#(i just think it’s an interesting choice considering how these r not the only instances of queercoding but the biggest that come to mind) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cto10121 · 3 years

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Does R&J Play With Gender Stereotypes?

So I came across this piece of meta by @hamliet that rather intrigued me:

There’s also another layer here: the imagery Romeo uses for Juliet (the sun) and that Juliet uses for Romeo (the moon) is the inverse of how imagery was typically presented in those days. The moon was feminine; the sun, masculine. Even if we look at Romeo and Juliet’s respective character traits, Romeo is the flighty, impulsive, love-struck one who cries all the time, while Juliet is the decisive, bold, and loyal one. That’s the first thing Juliet declares to Romeo in the balcony scene: that she will always be loyal, and she shows this in every choice she makes in the story.

Let’s break this down.

“the imagery Romeo uses for Juliet (the sun) and that Juliet uses for Romeo (the moon) is the inverse of how imagery was typically presented in those days. The moon was feminine; the sun, masculine.”

Romeo does indeed call Juliet the sun, but Juliet never calls Romeo the moon—or likens him with anything symbolically feminine, come to think of it. The closest she or the play gets is a small but clear association with night: Romeo has “night’s cloak to hide me from their eyes” and Juliet implores “loving, black-browed” night to give her her Romeo. Even then it is so that he can “make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night / And pay no worship to the garish sun.”

Instead, Juliet consistently uses the same love language of authority as Romeo does with her, calling him her lord, husband, knight, “day-in-night,” “mansion of a love,” “god of my idolatry,” and, (my particular favorite), “tassel-gentle” or “falcon.” “Pilgrim” is the lowest social rank she uses, but of course she is following Romeo’s pilgrim-and-saints flirtation and its wink-wink bilingual allusion to his name. Romeo’s use of “sun,” then, could be viewed in the context of both lovers conferring cosmic/earthly authority, beauty, ownership, and sovereignty to each other—the Elizabethan equivalent of calling each other wife/husband. And of course they begin doing that immediately after they marry.

Even if we look at Romeo and Juliet’s respective character traits, Romeo is the flighty, impulsive, love-struck one who cries all the time, while Juliet is the decisive, bold, and loyal one.

Definitely not. Romeo is plenty decisive and bold—making the first move in wooing Juliet, climbing the orchard wall, showing himself to Juliet, immediately agreeing to marry her, nearly killing himself when he thinks Juliet might not take him back and, er, actually killing himself for her. I wouldn’t say he is impulsive, either—though he makes decisions fairly quickly, it is almost always with some deliberation beforehand (“Can I go forward when my heart is here?” “Shall I hear more or shall I speak at this?” and his monologue after Mercutio’s exit) and of course there are instances in which he restrains himself (“I am too bold” and his monologue after Mercutio’s death). The most accurate description of Romeo is that he is a risk taker—at least when he is well and truly motivated. And even then it does not rob his deliberation or even his wits.

He is also not flighty. In fact, he proves just as loyal as Juliet—as soon as he meets her, he forgets about Rosaline and leaves her clear behind. He doesn’t once waver in his conviction that Juliet is for him and makes plans to die with her (and does!). His love for Rosaline is clearly framed by the narrative as shallow, performative, and passive, and the verse bears this out. He was never in any kind of relationship with Rosaline—his love was an unrequited crush that he was at perfectly liberty to have ditched, frankly. After that, it’s Juliet, Juliet, Juliet until he dies.

Also, once more, Romeo is no crybaby. He explicitly cries a total of two times—one even before the events of the play, when he pines over Rosaline under a grove of sycamore, and another when he’s 1) seen Mercutio get mortally wounded, 2) killed Tybalt, 3) learned that he is banished from the city, and 4) mistakenly believed that Juliet no longer wants him (the Nurse’s reply is vague enough to be misinterpreted); at the very least he is devastated to have been the cause of her pain. Anyone would break down in those circumstances. Juliet herself breaks down on hearing the news and arguably is more verbally vehement than Romeo—namely, that even the words “Romeo is banishèd” are worse than if herself, Romeo, her parents, and Tybalt were dead. She ends that monologue with a passive suicide threat: “And Death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!” How anyone can argue Juliet isn’t as lovestruck as Romeo is beyond me.

What Shakespeare was most likely aiming for was showing the mutuality of R&J’s love with parallel scenes and even language. Both have chances to act strong, decisive, and bold, both show vulnerability and great emotion and passion, both are lovestruck. Both demonstrate so-called “masculine” and “feminine” traits, which is almost always culturally-and time-based, anyway. There are only a few key differences between the two—almost all of the above traits, however, they both share. It’s almost as if…Shakespeare understood that no man or woman had all masculine or all feminine traits.

Moving on to the conclusion:

In other words, Shakespeare was deliberately playing with gender and its stereotypes in the play, which gains an even more interesting layer to it when you consider that Shakespeare was himself almost certainly bisexual (his sonnets are preeeetty explicit). It’s not a patriarchal narrative; it can well be seen as a queer narrative in a patriarchal society. And it shouldn’t take two kids having to kill themselves to get society to realize how effed up it is. It isn’t an out-of-touch play, but instead one extremely relevant to our society 500+ years later.

You just opened up 200+ years of fandom wank, OP. I’ll just do a quick sum-up.

The Sonnets are a complete mess. They are contradictory as hell, there is clearly more than one persona speaking, there is evidence that Shakespeare edited and revised them, evidence they were published with his permission, quite a few sonnets are based on pre-existing sources, and, most damnably of all, none of the most likely candidates for the so-called Fair Youth and Dark Lady fit the narrative of the Sonnets perfectly or even satisfactorily—if there is even a clear narrative to these things to begin with. Sonnets were artificial works whose clichés and conventions were heavily satirized in Shakespeare’s own works—Berowne’s own rant-y sonnet swearing he would never believe in love sonnets comes most readily to mind. They were usually not meant to denote an actual real-life relationship, although there was a kind of “game” in trying to figure out which parts are true and which ones fiction. At least one sonnet sequence had a completely fictional addressee (Fulke Greville, I think).

Shakespeare’s sonnets do break a lot of these rules and conventions, and radically, and as they seem to have been compiled over many years, they lend themselves to autobiographical speculation. But, as a bit of a poet myself, I feel this: No one writes 154 sonnets—plus a whole narrative poem!—to one lover or even multiple lovers. Poetry is much less personal than laypeople think. Outside the sonnets, Shakespeare is not linked to any man romantically, and, besides his wife, only to two women (unnamed citizen’s wife and Jane Devanant).

Even if we assume Shakespeare’s bi, though, that doesn’t mean R&J is a queer narrative, which brings us to…

It’s not a patriarchal narrative; it can well be seen as a queer narrative in a patriarchal society.

A queer narrative that has its lovers express their love through the language of heterosexual marriage (husband, lord, wife, lady, pilgrim/saint), and commit suicide by a chalice-and-blade symbolism that mimics heterosexual sex (Romeo drinking a “cup” of poison and Juliet stabbing herself with Romeo’s dagger. Freud couldn’t have done it better). If Shakespeare was thinking “gay allegory!!!” he would have had to at least change or erase the symbolism (straight coding?) of the double suicide, or have Juliet attribute to Romeo explicitly feminine imagery. He would have to have done some major plot rejiggering. He would have had to, in short, change the whole story.

(Unless by “queer narrative” you mean “anything that has an emotionally constipated male lead who doesn’t growl sexily and a female lead who doesn’t cry/faint at the drop of a hat.” That’d be most every narrative, lol.)

Also, I’m hard-pressed to think of love romances that are 100% patriarchal narratives, and those that do (Casablanca, maybe?) are not really true ones, anyway. Patriarchy inherently opposes all romances of love and sex, including heterosexual. It demands that men be raised as soldiers to kill enemies, slaughtered, and discarded, and women as chattel and land to be bought and sold. Marriage was that transferral of property. Having children is necessary, not out of love and care for them, but to propagate the species and create even more future warriors and womb incubators. It grudgingly accepts only (mostly straight and like maybe 1 or 2 gay) love narratives that can be subsumed into this narrow paradigm, but the tension of interpretation is always present. Ideally, it prefers to ignore, diminish, scorn and mock, or even suppress them. I suspect most people’s problems and discomfort with R&J stem from this pathology, this deep-seated unease over anything that touches on human experience patriarchy can’t quite control or subsume.

Shakespeare was obviously no lover of patriarchy (in his personal life, though…well, it’s debatable). His plays resist it greatly to various degrees, and R&J is no exception. R&J hews much closer to the reality of heterosexual love and love in general, which are informed by, though are not inherently tied to, patriarchy (as are gay relationships, sadly). Shakespeare is just being a good writer in throwing most of that rotten apple away; it doesn’t apply to what he was trying to do, anyway. R&J’s challenge to patriarchy, though, is heterosexual in nature.

And it shouldn’t take two kids having to kill themselves to get society to realize how effed up it is. It isn’t an out-of-touch play, but instead one extremely relevant to our society 500+ years later.

True dat.

#romeo and juliet #shakespeare #cristina metas #rj meta #r&j meta #rj are just so boyxgirl op #accept it and you will find peace #repressive traditional gender roles are back in fashion it seems #the victorians couldn’t accept romeo as a man either and had him be played by an actress #but if we’re going to take our notions of gender from the victorians of all people well…

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ilguna · 3 years

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Redamancy - Chapter One (f.o)

summary: it’s time to forgive and repair.

warnings; swearing, mention of trauma

wc; 8.4k

NOTES; I give reader a last name to fit the world.

–

Well, it’s been five years since you won the Hunger Games.

What an anniversary.

It honestly feels like you won them yesterday. You can recall all your memories as if it hasn’t been years since you stepped foot inside of the arena. Which is no doubt a bad thing. Before you’d ended your therapy a while ago, the therapist told you that you’re holding onto trauma. It’s not going to go away overnight. In fact, they wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t go away at all.

Which Reed didn’t like to hear at all, of course. The whole reason he’d gotten you into therapy was to work at you getting better. Unfortunately, neither of you would be reaching that goal. Not with how demanding the boarding school would get as the years would come on.

At first, you thought that everything you’d written down at the very beginning would be enough to suffice. However, the more you think about everything that you’d been through, the more that the details become clearer. Suddenly you’re remembering things that hadn’t existed in the first place.

Reed and Mox hate this habit of yours. They thought you would have buried and left it behind by now. But it’s impossible to do. You’re responsible for hundreds of kids and teenagers. The more you remember at this point, the more they’re able to learn from your mistakes and fix it themselves.

With every passing year, and bringing home a new pair of coffins, you can’t focus on yourself anymore. You think that every year is going to be different and new, that the tributes going in that year are a pair of winners for sure. But then you’re stunned right back into embarrassed silence.

District Four is being forgotten. Once again, you’re questioning why it was ever considered a career in the first place. You can’t produce victors, no matter how hard you try.

It’s frustrating, and almost not worth your time anymore.

Anchor thinks that he’s fixed the problem, though. The both of you know better than anyone that the training centers in the career districts typically train their tributes for years. There’s a reason why their volunteers are seventeen and eighteen, rarely ever sixteen. It’s because they’ve spent years training to be where they are, and they’re sure that they’ll win.

So, you switched up the rules this year. No one under the age of seventeen that goes to the boarding school is allowed to volunteer to go into the Hunger Games. If you’re chosen by chance and want to go in, that’s their deal. The only instance where it’ll be ruined is if someone else volunteers over them. If anyone over seventeen wants to go in, that’s their choice to make. Not the boarding school.

Of course, there’s no guarantee what will happen because of this. You’ve been getting at least one volunteer a year since the boarding school opened. But they’ve always been on the younger side, and have only been in the program for a year or so. They could win, but they’re not nearly as knowledgeable as the teens that have been in the program for years.

They’ve been able to watch and observe the mistakes of others. You think that if one of the seventeen or eighteen year olds that signed up when they were twelve or thirteen were to volunteer, they’d blow the competition out of the water. Show the Capitol and the career districts that you’re coming back for a round two. Bigger and better than ever.

Then again, the seventeen and eighteen year olds never express interest in volunteering because they’re nearly out. One or two years and they’re finally free of the reapings. No one would willingly throw themselves into an arena when they’re on the brink of being away from it. The chances of accidentally getting yourself killed in the arena is always an outcome, prepared or not.

Either way, you hope this year is different and you’re able to break the four-year streak of double coffins.

You head downstairs, fingers still securing the pin in a reliable spot in your hair. When it doesn’t budge no matter how you move your head, you call it good.

Downstairs is already awake. Reed is cooking breakfast, Mox is probably sitting at the table. You can faintly hear the sound of Alyssum talking. It’s only as you reach the bottom creaking steps, does she realize that you’re awake.

“(Y/n)!” She shouts, abandoning what she was saying before.

You find yourself crouching to look into the tiny mirror in an alcove. The pin doesn’t look out of place, in fact you can’t really see it at first glance. Only when you go to touch it, do you find where it is.

Alyssum comes around the corner, a wide smile on her face. It’s clear she hasn’t done her hair yet, waiting on you.

“Where’s your stuff?” You ask.

“Bathroom.” She says.

“Okay, let’s get it done real quick.” You push her towards the bathroom, “We’ll be in there in a minute!”

“No rush.”

You carefully comb through Alyssum’s hair, being gentle when you find snarls. Even if she were in pain, you know that she wouldn’t voice it unless it really hurt. Doesn’t mean that you purposely go ripping the brush through her hair like Reed used to do. You tie her long hair to the back of her neck, and then you loosen it up to make it look better.

“Can you tie this over the rubber band? I’m trying to match with Laleh.”

Alyssum holds up a silk white ribbon. If she had asked you to do this last year, you would have had to tell her no. Naida had to teach you how to do a variety of hairstyles for the boarding school. Sometimes the younger girls aren’t able to tie their hair back, and sometimes they don’t want it to be a ponytail.

Needless to say, you’re starting to feel like a mother. Once the bow is tight over the band, you hold her in front of the mirror, staring into her eyes, “If the bow comes undone, go to Naida or Calandra, stay far away from Reed and Mox, okay?”

She nods once, you let her free so that she can join your brothers at the dining table while you clean up the bathroom counter. It’s a quiet morning, no one really speaks at the table, which isn’t unusual for reaping mornings. Alyssum tends to get upset because you won’t be at the house for several weeks, and you’re already stressing out about what the arena will be like this year.

You know that things would be so much easier in the Capitol if you just had a partner that worked with you. Finnick does absolutely nothing, you’re not even sure if he stays in the apartment half of the time. You never see him, rarely in the morning, you think you hear him leave at night.

He won’t help, he won’t trade with Anchor. You’ve asked him, Anchor has asked him, even Mags has asked him. If he would just give up his mentoring spot to Anchor, you’re sure that you’d come out with a few victors. When you’re doing all the work by yourself, it’s chaotic.

It’s hard to hold a schedule. You’re running between the stylists and prep teams, constantly taking advice from Elysia. When you’re not keeping an eye on the tributes, you’re watching their odds on the scoreboard go up and down depending on how much the sponsors like them. And then when they’re actually inside of the arena, you’re staying up all hours of the night to not miss a single thing. Just in case you miraculously come across a sponsor that sees potential in one of the tributes.

Not to mention the whole boarding school, which is a whole new ordeal. He comes up with the idea, promises to be there to help train no matter what. But after he broke up with you that year, he gradually stopped showing up. So now, the future tributes of District Four are not only out of a valuable side of a story, but they’re also dealing with two overworked victors who just want one break.

It’s bouncing between you and Anchor, sometimes even Mags will have to take over for a day. Which isn’t much help, considering the stroke she had last year. She tried speech therapy, but figured out that it wasn’t working as well as it should early on. Mags gave up on it, the only way she communicates anymore is through notes.

How is that going to work? You’ve got hundreds of teens and preteens relying on an old woman that can’t even speak. Her techniques are out of date, as well as Luther and Scotch. The kids have better chances with you, Finnick and Anchor. Anchor hasn’t been inside of the arena for ten years, and the kids have heard your two strategies a hundred times by now.

If Finnick were to just help. Just a little bit, you’re sure that it would make a difference. But he has such a vendetta against you or the tributes because he won’t budge. You’re fucked, he’s backed you into this impossible corner. Every year since you two won, you’ve brought home double coffins. It’s fucking embarassing. You don’t know how District Four was ever considered a career.

It’s childish, he’s so childish. He hasn’t kept his promise and he’s weaseled his way out of it every single time. And you keep letting him get away with it.

It clicks.

You keep letting him get away with it, you’re not holding him accountable. He doesn’t fall through on his promises because you don’t push them onto him. And when he tells you no, you back off because you think that there’s no point in trying. He hasn’t made an effort in the past, why would he make one when you ask.

You press your lips together, smiling. This year is already supposed to be an experiment to see what happens with the tributes. If everything goes well with this year’s tributes, you think that you’ll try something new yourself.

“We have to stop by Naida’s place before heading over to the stage.” Reed says, standing from the table, taking his plate with him, “We can take Alyssum with us.”

“Okay.” you agree, standing up too. Mox cleans up the rest of the table, taking it into the kitchen to help Reed.

Alyssum comes over, throwing her arms around you tightly. You hug her back, being careful not to ruin her hair, “I’ll be back in a few weeks. Promise me that you’ll be good for Reed and Mox.”

“I promise.” her voice is muffled, face pressed to your stomach.

“I’ll be back before you know it.” you lean down to press a kiss to the top of her head, “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

She lets go of you, a frown on her face. But it doesn’t look like she’s going to be crying this year, “I’m leaving!”

“See you later!” Reed shouts back.

You leave the house, shutting the door behind you. As you squint through the bright summer sun, you head down the stone steps and to the left, towards the opening of Victor's Village. This year it’s Anchor’s turn to walk Mags to the stage, since you did it last year. Since they’re relatively slow, though, you’re sure that you’ll be able to catch up in no time.

You’re right, you come across Anchor and Mags more than halfway to the stage. It seems like Mags is doing just fine walking on her own, and Anchor is talking to her. Anchor hears you approaching pretty far back and glances over his shoulder to see that it’s you.

“Good morning!” you jog to catch up, “I see you got an early start today.”

“Haha, shut up.” Anchor says, but cracks up when you do.

Anchor goes back to what he was talking about, and you quickly find out that it’s about the boarding school. It’s an in-depth explanation about your plan this year. Mags knew the basics, but now it’s all about details. You’ll be lucky if you get two tributes that showed promise during training. Otherwise, you’re left with the gamble of the reaping bowls.

Luther and Scotch have already beaten you to the stage when you get there. No Finnick in sight, which you can’t say that you’re surprised about. The five of you get on the stage, leaving the far left seat for Finnick to take when he gets here. Mayor Burrula comes on stage, getting ready to take his spot in front of the podium.

The reaping area in front of you fills. There’s familiar faces in all the age categories, in your mind, you count all the seventeen and eighteen year olds that you know go to the boarding school. It’s a fair amount, most of them are really good at what they know, especially the ones that have been with you for a couple of years now. None of which have ever expressed an interest in volunteering, though. And if they did, it was never to you or Anchor.

Finnick finally shows up when it’s five minutes out from reaping time. The moment after he sits down in his chair, he scoots it two inches away from you. It’s his own personal yearly tradition… on top of all the other ones of neglecting his mentoring duties.

After the anthem, Mayor Burrula kicks off the reaping with the annual Dark Days speech. It’s boring, you try to look awake. As a joke, you can hear Anchor mocking soft snores. You crack a smile, shaking your head when you elbow him to get him to shut up. Burrula wraps the speech up, introduces Elysia as if she hasn’t been District Four’s Capitol escort for the past couple of years, and then sits back down.

She smiles as she does every year, standing in front of the microphone, “Good afternoon, and Happy Hunger Games. Ladies first.”

You hold your breath, all previous emotion draining out of your body. She heads over to the bowl, her gloved hand dipping into the bowl. She hesitates over the paper, trying to find one that’ll hold the golden tribute. If you have a girl volunteer this year, it’s not going to matter. She could pick a twelve year-old and they could be replaced by a seventeen or eighteen year-old.

She picks one, carefully pulls her hand out of the bowl, and resumes her spot in front of the microphone. She takes her time peeling off the black tape, not wanting to rip the paper. She reads over the name, and with the distance between you and her, you’re not able to see the name.

Still, you mentally cross your fingers. It’s a new year, a new plan. Please, please, please.

“District Four’s girl tribute is Shilin Brisby.” Elysia pronounces the name carefully, and then looks up to the section of girls.

The name isn’t familiar, and there’s no movement in the girl section. You wait, leaning forward slightly to see if the crowd will out her. But before that can happen, the magic words are being shouted, “I volunteer!”

In the eighteen section, out comes a brown-haired girl with a confident smile on her face. The peacekeepers escort her from the way back to the very front. She takes the stone steps easily, tucking her hair behind her ear so that she can see where she’s stepping.

Her name comes across your lips quickly, “Annie Cresta.”

She’s been with the boarding school since she was thirteen, which is five whole years of experience. Five whole years of training, of watching her start out small and hardly able to defend herself, to career-worthy. She’s still not very strong, but she’s resourceful, and smart.

She stops in front of the girl’s bowl, standing up tall. She let’s Elysia ask for her name, which she repeats for everyone in District Four and in the Capitol. You can’t help the grin that comes across your face. This is the year of change.

“And now for the boys.” Elysia says, moving over to the bowl on the right. She carefully pulls out this paper too, not as hesitant as before. She when stops in front of the microphone again, the tape comes off easier. She reads over it, and then speaks, “District Four’s boy tribute is Paslee Milillio.”

There’s no gap this time. You can see a hand shoot up in the seventeen section faster than the words leave his mouth, “I volunteer as tribute!”

You breathe out a laugh, covering your mouth. This one is an easy guess, Marsh Milillio never stops talking about how his younger brother, Paslee, is going to be the next victor prodigy. Paslee’s thirteen this year, he’s been with you guys for a year. And he does show promise, so Marsh isn’t lying.

