy]

the thing that kills me about bakugou is when the plf go "having a powerful quirk means i'm better than you"and basically advocate for eugenics, it's horrible and corrupt, but when bakugou does it, it's lol funny and 'oh that gremlin.' in a recent chapter he made fun of the past OFA holders for having 'weak' quirks and dying and he said these things in front of Toshi, who has himself given so much. just...what was the point of him knowing about OFA if he was just going to be a disrespectful ass?

I have no idea why it was necessary for him to know, tbh. I think it was a waste of an opportunity to give him growth by NOT telling him. And honestly, I agree that k*tsuki and the plf have similar ideals because they’re elitists. :/ They think they’re better than others. Unironically, the lov wanting k*tsuki on their side would have been like, them all sharing this same thought. Idk, I just don’t like him. The things he says and does are played off as comedic relief now and it’s honestly so annoying. He needs to be brought down from his pedestal. 

(I have multiple messages so I am putting them all in one post under a read more, I hope it works, but if somehow it doesn’t, I’m really sorry. My computer says it works, but mobile doesn’t show it. This will be a long post.)

Anonymous said:

You know... I wouldn’t mind Bakugou winning vs Ochako so much if his blast had simply redirected enough rubble for him to make it though the pelting, and the fight had ended with an actual visible inflicted injury on his part, like a cut on his face, that stuck around for the rest of the tournament. Make the close call have more concrete, visible consequences for him then his arms aching a bit.

I agree with this completely. That thing about his arms aching doesn’t show much of the consequences at all. And he gets over it rather quickly. I hate that he has so much plot armor.

Anonymous said:

Ngl i dont ship Todo/deku (dont really ship Izuku with anyone lol) but its such a nice ship like?? People can ship what they want but why ship Baku/deku when Tododeku is RIGHT THERE. I would rather have todo/deku be the twin stars like.. Todoroki having to overcome his fathers legacy and be a better hero then his father ever could be while Izuku perpetuates all mights legacy and carries the legacy of One For All?? Poetic cinema

+ I SENT AN ASK ABOUT PREFERRING TODO/DEKU TO BAKU/DEKU AND I WANTED TO ADD SOMETHING SKSKS. we could totally have an "its your power" moment. Izuku getting Todo to accept his left side and Todo getting Izuku to remember that OFA is his power now.

Todo/deku is really the poetic cinema we need and deserve. Idk why people like b*kud*ku, that’s what they prefer, but the ship itself is not healthy in the slightest and I find it pretty disturbing. I agree with you, nony. Everything you said is correct.

Anonymous said:

If I'm gonna be honest the whole "he was raised in a household of screaming and abuse" isn't a good enough reason as to why Bakugo has no chill. Like we've seen people like Todoroki raised in a household much worst but he didn't come out as a jerk or bully. I'd like to see more of Bakugo's interactions with his parents but for the most part the dad seems like a pushover and his mom is just loud at times. But no where close to Endeavor. So yeah Bakugo shut up challenge

Yeah, idk how their dynamic works, it’s just mitsuki screaming at k*tsuki while his dad tries to intervene, but doesn’t do a good job about it. I don’t like that she smacked his head. But I think people really stretch it to give him a tragic backstory when in reality, he doesn’t have one. He is a spoiled brat. Shouto has proven how to be a better person. He’s just a better character in general.

Anonymous said:

This might be long but I want to get something off my chest and I love your blog so I used to like bk//dk. If you asked me why. It's because I was enamored by the fanon ver of this pair with a better bkg and the whole appeal of childhood 'friends'/reconciliation trope it had going on and some fans have convinced me that their relationship wasn't as bad as it's portrayed before UA and that bkg was only like that because of society and thinking Izuku was "looking down" at him. 1/3

Thinking about it. it's really stupid and the verge of victim blaming but anyways. What stopped me from liking it and instead hating the pair is that after dk vs kc 2 I was expecting the improvement in their relationship, for a moment I thought we got it. But in reality it's just bc we haven't seen them interact much after the overhaul arc and before the joint training arc.Then the joint arc came and the 2nd internship arc came and whoo boy, I feel like I was cheated on. 2/3

Rather than making bkg's behavior improve towards Izuku, He's still as much of an asshole who belittles him, mocks him ,acts like he can't stand him but less threats of killing him combined with Izuku who just takes it because he's a nice person. But the narrative acts like their good friends now and I have been feeling so frustrated with this, I wanted a mutual relationship with mutual respect on both sides and bk//dk hasn't reached that part and it shouldn't take this long for it to be. 3/3

Thank you for sharing this with me, nony!! I appreciate it. It’s really sad that their relationship hasn’t improved at all. It’s so long overdue and now things are played as comedic relief like him hurting Izuku with his spike and also being extremely disrespectful during the ofa meetings. Their relationship isn’t healthy and it isn’t friendly, no matter how canon wants to paint it that way.

Anonymous said:

the only reason bkg gets to know OFA is because he guilted Izu into telling him a half truth in S1 then guilted AM and Izu with his tantrum in S3 He also had the privilege to know Izu since childhood and saw AFO so he had the advantage Izuku would have never told him otherwise. Same time Izuku's friends don't "deserve" to know about OFA, rather, Izuku deciding to tell them himself will make the revelation to them more special since its Izu deciding to tell a piece of himself than being forced to

HOT TAKE

@havocsss said:

i just wanted to say i appreciate your opinion on bnha about bakugo (bc someone finally said it 👀) and you put into words for me how i feel abt that character - and that's partly why i just can't watch it. he's the bully that everyone idolises and gets let away with murder and naaaah mate that's not how it works

Thank you, I’m glad to hear it. I don’t like that he, a literal bully who has suicide baited Izuku and has hurt him with his explosion quirk, is the fandom’s favorite and the most popular character. Literally any other character would have been better to stan than him. He’s everywhere and I can’t enjoy part of the series because of him always being there. It’s so annoying. I will continue to yell about why he is not a good character until horikoshi gives us the development he desperately needs AND an apology to Izuku for being so abusive to him. And yes, bullying is abuse.

Anonymous said:

I know that feeling. I also greatly dislike Bakugou. He almost ruins the manga for me at times. I can't even think of a plot with Izuku where Hori won't try to include him in some way. I tried reading metas abt him, tried to look at him in a different light but I realised that I really hate his personality, combined with his overhyped popularity just makes me can't stand him. I wish I could even just be neutral for him but that's being a challenge.

Yeah, he’s not a good character. Very infuriating and annoying. We do not stan him in this house.

Anonymous said:

I feel like if Aizawa actually knew that Bakugou used to bully Izuku he'd probably whoop Bakugou's ass

OOF I’d like to see him expel him.

Anonymous said:

I like how it's framed like I'm supposed to feel sorry for Bakugou because he feels manpain for not being the strongest in the class. Like the dude went from a regular school to the best of the best and he still expected to be the strongest person there is with no challenge?

Awww, is the spoiled brat sad? Good. He can die mad about it.

Anonymous said:

If Aizawa did the combat training instead of All Might he would've stopped Bakugou the first time he used his gauntlets and automatically failed him and I really wish that would've been the outcome

Tbh he should have been expelled for trying to kill a classmate.

Anonymous said:

Oh yeah I remember that character entrance when he just basically I insults his partner for training. Look I love the kid but if I was a teacher I would've flamed him so hard like there could've been a hostage, that weapon could have went off, his partner could've been captured. That's how you ended up failing the license exam

OOF. When will he learn.

Anonymous said:

Um excuse the ever living fuck out of me but I just saw a fic that was bakugou/consequences where Izuku attempted suicide and you know what the ship was?? My pure green son who deserves the world and his literal bully/abuser are you SHITTING ME???? I try very hard not to hate ships I do really try but I just CAN'T with this ship it disgusts me

It's not a healthy ship. I am disturbed by this fic and I don’t even know what it’s called and I don’t want to know. Eww.

Anonymous said:

I see myself as Izuku cause I relate to him a lot and I just read something where Bakugou does what my abuser did to me to Izuku and now I'm having a very hard time stomaching the thought of him and like I really loved kiri/baku too but now I can't even think about it cause someone who shipped my notp thought it would be a good idea to make Bakugou an abuser and give Izuku Stockholm syndrome ☹

Oh nony…I’m so sorry to hear about that. That really sounds rough and I hope you’re feeling better. That sounds awful. I’m just…I’m appalled. Also giving Izuku Stockholm syndrome with this ship is just. Wow.

[silver-wield]

"So if C and T had sex under the HG because it faded to black A and C made love in the gondola ride!It faded to black! Much more comfortable than in a rock! A:i want to meet you(and they make love) T:words aren't the only thing that tell people what you're thinking(have sex)" I just read this on Twitter, and I'm wondering if they read what Devs said or what. The part when they said they wanted them to come out from the Chocobo Stable, when multiple times is said C and T after (1/2)

-- sharing their mutual feelings under the HG they spend the night together. And you can clearly see it by playing FFVII, most people who rewatched that part think they made love. (Also why had sex? If their feelings matched it means that they made love not had sex, wtf) Also ik they say the only canon route (even if optional, 'cause apparently if it's optional but it's a CA moment then it's canon, but if it is a CT moment it's not canon) (2/3)

-- CA date but during the GS date every version has a black transition even if maybe the CA one is a bit longer?? Also if they want to think they made love (and here, why did this person used made love but not have sex?! What does it change in their mind from CT's "fade to black moment"? Where is written C and A shared their matching/mutual feelings? That's right, Nowhere. So why they made love but CT just had sex?!) they can. Everyone is free to have an headcanon in the end.(3/3)

Deep breath. Let them say whatever they want because literally everything is proving them wrong.

The ultimania, that they usually shake at us like a bible, has both the clotiscrew tunnel and Tifa’s resolution listed front and centre. Tifa and Cloud’s impressive words relate more to each other than any of their quotes have before. The in game messages from the devs hidden in posters and graffiti that we can only see when Tifa’s in our party and Aerith isn’t, all tell us that we aren’t imagining things. In fact, the devs want us to go all out there and think of the biggest gestures we can -- despite Cloud and Tifa not even being a couple yet -- and then go one extra. They want us to go over scenes and remember things that are said and make those connections.

It’s why Tifa keeps going on about connections. She never did that in OG. Ever. We need to look for the connections that tell the hidden story in part one because OG’s story for Cloti was hidden during Midgar. We didn’t see it because the devs at the time made a bigger deal about making the audience love Aerith. Anything Cloti was downplayed and that’s the metaphor in this disc for them, too. That’s the metaphor of their romance in OG. That we had to follow the clues and build the big picture.

Which, ykno, sucks because having to dig for gold is hard work, but that’s also one of the hints in the graffiti the devs left, so it’s not like they didn’t anticipate us needing to make an effort.

I’m betting that the rest of the game won’t be so sneaky about them. I’m hopeful, anyway, especially since my biggest vote is for established cloti content and not just endgame cloti. I wanna see them beyond the point they get together because that’s where they’re most fun.

I’ve got so many smaller posts that showcase things one step at a time. Put it together and basically:

Chapter 3: Cloud and Tifa flirt, agree to go on a date (Cloud is thirsty af and Tifa knows it because she teases him). The date is canon and did happen, even if some people try to argue against it because there’s dialogue callbacks in other chapters that reference stuff that happened during it. Chapter 4: Whispers (OG fans) try to keep them apart, resulting in them missing taking each other’s hand. Chapter 5: Clotiscrew tunnel and yeah, Cloud absolutely kissed her on the cheek (the graffiti in chapter 13 reveals the hints) Chapter 5: Tifa’s embarrassed because she thinks Cloud kissed her by accident - maybe - and he agrees to not bring it up again. (”You always know just what to say��) Chapter 9: Cloud looks at Tifa in the back of that carriage like he’s seeing a goddess. Tifa is teary-eyed that Cloud’s okay. Even though he’s sent away from her, he stares longingly after the carriage until he can’t see Tifa anymore. Chapter 9: Cloud’s literally about to storm Corneo’s place when a panicked Johnny runs up screaming “Tifa!” despite Cloud having spent the last few hours messing around getting a dress for Aerith.  Chapter 11: During the double arm grab, Cloud leans towards Tifa, keeps eye contact with her, agrees with her pov, then looks surprised and smiles when she grabs his arm.  Chapter 12: Post hand catch when Tifa’s running into Cloud’s arms at the top of the pillar, she hugs him in a reversal of the clotiscrew tunnel in that she surprised him with affection.  Chapter 13: Having fallen several times and been unconscious before, Tifa wakes at the start of this chapter with her arm under her head because Cloud put it like that.  Chapter 14: Barret’s resolution, where Cloud’s reminded what being jealous feels like in connection to Tifa. He wouldn’t feel like that if he didn’t have deep feelings for her. Chapter 14: Aerith’s resolution where she tells Cloud not to fall in love with her, he looks away and expresses surprise,  and then a soft eyed look as he stares at the house, where Tifa’s sleeping. Because he’s soldier Cloud most of the time, he’s not connected to those deep feelings, so having Aerith make the connection for him is surprising news. Before he can focus on what that means (fractured psyche) she distracts him because she knows he’s not in a fit state to have that kind of revelation about himself. Her line “Even if you have it isn’t real” alludes to that fracture between Cloud’s real self and Soldier persona. Chapter 14: after the resolution where he hugs Tifa and Leslie brings up messages, Cloud looks like he wants to mention the hug, but then doesn’t because he expects Tifa wouldn’t want him to after the last time when she wanted to ignore their intimacy (chapter 5), but she does, which surprises him.  Chapter 16: Cloud physically follows Tifa’s progress down the stairway as she leaps across the lights in the Shinra building. He trips running down the rest when she falls and stays there staring at that spot as she finishes the journey over to the reception desk. He’s so shaken he doesn’t even speak until he can see her properly without the screen blocking them. After the sim: Cloud literally reorients his body to Tifa’s position whenever he can’t see her. He keeps himself in line with her so that he can reach her quickly and save her. Final battle: Cloud offers Tifa a flirty line and raises his eyebrows at her when she appears first.  The final scene of them, we can see that while his head is turned towards Barret and Aerith as they talk, his body remains in line with Tifa’s position.

So yeah, put it together and you get a much bigger picture of their slow burn relationship from the emotional side of things. And don’t forget between that there’s a lot of longing looks, and there’s probably a load of other stuff that happens I’ve not included, but this is the most recent posts I’ve had going on.

Cloud’s bias is showing, so don’t worry about what other people are saying. He might not be great with words, but his actions are yelling from the rooftops.

[liskantope]

Some thoughts on BLM and our current unrest

[Content warning for death and violence and even sexual abuse (although that’s not part of this week’s issue) and, you know, discussion of a current topic that’s very upsetting for many people. I can’t guarantee that the opinion I express won’t be additionally upsetting although I’m hoping for an open-minded rather than strident tone here. Also, it turned out super long. And I didn’t even get around to the protest vs. rioting discourse!]

This post is long, and since Tumblr for some reason has done away with the light horizontal bars separating sections of writing (I can’t imagine why, and I wish they’d bring it back), I’ll adopt the style of Slate Star Codex and The Last Psychiatrist to mark different sections.

I.

(The following hypothetical situation is inspired by the crimes of Jerry Sandusky of Penn State and Larry Nassar of Michigan State.)

Suppose it becomes public knowledge that in many American universities there are officials working in athletics departments who are using their programs to gain access to children and teenagers for the purpose of sexually abusing them. Say it is discovered that this has been going on for decades at most of these universities, with the perpetrators using their privilege and power to keep the suspicions of the higher-up administrators on the downlow. This would of course become a dominating national news item and lead to a public conversation about how poorly structured the system must be at universities to allow for such despicable crimes to go on, how we as a society are putting people in power who care more about their power than about the basic safety of children and teenagers, and so on. If enough people felt like university administrations or state governments were refusing to take action towards dissolving these corrupt systems, or if they disagreed with the actions being taken, there might be full-scale protests or even riots along with the vigils that would take place in any case. I mean, I believe all of this is basically what happened when the Sandusky and Nassar situations broke out some years back.

Now suppose that in addition, when looking at all these horrific revelations from universities all around the country, it became noticeable that the victims of these sex crimes were disproportionately young people growing up in poverty; let’s say fully one third of the victims were growing up in households whose annual income was under $30,000. (I don’t recall the Sandusky case in great detail but something like that was probably true there to a more dramatic extent since he got access to his victims through a program designed for underprivileged children.) This makes the situation feel even more tragic -- don’t kids from low-income backgrounds suffer enough disadvantages already? These monsters that are protected by The System are adept at preying on the most vulnerable, and clearly this (hypothetical but altogether not unrealistic) phenomenon highlights the vulnerability of those who are not economically privileged.

Now in such a situation, class issues would definitely become at least a minor part of the discourse, but I have a hard time imagining that the entire main thrust of the public outrage would focus on classism, even if (and this is something I can’t imagine either!) the only cases being projected by the media to become common public knowledge, out of the whole series of university athletics sex crimes, were the ones where mainly poor kids and teenagers were targeted. In fact, I expect that if any media outlet tried to present the entire thing as being a class issue and implied that it affected only poor kids, there would be a lot of backlash especially on the grounds of this coming across as a big middle finger to the higher-income-background molestation victims. I just don’t see it happening. Primarily, the outrage would be centered on the fact that university administrations allow high-ranking people in their athletics departments get away with despicable violations of young people for decades. The fact that a disproportionately high number of those young people are from underprivileged backgrounds would be treated as sort of a secondary issue, if properly noticed by the broader public at all.

