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why-this-kolaveri-machi · 3 years

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it’s a fucking metaphor!

Titans 3.08

i’ve finally gathered the mental and emotional resources to do this thing, so let’s go! as always, i’m typing this up as i see the episode.

SPOILERS AHEAD

1. on watching this opening scene, i was thinking back to how gar was in s1, or even the early bits of s2. the way he idolised the others, particularly dick, and his readiness to go along with whatever they said, and the way he practically bled the need for acceptance. and here he is now, openly defying dick, fully open to and aware of the flaws of the people he loves and admires, knowing he is accepted no matter what and extending that generosity elsewhere. it’s a remarkable bit of character growth that’s... sort of blossomed in the background and so rewarding to see and acknowledge.

1.25. i guess what i really love about this conflict over how to respond to jason--as clumsily as it is sometimes written--is how their histories and individual traumas inform each character’s reaction. dick is torn between his guilt over what’s become of jason and his drive to do what batman had essentially given up on doing: he is motivated to track down red hood at all costs but there’s a sense that he’s not completely sold on the idea that the only way to stop him is to kill him. (he might go the comics route and try to put him in arkham? god, imagine if the season ended with jason in arkham.) kory’s never had much of a connection with jason in the first place, and jason has done one of the worst things he could do in her book: track and kill a member of her newfound family and is threatening to kill more.

and gar... sure. look. the idea of jason and red hood as separate entities appeals to him; that red hood emerged when jason was drugged to the gills by scarecrow and lost his usual inhibitions. gar’s struggled with what he becomes when he’s pushed to his limits, too--he did rip open that experimenting scientist with his teeth way back in 1.07, after all, and he was brainwashed by cadmus in s2 into becoming a literal monster. he needs to think, to know, there’s a dichotomy, a line that can only be crossed under extreme duress or by outside influence.

and he says--and we say--that he was accepted back into the titans in spite of what he’d done, but was he really? gar’s always struggled with his footing in this group; relegated to the caretaker, the tech guy, the gatekeeper, and sometimes punching bag even though everybody’s paying lip service to how much of a family they all are. perhaps gar reaching out to jason and offering acceptance is aspirational on his part: perhaps this is the effort he hoped the titans put/or will put into getting gar back, even when it would seem like he’s too far gone.

1.5. anyway my point is that i don’t think it’s worth discussing this in terms of right/wrong decisions because all of their reactions make a lot of sense given their backgrounds/personalities. gar is doing a fine job here of tracking down jason’s friends and trying to find him that way, but we the audience know that jason is ultimately going to end up an anti-hero/eventually-hero character, so with that knowledge in mind we know that gar’s reaction is the right one. it’s knowledge that the other characters don’t have, so to judge them on it is... uh, unfair.

1.8. also, molly is awesome, yay!

2. dick and barbara flirting over the phone is so cute! i love to see this side of dick: lighter, peppier, willing (even if somewhat reluctantly) to put his mission aside to go out on a date with his girlfriend. and i love how easy this makes his dynamic with kory too: it’s all very domestic and utterly delightful.

(also, re: the water leak in barbara’s office--you’re saying GCPD could afford fancy-schmancy table-wide touch screen computers and evil-lair lighting but needs its frickin’ commissioner to catch leaking water from above her desk with mugs and fishbowls????)

2.2225. this is probably a teeny tiny thing and i’m not sure i want to bring it up at all BUT. the fact that dick feels compelled to lie to barbara about not liking fancy gala food and eating something more substantial before the date? not a terribly great sign, though i wouldn’t call it a red flag per se.

“this from a man who forced his students to eat cauliflower crust pizza...”

3. so.... conner and kom are a Thing. huh.

in theory i really like the idea of them bonding over an innate alien-ness and longing for a place they could really belong. both of them are alien twice-over: conner a mix of kryptonian and human, practically generated in a test tube, and kom being somebody that was born different and rejected by her own people, now stuck on a planet dominated by an entirely different species. i even like them exploring this bond physically. i guess it’s the sense of... uneasiness around what we do and don’t know about kom that makes this scene land slightly left of centre to me. i think titans, especially through s2, has cultivated in its audience a sense of distrust even until the final episode, just in case somebody vital to the season is suddenly revealed to have had ulterior motives (i’m even low-key suspicious of leslie). i really want to see this kom-conner dynamic play out but the anticipation of watching the other shoe drop is sucking out the enjoyment.

4. for fuck’s sake dick, gar’s not your gatekeeper.

TIIIIIIIIMMMMM \O/

4.5. i love this nod to tim’s origins in the comics, the way he just comes in and lays out all his evidence and makes it clear to dick that he needs tim’s help as robin. the fact that he was there at the flying graysons’ last performance, he was obsessed with their acrobatic moves, and was observant enough to connect those moves with that of robin and later nightwing... all of this came together to put him where he is right now.

(i also love how he can’t contain his giddy excitement when talking about the day dick grayson’s parents died... to dick grayson. even if dick weren’t nightwing, that would be a deeply uncomfortable thing! yet tim can’t help himself, and i love him for it.)

4.8. it’s a testament to how much dick’s caught off-guard that he can’t come up with a better response to tim’s allegations other than “uh... he stole my moves! as you know, no two gymnasts in the world are allowed to do the same moves. now, let me escort you out while pretending poorly that i’m not at all shaken by this...”

4.9. i’ve talked about this before, but i find the logic around secret identities in this universe utterly fascinating. the titans don’t make much effort in keeping their identities secret: everybody seems to know that kory is starfire for instance, or that gar is beast boy. dick grayson is seen hanging out with kory a lot, especially at crime scenes. it won’t take a lot of sleuthing to find out that the titans are currently camped out at wayne manor, and to put two and two together.

my theory was that superheroes and villains have become such an integral part of daily society that it’s almost not worth it to seek out their secret identities, or that it’s just not a big deal anymore. like politicians or diplomats, not everybody bothers to look into who exactly their local politician is, but the people who know just... know. it’s a sort of unspoken social contract.

tim’s broken this contract by confronting dick about his identity, and dick’s not ready to deal with it. not entirely.

look at him! *pinches his cheeks*

5. ngl, it was quite satisfying to see jason knock the scarecrow out like that.

5.5. i guess... the question of jason’s culpability is always going to be a thorny one and would make for a great courtroom drama spinoff. there are a number of factors to consider: jason’s personality, the rough circumstances under which he grew up, his undoubtedly stressful transition to being robin, bruce wayne being... well, bruce wayne, never feeling accepted by the titans and having most of them turn on him, being roundly defeated and almost killed by deathstroke, alfred’s death, a fuckload of ptsd, his violent death, crane’s manipulations, coming back to life, crane plying him with a drug. but there is no easy line to draw between any of these factors to his actions. i think it would be a disservice to jason’s character to attribute his actions entirely to these things and rather irresponsible to do so. i think jason has to reckon with the fact that when he took crane’s drug, he wasn’t reckless and chaotic like the thugs he gave it to; the planning that went into hank’s death was meticulous and the way hank died--dawn essentially tricked into pulling the trigger that blew her lover into bits--is so drawn out and cruel.

5.75. it’s occurring to me that crane might have given jason a placebo. maybe jason’s dependence is psychological, and he’s externalised his fears in such a way that he believes crane’s drugs literally wipe them out, however temporarily.

in any case, the boy needs (more) therapy.

6. “he walked like robin...” fuck, tim

“gait recognition sweep” god, this show. i don’t know whether to laugh or cry. hey, once we’re done doing this gait recognition thingy, can we get a goddamn plumber in the house??? or move the commissioner’s desk so that sewage water isn’t dripping on her head or the million dollar touchscreen desk???????

6.5. oh no dick!!!!!! i am delighted that you got hurt but i feel ashamed about it! that looked like it really hurt!

he’s really not having a good time of it, is he. from being shot by a sniper to slamming at full speed into an suv, he’s got to be really fucking battered by now. and that’s just the physical side of it.

“can you believe that just over a week ago i was sitting in san francisco eating cauliflower crust pizza and feeling good about myself for the first time in five years...”

7. kory’s having visions again! now that she’s figured what they are, do you think the show’s just dropped justin? it’s curious that HPG hasn’t been brought up in a while after featuring relatively heavily in the beginning. hmmm.

8. dick’s in hospital but... he looks remarkably whole for someone who took a spill like that. you’d think he’d at least have a bruise to show for it. on the other hand, i love that the first thing he says is ‘i need to call home’. reminds me of season 1 dick and his clumsy attempts to explain away his found family as an ‘alliance of necessity’ or some bullshit. what a long way he’s come!

*gasp* dick’s hallucinating again!!!!!!!!!!!! i’m doing the dick’s hallucinating dance! can you believe that we’re carrying over these huge honking issues unearthed in season 2 onto season 3? can you believe?!!! all that time and effort i spent talking about dick’s mental health from last season has not gone in vain!!

... ahem. anyway. more on this later.

“hold on barbara, i think kory gave me the number to this therapist that she kept calling Hot Psychiatrist Guy...”

9. just an interlude to say that i’m barely halfway through the episode and i’ve already written 2k+ words... ugh. i’m going to try and be more concise.

10. man i fuckin love it when titans goes all out with its weird mindscapes and i’m extra glad that kory’s the focus this time. is that baby kom or maybe a secret sibling that neither of them knew about? was that lady luand’r? and is this place where kory was circling where the secret sibling is? it’s all very intriguing.

(if justin turned out to be that sibling... we’ve a real luke/leia situation on our hands.)

11. aw, i knew that nice security guard was going to die, but it still hurt to see him go :(

12. this show is so bizarre. like i get the mindscape as a narrative device, but jason using sex workers to try and vocalise his guilt about killing hank was just weird. like. i have to use tamil, sorry: idhulaan yaaru pa room pottu yosikara??? some things just can’t be translated into a second language.

i guess one way to interpret jason’s reckoning with what he did to the titans as a sign of him coming off crane’s drug, but i think it’s more to do with the disillusionment of realising that he was a mere pawn in a more sinister plan, and not, as he thought, a player in control of his destiny, rising to the purpose of liberating gotham of its fears in a way batman never could. along the way, he’s done some truly irreversible damage. it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

13. another hallucination! it’s really intriguing that it’s a young dick(?), younger than we’ve ever seen him, wearing an early-era robin costume from way before he even became robin. (this is also interesting in that it gives credence to the idea that ‘robin’ is an identity that dick created entirely on his own, and as a possible homage to his family.)

“old road, old house... it’s all gone.” i wonder what it all means.

13.5. it’s entirely likely dick’s hallucinating because of a brain injury from the accident, though just hallucinations without any other focal neurological deficit is unusual. he might’ve been microdosed with fear toxin at some point, though i wonder when... did jason do so after dick’s accident? did he get dosed at the factory from last episode?

it’s also possible it’s a continuing manifestation of dick’s issues from last season--which, if you remember, he never told anyone about and therefore never properly addressed. maybe he was hallucinating bruce wayne in a psychotic episode accompanying an acute stress reaction and maybe that’s what’s happening now. nobody’s denying that he’s under an extraordinary amount of stress right now. another way to look at it is that this is how he externalises conflict that he can’t bear to suppress anymore; if in s2 halluci!bruce manifested his insecurities and self-loathing, then these hallucinations... something to do with his fears, no doubt.

yet ANOTHER way to look at it might be: rachel is reaching out to him through their, well, psychic bond. after all, they were able to use that bond unconsciously last season to get the titans back together; maybe rachel has learned to gain a degree of control over it in themyscira and is sending across warnings? it’s all very intriguing.

anyway:

“i hear you skipped over the discowing suit in your evolution to nightwing... how could you??”

14. can you imagine, gar did all the work of reaching out to jason via molly and jason wants to meet dick? smh.

14.5. “i’m just a regular guy doing regular things” he says, standing at the opening of a secret old tunnel, like a secret person doing secret things, confronting someone who can now officially be called his stalker. neither of you guys are ‘regular’

14.8. ‘my dad was a cop and he taught me how to investigate’ - hmmm. i guess they’re trying to Explain Tim but i don’t think that’s really necessary. so he’s smart and he’s obsessed with batman and robin--that should be enough, imo.

15. that scene with scarecrow and his mother was... wow. i’m just laughing here helplessly, because what the hell? for a while i thought it was an extended dream sequence and i’m still not entirely sure that it isn’t...

anyway. i still love that titans is happy to throw out its plot in favour of extended character-exploration sessions.

15.5. it seems to me that this scene with crane and his mother (i have no idea if there’s anything in the comics similar to this) serves to move forward this season’s theme of harmful legacies and how parents can damage their children in the name of their mission. in a way it’s been the underlying message of the entire show but we’re really seeing it being reinforced this season. the titans, serving as a foil to scarecrow, are using the damage to rebuild themselves and actually work through their issues together, instead of spiralling further and further into the morass of their issues.

other than that... god, that scene was painful to watch. i can’t say i like this version of scarecrow or how this actor plays him at all.

16. i wonder what’s jason’s play here. i think he’s smart enough to realise that the titans aren’t going to just forgive him and let him be a titan again after what he did, and that dick agreeing to it is just a bid to pin both him and crane down. maybe it’s a ploy to trap them, get back on scarecrow’s good books so that he can have the drug again. who knows.

17. i absolutely felt dick when he said “we’ll bring him in and then re-assess the situation.” what the fuck else is he going to say? the priority is to get him.

so kory and dick are both hallucinating while potentially trying to rehabilitate their murderous siblings. CONFIDE IN EACH OTHER ALREADY

18. TIM NOOOO! you beautiful, reckless fool!

18.25. just to quickly address it here because i know it’s been brought up before: i think it’s perfectly justified to not have conner take tim to the hospital via superspeed because a) i don’t think we’ve seen conner do that with anybody so far and b) it’s probably not a good idea to submit tim’s body to that kind of stress without knowing what it would do to him. the paramedics with actual equipment and experience would be there in a few minutes, so on a risk assessment, i would say dick and conner absolutely made the right call.

18.5. i guess we won’t know what jason really intended to when the titans came to the pump to see him, but this is definitely going to set a big wedge in his relationship with crane. then again, crane got what he wanted--using starfire’s powers to blast through to the underground pipes--so jason can argue that this is exactly what he was working towards, too.

anyway, mortal peril, hallucinations, murderous family members, creepy visions and robins sprouting left and right. time to get rachel and donna on the scene, i think.

#titans #titans spoilers #meta #garfield logan #dick grayson #koriand'r #jason todd #tim drake #jonathan crane #conner kent #komand'r #aaaaah this is 3k+#*collapses in a heap*

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tigerkirby215 · 3 years

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5e Kayle, the Righteous build (League of Legends)

(Artwork by Jessica “OwleyCat” Oyhenart and Victor “3rdColossus” Maury. Made for Riot Games.)

You know I find it funny that I haven’t made a build for Kayle yet, given that I made Morgana awhile ago sort of as a spur of the moment thing. Despite the fact that I main support I really don’t play Morgana (can’t hit skill shots omegalul), but meanwhile I really like Kayle. She was one of the first champions I played along with Sona since I was told she was very similar to Terrorblade who was one of my favorite carries in DOTA 2. I dropped her for a bit after her rework but I picked her up again and she’s still super fun! I mean, shame she’s kinda trash in the meta.

Anyways it’s about time I make a build for her since Morgana was alone for so long, especially since she’s coming back along with Pentakill! Kayle’s probably the perfect character to play if you want to go Lawful Stupid, but out of respect for everyone else please don’t play her Lawful Stupid.

GOALS

On wings of fire, hope ascends - It’s the quest of all champions to eventually transcend mortals. Hopefully we’ll at least be able to fly after this.

Fire reveals truth - Kayle is also well-known for her Zealous attack speed, so we’ll need to be able to get out as much DPS as possible.

The worthy survive! - A little bit of Divine Judgement goes a long way. An explosion of flaming swords helps too.

RACE

This may come as a surprise to you but Kayle is an Aasimar. More specifically a Protector Aasimar, which is rather fitting seeing as she’s seen as The Protector in Demacia. As an Aasimar your Charisma increases by 2, but I’m going to increase your Constitution instead of the typical Wisdom increase from Protector Aasimar, for a bit more lane sustain.

You have Celestial Resistance to both your own Radiant damage and your sister’s Necrotic damage, have the Light Bearer feature for the Light cantrip, and can give yourself or an ally a Celestial Blessing thanks to Healing Hands. It only heals up to your level but it certainly helps!

You also get Darkvision and the Celestial language, and Radiant Soul at level 3 thanks to your Protector subrace, We’ll discuss that when we get to level 3.

ABILITY SCORES

15; CHARISMA - League of Legends body types, am I right? Sure you have a bit of an “evil must be purged” personality, but D&D Paladins like that a lot.

14; DEXTERITY - Something something medium armor. I would call what you wear Half Plate, which means that for once the choice of Medium Armor is accurate!

13; STRENGTH - This feels strangely familiar...

12; CONSTITUTION - Kayle is very squishy in League but I like not dying so...

10; INTELLIGENCE - You may have lived through history but most of that time was spent up in the stars. Basically we need everything else more.

8; WISDOM - Yeah I didn’t increase Wisdom with your racial increase because I was planning to dump it. Kayle’s fatal flaw is that she’s blinded by her sense of justice, which is a sign of poor Wisdom and critical decision making.

BACKGROUND

There isn’t a great background for “Half of the Aspect of Justice” but Celebrity Adventurer’s Scion works fairly well. You get proficiency with Perception as well as Performance (you were in Pentakill, after all!), a Disguise Kit (but I’d maybe replace that with something else or ditch it entirely), and two languages of your choice. (Pick your poison.)

Your background feature Name Dropping lets you tell people that your mom was actually a god. You might be able to find people who knew your mom (or more realistically worshiped her before... you know... you became half of her?) and folk might recognize that you’re... half a god, and give you free stuff.

(Artwork by Alvin Lee and Kan Liu. Made for Riot Games.)

THE BUILD

LEVEL 1 - SORCERER 1

Starting off as a Sorcerer because Kayle is about as useless as a level 1 Sorcerer at level 1. (Also because CON saves are nice.) But you can also grab proficiency with Religion (you are a god, after all) and Intimidation. (Because you aren’t exactly nice.)

Sorcerers get to choose their Sorcerous Origin at level 1 and Divine Soul is like being a Cleric but you get to dump your Wisdom because you’re blind to morality. You get one free spell from your Divine Magic and I guess Bless makes sense since its attached to Law? Honestly there are other spells I’d recommend (Protection from Evil and Good would be helpful, and you can’t go wrong with either Healing Word or Guiding Bolt) but it’s honestly easier to just take Bless and call it there.

But of course since you get Divine Magic that means you get Spellcasting! You learn 4 cantrips from the Sorcerer list at level 1 such as Firebolt to smite the wicked, Sacred Flame for enemies with a lot of armor (but hopefully bad Dexterity), Thaumaturgy to make sure your words are heard, and Guidance because it’s good to provide aid to those who need it.

You also learn two spells from the Sorcerer list: we’ll be taking Mage Armor for the same reason you buy Doran’s Shield as a top laner (because laning phase sucks and you’re weak as hell at level 1), and we’ll also grab Healing Word for your Celestial Blessing. As a treat.

You are also Favored by the Gods, so if you miss an attack roll or fail a saving throw you can add 2d4 to the roll to potentially turn it into a success. Given that you’ll likely be making a lot of attack rolls later in this build it’s very useful to be able to give yourself some insurance.

LEVEL 2 - SORCERER 2

Second level Sorcerers get a Font of Magic for Sorcery Points equal to your Sorcerer level. For now all you can really do with them is get one of your spell slots back, but they’ll be more useful later on.

For something that’s useful right now take Ice Knife for the AoE burst of your Starfire Spellblade. Yes it does Cold damage, but you also shouldn’t have an AoE E by level 2. Hell you technically shouldn’t even be a ranged champion yet. We have to make compromises here.

If you want a single target Starfire Spellblade Guiding Bolt is a decent choice I suppose.

LEVEL 3 - SORCERER 3

Third level Sorcerers gain the power of the Aspects thanks to Metamagic. You learn two Metamagic options to change your spells in various ways: Quickened Spell will let you increase your attack speed to slay the unjust with Zealous fervor, and while it’s perhaps not the most practical choice Transmuted Spell will let you wield holy fire, instead of holy ice or whatever other damage type you pick up.

If you don’t care about doing specifically fire damage than Empowered Spell is a good choice to more effectively maximize damage.

As a Protector Aasimar your Radiant Soul lets you sprout wings as an action. For 1 minute you have a 30 foot flying speed and can add your Charisma modifier as Radiant damage to one target whenever you deal damage. It might not be much at level 3 but the extra damage from Starfire Spellblade adds up when you get more AP! Oh and to top it off you can also learn another spell like Misty Step, for Flash.

LEVEL 4 - SORCERER 4

4th level Sorcerers get the first of many Ability Score Improvements. Increase your uneven Charisma score as well as your Constitution score for nice, even, Lawful stats.

You can also learn another cantrip like Message to keep in team chat, as well as a leveled spell like Spiritual Weapon. Kayle summons hundreds of swords for her ultimate so I think it’s fine if you summon one sword for some more DPS.

LEVEL 5 - SORCERER 5

Normally I wouldn’t go out of my way to get 5th level spells but we kinda need Fly more than once per Long Rest. Sprout those wings or grant the gift of angelic ascension to an ally!

The bad witch Tasha also gave Sorcerers Magical Guidance, letting you spend a Sorcerery Point to reroll a failed ability check.

(Artwork by Zeen Chin. Made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 6 - PALADIN 1

I swear it wasn’t my intention to make two casters with Paladin levels one after another, but we’re doing it anyways because it’s not like Kayle wouldn’t be a Paladin. First level Paladins get Divine Sense to know of any villains who need justice, and Lay on Hands to save the righteous.

LEVEL 7 - PALADIN 2

Second level Paladins get to choose their Fighting Style. Normally I’d take Blessed Warrior for a character who’s more-or-less a pure caster but you kinda get too many Cleric cantrips as is, so we’ll settle for good ol’ Defense because you can’t go wrong with +1 AC.

Protection and Interception are also fine to help your friends if you’re willing to hold onto a shield (no reason not to), and if you want to do a funny joke you can take Blind Fighting because Justice is Blind.

But of course what we’re mostly here for is Spellcasting: sure you got the entire Cleric list at your disposal but Sorcerer spells known is very limited, so take the following from the Paladin list:

Command to force evildoers to grovel at your feet.

Detect Evil and Good to... detect evil and good.

Protection from Evil and Good to... yeah this is fairly obvious too.

Heroism to empower heroes.

Shield of Faith to protect the righteous.

You also get Divine Smite, which sure would be nice if you used your sword as a melee weapon. I mean if you want to hit someone in melee you can turn a spell slot into damage but I kinda have to wonder why would you.

LEVEL 8 - PALADIN 3

Third level Paladins get to choose their Sacred Oath. Honestly just about any Paladin Oath would work for Kayle, but an Oath of Redemption would probably be best after you failed to upkeep justice the first time. Along with adding Sanctuary and Sleep to your spell list you also get two Channel Divinity options: if you go for Emissary of Peace you can add a flat +5 to all your Persuasion checks for 10 minutes. But Rebuke the Violent works great as a recreation of Divine Judgment’s damaging effect! When a creature within 30 feet of you damages someone other than you they must make a Wisdom saving throw after you use this reaction. If they fail they will take the same amount of damage they dealt as Radiant damage, and if they succeed they will take half. This has no maximum limit so you can use it when an enemy nukes your allies to have them experience retribution! "Drown in holy fire!"

The vial witch Tasha also lets you Harness Divine Power with your Channel Divinity to regain a spell slot equal to half your proficiency bonus once per Long Rest. And finally you get Divine Health, because justice doesn’t take sick days.

