#you should make retribution an original novel

[the-dream-team]

Guys I love @maraudersftw she’s so cool

[breelandwalker]

Oh for fuck's sake, are we having the curse-shaming argument AGAIN??? Every time I think we're done unteaching this nonsense.....

Arright, quick rundown of the points, more or less in order, because I've already had this discussion a hundred times:

One - There is no universal moral or ethical code in witchcraft. Not every witch is a Wiccan or follows Wiccan principles. Not even all Wiccans follow every Wiccan principle, and that includes the Rule of Three / Threefold Law. The Wiccan Rede is ADVICE, not a set of hard and fast rules or divine mandates. You don't get to tell other witches what types of spells they should and should not cast.

Two - If you think the Rule of Three / Threefold Law means, "Whatever you give out comes back to you times three" or if you think it only applies to baneful magic, you don't understand the rule. The original rule, as stated by Robert Graves in "The White Goddess" (you know, the fictional novel that Gardner used as a model for Wicca) states that whatever a witch is dealt, they should deal back three times over. In fact, the passage cites a particular initiation ritual that involves symbolic flagellation, NOT a code of ethics for witchcraft.

It was picked up by later authors as "Whatever You Give" and popularized by media like The Craft and Charmed and authors like Silver Ravenwolf in the 90s when the modern witchcraft movement was having its' millennial boom. (This is a gross oversimplification, but that's when the concept became common enough in pop culture that non-witches were starting to become familiar with the term.)

Three - Karma has absolutely nothing to do with it. Karma is not instant or sentient and the bastardized version of the concept that's been worked into much of modern witchcraft literature more closely resembles the Christian concept of sin and judgment than what karma actually is. Remove the word from your vocabulary when you're talking about magic. The universe does not give one single flying fuck what you do with your spells.

Four - The word you're searching for when you talk about these concepts is CONSEQUENCES. Every action you take, every spell you cast, everything has consequences and everything has a price. This isn't a divine mandate or a cosmic law either. It's a simple fact of life. BUT. It doesn't mean that baneful spells are morally or ethically wrong or that they're going to blow up in someone's face. The only reason a baneful spell might be more likely to rebound is that it's one of the only types of spells that witches actively ward against.

Five - Witches have a right to use magic for persuasion, defense, justice, retribution, binding, prevention, or outright harm if they so choose. If you don't like those types of spells, then don't cast them.

Six - Moral puritanism is a cancer that will destroy us all. Get off your high horse, drop the holier-than-thou bullshit, and remember that being a witch does not make you immune to propaganda.

Thank you for coming to my Toad Talk.

[llostwriter]

系统错误 | SVSSS Fanfic

CHAPTER 1

Yuhong, a typical daytime female who had just graduated from college, boarded the bus as usual after visiting her friend's home. She looked through her phones as she searched for anything to do to pass the time. Novels. She wasn't a huge admirer of novels, but she also didn't consider herself to be a hater; she only read them because they were fascinating. The protagonist of the book "Proud Immortal Demon Way" is a young male pupil who killed his Shifu as a result of ongoing harassment and hostility. After Shen Qingqiu's passing, the majority of the novel was just plain pornographic with no discernible plot, which made Yuhong lose interest in the book. 

Yuhong doesn't seem to have been the only one who was unhappy with it, as numerous more complaints were posted in the main comment section.

Luo Binghe had the option of choosing to be happier without the urge to exact retribution, but resentment and anger dominated his thoughts. He ultimately turned out to be no better than the monster he had previously battled. That's why it has a "abused becomes the abuser" vibe. Shen Qingqiu doesn't show Luo Binghe the affection he craves; instead, he is met with hostility and glares. Perhaps this is why he had so many affairs. That, however, does not justify his nasty behavior. 

Shen Qingqiu wasn't deserving of being turned into a human stick and placed inside a pickle jar. Or maybe he did. Everyone has a different way of looking at the scenario, and some people believe that Shen Qingqiu's difficult upbringing should not be used as an explanation for his mistreatment of Luo Binghe. Others could choose to remain impartial because they think that both sides have committed sins. Others would counter that Shen Qingqiu was just jealous of Luo Binghe because the latter had a happy childhood while the former did not, as opposed to the main character. 

Shen Qingqiu was initially only known to Yuhong as the villain, a cold-hearted Shifu, and as someone whose death was merited for torturing Luo Binghe. There is no history at all. Why would Shen Qingqiu abuse Luo Binghe in that way? Perhaps Shen Qingqiu was simply looking for someone to use as a punching bag for all of his issues, and Luo Binghe was the one he ultimately settled on? 

Before moving on with her thoughts, Yuhong scowled at the idea.  

The novel centers on Shen Yuan, a misfortune guy who was reincarnated into the body of Shen Qingqiu, otherwise known as the antagonist of the original book, in "The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System," an alternate version of the book with more plot than "Proud Immortal Demon Way". It provides further Shen Qingqiu background information.

Shen Jiu never experienced his own happy ending, as the saying goes.

•••

Yuhong was startled awake when she felt something, or more precisely someone, pulling on her arm. She was unable to recall anything that occurred after getting on the bus, and the ringing in her ears wasn't exactly helping either. She tries to open her eyes, but it takes her a few tries before she is able to see a hazy dark figure and an unfamiliar setting. As her sights grew clearer, she was able to make out a long, silky brown haired woman with lovely gray eyes that had a mixture of innocence and worry in them.  She is no longer in the bus; instead, she is in a medium-sized room that is furnished with items that resemble those in manga, where the historical period is set in ancient China. She was lying on what seemed like a western four-poster bed. 

"Ah, A-Ji! Finally, you're awake."

Yuhong offers the other woman a bewildered expression in response to the strange nickname she was given. She doesn't recall ever meeting the woman, yet the woman calls her with a familiarity that suggests they have been friends for a long time. 

"Sorry, ma'am but I think you confused-"

Her surroundings were still, and the other female was standing still. She was somewhat startled as a blue screen suddenly appeared in front of her before she turned to face the screen. 

【ƦᴇᴀᴅᴇƦ ʜᴀs ʙᴇᴇɴ ᴛƦᴀɴsᴘᴏƦᴛᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ "ᴘƦᴏᴜᴅ ꞮᴍᴍᴏƦᴛᴀʟ ᴅᴇᴍᴏɴ ᴡᴀʏ", ᴄᴜʀʀᴇɴᴛʟʏ ɪɴʜᴀʙɪᴛɪɴɢ xᴜᴀɴ ᴊɪ's ʙᴏᴅʏ. ᴅᴏᴇs ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴠɪᴇᴡ ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴏᴅʏ's ɪɴғᴏʀᴍᴀᴛɪᴏɴ】

                <<< ʏᴇs>>> ᴏʀ <<<ɴᴏ>>>                    

              ᴏɴʟʏ ᴏɴᴇ sᴇʟᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ᴄᴀɴ ʙᴇ sᴇʟᴇᴄᴛᴇᴅ 

Yuhong tapped on the 'ʏᴇs' selection, with just one tap the words in the screen quickly changed. 

【xᴜᴀɴ ᴊɪ,  ᴀ sʜɪᴊɪᴇ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴀɪɴ ᴘʀᴏᴛᴀɢᴏɴɪsᴛ ʟᴜᴏ ʙɪɴɢʜᴇ. sʜᴇ ᴡᴀs ᴀ sɪɴɢʟᴇ-ᴄᴜʟᴛɪᴠᴀᴛᴏʀ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴏʀᴋ ᴏɴ ᴅᴇғᴇᴀᴛɪɴɢ ʙᴇᴀsᴛ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʜᴀᴅ ʙᴇᴇɴ ᴘᴇsᴛᴇʀɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇ ᴠɪʟʟɪᴀɴᴇʀs ᴀɴᴅ sᴇʟʟɪɴɢ ʜᴇʀʙs ᴛᴏ ᴇᴀʀɴ  ᴀ ʟɪᴠɪɴɢ. ᴅᴜʀɪɴɢ ᴏɴᴇ ᴏғ ʜᴇʀ sᴇᴀʀᴄʜ ғᴏʀ ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴜʀᴇs, sʜᴇ ᴍᴇᴛ xɪʏɪɴ. ᴇᴠᴇʀ sɪɴᴄᴇ ᴛʜᴇɴ, xɪʏɪɴ ʜᴀs ᴀʟᴡᴀʏs sᴛᴜᴄᴋ ʙʏ ʜᴇʀ sɪᴅᴇ. xɪʏɪɴ ᴡᴀs ᴜɴғᴏrᴛᴜɴᴀᴛᴇʟʏ ᴋɪʟʟᴇᴅ ʙʏ ᴏɴᴇ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ sᴏᴡᴇʀ, xᴜᴀɴ ᴊɪ ғᴏᴜɴᴅ ʜᴇʀ ʙᴏᴅʏ ʀᴏᴛᴛɪɴɢ ᴀᴡᴀʏ ɴᴇᴀʀ ᴀ ʀɪᴠᴇʀ. ʜᴇʀ ᴍᴀʀɪᴛᴀʟ sᴋɪʟʟs ʟᴀᴛᴇʀ ᴄᴀᴜɢʜᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ɪɴᴛᴇʀᴇsᴛ ᴏғ sʜᴇɴ ǫɪɴɢǫɪᴜ, ᴡʜᴏ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ʜᴇʀ ᴏɴᴇ ᴏғ ʜɪs ᴅɪsᴄɪᴘʟᴇs. sʜᴇ ᴍᴇᴛ ʜᴇʀ ᴅᴇᴍɪsᴇ ᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴀɴᴅs ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴀɪɴ ᴘʀᴏᴛᴀɢᴏɴɪsᴛ ʟᴜᴏ ʙɪɴɢʜᴇ】

Yuhong was able to determine the name of the other female and her present body using the information the machine had provided. She was awakened and welcomed by a woman named Xiyin when she first entered the world of this tale. 

"Why was Xuan Ji killed by Luo Binghe?" Yuhong enquired with the system in the hopes that it might provide her with some additional context. 

【sʜᴇɴ ǫɪɴɢǫɪᴜ ɪɴᴠɪᴛᴇᴅ xuan ᴊɪ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴜᴘᴄᴏᴍɪɴɢ ᴅɪsᴄɪᴘʟᴇ ᴄᴇʀᴇᴍᴏɴʏ sᴇʟᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ǫɪɴɢ ᴊɪɴɢ ᴘᴇᴀᴋ. ᴀғᴛᴇʀ xᴜᴀɴ ᴊɪ ᴡᴀs sᴜᴄᴄᴇssғᴜʟʟʏ ɢᴀɪɴᴇᴅ ғɪʀsᴛ ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ ᴅᴜᴇ ᴛᴏ ʜᴇʀ ǫᴜɪᴄᴋ ʀᴇᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴ sᴘᴇᴇᴅ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀᴛᴛᴀᴄᴋs, sʜᴇ ᴡᴀs ᴏғғɪᴄᴀʟʟʏ ǫᴜᴀʟɪғɪᴇᴅ ᴀs ᴀ ᴅɪsᴄɪᴘʟᴇ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ǫɪɴɢ ᴊɪɴɢ ᴘᴇᴀᴋ. ɪɴ ᴀ ᴘᴇʀɪᴏᴅ ᴏғ ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ 𝟸 ᴀɴᴅ 𝟷/𝟸 ʏᴇᴀʀs, ʟᴜᴏ ʙɪɴɢʜᴇ ᴍᴀɪɴ ᴘʀᴏᴛᴀɢᴏɴɪsᴛ ʙᴇᴄᴀᴍᴇ ᴀ ᴅɪsᴄɪᴘʟᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜᴏᴜᴛ ʀᴇǫᴜɪʀɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ᴀᴛᴛᴇɴᴅ ᴀɴʏ ᴄᴇʀᴇᴍᴏɴʏ. xᴜᴀɴ ᴊɪ ᴋᴇᴘᴛ ʜᴇʀ ᴄᴏʟᴅ-ғᴀᴄᴇ ᴄᴏɴᴛɪɴᴏᴜsʟʏ ᴄʀɪᴛɪᴢᴇ ʜᴀʀsʜʟʏ ᴏɴ ʟᴜᴏ ʙɪɴɢʜᴇ, sᴏᴍᴇᴛɪᴍᴇs ᴇᴠᴇɴ ɢᴏ ᴀs ғᴀʀ ᴀs ғᴏʀᴄɪɴɢ ʜɪᴍ ᴛᴏ ғɪɢʜᴛ ʜᴇʀ. ᴅᴜʀɪɴɢ ʜᴇʀ ʟᴀsᴛ ᴍᴏᴍᴇɴᴛ ᴀʟɪᴠᴇ, sʜᴇ ᴡᴀs ɢɪᴠᴇɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʜᴏɪᴄᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴇɪᴛʜᴇʀ ʙᴇ ᴀ ᴏʙᴇᴅɪᴇɴᴛ sᴇʀᴠᴀɴᴛ ᴏғ ʜɪs ʜᴀʀᴇᴍ ᴀɴᴅ sᴜғғᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴜᴍɪʟɪᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏʀ ᴅʀɪɴᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴏɪsᴏɴ. xᴜᴀɴ ᴊɪ, ᴛᴏ ᴋᴇᴇᴘ ʜᴇʀ ʀᴇᴍᴀɪɴɪɴɢ ᴅɪɢɴɪᴛʏ ᴅʀɪɴᴋᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴏɪsᴏɴ, ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴏɪsᴏɴ sʟᴏᴡʟʏ ᴇᴀᴛ ᴀᴡᴀʏ ʜᴇʀ ғʟᴇsʜ ғʀᴏᴍ ᴛʜᴇ ɪɴsɪᴅᴇ-ᴏᴜᴛ ɢɪᴠɪɴɢ ʜᴇʀ ᴀ sʟᴏᴡ ᴀɴᴅ ᴘᴀɪɴғᴜʟ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ】

This simply serves to highlight how vicious and evil the actual Luo Binghe truly is! Just when Yuhong had a chance to settle down, become friends with the book's characters, and spend the rest of her days as a minor figure she had no idea even existed in the story. But since she couldn't recall how she died, she had to be reincarnated. Wait, does it even count as reincarnation? She must now live out the remainder of her days as Xuan Ji before dying at the hands of the main character, Luo Binghe. Oh wait, perhaps she could be more considerate toward Luo Binghe than the actual Xuan Ji, and one can only hope that Luo Binghe will remember her generosity and spare her life. 