So, if you’ve read this far you probably see where I’m going with this. And I know that the above hypothetical scenario furnishes nowhere near a perfect analogy to what has people riled up right now. But why is it that in my hypothetical nightmare crime scenario, the prevalence of the crime itself (rather than which demographic is disproportionately on the receiving end) is what constitutes the outrage, whereas in the real-life scenario of numerous documented instances of police brutality and murder, the entire thrust of the public outrage is centered on the notion that this is all about racism, that yeah there must be something seriously amiss in a system that lets cops get away with brutal violence towards innocent civilians but pretty much every single statement expressing that sentiment will frame it in terms of racism while the existence white victims of police brutality is essentially never even acknowledged?

From what I can see, in this age where everyday happenings can easily be recorded by random bystanders and the recordings can easily become accessible to the public, we are seeing evidence that a number of American cops are way, way too liberal with lethal violence, either through direct training or through a tendency towards paranoia of how dangerous a civilian under arrest might be or through psychopathic tendencies that attract certain kinds of people to a profession where brutally violent behavior is too easily excused in the courts after the fact. I don’t know to what degree these relatively few pieces of documented footage reflect a large part of the police force rather than just “a few bad apples”, but on some level it doesn’t matter -- an event like the murder of George Floyd should not be tolerated and the fact that many such instances are happening every year seems unacceptable. This is true regardless of whether Floyd’s race actually played any significant part in Derek Chauvin’s decision to apply very excessive force. Then there are statistics to reckon with -- I don’t have the skillset that some have for knowing where to look up data and rationally analyzing it, but to my understanding it’s quite unambiguous that American law enforcement officers kill a lot more people than the police forces of most other countries, and this would seem to point to a serious problem. I have generally heard that in absolute terms, in fact more white men are killed this way than black men, but relative to the ratio of white people to black people, black men are killed disproportionately often. Of course there seems to be no room whatsoever for discussion of any possible reason this could be aside from purely racist motives on the parts of the cops, which is certainly one of my issues with the whole topic, but let’s set that aside for the moment and assume for the sake of argument that this disparity is entirely attributable to anti-black racism. Even with this assumption, does it make sense to present the entire issue of police brutality as a purely racial one?

Here is another analogy to something that is not only non-hypothetical but is an even bigger current situation: the pandemic. It’s frequently been remarked on that Covid19 has been killing at a significantly higher rate among racial minorities. And yet the broader framing of the crisis we’re in hasn’t been that it’s an African-American issue or that every failure of government officials to respond effectively is primarily an instantiation of racism. The racial component of this is treated secondarily, in fact with far less emphasis than the direct crisis which affects everyone in the country even if not in equal measures.

With the murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Abery, as with every other story of a cop killing of a black person that goes viral, it’s not only that the narrative frames the race component as the primary issue -- the race component is framed as the only issue. This is done in such an absolute and unquestioning manner that I’m still a little taken aback whenever I see each new “We denounce racism!” announcement from almost every company whose mailing system I’m in: my Unitarian Universalist organization, the university I work for, Lyft, Airbnb, etc., not that any of them actually suggest a plan of action beyond donating to Black Lives Matter and other related organizations.

I think I can answer my own questions about why the narrative is coming out this way. Some areas of social justice enjoy a much more prestigious position in America than others do, and racism seems to dominate all the rest. (I’ve come to see this as a very American thing, no doubt due to the exceptionally dramatic nature of my country’s struggles against racial oppression, although it’s probably the case in Canada as well and maybe to a comparable extent in other Anglophone countries.) There is no surer way to make an issue more hot-button than by framing it as a racial issue, except in the unusual case (as in my Covid example) that the issue is actually of urgent and immediate concern to all citizens. Opposition to something like police brutality could have some momentum on its own, but as motivation for activism it has nowhere near the mighty strength in our culture that anti-racism does. In the hypothetical scenario about child abuse at universities, we have one type of social injustice, economic inequality, which has mostly been relegated to the background in the recent history of social activism (yes, Bernie Sanders has had a significant following, but my impression is that even many of his most diehard supporters get more passionate about racial inequality than economic inequality, at least when it comes to fiscal issues other than health care reform). Whereas child molestation is condemned in the strongest terms by our society perhaps even more universally than racism is (even though this universality makes it less of a cause for energetic activism -- I never hear anyone complain that “we live in a molestation culture” or anything like that). So, issues viewed as racial have far more memetic endurance than non-racial issues or even the exact same fundamental issues when not viewed from a racial angle.

Or, here is another way that I’ve considered looking at it: because police violence happens disproportionately to African-Americans, police violence could be considered to be “an African-American issue”, and since anti-racism activism is already quite a strong force in modern American culture, the issue of police brutality will naturally find an outlet to the public through the lens of African-American issues. Therefore, this is the only angle from which most of us will ever see it.

Of course the obvious thing that someone would surely point out here is that pretty much all of the examples of police brutality we’ve been seeing for years have white people victimizing black people (George Zimmerman did not present to me as white from the moment I first glanced at him, and by many definitions he is a PoC, but I guess he’s close enough to white that people were able to ignore this). Therefore it seems logical to assume that anti-black racism is the only lens to view these events through. Well, it would be logical except that we should all be able to think critically enough to realize that there are probably tons of videos out there of innocent white people being victimized by cops but those aren’t the ones that go viral. In fact, videos of black people being victimized by non-white cops probably also don’t get very far in the memosphere* -- it’s occurred to me that perhaps if the Asian policeman on the scene had been the one in the center of the frame pinning Floyd to the ground, this atrocity might never have become public knowledge!

(*Did I just make up that term? Google isn’t showing anything.)

And honestly, for this reason, I can’t help feeling particularly bad right now for loved ones of nonblack people who were victims of such crimes while being treated as if their cases didn’t exist.

This is not me trying to covertly imply support for “All Lives Matter” here. I’ve never felt the slightest bit of attraction to that counter-hashtag, which has always struck me as subtly obnoxious in implying that Black Lives Matter’s name is equivalent to saying “only black lives matter”, which of course BLM is not saying. Black lives do matter and in many ways still constantly get devalued and it is good that there’s an activist group out there whose main purpose is to stand up for them. But my discussion above does point to a specific issue -- probably the biggest of two or three issues -- I have with BLM. It would be one thing to say, “Police brutality can be considered a black issue since it affects black people disproportionately, so we should form a Black Lives Matter group and include it as one of the things we want to fight against.” Instead, BLM’s rhetoric strongly implies, “Police brutality is entirely a black issue and we’ll round off the entirety of it to racism and make opposition to it our main plank”. (Compare, from an secularist activist group, “Anti-gay bigotry often arises from fundamentalist religion and the justification for anti-gay-rights legislation threatens separation of church and state; therefore we should consider it an atheist/secularist issue and place gay rights issues among our concerns” vs. “Anti-gay bigotry and legislation is simply a manifestation of religion’s attempt to dominate non-religion so we should make opposition to it our main plank and not acknowledge or stand up for gay Christians.” Again, not a perfect analogy, but I hope it shows where I’m coming from.)

II.

I already wrote a post exactly four years ago describing and criticizing what I called “protest culture”. My point in linking to it here is not to revisit the discussion about Bernie Sanders or even the question of protesters’ deep-down motives but to endorse the following paragraph describing the kind of protest activism I felt (and still feel) could be helpful:

I definitely think there’s an important place in our culture for organized protest.  Sometimes we ordinary citizens need to show our dissatisfaction to the higher-ups in a way that they are forced to notice and not ignore.  But I strongly prefer protests that express dissent from a particular action, propose a concrete solution, and include many people who are able to make nuanced arguments in favor of this solution.  If there is no good consensus as to a serious solution, then I’ll settle for some particular action that is being protested against.  For instance, I would have proudly joined the marches against the war in Vietnam had I been around for it, and would have joined the marches against the war in Iraq had I been a little older at the time.  I would consider joining protests against, for instance, particular amendments I feel strongly about.  I did not, on the other hand, feel comfortable with the “99 percent” movement.  What was it expressing a sentiment against, exactly, apart from the very vague notion that a few people at the top screw things over for the rest of us?  (And by the way, I suspect that demonizing the entire top 1% was too heavy-handed; it’s probably only some in the top .01% who have been doing the main damage.)  There seemed to be little organization to this movement, and little common purpose except “let’s protest for the cause of being vaguely left-wing!”  The best argument I remember hearing in its favor was when a student explained to me the main strategy behind the movement: they would essentially fight guerilla-style by occupying large areas for a very long amount of time in a way that the top politicians couldn’t ignore, never, ever giving it up until things change in Washington.  But I was still pretty sure that at some point, the movement would have to die down, and was willing to bet that this would happen before anything changed in Washington.

I’ve never felt as fervently as I do now that too many law enforcement officers in the US are out of control and some kind of reform needs to be done (or at least strongly considered, in a serious conversation) to the system so that it can be effective in keeping them in check and outlawing certain forms of excessive force. There’s a lot I don’t understand about the demands and risks involved in law enforcement, but I really can’t imagine how there’s any possible excuse for what Officer Chauvin did, or for his colleagues who stood by and watched him do it. One reason I’m bringing up everything I did in the section above is that a massive protest movement based entirely on opposing racism seems to me like the exact wrong way to bring about the kind of reform we need, in part because it fails to recognize that the link from the bare facts of these events to possible racist motives is far less direct than the link to the overpowered nature of American law enforcement.

What is a campaign centered on “Be less racist!” possibly going to accomplish? Yelling at the police to be less racist isn’t going to change the behavior of individual cops who might be subconsciously racist but don’t realize it, many of whom are likely to react with defensiveness (because racism on an abstract level is sufficiently shamed in modern western culture that nobody likes to admit to themselves that they’re being racist). It’s even less likely to change the behavior of individual cops who are maliciously racist. It’s not going to change the policies set in place for law enforcement when, in this day and age, it would be highly illegal and unconstitutional to have explicitly racist policies in the first place. (It can be argued that some of these policies are a part of systemic racism, but then in my opinion the activist movement should focus on attacking those specific policies.)

In fact, I can’t think of any situation, however race-related, where I expect it helps to yell “Be less racist!” except for when (1) you are protesting against a particular law which discriminates against people of a certain (minority) race; or (2) you are denouncing a particular candidate or person in power who has explicitly endorsed racism in public or in private. Both of these scenarios are highly rare in 2020. Maybe there are other neighboring scenarios I’m not thinking of at the moment, but I’m pretty sure our current scenario isn’t one of them.

I imagine that if we set race aside for a moment and focus on police reform, by waiting for background information on the Floyd case to come out and piecing together what led to this injustice and pinpointing which factors led to it, a difference could be made. I’m not saying that this should all be done dispassionately, and in fact acting with passion and emotional force is crucial. And I’m not saying that in the wake of such an obvious murder everyone should just stay quiet until more facts come out. It makes sense to cry out in pain and anger as an immediate reaction, and I’m not going to criticize anyone for doing this, especially someone who feels closer to the tragedy (yes, including through shared racial background) than I do. But letting this get immediately drowned in a rampage against perceived racism and only that, against a system that has shown time and time again that it clearly doesn’t think itself racist at all and perhaps (in at least most of its components) has no deliberate intention of being, doesn’t seem likely to produce anything but further acrimony and polarization.

[TL;DR for these last two sections: it would seem like a more effective response to focus on police brutality and overpowered-ness as the main issue rather than making it all about race.]

III.

I forced myself to watch as much of the video of George Floyd’s final hours and minutes as I could. I didn’t actually succeed in finding the full video, and maybe that’s for the best, because what I did see chilled me to the bone and distressed me more than almost any real-life footage I’ve ever seen. I’m not as eloquent as some at putting my raw emotions in writing and don’t know the words to describe how twisted up it made me feel to “witness” an obvious murder of a man whose greatest “crime” was resisting getting pushed into a police car, and to watch him dying one of the most undignified deaths I can imagine ever being forced on anyone. I felt momentarily physically ill and wanted to cry.

Others in my orbit -- mostly white people; my social bubbles have always been disproportionately white and Asian and certainly nonblack -- have expressed a similar emotional reaction to mine except with the added factor of disgust at the obvious racism present. This was just simply not part of my immediate emotional reaction. On a cognitive level I am aware that there clearly has to be some degree of anti-black racism in law enforcement, even independent of classism and other factors, and that could be of some relevance in any individual case (although it would seem very tricky to assess how much). But this awareness doesn’t have time to kick in when I open a video or news story that’s already been presented to me as “another black man killed by racist cop” which reminds me that this is embedded in a particular media narrative and makes me feel instinctively on guard against letting my perceptions be colored by it.

Black people seeing these apparently all feel on the level of deep, fundamental knowledge that this happened to Floyd because he was black and that it’s a fate they have to constantly fear happening to themselves, or at least that’s what the white people around me are constantly claiming. I feel epistemically helpless when it comes to knowing what the “average” (rather than one of those on the forefront of racial activism) African-American’s take on this is, or how fearful the “average” African-American is of the police on a daily basis as compared to a white person’s, especially prior to the age when videos of police abuse started going viral.

But I’m certain that a significant part of the African-American community is right now in a deep pain that I can’t really imagine, because I don’t quite know how it feels to perceive one horrible tragedy as indicative of something that is done to attack a specific minority that I belong to.

I expect that some of them learn about an incident like this, and an incident like the one with Ahmoud Arbery, and feel on the level of social intuition (I think I’ve sometimes called this “social sense”), developed from a web of personal experiences, that these individual terrible choices clearly had a lot to do with the victims being black. I would be a hypocrite to fault someone for reaching a strong conviction based on this kind of social intuition, because I do it myself all the time -- in fact, I often express such conclusions on this blog. I feel less qualified to rely on this social intuition and my own experience when it comes to race issues, but I invoke it all the time on this blog when I talk about male-female dynamics in order to argue on controversial position on gender relations, for instance, because I do have lifelong ample experience with men and women interacting.

If many black people in America have a deep instinctual feeling for the racial aspect of many of these attacks, then I do acknowledge that a lot of that is probably coming from somewhere other than media narratives. It might come from everyday interactions with police, observing that they are stopped and treated hostilely by the police than their white friends seem to be, or who knows what else. And those voices with their explanations need to be at least listened to. I wish it were easier to hear them through all the tribalistic noise and confusion.

So trying to better understand all this is part of my struggle at the moment. This post might not age well -- I wouldn’t be surprised if I view some of my turns of phrase in this section of it with some embarrassment even sometime in the near future -- but I need to commit myself to trying.

Anyway, I guess all of this is to say that my lengthy arguments above aren’t meant to claim that the instances of police brutality we’ve been seeing aren’t related in some way to racism, but that reflexively framing them in terms of racism seems guaranteed to bring only more pain to an already painful situation.

[arecomicsevengood]

Quarantine Movie-Watching Journal, Continued

Throughout all this quarantine time I’ve been chronicling my watching movies, I’ve also been reading books, but have had assorted troubles on a level that seems close to basic comprehension, or just getting on their wavelength. Part of this is having a certain tendency towards the difficult or avant-garde in terms of what I think is “good,” but also wanting things to make sense or have a certain level of clarity: It’s maybe a difficult balance to strike but I don’t know, plenty of books pull it off, I have plenty of favorites. Nothing I’ve read recently has really been hitting, the only thing I’ve found compulsively readable is Virginie Despentes’ Vernon Subutex series, which I would hesitate to recommend as I also think they’re kind of bad. I want clarity on a certain level, and mystery on a deeper one; a lot of things essentially get the formula backwards, and feel incredibly obvious and free of ideas while employing obfuscatory language. (This isn’t to say I like “straightforward” prose, the “mystery” I’m referring to is basically created as an act of alchemy when language is functioning on its highest level, and insight, mood, imagery, and motion are all generated simultaneously. This isn’t “plain speech” I’m describing, but it doesn’t short-circuit the brain’s ability to make sense of it.)

In watching a lot of older movies I find that one of the things that help them maintain a level of interest is I possess a certain confusion about their cultural context. Even if something is a perfectly straightforward mainstream entertainment, there is still a sense of confusion or mystery about it, where you can follow it perfectly, but don’t necessarily know where it’s coming from, so it’s unclear where it’s going. In contrast, watching modern movies, especially more mainstream things but also, generally speaking, everything, I feel like not only do I know exactly where it’s coming from it’s also aggressively spelling everything out, as if to avoid moral confusion. This is also combined with a certain aggressiveness to the editing, so even as everything too fast-paced on certain level, it also ends up being too long, because it needs to fit in a certain level of redundancy. Older things tend to have a greater degree of storytelling clarity that’s also premised on a higher level of trust in the viewer’s ability to intuit things. Maybe there’s also a greater level of reliance on a set of semiotic devices that we’ve become more critical of over time, but what’s emerged in their absence feels more self-consciously insistent.

Little Women (2019) dir. Greta Gerwig

After watching this I looked up on IMDB to see what Gerwig is up to now and she’s slated to direct a Barbie movie? I hate this era, where success doesn’t lead to any actual clout to make important or interesting work, but instead forces artists into these traps of economic contract where they service a trademark. Also this movie is kind of weird because all these actresses are in their twenties but I think are meant to be playing teenagers for most of it? Or even younger? This movie basically feels like it is meant to be for children but is given this gloss over it to maybe seem appealing to young adult modern feminists but it doesn’t really seem like it would be except to the extent they’re indulging a youthful nostalgia.

Shirley (2020) dir. Josephine Decker

I’ve been wanting to watch Decker’s last movie Madeline’s Madeline because a lady I met and thought was cute has a small role in it. I guess all her movies are about artists and performers? I like that this one seems capable of depicting a fiction writer without just presenting their work as autobiographical but I guess that’s because it’s, you know, a real person whose story is being told. Elisabeth Moss is pretty good as Shirley Jackson. Jackson acts real weird and petulant and destructive and I sort of went in feeling like she would be depicted as a manipulative monster, but watching it I felt like it was probably well-researched and accurate to how she was but not in a way that makes me dislike Shirley Jackson — but also I do like destructive difficult personalities and I think that’s basically a fine and acceptable way for artists, or anyone, to behave. I still don’t think this is really a good movie, Shirley Jackson is not really the lead but more like the only interesting character: She’s got an obnoxious and self-satisfied husband, but the movie is more about this couple that moves in — a woman who’s pretty dull is the focal point, and her husband is boring, and manipulative too, albeit in a very commonplace way. Pretty average.