(Artwork by John Yucedag. Made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 9 - PALADIN 4

4th level Paladins get another Ability Score Improvement so cap off that Charisma modifier, because we’re building AP in this build. Maxed out Charisma also means more prepared spells, but we’re going to wait for...

LEVEL 10 - PALADIN 5

5th level Paladins get an Extra Attack which sure would matter if you were actually swinging that sword instead of shooting Fire Bolts and Sacred Flames.

But what does matter is that you get second level Paladin spells! Along with Hold Person and Calm Emotions from the Redemption spell list (you should perhaps cast Calm Emotions on yourself at some point?) you can prepare spells like Aid to boost yourself and your allies, and Warding Bond (Tasha’s work once again) to take some damage for an ally. (Which is almost like making them immune to damage?)

LEVEL 11 - PALADIN 6

The only reason to multiclass into Paladin as a caster would be for Aura of Protection. Seeing as your Charisma modifier is maxed out already that means that you (and your allies within 10 feet) can add +5 to all their saving throws! I really don’t think I need to explain why that’s useful: your Constitution saves are now a +11 (meaning that if you take 22 damage or less you automatically succeed the Concentration check) and even your lowest save is still a +4!

You can also prepare one last spell but I’m actually going to take this time to remind you that Paladins are prepared spellcasters. Even though you have a relatively limited amount of Paladin spells be sure to swap them around to whatever’s the most useful for your task at hand. But if you must pick up a spell Detect Magic is never bad to have?

(Artwork by Alex “alexplank” Flores. Made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 12 - SORCERER 6

Now that the obligatory Paladin levels are done it’s time to go back to Sorcerer. Hope your party didn’t expect you to be the support because you’re only now getting Empowered Healing to spend a Sorcery point and reroll any healing that you or an ally within 5 feet performs. I mean by total level 12 healing numbers will actually get pretty big, so this becomes a lot more useful!

But speaking of healing we’ll be getting not that but Haste instead. While you can’t use it too well (can only use it to make a weapon Attack, Dash, Disengage, Hide, or Use an Object) you can turn your allies into an avenging angel! As long as you can keep your Concentration which I mean... you have a +11 to your CON save.

LEVEL 13 - SORCERER 7

Unfortunately there’s no spell to make someone completely immune to damage for one round (while also still letting them move as normal except the 9th level spell Invulnerability that you can only cast on yourself) so we’ll just have to settle for Death Ward keeping the target you cast this on alive after reaching 0 HP. No rain of holy swords either unfortunately.

LEVEL 14 - SORCERER 8

8th level Sorcerers get an Ability Score Improvement and I think it’s about time for us to grab Metamagic Adept for 2 more Sorcery points to use on your Metamagic options like Twinned Spell to spread your wrath amongst all, and Careful Spell to avoid hurting those allied to your cause.

Speaking of AoE damage Vitriolic Sphere may do Acid damage but it’s a great recreation of the AoE damage of a high level Starfire Spellblade.

LEVEL 15 - SORCERER 9

Behold the might of 5th level spells! Remember how I was a little disappointed that you didn’t have the ability to make flaming swords rain down from the sky? Here you go: Flame Strike! Sure it basically does the damage of Fireball (and hey feel free to grab Fireball if you’re so inclined) but it has the holy flair that’s to be expected of Kayle.

If you want something more interesting than “Radiant damage Fireball” Dawn is also a good spell choice.

LEVEL 16 - SORCERER 10

10th level Sorcerers get another Metamagic option! Seeing as weve already got plenty thanks to Metamagic Adept one of the few options left is Heightened Spell to make sure your foes tremble beneath your might! You can also grab another cantrip like Prestidigitation for more generalized divine power.

And finally there’s also plenty of great spells you can take but Dispel Evil and Good probably fits Kayle the best. Now is a great time to remind everyone that you’re more than welcome to make your own Kayle, and while what I take may be “accurate” it’s not even necessarily what I’d build if I was making the character.

(Artwork by West Studio. Made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 17 - SORCERER 11

11th level Sorcerers can finally ascend! I hope you kept your Paladin weapons because it’s time for Tasha’s Otherworldly Guise! Calling upon the power of the Upper Planes (or lower planes too I guess if you’re awful) you get:

Resistance to Radiant and Necrotic damage (which you already have. Oops.) (I mean Lower Planes would make you immune to Fire and Poison damage...)

Immunity to the Charmed condition.

A 40 foot flying speed.

+2 AC

The ability to use your Charisma to attack, meaning that you can finally swing a sword well!

And the ability to attack twice, which you already have.

And the cool part is that unlike Tenser’s Transformation you can cast spells and don’t Exhaust yourself after using this spell! If you want to finally use your Paladin levels to bright the fight to your opponents you finally have the power to do so!

LEVEL 18 - SORCERER 12

12th level Sorcerers get another Ability Score or Feat and I’m simply going to suggest the Tough feat. Even if Kayle doesn’t usually build health in League you can, and d6 hit die suck when it comes to actually surviving.

What? Did you expect another spell known? Nah fuck you lmao WoTC says no to Sorcerers having spells.

LEVEL 19 - SORCERER 13

13th level Sorcerers can learn 7th level spells and while this may seem like a copout I have none that I really want for Kayle. Pick whatever you think would be the coolest since you can make your own choices by level 19. (My personal vote for Kayle would be Fire Storm but you are kinda loading up on AoE spells.)

LEVEL 20 - SORCERER 14

Our final level is the 14th level of Divine Soul Sorcerer to finally ascend. You have Otherworldly Wings for a permanent 30 foot flying speed! You did it! You reached max level as Kayle! You’re now unstoppable!

FINAL BUILD

PROS

Kneel before the light! - Your spells known go up to 7th level, and your spell slots go up to 9th. I really don’t think I have to explain that a full leveled caster is extremely powerful.

What is dark in me, I will illuminate - Even your non-spellcasting has great utility. Both your Channel Divinity options are extremely useful, and a little bit of Lay on Hands healing never hurt anyone. Not to mention your Aasimar transformation providing a flat +20 to damage every turn while it’s active!

I am your salvation! - Even if you aren’t running up in melee range Paladin levels do help a ton for staying alive. +5 to all saves is no joke, especially when it means that your Concentration save sits at a whopping +13! (You have to take more than 26 damage to even have a chance at failing your Concentration check!)

CONS

Why have we wings, sister, if not to fly? - You’d think a high Charisma would at least make you good at socializing but... no you’re not even that. Proficiency in the “mean” Charisma skills and mediocre ability scores in everything other than Charisma means you’ll contribute very little other than divine wrath.

Wings of Immortal Flame, lift me from mortal temptation! - How much flight is too much flight? Between your Radiant Soul, Tasha’s Otherworldly Guise, and you know... the Fly spell you have quite a lot of ways to take to the skies which all become near-completely redundant by level 20.

Celestial justice, guide my blade - Ironically enough one of the biggest issues with this build is how long it takes to get online. The Paladin dip may keep you safe but it’s not making you stronger, and I doubt you’ll be sitting beside your friends like a support. If you don’t mind praying to darker powers Genie Warlock is actually a great choice to get considerably more damage (and “attack speed!”) with Eldritch Blast and easily accessible flight by level 6 in Warlock. (Celestial Warlock also exists if you want more healing utility and want to stay in flavor.)

Of course weakness is something to shed as you come closer to divinity, but remember that even if mortality makes you weak mortals are not. Your allies will fight by your side and its your duty to protect them, as they shall no doubt protect you. Treat them with respect and vanquish evil together! Because no one likes a lawful stupid top laner.

(Artwork by Atey Ghailan. Made for Riot Games.)

#dnd #dnd 5e #dnd build #dnd guide #League of Legends #League of Legends Kayle #angel #avenging #avenging angel #light #wrath #dnd sorcerer #dnd paladin #Pentakill

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marmarparadoxa · 4 years

Note

It's because of recent tweets I saw but I know some are blaming the SC (esp the 104th) for not seeing Eren better during the 3 years they had and also for pushing many responsibilities onto his shoulder. I get why they see this as Eren's friends making a blunder but I can't help but disagree partly. (1)

On one side, their excitement and distraction came in the form of the outside world - something that seemed neigh impossible at the beginning of the series and once had been the 'end goal'. We know that's not it now. It seems logical that people like Armin and Hange will be distracted per say towards the new techs and innovations the outside world is offering. How the fruitful encounters they have w Marleyans making them hopeful (2) I understand where they're coming from, especially considering their disposition that tends to be optimistic and intelligent. Others like Jean, Connie, Sasha, and Mikasa can also be distracted by the new things too. It's something so human and highlights how even the close-knit group can make blunders. (3) I don't agree with people blaming SC for not noticing and their slow decision with Eren and the Yeagerists because that means they still care. They value their friendship with him and want to not mess him up more. Even from my perspective, there's a level of respect SC and military have for Eren for not just being the AT and FT but as a person/personnel. (4) It's so easy to 'coddle' Eren because as a reader, we are relatively relegated to a higher see/position to judge. But take it from the charas' views, it's just like real life to a point. They are faced with this time limit and the world going down on them while at the same time, they try to not cross too many moral lines. Especially for Hange who is responsible for many lives under her and Armin's 'kind' disposition. (5) What miffs me is that the people who side with Eren in this case doesn't tend into account that Eren almost never tries to reach out. While it's justified when we put his 'plan' into account, that just sounds selfish to be frank. Yes, he asks Mikasa about 'what he is to her' and he did try Armin's way once, but those are such minimal effort. Sometimes, they themselves need to reach out first and seek help more (6) That may sound cruel, but that's how it works unfortunately. I would be more lenient to Eren if he did more effort with sharing and trusting his friends but he doesn't - so of course, the SC is surprised and shocked and hurt at his actions. They don't know and it's unfair. Eren does this all because of what he saw and ironically is likely doing a self-fulfilling prophecy. He gives up hope and that's his downfall. (end)

Hi! :) Apologies for this late reply. You’ve already covered a lot, so I’ll try to add my two cents on what you’ve already pointed out.

In short, blaming the SC, especially the 104th, or Hange, for not seeing through Eren and not understanding what was going on with him doesn’t make sense to me. Because Eren didn’t allow them to do so, he didn’t allow them to see. During those three years between the battle of Shiganshina and their leaving for their trip to Marley, he kept on working with them, he never disrespected Hange, and almost always he acted and talked in accordance with what were their shared plans for the future. When Kiyomi proposed Zeke’s plan, of course they were all horrified, none of them wanted to proceed with it, and didn’t know what to do, but then, it was Eren who standed up and spoke against it. In front of everyone, Mikasa, Hange, Historia, and the rest of the assembly, he said he would never agree with Zeke’s plan and sacrifice Historia, that relying on the Rumbling would be too risky, and it was he who proposed to use the time they were left with to think about other options, that they should seek other ways. Not long after, he would say to the same persons which would end up risking their life in order to stop him, that they were more important to him than anyone else, and that he wanted them to live long lives. I brought up all this, so to clarify how Eren could be perceived by his friends, what was the picture that they could make out of his words and actions. On the other hand though, there were also some signs that something was off with him. When Armin and Mikasa were talking about the building of the port and them getting along with the captured Marleyans, Eren couldn't be as hopeful as them, and his attitude was sharp and emotionally detached. Then, unlike all others, he wasn’t there to taste Niccolo’s cooking, and we didn’t see him interact with any Marleyans - he was the only one that was missing when they were talking with Onyankopon, and in all those little, shared moments of peace and hope. So I think Eren, at that point, was already starting to isolate himself from the rest of them, shutting himself up, and maybe, as you also said, with all those new things to understand, with all the work and the building and the planning Hange, Armin, and the others too had to do, they weren’t able to notice this change, they didn’t pay much attention to it. But again, what could they infer from that? With respect to his words, to his resolute opposition to the use of the Rumbling and Zeke’s plan and Historia’s sacrifice, to his outward determination to find another way, those were subtle cues, that could reasonably pass unnoticed, and blaming the 104th for not acting upon them is rather pointless.

So this is where his friends’ remarks in the last episode come from: Jean: “Eren suddenly started getting along with Zeke’s plan”, Connie: “Did he look like Eren to you? I don’t think so.” and Armin and Mikasa’s disbelief and painful confusion. Eren methodically killing children and civilians, Eren getting along with Zeke’s plan was nothing like the Eren they used to know, even in those last years.

And Eren never shared with his friends, or with Hange, and not even with Armin or Mikasa, what he saw in those future memories. He kept everything inside, he trusted no one with that knowledge, ruling out the possibility that anyone could help him understand what was the nature of those memories (was it all bound to happen? Could it be avoided?), and try to figure out a solution, so as to prevent that catastrophe. Maybe, initially, he still believed that they could have avoided that, but more and more, he felt like they were running out of time, and that future he saw increasingly assumed a character of concreteness and unavoidability. I was also talking with @oldsummerdream the other day about Eren, and Sushi reminded me of this Isayama’s interview, where it says that, as his prior beliefs were gradually getting destroyed, Eren more and more would act upon a principle of self-preservation (”How about just conserving myself?”). So perhaps, also indulging in those seething feelings of disappointment, anger, and the imperative to preserve himself , that future became a necessity in Eren’s mind, something that Eren eventually stopped fighting against, and adopted as his own will.

And it was him who eventually decided to act alone, not consulting anybody else. The SC, his friends, never put that responsibility on him, they never required from him to save Paradis alone. Eren could have been the wielder of that power of the Founding Titan, a power which could decide the fate of them all, but, under their commander’s guidance, they were all working together in order to find a solution, a way to peace. As Hange said, they were ready to think stuff through and feel frustrated along with him, so Eren wouldn’t have been left alone. He just decided to do so, building an impenetrable wall around him, and once he settled himself on that irreversible path, he then proceeded to push away the people which cared about him more than anyone else - Armin and Mikasa.

Maybe, when that night in Marley he asked Mikasa what he was to her, he was still wavering, maybe, there was still the tiniest possibility left inside him to not succumb to that darkness; maybe, if Mikasa would have chosen another answer, things would have been different. The other possibility though, is that Eren, at that point, already knew what he was going to do, and that’s why he was already apologizing to Ramzi, and crying - because he had already given up all hope. So perhaps, he just wanted to know, before leaving them, before entering that road, he wanted to ask that question to Mikasa, because he knew that it would have been his last time with her, his last chance to know (and months later, he’d be still wondering about that, and asking for his brother’s opinion). But I’m not sure about it, and at this point, we’ll never know.

#eren yeager #mikasa ackerman #armin arlert #hange zoe #jean kirschtien #connie springer #sasha blouse #eremika #historia reiss #snk meta

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gigslist · 3 years

Text

34+ Voiceover Roles & 3 Musician Open Calls - Work From Home - Paid

'F*cking Sober' Podcast

22 + Roles

3 Open Calls for Musicians With Their Own Music

PAID WORK FROM HOME NON UNION

Deadline : September 15, 2021 2:00 PM

Somehow9am Productions // F*cking Sober: the first 90 days Podcast

Katie Mack, coord.

:"A call for artists in recovery for the 2nd Season of The Webby Award Winning Podcast Series 'F*cking Sober: the first 90 days.' We are looking for voice over talent and musicians/music producers for 'FS: Shadai.' 'F*cking Sober' is a semi-comedic mostly non-fictional narrative podcast following Shadai’s first 90 days of getting sober. Thirty-five year old Shadai is the black, queer, strong female in advertising— so what if she keeps shots in her bra for between meetings, right? But after a shitshow holiday party, a fuzzy cop encounter, and a disaster presentation with the new big account, Dry January doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. Maybe Dry Forever is better. This is what it looks, acts, and feels like to get f*cking sober. This 8 episode serialized show features music by artists with their own story with recovery. F*cking Sober Season 1: Anita has received 15k downloads since it’s release in Nov 2020, and received a 2021 Webby Nomination for Best Limited Series, and a Webby Win for Best Writing for a Podcast. At this time we are only looking to work with artists who have a relationship/understanding of recovery. Please follow instructions for submitting and what to include in the cover letter to be considered! Thank you! Listen to Season 1 to get the vibe: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f-cking-sober-the-first-90-days/id1538804959?i=1000499155627 And check out: www.fckingsoberpodcast.com @fckingsober90_podcast More information about Somehow9am Productions & Katie Mack (Producer): www.somehow9amproductions.com www.mackstage.com"

Roles

Shadai (Voiceover): Female, 18+WORK FROM HOMEproduction states: "Note: We are only accepting submissions from artists who have their own story in recovery, TY! 35 year old, black, queer, cis gender female attorney with a dry sense of humor, who has strong opinions and shares them sometimes, is a powerhouse and knows it all… until… until she doesn’t. Please note your experience with improv/comedy in your cover letter If you have writing experience or are interested in writing please note this in your cover letter. We will be giving writing credits to the right candidate who desires to contribute to the molding of this character."Required Media: Voice Reel

Other Characters (Voiceover): 20-70

"Note: We are only accepting submissions from artists who have their own story in recovery, TY! We are looking for diversity in every sense of the word, from all genders, to ages, to ethnicities, to lived experiences, to food preferences!! In short, we are looking to cast dope, interesting people. Looking to cast various characters through out the S2 Shadai, including but not limited to:

Dad (black, army veteran, a dad’s dad)

Mom (black, hyper critical, the opposite of Shadai)

Dana (any ethnicity, work enemy)

Coco (white, work bestie)

JewBoo aka Therapist (Jewish, confidant, motherly, with a special sense of humor)

Miriam (black, best friend and ex-lover who tells it like it is)

Galen (white, gay, best friend who is warm and caring and pushy)

15 other characters Please note any experience you may have with comedy/improv if any. Please submit your reel along with your cover letter."Required Media: Voice Reel, Cover Letter

Musicians (BIPOC Artists in Recovery) (Voiceover): 18+ music from BIPOC identifying artists.

Musicians (Queer Identifying Artist in Recovery) (Voiceover): 18+ music by Queer Artists.

Musicians (Non-BIPOC/Non-Queer Artists in Recovery) (Voiceover): 18+ music from non-BIPOC or non-Queer Identifying Artists in recovery.

"To be produced over the course of October 2021 - January 2022 Shadai’s commitment is estimated at two hrs/wk. Other characters 30mins. Musicians, all work should already exist. Please be prepared to send stems or stripped down tracks."

Compensation & Union Contract Details

Stipend: $25 - $75Production states: "Shadai (Lead Character), $550 for full season. All Other Characters: $25-$50 per episode. Musicians: $25-$75 per song per episode. Sync license contract."

Seeking talent: Nationwide (United States)

Website:http://www.fckingsoberpodcast.com

======================================

'Rain: Series III'

12 Voiceover Roles

PAID WORK FROM HOME NONUNION

Deadline: September 14, 2021 8:59 PM

JKPRising James Klim, filmmaker

Seeking voiceover talent for "Rain: Series III," a web-series, created in the video game Halo Reach on MCC via Xbox/PC. "This series will have a total of 13 episodes. I have many characters to cast, 12 specifically. If you wish to learn more about the show, you can check out my documentary series regarding the show. You can view the first episode here - www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlzPQvJS3og A little bit about me, I am a freelance filmmaker who actually got into film through making Halo videos as a kid when I was younger. You can check out some of my work here - www.jkprising.com/ I've always wanted to return to my roots & finish a series I was never able to before, but now I have the time to focus on it. This is a paid position. Rates depend on each character as some have more lines than others & vice versa. I am not the wealthiest person in the world, but I will to compensate each voice actor for their performance. My budget per character is between $100 - $300. This again, all varies per character. In this post, there is a video of what the character will look like in the series. I have also attached a single page from a random episode script from the show. The highlighted lines are what the character will say. There will also be non verbal lines highlighted, this is meant to be voiced kind of like an anime, where every movement usually has sounds. Typically, how would you make a sound if you did any of the following, head turn, turns around, surprised gasp, sighs, etc. Since this a paid gig, I am expecting a professional voice audition & if hired, continued professional audio. This means minimum to no background noise. The audio needs to be crisp."

Roles

Chloe Moody (Voiceover): Female, 18-35WORK FROM HOME29. Voice type: English/United Kingdom accent, polite, doesn't get mad often but when she does, she loses it, anxious, low self esteem, hopeful. Chloe Moody used to be a psychiatrist, but after the death of her soon to be husband, she spiraled into insanity. She met someone later on in life named Tom Rains, who looked exactly like her dead boyfriend. She became obsessed with him & tried to get with him, which sunk her further into a deep depression. She finally hit rock bottom, which causes her to seek out help from the very people she used to serve. Chloe meets a psychiatrist named Jennifer, who is able to help herself almost fully recover. Chloe eventually accidently runs back into Tom, which triggers Chloe to try one last time. After a final rejection, Chloe comes to the realization that she is not redeemable & decides to take her own life in front of Tom. Chloe's death, triggers a massive event for Tom Rains, which has massive ramifications for the series. Chloe is a major character and will appear in a couple episodes.Languages:

English

Accents:

British

Australian

Voice Styles:

Soft

Softspoken

Crazy

Compassionate

Sad

Angry

Required Media: Voice Reel

Dark Daryl (Voiceover): Male, 18-40WORK FROM HOME

32, voice type: Very dark presence, evil. sadistic, look at examples like Yami Marik from the Original Yu-Gi-Oh - www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xaa_ycud6o, manic, darkness. Dark Daryl is the darkness of his original persona, Daryl. Daryl accidentally acquired a powerful technology known as an imperium. This caused Daryl to lose himself to it at some point & was taken over by an alternate personality named, The Professor, which caused tons of damage. When Daryl came back to his senses, the damage had been done & others abandoned him, which caused him to grow angry at something that he didn't consciously do. Daryl once again loses himself to the imperium, which turns into Dark Daryl, a representation of all the anger & hatred he endured over the course of his past uncontrollable actions. Dark Daryl is very aggressive, sadistic & wants to destroy the people who wronged him in the past. Eventually, he comes face to face with Daryl & fights to stay as the one who remains in control, even if that means killing Daryl & anyone who gets in his way. Dark Daryl is a character who appears in the second half of the show, & becomes the series main villain. He will appear in many episodes.

Languages:

English

Voice Styles:

Aggressive

Angry

Evil

Commanding

Straightforward

Scary

Dangerous

Intimidating

Demonic

Required Media: Voice Reel

Nikki (Voiceover): Female, 18-35 WORK FROM HOME

25. Voice type: Energetic, passionate, caring, open-minded, loving, positive, independent, fighter. Nikki used to date Tom Rains. She didn't really have much going for her, as she had no ambition at all during that time of her life. After Tom broke up with her, this was quite the shock to Nikki. It caused her to really dive deep within herself & from that moment, she tried to learn more about herself. She discovered a love for storytelling, & so went into journalism. Nikki is now dating Jennifer & they have been together for almost a year. Nikki eventually gets wrapped up in a major conspiracy, which drags many of her friends in with her. She is in for the story of her entire career. Nikki is a major character and will appear in many episodes.

Languages:

English

Voice Styles:

Comforting

Compassionate

Caring

Amusing

Animated

Brave

Heroic

Required Media: Voice Reel

Talent works remotely with professional recording equipment.

Professional Pay: $100 - $300Pays between $100-$300 depending on character.

Nationwide (United States)

Additional Materials

Website: https://www.jkprising.com/

Nikki Audition.pdf - https://d26oc3sg82pgk3.cloudfront.net/files/media/uploads/casting_call/7f95c65b-ab53-43d3-a66b-9e59d1041acb.pdf

Dark Daryl Audition.pdf - https://d26oc3sg82pgk3.cloudfront.net/files/media/uploads/casting_call/00cfdf46-84c1-4da6-9dee-91c7bcdeed3d.pdf

Chloe Moody Audition.pdf https://d26oc3sg82pgk3.cloudfront.net/files/media/uploads/casting_call/186cbe9e-9c7e-4ce5-bcbe-2407a9dec00b.pdf

#voiceover casting calls #work from home voice over work #music wanted online #jobs for musicians #remote jobs for musicians #music writer jobs #gigs for recovering addicts

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argumentl · 4 years

Text

The Freedom of Expression Ep 17 - Sharp selling masks on thier own website.