Marsh gets brought up to the stage, stops in front of his bowl and says his name clear into the microphone. Two volunteers, two very good tributes. This year, the golden beam of light is on District Four.

Elysia wraps it up, wishes for a Happy Hunger Games again, and then backs up to allow Annie and Marsh to shake hands. They do, and you can see that Annie has this smirk on her face, something mischievous. You can only imagine how Marsh is looking at the moment, especially since they’re friends.

Once they’re done, they have to face the district again as the anthem plays for the final time. When the anthem is over, they’re brought inside of the building to say goodbye to their families. You’re supposed to take a minute or two saying your own goodbyes, or head straight to the train to make sure that you leave on time.

You stand, a bright smile on your face, “Holy shit.”

“Don’t fuck this up.” Anchor says, he’s got a grin going, “Please.”

“Holy shit!” you repeat, laughing, “Annie and Marsh? Talk about striking gold!”

It’s going to be an easy year. They understand the rules, they know how to color inside of the lines. You’re not going to have to baby them at all. Not even Marsh, even though he’s seventeen. You’ll be able to focus on more important things.

You give Anchor a hug, and then Mags too. You tell Anchor that he should probably visit the families, and then hold a celebration at the boarding school the night of the interviews. You wave goodbye to your family, who are hanging out on the outskirts of the reaping pen, and then go to meet the car that’s waiting for you.

Finnick is already inside, looking out of the window. The car takes off towards the train as soon as the door is shut. On the way to the train, you work on how you’re going to uphold the deal you made with yourself when it comes to Finnick. You’re not going to let him wreck it. He’s going to help, or he’s going to regret it.

You and Finnick head right inside. As Finnick does every year, he heads straight towards his room. He only makes it one step before you’ve got an iron lock on his wrist, keeping him from going any further.

He turns, confused, eyes trained on your expressionless face.

They say that time heals all wounds. That the longer you put the problem off, you’ll eventually forget about it, and it’ll magically evaporate and disappear like it never existed in the first place. But they’re wrong. Time has let you grow bitter and angry and tired and cold.

The last time you talked to Finnick was years ago, when he told you for the final time that he wouldn’t be participating anymore. To leave him alone and let him do his own thing inside of the Capitol. The mentoring responsibility is now yours, consider him a ghost.

He owes you.

“Work with me this year.” The words aren’t harsh, and they even leave a little room for discussion. A part of you wants to add the word ‘please’ to the end, but you won’t be begging.

“What?” His face twists, and you can see the annoyance before it’s even appeared, “I thought we went over this already. The answer is no.”

You’re not begging. You’re also not backing down. You’re holding him to his promise this year. And if that means getting aggressive and mean, he’s about to meet a new side of you.

You face drops, hand tightening around his wrist. You lift, and pull him closer to you. Finnick might have height, but you have strength through persistence, “Let me rephrase; you’re working with me this year. It’s not a question.”

“You say that now, but you can’t make me do anything.” He twists his wrist, trying to get it free, “Let go.”

You inhale through your nose, keeping your voice quiet and level so that the microphones outside won’t pick you up, “You will help me this year, or you will wish you died in that fucking arena. I’ll make an example out of you, Finnick. You think it’s bad now, wait until I make you the punchline of the fucking joke.”

You yank him closer, he stutters to catch himself so that he doesn’t smack into you, “Your free trial is over. I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.” He’s glaring, pissed. You let go, pushing him back in the process, “You can hide and wallow in your room now, but when we get to the Capitol, shit changes. Whether you like it or not.

“You’re under me. And you’re working for me, on my terms this year. Don’t like it? Cry me a fucking river.”

You hear the car doors outside of the train, slam shut. The tributes are here, you don’t need to be here waiting when they come inside.

“Clocks ticking, Finnick. You’ve got less than twelve hours to do what you want before your free time is mine.”

“You’re so fucking cocky. Last time I checked, I’m my own person. You can’t tell me what to do.” Finnick shakes his head, face scrunched, a slight shade of red, “Maybe this shit would have flown with Anchor, but I’m not your fucking boyfriend.”

“No, you’re not. And I’m ashamed you ever had that title in the first place. At least Anchor is fucking reliable.” You spit, and you physically see his face fall. Whatever he wanted to say next doesn’t appear on his lips, “I’ve grown up, Finnick. I’ve shouldered all of your bullshit for the past couple of years, and you’re telling me you can’t pull it together just once? It’s garbage.

“I’ve given you your space. Now it’s time to own up or get off of the fucking program. I’m not dealing with this for the next fifty years. I’d rather die before then.” You stop walking, “Once again, you’re helping me this year, or you’re going to regret it. You can think of it as an empty threat, but I’ve had years to get creative.”

He doesn’t say anything back, just leaves the train car. You let him get a headstart, not wanting to have to walk side by side with him to your rooms. By the time you start walking too, the tributes are just ending their time on the station. You leave before they see you, and take your time taking deep breaths to calm yourself down.

You don’t get angry often. It’s hard to be when you’re normally surrounded by people who take the circumstances you live in, seriously. Anchor helps and keeps you company, your family friends keep you grounded, your siblings are a reminder as to why you won in the first place. All of them are working for the better, the only one ruining the current is Finnick. Go fucking figure.

In your room, you lay down on the bed and close your eyes. Dinner will be ready in a couple of hours, and before midnight you should be inside of the Capitol. Tomorrow is the Tribute Parade, the starting point and the decider of how the rest of the trip will go. All you can do right now is hope.

You end up dozing off, only being woken when Elysia comes to the door to bring you to the table before the tributes. You get up, fixing your hair on the way to the dining room. You’re the only one at the table when you get there, and you don’t wait for everyone to show up. You’re no psychic, but you’re pretty sure that Finnick won’t be eating with you guys this evening.

Annie and Marsh take the only real seats that are offered to them. Annie to your right, Marsh to hers. The only chair that’s empty is the one across from you, where Finnick would normally sit. And of course, to your left is Elysia, always sitting at the head since she’s the escort.

Like how Elysia warned you during your train ride to the Capitol for the first time, she tells Annie and Marsh to ration out their hunger. The food will keep coming, and the portion sized will only get bigger as time goes on. You go ahead and tell them--like you tell the tributes every year--that the food is rich too, so they probably shouldn’t eat large portions anyway.

“Finnick didn’t look very happy.” Elysia says, she’s obviously talking to you.

“We spoke for a couple of minutes.” you dip your spoon into the bowl of soup, “If I were him, I’d be pretty pissed off too, but it’s just the way the cookie crumbles.”

Elysia nods, “Any big changes this year?”

You look at her, “I’m going to have an extra pair of hands, I don’t think that I’ll be running around this year.”

Elysia’s smart, she gets what you’re saying almost immediately. You watch the small smile spread over her face, but she doesn’t say anything more about the topic itself, “I suppose some attendants can run him some food.”

You finish up dinner, and then have a little bit of lava cave for dessert. Annie and Marsh are full, but not to the point where they’re going to be sick. So, you all pack it up and bring it to the next train car to watch the reaping recap. You let Annie and Marsh take the seats they want on the couch, but you stand behind it with Elysia.

You’ve grown to realize that sitting down during important events like this, makes you more nervous. It’s more or less the reason why you hate sitting during the reaping.

You watch and observe, listening to what Annie and Marsh have to say about their competitors. They don’t seem all that worried, honestly. They guess strengths and weaknesses, forming a plan of their own. A part of you wonders if they had the reaping planned out, if they made a deal to volunteer together. Like you said, they’re friends. It makes the most sense.

The obvious kids to keep an eye on, as per usual, is Districts One and Two. As the years go on, the more the tributes look vicious. Last year was a fucking nightmare when it came to watching them killing the other tributes around them. It’s no surprise they won, considering they were a fucking tornado in a playground.

“We’d like to be mentored together.” Annie says, looking over her shoulder at you.

Elysia left after the first time they played the recap, she saw all that she needed to. You vaguely remember her mentioning something about checking up on Finnick to make sure he’s eaten. It’s whatever, if he wants to start off on the wrong foot, it’s him that’s going to be regretting it, not you.

“Sounds good to me. Got a plan going on yet?” you cross your arms, eyes landing right back onto the screen in front of them.

“Marsh and I are allies, we think that’s going to work out the best.” she says, “Right?”

Marsh nods in agreement.

“This is your time to shine, not mine.” you raise your eyebrows, “We should arrive in the Capitol in the next few hours. We’ll start getting down to business tomorrow morning. Sounds good?”

“Yeah.” Marsh says.

“You should probably shower if you haven’t already, and get to bed. You’ll need all the sleep you can get, tomorrow’s going to be exhausting. You can find your rooms?” you get ready to go.

“Yes, thank you.” Annie says.

“Goodnight.” you start your way to the door, nearly leaving when Annie calls your name, “Hmm?”

She’s got a sheepish smile on her face, “Thank you for training us.”

“You’re going to be excellent inside of the arena, you two.”

Back in your room, you lay out the clothes you’ll wear when you get to the Capitol. You take a shower, starting off standing and soaking in the warm water. Which you eventually turn hotter, and sit on the floor while it rains on you. For a while, you stare at the granite tile, but end up placing your head on your knees.

You can’t let these kids down. You’ve worked with them for four and five years, you’ve grown to know them. You watched them grow and become better at their chosen skills. You know their families, and you know that if you lose both of them this year, the whole boarding school is a joke. You’ve been working towards this idea for the past five years. You should’ve had it perfected years ago, yet here you are, still going through the trial and error process.

“Please, let one of them win this year.” you murmur, squeezing your eyes shut, “Just one of them, either of them. One of them has to come home. One beacon of hope to keep me going, please.”

You sit there for a while longer, until your fingers begin to prune. You dry your hair and gently tie it out of your face. After you’ve gotten dressed and brushed your teeth, you sit in the corner of the room, staring out of the window, watching as the sky darkens further. And then you see the lights of the city.

You gather your things out of the room, folding the outfit you wore, and then tucking it into a canvas bag. You make sure that the ring is on your finger before you leave the room behind. You’re the first to make it to the train car, arms crossed and still staring out of the window as you wait for the others.

Finnick shows up next, standing on the far side of the room, quiet as ever. Elysia brings Annie and Marsh around, just in time for the train to stop. The cheering of the Capitol citizens starts immediately, loud clapping and whistling and shouting their names.

Since there’s cameras, Annie and Marsh leave the train with Elysia first. You and Finnick follow, getting your own car. And even though the tributes left before you did, your car makes it to the Tribute Center first. Knowing that Elysia will make sure that they’re signed in properly, you and Finnick head straight to the apartment.

The elevator is quiet, tense, “Marsh is seventeen years old. He’s been in the boarding school since he was thirteen, just like Annie. They’ve decided to be allies, they know each other well. He’s good at fighting, I’ve seen him against the others, he’ll be able to measure up to the others in the gymnasium.”

You run your finger along the silver handle inside of the elevator, briefly wondering if people actually use it or not, “Annie is eighteen. She’s smart, quick on her feet. She’s reliable when it comes to recalling survival skills. She looks like she doesn’t have a lot when it comes to fighting, but that’s only the surface. Annie will never choose violence as her first choice, but as a last resort, she’s deadly.”

You look to Finnick to see that he’s already got his eyes on you, watching. You can’t tell what he’s thinking. Maybe he’s planning on telling you that he’s not going to follow your plans. He might as well save his breath, because he’s going to listen. He might think he has an option now, but you know how to work around problems.

The elevator reaches the Four floor, “Goodnight, I’ll see you at the table tomorrow.”

“Don’t count on it.” He says, following behind you loosely.

“You should be dressed and ready before noon. I trust you can find your way to the Tribute Parade by yourself.” You pause, and then look at him, “If not, I could walk you there.”

Finnick stops right next to you, angry and leaning over you like he’s trying to intimidate you. He opens his mouth to say something, but you slip out from underneath him. You hop up the last step, practically skipping as you round the corner to go to your room for the next.

You don’t scare easily.

You change into comfier clothes and then go straight to bed. With the blankets pulled to your chin, you’re out in no time. You wake up on your own time, since Elysia doesn’t really have to baby you anymore. After laying out your clothes, you take a shower and make sure to not touch your hair.

You’re the second person out in the dining room, with Elysia already at the table. She’s drinking her coffee quietly, eyes on the tv in the living room. It’s loud enough to hear from where you sit, and it’s just an overview of last year's tribute parade and costumes. The woman talking is definitely not Claudius or Caesar, so you know it’s going to be a good morning.

“Laurel sent word early this morning, said she’d like to see you as soon as possible before the Tribute Parade.” Elysia says, setting her mug on the table, “I’ll get the kids up.”

“Thank you.” you say to her, and then repeat it for the avoxes when they begin to bring out breakfast.

Annie comes out first, looking fairly put together. She gives you a polite smile and sits by you at the table, “Good morning.”

You nod, eyes on the tv, watching as the woman skips over the first two districts. Their outfits tend to be the same thing every year. It’s a comfort for District One to dress their tributes in expensive fabric and make them look as Capitol-ish as possible. As for District Two, it’s always a gladiator thing, it’s just a different variation this year.

And even with how boring it is, they still manage to come out as the favorite every single year. For a city that loves the adventure and the unpredictability of the Hunger Games, they’re pretty boring when it comes to allowing the careers to do the same thing every year. At least District Four has the brains to try something new, even if it doesn’t work all the time.

Elysia comes back out, taking a seat at the table, “Marsh will join us in a moment.”

If Laurel wants to talk to you, it’s probably about the costumes. She knows what she wants, but sometimes seeks out advice if she’s caught between two ideas. No matter what happens, Pleurisy will have to match her, and she won’t object to changes. Laurel is older than Pleurisy, which sort-of got her a certain amount of respect from Pleurisy.

It makes Laurel’s job a whole lot easier, you think. They have to match costumes at the Tribute Parade, and it’s better if you coordinate the formal outfits for the night of the interviews. Especially if the tributes are going to be working together inside of the arena. Laurel’s a sure person, if she wants it, she’s going to get it. She’s also a visionary, likes to see her works come to life.

Right after breakfast, you should get down there quickly so she isn’t waiting for long. If you’re making a costume decision, then the prep teams are going to need to be able to shift to fit the new needs. As soon as Marsh is out here, you’ll say what you need to and then go. You can always eat later if you’re hungry.

Marsh comes out of the hallway, barely awake but he looks as put together as Annie does. You wipe your mouth with the cloth napkin, finish up your orange juice, and neatly stack up your plates for the avoxes to take.

“Today is the Tribute Parade.” you start, catching their attention, “After breakfast, Elysia will take you down to the Remake Center. The prep teams will take care of you, no matter what happens, don’t resist or complain. Let them do their jobs, they have rules to follow.” you stand up from the table, “I’ll see you again before you get on the chariots.”

You’re about to tell them that if they have any questions, they should ask Elysia. But Finnick comes down the steps, heading straight for the dining table. It’s perfect timing on his part, you get ready to leave, “If you have any questions, Finnick will have the answers. I’ll see you later this afternoon.”

His eyes meet yours, already glaring. He doesn’t turn around and go back to his room like you halfway expected, but sits at the table and waits to be served. You think that he won’t let the tributes down, so you go ahead and leave. If Finnick doesn’t step up, Elysia will gladly do it.

Laurel and Pleurisy are standing in the hallway with the prep teams when you get there. They open up to make a space for you to stand, and you patiently wait as Laurel finishes telling Annie’s prep team what they’ll be doing with Annie. The basic stuff, some extra points if they have the time to later on. You know what the team will make room for the extra stuff either way.

Pleurisy is doing the same thing with Marsh’s team, but it’s not as heinous. They’ll find a way to draw out Marsh’s grooming so that Annie and him finish around the same time. Just so Marsh doesn’t sit around and wait for the Tribute Parade to come around.

Once they’re done, the magical opinion question is brought to the table. Laurel shows you the two options this year, and immediately you can see why she was caught between them. The first option is based off the coral reef, with bright colors and shelves that stick out in places that aren’t awkward. You know that this would be an eye-catcher, and there’s not a spot of blue to be found.

The second option is something less interesting; ropes. Brown nets that’ll be strategically placed around their bodies to make them seem dressed, but really they’ll practically be naked. The only reason this could ever appear to the Capitol citizens is because of a nearly revealed tribute. Which they’ve seen hundreds of times by now.

“Definitely the coral reef. The colors are bright and might even drown out everyone else a bit.” they back away from you, looking pleased, “It’s bold, though.”

“They’ll look amazing by the end of it. We’ve got big plans for them.” Laurel then turns to the prep teams, “Get ready to receive the tributes.” the teams scatter, leaving just you three in the hallway, “Elysia tells me you’ve got Finnick working this year.”

“Not just yet.” you admit, gently shaking your head, “He’s not very happy, I’m going to start slow but by the time the games roll around, he’ll be under my thumb. I can handle the week in the Capitol, but I start to spread myself thin when the tributes get in the arena.”

“Will he be at the parade?” Pleurisy asks.

“Should be. If not, it’s not that big of a deal.”

You spend the rest of the morning with the stylists, following them around, watching as they prepare the costumes. As it nears noon, you get word that the tributes are just about done, which means you three have to scatter. You bid them goodbye, and head back to the apartment to have lunch before meeting the tributes below the Remake Center.

The whole place feels empty, with no sign of Elysia anywhere in the common rooms, and lord knows where Finnick is. You turn the tv on again to hear what Caesar and Claudius have to say about last year’s costumes, and the predictions for this year. You sit at the table, and eat quietly, trying not to hate the Capitol anymore than you already do.

Even after you’re done eating, you sit at the table for a while. Which seems to pay off in the end, as the mystery of where Finnick’s been the entire time, is solved. Still leaves the question on where Elysia is. But if you were to take a guess now, when the Tribute Parade is less than thirty minutes off, she’s probably with the stylists so that she’s on time to the parade.

You lean your head against your hand and watch as Finnick takes his time making his way up the stairs. He’s obviously trying to avoid talking to you, because if he doesn’t look in your direction, you’re probably not going to bother him. At least, that’s what he thinks. Unfortunately, you know how to play mind games and have a fair amount of patience.

The constant silence seems to make him curious enough to look anyway. His eyes lock with yours, he stops moving up the steps. As the staring contest begins, you can see the guilt in his eyes. But as quick as it appeared, it’s suddenly gone. It doesn’t matter, because you’ve seen everything that you needed to already.

You give him a smile, “There’s fifteen minutes before the parade. Plenty of time to get cleaned up, and go, so you might as well.”

“You were waiting here for me?” he asks, face twisting.

“Don’t flatter yourself, I just ate lunch.” you roll your eyes, looking back at the tv.

He leaves, you watch as the stands fill with bright colors and animated Capitol people. To think that it feels like yesterday you were the one rolling through the street, dressed as a marble statue straight out of Atlantis. You can still remember the way your stomach twisted right as the chariots began to move.

As the years have come and gone, you’ve become more used to the cameras. Whether you like it or not, the Capitol will always be with you. They might not follow you around in District Four anymore, but they sure do keep tabs on you when the games roll around. What is (Y/n) doing this year? You’re sure they noticed your happy expressions during the reapings when Annie and Marsh volunteered. You wonder if they were suspicious that you weren’t really surprised.

You can’t say you’ll be as indifferent when the games roll around. It’s going to be harder to hold yourself together, as it is every year. And if Marsh or Annie win? It’s going to be a celebration, there’s not a single doubt about it. And depending on what happens in the arena exactly, especially with the other careers, you’ll be rubbing it in.

Finnick comes out when it hits ten minutes. He doesn’t look all that different, just less disheveled than he had started as. You and him take the elevator down below the Remake Center, and you’re able to see that there’s a handful of tributes here already, waiting by their chariots.

Annie and Marsh are dressed brilliantly. As always, Laurel knows what she’s doing, and she’s managed to make it look like they could easily blend into the reefs themselves, if they wanted to. Annie’s hair is done up in braids, with bright colors weaved in and out. As a headpiece, she’s got an orange reef hair comb tucked in neatly.

The colors on their bodies are strategically placed to make them blend into each other. Annie’s got a dress that bells out at the bottom, with unique, hand-painted designs that must have taken hours. Even Marsh has brightly colored makeup around his eyes, smeared with colored glitter mixed in.

“Huh.” Finnick lets out, “You picked this?”

“This is not what was sketched out.” you look at him, raising your eyebrows, “But it’s pretty cool, huh?”

You elbow him slightly, and then head over to Annie and Marsh, “You guys look amazing!”

Annie turns, giving you a red-faced smile. Marsh on the other hand, rolls his eyes and picks at the coral band on his arm. Since they can’t do special effects on the tributes, as the chemicals might irritate his skin, the stylists have to get creative with how they get props to stick onto the tributes. It typically turns out to be tight bands like the ones Marsh is wearing. It doesn’t cut off circulation, but it isn’t exactly comfortable either.

With this, Pleurisy slaps Marsh’s hand to get him to stop fiddling with the band. If he messes it up now, it’ll have to come off completely. There’s absolutely no time to go back and fix anything that he might fuck up. Marsh seems to catch the clue though, because he laces his fingers together and tries not to touch anything else.

The opening music starts, notifying you that it’s time to get the tributes onto their chariots. Laurel and Pleurisy shift anything that needs to be moved, and then they’re making Marsh and Annie get onto the chariot. You watch as they shift around, finding the way they’ll be standing for the parade.

“Any tips?” Annie asks hopefully.

“Follow your gut.” you say, “If you feel like smiling or waving, do it. This is your time to set what you’ll be like for the rest of the Capitol trip. As soon as you’re in the arena, it can go away.”

They don’t ask any questions, and even if they had any, their time is up. The doors behind them have finished opening, District One’s chariot is starting to move. You and the others back off, wishing the tributes good luck. You’re all subjected to watching the chariots on the tv.

You cross your arms, yawning slightly. You’re ready for the day to be over, at least the next three days or so is going to be slow. All you really have to do is get up and make yourself presentable until they’re shipped to the Training Center. The only real working day is the one the day before the interviews. And that’s because you’re going to be figuring out how you can help them be ready for the interview.