The Predator (2018) dir. Shane Black

A movie about how people with Asperger’s are the next step in human evolution that nonetheless uses the r-word slur to describe them, filled with some of the most generic actors imaginable. I like Shane Black movies as much as the next guy, but am indifferent to the Predator franchise. Maybe because, despite the R rating, they really do feel like they’re made to sell toys, like so many cartoons of the eighties? I hope the sequel the ending transparently sets up never gets made.

The Lighthouse (2019) dir. Robert Eggers

Wasn’t able to finish The Witch and I stopped and started this one a few times. Tries to avoid accusations that “all these modern horror movies are dumb as shit” by not being a horror movie but it also isn’t really anything else — Not funny enough to be a comedy nor evocative enough to be an art movie. Sort of like High Life in the sense that Robert Pattinson isn’t actually good in it but maybe it’s surprising that a mainstream actor would be in a “weird movie,” but he doesn’t really have to do anything in either, at least as far as building a character goes. It’s underwritten enough he might not even know how to read. Willem Dafoe is ok as a guy doing the sea captain voice from The Simpsons.

The Whistlers (2020) dir. Corneliu Poromboiu

Contemporary crime thing that vaguely reminded me of all the other post-Tarantino crime movies made in the past 25 years that I don’t really remember, particularly the ones in other languages. This one’s got characters learning a whistling language to communicate in a way cops will just thing is birds. Also a semi-complicated plot, told non-linearly. The female lead also pretends to be a prostitute and has sex with a criminal dude so the police watching him with hidden cameras don’t figure out what she’s up to, although, if I understand the plot, I’m pretty sure they work it out anyway.

Pain And Glory (2019) dir. Pedro Almodovar

This one stars Antonio Banderas, is pretty plainly autobiographical, being about a filmmaker approaching the end of his life -- Penelope Cruz plays the mother in flashbacks that are then shown to be a filmed recreation as an autobiographical work is begun, which is the sort of twist that could seem corny but isn’t. The film has a weird/interesting structure, the slow revelation of details from the character’s past forming a narrative a film can be made of eventually but before that there’s this totally separate story involving an actor, heroin use, and an ex-lover. That stuff’s good but also it sort of wraps up halfway through. Like, a bundle of narrative threads culminate, and then the film keeps going, to eventually tie up other bits that seem incidental. Maybe this would be fine in a theater but streamed at home I got a bit anxious. Penelope Cruz made me think “I could watch Vanilla Sky” but it turned out I can’t, it’s unwatchable.

High Heels (1991) dir. Pedro Almodovar

I love Almodovar, my stance has been that there’s a degree of diminishing returns the more of his work you see but it’s been years since I’ve seen one of his movies, and at this point I remember very little of any of them. This one’s on Criterion as part of a collection of films with scores by Ryuichi Sakamoto — Sakamoto’s not my favorite member of Yellow Magic Orchestra but he’s certainly an adept talent, and this one operates differently than I’d expect from him, most of the music feels saxophone-led, sort of in a jazz vein. Obviously you can compose for this instrumentation but yeah, not what I’d expect. The movie itself is pretty solid: bright colors, some melodrama, a ridiculous twist, a sense of humor which feels both over the top and somewhat deadpan. A woman’s mother returns to Spain after close to a lifetime away, she ends up sleeping with the daughter’s husband, he turns up dead, the daughter reveals he killed her stepfather as a child. The movie is primarily about the daughter’s yearning for the approval for an emotionally distant mother, at one point she summarizes the Bergman movie Autumn Sonata for her, but Almodovar is gayer and more sexually perverse than Bergman. so it’s less dour than I’m maybe making it sound. At one point the daughter is wearing a sweater with the pattern of the Maryland flag on it? But the credits reveal all her outfits are by Chanel.

The Handmaid’s Tale (1990) dir. Volker Schlondorff

The score is closer to what I would expect from Sakamoto here, in a martial/industrial vein, though not exclusively. Stars Natasha Richardson, and her performance feels related to what she did in Patty Hearst — a depiction of a woman shutting down parts of herself for the sake of her own survival, displaying inner reserves of strength through the appearance of submission. This seems a lot better than the current Hulu show, although I think it’s largely dismissed? It’s been a while since I read the book so I can’t remember how many liberties it takes. Obviously there remain traces of an exploitation bent in a weird way, through depiction of women in dehumanized sexual contexts but I feel like this movie is good at depicting competition between women in the context of a rigged patriarchal system.

Merry Christmas Mister Lawrence (1983) dir. Nagisa Oshima

Never seen any of Oshima’s films, despite the allure of explicit sex in an artsy context. This has Sakamoto in it opposite David Bowie. There’s a lot of English language being spoken in a thick Japanese accent. David Bowie plays a prisoner of war Sakamoto, as a military officer, falls in love with and tries to keep from harm, his score does the heavy lifting of highlighting these emotions. Was not super-into this movie but it’s always interesting to think about how popular YMO were, and if these are the type of faces you enjoy looking at you can do that. Sakamoto’s got a weird hairline. The movie is fine considered in the context of like, 1980s movies (not my fave decade) that are period military dramas (not my favorite genre) and exist in this Japanese film context that is neither super-insane and exuberant in its style nor is it super-austere and minimal.

A Farewell To Arms (1932) dir. Frank Borzage

Very well-shot piece of romance, starring Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes, in an adaptation of a Ernest Hemingway novel I don’t remember whether or not I read in high school. Hemingway didn’t like it, maybe because there were a lot of changes, which confuses the issue of whether or not I know the source material further. I don’t like this movie as much as I liked History Is Made At Night but it makes a lot more sense as a narrative, easily reduced to a bare-bones plot: He’s in the army, she’s a nurse, people don’t want them to be together during World War I, he ends up deserting to be with her. Feels lush, romantic, dreamy and swooning, but I feel like the strengths are more in the cinematography than the characters — the leads are fine enough, though not super deep, beyond the depths of their love, but the supporting cast is a bit dull.

War Of The Worlds (2005) dir. Steven Spielberg

Feel like I had heard this one was good? I appreciate Tom Cruise in the Mission: Impossible movies, and Spielberg some of the time I guess. This is a blockbuster that feels post-9/11 in a way where I wonder what a post-Corona thing would feel like — feel like it would shy away from away from a lot of spectacle or something but probably I’m wrong about that. So this one focuses on a parent and his children making their way across an increasingly demolished landscape to make it to the other parent, alien monsters are in the way, kinda just seems logistically weird or like the premise of the quest is unsound given the stakes should probably just be survival? But maybe this is post-covid thinking of how such a thing would operate — the disaster picture with a “human element” to focus the narrative on is a decades-old form and one I don’t really get down with nor do I think is generally considered to age well - i.e. I don’t remember growing up with The Towering Inferno being on TV.

My Twentieth Century (1989) dir. Ildiko Enyedi

Weird Hungarian movie where like… angels/stars observe? As two twins are born in the late eighteen-hundreds and go on to have separate lives? One as an anarchist, the other as like a party girl type who seduces rich men. The latter gets more attention than the former. Sort of a fairy tale atmosphere, which makes the explicit sex scenes awkward. There’s also a scene where a guy gives a sexist lecture about how women should be allowed to vote even though they have no sense of logic and are obsessed with sex. He draws a dick on the chalkboard and talks about how women can’t understand beauty since they are obsessed with erections which are disgusting. Not really sure what it adds to the movie as a whole since I’m not sure which one of the two characters played by the same actress is meant to be watching it, but it’s funny. A lot of things are confusing about this movie, but it’s still sort of interesting and therefore worthwhile I guess. Apparently the director has a new movie on Netflix — I don’t have Netflix at the moment but might get it for a month or two in the future to catch up on assorted things like Sion Sono’s The Forest Of Love and the David Lynch content.

His Girl Friday (1940) dir. Howard Hawks

not into this one. Rosalind Russell wears a cool suit at first though. Features the thing where a male romantic lead (Cary Grant) is openly manipulative but it’s sort of viewed as fine and funny because the woman in question is confident and modern, which kinda feels like a fascinating view into the gender dynamics of the time, although I don’t think it works as a comedy as far as me being able to figure out what the jokes are. The journalists getting caught up in crime intrigue plot is cool though, that kind of feels like something that always works.

Lured (1947) dir. Douglas Sirk

Kind of have no idea why I watched all the older Douglas Sirk movies on the Criterion Channel at this point, even the ones I liked I don’t think I liked that much? This one stars Lucille Ball, who I don’t love. Other movies I watched recently that were partly comedies and partly suspense things worked better than this. This one’s about attractive young women disappearing and Lucille Ball getting hired by the police to be an undercover detective. She ends up finding love, but then the man she gets engaged to is framed for murder by the actual killer. Features scenes where the police (led by Charles Coburn, who’s fine in this) talk about how crazy Baudelaire was. Wouldn’t recommend.

Far From Heaven (2002) dir. Todd Haynes

Not sure I have any strong feelings towards Todd Haynes, but it seems likely I might end up watching a bunch of his movies eventually. This came out in high school, and I had no interest in it, but I’m more charitable towards the whole fifties melodrama thing it’s paying homage to now. Julianne Moore stars as a woman whose husband (Dennis Quaid) is gay and repressing himself via alcoholism, who strikes up a friendship with her black gardener, (Dennis Haysbert) which scandalizes her neighbors. The moments Moore and Haysbert spend together are maybe the most interesting - particularly them going to an all-black restaurant - but the aspect of them being watched and judged feels more cliched. Similarly, the stuff about Dennis Quaid’s homosexuality is most interesting as a lived-in thing, and his drinking, hitting his wife, etc., is less so. The veins of sensuality running through the movie are richer than the plot structure that unites them. This might be one of the things that makes Carol a superior movie.

The Violent Men (1955) dir. Rudolph Mate

This stars a bunch of people I don’t like — Glenn Ford, Edward G Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck is fine in other stuff but boring here. Dianne Foster plays her daughter, and that’s the meatiest role basically- she gets to denounce violent men. This is a western about a guy being pressured to sell his land for cheap. Criterion Channel programmed this as part of a series called “western noir” and I don’t know about this stuff. Foster’s character is definitely the most interesting part — her parents are essentially these gangsters running the town, her teen angst feels like it stems from an inherent morality and disgust with them. Stanwyck is cheating on Foster’s father (Robinson) with a guy I think is his brother who also enforces the violence. The mom tries to kill the father, and then is herself killed by a woman in love with the person she’s sleeping with, so the daughter, you would think, would go through a gamut of emotions. But she’s a totally secondary to Glenn Ford’s male lead, who she ends up riding off into the sunset with — he initially was involved in a relationship with a woman who didn’t care about his inherent morality in favor of a materialism, but she just sort of gets dropped from the narrative at a certain point. The movie really tries to play it both ways with regards to the violence, but I feel like that’s pretty common actually: While I feel like today the title might primarily be intended as an indictment, it also feels like at the time it was very much the sales pitch to the audience.

Shane (1953) dir. George Stevens

Classic western, about homesteaders just trying to live who end up needing to get in gunfights with people who want their land. Jean Arthur plays the wife and mother, which is why I sought it out (especially sicne she had established rapport with Stevens) but she’s barely in it. The titular Shane is a good dude who wanders through and ends up helping them out. The kid’s infatuation of Shane is really annoying to me personally. I love how this has two big fist-fights though, the second of which is a They Live style thing, a conflict between friends that becomes incredibly drawn out. The first fight is also just incredibly brutal and well-choreographed, probably the high point of the movie.

Cast A Deadly Spell (1991) dir. Martin Campbell

TV movie made for HBO with very Vertigo Comics energy, I started off thinking “this is dumb” but very quickly got on its side. It’s a riff on HP Lovecraft mythology set in a 1940s Los Angeles where everyone uses magic except for one private detective, whose name is Harry Lovecraft. Pretty PG-rated, some practical effects (not the best kind, more like gargoyle demon creature costumes I assume are made of foam), and a pretty easily foreseeable “twist” ending where the apocalypse is averted because the virgin sacrifice just lost her virginity to a cop. Not actually that clever but clever enough to work and be consistently enjoyable. Julianne Moore plays a nightclub singer. My interest in this is brought about because there’s a sequel (where I guess the deal is the detective does use magic, and no one else does) called Witch Hunt starring Dennis Hopper and directed by Paul Schrader.

Jennifer’s Body (2009) dir. Karyn Kusama

The climax of Cast A Deadly Spell shares a plot point with this, which I think is being reevaluated as a “cult classic” to what I assume is the same audience that valued the Scott Pilgrim movie: People ten years younger than me who think it’s charming when things are completely obnoxious. A lot of musical cues, all mixed at too loud relative to the rest of the audio, bad jokes. This tone does help power the whole nihilistic, I-enjoy-seeing-these-superfluous-characters-die aspect of the plot but the sort of emotional core of the horror is less present. This movie is basically fine, by lowered modern movies standards, but it’s perfectly disposable and not really worth valuing in any way. I watched Kusama’s movie Destroyer starring Nicole Kidman a year ago and don’t remember anything about it now.

Dead Ringers (1988) dir. David Cronenberg

Rewatch. I think for a while I would’ve considered this my favorite Cronenberg but nowadays I might favor eXistenZ? Jeremy Irons in dual roles as twin brothers, with different personalities, but who routinely impersonate each other, and whose lives begin to deteriorate as a relationship with a woman leads to them individuate themselves from each other. They’re gynecologists, and the whole thing is suffused with an air of creepiness. There’s this sense of airlessness to the movie, a sense of panic, which is present incredibly early on and just sort of keeps going, getting weirder and more uncomfortable as you become accustomed to it, that feels like a sure sign of mastery. I’m fascinated to think about how watching it in a crowd, or on a date, would feel. Most movies don’t operate like this.

Imagine The Sound (1981) dir. Ron Mann

Mann is the director of Comic Book Confidential, which I saw as a middle schooler. This is a documentary about free jazz, featuring interviews and performance footage. Paul Bley and Cecil Taylor are both shown playing solo piano, which isn’t my favorite context to hear them in. Bill Dixon and Archie Shepp say some cool stuff, there is some nice trio footage of Shepp with a rhythm section.

Born In Flames (1983) dir. Lizzie Borden

Easily the best movie I watched for the first time in the time period I’m covering in this post. I heard about this years ago but only seeing it now, when it feels super-relevant. It is shot in New York in the eighties, features plenty of documentation of the city as it was, but in the context of the movie, there has been a socialist revolution ten years earlier, and this film then documents the struggle of the women, particularly black women, who are slipping through the cracks, and fighting for the ongoing quest to make a utopia, but exist in opposition to the party in power. While focusing on black women, there’s also plenty of white women, also opposed to and more progre.ssive than the people in power, but that are having their own conversations which are very different. There’s also montage sequences of women performing labor that cut between women wrapping up chicken to close-ups of a condom being rolled onto a erect penis. The title song is by the Red Krayola, circa the Kangaroo? era where Lora Logic provided vocals. So yeah, this movie rules! It would be a good double-feature with The Spook Who Sat By The Door, though in a film school context, or a sociology context, you would need to do a great deal of groundwork first. Could also work as a double-feature with The Falls for how what you are seeing is the aftermath of a great sociological reshaping realized on a low-budget. I think I put off this movie I think because I was skeptical of the director’s self-conscious “artist’s name” but it turns out they got it legally named as a young child.

State Of Siege (1972) dir. Costa-Gavras

Also really good! Better than Born In Flames when considered in terms of its level of craft. Would make for a fine double feature with my beloved Patty Hearst. Tightly structured over the course of a week, leftist terrorists kidnap an American and interrogate him about what exactly he’s doing in their Latin American country that’s being run by death squads. He denies wrong-doing, but basically everything he’s done is already known to them. This exists in parallel to police interrogations of leftists. Pretty large scale, tons of characters, some basically incidental. Screenplay’s written by the guy who wrote Battle Of Algiers.

Olivia (1951) dir. Jacqueline Audry

French movie sort of about lesbian love at an all-girl’s boarding school that’s weird because everyone seems like they’re feeling homosexual love, but just for one instructor who eggs everyone on. Everyone acts weird in this one, basically. There’s a lot of doting. The atmosphere is pretty unfathomable to me. Chaste-seeming in some ways, but also like everyone is being psychologically tortured by being subject to the whims of each other, but also just rolling with it in this deferential way. Seems like it could feel “emotionally true” to a lesbian experience but only in highly, highly specific circumstances?

Lucia (1968) dir. Humberto Solas

Good score in this one, which is not that much like I Am Cuba but I feel obligated to compare them anyway - both are from Cuba and use this three-story anthology structure. All the stories in this movie revolve around different women named Lucia, in three different, historically important, time periods. The first is about a woman who falls in love with a man from Spain, during the time of Cuba’s war of independence, he says he doesn’t think about politics, but this is one lie among several. This ends with brutal sequences of war. The second takes place under the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. The third takes place post-revolution, and is about a literacy coach teaching a woman to read and write under the eye of a domineering chauvinistic husband. As with I Am Cuba, it is the very act of considering these three stories together that brings out their propagandistic aspect, and makes them feel less like individual stories. They’re all beautifully shot, although it’s less in less of a show-offy way than I Am Cuba.