It as if the system could read her mind, the system immediately changed the word on the screen. 

【ᴜsᴇʀ ɪsɴ'ᴛ ᴀʟʟᴏᴡᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴀᴄᴛ ᴏᴏᴄ ᴏʀ ᴇʟsᴇ ᴜsᴇʀ ɪs ɢᴏɴɴᴀ ɢᴇᴛ ᴅᴇᴅᴜᴄᴛ ᴘᴏɪɴᴛs ғʀᴏᴍ ᴛʜᴇ sʏsᴛᴇᴍ. ɪғ ᴘᴏɪɴᴛ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴄʜ ɴᴇɢᴀᴛɪᴠᴇ 𝟷𝟶𝟶𝟶𝟶, ᴛʜᴇ ᴜsᴇʀ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀᴄᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ ᴡɪʟʟ ʙᴇ ᴛᴇʀᴍɪɴᴀᴛᴇᴅ】

Terminated as in completely gone from existence? That seems like a bit of an overkill. For Yuhong, being slain is one thing, but having her existence completely obliterated... wouldn't that imply that her soul couldn't experience another reincarnation? 

【ɪғ ᴛᴇʀᴍɪɴᴀᴛᴇᴅ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴘᴜᴛ ᴏɴᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴜsᴇʀ, ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴇᴍᴏʀʏ ʟᴏɢs ᴏғ ᴜsᴇʀ's ᴇxɪsᴛᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴡɪʟʟ sᴛɪʟʟ sᴛᴀʏ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪʟᴇs ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ sʏsᴛᴇᴍ. ʜᴏᴡᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴊᴜsᴛ ᴀs ᴛʜᴇ ᴜsᴇʀ ʜᴀᴅ ɢᴜᴇssᴇᴅ ᴏɴᴄᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛᴇʀᴍɪɴᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴘʀᴏᴄᴇss ғɪɴɪsʜᴇs, ᴛʜᴇ ᴜsᴇʀ's sᴏᴜʟ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ɴᴏ ʟᴏɴɢᴇʀ ʙᴇ ʀᴇɪɴᴄᴀʀɴᴀᴛᴇᴅ. ᴅᴇᴄɪsɪᴏɴ ғɪɴᴀʟ】

Being too kind is therefore not an option. Yuhong let out a frustrated sigh that had a whiff of annoyance. She was not having any fun at all, and it was clear that the system was making things tougher than they needed to be. 

"Wait, Xuan Ji is already a disciple of Qing Jing Peak?"

【sʏsᴛᴇᴍ ᴀɴsᴡᴇʀ ᴛᴏ ᴜsᴇʀ's ǫᴜᴇsᴛɪᴏɴ: ɴᴏ, xᴜᴀɴ ᴊɪ ʜᴀs ʏᴇᴛ ʙᴇᴄᴀᴍᴇ ᴀ ᴅɪsᴄɪᴘʟᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ʜᴇʀ ғɪʀsᴛ ᴍᴇᴇᴛɪɴɢ ᴡɪᴛʜ sʜᴇɴ ǫɪɴɢǫɪᴜ ɪs ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ 𝟻 ᴍᴏɴᴛʜs ᴀғᴛᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴜʀʀᴇɴᴛ ᴛɪᴍᴇ】

"Can I just avoid meeting Shen Qingqiu?" 

Yuhong only needs to stay away from the setting of the plot and Shen Qingqiu in order to avoid seeing Luo Binghe, and if she did, she wouldn't be recommended for the disciple selection ceremony. 

【ᴛʜᴇ sʏsᴛᴇᴍ ʜᴀs ʏᴇᴛ ɢᴇɴᴇʀᴀᴛᴇᴅ ᴀɴ ᴀɴsᴡᴇʀ ғᴏʀ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʀᴇᴘʟʏ】

What kind of slow internet connection system is this based on to not even generate an answer for that???

【sʏsᴛᴇᴍ ɪsɴ'ᴛ ᴄᴏɴɴᴇᴄᴛᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴀ ɴᴇᴛᴡᴏʀᴋ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʜᴜᴍᴀɴs ᴜsᴇ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏᴅᴇʀɴ ᴇʀᴀ ʙᴜᴛ ɪɴsᴛᴇᴀᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴀɪɴ sᴛʀᴇᴀᴍ ᴏғ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ sʏsᴛᴇᴍs】

"A stream of other systems? So aren' t the only system around? Also I would gladly appreciated if you don't read my mind without my permission", Yuhong knew arguing with the system wouldn't work, but the fact that her every single thought is being monitored is basically a invasion of her privacy. 

【ʀᴇsᴘᴏɴsᴇ ғᴏʀ ᴜsᴇʀ's ǫᴜᴇsᴛɪᴏɴɪɴɢ ʜᴀs ɴᴏᴛ ʙᴇᴇɴ ɢᴇɴᴇʀᴀᴛᴇᴅ. ᴍᴀʏ ᴜsᴇʀ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴀ ɢᴏᴏᴅ ᴅᴀʏ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ɴᴇᴡ ʙᴏᴅʏ】

 "Not been generated...you got to be kidding me right now!" 

【sʏsᴛᴇᴍ ʀᴇᴘᴇᴀᴛs: ᴍᴀʏ ᴜsᴇʀ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴀ ɢᴏᴏᴅ ᴅᴀʏ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ɴᴇᴡ ʙᴏᴅʏ. sʏsᴛᴇᴍ ʀᴇᴘᴇᴀᴛs: ᴍᴀʏ ᴜsᴇʀ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴀ ɢᴏᴏᴅ ᴅᴀʏ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ɴᴇᴡ ʙᴏᴅʏ. sʏsᴛᴇᴍ ʀᴇᴘᴇᴀᴛs: ᴍᴀʏ ᴜsᴇʀ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴀ ɢᴏᴏᴅ ᴅᴀʏ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ɴᴇᴡ ʙᴏᴅʏ】

The blue screen vanished, leaving a frustrated Yuhong alone with her thoughts. 

Clearly ignoring her inquiries, the system then abandoned her and left her to fend for herself. You crappy system, damn you! 

She turned to check and noticed that the pause mode was still active. 

"System, hey! You neglected to press the unpause button", the system stopped showing up, Yuhong yelled at nothing. She would be thought to be nuts for shouting at the air, if the environment weren't in pause mode. 

Maybe she infuriated the system? Oh no, despite Shen Yuan cursing the system repeatedly, it continued to function. Therefore, it is implausible that the system actually abandoned her and put her surroundings on indefinite hold. Right??? Yeah, she wouldn't have to worry about being killed by Luo Binghe, which would seem good, but she doesn't want to live out the rest of her new life in a paused world!

【ᴜsᴇʀ sʜᴏᴜʟᴅ ɢᴇᴛ ᴜsᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ʜᴇʀ ɴᴇᴡ ᴀᴘᴘᴇᴀʀᴀɴᴄᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ʟɪғᴇ ᴀs sɪᴅᴇ-ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀ xᴜᴀɴ ᴊɪ. ᴜsᴇʀ's ʀᴏᴏᴍ ᴄᴜʀʀᴇɴᴛʟʏ ʜᴀs ᴀ ᴍɪʀʀᴏʀ ɴᴇᴀʀʙʏ, ᴜsᴇʀ sʜᴏᴜʟᴅ ʙᴇ ᴀʙʟᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴜsᴇ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴍɪʀʀᴏʀ ᴛᴏ ᴠɪᴇᴡ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ɴᴇᴡ ᴀᴘᴘᴇᴀʀᴀɴᴄᴇ】

Oh, thanks god...

Yuhong seems to have worried needlessly. She took a look around and saw that, as the system had predicted, there was a long, rectangular bronze mirror with lovely swirling curves on its sides. A beautiful woman with a slim build and dark black hair is reflected in the mirror. She is dressed in soft white fabric that suggests a clothing for a feminine cultivator. 

She encircled a lengthy strand of hair with her thin finger. She was met with a long strand of black hair instead of her customary medium length straight brown hair. The hair was plainly considerably longer than Yuhong's typical hair length and had wavy ends without any broken ends. And finally she turned her gaze to the crimson eyes in the mirror. She noticed something dark near the wooden table in the backdrop out of the corner of her eye. Before moving toward it, she turned around with a her current body, spotting it was a black blindfold...

[cousticks]

OMYGOSH COU!!!

You can't just drop that idea and gatekeep it!!

make Beastzai's death more gratifying??? H-How?

w-when, where, why, who, what-

AIJDFRIEOGHB

okok yes, if it's bad for your mental health, don't write it

but if you don't mind, can I get the concept at least?

I must see what's happening in the cou misery machine's little brain. 😭🥺

#nopressureasks

Well first I'd like to clarify I'd be making his death more gratifying to ME, not necessarily to anyone else. That man has dealt me horrendous amounts of psychic damage for years now and I believe he should answer for it in blood. Its personal.

That being said. He gets off easy, in the end, by being able to jump off a building and just... disappear. He finishes his plan and removes himself from the equation. Done and dusted. Its almost anticlimactic, its a little unsatisfying, and in the original story I think that's part of why his death works so well. There's no dramatic final battle, not really. He's finished writing the story and he's writing himself out of it.

It's also very, very Dazai. In a world where he forces himself to be more machine than man to keep his goals in line, there's not much left that's actually Dazai, you know? He's subject to the world he's created as much as everyone else is, the only difference is that he knows that. Back in the main timeline, as odd as it is, suicide attempts end up almost a hobby for normal Dazai. That's just... a thing he does. But Beast Dazai doesn't have that identity, not anymore. He doesn't have "hobbies" he doesn't have things he's imbued so much of the book with his will and in turn is so subject to the will of the book that they're one and the same at that point. He's ceased to really be Dazai. So in a way? Beast Dazai offing himself at the end is really like severing his ties to the book and becoming Dazai again before he dies.

For me, personally, in my own acts of retribution against Beast Dazai for the way he charges me rent in my own brain, I'd want to strip him of that one last shard of autonomy. Someone else has to kill him. Preferably me with my own bare hands. The problem is that there's really no one in that world that has a good right or reason to kill him, honestly. As much as Chuuya wants to, as much as he claimed his stake on Dazai's life in that world, he'll never do it. Chuuya will never be the one to kill Dazai. It just... won't happen. Atsushi never would either, for tangential reasons. The most appropriate would be Akutagawa, but the entire point of Beast is, in part, proving that there is a world where Akutagawa can do and be good even without Atushi's influence. Proving that it was already in Akutagawa to start. Having him kill Beastzai would be a backtrack of that progress. The most tragic would be Oda, but Oda is going to write his novel. He's done killing, now. So that doesn't work either. The only one who could have killed Beastzai is himself, unfortunately.

Now, if you let ME into the Beast universe, unlike all these characters with personal motives and layers and thematic character arcs, I'm just some guy with a vendetta and no stakes in the game and I'd personally love to put Beastzai through as much physical pain as possible before offing him just because I know he hates pain and I want to watch his skull bounce. I haven't worked out the details of how I'd kill him if given the chance but let me just say it is not a pleasant way to go and he'd totally for sure hate the entire thing. I'd have to have Beast Chuuya locked up somewhere though because he'd have me dead seven times over before I got the chance.

[argentumcor]

Notes About the Halo Ferret Trilogy

If you are reading this and haven't read Halo: Last Light and Halo: Retribution, you should because they're good.

