#al-an's story is so interesting!!! i love the arcs SO FUCKING MUCH!!! when i saw him for the first time i lost my SHIT

[sleepy-crypt1d]

am i?? losing my mind here??

okay, so, like, subnautica, right?

recent news is that subnautica 3 is in production/in the works, hooray!! literally cannot be more excited about this, it’s my favorite game ever and i am so thrilled to see where the next one is headed but, i feel like, what the next one is going to be about is. . obvious?

who knows!! maybe im losing my mind here and i am just a tad too into these games so other people didn’t think about this but, sub3 is gonna be about the architect home planet. it has to be, doesn’t it?? 

the exact quote from the people working on the game is “I dream of visiting new worlds, exploring intricate alien ecosystems and lost civilizations. I don't think I'll ever get tired of the fantasy of making contact with intelligent life. I also dream about going on these adventures with friends. Getting lost, together.” and people are theorizing that the game takes place either in the past, showing 4546B a thousand years ago, takes place in the crater’s edge, or another unseen part of 4546B but. . .4546B’s story is done? the only loose end there is Ryley, who i would love to see again, but the planet’s mysterious have all been answered? i don’t know how they are coming to those conclusions when BZ perfectly sets up what the next game will be about?

“I dream of visiting new worlds, exploring intricate alien ecosystems and lost civilizations” this??? seems so much like they’re talking about exploring the architect homeworld??? new worlds implies we’re going to a different place, doesn’t it? and lost civilizations, yeah, going through the arc homeworld and piecing together what happened??

“I also dream about going on these adventures with friends. Getting lost, together.” some people are interpreting this as sub3 going multiplayer, which would be okay i guess, but wouldn’t this make more sense if it were referencing Al-An and robin???? especially with the line BZ ends with?? ‘with you, I am ready to face whatever awaits us’ like???

also the second game ended with a cliff hanger!!! it ended with showing us the architect homeworld!!! WHY WOULDN’T SUB3 BE ABOUT THAT???? WHY WOULD THEY SUDDENLY SHIFT THE STORY ENTIRELY??

i dont know, maybe im losing my mind here, maybe theorists on youtube know something i don’t but the plot of sub3 seems obvious to me, because BZ literally ended with showing us where the story was headed.

am i crazy? or have other people also realized that exploring the architect homeworld seems like the only logical next step in the story? to find out what happened? we found out what happened to sam and the game ends with robin promising they’ll find out what happened to the architects. why are people thinking ANYTHING ELSE would happen????

who knows, if sub3 comes out and im completely wrong, i will take that L and dig myself a grave but until then, i will hold this thought pretty confidently 

#subnautica #subnautica below zero #subnautica below zero spoilers #subnautica spoilers #subnautica al-an #is it because they hate BZ :(( it's because they hate BZ isn't it :(( god dammit #sleepy rants #these games are legit my favorite games in existence and BZ meant so fucking much to me - i adored that game!! it was so good!! #not every game needs to be a masterpiece - i had a wonderful time playing it and fell in love with the story/characters #that's all a good game needs #the story of the architects is so interesting and i would love to know more about them/their home and so many people just pretend- #-that they dont exist and it takes away such a big chunk of what makes subnautica the amazing game it is #sorry if i come off as bitchy here- i just care about subnautica a lot and seeing people completely ignore a major part of it sucks #al-an's story is so interesting!!! i love the arcs SO FUCKING MUCH!!! when i saw him for the first time i lost my SHIT #I WANT THE NEXT GAME TO BE ABOUT THE ARCS SO BADLY #TELL ME MORE ABOUT THEM #PLEASE #like i cannot tell if these people are willfully being ignorant to basic story telling mechanics or if they just. . . dont get it #it ended on a cliff hanger- the next game will be explaining that cliff hanger? #like sure we didn't get an answer to what happened to ryley word for word but we KNOW that alterra is pretending he doesn't exist!! #we know- in part- what happened to him- that's why it isn't answered #we find logs talking about how the aurora 'disappeared' #with no survivors #alterra is hiding his existence #also WE NOW HE'S IN SPACE- MYSTERY THERE SOLVED #SPACE #BUT WITH THE ARCS WE DON'T KNOW!! #WHY WOULD THEY SET UP AN ENTIRE GAME WITH THE MYSTERY OF TRYING TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ARCS AND THEN JUST DROP IT??????? #WHY DO THEY THINK THAT UW WOULD DO THAT??? #angry

[pochapal]

32! Do you like HS^2?

i...genuinely do! i think sometimes there's a half-conception that based on the mere premise of my fics that i don't like postcanon all that much (omelette route was misconstrued as an epilogues fix-it fic in certain circles and pickle route is still sometimes seen as a "better version" of hs^2) even though everything i write is in direct conversation with and comes from a place of admiration for hs^2/the epilogues.

with hs^2 in particular i think it had some really electric ideas that we only got to see the very first brushstrokes of (thinking most pertinently here about whatever was going to go down on deltritus that we never saw) that, if they'd been able to get off the ground, probably would have eclipsed the epilogues as the most interesting part of homestuck. from the bits we saw the meat timeline stuff was definitely the weakest. outside of the jade/altcallie possession chapter a lot of that half of the story was fairly unsurprising character-driven extrapolation of the same angst we departed the epilogues with - and i largely agree with @hms-no-fun that some kind of timeskip here would have helped it feel a little less repetitive (although arguably there might have been? three years definitely passed with dirk et al but it was very up in the air as to how long it had been for the pursuit spaceship crew). i get why that never happened - both meat and candy were being told in tandem and candy ended on a buildup to an immediate conflict that needed to be followed in real time versus meat's meandering slingshot towards something more nebulous, so for the sake of structural symmetry that limited things a little.

i think i'm more amenable to a lot of hs^2's storytelling decisions because i wholly and entirely loved the epilogues from the getgo and it was so good to see that theme/tone be carried through to a more "traditional" mspa space, even if i wonder if the comic form damaged the story more than it helped it. i remember a lot of people getting weirdly mad whenever we'd get an extended prose scene instead of visual panels despite hs^2 being a continuation of the text-based epilogues. then again, the mainstream hs fandom as a whole fucking sucked when it came to postcanon and that's even more evident in how they've collectively memoryholed the whole thing so talking about audience reception is maybe not the most useful thing to talk about here lmao. idk i think people forget that homestuck is largely a story about people who suck and then who get better from sucking. it's just that nobody really likes it when that lens is turned inward onto the alphas/betas who outside of a small handful of exceptions in canon never really had any ethical issues that caused problems for them and others so i personally think it was very interesting and refreshing to explore how the kids' complacency wrt their baggage and trauma allowed them and their world to backslide so disastrously! roxy lalonde enabling jane's fascist ascension is fascinating storytelling actually! (side note: read through shadowed eyes)

hs^2's original characterwork is probably where the story shines the most. the fucked up dynamics between the theseus crew was super fun to read because there's honestly nothing more enjoyable than Supremely Divorced people deciding that makes them irredeemably evil now. the egbert gender stuff was really nice! i particularly enjoyed how, even though it came after the june egbert renaissance, it still managed to be its own unique take on egbert's gender arc that i think really encapsulated the originality driving the project. also forever shoutout to the candy kids my beloved candy kids my children who i will die for - for me in particular hs^2 was a fun time because i was developing my own versions of harry/vrissy/tav for pickle route in parallel to hs^2 and it was so enjoyable seeing all the overlaps and divergences with each upd8. also yiffy fucking rules on every level and even though she never got to be more than a promise she sure was one hell of a promise.

that said i do not think it's that surprising that hs^2 ultimately died before its time. the conditions of the story paired with the most demoralising and vicious iteration of the fandom meant the odds were stacked against it in a big way. you can particularly see the strain of that starting to manifest in the final ~6 months worth of upd8s where people were leaving/being pushed out of the project and every part of hs^2 was a completely hostile environment and the quality of the art and storytelling began to get a little shaky - which i can't really blame them for all things considered! it's hard to want to make the best version of a story possible when the overwhelming reception is a bunch of sanctimonious redditbrained weirdos screaming that you're evil and foul for making characters in a piece of fiction do unexpected and surprising things and also being sympathetic to trans women. there were of course issues with the production conditions of hs^2 that would have probably led to some sort of reckoning at some point, but it's very obvious that the traumatic pressure cooker of a fanbase that wanted nothing more than the death of this project and the ruination of everyone that worked on it threw this whole thing off the rails much faster. despite that, you still have to infinitely admire the team for daring to make something challenging and original in a sphere dominated by people who are content to regurgitate the same babybrained 2013 content ad infinitum - for just a brief moment, homestuck was truly allowed to be the literary masterpiece it's been all along. now people just treat it as more fandomslop to consume and that's perhaps the biggest shame of all.

in the end i think hs^2's legacy is best felt in the places haunted by its premature absence. i'm talking about the comic itself of course but also other spaces and people and projects. stuff that really engaged with the meaty thematic frameworks being thrown up in postcanon that now no longer have a mirror to talk back to - stuff like pesterquest and godfeels and the aforementioned through shadowed eyes that all massively are in conversation with the deeper artistic and philosophical principles underpinning this era of homestuck. if anything else hs^2 will continue to serve as a useful prerequisite for getting into some of the best stuff homestuck fans have ever made. we might never see what could have been, but at least the torch is still being carried by people who care.

#spaceengineerjulia #homestuck asks #homestuck^2 #long post #i had more opinions on this than i'd previously thought lmao

[stxleslyds]

Also, the writers' failure to understand, every crime Jason committed had a motive. Attack other criminals? Holy warrior destined to purify the world of evil. Attack Bruce? Joker's still alive. (Oh, Jason, it's much worse than that.) Attack Tim? A parody of what he once was. He wasn't just a "bad boy". He was dangerously insane.

Hi, Anon! Yup, there seems to be a lot of things that writers have gotten confused about Jason Todd/Red Hood and the biggest one is his motivations to kill certain criminals.

Let’s be honest, Judd Winick set a golden path for the upcoming Red Hood writers. But each and every writer that used Red Hood in their stories completely missed the point of Jason’s character. All of them. It’s so incredibly wild to me that every other writer read UtRH and came up with whichever version of Jason they came up with.