Annie and Marsh seem to be in their element for the most part. Annie is obviously shy, Marsh doesn’t mind it at all. She waves and smiles and does just as much as Marsh does. They stop in the City Circle, the anthem plays, President Snow gives his speech, the chariots go around the circle one last time, and then come back.

“Not bad.” you say to yourself, “Not bad at all.”

You leave Finnick standing there, giving the tributes a wide grin. The prep teams are already singing praises, so there’s not much to say. Muchless room to say it. Elysia thinks that they’ve had an influence on the Capitol already, which is a relief. As long as they’re drawing in some attention, you’re good.

Back inside of the Four floor, your tributes head off to take their showers. Finnick meanders around the rooms, you settle onto the couch in the living room, watching the chariot rides again. As always, Claudius and Caesar have been captivated by District One and Two’s amazing stylists. They barely make a comment about District Four.

You end up with your head in your hands. You know that just because the moderators didn’t say anything, doesn’t mean that other people didn’t take a closer look. But their biased opinion tends to have an effect on people after a while. Continue to make dim comments about districts, and you’ll end up like District Twelve.

No one wants to be District Twelve.

Dinner with everyone--with the exception of the prep teams--is enough to keep you awake. You go ahead and indulge yourself in red wine, trying to seem like you’re enjoying yourself. As soon as the alcohol sets in, making your head spin a little, you go ahead and give it up. You’re not really a drinker, anyway.

As soon as the cake is served, you’re sure that dinner is pretty much over. You go and watch the replay of the parade again, Elysia goes ahead and tells you guys what the people she’d talk to said. It’s all very good things, and you begin to suspect that she’s just being nice for the tributes.

“Don’t give them false hope.” you say, cutting her off completely, “Claudius and Caesar did nothing for us. Annie and Marsh have to do good on their training scores, and even better during the interviews if they want to make a lasting impression.” you look at the tributes, “The pressure of performing well has only just begun.

“You guys should get to bed, we’ll see you at breakfast for instructions. Try to get a good night of sleep.”

Annie thanks Laurel on her way out, Marsh barely does the same. You absently watch the tv while you wait for them to be gone completely. Finnick’s already gathering his things, “I’ve got to go.”

“Be there at breakfast, I’ll fill you in the best I can.” you tell him.

“Sure.”

He leaves too, and you’re left there with Elysia, Laurel and Pleurisy.

“You know how to clear a room.” Laurel says, you crack a smile.

“Well you wanted to talk.” you look at them, “So let’s get to talking.”

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didanawisgi · 3 years

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Medicine’s Fundamentalists

The randomized control trial controversy: Why one size doesn’t fit all and why we need observational studies, case histories, and even anecdotes if we are to have personalized medicine

BY NORMAN DOIDGE

AUGUST 14, 2020

If the study was not randomized, we would suggest that you stop reading it and go on to the next article. —Quote from Evidence-Based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach EBM

Why is it we increasingly hear that we can only know that a new treatment is useful if we have a large randomized control trial, or “RCT,” that has positive results? Why is it so commonly said that individual case histories are “mere anecdotes” and count for nothing, even if a patient, who has had a chronic disease, suddenly gets better with a new treatment after all others failed for years—an assertion that seems, to many people, to run counter to common sense?

Indeed, some version of the statement, “only randomized control trials are useful” has become boilerplate during the COVID-19 crisis. It is uttered as though it is self-evidently the mainstream medical position. When other kinds of studies come out, we are told they are “flawed,” or “fatally flawed,” if not RCTs (especially if the commentator doesn’t like the result; if they like the result, not so often). The implication is that the RCT is the sole reliable methodological machine that can uncover truths in medicine, or expose untruths. But if this is so self-evident, why then, do major medical journals continue to publish other study designs, and often praise them as good studies, and why do medical schools teach other methods?

They do because, as extraordinary an invention as the RCT is, RCTs are not superior in all situations, and are inferior in many. The assertion that “only the RCTs matter” is not the mainstream position in practice, and if it ever was, it is fading fast, because, increasingly, the limits of RCTs are being more clearly understood. Here is Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., former head of the CDC, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, in 2017, in an article on the kind of thinking about evidence that normally goes into public health policy now:

Although randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) have long been presumed to be the ideal source for data on the effects of treatment, other methods of obtaining evidence for decisive action are receiving increased interest, prompting new approaches to leverage the strengths and overcome the limitations of different data sources. In this article, I describe the use of RCTs and alternative (and sometimes superior) data sources from the vantage point of public health, illustrate key limitations of RCTs, and suggest ways to improve the use of multiple data sources for health decision making. … Despite their strengths, RCTs have substantial limitations.

That, in fact, is the “mainstream” position now, and it is a case where the mainstream position makes very good sense. The head of the CDC is about as “mainstream” as it gets.

The idea that “only RCTs can decide,” is still the defining attitude, though, of what I shall describe as the RCT fundamentalist. By fundamentalist I here mean someone evincing an unwavering attachment to a set of beliefs and a kind of literal mindedness that lacks nuance—and that, in this case, sees the RCT as the sole source of objective truth in medicine (as fundamentalists often see their own core belief). Like many a fundamentalist, this often involves posing as a purveyor of the authoritative position, but in fact their position may not be. As well, the core belief is repeated, like a catechism, at times ad nauseum, and contrasting beliefs are treated like heresies. What the RCT fundamentalist is peddling is not a scientific attitude, but rather forcing a tool, the RCT, which was designed for a particular kind of problem to become the only tool we use. In this case, RCT is best understood as standing not for Randomized Control Trials, but rather “Rigidly Constrained Thinking” (a phrase coined by the statistician David Streiner in the 1990s).

Studies ask questions. Understanding the question, and its context, is always essential in determining what kind of study, or tool, to use to answer those questions. In the “RCT controversy,” to coin a phrase, neither side is dismissive of the virtues of the RCT; but one side, the fundamentalists, are dismissive of the virtues of other studies, for reasons to be explained. The RCT fundamentalist is the classic case of the person who has a hammer, and thinks that everything must therefore be a nail. The nonfundamentalist position is that RCTs are a precious addition to the researcher’s toolkit, but just because you have a wonderful new hammer doesn’t mean you should throw out your electric drill, screwdriver, or saw.

So let’s begin with a quick review of the rationale for the “randomized” control trial, and their very real strengths, as originally understood. It’s best illustrated by what happens without randomization.

Say you want to assess the impact of a drug or other treatment on an illness. Before the invention of RCTs, scientists might take a group of people with the illness, and give them the drug, and then find another group of people, with the same illness, say, at another hospital, who didn’t get the drug, and then compare the outcome, and observe which group did better. These are called “observational studies,” and they come in different versions.

But scientists soon realized that these results would only be meaningful if those two groups were well matched in terms of illness severity and on a number of other factors that affect the unfolding of the illness.

If the two groups were different, it would be impossible to tell if the group that did better did so because of the medication, or perhaps because of something about that group that gave it an advantage and better outcome. For instance, we know that age is a huge risk factor for COVID-19 death, probably because the immune system declines as we age, and the elderly often already have other illnesses to contend with, even before COVID-19 afflicts them. Say one group was, on average, 60 years old, and all the members got the drug, and the other group was on average 75 years old, and they were the ones that didn’t get the drug. Say that when results were analyzed and compared, they showed the younger group had a higher survival rate.

A naive researcher might think that he or she was measuring “the power of the medication to protect patients from COVID-19 death” but may actually have also been measuring the relative role of youth, in protecting the patients. Scientists soon concluded there was a flaw in that design, because we do not know, with any reasonable degree of confidence, whether the better outcomes were due to age or the medication.

Age, here, is considered a “confounding factor.” It is called a confounding factor, because it causes confusion, because age can also influence the outcome of the study in the group as a whole. Other confounding factors we know about in COVID-19 now include how advanced the illness is at the time of the study, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and probably the person’s vitamin D levels. But there could easily be, and probably are, many other confounding factors we don’t know, as of yet. There are even potential confounding factors that we suspect play a role, but are not quite certain about: the person’s general physical fitness, the ventilation in their home, and so on.

This is where randomization is helpful. In a randomized control trial, one takes a sufficiently large group of patients and randomly assigns them to either the treatment group, or the nontreatment (“placebo” or sugar pill) control group, for instance. Efforts are made to make sure that apart from the treatment, everything else remains the same in the lives of the two groups. It is hoped that by randomly assigning this large number of patients to either the treatment or nontreatment condition, that each of the confounding factors will have an equal chance of appearing in both groups—the factors we know, such as age, but also mysterious ones we don’t yet understand. While observational studies can, with some effort, match at least some confounding factors we do understand in a “group matched design” (and, for instance, make sure both groups are the same age, or disease severity), what they can’t do is match confounding factors we don’t understand. It is here, that RCTs are generally thought to have an advantage.

With such a good technique as RCTs, one might wonder, why do we ever bother with observational studies?

There are a number of situations in medicine in which observational studies are obviously superior to randomized control trials (RCTs), such as when we want to identify the risk factors for an illness. If we suspected that using crack cocaine was bad for the developing brains of children, it would not be acceptable to do an RCT (which would take a large group of kids, and randomly prescribe half of them crack cocaine and the other half a placebo and then see which group did better on tests of brain function). We would instead follow kids who had previously taken crack, and those who never had, in an observational study, and see which group did better. All studies ask questions, and exist in a context, and the moral context is relevant to the choice of the tool you use to answer the question. That is Hippocrates 101: Do no harm.

Now, you might say that a study of risk factors is very different from the study of a treatment. But it is not that different. There can be very similar moral and even methodological issues.

In the 1980s, quite suddenly, clinicians became aware that infants were dying, in large numbers, in their cribs, for reasons that couldn’t be explained, and a new disorder was discovered, sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, or “crib death.” Some people wondered if parents were murdering their children, or if it was infectious, and many theories abounded. A large observational study was done in New Zealand that observed and compared factors in the lives of the infants who died and those who didn’t. The study showed that the infants who died were frequently put to sleep on their tummies. It was “just” an observation. But on that basis alone, it was suggested that having infants sleep on their backs might be helpful, and that parents should avoid putting their infants on their fronts in their cribs. Lo and behold, the rates of infant death radically diminished—not completely, but radically. No sane caring person said: “We should really do an RCT, rule out confounding factors, and settle this with greater certainty, once and for all: All we have to do is randomly assign half the kids to be put to bed on their tummies and the other half on their backs.” That would have been unconscionable. The evidence provided by the observational study was good enough.

Again, all studies have a context and are a means to answering questions. The pressing question with SIDS was not: How can we have absolute certainty about all the causes of SIDS? It was: How can we save infant lives, as soon as possible? In this case, the observational study answered it well.

The SIDS story is a case where we can see how close, in moral terms, a study of risk factors and a study of a new treatment can be in a case where the treatment might be lifesaving. Putting children on their tummies is a risk factorfor SIDS. Putting them on their backs is a treatment for it. The moral issue of not harming research subjects by subjecting them to a likely risk is clear.

Similarly, withholding the most promising treatment we have for a lethal illness is also a moral matter. That is precisely the position taken by the French researchers who thought that hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin was the most promising treatment known for seriously ill COVID-19 patients, and who argued that doing an RCT (which meant withholding the drug from half the patients) was unconscionable. RCT fundamentalists called their study “flawed” and “sloppy,” implying it had a weak methodology. The French researchers responded, in effect saying, we are physicians first; these people are coming to us to help them survive a lethal illness, not to be research subjects. We can’t randomize them and say to half, sorry, this isn’t your lucky day today, you are in the nontreatment group.

There are other advantages to observational studies in assessing new treatments. They are generally lower in cost than RCTs, and can often be started more quickly, and published more rapidly, which helps when information is needed urgently, as in a novel pandemic when little is understood about the illness. (RCTs, in part because of the moral issues, take longer to get ethics approval.) Observational studies are also easier to conduct at a time when patients are dying in high numbers, and hospital staff is overwhelmed, trying to keep people alive. They can involve looking back in time, to make use of observations in the medical chart. In such cases, it is crucial that the initial observations about how patients responded to the medications and treatments that the staff had on hand is documented, in as systematic as way as is possible, because there might be clues and nuggets as to what worked.

Exclusion Criteria: Do RCTs Study Real-World Patients?

But there are also problems at the conceptual heart of the RCT. Often the RCT design sees “confounding factors” not simply as something that has to be balanced between the treatment and no-treatment groups by randomization, but eliminated at the outset. For a variety of reasons, includinga wish to make interpretation of final results more certain, they aggressively eliminate known confounding factors before the study starts, by not letting patients with certain confounding factors get into the study in the first place. They do this by often having a lot of what are called “exclusion criteria,” i.e., reasons to exclude or disqualify people from entering the study.

Thus, RCTs for depression typically study patients who only have depression and no other mental disorders, which might be confounding factors. So, they usually study people who are depressed but who are not also alcoholic, not on illicit drugs, and who don’t have personality disorders. They also tend to exclude people who are actively suicidal (because if they are, they might not complete the expensive study, and some people think it is unethical to give a placebo to a person in acute risk of killing themselves). There are many other reasons given for different exclusions, such as a known allergy to a medication in the study.

But here’s the problem. These exclusions often add up until many, maybe even most, real-world depressives get excluded from such a study. So, the study sample is not representative of real-world patients. Yet this undermines the whole purpose of a research study “sample” in the first place, which is to test a small number of people (which is economical to do), and then extrapolate from them on to the rest of the population. As well, many studies of depression and drugs end up looking at people who are about as depressed as a college student who just got a B+ and not an A on a term paper. This is why many medications (or short-term therapies) end up doing well in short-term studies, but the patients relapse.

If you are a drug company (which pay for most of these studies) and you’re testing your new drug, exclusion criteria can be made to work in favor of making your drug appear more powerful than it really is, if sicker patients are eliminated. (This is a good trick, especially if your goal of making money from the drug is your first priority.)

This isn’t a matter of conjecture. This question of whether RCTs, in general, are made up of representative samples has been studied. An important review of RCTs found that 71.2% were not representative of what patients are actually like in real-world clinical practice, and many of the patients studied were less sick than real-world patients. That, combined with the fact that many of the so-called finest RCTs, in the most respected and cited journals, can’t be replicated 35% of the time when their raw data is turned over to another group that is asked to reconfirm the findings, shows that in practice they are far from perfect. That finding—that something as simple as the reanalysis of the numbers and measurements in the study can’t be replicated—doesn’t even begin to deal with other potential problems in the studies: Did the author ask the right questions, collect appropriate data, have reliable tests, diagnose patients properly, use the proper medication dose, for long enough, and were their enough patients in it? And did they, as do so many RCTs, exclude the most typical and the sickest patients?

Note, other study designs also have exclusion criteria, but they often are less problematic than in RCTs for reasons to be explained below.

The Gold Standard and the Hierarchy of Evidence

So, why is it we also hear that “RCTs are the gold standard,” and the highest form of evidence in the “hierarchy of evidence,” with observational studies beneath them, and case histories, at the bottom, and anecdotes beneath contempt?

There are several main reasons.

The first you just learned. It had been believed that RCTs were a completely reliable way to study a treatment given to a small sample of people in a population, see how they did, and then one could extrapolate those findings to the larger population. But that was just an assumption, and now that we have learned the patients studied are too often atypical, we have to be very careful about generalizing from an RCT. This embarrassment is a fairly recent finding that has yet to be taken fully into account by those who say RCTs are the gold standard.

The second reason has to do with the fundamentalists relying on outdated science, which argued that RCTs are more reliable in their quantitative estimates of how effective treatments are because they randomize and rule out confounding factors.

But a scientist who wanted to know if RCTs, as a group, were universally better and more reliable than observational studies at truth-finding would actually study the question scientifically, and not just assert it. And, in the 1980s, Chalmers and others did just that, examining studies from the 1960s and 1970s. They found that in the cases where both RCTs and observational studies had been done on the same treatment, the observational studies yielded positive results 56% of the time, whereas blinded RCTs did so only 30% of the time. It thus seemed that observational studies probably exaggerated how effective new treatments were.

Three other reviews of comparisons of observational and RCT study outcomes showed this same difference, and so researchers concluded that RCTs really were likely better at detecting an investigator’s bias for the treatment being studied, and hence more reliable. Since many scientific studies of drugs were paid for by drug companies that manufactured those drugs, it was not a surprise that the studies would have biases. These reviews formed much of the basis for RCT fundamentalism.

Just because an RCT is performed and published is no reason to assume it doesn’t exaggerate efficacy.

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But here’s the problem: These were reviews of studies that were done in the 1960s and 1970s. Once the observational study researchers became aware of the problem, they upped their game, and improved safeguards.

In 2000, new reviews comparing the results from hundreds of RCTs and observational studies in medicine that had been conducted in the 1990s were conducted by scientists from Yale and Iowa College of Medicine. They found that the tendency of observational studies to suggest better results in treatments had now disappeared. They now got similar results to RCTs. This was an important finding, but it has not been sufficiently integrated into the medical curriculum.

There is another reason we hear about RCTs. As RCTs became the type of study favored by regulatory bodies to test new drugs, they rose to prominence, and drug companies upped their game and learned many ingenious ways to make RCTs exaggerate the effectiveness of the drugs they are testing.

Entire books have been written on this subject, an excellent one being Ben Goldacre’s Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients.Since, to bring a drug to market requires only two RCTs showing the drug works, these techniques include doing many studies but not publishing the ones that don’t show good results. But there are sneakier techniques than making whole studies with negative outcomes go missing. There are ways to publish studies but hide embarrassing data; publish the good data in well-known journals and the negative findings in obscure journals; not study short-term side effects; almost never study, or ask about, long-term side effects; or play with measuring scales, so that patients appear to achieve statistically meaningful benefits which make no clinical difference. If you do a study that gives you a bad outcome on your key measure, don’t report that, just find some small outcome that was in your favor and retroactively change the goal of the study, to report that benefit and that alone. Make researchers and subjects sign gag clauses and nondisclosures. Have the drug companies ghostwrite the papers, make up the tables, and get academics, who never see the raw data sign them. This is routine.

The list goes on, and those tricks have often been used, successfully, to gain approval for drugs. Becoming very familiar with these ruses can save lives, because in a pandemic, new drugs will earn Big Pharma billions because the illness is so widespread, and they have a large playbook to draw from. Once two RCTs are selected from the many done to take the drug forward, the propaganda campaign begins, and as Goldacre shows, drug companies spend twice as much on marketing as they do on research. So, to repeat, just because an RCT is performed and published is no reason to assume it doesn’t exaggerate efficacy.

One group of studies, though, that don’t often play by these corrupt rules are RCTs done on already generic drugs, because they are off-patent, and there is really very little money to be made in them. In these cases, when a drug company has a generic rival to what might be a big money maker, there are ways of making that generic look bad. If the generic takes four weeks to work, test your drug against it, in a three-week study (the placebo effect for your drug won’t have worn off yet). If a vitamin is threatening your drug, test your drug against it, but use the cheapest version, in a dose that is too low. It’s an RCT, that’s all that matters.

Despite all this, advocates of RCTs still teach that, all else being equal, RCTs are always more reliable, and teach this by cherry-picking well-known cases where RCTs were superior to observational studies, and ignore cases where observational studies have been superior, or at least the better tool for the situation. They take the blunt position that “RCTs are better than observational studies,” and not, the more reasonable, accurate, and moderate, “All else being equal, in many, but not all situations, RCTs are better than observational studies.”

The phrase, “all else being equal,” is crucial, because so often all else is not equal. Simply repeating “RCTs are the gold standard of evidence-based medicine” implies to the naive listener that if it is an RCT then it must be a good study, and reliable, and replicable. It leaves out that most studies have many steps in them, and even if they have a randomization component, they can be badly designed in a step or two, and then lead to misinformation. Then there is the very uncomfortable fact that, so often, RCTs can’t even be replicated, and so often contradict each other, as anyone who has followed RCTs done on their own medical condition often sadly finds out. A lot of this turns out to be because they have many steps, and because Big Pharma is so adept now at gaming the system. Like gold, they turn out to be valuable but also malleable. A lot of the problem is that patients differ far more than these studies concede, and these complexities are not well addressed in the study design.

The Hierarchy-of-Evidence Notion Does Harm, Even to RCTs

One of the peculiar things about current evidence-based medicine’s love affair with its “hierarchy of evidence” is that it is still proceeding along, ignoring the implications of the scientifically documented replication crisis. True, the fact there is a replication crisis is now widely taught, and known about, but to the fundamentalists, it is as though that “crisis” doesn’t require that they reexamine basic assumptions. The replication crisis is compartmentalized off from business as usual and replaced with RCT hubris.

The irony is that the beauty of the RCT is that it’s a technique designed to neutralize the effects of confounding factors that we don’t understand on a study’s outcome, and thus it begins in epistemological humility. The RCT, as a discovery, is one of humanity’s wonderful epistemological achievements, a kind of statistical Socrates, which finds that wisdom begins with the idea, “whatever I do not know, I do not even suppose I know” (Apology, 21d).

But that beautiful idea, captured by a fundamentalist movement, has been turned on its head. The way the RCT fundamentalist demeans other study designs is to judge all those designs by the very real strengths of RCTs. This exaggeration is implicit in the tiresome language they use to discuss them: The RCTs are the “gold standard,” i.e., against which all else is measured, and the true source of value. Can these other designs equal the RCT in eliminating confounders? No. So, they are inferior. This works, as long as one pretends there are no epistemological limitations on RCTs. The problem with that attitude is, it virtually guarantees that the RCT design will not be improved, alas, because improved RCTs would benefit everyone. In fact, RCTs would be most quickly improved if the fundamentalists thought more carefully about the benefits of other studies, and tried to incorporate them, or work alongside them in a more sophisticated way. That is another way of saying we need the “all available evidence” approach.