Mr. Klein (1976) dir. Joseph Losey

This one’s got a cool premise- About an art dealer, played by Alain Delon, who is buying art from Jews at low prices as they leave occupied France quickly, but who then starts getting confused for another person with the same name as him, who is Jewish. Gets sort of Kakfa-esque but also remains grounded in this world where there are rational explanations for things. (at least as far as the holocaust is rational) So the line gets walked between bits that feel vaguely verging on nightmare but also sort of maintain the plausible deniability of belonging to the waking world, of a paranoia for something the exact scope of which remains unnamed. Ends with Klein as one of many in a trainyard full of people being sent off to concentration camps, which to me felt sort of tasteless, as a large-scale recreation, but that feels deliberate, as a way of offsetting the scope of the film being primarily focused on one person, whose relationship to the larger horror, before it affected him, was parasitic.

Husbands (1970) dir. John Cassavetes

Not into this one. The semi-improvisatory nature of the dialogue never coalesces into characters that seem to have a real core to them, there’s always just this sort of drunken aggression mode. What even is there to these characters, besides the aggression they treat women with? What separates them from one another, makes them distinct entities, beyond the sense they egg each other on?

Casino (1995) dir. Martin Scorsese

Rewatch. Joe Pesci plays the violent Italian guy, Robert De Niro plays the level-headed Jew, Sharon Stone plays the blonde who gets strung out on drugs. Three hours long to contain everyone’s arcs, but also sort of feels like it neatly has act breaks at pretty close to the hour marks, while also telling this pretty big historical sweeping piece about how corporate control comes to Las Vegas, the notion that “the house always wins” but even the individual whose job it is to run the house is himself situated inside a larger house. Both here and in Raging Bull, De Niro plays a character whose third act involves trying to be an entertainer for reasons of ego, and it’s so weird. Yeah, a great movie, one of the few that the reductive view of Scorsese as “someone who just makes mob movies” applies to, I have no opinion on whether it’s better than Goodfella or not.

Blue Collar (1978) dir. Paul Schrader

Not great. Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, and Yaphet Kotto co-star. Sometimes feels like maybe it’s meant to function partly as a comedy but doesn’t. It’s also mostly a crime movie, about people working at an auto plant who decide to rob their union’s vault. They end up not making any money from that robbery, but the union can claim insurance funds, so they get to benefit while the working men continue to be shafted, worried about the consequences of what they’ve done. Kotto dies, and Pryor and Keitel are turned against each other by circumstance, which the film tries to play off as being about the divisions among people that keep the working class weak. I definitely feel like the Schrader oeuvre begins with Hardcore.

Mona Lisa (1986) dir. Neil Jordan

This ends up kind of feeling like a lesser version of Hardcore, with British accents. Bob Hoskins, out of jail, starts driving for a prostitute, they dislike each other at first,  but become friendly. She asks him to track down a younger girl she was friends with, who a pimp has gotten strung out on drugs. (Hoskins is also a father to a daughter, though his relationship with the mother is strained from having gone to prison.) Hoskins’ character isn’t that interesting and the film revolves around him, the female lead is more interesting but deliberately removed from the larger narrative. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good Neil Jordan movie.

The Untouchables (1987) dir. Brian De Palma

Rewatch. Great Ennio Morricone score in this one, a real reminder of a different era in terms of what constituted a blockbuster or a prestige picture. David Mamet provides the screenplay. De Palma is pretty reined-in, while Mission: Impossible is an insane procession of sequences of top-notch visual storytelling, the most De Palma trademark thing here is a first-person perspective of a home invasion scene, watching Sean Connery, that ends up being a deliberate choice of a limited perspective to surprise as he gets lured to his death. I feel like there’s a straight line between this movie and Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (1990), but obviously what that line runs through is the reality-rewriting effect of Tim Burton’s Batman.

Pulp Fiction (1994) dir. Quentin Tarantino

Rewatch. Can scarcely comprehend how it would’ve felt to see this in a theater when it came out. I watched it the first time in college on a laptop and headphones and it blew me away, even after years of a bunch of it being referenced on The Simpsons and everywhere else. I haven’t seen it since. Rewatching is this exercise in seeing what you don’t remember when everything’s been processed a million times. Feels like Tarantino’s best screenplay due to its construction, more so than any dialogue, which is obviously a little in love with itself. Samuel Jackson wears a Krazy Kat t-shirt after his suit gets covered in blood. Quentin Tarantino casts himself as the white guy who gets to say the n-word a bunch.

[letterstothemidnightsociety]

It’s week three of my Global-Pandemic-Induced decision to rewatch all of Supernatural, and so I’m still attempting to make this watch more productive than the last show that I binged.

So I’m on disc two now - that’s episodes 5 - 8 for those of you watching on Netflix. By the time we get to this disc, we know the basic formula for Supernatural as a series - Two Hunks + Fighting Evil to the Power of Acceptable Levels of Gore x Missing Dad = Ratings Gold. Or at the very least, good enough ratings that we’ll give you a season (or fourteen). And then...well...then.

Episode five is “Bloody Mary”, easily the scariest episode of this first season and, based on the nose dive that the formula takes after season 1, probably the entire series. Maybe it’s that the Bloody Mary legend was one that really got me as a kid, maybe it’s just that I don’t do so hot with ghosts, but guys this episode still made me turn on all the lights and avoid all my mirrors. I accidentally turned this episode on at 9pm and regretted it immediately. I walked away at one point to go clean my kitchen to strategically miss some of the spookier points and I walked back in during an even spookier point. I was mad that there were no commercials at the commercial break cut-to-black! The first time I watched this episode, I’m pretty sure I watched it through my fingers. This most recent viewing, I ALSO watched it through my fingers. Guys, THIS EPISODE. 

I will say it a-hecking-gain: This episode scared the SHIT out of me.

AND THEN, THEN! Then this show has the gall to go ahead and drop a major season/character plot point right there in the middle of all this content that I am actively trying not to look at: SURPRISE! Sam has premonition powers and sorta kinda knew that his girlfriend was gonna die a terrible death weeks before she dies. Because sure, why not? 

Ohmiglob the DRAMA.

I’m gonna take a moment to say that, yes, technically this piece of plot gets dropped within our first six episodes, so we can still safely say that, you know, they’re still setting up the story for the rest of the series. It’s not like a sudden twist they drop half way through the season, it’s being laid down as ground work. And I know that this turns out to be a MAJOR issue for the next four seasons at least, but can I just say: Kripke, you’re really throwing a lot at us. I mean, OK. here’s what we’ve got - 

The Winchester’s lost their mom at a young age to some evil thing. Cool, got it.

THEN they have daddy issues with C-minus Single Dad John Winchester. Alright, that seems logical. 

The brothers hunt bad guys looking for the thing that killed their mom. Ok still on board. 

There’s family drama, relatable. 

Dad’s gone missing and we gotta find, ok ok ok. 

Also Sam’s girlfriend dies in a fire, alright, so we’re looking for that thing now too. 

OH! And now Sam has magic powers. 

I mean, it’s a lot, right? We got a lot of layers here. That’s all I’m sayin.

So “Bloody Mary”, right? Big episode, big bad guy, they kinda loophole their way into defeating her but I’m not mad. Big reveal at the end, so kind of an important lore episode. And then...well...then we get the following episodes:

“Skinwalker” - gross-out fx, establishes Dean as a lonely asshole with a lot of APB’s out on him

“The Hook Man” - takes the Urban Legend angle of the show and dials it up to 11

“Bugs” - Does what it says on the tin.

Now to be fair: all three of these episodes have at least ONE shining moment that reveals a little more about the characters we’re working with, and that character development plays out in important ways in the rest of the season/series. But all three of them are arguably---

FILLER EPISODES-ODES-ODES-ODESSssssssss. 

Alright, maybe that’s unkind. Maybe we should call them standalones or self-contained. A Filler is an episode designed to “fill out” your season. It doesn’t necessarily move the overarching story of the season forward, although it may contain some concepts or revelations that are important later. I’d argue that Supernatural has only ever had two kinds of episodes - Series Arc and Filler. Not that that’s a bad thing -  I like a filler episode now and again. Depending on how heavy your season gets (and by all accounts Supernatural gets pretty heavy), they can be a nice breath of fresh air - also known as a Breather Episode. Or they can be just for fun. I’mma reference “Once More with Feeling” again because sure, why not throw in a musical episode in season 6 of a show about vampire slaying, that’s fine. I wanna reference something from Community here too, but honestly anything after season 2 could probably be called filler or self contained, so who even knows. I’ll point at the Voltron episode where they spend a day in the mall to gather some unobtainium for the ship and wacky shenanigans ensue. Point being, they can be times to break the mold and experiment and have fun with what you’re writing. Or they can be ridiculous nonsense. Mileage may vary. 

The crazy thing about these episodes is that they most closely resemble what Kripke intended the show to be in the first place. Kripke wanted a show that revolved around characters investigating American urban legends. What is more quintessentially urban legend than Bloody Mary, the Hook Man and curses from ancient Native American burial grounds? These were stories that I as the viewer was already sort of familiar with because I’d heard of all of them before. What I appreciated, specifically about the Bloody Mary episode, was that they a) acknowledge the fact that these are Urban Legends (capital letters and all) and then b) acknowledge that the legends vary wildly so a part of their job is figuring out what is true and what is rumor. I guess you could also call that a cop out but when I was a kid, I was told that Bloody Mary was the ghost of Queen Mary of England who was sister to Elizabeth I and was also violently anti-protestant. WHERE did I get this story? I have no idea. But I also have no idea where Sam got the “mutilated bride” story from either. 

In an old article I found circa season 2, Kripke actually talks about preferring standalone content to mythology/lore episodes in television. Both as a creator and as a viewer, he wants a show where people can jump in at any time and “join the party” wherever they are. That’s the beauty of procedurals - you don’t need to start from the beginning to enjoy them.

But what really got me personally hooked on the show was the mythology, was the season long arc to find John Winchester and whatever killed their mom. Those mythos episodes were where the meat of the show was for me - it usually involved a lot of feelings and a lot of character development which is still mostly my jam. If I’m obsessively watching a show, it’s because I’m connected to the characters and watching them struggle through the challenges in their path, not because I want to see what monster they kill next. 

And again, I’ll reiterate that each of these episodes contains an important nugget of character. In “Bloody Mary”, easily the least likely to be called Filler, we find out that Sam has weird magic powers that are the real source of his guilt over Jessica’s death. 

In “Skin”, we find out a lot about Dean’s inner landscape from the DopppleDeaner, who reveals that Dean is probably most afraid of people leaving him (be still my 19-year-old heart). 

Wasn’t mad about this bit...

Coulda done without this bit tho...

In “Hookman”...alright, you kinda got me on “Hookman”, but we do get the first appearance of the rocksalt shotgun and Sam talks with a girl about her dad issues which is really Sam talking about his own dad issues in the language of tv shows. Also, he maybe starts to move on from Jessica???? It’s unclear, and also a little weird but I guess he’s only 22 and that’s not that far off from 18/19. 

Really, WB?? Sneaking into sorority houses?

And then in “Bugs”, yes, even in “Bugs”, we get juicy little bit of tension between the brothers as they advise some teen boy about family dynamics. The fight shows a lot about what each character feels about their own experiences growing up the way they did, how they manage the expectations from their own father, and how they believe those family dynamics should exist. I mean I guess you could also argue this is the episode that plants the seed for Wincest, but I don’t really want to go there, let’s not talk about it.

This kid’s like, “This is...not a conversation about me and MY dad, is it?”

So they could be worse. I mean the last two definitely aren’t great, and we’ll see how they measure up to the Monster Truck episode later in the season, but they’re not bad episodes. 

So let’s flash forward to Now again - have we seen the end of Filler Episodes?

As I have mentioned in previous posts and will probably continue mentioning in future posts, the 22 episode season is not the norm anymore. A lot of articles I’ve read point to Breaking Bad as the first American show to really break that mold. Breaking Bad released only 7 episodes in it’s first season in 2007. When you’ve cut your story down that much, there’s no room for filler - you’re basically producing a 7 hour movie. 

Now notice I said American TV show. I’m pretty sure for most of the rest of the world, 22 episodes is way outside the norm, but really I can only speak to UK TV. Seasons in the UK do not last as long as seasons in America. Doctor Who, one of, if not the, longest running show on BBC, aired its first season with 42 episodes, which is mind boggling. But since the series revived in 2005, it hasn’t had more than 13 episodes in a season. Spooks/MI5 never had more than 10 episodes. The IT Crowd only aired 6 episodes per season. Broadchurch had only 8. And because I must complete the Superwholock trifecta, Sherlock seasons were only 3 episodes a piece. These are the shows that spring to mind while I’m writing this, but you get the idea.

So why does American broadcast TV have such long seasons? Well, the answer is: moneymoneymoney.

We live in an age of “prestige” TV. Some throw around “Golden Era”, but there’s been like, a Golden Era of television every 10 years since tv’s became household commodities, so that phrase basically means nothing. TV today is more similar to long-form film making than it was a decade ago. We associate terms like “film” with other terms like “art”, and sometimes we forget that television is, and always was, a business. It’s a business that’s making a lot of money entertaining you for hours on end, but a business nonetheless. I’d argue that it doesn’t mean it’s not art, but I don’t think we can separate the art and entertainment value of tv from its actual monetary value. 

Strategically, the 22-episode season was to get a show to a magical number of total episodes - 100. Once you hit the 100th episode, somewhere around season 5 (thanks math), then you can sell the show in syndicated reruns. This is also referred to as second-run syndication or off-network syndication. When a show is syndicated, that means the production company that produces the show can now sell the right to air episodes to other channels. Think channels like TBS or TNT or even USA Network - they don’t really dabble in producing their own content, they just repackage content from other networks to plug in to empty slots in their programming. And because these channels can air episodes 5 days a week, 365 days a year, that means the production company can actually make more money by selling the show in syndication than when they sold the show to the primary network. The more episodes you have in a season, the faster you get to syndication, and sometimes that means a show that’s on the brink of cancellation due to poor numbers may still get greenlit for another season or two if they’re closer to that magic 100th episode. For a show like Supernatural, that has a very procedural, not-super-heavy-mythos, structure, you can do very well in syndication. Just cuz another network agreed to air your show doesn’t mean they agreed to air it in order, so procedurals work better in syndication than your season-arc shows do. And that’s why we have episodes like Bugs, that have nothing to do with the overarching plot of the season and also phone in some questionable CGI. 

Apparently they DID use real bugs to shoot this scene and everyone got bit to hell but the bugs didn’t show up good and they went with CG anyway?!?

But these days, you don’t have to hit 100 episodes. Sometimes only 80 episodes will do. Sometimes, you run a streaming site and you don’t have to worry about reruns at all because your revenue isn’t generated from air time or even ads, but from subscription prices. Honestly, when you think of it that way, it makes way more sense to greenlight shorter seasons so that you have the budget to buy more and more diverse shows that will appeal to a broader audience of viewers. 

So if Supernatural was produced today, would we get these off-shoot, self-contained episodes that have little to do with the plot of finding Sam and Dean’s dad? It’s hard to say. Knowing what I do about Kripke’s original plans for the show and his thoughts on procedural standalone episodes in general, its possible that he’d still try for a traditional season aired on a traditional TV network. But in that same interview I quoted above, he also mentions that the only way to get into a show with a heavy mythos is to buy the DVDs. We don’t need DVDs anymore - we have Netflix. And Hulu and Prime and any number of other streaming services that pick up any show they can get just to have a larger library of content and attract new viewers. I think a good indicator of what Supernatural would look like if it aired today is Hulu’s Helstrom - a show about two siblings with a childhood marked by strange and terrible happenings, who spend the season trying to defeat an evil demon. This show is a Hulu original that dropped all 10 episodes on October 16, 2020, and damn if that doesn’t sound familiar. I told a friend, “it’s like Supernatural but more emotions.” (Her response was, MORE emotions?!?!?) And before you dive down the rabbit hole, the characters in Helstrom made their debut in a Marvel comic back in the 70’s, so you can just chalk it up to nothing new under the sun. 

Big Mood, guys. Big Mood.

I’ll close this one by reiterating I don’t mind a filler episode. Some fillers can be weird and great and wonderful. I’d say “Tales of Ba Sing Se” (Avatar the Last Air Bender, Season 2)  is a great example - with the possible exception of Appa, the vignettes presented in “Tales” are basically side quests that have nothing to do with the main quest of season 2 and only serve to develop characters. The stories are sweet and touching and also light and fun.

I’m not crying, YOU’RE crying! It’s ok, I’m also crying. 

 And the longer a show runs, the more likely you are to run into these fillers - episodes that take a break from the main action to bring something that’s new and out of the box and possibly/probably writers getting bored with the every-day formula of the show. I think season 1 of Supernatural does a decent job of balancing the two styles of episode so that neither gets boring. In fact, I’m pretty Supernatural was what taught me the difference between the two episode styles in the first place. And the first time around, I was hyped for those season arc episodes, because back in the late 2000’s, I hadn’t seen a lot of TV content like that. Now, 15 years on and mired in a sea of seasons that stick mainly to a season arc story with little to no room for breathing, I think that if all TV became nothing but season arc episodes...well, it’d get pretty boring. 

[vios-rockland-corner]

Rockland: Zeitgeist pre-release thoughts PT 12

The date of this post is 8/3/19.  Please note that information revealed at this time via Patreon or any of the creator’s blogs may be subject to change after this date.

This post is following the heels of my last post concerning a spoiler of some of Rodchester’s notes on a couple of other characters.  One of the names that popped up was Cain, which made me have a minor/major revelation.

(Possible spoilers below for BTD2)

I’m a little torn right now about how much context I should be giving when it comes to spoilers.  Especially when they’re locked to some.  On one hand, the spoilers are meant to be a privilege/bonus for some.  On the other hand...I really want to explain how I come to my conclusions sometimes.