Let’s list the writers that completely missed the point.

Geoff Johns in Teen Titans vol.3 #29.

Geoff Johns was one of the first to completely mischaracterize Jason, why on earth would Jason go to the Titans Tower to beat up Tim? This is not me saying that Jason would never do that because Jason thinks of Tim as his brother or a friend or the person that he can trust the most from the Bat-Clan (can you believe Lobdell tried to sell us that one?), this is me saying that Jason wouldn’t have done that because he couldn’t have given less of a fuck about Tim’s existence.

When Jason found out that Bruce had another Robin he wasn’t bothered by his “replacement” he was mad at Bruce for having another child playing hero after he lost his life as a fifteen-year-old. Jason didn’t even think of Tim as his replacement as fandom likes to make us believe, Jason called Tim “pretender”. And that was that, but to go from minimal recognition to go out of his way to beat him up at Titans Tower is a massive mischaracterization.

Paul Dini in Countdown (to Final Crisis).

Paul Dini in Countdown did absolutely nothing with Jason, I am sorry but that’s all he did. Him writing Jason was like watching a dog trying to catch their own tail. He started with a pretty basic take on UtRH Jason, then he added a bit of Jason being an annoying man with Donna, then we had the jealousy arc because apparently, Jason had the hots for Donna but she didn’t want anything to do with him and he was all angsty when she paid attention to Kyle instead of him, and then, later on, he had that whole Red Robin bullshit (I am sorry about this, but I absolutely hated that, it was so dumb, I am so glad it didn’t last long because it was just too bad), and after all that mix of just not interesting stuff he went right back to the Jason that he had at the very start. It was a waste of time, but I guess that he had to be there because he was an anomaly and all that. I just think that was DC’s first try at making Jason Todd/Red Hood something more than just a street-level vigilante and they failed miserably.

Tony S. Daniel in Batman: Battle for the Cowl.

Even though the first two did make mistakes with Jason’s characterizations, this man was the first to just throw UtRH out of the window and make up his very own version of Jason Todd. And his version was horrendous, that Jason had no problem with attempting to kill children and innocent people, he also really wanted to be Batman because Gotham needed a Batman and he wanted to be the person to wear the Cowl and he was looking for a Robin for himself.

I know, the whole concept is the perfect opposite of what Jason Todd and Red Hood were in UtRH. Every aspect of BftC Jason is based on nothing.

Jason wanting to be Batman because Gotham needed Batman is just the beginning of what’s wrong in this book. Jason became the Red Hood (in part) because he believed that Batman and his ways weren’t what Gotham needed so he made a better version of Batman with Red Hood (according to him) because Red Hood did what Batman refused to do. Another thing that is just wrong is Jason wanting, Damian, Tim or Dick to be his Robin, there is just so much wrong with this, first of all, Jason wanted Batman to stop having Robin because child soldiers ran the risk of dying at a very young age and that’s exactly how he saw the whole thing because that was what had happened to him. Second, if Jason was mad at Bruce for getting another Robin why would he now want one of his own to team up with his Batman? Damian was a child, Tim was someone that apparently Jason hated (because Jason beating Tim was mentioned in this event), and then Jason actually asked Dick Grayson, Nightwing, to be his Robin? Listen, there is no way that was Jason, nothing about him makes sense, even taking into account that Jason had beaten Tim already in this event Jason actually tried to kill both Tim and Damian (it might have been just one of them but yeah, it still doesn’t make sense).

I just don’t think that Tony S. Daniel knew who Jason Todd was, maybe he got confused but the thing is, his “villainous” and deranged version of Jason Todd allowed a villainous and deranged version of Red Hood to happen with the next writer that I will be talking about.

Grant Morrison in Batman and Robin vol.1 #3-6.

This was the birth of the villainous, deranged and bloodthirsty Red Hood. There is absolutely no trace of UtRH Jason here, not even if we are looking at the opposite of things like we could do with Daniel’s Jason. Grant Morrison wanted Dick and Damian to have a villain to match their Batman and Robin and they decided to give us a red-haired-pill-headed-red hood. Everything from Morrison’s characterization of Jason is crazy, from the red hair (hello pre-crisis) to the awful Joker’s Red Hood looking suit, everything was just weird.

I still don’t believe that was Jason, to be honest, I would rather think that version of Jason was actually a rouge Skrull that came all the way from the Marvel Universe and lost his way in Gotham City. Maybe when he made the jump between universes, he got too much information and got confused and took the form of the wonkiest Jason Todd he could come up with.

This Jason was absolutely deranged, he knew exactly what he was doing and he didn’t care if innocents died. This Jason was the one that got locked up in Arkham. This is the Jason that Dick put in Arkham for Jason and everybody else’s safety.

Dick putting that Jason in Arkham wasn’t a bad thing or something that anyone can use to shit on Dick Grayson (not on this house). This Arkham was reformed and that Jason knew that if he stayed in that new Arkham he would stay away from trouble, but here is the thing, that Jason loved trouble, so he took all the tests to prove he wasn’t insane and asked to be transferred to Blackgate (where all the Red Hood’s enemies were). That Jason didn’t ask to be sent to Blackgate because the Joker was a cell away from his in Arkham, he did it so he could go on a killing spree in Blackgate (which he did when he got there).

Skrull Jason was just bloodthirsty and nothing like UtRH Jason, he had no motive other than just killing for fun or whatever. He didn’t want to protect Gotham and he couldn’t have cared less about the drug trade in Gotham. In Batman and Robin vol.1. Jason Todd was unrecognizable. And luckily, we never saw him again.

Scott Lobdell in Everything that he ever wrote about Red Hood.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Lobdell was the king of overpowering Jason, he was the one that drove Red Hood farther and farther away from his street-level vigilante status. He continuously added more to him, he was a big deal because he was meant to take down Ra’s al Ghul, he was a big deal because he was the only human to train in the All-Castle and learned to summon the All-Blades.

This Red Hood’s morals and ideals were kind of gone, there just wasn’t any kind of interest in Jason to get rid of drugs or try to control its trade in Gotham, he just had no interest in street-level threats, everything was extraordinary in both New 52 and Rebirth. If he wasn’t in space he was in some mystical land. His friends and allies became even more and more powerful, his level of power was completely off compared to the others. His personality was ever-changing and quite honestly you could barely see the Jason that he once was.

This Jason also was very inconsistent in the way that he felt towards people (obviously because Lobdell is a shitty writer), he wanted to follow Batman’s rules and was shown as someone that still had fond memories of his life with Bruce before he died but was also willing to let those memories go, to move on? Maybe? I don’t know. But he changed his mind about Bruce and following his rules or not for a very long time. Jason was also a little bitch about Dick, and he was a little bitch because he (Lobdell) never gave the reader or anyone a concrete reason as to why he hated him so much and then in Rebirth he decided that Dick wasn’t that bad. Also, Jason went from “Willis Todd, abusive husband and father that deserved to die” to “Willis Todd abusive husband and father but he sent me letters when he was in prison and Penguin had him killed so now, I really want to avenge him”. Yeah, I don’t really know why that happened and like most of Lobdell’s arcs and stuff it was never really completed or well thought out.

Lobdell’s Jason characterization was a mess for ten years and that’s the prime reason why Jason is a character with no solid background, story or future.

James Tynion IV in Red Hood and the Outlaws.

Tynion’s Jason Todd was a hero, he was like a mini Tom King Batman. Everything he did was right and there was just no way that you could bamboozle him. This Jason was able to hold to Blades that drained his soul as well as hosting the Untitled in his body (that were able to drain his soul too) and on top of all that he completed his journey of the Chosen One by making those ancient martial arts moves that he learned before he was Robin even though Talia hadn’t been able to master it yet.

Scott Snyder, Tim Seeley in Batman Eternal and Batman and Robin Eternal.

A mess, this was pure New 52 levels of bullshit and they all just wanted to push the “Batfamily” and while Dick was gone, they were trying to make Jason fill the void that Dick left in Batman events. It didn’t work at all and all they did was mess around with Jason’s characterization more.

Geoff Johns in Three Jokers.

I have talked enough about Johns’ takes on Jason Todd and Red Hood, but let me tell you something real quick, if a writer thinks that the best they can do with a character is make them give up their morals/ideals for an unrequited love interest, then they can keep that idea for themselves. Geoff Johns wrote a book that was absolutely not needed and then proceeded to butcher every characterization that he could, Three Jokers was three issues long and he managed to add more trauma to Jason’s torture, push the narrative of Jason being at fault for his own murder and make Jason’s motivations to be the Red Hood weak enough to make him want to give up his work for a woman that he barely knows (and doesn’t like him at all).

Joshua Williamson in Future State: Red Hood and Robin #5.

Now, with Williamson I have issues only when he writes Jason, not because his stories are bad, don’t get me wrong, I would have completely enjoyed FS: Red Hood if it weren’t for the completely unnecessary Rose/Jason side plot he had going on. Jason was clearly working undercover for some people that he hated working with. He had to arrest or kill “masks” (vigilantes, just like he “used” to be) for the Magistrate.

His ideas were pretty solid, Jason did the job but he never killed the masks and actively didn’t trust the Magistrate but he was working there to tear them apart from within, and that’s amazing if Williamson had given us Jason Todd/Red Hood working undercover to dismantle an organization I would have been really happy.

But that’s not all he gave us, even if I just forget about his failed attempt at giving Jason a relationship, I can still see that Williamson is the kind of writer that wants (or is just following DC) to make the “Batfamily” happen no matter how dumb and out of place it looks in comics’ canon. So, I am a little bit weary, any writer that leans too much towards making Jason and Bruce work together and become a family makes me want to scream, but I do understand that is just me, many people want those two to be buddy-buddy, I, personally, would love to see Jason kick Bruce in the balls and tell him to lose his number.

Chip Zdarsky in Urban Legends: Cheer.

Ah, yes, I remember the days in which I thought that this could have been something good. Well, I was utterly wrong and I suffered all the way through this mini. I feel like now I can safely say that Zdarsky only wanted to write a Batman book but DC told him, “Hey you can write Batman but it has to be within a Red Hood story, but don’t worry, you don’t have to know much about the Hood guy, just come up with something and write Batman around that”.