Apparently, Troy Denning (of Star by Star fame, much is explained) said that he had to rewrite the ending of Shadows of Reach because Infinite was getting delayed. The Ferrets were supposed to get away with Blue Team and go back to the Infinity, not go off to the Ark. This was done last minute, as in the book was formatted and sent to be printed when the word came down. I would just about kill for the part that got switched, but 343 likely shredded it.

Knowing this now, I reread the book to find where the patch job likely was...I think it started when John and the girls go to grab the stuff they were on Reach to snag. It's not a really Denning Halo climax- all the Spartans are injured and their armor damaged, which in his books is usually a prelude to a final fight for somebody if not them. Instead, John does leg day and says hi to fragmentary AI and Fred has a too-brief encounter with Veta. There's no fight to get out, the mission just kind of ends. It's well written for sure but it just...the pace is off. A patch job.

I can see the set up for the original ending, too, I think. Fred keeps talking about blowing stuff up, which doesn't really get a pay-off. The Ferrets watching and waiting is set up for them needing Blue Team to do something, and delivering a message seems like a lot had to go just right for that move to work the way it did, rather than the easier task of getting the message to the horde of UNSC personnel now on the planet. Also it doesn't matter? Atriox is back and...I mean everyone would know soon enough, he's not a shadowy sort of guy, Atriox.

Also, I was certain that the mining equipment would not make it to the excavation site after all this effort was put into protecting it and it was really useful for doing war.

How, exactly, Infinite's delay necessitated the existence of Divine Wind specifically I'm not clear about. Atriox is back from the Ark, okay, there are a lot of portals to the Ark, or he could have got through regardless of what Blue Team did (making the mission a su success and failure at the same time is on-brand for Halo novels). Nothing in Divine Wind comes up in Infinite- not any of the stuff with the Prophets, not anything to do with the Banished's humans, not the Spirit of Fire. I get needing a book to fill in the schedule gap for the franchise, and Denning being slotted for that, but have him write another Ferret and Blue Team book, no one would mind...Blue Team is barely mentioned in Infinite, and their specific status except alive and busy elsewhere isn't said.

I'm pretty sure there was meant to be one more Ferrets book after Retribution that did wrap up a lot of the plot points wrapped up in Divine Wind, but perhaps with more finality in a few cases.

The three Ferret books were all about facing off with Intrepid Eye and Castor...and the first two had a lot to do with Gao. Intrepid Eye got brought down of course, and Castor while alive is in a different spot. Veta should be the one to off Castor, or at least set him up, considering what he did to her team. Arlo Casille needs justice for his part in that and worse, too.

Of course Blue Team, and Fred specifically, is a highlight of the first two books, too. Fred is my favorite Spartan so I'm biased. Not having the Ferrets working with him again seems like a mistake, and not just because of Fred/Veta, but also because it gives him something distinctive to do. Otherwise he's just a guy on John's team, which is unfortunately what Halo 5 did to my boy.

The first two books also made use of Veta doing CSI stuff, not just spy stuff. It's such a cool bit of both books and gives her a really unique skillset in the Halo roster that makes for some entertaining reading. It is not utilized in Divine Wind.

Divine Wind introduced a lot of interesting things, don't get me wrong, mostly on the Covenant side. The Ferrets...well, poor Mark died horribly. The survivors are on the SoF in a situation where spying isn't going to count for much (the Banished are killing their human members pretty freely), so maybe Ash and Olivia will be back to combat ops leaving Veta to...?

On my list of projects now, I guess, is to write my shot at the original climax of Shadows of Reach, then maybe try writing the third Ferrets book set on Infinity- an underutilized setting, may she rest in peace (if she is dead? I like that ship...she was beaten and evacuated, so she's gone...right? Why is the fate of so many people and places in Infinite not clarified?! Where is Blue Team?!?!)

[mega1232]

Hey! I've seen every live action adaptation official adaptation of resident evil! Here are my thoughts! (warning: SPOILERS!)

Resident Evil: Cool and slick. Kinda a let down that Rain died, but her death was effective. If you watched this, and only this, you can see it as a tie in to the games and a nice standalone feature. Weird that the dog scene in this is better than the Netflix one.

Resident Evil Apocalypse: Fun, if the characters are flat and one note. Milla Jovovich (Alice) and Sienna Guillory (Jill Valentine) own in their action scenes. Could have sprung for CGI for Nemisis in the close range fight - made it more believable.

Resident Evil Extinction: Mad max rip off with character's somehow flatter than the previous installment. Clair Redfield was played well by Ali Larter, but her character had nothing but "leader of the caravan" - needed more characterization. The oil rig set piece was alright, but kinda a low point of the series.

Resident Evil Afterlife: Damn cool first and last action scene. Wentworth Miller was a great Chris Redfield, but Shawn Roberts as Albert Wesker was the MVP - so over the top, and loving every second of it. Boris Kodjoe as Luther Wes had great charisma as well. The middle of the movie is kinda standard zombie movie and not that interesting - could have been better, but otherwise okay. This movie's title should have been Afterlife - given how it's after the extinction - the next one should have been called rebirth. Hindsight is 2020.

Resident Evil Retribution: Best installment, in my opinion. The underground water base gave a variety of locations, the monsters were varied and gave room from several set pieces. Say what you want about Johann Urb as Leon, Kevin Duran as Benny, and Li BingBing as Ada, but all three had good chemistry with each other - not a lot of substance, but DAMN, did they have style. Michelle Rodriguez was underutilized - should have had an OG version of Rain come back as a clone and survive to the final film - that would have been cool. Ending shot mirror's the first movie's ending shot x10 setting up for an epic conclusion.

Resident Evil - The Final Chapter: WE WE'RE ROBBED! Why did they go back to the Extinction ascetic and skip the much more interesting looking Washington DC battle (and not to mention kill several characters) for a run down retread of the first movie?! Even if you just wanted to do that, why is Clair and Alice the only characters at the end?! Yes, Jason Issacs is a great actor and it was cool you brought him back, but it required the lore to bend over backwards to fit him in. I'm not saying it super bad - some action sequences are very cool - just disappointing.

Resident Evil - Welcome to Racoon City: And I thought the last installment sucked! Bad fight choreography and filming, bland characterization (oh, Albert, what did they do to you? A misunderstood "not" bad guy that doesn't even do anything noteworthy? And Jill was turned into a weeping willow? Leon as the comic relief?), not scary (somehow, the Licker from the first Resident Evil was better then what showed up here). How do we beat the final boss? Oh, I just so happened to find a rocket launcher - LUCKY US! Just...bad. And also kills any straightforward adaption.

Resident Evil - Netflix live action series: In attempting to create something unique, they ended up presenting a boring YA novel mashed with a disappointing apocalypse (STOP IT WITH THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE IN THESE MOVIES! IT WORKED IN THE ORIGINAL INSTALLMENTS, BUT NO MORE! IT BACKS THE ENTIRE FRANCHISE INTO A CORNER BECAUSE YOU CAN NEVER PULL BACK THE APOCALYPSE!) The lead constantly makes dumb decisions and survives not by skill or smarts, but by luck. Giant centipede attack? Survives because of random survivors. Surrounded by Zombies? Survives because a car just so happens to be swinging by. Only have a chainsaw against an oncoming horde of zombies? That sounds cool - no wait, the chainsaw breaks down - awe. WAIT! She's been saying she is smart - write her a way out of this that requires her to think! She can see an grenade that didn't pop off - she positions it at the door, fires her last few rounds on it's hinges, it falls and explodes - sending the door upward and breaking the granite above her and sending down an avalanche against them....or you can have her throw it and then stand up when it doesn't explode and have the door falling down thing be dumb luck. UGH! And the set pieces just do not have any good conclusion. Giant centipede - the centerpiece of the first trailer - killed by a dozen bullets from offscreen characters. Literally no problem to put down - SO BORING! Interesting set up - good actors (Lance Reddick rocks and the rest of the actors and actresses do well - but MAN should he have been playing the real Wesker - his one scene as OG wesker was SO FUN AND THE BEST Live Action adaptation of the character - but NOPE! Let's have him play a dad and an out their guy - cheat the fans even more), disastrous execution. FYI - somehow WTRC is more boring than this, but there are just so much wrong with this instalment. PLEASE give the franchise back to PS Anderson and Milla Jovovich - the OG series wasn't all winners, but they were better than this and WTRC!

[addictedtooverwatch]

Overwatch/OW2 Theories: 2021 Archives Event

Sorry this is a really long post, I had a lot of fun with making this post, more fun than most of my other posts! Hope you like it! ~ Nova

Alright! The 2021 Lunar New Year event was one of the best so far. It was so hard to choose a favorite skin when we got Pale Serpent Widowmaker, Tiger Bob, and Kkachi Echo, but I am more excited for the 2021 Archives Event that will be coming up in the next month/month and a half. So, I’m going to be talking about what the event is, for anyone who doesn’t really know what the whole point of the Archives event is, and what skins I want. 

What is the Archives Event: basically, it is the event with the best challenge missions and some of the best skins(I think Halloween has best skins, fight me, but Retribution is the best game mode, Blackwatch is like a grumpy family and it’s great). Really the Archives Event is all about the lore of Overwatch. The skins are all based in the story, and we usually learn more about the story during the event. As an example, Orisa and Bastion’s Null Sector skins tie into the Omnic extremist group, Null Sector who shows up in the Uprising event. 

What skins I want:

D.Va Shooting Star Skin: in D.Va’s animated short Shooting Star, we get to see Hana in an Esports uniform and a Mechanics outfit. Either would be good, it would probably be an epic skin though. 

Sigma Scientist Skin: I want his outfit from his origin story when he was writing on a whiteboard... see-through-board... the name of the board doesn’t matter! Just give me a Sigma skin that has him in semi-normal clothes. 

Brigitte Ironclad Skin: Torbjorn has an skin called Ironclad and I think Brigitte should also have one similar to it. We know that both Torbjorn and Brigitte have Ironclad Guild tattoos on their outer shoulders, Brigitte’s is on her left while Torbjorn’s is on his right. 

Zenyatta Shambali Skin: I want this skin because of fanart I saw in a video about possible Archives Event skins. I think it’s cool because we know that Zenyatta was part of the Shambali Monastery with Mondatta, so it would be a good way to relate back to the lore and create a awesome lookin’ skin. 

Ashe Deadlock Rebels Skin: the Deadlock Rebels novel by Lyndsay Ely that will come out in June 2021 has a really cool color with Deadlock McCree and Ashe in a cool lookin’ red, white, and black outfit. So yeah, I want it.  

Echo Null Sector Skin: like I mentioned early, Orisa and Bastion have Null Sector skins, so I think it would be cool of the Overwatch Devs. to also make Echo look like she is in Null Sector. 

Symmetra skin: I don’t know what type of skin would work for her, she already has Viskar skins for her basic legendaries and she got a Marammat skin for her special event, so I’m not sure, but she hasn’t gotten a lootbox legendary skin since the 2018 Winter Wonderland Event and I would like more Symmetra content.  

Also, if you want to learn a little more about what this year’s Archives event might look like, check out Master Ian Gamer’s video about the 2021 Archives Event - Start date, New Skins, and other predictions. 

Anyway, I think that I’ll either make a post about Ana or Hanzo next. I’ll also put together a couple master lists of all of my post to not just make it easier for anyone interested in my theories to look at the different posts I’ve made, but to make it easier for me to find my old posts.

TLDR: For the 2021 Archives Event, all about the Overwatch lore, I want a D.Va skin based off Shooting Star, a Sigma Scientist skin, a Brigitte Ironclad skin, a Zenyatta Shambali skin, an Ashe Deadlock Rebels skin, an Echo Null Sector skin, and a Symmetra skin of some sorts. 

[therobotmonster]

I don't have the energy to respond to everything on the thread. But I think this part is important to address:

Now, I’m a little curious as to whether this comes under fair use.  It... probably does.  I guess the question is are you allowed to take that 250 TB source materiel and use it to make knock offs.  Would this make more sense if it were more trademark instead of copyright?  If it overfits a signature to the point it become recognizable as the original artists signature, where does that put us?  Sincere question, I’d like to know.

My view on it is this. The training of the model is fair use provided it is trained on public-facing, published material.

How people use it is a case-by-case basis.

You can use an AI to make a work that infringes on another work's copyright or trademark using a dataset and prompt that doesn't have anything about that work in it, and at the same time you could use a model trained heavily on, and even prompting around, a specific artist or work and produce wholly novel, non-infringing work.

And a human artist, working on their own, could infringe either a copyright or trademark with or without intending to.

It's all about what comes out, and what you choose to publish and other what circumstances. The short version basically being, that published works made with AI would and should be handled in the same way any created image might. If the end result infringes in a way that isn't in line with fair use, it's actionable.

As to the overfititng to the point that an artist's signature is recognizable?

Where that would put us is... in the possession of a badly trained AI.

The whole point of the tech is to produce novel images, and the overfitting of things like the Afghan Girl photo, the Mona Lisa, or the Captain Marvel poster are bugs made by having a lot of redundant versions of a single image. Getting a coherent, recognizable watermark takes a corporate logo's image-search saturation. If a human artist has enough pieces processed to reproduce an accurate signature, that means they've had pieces duplicated in the training process, a lot, and you're going to get artifacts and undesirable behavior.