The Case History and Anecdotes

Also disturbing, and, odd, actually, is the belittling of the case history as a mode of making discoveries, or what it has to offer science as a form of evidence. In neurology, for instance, it was the individual cases, such as the case of Phineas Gage, that taught us about the frontal lobes, and the case of H.M., that taught us about the role of memory, two of the most important discoveries ever made in brain science.

Here’s how the belittlement goes. “Case histories are anecdotes, and the plural of anecdote is not data, it is just lots of anecdotes.”

First of all, case histories are not anecdotes. An anecdote, in a medical text, is usually several sentences, at most a paragraph, stripped of many essential details, usually to make a single point, such as “a 50-year-old woman presented with X disease, and was treated with Y medication, for 10 days, and Figure 7 shows her before and after X-rays, and the dramatic improvement.” In that sense, an anecdote is actually the opposite of a case history, which depends on a multiplicity of concrete, vivid details.

A case history (particularly in classic neurology or psychiatry) can run for many pages. It is so elaborated because it understands, as the Canadian physician William Osler pointed out: “The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.” And who that patient is—their strengths, weaknesses, their other illnesses, other medications, emotional supports, diet, exercise habits, bad habits, genetics, previous treatment histories, all factor into the result. To practice good medicine, you must take it all into account, understanding that the patient is not any one of these details, but a whole who is more than the sum of the parts. Thus, true patient-centered medicine necessarily aspires toward a holistic approach. So, a case history is a concrete portrait of a real person, not an anecdote; and it is vivid, and the furthest thing possible from an abstract data set.

A typical RCT describes several data points about hundreds of patients. A typical case history describes perhaps hundreds of data points about a single patient. It’s not inferior, it’s different. The case history is, in fact, a technology, albeit an old one, set in language (another invention, we forget) and its structure (what is included in the case history, such as descriptions of the patient’s symptoms, objective signs, their subjective experiences, detailed life history, what makes the illness better, what worse, etc.) was developed over centuries.

Even anecdotes have their place. We often hear methodologists say, when a physician claims he or she gave a patient a particular medication, or supplement, or treatments, and they got better, “that that proves nothing. It is just an anecdote.” The problem is in the word “just.” Something doesn’t become meaningless, or a nonevent because a scientist adds the word “just” before it. That word really says nothing about the anecdote and a lot about the speaker’s preference for large number sets.

But anecdotes are very meaningful, too, and not just when lives are changed by a new treatment for the first time. This dismissive indifference to anecdotes turns out to be very convenient, for instance, for drug companies. If you are a physician, and you give a patient who had perfectly good balance an antibiotic, like gentamicin, and she suddenly loses all sense of balance because it injured her balance apparatus, the drug maker can say that is “just” an anecdote. It doesn’t count. And in fact, it is a fairly rare event. But it is by just such anecdotes that we learn of side effects, in part because (as I said above) most RCTs for new drugs don’t ask about those kinds of things, because they don’t want to hear the answer.

If we are to be honest, evidence-based medicine is, in large part, still aspirational. It is an ideal.

That’s why the approach I take—and I think most trained physicians with any amount of experience and investment in their patients’ well-being also take—might be called the all-available-evidence approach. This means, one has to get to know each of the study designs, their strengths, and their weaknesses, and then put it all together with what one is seeing, with one’s own eyes, and hearing from the particular patient who is seeking your care. There are no shortcuts.

One of the implications of this approach in the current COVID-19 situation is that we cannot simply, as so many are insisting, rely only on the long-awaited RCTs to decide how to treat COVID-19. That is because physicians in the end don’t treat illnesses, they treat patients with illnesses, and these patients differ.

The RCTs that are on the way may recommend, in the end, one medication as “best” for COVID-19. What does that mean? That it is best for everyone? No, just that in a large group, it helped more people than other approaches.

That information—which medication is best for most people, is very useful if you are in charge of public health for a poor country and can only afford one medication. Then you want the one that will help most people.

But if you are ordering for a community that has sufficient funds for a variety of medications, you are interested in a different question: What do I need on hand to cover as many sick people as possible, and not just those who benefit from medication X which helps most, but not all people? Even if a medication helps, say, only 10% of people, those will be lives saved, and it should be on hand. A medication that helped so few might not even have been studied, but if the others failed, it should be tried.

A physician on the frontline wants, and needs, access to those medications. He or she asks, “What if my patient is allergic to the medication that helps most people? Then, what others might I try?” Or, “What if the recommended medication is one that interacts negatively with a medication that my patient needs to stay alive for their non-COVID-19 condition?”

There are so many different combinations and permutations of such problems—and hardly any of them are ever studied—that only the physician who knows the patient has even a chance of making an informed decision. They are the kinds of things that arise on physician chat lines, that ask questions to 1,000 online peers like, “I have a patient with heart disease, on A, B, and C meds, and kidney disease on D, who was allergic to the COVID-19 med E. Has anyone tried med F, and if so, given their kidney function, should I halve the dose?”

Evidence-based medicine hasn’t studied some of the most basic treatments with RCTs or observational studies, never mind these kinds of individual complexities. So, the most prudent option is to allow the professional who knows the patient to have as much flexibility as possible and access to as many medications as possible. If we are to be honest, evidence-based medicine is, in large part, still aspirational. It is an ideal. Clinicians need latitude, and patients assume they have it. But now the RCT fundamentalists are using the absence of RCTs for some drugs to restrict access to them. They have gone too far. This is epistemological hubris, at the expense of lives, and brings to mind the old adage, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” As long as we’ve not got the best studies for all conceivable permutations, medicine will remain both an art and a science.

So, does conceding as much and giving the clinician latitude mean I don’t believe in science?

“Believe,” you say?

That is not a scientific word. Science is a tool. I don’t worship tools. Rather, I try to find the right one for the job. Or, for a complex task, which is usually the case in medicine—especially since we are all different, and all complex—the right ones, plural.

#medicine #fav #print this off later #family medicine #internal medicine #philosophy #science #covid-19 #sars-cov-2 #covid-19 vaccine

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thatonealise · 3 years

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On Worlds.

We inhabit them. We've christened ours Earth, but there are some who call Middle-Earth their home. I've heard many dashing tales from the Borderlands, and on all too many occasions guested in Azeroth. All these faraway lands are unique in their own right, sporting flora and fauna so diverse it really does make one wonder how such things came to be, whether out of nothing, or out of the wilds of human imagination.

I've always been under the impression that it would take a person too much blood, sweat and tears to fashion one. But here I stand, alone, and I need a place to set my latest overambitious and never-ending enterprise. It's a habit I'd always detested deep down, but came to respect over time, and now I say it is the prospect of making something grand, chipping away at it day and again, that gives me one more reason (among many, mind you) to get up early in the morning, and wonder what aspect of it am I going to work on next.

So it is, that I've been pondering on the sort of a world I would want you, the Player, to quench your wanderlust, and perhaps take your subconscious somewhere it has never travelled.

My research -- that hunt for inspiration, artistically speaking -- took me to media I have and have never ever witnessed, or heard, or read, or seen. I've browsed art, played this game and that; I've watched film and series, and I've brushed the dust off some of my forlorn literature. I've even dared to show up in the local library for once in an embarrassingly long (by a reader's standards) while, and borrow a "manuscript" or two I thought had a few interesting ideas. But, I have to admit, Stack Exchange remains my personal favourite. There are so many great minds there, with an equal knack for world-building, and even more thought-provoking questions granted inspiring answers. I can't recommend it enough.

On to the point, though, and it is that I've compiled a list of "archetypes" to take into consideration building my own world:

Earth-likes

What a surprise, huh? I believe it to be the most widespread archetype, and it is rather self-explanatory. An Earth-like world is more often than not a carbon copy of the blue planet (or our rather milky galaxy), with oceans and continents shuffled a notch to dodge the cosmic copyright, so to speak. It is again most common, and for a good reason: we know plenty about the science that keeps such worlds (and, by extension, our own) spinning, and the life living the way it does. It is a solid point of reference, backed with facts and studies so easy to look up on the web, or anywhere bookish, and it is always oh so tempting to use.

A few notorious examples taken from modern authors include...

...a continent under the influence of Celtic and Germanic myths; known as Middle-Earth of J. R. R. Tolkien.

...the super-continent of Stillness by Nora K. Jemisin.

...the Present World, to some extent a mirror of ours, and found in Kentaro Miura's Berserk.

...or the unforgiving deserts of Arrakis, credited to Frank Herbert.

...or Faerun, the iconic setting of Forgotten Realms.

...or even the Journey, courtesy of thatgamecompany, and the dunes one has to slide down rushing to the mountain's peak.

If at least two of the above ring a bell, you may have an idea of what brings all these worlds together, and by extension, what I think constitutes an Earth-like world. If not, then let me illustrate my point instead:

Go on, draw a comparison! It wouldn't take a particularly perceptive eye to notice that even a seemingly outlandish example, the desert planet of Arrakis, shines features not too unlike those we may find here on Earth, albeit "turned up to eleven," for the lack of a better expression. They are planets filled with oceans, and continents in between the oceans, most of them, and in general they follow the same rules we follow in our universe: desert storms rise as the wind blows, plates collide to erect mountains, and sentient life is soon to usher in an age of civilisation. Physics and passage of time progress the world as you would expect them to.

Naturally, there will be a degree of variation between Earth-likes. George Martin's Westeros, for one, is an otherwise conventional continent subject to unconventional seasons, some so abnormal they shape entire cultures -- consider the Long Night, for instance, and the impact it had on the Westerosi folklore.

Let's touch on Arrakis again: it is too an Earth-like world at the core, that suffered from a speculated misfortune of a near-miss encounter with a comet, and what once might have been an arid and bountiful world has now been left a scorching desert inhabited by massive sandworms that have evolved to swim through the sands as though they were oceans, and gobble up the teeny-tiny human wanderers crossing their "soil." A few similar worlds come to mind: Kharak, just as extreme and featured in the Homeworld series, and the much more famous Tatooine, the brainchild of George Lucas.

This big quirk -- extreme weather, unpredictable seasons, or morphed geology, or fictional species -- I prefer to dub "the Twist." It is something, a phenomenon or fact of life, that sets this world apart from ours -- something you can use to suggest that the world at hand is its own, and not Earth put in an alternate reality. Extreme biomes of Arrakis or Kharak, and bizarre seasons of Westeros, are just two examples of the Twist. Magic and magical beings found on Azeroth, or in Faerun, is another.

While the Twist is found in all archetypes, I'm of the opinion that Earth-likes depend on it more than others. Take away the Twist, and you will be left with yet another exoplanet, abiding by the rules we all know and, to be frank, find them too mundane to entertain us, or to leave a lasting memory.

As you'd expect, this was the first archetype I visited and considered for my game. The Twist I wish to feature, to go hand in hand with game mechanics I have devised, is the marriage (or clash, depending on your point of view) of science and magic, and the many ways cultures practicing either-or-both would balance them out, or tip the scales in one's favour if they so desire. I'm also very keen on endangering the Player on their journey, which I want to be perilous, and for it to matter more than the destination. Think of it as a world of vagabonds and gallivants, travelling from one bizarre place to a place twice as otherworldly, and embarking on life-threatening quests.

I've considered several worlds, most notably Kharak -- whose native species, the Kushan, traverse it on trucks and jeeps and other sand-crawling machinery. Cities on that scorched planet exist as only safe havens around, surrounded with lifeless sands, and to make it from one city to another is a dangerous affair indeed. The theme resonated with me quite a bit, but I did not find desert planets a good choice for my game, for many reasons:

It is, as the name suggests, a giant desert. There aren't that many biomes (just two, in fact, if you count largely mechanical cities as one) for the Player to explore, and there is little challenge in generating them on the fly, as opposed to a more varied world.

Throwing in arid biomes we discover in worlds like Middle-Earth or Narnia, or Faerun, felt far too conventional to me, and in my mind there would not be much room for an apocalyptic event so crippling as to make exploring this world nigh fatal.

Even if I dodged the desert altogether and rolled with a different biome or biomes, I'd still have to balance between two problems I doubt are easy to solve: featuring more biodiversity in a fundamentally monolithic environment, or more extremes in an Earth-like world that would not fit in very well.

Banality. Banality was a major concern for me, as there are oh so, so many Earth-likes out there in the industry, and the last thing I wish for my little side project is to offer yet another one. No sir!

Scope was the last but nevertheless just as important. It is difficult to fill up a giant continent, or continentS, with enough quests and points of interest to keep the Player invested. It is hard enough to produce enough scripted content, a la World of Warcraft, and it is harder still to delegate the creative matters to an automaton (Talking about you, Left 4 Dead!). Earth-likes, to my understanding, necessitate imposing scale, that I can not hope to achieve neither alone nor in company.

So I scratched this archetype off my list, and again I went searching every nook and cranny of the game industry and beyond for patterns and clues to make into archetype...

Otherlands

Perhaps not the best title to describe a world so otherworldly as to defy all laws native to our universe, but I nonetheless thought it described what I had in mind for such worlds best. Exotics, Otherlands, Alternate Realities, you name it: they spit on the natural laws we've always known, and turn what we consider to be natural upside down, from a relative point of view (I'd image they'd think we earthlings bend their ideas of what is natural, vice versa). They more often than not have so little in common with a conventional; continental world, that as a Player, you ought to be born anew, in a sense, as you have to come to terms with the new reality, and learn the rules alien to your human brain-box.

While not so abundant in fiction or film, there is an unexpected plethora of otherworldly examples found in video games. I suspect, as little more than a humble writer and not at all a qualified game designer, that the blame (the reason, rather) is at least in part to be pinned on the freedom of mechanics worlds detached from all physical boundaries allow. You're no longer on Earth; seldom even in our universe, and more often in a dimension forged by game designers to fulfill a very blunt purpose: to serve the gameplay, in full. I'd imagine it is times easier to set a game built on mechanics hostile to laws of physics somewhere abstract; mallable, in a way, to the designer's whim.

Thinking of examples took me to these fine pieces of digital entertainment:

William Chyr's Manifold Garden is, to me, a quintessential Otherland. It is set in an abstract world wrapping on itself, juxtaposing impossible geometry against Euclidean space. About the only link to our reality it maintains is the presence of gravity. Look up and down, try interacting with the objects or solving the puzzles, and you will very soon understand this is NOT the realm accomodative of your earthly instincts.

Alice: Madness Returns, too, features an Otherland (not Otherlands, fellow Alice fans!), a level set among the clouds, far above in the sky -- none other than Cardbridge! Playing cards dwell there, and glide along the windy streams to form marvellous paper castles in the sky, and bridges, and gates for Alice to cross on her way to the evil (is she really?) Queen's heartful (quite literally) domain. Like in Manifold Garden, physics still permeates this world, but the only "actor" it appears to affect is Alice herself. All that surrounds her, on the other hand, behaves in a way we would think odd.

Oddly enough, Valve's Ricochet is one more example of an Otherland, the way I see it. It's set in a pitch black void, a pocket dimension of a sort, and constricts its gunslinging inhabitants to a small archipelago of quasi-futuristic-looking platforms. It is in many ways abstract and disconnected from what we would brand a "real" world; akin more to a simulation than something even an advanced civilisation would be able to orchestrate in the vacuum of deep space. It instead serves a solitary purpose: to be an open and clear arena for the Players to pull off dextereous ricochets and physics-bending leaps from one spot to the next. There are no other earthly rules to govern this world, and beyond the dark arena is the thrice as dark abyss.

Of course, by this logic, one could consider more abstract games along the lines of Tetris Effect or even Pinball Dreams, to also fit under the same umbrella of otherworldness, and I reckon they would be right. Both games take place in places foreign to our expectation for a, dare I say, traditional setting. This is not to say, oh no, that Otherlands belong to just the games -- far from it! Otherlands are to be found in many other media.

Off the top of my head, I'd count that one scene from the cult-classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, as a "classic" Otherland in a mind-boggling nutshell:

The message I'm trying to convey, if not clear, is that Otherlands are very stubborn, and insistent on breaking you as an earthly thinker; to augment your mind and let it comprehend and utilise the new reality and the rules it enforces, like one would use the laws of our universe. "When in Rome," is the mantra they will have you etch into memory, until you think and interact with it as though you had never known another home.

The entire world, in other words, is one big Twist, standing in stark contrast to the little twists applied here and there to an Earth-like dimension. Furthermore, one could even assert that the Twist in an Otherland is turned on its head -- whereas in an Earth-like Twists were other-landish phenomena many in number but little in scope -- the Twists in an Otherland are instead few and far between, and grounded in reality. They are the links linking an Otherland to the Earth-like law. Say, physics would be very much expected in an Earth-like world, but treated as an exotic Twist in an Otherland.

To be a little more precise, an Otherland does not bother to stay true to the mechanics we think mundane and natural. It instead moulds or kills them outright, and throws itself at the mercy of the designer's wants and wishes.

Otherlands were an option, but not the option, that I'd choose for my world. I cherish the freedom they bestow upon you as a designer, but it alone did not convince me to opt for this archetype. Simply put, the downs outweighed the ups:

The world I wish to create will host fantasy far too Tolkien-esque to distance so much from Earth and earthly law. There is, in my view, a strong pull among many dungeon-crawling aficionados towards fantasy, and fantasy I will deliver. My own strain of fantasy, to be clear, but it will nevertheless mandate a degree of reality deemed by me too Earth-like to belong in an Otherland. I just can not see, at this time, a world of fantasy that is also an Otherland, not if I want my world to radiate welcoming familiarity.

This game being an open-ended RPG, it is difficult for me to envision it in an abstract environment. It calls, as I see it, for landmarks sensible to someone never ever "tainted" by the quirks of Otherlands, familiar and homely in a way, based in laws of physics and around points of interest grounded in our reality. Elevating it to be the Twist of an Otherland, brings the latter much closer to an Earth-like, but not quite. Neither this nor that, if you will, and that in turn leads me to the next and last archetype...

Near-Earths

Should you ever run into the same predicament as yours truly did in the paragraph above, I'd strongly advise you to consider Near-Earths. Not entirely Earth-like, but also too Earth-like to fit as an Otherland, a Near-Earth world is based to some considerable extent in the laws and traits of an Earth-like. It takes the best of both worlds -- mind-boggling Twists of an Otherland and experiential familiarity of an Earth-like -- and mixes them up to shape up something in-between.

Near-Earth remains ultimately an extension of an Earth-like world at its core, but to set itself apart it puts an emphasis on large-scale Twists -- that would be considered too outlandish for an Earth-like. One popular trope among Near-Earths is to feature earthly topology, strewn around the universe in the form of isles or even whole continents. Fundamental laws that define an Earth-like it bends to a fictional degree, but preserves the essentials, such as planets or stars or faimiliar dimensions, that make up our universe. Thus the link between our universe and that lives on, and it's easy for a newcomer to the world to find their way around with little to no hand-holding required.

I can't help but conjure up a few shots from Treasure Planet, which I gather needs no introduction, to illustrate my line of thought. Take one of the more iconic stills from this flawed masterpiece, R.L.S. Legacy docked at the spaceport of Crescentia:

It is in many ways familiar, I think, to anyone who has ever been to any run-of-the-mill harbour, except that ginormous frigate appears to stay suspended mid-air, not even ropes to hold it in place, and not at all swaying side to side on the high seas as one would assume. No, in this universe carpenters and shipwrigts build 18th century vessels propelled by internal combustion engines to fly through the breathable expanse that they call Ethereum. Indeed, there it is possible to breathe in space, so long as one stays careful not to lean too much on the taffrail and fall into the Ethereum proper, doomed forever to be a cosmic castaway.

Treasure Planet is very representative of a Near-Earth world, as I reckon the aforementioned scene proves. While grounded in culture and (partly) science of our universe, it strays a lot from what our scientists would deem feasible, to the point that it is fundamentally different from our universe in some respect, such as there existing a breatheable atmosphere everywhere in their universe, but not so fundamental as to defy every law of science we know in our world. Physics, and planets, and other celestial bodies and phenomena still exist there, albeit altered in a variety of ways.

Another such example would the High Wilderness, that we're told to travel aboard a literal locomotive, in the brilliant game and one of my many favourites -- Sunless Skies:

It, too, features all the same biomes and structures and many laws with a basis in our universe, and like Treasure Planet, it introduces a major twist: the space beyond the confines of Earth (which does exist in Sunless Skies, and generally follows our history with significant deviations perpetrated by Masters of the Bazaar) is an intricate maze of seldom interlocked and often overlapping topology, stacked on top of one another, and filled with an atmosphere reminiscent of Ethereum, breathable but named a different name.

It is still familiar enough to us as earthlings, and it would not take a seasoned Otherlander to pick the thing up and know the rules of play by instinct. Sure, we are driving a locomotive through time and space, and pass by living stars that govern all, called the Judgements, but the spaces we traverse and people we meet and phenomena we witness are not confusing in the slightest. Shrouded in mystery, maybe, but ultimately sensisble if given enough thought. There is not another dimension for us to consider, and impossible geometry wrapping on itself to comprehend, as seen in Manifold Garden. Nay.

On the Judgements, as a side note, I've found them to be an interesting twist in and of themselves: they are intended to be the law-makers that decide what is real in this world, and what is not. Kill, or posses them, and the world will return to a chaotic state, easily a contender for the quintessential Otherland.

One last sample for you to taste would be the city-state of Sigil, the center of all planes in the planar world of Planescape (pardon the tautology!). Also an earthly world in many ways, it departs from tradition by dabbling in the ideas of interplanar travel, and whole planes of existence drifting from place to place depending on the belief of its denizens. Name me a single spiral-shaped medieval town suspended miles in the air:

I hope my criteria is now clear, or clear-er, better still if as a day. A Near-Earth has some of its fundamental laws thrown away, or meddled with, but there is always at least some foundation identical to that of an Earth-like.