I know that’s what happened because I read that story and all we got from it was horrible characterizations for pre-Robin Jason, Robin Jason, Jason Todd and Red Hood. I don’t know how he did it but yes, he managed to mess it all up.

From Jason not really wanting to be Robin and acting recklessly every step of the way, to secret desires of a perfect family with Bruce and so many other people that he couldn’t care about, Urban Legends: Cheer is the perfect book to avoid at all costs if you believe that the concept of “Batfamily” is the biggest lie, DC is trying to profit off this time around.

Zdarsky also nerfed Jason in ways that I thought DC only wanted to nerf Dick Grayson. But I was able to see that I was wrong. Zdarsky’s run also pushed some of the most disastrous narratives that DC really wants readers to believe like: Robin Jason wasn’t good at his job, he was too reckless and ultimately his death was his own fault. Yay! I want to cry!

I will give Zdarsky two points for at the very least showing that Red Hood wants to protect children and that he has a huge issue with how the drug trade is controlled and abused in Gotham City, it had been a while since we had seen that aspect of Jason’s Red Hood make an appearance.

-

It’s just too many writers completely missing the point of Red Hood’s character or simply writers agreeing to destroy Jason’s uniqueness in the DC Universe so DC (as the publisher) can further push the abomination that is the “Batfamily” in comics’ canon.

I do agree with you Anon when you say that Jason isn’t just a “bad boy” but I also don’t think that we can call UtRH Jason “dangerously insane”. Personally, I will only use that last description for BftC and Batman and Robin Jason, those two were dangerously insane indeed.

UtRH Jason was very meticulous in who he wanted dead and who got to live. He entered Gotham’s most dangerous world and he had to make a big entrance, he invited the eight most prosperous street dealers to a meeting, showed up with the decapitated heads of each of their right-hand men and an AK-47 and said:

“I am offering you a deal. I will be running the drug trade from now on. You will go about your business as usual. You will kick up forty percent to me. That is a much better deal than the Black Mask will give you. In return, you will have total protection from both the Black Mask and Batman. The catch? You stay away from kids and schoolyards. No dealing to children, got it? If you do, you’re dead.”

This was Red Hood! Red Hood wanted to control the drug trade in Gotham because he knew that Gotham is far too corrupt and filled with drug lords for him to just want to eradicate drugs from Gotham. If he had tried that he would have been a dumbass, but he wasn’t. He didn’t want to start a gang war and get innocent people killed because of it, he wanted to set the rules of his new Empire and he had to start with the street-level drug dealers, from there he grew until he became a major pain in Black Mask’s ass.

We went from Jason wanting to control the drug trade and take over Gotham’s underworld so people like Black mask couldn’t have people work for him (or being dependent on him) when they were still in high school or were in a vulnerable position, to Jason fighting a war for a mystic land because he was their “Chosen One”. DC really wanted to do something grand (yet boring) with Jason instead of sticking to a street-level vigilante that could have become a Drug Lord to control the drug trade of a city that is so filled with crime and corruption that it can’t be saved by anyone.

Batman doesn’t eradicate crime, he “controls” it, puts a blank it over it, lets it nap up until it wakes up once more to make more mess.

Red Hood had other plans, certain criminals didn’t get to nap, or, better said, they would get to nap forever.

So, no. I wouldn’t call that “dangerously insane”, I will call that “vigilante that believes himself judge, jury and executioner” of a city that is drowning in crime and corruption.

Anyway, I hope you have a really nice week Anon and thank you so much for sending me this ask!

#jason todd #red hood #under the red hood #red hood and the outlaws #dc comics #future state red hood #three jokers #bftc #asksss

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Liveblog Ch. 57-61

This is the “Wizardry” arc. 

I don’t know why it just now occurred to me, but there’s more than a hint of the Joker in the Major’s character.   He’s always grinning, and now we have him dancing on a blimp while enemy helicopters are firing on him.

The Doctor shits a brick over this, because the arrival of the Vatican’s 9th Crusade force is the first serious resistance that Millennium has encountered since they invaded London.   He begs the Major to come back inside and move their airship to safety, but the Major is too preoccupied with dancing like a goofball.   Up to this point, the audience must have been eager to see someone take a poke at the Major.  I know I was, if only to see what sort of powers he had.   I mean, he hasn’t aged a day, but he doesn’t seem to be a vampire, so what’s his deal?

But before we can find out, the helicopter that was about to shoot him gets torn apart by magic wires.   Wait... that sounds like...

DUN DUN DUUUUUNNNNNNN! 

Yeah, Walter’s switched sides.   He’s also younger-looking too, so this must be what Schrodinger was talking about when he told Zorin that the Major and Doctor had a new “toy”.   They were too busy turning him into a vampire to bother punishing Zorin for disobeying orders.   In the previous chapter, the Major asked about using Walter (without mentioning him by name), and the Doc said something about the rushed nature of the job.    Presumably, the Doctor was doing the artificial vampire treatment on Walter all through the night, while Seras and the Wild Geese were defending the mansion. 

What I’ve never been sure of is whether this was a spur-of-the-moment decision, or if Millennium approached Walter a long time ago, and Walter’s been their mole in Hellsing throughout this entire story.   The Major’s line here seems to suggest this was a long-term plan.    “I had already decided half a century ago.   The Death’s Head [the Nazi SS skull insignia] is a fitting match for the Angel of Death [Walter’s old Hellsing codename].”

But that could just mean the Major thought of the idea way back then.   He saw Walter and Alucard wrecking all his stuff in World War II and thought “This kid would be a good recruit someday!” But when did he make the pitch?   Was it last night?    Before the Valentines’ attack?   Before Arthur Hellsing’s death?   Before the end of the war?

I think it’s reasonable to assume that Walter was on board at least before he parted ways with Integra back in Chapter 39.  The Captain suddenly showed up, and he told Integra to take the car and flee, because he wasn’t sure he could defeat the Captain and he didn’t want her around in case he failed.   But it’s much more likely that he only said this to keep her from finding out that he had a rendezvous with the Major, who arrived soon after.   

Now that I think about it, this may be the only reason the Major sent his troops to capture Integra.   He wasn’t particularly concerned about her, but he knew Walter would be with her, and he wanted to get him to the Doctor as quickly as possible.   This may also be why he ordered Zorin Blitz to hold off on attacking the Hellsing mansion.  If Walter had been inside, Zorin wouldn’t have known about his allegiance, and it’s very likely that one might have killed the other.  

Actually, yeah, this is why the Major fired those rockets on the Hellsing mansion in the first place.   If Walter was there, he would know the attack was coming, and use the attack to cover his departure. Then Zorin probably would have been ordered to give him a lift back to the Doctor.  But Walter wasn’t home, and Zorin didn’t wait for orders, and Seras turned out to be much too powerful for her.  

Wow, this is like peeling an onion.  That must be what the Major meant when he chided Zorin for costing him “precious soldiers.”    Her reckless tactics got her and her company killed, but she might have also wrecked his plans to extract Walter, and it’s only a matter of luck that he happened to be at the naval base instead of the mansion. And we know that Zorin knew nothing about Walter, because Schrodinger only hinted about him without mentioning his name.   If Zorin had known, he would have just said “Yeah, we’re turning Walter into a vampire right now, no thanks to you.”

Anyway, Walter’s betrayal fascinates me, but also fuck you, Walter, you traitorous piece of shit.

Speaking of treachery, the 9th Crusaders are busy shooting the shit out of London, killing anything that survived the previous night.    Millennium is a threat, sure, but Maxwell sees this as an opportunity to conquer England for the Catholic church.    I’m not really sure “conquer” is meant literally.   I think it’s more like, Hellsing and the Iscariot Organization have some treaty, and I think that treaty applies to their respective governments as well, but the civilian governments might know nothing about it.    Maybe?  

What I’m saying is that I think this 9th Crusade is supposed to end with the overthrow of the Anglican Church in the United Kingdom, with a new Catholic-leaning regime in its place, so that the Pope would have the same influence over the U.K. that he apparently has over continental Europe.   

In that sense, I’m pretty sure Hellsing’s version of John Paul II didn’t order Maxwell to gun down civilians and shout “Die did die die!” over a loudspeaker.   He may not have been terribly worried about Protestant casualties, but there’s plenty of Catholics living in London, after all.    Maxwell doesn’t seem to care, and I think it’s clear that he’s exceeding his mandate.   

And Alexander Anderson knows it.   I think the whole Catholic contingent in this story knows that Maxwell’s gone too far, but Anderson’s the only one honest enough to say it out loud.    Anderson’s group is still escorting Integra home when the 9th Crusade attacks, and Integra accuses Maxwell of betraying her, but Anderson remarks that such backstabbing is typical in war.    So it’s not Maxwell’s duplicity that offends him, it’s the way he’s going about it.   When Anderson kills people, he’s doing it to serve God, and God alone.   Maxwell’s not serving God at all.

“All you’re serving is his power!!” Anderson says.    By “his” does Anderson mean Satan?  Millennium?  Mars, the god of war?   Maybe all three, or maybe it doesn’t matter.   I always thought Maxwell was serving his own power, but the point is that he’s not doing God’s will by any stretch of the imagination.

But the others still respect the chain of command.  Archbishop Maxwell is in charge of the 9th Crusade and the Iscariot Organization, and Heinkel reminds Anderson that they were ordered to capture Sir Integra, not escort her home.    So they all draw their guns on Integra, resulting in the most Integra panel ever.

Then Seras shows up and beats all their asses.   Yeaaaaahhhhh!   Seras, you’re doing amazing, sweetie!

Everyone’s like “Oh shit, it’s Seras Victoria!” like they’re gonna try to fight her, but Anderson can tell that Seras is now way out of their league.   Remember, this group of Iscariots fought some Millennium troops and half of them were killed.   Seras tore through about as many Milennium troops without much hassle at all, and that was before she drank Pip’s blood.

And Anderson spares some words of praise for his foe.   I guess this is like the owner of a Ford truck exchanging compliments with the owner of a Chevy truck.    “You’re a rat bastard, Chevy man,” he says, “but those are some fine Truck Nutz” you have dangling from your tow hitch.”  They’re never gonna be pals, but real recognizes real.