To the creators:  You know you can yell at me anytime I overstep right?  I just want to make that clear.

That being said, I want to give a teeny tiny bit of context.  Following my last post, Rodchester had some notes he’d written.  It was a list of names.  It was clear it was regarding an event.  More importantly, it gives me the impression that Rodchester was writing this list out of a sort of obligation.  Like for an office party or event...or holiday~.  

Let me try to break this down:  Rodchester works with Damien.  Damien is one of the archangels (or an angel of some sort).  The archangels operate in the Rockland universe.  By Rodchester’s connection to Damien, he may sometimes have to meet and/or work with some of the other archangels.

There were some other names on the list I either didn’t recognize or knew weren’t archangels, but for the meantime I’m not going to get into that here.  I’m just going in with the assumption these are people Rodchester has come to know via his association with Damien and his work.

Now getting back on topic, CAIN is on the list.  At first one would go, “Well yeah it’s his game, so he’s in it.  What’s the problem?”  But to me I’m going, “WHY is Cain on the list?”

Yes, Cain is a fallen angel.  He is associated with these other characters that were listed.  He is also Damien’s half-brother.  It’s not surprising Rodchester knows about him then.  But there’s a few reasons why this is weird.

- Cain has never been depicted as a nice person.  What’s more, Cain has never been depicted having a good relationship with Damien.

- BTD2 Cain was a fugitive.  He originally was being punished/tortured in hell for his sin, and only taken out to act as a torturer himself when it was requested.  He had recently (the time frame is unknown) escaped though.

Okay, so the first point can be explained away why Rodchester would need to think about Cain because Rodchester seems to be filling some sort of obligation here (towards co-workers for an event or holiday).  Otherwise, I kind of doubt he would want to show any form of kindness to someone who is more or less Damien’s (his superior’s) enemy.

I’m much more concerned with the second reason because why would Rodchester need to consider Cain at all if he was a wanted fugitive among the archangels at the moment?

One other small spoiler I will give only because I can’t ignore it, is Cain’s name is crossed out and has a check next to it.  I won’t tell you what Rodchester wrote though (it doesn’t help give much context anyway).

This now tips me off to a couple of possibilities:

1) Cain has just INCREDIBLY recently escaped from the other archangels.

2) Cain works regularly with the other archangels.  

3) Cain has gone missing recently.

Let me to go through each of these points, because it probably doesn’t sound like I’m stating anything different from what I said before.

For number 1, this still follows the same story that BTD2 Cain was in, but why would Rodchester still need to have worried about concerning himself with essentially a prisoner of hell?  Yes I did say in the BTD verse that Cain would sometimes get utilized as a torturer, but I still doubt you’re expected to do any favors for one of the first murderers in the universe.  See what I mean?

However, if I consider the possibility of number 2, things start to make a little more sense.  To be perfectly honest, the archangels created by Runawayoutlaw aren’t always depicted as well... “angels.”  Some of them are incredibly questionable characters.  So much to the point that I would sometimes wonder why Cain would not be considered on par with them in terms of power and mentality.  It used to be that Michael Volkov (archangel of war/chaos) wasn’t such a nice character in general either.  But he was never depicted as a criminal either.  My guess is the archangels I suppose you could think of them as akin to greek gods.  Basically, the greek gods were in charge of things, did what they wanted, but weren’t always the nicest individuals.

So this just leads to the possibility that Cain is just a regular member of the fold, not the guy always in time-out.  I could see that because of his sin, he was turned into a fallen angel to work for hell the rest of his existence.  But because he was also one of the first humans, he’s a special case where he doesn’t have to be locked in a cage all the time.  I’d be interesting if the Rockland universe ever decided to introduce a set of angels opposite to the ones more closely related to hell as a comparison.  Not sure that will ever happen.  I’m horrible at world-building myself, so I don’t know if I’d even be very good at separating the two parties like that.

Getting back on topic, if Cain is “a regular full-timer” of the archangels so to speak, that makes much more sense why Rodchester would have to think about him and/or be in contact with him.  For work basically.  That sounds incredibly unfortunate by the way, haha.  I may put this on my “guess” list.  This is the point I’m leaning towards the most.  I don’t know if it contrasts with my guess that “Cain will still be a sadistic villain” though.  Like I said, the angels aren’t always pure, and he may just be a more complex character.  I’ll have to think about that.

Number 3 is in conjunction with number 2 actually.  It’s a possibility, but not necessarily the case.  I did say Rodchester had the name crossed out, so this means one of two things.  

a) Rodchester already knows what he wants to do with Cain OR

b) Cain has not been coming to work recently, so Rodchester doesn’t have to worry about it.

Again, number 3 may or may not be the case.  I just like putting down whatever thoughts come to mind when I have the chance.

Now for the big thing:  If Cain is a full-time member of the archangels’ group, is this going to change Zeitgeist’s story?

You know at first I was going to say, “No,” since the MC was probably going to be with Cain most of the game.  And Cain was going to be...well Cain, haha.  He’d probably disregard the concerns the MC has and just do what he wants.  He probably also doesn’t care TOO much about what others think of him.

However, if Cain is more closely associated with the other characters on a normal basis, this new development may provide more opportunities to have interactions and/or interventions from other characters.

This also still makes me think: Is Rockland Cain plotting anything?  That would be interesting if Zeitgeist is the MC getting to see Cain start to really defy the others and plan to cause some chaos of his own.  Poor MC is just along for the ride I guess.

I do apologize for the length of this post.  It probably went a little off the rails, but that’s kind of what happens when you write as you think.  I’m excited though because if some of these changes are true, it’ll help separate BTD Cain from Rockland Cain a lot more.  It changes the story a lot.

[celestius]

Moby Dick

Moby Dick has always been my white whale. Ha ha, Martin, excellent joke, no one has ever thought of that one before!

Let me start again.

Moby Dick has been lying in my bookcase for years. I vaguely remember starting it once or twice (weirdly, I seem to recall a passage at the beginning that is most definitely NOT in the book, so I have no idea where I remember it from) but I never got far enough to commit and always started reading something else. This time, I decided to get through it no matter what. Although genre-wise I mostly prefer sci-fi or fantasy, and haven´t really read much of what could be considered "classic" literature (with the exception of maybe Brothers Karamazov) since I finished college, I´ve been on somewhat of a classic streak recently - basically in a row I (re)read the Heart of Darkness, Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World.

I was prepared (mainly due to a quick reddit research along the lines of "Is Moby Dick a good read?" :)) for a lot of digressions and non sequiturs. I was expecting something like the Cryptonomicon, in which Neil Stephenson often abandons the main narrative in favor of either philosophical ponderings or treatises on the nature of various technologies; what awaited me, however, was an unpleasant surprise. While Stephenson´s digressions always covered topics that were actually interesting in themselves, I couldn´t care less about the nature of a whale´s tail or five pages on a random harpoon throwing method. The story was barely all that interesting in itself, but now I was expected to read about topics that I didn´t care about at all - NAY! - that essentially no one could care about at all?

I was about one third through the book when I was simultaneously struck by the beauty of the language (which I must have been somehow "blocking out" prior to this moment in favor of following the essentially non-existent narrative) and more importantly -  by the way Melville perceived the world. I remember the moment precisely - it was when Melville was describing a completely uninteresting water canal in the US. I was completely awestruck by how much meaning he invested in it, and by the extent to which his mind was able to turn this canal in its mental grasp over and over again, draining much more content from it than I ever would have thought possible.

After this moment, I started noticing these passages more and more often, and I couldn´t stop thinking about how marvelous it must have been to see the world through Melville´s eyes, how incredibly deep and meaningful his experience of life must have been - to look at the most mundane things and ponder to such extent on what they mean and what they symbolize, how much meaning can be projected on them and how much they say about the world...

The very mediocrity of the subjects he focused his mind on seemed to exhibit even more how marvelously his mind must have worked, and more importantly - how marvelous anyone´s mind could be when "taught" to project the sublime onto the most ordinary things. Indeed, I am almost tempted to say that Melville chose such mundane topics precisely to show that there is no limit to meaning in this world (although realistically, he probably did think whaling was that interesting :))

One of the most interesting opinions that I ran across in online discussions regarding Moby Dick was that rather than being a book full of metaphors, it is in itself a contemplation on the nature of metaphor and symbolism, and that it teaches one to read - both literature as such due to its demanding style, as well as read the world in general, to venture beyond the simple appearance of things and be able to see the nature of existence in all its iterations, even the most mundane.

Getting through the book proved much less tedious when I abandoned the idea of reading it as prose, and started thinking of it as poetry. There is no rush with Moby Dick. Most chapters are barely related in more than a very general sense, and can therefore be read separately. With some books, spreading out the reading time too much decreases immersion or might lead to one forgetting the story, but since the "actual" events of Moby Dick can be summed up in one paragraph, there´s very little that needs to be remembered in order to enjoy it.  Furthermore, reading the book slowly, in small chunks, seemed to me to reinforce the feeling of timelessness present in the narrative itself. Much like the Pequod´s crew, I was sailing through its pages at a leisurely pace, only speeding up together with the men when a whale was sighted.

Most classic books are in many ways tied to their time, and loose much of their flavor (at least for me) by the time they get to our 21st century hands. It speaks volumes of Melville´s literary prowess then that his work could be enjoyed so immensely even today, without any concessions to its long winded lineage.

"And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy."

"How can a prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But it is enough. He tasks me, he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.

I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom and round perdition's flames before I give him up."

[mmwm]

Welcome to day 4 of 31 Days of Apocalypse, Now, a month of posts about apocalypse, revelation, uncovering what’s been hidden. Each post will look at these ideas from its own vantage point, which may not obviously connect with the others, and which may only peripherally seem related. I won’t attempt to tie the posts together. They’ll all be listed here, as they are posted.

__________________________________________________________________

Sometimes a post just falls into your lap.

In 2012, I planted a few standard (pink) swamp milkweeds (Asclepias incarnata)  in the fruit guild, and in 2014 I planted several more of them in the side yard, as well as a white variety, “Ice Ballet.” In 2016, I planted common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) in the side yard and it’s since almost taken over that garden and planted itself in the vegetable garden, the back border, the fruit guild, and the front yard.

I’ve loved seeing (and have posted multiple times about) the great golden digger and great black wasps on the A. incarnata, and the milkweed tussock moth caterpillars, the oleander aphids, milkweed bugs and milkweed beetles, (invasive) Asian ladybugs, hummingbirds, fritillaries, swallowtails, and even a few monarchs on all these plants.

I even saw a few monarch caterpillars on the A. incarnata in 2012 But until this year, I had never noticed a chrysalis, though surely there were some. Then suddenly, this summer*, caterpillars galore, on both kinds of asclepias, and I have posted a few times about the caterpillars, the chrysalises, and the emerged butterflies, both the seemingly successful emergences and those that weren’t.

Then today! Almost one month after I noticed a chrysalis on the perovskia in the vegetable garden (near a stand of pink A. incarnata),

7 Sept.

and two weeks after I took a photo of what looked like a hole in the chrysalis, which made me think it wasn’t viable,

20 Sept.

I walked out today — the warmest day in over a week (71F), and the first dry morning after recent rains — and what to my wondering eyes should appear?

 You can see the cream-coloured chrysalis below and to the left of the monarch.

I am gobsmacked that this monarch spent at least 28 days in the chrysalis, probably more like 30 days; the norm is 10-14 days, though weather can affect the timing. I had all but given up hope. Just this morning, I’d brought to mind the fact that no one on social media had asked for a progress report on the chrysalises, and I was feeling just as glad, since all those that remained seemed to have died — though I’m not sure that’s the right way to think of them: On the one hand, a live caterpillar went in and a live butterfly could emerge; but on the other hand, what’s in the chrysalis is basically goo with DNA, more like potential life than actual life. In any case, I had been spared having to bring the bad news of the remaining chrysalises to butterfly-lover friends.

And then, just when I had formally given up on any more butterflies emerging, this butterfly comes out of hiding, uncovers herself as it were, and reveals herself to be alive and vibrant.

I took another photo a few hours later; she’s spreading her wings on the weeds in the vegetable garden. The wings look good!

Close by, three other monarchs feasted on asters.

  I hope she finds her tribe and heads to Mexico soon.

*

You know how they talk about “the reveal” these days? Expectant parents have parties that include “the reveal” — disclosing the gender of the baby with pink or blue balloons, pink or blue cupcakes, scratch cards, pink or blue water through a fire hose, etc.. Home makeover shows like “Fixer Upper” — and in the olden days, first broadcast 18 years ago!, “Trading Spaces” — feature “the reveal” to display the redesigned room or house. Men and women model various flattering (but not always?) outfits on personal makeover shows like “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and “What Not To Wear.”  You don’t have to look far to find hype around the concept of revealing something, even when it’s not all that startling (I mean, it’s either a girl or a boy, the same two options as forever); just the fact that something that was heretofore hidden — not known or disclosed or displayed — will now be announced, uncovered, or shown, makes “the reveal” appealing.  Most of us are curious and we like the suspense that leads to discovery of something new.

For me, this monarch butterfly’s emergence from her chrysalis was the big reveal: an apocalypse of beauty, life, vitality, and hope when all hope seems to have died.

_________________________________

*I had to look up “Suddenly, Last Summer” — the 1958 Tennessee Williams play, the 1959 movie adaptation with Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Montgomery Cliff; and the 1983 The Motels song of the same name. Now I gotta see the movie.

  31 Days: Apocalypse, Now ~ Day 4 :: The Reveal Welcome to day 4 of 31 Days of Apocalypse, Now, a month of posts about apocalypse, revelation, uncovering what's been hidden.

[journeysintowebcomics]

Worm Liveblog #65

UPDATE 65: Breaking Down

It has been a while! Here I thought an internship would be a somewhat lighter workload than my usual work, but it has me even busier. Not what I expected. Anyway, here’s today’s update.

Last time Crawler tried to reach Noelle in the depths of Coil’s base, and Cherish went to tell his brother he’s screwed. There’s one last Slaughterhouse Nine member to appear, it’s Bonesaw’s turn. Let’s start.

Amy, as in Amy Dallon, as in Panacea. That’s the person this interlude is focusing on. Either whoever Bonesaw’s aiming for is someone Panacea knows – in that case Glory Girl seems a likely option – or it’s Panacea herself. Interesting choices, anyway. From the two I think Panacea is more likely to be tempted to join, maybe out of frustration of always having to be the good Samaritan due to her powers, since it was already shown she’s under emotional stress because of that. Not a guarantee, though, because Panacea also seems to have a very clear-cut opinion of what’s right and wrong. That’s likely to deter her from even thinking of joining that group.

The scene opens with Panacea reading a letter. She found it on her mother’s bedside table, and due to the header and logo she saw, she took it to read. Also!

Carol had probably been reading it to him late the previous night, and maybe forgot to put it away due to a mixture of exhaustion and the distractions that came with waking up each morning to a disabled husband and a ten-year career in jeopardy.

Oh, right, I think I remember something like that. I remember her husband had suffered quite the injury during the Leviathan attack. It was related to his spine, if I recall correctly. Or maybe I’m getting confused and what I remember was about a person dying from a broken back. I see why this woman’s hero career is on the verge of meeting its end. It’s a good thing she has a good reputation, judging by how the letter is offering her a job.

The letter itself is much more important, though.

Marquis, interred in the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center, confided to another inmate that he fears for his daughter’s life.  I have checked the facts to the best of my ability, and the details I have been able to dig up match with his story.  I must warn you that Allfather may have arranged for Amy Dallon to be murdered at some future date, in revenge for his own daughter’s death at Marquis’ hands.

Honestly it took me an embarrassingly long time to remember Panacea doesn’t know who her father was – a total of three paragraphs. How could I forget such a basic fact? True, Panacea is a side character, but still...anyway, that Marquis man is Panacea’s father, and she had suspected it. Maybe. There’s good reason for them to fear Panacea may be attacked and killed, knowing what I know about Allfather, he has the resources and people to try to kill her.

What a time for a Slaughterhouse Nine member to appear, Panacea is clearly upset about what she just found out, therefore she’s vulnerable emotionally. With some luck she won’t make a decision she’ll regret.

Back when Brockton Bay was a hotspot for villains, Marquis was rather well-known, to the point now in the present he’s still someone people talk about. He was an osteokinetic, meaning he can manipulate bone and wow, that sounds like a painful thing to do to yourself. I hope his power included his nerves not registering any sensations from his own bones being manipulated. Now he’s in the Birdcage, and Panacea just found out about his existence. Something that’s bothering her is that it’s said Marquis was a rather callous person, and she’s afraid she’s being the same because she isn’t feeling anything towards the people she heals, she’s apathetic about that now.

Personally I think the fact she’s aware of it means she’s unlikely to ever be as ‘heartless and cold’ as Marquis was. Awareness really helps to avoid such things.

Yeah, it seems Panacea suspected something was off and that Marquis may have been her father, but it seems to be everything she had was circumstantial. This here is the solid proof she needed to know for sure. Not that she’s happy to know. She’s so unhappy and shaken by the revelation, and it doesn’t help that Brandish enters and looks at her accusatorily. There’s drama, hm.

Former hero Flashbang is...well, technically he’s not paralyzed. He’s amnesic to the point he forgot everything he could do, even the simplest actions. Oh, wow, that’s serious damage. Guess I was wrong about it being his spine.

It was technically amnesia, but it wasn’t the kind that afflicted someone in the movies and TV.  What Mark had lost were the skills he’d learned over the course of his life. He’d lost the ability to walk, to speak full sentences, hold a pen and drive a car.  He’d lost more – almost everything that let him function.