But that's largely academic, because any one of us can go on Fiverr right now, find a decently skilled freelancer, and pay them to imitate the style of any artist you might want, living or dead. As long as the end result isn't an infringement of a specific, fixed work, there's no infringement there. Even if the intent way to duplicate their style and aesthetics. Artistic styles cannot be copyrighted or trademarked.

But on the other hand, if I ask for a hybrid of say, H.R. Giger and Lisa Frank, the result is going to be a weird, new thing. And I've got some lengthy showcase posts planned about how AI doesn't "see" styles the way we do and how often you prompt for something you know the AI will do wrong because you want the mistake.

Every new art technology opens up new avenues of plagiarism and opportunities for bad actors, and if someone thinks prompting for a living artist is a dick move, I might agree with them depending on the circumstances. But things can be tacky, gauche, distasteful, or rude without rising to the level of needing legal intercession or social retribution.

Any new rules/laws will very likely wind up being the same for people using machines and people who aren't. We already have systems and principles for deciding what is and isn't IP infringement as judged on the end result, and I don't see good things happening if that point of judgement is moved to the start of the creative process.

Also, who owns the copyright on AI generated art? 

At present, no one. Current precedent establishes that images generated by nonhumans are not subject to copyright and are thus in the public domain, as a "minimum amount of human expression" is required for something to be a copyrightable work. Though like any public domain material, the images can be modified and remixed into a protectable expression. How much remixing is required is an unsettled issue.

Whether that standard will remain is an untested legal area, as it's built on the idea of unguided GANs and monkeys with stolen cameras. There is an argument to be made that a prompt of sufficient creativity or enough guided iteration would establish the minimum human expression requirement, but again, it is untested.

Personally, as long as the copyright office lets Lungflower and the rest of its fellows get their marks, I see the current zero copyright until modified situation as the ideal.

Hope this clarifies my stance a bit.

Please don’t use midjourney it steals art from pretty much every artist out there without any compensation. I didn’t know this at first and tried it but then during the creation process i saw water marks and Getty image logos (though I’m sure they’ve hidden that now) so it’s definitely stealing.

No, it isn't. And you've taken the wrong lesson from the Getty watermark issue.

AI training on public facing, published work is fair use. Any published piece could be located, examined, and learned from by a human artist. This does not require the permission of the owner of said work. A mechanical apparatus does not change this principle.

All we, as artists, own, are specific expressions. We do not own styles, ideas, concepts, plots, or tropes. We do not even own the work we create in a proper sense. All our work flows from the commons, and all of it flows back to it. IP is a limited patent on specific expressions, and what constitutes infringement is the end result of the creative process. What goes into it is irrelevant, and upending that process to put inspiration and reference as infringement is the end of art as we know it.

The Getty watermark issue is an example of overfitting, wherein a repetitive element in the dataset over-emphasizes specific features to the point of disrupting the system's attempts at the creation of novel images.

No one denies that the SD dataset is trained on images Getty claims to own, but Getty has so polluted the image search functions of the internet with their watermarked images that the idea of a getty watermark has been picked up the same way the AI might pick up the idea of an eye or a tree branch. It is a systemic failure that Shutterstock and Getty can be so monopolistic and ubiquitous that a dateset trained on literally everything public facing on the internet would be polluted with their watermarks.

Watermarks that, by the way, they add to public domain images, and that google prioritizes over clean versions.

The lawsuits being brought against Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are copyright overreach being presented as a theft tissue. The facts of the matter are not as the litigants state. The images aren't stored, the SD weights are a 4 gig file trained on 250 terabytes, roughly 4 bytes per image. It runs local, does not reach out to image sources over IP. All you've got are mathematical patterns and ratios. I would go so far as to say that the class action suit is based on outright lies.

But for a moment, let's entertain the idea that what goes into a work, as inspiration, can be copyrighted. That styles can be stolen. That what goes in defines infringement, rather than what comes out. What happens then?

Well, the bad news is that if Stable Diffusion and Midjourney were shut down tomorrow, Stable Diffusion is in the wild. It runs local, it's user-trainable. In short, the genie isn't going back in the bottle. Plus, the way diffusion AI works, there's no way to trace a gen to its sources. The weights don't work like that. The indexing would be larger than the entire set of stored patterns.

Well good news, there's an AI for that. The current version is called CLIP Interrogator And it works on everything. Not just AI generated, but any image. It can find what style it closely matches, reverse engineer a prompt. It's crude now, but it will improve.

Now, you've already established that using the same patterns as another work is infringement. You've already established that inspiration is theft. And now there's a robot that tells lawyers who you draw like.

Sure, you can fight it in court. If it goes go to court. But who's to say they won't just staplegun that AI to a monetization re-direction bot like youtube has going with their content ID? Awesome T-shirt design you uploaded to your print-on-demand shop... too bad your art style resembles that from a cartoon from 1973 that Universal got as part of an acquisition and they've claimed all your cash. Sure you can file a DMCA counter-notice, but we all know how that goes.

And then there's this fantasy that upending the system would help artists. But who would "own" that style? Is that piece stealing the style of Stephen Silver, or Disney's Kim Possible(TM)? When you work for Disney their contracts say everything you make is theirs. Every doodle. Every drawing. If the styles are copyrightable, a company could hire an artist straight out of school, publish their work under work-for-hire, fire them, and then go after them for "stealing" the style they developed while working for said corp.

Not to mention that a handful of companies own so much media that it is going to be impossible to find an artist that hasn't been influenced by something under their control.

Oh, and that stock of source images that companies like Disney and Universal have? These kinds of lawsuits won't stop them from building AIs with that material that they "own". The power goes into corp hands, they can down staff to their heart's content and everyone else is denied the ability to compete with them. Worst of all possible worlds.

Be careful what wishes you make when holding the copyright monkey's paw.

[thetypedwriter]

Lore Book Review

Lore Book Review by Alexandra Bracken 

Lore by Alexandra Bracken was one of 2021’s most anticipated YA novels and it's easy to see why. The plot summary itself is enough to pull you in with the intriguing concoction of calling it the combination of The Hunger Games and the Percy Jackson series. 

What’s not to love when you fuse the illicit danger of Katniss Everdeen with the mythological enchantment of Rick Riordan’s masterpiece?

Turns out, quite a lot unfortunately. 

Before I get into why this book didn’t live up to the insurmountable hype it built up, I’ll attempt to give a basic summary. The key word being attempt as a good portion of this novel’s plot was a mind boggling and convoluted mess. 

The book takes place in modern day New York which Bracken likes to remind you every other paragraph with small snippets about how the city that never sleeps smells like sewage and is yet still the best place on earth apparently. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love New York as much as the next person, but the pandering to the Big Apple got annoying after awhile. 

Within the cantankerous city lives a girl named Lore which we are introduced to by means of her kicking ass in an underground Chinese restaurant’s fighting ring. 

Pretty strong start. 

Lore’s world (and the reader’s frankly) is tipped upside down when Lore’s long lost childhood friend, Castor, reappears to warn her that he is looking for her. Terrified, Lore is then at first unwillingly thrust back into the world in which she was born-a world dominated by violence, bloodlines, and the Greek gods who are very much alive and out for vengeful retribution. 

In a very exposition-dump heavy conversation, we learn that Lore is the last of Perseous’ line with the rest of her family having been horrifically murdered, that a week long event called the Agon occurs every seven years in which the original nine Greek gods or their reincarnated selves become mortal for seven days, and that a series of killing often happen because if you kill a Greek god you then become that Greek god as well as inhabit their powers, abilities, and immortality. 

Well, until the next Agon that is. 

The currently reincarnated God by the name of Wrath is attempting to end the Agon by killing all the other Gods, but in order to do it he needs to wield a special weapon called the Aegis. 

Unfortunately, only the Perseides can wield this shield (for some reason) and thus, Wrath is out to get his hold on Lore as the last of her line so that he can bring this eons old competition to an end with himself as the sole victor and only remaining God. 

Confused?

I’d be surprised if you weren’t. 

Now, I love Greek mythology. I’ve read the classics and would say I’m fairly up to date on the stories, the legends, the gods, and the stories they represent. I’m not an expert, but I would say I’m  knowledgeable on who the major figures are and what they stood for. 

I genuinely think this book would have been miserable for anyone that didn’t know anything about Greek mythology.

 Bracken does a terrible job of explaining what the hell is happening at any given point, and she often throws out allusions and references to Greek mythology without bothering to explain a single shred of information about it. 

In addition, after this laughably and poorly explained world and plot at the beginning, it is almost never explained again. It’s brought up, as are names and titles and weapons and relationships, but it’s never explained in a way that’s feasibly understandable. 

At the beginning of the novel Bracken lists who all the important characters are, their bloodlines, and their titles.

 I soon figured out why, as every other sentence a name like Wrath or Reveler or Tidebringer or whoever was brought up, and it was impossible to keep track of so I didn’t even bother. 

Even Lore brings up that the names are ridiculous, which I appreciate, but the meta moment of clarity doesn't make it any better. 

Also, what Lore and her friends get up to over 90% of the novel is a muddled mass of bewilderment. 

Why do Lore and Castor and the others need to find Artemis? I don’t know, but sure, whatever, sounds good. Why was Lore the last of her line again? Oh yeah, right, okay, I guess. Wait, Castor died? Oh, he didn’t? Why not? Oh, we’re not going to explain it. Sure, sure. 

Throughout this entire novel, what the characters are doing and what is happening is almost impossible to follow with the way it's presented and the way Bracken developed her world. I think this was a really cool idea that had very poor execution. 

Points for the originality and the inclusion of Greek mythology, but all of the positives were taken away when that originality was flushed down the drain with a lack of explanation and logic. 

Lore very much reminded me of a shoot-em up, bang-em up action movie. Almost every other chapter was some sort of super intense, super climactic fight scene, chase, theft, break-in, etc. 

Now. I do think action scenes are hard to write and I think Bracken actually did an incredible job of writing action in a way that was entertaining and thrilling. 

However, when the action takes place every ten pages it gets really old, really quick. Towards the end, I downright started skimming the fight scenes, because they lacked so little depth and stakes and we had read so much action at the end point that it had lost all vigor and vitality. 

Continuing with the action movie metaphor, most action movies focus solely on the bright explosions and the crazy fight scenes as their selling point of the whole movie, often to the detriment of the characters, plot, and development. 

Now, some people like this. I am not these people. 

I find action movies boring as most of my enjoyment from consuming media comes from the characters and the developments they undergo. 

My biggest criticism with Lore, other than the astonishing storytelling, is by far the characters. I just...didn’t care. About any of them. 

Bracken tried to make Lore come across as a strong, opinionated, fierce, angry female character and while sometimes she succeeded, more often than not I found Lore temperamental, aggravating, impulsive, selfish, and shallow. 

Bracken very much invoked the tell-not-show strategy that makes any book hard to get through. While there were some decent moments of showing instead of just stating, more often than not, Bracken would tell us that Lore was strong by having other people say it or others calling her weak. 

I appreciated Bracken’s feminist agenda and how strongly Lore felt about gender inequality, even if it was a bit heavy-handed at times. Still, I did appreciate this inclusion of civil rights on this front, even if some of the circumstances to incite it were ridiculous or over the top. 

In addition, I hated that there was all this backstory that we were just told but not shown. Like in my last review of Wilder Girls, Lore suffers from an intrinsic failure of getting me onboard with these characters and their relationships by telling me how I should feel about them instead of exposing them through action. 

I was told:

Lore and Castor haven't seen each other for seven years, but my gosh, Castor is just the best and is so beautiful. Ensue obligatory YA romance. 

Lore has a best friend! Yeah. Her name is Iro. Here she is! Um. Okay. Why was this necessary?

Miles is just the coolest best friend ever. Like, look how cool and chill he is. How funny is it that he has no idea what’s happening? Really not funny at all. He was a useless character used to build empty stakes. 

  The list goes on and on, but Bracken will throw out some sort of fact or relationship and just expect the reader to go “Okay!” Which. I didn’t. On any of those occurrences. 

Often Bracken would do this in the use of flashbacks at the most inopportune times (during a fight scene, after someone was injured, right before a huge revelation, etc). These flashbacks were the worst. I do not care for adolescent Lore and child Lore was somehow even worse. 

The romance in this book, much like an action movie, is off to the side and really only there to fulfill the trope of having a romance. 

Lore and Castor are boring. I don’t know what else to say. Castor is too perfect to be likable and Lore is the opposite. Nothing about their romance was unique or well-crafted. 

The kiss between Van and Miles I also saw coming a hundred miles away. I also thought it was pointless as Van and Miles had known each for six days and had had maybe two conversations. So. No. I didn’t care at all about the romances. 

It actually made me laugh and scoff simultaneously at the end when Lore is looking at Van, Castor, Iro and Miles and smiles because she realizes that these people are her family. 

Ummm. Sorry?