Also, I just think Seras looks super extra-cool in this moment.  Anderson kind of treated her like a joke before, but now he sees her as a peer.   She looks so dark and haunted now, and at the same time she’s more comfortable and sure of herself than we’ve ever seen her.    Seras never set out to become a vampire, but she’s still found herself on this path.  It’s scary and beautiful at the same time.

But never MIND that SHIT, here comes...

No, not Maxwell, Alucard is returning!  I just used this page because Maxwell’s reaction to the news is more interesting than gloomy images of a ruined carrier drifting up the Thames river.   

There’s a moment in the Hellsing Ultimate anime, right after Seras and Anderson turn to look, where she’s got this big grin on her face, and she goes “I can feel it.   He’s returning.”  It’s not in the manga, maybe because it’s not that important, but I’m a sucker for any Seras content, and I love that moment because she can sense Alucard at a distance now, and it’s a very pleasant experience.   For Seras, I mean.  I suspect it’s actually a very bonechilling, bloodcurdling sensation, but Seras has gone Full Goth, so she digs that sort of thing now.  

I don’t know how the hell Anderson can sense Alucard, though.   Maybe being a Regenerator gave him super smelling powers, like Wolverine.  

And even the Major is pleased, because now we finally have all the major players in the same city.   Not sure why the Captain rates an appearance here, when he never says a word, but we’ll run with it. 

So, up to now, we’ve had these 9th Crusaders lined up against Millennium soldiers, each cosplaying as troops from old wars.  I guess Millennium’s SS uniforms have hint of legitimacy to them, as these guys really were part of the SS back in World War II, before they became vampires.  But the point stands, they’re walking anachronisms and they know it.  

But then Alucard jumps in between them, practically giddy for a chance to participate in this war.   Not to be outdone, Anderson and the Captain perform similar Iron Man landings on the same street.   When I watched the OVA, this was about the point I started to wonder if I had missed something about the Captain, because this story has been hinting that he’s like Millennium’s strongest guy, and somehow on par with Anderson and Alucard, even though he hasn’t said anything or done anything this entire time.   This would be like if Superman and Goku squared off in the middle of London, and then some rando OC from DeviantArt walked up to join them.   Like, we know Al and we know Andy, but who the hell is this dude?   I don’t care if he can hang with these two, they should have established that earlier.

Al asks for orders, and Integra makes this big production out of “Kill everybody with a racist uniform and a funny accent.”   Okay, fine, but this is a lot of bad guys.   How is even Alucard supposed to take them all down?  And this leads us to Control Art Restriction Level Zero.

I’m just gonna cut to the chase, because this post is running long enough already.  Al used “Level 1″ to make short work of Luke Valentine and Rip van Winkle, and maybe Dandyman as well, I’m not sure.   Recall that nothing could stop Alucard on the H.M.S. Eagle.   The Blackbird crash, the Millennium soldiers, Rip’s magic bullets, none of it.   So he activates “Level 0″, which ought to be even more gonzo overpowered, and starts reciting this alchemical poem which I really out to cover in some other post, and all the bad guys panic and start attacking him. 

To all the smartasses who say “Well why don’t the bad guys attack them during the transformation?” there you go.   AGAIN.   This sort of thing happens a lot more than you’d think, and it never works, because anime/manga creators are more self-aware than you’d think.   It never works, because if it did, then it wouldn’t be “attacking a character in mid-transformation”.  It would just be “killing a guy before he could do his big move.”  So when a character does a big climactic thing like this, there’s really only two options.   1) Have the other characters stand back and watch, or 2) have them TRY to stop it, only to fail, because it’s too late for that.

Anyway, I’m skipping all of that and just showing the end result of Alucard’s power-up.   The bad guys tear his body apart, but it doesnt’ matter because that never worked on him before, and then all these undead men crawl out of the black ether that seems to make up Al’s body.   Just a veritable flood of humans, all washing out of him like a tide of death.  

Anderson starts to figure it out when he recognizes some of the uniforms on these creatures.   And if that’s not enough, Integra explains it for Seras.   When vampires drink blood, they absorb the very essence of the living being who contained it.    “To suck blood is to make the whole existence of a life one’s own.” That’s why Zorin saw Pip’s memories when she tried to read Seras’ mind.   By drinking Pip’s blood, Seras has taken on Pip’s soul as well.   But that’s just one guy.   Alucard’s been drinking blood for over 500 years.   And each one he consumes becomes another soul in his personal army.   

I’m going to guess that Alucard didn’t always have the ability to manifest all of his victims as familiars like this.   Otherwise, how in the hell was Abraham van Helsing able to subdue him a century earlier?   The Hellsing family did stuff to enhance and improve Alucard’s powers, so maybe this was one of them.  They gave him the means to weaponize all of his victims’ souls, for use in large scale battles like this one. 

And I think this might be why Seras is trembling in this scene, because she knows that this ability was passed down to her when Alucard turned her into a vampire.   Or maybe, she’s realizing that she’s got something in common with all of those dead people in Al’s army.   Alucard made her a vampire, sure, but he still drank her blood, so doesn’t that mean there’s a Seras Victoria creature down there, standing alongside all the Janissaries, Wallachians, and everyone else Alucard has consumed?

Something I picked up on was that this is what all of those eyes in Alucard’s design are supposed to represent.   When he used Level 1 you’d see all these eyes staring out from the shadows, and now Level 0 has brought out all these dead people, like they’re the ones the eyes belong to.  Although, most of them don’t actually have eyes, just smoke trailing from their eye sockets.   So maybe that’s symbolic as well.  

There’s also horses in this mess, and that makes me wonder if Alucard drank the horses’ blood along with the riders. Anyway, Archbishop Maxwell observes all of this from his Popemobile and finally confronts the elephant in the room: Alucard is Dracula, like the Dracula.  I don’t think it was ever meant to be a secret, but Kouta Hirano’s been dancing around it this whole time, without ever spelling it out, and now he’s finally spelling it out.  

I think the only one who might not know is Seras?   Someone might have filled her in off-panel, or maybe she figured it out, since it’s not exactly hard, but I don’t know.

So yeah, somewhere in this arc, they do a headcount of all three sides of this thing.  Millennium has “572″ soldiers left, and the 9th Crusade has “2875″, while Hellsing, of course, is down to just 3.  But Alucard has more than evened the playing field, since he can do this trick and spawn an invincible army.   I’m more confused how Millennium lost 428 guys in one night.   Seras killed a lot of them, but not that many. Sir Penwood got some and Anderson killed a bunch of them, but not hundreds of them.  The Crusaders could have taken out that many, but they haven’t been here very long.  

But yeah, they try to form a Phalanx to hold off Alucard’s forces, and it does not work at all.    You can’t kill these things because they’re already dead. right?  I mean, maybe the Crusaders have holy weapons that can destroy these things, but there’s just too many of them.    And the Millennium troops don’t even have holy weapons, so they’re completely fucked.

But what about the helicopters?  Well, Alucard drank the blood of Dandyman and Rip Van Winkle too, and their powers are now a part of him, which makes quick work of nearby aircraft.    I like how these two look the same as before, but they never say a word.   I think they’re the only ones with normal eyes, although Alucard’s shadow tentrils are still fused with their bodies.  

The Crusaders’ battle lines are broken, and they beg for Maxwell to order a retreat before they’re all slaughtered.   But Maxwell refuses to give up.  He’s drunk on his new power, and so he can’t accept that he’s been one-upped so easily.   Then the helicopter carrying his Popetruck gets destroyed, and he somehow crashes without getting hurt.

And now he’s got a front-row seat to the same hell his troops are experiencing, but he still gloats, because somehow Alucard’s soldiers can’t get through the glass.    He refers to “tektite” reinforcement, and that’s dumb because Tektites are just an enemy in the Legend of Zelda.   I’m onto your ass, Hirano. 

But then Anderson throws a knife at the glass, and that breaks it, so maybe it was magic glass that only a blessed weapon could pierce?    All that really matters is that Anderson has finally turned on Maxwell, and Maxwell is doomed.

Alucard’s dead warriors hoist him up on pikes, fitting for Vlad the Impaler, and Maxwell realizes that he’s going to die alone in a foreign land.   The moral is: Don’t start none, won’t be none.

Then this happens, and I’m pretty sure Dark Horse Comics goofed when they scanned this manga for the digital edition.  I’d contact them to complain, but they don’t even sell Hellsing anymore because they lost the license years ago.   I don’t think a lot of stuff happened on Pages 62-63 of Volume 8 of the Hellsing manga, but I can’t tell.  I’m guessing just Maxwell finally succumbing to his injuries while Anderson pontificates about why he had to do it to him.   And really, Anderson hardly needs to explain his actions in this case.   Maxwell sucked.

Moving on, Anderson contacts all Vatican forces and tells them to withdraw.   They can’t beat Alucard, Maxwell is dead, and there’s nothing more they can do here.  However, Anderson chooses to stay behind and take on Alucard.  

This is Anderson’s reasoning: By releasing all of Alucard’s stolen lives to fight as his army, Alucard has left his person vulnerable to attack.  So Andy thinks that if he gets close enough to Alucard, he can finally have a chance to defeat him.   If he’s right, this might be his only chance to try.   

Anderson further speculates that this may have been the Major’s plan from the beginning.   Invade London, force Alucard to use this Level 0 ability, all to leave Alucard vulnerable to assassination.   Perhaps the Major was even counting on Anderson to see this opening and take it.  

More to the point, I think Anderson kind of has to fight Alucard because it’s the only way his people can escape London.  Integra’s orders were clear: None of these invaders leaves the island alive.    Alucard would continue hunting down the Crusaders whether they retreat or fight back, so some force has to stay and keep them occupied to save the rest.  

Anyway, now we get to the actual part with this scene, where Alucard kneels before his master and she welcomes him back.   It’s pretty satisfying to see all these butthole soldiers finally get what’s coming to them.   