K: Hi, this is Dir en grey's Kaoru starting this week's episode of The Freedom of Expression. Joe san! (*looks intentionally at J*)

J:Yep

K:Tasai san! (*looks intentionally at T*)

T: *nods*

J: Get it right this time, haha.

K: *laughs* Its started to go funny when I say it carelessly.

J: Well, you kinda zone out a bit, don't you, when you're wearing a mask.

T: Yeah.

K: Its slightly difficult to concentrate.

J: It is difficult.

K: ...with your awareness.

J: If we go on like this into the rainy season, it will feel pretty tough to keep wearing a mask.

T: Yeah.

K: Yeah, but there are those things that you can wrap round your face and neck. I've heard those feel a bit cooler.

J: Yeah, I do think wearing a mask in the rainy season will be tough. At the moment, what I am not sure about is whether or not, and to what extent masks are effective. There are different opinions everywhere you look. In the end, you don't know who to believe. Im at the point of thinking I should wear one to avoid any risk just in case, even if its a small risk.

K: Yeah, and what about your eyes?

J: Yeh, your eyes.

Kami: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

K: Like, Trump wasn't wearing a mask, but he was covering his eyes, right?

J: Yeah, yeah. Oh! Kami? Are you coming in at this point?

Kami: Yes, yes.

J: Okay, go ahead.

Kami: Um, as for masks, when they were tested on mice, apparently they were effective. They had one side infected with corona next to one side that wasn't, and when they added a mask barrier inbewteen the cages, the infection rate reduced a lot.

T: Ehh?

J: Yeah, I've read about that too.

K: It seems like its better to just wear one.

T: Well, this is the news from Tokyo Sports today, but the home appliance company Sharp are making masks, and selling them at 2980yen for 50, with a delivery fee of 660yen. They are limited to one box per person, and you have to register as a member. So with even Sharp making masks, its like..won't Japan end up with a mask surpluss?

K: You see them a lot don't you? Well, you don't know where they come from though.

J: Well, Sharp is a home appliance maker that has been operating for many decades, but this year has apparently been their best year for sales and profits. They've made the leap over to masks as thier big money maker, instead the of home appliances, which they've sold up to now. Thats how much everyone has ???*1

T: Going from making home appliances to making masks is pretty impressive, right?

J: Yeah.Thats the great thing about Japanese technology. I think people are very reassured to see 'Made in Japan', they prefer Japanese made ones over foreign made ones, especially in terms of hygiene. But it must have been tough for them with their web server going down.

T: Yeah

J: I tried to have a look at thier site, but in the end I couldn't connect to it once ...

T: Were you thinking of buying some?

J: Yeh, I was! But while Im doing this, you can still see masks on sale all over town recently.

T: There are real estate agencies selling masks..

J: Yes, thats it! Even a tapioca drink stand was selling masks.

K: Yeah, but a friend of mine has been selling them too ...they come via a route, you can purchase them directly from the factory in China or somewhere, and then disperse them to people here, so you don't really know where they've been.*2

J: Right? They really are being sold by all sorts of people in all sorts of places. Its incredible.

T: Its a mask bubble.

J: Also, a lot of people are wearing hand made masks, or brand name masks...

K: Washable ones?

J: Yeah, washable ones.

K: Well, its not like they don't work.

J: Yeah.

T: Masks can be fashionable. Do you remember that chain, Dom Dom Burger?

J, K: Oh, nostalgic!

T: Dom Dom Burger have been selling masks with 'Dom Dom' on the side.

K: Thats cute.

T: They've also been really popular. They are cute.

K: That elephant logo?

J, T: Yeah, yeah.

K: I kinda want one of those.

J: Yeah, I want one!

T: So in this way, masks are no longer staying the usually white, but are turning into fashionable items.

J: Well, I usually like Yohji (Yamamoto), and Yohji is also putting out masks, black or white leather.

T: Yohji is doing a white mask?

J: A white one and a black one. Some people are saying this type of thing is cool, or this is want they want.. I want to buy one of his masks, but I can't. Leather is expensive.

K: There are a lot of overseas artists making them too, aren't there?

J: Is there a particular one you like?

K: Well, no, I just thought theres loads of places doing like a design or print on masks at the moment.

J: Will you make a mask with your characters (Krim and Zon)?

T: Ah, that would be good.

K: I wonder if they would sell?

J: Yeah, I think they would.

K: *laughs*

T: Should we (Tokyo Sports) make them?

K: *laughs*

J: Could Tokyo Sports make them?

T:???*3

K: We could have a little Tokyo Sports logo on the side.

J: It would look so fake!

K: *laughs a lot*

J: Like a counterfeit.

T:???*4

J: But that does happen, in this case.

K: I think it would be good. There is that monthly magazine 'Mu' isn't there? You see their logo on tshirts a lot. Tokyo Sports could do that type of thing.

T: Oh, right, yeah. But we did actually make a parker once.

K: Ehh, I want it!

T: And a kind of Idol person really wore it to lives and stuff, and it became a desirable item. Everyone was like, 'Eh?! A Tokyo Sports parker?!'

K: Its good, right?

J: It is good. If you wear something with 'Tokyo Sports' on it, it shows a kind of intelligence.

T: Really?! Im so happy *laughs*

J: It shows you've read around a bit. Its good. Although its a bit strange to say it. Its a bit different from something with an 'Asahi Shimbun' or 'Yomiuri Shinbun' logo. Its 'Tokyo Sports'!

T: Should we put our name on Dir's goods next time?*5 *everyone laughs*

J: Yes, start there.

K: It would be recognized, right?

J: Yeh, everyone would be like, 'Ah, its Tasai san!'. They might buy it. But, conversely, if Kaoru was to make masks, would Tokyo Sports be interested?

T: Of course.

K: But would those characters mean anything to the readers of Tokyo Sports?

T: We could put UFO on the side.

J: Ahh, UFO right?

K: ???*6

J: Well, it sounds strange, but just like how people send out a message with the print on their tshirt, you could do that with masks. For example, how you are feeling today or something...if you have a picture of beer on your mask, people might think, 'ah, that person wants to drink beer'.

T: Thats a good idea.

J: You could show if you are feeling good or bad, like include a message. You could send a message with your mask, send a message without talking.

T: Well, that type of think is developing, isn't it? That kind of fashion style.

K: Yeah, despite not being disposable, you can change your look everyday. Like, you could wear this one on Monday, or pair one with your glasses, or whatever you have that you want to wear.

J: Match it with your feelings, right?

K: ..with everything.

J: But up to now you see them in white, black and kind of bluey colours, and maybe pink..with womens' masks. But what about more different..

K: More colourful ones?

J: Yeah, deep purple or such..

T: Deep purple?

J: The colours, or the design, like the shape can be..

K: Like this pattern? *gestures to his shirts*

J: Yes, like check or patterned...if they come like this, it will be more exciting to wear a mask. Aren't you looking forward to that a bit?

T: Well, yeah. I think white looks kinda bleak.

J: It does, yeah. You could also put stickers on your mask. It might be a bit difficult to stick them on if it gets fluffy though

K: You could put studs in it.

T: Ah, cool!

J: Should we put studs in?

K: Wasn't Yohji selling one like that?

J: Yeh, that was kind of printed on to it, but it looked like studs.

T: Its good putting different things on masks, right?

J: Well, if masks really are effective, we have to wear them.

K: Right.

J: I'd like some which are more creative. If there is scientific progress, you could have ones that open up when you try to eat.

T: Ah, that would be cool!

K: I think I've seen that kind of video! He looks like he's wearing a mask, but then it opens up when he eats.

J: How does it?

K: It just opens when he opened his mouth.

J: Really?

T: I see.

J: Ehh, there are lots of ways...Well, I don't know if I would wear it, but what about a mask you can kiss with..?

K: A mask you can kiss with? ...What are you talking about? *laughs*

J: Im sorry, at 52 years old, I've gone funny...

K: But, actually, it a good feeling to see normal life returning a little, some stores opening up again, isnt it? Starbucks, for example.

J: Yes, yes.

K: If it spreads more, we'll be in trouble though..

T: But there was that Spanish flu wasn' there?

J: Yeah, 100 years ago.

T: While it was spreading, they didn't know why, but they eventually realised it was spreading where people were gathered together, so maybe corona might be the same, and it might just return to normal after two or three years, I wonder?

K: It will.

J: Yes, we won't be social distancing forever.

Kami: I have something to say. Um, Didn't Dir en grey sell masks before?

K: We made them before, yeh.

Kami: So you sold them, and you also have a song called, 'Mask', right?

K: You know a lot, don't you?

Kami: Have you thought of using that?

T: I see.

Kami: I thought, since everyone needs masks, and you have a song called 'Mask', you could do something.

T: Kami has come in straight talking.

Kami: Thats right.

J: What do you think, Leader?

Kami: Yeh, if you did that..

K: I havn't really thought about it.

J: Hahaha.

K: I havn't thought about it at all.

T: Haha.

Kami: Its a laymans idea. You have a song called 'Mask', so do a mask campaign. But I wasn't sure whether it would fit with Dir en grey's image. But that was a shocking answer.

T: Hahaha.

J: Yeah, I saw Kaoru's expression and he really did answer honestly. But conversely, how about Kami's idea? You might want to try if you think about it a bit more?

K: Ahh, it didn't really resonate with me..

*Everyone laughs*.

K: Well, anyway, see you next week. Thank you very much.

J: Thank you

K: Please subscribe.

*1, 3, 4, 6 Couldn't make it out.

*2, 5 I think this is what he meant.

#dir en grey #the freedom of expression #tfoe #kaoru #薫

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grailfinders · 4 years

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Fate and Phantasms #70: Scáthach

Today on Fate and Phantasms, we’re making the queen of the Land of Shadows and Witch of Dun Scaith, Scáthach!

Or at least we’re trying to, because to properly make her, you have to make someone who’s great at literally everything. Don’t worry though, you’ll just have to settle for being very good at most things instead.

Check out below the cut for the full breakdown, or you can look at the character sheet over here!

Note: I’m not changing the build around for it, but Tasha’s added the ability to cast cantrips as weapon attacks to the sixth level of bladesinger, so it might be worth the effort to shift things around to get that benefit.

Race and Background

Scathach used to be human, but now she’s half divine and guards the underworld. Fallen Aasimar would be more flavorful, but Half Elf gives us more to work with, also makes us half human, and will appease any stickler DMs when it comes to level 10. They get Darkvision; Fey Ancestry, giving you resistance to being charmed and immunity to magical sleep, and Skill Versatility, making you proficient in two skills of your choice. Here we’re going with Athletics and Religion to balance your physical and mental skills. You also get +2 Charisma and +1 in two abilities of your choice, here Dexterity and Wisdom.

Guardian of the Underworld is one hell of a resume, but it keeps you away from the rest of humanity and makes you a lot smarter than most people, so Sage is a pretty close approximation, giving you proficiency in Arcana and History.

Stats

Make your Dexterity as high as possible- you know where to stick those spears, and you’re also remarkably hard to stick spears into. Second is your Intelligence, you mentor some of the greatest warriors and mages in Ireland, so you’re pretty smart. For that same reason, make Wisdom third. Your Constitution isn’t as high as we’d like it. You’re supposed to be immortal, but we have plenty of ways to make that a nonissue. Same for your Strength, we don’t really need it, but it should be a lot higher than 10. Finally, dump Charisma; you can be hard to get along with sometimes, especially when people bring up your age.

Class Levels

1. Fighter 1: Starting off as a fighter gives you proficiency in Strength and Constitution saves, as well as in two fighter skills, like Acrobatics and Intimidation. You also pick up a Fighting Style. Two-Weapon Fighting will make your left hand just as strong as your right... just as soon as you can dual-wield your spears. We’ll get there. You also get a Second Wind, letting you use your Bonus Action once per short rest to heal yourself. You’ve got tons of runes, one of them has got to be able to heal you.

Eventually, you’ll be dual-wielding spears, but for now just focus on using the one.

2. Monk 1: Hopping over to Monk nets you Martial Arts, letting you use your much stronger dexterity instead of strength for weapon attacks, a d4 for unarmed attacks, and your bonus action to make an unarmed strike after making a weapon attack with your action. You also get Unarmored Defense, giving you an AC of 10+your dexterity modifier+your wisdom modifier when not wearing armor. I’m not sure what you’re supposed to be wearing, but it’s definitely not armor.

3. Fighter 2: Back in Fighter now, you get an Action Surge, letting you tack an extra action to one of your turns once per short rest.

4. Fighter 3: Grab Eldritch Knight as your martial archetype, gaining Spells that use your Intelligence to cast and the ability to Weapon Bond. If you spend an hour performing the ritual, you can bond a weapon to yourself, making it impossible to disarm you unless you’re incapacitated, and you can summon one bonded weapon as a bonus action as long as you’re in the same plane. You can have up to two weapons bonded at once.

For your spells, Create Bonfire and Frostbite are fire and ice runes, respectively. Protection from Evil and Good will make you more of an anti-divinity powerhouse, Shield will boost your AC higher and protect you from missiles, and Sleep’s just useful.

5. Fighter 4: For your first feat, grab Dual Wielder to increase your AC by 1 while holding two weapons, finally allow you to dual wield spears, and draw two weapons at once. Summoning weapons is cool, but maybe you should just keep some on hand too.

For your spell, Magic Missile can be even more summoned spears that always hit their target.

6. Fighter 5: Fifth level fighters get an Extra Attack, letting you attack twice per action. This adds up to two times normally, three times with your off hand/martial arts, four times with your action surge, and five times altogether.

7. Fighter 6: Use your next ASI to become a War Caster, giving you advantage on concentration saves, the ability to cast spells as opportunity attacks, and best of all, the ability to cast somatic spells with both hands occupied by weapons. If you’re going to dual wield, you better do it right.

8. Fighter 7: With our last level in fighter for a bit, you learn some War Magic. If you use your action to cast a cantrip, you can attack with a weapon as a bonus action. Now you can really mix your magecraft and weapon wielding!

For your spell, grab Darkness to bring a bit of Dun Scaith back to the material plane.

9. Wizard 1: We’ll be heading back to the fighter levels soon, but we’re taking a quick detour for some extra magic power. When you become a wizard, you gain another set of Spells that also use Intelligence to cast, but are kept in your Spellbook and have to be prepared ahead of time. You also gain Arcane Recovery, letting you recover a number of spellslots on a short rest with a total level equal to half your wizard level, rounded up.

You also get a ton of spells at level one, most of which will be your Wisdom of Dun Scaith helping you steal some abilities from other classes. Jump and Featherfall from monks, and Comprehend Languages and False Life from Warlocks, specifically. You also get Detect Magic and Indentify to help you sniff out magical artifacts that you probably already know about. Finally, you get Booming Blade, Chill Touch, and Message as cantrips.

10. Wizard 2: Second level wizards specialize in a school of magic, and being a half-elf qualifies you for becoming a Bladesinger. Bladesingers gain Training in War and Song, a long way of saying Performance proficiency, and the titular Bladesong, which you can activate as a bonus action. It lasts for a minute, and while active you add your Intelligence modifier to your AC and concentration saves, add 10′ to your movement speed, and have advantage on acrobatics checks. You gain a number of bladesongs equal to your proficiency per short rest, and it will end early if you wear medium or heavy armor, a shield, or make a two-handed attack with a weapon. None of those should be issues for you.

For your spells this level, grab Longstrider for extra mobility and Cause Fear because you tend to have that effect on people. Especially your pupils.

11. Wizard 3: Third level wizards get second level spells. Cloud of Daggers lets you summon a swarm of Gae Bolgs in a 5′ cube, dealing damage to those who enter. Hold Person lets you stun a Humanoid for up to a minute if they fail a Wisdom save each turn, for free advantage on attacks in guaranteed critical hits.

12. Wizard 4: Now that we can finally use spells and spears at the same time, we can use these ASIs for stats. Bump up your Intelligence for more wizard spells, stronger spells in general, and a stronger bladesong.

You also learn how to cast Gust for a wind rune, can Misty Step for high-speed movement, and Detect Thoughts for some more Clairvoyance.

13. Wizard 5: Our last wizard level gives you some third level spells! Magic Circle lets you carve protective runes to ward off or capture extraplanar beings, and Haste makes you anime-character level fast, doubling your movement and giving you an extra action each turn.

14. Fighter 8: Another ASI, this time bumping up your Dexterity for more damage to others and less damage to you. You also learn how to use your clairvoyance to Locate Objects.

15. FIghter 9: You become Indomitable, letting you reroll a failed saving throw once per long rest.

16. Fighter 10: Tenth level Eldritch Knights can make Eldritch Strikes, imposing disadvantage against the next spell save a creature makes before the end of your next turn when you hit them with a weapon attack.

For your spells, you can Encode Thoughts, making a physical copy of either your own thoughts, or those you read with Detect Thoughts, to literally steal people’s skills. You also learn how to combine your summoned spears with an ice rune to create Snilloc’s Snowball Swarm.

17. Fighter 11: Thanks to another Extra Attack, you get a third attack each action. You also learn to combine your summon spears with a fire rune to make some Scorching Rays.

18. Fighter 12: Another ASI. Use this one to improve your Intelligence for stronger spells and songs.

19. Fighter 13: You gain a second use of Indomitable per rest, and learn how to carve a Glyph of Warding. It can either be used as an explosive trap, or to cast a 3rd level or lower spell on activation. All you have are 3rd level or lower spells, so that’s not much of an limitation.

20. Fighter 14: Use your last ASI to empower your Constitution for more health and stronger concentration saves. You also get your final spell, Melf’s Minute Meteors, to summon some lasting spears, launching a few each turn as a bonus action.

Pros:

You have a really strong Armor Class, ranging anywhere from 17 with only your weapons to 26 with your bladesong and spear active, meaning you can last for a while on the front lines.

You also have plenty of options for dealing with enemies, ranging from spell-enhanced physical combat to using regular damaging spells.

Finally, you’re really smart, and have great focus. You have a high intelligence score and proficiency in most intelligence checks, meaning you’re always caught up on whatever lore the party needs to know. Your Concentration is also solid, thanks to War Caster and your Bladesong.

Cons:

Overall, the build is kind of unfocused. In FGO, being a good fighter and spellcaster makes you extra powerful. In D&D, it makes you spread thin.

Grabbing all that extra martial ability means you’re stuck with low level spells. Upcasting a glyph of warding to level 5 is nice, but let’s be honest; high level spells are just better.

Your Charisma is pretty low, and you don’t have proficiency in any interpersonal skills. Knowing the right thing to do won’t help much if you can’t convince others to go along with your plan.

Next up: If I had a nickel for every dual-wielding magical spearperson I’ve built, I’d have two nickels. It’s not a lot, but it’s strange that it happened twice.

#fgo #Fate Grand Order #Scathach #D&D 5e #Fate and Phantasms

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kuronekonerochan · 4 years

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The laziest compilation of thoughts about the mess that was Alice (spoilers)

I finish a lot of shitty dramas. Like a lot. I could review them, but I won’t bc there’s too many and I’m too lazy (when you ff some dramas from 45min to 5 per episode it doesn’t really count as watching too many dramas bc it’s really a commercial break, lol). Some I watch for the so bad it’s good content, or love hate watching or just to have something to watch while I eat, even if they’re boring af. It’s also a tiny bit of ocd bc I need to see how they end (even the ones I drop I check out the finale). I only drop the ones that as Marie Kondo says *Do Not Spark Joy, more specifically...annoy me and make me cranky.

I sometimes bitch about it on DMs with ranty spoilers without structure and that reference other unrelated dramas or shows, because ADHD and my mind refuses to stay on topic, which would make it probably unintelligible except if you are in the niche who happens to have watched the other unrelated dramas, so it’s probably useless as a review.

That said, here are some random disconnected thoughts about Alice.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERTS BEWARE

(this is like partly copypaste of DM rants bc I am that lazy biatch. Also, fair warning I will seem super harsh or this drama because that’s the thing about a bitching dm versus a proper review... I am not bringing up all the points and talking about the good and what I liked as well as the bad, it’s just the bad...and although the drama is imo a mess, it does have some good in it. So if it were a review I’d always argue pros and cons...ranty thoughs who cares about pros? boring..I will not be bothered with devil’s advocate).

This was fascinating to watch, interesting but not good... but like a trainwreck.

I continued watching this mess despite the headache inducing convoluted plot (I watched a lot of timetravel stuff and I love it...encompassing all the theories about it, from butterfly effect, to effectively changing the future (with characters forgetting it or keeping it in memory because “eye of the storm” theory, the “efforts are futile and you can try to change it but the future is set in stone”, to “small changes can be made but big events are fixed points in time”, to “every change creates a new time line” and multiverse, etc... and trust me, all of them can be done well when well written or turn out a confusing illogical mess and that has nothing to do with the theory chosen, but with presenting how time travel works for that story and what the basic rules are and sticking to them...or when something happens that contradicts them, come up with an explanation as to why that happens.

I don’t mean the drama should be an exposition borefest with too much pseudosciency jargon...but this drama gives you too little in the way of rules and the viewers sort of figure out how timetravel works (which is not bad per se, huge fan of show don’t tell...but there’s a limit to how much they cannot tell or the characters chose not to ask just for the sake of plot and not without any logic to it). Anyways, the little “rules” that we gather along the way...the writing doesn’t stick to them and keeps contradicting itself without addressing or explaining it and hoping we’re so confused we don’t notice. Some dramas you just say “eh, forget it, it doesn’t make sense, let’s turn off our brains and enjoy it”, but here if I wanted to try and follow what was going on at all it required “brain on” mode for their convoluted plot twists...which also made me aware of so may plotholes the time road should have looked like Swiss Cheese. I could go into them...but I cannot be bothered and the list would be extensive and still incomplete, so I will just put 3 here bc I can’t help it:

1) Hot Daddy with emotional turmoil the entire drama of “Oh no, I abandoned her in 92 and regretted it, it happened 1 year ago for me, and now I find out she died in 2010. How was she, did she suffer? What did she know? Oh god, if only I were a time traveler eventually going rogue who could show up and talk to her any time in the timeline between 92 and 2010...Alas, I have to live in misery with the consequences of my actions...there is just ABSOLUTELY no way of solving this. I guess I’ll just keep making unauthorized time travel journeys from 2050′s time agency back to the year of 2020 and only 2020 to constantly be blindsided by murder attempts on everyone everywhere without having a clue to what’s going on when I could simply go back to before 2010 and talk to the one person who is proven to know what is going on.” Here is where there could be a bullshit reason as to why he could go only go to 2020 and not before, but the drama didn’t even bother.

2) They say Tae Yi’s mom was originally a time traveler who settled with her physicist dad in the past, eventually making way for her to discover time travel herself. The mom is missing and this is never addressed again.

3) The book...who wrote it? Because I have guesses but they never outright answer it... and if the biatch author knew that stuff why the alice in wonderland stupid analogies?

Coward, or petty, or both.... or maybe just a chaos gremlin godlike entity who wanted to watch them all squirm, like the author from Extraordinary You...and that I could get behind, but sadly they don’t go that metaphysical/theological with the plot...which is honestly the main problem with this drama. It seems ambitious in concept but it’s never explored decently in any way, not in the pseudoscience, not in the philosophical sense of the meaning of time/space/existence, not even in its relationships, with the constant back and forth and weirdness of it.