Enter the Wild

In the end, I had a choice to make; a choice of three options, all of which bore pros and posed cons. Weighing all of them took me several restless nights, about a week in total, and some creative encouragement from a colleague, who suggested I turn to Sunless Skies-esque worlds for inspiration: islands floating in the sky, nurturing islanders and their peculiar settlements. I fell in love with the idea in a heartbeat, and on and on I went searching for references. It implied to me a Near-Earth, and all the marks of distinguishment I outlined before for other archetypes pointed to Near-Earths as the perfect fit for my world.

I settled for a few points of reference, among them...

Variably-sized islands and quasi-continents of Dragon Hungers, complete with pocket cultures and hosts of creatures that dwell there:

"Outdated" and outlandish means of transportation between the islands, like airships or fire-breathing dragons, a la Sunless Skies:

Celestial bodies of Treasure Planet, like black holes or nebulas, making an appearance, though toned down a bit to ditch some of their more destructive and lethal properties. A black hole wouldn't spaghettify you in the blink of an eye, but falling into one will nonetheless bring a swift (albeit not quite so fast and unavoidable) end to your career:

What they amounted to, ultimately, is an amalgamation of varied islands, some as big as a continent, others as small as my balcony, and all sporting ecosystems never-before-seen on most other islands. They are suspended in the sky, fortunate to have a man-friendly atmosphere, with a devilish twist I'd rather keep a secret for the time being.

Wannabe heroes make their living sailing through this sky aboard mighty airships or fire-breathing dragons (among many other means of transportation), from one island and on to the next, undertaking quests and accepting commissions from the locals to earn themselves some sustenance. It's a floating world of vagabonds, gallivanters, and legends-in-the-making.

OR! Those same gallivanters may find a particular island, or spot upon on the island, very tempting to settle on. Indeed, if they so desire, players would be able to adopt a sedentary lifestyle, and see what the wilds beyond the comfort of their heart might bring one treacherously blissful morning...

Us locals have entitled this universe the Wild. Enter at your own risk, traveller, for you may never return. This theme seemed to me like a good middle-ground between all the problems I've outlined reviewing archetypes:

Scope was confined to the typical bounds of an island. Some are bigger than others, no doubt, but all of them are a far cry from the usual dimensions of a continent. A narrow scope, as such, is a scope amiable to developers limited in number, or readiness to tackle an enormous landmass.

Narrowed scope in turn shortens the distance one must travel to leave one point of interest for another. We're feeding two birds with one scone -- there is no need for us, as developers, to fill up the lands betwixt with something for you to do, and you won't have to drag yourself through an overstretchesd piece of half-arsed (pardon my French) filler to finally reach the objective that caught your eye in the first place.

At last, as my colleague pointed out, islands in space are capital. Done before to be sure, that road has been travelled many times (and so were most others), but it is still the Earth-likes that proudly keep at the victorious spree as the dominant archetype among the developers. A Near-Earth to me felt like a fair and much-wanted change of scenery, for once in a blue moon.

A floating world shattered into many habitable pieces by far imposes so many more factors upon the cultures, languages, civilisation, technology, and nature of the wild, that to turn it down in favour of an all-too-researched Earth-like world seemed a lazy way out the massive creative problem, I think, many people of letters and pencil and other trades would be thrilled to approach.

P.S. I do realise all my scribbled judgements are arbitrary, and the lines separating Near-Earth from Earth-likes, from Otherlands, is apparently fine, and entirely subjective. These are little more than my five cents; my five thoughts on the subject, and I personally found grouping these worlds into archetypes a good "bookmark" that I've used and will likely come back to designing my own worlds. Peace.

#worldbuilding #devlog #gamedev

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laws-yellow-submarine · 4 years

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Hiiii! Can you please do the NSFW A-Z for Zoro? 💕

Hello! Thanks for waiting so patiently for this, I’ve been working on it in between shifts and breaks and all that haha much easier to do the whole thing if you do it in chunks rather than all at once! I hope you enjoy!

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex)

Considering that he falls asleep pretty much instantly, he’s not too good about aftercare; he’s absolutely down for cuddles though, and will likely even seek his partner out in his sleep.

B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

On his partner: He’s an ass man, he just really loves touching/grabbing/squeezing/whatever-ing his partner’s butt.

On himself: So this’ll be hard to explain, but Zoro doesn’t really have a favorite part of his own body. Not because he’s unhappy with how he looks or anything to do with that, after all he puts a lot of work into keeping his body strong and in shape; but it’s all a vessel for his dream of being the World’s Greatest Swordsman. The closest thing you could come to for an answer would be his muscles, but that’s only because they’re the physical embodiment of what he can do as a fighter. He doesn’t attribute any emotion to his physical form, it’s all just hardware.

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person)

Considering how grossly filthy Zoro is at pretty much any given time, he has zero qualms about getting cum everywhere. Please spray him with a hose (honestly just spray him with a hose even without the sex, the man only bathes once a week, and that's a crime)

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Zoro actually really likes getting pegged (when he's with a woman), and when he's with a male partner he actually tends to bottom. It's not something he's ashamed of, per se, but it's not something most would think when they look at him, so it can be a bit of a surprise

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)

Zoro has zero experience, but once he finds someone he wants to be with he's ready and willing to learn the ropes. He approaches it just as earnestly as his regular training (though with a few more blushes of course). He mostly just needs to be guided through at first; his instincts are pretty sharp, and they’ll kick in pretty easily.

F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual)

He's fine either being on top or bottom, but his favorite positions are ones that let his partner grip him to the point of scratching him. Feeling their nails dig into his skin is a pretty big turn on and just gets him going even more than he already was. He's also a fan of sex while standing up, and he can easily hold up his partner's body while he's slamming into them.

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc)

He's unintentionally goofy, as in he's totally serious about everything he says and does, but the things he's saying and doing are so ridiculously silly that the whole thing ends up being hilarious. As he gets more comfortable having sex, he'll stop getting so embarrassed when his partner starts giggling at his antics, and he'll even be silly on purpose.

H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.)

It's a mess down there, and to be honest he can't be bothered to trim it. Maybe if he's asked really nicely (aka threatened) he'll do something about it, but otherwise it's staying a mess.

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…)

Zoro is just downright affectionate during sex. Even if it's super kinky sex, he's finding every opportunity he can to kiss his partner, whether it be on the mouth, back, shoulder, stomach, or just wherever he can reach; he just wants them as close as possible. He's so intense about it.

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)

When he's not interested in anyone in particular, he can go quite a while without masturbating; he even considers it a form of discipline training (how long can I deal with the fact that I'm horny right now, and can I hold off long enough for it to just go away?). It can become harder to keep his focus when he is interested in someone, but either way he's no stranger to masturbation. As long as he's alone and no one can hear him, he's fine.

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

Zoro's down to try anything once, but the one thing he knows for sure he likes (after trying it) is anal, both giving and receiving. Also impact play (on himself, though if his partner's into it he's up for that as well)

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do)

Anywhere he knows he won't be walked in on; he's really got no particular preference on location. He'll try to stick to comfortable places (like a couch or a bed) whenever possible for his partner's sake, but comfort isn't an issue for him as long as it's private.

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

He gets turned on the most when his adrenaline is high; so after working out, after a battle, things like that. His blood's already pumping, and then afterwards he can settle down for a nap. Win-win!

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

He won't do public sex; not because he's embarrassed about his performance or anything like that (after all, it's one more thing he can lord over a certain cook), but he's a private person. Others don't need to see how he acts with his partner in their intimate moments, and nobody except him gets to see his partner in that situation.

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)

Zoro loves receiving, he goes just absolutely wild for it; but he definitely gives as good as he gets. The man can hold a whole ass sword in his jaw, and can even hold a clear conversation while doing so! He can go for a long time without his jaw getting tired, and he’s...dextrous? Shall we say? He also can absolutely talk to his partner while he’s going down on them, which the first time he did that was definitely a shock, but after that he occasionally just...says something (about the weather for instance), just to be silly. What a dork.

P = Pace (Are they fats and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.)

He is the definition of "fast and rough", he's relentless. But, there's passion in what he does, and that's its own kind of sensuality. He can go slower if his partner would like, but he has to physically slow himself down as it's not his default setting

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.)

Zoro has no problem with quickies. If it's a matter of "we have about 5 minutes before someone walks in here but we're both horny", that seems like an easy decision for him. He does still prefer to take his time with his partner though, so he might find them again later, time permitting. It's also going to be very rough, and may leave his partner a tad sore for a while afterwards.

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)

As long as the risk isn't "let's see if we can fuck without getting caught" he's fine, and even then it's mostly that he doesn't wanna be caught with his pants around his ankles in an emergency. But honestly, this is Zoro; what's life without a little risk?

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…)

Zoro has ridiculous amounts of stamina. Sex can end up lasting a pretty long time with him, so hydrate well before and after. It'll lead to some nice sleep afterwards, though.

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)

He doesn't own toys, but if his partner has them he's more than happy to try using them. It's all part of the learning/training process for him.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

Zoro would like to tease, and he gives it a fair shot, but he usually can't hold himself back for very long to really make it worth it. He just wants to taste and feel every inch of his partner's body, and he loves the sounds they make when he's pleasuring them.

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make)

If/When he’s being teased, or just during foreplay when his partner is touching him or blowing him or grinding on him or whatever they may be doing, Zoro downright whimpers. He’s trying so hard to remain in control of himself, but when he feels good it’s harder and harder for him to remain disciplined, and those little sounds just slip out of him (especially pre-timeskip, before he’s had further training with Mihawk; he’s much less self-controlled then). He’s pretty embarrassed by it though, so don’t tease him about it (but feel free to continue teasing him in other ways hehehe). Otherwise he's pretty loud anyway, but not much for words; it's just a bunch of noisy grunts and caveman noises. He's so noisy!

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice)

Surprising probably no one, Zoro is a bit of a masochist! Nothing too crazy, but the slight sting of pain during foreplay and sex is a huge turn on for him, and drives him absolutely wild. It's part of why battle gets him worked up.

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words)

His penis is pretty average in length and girth, with a slight curve to the left.

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)

He's pretty good at staving off the urges, but his sex drive is remarkably high. He's honestly always DTF, so long as circumstances permit it.

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

He passes right out, sorry. He’s just exerted a lot of energy and stamina, no different than when he trains and works out, and he celebrates by taking a nice nap. He’ll be up again soon though, he never sleeps for very long.

#roronoa zoro #roronoa zoro headcanons #not safe #one piece #one piece headcanons #thanks for the ask!#anon asks #and with this we complete the trifecta of 'One Piece Boys I'd Smash If Given The Chance' lmfao #more soft/bottom Zoro please...

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 12 Review: Diary Queen

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This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.

The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 12

The Simpsons Season 32, episode 12, “Diary Queen,” may be the sweetest offering of the series. It’s not only sentimental and self-esteem-positive, it’s downright edumacational. At least for Bart, who certainly learns a lesson. Thankfully, as the episode explains by example, he probably won’t retain it.

“What’s the matter, Bart? I figure you’d be used to failing by now,” Edna Krabappel once consoled the spiky haired kid who seemed so determined to get through school without schooling. Marcia Wallace, who played the Springfield Elementary teacher, died unexpectedly in October 2013. Edna’s death was first acknowledged in “Four Regrettings and a Funeral,” from season 25, when Bart wrote “We’ll really miss you Mrs. K” on the chalkboard. He only wrote it once. Her death was punishment enough. Both the character and the voice actor were instrumental in the chemistry of The Simpsons, and chemistry happens to be one of the few things Bart’s ever excelled at in school, even pranking a talent show in the “Haw-Haw Land” episode. But he gets his beakers crossed in the latest installment.

“Diary Queen” opens with an inspired West Side Story song parody, “Too Nice” replacing “Tonight.” It’s time for Ned Flanders’s annual yard sale, and he’s on a holy mission to undersell eBay. Comic Book Guy is looking for a broom to play Quidditch on, Waylen Smithers is going to score some kitsch, and Ned will finally toss those fuzzy dice Maude bought him to the bottom of an impulse item box of jokes he did not get. The Flanders family are parting with their humble possession in a public bid for humility, in case no one notices. Ned gives up Rod’s teeth. Todd consigns his toys to the auction block on the grass. “Playing is a sin that we regret,” one of the Flanders kids explains.

Ned’s bizarre outdoor bazaar is the only segment which has any meanness in it. The Springfieldians want to take advantage of Ned, and openly mock him. Carl and Lenny turn the yard sale into a yarn brawl, and Jimbo’s gang buys commemorative plates just to smash them. It’s enough to send Ned looking for the fans he always carries around in case of stress-induced hot flashes. As Patty and Selma are flicking ashes into Rod and Tod’s baby shoes, it seems Nelson, Bart, and Millhouse are the only ones worthy to buy Ned’s treasured mementos. And, of those, only Nelson’s purchase is authentic. He buys all the bad words, like “adultery” and “fornication,” which Ned cut out of his old religious texts. Nelson has a genuine use for them, you can just tell.

Bart and Millhouse buy the books. Even without the offending admonishments, they swear they’ll still find useful ways to better themselves. Their haul winds up being the fiery centerpiece for a supercool skateboarding feat which no one will ever see. It’s an old joke, but we do get to notice how big Millhouse’s nose looks when he’s picking it. One book, which gives the title to the episode, is spared the conflagration of Bart’s daredevil jump: Edna Krabappel’s diary. Bart recognizes the Ds and Fs, and Millhouse recognizes the smell of Parliament Lights 100s. It’s very telling how these are the most recognizable clues. They are each ready-made character punchlines.

The diary is a font of information. Bart and Millhouse learn all the teachers work night jobs during school hours, and the many lonely secrets of Groundskeeper Willie. But their first use of it is inspired gaggery. Bart learns Superintendent Chalmers keeps his car keys behind the visor. The two kids not only steal the car but take advantage of a free yogurt offer at a car wash. The idea that taking the yogurt and ditching the car is a “perfect crime” is great kids’ logic. It is a little odd, however, that Springfield’s Chief Wiggum sees fourth grade car thieves as inspiration for a little personal time with Officer Lou, but it works within Simpsons logic.

The central point of the episode is Bart’s relationship with his dead teacher, and his relationship with himself. He actually believes someone he thought only saw him as troublesome also considered him “smart as a whip.” It leads him to believe he actually has potential, which he translates to: all the time he was showing his butt he was showing promise. This spurs him into thinking about getting seriously educated. Not only does he try but he succeeds on his first dry run, resisting the urge to draw a skeleton head on a multiple-choice test grid, and getting an A. Not only does he finally understand how his sister Lisa doesn’t suck, but he puts himself on the same level.

Lisa goes through all the stages of jealousy, and even realizes she’s on the verge of obsession when even her imaginary comfort pony begins to look like Bart. This makes it worse, because realizing he is the only thing she can think about only makes her dwell on it. Lisa is usually the family genius, and how she reacts to Bart doing well really depends on the circumstance and need for story conflict. For instance, when Bart had to apply geometry to miniature golf in an early episode, Lisa brought a Zenlike understanding of all things which putt. Lisa does Bart a disservice tonight in the guise of doing the right thing. It’s her MO.

Of course, Marge and Lisa don’t trust Bart’s recent good grades, but while he comes up clean to Marge, Lisa digs up the dirt. Bart correlates “cruel” with “lying” because “they’re both great.” He thinks he’s going to win a Spelling Bee just because he has the potential to do it. Would it have been less cruel for Lisa to let him see how far his belief would get him? She’s set him up for worse humiliations just for an edge at science fairs.

Millhouse gets a few good gags tonight. When Lisa starts developing a rash because of the stress of not crushing her brother’s potential, he pulls cream out of his fanny pack labeled “rash stash.” Groundskeeper Willie is a highlight of the episode. His character has one of the most interesting takes on passive aggressive behavior in comedy. It’s not that he gets it backwards, so much as he pays it forward: Terrorizing Bart with the idea of simmering a new pet into rabbit stew when all he’s thinking of is how much bunnies love stewed carrots.

The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 11 Review: The Dad Feelings-Limited

By Tony Sokol

The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 10 Review: A Springfield Summer Christmas for Christmas

By Tony Sokol

Subtle social commentary makes its way into the episode. As this is the first episode since the Trump presidency, it opens with a Bald Eagle flying a sign asking “Is it safe yet?” We learn Ned doesn’t find Bill Maher funny. A priest tells Bart and Millhouse reading someone else’s diary in church is not the worst thing you can do within the hallowed walls. Moments later we see the priest handcuffed and escorted past the pews by the police. We can only wonder what offenses are happening at Reverend Lovejoy’s competition.

Fat Tony (Tony Montagna) tells his henchmen his crime family doesn’t kill children, “We wait till they’re 18.” Lisa is kept up at night by the cold dead eyes of Mike Pence. Subtle subversive commentary can be found when Principal Skinner declares the drug-free portion of the school assembly a success because Lisa, the only one in the auditorium, tells him she doesn’t do drugs. But the scene comes shortly after we learn Dr. Hibbert is pushing kiddie-Xanax “sleepies” and “dopies” on her. The best bad side effects are “Portuguese insolence” and the “tendency to see yourself as others see you.”

The episode has quite a few sight gags which work well. The sign outside the Spelling Bee contest reads H-E-A-R, and we see one of the losing contestants ripping up a dictionary on the way to the exit. When Ned starts to preachify in the treehouse, he only stops because Bart is drawing back a trigger finger on his slingshot. Mrs. Krabappel’s beloved cat not only was not harmed during the making of the episode, but was a willing participant, according to the closing disclaimer. One of the stills in the photo montage is of Krabappel watching The Bob Newhart Show, which Marcia Wallace was a regular on.

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

For the majority of The Simpsons’ run, Mrs. Krabappel was a sexually independent woman who was often “looking for a substitute to teach me a lesson I sorely need.” She began dating widower Ned in “The Ned-Liest Catch” from season 22. They married in secret and stayed together until her death in “The Man Who Grew Too Much.” The cause of Edna’s death has never been revealed, except in a non-canon, future-set episode. For this installment, Wallace’s two lines are taken from earlier episodes. “Diary Queen” will be her last appearance.

This is a different kind of arc for The Simpsons. “Diary Queen” is on an uplifting trajectory until Lisa knocks it off course, and ends in a sudden life-affirming crash. Bart’s final warning to Marge, “I’ll go over the edge if you try to make me feel better,” is wonderfully skewered, but the final twist is a dose of treacle. The episode was originally slated to premiere on Valentine’s Day, and is a sweet sendoff.

The post The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 12 Review: Diary Queen appeared first on Den of Geek.

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otomehonyaku · 4 years

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DIABOLIK LOVERS CHAOS LINEAGE | KINO 2 [ENGLISH]

♥ OTHER CHAPTERS OF THIS ROUTE & OTHER TRANSLATIONS (CLICK HERE) ♥

@kyouxa and I decided to join forces to translate Kino’s CL route together! ☆*:.｡.o(≧▽≦)o.｡.:*☆ She’ll be translating the endings (which I’ll be linking to in my masterpost), and I’ll be translating the main route. This is the second chapter, and things are getting pretty interesting... Enjoy!

In terms of the gameplay: The black choices lead up to a bad ending, the white choices lead up to a good ending.

DO NOT REPOST MY TRANSLATIONS ON TUMBLR OR OTHER PLATFORMS, TRANSLATE MY TRANSLATIONS TO ANOTHER LANGUAGE, OR USE MY TRANSLATIONS IN ANY FORM ELSEWHERE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING DOING ANY OF THESE THINGS, PLEASE ASK FOR MY PERMISSION FIRST.

MONOLOGUE

The day after I promised Kino to join forces with him,

I was called to the living room by Reiji to have dinner together with everyone.

As we sat gathered around the dining table, Reiji began his report on the current situation.

-LOCATION: SCARLET MANSION DINING ROOM-

Reiji: As for the fight for the throne, we have no less than Eve in our possession, so we are in an advantageous position. However, as long as the King has not yet arisen, the other houses will surely attack us in an effort to take Eve from us.

Yuma: Don’t you think they’ve decided when they’ll be coming to sniff us out and attack right about now?

Reiji: Exactly, so let’s go and investigate the other houses ourselves too. Yuma, Shu. I’d like the two of you to go and spy.

Yuma: Guess we’ll have to. It’s no use sittin’ around waiting either, right?

Shuu: Fuck this...

Yuma: ...Oi! Shuu! I keep tellin’ you to eat your veggies!

Shuu: Don’t throw such a fuss about veggies.

Yuma: Who do you think grew those veggies?!

Reiji: Shuu. Even resources and food are limited under these circumstances.

Shuu: It’s not like us vampires need to eat.

Yuma: What? That’s not what I’m saying, I’m saying that you shouldn’t let my veggies go to waste!

Yui: (Even though everyone’s memories have been tampered with, it’s business as usual... It’s basically as if nothing has changed.) (However, Reiji has taken up the role of the eldest son, and Shuu and Yuma were made to be brothers...) (Hmm... Because I know everyone's original relationships, it's uncomfortable, after all.)

Reiji: ...Eve. Your hands are awfully still.

Yui: Ah... I’m sorry. (Oh no, they’ll become suspicious of me if I keep getting lost in thought. I should try and focus on my meal first.)

Reiji: Let’s return to discussing the matters at hand. I don’t know which house will be attacked first. We must all stay vigilant. Especially you, Kino. Please make sure Eve is not taken from us.

Kino: I gotcha, brother Reiji. You can leave Eve in my care.

Yui: (I was quite nervous, but dinner was over before I knew it.) (Everyone else went back to their rooms, but Kino is still playing on his smartphone on the sofa...) (Ah! If it’s just the two of us, this might be my chance to discuss with him what we should do next!) Hey, Kino.

Kino: Hm?

Yui: Maybe we could talk about how we’re going to get out of this place?

Kino: Hm...

Yui: First things first, I think we should try and make everyone regain their memories. If we can do that, we might be able to discuss a way to get back home with everyone altogether.

Kino: I see...

Yui: (Kino... Seems to be so entranced by his smartphone that he’s only giving me half-hearted answers.) Hey, Kino. Put your game away for a bit and listen to me properly!

Kino: Ah, hey! C’mon, really... It’s game over because you got in the way!