I’m just gonna put up the entire reunion moment because it’s so sweet.   Interesting how Seras sort of reverts to her old self when Alucard returns.    For all that badass power she gained from drinking Pip, she’s still uneasy around Alucard.   But he missed her and I think that look on his face tells the whole story.    He of all people can tell that Seras has finally taken the fateful step to becoming a “true vampire”. 

I do think it’s kind of interesting how Seras continues to address Alucard as “Master”.   He promised her way back in Volume 1 that she’d no longer be a servant if she drank blood of her own free will, but maybe it’s more complicated than that.    Or, perhaps she still calls him “Master” out of respect, rather than any sort of blood bond or whatever you want to call it.   It’s like how Anakin continued to call Obi-Wan “Master” in “Revenge of the Sith”, even though he had been promoted to Jedi Knight.   The relationship is still there, even if it’s no longer official.  

I’m a big, dumb Seras fanboy, so you’d better believe I think about this sort of thing a lot.   I’m not real crazy about Alucard/Seras shipping, although I do sort of get it.   I’m really not interested in Seras in some freaky-deaky sex kind of way.    Take the D/s stuff to the Alucard/Integra room where it belongs.   No, there’s something very wholesome between Alucard and Seras, and I could talk about it all damn day.    And why not?  It’s my blog, and I’ve got the time.    So let’s start with--

Um, excuse you?!  

Okay, so Anderson isn’t waiting around to take on Alucard, so I guess we’re doing this now.

And whether or not the Major planned for this to happen, he certainly approves...

#2021hellsingliveblog #hellsing #alucard #seras victoria #alexander anderson #the major #the captain #sir integra hellsing #walter c dornez #enrico maxwell #the doctor #warrant officer shrodinger #is that everybody? #i think so #i'm not gonna tag dandy and rip because they're dead

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Eccentricity [Chapter 6: You Know You Got Me In The Palm Of Your Hand]

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: Mean It by Lauv.

Chapter Warnings: Language, references to sex and violence, slavery in American history.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Tagging: @queen-turtle-boiii​​​​​ @bramblesforbreakfast​​​​​​ @writerxinthedark​​ @maggieroseevans​​​​​​ @culturefiendtrashqueen​​​​​​ @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark​​​​​​ @escabell​​​​​​ @im-an-adult-ish​​​​​​ @someforeigntragedy​​​​​​ @imtheinvisiblequeen​​​​​​​​​​ @deacyblues​​​​​​ ​ @tensecondvacation​​​​​​​ @brianssixpence​​​​​​ @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye​​ @some-major-ishues​​ @haileymorelikestupid​​ @loveandbeloved29​​

Please yell at me if I forget to tag you! 💜

What The Fuck, Washington Animals Are Weird

I woke up in a bedroom drenched in a rainbow of darkness, shades of grey vacillating from charcoal to the wings of a mourning dove; indolent dawn rain pattered against the window. There were no glaring veins of sunlight spilling in through gaps in the curtains, no promise of dry invigorating heat, no whistle of vicious parched wind. Toto, we’re not in Phoenix anymore.

“Ugh,” I complained to the empty room, unraveling from a tangle of blankets patterned with cacti and pure white clouds and rust-orange suns.

I clicked off my iPhone alarm—I’d beaten it by two minutes; my circadian rhythm was finally conceding that this whole Pacific Time thing was permanent—and read my nine new texts from Joe.

3:12 a.m.: Hey it’s an emergency what’s the plural of octopus

3:13 a.m.: Rami is insisting that it is octopuses

3:14 a.m.: But it’s octopi, right? Right?? I just announced in front of everyone that it’s octopi

3:15 a.m.: Scarlett is verbally abusing me

3:18 a.m.: Oh you are probably asleep

3:21 a.m.: Update, according to the internet Rami is right and now I have to assume a new identity and move to Antarctica

3:25 a.m.: We can discuss logistics of the Antarctica relocation tomorrow

3:26 a.m.: Hope you like penguins

3:30 a.m.: Okay goodnight!! Don’t let the mythical creatures bite!!

“That man,” I murmured to myself, smiling.

I typed out: It’s definitely octopuses, you clown. Then I deleted ‘clown’ and replaced it with its Italian equivalent: pagliaccio. Text sent.

Joe responded almost instantly. I had to ask Lucy what pagliaccio meant and now she’s verbally abusing me too. Send help. See you at lunch. xx

Wait, two Xs? What did Xs mean?? Kisses???

Did Joseph Francis Mazzello, sexy undead Italian man, just send me multiple text kisses?

“You’re gonna give me an aneurism, Chicago boy,” I muttered at my phone as I slid it into the pocket of my flannel pajama pants. And then I glanced out the bedroom window into a tussle of rain and thick, caliginous fog.

Just a few feet beyond the misted glass, its leathery talons hooked around a branch of Charlie’s decades-old red alder tree, was an owl. But not just any owl. A hulking, spotlessly white owl.

“Oh, hey, you,” I whispered, leaning closer, pressing my palms against the cold window. My hands left transparent imprints in the condensation. “Hey, buddy. Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping? I sure wish I was. Did something wake you up? Did your idiot vampire boyfriend disturb you with a series of ridiculous texts?”

The owl just contemplated me with unnervingly vast, slick, engrossed eyes. And there was something else, too: those eyes were blood red.

“So you’re an albino owl, huh big guy? Good for you. You know, usually albino animals don’t last all that long in the wild. Because they’re really easy for predators and prey to spot. Or they get skin cancer. So congratulations on living to become the voluptuous, tremendously creepy creature that you are today. Job well done.”

The owl stared back at me unflinchingly, blinked, then resumed staring. Rainwater gathered in swelling beads like blood drops on its ivory-colored beak and talons.

“Well,” I noted, turning away and grabbing my shower towel off the back of the desk chair. “You don’t get that in Arizona.”

Thirty minutes later, I was bounding down the stairs two at a time to meet Charlie in the kitchen. He was browsing through his daily newspaper at the table, drinking coffee and nibbling messily on burnt triangles of toast. Crumbs littered his moustache.

“You didn’t tell me that living here came with the added benefit of freaky albino animal friends.”

Charlie crinkled his forehead at me. “Huh?”

“How was bowling with the dads last night?”

“Oh, awesome!” he exclaimed, folding up his newspaper and slapping it down on the table. “We bowled against the team from Mora and it came right down to the wire, but we caught them. Dr. Lee got a strike on his very last turn. He always seems to do that...he’ll be bowling hit or miss all night and then when it really matters he manages to pull a strike out of nowhere. He’s a beast.”

“He’s a pretty remarkable guy,” I agreed, rummaging through the cabinets for Pop-Tarts.

“He mentioned that you and his son were really hitting it off,” Charlie said, grinning. “Not the ragey blond one. The spindly annoying one. What’s his name again? Josh? Jimmy?”

“Joe.” I conjured up my best poker face of lofty indifference. It crumbled like a sandcastle beneath reckless, rushing footsteps.

“Ohhhh, I saw that!” Charlie said, pointing, delighted. “Check out that smile. My gorgeous, brilliant progeny has a crush. I knew it. I knew you wouldn’t be single for long up here. Alright, I’m ready. Bring on the grandchildren.”

“Shut up,” I pleaded good-naturedly.

“Relax, I have great news. According to Gwil, that Joe kid is pretty wild about you too.”

“Oh, is that what you old guys do between bowling turns? Betray your children’s deepest confidences? Matchmake them over nachos and chili cheese dogs?” Still, my curiosity was piqued. “What else did Dr. Lee say about Joe?”

“I think the exact word he used was...” Charlie reminisced, sipping his coffee, curls of steam pouring over the rim of the mug. “Smitten.”

Supernatural Pictionary

I turned the notebook to Joe so he could see; everyone else momentarily covered their eyes or looked away. Then Lucy started the timer on her iPhone. Thirty seconds.

“Go!” Lucy announced.

“I think it’s a boat,” Rami said, hesitantly, haltingly, squinting at Joe with great concentration.

“Do you?” Joe teased.

“Yeah. But I’m also getting something about a fish.”

“Maybe I’m trying to make you think it’s a fish because it’s actually a boat,” Joe replied flippantly.

Rami muttered: “Or you want me to think it’s a boat because it’s actually a fish.”

“Interesting.”

“Now you’re mentally singing Never Gonna Give You Up just to fuck with me.”

Joe gasped, pressing a palm to his chest. “That doesn’t sound like something I would do!”

Scarlett snickered, dunking her chicken tender in honey mustard, slurping Coke through a straw clenched between crimson-painted lips. “That sounds exactly like something you would do.”

“Fifteen seconds,” Lucy warned.

“Fish or boat, boat or fish...” Rami chanted, peering fixedly at Joe.

“Make a decision,” I taunted, hugging the notebook to my chest.

“I’m going with boat,” Rami decided.

“Final answer?” Lucy asked, then stopped the timer when Rami nodded.

“Loser!” Joe cackled victoriously, leaping out of his chair, waving his L-shaped fingers in the air. Calawah University students at nearby tables glanced over with wide, startled eyes, their beloved chicken tenders briefly forgotten. “How’s it feel to not win every round of a game, huh?! Loser!”

I flipped my notebook so Rami could see the extremely unskilled pencil sketch I’d drawn there: a smiling fish. “My condolences.”

“Damn.” Rami pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his wallet and slid it across the table to Joe. Joe snatched it up, tucked it into the waistline of his jeans like a stripper collecting money in her G-string, and slung his arm around my shoulders.

“We are the champions. Bask in our glory.”

Scarlett turned on her iPhone flashlight and waved it in slow arcs over her head. “Youuuuu are the champions, my friendssssss...”

From my usual lunch table, Jessica gazed at my esteemed place among the Lees with palpable envy, resting her chin in her hands. I had worked out a schedule that seemed fairly obvious given my extensive experience as a child of divorce: lunch with Jessica et al. one day, lunch with the Lees the next. I took a bite of the Chipotle veggie bowl that Joe had insisted on ordering for me and tossed Jessica a sympathetic wave. Get Ben’s Snapchat for me! she mouthed back. I harbored serious doubts that Benjamin August Hardy, former professional assassin, born in 1893, had a Snapchat.