Besides the timetravel migraine, we had the weirdest directing, that made the relationship between the leads feel a bit too incesty...which was the main reason I kept watching this drama...morbid curiosity of how they wrapped up this mess of a plot AND especially the relationship payoff...would it keep being weird with trope romance drama scenes like the female lead and second female lead facing off and being jealous, or that weird hair washing that felt more sensual than maternal? I knew it wouldn’t happen but my inner chaos gremlin wanted kdramaland to grow some balls and go full “predestination: oedipus edition” with this mess. Alas they sort of did, mostly didn’t. Even that angle was a whole inconsistent mess: there were times where it felt too romantic, then for a short minute I misguidedly shipped the journalist friend, then it seemed the dude was ace, then they calmed their tits with the whole weird romantic vibes and it got platonic cute, then with the memory merge thing finally motherly vibes, then I shipped the journalist again for 1 sec only...and then the ending:

Alice ended with the lead solving every problem by shooting himself (technically) in the head...and that's the second meta perfectly fitting ending for a drama with a good cast and terrible writing that drove itself into a corner this year, after the sleepless princess ended with the leads jumping off a cliff. I don't think it's a self aware choice of the writers, or an admission that they themselves know it was bad, but the irony is delicious.

Spoiler for the ending: he undoes timey wimey stuff from when his mom first got killed in high school and closed the time travel door. So he became an architect and new Tae Yi just woke up in her bed remembering everything, but in reality she had just come back from a conference abroad and had never met him. So mom TaeYi didn't die then, but never got back on screen after the time undo so who the f knows what happened to her.

Also, if new Tae Yi remembers, does that mean hot daddy from the future does as well, but he is just stuck in the future without a time door to ever see them again? The drama doesn’t care answering that and forgets his character is even a thing...I will miss you, my fave who looked emotionally and literally constipated 24/7 (it doesn’t care answering much at all tbf... a little known fact about the time travel paradoxes according to the physics of this world is that besides doppelganger chickenpox it induces severe lazy writing).

Anyways new Tae Yi went looking for architect (? okay...I guess) ML after she woke up, at first he didn't remember her, but it ends with him meeting her, apparently remembering her and they stare at each other... you know, like any bad traditional romantic kdrama finale....so there is still THAT vibe.

Honestly, the usual romantic ballad score for scenes between the leads WAS NOT the most intelligent choice for this drama in specific but boy did they stick with it (not to mention the ending song... that goes, in english “we be like Bonnie and Clyde we ride or die...which...k, sure)...so technically the ending was exactly the cliche post amnesia running back to each other and staring for the final scene while romantic music blasts trope. Take it as you will.

#alice #sbs alice #kdrama #mine #kdrama edit #kdrama rant #kdrama rambles #sleepless princess #cdrama #just the reference tho #alice kdrama #alice sbs

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isolaradiale · 4 years

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When the final wire was cut, the entire city went black. The power grid was not tied to the network, but the outage was NULL’s only shot at preventing Ofiuco’s retrieval after she fell from the sky. The entire city fell still for five minutes before power returned, but this light only served to illuminate the next phase. It wasn’t like GPU had been without a backup plan. If they didn’t have a way to leverage the arrest of the Stars, then at the very least they could throw a wrench in their operation.

However, the light of the moon and stars that shone down on the city in the dead of night was obscured by a sudden apparition. A floating island that existed beyond the flight limitations of the city obscured the view, almost the same size as the city itself and becoming a constant and looming darkness over the cityscape. It cast things into uncertainty, and all of the Shades remaining on the ground flocked up and into it... before a loud rumbling began.

The island suddenly dropped and it inevitably looked as if it was about to crash into the city itself before stopping in a convenient location: just below the maximum flight limit. Beams of light soon extended from all around the floating island’s perimeter to Spirale below, their uses initially unclear.

That was, until, people began to step out of them. These weren’t NPCs nor agents, their ranks instead populated by the monstrous and the villainous. Enemies and rivals gathered from the worlds the characters had all been taken from, their sights set on razing the city. Chaos immediately unfolded where they landed, structures and people alike targeted while some of these foes sought conflict with their greatest nemesis.

LISTEN TO ME PEOPLE OF THIS ISLAND CITY.

If it was a device capable of receiving a signal, this distorted voice boomed over it. Many believed the speaker to be an enemy at first, probably one of the agents that had turned their world into disarray. Thankfully that wasn’t the case.

I AM AN EX-MEMBER OF THE GPU AND BOTH MYSELF AND ONE OTHER HAVE BEEN WORKING WITH YOUR ISLAND STARS FROM WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION FOR THE LAST SEVERAL DAYS. GPU WILL DESTROY YOU REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THE STARS TURN THEMSELVES IN OR NOT, AND BY THE TIME THE MAINTENANCE DROID IS ABLE TO CONVEY THIS MESSAGE TO YOU THE PROCESS MIGHT HAVE ALREADY BEGUN.

YOU AREN’T DREAMING. THE ENEMIES THAT HAVE LIKELY POURED OUT OF THAT FLYING STRUCTURE ARE ALL VERY REAL AND VERY POWERFUL. SOME OF YOU MIGHT RECOGNIZE THEM BECAUSE THEY WALK, TALK, OR GROWL LIKE FOES YOU’VE ENCOUNTERED IN YOUR OWN WORLDS. DON’T BE FOOLED, THEY ARE IMITATIONS MADE COMPLETELY UNDER THEIR CONTROL. HOWEVER THEY ARE VERY DANGEROUS, AND POSSESS THE FULL RANGE OF ABILITIES YOU KNOW THEM TO.

MY PARTNER IN THIS ENDEAVOR TOLD ME THEY’LL BE MAKING SURE THE ISLAND IS LOWERED ENOUGH THAT IT CAN BE REACHED, AND WE’LL ENSURE THE LIGHT LIFTS CAN BRING THOSE WITHOUT WINGS TO THE SURFACE. IF YOU WISH TO KEEP ON LIVING YOU NEED TO NOT ONLY PROTECT YOUR CITY, BUT BRING THE FIGHT TO THEM AS WELL.

Whether these words inspired or not depended on the listener, but there was no denying the immediate threat of the invading force as well as the personal nature of some of these opponents.

“To those ends, a gift!” This time the speaking voice was a familiar one as a dot of pink light zipped up from the depths of the hole, a familiar android plastered across every screen in the city. This time though her eyes weren’t red. A wave of light reverberated across the city from the flapping of Ofiuco’s wings, granting all it touched their weapons and abilities back for the time being. “Don’t forget there are people from the city itself still working with NULL. I know this is all hard to understand. You don’t know why you’re fighting nor do you know what you’re fighting.”

She exhaled before looking at the floating island above. “I guess there will be some explaining to do when all is said and done, but go! You need to reclaim the starry sky!”

INFORMATION

Welcome to part 2 of Security Breach! There’s a lot to cover here so we’ll try to be as specific as possible. But as always if you have a question don’t be afraid to send it to the ml!

What has happened? With the network shut down thanks to all the cut wires, NULL has wordlessly moved into their backup plan: completely razing the city from within.

To those ends they have summoned a floating island that eclipses the city, and from it enemies pour down from both the top and the light elevators that extend to the city from the floating island’s surface.

These are not normal enemies however. They are villains and monsters from the worlds of your muses (more information including guidelines in the FAQ section). While they walk, talk, and hit as hard as the real things, they are completely under NULL’s control and share their goals.

This is a grand battle that will be fought on two stages: on the island below and flying structure above.

Ofiuco has granted everyone their powers and abilities back, but is also enforcing a cap so the enemy forces can’t use game breaking powers. Since this is universal it will also affect the characters within the group (more information in the FAQ section).

For those that are powerless: you will be able to access your Fantasia avatars via the Spirale Alternate World Life app. This feature will be removed at the end of the event, and it will not work for characters that already have powers.

We will be running this poll until 12:01AM EST on May 1st. Based on the results the story and aftermath of the event will change.

FAQ

Everyone’s powers are unlocked but are there limitations like in part 1? Yes there are! Abilities used must be tier 6 or higher by vsbattlewiki standards. Obviously these could easily destroy an island, but while structures can be destroyed the island Spirale is on and the island in the sky are both impervious to damage from these attacks. If your character possesses an ability that exceeds this ranking you can tone it down, but some things are strictly off limits like conceptual abilities in certain instances (conjuring items or allies en masse, erasing existences, etc are not allowed). These guidelines are consistent between both sides so as not to break the world.

What’s this about Fantasia and the Spirale Alternate World Life app? Last summer we held an event called the Fantasia War where characters were placed in a fantasy setting with fantasy avatars. At the event’s conclusion we made Fantasia into an MMO game that can be accessed in the Intraspace, and everyone’s avatars have been preserved there. The SAWL app is an app we introduced to allow MMO characters (like from SAO) to be able to switch between their normal and game forms at will, and it is having its functionality temporarily boosted to let people use their Fantasia avatars, including the attached powers, during the event. This app will not show up for anyone that has powers of their own.

If your character was not present during Fantasia you can still create your own avatar! You can still find the list of available races here and list of available spells here.

Villains and enemies are pouring out of the flying island? What does this entail? Essentially what it sounds like. You will have the unique opportunity to bring in villains, monsters, or machines as agents of NULL. They will act as they would in canon, but are dedicated to their cause of destroying the city and killing off its citizens. There are, of course, limitations:

only one boss-tier enemy per mun per series can be brought in. you can bring in as many trash mobs (generic monsters, grunts, etc.) as you want, but you can only choose one powerful opponent. you can just say what kind of mobs might be running around for others to deal with in their threads, but the boss-tier foe must be controlled by you.

boss-tier enemies can be sentient, but they don’t have to be. if you want to bring in things like giant machines that are piloted by grunts, these still count as boss-tiers however.

you cannot bring in an enemy that exists on the masterlist

enemies, including boss-types, can be overlapped throughout a cast to avoid the possibility of someone claiming a boss just to deny other cast members from interacting with them. however do not have these duplicates interact / in the same thread.

The best way to keep this in order would be to make a post introducing the kinds of trash mobs you’d see running around as well as the boss-type you plan on controlling. People can then use the mobs in their threads if they choose, or approach you to interact with the boss. Likewise, you can keep the boss for more personal threads or drabbles. It’s really up to you!

I don’t really have any enemies in my series and I’m not comfortable using mobs from others. Are there any other options for what I can fight? Yes! The Shades are still around, as are a plethora of generic fantasy monsters for you to fight!

Are the weather conditions from part 1 still ongoing? No, those have come to a halt! However the island above blocks all of the weather in general.

Speaking of the floating island. We can go to the top, right? What’s up there? To put it simply: it’s a mess. Whether NULL had difficulty importing code or if it was just a big error, assets from every series imaginable compose the landscape. Maybe you’d see a building from BLEACH, but then one from Naruto right beside it. Some assets have even been merged together. Pieces of it glitch out and redesign constantly, so it’s almost a depressing mockery of Spirale in a way. There are hills and rivers too, but even those are constantly shifting position.

While tons of enemies have poured onto the streets of Spirale, there are plenty waiting on standby atop the flying island. To go it alone would be a terrible idea.

Can we destroy the flying island itself? No! You can destroy the structures on top but new things will eventually sprout up in their place. The ground and undersides seem to be protected by an impenetrable barrier. But even if you could, do you really want it crashing onto the city below?

Where should we put big, newsworthy posts during this event? Please use the tag ‘#isola sb2 news’ as opposed to the regular ‘#isola news’ tag during this part of the event. We anticipate a lot of people are going to want to do cool and interesting things that they want everyone to see so we want you guys to have a space for this, but we also do not want to clutter the regular news tag.

I have an additional question! Feel free to send it to the masterlist! Due to the nature of this part and all of the potential moving pieces we’re sure people may have questions or concerns that haven’t been covered.

When is part 2 expected to end? A week from now on May 1st at 12:00:01AM EST. We’ll likely be polling around the middle of the week to see if people would like an extension however!

#isola event #isola event: security breach pt2

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slowlymadeart · 5 years

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[Image 1 Description: A Crowd of people, all colored blue, with the label "Interneters" on them. To the left of the crowd a young man stands out. He is a repeat character. We'll call him "The Interneter." He has dark brown skin, short light blue dread-locks. He wears a burgundy colored hoodie, a dark teal V-neck shirt, and dark bluish-grey jeans. The Interneter says "You never told us what a "Spoonie" is."

To the middle right is Rachel, we can only see to the bottom of her shirt for now. (She has pale white skin, short and messy blonde hair, teal shirt with ferns printed on each side, Maroon shorts, light cyan thigh-high stocking with cut outs of leaves on them, maroon shoes). Rachel, smiling wearily, looking right at us, holding her index finger up:"Well, you could just google it. But hey, what the heck? Why pass up an opportunity to be the first person who tells you what it means?"

We see Rachel again on the lower left side, smiling while raising an eyebrow, holding her left hand to her face, and her right hand out towards us: "Ya ready?"

The crowd lines the bottom of the image. The Interneter stands in the middle, with a speech bubble above "Yes." and a speech bubble to his bottom right, "That's why we asked."]

[Image 2 Description: There is a lavender square at the top of this image, on it is the text: "Spoonie" comes from a disability metaphor first described in a 2003 essay by christine miserandino called "The Spoon Theory" in which she tells the story of trying to explain to a friend what it feels like to have lupus, using spoons as visual representation of her daily energy. She actually handed her friend a bouquet of spoons and said: "

Below Christine, a white woman with long brunette hair, a white headband, purple dress shirt and jeans, holds out a sparkling bouquet of spoons saying "Here you go".

Below this we see her down on one knee. To her right her friend, female, brown skin, long braided dark brunette hair with a reddish tint, blue over-all dress, and teal leggings, sits on a stool holding the spoons Christine handed her.

"You have Lupus." Christine says, to which her friend nervously responds "Haha, whaaat?...... Please explain."]

[Image 3 Description: Another lander square fills the top of this image, on it is a quote from Christine's Essay, "Most people start the day with unlimited amounts of possibilities- energy to do whatever they desire...for the most part, they do not need to worry about the effects of their actions...I wanted something for her to actually hold, for me to then take away. If I was in control of taking away the spoons, then she would know what it feels like to have something else being in control."

Below Christine sits alone, her legs "criss-cross". She is smiling at us and holds a giant spoon. Around her are little blurbs in purple text, "Might actually own a giant spoon" "Has done awesome advocacy work" "Read more at butyoudontlooksick.com (if you want to)"]

[Image 4 Description: a chart titled "How Spoon Theory Works". A single spoon equals a unit of energy that a person can use safely. On the left is "spoon cost per activities" on the right is icons to show the activities.

1 spoon; Getting out of bed, taking medications, changing clothes. 2 spoons; Watching a tv show, a microwavable meal, using the internet.3 spoons; Enagaing in a small activity like art, cleaning something, making a meal that required stove or oven.4 spoons; Taking a shower, leaving your home, socializing.

Narration text: Why use it? I'll let this quote by a doctor who was originally using buckets of water (???) with patients explain. "Using analogies and/or metaphors...can help clinicians and patients' loved ones get a better understanding of the impact of specific activities on a patient." (John Hopkins Neurologist Scott Newsome, DO, on the topic of "Spoon Theory")]

[Image 5 Description: The Interneter is looking worried, sweating. He says to Rachel,

"Oh wait, so I have major depression disorder, insomnia, and ADHD. During my last episode, I was barely able to make it to one class a day, and maybe get one meal. My insomnia felt uncontrollable. I ran out of mental brain power for my classes, but I still attempted as much class work as I could, even if my brain couldn't fully show up. Don't get me wrong- I still tried, so hard. Even if I was too depressed to feel things like 'normal' I still wanted to be embracing my college life. I feel like spoon theory would have really helped me in times like those. Especially since I haven't found an antidepressant that works on me yet. I know it's not like what you go through, like chronic physical illness. I wouldn't want to make less of your experience or appropriate this term. I'm just wondering if-"

Rachel, looking calm, finding The Interneter endearing and smiling slightly, "Your experiences are just as valid and the level of impact your depression has absolutely qualifies you as a spoonie."]

[Image 6 Description: Narration text "Today a spoonie is someone with a condition that causes limited amounts of physical and/or cognitive energy, such as chronic illness, mental illness, or disability. It's also used by neurodivergents who deal with persistent energy limitations."

Below sits 4 girls all smiling, waving, and looking at us, left to right; The first girl has an average frame, tan skin, long navy blue hair, a maroon hat, faded pink pants, a blue/purple/lavender striped shirt, and cutting scar on her arms. Second girl is Kitt, she was in another comic, she has a plus sized frame, dark brown skin, shoulder length curly/dark brown hair. she wears a teal dress with white strips, a waist long blue jacket, blue shoes, her left left is a purple prosthetic. Third girl, she is Asian, very light but still tan skin, with black hair in cut in a pixie style. She has on a white sweat shirt that has lavender sleeves and a salmon color at the bottom, in the center is the rainbow infinity sign for neurodivergence. She has on mint pants and wear white and salmon colored sneakers. On the floor below them sits Rachel.

Narrative text "Not all of us are literally measuring out energy in terms of spoons, but having such a metaphor is extremely helpful."]

[Image 7 Description: Narrative text "Spoon Theory embraces acknowledgment of a condition's control, which is weirdly liberating because this reminds a person:"

Girl number 3 is on the right is whispering to The Interneter "Lack of control isn't proof of personal weakness. You don't have to beat yourself up for experiencing your condition."

"I know that. . ." the interneter says shyly, blushing and smiling.

"Do you though?" Rachel says from the left.

Below her is girl number one. "Do u? I've been doing this for 13 years and even I forget sometimes."]

[Image 8 Description: Narrative text "For young people in particular, spoonie is the first word a person may use when starting to rewrite what their life with their condition could look like."

The Interneter lays flat on his bed, we see him from the side looking hopeful "Having to live life this way isn't easy, but I want to make it work."

Below we see he is centered on his bed holding 1 spoon, "especially since I'm still having that episode of depression." On the right side his words continue "I didn't say anything because I was afraid of messing up the flow of the comic."]

[Image 9 Description: Narrative text "Spoons can be a silly thing to associate with possibly not having enough energy to manage basic survival activities, which is one reason some don't bother using the term at all. Still, it's easier to say,"

A woman, standing in the center of the image with a long purple dress, short brunette hair, and a purple walking cane, holds a hand to her chest smiling "I'm a spoonie!"

To her left is a large man all in red, hand on his hips smiling, "My own experiences of feeling tired helps me empathize with you. You make me feel validated."

To her right is a little girl colored pink "Spoons are good!"

Next to her is a woman in maroon "Such a cute and positive take!"

At the bottom of the image narrative text says "Rather than bring folk's moods down with-"]

[Image 10 description: "My body is disabled! Living an existence with a condition that is unpredictable and invisible sometimes breaks my brain! Please don't shut me out until I'm "Fixed". Just respect my limits." Rachel says, now in the center of the people instead of the purple-dressed spoonie. She sits in her wheelchair with legs up, holding her arms out, her expression is crying yet smiling.

The large man to her left has his arms folded, now very uneasy "How do I tell apart your "disability" from excuses, self pity, and faking stuff? And who sits in a wheelchair like that?"

On the right the little pink girl is crying, her maroon mother bending down to hold her. "Isn't "Disabled" bad?" the girl ask.

Her mother responding "Nothing we need to worry about, sweetie. There are plenty of programs that think of the disabled so we don't have to."

Narrative text, "Yes. Spoonie can at times feel detached just enough from harsh reality to ease people's discomforts."]

[Image 11 Description: Narrative text:” Perhaps detached enough for misguided normies to think,”

A young woman standing in the center with one hand on her hip and one raised with her index finger pointed upwards says "Hey! I feel like I have limited energy to! I like this "spoons" idea. It will help me be mindful and proactive with my energy! I'm a spoonie now!"

She is white woman with tanned skin, long bleach blonde hair in a pony-tail, wearing grey yoga pants and a green tang top. On her tang top are the words "Has no condition is just human".

To her left Girl number 3, Kitt, and Rachel are huddled looking at the woman. “Don't-” says girl number 3. "Oh no, wait-" says Kitt. "You're not one now, but hey, you'll be one of us eventually. No need to rush." says Rachel.

On the left is a young hipster male all in orange "You're just a product of obsessive online health trends." He calls out.

Narrative text "Let's hope it doesn't turn into the 'snuggie' of disability lingo.]

[Image 12 description: Narrative Text: "Now, being disabled by a condition, especially it's fatigue aspect, doesn't mix well with the 'hyper-productive' narrative that today's society puts out."

A Pinkish-maroon leg with the words 'society that doesn't fully realize the systemic harm of it's ableism' on it, kicks a stick figure of the Interneter high up into the air in a Team Rocket fashion.

"Looks like having problems with my human body is causing me to be considered less of a human agaaiinn!!!" The interneter says, surrounded by anime sparkles.

Narrative Text "Still, being active, productive, and accepted by some form of community, lay the foundations for self-confidence and a sense of worth. Contributing online is one way even the most debilitated amount us have managed a version of that foundation."]

[Image 13 Description: Narrative text: "Disabled communities are sources of support, love, guidance, and empowerment built upon collaboration, inclusion, and knowledge. They help bring together people with a willingness to listen, because they all know the value in feeling heard."

Two horizontal rows of a diverse group of people with disabilities, drawn to show them all in bed, all interacting with each other like the would if the were together in person. Below each person is an awareness ribbon to indicate the condition(s)they have.

From left to right, top row; A young woman with very dark brown skin, black hair in a bun, is looking concerned and reaching for a young man in the row below her. He is black with slightly lighter skin, very short hair, a 5 o'clock shadow, wearing glasses. He is reach towards her with is left arm, his right arm is curled due to his medical condition. Next in the top row, a Young woman with curly brown hair, tan skin, glasses, and cutting parts on her arms is smiling and being handed a book by a young white male with Downs-Syndrome, he hair short light brown hair and glasses. A young woman with tan skin, glasses, wearing a hijab, has a pink prosthetic arm holding a piece of paper, and is using her other arm to hold hands with the person she is smiling/talking with- a thin non-binary with short blue pixie hair and braces on her elbows and right arm. This person is also holding a piece of paper, eyes shut from laughing, with happy tears coming from their eyes.

Bottom row; Next to the young man with dark skin, is a plus-sized woman with white skin, her hair is deep violet in a pixie cut. She is holding a yellow ribbon, looking concerned and speaking a "?" as she taps the should of the girl next to her. This girl is Asian with black hair in a short ponytail, she looks back at the woman with the ribbon, her arms are on the back of the next woman, whom she is comforting. This woman has medium dark skin, half her head is shaved, the other is short navy blue dreadlocks. She is curled up and crying, below her is a yellow ribbon next to a purple one. The young man on her left has his left arm around her, and has a sympathetic expression, talking with the woman to try and provide comforting. He has tan skin and short curly brown hair, with short curly brown facial hair.

Narrative text: "Spoonies are just one part of this collective, their efforts displaying that a condition's control isn't proof of weakness, as if can exist even along side massive amounts of inner strength."]

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utilitycaster · 4 years

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I have a question abt dnd multiclassing. I’ve just started my first game and have a half-orc wizard (no school yet) with a strangely high strength stat. My nerd wizard’s buffness has already become an in-joke among the party and I was wondering if I could play into it narratively and gameplay-wise by eventually having her multiclass into a physical combat class. Is there a good combo for this or would it just be a novelty? It’s my first game so I don’t want to lag behind in combat.

So the big caveat here is that my multiclassing knowledge is not first-hand; I’ve never actually played a multiclassed character, I just read a lot and watch a lot and have played a decent amount as a DM/single-class character, and I love rules.

With that said this is a great question and the below is more some questions to guide you than hard advice on what to do. The very short answer is that I can’t tell you if you should multiclass, but if you do multiclass, fighter makes the most sense mechanically and I’ll go into why below.

1. What drew you to playing a wizard? Was it doing huge amounts of damage? Was it versatility in your spell options? Were you attracted to the idea of being a character who is smart and could learn magic from their surroundings? Is there a school you have your eye on? Did someone just say “hey we need an arcane caster” and you said “okay?” Any of these reasons are valid, but this will help guide what you do.