Yui: Ah... I-I’m sorry... (Is it really my fault though?)

Kino: Ah, games really are no fun when you can’t compete with anyone... You know, only being able to play offline and all. It’s such a pain in the butt not to have an internet connection.

Yui: (Hmm. I wonder why Kino won’t listen to me.)

— SELECTION —

1. スマホゲームの話題を振る　Bring up the topic of Kino’s game (white)

Yui: (Maybe Kino will listen to me if I try talking about a subject that he seems to be interested in.) Why can you still play games even though you don’t have an internet connection?

Kino: That’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s an app that I downloaded on my smartphone. Do you really not know that kind of stuff?

Yui: I’m sorry, I don’t really play smartphone games or anything. Uh, are you good at them, Kino?

Kino: I’m always high in the rankings. However, when we’re stuck in a place like this, I’ll be left behind in no time.

Yui: That’s unfortunate... Ah, listen! Let’s do our best to get back to the real world as fast as we can, so you can play your games again too!

Kino: What? Are you trying to get my attention by talking about something that you think I’ll like?

Yui: Ah...

Kino: Gotcha. You are so easy to read.

Kino: ...I think you’ll make a great toy.

Yui: Did you say something just now?

Kino: No, nothing at all.

2. そのまま本題を話続ける　Keep talking about the main topic (black)

Yui: (If I give up so soon and just see what happens, nothing will change, so I should try talking about the matters at hand until he listens to me.) Kino, why don’t we try and come up with something to get back to where we belong as soon as possible?

Kino: Listen. Do you really think you’ll get through to me if you beg me please? Isn’t that a bit arrogant?

Yui: That wasn’t my intention, though... I’m sorry.

Kino: ...Ah, well. It’ll only be more of a pain in the ass for me if you keep being stubborn, so I’ll listen.

— END OF SELECTION DIALOGUE —

Kino: So, you want to return to where we belong? Do you have some kind of idea about the way to achieve that?

Yui: For now, I’ve only come up with one thing, though... We don’t have anything to lose, so why don’t we try and play on Reiji and the others’ sympathies and talk to them about these strange things that happened to the two of us?

Kino: That’s obviously a no-go.

Yui: Huh... Why?

Kino: If you say something like that out of the blue, don’t you think you’ll be thought of as a woman who’s lost her mind? You should know more than anyone that Reiji isn’t enough of an idiot to believe things like that easily.

Yui: That’s true... (Shuu would probably find me a nuisance. And Yuma...) (Even if they were to listen to me, it’d be over as soon as they look at me with suspicion...)

Kino: Well, in any case, I’ve gotten quite thirsty.

Yui: Ah, is that so?

Kino: ‘Is that so,’... You’re not very smart, are you? This is where you say, ‘I’ll go and get something for you,’ right?

Yui: Oh, me?

Kino: There’s nobody else here except you. Didn’t you say you’d join forces with me?

Yui: I did, but... (Rather than ‘joining forces,’ it just seems like I’m only being used at his convenience.) (However, Kino is the only one I can talk to in this situation, so I don’t want to cause an unfriendly atmosphere over something like this.) Okay, I’ll go get something for you.

Kino: Well then, guava juice, please.

Yui: Guava juice!? Do they have that here?

Kino: I dunno, but they might. So, go on and have a look.

Yui: R-right... okay. Huh? Come to think of it... we talked about this during dinner, but how do you get food around here? Maybe a supermarket... If it’s not that, are there any shops, for instance?

Kino: All that’s here is the church and the mansions. Nobody lives here except us. So, there aren’t any shops either.

Yui: Ah! Then, how do you get ingredients for our meals?

Kino: All our resources are deposited at a specific spot. From there, our familiars bring them to us.

Yui: Deposited? Do they just appear suddenly?

Kino: I haven’t seen the exact spot, so I don’t know. However, the fact that these items are deposited as time elapses... It’s like a game world, isn’t it?

Yui: This isn’t the time for such carefree talk! There’s no way food would naturally appear like that out of the blue. So there has to be—

Kino: Someone is putting the resources there.

Yui: ...!

Kino: The distorted memories, the provision of resources, it’s all intentional. Well, there must be a mastermind who took us here and is making us fight.

Yui: A mastermind...? (Someone brought us here with some sort of goal. By making everyone fight one another over the Throne.) (Who on Earth could do something like...)

Kino: In any case, where’s my juice? I’ll punish you if you don’t bring it to me within 10 seconds.

Yui: What!? 10 seconds!?

Kino: Ten, nine...

Yui: (I-I have to hurry and search the kitchen!) I’m back, Kino...

Kino: Took you longer than 10 seconds. Why did you come back empty-handed, though?

Yui: I looked in the kitchen and the storage room, but I couldn’t find such a specific kind of juice.

Kino: What? Why isn’t there any guava juice?

Yui: If only I knew...

Kino: Reiji’s dishes and Yuma’s vegetables are all there, but my juice isn’t... This pisses me off...

Yui: Huh... Kino?

Kino: I told you I’d punish you if it took you more than 10 seconds, right?

Yui: B-but, there really isn’t any juice in this mansion!?

Kino: That’s true... but I just really wanted to drink some sweet guava juice. So... Then let me drink your blood instead.

Yui: Ah, that’s... Stop, Kino...!

Kino: Hm... Fine. Struggle as much as you want. It’ll be so much fun making you submit yourself to me.

Kino: [bites down]

Yui: Ah... Kino! (I can’t do it... I can’t compete with his strength.)

Kino: Ha... I have no use for you, but your blood is the only thing that’s good about you. Tell me that you’ll sacrifice yourself to me. Beg me to drain you of every last drop of blood in your body. Ah, you can cry and apologise all you want, you know? Even if you were to get down on your knees and beg for forgiveness with your forehead to the ground, that won’t be enough.

Yui: There’s no way I’d...

Kino: Then I won’t forgive you. I’ll bite deeper than before. [bites down]

Yui: [struggles] (His fangs are in so deep... It hurts...) Kino, please, stop...

Kino: There’s no way I would. I won’t let you go unless I want to. I’m thirsty because you didn’t bring me any juice.

Yui: That’s... Not even my fault...

☆ EXTRA AUDIO — TOUCH THE SPOTS ON THE SCREEN ☆

(Yui’s hair) Hehe... No matter how much you resist, you’ll always succumb to the pleasure of having your blood sucked in the end... You’re so easy to read.

(Yui’s right hand) Why are you trying to resist so much? This is your own fault. C’mon, be a good girl and stay put.

Yui: (Kino is... having fun doing this. He doesn’t want to listen to what I have to say at all...) (I told him I’d cooperate with him, but... If he keeps doing things like this to me, I won’t be able to trust him...)

Kino: What, lost in thought? You’re so calm. Well then, I’ll drink even more. It might hurt if you don’t stay put, you know?

Yui: N-no...! Stop...!

Kino: Hehe, your frightened expression is the best. [bites down]

Yui: [breathes heavily] (I’m at my limit... He took so much, my conscience is...)

Kino: Huh? Did I drink too much? It’s no fun feeding off of you when you’re asleep, though. It can’t be helped. My thirst was quenched, so I’ll reward you by carrying you to your room.

Yui: (Ugh... Kino is picking me up...?)

Kino: Yeah. So, our destination is my room, correct?

Yui: ...Huh...?

Kino: I have to keep watch over you at all times, after all. From now on, you’ll be sleeping over in my room.

Yui: T-that’s...

Kino: I don’t need your permission.

Yui: (I really can’t tell if I should trust him or not.) (What... will become of me from now on?) (No... I can’t think straight. My conscience is fading—)

#diabolik lovers #dialovers #diahell #diabolik lovers chaos lineage #chaos lineage #diabolik lovers translation #diabolik lovers translations #kino #kino sakamaki #sakamaki kino #japanese translation #japanese translations #otome #visual novel #otome translation #otomehonyaku #dlclkino #visual novel translation

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surveys-at-your-service · 3 years

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Survey #298

“i don’t like what i am becoming / wish i could just feel something”

Do you have sensitive skin? Very. Do you wear necklaces or earrings more? Just my tragus piercing, really. I only ever wear a necklace sometimes if I'm taking a "nice" picture. Rings or bracelets? I currently don't wear any bracelets, but I do always have one ring on. How many toilets are in your house? Two. Is your current crush younger than you? By just a couple years. Are you a lighter complexion than your father? Yes; he's very tan, especially his arms from being a mailman. Ranch or barbeque sunflower seeds? I don't like sunflower seeds. Do you know the first five books of the Bible in order? No. Do you have a pet fish? Nah, they're not my thing. Do you believe being gay is a choice or a "disorder"? Neither; I believe it's a genetic mutation. It defies biology and the very motive for life, but I always say that a mutation does not, in any way, equate to "wrong." I am extremely adamantly pro-gay rights and bisexual myself, so I can't shit-talk it. What are some of your favourite sounds? Crunching leaves, rain gently tapping on windows, windchimes, birdsong... mainly nature sounds. There are others, I'm just blanking right now. Are you a warm weather or cold weather person? Cold, 100%. What time do you wake up? What for? This spans over a massive gap, honestly... I can wake up as early as 5 or as late as 9:30. Most often, it's pretty early, and I call that my "trial" of being awake, lol... because I will almost without fail go back to sleep for a couple more hours. Hell, that happens even if I sleep on the later side. Do you ever listen to music to fall asleep to? I used to do that in middle and maybe some of high school, I think; I'd fall asleep with my iPod on and earbuds in. I haven't done that in a very long time, though. Could you spend the rest of your life with someone who had bad taste in music? ... Yes? Their taste in music has nothing to do with them as a person???? Do you still talk to the person you fell hardest for? No, and it's best I don't. Have you ever wanted to get drunk and get your mind off everything? Yes, and that's how I found out I'm far from a lightweight. I wasn't going to drink more than I actually wanted to drink just to get wasted. Did you love playing hide and seek as a kid? Yeah. Who is the last child you held? My youngest niece. Have you ever woken up not knowing where you were? Maybe for a few moments after my surgery? I don't really recall. When is the last time you made the wrong choice in anything? Every fucking day when I decide what to do with my time. What is the most interesting thing in the room you are in? My snake, I guess. She's a champagne morph ball python. When washing your hands, do you wet your hands or put soap on first? I put on soap first. When was the hardest you ever cried? What was the circumstance? Probably when Mom literally dragged me home after I tried to walk to Jason's to talk the night of the breakup. I lost my fucking mind. Which gift cards do you have in your wallet? I don't think I have any. Coke or Pepsi? Coke. I hate Pepsi. What is better: cute smile, or amazing eyes? A cute smile. What song are you listening to? "Drilled a Wire Through My Cheek" by Blue October is on currently. Name your best friend(s): Sara. Do you know any mechanical stuff about cars? Nope. Last night you felt? I wasn't suicidal, but still kinda wanted to die lmao. Do you still watch Disney channel? No. How do you like your eggs? I only enjoy them scrambled, and preferably with cheese. What’s your all-time favorite song? "False Flags" by Massive Attack. If you could be any TV character, who would you be and why? Idk, I don't watch TV enough. Maybe Donna from That '70s Show. Very strong and independent, outspoken, and not to mention she has great taste. I find her to be a good female character to look up to. Do you ever come up with really good ideas for stories or movies? Do you do anything with them? Yeah; I'll try to integrate them into RP characters and plots. What sort of things do you post on your Tumblr? Vintage photos, screen caps, girly things? It's a Markiplier cesspit lmao. Sometimes I'll reblog shit I find funny. I've been very inactive on it, though. Have you ever had a dream that you couldn’t shake, even for days after you woke up? Oh yes. When was the last time you felt like a nuisance, or unwanted? Recently, I'm sure. When was the last time your dreams were crushed, or at least hindered? I dunno. How’s school going? I'm not in school. Are you angry at anyone right now? Myself. The last person to say they loved you? Mom. When is the last time you laughed hard? Hard? I'm really not sure. Are there any words on your shirt? No, it's just a blank black tank. Does it take a lot to make you cry? NOPE. Do you tell your parents everything? No. Do you get bored easily? I'm bored to the point of thinking being dead would be more fun at some point almost every day. I have anhedonia badly. I'm honestly starting to think I've over-medicated to a numbing degree so am trying to wean off some things. Have you ever burned someone's picture? No. How long was your last nap? Maybe three hours? I was really, really tired, though. Can you name the last time you felt happy? Probably when Sara and I talk-talked for the first time in a while. When was the last time you played with sidewalk chalk? Oh, I have zero clue. Probably not since I was a kid. Do you have friends obsessed with World of Warcraft? Bro wtf don't @ me. Have you ever punched a hole in the wall? No. Have you ever told someone you hated them? The only time I've seriously said that was to my dad before we reconciled after the divorce. What was the color of the bridesmaid dresses of the last wedding you went to? I actually don't remember... Favorite thing to do on Facebook? See The Memes. Do you wear flip flops, regardless of weather, all the time? I SAID don't @ me. What is in store for your future? I both do and don't want to know. Have you ever seen a live bat? Yeah. I adore bats. Do you chew on straws? No. Do you have any trophies? Yeah. Who’s the last person that creeped you out? Some guy who walked into the store I was at with Mom, continuously looking back and forth. Would you believe an ex if she/he said they love you? Well, that would depend on the person. Have you ever been kissed in the rain? Yeah. Anything exciting happening soon? My half-sister and her kids are visiting tomorrow and staying for a few days. It's a surprise for Mom. Do you keep a diary or journal (offline or online)? You could say these surveys kinda are. I don't have a designated "diary," though. When was the last time you took a painkiller? What was it for and did it work? I had womanly issues a few days back, and yeah, it helped. Have you ever had to go and rescue someone because their car broke down? When was the last time that happened? I mean, I've driven /with/ Mom to do so. I myself don't drive. What’s one sweet/candy you miss from your childhood? Is this item something you can still buy or has it been discontinued? Y'all remember Baby Bottle Pops??? 'Cuz I do, and I love those fuckin things. I still see them sometimes in gas stations. When was the last time you used some kind of moisturiser? A few days back for my hands. They were painfully dry. If you’re under lockdown/stay at home orders at the moment, are you struggling or managing okay? A bitch is s t r u g g l i n g. Has anything positive come out of the pandemic for you? Fuck no. Do you wear a watch? Is it analogue/digital? Does it it have things like a step-counter in it? No. Do you have any gifts from Christmas that you still haven’t opened or used? Not used, yes. Well, then some things are still in their boxes, but they're unwrapped. Do you know how to tie a tie? If so, who taught you? No. Who was your last missed call from? Did you ring that person back? Some number I didn't recognize, so no. When was the last time you had some kind of problem with your internet connection? Is this something that happens often? A few days back. It has occasional instances where it'll go out but come back on shortly. Do you have a favourite celebrity chef? No. Do you prefer pizza or pasta? Pizza. Have you ever volunteered anywhere before? What was the reason behind doing so? Once at PetSmart when they had dogs to adopt out, which was for school volunteer hours. I spent time with them, giving them attention and taking them outside. I also had two other animal-related volunteer days, but each was only a few hours because my fucking weak-ass body couldn't handle them. Have you ever been truly obsessed with something? What was it and how did you come to feel that way? I have an incredibly obsessive personality; I could probably name near on a dozen or so things I've been genuinely obsessed with. I don't know what it means to love in moderation. Some are/were pleasant obsessions, some aren't/weren't. Does it bother you when people turn up at your house without asking or waiting to be invited? Yes. Are you taller or shorter than average height? I'm the average for an American woman. Do you have any family members whose beliefs or ways of life completely embarrass you? YUP YUP YUP YUP. Are you scared of heights? Yes. When was the last time you lost something of great sentimental value? Did you ever end up finding it again? I don't know. Have you ever injured anyone in self-defense? No. What food do you find to be the most filling? Is this something you eat a lot of? In relation to its portion sizes, oatmeal or eggs. I can't have a whole lot of either. I wouldn't say I eat either a lot, but oatmeal is more common. Have you ever heard people talking badly about you behind your back? Did you confront them about it? Yes, and in at least two instances. Do you consider “home” to be the place you were born, or is it somewhere you create for yourself? I consider it to be my childhood home; not the one I was actually born in, but only because I was way too young to remember and we only lived there like, maybe two years into my life. Have you ever experienced having to leave your home due to a fire, or due to the threat of fire? No, thankfully. When was the last time you felt you were in a dangerous situation? When we had a serious tornado warning Christmas Eve. Yes. In winter. Are there any superstitions that you believe in? Which ones and what are your reasons for doing so? No. Are there any series of books/films that you never finished - either because you got bored of waiting or just lost interest? Oh, I'm sure. I Wouldn't say I lost interest in a lot though, I just wasn't interested enough, like for The Hunger Games. Which theme park is your favorite? I haven't been to nearly enough to know. Like, just one. Do you eat healthy? I try to be, at least. Though I've been doing very poorly about it lately because I'm a emotional goddamn eater and am having a very hard time. Do/did your parents fight often? They're divorced for a reason. Do YOU fight with them often? No. Would you say that you're respectful? I hope so. Are you a fan of Green Day? Yeah, I love them. Would you rather have 4 kids at one time or never have a kid? Jesus Christ, never. I don't want any anyway. Do you think 'friends with benefits' relationships really ever work? No. Do you or have you ever known a drug addict? Yes. Do you turn off the water while brushing your teeth or leave it on? I always turn it off. No reason to waste it. Do you have any nieces or nephews? Lots, if you include my half-siblings. Are caterpillars more cute or disgusting? I tend to find them cute. What's your homepage when you bring up the internet? Google. Was the last book you read for fun or was it for some type of assignment? It was for fun. Have you ever dated someone you met online? Yes. Would you go on a date with someone right now if they asked? Depends on who's asking. Do you own any band tees? Oh, I have lots. Off the top of my head, some that I frequently wear are Metallica, Otep, and Korn. Do you know someone who wears a wig? No. Have you ever kissed someone under fireworks? I don't think so. What kind of dressing do you eat on your salad, if any? I strongly prefer the Olive Garden kind, but I also enjoy ranch. What genre of music do you listen to the most? Metal of some sort. Have you ever dated someone who was way overprotective of you? No. Do you personally know any cops? No. How many different colleges have you gone to? Three. How much stress can you handle? Not much at all. How confident are you in achieving your dreams? I ain't got the slightest clue by this point in my life. What is one thing you thought you’d never do but have done or are doing? There's a lot of things, most bad, some good. Do you have to take medication for any mental illness? A lot. Do you like looking at pictures? It depends on what's in them. Specifically pictures from my past, that's usually a big no. Do you believe the dead can have connections with the living? I guess in very vague ways. Which family member do you get along with the most? Well, define "get along with." I by far have the strongest relationship with my mom, but we fight sometimes. As for who I stay on the most stable ground with, that's probably my dad. Would you ever be able to become a vegan? I know I couldn't, but I'd love to. How did you meet your newest friend? Who even IS my newest friend... Have you ever watched the show Teen Mom? What did you think about it? No, and I think it's an awful fucking idea for a television show. Put a spotlight on and money into teen pregnancy, yeah, that's a genius plan. Are you old enough to remember MySpace? Yeah. Do you think you’ll be a good mother/father? I wouldn't be. Do you have trouble deleting your text messages? I don't need to. Is there something that you haven’t told anyone that you actually would like to tell someone? No. Have you ever been called a tease? Yeah. Do people ever make fun of your religion or lack thereof? No. Do you say/do things a lot for shock effect? No? What was the last compliment you gave a guy? I probably told my nephew Ryder he was a good brother. Was one of your grandpas in a war? Maybe? Idk. I never knew either well at all. Have you screamed in a pillow before? Yes. What do you like more, acoustic or electric? Electric. Have you ever ordered something off a commercial on television? No. What's worse, having someone mad or disappointed in you? Disappointed. Do you still consider Pluto a planet? Yes. Didn't they reinstate it as one, anyway? Right now, are you at a high, leveled, or low point? What's lower than "low?"

#survey #surveys #questions #questionnaire #lyrics: ''i am machine'' by three days grace

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theincompetentgenius · 4 years

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Matchup

hiyaaa!! could i pls get a written matchup for ikesen, ikerev, & mlqc? 💞 bi but i prefer guys! i have an older twin sis~ 5'4 young girl~ medium-length straight-ish black hair & dark brown eyes. ambiverted INTP! hufflepuff/ravenclaw. fun-loving & friendly scorpio. if not given attention, i feel unwanted/sad. quiet w/ people im not close w/. easily annoyed but guilty after 'cause im soft-hearted. playful/serious, childish/mature, competative/laidback, funny/shy, talkative/good listener, loud/soft, kind/quiet, emotional/solemn, sweet/smart, bright/deep, poetic/intellectual, daydreamer/studious, annoying/lovable. hopeless romantic! sorta socially anxious, i have a fear of judgement. my personality is like half fun/happy and half deep/quiet- very awkward. i want to be the best! im not innocent but ppl think i am at first. its easy to make me smile & laugh but i also get jealous often. i have trouble asking for help even if i help others a lot! im the type to do fun stuff and loosen up, but im also the type to just cuddle and have long conversations about life and the world. emotionally mature but a bit emotionally unstable (mental health problems-) i look fine on the outside but on the inside its a MESS. im actually a complex person, and i rlly think a lot to myself. i feel rlly scared tho if im not completely sure if im correct abt smth, n i get rlly anxious when ppl r looking at me blankly w/ smiling- likes: diff kinds of jokes, testing myself, affection, animals, doing exhilirating things, music, movies, books, games, family, friends, astrology, astronomy, learning new things, & mythology. dislikes: too much heat, school presentations, creepy dolls, being under pressure, dirty things. i love weapons (esp swords n guns, i like magic too tho)!! i think they're super cool- omg im super srry cause i think this is too much- tysm anyway!! feel free to take your time (health comes first!) n have a great year! 💞

Aww, thank u so much! This was submitted to me quite a while back and I’m really sorry for the major delay. However, I’ve finally gotten to this. Hope you still enjoy it :)

Ikemen Sengoku

I’d pair you with.................. Hideyoshi Toyotomi!