Joe’s words from last week rolled around in my head; I could see him all over again, nodding to the enormous painting hung in Gwil’s upstairs office, telling me about those startling, ethereal figures who had initiated Ben into life as a vampire. They call themselves the Draghi. They collect dues from covens, offer protection, keep order, protect our secrets. But they also demand loyalty. They force people they want into service. They might try to make it seem like you have a choice, but you don’t. They destroy anyone who tries to resist them. And they feed on humans.

“This is so awesome,” Lucy sighed, elated. “We could never play Pictionary before, drawing something is way too much of a mental process, Rami always figured it out right away...”

But now they had a built-in blindfold, someone who could draw without Rami getting a peek into their thoughts, a fighting chance at hiding the truth from him...for thirty seconds, at least.

“Okay Benny Boy, you’re up.” Joe darted over to Ben’s side of the table and massaged his tense, muscular shoulders as Ben grimaced. “You got this. I believe in you. Baby Swan is gonna pitch you a home run.”

“I’ll pass,” Ben said.

“You can’t!” Lucy cried. “Ben, please? Rami got Scarlett’s, and then he didn’t get Joe’s...and I know he’s going to see though me immediately. You’re our only chance to tie things up and maybe beat him!”

“Traitor,” Rami told Lucy affectionately.

“Uhh...” Ben hesitated, glimpsing longingly at the doors that led outside to the grove of bigleaf maple trees. He was fidgeting restlessly with his vape pen.

“Come on, Benny!” Joe begged. “I’ll owe you. I’ll do anything.”

Ben perked up a little bit. “You’ll do my Calc 2 homework for a month?”

Joe groaned theatrically, but nodded. He was wearing a grey U Chicago hoodie today. “Fine. Okay. But you’re gonna have to learn that shit eventually, I can’t take the MCAT for you.”

“Deal.” Ben bumped his knuckles against Joe’s.

“Batter up,” Joe heralded in his best mock-umpire voice, grinning at me expectantly, drumming the table with his palms. “Go Baby Swan, go! What will she choose? Will she continue with the nautical theme? Will she change it up, maybe switch to beloved Chicago landmarks? Baseball or food? Will she invent a variety of pizza even more despicable than pineapple?”

“Hm.” I flipped to a fresh notebook page, scratched my temple with the eraser end of the pencil, then quickly sketched a picture for Ben. “Okay, I’m ready.” I showed the drawing to Ben while everyone else covered their eyes.

Ben shook his head, scowling. “You’ll have to try again. I have no idea what that is.”

“Really?!” I checked the picture again. Okay, it definitely didn’t belong in the Louvre or anything, but it was lifelike enough to be decipherable. “You don’t recognize it? At all?”

“No,” Ben replied flatly.

From behind his shielded eyes, Rami scanned through the images in Ben’s mind. He dropped his hands onto the table. “SpongeBob?!”

“Who...?” Ben ventured.

Everyone else looked too. “Oh yeah, that’s definitely SpongeBob,” Joe said, then chuckled. “Aww, Baby Swan, you even remembered his little necktie!”

“It’s so cute!” Lucy trilled.

Ben just stared at the picture, blinking, completely lost, increasingly morose. And now there was a new guest at the table; or maybe not a new one, maybe just a quiet one, something that perched on the ledge of every conversation and field of vision just waiting to tap its claws against the wall and make its presence known: that interminable reminder of Ben’s unconventional past life, of how incomparable his vampiric upbringing was to those of the rest of the Lee kids.

“Benny Boy, you’ve never seen SpongeBob?” Joe inquired gently. “No problem. We’ll have a marathon tonight. I have the entire series on DVD. Also several Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy action figures.”

Scarlett snorted. “This is why you’ve been single since Hoover was president.”

“I wasn’t single the whole time,” Joe corrected.

“Oh, really?” Not that I’m interested, my voice suggested. I was a total liar. I was super interested. Thank the great deity that Rami and Ben couldn’t read me like a restaurant menu. Today’s specials are Being In Love With Someone Wildly Inappropriate for $15.99, and also Lamenting My Own Lack Of Sexual Experience for $11.99. Oh, and clam chowder.

“He had a couple of...what would you call them?” Scarlett combed her elegant fingers through her voluminous blonde hair. “What’s the modern vernacular? Fuck buddies? Booty calls? Netflix and chill partners?”

My stomach lurched; I nonchalantly buried my fork in a mountain of guacamole and left it there. I kept my lips turned up into a smile like a mask. Of course he’s loved other people. Duh. He’s hot and immortal. Get over it. But that didn’t calm my pounding heartbeat at all, didn’t soothe that sudden and irrational melancholy.

“Whoa whoa whoa, okay, you’re making it sound way worse than it was,” Joe protested, glancing at me nervously.

Scarlett continued: “It wasn’t serious, whatever it was. None of them would have cared about your action figure collection or obsession with a city you haven’t lived in for fifty years. It wasn’t your personality they wanted. Thank god.”

Oh this is bad, I thought helplessly. How am I ever going to be able to compete with the memory of countless gorgeous vampire girlfriends?

“Uh, ScarJo, you’re single too.” And Joe’s nickname for her was strangely apt; Scarlett could pass for Scarlett Johansson’s younger, blonder, much hotter sister. And Scarlett Johansson, in case you’re somehow unaware, is already pretty fucking hot.

Scarlett flashed a grin. “Entirely by choice.”

“And much to Mercy’s eternal and profound concern,” Lucy told me. “She stages an intervention at least twice a month. Did I overhear one last week, Scarlett?”

“Oh jesus, yeah. I was like, ‘Mom, what the hell do I need a husband for? I have my own money. I can fix household appliances. I have a vibrator. I’m good to go.’”

Joe rocked back in his chair, howling. “You did not tell Mom that!”

“I did. She was so distraught. She just kind of pinched her eyes shut and shuddered and then went out back to feed the alpacas.”

“Scarlett, babe,” Rami managed between gales of laughter. “A vibrator isn’t going to keep you company for all of eternity. It’s not a suitable substitute for a life partner.”

“You’re right. It’s even better. It’ll never abandon or disappoint me. Assuming I keep the batteries fresh, of course.”

“Oh my god,” Lucy giggled into her hands.

“She’s not wrong,” I said, shrugging, sipping my Diet Coke.  

And Joe peered over at me, surprised, intrigued, slowly raising his thin dark eyebrows. I winked back. Yeah, okay, I’ve never slept with someone. But that doesn’t mean I’ve never had an orgasm.

“Ah, loud thoughts! Loud thoughts! Joe, please!” Rami moaned, pressing his balled fists to his forehead.

Ben smirked. “There’s a color I’ve never seen from you before, Joe.”

“This family is the worst!” Joe exploded.

“I like that girl,” Scarlett decided, signaling to me with glossy maroon fingernails. “She can stay.”

Joe sighed, flustered, then shook it off as he turned to me. “You coming over tonight?”

“I can’t spend every night at your house petting alpacas, mob guy.”

“Yeah?” he asked, smiling, draping his arm around the back of my chair. “Why not?”

“Well, my tonight-specific reason is that I’m visiting a friend.”

“Cool. Your friends are my friends. Can I visit too?”

“You’re aware that you’re a legit stalker, right?” But actually, Archer was dying to meet Joe: the loud Lee, the approachable Lee, the Lee who I definitely liked more than a Tinder swipe could ever convey. This could work. “Offer to buy dinner and you can come.”

“I’m a walking Visa, baby.”

Ben stood, hauled on his backpack, gathered up his trash to throw away. “I need a smoke break before Chem. See you guys later.”

“Don’t forget!” Joe called after him. “SpongeBob marathon starts at 8! I’ll bring the Milk Duds!”

And when Ben disappeared through the doors, a solemn hush descended over the table.

“Poor guy,” Lucy said softly. The other Lees nodded.

And again, I recalled what Joe had told me in Gwil’s office, what he had said when I asked how Ben came to join the Lee family. He was assigned to us, to be the liaison to our coven. And Gwil saw something in him. Potential, suffering, unrealized decency, I don’t know. But Gwil worked on him for years, trying to convince Ben to leave the Draghi when his contract was up and come live with us. To give a peaceful life a try. And to be honest, Ben never seemed interested. But something must have resonated with him, because we opened the front door on October 15th, 2016 and he was sitting on the steps of our porch with a single suitcase, puffing on that fucking vape pen and watching the storm clouds roll in off the Pacific Ocean.

But why would they just let him leave? I had asked, tracing my fingertips over the uncanny and magnificent faces in that painting. Why would they let him live?

Because they know how valuable he is. And because they think they can get him back.

“I think he’s a good person,” I said, breaking the silence. “You know. Underneath the whole being raised to be a killing machine thing.”

“Yeah,” Rami replied, frowning thoughtfully. “Just try not to spend too much time alone with him.”

Car Jacks And Sneak Attacks

“Joe, this is Archer James Foxchild, my first-ever best friend.”

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you!” Joe said, shaking Archer’s oil-stained hand. “I understand you are really good at making mud pies and poking dead animals with sticks.”

Archer chuckled. “It’s true. We found a shark tooth down at La Push one time and I convinced Baby Swan here that it was from a sea monster. She had nightmares for months. Charlie called my dad over it and I got my Game Boy taken away.”

“No!” Joe gasped in horror. “Were you a Pokémon guy?”

“For sure.”

“Ruby or Sapphire?”

“Emerald.”

Joe grinned. “This dude knows what’s up.”

“And to think, my grandpa tried to tell me that you guys were freaks,” Archer replied.

“Well,” Joe conceded. “Not all of us.”  

“Maybe you two should start dating,” I said. “Don’t mind me. I’ll just sit in my Honda and eat my Taco Bell cheese quesadillas and Cinnamon Twists and try not to interrupt all the sex.”

“Yes, you brought Taco Bell,” Archer sighed euphorically. “Give me five minutes, I just gotta finish rotating these tires real quick.” He jogged to the other end of the garage, knelt beside a Ford Mustang that was propped up on a jack, and starting twisting off lug nuts with a tire iron.

“You have a nice place here,” Joe observed, strolling around the small garage with his hands in the front pocket of his U Chicago hoodie, eyeing the fractures in the concrete floor and the spidering cracks in the windows. “You have any investors?”