2. If you do choose to multiclass, fighter makes the most sense: it’s strength dependent for multiclassing (unlike rogue, monk, or ranger) and it’s only dependent on strength (unlike paladin, which requires high charisma as well). Additionally, barbarians can’t do spellcasting while raging which would make it sort of hard to benefit from a lot of the wizard skillset.

3. If you don’t choose to multiclass, that’s valid! If progressing in spellcasting and all the wizard stuff (except for huge amounts of damage, potentially) is why you chose wizard, you can just be a strong wizard! Wizards do get proficiency with a couple weapons and if you pick one dependent on strength (my recommendation here is the quarterstaff, but daggers will work too provided you’re stabbing and not throwing) that means even when you’re low on spells you have an option at hand beyond cantrips. It also means your attacks of opportunity are actually likely to hit and do a little damage, which is useful at lower levels. If you really want, you can capitalize on this while still progressing as a wizard by taking feats that grant you weapon or armor proficiencies.

4. Multiclassing even a little into fighter is, however, pretty beneficial, I have to say. A single level of fighter will give you:

- proficiency in up to medium armor and in shields, making you way less squishy; proficiency in all typical weapons; a fighting style which can make you harder to hit or able to do more damage or help your allies; and give you second win which will let you regain 1d10 + fighter level hit points, which is very useful again for the squishy wizard.

This would only set you back one level in the wizard progression.

A second level in fighter will also give you action surge, which gives you the ability to take two actions per turn once per rest, which would let you cast two spells in one round when you use it.

Narratively I also think this works nicely; you studied the book, and then you studied the blade. Fighters are the wizards of the battling classes* anyway.

5. Beyond two levels in fighter is I think the point where you need to make a choice, at least for a while because if you try to keep things evenly split between classes without committing more to one of your two classes you will probably fall behind, at least at lower levels. I think multiclasses work best when either you start multiclassing at a fairly high level when a lot of the really good core stuff is already under your belt, or alternately if you take just one or two levels in one class that provide a lot of benefit for little investment.

If you decide to mainly progress in fighter, without going too far into subclasses, fighters are very good at doing lots of weapon damage to one thing at a time. As they take levels, they get lots of ability score improvements, they get to attack tons of times, they can just reroll saves to a certain extent, and they’re really good at physical fighting. If you find that you really like the fighting life, Eldritch Knight is a subclass I’ve never played but want to which has some limited spellcasting abilities as a subclass. It will make multiclassing spell calculations and prep a little more complicated, but it will fit with your level of wizard nicely.

You can also mainly progress in wizard and have those two levels of fighter. You’ll hit your school features and higher level spells slightly behind other casters in the party, but you’ll also be able to wear medium armor and hit hard with a sword.

-------

I know this was very long so: what I would do, personally, is play as a wizard with a quarterstaff for a few levels (up to L3 or 4 maybe?) which will help you know what you like and develop your character. If you really love being a wizard and are impatient to keep learning new spells, stick with it and be a strong half-orc wizard! If the fighter abilities seem intriguing and you think it makes sense narratively, try a level in fighter, and if you like it a lot, try another, and by then you’ll have a much better sense of your character, what you enjoy doing as a player, and what would serve the story and can decide what to do next.

*this is entirely off topic but fighter:wizard::barbarian:sorcerer::paladin:cleric::rogue:bard::ranger:druid::monk:warlock

#d&d #dungeons & dragons #multiclassing #Anonymous

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seddm · 5 years

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STARCO OVERVIEW - Season 2 (part 2/2)

SEASON 1

SEASON 2 (part 1) (part 2)

SEASON 3 (Incoming)

SEASON 4 (Incoming)

RAID THE CAVE (2x15a)

Bonbon The Birthday Clown was a huge moment of change for Star, her first real loss, something that forced her to start facing her responsibilities: from this moment until the end of the season she’s mostly going to be on a solo-growth time roll, with Marco’s direct influence on her being minimal: he’s still going to be with her in many episodes, and he’s even going to give her some advice in episodes like The Bounce Lounge or Collateral Damage, but there aren’t going to be moments like Mr. Candle Cares or Game of Flags until next season. This doesn’t mean that the two are going to be any less close, and until Just Friends Star is going to be none the wiser about her crush, so it’s not correct to talk about a fracture between the two dorks as a consequence of Jarco happening, but it’s also undeniable that the series wanted for Star to make more solo-experiences during S2B. This is what I talked about several times before: during S1 and early S2 Marco had a huge influence on Star, and Star had a huge influence on Marco, helping each other grow and develop (in several ways, but we can sum it up, for the sake of simplicity, to “be more responsible and thinking more about things” and “get out of his comfort zone more and be more open to taking risks”). Bonbon The Birthday Clown is an episode of important change for both of them, and from here on Star is going to slowly start putting all the accrued development to good use (stopping running away from problems as much, trying to be a princess in her own way in S3), and Marco is going to VERY slowly start doing the same (moving to Mewni in S3, realizing his feelings for Star).

All this introduction was needed to reiterate once more that less Star and Marco moments from now onward, especially in the rest of S2, absolutely doesn’t equal to Starco being less important to the show, or to the characters. It just means that both main characters were finally ready to realistically start to be more active in their growth process, thus allowing the writers to explore other kind of interactions and development arcs.

Getting to the actual episode now, the segment immediately opens on a recurring theme: Marco putting Star over Jackie, leaving her hanging for his bestie’s sake. This is clearly a horrible way to put it, and we now have canon confirmation from Jackie herself that Marco was an average, standard boyfriend to her, but ti tells us something important about commitment. This is the core of why Jarco couldn’t work, why Tomstar isn’t going to work, and even the main answer to the question “Did Starco truly have to be romantic?”: we have repeatedly been shown that Star and Marco are vastly more committed to each other than to any other person in their lives, ultimately putting each other before anyone else.

The monsters in this episode like Star on account of her ideas and different ways of being a princess, of doing things her own way. Which is exactly what Marco told her in Mr. Candle Cares. And this is going to lead to her trying to unite Mewmans and Monsters, and Marco is the one who first opened her up to the idea in Lobster Claws and Mewnipendence Day. Again, it’s not that everything good Star does is thanks to Marco (nor vice versa), but he was the catalyst who complemented her qualities and characteristics, helping her become the best version of herself - something that still clearly required a lot of self work and interactions with other people.

During this episode Marco gives Star good advice, per se: being honest about what happened with her parents, and not making the situation any worse. And yet, that’s not really what Star needs now, as Glossaryck tells her - what she needs now is to face her mistakes and try to make up for them, truly accepting her responsibilities for the first time. Was Marco wrong? Is he suddenly not a good advice giver anymore? No, it’s simply an effect of the focus on solo-growth for Star in this part of the season I mentioned earlier: in this moment Star outpaced Marco in maturity, and it’s going to take him until Sophomore Slump to catch up, so there’s some sort of “disconnection” between her current position in life and his advice. Star started (slowly) walking toward “maturity”, and Marco was left for some episodes with a different point of view.

This is more of a story structure element than a statement about Marco, it’s clear that he still deeply understands and relates to Star, but if we look at the larger picture Star’s Second Act began with Bonbon, while Marco is going to lad behind in his First Act until Sophomore Slump.

TRICKSTAR (2x15b)

An episode full of foreshadowing for Star’s emotions at the end of the season and for her to mature enough to accept how things are going to go (you can’t be happy all the time, you have to face unpleasant things because turning a blind eye to them is worse, happy times are eventually going to follow sad times once again, all that jazz), but it doesn’t really involve Starco to any extent that’s not three layers of separation away.

Star launching herself to protect Marco from Praeston as soon as she sees him crying being all worried about him being sad is medicine for the soul.

And Marco saying this is almost certainly just a gag and maybe, just maybe, a sign of the relative lack of insight on maturity I mentioned in the previous segment, but it’s ironic given that the series is essentially going to end with both of them going “love is the answer” and the magic that is love being very real and saving their asses.

BABY (2x16a)

Once more, you guessed it, a mostly solo-growth episode for Star, like most in this part of the season. Important episode bla bla Star looks finally excited about doing magic stuff out of her own initiative but gets slammed down hard because she lacks basic Glossaryck was right in saying that she has her own way to learn blabla first signs of maturity but also always doing things her own personal ways, failing while forced to do things by the book but getting new, incredible results in ways no one would have expected when free to do things her own way, usual individuality stuff.

Marco helping Star with Baby by dutifully making food is cute and certainly one more page in the long book of “Marco makes Star’s stressful life a bit more overwhelming” moments, but it doesn’t get any particular relevance in the episode.

On the other hand what’s interesting is that what pushes Star over the edge, helping her to “channel strong emotions” and create a new spell, is fear over having to leave Earth. Obviously it’s not just “leaving Marco”, Star has many reasons to like being there and the scene itself doesn’t involve her bestie in any extent. But it’s mostly about Marco. It’s obvious that it’d be reductive to consider that he’s the only Earth thing Star cares about, but narratively speaking it essentially is - in S3 Earth barely gets mentioned at all as soon as Marco moves to Mewni, he’s the symbol for what “second home on Earth” means to Star.

And if it wasn’t clear enough already, Star’s spell uses both “colors” of magic, pink and green, and it first splits the apple in two (cleaving it apart), to then make the seeds sprout, giving it new life (cleaving it together, we might say). The theme of unity, of something new and better being born from two different elements meeting, is constant throughout the show, and we now know that it’s all going to culminate in Star and Marco meeting once again in their new dimension, to be always together.

Look how worried Marco is about knowing whether Star can stay his voice is so expectant he’s so cute they’re so cute I love them so much

Remember when S1 hammered the idea that Marco was so important and “formative” to Star because he was the first person she met who truly trusted her and didn’t see her as an irresponsible mess up? Yeah it’s still there, and it’s always beautiful.

RUNNING WITH SCISSORS (2x16b)

Getting Star's scissors back is certainly part of Marco's motivation here, since he would definitely go to such extremes to avoid damaging Star, but honestly the episode is more of a solo-growth one for Marco: Star, and her importance to Marco, play a fundamental role in it obviously, but his decision to not back down and go home is more connected to his tenacity and willingness to go all the way in once he sets his mind on something, rather than specifically to get Star's scissors back itself. That's both Marco's greatest quality, and one of his main flaws when it degenerates into tunnel vision.

This is a weird episode. Marco spends more time living in the Neverzone than he did on Earth his whole life, and yet Running With Scissors doesn't change him at all. He doesn't get any tangible moment of growth or development from this, needing until Sophomore Slump to enter the next stage of his character arc (even if it's clearly important for the scissors, for Nachos, for his fighting skills...). And yet, it's an important episode: we know from the beginning of the season that Marco's greatest fear in life is lagging behind, wasting his life without finding a goal. In this episode an "alternate" version of Marco finds in adventuring a reason to be, something that fulfills him, and for 16 years he doesn't worry about anything else. But it's an incomplete life, by shedding all of his responsibilities and social connections Marco lost in maturity what he gained in freedom. And it's Star who snaps him out from this "fantasy" - a good one, but a limited and limiting one.

The scene is constructed to give Star's "Or... me?" part emphasis, and Marco deeply reacts to it.

The scissors imagery is particularly powerful, as it has multiple layers: there's the usual symbolism for "dimensions meeting", since the scissors are what allowed for Star and Marco to meet and completely change each other lives (and with Cleaved in hindsight we know how hugely important this theme is), and the theme of union in general is important to the show (it might not be a coincidence for this segment to have been paired with Baby, which ended with a similar theme); but there's also this idea of Marco's lonely reflection gaining something once he open the blades, showing Star as well: living a life of adventures is not worth it without all his loved ones. Cleaved apart, cleaved together. Marco gives up on something, this easy life he built for himself in the Neverzone, to gain something that's vastly more important to him, being with Star once more. Obviously it's not just Star, but she's the main symbol for it (and honestly given the series finale it might has well have been just Star): Marco feels content right now, the days of being a sweaty and anxious teen with no clear goal in life are a distant memory, but can he actually be happy and fulfilled without Star? No, obviously not. So he goes back.

And once home Star essentially gives exposition on what I just said, and what Marco thought just mere scenes earlier, probably mostly in an unconscious way. Sure, he has to go through the pains and uncertainties of growing up once again, but this time they'll be together. This is a gem of a scene that often goes unnoticed, essentially Star's version of Marco's speech in Mr. Candle Cares, since in both cases one of the dorks manages to give the other dork a new perspective on their biggest fear (not having choices about her future, not knowing what he wants to do in his future), helping them during a hard time. It's clear that Star deeply understands Marco, even if she usually helps him in practical or indirect ways, rather than delivering speeches like this.

Bonus: Marco's face lights up and immediately goes from gruff buff adventurer to excited kid as soon as he sees Star, wanting to tell her all about the past years like a kid recounting his Summer vacations. Should be clear enough which of his two lives is more important to him.

THE BOUNCE LOUNGE (2x17b)

Not really an important episode, just a lot of foreshadowing for the “end” of Star’s carefree days by the end of the season. Marco’s line here is mostly for that, it’s not really an important less nor something that helps Star figure things out in the context of the episode. If we reeeeally want we could see a connection between accepting that things have to end eventually and the “at least we have good memories from the past!” at the end of the episode with Star’s behavior in Scent of a Hoodie, but it’s kind of a stretch given that Star would have never truly accepted not being Marco’s friend again so it doesn’t properly fit as a parallel.

If you needed a reminder that Star helps Marco get out of his comfort zone and make new experiences that he often ends up liking...

HEINOUS (2x19a)

Just a quick note: even if it’s been a while since Marco called Star the coolest girl he knows, it’s clear that he genuinely appreciates her personality and individuality (see Mr. Candle Cares), and this is particularity important since he’s currently donning his Turdina identity, someone who became a paragon of freedom to express yourself to princess all over the multiverse, and he’s currently essentially telling Star that she’s, to him, the archetype of what a strong princess is. If that’s not love I don’t know what it is.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE (2x20a)

Star immediately seeking Marco’s advice to understand what she did is cute, but we were robbed of a moment of understanding and emotional connection. Stupid Otis.

JUST FRIENDS (2x20b)

After Bonbon The Birthday Clown and right before Face the Music, the tradition of songs highlighting the characters’ emotional state continues. I’m not going to analyze the lyrics of the song because their message is extremely clear, and it’s not like there’s a clear subdivision of verses between Star and Marco: clearly the whole concept of being “just friends” because it was too late for feeling to be revealed relates to Marco being with Jackie and Star liking him, but other than that the song generically talks about the reality of Star and Marco’s relationship. Taunting us viewers. It’s clearly way too early to talk about “love” as in full romantic love by this point, but it’s also clear that Star and Marco’s relationship is characterized by an incredible amount of care for each other which is visible to everyone. And yet.

Hahaha see it’s fun because the episode puts a lot of emphasis on the concept of being “friends”, something that has always been super important to Star, but by the end of it she’s going to be deeply hurt by Marco seeing her just as a friend, realizing that she would have wanted something more. Haha so much fun.

In a single scene we get reminders for several of the important elements in Star and Marco’s relationship:

Star helps Marco with Jackie, still acting as his “wing(wo)man” and pushing him out of his comfort zone

Star is still blissfully unaware of how much Marco dating Jackie is going to hurt her, there’s complete disconnection between what the Heart wands and what the Mind thinks it wants right now, and she’s going to delude herself until she literally sees his bestie smooching someone who is not her

Marco still thinks that Star is supercool, and he’s worried that Jackie is going to realize that he’s not at her level: when I talked about Sleep Spells I said that Star and Marco’s conversation on the roof essentially solved forever Marco’s feeling of inferiority compared to Star, but I forgot about this detail. It’s a very specific situation, but right now Marco feels “not enough”, and Star clearly comforts him

And the next morning Star keeps being extremely “delicate” with Marco, doing her best to put him at ease. Because showing Star being particularly close and enamored with her bestie minutes before getting her heart shattered is cool!

And then, to make things EVEN funnier, later in the episode Star is about to go comfort a dejected Marco, doing what she has done many times before, but Jackie is faster and she “replaces” her. It’s obvious that Jackie never replaced Star in Marco’s life in any extent, it’s just a detail in this specific scene to better build up the mood and themes for the climax.

Haha isn’t if fun that for the whole episode Marco worries about being the third wheel between Star and Jackie, but at the end it’s actually Star who is going to feel terribly, hauntingly alone?

I don’t want to post too many screenshots, but the first part of the concert... well, it speaks for itself, with Marco sitting between the two important girls in his life, being confused when Jackie grabs his hand, and confused when Star grabs his other hand, but then getting into it.

I might be over reading too much into the boarders intentions here, but I think that Star’s expression in the first screen might fit with the idea that she has always been the one to push Marco intro trying new things, into “letting loose”, but this time Jackie “replaced” her, once again. Since this segment was boarded by the same artists who worked on The Bounce Lounge, which featured a similar “let loose and dance!” scene, it might not be too out there as an interpretation. Anyway, it’s a minor detail, the general vibe of the whole scene is heart crushingly clear.

For most of the song the shot focuses exclusively on Star and Marco goofing around, lypsynching like at the beginning of the episode: it’s their song, and that’s what they usually do. This is a friendship moment, and Marco obviously defaults to Star for it. But then the song gets into the “romantic” part, and the camera moves to Jackie and Marco: Star is just a friend, and as such she doesn’t get to take part in this special part of the night. Just like she said in Blood Moon Ball, this is a “different kind of fun”, and she’s not invited.

And in full “you don’t know what you want until you lose it” fashion, it’s also the moment she realizes that she’d have killed to be invited to the smooching Marco kind of fun.

Second instance of Marco prioritizing Star over Jackie, he interrupts a making out session because he notices that she’s not there anymore and gets worried. It’s clear that Heart VS Mind is true for Marco as well, even if his feelings are way less definite by this point of the show. His first instincts still always put Star at the first place, but when it’s not an “emergency” moment anymore he’s not mature enough to properly recognize that she truly is the most important person to him. We’ll see this especially well in S3: during The Battle For Mewni he’s not going to hesitate in following her, risking his against Ludo and Toffee, but once the danger is over and his Mind takes control once again he goes back to Earth, without acknowledging Star’s confession, because still convinced that Jackie / Earth life were what he wanted. This scene here in Just Friends is a small taste of it.

Sadly Marco doesn’t have a clue, and Star hides her sadness, and she gets rewarded with a “you’re the best friend”. As I mentioned earlier, the episode opens up with Star and Marco being mutually happy to call each other besties, but ends with Star being crushed inside by being considered just a friend by Marco.

MORE SONG SYMBOLISM!

FACE THE MUSIC (2x21)

“How come Star doesn’t seem distraught over her crush for Marco, and why is she acting normally with him?” well, there are three layers of explanation:

The show is very compartmentalized

Star is super good at being in denial, as we’re going to see in Starcrushed when she claims that she’s over her crush fro Marco

The good ol’ usual “feelings are confused”: in Just Friends Star certainly realized what she truly wanted, but as far as her character arc goes it wasn’t the same as outright admitting her crush to herself. Which is just a form of denial more connected to the structure of the story: in the previous segment Star finally makes a connection between what she wants and why she feels like that, but it’s not the same thing as fully going, even just internally, “Ok I like Marco romantically”. It’s clearly confused if we dissect the whole matter like this, but it’s how the whole show operates when it comes to feelings, and it’s the difference between Star being ok around Marco here, and Star being a complete mess in Scent of a Hoodie.

This being said, once again we see Marco appreciating Star’s individuality and uniqueness, which deeply relates to her wanting Song Day to be special, crafted around her personality.

Was this hug alone enogh to turn Ruberiot into a Starco shipper and convince him that he needed to add a part about Star’s romantic life to his song, or did Star go on and on saying stuff about Marco while they were working on it later in the episode, offscreen? We can’t know and it’s not that important, but I choose to believe that a single hug was enough to make this genius of an artist understand just how much love there’s between these two. No bias here. No bias at all.

Also please note the penguins on the screen foreshadowing the end of Starcrushed - one goes away and the other one is left sad, alone.

Look at Marco, trying to move out of the way to make it clear that he’s not Royal Family, as if he’s not going to be part of it one day! They won’t be royal anymore by then though, admittedly.

Star spills the beans about her own failures during the season, feeling like it was the right thing to do. She starts owning up to her own mistakes, facing her problems instead of running away. But then the part about her crush on Marco comes up, and by the end of the episode she literally runs away: obviously as far as stakes go Star’s development arc in this part of the show culminates in accepting that she has to go to Mewni to defend it, and defeating Toffee is the ultimate test of maturity that allows her to enter the second part of her story. But accepting her feelings for Marco, confessing her crush, is symbolically the last step in her journey toward learning to face her problems and not running away from unpleasant facts. It’s the key to everything, not because there is ONLY Marco and Starco, obviously, but because he’s the single most important thing to Star, and by far what influenced her the most over the first half of the series. So by Face the Music Star is almost there, she has almost reached this first important checkpoint, but she can’t quite get to it until she embraces her crush for Marco.

Because he’s important.

Because Starco is important.

"Star Butterfly is in love with her best friend”. Now, obviously this is a song so lyrics are limited by what goes well with the rhythm, but the idea of best friends making the best lovers is incredibly important to the show, so while it’s extremely possible that it wasn’t specifically on purpose in this case I always like the association of “best friend” and “love”. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about it during S3.

STARCRUSHED (2x22)

While the episode is mostly solo Marco and solo Star moments, with little actual Starco interactions being formative or leading to development, I’m still going to go over more or less all of it, since most scenes can be directly reconnected to Star’s crush on Marco, which is directly connected to Star’s S2 arc, to the point that the climaxes of the two “storylines” end up overlapping in Star’s confession to Marco.

The idea of wanting things to go back “to normal”, to how they were once, is going to characterize the whole Starco romance arc: these two idiots, until Here to Help, are always going to think, to some extent, “oh no, having a crush on your best friend is weird and it can change things and maybe they’d get worse and maybe he/she doesn’t feel the same!”, and wish to go back to feeling nothing but platonic feelings of friendship for the other. It happens here, it’s going to be a theme in Booth Buddies (and for most of S3 with the idea of Marco trying to reframe his whole approach to being Star’s friend), it’s going to happen in Curse of the Blood Moon. Obviously things can’t go back to how they were because, as Marco said in Here to Help, they have always been like that. Not as in love at first sight obviously, took months and months for “romance” to start consciously becoming an element in the equation of their relationship, but as in a special kind of connection that was doomed since the first moment to evolve into something more. Essentially Star and Marco were always only able to either go forward in their relationship, or stagnate (with all the tensions and sudden heat-of-the-moment kissing that resulted from it): regressing was never an option, nor something that either of them ACTUALLY wanted (usual Heart VS Mind: worrying about feeling being “in the way”, while still wanting to forever be at her side in her pocket).

At the beginning of the episode Star shows marked improvements compared to her old self, and actually tries to force herself to face the problem, while Jackie pushes Marco to do the same - by leaving them some time, but it’s still quite a little bit too early: Star’s seeing the goal, but she still need some last pushes, and so nothing comes out of it, they’re both too embarrassed to talk.

Star sees a picture of a fun day with Marco then (ignore the “photo from the future” plot for now, it clearly wasn’t planned at the time, or at the very least not relevant to the messages and themes in this episode), and she’s reminded of how important her friendship with Marco is, and gets frustrated at the idea of losing it over some awkwardness, and calls her friends for help.

(idea of things “going back to normal” once again) said friend are actually a bad influence on Star though, dragging her to a party, reinforcing her tendency to avoid problems and confrontations proposing her an alternative distraction.

The party doesn’t convince Star, who is about to go back home: clearly her relationship with Marco is not the kind of problem she wants to ignore, and she can’t bring herself to just run away from it... until she notices Oskar.