Honestly, I was having difficult picking just one person since you have such a complex personality (don’t worry, this is a good thing). For a while, I was leaning towards Mitsuhide at first because your personality would’ve made the perfect MC for his route. You’re sweet enough to get him to open up, but not a complete ditz. He’d love to learn all the different sides of your personality, falling for every single piece. After all, there’s no puzzle that he can’t solve.

However, I’m gonna go with Hideyoshi on this one. His simple attitude would best compliment all your different traits, creating the perfect balance. Whenever he’s being hard-headed, your multi-dimensional personality will provide him with another side that he hadn’t considered.

Don’t want to ask for help? Not a problem because Hideyoshi is going to help you anyways (whether you want or not). He’ll be at your side all day, making sure that even the smallest of tasks have dealt with. Once your work is done, he’ll linger around for a little bit, waiting for that last good-bye kiss.

You manage to pull him out of his comfort zone, going on small adventures together! He’s not the biggest fan of them, but he always tags along to make sure you’re alright. His favorite adventures are when you two go into the forests, observing all the different animals. There’s nothing like seeing the sweet smile on your face to brighten up his day.

The day always ends with the two of you heading back to his room, laying on his bed, and looking at all the cool stuff that you found. He’ll have his arms wrapped around your waist, resting his chin on top of your head, listening to you rave about the adventure. But when you remind him that there’s no place that you’d rather be than in his arms, Hideyoshi can’t help but turn into a puddle. It’s just a night of cuddles and endless affection.

Hideyoshi is also the best person to go to when you’re feeling like a complete mess. Even if he’s busy, he’ll always put time aside to comfort you. If you’re feeling scared or unsure, the warlord will stroke your hair and remind you about all the times that you’ve been right (and all the things you’ve accomplished because of that). Even if things go awry, he’ll always be there to hold your hand for comfort’s sake. After all, you’ve guided him through his messes, so now it’s his turn to repay the favor.

Another Possibility: Mitsuhide Akechi

Ikemen Revolution

I’d pair you with............... Ray Blackwell!

So there’s not a lot of leeway here since your description really just screamed “RAY” to me. However, I feel like I could throw you at Blanc! He’d do his best to make you feel welcome in the Cradle and slowly crack through your quiet demeanor. Once he learns what’s inside, bunny boy is absolutely charmed! It’s hard for him to stay away, especially since he just gravitates towards your cheery energy. Nevertheless, the Black Army King won over in the end.

When Ray first meets you, he appreciates your quiet side. Not too noisy or annoying, unlike certain members in the Black Army. Besides, you seem to have your head screwed on straight, so he won’t have to worry too much about you getting into endless trouble. Your maturity throughout the entire situation will only garner his respect.

When Fenrir cracks a crude joke and you stifle your laughter, Ray raises an eyebrow. There’s definitely more to you than meets the eye and he’s interested in what exactly hides behind your quiet exterior. While he may not go out of his way to search for it, Ray takes mental notes when you do something that pleasantly surprises him.

Bookworm buddies!! Every now and then, you two engage in a reading competition: who can read the most books throughout the week? For the prize, the loser has to listen to the winner’s commands for an entire day. While the winning party varies, it’s always a close call.

Ray is always teasing you for being a hopeless romantic. However, that’s just his way of hiding how he thinks that your mentality towards love is adorable. If he’s completely honest, you remind him of the main heroine in most romance novels. Does that mean he’s willing to be your love interest? Why don’t you ask him and find out ;)

Ray notices the twinkle in your eyes when you watch him practice with his sword. When you ask him about it, he’ll happily show you all the types of swords and guns that are used in the Black Army. He even gives you confidential information about the latest gun prototypes. At one point, he’ll even gift you with the weapon of your choice (you can customize it however you want). Whether you choose to use it is up to you (but little tip here: Ray finds it hot when you carry it around on your belt).

Another Possibility: Blanc Lapin

MLQC

I’d pair you with............ Victor!

Before I unveil first place over here, I think you and Kiro would also have amazing chemistry too! You two would mesh so well together, being the biggest balls of sunshine. When you’re feeling down, you can always expect his teddy-bear smile to cheer you up in an instance. It gives me such “wholesome couple vibes” that I’m not even sure how to put it into words.

So you must be wondering, “Why Victor?” It’s because our loveable grump needs some sunshine of his own (a ray of sunshine that he won’t throw out the window or chastise to death). From the beginning, Victor takes a liking towards you. You’re mature, dependable, and want the best for the company. Even if you’re not directly involved, he appreciates your efforts towards becoming the best. There’s something about you that makes him want to root for you.

And so he does, pouring a decent amount of money into your dreams. However, Victor will constantly watch you from the side (after all, he’s gotta see how his investment is being used). This may cause you some discomfort, but he’s doing it to make sure that you get to the top of your dreams.

When you’re feeling unsure of yourself, Victor will give you the guidance that you need. He’ll try his best to give his input on the situation, making sure that it gets you closer and closer to the answers that you need. Once you manage to pull everything together, he can’t help but feel a little tug on his chest. It’s a combination of both pride and something a little sweeter.

Victor also finds your multi-faceted personality quite impressive. It’s amazing how you can show a range of emotions and feelings, especially when you’re dealing with different types of people. He doesn’t have such a range of emotions, so he tries to pick up on a few of your traits. It doesn’t always work, but you always get a good laugh out of it.

Whenever Victor has had a long day at work, the two of you lay on the grass and watch the night sky. There’s something about the stars that calms him and he wouldn’t have known it if he never met you. So he’ll always be grateful for the peace that you’ve given him.

Another Possibility: Kiro

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c0x1a4 · 5 years

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As long as most psychologists are going to be

1. Inaccessible to most people

2. Extremely patronizing to neurodivergent

3. Be completely clueless about neurodivergent people

And frankly, even these criteria improve, you should probably not turn into a police detective whenever a person has a considered, researched self-diagnosis. They know themselves, the doctor knows many people better than most outsiders but still not as well as the subject. I might also have psychoses but I’m MORE than aware of what is, and isn’t real, I’m capable of piecing together my emotions, thoughts, and synthesizing that with scholarly information about psychology, I’ve done painstaking reading, research, and naval gazing and come to the conclusion that I’m almost definitely undiagnosed high-functioning autistic. Of all the things psychologists have talked with me about, and all the things I’ve pored over trying to solve my “problems”, it’s the only one that makes sense of my life, explains why I have profound difficulty socializing with new people, why I can hear a leitmotif a few times and remember it perfectly but have trouble understanding words if there’s any sound whatsoever around it (I frequently look up lyrics to songs I’ve sung wrong and discover lyrics I completely misunderstood or simply hadn’t been able to parse at all) I am sometimes capable of doing NT-expected pleasantries but sometimes can’t even form a sentence to respond or don’t respond as “politely” as expected (Not because I’m trying to be rude-quite the contrary, I’m trying to be polite and don’t know how to interface with the other person), I can overcome sensory overload for a while but sometimes it just becomes too much and I have no choice but to take myself out of a situation for a few minutes while I stare like a chicken hawk at the threat (I’ve discovered meditation helps, but ultimately I have to FORCE myself to cope often and my executive function suffers profoundly), I’m a VERY, PICKY, EATER and I’ve tried to FORCE myself to like things like carrots, tomatoes, green beans, and strawberries but I CANNOT tolerate them no matter how hard I try (I can tolerate these things when they’re mixed with other flavors, for instance if the strawberry is blended with a lot of extra sucrose it’s tolerable, I like ketchup and salsa but I tried adding just diced tomatoes to some eggs recently and I COULD NOT SWALLOW THEM AT ALL and had to compost them instead. Oh, like many a stereotypical example, I LOVE COMPUTERS. I’m completely obsessed with them. The downside is, I was homeschooled by really negligent parents who only occasionally made sure I was doing schoolwork instead of (a) learning how to defeat various internet blocks (b) Installing/live booting Linux (c) Reading literally everything I could get my hands on about Apple/UNIX/Hardware et cetera. From about 2008-2014, my interest in computers turned into a complete OBSESSION with Apple and Apple alone. I read Apple, I memorized as much as I could, I learned how to do things in OS X and iOS even though I didn’t have any apple products, I learned how to form PLISTS, how iTunes was structuted, I knew every spec, price, advertising info, et cetera. I told everyone who wasn’t using a Mac their computers and taste in them were dumb (I often said r*****ed) and went on a spiel about all the great things about Macs and iPhones, then iPads, and it pissed everyone off and I had NO EARTHLY IDEA until YEARS after it happened. I was also obsessed with rollercoasters from 2004-2009 or so I was completely obsessed with rollercoasters. My favorite game growing up became RollerCoaster Tycoon (The first one My ability to care about special interests diminished in 2014 when, at the age of 20, I got my first job in the real world. I discovered nobody cared that much about Apple, or 30 Rock, or Phineas and Ferb, or roller coasters, or computers in general, and that didn’t bother me so much as the fact that I didn’t really have the spoons to care much. I had been attempting to learn Cisco CCNA and get a cert, but after I got a call center job I discovered I just did not have one single fuck to give about the things I actually cared about. I stopped going to Ars Technica, MacWorld (which I think went under that year anyway), TechCrunch, Gizmodo, et cetera and stopped listening to my tech podcasts. I felt further away from myself than ever. Recently I’ve taken to autodidacticism. I’ve been teaching myself algebra, geometry, et cetera and I’m going to learn and practice math every day in my free time. After I know enough math I’m going to take MIT’s EE/CS courses from OpenCourseWare, do all assignments, carefully grade myself honestly, apply theory to practice, and work at it in my free time until I’m a computer scientist, electrical engineer, and mathematician extraordinaire. I’m going to work towards a Paralegal Studies AAS and General Studies AS at Pellissippi.

I’m going to kick ass. I’m going to contribute to the world. I’m going to make my insistence on correctness and refusal to give up my strongest assets.

#myself #gpoy #self-diagnosis #autodidact #autism #aspergers #psychology

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caledfwlchthat · 5 years

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R:R(RR) theorypost: GAME OVER and the route to victory

I’m now at the point in Rose: Remember where I really have to decide how I’m going to wrap it up just in order to write new material. I’ve put the poor dears through a lot, and am putting them through more, and they’ve been changing in response to it. Do I just leave it hanging, as a meditation on the indifference of the multiverse? Do I crush their hopes by revealing to them the truth that victory was never solely within their grasp? Do I give them some small part to play in filling in gaps of the canon retcon timeline? Or do I work to find a way for Rose’s plan to pay off, into an AU vision of victory diverging further from canon?

I don’t know that there’s any particular right or wrong answer for this. My thoughts on how long the story should be, and how to end it, have evolved as I’ve written and more of the story’s potential has been revealed along the way. I feel like I’ve taken some risks already, so whatever I do, I don’t want the conclusion to be a timid anticlimax. But while I could argue that the doomed timelines that have been revealed are all mostly canon-compliant, the essential nature of the canon retcon timeline is pretty much set in stone. And we’re only shown, in canon, doomed timelines that somehow come back to affect the alpha.

Also, the reason I set “canon compliance” as a goal to shoot for is that I’m interested not only in the characters and their relationships, but the whole mythos and big-idea questions Homestuck poses. Thus if I go the AU route, I want whatever I come up with to be heavily informed by the meta-structure and central themes of Homestuck canon, while interpolating somewhat to resolve the tensions I’ve already built up with the doomed timelines we’ve seen so far, and propelled by the momentum the characters are building in their shared dream-bubble afterlife. I’m happy with the canon Homestuck ending, but I see the constraints posed by Lord English’s influence as a challenge to be curious about.

Regardless of what route I take, I need to think carefully about what GAME OVER meant and what the deal was with the retcon timeline in my view. Again, better theory minds have thought about this in a canon context. Items to consider below include:

the nature of Rose’s proposed plan in R^4;

the nature of John’s retcon powers and LE’s influence;

the details of Terezi’s choice to have John revive Vriska.

Mild spoilery stuff for R^4 under the cut, not in terms of any definite choices yet made but in terms of my reasoning about the scope and flavor of things to come, based on constraints from Homestuck canon theory. (Major spoilers for the end of Homestuck though, if you’re just reading it now!) If you’re a fan and want the inside scoop, or if you just have opinions, click the clicky.

Rose’s Cunning Plan

At issue here is whether to provide the doomed meteor kids of R^4 with a plausible path to victory, as Rose suggested in chapter 15: by allowing the meteor kids in a currently live timeline to meet their doomed alt-selves and receive game-saving cross-timeline support. This choice recalls Vriska’s insistence on acting to remain relevant despite being stuck in the afterlife. Similar things do happen in canon (Davesprite, the Aradiabot army, John joining Vriska’s treasure hunt), but less often, and perhaps not in the way Rose is talking about. There is quite a lot of commerce between players and/or ghosts from different universes (Calliope, all of Openbound, pretty much all of Homestuck really), but much less from different timelines within the same universe.

This might be just as well, because if it happened regularly it would mean pretty much any player could become a Seer of Time/Mind/Heart after experiencing at least one death, in addition to all their other powers and abilities. It would break something. It seems as though it should be rare, or have a high cost attached to it (e.g. a Denizen Choice), or both.

What the cost should be, though, depends heavily on the context provided by the canon narrative, so let’s look at that.

John’s Retcon Powers and the End Run Around Lord English

My understanding of what happens in Act 7 is strongly informed by this comprehensive post (“Apotheosis and Creation Myth”), which sets out the entirety of the Homestuck canon narrative as the “alpha timeline” controlled by Lord English, and interprets the house juju and universe door as linked entities providing entrapment within, and escape from, the alpha timeline and hence the canon storyline.

This means John’s retcon powers are fundamental to Homestuck as a story. If LE really is that powerful and has absolute causal control over the alpha (canon) timeline as a stable loop, then the only way to break his influence is to introduce acausal elements — which is what John does, by dipping his hand into the rich world of possibility. This could consist either of pulling in extra-canon influences, or remixing influences within canon in ways LE couldn’t have anticipated starting from the initial conditions that spawned him. Within the narrative, John’s actions fix a bunch of fairly prosaic problems with the GAME OVER timeline that could probably be addressed with regular Time player shenanigans. But on a mythic or meta-narrative level, the retcon powers are absolutely necessary to neutralize LE.

This is why, in R^4, even timelines in which alt-Daves decide to use time travel to fix things end up doomed. From within the narrative, if Dave can only travel to events along his own past or future world line, Dave actually can’t access the primary decision point John uses to fix things (reviving Vriska). From a meta-narrative viewpoint, Dave is a Time player working only with elements LE has already doomed, so his efforts are hopeless.

I thought about giving Dave a Denizen Choice that could enable him to preserve the timeline and defeat LE. Based on the above theoretical understanding of LE, though, the scope for that is pretty limited. I could wangle things to give Dave retcon powers instead, but thematically they’re much better aligned to Breath than Time, and to John’s personality, so that solution would stretch plausibility. Or I could get Dave to team up with John somehow — meaning the price would already have been paid and a Denizen Choice for Dave would be superfluous. I might allude to Dave being presented with such a Choice, but it won’t play a major part in the action.

So any alternative ending R^4 produces has got to involve John’s retcon powers somehow. This requires John to:

Participate in the treasure hunt and interact with the house juju to acquire his retcon powers;

Participate in at least one GAME OVER timeline to spur him to gain control of those powers;

Make his own Denizen Choice and claim the retcon powers as his own;

Receive information from some trusted source (such as a GAME OVER Terezi or some other cross-timeline Light or Time player) enabling him to F1X TH1S.

Technically it could happen that John never gains control of the retcon powers and just blunders into a solution, but the in-narrative probability of this is basically zero, and the lack of any meta-narrative cost would stretch plausibility. This also illuminates why GAME OVER had to take place. You could say GAME OVER is the true cost of John’s retcon powers, at a much higher overall price than his Denizen Choice (although the latter impacts John more directly, in terms of his knowledge of Retcon Jade’s loneliness).

A Multiverse of Retcons

What this also suggests to me is that John’s retcon powers could be even more of a problem for LE than previously implied. The canon retcon timeline demonstrates at least one way to resolve the various problems that prevent the players from winning. Any timeline that leads to victory needs to pass through the choke points defined by LE’s influence, but there are so many degrees of freedom in a timeline that it’s far from obvious to me that those constraints define a unique and immutable solution to Homestuck. Thus, if I was able to think of another one, who’s to say John couldn’t have made those choices?

The Apotheosis post is optimistic and generous about the openness of the post-game world. In principle, I don’t see why that spirit couldn’t extend to any alternative retcon timeline that could be made convincing.

The one problem with this approach that would necessitate a true AU, rather than an elaboration on canon, is the fact that LE originates from within the new universe created in the retcon timeline shown in canon in ACT 7. This raises the question of what LE’s relationship is to any other potential universe created from a separate retcon branch of the alpha timeline not shown in canon. If multiplying offshoot universes also multiplies instances of LE, the kids have actually made the situation worse for existence! And if LE is associated only with the canon universe, that fact needs to be explained somehow too. There’s nothing in canon that would explain why LE would be associated with any particular offshoot universe; we could call it “spontaneous symmetry breaking” which might be an acceptable explanation from a within-narrative standpoint, but not from a meta-narrative standpoint. It isn’t elegant, in a way that galls me.

I’ll have to let that one simmer for a while but I welcome comments on it.

The Problem of Vriska

So, what are the choke points? In particular, what context guides Terezi’s specific choice of intervention — to bring Vriska back?

This choice remains controversial, but upon thinking about it, it seems like the most economical choice that could have been made under the conditions. Here’s what that single change accomplishes:

Brings Vriska back (i.e. prevents a major character death). Doc Scratch telegraphs Vriska’s death as a classic LE move — saying that Bec Noir’s massacre of the meteor kids, but implying any other outcome in which Vriska lives was “certainly not an outcome the alpha timeline would allow”.

Absolves Terezi of the guilt of having killed Vriska, which certainly serves LE’s purposes — though this may be disappointing for those who want to watch Terezi grapple with and overcome this guilt on her own.

Enables Vriska to intervene for Rose and Terezi, keeping them out of destructive substance abuse and/or blackrom cycles.

Nonlethally removes Grimbark Jade from the action until Condy is dealt with.

Prevents a post-retcon Aranea from screwing things up all over again, since pre-retcon Aranea was inspired by dead Vriska to intervene and cause GAME OVER.

Provides the group with a player who is not only willing, but enthusiastic, to forgo entering the new universe in order to face off against LE with the house juju.

That’s a lot of stuff. It’s pretty much a comprehensive catalog of Act 6 failure points. If Vriska isn’t brought back, then all the rest of these other highly non-trivial things have to be dealt with by other people. The other important thing John does is to exonerate Vriska re: Murderstuck, prompting Terezi to arrest Gamzee and thus contain LE’s influence through him — and even this isn’t totally unrelated to Vriska’s death sentence.

I remember Hussie getting a lot of flak for bringing Vriska back at the time. The main accusation I remember was that it was lazy storytelling. Some fans were glad to watch (Vriska) learn some humility and find flushed happiness with Meenah, and felt she was robbed of this development. Others felt as though Vriska’s meteor interference was ex machina and robbed the meteor kids of the chance to develop more naturally; prior to the retcon, though, they were clearly all in arrested development post-Openbound, and needed some kind of stabilizing influence against Gamzee, or for Gamzee to be contained. Apart from that things are all a bit hazy in my head.

So, can the R^4 kids win without Vriska in a way that isn’t implausible or distressingly expensive? If it can be made to work, the result would be an alt-ending AU, requiring the story to depart from its relatively strict canon compatibility. If we instead believe that the canon retcon timeline is the only way Lord English could have been defeated, this clamps down on the influence the dead meteor kids can have from their bubble, and gives the story an even darker and more fatalistic feel than it already has. Of course, I have elements in motion to take some of the pressure off (*coughrosemarycough*), but it will definitely affect how the plot flows.

#homestuck #homestuck fanfic #r:r(rr)

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nerdylittleshit · 6 years

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Thoughts about Spn 13x22

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

This was… an episode. I don’t really have an opinion on it. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t outstanding either. And strangely enough I got the feeling that not much happened. Or rather the things that did happen were to be expected at this point in story. The one thing however that I noticed is that Bucklemming still have a problem with the pacing. And something that keeps happening with all of their episodes, that I never noticed with any other writer, is that their episodes always feel incredible long, and despite the fact that they try to cram in as much plot/characters as they can at times also incredible boring. Or maybe it is the fact that most of the screentime went to Lucifer, doing what he likes best, talking about himself, but somehow I couldn’t warm up with this episode.

The other thing I noticed is that we end the episode in a relatively happy place. The family is reunited, everyone is safe in the bunker. Last year the penultimate episode ended with a Winchester family hug. We all remember however how season 12 ended, so if there is a pattern to be seen, 13x23 will leave us in tears. I’m scared.

Until then though let’s have a closer look at this week’s episode.

Make Room For Daddy

The meeting between Lucifer and Jack has been inevitable all season long. And though Lucifer has been the one actively looking for his son it makes sense that Jack has an interest in meeting his father as well. So far he has only heard stories but he wants to form his own opinion. Naturally Sam, Dean and Cas want to avoid this. They know that if anything Lucifer has his way with words and can be very convincing. We have seen in the past the way he was able to bring several people to say “yes” to him. But with trying to keep Jack away from Lucifer they only play into his cards. Lucifer portrays himself as the victim, the way he always did, and by trying to keep Jack away from his father they confirm this story. I think that Mary, who by now has spent several months with Jack, is right here. It is impossible to keep Lucifer from Jack, and Jack has a right to get to know his father after all. She trusts Jack however to come to his own conclusion about the true nature of Lucifer. Mary knows Jack, knows his good heart, and that Jack in time will see right through Lucifer.