Okay, I’m not an expert in amnesia and I don’t really have time to look what it’s about, so I may be wrong: generalized amnesia – the type you see often in movies and TV – means that you lose your memories and sometimes identity, but everything you know how to do, your skills, your common sense, it all stays. For him to have forgotten so much, well, it must be very extensive damage to his brain. Dang, poor guy...

Glory Girl is the same way than Brandish: being rather cold towards Panacea. Okay, something really did happen, and I don’t think it’s related to the letter. Usually that letter would make a person worry about them, not ostracize them. Maybe...

...

Amy felt her pulse pounding as she looked at Mark.  Made herself sit on the couch next to him.  Does he blame me?

Maybe the reason why they’re blaming Panacea is because she can’t do anything to heal Mark. She doesn’t want to touch anything related to the brain, and since he has amnesia, that’d fall under that category. They have a competent healer who routinely goes around healing parahumans and patients at hospitals, yet in the very same house she lives in there’s someone she can’t help. It’d be ironic if it wasn’t so freaking sad.

Amy had learned a few years ago, overhearing a conversation between Carol and Aunt Sarah, that Carol had initially refused to take her in.  Her adoptive mother had only accepted in the end because she’d had a job and Aunt Sarah didn’t.  One kid to Aunt Sarah’s two.  When she’d taken Amy in, it hadn’t been out of love or caring, but grudging obligation and a sense of duty.

...wow. That really ruins the image I had of this family. I knew Glory Girl was a rather zealous hero, and that Panacea had a load of trouble and personal drama, but I had the impression they generally were a well-adjusted family. I’d have never imagined there was this kind of tension among them. Mark tried to be supportive and be a father, but his clinical depression didn’t help. Victoria was the only one who received Panacea well, and now she’s being distant too. Things sure took a turn for the worse for Panacea. Honestly, the more I read, the more I fear she really would be interested in joining the Slaughterhouse Nine.

Victoria was appalled, seething with anger, brimming with resentment, because Amy couldn’t, wouldn’t, heal their father.

By now they should all be used to Panacea’s personal rules. I know there’s a personal and emotional element here, and maybe if I were in their position I’d recent Panacea too, but from my point of view as a spectator, they really should know by now why Panacea doesn’t mess with the brain. She has her own rules, and given it’s her powers and her experiences, surely she knows better than anyone what she should do and not do with her healing powers. They’re being kind of unreasonable – at least that’s how it seems to be as an observer unattached to most of all these characters.

Brandish’s coldness towards Panacea has a different reason, though.

Marquis was one of the organized killers.  He had his rules, he had his code, and so did Amy.  Amy wouldn’t use her power to affect people’s minds.  Like father, like daughter.

Again, I’m sure Panacea has her reasons to have her own rules. They really should know by now!

Unable to endure all this pressure and coldness, she decides to leave her family before they get even more distant. She’s old enough to take care of herself, and I think a power like hers could be enough for her to live, so she should be fine. Before leaving forever she wanted to try heal Mark, for it to be the parting gift. Hm. Brandish may see Panacea running away as the confirmation she’s up to no good. I hope Glory Girl will appreciate this.

She doesn’t get to even approach Mark when everything derails. The TV Mark was watching is off, and it’s doubtful he did it. No, he’s not dead, he just has company, company he can see is bad so he’s trying to move, maybe to get away. Not that Bonesaw was being subtle at all about how dangerous she is:

The girl turned to look at Amy, and Amy saw that some of the dirt that covered the girl wasn’t dirt, but crusted blood.  The girl wore a stained apron that was too large for her, and the scalpels and tools in the pocket gleamed, catching the light from the lamps in the corner of the room.

Nobody would dare mess with her.

Panacea recognizes her, pleasantries are exchanged. For a moment she thinks Allfather may have arranged one of the Slaughterhouse Nine to kill her. Unlikely scenario, even if they weren’t looking for candidates. Surely he has nothing to do with this.

Bonesaw isn’t alone, there’s someone else with her: Hatchet Face, who somehow is alive. Verh battered, but alive. Okay, something’s wrong. I don’t doubt Cherish was able to defeat and kill Hatchet Face because otherwise she wouldn’t be alive, but still, how’s this possible? His powers may be intact, too. Panacea starts running away, but another Hatchet Face blocks the way.

There were two Hatchet Faces?

Then the first one exploded into a cloud of white dust and blood spatters, momentarily filling the room.  Amy could hear Bonesaw’s giggling, felt her heart sink.

Something is...off about this. I know very little about Hatchet Face other than what the characters have said, but they never said he could copy himself or anything like that, much less copies that can explode in gore. I think there’s something I don’t know yet—oh, wait, there it is. It was revealed immediately, and I’m a bit regretful about wanting to know.

“Get it? You figure out what I did?  Turn around, Hack Job.”

Amy had figured it out, but Bonesaw’s creation demonstrated anyways.  He turned his back to Amy, and she saw what looked like a tumorous growth on the back of his head, shoulders and arms.  Except the growth had a face, vaguely Asian in features, and the lumps inside the growth each roughly corresponded with organs and skeletal structure.  The jaw of the figure that was attached to the back of Hatchet Face’s body was working open and closed like a fish gasping for air.  The stitches were still fresh.

“You mashed them together.  Oni Lee and Hatchet Face.”

She fused them into the appropriately named Hack Job, creating an abomination that can duplicate himself and disable powers. That sounds like it has the potential to be rather overpowered. I don’t think Oni Lee’s copies burst into clouds of dust and blood, this here may be a side effect from the mashing she did.

Leaving that aside, wow, that’s a really creepy image. I can’t avoid wondering how exactly she made this work, and I think it’s better I don’t find out.

“Yes!  I can’t even begin to tell you how hard it was. I mean, I had to conduct the operation from a remote location, using robots, because I would lose my Tinker powers if I got too close to the big lug.  And I had to fit their bodies and nervous systems together so that they could use their powers without messing up the other.”

Fine. That’s vague enough to not be as horrible as I feared. Still...now I wonder how exactly their bodies nervous systems worked this. Hatchet Face and Oni Lee’s powers were rather unusual; they didn’t involve their own bodies transforming or anything like that. What they did was affect something away from their bodies, like for example Hatchet Face made other parahumans lose their powers. I can’t for the life of me imagine how his body made that happen! Maybe some sort of psychic field from his brain...? But I digress. Back to the interlude.

Since he’s here, and Bonesaw just said the powers are intact, I suppose that means Panacea’s healing won’t be available right now. She won’t be healing Mark soon. Although, frankly I fear he’s going to get killed here, just to make Panacea hurt. If that happens, then Glory Girl and everyone else would blame Panacea for this too, they’d think if she hadn’t been here, this wouldn’t have happened. Let’s hope that fear of mine doesn’t turn real.

The way Bonesaw is describing Hack Job, it sounds like it’s barely sentient. Hatchet Face is the one that controls it, while Oni Lee is...there and feels everything Hatchet Face feels. That means Hatchet Face now controls Oni Lee’s powers too? That could mean he’s not as experienced as Oni Lee, and could make mistakes, I hope!

The parahumans who can affect the human body in some way are rare, and Bonesaw thought Panacea would appreciate her work precisely because they’re similar on that regard. To showcase her skills even more, she makes a few of her creations enter. Needless to say, this is nightmare fuel. I’ll spare you the descriptions.

Okay, maybe not. Why the heck does this woman have machetes on his fingers and toes. Bonesaw may be a brilliant genius when it’s about working with human bodies, but there’s no way this has mobility. I’ll take this as brilliance from Mr. Wildbow’s part, since Bonesaw is, what, fourteen or so years old, it’d make sense for someone so young not properly think about the finer details despite her power.

Another one is like a centaur, just that instead of having the body of a horse, he has a torso growing from where his neck would be. The result has to walk on four feet, using his knuckles as front legs, no doubt because there’s no way it could keep its balance if it stood upright. Wow, that’s...I’m not sure if it’d be better or worse to know what happened to you, if you were the guy who moves this body.

Last, there are boxes that move with legs that end in tools like scalpels or syringes. Neat! Neat and horrible. Okay, Mr. Wildbow, you have my attention with Bonesaw. Being the last member of the Slaughterhouse Nine, she had to reach expectations that were already pretty high, and she has done it. This is good stuff. I like this.

Since it was already established this girl recently has been meshing bodies together, she explains to who belonged the bodies she has worked with.

“Murder Rat used to be a heroine, called herself the Mouse Protector.  One of those capes who plays up the cheese, no pun intended.  Camped it up, acted dorky, used bad puns, so her enemies would be embarrassed to lose to her.”

Oh, those exist in this universe too? Mouse Protector...I wonder why she called herself that. A fondness for rodents? Any...uuuuh...any rodent appearance she has right now is Bonesaw’s work. So, this parahuman got meshed with the body of someone who hated her. The other one has a different story.

“The other, I’m trying to figure out a name.  The one on the bottom was Carnal.  Healer, tough, and healed more by bathing himself in blood.  Thought he had a place on our team, failed the tests. The one on the top was Prophet. Convinced he was Jesus reborn. What do you call a mix of people like that?  I’ve got a name in mind, but I can’t quite figure it out.”

For a moment I thought the ‘healer’ meant he healed other people, and I was starting to ponder how exactly bathing yourself in blood would help heal anyone. That was stupid of me. He tried to be in the Slaughterhouse Nine and failed, so now I hope everyone they’re trying to recruit doesn’t fail, because judging by this, failure just means Bonesaw will have bodies to work with. It’s a fate worse than death, if you ask me.

Prophet sounded kind of familiar, like he was one of the few that was in the Leviathan fight. I went back and checked, and looks like I was wrong. Oh well.

You know, since Mark is in this place, and Panacea is here too, I’m growing increasingly concerned about this. I don’t know how Bonesaw’s personality’s like, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she chooses to take Mark and, if Panacea fails the tests, fuse her to him. It’d be a nasty surprise for everyone.

Apparently Bonesaw’s approach is to say she wants a big sister. Well...that’s a new one! Whether she’s being sincere or not a different topic altogether. Maybe she does want a big sister, maybe she doesn’t and this is just her way to try to convince her to join.

Bonesaw pouted a little.  “But think of the stuff we could do together.  I do the kludge, the big stuff, you smooth it over.  Imagine how Murder Rat would look without the scars and staples.”

This isn’t going to convince her at all. True, Panacea would be capable of doing that, but I don’t see any reason for her to want to. I may be proven wrong if she does for some reason feel willing to join, though. The Slaughterhouse Nine characters aren’t stupid except by one glaring exception, I’m sure they know about Panacea’s father. That could be something to exploit.

As expected, Panacea’s immediate reply is to say no, although it’s not, uh, it’s not an assertive reply at all. Not that it matters, I bet Bonesaw would have reacted the same way if Panacea had been more vehement about her refusal to join. She just smiles and pins Panacea down with Hack Job, while Murder Rat shoves her machetes against Mark’s face. Hoh, going to threaten Mark’s life? The odds in this ending in bloodshed keep increasing.

“Jack’s taken me on as his protegé.  Teaching me the finer points of being an artist.  What he’s been saying is that I’m too focused on the external.  Skin, bone, flesh, bodies, the stuff we see and hear. He’s told me to practice with the internal, and this seems like a great time to do that.”

Somehow I have the feeling Jack doesn’t mean internal as in internal organs. She’s going to try some insidious actions, won’t she? Aim to break Panacea’s heart and soul. There’s a chance it won’t be effective given that it seems Bonesaw isn’t experienced in such thing, but I’m not going to bet on that.

Indeed, Bonesaw intends to push Panacea towards her breaking point, break her enough to make her want to join. Great timing, simply perfect, striking just when she’s vulnerable from being alienated by her family and found out who her father is. But, much to my surprise, she doesn’t aim at any of that, Bonesaw’s taking another direction.

“You’re a healer, but you can do so much more.  Why don’t you go out in costume?”

Amy didn’t respond.  There was no right answer here.

“Are you afraid to hurt someone?  That could be our first exercise.”

Well it is true Panacea can do much more than just healing. Her threats towards Skitter about changing her body in some way that was unrelated to her injuries kind of hinted that. I suspect Panacea can modify a person’s biology in some ways, but she doesn’t like to do it. Maybe because she has restraint and knows she should limit herself to healing. Modifying a person’s body without permission is a huge invasion of privacy, and that wouldn’t mesh well with the hero image. Gotta work that good PR, yo.

To encourage her to hurt people, she’s ordered to hurt Murder Rat, and is warned that if she leaves her in a state where she can move, then she’ll hurt both Panacea and Mark. That’s a good incentive, I have to admit that, one I think Panacea wouldn’t resist at all. She was considering helping Mark, and although Panacea could heal Mark’s new injuries, I doubt they’ll be just injuries, he’ll die sooner or later. Glory Girl’s family wouldn’t like that at all.

And she does! She hesitates just for a moment before using her power to have an idea of how Murder Rat’s internal workings are like, and finds out an easy way to make her unable to move – dissolving the ligaments of her joints. Without ligaments you can’t move. It happens in no time, they just dissolve. Task...completed? I...don’t know if Bonesaw will be satisfied with this. I imagine she had something different in mind, but hey, she did just what Bonesaw told her to do, she made Murder Rat be unable to move and hurt them.

“I’m surprised you didn’t kill her.  The healer, letting someone suffer like that.  Or are you against mercy killing?”

I bet she used Murder Rat for this because of the contraption around her heart, the one that crushes it if the control frame was disabled in any way. Maybe all her creations have it, but as I see it, she may have meant her to use the way to kill she provided right there.

No death? Then this isn’t over yet! Centaur guy, from now on called Pagoda, gets on the metaphorical stage, and since Bonesaw is looking to make Panacea kill, guess that means he’s as good as dead. That’s for the better.

There’s a mechanism inside Pagoda that’ll kill him, yep, but instead of being needles around his heart, it’s around his spine. Sounds like he’d suffer a more painful death than Murder Rat. Bonesaw is really, really twisted. Not wanting to take part in Panacea’s games, she tries the same she did to Murder Rat, she tries to dissolve the ligaments.

“He heals,” Bonesaw informed her.  “Two regenerators in one.  There’s only one good way to stop him.  Try again.”

He’s as good as dead, seriously! I doubt Mr. Wildbow would let Panacea die at a time like this. There must be a way to do it without having to bury who knows how many needles into his spine, I hope!

While Bonesaw counts town the seconds, Panacea examines the heart, finding out that instead of needles, there are canisters of liquids. Doubt whatever’s in there is instant. Right before she runs out of time, I...I think she makes the canisters pour the contents onto the heart? It’s not specified, but that’s what makes sense the most. Whatever she did works, he slowly dies, rather slowly.

“A chemical trigger for something I already put in his DNA, when I was patching his regeneration abilities together.  Reverses the regeneration so it does the opposite, starting with the heart.”

Don’t tell me he’s going to decompose in minutes right here and now. Oh, geez...

She shivered. It had been so easy.  Was this what it was like for her father?  Had she just taken one more step toward being like him?

Well, to be completely fair, I really doubt Marquis did everything he did with someone nearby threatening him. He did all that of his own volition, as far as I know. He took every decision by himself, and earned that reputation of being heartless with his own two hands. That’s a huge distinction between Panacea and Marquis, and I hope she understands that, despite what she just did. Heck, I’m sure absolutely everyone would think this was a mercy-kill, like putting down a suffering animal. Better this than continuing to be under Bonesaw’s control.

Even after killing, Panacea refuses to join, saying she doesn’t want to hurt anyone, answer Bonesaw doesn’t like. She’s even encouraged to get onto the light side – nobody’s going to accept a Slaughterhouse Nine member anywhere else other than in the deepest pit in the Birdcage, I’m afraid. If they leave her alive, that is. There’s no way this’ll be so simple a ‘you could be good’ will solve anything.

There we go! Panacea is being more assertive! And Bonesaw doesn’t seem to understand, she keeps insisting Panacea has to join. What’ll be the next move, I ponder? Not backing down and continuing to try to find the breaking point. Nobody can say Bonesaw isn’t persistent. She strikes a bit closer to Panacea’s many problems when she asks why she hasn’t healed Mark despite living near him all this time.

“My power doesn’t work on brains,” Amy lied.

“You’re wrong,” Bonesaw said, stepping closer.

...a shiver ran down my spine when I read the ‘Amy lied’ part. I took at face value that she couldn’t modify brains. But, you know, it’s a strange feeling, I feel like this isn’t supposed to be a big reveal. Maybe it had already been revealed before and I don’t remember it?

Panacea’s power does work on brains. Does that mean she can heal things like neurological connections in the brain, and create neurons? I’m certain she can do that, it should be quite easy for her to make cells grow, even if they’re cells that don’t usually grow again. Or could her power extend to the more complicated and delicate parts such as personality? Hm...

Bonesaw has experimented with normal civilians, forcing them to have trigger events, studying the details of such event. I’m willing to bet none of them survived being taken apart. Maybe Bonesaw right now has a collection of bodies, ready to mesh them together whenever she wants. If not to do that, then maybe she’d keep them around so she’d have raw material to use.

“You don’t have to.  What you need to know is that the subjects of our power, the stuff it can work on, like people?  Like the fish lady in Asia?  The boy who can talk to computers?  Our powers weren’t created to work with those things.  With people or fish or computers.  It’s not intentional.  It happens because the powers connect to us in the moments we have our trigger events, decrypt our brains and search for something in the world that they can connect to, that loosely correlate with how the powers were originally supposed to work.  In those one to eight seconds it takes our powers to work, our power goes into overdrive, it picks up all the necessary details about those things, like people or fish or computers, sometimes reaching across the whole world to do it.  Then it starts condensing down until there’s a powerset, stripping away everything it doesn’t need to make that power work.”