Oskar is kind of a litmus test for Star’s growth: she had been drooling over him for two seasons, but she’s largely uninterested now. Even when he essentially tries to hit on her, and make plans to “hang out” over the Summer, Star looks uneasy at worst about the situation, and unconvinced at best. What changed? Star’s infatuation with Oskar was a symbol of her old self: Greason, the bad boy with a record who abides to no rules, lives in his car, and rejects all responsibilities and problems. The perfect man for Star “I love Freedom and Individuality More than Anything” Butterfly, right? But then Star grew and we got a number of episodes teaching her the importance of facing problems and accepting your responsibilities and that rules can be important at times and aren’t necessarily antithetic to fun, and this new Star isn’t actually interested in him anymore.

Star tries to latch to this, and to Oskar, in a last attempt at denial, at “replacing Marco”, as Oskar himself implies.

Meanwhile something similar happens with Marco (even if it’s way less clear in his case, and it’s going to take until Sophomore Slump to get any real payoff, while it’s immediate by the end of the episode in Star’s case): Jackie encourages him to stop worrying about Star and enjoy a Summer of nothing (please note: Jackie absolutely not a bad influence on Marco - just a couple of scenes ago she tried to give him and Star some time to talk things out, this is an isolated case to set a parallel between the dorks).

Also in the following scene we get Marco’s version of “I’d make a great Mango”: he deludes himself into thinking that Jackie is his partner in crime, trying to find a “replacement” to Star in this moment of deep emotional stress and tension. Obviously it’s something unconscious, it’s the first, smaller version of “You’re my best friend!” from Sophomore Slump: Marco’s Mind trying to convince his Heart that Jackie is who he truly wants, and the symbol for the kind of life he wants - a calm, easy life on Earth. But this is premature, I’ll talk about this during S3: in this specific episode what matters is that Jackie is not Marco’s partner in crime to any extent, and that Rafael’s words remind Marco of what should have been the basis of Star and Marco’s relationship from beginning to end but hasn’t been for long stretches of time when romance was involved.

Right now both Star and Marco are convinced that they have to talk things out, but as we’re about to see in a moment they aren’t quite ready to go all the way in with it. Third instance of Marco leaving Jackie hanging for something connected to Star (after Raid the Cave and Just Friends), too many not to be something they wanted viewers to notice, and it’s perfectly in line with the important theme of commitment.

Star takes Marco by the hand to gently lead him to a quieter place to talk, instead of dragging him by the wrist as the usually (not always, this is not the first time she grabs his hand, but it’s clearly a different context), and Marco stares at their hands, almost in disbelief. We get the same kind of scene in Here to Help. Hand holding is apparently symbolic for romance in this series (Marco mentions being ashamed of never having held a girls’ hand in Naysaya, in Demoncism and Kelly’s World the episode closes on the new couples holding hands, in Curse of the Blood Moon Star and Marco holding hands is a symbol for them falling in love, Mama Star and Here to Help we get the came focusing on Star holding Marco’s hand and they’re scenes eventually leading to Starco becoming fully canon).

Short digression about things that are going to be explored better in future seasons: isn’t it fun? Both this episode and Booth Buddies put a lot of emphasis on “things being different”, but then in Here to Help, when Marco can finally be entirely honest with himself and with Star, he says that things have essentially been the same since the beginning, just with an ever increasing intensity: feelings needed time to grow, absolutely, but there has never been a single, clear moment that suddenly made things different. See, this is why Marco’s “You don’t just fall in love at first sight” line is extremely important, because it confirms that Marco and Star’s relationship has been a linear journey from the beginning. It’s not that one day they suddenly stopped being just friends and became more, borders are confused, the feelings have always been there but needed time to grow and change and gain new connotations. Obviously the “Mind” part of their awareness about said feelings has clearly identifiable changes in specific episodes, it’s obviously needed for the structure of a TV show and for the characters arcs, but “in universe” it’s not that things started being different from a specific point in time, it’s just that the feelings became intense enough to scare Star and Marco into wanting for things to go backward. Cowards.

Anyway, Marco is obviously worried about the possibility of Star having a crush on him, Star can’t muster the courage to confess AND she’s possibly even truly slipping back into denial, thinking “Eh, I have Oskar now for the Summer, I’ll be happy with that and I won’t have to focus on Marco and things won’t be weird anymore between two of us, right?”, and they both put emphasis on being friends. Just friends, nothing more.

It’s easy to understand what worries Star and Marco, influencing their actions when it comes to romance until the end: fear of change, fear that their feelings might be in the way of friendship. And in the meantime the show spends seasons telling us viewers “look, the best romance is born from friendship, and Star and Marco’s love is just a side of their friendship! They should embrace it and it would be beautiful!” but nope, takes them until the end.

After this talk, Star is deep in denial: she’s latching to this idea of “Summer” as a panacea there to solve all her problems. She thinks that she actually fixed things with Marco, and she’s evidently trying to delude herself into thinking that hanging out with Oskar could actually serve as a bandaid for her unaccepted, unexpressed, unreciprocated feelings (and she’s barely buying it herself, apparently).

The idea of being able to make choices is extremely important and it goes all the way back to Marco’s speech to her in Mr. Candle Cares, but it’s applied in the worst of ways here.

But then she gets told that she has to go back to Mewni, possibly for a long time, possibly even dying in a dangerous fight with Toffee, it’s impossible to know exactly what Star thought in that moment beyond “I might never see Marco again”, and the Summer illusion comes crashing down. And she’s forcefully reminded of what (who) is actually important to her, and voilà, the last step is Star’s S2 Arc, “stop running away from problems” is complete. By accepting her crush on Marco and owning up to it, no matter how painful it is, she also accepts her duties as princess of Mewni and the burden of her family’s history.

This is what I meant when I said, at the beginning of this episode, that the two storylines of the season end up overlapping in the confession: Star starts becoming an actual princess and actually and actively being involved with the history of Mewni (leading to her arc in S3) when she stops running away from the greatest problem she had at the time, her crush on her best friend.

Pretending that a problem is not there doesn’t make it go away, and it’s clearly relevant to feelings as well and it’s true for Star here as it’s going to be true for Marco in Lava Lake Beach as it’s going to be true for both of them for the rest of the show, to some extent, sometimes more consciously, sometimes less. From this point onward feeling are never going to truly go away for Star, even through S3 and Tomstar: the disconnection between Heart and Mind, how conscious the dorks are about their feelings, how painful they get, how distracted by other things they are, how strong the “romance” part is over the platonic one, all these elements are going to fluctuate over the show; but the intensity of their feelings is going to steadily and linearly grow, as Marco ultimately evidences in Here to Help. They never go away.

Being upfront and honest with your friend is important, and it’s a recurring theme in the show (foreshadowed in All Belts Are Off in recent times, clearly central to the episode in Booth Buddies), and yet for the rest of the show it’s going to be so hard and so rare for the teens to be completely and entirely honest with each other and, most of all, with themselves. And the moment one of them finally is - Marco in Mama Star, everything clicks in place and they can finally, easily solve months worth of tensions (and years worth of suffering for us viewers).

Hard to tell if Star is crying here just out of sadness for having to go away, or if Marco’s inability to answer anything to her confession, tell her anything at all, played a role. We still know from S3 that Marco’s silence hurt her, a lot, but that probably includes all the time spent together on Mewni after Toffee’s defeat as well, so it’s not that relevant right now.

But Marco’s inability to answer by itself, now that’s relevant. An expected reaction obviously - he was in front of Jackie to booth, but still one that, in the context of fictional narrative, clearly evidences how unready for this kind of thing Marco was - as I mentioned he started lagging behind Star in terms of character development and maturity after Naysaya, and won’t catch up until Lint Catcher.

To conclude the post and the season, a heart warming shot full of “magic disappears from Marco’s life” imagery. Obviously Star isn’t gone forever, magic isn’t gone from Marco’s life, and everything she meant to him is still there, but after most of a season focused on Star’s perspective we get this last scene focusing on Marco’s one, with the feeling of emptiness brought by the departure of the one person who completely changed his life for better (when I say “bringing magic in it” I mean it in a broader sense, not strictly THE Magic).

Fun stuff.

#star vs the forces of evil #starco #svtfoe #star butterfly #marco diaz #seddm ramblings

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mcwriting · 5 years

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starstruck (4)

Here it is... finally! It’s ~angsty~ but it was really fun to write.

I will say, I realized while writing this that the timeline of this fic is sooooo short but hey, its fiction, so I guess anything can happen lol. I tried to resolve it in later chapters but it’s definitely quick moving in these initial chapters.

There’s a lot of italics in this one lol

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9

Fandom: Thomas Stanley Holland

Ship: Tom Holland x Reader (eventual)

Setting: LA in general

Word Count: 2240 yeet

Warnings: angst, some mild language

Rating: still k+ right now

Last time on starstruck...

“Hey what’s going on? Uh huh. No, we actually have it handled. I might or might not be with her right now… no it’s fine. Seriously, we are laying low! We’re on the way to the hotel right now. Alright, alright I’ll see what I can do. See you in a few.”

And with that, he hung up, turned to you, and said, “That was my manager. Apparently we’ve got a problem.”

__________________________________

You pulled underneath the awning of the posh hotel Tom was boarding at, the kind of place you only dreamed of staying.

Sure, your family wasn’t poor, but your parents definitely weren’t the type of people to spend a lot of money on hotels. They claimed to enjoy spending more money on the “fun” parts of vacations than where you slept at night.

To each their own, you supposed.

Tom wanted you to come inside, per request of his manager, so you figured you would drop him off and park so you wouldn’t be seen together.

The valet had other plans, however, pulling you out of the car and exchanging your keys with a numbered slip of paper.

It all happened so fast that for a moment you just stood there, stunned. You snapped out of it when the man began to drive off and Tom grabbed you to lead you inside.

The lobby was massive and covered with marble flooring. A large, plush rug covered many of the tiles and on top of it sat some luxurious couches and armchairs, framing a huge TV on the wall.

On the other side was a long marble counter that seated hotel staff, who stood at the ready upon seeing Tom.

You also couldn’t help but note the smell, a light, sweet floral scent wafting through the air pleasantly.

This must be rich people scent you thought to yourself.

Due to the nature of it being midday, very few people were seen in the lobby, and Tom led you straight through to a hallway and past the main elevators, his hand resting on your lower back the entire time.

“I have access to a service lift so less people will see,” he explained, as if he’d just read your confused mind.

You walked briskly with Tom through the winding hall, finally ending up at the alternate elevator, where he swiped his key card and the doors slid open with a few creaks.

You tapped your foot nervously as you passed floor by floor, letting go of a breath you didn’t realize you were holding upon reaching the top.

Once again, you followed behind Tom through the hall and to his room. You stood awkwardly in the doorway, clenching onto the straps of your beach bag, as he entered to find more suitable clothing.

After disappearing for a moment, he popped his head back out.

“You can come in, you know. This might take a few minutes.”

You stepped further into his suite, making your way to the sliding doors attached to a balcony. Looking out you could see Los Angeles in full light, the people and cars below feeling so out of reach, like nothing you had ever experienced in your city.

You seemed so out of place in the heavily decorated room still in beach clothing and legs covered in sand.

You could hear Tom rummaging through the drawers and walked over, giving a gentle knock on the open door.

“Having trouble, twinkle toes?” you joked at the way he pillaged through his clothes. He smiled at your commentary.

“Maybe a bit. Do you need anything? A drink, snack? The fridge is stocked so take anything you like.”

You were surprised at his generosity and at how little he cared about paying for that stuff. In your family, everything in the hotel room was off limits if it wasn’t free.

“I think I’m good but do you mind if I use your restroom? I really need to rinse this sand off and put on some real clothes.”

“Go right ahead,” he gestured to the bathroom door.

The bathroom was also massive, especially for a hotel. The shower thankfully had a handheld spray head so you were able to just target and rinse your legs. You tugged on some athletic shorts and a loose tank top to replace your former garments.

You quickly used the toilet too and went to wash your hands, not believing how many fancy soaps and lotions covered the counter.

As you lathered, a small bottle caught the corner of your eye. It was a light yellowish color and read “OBSESSION for men.”

Of course he would wear Calvin Klein cologne. Now I know.

You finished up and made a final once over in the mirror, fixing some stray hairs in your ponytail and opening up the door.

You stopped in your tracks as your eyes laid upon Tom, who was shirtless with his back to you, the elastic of his underwear poking out of his pants’ waistline.

“You’re a pretty big fan of Calvin Klein, huh?” you asked, referring to both the cologne and his boxers. He turned around, giving you a view of his bare chest, which didn’t disappoint, a fact that you pretended was annoying.

“Hah, yeah. I really want to do an ad campaign with them if you couldn’t tell,” he bent over to pick up a shirt from the bed and toss it on.

“Well with the cologne and underwear you’re pretty much a walking billboard.”

“You like the cologne?” he asked, causing your face to heat up. You knew a blush was present and probably obvious, so you decided not to lie.

“Yeah, actually I do. It’s a nice scent. It also happens to be all over my bed right now thanks to a certain someone,” you tipped down your chin and raised an eyebrow accusingly.

“You want it? The company actually sent me like… eight bottles and a bunch of clothes not too long ago after I posted on Instagram about them. I can’t get rid of them fast enough,” he offered, walking towards you.

“What? No! I couldn’t just take that from you. What would I tell my friends when they see men’s cologne bottle in my room? I can’t say ‘oh yeah Tom Holland gave it to me’ and it would be majorly out of character to tell everyone that it’s what you wear.”

He went past you into the bathroom and rummaged through a toiletry bag, muttering an “aha!” when he pulled out another bottle identical to the one on the counter, except this was sealed and full.

“Seriously Tom I can’t just tak-” you started when he dropped the bottle into your bag.

“Whoops,” he quipped, “no take backs. Now your bed can forever smell like me”

You were ready to argue again (with an undeniable smile on your face) when there was a loud rapping on the main door.

Tom grimaced at you to wordlessly send a message of ‘prepare yourself’ as he took a deep breath in and headed out of his bedroom. You silently followed into the living room and watched Tom open the door, where a well dressed man and woman pair stood talking.

__________________________________

At first you and Tom together discussed the plan you had made at the beach with his manager and publicist, neither of whom seemed to like the idea very much.

They asked to speak with Tom privately, so you relocated back into the bedroom and sat on the side of his bed, reminiscing on how the roles were almost reversed compared to only two evenings prior.

You were only in there for about ten minutes, but it seemed like hours. You were too anxious to mess with your phone and instead looked out his window.

There was a quiet knock on the door before Tom opened it. You recognized the steely look in his eyes and the way his jaw was clenched.

He motioned for you to come out, and almost immediately after stepping into the living room his manager started talking to you.

“So, y/n, right? I’m gonna have to give this to you straight. You cannot be seen with my client ever again,” she stated bluntly, “it’s nothing against you, of course, but Tom here needs to maintain a ‘single’ rep until this movie is no longer in theatres and frankly you’re jeopardizing the whole thing.”

Your eyebrows shot up and you weren’t happy to hear this woman’s feigned criticisms.

“I’m sorry, but Tom is the one who sought me out. I never liked him, you could ask any person who knows me and they would tell you the same. I’m only here because Tom asked me to meet him about getting rid of this whole ‘scandal’ or whatever you want to call it. So if anyone is jeopardizing Tom, it’s himself.”

The publicist took a step forward.

“Look, miss y/n, it’s really nothing against you, we just want to maintain his image, and the best way to do so would be for us to go online and tell everyone he helped you get medical attention for an injury, which we all know is true, and end it at that. It makes Tom look like a hero, and you’ll be popular for weeks with your peers I’m sure,” he explained, angering you further.

“I never asked for this. I don’t want attention. I don’t want the world, or more importantly my best friend, to find out I’ve been lying about the guy I used to hate. Do you realize how many rumors this will fuel? This is ridiculous and I can’t allow you to put out my information like this.”

“Oh, well. Too bad. I just sent the tip to TMZ and they’re posting the story tonight,” he replied, “and Tom is going live on Instagram at 4:00 to address it the way we told him to and you two can’t be seen together again. Text all you want like you have been, but no public contact. Unless of course we want to do a ‘girl saved by hero reunites with him’ thing. Oh man would that look so good-”

“I’m done. This is so sick. Tom,” you looked directly into his eyes, “never contact me again, you disgusting cheap sellout bastard,” you spat, a fire in your own eyes like nothing anyone had ever seen from you.

“Y/n I-“ he began, but you were already heading to the door. You could hear footsteps behind you and the door slam shut but you kept power walking towards the main elevators, hoping they were the opposite direction from which you and Tom initially came.

“Wait!” he cried out, finally catching up and grabbing your elbow.

You threw his hand off but stopped moving forward and instead spun around to face him. Tears had made their way down your cheeks by now and you weren’t any happier to be so vulnerable in front of Tom.

Never in your life did or expect the next (or even last) guy you’d cry over would be Tom Holland.

“Y/n, please listen,” he pleaded, his face was also red, as if he were going to cry himself. You stood firm and gave him an expectant glare, so he continued.

“I don’t want to do this, I really don’t. Please understand that I have to, though, no matter how much this hurts. We can still talk. I was so drawn to you the second I saw you in that crowd just last week and I could’ve never imagined how close you could become in the short amount of time we’ve known each other. Please, babe, I don’t want to lose you.”

Anger flashed inside of you again and you felt your chest tighten at the bomb he’d just dropped..

“Do you really, Tom? Do you really care? Because to me it sounds like you actually have a choice here, but you’re too much of a pushover to do what’s right. If you really cared, you wouldn’t do this to me. I was serious back there. Don’t talk to me again, and definitely don’t call me babe if you do.”

“I’m so, so sorry, y/n,” Tom’s voice finally broke, and you could see the way his lip quivered as he continued, “I’m sorry I ever got you into this mess.”

“Me too,” you whispered.

You wiped more stray tears and turned, looking back one last time into the face of the broken-hearted celebrity, hoping it was the last time you would ever see his face, but knowing it wouldn’t be the end of it.

__________________________________

You exited the elevator, which you were glad was empty. More tears had fallen on the journey down and you mustered up everything you could to stop them, at least until you were off the premises of the hotel.

Though knowing you looked like a wreck, you walked through the hotel lobby with head held high, looking straight forward at the large front doors.

Your numbered ticket was in hand and you gladly gave it to the valet so he could pull up your car.

It was getting harder to hold it together as you waited. Finally, he appeared and parked the car in front of you.

He held out the keys and then stood directly in front of you, silently pleading for a tip, even though he could probably see the obvious anguish on your face.

Finally, you gave in, rolling your eyes as you dug through your bag for a spare $5 bill and slapped it into his hand with disdain.

“How kind. Have a nice day, ma’am!” he voiced cheerily.

You fought the urge to flip him off as you sat down in the driver’s seat and began the journey back home, dread filling your stomach the closer home became.

__________________________________

A/N: yeehaw that was a fun time. Next chapter is angsty too sorry I don’t make the rules... :)

Tag List: @marvel-lously, @jackiehollanderr, @one-big-fangirl

#starstruck #tom holland #tom holland fanfiction #tom holland imagine #tom holland x reader #tom holland dancing #tom holland x y/n #tom holland x you #spider-man #spiderman #spider man #Spider Man: Homecoming #tom holland spider man #SPIDER MAN: FAR FROM HOME #SPIDER MAN FAR FROM HOME #sm:ffh #MARVEL FANDOM #marvel

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rp-repliforce · 5 years

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{Get to Know my Muse in 8 Songs or Less}

Music is a great way to get a sense of a character’s personality, history, or general vibes. You might only have a handful of songs you associate your muse, or you could have a massive playlist that’s impossible to list. Songs make it for all kinds of reasons: the lyrics, the genre, or maybe you just found the song at random and it stuck. The purpose of this meme is to introduce your muse in the span of one album or less, share some of your musical inspiration, or even stuff you’re into right now while you write! You can explain as much or as little as you like (multimuses are welcome to do one track per character too!).

((I kind of broke the rules of this meme, and made a playlist for my main 3 muses. It’s a lot to go through, so its ok if you don’t want to listen to them all... ^^;))

General

1. [Stadler - Dreams of war] This was actually one of the first theme songs I chose for General, but I feel like it still manages to capture his personality prefectly. I think it kind of speaks for itself.

2. [A Cerulean State - If Only I Had Forever] When I listen to this song, I imagine General leaning against a balcony and staring at the stars... Maybe thinking about the things that could have been.

3. [Evening Star - Octavia] Here’s one that’s more upbeat. Even though this is an MLP song, it’s always reminded me of General. I don’t really know what this one makes me think of though...

4. [Two Steps From Hell - Submariner] Here’s a look at General’s more serious side. This one makes me think of General on the move. Most likely headed to a battle.

5. [David Edwards - Insurrection] I’ve been thinking about choosing this song as his new combat theme, because it captures how scrary it would actually be to fight him. His armor is nearly impenetrable, he’s strong enough to bash through the walls of fortresses, can easily crush a reploid in his hand, and It’s almost impossible to hide from his onslaught (if you’re a reploid) because his whiskers can detect electrical activity. I tend to assocoiate heavy sounding orchestral stuff with him anyways.

6. [Audiomachine - Last Plane Out] I chose this song to be the theme of General’s sacrifice. I remember that in my story, I actually drew the scene out a bit. Instead of moving himself into the path of the final weapon’s beam, he instead dives into the structures surrounding the core, and uses the last of his strength to cause as much destruction as he can. General eventually succumbs to his wounds, and has a surprisingly peaceful death before the inferno from the core’s implosion could take him. He died a true hero, giving up everything he had already sacrificed so much for to protect the innocent humans and reploids of earth.

7. [The Volga Boatmen (Paul Robeson cover)] I remember sharing this song to show how I imagined General’s singing voice to sound.

Colonel

1. [Two steps from hell - Never back down] This is the song I chose to be Colonel’s theme song. Beleive it or not, it has actual lyrics. I think they suit him really well.

2. [Kingdom Hearts II Soundtrack - Passion - KINGDOM Orchestra Instrumental Version] If I could make this Colonel’s theme I would, but I have a personal rule against using songs from popular media for themes. I remember a time when I had almost lost muse for him, but listening to this song helped me remember his more noble and heroic side (mostly at 1:56 though).

3. [Thomas Bergersen - Immortal] This is actually one of the previous theme songs I had for him. I think it still does kind of fit

4. [Two Steps From Hell - Winterspell] Whenenver I listen to this one, it almost makes me picture a scene where Colonel goes on some kind of mission. Also so far it seems like most of these songs make me think of Colonel running. He’s pretty good at that after all, being able to reach a top speed of 30mph on foot.

5. [Charlene Soraia - Wherever You Will Go] Sometimes I imagine Colonel singing this song to Iris. It reminds me of an idea I had a while ago where Colonel and Iris would have a bit of a falling-out, and Iris would try to stay on Earth with Zero while Colonel would try to go space with General. Still, even though her descision had hurt him, he respected her choice. They had been close their whole life, and now... They would be truly separated for the first time. Even though she’s not there to listen, it’s like Colonel is silently calling for her to come back. It makes me feel a little choked up knowing that despite all the greif that Iris had caused him during the war, he never stopped loving her. (One of the lyrics doesen’t really work here, but... you know.)

6. [Manowar - Die with Honor] The lyrics of this song really makes me think of Colonel’s last stand against Zero at the spaceport. I remember imagining that He had actually decided to stay back and fight off the hunters so that General could escape. Maybe I’d change a couple words in the song though, since Colonel never had a son... ^^; It also makes me think of this card from Teppen, which says: “Pushing himself ever further for the sake of his comrades, this proud reploid's blade can cleave any enemy in to two.”