Castor disappeared for seven years and you’ve been reunited for seven days. You’ve hated Van your whole life until this week. You also haven’t seen Iro in seven years and she tried to kill you at least twice in this book. Miles is...fine, but again useless. I don’t even know why Bracken included him except to make Lore worry about him which she only did about half of the time. 

Phew. 

I know this review has come across largely negative, so this might be surprising, but I didn’t hate it. It lacks substance and depth, but it was entertaining. 

Just like an action movie.

 If you want some hyped fights and a plot that really doesn't matter and characters that won’t stick with you, but a fast-paced narrative that keeps you on your toes nonetheless, then you would probably enjoy this. 

It’s like the equivalent of watching a James Bond movie or one of the millions of the Fast and Furious. Bracken tries to develop the characters, but at the end of the day, most of the story is made up of cool fights, magic, and weapons. If that’s your speed then you would probably really love Lore. 

Recommendation: Action, action, action. If you want some high intensity, get-your-blood-pumping enterprise then this is your novel. The writing is fluid, the adrenaline-inducing scenes are non-stop, and everything else falls to the backdrop of external fights and villainous monologues. If action is not your preferred genre, then your best left to get your Greek mythology needs from Percy Jackson or the Song of Achilles instead.  

Score: 6/10

[oscopelabs]

It’s Arrested Development: How ‘High Fidelity’ Has Endured Beyond Its Cultural Sell-By Date by Vikram Murthi

It’s easy to forget now that at the beginning of 2020, before the pandemic had taken hold of our consciousness, for a brief moment, High Fidelity was back. Not only did Nick Hornby’s debut novel and Stephen Frears’ film adaptation celebrate major milestones this year — 25th and 20th anniversaries, respectively — but a TV adaptation premiered on Hulu in February. In light of all of these arbitrary signposts, multiple thinkpieces and remembrances litigated Hornby’s original text on familiar, predictable grounds. Is the novel/film’s protagonist Rob actually an asshole? (Sure.) Does Hornby uphold his character’s callous attitudes towards women? (Not really.) Hasn’t the story’s gatekeeping, anti-poptimist approach to artistic taste culturally run its course? (Probably.) Why do we need to revisit this story about this person right now? (Fair question!)

Despite reasonable objections on grounds of relevancy, enough good will for the core narrative—record store owner seeks out a series of exes to determine a pattern of behavior following a devastating breakup���apparently exists to help produce a gender-flipped streaming show featuring updated musical references and starring a decidedly not-middle-aged Zoë Kravitz. I only made it through six of ten episodes in its first (and only) season, but I was surprised by how closely the show hewed to High Fidelity’s film adaptation, to the point of re-staging numerous scenes down to character blocking and swiping large swaths of dialogue wholesale. (Similarly, the film adaptation hewed quite close to the novel, with most of the dialogue ripped straight from Hornby.) Admittedly, the series features a more diverse cast than the film, centering different experiences and broadly acknowledging some criticisms of the source material regarding its ostensibly exclusionary worldview. Nevertheless, it seemed like a self-defeating move for the show to line itself so definitively with a text that many consider hopelessly problematic, especially considering the potential to repurpose its premise as a springboard for more contemporary ideas.

High Fidelity’s endurance as both a piece of IP and a flashpoint for media discourse is mildly baffling for obvious reasons. For one thing, its cultural milieu is actually dated. Even correcting for vinyl’s recent financial resurgence, the idea of snooty record store clerks passing judgment on customer preferences has more or less gone the way of the dodo. With the Internet came the democratization of access, ensuring that the cultivation of personal taste is no longer laborious or expensive, or could even be considered particularly impressive (if it ever could have been). Secondly, as one might imagine, some of Hornby’s insights into heterosexual relationships and the differences between men and women, even presented through the flawed, self-deprecating interiority of High Fidelity’s main character, are indeed reductive. Frears’ film actually strips away the vast majority of Hornby’s weaker commentary, but the novel does include such cringeworthy bits like, “What’s the deal with foreplay?” that are best left alone.

Accounting for all of that, though, it’s remarkable how many misreadings of Hornby’s text have been accepted as conventional wisdom. It’s taken as a given by many that the novel and film earnestly preach the notion that what you like is more important than what you are like when, in fact, the narrative arc is constructed around reaching the opposite conclusion. (The last lines of the novel and film are, literally, “…I start to compile in my head a compilation tape for her, something that's full of stuff she's heard of, and full of stuff she'd play. Tonight, for the first time ever, I can sort of see how it's done.”) That’s relatively minor compared to the constant refrain that Rob’s narcissism goes uncriticized, even though the story’s thematic and emotional potency derives from what the audience perceives that Rob cannot. To put it bluntly, High Fidelity’s central irony revolves around a man who listens to music for a living being unable to hear the women in his life.

While Hornby’s prose immerses the reader in Rob’s interior monologue, providing ample room for the character to spout internal justifications of his behavior, the novel hardly obscures or conceals this conclusion. Moreover, the film makes it unavoidably explicit in numerous scenes. Rob (John Cusack) triumphantly pantomimes Rocky Balboa’s boxing routine soundtracked to Queen’s “We Are The Champions” after his ex-girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle) confirms she hasn’t yet slept with her new boyfriend Ray (Tim Robbins), but doesn’t hear the part where she says she prefers to sleep next to him. When Laura informs Rob that she did eventually sleep with Ray, Rob completely falls apart. In an earlier, more pointed scene, Rob goes out with his ex-girlfriend from high school (Joelle Carter) to ask why she chose to have sex with an obnoxious classmate instead of him. She venomously informs him that he actually broke up with her because she was too prudish, an abrupt, cruel bit of business we actually witness at the film’s beginning. It was in her moment of heartbroken vulnerability that she agreed to quickly sleep with someone else (“It wasn’t rape because I technically said, ‘Okay,’ but it wasn’t far off,” she sneers), which ultimately put her off sex until after college. Rob doesn’t hear this explanation or the damning portrait of his teenaged self. Instead, he’s delighted to learn that he wasn’t actually dumped.

These are evidently low character moments, one’s that are comedic in their depiction of blinkeredness but whose emotional takeaways are crystal clear, and one’s that have been written about before. My personal pick from the film, though, comes late when Rob attends Laura’s father’s funeral. He sits in the back and, in typical fashion, turns to the camera to deliver a list of songs to play at his funeral, concluding with his professed wish that “some beautiful, tearful woman would insist on ‘You’re The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me’ by Gladys Knight.” It’s a really galling, egotistical moment that still makes me wince despite having seen the movie umpteen times. Yet, it’s immediately followed by the casket being lowered to the ground as Laura’s sobs ring out in the church. In a movie defined by John Cusack’s vocal timbre, it’s one of the few times when he completely shuts up. From two-thirds down the center aisle, Frears’ camera pushes into Cusack’s face until tears in his eyes are visible, but what you really see is an appropriately guilt-ridden, ashamed expression.

However, none of this evidence carries any weight if your objection to High Fidelity is that Rob suffers no material consequences for his behavior. While Rob is frequently called out for his actions, he is never actively punished. He doesn’t, say, receive a restraining order for continually calling Laura after they’ve broken up or end up alone mending a permanent broken heart because of his past relationships. By the end, Rob and Laura get back together and Rob even starts an independent record label on the side. It’s a stretch to characterize Hornby’s High Fidelity as a redemption tale, but it is a sideways rehabilitation narrative with a happy ending that arises at least partly out of mutual exhaustion.

Those two elements—Rob’s asshole recovery and the exhausted happy ending—rarely seem to factor into High Fidelity discourse. Granted, there’s credence to the idea that, socially and culturally, people have less patience for the personality types depicted in High Fidelity, and thus are less inclined to extend them forgiveness, let alone anything resembling retribution. I suppose that’s a valid reaction, one against which I have no interest in arguing, but it’s somewhat ironic that High Fidelity has endured for reasons that have nothing to do with its conclusions regarding inflexible personal principles and the folly of escapism. Both the book and film are specifically about someone who slowly comes to terms with accepting reality rather than live in a world mediated by pop cultural fantasies whose unrealistic expectations have only caused personal suffering. It’s not unfair to characterize this as a fairly obvious epiphany, but considering we currently live in a world dominated by virtual echo chambers with an entertainment culture committed to validating arrested adolescence, it retroactively counts as “mature” and holds more weight than it otherwise should.

Near the end of High Fidelity, the book, after Rob and Laura have gotten back together in the aftermath of Laura’s father’s death, Hornby includes a chapter featuring five conversations between the couple unpacking the state of their relationship. During the third conversation, Rob and Laura fight about how she doesn’t care about music as strongly as he does, catalyzed by Rob’s objection to Laura liking both Solomon Burke and Art Garfunkel, which, in his mind, is a contradiction in terms. Laura finally admits that not only does she not really care about the difference between them, but that most people outside of his immediate circle of two don’t care about the difference, and that this mentality is indicative of a larger problem. It’s part of what keeps him stuck in his head and reluctant to commit to anything. “I’m just trying to wake you up,” she says. “I'm just trying to show you that you've lived half your life, but for all you've got to show for it you might as well be nineteen, and I'm not talking about money or property or furniture.”

I fell for High Fidelity (first the movie, then the book) as a younger man for the reasons I assume most sensitive-cum-oblivious, culturally preoccupied straight guys do: it accurately pinpoints a pattern of music consumption and organizationally anal-retentive behavior with which I’m intimately familiar. I spent the vast majority of my early years listening to and cataloguing albums, and when I arrived at college, I quickly fell in with a small group of like-minded music obsessives. We had very serious, very prolonged discussions filled with impossibly strong opinions about our favorite artists and records. Few new releases came and went without them being scrutinized by us, the unappreciated scholars of all that is righteous. List-making wasn’t in vogue, but there wasn’t a song that passed us by that we didn’t judge or size up. I was exposed to more music during this relatively short period of time than I likely will ever absorb again. Some of these times were the most engaging and fun of my life, and I still enjoy discussing and sharing music with close friends, but I’m not such a true believer to fully feel comfortable with this behavior. It’s not entirely healthy on its own and definitely alienating to others, and there comes a point when you hear yourself the way a stranger might, or maybe even catch a glimpse of someone’s eyes when you’re midst rant about some stupid album, and realize, “That’s all there is of me. There isn’t anything else.”

This is what Rob proclaims to Laura in the conversation when she tells him she was more interested in music during their courtship than she is now. It’s a patently self-pitying statement on his part that doesn’t go unchallenged by her in the moment or bear fruit in the rest of the novel. Yet, it’s this type of uncomfortably relatable sentiment that goes under-discussed. If High Fidelity will continue to have a life well after its cultural moment has passed, then it’s worth addressing what it offers on its own terms. Near the end of the book, Laura introduces Rob to another couple with whom he gets along quite well. When the evening comes to an end, she tells him to take a look at their record collection, and it’s predictably filled with artists he doesn’t care for, e.g. Billy Joel, Simply Red, Meat Loaf. “'Everybody's faith needs testing from time to time,” Laura tells him later when they’re alone. Amidst Rob’s self-loathing and sullen pettiness, Hornby argues that one should contribute in some way rather than only consume and that, at some point, it’s time to put away childish ideas in order to get the most out of life. It’s an entirely untrendy argument, one that goes against the nostalgic spirit of superhero films and reboot culture, but it doesn’t lack merit. Accepting that some values aren’t conducive to a full life, especially when it’s shared with someone else, doesn’t have to mean abandoning interests or becoming an entirely different person. It just means that letting go isn’t an admission of defeat.

It’s why I’ve always found the proposal scene in the film to be quite moving, albeit maybe not specifically romantic. It plays out similarly in both the book and the film, but the film has the added benefit of Cusack and Hjejle’s performances to amplify the vulnerability and shared understanding. Laura meets Rob for a drink in the afternoon where he sheepishly asks if she would like to get married. Laura bursts out laughing and says that he isn’t the safest bet considering he was making mixtapes for some reporter a few days prior. When asked what brought this on, Rob notes that he’s sick of thinking about love and settling down and marriage and wants to think about something else. (“I changed my mind. That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. I do. I will,” she sarcastically replies.) He goes on to say that he’s tired of fantasizing about other women because the fantasies have nothing to do with them and everything to do with himself and that it doesn’t exist never mind delivering on its promise. “I’m tired of it,” he says, “and I’m tired of everything else for that matter, but I don’t ever seem to get tired of you.”

This sort of anti-Jerry Maguire line would be callous if Laura didn’t basically say the same thing to him when they got back together. (“I’m too tired not to be with you.”) It’s possible to read this as an act of mutual settling, but I always thought Hornby’s point was personal growth and accepting one’s situation were intertwined. The key moment in High Fidelity, the film, comes when Laura finds Rob’s list of top five dream jobs. (In the book, Laura makes Rob compile the list.) At the bottom of the list, after such standard choices like music journalist and record producer, lies architect, a job that Rob isn’t entirely sure about anyway. (“I did put it at number five!” he insists.) Laura asks Rob the obvious question: wouldn’t you rather own your own record store than hypothetically be an architect, a job you’re not particularly enthused with anyway?