“Are you kidding?!” Archer replied from the Mustang. “No, man, it’s just me. I rent for now, but at some point I’ll buy my own shop. Once I’ve saved up enough. A great big one with shiny new equipment and no mice squeaking behind the walls.”

“What’s your cash flow like?”

“I’m netting around three grand a month after taxes.”

“Not bad!” Joe noted admiringly.

“Yeah. It’s a hustle, but I love it.”

“Hey, I don’t know if you’d be interested—and absolutely no pressure if you’re not, really—but I do a lot of work with start-ups and I’d love to help you get into your own shop. By this Christmas, preferably. If we can work out a deal.”

“Really?!” Archer peeked incredulously over the hood of the Mustang.

“Absolutely.”

Archer beamed at me. “This guy is willing to drop serious cash to look good in front of you. You should probably marry him. No prenup though.”

I held my pinky out towards Joe, grinning. “No more sad prenups.”

He laughed and hooked my pinky with his. “Bankrupt me, bitch.”

I heard the metallic clang of a lug nut hitting the concrete floor and rolling under the Mustang. “Come back here, you bastard,” Archer muttered, then dropped to his stomach and crawled beneath the car.

“Hey, kid, be careful,” I fretted, crossing my arms across my chest and taking a step closer.

“Relax, Baby Swan, I am a professional, changing a tire for me is like feeding a fish for you, so just chill and keep fantasizing about those Cinnamon Twists—”

There was a squeal of metal as the car jack collapsed and the Mustang came crashing down. In a fraction of a second—faster than I could see him moving, faster than I could loose a scream—Joe had soared across the garage, yanked Archer out from beneath the falling Mustang, and dragged him to the center of the room.

“Oh fuck,” Archer wheezed, his dark eyes huge and fascinated and horrified. “Grandpa was right.”

I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)

We rolled up to the Lee house in my 1999 Honda Accord just as I polished off the last of my Cinnamon Twists and Archer chewed, tentatively and dazedly, on a Cheesy Gordita Crunch. The sun was beginning to set in a clouded sky that perpetually threatened rain.

He asked Joe for the fifth time from the back seat: “But wait, seriously, no one is going to eat me, right? Because I’m too young to die. I haven’t taken enough vacations yet. I can’t die without seeing Hawaii. I want to swim with the sea turtles.”

“No, none of us have ever eaten people. Well, almost none of us. Maybe stay away from Ben.”

“I would like a little more exposition,” Archer replied, blanching.

“Hey, if you stay until 8, you guys can join us for the SpongeBob marathon!”

Gwil and Mercy were waiting on the front porch, thanks to Joe’s ‘hey I accidentally exposed myself as a paranormal being and now we have a new friend, plz don’t be mad okay love you see you soon!1!!’ text.

“Welcome, sweetheart!” Mercy fussed, enfolding Archer into her arms as soon as he stepped out of the Honda. “Would you like some hummingbird cake? I just baked it this morning. And maybe some sweet tea too. And some peanut butter cookies. And banana pudding.”

“Sure,” he responded, bewildered. This lady does not seem like a bloodsucking demon, that voice said. And he was absolutely right.

“I’ll fix you up a tray,” Mercy promised, and hurried into the house.

“We’re so very happy to have you, Mr. Foxchild.” Gwil shook Archer’s hand firmly. “We don’t get many visitors around here. I’m sure you understand why.”

“My grandpa always insisted that there was something off about you guys. Especially you, Dr. Lee. Said you shouldn’t still be around.”

“Yes, I imagine that would have been disconcerting for him. He must have remembered us from the 1940s...that’s the last time we settled down in Forks. It’s not often that someone recognizes us after so long, but it happens. It was just Mercy and me and Rami and Joe back then. And look how far we’ve come.” Gwil beamed warmly, then turned to Joe. “But really, son, you’re going to have to stop telling humans about us.”

“Hold up, I was not responsible for her!” Joe exclaimed, waving at me. “Take it up with Ben!”

The garage door rumbled open and Scarlett sauntered out, wiping her filthy hands with a rag. She halted abruptly, stood there in her high-waisted vintage jeans and black crop top and bare feet with maroon-colored toenails, tilted her head and pondered Archer with an innocent sort of curiosity that I hadn’t seen from her before.

“Wait,” Archer said, gaping. “Is that...is that an Aston Martin Vantage in there?!”

“You bet,” Scarlett replied. “You want to learn how to work on it?”

“Uh, hell to the yeah!” He trotted over and they vanished into the garage together.

“Huh,” Joe muttered, watching them. “She was nice to him. Very weird.” He whirled back to me. “Anyway, come on. I promised you an education in classic rock music. And I shall deliver.”

Joe’s bedroom was a chaotic jumble of economics textbooks and Chicago Cubs paraphernalia and U Chicago apparel and action figures and comic books and classic rock posters. There was a massive Italian flag tacked to the wall above his bed. But what caught my attention immediately was a life-sized cardboard cutout of Ben lurking in the corner by a bookshelf full of cassette tapes.

“How is there any possible logical explanation for that?” I asked, pointing.

“Oh, that! That was a joke. When Ben first showed up, he pretty much lived in his room and never came out. Gwil was worried. Mercy was heartbroken. So I made a cardboard cutout of him and would bring it to family activities and do this really deep and seductive Ben voice when I pretended to have conversations with him. It gave the whole situation some levity...and I think Ben secretly liked that we missed him enough to make an artificial version to fill the void.”

“So this bitchy, brooding, blood-craving Ben I met is actually a drastic improvement?”

“Oh, Baby Swan,” Joe confided, almost sadly. “You have no idea what he was like four years ago.”

“I’m glad he has you. All of you. That he has a chance to get better.”

“I think you might be good for him too. Seeing a human as a real person instead of a walking, talking Hi-C juice box. And you care about him, don’t you? Despite everything.”

“Of course. It’s not his fault they taught him to be a monster.”  

Joe just looked at me for a while, and then he cradled my face with one hand and grazed a thumb across my cheek “You’re never going to stop saying things that knock me into next week, are you?”

“Joe...” I hesitated, laying my hand over his. His skin was smooth and yielding yet strong, cool yet not unnaturally so. Refreshing. Safe. Fan-fucking-tastic. Oh noooooo. “Are we a thing?”

“Why? Do you want to be a thing?”

“Oh, uh, no, I was just wondering if we were.”

He stepped away, teasing me with a crooked smirk. “...So you don’t want to be a thing?”

“What would that entail?”

“Well...we’d be an official thing, you and me.” He shot finger guns at me, and then towards himself. “Which means you can’t be a thing with anyone else. And neither can I.”

“Ahhh, I see. So this thing is an exclusive thing.”

“Will you shut up and just admit that you’d totally be thrilled to be a thing with me?”

“Fine. Whatever. We’re a thing.”

“Nice.” He high-fived me.

“This is the most romantic moment of my life.”

“But wait, there’s more.” He went to the bookshelf, browsed through his cassette tape collection, found the one he wanted and popped it into a boombox that was probably older than I was. The frantic opening piano notes of I’d Do Anything For Love poured out.

“Meat Loaf,” I said in disbelief. “Really. This is the product of your superior taste in music. This is the culmination of over a century of musical experience. Meat Loaf.”

“The man is a genius!”

“This is all an elaborate joke about my vegetarianism, isn’t it?”

“No,” Joe mused. “But now that you mention it, I have yet another reason to force you to appreciate this song.” He took my hand in his, spun me around like a ballerina in a slow and careful circle, sang along—with extreme and dramatic enthusiasm—to the music.

“And I would do anything for love

I'd run right into hell and back

I would do anything for love

I'd never lie to you and that's a fact...”

“I don’t dance,” I cautioned him, laying a palm against his chest to catch my balance. That brisk, comforting scent of pine and snow and peppermint was everywhere. It feels like I can’t stand to be away from him. Like I’ll never get close enough. “I am terribly uncoordinated. I will step all over your feet. And I’m really not sure if I can trust you. You didn’t even know the plural form of octopus until like eighteen hours ago. You’re kind of a disaster. A, you know, uh, unexpectedly charming, unconventionally super cute, kind of bizarrely enchanting disaster.”

“Yeah,” Joe whispered, smiling, tilting up my chin, leaning in to kiss me. “I like you too.”

Cato

He came out of the oak trees like a ghost, pushing aside massive chandeliers of Spanish moss that blotted out the dusk sun, his expensive shoes sloshing in the marshy water that flooded the rice field. He was wearing a full suit, but no top hat; his hair was black and chin-length and wild around his face. And at first I thought he was a hallucination, a dream conjured by heat sickness or those first dreaded signs of malaria. He was unnervingly, uncommonly beautiful; beautiful like a hurricane, beautiful like lightning or an eclipse. But he was real. I straightened up as I watched him approach, my back aching in protest, a basket full of seedlings slung over my shoulder.

“Mr. Cato.”

His voice, clear and beckoning and twisted by an accent I’d never heard before, rang in my skull like church bells. He called me mister. This white man called me mister.

“Yes sir?” And I almost added: You want to be careful there, sir. The water moccasins like to hide among the tree roots, especially when the sun starts going down. But I had an inexplicable feeling that this man wasn’t afraid of things like snakes. Maybe the snakes should be afraid of him.

“Mr. Cato,” he said again, this time to himself, very quietly, tasting it.

I kept trying to look away, to disentangle my gaze from him like a hook out of a sturgeon’s mouth, because staring piercingly and astonished at a white man like that in the rice swamps of South Carolina in 1851 could get me beaten or the lash, could get my teeth pried right out of my jaw. But it didn’t seem to bother him. He grinned, hugely, all-knowingly, under prehistoric golden eyes like an alligator’s. He knew exactly what he was doing to me. And he was proud.

“Do you want to be free?” he asked, almost hissed, still grinning from the tree line.

What kind of question was that? Did a sandpiper want to fly? Did a coyote want dirt under its paws and flesh disappearing down its throat? But that wasn’t something you ever confessed aloud, not if you wanted your feet on the ground instead of swinging ten inches above it. But this man wasn’t a master, wasn’t an overseer. He wasn’t from the South. He didn’t carry a whip or a club to remind you of the rules of the world. He stood there tall and radiant in the shadows of the fading daylight like he was the one who wrote the rules to begin with; which meant that maybe he could change them. “Yes sir.”