I...think...I understand? It’s late in the night and I’m half-asleep at times right now, but I think I understand. Basically, the power isn’t meant to be so specific. The power should work in a different manner, but for whatever reason it doesn’t. Instead, it takes the form of something that makes it be similar in some vague manner to the powers’ function. Or something like that, I think. I wonder if this applies to characters other than Panacea...is it a coincidence Bonesaw is using as example the power of controlling specific stuff, Mr. Wildbow? Because Skitter does that with bugs. Maybe she was supposed to have a power that’s different yet not so different, like it was meant to control something but not insects. Kind of farfetched, in my opinion, but that’s what I’m understanding from Bonesaw’s revelation.

The powers then adapt so it can be contained by the body without destroying it. All this happens in matter of seconds after a trigger event, the one that happened during the Merchants’ party seems to fit with this. The description made it sound like such a painful and traumatic thing, the power being activated, I mean. Makes sense.

Bonesaw looked down at Amy.  “Your inability to affect brains?  It’s one of those protections.  A mental block.  I can help you break it.”

Maybe it was a combination of an instinctual knowledge about how she shouldn’t modify the brains, and her self-imposed rules. For Bonesaw to get the result she wants, she needs to make her overcome both things. It...it sounds possible, unfortunately. Not everyone has unbreakable willpower.

Panacea’s continued refusal to try it just makes Bonesaw be even more excited about getting her to break those boundaries, and for that she decides Panacea needs a harrowing situation. I expected her to try to harm Panacea again, but this time she uses one of her mobile machines and makes it get on Mark’s face.

Thanks, Mr. Wildbow, I sure wanted mental images of a long needle being thrust into someone’s nostril. I’m going to have nightmares about that tonight. Bonesaw saying Panacea will be thankful doesn’t help.

Once Panacea gets a chance, she touches Mark’s face to try to assess the damage to his brain, and of course a needle that leaks acid is kind of a nasty thing, so of course the prognosis is pretty bad. I don’t know what’s the extent of Panacea’s powers, but will she be able to neutralize the acid? True, she’s capable of modifying organs and biology to some extent, but doing something to Mark’s brain so it can counter the acid is a bit of a dangerous ordeal. The mere sound of it sends shiver down my spine.

The process takes much less than you’d think restoring the brain of a man with brain damage would take. Even those areas she can’t do much with at first she manages to fix, just by finding out what those do by examining the surrounding areas. It doesn’t sound like it’ll be perfect, but he’ll live! And be a functional human again! Still, I have to wonder:

Can she restore his powers? Were they affected by his nervous system damage? If so, now that she’s restoring his brain, does he have them back, the same way they used to be? Bonesaw over there is capable of messing with powers, she proved that already, but she has experience and stuff, Panacea is…well this is her first time. Even if she says she knows she can do it, I’m not taking it for granted.

It wasn’t that she was afraid to get something wrong.  No.  Even as complicated as the mind was, she’d always known she could manage it.  No, it was what came after that scared her more than anything.  Just like finding out about Marquis, it was the opening of a door she desperately wanted to keep shut.

Only time will tell if this is good or not. I think it’d be most defined by people’s reactions. I’m sure if everyone found out Panacea can heal the brain, she’d have a million more patients to heal, as if she didn’t have too many already. I can imagine her frustration would grow, and so would the guilt she feels because she can’t heal everyone. Maybe that’s what Bonesaw is going for, maybe she’s playing the long game, and once Panacea gets more and more fed up about having to be the good Samaritan she has to be because of her powers, maybe she’ll visit and try to convince her again. Learn to play with the mind, Jack told her, and doing that would qualify as playing with the mind indeed.

Oh, good, he does have his powers again! I’m pretty sure Bonesaw knew that after healing a superhero there was no way she wouldn’t get attacked, so everything that’s happening now must be something she foresaw. One of the Hack Job copies materializes in front of her, taking the brunt of a light sphere Mark threw at her, and more appear. The small machines also attack. You know, if Hack Job wasn’t here, I’d think the recruiting chance was over and done, but since he can disable powers…well I’m expecting at any moment for that to happen.

...or not. It didn’t. He actually managed to fight quite well, and although he didn’t hit Bonesaw and she got away, Mark is okay and Panacea is okay. The only ones who died or got horribly mangled today are Bonesaw’s creations. Death may be a better fate for them, anyway. Mark puts Murder Rat out of her misery, and thanks Panacea for healing him. All is well that ends well?

Now that the excitement is over, Panacea is free to return to her room and finish her preparations to leave. Mark is aware she’s leaving, and...well he’s not trying to stop her. I’m not sure what to think about that. Maybe he’s being neglectful, maybe he’s respecting her decisions. It’s hard to know what exactly are his intentions here. She’s leaving and that’s the final word, though, she even has a note ready. See you, Panacea.

The intermission isn’t over, though.

It would be better this way.  Maybe, after weeks or months, she could stop worrying, stop waiting for the other shoe to drop, for everything to fall apart in the worst way.  She’d already had to face finding out about Marquis.  She’d taken a life.  She’d broken one of her cardinal rules.  She wasn’t sure she could take any more.

Two of her rules, actually, although she was going to break the one about modifying the brain before Bonesaw arrived, so maybe she wasn’t counting that one. Still, even if things get quiet again, I don’t think she’d return to the family. This all sounds very final. I wonder where this character will go from now on, even if I’m not that fond or interested on Panacea, I admit I’m curious to see what else will happen with her.

After the line break, she’s out getting caught for breaking curfew. Nothing can go according to plan for poor Panacea, eh? And even worse, her sister was the one who found her. Glory Girl is here, and she wants to know what’s going on! This will be the final obstacle in Panacea’s plans, will she continue even after talking with Glory Girl? Will she return? This here should test her willpower.

“Geez, what’s going on?  Amy, we’ve been together for a decade.  I’ve stood by you.  I’d like to think we were best friends, not just sisters.  And you can’t tell me?”

To Glory Girl’s credit I’ll say, she sounds so genuinely concerned about Panacea I think it’s heartwarming. Despite the many faults Glory Girl has, I have always felt she cares a lot about Panacea, and that’s something I like a lot. Gives her dimension to her character, which is good, given how she has so little time to shine compared to others. Honestly, although her first appearance back in that interlude didn’t impress me much, I admit I have grown to like Glory Girl to some extent. Not enough to say I <i>like</i> her, but I want to see more of her.

There we go, the bank robbery incident is mentioned and about how Panacea was hiding a secret, secret she hasn’t told anyone offscreen all this time. There’s also what she told to Skitter at the hospital...uuuuh...okay, give me a moment to check.

She leaned close, so her mouth was by my ear, “Not so fun, is it?  Let me tell you, this isn’t a hundredth of the mind-fuckery that your teammate was pulling on me, back then.”

“That wasn’t-” I stopped.

“What? Wasn’t you?  You stood by and watched it happen, played along, took advantage of it.  Or maybe you were going to say it wasn’t that bad?  You really don’t know.  You don’t know me, you don’t know Glory Girl, you don’t know what Tattletale was saying, how she was threatening to ruin my life.  Imagine the person you care about most, finding our your darkest secrets. Secrets that, even if they eventually came to accept it, you know they would taint and color every single conversation you have with them afterward.”

Aaaah. I had completely forgotten about this. During the bank Tattletale said Panacea would have to deal with the fallout of her secret coming out, and here she’s specifically talking about the person she cares about the most. What she’s afraid the most is...about Glory Girl finding out, perhaps? I’d really think it was being Marquis’ daughter if she hadn’t found out for sure in this interlude, here she sounds completely certain of the consequences of her secret.

I’m not sure what to think. It must be really bad if it’ll drive such a wedge between her and her sister, but I can’t even begin to imagine what it could be. Betrayal of some sort is what’s crossing my mind, but I don’t think Panacea has the ill will necessary to betray Glory Girl or even the rest of the family.

Turns out Panacea was right; Glory Girl did resent her for leaving Mark to suffer all this time. Although maybe she just found out she can heal him, when she returned home. Who knows.

“I love you,” Victoria said, stressing the ‘I’.  She dropped to the ground and stepped closer.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Idiot,” Victoria grabbed her sister by the shirt collar and pulled her into a painfully tight hug.

I’m so glad Panacea can rely on Glory Girl, even if she never returns home, just having Glory Girl’s support will be invaluable. Even if the rest of her family doesn’t love her, Panacea can be certain Glory Girl does.

Panacea doesn’t try to get away after the first contact, she stays there while Glory Girl insists they’re going to solve it all as a family, or only the two of them, if necessary. In a moment of weakness—eh? Okay, so sometimes I say aloud the stuff I write in these updates before typing them, and I made the most confused noise I have made in quite a while. That ‘eh’ doesn’t make it justice. Something’s happening, there’s a lot of build-up about Panacea doing something barely consciously.

Victoria let go of her, pushed her away.  “What did you just do?”

Amy could see the revulsion slowly spreading across Victoria’s face.

Whatever it was wasn’t subtle. I expected surprise, anger, a demand of an explanation, but I didn’t think there’d be revulsion. Did Panacea do something to her insides? If so, it must have been a considerable change because you don’t usually feel what happens inside yourself unless it’s pain.

Panicking, Panacea tries to offer to revert whatever happened, Glory Girl still demanding an explanation, and says Panacea changed her way of thinking. Ah. So she modified her...I would say brain, but this seems deeper than that. Personality? The way of thinking isn’t an organ, whatever she did can’t have been simple. Panacea’s already trying to take it back, undo what she accidentally did, but Glory Girl isn’t letting it happen.

“You have feelings for me,” Victoria answered.  She couldn’t keep the disgust out of her voice, she didn’t even try. “That’s what Tattletale was using as leverage, wasn’t it?”

...oh.

...

...

...

...well no wonder she was so afraid of anyone finding out! And of course Glory Girl isn’t taking it well. It’s starting to sound like Panacea inadvertently burned another bridge. She’s already in a fragile state of mind, I don’t think she’ll take well the loss of Glory Girl’s support. Even if they get along again, I doubt Glory Girl’s going to forget this anytime soon.

“When I was at the lowest point in my life, when the boy I thought I might marry someday was dead, were you secretly elated?  Were you happy Gallant died?”

“No! Vic- Victoria, I love you.  I wanted you to be happy with him.  I just… it hurt at the same time.”

...I can’t tell if Panacea would have felt happy or not. I doubt she did, because let’s face it: her chances of getting together with Glory Girl are zero, for a lot of reasons, and she must have known that. I’m inclined to believing she wasn’t happy...for long, no matter how much she hated Gallant.

Some people may think Panacea is making excuses right now, that saying all this about Bonesaw breaking her self-imposed restrictions and pushing her to get out of her comfort zone and about the very stressing situations she’s in, but given what happened...eh, not that Glory Girl will forgive her for whatever she just did, at least not soon.

“Anything stupid.  Like what? What did you do?”

Amy’s voice was a croak as she replied, “…make it so you would reciprocate my feelings.”

...or...ever. Yikes, that’s rough. No wonder Glory Girl is filled with revulsion. So Panacea’s desperation made her to unconsciously force Glory Girl to reciprocate her feelings, most likely to ensure she’d always have her support and love, and it backfired spectacularly. The fact she wouldn’t have done this if she had been in any other mental state makes it worse. It was a moment of weakness, and now she severed all positive ties with Glory Girl. This isn’t going to help her sanity.

Of course after finding out she had messed up with her feelings, of all things, Glory Girl would refuse letting Panacea touch her, no matter how much Panacea begs.

“You can’t. I- Oh fuck.  You’re underestimating what I did.  Please.  If you never ever give me anything else, if you never talk to me or look at me again, just let me fix this.”

...she’s underestimating it? That’s dreadful. Just how badly did Panacea screw up? If she’s begging like this and trying to convince her to fix it, then it must be pretty bad. I can’t fathom what exactly can be worse than what already happened, though. If Panacea says Glory Girl is underestimating that, then she really must be, but still...what could it be?

We’re not finding out right now, though. Glory Girl flies away, rubbing so much salt in Panacea’s wounds it’s surprising she doesn’t faint from the emotional pain, and all Panacea can do is fall to her knees and be contrite. Her life is ruined. It took...it took a very short amount of time, and I feel bad for her. I hope she’ll be okay.

That’s the end of the interlude. Next time a new arc starts!

Next update: next time

[julies-butterflies]

first lines   ::   a writing game

rules :   list the first lines of your last 20 stories  ( if you have less than 20, just list them all! )   see if there are any patterns.  choose your favorite opening line. then tag 10 of your favorite authors!!     ---   i’m going to be ranking mine  x / 10,  with comments, just for the heck of it.

1.   with friends like these   ( 2100, gen, phantoms friendship )

“Dude,” says Reggie, after the third — or maybe fourth — time it happens. “You... doin’ okay?”

verdict :   starting off with a line of dialogue is always an effective way to throw the audience right into the story, without a lot of build - up exposition.  and i... get carried away with the exposition sometimes.   this was my first ever JATP fic, so i was just trying to get a feel for the characters voices  ---   starting off with dialogue felt like a good place to begin!    7 / 10, vague but it works, and i can hear reggie’s voice clearly!

2.   even if we hit the ground  ( 3200, pre-canon, shameless reggie whump )

It all explodes in an instant, so fast that no one gets the chance to react.

verdict :   this line punches!!  it’s supposed to punch, it’s supposed to feel like the audience just got caught up in an explosion, because reggie literally does!   ( this is the story in which i establish the precedent of Hurting Reggie in my fics, just because he’s there. )      9 / 10,  super effective line

3.   if i didn’t know better  ( 3500, grief fic, julie centric )

Doctor Turner always said the special days would be the hardest.

verdict :   it’s...  okay.  i mean, it accomplishes what it needs to, but it’s nothing special.   this story holds a very dear place in my heart, and might be my favorite  ---  i wrote it to help cope with my sister’s very recent death, and frankly, it was just what i needed at the time.  i love the story as a whole more than this opening line.   5 / 10

4.   21st century (dead) teen rebellion   ( 2100, willex, ghoul bois antics )

If Alex knew exactly how he gets talked into half the things he does, he’d know how to avoid them, and his life would be so much easier.

verdict :   bahahaha, it’s sad because it’s true!!  i love this story, and this line  ---  while a bit cluttered  ---  makes me giggle.   7 / 10

5.   how to be a heartbreaker    ( 7500, luke character study, light jukebox )

Luke learns the danger of a crying woman early.

verdict :   this story was a constant surprise.  i didn’t expect it to get as long as it did  ;  i never expected it to take off the way it did, oh my gosh  ;  and there are parts of it i really like, and parts i’m more ‘meh’ about.   this opening line is good, it absolutely works in the scope of the story...  i just feel i could have done it better somehow.   but...  it leads into a whole segment with baby luke, so no regrets.   5 / 10

6.   nothing quite like living on the edge   ( 6200, missing scene after ‘nothing to lose’  ;  the boys trapped at caleb’s club )

By the time Caleb’s song reaches its grand finale, self-control is trickling back to them…  slowly, slowly, like the reverberation of the final notes.

verdict :   heehee...  like the entirety of ‘nothing to lose’, this line is delightfully unnerving.   caleb’s weird not-quite-mind-control was a topic i just had to explore in greater detail, so i really took it and ran with it.  this isn’t exactly a whump fic, but none of the boys are having a good time... and i get to explore a much darker tone, which works really well with my writing style.   overall, one of my favorite stories, and an excellent line.   9 / 10

7.   every empty space   ( 2900, emily patterson study, growing up luke )

Raising Luke was never easy, even for a moment… but in the beginning, it was a dream come true.

verdict :   the first half of this line was the main thesis for the entire story...  and i love how it sets up emily’s entire pov, and her arc over the course of 17 years, in a really effective way.  ilove writing emily because i relate to her  ---  i also look at luke and think “my beautiful, stupid son” daily.   fun story, great opener.   8 / 10

8.   revelations   (3200, gen, boys coming back to life, ray finds out )

The night of the Orpheum performance is definitely the start of something… and things never go back to normal after that.

verdict :   this is a very sexy leading line!  it’s informative, it’s ominous, and sets up a fun story / series.  i can get behind this!!  8 / 10

9.   sugar, how'd you get so fly?   ( 3000, gen, alex learns to fly, help him )

Her mom used to call it the “Mama Spidey Sense”;  a very loud, very accurate superpower that only parents have, to let them know when something is Going Down.

verdict :   ...  meh.  i like the idea, it’s a very rose vibe, but.  i don’t love it.  doesn’t have a lot to do with the rest of the story.  i think i just honestly didn’t know how to kick things off.  3 / 10

10.   know that it's probably magic   ( 4600, gen, soul bonding w/ spirits )

It takes a while for the boys to figure out all the weirdness that comes with being a ghost — and for Julie, on her end, to sort out living with a haunted band.

verdict :  opening lines work best when they’re short and pithy.  this... feels a bit cluttered, not going to lie.  while it definitely sets up the rest of the story, i feel like there was a more concise way to do it, if i just dug around a bit more.  i love this story as a whole more than this actual line.   ( also, ‘haunted band’??  does that even make sense??  girl... )   4 / 10

11.   still alive but i’m bearly breathing   ( 4100, possessed teddy bear )

Honestly, if she hadn’t been zoning out on her history essay long enough for her eyes to wander, Julie might’ve never noticed anything was wrong at all.

verdict :    uhhhh....  i don’t know how to talk about this one, actually.  midterm season is one hell of a drug.   ( another theme in my stories?  really putting alex through it.  not in a whumpy way, just in a ‘fml’ way. )  fine opening line, 6 / 10

12.   regenesis    ( 28000, multichapter, reggie whump / backstory )

Carlos is the first one to bring it up.