It’s Laura who convinces Rob that living the fifth-best version of your life can actually be pretty satisfying and doesn’t have to be treated like a cruel fate worse than death. Similarly, Rob and Laura both make the active decision to try to work things out instead of starting over with someone else. Laura’s apathy may have reunited them, and Rob’s apathy might have kept him from running, but it’s their shared history that keeps them together. More than the music and the romance, High Fidelity follows the necessary decisions and compromises one has to maneuver in order to grow instead of regress. “I've been letting the weather and my stomach muscles and a great chord change in a Pretenders single make up my mind for me, and I want to do it for myself,” Rob says near the end of Hornby’s novel. High Fidelity’s emotional potency lies in taking that sentiment seriously.

[wipbigbang]

2021 Round - Artists Claims (Round 2)

Round 2 of claims for artists are open! The second round will go this week and then I'll post a new round on Thursday, opening it up for thirds. Everybody spread the word! We have 70 story summaries below for you to choose from, and this round, you may choose 2 stories to do art for! Just use a different check in ID with each sign-up.

This year, art claims are working a little differently than in years past. We are using a google form to streamline things, which should make things easier both for you as participants and us mods. To claim a story, the form requires email, check in ID, and the identifying number of your first choice of story. Putting your top three choices is best in case your first or second has already been chosen. Please be sure you've read the FAQ before claiming.

Click here to claim a story!

BBC Sherlock #15 Title: Children Of Light, Children Of Dark Pairing/Characters Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, John Watson/Mary Morstan, Irene Adler, Greg Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes/Anthea, Sally Donovan, OMCs, OFCs Rating: Teen Warnings/Tags: Mentioned animal abuse, character death Summary There are a series of murders going on that have a pattern, and Sherlock sees glimpses of it but can’t fathom it completely. But Molly realizes it’s reminiscent of an unsolved case her mentor had told her about, where the murders were based on a series of fantasy novels that Molly herself adores. Sherlock asks her to use her knowledge as a pathologist and a fan of the series to help him figure out both sets of murders, and in the process Molly gets quite a bit more than she bargained for. BBC Sherlock/Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D/Marvel Cinematic Universe #17 Title: Playing The Game: Act II – Knights & Knowledge, Romance & Regret Pairing/Characters Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, background Natasha Romanoff/Clint Barton, background Jemma Simmons/Leo Fitz, past Molly Hooper/Victoria Hand, Daisy Johnson, Antoine Tripp, Phil Coulson, Melinda May, Grant Ward Rating: Mature Warnings/Tags: Graphic Violence, mentioned past major character death Summary After tracking down Phil Coulson and his team, Molly and the others join him on their hunt for Grant Ward so that Molly can get retribution for Victoria’s death and Nat and Clint can further Fury’s assignment to help deal with all of the escapees from the Fridge. But as things get more complicated with the appearance of the Diviner and all the entails, Molly begins to wonder if she will ever get her end goal of Ward disappearing in a deep dark hole where no one can find him. BBC Sherlock/Midsomer Murders #18 Title: Every English Village Has Its Secrets Pairing/Characters Past/Pre-Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade; Tom Barnaby/Joyce Barnaby, Sally Donovan/OMC, Gavin Troy, OMCs, OFCs Rating: Teen Warnings/Tags: Character death (no major characters), murder Summary When Greg and Sally get called to Midsomer County for a case, right from the start Greg knows it will be a headache when Mycroft offers him lodging (so long as he's alright with his former lover being his housemate for his time there), and it doesn't get much better when he meets DCI Tom Barnaby and immediately their Detective Sergeants take an instant dislike to each other when Sally arrives the next evening. And that isn't even getting into the actual case itself and all the secrets hidden in the village of Elverton-cum-Latterley... 

Star Trek: Alternate Original Series/BBC Sherlock #60 Title: To Fight For The One You Love Pairing/Characters Khan Noonien Singh | John Harrison/Molly Hooper, OMCs, OFCs Rating: Mature Warnings/Tags: Graphic Violence Summary Something is peculiar about his flatmate, Molly Hooper. In a new world where nearly everyone has a superhuman ability of some sort, Molly seems...different. And she arrives home early in the morning all beat up to Hell. What is she doing? Khan is determined to find out.

[miaoqing]

this is a really good point! but, he still didn't even consider that there might be a deeper cause for airplane's "shitty writing" than greed - which is different than "selling out" so you can afford to live. so, at least part of his criticism came from a place of extreme privilege. i don't have the books on hand right now but does it say anywhere that SY liked *the writing*? wasn't he mostly into the worldbuilding (and binghe ofc)? idk both SY and airplane had their reasons but if i was a struggling writer and some rich asshole criticised my work that they are CHOOSING to read despite "hating" it i would be furious lol. like it would be one thing if PIDW was a published book that he paid for but idk hating on an online novel that was mostly (? correct me if i'm wrong) available for free kind of makes me think more of someone writing intense hatred about like... fanfiction. (yes i know that he paid for bonus chapters but iirc that was just a fraction of the entirety of PIDW)

but i guess that's where the whole "you can you up no can no bb" thing comes in i guess, getting put into pidw was the retribution he got for being such a hater lol.

bottom line: i think that the statements "SY's assumption that Airplane wrote shitty stories out of greed comes from a place of privilege" and "SY was frustrated because he knew Airplane had it in him to write something really good" can and should coexist! my original post was mainly me expressing my frustration not at SY himself but at people who write/joke about airplane being a shitty writer, blindly trusting SY's opinion; he lacks insight into airplane's life but we don't, and I think it's important to acknowledge that his writing suffered because of his circumstances, not because of laziness or lack of talent. i could have expressed myself better but i really didn't expect this to get so much attention D:

so many punchlines in this fandom boil down to "haha airplane shitty author" and i feel like it's important to remember that SQH was writing pure porn because it literally paid his rent and mister NEET third son of wealthy family-Shen Yuan actually had no business criticising him for it as harshly as he did, especially considering that, you know, nobody was forcing him to read PIDW. obviously SQH had no way of knowing that his little fictional world would come to life - he wrote tragic backstories because, again, it paid his rent. in the end SY literally got to marry his ultimate blorbo and still dares complain??

idk i'm just feeling emotional over airplane today :')

"It’s just that he really, truly loved this story he’d written." (airplane extras)

[spookyshake]

*proceeds to do exactly everything but work on my pets* H-have some faeries and lore dump I had rotting in the cabinet

[Light Faerie - Justine] A stern light faerie who manages Faerieland's treasury. Rules and regulations are her creed, and she will not allow any misdeed under her watch.

Despite her uptight demeanor, she has a peculiar fondness for games of chance. She seems to have an unwavering confidence in the certainty of numbers- and the dice, once cast, are fair and absolute arbitrators in her eyes. Of course, it could just be that she's addicted to gambling. When there's no clear protocol for a situation, she opts to flip coins and leave it to luck and happenstance.

-Fwaku's life was saved by Justine, who had happened to be passing by the area. She decided to flip a coin to determine his fate- and as luck would have it, he would survive. -The townspeople that had found Fwaku suggested that Justine should give the draik a name. The exchange probably went something like this: Townspeople: Thank you great faerie!! Would you give the honor of naming this child you just saved????? Justine: (uh shit) Give me a moment. *furious dice rolling* Justine: I grant this child the name...F..W...Q...Fwaku. Townspeople: WOW!! WHAT AN HONOR!!

(What kind of name is Fwaku......)

-While Fwaku is generally irreverent and unlikable to most parties he comes across, he displays a great deal of respect towards Faeries because of his background. Justine, in her act of saving and naming Fwaku, also unwittingly left him with a strange blessing: he has extremely good luck to the point of absurdity, which has saved his skin from karmic retribution countless times in the past.

---

[Fire Faerie - Heliae] A go-getter fire faerie with a particularly strong affinity to her element. Still young for a faerie, she has trouble controlling her excessive energy and often bursts into flames when she's excited.

Fun-loving but a bit careless, she loves to attend concerts, festivals, and other events where crowds gather...a serious fire hazard waiting to happen. She doesn't seem to fully grasp the danger she poses to those around her, and was originally sequestered away in Faerieland before she decided to run away- as you do, when you're a young faerie whose had your freedom denied.

Very explosive. very explosive. very explosive.................................

---

[Earth Faerie - Lottie] A lax but cryptic earth faerie who appreciates tranquility. She wandered into Kiko Lake some long time ago, and has since stuck around trying to achieve what she calls 'perfect bliss.' Generally found quietly meditating and contemplating her surroundings- usually with sweets and a cup of borovan as accompaniment. Her perception of time seems to be a little out of sync with the world around her.

Though usually impassive and calm, she hates above else having her peace and quiet disturbed. She will, with a quiet but tremendous fury, catapult raucous intruders out the window. Her longest recorded throw was over a mile! So impressive is her throwing skill, that kiko children often dare one another to see who can get flung the farthest.

-Because the architecture around Kiko Lake are built with kikos in mind, it's not uncommon to see the faerie bump her head on the door frames and ceilings. Fortunately, there's also never a shortage of bandages in the vicinity.

[Dover] Brown Kiko. Ever since Lottie began living on their family land generations back, their crops have prospered- especially asparagus. Now, the family is in the Borovan business, exporting premium blends of chocolate and asparagus for which Kiko Lake is now famed.

Dover isn't the kiko's real name- that was the name of his great great grandfather, but Lottie doesn't seem to make a distinction. All of her little helper kikos are 'Dover' to her. His job is to run around fulfilling Lottie's errands, whether that be procuring snacks or chasing pesky kids out of her yard.

---

[Dark Faerie - Alluce] A vain dark faerie living near Neovia, known to kidnap Neopets to force into servitude. She periodically terrorizes the citizens of Neovia to spread her influence. She wants, above all, to be feared and revered! ...but her actual ambitions tend to be quite small and petty. Knowledgeable about mirrors and magic involving them.

Though she revels in garnering fear, she's rather full of fears and cares herself- the thought of the true horrors lurking within the depths of the Haunted Woods makes her quiver. All smoke and mirrors, no bite.

-Doesn't get along well with Clariote. Alluce can't maintain her high-and-mighty mistress of evil theatrics against Clari's general irreverence. ABSOLUTELY D I S R E S P E C T F U L

---

[Air Faerie - Nephele] A fickle air faerie scout with a light-hearted but arrogant demeanor. One of the faeries tasked by Justine to recover Faerieland's lost artifacts, which were scattered across the lands in the aftermath of the Faerie's Ruin. Holds a strong belief that Neopets are lesser beings, considering them to be incompetent without Faeries.

Rand (Faerie Tonu) and  Bell's (Faerie Tuskaninny) supervisor. She usually leaves the Neopets to do all the dirty work and takes credit for their efforts, usually under the justification that Neopets 'owe' the Faeries anyways.

---

[Social Media Faerie - Papilla] A young faerie, rare in her time (Einse’s Future). Big-time celebrity and social media influencer, she loves travelling Neopia and blogging about her adventures (and promoting sponsored products.) Has a great love towards Neopets and lives life at her fullest interacting with them, but holds feelings of isolation due to being perhaps the last known faerie in Neopia. She’s invested in discovering why Faeries have all but disappeared in her time, and spends some of her time flitting across Neopia looking into the matter. She has a terrible sense of humor, and she sometimes has strange fits where she floods her social media with incomprehensible jokes and memes- terrorizing her followers’ feeds. She does all this in earnest, thinking her jokes are hilarious, but her fans generally think she’s just trolling and get a kick out of it. This creates a strange cycle of positive reinforcement as Papilla continues to get many reactions from her bad jokes, reinforcing her confidence in her humor. SOMEONE STOP THIS FAERIE

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

[The dynamic between Faeries and Neopets] Neopets aid Faeries, Faeries grant blessings. The dynamic between Neopets and Faeries is mutually beneficial, for the most part.

-Power of belief is essential to grant power to a Faerie's magic. Neopets, by helping Faeries on the premise that they will receive a reward or be granted a blessing, creates a transaction of belief. This is the premise of Faerie quests, which plays a vital role in powering the barrier that protects Neopia from wraiths (among other things.)

-Faeries are perhaps better defined as 'memetic' as opposed to 'elemental'- their magic is framed on a concept or idea, which relies on the belief/understanding/recognition of the themes surrounding the idea in question. The more wide-spread and strongly understood the idea, the greater the manifestation of a faerie's magic. (Motes, though simpler entities, also work on the same logic)

The basic elements, for example, are widely and easily understood as a concept- which may be why the majority of the faerie population falls in this category. (Something like a singular 'Fire' Faerie, for example, would probably be TOO POWERFUL AN IDEA to contain as a single being, so instead there's just a lot of them.)