7. [Two steps from hell - Unforgiven] This is the battle theme I’d decided on for him. The ascending notes in the background are like rising winds, the snare is like rain hitting your face, and the big drum that comes every now and again is like a thunderclap. Near the end, I imagine that Colonel is wounded, but has one last surge of energy before he either wins or loses. I didn’t call him the “Silver Prince of storms” for nothing. I remember imagining that his final battle with Zero would get so stormy and rainy that they would both have reduced visibility and would be at risk of falling off of the bridge they’re fighting on.

8: [josielemmings - In a Dying Whisper] “...Never in my life did I expect you to be the one to strike me down... Our practice duels... At one time we bonded over them... But now... It seems that they were only the beginning..." -Colonel, when he realized he was dying I’d say that by the time the chorus starts, he’s completely gone.

Iris

1. [Lucas king - Smiles] This is the song I chose for Iris’s theme. I think it really fits the impression she tends to leave on people.

2. [Lucas King - Cat] In Iris’s bio, I used this song to describe the way she feels when she’s with Colonel. Warmth, happiness, security, familiarity... Those are the words that come to my mind. I like how the bass of the song almost makes me think of Colonel’s presence and/or voice.

3. [Yann Tiersen - Summer 78] I’m not quite sure why, but this song still reminds me of Iris. I guess it’s her more ‘serious‘ theme. I feel like this track and the one after it do kind of capture her hopefulness.

4. [Yann Tiersen - Mother's Journey] This one makes me picture Iris running through the rain as fast as she can, as well as how she did her best to endure the turmoil happening around her. It makes me think of her perserverance and her quiet desperation.

5. [SAMUEL BARBER - Adagio for Strings] I imagined this to play when Iris would go to Repliforce’s spaceport, but she would find that not only have all of the ships left, there’s also fallen Repliforce soldiers littering her path. Eventually, she finds Colonel laying there... Completely motionless. She was too late to say she was sorry...

6. [Really Slow Motion & Giant Apes - Swirling Dinosaurs] This one was a last-minute descision, since I was kind of dissatisfied with the battle theme that’s actually in her bio (for X4). When Iris fought Zero, she was pushed to her physical, emotional, and psychological limits... All for the sake of trying to finish Colonel’s fight for him.

7. [Lucas King - Hurt] I picked this song to play for Iris’s death scene. No joke, when I played this over the cutscene in X4 (redubbed), I felt like my eyes got slightly moist. It really reminds me of her body struggling to stay alive in that moment as she becomes weaker by the second.

BONUS TRACKS: Post a joke song, a song fitting a relationship, or anything else you couldn’t make room for)

[Atherine Jenkins & Laszlo Maleczky - Amigos Para Siempre] I’ve kind of made this my song for Colonel and Iris. I oftem imagine them singing it as a duette.

[Two Steps From Hell - Dark Harbor] I think this song would be good for Jet Stignray’s grim mission... Cut off the Hunters’ supply lines by destroying its very source.

Tagged By: @radio-pirate (Sorry I took so long... ^^;)

Tagging: @keiko-sacaro @ask-navigator-layer

#Repliforce Highlights

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starberry-cupcake · 6 years

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Overall thoughts on Les Mis BBC

I decided, after all those summaries I made, to write what I hope can be a more coherent opinion on what I thought of the adaptation as a whole. I wanted to make sure to state that my critical reactions weren’t for entertainment purposes only or exaggerated for the fun of it but based on real concerns I’ll expand in this post. This is like the “serious companion”, if you will.

I don’t know if anyone cares about it at this point, but I feel that even though my summaries helped me go through the immediate frustrations in a (mostly) lighthearted way, it’s the distance from having watched it all what gave me a little bit more clarity to order my thoughts.

I’ve established my opinion isn’t worth a damn, I’m not smart or knowledgeable enough for this fandom and, needless to say, these are all my personal opinions, take them with a grain of salt or a bathtub of it. I’m a worthless nobody and my words have no value, but the internet is still (sort of) free, so here I go.

Introduction: the initial news, Andrew Davies & the PR mess

BBC announced the adaptations of 2 media phenomenons which started as books that I love so much I’m considering tattoos of both. And, for both of them, my main concerns were on the person adapting the script.

On the one hand, there’s His Dark Materials, a book series that made me the person I am today, pretty much. One of the directors is none other than Tom Hooper (what are the odds) and the script adaptation was in the hands of Jack Thorne. Cursed Child Jack Thorne. Yeah, not thrilled about that.

Surprisingly enough, His Dark Materials was given a projection of 3 possible seasons, rather than just one, the 3rd hasn’t been yet confirmed but the fact that the script was made thinking on one season per major book on the series, and that each season has 8 episodes planned, at least gives me a bit of hope, even if the person adapting it isn’t in my favorites list.

Les Mis, on the other hand, went to the hands of Andrew Davies, another person I don’t trust.

I’m one of those folk who was never too fond of the ‘95 version of Pride and Prejudice, mainly because of how Darcy was made into a sort of sex symbol, where his flaws were seen as “attractive marks of broody character” rather than vulnerability and with gratuitous sexualizing fanservice. I know a lot of people love it for that and that’s cool, you do you, but it’s not for me.

Then, when he adapted War and Peace, he talked about adding more sex to it and had the Kuragin siblings shown explicitly sleeping together from the get-go in episode 1 and that’s when I stopped watching (there were other things I didn’t like but that one was my limit).

To make matters worse, it made me weary that Les Mis was getting an overall amount of only 6 episodes whereas HDM was getting a potential 24-ish. That was an odd choice.

So, as you can guess, I knew coming in that Davies writing the script, a script with a limited time-frame for the story, was a huge risk.

But, on the other hand, as the cast was announced, I got excited. Especially for people like Archie Madekwe, Turlough Convery, Erin Kellyman and some famous actors like David Oyelowo. Their filming logs on social media, how nice they all were and how much fun they had filming made me happy. I felt that maybe these great folks could turn around whatever the scrip had to disappoint me.

But then came all the PR stuff.

The more I read Davies & co. talking about the show, the less hope I had for it. Talking very badly about the musical and the 2012 movie, calling female characters “not complicated”, insulting Cosette, saying that Javert’s lack of explicit heterosexual sex in the brick was reason enough to push a homosexual narrative centered on an unhealthy behavior, patting themselves on the back for having a diverse cast as if no other adaptation of Les Mis had ever done it before...even their talks about Fantine’s make up made me weary. And, let’s not forget their ridiculous insistence on not having songs.

By the time the show premiered, my hopes had dwindled. The excitement I had upon knowing there would be another Les Mis adaptation so soon, a BBC one at that, and with a cast I had hopes for, was blurred by all the nonsense of PR and I was more afraid than hopeful.

In the end, after having watched it completely, and as you can see for my summaries, I was heavily disappointed. I’ll try to list some of my biggest concerns, in no particular order.

I can’t be super extensive about it, because there are a lot of points to go over, but there are a lot of amazing opinion pieces out there about specific issues, so you don’t need me for that.

Anyway, let’s delve into some of my biggest problems with BBC Les Mis.

Problem #1: The portrayal of femininity

Solely by the fact that Davies stated that women on Les Mis “are not terribly complicated” you know that things are not going to go all too well on that front.

I’m going to pick 3 characters to showcase how badly women were portrayed in this: Fantine, Cosette and Éponine. I’ll leave other characters for another section.

1. Fantine

I’ve talked about Fantine before, upon receiving some questions on my summaries, but I’ll try to explain it all in a more understandable way.

The lens in which Fantine was seen was sexist from the get-go. The way in which the story was framed made the audience complicit in the choices she was making, choices that were negatively regarded by the narrative perspective alone. Her “fall to disgrace” was framed as her own decisions being incorrect, silly mistakes that were easily avoidable, and never regarded as the result of living in a society that was unable to contain her and see her as a valid human being. But we’ll get to that when we talk about the politics (or lack thereof) on this show.

Like I said in my response before, the way in which Fantine is portrayed, even in the musical itself, varies greatly performance to performance. Patti LuPone performing I Dreamed a Dream after Fantine gets dismissed isn’t like Anne Hathaway performing it after she has become a prostitute and neither carry the same implications as Allison Blackwell in the Liesl Tommy’s Dallas modern production, influenced by her experience in apartheid South Africa.

Still, the key element to developing Fantine’s portrayal, when it comes to sexism and the showcasing of her environment, has two layers: the actual oppression showcased in the source material and the contemporary interpretation or lens in which an adaptation will view it.

In this version, Fantine’s character was toned down in her attitude. She was less reactive than in the brick, a lot more passive, a lot more of a tragic figure, which paired up with the fact that this adaptation covered her entire “fall to ruin”, from meeting Tholomyès onward, made her a victim of everything that happened to her.

A victim of her own bad decisions, though, not of a social context that was failing her.

But the worst part is in how the focus of the show is placed. You can have Fantine being a summarized version of herself, with less spunk, and still showcase through her that the circumstances she was in were permeated by an escalating force of social disadvantage and oppression.

This adaptation made, like I said, the audience complicit in Fantine’s decisions as if she was a princess in a movie, unaware of the threats she was getting herself into by her own naive foolishness.

Tholomyès is blatantly shady, clearly dishonest, not at all charming or in any way trustworthy and Fantine gets a “voice of reason” on a friend who tells her various times that he will eventually leave. There are a lot of red flags, blatant for the audience, that Fantine chooses to dismiss. The show focuses less on why Fantine trusted Tholomyès and more on her making a clear bad choice we all knew was doomed from the start.

This becomes a problem once again when she chooses to leave Cosette with the Thénardiers. They are very clearly shady, very blatantly aggressive and ready to take advantage of her, visibly manhandling Cosette in front of her and asking for more money on the spot, and Fantine again naively ignores all of this.

They do it again when she enters employment in Montreuil. She talks to Valjean himself in this version, and is asked repeatedly and with kindness if she has a family. The scene makes it seem as if she could have easily told the truth, especially because we were previously given a scene in which Fantine hears a speech talking about how Valjean is the Best Person Ever and could potentially help her. Still, she chooses to repeatedly lie and the show makes it seem less for necessity and more for a sense of pride of some sort.

(Also, as a foreshadowing of creepy Valjean to come, there are some insinuations from her co-workers that she could seduce Valjean, which is confusingly placed and awkwardly added where it is.)

Then, after she’s dismissed, there’s a man in a post office who asks her, after receiving letters from the Thénardiers (to which she reacts a lot more passively than in the brick), why she doesn’t bring Cosette to live with her, in a condescending tone, as if he was stating the obvious. Fantine responds again as if she was doing it out of pride. The same man is the one to suggest her to start selling her body and then tell her she should have done it before selling her hair and teeth because “nobody would pay for her after that”.

Every turn we’re met with ways in which Fantine’s decisions are seen as foolish in the eyes of the viewer. It’s like Blue’s Clues or Dora the Explorer when they ask stuff to the audience for the kids to say they shouldn’t do something. It’s patronizing as fuck, is what it is. And, yes, sexist.

These narrative choices are sexist because they erase most of the social and political situation which made Fantine vulnerable in the first place, to push the tragic drama as if she was a victim of being “too naive”. It’s sexist because it makes the audience know from the get go that what Fantine is doing is a “bad choice”, easily avoidable mistakes that whoever writes is smart enough to sense are bad but poor naive Fantine can’t understand.

It isn’t just that she’s called a whore a lot of times, that she’s smashed against walls and the ground hard enough that Lily Collins was actually hurt, that she’s shown explicitly being used by a patron on the street. It’s that all of it is done with the added layer of her having “chosen wrong”. That everything is framed as the consequences of actions that the narrative voice, as well as the audience, are smart enough to know are wrong, but poor little Fantine can’t handle.

Like many things in this adaptation we’ll see later, Fantine’s journey is framed more like the tragic end of a woman who didn’t know how to choose right and was punished for said choices rather than the result of an unfair society which didn’t allow women any freedom to choose and didn’t see them as worthy human beings.

2. Cosette

When Andrew Davies called Cosette a “pretty nauseating character” in need of change, I knew I was up against one of those people.

Cosette is probably one of the most underestimated female characters in literature, and adaptations tend to do her dirty very often. I’m not even fond of her interpretation in the musical all that much, which goes in tow with the interpretation of Éponine. I’ve seen my fair share of men on youtube claiming Gavroche should be the face of Les Mis rather than Cosette, I’ve received my fair amount of messages claiming she’s The Worst, I’ve seen it all.

This adaptation does with Cosette something that, out of context, I would have thought impossible. They manage to somehow attempt to make her more “active” (they would call it “strong” but I have problems with that denomination) while making her even more of a helpless victim. It’s a pretty impressive oxymoron.

Let’s begin with little Cosette.

This adaptation does something very weird in that it only showcases Cosette’s storyline as a child when it serves other characters, but then intends to build upon the abuse by mentioning it or making it clear that adult Cosette remembers it well.

So we see Cosette when she’s important to Fantine’s storyline, the Thénardiers’s storyline or Valjean’s storyline, but not much about her on her own, aside from one time she’s looking at dolls and another time when she’s being beaten up by Madame Thénardier, which could be also a moment for the Thénardiers and not solely for Cosette’s narrative.

What I mean with this is that the view on her is reduced to a side character rather than a main one and, with that, her perspective on her own abuse isn’t taken into account. You don’t know how Cosette feels about things, you don’t see her perspective on it, you only see what others do to her but never get to see her side of it. For all the musical erases of her narrative, at least they give her Castle on a Cloud.

It’s with little Cosette where we start to see this weird sense of sexually charged perception towards her relationship with Valjean.

For some inexplicable and highly alarming reason, it’s implied by various witnesses in different occasions that Valjean’s intentions with Cosette may be inappropriate, and I would have let it slide as just people thinking The Worst out of living in a social context in which The Worst is most often the truth, hadn’t that perception carried throughout the series and mixed with Valjean’s erratic and possessive characterization.

When Cosette grows up, she gains a bit more focus, but she also starts to be charged a lot more sexually.

Both Cosette and Éponine are sexualized and objectivized in this adaptation. This will be addressed later, but most often than not this sexualization acts as an accessory to a narrative about masculinity.

Cosette’s virtue, beauty and body are talked about and even exposed in various moments. They tell her she can’t be a nun because that would be “a waste of her beauty”. In that dreadful scene in the dress shop I talked about in summary 4, the shop assistant again implies that Cosette is Valjean’s lover and lets him see her in undergarments through the curtain, with clear intentions. Valjean’s erratic persona is intent on separating her from Marius, explicitly telling her he’s worried that she will be taken advantage of by men, bringing up Fantine’s history to her with that in mind, while putting her in danger and in the company of the Thénardiers again, in more than one occasion.

Adult Cosette has visible signs of the trauma she suffered, which is an interesting direction to go. I haven’t seen an adaptation taking such a big route on her remembering her past abuse, and is a change that worked in performance, Ellie did some great visible responses like covering herself when Valjean wakes her up or going fight or flight every time she sees Thénardier. She is visibly upset when Marius gives him money and looks both angry yet still hesitant when she sees the man for the last time.

But all that kind of loses its importance when the men around her not only don’t give a shit but also do their worst.

Valjean manhandles her, harms her even, pushes her to the limits of her emotional state by taking her to see the prisoners intentionally after she mentioned prison, acting more possessive than caring and more erratically violent than conflicted and concerned.

Marius has a somewhat wet dream about her and then again dreams with her in confusing ways when he’s out of the barricade, with his grandfather talking about her as if she’s a piece of meat even after he meets her and she’s right in front of him.

They tried to make Cosette more aggressive, I think, more reactive, which in some moments worked. But when the lens in which she’s viewed is objectivizing, when she’s being commented on, offered and treated as an object, then it isn’t enough. It makes it worse, actually.

I’m sorry for Ellie, though, she did good.

3. Éponine

Much like Cosette, Éponine’s childhood was all but a few cameos. It’s very often that adaptations try to “tone down” Éponine in order to pull a narrative of her as an underdog in a love triangle, the “friendzoned” girl who tragically dies. The musical does that, for example.

Some of Éponine’s most controversial actions in the brick tend to be most often deleted or changed, except for adaptations in which she’s an “enemy” to Cosette’s narrative of a classic heroine.

It isn’t easy to find adaptations that are able to make Éponine showcase the complexity of her canon character not as a problem but as what makes her character so good and important in the overall story. Hey, even fandom sometimes tends to romanticize Éponine as if she had to be “redeemed” in order to be seen as a worthy character (but that happens a lot with female characters in general).

Éponine doesn’t exist for Marius’s narrative, as the other girl in a love triangle, or for Cosette’s narrative, as an enemy, she’s her own character with her own reason for existing and complex human dynamics that are extremely permeated by the social circumstances she’s immersed in and represents.

I’d say this adaptation is on the group that uses her for Marius’s storyline.

Added to that, it’s one of the worst I’ve seen on that case, because in this one, Marius is complicit of Éponine’s intentions, which are sexualized to a degree I don’t feel comfortable with.

We’ll talk a bit more about the Marius side of things later, but for Éponine, it meant she was reduced to a character that exists to sexually awaken Marius rather than a tragic figure on her own or even a piece of a love triangle. So, basically, this is the worst I’ve seen in a while.

This is clearly seen in that interview when Davies explained why he added that “wet dream” scene, saying:

“One of the best things Hugo does is to have Eponine tease Marius with her sexiness because he is a bit of a prig. So I have introduced a scene where Marius, even though he is in love with Cosette, has a wet dream about Eponine and feels rather guilty about it. I think it fits into the psychology of the book.” Source

Let’s leave out the part where he considers that to be “one of the best things Hugo does” because I cannot deal with that right now. Let’s focus on the other bit.

Like this quote suggests and I said before, Éponine was rather reduced to a tool for Marius’s sexual awakening. In this version, it isn’t only the “wet dream” which precedes more crucial interactions between Marius and Éponine, there’s also a scene where she strips for him through the hole in the wall and another where Courfeyrac is commenting on her and Azelma as Marius moves into the building for the first time.

By the time Marius gives her his money and any sort of bond can occur, it’s evidently clear in this version that Éponine has been teasing Marius and he is fully aware of it. He looks at her through the peep hole licking his lips and then has that disturbing dream where she’s kind of forcing him onto her in a very questionable way.

So, this Marius is by no means unaware of the fact that Éponine was attracted to him in some capacity and has played along her seduction, which makes his dismissal of her and his request for her to find Cosette a lot like he is using her for his own gain and replacing her for another girl.

Éponine’s attitude, much like Cosette’s, tries to be more active at times. She’s confrontational to her parents, seems protective of Azelma and is pleased to see her mother stuck in jail.

However, much like with Cosette, any kind of agency is compromised for having her narrative be serving a male character’s development rather than her own. Her involvement in the barricade is also somewhat modified but, by that time, her journey has already been substantially affected.

Much like Ellie, Erin was a very good Éponine when she was allowed to perform at her best and I wish she had been involved in an adaptation that was able to portray Éponine with more justice.

I’ll talk a bit more about women on the show in general in problem #3 but, for now, let’s move on.

Problem #2: The portrayal of masculinity

1. Javert

I am not the best person to write an essay on Javert, there are a lot of people more capable than me for that, and I may be called out for this and mess everything up, but I can’t write overall opinions without mentioning my issues with his characterization, at least summarized.

Javert is a complicated character. He is, as much as everyone else, affected by the circumstances and a man who goes through a huge emotional impact and sees his values questioned and compromised. His and Valjean’s journeys have a lot in common, in different ways and with different outcomes.

Sadly, Javert tends to be seen as a villain in a lot of adaptations. It’s a way to simplify the plot in the way movies tend to do: something is defined by what the other isn’t, if Valjean is the protagonist, then Javert must be his antagonist. I was worried that this version was going to fall into that trap, because of time restraint and Davies’s tendencies of simplifying complex characters.

Javert’s characterization was erratic, much like Valjean’s. His attitude was blurred by fits of rage and moments of confusing violence, followed by charged pauses in strange cadences which tended to fluctuate. I don’t think his attitude was as all-over-the-place as Valjean’s, but it was certainly not as well defined as other Javerts I’ve seen through the years.

This Javert, however, had a choice made for him that separates him from other versions:

Over tea in central London, Davies tells me that he was surprised to discover that, in Hugo’s 1862 novel, neither character [Javert or Valjean] mentions any sort of sexual experience, leaving the 82-year-old screenwriter wondering, at least in the case of Javert, whether it was indicative of a latent homosexuality. Source

There is a lot to unpack there.

First, there’s this idea of masculinity in which the lack of explicit heterosexual intercourse in canon is directly representative of homosexuality. I’m not gonna delve a lot in the brick but there are a good bunch of characters you can easily read as gay. Hell, there’s that whole thing going on with comparing Enjolras and Grantaire to greek couples. And if you want to write Javert as gay, go ahead, there’s a lot of fanfiction out there who is with you on that and I’m here for all interpretations, no problem at all.

But if you’re going to take that route, you need to be careful with your optics.

This Javert is, at the end of the day, in this adaptation, a gay man of color. He is also explicitly obsessed with Valjean in a way that exceeds his sense of justice. He looks at him undress in prison, is all over his personal space while he’s in chains and later interrogates him believing Marius is his lover, clearly attempting Valjean to confess to him if he was. He receives a lot of comments from an officer who touches him and looks at him strangely in the last episode, prompting an immediate rejection from him.

Everything points to Javert’s homosexuality being in the plot only as a further motivator for his need to capture Valjean, which makes for both a problematic portrayal of predatory homosexuality and a subsequent narrative of police abuse, both very problematic aspects to portray through a gay man of color. The way he acts and the way in which people act around him make it seem like his obsession with capturing him is fueled by the fact that Valjean represents his closeted feelings and that is all kinds of messed up.

He is also clearly not as involved in other aspects of the law as he is in capturing Valjean, since Thénardier ends up being a secondary worry to him, even explicitly knowing he has been mistreating and abusing a child, and he also explicitly doesn’t care about his achievements or the ones of his other officers as long as Valjean is on the loose. He lets Thénardier escape prison on his watch and doesn’t take care of it himself, prioritizing Valjean.

It isn’t about what happens in canon or not but in how all of this, in this version, is framed under this idea that Javert is also gay and has an obsession with Valjean that seems predatory in part, rather than fueled by his beliefs. And that is a dangerous optic to write a gay character under. Especially a police officer who is also a man of color.

I’m not the one to talk about that, it’s not my experience to tell and I’m not going to speak over those whose experience this is, but as a content creator, I’d question if my need to diversify is stepping over the lines of problematic aspects that may ill represent the identities I’m trying to integrate. Just saying.

David’s performance hits some very good moments, especially when Javert starts contemplating suicide. That is a very important scene in every adaptation and a very amazing chapter in canon and David does well in performing the turmoil in Javert’s decision. They also add, as a voice in off, the notes he left to improve the service, which is a great touch.

But, much like the other characters I mentioned, his performance is blurred by these writing choices in which Javert has been added this sort of predatory sense in which Valjean in jail symbolizes also keeping his identity hidden away. Davies would probably say his “desires” because that’s the kind of guy he is.

I hope my opinion isn’t overstepping anyone’s voice and I’ll leave the further of this discussion to someone more appropriate, but I felt it was an important matter to include and something we all, as media consumers, must pay attention to.

2. Marius

I had higher hopes for this boy, I really did.

The good thing this adaptation does for Marius is give him a bit more room than others do. They touch more on his relationship with his father and his grandfather, they bring up the Thénardier connection to his dad, they introduce Mabeuf, and they bring him on as a kid in the beginning, which even though questionable in comparison to him having more development as a child than Cosette and Éponine, at least helped to introduce him as another key character of the whole story.

I had hopes that this earlier introduction, albeit unfairly unbalanced with Cosette’s and Éponine’s, would allow for his character to develop more strongly, especially since politics were very present in his conversations with his grandfather and the ideals of his dad. I thought that by introducing politics through Marius that would allow his connection to Les Amis de l’ABC be more profound when the moment for revolution came.

Yeah, no, that didn’t happen.