verdict :   this story!!  i love this story so much!!  while this opening line is the definition of ‘meh’, the story itself is such a favorite, and was so much fun to write.  i’d rank the story itself 10/10...  this line, though, will have to get  4 / 10

13.   paint a picture of it   ( 1800, gen, julie + reggie become art buddies )

“These are amazing! You’re really playing with color composition here, I like how you blend it all together.”

verdict :   can you tell i’m bullshitting my way through art terminology?  oof.  i started off this story with an entire conversation, through literally just dialogue  ;  i don’t love it, but it works well enough.   5 / 10

14.   interwoven   ( 2500, emily adopts sunset curve via knitting )

They break her heart sometimes, just a bit — her eager boy and his habit of bringing home strays.

verdict :   luke and emily patterson, out here once again, breaking my heart.  this was a more sympathetic view on emily, yes  ---  i didn’t want to excuse her canon behavior, and she still has flaws in this story...  but she also cares, and tries to be a good mom, in her own way.  she loves luke, and she loves his friends too.  this line sets that up wonderfully.   9 / 10

15.   if i was you (i'd wanna be me too)   ( 11000, multichapter, carrie redemption arc-ish??  ;  exploring carrie / julie relationship )

Because her dad always has impeccable timing, he picks the night Julie plays at the Orpheum to completely lose his mind.

verdict :   oooh, i love this line.  poor trevor, but also... this line slaps.  it’s just the right amount of carrie-pov bitchiness.  while this story is still very much a work in progress, but i love how it’s coming along so far  ;   it already has so many moments i love  ( ‘this band is home’!! )  and writing carrie is an exercise in characters i’m not used to writing.   excellent line, 8 / 10

16.   kill your heroes (and then kill them again)   ( 9500, vampire reggie )

Reggie gets bitten on a Monday. On Tuesday, he goes to band practice.

verdict :  EXCELLENT opening line!!  it’s short, it’s pithy, it gets right to the point, and you’re sure not going to forget it.  i love this line.  i love this story.  this really set up the story and i’m super happy with it.   10 / 10

17.   feast or famine    ( 7200, demon goose fic )

In their absolute defense, the boys do not, as they’re later accused of, murder a goose.

verdict :   ... listen.  this is the best opening line i’ve ever written.  it literally doesn’t get better than this, you can’t top this one.  the pinnacle has been reached.   i will literally never write a line, or a story, more engaging than this one.  200 / 10

18.   fall out boy knockoff   ( work in progress ;  5 times luke falls while climbing things he really shouldn’t be climbing )

The first thing Luke says when he sets foot in the garage for the first time is, “Whoa! You’re kidding me, you got a loft!”

verdict :   starting off with action  ---  another great way to toss readers right into the story!!  this is a fun line that really encapsulates luke’s sheer...  chaos gremlin energy.   this entire fic radiates chaos gremlin energy, and i can’t wait to post it.  7 / 10

19.  i can’t even hear them scream   ( work in progress ;  all the women in julie’s maternal line have the ability to see ghosts, the boys ain’t special )

Julie is eight months old when she sees her first ghost.

verdict :   straightforward!  to-the-point!!  tosses you right into the plot!!  not the most engaging...  but i like it, especially as this section of the fic is being told from rose’s point of view, so it comes from a perspective we wouldn’t otherwise get.   6 / 10

20.   remembering   ( work in progress ;  part of the ‘side effects of coming back from the dead’ series, basically an excuse to write sleepy bois )

Even after the spell is broken and Caleb’s stamps are gone, Julie can’t bear to leave the boys alone; the idea that they will vanish when out of her sight, flickering out of existence like candles dying in the rain, is too real, and too awful to endure.

verdict :   this...  might work better broken up into two sentences.  i’m probably gonna do that.  technically it works better as two lines, but as an opening sentiment, i love this??  the entire fic has a...  very slow, soft, thoughtful vibe, and i like how this line establishes that with a metaphor.   excited for this one!!  8 / 10

tagged by :   the absolute superstar that is @sunsetcurvecuddles​ tagging :    uhhhhh i don’t know a lot of writers in the fandom i don’t socialize hEL P

[neoduskcomics]

If you didn't hear the news, 6 new episodes of Steven Universe were recently made available on the Cartoon Network app. Go watch them if you're able, and then come back here if you'd care to hear what I thought about them. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS.

Dewey Wins The plot in this episode is basically creating a parallel to Connie's heartbreak over Steven's actions in the last story arc and putting him in her shoes. It's not exactly the most gracefully or subtly executed story device, and I was a bit disappointed when, at the end, I realized that the entire point of it was simply to get Steven to understand why Connie was upset at the beginning of the episode (something that I'm sort of surprised wasn't immediately obvious to him).

That being said, I didn't dislike this episode. We're coming right of the heels of some of the most dramatic and loaded plot in the series, so a lot of it is really just winding down and getting everyone up to speed in the aftermath. It sort of subsists on carrying the momentum of what came before it. While the stuff with Dewey wasn't the most engaging, it was harmless, and they got a couple good jokes out of it.

I was hoping we'd see a bit more of Dewey actually dealing with the consequences of his lackluster-ness as a mayor, which we sort of did, but he didn't have a lot of time to process any of it, since the episode had to shift focus right back onto Steven's relationship issues with Connie. Hopefully, we'll see a future episode that features some actual character growth for Dewey so that this whole story wasn't just a means of getting from point A to point B. Gemcation What do you do when your son is clearly having some kind of personal problem, judging from the fact that he's constantly checking messages on his phone and all bummed out? You drag him to a vacation home that he's clearly disinterested in and try to force uncomfortable conversations about his traumatic space trip, of course. So much sound, emotional clarity going on in these episodes. Kidding aside, though, I did enjoy this one. It was amusing seeing the gems trying to figure out what was bugging Steven (and doing a comically terrible job of it). Pearl's antics got several laughs from me, and it made me feel like the comedy in this series was on point for the first time in a while. The plot wasn't outstanding, but it had a lot of good character moments. Seeing Garnet being awkward and out of her field of expertise was fun, and seeing Greg defer to the gems with helping Steven, only to reassert his role as father was nice to see. The whole cell-phone-reception-race ended predictably, but I do like that interpersonal issues in this show aren't resolved so quickly and easily. It's part of what helps the characters in this show feel like people and not just set pieces, and helps this series about magical gem warriors from outer space feel more grounded. Also, for real, though, that part with Pearl trying to talk to Steven and she kept covering her own mouth. The fuck was that. She totally killed Pink Diamond. Or she knows who killed her. Or she knows something. And someone cursed her or ordered her not to talk. Maybe Rose. Who the fuck knows. I'm sure everyone has already drawn up like fifty conspiracy theories about it. I'd prefer to just keep my mind open and let myself be surprised, but it's hard not to speculate when the show drops shit like that. Raising the Barn Say bye to Lapis, kids. I mean, you know, again. I'm sure she'll come back, but it is interesting to see such a status-quo-shifting departure happen on the show. Again, I like it when the show has these realistic turns of events. Connie's not gonna immediately make up with Steven. Lapis isn't necessarily going to stay just because Peridot wants to. Now, if I had an issue with all of this, it's probably that the way in which we arrive at these issues (or the resolutions thereof, but we'll get to that) isn't always the most interesting. Like, this episode was good, but it wasn't great. It could've done with more comedy or maybe more dialogue that was of consequence to the characters, rather than looping around the motions of Peridot very obviously avoiding the situation before finally and predictably confronting Lapis at the end. I'm not saying this episode was bad, just that it could've been better. I don't really have a whole lot to say about it other than that. Back to the Kindergarten While not one of my favorite episodes, this was a good episode for Peridot. I like seeing her really grapple with her newfound feelings of despair and distress, and trying to deal with it in an emotionally healthy way. While the sunflowers all dying was a tad predictable, it was still a well-executed plot device, and moving forward with the idea of understanding that while some parts of life will always be sad, there's always a whole world of potential happiness around you. Again, it's a more realistic message and, as a result, it feels more genuine. For there to be highs, there have to be lows. You have to work for your catharsis, and I think that's something this show mostly gets.

The last time we saw Amethyst, Peridot, and Steven hang out was the "shorty squad" episode, and I found this one to be far more interesting. Peridot doesn't simply spend the whole episode moping and then finally realizing some uplifting truth--there's an emotional mini-arc that she goes through: moving from despair to hopefullness, having that hope crushed, and then learning from the experience and finding that hope again in a different place. Moving through a range of different feelings is, I think, what makes for a more affective episode than having basically a single tone or conflict that leads you to an inevitable conclusion. Sadie Killer I think this is the first episode involving the cool kid crew that I genuinely enjoyed. There are a handful of episodes in the series are pretty much devoid of magical gem stuff, but out of all of those, this is definitely one of the better ones, if for no reason other than that it just has some great character development and progress for Sadie. For the first time, we really explore her as a person, not as she relates to Lars, but just herself. It was neat seeing her feel the weight of her monotonous and stressful life, and then finally break through and come out of her shell of her own volition—not because she was forced to in some contrived plot about how she doesn’t communicate well with her mom.

The musical number was fun and it was a great way to have Sadie let loose, doing something she enjoys and showing a side of her that you always sort of detected was there but she never just came out and expressed it. Sadie didn’t suddenly have a dark side for the sake of this episode; you’ve seen her deal with anxiety and stress and dealing with bullshit for five seasons. It’s good to finally see a culmination to all of that.

If I had an issue with this episode, it’s maybe that it just ends with her quitting the job. I would’ve liked to have seen her really deliberate over the situation, either prior to or in the aftermath of the decision, rather than simply using it as an ending revelation. But apart from that small gripe, it was a great character episode.

Kevin Party

I think this episode was a bit of a mixed bag. I think they really nailed the awkwardness of having Steven and Connie struggling to confront one another. The nervous tension is present in every scene of that episode, basically from the moment Kevin informs Steven that Connie would be at the party. Aside from that, though, the episode feels mostly like another one of those terrible “guy gets bad relationship advice from person he very obviously shouldn’t be taking relationship advice from and then inevitably screws things up before finally coming clean and being honest with himself which in return earns the trust/affection of the girl” plots. It’s played out and this story didn’t really offer anything new to the formula.

Not only that, but is Kevin just going to be a thing in every episode where Steven and Connie are having awkward relationship issues? I mean, we’ve already seen them embarrass/humiliate him for being a douche. I thought this time we might get something different. When he brings up that girl he apparently broke up with, I thought we might actually explore Kevin’s character and see why he is the way he is, and make him maybe a more complex character. But, no, we just saw him continue to be an asshat for self-gain before it blows up in his face.

Overall, I do like that we got to see Steven actually mess up in a personal matter and not just a magical destiny matter, and that’s something he really had to struggle with and learn from. At the same time, I feel like getting into that string of episodes and then leaving it was not the most gracefully executed. I’m glad that it happened, but I also sort of wish they went about it in a more interesting way, especially in a show that has frequently demonstrated, in the past, an ability to break the mold and go against the grain with its characters and storytelling.

But, you know. Connie has a cute haircut, now. So there’s that.

Overall

This was a nice chunk of episodes that left me feeling ultimately satisfied. I was expecting a string of episodes that leaned more toward the slice-of-life element of the show, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed them. To me, these were far superior to the slice-of-life episodes of Season 3 that I complained about. I found the plots more compelling, the characters were more engaging, and I even thought that the jokes were funnier (Steven’s oblivious napkin-stealing cracks me up).

Not to mention the fact that we’re seeing a lot of changes to the status quo. And not ones that feel like they were made just to switch things up. They all feel like logical outcomes based on what we know about the characters. Mayor Dewey was always ignorant and incompetent. Lapis was always against getting mixed up in Gem business, even Peridot at first. Sadie was always having her patience and tolerance for bullshit tested. It’s a good feeling when you have developments in your story that feel less like arbitrary sources of conflict and more like payoff to what we’ve known and felt all along.

I hope we get more episodes soon. Even if the “main plot” doesn’t advance, I just miss being in this world with these characters. This last Steven Bomb reminded me a bit of why I like the series so much in the first place. I hope we don’t end up like Steven, waiting fruitlessly for an update for days on end.

[rockofeye]

Epiphany: The Meaning of Blue

Epiphany was yesterday, January 6th. I grew up Baptist and had no real conception of Epiphany or the place of the three magi who sought out the Christ child and brought gifts for this manifestation of divinity made mortal. Vodou changed that, and the meaning and manifestation of the feast of the three magi associated with the word ‘epiphany’ has taken on meaning. 

The story goes that the three kings (changed to fit liturgical standards from magi, which is a practitioner of magic and probably had to do with the prophecy that a child would be born, etc) followed a star to find the divine made manifest in mortal form, bringing aromatic and important gifts. Once there, they realized that the prophecy was indeed fulfilled by this tiny baby and recognized that something significant had happened.

In vodou, Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany are Petwo timesof year. The manifestation of the divine in human form is an extremely ‘hot’ spiritual act, and that moment of the full seating of a spirit in a mortal body is full of fire. The images associated with this season--Mary overseeing a baby in the manger, a child Christ, the three magi--are deeply tied to out Petwo spirits. In particular, the image of the three magi holding gifts represents the Simbi, a family of spirits who collectively hold many secrets of the wanga priests tie, of the fey and bwa that make up some of the contents of such, and who stir and heat the baths. They are by and large master magicians, and the three magi speak to that, as well as speak to the diversity of the Simbi, since the magi are often pictured as having distinct backgrounds. The culmination of the season is fete Twa Wa, or Epiphany, when the bath for the New Year is made and, in houses that hold a fete Twa Wa, the spirits themselves make the bath. A good luck bath can only be made by a priest (and mine is pretty bitchin’), but a bath made by the spirits known for hot, fiery work? Y-E-S.

For me, this has been a season of revelation, both in life change and internal realizations. One day into the season of advent, I started a new job that lets me use all my skills and experience in my field thus far. Just before Christmas, I signed on to a new apartment that is my first stable, long-term housing since just before I left for kanzo. Big stuff for me, delivered right from the hands of my spirits.

Internally, I have really been considering and realizing the idea and meaning of ‘epiphany’: revealing of a sudden intuitive realization. The lightbulb moments. Sitting back in your chair after you read a piece of research that connects dots you hadn’t considered before. Thunderstruck moments of knowing.

I did a novena leading up to jou de Twa Rwa, and part of that novena was revisiting the epiphany that my emergence from the djevo was. The world had really changed for me, and I saw (and contiue to see) things very differently than I did prior to kanzo. For me, part of being a priest is keeping my feet in that particular epiphany and keeping it up front as a key foundational piece of my priestwork.

It’s hard to explain if you aren’t in the middle of it. I had a related conversation with a good friend recently who is an old school traditional witch. She has been one of few people in my life who have had a front row uncensored seat to vodou unfolding in my life. She was the first person to see me once I got back to the US after kanzo, and she has been utterly unsurprised as to how things have unfolded.

We were talking about how hard it is to explain what happens with spirits whom you have deep and abiding relationships with and how real and in-this-world they are. She related it to the relative lack of advanced traditional witchcraft books or written resources: at some point a) you must experience it to fully understand it, b) the spirits must teach you how to do the work and be in these relationships, and c) it looks utterly ridiculous written down because it makes no sense to most people who are not living it in their own way right beside you.

She’s pretty on target. It is incredibly frustrating in some ways to write about those epiphanies and have them make sense to anyone else. Sometimes words fail the experience because how do you describe what shakes your foundations and changes your understanding of who you are and what you mean in this world?

Epiphany.

This season, it has been about the bonds between myself and my spirits. We talk a lot about how ceremony solidifies something and there is cemented truth there--unless you seek to ruin the work put on you as part of ceremonies and/or break agreements you make, those spirits are with you forever. 

The rest of it, though, is based on how you show up and what you do. Attitude means something, as do intentions. How you live your life and conduct yourself influences how you approach your spirits. What sacrifices you make to do what is asked of you, and what lengths you are willing to go to. All of this balls up into the stretchy rubber band of your relationships. 

When I arrived in Haiti for kanzo, my mother and I sat in her house and had a long conversation about what my life had been before I left the United States and what was possible going forward. She looked me in the eye and told me that my sacrifices of basically everything--job, home, car, most of my belongings--would not be in vain, as long as I did the work that I was there to do. My spirits backed that up and told me that my sacrifice was my foundation, in a lot of ways, and that as long as I kept up front my oaths and promises, I would always be taken care of. When I did maryaj, they made the same promises in exchange for my promises--my rings will always be the physical reminder of the spirits who love me and walk next to me each day.

That has been the epiphany I keep re-living: they love me and are with me a-l-w-a-y-s, even in situations that seem completely unrelated to vodou because they are MY spirits. They love me enough to show up and show me where the danger is. They love me enough to show up and slip money in my pocket. They love me enough to explain things in ways that make sense to me. They love me enough to teach me and teach me and teach me. They love me enough to be patient.

It sounds simple, but it’s absolutely mindblowing and, over and over, it says ‘this shit is for real’. That, no matter how deep your faith and what you have seen, is always an epiphany of it’s own. This particular revolution of realization shakes your bone marrow. You can go through kanzo and suffer with your sacrifices and receive the support of your spirits there (because you expect it there), but when they show up in a dream on a Tuesday night when you’re curled up on the couch or the floor or on a borrowed mattress in your terribly worn out jammie pants that you keep because they are the most comfy thing ever and tell you that they will always love you and always protect you? 

It shakes things up in the best mind-blowing way. You understand things differently and you don’t understand how you don’t look different for it. The color blue is no longer a flat hue, but is deep and rich and technicolor and you intrinsically know what that means and how it spins around you. Things can never be the same, ever, and your internal revolution cycle revs just a tiny bit faster.