One of the problems is that Sam, Dean, Cas and Gabriel tell Jack how truly evil Lucifer is, but they leave it at this very vague point, without giving him concrete examples. Lucifer has (seemingly) killed Gabriel, killed Cas, tried to kill Kelly, has tortured and abused both Sam and Rowena, and of course killed the later even twice. I’m sure I forgot something, but the point is does Jack know about this? Did they sanitize the stories about Lucifer for Jack, keeping them as vague as possible? Because somehow I doubt Jack would have had an interest in talking to him if he knew about all of this.

I also think we can officially stop worrying about Lucifer getting a redemption arc. There are quite a few characters who did get a redemption arc this season: Ketch, Gabriel, Rowena. What they all have in common is their will to change. Ketch redeemed himself in the other world, risking his own life to help strangers. Both Gabriel and Rowena stopped running away, both stopped acting selfish. And that is exactly what Lucifer is incapable of doing. The entire time he only talks about himself. He never shows responsibility for his actions. Instead he blames humanity, who in his eyes is flawed and weak, and asked to be corrupted. He blames his father. He plays the victim because that is the only role he knows.

In the end it is Gabriel who tells him who he truly is. Someone incapable of love and empathy, a cancer cell that ruined humanity forever. We see that Gabriel’s words do affect Lucifer; he starts crying. But by the end of the episode he once again proves that he has learned nothing. He is willing to let Michael destroy another world, not caring about the humans in it, just to be reunited with his son. And it shows that he doesn’t know a single thing about his son either, because all Jack wants is to keep these people save that Lucifer has now doomed.

Speaking of Michael I still wonder what his goal here is. Does he want to destroy another world? What for? I hope the season finale will give us an answer what Michael really wants. The only way I see Jack working together with Lucifer is also because the two together could be powerful enough to kill Michael. But will they? Say we get Michael!Dean that could be a reason why Jack won’t kill Michael yet, because he would kill Dean as well. To be honest I rather see Lucifer gone and Michael as the big bad next season.

And then of course there is also heaven’s current situation that will play a role in the next season. Cas suggested Gabriel as a new leader, but it is possible AU!Michael will be in charge next season. He and Jack are the only two powerful enough to create new angels (besides God, but I wouldn’t count on him). The question though is not the power but the “how”. It’s not that a manual for creating new angels is lying around.

I am also not surprised that we saw Gabriel dying again. I’m still not sure why they brought him back in the first place to be honest. His entire arc has been in the end very similar to how his story once seemingly ended in season 5. He stopped running away, took humanity’s side, faced one of his brothers, and paid with his own life, all to help the Winchesters. It is a repeat of his season 5 storyline (minus the torture & abuse), but then again so much about the apocalypse world is a parallel to season 5 and especially 5x04. So much that even Sam & Dean said “We’ve been where you are. Hell, we are you”. We will always end up here.

There must be some kind of way outta here

Right at the beginning of the episode Sam and Dean have to face a moral conflict they haven’t really thought about yet: the fate of the people in the apocalypse world. Until now their plan was to get Mary and Jack and bring them back to our world. What they didn’t consider was the fact that by now both Mary and Jack have become part of the resistance, found their purpose in that other world and are not willing to leave their friends behind.

Because I have already seen some hate towards Mary for her decision to stay: she doesn’t act selfish, rather the opposite. She gives up the chance to be reunited with her sons because she couldn’t live with herself if she would abandon the people she fought with over the past months. She gives up her own chance of happiness in order to help others. Which is basically what Sam & Dean have been doing their entire life. Giving up their own chance to live a normal life, to be safe, so that others can.

It is interesting then how different Dean & Sam react. Because Dean is tired of giving up, tired of sacrifices. And we can’t blame him. This season alone he has lost Cas, his mother, Jack, and minutes ago Sam. He sees everything they have lost and it doesn’t match up. This is also another instance of want vs need. Dean says they need Mary, but the truth is that they don’t. They are no longer children and they have lived the biggest part of their lives without a mother. He wants his mother, and that is the difference. Wanting something or someone for your own, acting selfish for once, is not a bad thing, at least not for Dean, who always prioritized everyone else’s needs over his own. It is okay that he for once wants something for himself.

Sam on the other side sees Mary’s perspective. He has been the one suffering the most under her loss, finding her was his win. He should be devastated to learn that she doesn’t want to leave, yet he comes up with a plan. (And you can see Dean doing the maths, coming to the conclusion that with so many people in the bunker, he has to share a bed with Cas now, there is no other way) Overall this has been a positive episode for Sam. Dean takes the blame from him for bringing Lucifer to the camp, telling him there is nothing to apologize for. And he regains some agency towards Lucifer, as he is the one in the end making sure Lucifer won’t come back with them. He also for once wore some nice clothes, so that’s another bonus. And he got to hug Charlie, before he remembered that she doesn’t know him, resulting in one of the cutest Sam scenes we have seen lately.

The other thing that by now was kinda inevitable was that we would see an alternative version of Cas. There had been already some speculation after 13x18 if one of the angels we saw could have been Cas, but it makes sense that Cas has the same vessel, given that Jimmy Novak was a devout man. However… the accent. Which I honestly don’t get? Why would this Cas speak with another accent than our Cas? My first thought was that he sounded Russian, but the term that I have seen the most on my dash by now is “Nazi Cas” (which basically means Hitler’s speaking pattern, with a huge focus on the “r” because the normal German accent doesn’t sound like that). So maybe the accent was used that we would associate the angels in the other world with Nazis? Making a political statement as the US becomes more right-winged every day. I would love to know if this was mentioned in the script or if it was Misha’s choice. Still, I think they could have done without the accent. Different outfit, different behaviour, we would have already knew that this wasn’t our Cas. And remember 4x20? Within seconds we knew it wasn’t Cas talking to Sam & Dean. Misha is a good enough actor that he can do without the accents.

What I love is that they did keep consistent with the AU characters. Bobby and Charlie are pretty much the same as the ones from our world, because the Winchesters didn’t influence them as much. Bobby was already a hunter when he met them (and John), Charlie was always a rebel. Kevin and Cas however were influenced a great deal by Sam and Dean. Cas has fallen in every way imaginable, has rebelled against his angelic family and chosen the Winchesters as his new family time and time again. However we did learn in 8x21 that Cas has always been a rebel, that he never did as he was told. He has never been in fact a perfect soldier. But in that episode we also learned that Naomi brainwashed him multiple times and it is possible that exactly this happened in the other world. Cas was always a rebel, but it took Sam & Dean for him to finally break free from heaven.

The one line that stood out to me was AU Cas saying “Don’t think you are better than me” in reference to Cas supporting humanity. Which is odd considering most angels see humans as weak and flawed. So why would AU Cas think of our Cas as someone above him, knowing our Cas is helping humanity? Is it possible that AU Cas was jealous of our Cas? That he wished he could have been strong enough to step away from heaven as well, to help the humans in his world? I like to believe that AU Cas had some rebellious nature as well, but that centuries of brainwashing resulted in the cold torture machine that we saw.

And AU Cas torturing Charlie by invading her mind mirrors of course the scene where our Cas does the same with the traitor in the camp. The only difference is that our Cas stopped before the damage would be too much. But looking back at 13x14 we know how far he is willing to go to protect the people he loves. AU Cas says they are the same, and in some ways they are. They are both ruthless when it comes to their individual cause. In the end however Cas killing the other version of him, the angelic soldier Cas, was a huge metaphor for Cas killing his old self. Not subtle but nevertheless satisfying.

And that is all for this week. So long and good night.

#supernatural #spn 13x22 #exodus #spn meta #spoilers #my meta

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dinoeggnog · 6 years

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My Smash Bros. for Switch Character Wish List

You know It’s been awhile since I’ve made an article for my blog and with Smash for Switch having just been announced in the latest direct; I think it’s the right time to add a spot of fuel to the Smash Hype Train.

A few things of note in regarding this list before I begin, This list will be presented in a top 10 like basis but I will be cheating a little bit when talking about certain characters and scenarios. Also, most of the characters on this list will be first or second party and no veterans; I want to focus on the new. This list will be pretty lengthy but it’s Smash related so I believe it’s deserving of such pedigree.

With all that out of the way let’s begin.

10. Part 1. Simon Belmont/ Castlevania

When It comes to 3rd party representatives in smash I’m of the belief that said fighter should have two qualifications. 1. Noteworthy as a franchise in gaming, meaning either Iconic or influential, even classic. 2. History with Nintendo. Many of the 3rd parties represented in Smash already reach such criteria in my opinion and Castlevania’s Simon Belmont, I believe is another well suited for battle.

Like Mega Man, Castlevania as a series has seen a wide variety of releases over the last thirty years but the main series has received a ton of love on Nintendo’s platforms. Now there are many faces that share the name Belmont in the series but like Mega Man, I see Sakurai pulling mostly from the original, classic trilogy with some exceptions. The Belmont whip is such an awesome and iconic weapon and Castlevania has many interchangeable secondary weapons, there are B moves just waiting to happen.

But how likely is Castlevania to be represented. That falls on Konami and yes we all know that they are a fickle sort to say the least. I suppose it would be wishful thinking but Hey! You never can predict the future when it comes to smash, only speculate. It would be a pleasure to see Simon break out of the Pachinko parlor and into the fighting ring, if you know what I mean.

10. Part 2. Bomberman

Like I said I’m cheating a little with this but personally I group both Simon Belmont and Bomberman together on the same spot, both of which are owned by Konami although for Bomberman that wasn't always the case. Bomberman has been around since 1983, his first game having been developed by now defunct Hudson Soft and released on multiple platforms including Nintendo consoles. Today Bomberman has been featured in over 70+ games, spanning countless generations of platforms.

More recently Bomberman appeared on the Nintendo switch exclusive Super Bomberman R; a game that Konami surprisingly kept alive past it’s initial release. So unlike Simon Belmont, many would argue that Bomberman would have a better shot. However some would also argue as to what Bomberman could bring to the roster; he just throws Bombs right? Well to that I say, dig a little deeper.

While it’s true that his primary form of combat would involve bombs. if you’ve ever played a Bomberman game you’d know that there are many hazards and pick ups that could be brought to the table. Bomberman is no stranger to 3D platformers either, with both Bomberman Hero and 64 on the N64, there are multiple moves that could be incorporated into a viable move set. In addition he even has his own animal companions, one example being Louies. A race of rabbit like, kangaroo creatures that are essentially Bomberman’s answer to Mario’s Yoshi. Naturally There would be elements of Super Bomberman R featured as well.

In conclusion I believe Bomberman has potential and between him and Simon; I think Bomberman would be the likelier candidate as a potential Konami representative. Thought honestly I would love to have them both. You know what they say, the more the merrier.

9. Banjo and Kazooie

I agree many would argue that Banjo Kazooie is really no longer relevant but there is one thing I want to address. To me a 3rd party character should have at least some relevance to Nintendo. Smash Bros. as a whole is a celebration of Nintendo and it’s many franchises. And no other 3rd party character has had a relationship with Nintendo quite like the Bear and Bird tag team.

You know the story. Rare and Nintendo had a perfect chemistry together, releasing some of the most well acclaimed system sellers of their time during the Snes/N64 era and then Micro$oft came along and the rest in unfortunately history. Banjo Kazooie is considered by many to be their best work/outside of Donkey Kong Country. That’s were i’m coming from, this game was one of my childhood favorites and personally I don’t view them as third party, I view the duo more as long lost family. Like that cousin you never knew you had but just met at the recent family reunion.

Let’s face it Banjo and Kazooie would be perfect for smash,Their move set practically rights itself. Any number of Bottle’s moves from egg shooting to beak barging, flying across the stage in a barrage of feathers the list goes on. Not to mention any number of Mumbo’s transformations that could also play a huge role in their play style, including Final Smash. In terms of stages, naturally it would have to be Gruntilda’s castle, complete with the Witch herself as a boss. flying around and striking players with her magical spells and making them cringe with her rhyming quells.

Do Banjo and Kazooie even have a chance? It’s hard to say, Micro$oft’s Phil Spenser has publicly stated in the past that he wouldn’t mind leasing the Bear and Bird to the Smash team in regards to the smash poll. I wan’t to believe that I really do.If Banjo and Kazooie never do come back to their full potential I would at the very least love to have them here in Smash. I can dare to dream.

8. Impa/ The Legend of Zelda

Lets be honest, Do we really need another sword fighter? NO!

But do we need more Zelda representatives? YES!

With Link sporting his new Breath of the Wild look and many jumping on board with numerous Zelda characters they wish too include in the roster, plus additional hopes of Zelda getting a coat of Breath of the wild Paint as well. I felt it only fitting to go ahead with my personal Zelda pick. Legend of Zelda naturally is a vast franchise with many unique faces over the years and it can be difficult to pick just one.

Many want the Skull Kid from Majora’s Mask or Midna of Twilight Princess, Ghirahim of Skyward Sword or any one of the Champions from Breath of the Wild; the list goes on. But why Impa, well a few reasons; she’s awesome in Hyrule Warriors, I mean let’s be real that game can make a great fighter out of anyone in the Zelda Cannon but Impa stands out to me the most. My second and most important point in this case is her relevance in the series. Impa has been in a majority of games in the cannon almost since the beginning, that can’t be said for many other charters in the franchise, aside from the hero of time himself, the titular Princess and the big bad.

While Impa has had drastic changes from game to game. In one instance being a frail, older woman or in another being captain of the royal guard, regardless she’s still there. That longevity and adaptability I think would have her recognized by Sakurai as a Series regular and worthy of a spot in the roster. Of course she is a sword fighter, many tire of that and I can relate but taking Hyrule Warriors into consideration I think she could be a lot of fun to play as and a great addition to Smash’s leading ladies. She’d be plenty more unique than Lucina that’s for sure. Also if it’s not to much to ask give Ganondorf an original move set this time around, Please!?!.

7. Dixie Kong

Yep, I want more Kong's in Smash and while I too support the King K.Rool movement; for this list I’m gonna be a little different. Unlike K.Rool many argue that Dixie would be way to similar to Diddy in terms of move pool but I have to disagree, at least to a point. Dixie naturally has a built in recovery with her pony tail which alone can be used in a variety of melee attacks and grabs. Like Diddy and his peanut pop guns, Dixie would utilize a weapon from DK 64, in this case the feather bow previously used by Tiny Kong. Dixie has also been one to dabble in musical arts with an electric guitar; maybe that can play a part in her moves as well.

I do think Diddy and Dixie would share similarities with each other but in the same way Mario and Luigi or Ness and Lucus would.They would both have unique spins on a familiar play style but incorporate separate elements from their franchise. Hey we still don’t have any sign of the animal buddies in smash; like Rambi or Squawks and the like. Why not include them in Dixie’s move set or impalement them in D.K or Diddy’s, I’m just spit balling ideas here.

So whether it be King K.Rool, Dixie, Funky or even Cranky and what have you, I and many others would love to see more Donkey Kong Country love in Smash Bros.

6. Issac; Golden Sun

When it comes to Nintendo R.P.G’s and Tactics games people have their obvious choices. Another Fire Emblem rep. (shudders) or a face from the recent Xenoblade Chronicles 2 to join up with shulk. There is one classic Nintendo R.P.G series that many overlook, that is except for smash fans like myself.

Issac is an interesting choice, the Golden Sun series has seen a fun, little trilogy across Nintendo’s portable systems. Now Issac was an assist trophy in previous Smash titles but he’s so much more than that little forced push thing you saw there. Issac is Golden Sun’s equivalent to an earth bender, using a variety of landscape and plantlike magic to defeat his foes.

There’s lots of potential for unique attacks here to be explored outside of the traditional R.P.G offerings. We’ve seen so many other elemental’s in Smash already with fire, Electricity and even Water; why not earth?

Golden Sun is a series that needs more love and Smash is no exception. I also wouldn't mind a new Golden Sun on the Switch but we can’t have everything now can we?

5. Takamaru; The mysterious Murasame Castle

I’m always a sucker for old school choices; I call them the 8-bit Ambassadors. You know the ones, Ice Climbers, Duck Hunt, R.O.B, Pit, Little Mac and so forth. There’s always one in each addition of Smash and my list is no exception and while choices like balloon Fighter or the Excite Bike Racer were tempting, I just had to include this guy.

The final member of the Famicom 4 and an assist trophy in Smash 4, Takamaru could have a lot of potential evidence for his inclusion. Sakurai has actually considered him for the roster numerous times, dating as far back as melee. The biggest reason for his exclusion before was his lack of presence outside of Japan. Nowadays he’s more well known namely for said Smash appearance but in addition his game was featured in Nintendo Land on the Wii U and his original game was released on the 3DS’s virtual console, so there’s that.

Again some may grimace at yet another sword user but he’s a Samurai; A bloody Samurai. I don’t think anyone should complain on that subject alone. From his one game they could easily pull a satisfying move set and even then they can get get creative. Also have I mentioned yet; He’s a fricken Samurai. I think I made my point.

4. Another Kirby Rep.

Much like Zelda and Donkey Kong, I think Kirby is do for another character spot. There are just so many possibilities that it can be difficult to pick just one and let’s face it, the recent Star Allies isn’t making it any easier. Favorite choices include Bandanna Dee, Knuckle Joe, Marx, Magolor, Gooey, Adeline, Susie, The Robobot armor and the list continues. But I have my own Ideas

I want to see Kirby’s Animal Friends Rick the hamster,Coo the Owl and Kine the fish as a collective one piece character. I don’t necessarily see them as a tag team but rather you would primarily play as Rick, Coo and Kine would assist in various moves. Examples include Coo being used in a up B special, as well as with aerial attacks and Kine being used for stronger smash attacks and a down B special; Kine would also allow Rick to swim and never drown in water areas in certain stages.

As far as moves, simple. Thanks to Kirby they can perform a variety of moves that could be implemented quite easily into their respective move set. Rick can breath fire and produce spikes. Coo can throw Talons, be turned into a feather duster and produce lightning. And Kine could be thrown around like a weight, make shock waves and bust light bulbs. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. That’s my idea anyway.

In addition I also wan’t to highlight Marx for a moment. I think he would be the perfect villain to represent the Kirby series (even though he’s only been in one game) and I think they could have a lot of fun designing a move set around him. Though that’s just the Kirby fan in me coming out and saying “Hi”.

3. Dr.Eggman

My last 3rd party pic.

Admittedly I’m not the biggest Sonic fan but I’m of the belief that at some point, in some way; Sonic is getting a second rep. I would much rather have another Sega franchise represented; we know that's not gonna happen but I would love to be proven wrong.

That being said as to which character; many would love Knuckles or tails and many sonic fans suggest Shadow but as for my choice, Why not Dr. Eggman himself. Like K.Rool, Smash needs more villains, Smash needs more heavy weights and Eggman fits that criteria to a T.

Eggman or Dr. Robotnik I think would be a worthy addition to the roster. He would fight in a mech, much like Bowser Junior and would have the raw horsepower rivaling that of Bowser or Donkey Kong. As far as moves you would have a plethora of boss battles spanning nearly thirty years of Sonic games to choose from.

Like King Dedede and his Waddle Dees in brawl, Eggman could summon his robot minions to do his dirty work in many instances and ranged projectiles like missiles and bombs are a given. Honestly I think this could work, fighting in a mech would not be out of the ordinary for him, just look at Sonic Adventure 2 or that Sonic arcade fighter. Shoot! I’m kinda getting giddy over this.

2. Dillon; Dillon’s rolling western

A personal pic more than anything else.

As a causal fan of the downloadable 3DS series I think Dillon would be a fun addition to the roster. However I don’t really see it happening unfortunately, many would complain that he would be to similar to Sonic and personally I think Dillon could easily differentiate himself from the blue hedgehog by showcasing various weapons and other game play mechanics the series is known for but at the end of the day this one is really a pie in the sky choice.

Although Dillon is a Nintendo IP and lets face it Nintendo is running out of options when it comes to newer franchises, We got the Splatoon Inklings and I’m sure an Arms fighter is on the way but then what? No matter the case I’m positive the Smash team has something planned up their sleeves.

I don’t know maybe it’s just me but I really like the western setting. We have fantasy and Sci fi represented in smash already and I think of the idea of having a cowboy in the line up and the thought just makes me smile for some reason. So yeah, maybe it’s just me.

1. Waluigi; Mario

Whiter it be out of sheer stubbornness or innocent curiosity; I kinda want to see the purple clad mischief maker finally make his Smash debut. Much like Fire Emblem many would rather not have another Mario character make the cut after getting what? Three reps in the last installment and I can defiantly understand where you come from by that logic.

However to end of this list I wanted to include a popular fan pic and it was a coin toss between him or Ridley so, there ya go. But to be frank I think a move set for this guy would be really interesting, to say the least. Like Wario his moves would be weird and Sporadic; Waluigi could even take inspiration from the sports and party games he calls home; utilizing various sporting equipment and referencing classic Mario Party Mini games.

Hell! in some games Waluigi’s proven himself to be a certified water bender and I’m not making that up. And if you’ve played Mario Golf on the 3DS or if you've seen him in action in the latest Mario Tennis coming to the switch; you know very well what his Final Smash has to be.

Also a Waluigi Pinball stage needs to be a thing. And let’s not forget his taunts; you know what I’m talking bout’ Strikers fans.

Bonus. Poochy; Yoshi’s Island

Okay here me out on this. I want Poochy in Smash for one reason. His Final Smash, now hear me out on this;

His final smash would be Touch Fuzzy get Dizzy. He shakes the Fuzzies out of his fur like fleas and they would bounce around the stage until they’ve made direct contact with the player. Poochy’s final smash would be a remake of Luigi’s final smash in brawl; the negative zone.

Tell me that’s not a great idea, I NEED THAT.

And that concludes my Smash for Switch wish list. I hope you enjoyed this; do you agree or disagree with my choices? Who do you wan’t for the next smash? The hype train is once again leaving the station and it’s time for us Smash fans to rejoice. It’s going to be a short but wild ride, so let’s enjoy it while it lasts.

#article #nintendo #super smash bros #nintendo switch #character #wishlist #hype train #this took way too long #very long post

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