Les Mis is a book where people are the heart and soul of it. With that in mind, characters aren’t like each other, they aren’t repetitions of the other’s attitude, they are diverse reflections of the complexity of humanity. The portrayal of masculinity in characters like Javert, Valjean, Gavroche or each individual member of Les Amis aren’t the same between each other, and neither are the same as Marius’s.

Marius represents a very wide emotional spectrum. He’s sensitive and vulnerable, passionate and driven, but at the same time can take action into his own hands when he has to and fight, even at the cost of his own life. There are layers in Marius. Like a Rogel cake.

I don’t want to generalize but a problem I have often with older male writers is that they see emotional complexity as weakness, especially when it comes to the portrayal of masculinity. There’s this idea in which something that is undefined or conflicting isn’t “strong” enough and therefore requires forcing.

Remember that quote I brought up for Éponine’s characterization? we’re going back to that. To Davies calling Marius “a prig” in need of being seduced.

Like I said, this version made Marius complicit in Éponine’s advances and aware of her sexually charged intentions, and this was made in an attempt to “upgrade” Marius’s masculinity and make him “less of a prig”. Because in order to be a Man, Marius needs to objectivize women. Apparently.

Like I mentioned, the gesture of Marius giving Éponine the little money he had ended up being a lot less effective by the fact that he had already fantasized about her more than once, and with her knowing that. He is taken to a brothel by Courfeyrac and Grantaire in which women pretty much throw themselves at him while he looks for Cosette. The “wet dream” he has is a very eerie combination of idealization and assault, in which Éponine, taking Cosette’s place, forces him onto her (much like Davies is forcing this onto Marius).

It isn’t about sex or eroticism being introduced to Marius’s storyline, is that they appear forced and almost violently thrust upon him in order to validate him in this idea of masculinity the adaptation seems to have, which seems to be very narrow.

And, with that in mind, we’ll move on to the last bit of this section.

3. Valjean

I am unable to write a piece about how many layers of wrong this Valjean embodied.

There are a lot of good tumblr scholars and Les Mis experts talking about it already, they can explain better than I ever could, but we need to, at least, try to glimpse at the mess this was, because this is a post on problems and this was a major one.

There are a lot of interpretations of Valjean, some of which are astronomically awful. He’s a character that can be easily fucked up, maybe because he also represents a very complex range of emotions, a very wide spectrum of masculinity, and is inserted in a wide variety of social contexts and spheres during his lifetime, which permeate his way of living as well as his agency to do things.

Any adaptation of Les Mis from the get go starts with the challenge of representing all of this in a limited time frame and with a limited perspective. It’s very difficult to translate not only all of this complexity but also all the thoughts the narrator can rely, all the feelings and conflicts and internal turmoil that we can get from the book because it’s written.

The musical, in that sense, has some elements from its medium that help, like the soliloquies, the changes of key, the ability for characters to bear their souls through song without interrupting the believability of the story.

Representing Valjean without a medium that allows a peek inside his head is a big challenge. He is a character whose turmoil is most often interior, so showcasing that externally poses difficulty.

Still, you can’t fuck up this much, my dude.

I’ve seen bad Valjeans in my life, this one is...complicated. He’s not good, don’t get me wrong, but he isn’t as clear-cut godawful as others I’ve seen, he’s too erratic to be easily described.

I think this adaptation tried to showcase complexity through visible emotional distress and physical violence. Instead of having a soliloquy or symbolism, we have Valjean shouting or screaming or burning his hand with a coin and staring at it for a while or shouting at nuns or carrying Cosette by force so hard her arm is in pain.

Everything gets even more confusing when everyone around him treats him weirdly.

You get years of exposition clumsily thrown at you via a speech Fantine hears when she arrives at Montreuil and he’s been elected. You get girls looking at him naughtily and suggesting Fantine to try to seduce him. You get inkeepers and Thénardier suggesting his intentions with child Cosette aren’t appropriate. You get women in dress shops thinking his intentions with young adult Cosette aren’t appropriate. You get Javert thinking his intentions with Marius aren’t appropriate. Everyone wants to talk about Valjean’s sex life or something, I don’t know.

His attitude towards Cosette is also muddled by this erratic behavior and the very strange way in which he sees her and Fantine.

He is visibly more worried about men taking advantage of her, of “defiling” her, than other dangers she could be in, like his identity being found out by the police or her falling in the hands of the Thénardiers again. He forcibly removes her from Marius’s presence and has a fight with her about it that ends on him taking her to see the prisoners. He knows she still, as an adult, visibly flinches when she’s approached harshly yet manhandles her when he wants to keep her locked up.

There’s something possessive about this Valjean that ties in to how Cosette is portrayed as an object. He talks about Cosette as if she was something he needs to keep, says Marius will “rob” her, not because he wants to be a good father or see her happy but because she is his to have.

This Valjean feels as if Cosette was his attempt to get rid of the guilt he feels for having failed Fantine more so than anything else. She’s less of a person and more an object he needs to keep for himself like a third candlestick. That’s the impression I got of their relationship with his characterization.

By the time the series ended, I felt upset with Valjean.

I didn’t care if he died, I didn’t care if he suffered. And that’s pretty shitty for a Les Mis adaptation to prompt. He made me feel uncomfortable, uneasy, as if he was the last person I would trust to take care of a young girl. And whatever internal journey he was going on wasn’t developed well enough to understand any of these choices.

I don’t know, like I said, I’m not an expert of the subject of Jean Valjean, but I’m pretty sure this is not how you adapt him.

Problem #3: Diversity without optics

This show hadn’t even started and it was already patting itself on the back for being diverse.

Now, if you haven’t been in the world of Les Mis for too long, let me tell you there are a lot of adaptations which are diverse, and not only of the musical. In itself, it wasn’t a pioneer move, but I was nonetheless happy that they were going to pay attention to that. At the end of the day, Les Mis is about society, about oppression, and adaptations of it should represent the diversity of the social landscape of the time and place they’re created in.

That being said, diversity in a highly political storyline needs to be carefully worked through, because without optics you can make questionable choices. And, you guessed it, questionable choices were made here.

I can’t and won’t go over all of the issues with this that there are, but I can give a few examples.

There is, of course, the always present argument of casting Fantine and Cosette white and the majority of the Thénardiers and Éponine as poc. And of casting the majority of Les Amis as white and the majority or most visible part of Patron Minette as poc. People have discussed this at length so I won’t go over that.

There is also how constantly woc were cast in roles of service, some of which were questionable given the context. Simplice, for example, is cast this way, which I overlooked at the time but as it kept escalating with other characters like Matelote and eventually Toussaint, it grew a bit more complex.

Toussaint was...a very problematic choice.

When you present the character of a “housekeeper” in a period series which is meant to represent France in the 1800s, and she is a woman of color, some alarms start ringing. I don’t specialize in French history, but my instincts were proven correct when I checked various sources on dates, after seeing the episode, and I’m quoting wiki for easier access here:

Slavery was first abolished by the French Republic in 1794, but Napoleon revoked that decree in 1802. In 1815, the Republic abolished the slave trade but the decree did not come into effect until 1826. France re-abolished slavery in her colonies in 1848 with a general and unconditional emancipation.

This series has a weirdly set timeline in comparison to the book but, for all intents and purposes, we’re in the early 1830s at the time she’s first introduced, correct? There was still an unstable situation regarding abolition at the time. The general emancipation hadn’t been yet stated in the colonies and the decree had just been starting to hold effect.

I know this show is casting in a general way as a suspension of disbelief of some historical facts and I’m all for diversity in casting in period dramas, regardless of anything else, if it’s allowing for representation in media.

But, at the same time, you need to be careful with your optics. She could have been cast as anyone else.

I don’t wanna go over this a lot because I don’t know enough about these parts of French history nor is it my story to tell, but the problem is in the erasure of conflicts or racism altogether as a way to prompt a shallow sense of diversity in a story that is directly linked with the subject of oppression.

Let’s continue with another similar optics problem involving “diversity” to exemplify this issue further, so that I can clarify.

This barricade had women on it and didn’t have Combeferre.

Now, here is the thing about that. In the barricade my man Combeferre gives an amazing speech about women and children.

In case you weren’t aware, the 1800s were the moment when European women and children barely started to be seen as separate members of society and not only “men but worse” and “men but small”. There are a lot of good articles about that, including one by Martyn Lyons about the new readers of the 19th Century, which changed the course of the editorial market, those being women, children and working class men, who didn’t have access to literature or literacy before that. The idea of childhood as we know it started then, and the later editions of the Grimm fairy tales was one of the first published books of fairy tales explicitly aimed at children’s education. And since a lot of us, in other places of the world that aren’t Europe, were colonized af or barely getting free from colonial governments in the 1800s, we kinda had to go with the flow, regardless of the social structure of native peoples, because colonialism sucks.

But you all came here for Les Mis so, let’s get back to that.

As this terrible and summarized dive into history implies, women and children were vulnerable to the fucked up state of social strife. Education was scarce and only accessible to some, employment was scarce and only accessible to some, food was scarce and only accessible to some. Most often than not, “some” did not include women and children.

In comes the the sun to my moon, Combeferre, with his speech.

He talks about all of this. Basically he talks to men who are the main providers of families, providers of women and children who depend on them and goes (I’ll paraphrase) “it’s our fault as a society that women can’t be here now, it’s our fault they don’t have the same possibilities and education we do, so at least do them a solid and don’t die today here if they depend on you to live, because the only possibility they have without your support is prostitution”. It was a fucking power move to include that on Les Mis. I mean, the entire book is a call out to the social and political situation, but damn.

So yes, there aren’t women there but the reason for it is that patriarchy sucks and the consequences would be disastrous for them.

Davies & co. pretty much didn’t give a shit about this. But, at this point, considering Problem #1, who’s surprised.

They removed Combeferre, his speech and placed random women on the barricade, as if nothing of that was going on and the patriarchy didn’t exist. Because ~diversity~.

The fact that they thought more woke to put some random women there on the barricade to die fighting instead of acknowledging the existence of sexism altogether pretty much sums up what this whole show thought diversity was.

For them, diversity wasn’t a political and social standpoint born from reality, a way to represent the dynamics of oppression that are at stake even on this day, but an aesthetic.

And, talking about speeches, let’s move on to the next bit.

Problem #4: Where are the politics?

1. The social and political landscape

Les Mis adaptations have a fluctuating balance with politics and social conflicts.

That is, at the end of the day, the very core of the existence of this story, the reason why still, to this very day, it is relevant and quoted, adapted and regarded is the fact that we still need it.

All of us, as human beings living as members of society, are always immersed in political decisions. It’s not only unavoidable, it’s part of our lives as people living together.

In the same way, the personal narratives of the characters of Les Mis are intrinsically linked to this landscape. They are set in different places of the social spectrum and hold different power dynamics and actions that relate to political standpoints.

Adaptations tend to work this in very different ways.

Some focus less on the politics and more on the social strife, with a greater focus on the characters. Others re-insert the characters in other different historical moments with the same levels of social and political strife. Others just copy-paste the situations and put them in another context, without really explaining what revolution it is, what they’re fighting for and why they’re being killed. The focus varies.

It seems, for how this adaptation starts, with Waterloo and a subsequent argument between Gillenormand and Baron Pontmercy about Napoleon, that politics are going to be important. This doesn’t last very long.

My biggest issue with the introduction of these circumstances is that they don’t bother on them but then attempt to use them for gratuitous self righteousness. It isn’t that they abandon them altogether, they overlook them but then attempt to use them for shock value.

There is a constant use of exaggerated, almost cartoon-y, stagings of social depiction:

- You have Gillenormand dining with his boys, in a luxurious and incredibly flamboyant scenery, while dissing political views in an almost comical fashion

- You have beggars downright assaulting Valjean and Cosette on the street right outside the convent, as a means of shock to Cosette’s expectations of the world outside of it

- You have Fantine’s entire sequences as a prostitute with higher and higher degrees of abuse

- You have the streets before the barricades, in some sort of confusing clamor that loses focus in favor of Valjean’s storyline

- You have a god awful last scene which attempts to say something socially compromising by showcasing the kids Gavroche was helping (I don’t think they’re siblings in this version), as a means to say “the revolution wasn’t successful and social strife will always continue” I guess, I don’t know, because it’s not like they gave a shit about it all before, so this kind of Perrault-ish moral of the story at the end makes no goddamn sense

They are exaggerated snippets of things without context, with very little exposition, that are used more as props to shock than they are to actually take a stand on what the original story is trying to tell.

Even the reality Fantine has to suffer is blurred by the fact that the social situation isn’t seen as much as a reality in itself but a combination of Fantine’s “choices” and Valjean’s “guilt”.

But, in order to delve more into the non-political aspect of this adaptation, let’s focus on some specific characters.

2. Enjolras

Well, I’ve seen a lot of Enjolrai in my life (is that be the plural of Enjolras? yes? no? can it be?).

Enjolras has very different characterizations, even within fandom itself, but we can all agree that he’s a) highly political, b) highly committed to the cause and c) extremely charismatic.

And when I say “charismatic” I mean it in the sense that his speeches are so beautifully crafted, so certain and commanding, that you just wanna listen to what he has to say, regardless of your views. They’re political discourse but also very poetic, which is a very interesting literary opposite to Grantaire’s voice, but I digress.

Still, Enjolras doesn’t stand on his own.

He represents a part of a whole, an important part, but a part nonetheless. Les Amis are a very diverse mixture of individuals, and the main triumvirate represents different stances on the same political action that coexist together.

Without others to stand with, Enjolras loses context. Not because he can’t support himself as a character, but because his biggest value is within other people.

This Enjolras is confusing, angry and loses a lot of steam when most of the people who should be around him aren’t really paying attention.

Courfeyrac, although performed really well, doesn’t really get a chance to show his political ideas without Enjolras around, and that makes it seem like he’s being convinced to participate rather than doing it for his own reasons and being one key part of the group.

In the barricade, Enjolras acts as if he doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time, and the other half he doesn’t give a shit about killing soldiers, smiling and laughing while shooting people.

It isn’t just that the scene with Le Cabuc doesn’t exist, Enjolras doesn’t seem to have empathy, which is all given to Grantaire instead.

By taking away Enjolras’s vulnerability, his complexity, they make him seem more shallow overall, and in tow, make his cause lose importance.

And without a clear political standpoint, because his expositions about the situation are very shout-y and unclear, and his speeches are summarized with some actual quotes but without their meaning and true feeling, he seems to be fighting just because, rather than having strong ideals.

Enjolras in the brick is eloquent enough, humane enough, that you understand what he’s doing and why. This Enjolras is a mess that I couldn’t understand at all.

I don’t think people who have never seen, read or heard of Les Mis before will understand Enjolras as a character through this. He’s just a very angry student with weird facial hair (why?) who rants in a cafe while his friends are playing games and making jokes, who is friends with some workers and is the leader because he shouts the loudest but doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing.

And, worst of all, doesn’t seem to care for human life. Which brings me to the next bit...

3. Grantaire

Man, was I excited with this casting choice.

When I heard Turlough was playing Grantaire, I was delighted. And, at the end of the day, his performance was very good, but for a character who wasn’t quite Grantaire at times.

I mean, he wasn’t as off as Enjolras, but he was also so erratically written.

They decided to make Grantaire hesitant rather than a cynic. He didn’t get to express his cynicism or his attachment to his friends (what friends though? only Bossuet had a name other than Courfeyrac and Enjolras) and his involvement with the fight was shown as insecure rather than questioning of ideals.

He is shown conflicted when he decides to fight with them, he doesn’t have any of his long speeches, the Barrière du Maine scene or anything of the sort. He is just...hesitant about death, I guess. About dying and killing people. That’s his conflict.

This has, to me, two big problems attached to it.

First, it’s a simplification of the entirety of Grantaire’s thoughts. It’s taking the cornucopia of drunken philosophy that Grantaire’s voice in the brick represents and replacing it with a single fear, which while very valid doesn’t reflect Grantaire’s true extensive complexities.

Second, it takes away from Enjolras’s humanity. Enjolras is showcased as an indiscriminate machine of shooting soldiers while Grantaire is conflicted about having to do this and, in tow, makes Enjolras’s rejection of him when he leaves and gets drunk like a jerk move of an insensitive asshole.

There isn’t a clear instance of Enjolras giving Grantaire a chance to do something before the barricade and Grantaire failing at it, with all the dominoes symbolism and all the stuff it implies. There isn’t a complementary set of complexities between each other. Grantaire seems to care about human life more than Enjolras does in this version, at the end of the day, because Enjolras’s speeches, even if carrying canon quotes, are inserted in a context in which he laughs while shooting people, knowingly sends Gavroche into danger and chastises Grantaire for being conflicted about human lives at stake.

So, instead of representing Grantaire’s true complexity as a character, they chose to give him something else that they think makes him more dimensional, when, in reality, takes away from his (and Enjolras’s) worth as a character.

All of this is very weirdly intersected with drunken jokes. Sometimes, the jokes and the behavior pays off and is inserted in good moments, sometimes they just don’t know when to stop and they kind of ruin their death scene with them, which is even worse considering it’s one of the few where they’re actually holding hands.

Overall, I think this was a simplification of Grantaire, in a way, a simplification which falls apart without a solid context to exist in. And it’s a pity, because Turlough was good.

4. Gavroche

The only reason I’d want an immediate new adaptation of Les Mis is so we can cast this same Gavroche in a decent one. He’s one of the best Gavroches I’ve ever seen, hands down.

In this case, the problem isn’t with his interpretation or how he was written, necessarily, and all time frame and socio-political simplifications aside, the problem is in how the context reacts to him.

A lot of Gavroche’s agency is deleted in this version.

For starters, his age is kind of all over the place at the beginning. He’s fine by the time of the barricade, but before it’s kind of a mess. As a result, he lives with his parents for a bit longer than necessary and the few times we see him on his own, being his independent self, are in conflict with how his involvement in the main events come to happen.

It feels as if he’s been used in the barricade. When he’s off to find bullets, only Marius tries to get him back to safety, while the rest cheer him and laugh.

His character is well performed and we get to see his personality and his situation when he’s allowed to act on his own, but within the context he’s inserted in, he seems more like a prop than a character.

This makes it so that when he dies, you’re upset more so than sad. It doesn’t feel like a tragic circumstance born out of a lot of layers of social strife which culminate in a dead end for a kid who deserved a better life. It feels like every adult around him, every person he encounters, either neglects him, mistreats him or sends him into danger. It feels, much like with Fantine, like an easily avoidable situation.

And things get worse with this guy:

Like I said in my summary, this David Harbour-ish soldier is the one who is shown to mercilessly kill both Gavroche and execute Enjolras and Grantaire.

This is another layer in the modus operandi of an adaptation who uses social oppression and political strife as shock value rather than commentary and discourse.

By personalizing “evil” in one stern, mean, unreasonable, power-hungry soldier, they’re villanizing (and trivializing) the social context as a whole. It isn’t about how Gavroche got to that point, how we as a society failed so hard that he has to die in that way. It’s just one bad guy.

But then, they try to be fake deep about it, by doing that last scene with his brothers or by placing him alongside Mabeuf and Éponine but not explaining what that means, why those juxtapositions are socially relevant and important to the plot (maybe they don’t know why).

Overall, this was such a waste of a great Gavroche that I just feel really bad. Reece deserved so much better.

5. The barricade

Needless to say, this barricade was more of a mess than you would have expected.

The lack of proper introduction to the political landscape, the clumsy exposition, the out of context shout-y speeches and the erratic behavior of its characters, paired together with the fact that it ends about 1/4 into the last episode, giving more time to personal drama than any of what happens in it, makes it one confusing mess.

It’s also in the barricade where it’s super clear how visually similar this series is to the 2012 movie. A lot of visual choices are extremely similar, even when they didn’t need to be (Fantine’s and Cosette’s hair choices? the shots in the hulks? the scaled down yet very similar camera angles and movements during the entire fight? the color schemes of some particular scenes?), and it’s pretty heightened in this barricade.

Which I wouldn’t care about hadn’t they talked crap about the movie during their entire PR campaign.

Like I said, there were so many issues within the people involved in the barricade. With the women, with the characters, with the soldiers. There was also a very strangely set line between workers and students that they were very clumsy about setting yet didn’t get to do much aside from having the leader of the working class men leave when Enjolras prompted it.

By the way, Enjolras was a lot less convinced about the whole ordeal in this version, which made his characterization even more confusing.

The barricade had a lot of messed up ingredients and not enough time to even simmer. At least the musical, which doesn’t have a lot of time dedicated to the students either, has Drink With Me, which doesn’t only serve as a way to characterize different students and their beliefs and personalities (“Is your life just one more lie?”) but also brings some melancholic change of pace, a pause between the action.

The highlight of this barricade, though, is Marius going apeshit with the torch.

But, all in all, there’s no much we can expect from a barricade born of confused ideas and even more confusing characterizations. This barricade feels less like a climax and more like a thing they had to do because it was in the book.

And don’t even make me talk about how they butchered my favorite speech. I’d rather not have it there at all, tbh.

Conclusion: A writer’s ego

We arrive to the end of this long and boring trip through my thoughts. If you’re reached this point, thank you for your time.

All in all, I feel like a lot of the issues of this adaptation stem from the fact that Davies thinks he’s better than everyone else and other men around him agree so much that they let him do as he pleases, without questioning anything.

I can’t really understand how you’re going through the script of this and see some of these choices (like the dress shop scene, the carriage scene and let’s not even mention the peeing in the park scene) and you go, and I’m quoting Shankland here:

“Andrew’s scripts made these characters feel modern. That was nothing to do with having them speak in a very modern way or changing their behaviour, he just found the humanity and earthiness of it,” Shankland says, recalling a scene in which Fantine and her companions urinate in a Paris park. “I thought, ‘Oh god, they’re going to pee in Les Misérables, that’s exciting.’” Source

That just sums it all up, doesn’t it?

After I watched this, I let some time pass. I watched all 3 fanmade adaptations that are currently out at this moment (back to back), revisited some of the ones I had seen before, read fics, read people’s articles and rants, looked into other adaptations on stage, from the classic ones to the more interpretative versions, and other current tv adaptations being done in other countries.

All of those things are vastly different. Some are more similar to each other, some are widely different, but they’re all different points of view on the same canon.

This is a canon that has some of the wildest possible interpretations coexisting. You can have a play centered on one specific character told through the songs of a specific album, a tv drama in modern times with a lawyer Valjean, a coffee shop au starring Les Amis, a parody comedy set in 1832, all happening at the same exact time.

And that’s great. That’s fascinating. That means this book is still alive because we need it still today.

Some days you’re in the mood for a heavily political adaptation which gives you goosebumps for setting canon in a context that is closer to your everyday reality, other days you just want all the Amis to live and have movie marathons cuddled together. It’s all valid.

But what all of those adaptations have in common is that they aren’t trying to be more than they are. They aren’t acting brand new, they aren’t pretending they’re re-inventing the wheel or that they are smarter than Victor Hugo himself because what Hugo didn’t know he needed in the “psychology of the book” was a soulmate au or a documentary series.

This adaptation, through what they said and how it was written, acted as if it was going to be the ultimate Les Mis adaptation to end them all. It presented itself as smarter than us all, as holding the keys to the meaning of Victor Hugo’s thoughts, as being able to fix his “mistakes”, fix other adaptation’s “mistakes” and deliver the best interpretation of canon possible.

And it managed to be a sexist, socially insensitive, problematic, un-political, homophobic mess.

Which, is a problem in itself, but even more so when the canon you’re adapting should be, first and foremost, against all that. It isn’t about how many brick quotes you use, it’s about channeling the soul of the story.

#les mis #les miserables #les mis bbc #les mis bbc a summary #jean valjean #cosette #fantine #eponine #marius pontmercy #enjolras #grantaire #gavroche #death cw #long post when expanded #luly rambles #bbc les mis

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