-Names are very important, because they give shape to a concept or idea. -When they're cut-off from belief, they lose strength (Bottled Faeries) -They can shrink! Probably to conserve magic. -A Faerie without wings is essentially unheard of (with the special exception of Water Faeries). Taking away their wings is one of the most heinous things you can do to a Faerie. -Faeries are born spontaneously? Most of them just appear one day out of the ether or whatever. -They're ageless and nigh immortal

they're......the OG gijinkas <-- hold on this is actually somewhat relevant but that's a story for another time

[Shenkuu - A curious case study of Kaia, the Shenkuu Faerie] Kaia the Shenkuu Faerie appeared spontaneously in a relatively recent timeframe- probably within an average Neopian lifetime. She's a young faerie, younger than most of her kind. She's in the same category as Jhuidah and Taelia- faeries with a strong conceptual connection to the land they watch over.

There are no other (known) faeries in Shenkuu, which implies that the faerie population in Shenkuu is very low or...non-existent? At the very least, it can be said that Faeries are novel in Shenkuu, given that Kaia mentions how everyone stares at her. If we go a step further, we could postulate that Faeries, as a concept, isn't a part of common knowledge in Shenkuu as a whole.

Almost as if the concept of 'Faeries' have never existed here...?

-Shenkuu was a land that had barred itself from the outside world for an undetermined amount of time. The land only recently opened their doors to the rest of Neopia (Cyodrake's Gaze) (*in my lore I'm pinning that down to like 10~15 yrs ago for character reasons but passage of time in Neopia is not very well defined so.... shrugs) -It can be assumed that there was still some exchange occurring with the outside at a smaller scale (Airship merchants, travellers who ended up in or out of Shenkuu by happenstance, Neopians living in areas close to but not quite in Shenkuu proper, etc) -Assumably, Shenkuu has a history perhaps dating back to the heyday of Altador and other 'ancient' civilizations (1000+ years) -This creates a situation where: a. There never were faeries to begin with in Shenkuu or b. There used to be faeries, but they disappeared from Shenkuu AND from common knowledge

-Kaia's manifestation may have been the direct result of the opening of Shenkuu to Neopia- with the arrival of outside trade and ideas, so too did the knowledge of Faeries. Once the faerie 'meme' took hold in Shenkuu, where there was a void of Faeries, it took form as the Shenkuu Faerie: Kaia. This is why she's so young as a faerie- she probably spawned sometime between Cyodrake's Gaze and the present day. (Alternatively, she might have existed in Shenkuu before the events of Cyodrake's Gaze but I think it still holds that she popped up in a pretty recent timeframe.) Kaia herself only seems to know Faeries through the knowledge she received from travelers.  

[iaintyourbro]

I noticed something that sort of ticks me off in Case of Tifa. After Cloud does a delivery for Elmyra to take a bouquet to Aerith's grave he starts staying away from Tifa and Marlene. But then after he finds Denzel and says that Aerith brought Denzel to him and decides to let him live with them and save him from geostigma, Cloud starts being back at home more often again. Did Cloud really start spending more time at home again just b/c of Aerith, and decided to save Denzel just b/c of her?

Hey anon.

The AC/CoT stuff seems to be a popular topic recently. I think it’s good that people are watching ACC and reading the novels since I think it’ll be important to understand both as Remake moves along. They’re pulling all pieces of the compilation into Remake, and the novels are no exception, since Leslie, Marle, and Kyrie have already made appearances. 

The delivery to the Forgotten City caused a old wound to be ripped open. The point of ACC is to show Cloud’s guilt for letting (in his mind) Aerith die. They also tie in Zack since he also feels immense guilt and sadness over that. In CoT they only really say that Cloud does feel guilty because he feels like he couldn’t protect Aerith and prevent her from dying. I don’t think that’s romantic - he was supposed to be her bodyguard and we know from Cloud’s history that he takes these things very seriously. He failed at preventing her from being killed, so he lives with that guilt.

Tifa also has a lot of guilt surrounding Aerith’s death and the Sector 7 plate collapse. They mention her guilt a ton of times, and I find it interesting that it’s not something that’s talked about often online. It’s always about Cloud’s guilt.

Here’s something an anon wrote in that I think is a great summary:

Anon Ask/Statement on Cloud’s Guilt

Tifa’s first time at the Forgotten City, which is shortly after the first defeat of Sephiroth, causes her to break down. The one thing that’s interesting in CoT is Tifa’s guilt slams her almost immediately, while Cloud is the one who seems to be holding it together to support her. 

We see that he’s willing to try and help her be strong. At this point, I’m not sure if he’s fully aware of the amount of guilt that’s settling within him. The point where it really seems to slam him is after he does the delivery for Elmyra. He has PTSD associated with the Forgotten City. I would assume anybody would. I would whether I knew a person closely or not if I saw them murdered in front of me. Especially if I attempted to kill them myself right before. 

Cloud also just generally has PTSD from everything else that’s happened to him. He lost his mother violently, his hometown was burned down, he watched the girl he’s in love with almost die, he was experimented on for four years and then ultimately watched his best friend die in front of him. He’s got a lot of shit going on and now add a reminder of ANOTHER incident in his life, he’s going to spiral.

Cloud also has a tendency to close in on himself. He doesn’t want to be a burden and he’s scared of hurting those he loves. It’s very possible that during this point, he didn’t want to worry Tifa anymore than she already was. So he begins to avoid them. Tifa also is non-confrontational at this point so isn’t going to push him. 

For the Denzel piece: Cloud sees Denzel as a way to repent for his sins of letting Aerith and Zack die. He says Aerith sent Denzel to him not in a romantic sense, but (in his mind) as a way to be forgiven. 

Now, we know Aerith doesn’t blame Cloud for her death. She tells us that in AC. This is all in Cloud’s mind that he’s a failure and he causes all these issues. He’s very selfless, but ends up seeming selfish because he really does pretty much self implode.

It’s not the first time he does this, either. When Tifa falls from Mt. Nibel - he blames himself. He goes through this time when he just becomes and asshole and beats people up. This is the event that causes him to decide to become a SOLDIER. He wants to win Tifa over.

He never tells anybody why he wanted to join SOLDIER. They show that during the Lifestream when Tifa asks him why. It was a sudden decision to everyone around him. Most likely not to Cloud - because Cloud was in his head coming up with all of this stuff. Ultimately, he wanted Tifa to notice him. He wanted to win her over and prove he could protect her. That was his driving force behind joining SOLDIER. 

So now we’ve covered this is just the way Cloud is. In Tifa’s case, he already had a crush on her, so that just grew from there into this deep desire to win her over. In Aerith’s case he didn’t have as strong of a connection to her - he didn’t know her as long - and he was “contracted” to be her bodyguard. He takes these things seriously. 

Cloud and Tifa take Denzel in and Cloud becomes obsessed with finding a cure for Geostigma. We see the books and papers on his desk in Advent Children - so we know this is something he was really looking in to. I relate - I did the same thing when my dad had cancer. You can get into these moods and forget about everything else. Usually somebody has to try and slam you out of it, but it’s hard. 

Tifa also sees Denzel as a way to retribution. She has a lot of guilt over what she did with Avalanche and the Sector 7 plate collapse. Denzel lost his parents in the Sector 7 plate collapse. 

Here is the conversation the two of them have that I think people take out of context. Cloud didn’t say Aerith brought Denzel to him for romantic reasons. He sees it as another chance to save a life. He tells us this - directly. Tifa feels the same was, as we see in the earlier excerpt. If anything, Aerith knew both Tifa and Cloud needed some help here with their inner turmoil. 

On top of it, Tifa feels that Denzel’s arrival strengthened their family. I would think if this was an old flame thing happening, she may feel a bit differently. Cloud decided to cut back to spend more time with the children. This has nothing to do with Aerith. It is also mentioned on a previous page that the bar was starting to lose business because people started realizing a kid with Geostigma lived there. Cloud, Tifa, and Marlene never mention this to Denzel, and instead, they continue to embrace him as part of their family. 

Honestly it’s pretty warm and fuzzy - even though all the darkness in this chapter - Tifa and Cloud are pretty good parents, especially since they’re young and it was kind of thrown on them. Also, it wouldn’t really be nice if Cloud was like “hey I’m dropping another kid off for you to deal with while you’re working the bar and all.”

As for the very last paragraph: We find out later that Cloud ends up with Geostigma and that’s why he left. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back sort of thing. Not only was he failing at saving Denzel, but he also now had what he knew to be a terminal illness in many cases. He now feels he can’t do anything and he runs. He tells us this in AC. 

I don’t think Tifa imagined the promise - because things ultimately end up being okay. Cloud just really thought he was going to die and was going to fail her - being dead means he can’t fulfill his promise to her. 

Here’s an excerpt from Case of Denzel. He mentions Tifa, Cloud, and Marlene. Not just Cloud. He sees them all as his family. He also mentions all of the folks along the way. The bulk of Case of Denzel is him getting to the point of being found at the church. It’s not just about his time with Cloud and Tifa - it’s Denzel’s journey. Johnny is in this one a lot. 

Ultimately, I do have issues with the way Advent Children was handled outside of Japan. Without the novels, it does seem like Cloud is just a depressed mess. You don’t really know why he’s a mess. You know he has Geostigma and you know he feels guilty. Some people took it as him pining for Aerith. Watching ACC and reading the novels, I didn’t get that at all. Many people became Cloti fans because of Advent Children. They were acting like a married couple going through a rough patch. 

They really do only mention his guilt in the novels and his issues with not being able to protect her. We do not have an official “Case of Cloud” so really can only go based on what the other characters are seeing with him and what he’s told them. As I’ve said in previous posts, there’s not canon evidence that his feelings were romantic - especially post Lifestream. 

The novels were released AFTER Advent Children in the US and I don’t think it was very well known. Most of the people I’ve talked to that are casual fans never saw Advent Children as romantic for him and Aerith. Especially since Zack was around. The ending alone makes people laugh when they find out they think Cloud and Aerith had any romance - he calls her “Mom” - her boyfriend is there with her and they’re acting like foster parents. 

I think with Remake, they’ll make things a bit more clear. I think ACC does a good job of making the guilt feel a bit more broad between Aerith and Zack. I wish it would have covered a bit more about Tifa’s guilt like Case of Tifa does, and maybe it would seem less romantic, since they seem to be having the same inner turmoil.

I think if people fully played OG, played Crisis Core, read the novels, and then watched ACC, they’d realize this all comes together pretty clearly. Dirge of Cerberus doesn’t show too much of he full original gang, but you do get to see a much happier Cloud and Tifa in it. The phone conversation is cute and hilarious - especially since since Barret is being ridiculous and Tifa yells at him.

Aerith and Zack are a thing. Cloud and Tifa are a thing. Cloud and Tifa have some serious problems with dealing with what goes on in their heads and it’s resolved by the end of Advent Children. Zack and Aerith give him that look at the end like “Alright, everything should be good now. Don’t disappoint us!” 

I also really do not think Cloud is going to pine after his best friend’s girl. Cloud isn’t a douchebag. He’s a nice guy. He respects people. Zack was his one and only best friend. Zack saved his life. I really think if people would remember to pull Zack into these conversations, they’d realize that it’s ridiculous to think that Cloud was after his dead best friend’s dead girlfriend. 

Additional Reading:

Advent Children Anon Ask  (About Romance)

Cloud and Tifa Ask - Advent Children

Why Zack is Important to Cloud

The Future of the LTD (This has a links to other blogs as well - so there is a variety of opinions here, including from a CA multishipper)

Case of Tifa and the Kids are Alright

[aion-rsa]

The Cinematic Legacy of Lupin: Arsène Lupin’s Live-Action Filmography

https://ift.tt/2ToNPSY

When Netflix premiered the first season of Lupin last January, 70 million sheltered-in-place households ravenously binged it, making the series the most-watched non-English show for its premiere month on the streamer so far. Lupin steals a page from French literature. The hero of Lupin, Assane Diop (Omar Sy) is inspired by France’s iconic ‘Gentleman Thief’ Arsène Lupin, a fictional figure created by French writer Maurice Leblanc in 1905. 

Lupin was the subject of some two dozen books by Leblanc, who continued adding into his literary franchise until well into the 1930s. Akin to Robin Hood, Lupin stole from the rich, and often did good deeds despite his thieving capers. He was a master of deception and disguise, a lady killer who always operated with a classy panache. With a legacy spanning more than a century, there have been plenty of live-action depictions in film and TV.

The First Lupin Films are Over a Hundred Years Old

The earliest cinematic portrayals of Lupin were in black and white, and many have been lost. One of the very first was a U.S. production, a short film titled The Gentleman Burglar in 1908. William Ranows, a veteran of over sixty films, played Lupin. It was directed by one of the first film directors ever, Edwin Porter, who worked for Edison. 

Leblanc was a contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Consequently, Holmes appears in a few Lupin stories. Doyle took legal action against Leblanc, forcing the name change in Lupin stories to the thinly disguised ‘Herlock Sholmes.’ As Holmes is loved by the British, Lupin is cherished by the French, and both characters became global icons. Consequently, among the many film and TV adaptations, several that depicted their rivalry regardless of copyright issues. In 1910, a German film serial titled Arsène Lupin contra Sherlock Holmes starred Paul Otto as Lupin and Viggo Larsen as Holmes (Larsen also served as director.) There were allegedly five installments in the series, but they’ve all been lost. 

France produced Arsène Lupin contre Ganimard in 1914 with Georges Tréville as Lupin (Inspector Ganimard was constantly on Lupin’s trail). The silent film Arsène Lupin came out of Britain in 1916 with Gerald Ames in the titular role, followed by more U.S. productions: Arsène Lupin (1917) starring Earle Williams, The Teeth of the Tiger (1919) with David Powell, which is also lost, and 813 starring Wedgwood Nowell. 813 was the title of Leblanc’s fourth Lupin book. 

Lupin and the Barrymore Clan of Actors

The legendary thespian John Barrymore played Lupin in 1932’s Arsène Lupin. He took on the role under one of Lupin’s aliases, the Duke of Charmerace. His brother, Lionel Barrymore, played another Lupin nemesis, Detective Guerchard. Given the illustrious cast, this is a standout Lupin film, although there isn’t a shred of Frenchness in Barrymore’s interpretation. Coincidentally, John Barrymore also played Holmes in Sherlock Holmes a decade earlier. He is also the grandfather of Drew Barrymore. 

Barrymore’s Arsène Lupin revolved around the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Historically, the Da Vinci masterpiece was stolen in 1911 and recovered in 1913. This inspired a Lupin short story, a parody akin to early fanfiction that was not written by Leblanc. In 1912, mystery writer Carolyn Wells published The Adventure Of The Mona Lisa which imagined Holmes and Lupin to be part of the International Society of Infallible Detectives alongside A. J. Raffles, Monsieur Lecoq, and other crime-solving luminaries. Barrymore’s Arsène Lupin does not retell this tale, but the theft of the Mona Lisa comes up again in other Lupin films because it’s France so robbing the Louvre is a common plot point. Netflix’s Lupin begins with Diop’s heist of the Queen’s necklace from the Louvre, an Easter egg referring to Leblanc’s original Lupin short story, ‘The Queen’s Necklace’ published in 1906.

The ‘30s delivered two more Lupin films. The French-made Arsène Lupin detective (1937) starred Jules Berry as Lupin and the American-made Arsène Lupin Returns (1938) with Melvyn Douglas who was credited under another Lupin alias Rene Farrand (Lupin has a lot of aliases). Despite being a completely different production, Douglas’ film was an attempt to capitalize on the success of Barrymore’s film as both films were from MGM. Universal Studios entered the fray soon after with their version Enter Arsène Lupin (1944) starring Charles Korvin. The following year, the Mexican-made Arsenio Lupin (1945) featured Ramón Pereda as the French thief. That film also starred José Baviera as Sherlock. 

The Early Japanese Lupin Adaptations

Lupin captured the hearts of the Japanese. Ironically, Japanese speakers have a difficult time pronouncing ‘L’s so Lupin is usually renamed as ‘Rupan’ or ‘Wolf’ (Lupine means wolf-like – remember Remus Lupin from Harry Potter). As early as 1923, Japan also delivered a silent version of 813, retitled Hachi Ichi San, starring Komei Minami as the renamed Lupin character of Akira Naruse. 

In the ‘50s, Japan produced 3 films that credit Leblanc: Nanatsu-no Houseki (1950) with Keiji Sada, Tora no-Kiba (1951) with Ken Uehara, and Kao-no Nai Otoko (1955) with Eiji Okada. However, post-WWII Japan has obscured most of the details on these films. Like Hachi Ichi San, these Japanese versions laid the foundations for the Lupin III, which debuted as a manga in 1967 and spawned a major manga and anime franchise. In karmic retribution for Leblanc poaching Sherlock, Japan stole Lupin. Lupin III was Arsène Lupin’s grandson. 

Notably, the second Lupin III feature film, The Castle of Cagliostro, marked the directorial debut of famed animator Hayao Miyazaki and is considered a groundbreaking classic that inspired Pixar and Disney (Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective (1986) pilfered the finale clockwork fight from The Castle of Cagliostro). In the wake of the anime Lupin III Part I (1971), Japan produced some anime films that were more loyal to Leblanc, notably Kaitō Lupin: 813 no Nazo (1979) and Lupin tai Holmes (1981). However, this article is focused upon live-action adaptations. Lupin III is another topic entirely. 

In the late ‘50s and into the ‘70s, France reclaimed her celebrated son. Robert Lamoureux became Lupin for two films, Les aventures d’Arsène Lupin (1957) and Signé Arsène Lupin (1959). A comedy version pitted rival sons of Lupin against each other in Arsène Lupin contre Arsène Lupin (1962). Playing the Lupin brothers were Jean-Pierre Cassel and Jean-Claude Brialy. 

Lupin on the Small Screen

Read more

TV

From Lupin III to Inspector Gadget: Examining the Heirs of Arsène Lupin

By Natalie Zutter

France also delivered several TV series. Arsène Lupin ran from 1971 to 1974 and starred Georges Descrières. It encompassed 26 60-minute episodes. L’Île aux trente cercueils (1979) is often included in Lupin filmographies because it is based on a Leblanc novel published in 1919 in which Lupin makes a guest appearance. However, he was omitted from this six-episode miniseries, so it doesn’t quite count. Arsène Lupin joue et perd (1980) was another six-episode miniseries loosely based on ‘813’ with Jean-Claude Brialy from the 1962 comedy. 

One more French TV show, Le Retour d’Arsène Lupin, was televised in two seasons, 1989-1990 and 1995-1996. These were 90-minute episodes with 12 in season 1 and eight in season 2. François Dunoyer starred as Lupin.

And in 2007, the largest Lupin TV show ran for a whopping 96 episodes plus one special. Lupin was made in the Philippines no less, starring Richard Gutierrez as André Lupin

Lupin in the Last Decade 

In 2011, Japan delivered one more live-action film Lupin no Kiganjo starring Kōichi Yamadera. Based on Leblanc’s 3rd Lupin book, L’aiguille Creuse, the film is reset in modern Japan.

In the strangest permutation of Japanese Lupins, Daughter of Lupin was a TV series that is an odd hybrid of Lupin III and Leblanc’s work. A campy sitcom in the tradition of Romeo and Juliet, Hana (Kyoko Fukada) comes from a family of thieves known as the L clan who are inspired by Lupin. Her lover, Kazuma (Koji Seto), is from a family of cops. When in thief mode, Hana wears a carnival mask and a velvet catsuit. It’s goofy, sort of a live action version of anime. It ran for two seasons in 2019 and 2020.

The Lupin Adaptation You Should See 

The strongest modern adaptation of Leblanc’s iconic burglar is the period film Arsène Lupin (2004). It’s an actioner, a creation story for Lupin, starting from his childhood and moving rapidly to him becoming a master gentleman thief. Romain Duris plays the titular role, and the film is in French. Backing Duris are veteran actresses Kristin Scott Thomas as Comtesse de Cagliostro and Eva Green as Clarisse de Dreux-Soubise. The story is absurd, like a mash-up between a superhero film and the DaVinci code, and it gets a bit muddled in the telling. However, it’s shot on location (including the Louvre) and encapsulates the spirit of Leblanc’s character in an updated fashion. It’s a perfect primer for Lupin Season 2.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Lupin seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream on Netflix now.

The post The Cinematic Legacy of Lupin: Arsène Lupin’s Live-Action Filmography appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2U0px1N

[zykamiliah]

bingge is obsessed with original sqq because he's the parental figured that SHOULD have treated him kindly, seeing as him personally CHOOSE binghe to be his disciple, but instead of that all bingge got was physical and emotional abuse, for the better part of his late childhood. he did to binghe the same thing qjl did to him. it's the cycle of abuse, it's about who is "better" or who is "worse", who deserved what or whatever. it's not a moral context. svsss it's NOT about that. the """Moral"" of the story is about how upbringing, kindness, suffering etc can shape people, how by hurting others we eventually hurt ourselves, because eventually there will be some form of karmic retribution

sj's suffering doesn't invalidates bingge's suffering. i wish people would understand this

the cycle of abuse is about how the abuse multiplies and gets worse in each iteration. qjl abused a sj. sj abused a whole peak of children. bingge terrorized the whole human realm.

also, pidw is not a "sex-pollen" land. that's fanon. the thing about pidw is that there was gratuitous smut thanks to lbh's pillar being a magical cure-it-all thing, and that later on bingge will use dual cultivation to stabilize his cultivation. the sex-pollen stuff is fanon having fun. sy fully acknowledges that bingge raped women, so it's not as if he's blind to it.

in fact, he's very much aware of how awful bingge is. that's why he spends the better part of book 2 afraid of him. it's not until after the punishment protocol, when he meets the real Bingge, when he realizes that bingmei and bingge are different.

The absence of a reveal leaves me with a bunch of questions. If there were one, everything would click into place, and we'd be confident that Luo Binghe fell for Shen Yuan, the individual. However, since that revelation is MIA, it does open the door to the possibility that his affection might hinge on the the false identity of the transmigrator not being revealed . The ambiguity introduces an element of fascination – is it genuine affection, or is Shen Yuan's need to keep his transmigrator identity under wraps from Luo Binghe, purportedly for the world's survival, a dubious twist in the tale?

tell me you haven't read the extras without telling me you haven't read the extras

-lbh fell for sy!sqq, bc by the time of the demon invasion EVERYONE AT CQM, thought that sqq was either possessed (which was later disproved) or that he'd lost his memories. his sj!sqq "act" wasn't good! specially after he broke the OOC lock. he's not "hiding" behind sj!sqq's identity; he's his own version of sqq.

i agree that a reveal would be nice, but just so lbh understands that sy wasn't the same man that abused him.

-lbh does not have affection for sj!sqq. as proved by pidw. he was a perverse and unhealthy obsession with the man that abused him, and wants to make him suffer for that, he wants sj to suffer at his hands, under his power, the same way sj made him suffer. and it's an obsession bc as i said, sj is the failed parental figure that should have loved him and didn't.

-"is it genuine affection" yes it's genuine, please read the extras. they love each other. don't be fooled by sy's unreliable narration. he's not with binghe to "survive" or protect the world, he choose to be with lbh. that's pretty much clear in the novel finale, where sqq goes after binghe and tells him that they should leave together. if sy!sqq choose to stay in cqm, binghe would have let him, because he actually learns what consent is.

I ain't gonna act like what original Luo Binghe went through under Shen jiu wasn't horrible because it was but like shit I feel like original Luo Binghe was obsessed with the OG tbh because that level of torture is heinous. I don't get how some be like Shen jiu got what's coming like yeah what he did was bad but shit he didn't deserve to the extent of torture that he suffered under and did especially after learning some things were debunked. Like if it were an eye for an eye thing sure but nah he went over to the point my man just became a human stick. Everyone in PIDIW weren't good people they were bad it's just my guy had that strong villain halo on him going strong.

Shen jiu wasn't a good person he was a kid when a man QJL cruelty permanently altered his life and worked under someone called Wu yanzi under a promise to get stronger only for that to result for SJ to become a willing accomplice to his crimes and took advantage of him and encouraged him for violence and murder. That whole debacle of him going to the brothel to sleep around and being a lecher is just one big fat lie.  I think NYY reminded him quite a bit of Qiu Haitang, who he obviously cared for a great deal it's so fucking sad that every good deed he does like trying to save Liu qingge just backfires and were only further used to condemn him.

What's even sadder is that he climbed the cultivation ladder to peak lord status, only for someone to hijack his body at the pinnacle of his achievements. And the cherry on top? Nobody cares about his past memories on how to get them back . It's a combo of fears – rising to glory only to have it snatched away, and the deafening silence around his struggles. We don't really know what happen to him in the end sadly.

Luo Binghe's actions were not just bad; they were significantly worse especially his treatment of women. I'm not gonna ignore the fact that in PIDIW i'm sure he developed a fucked up mentality when it comes to consent because he virtually lives in a sex-pollen world where that must seem so normalized to him being a stallion protagonist and how much sex sceniories and dub-con is enforced with him in it.

I personally think Bing-mei retains the manipulative traits of OG Bingge, with the key distinction that Bingge manifests when feeling wronged and unloved, yet their underlying morals remain quite similar. Despite the potential backlash, I've always pondered why the revelation never occurred in SVSS, possibly tied to the imperative concealment of Shen Yuan's identity. It's intriguing that Bingge receives validation; NYY was always kind to him. However, Shen Jiu's approval holds greater significance. Bingge's fixation on Shen Yuan to me was always essentially an obsession with Shen Jiu.

The absence of a reveal leaves me with a bunch of questions. If there were one, everything would click into place, and we'd be confident that Luo Binghe fell for Shen Yuan, the individual. However, since that revelation is MIA, it does open the door to the possibility that his affection might hinge on the the false identity of the transmigrator not being revealed . The ambiguity introduces an element of fascination – is it genuine affection, or is Shen Yuan's need to keep his transmigrator identity under wraps from Luo Binghe, purportedly for the world's survival, a dubious twist in the tale?