“I can only take you,” the man warned. “No others. No family. No friends.”

“No trouble, sir,” I told him. “They sold my family. They hanged my friends.”

The man’s grin stretched wider under glinting eyes. His canine teeth were sharp, I realized: like a coyote’s, like a snake’s fangs. He held out his hand. “We are going to get along very well, you and I.”

I let the basket fall from my shoulder. I slogged through the mud and rows of wispy verdant rice plants to meet him in the shade of the oak trees. And there, for the first time in forever, a man with skin the color of bones looked me dead in the eye and shook my scarred hand.

“Welcome, Cato,” he whispered; and I was home.

He took my face in his cool palms, gingerly, reverently, like a lover. He touched his teeth to my throat. And every nerve ending in my body flooded with wildfire as he dragged me, screaming, into the depths of the forest.

[blackbatpurplecat]

What do you think of Catwoman in the video games (Arkham City & Knight, Tell Tale, Injustice)? Which are you favorites and do you think TPTB would ever come out with a solo game of her's?

Yay, finally I get to say something NICE! XD Short answer: They’re (almost) all great! My absolute favorite is Catwoman in the Telltale games!

Very long answer incoming:

Lemme rank them from the one I like the least to the one I love the most. That’s probably the easiest way to answer this. There are many more games Catwoman is appearing in but they’re not really worth mentioning here.

3) Catwoman in Injustice 1+2

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of Catwoman in those two but that’s no big surprise when the cast is bigger than the one in Avengers: Endgame. She’s fantastic in the tie-in comics but I can’t count those here.

So in part 1, she’s Bruce’s ex who ratted him out to protect him and after everything, she still wants to redeem herself and get back together with him. I liked her purple-gray costume (the weird steampunk one with the tail... not so much), I liked her voice-actress who also voiced her in the Arkham games, Grey DeLisle. I liked her cunningness, how she quickly figured out that Cyclops was a different Cyclops and made him blow his cover.

I understand that Selina would do something more selfish to protect the man she loves. She wanted Supes to spare Bruce and for that, accepted that many other people would die - BUT I will never understand WHY they wrote her arc like that. Why not write her as Bruce’s loyal partner and girlfriend? Why couldn’t she be on his side in the fight against Superman and the Regime? Even Harley and Luthor were! At least, they didn’t make her entirely evil, she did have good intensions but was misguided. And her ending had a feeling of hope in it.

Years later, she’s apparently reached her goal of redemption, found her way back to Bruce, and is now working as a double agent for the Insurgency. This time, she has more than only two scenes but we don’t learn much more about her, her relationship with Bruce, or her arc. You gotta read the comics for that... And again, not a huge fan of her costumes in this one but it’s cool that you can modify them to your liking. 

Her ending is the worst in this however. After what she’s been through with Bruce, after fighting with him, against him, redeeming herself, earning his trust again, and getting back to his side, she... just leaves him because she got bored. Wow. What fucking idiot wrote that?!

All in all, she’s a minor character in both games, her arc happens mostly off-screen, they don’t do anything new or outstanding with her but I enjoyed seeing her. Too bad, you can’t play as her.

2) Catwoman in the Arkham games

Now THAT’s more like it! ❤️Back then, I only bought Arkham City because you could play as Catwoman in it. I didn’t know much more about the game, I had never played its predecessor, I only wanted to play as Catwoman - and boy oh boy what a glorious purchase that turned out to be!

To this day, I still adore Arkham City, so much so that I bought it three times (CD + Steam + PS4). I can play it in my sleep! And it made me buy Asylum, Origins, Blackgate, and Knight, half of them were good and some also had Catwoman!

City - Her part in the game is a short side quest that’s not really connected to the main story: Catwoman wants to steal from Hugo Strange’s vault, convinces Ivy to help her break into it, then she leaves her loot behind to save Batman’s life, then tracks down Two-Face to get her stolen loot back, and after finishing him, retrieves her loot. She then decides to stay in Arkham City because it’s still dangerous there a.k.a. fun!

While it’s a shame that Catwoman and Batman only meet twice, they do save each other’s lives. The banter and flirting could certainly be better in this though. Her story isn’t anything new BUT it’s perfectly executed and it’s exactly what Catwoman’s like. She’s playful and seductive (they could have turned down her horniness about a few points - but you gotta please the fanboys *sigh*), she’s looking after herself, she only does what she wants (so she won’t return the plant to Ivy who had treated her so badly), but in the end, she does the right thing by saving Batman because she has a good heart.

While her side story felt tagged on, I really enjoyed it! I just love playing as her, beating up thugs, using the whip, and crawling on the ceilings. Also you get to wear the BTAS suit AND the purple Long Halloween suit! YAY!

Blackgate - It starts with Batman chasing Catwoman across the rooftops for the very first time, that’s just a fantastic intro! And I really liked their fight towards the ending for its very interesting execution. This time, Catwoman is not playable but both a suspicious ally who helps Batman with information and an enemy Batman has to defeat. Which I get because they’ve basically just met and don’t know each other yet.

The lack of trust is also the reason why Catwoman’s playing him like she is in the game. She figures him out rather quickly and cleverly uses his urge to save and protect others against him to get access to what she had been told to get from Blackgate. Manipulating Batman into helping her completing her mission is a real Catwoman-y move so the Arkham games continue the trend of “getting” her character. Well, except for having Catwoman lick herself like a cat.

Knight - Selina’s third and last appearance in the Arkham games. She’s kinda playable and she’s no enemy BUT she’s a damsel in distress... ... ... Okay, Knight, what do have for us?

Riddler, of all people, has captured Catwoman and uses her to play with Batman. Well, at least it proves that everyone knows about the relationship between the Bat and the Cat (yet Catwoman keeps saying they’re not close - oh honey, no one believes you). Selina’s wearing an explosive collar and Batsy has to find Riddler trophies and complete riddles (and for some fucking reason drive races!) to unlock the keys to set her free.

Catwoman’s kinda playable since you can’t explore the city with her but you can switch to her while you’re solving Riddler’s contraptions or fight his robots. The dual team feature in the game was magnificent in general. I would have loved to play more as her but at least, she’s not just sitting around waiting for Bruce to save her but is partaking in her own rescue.

The chemistry between Bruce and Selina is the best part of this Riddler mission. Neither fears nor takes Eddie seriously and especially Selina drops so many awesomely annoyed comments and jabs against him, but gets increasingly more worried. While we saw BatCat meet in Blackgate, in Knight they’ve known each other for years and it shows. There’s no other character in the game Batman talks to in the way he talks to Catwoman. It’s... casual, funny, flirty. Additionally, you can clearly hear his worry for her in his voice. In the end, Selina even comes back to help Batman with Riddler even though she didn’t have to - she wanted to! And offers more of her help, it’s so obvious how much he means to her.

I love Batman and Catwoman working together and flirting and bantering while fighting other Rogues but the only thing that’s holding this back from being perfect is the series’ idiotic insistence that Bruce is still mourning the al Ghul chick which we all know is bullshit. And Selina doesn’t know Batman’s identity?! Come on.

To sum it up, I really liked Catwoman’s attitude and portrayal in Knight but would have loved to have more of her in the game. What we got was passable enough to have fun with. Bonus points for the 90s Balent suit you can put her in!!! If only there was an Arkham game in which both characters were playable and constantly working together, now THAT would be my dream!

1) Catwoman in the Telltale games

Where do I start? The voice? The charm? The complexity? 

She’s not playable but that doesn’t make this game and her in it less perfect. We again meet a clever, confident, I-mostly-care-about-myself Selina who’s great at fighting and stealing and manipulating. She’s caught Harvey in her trap to get close to his buddy, rich boy Bruce Wayne. She instantly finds out that he’s Batman (same way he finds out that she’s Catwoman) and they form a rocky alliance which either blooms into something deeper or not, depending on your decisions.

The makers of the game understand her the way Rocksteady did but add a softer layer to her. She’s playful, seductive, and doesn’t take no shit from anyone and in episode 3 of the first season, we see a vulnerable Selina for the first time. A woman who doubts she could ever be more than a cat burglar. She does take pride in her skills and doesn’t apologise for what she does (she even says “you shouldn’t trust me”) but you notice that she’s longing for a connection, for someone who trusts and relies on her without weighing her down. 

I personally had the impression that she felt a bit honored that Batman would support her and have faith in her the way he did in my playthrough. It gave her a chance to prove to herself that she could do more, be more. And that it felt good to have someone she in turn could rely on and trust which proved to her that the world maybe wasn’t as bad as she’d thought, that she could let her guard down once in a while. There was also another side we don’t see often on her: She didn’t want to face Harvey at the hospital. Maybe due to cowardice, shame, you decide.

Her last scene in season 1 wasn’t the best, it was just her going back to her old ways, seemingly leaving behind her character development from previous episodes but she probably wasn’t at the point of staying and saving people yet. It was the usual move to save herself and telling herself that she’s a bad person who doesn’t have feelings for Bruce. Changing yourself isn’t hard, it’s not changing back to your old self that is, and I think that’s what happened there, she simply fell back into her old self. 

In season 2, she returns as the thief we all know and love. They didn’t change her, her actions and dialogue lines fit the character we met in season 1. This time, we also see her vengeful side as she’s trying to get revenge for her dead friend, Riddler, and she won’t let anyone get in her way, not even Bruce.

Later, she wants Bruce to tell her that he needs her and he can’t take down Harley and the rest without her, proving she wants to be needed and trusted as I’d mentioned before. Same goes for admitting that it means a lot to her that he lets her into his secret life. Season 2 shows us that everything from season 1 did leave an impact on her and her development is slowly moving forward. One lovely example is her being surprised by a hug in S1 and in S2, she hugs Bruce first.

To put lots of rambling briefly I LOOOVE Telltale’s Catwoman! She’s not just a cunning thief but a woman with feelings, hopes, fears, layers. I really hope we will get a third season someday, especially since we didn’t get any closure scenes with Selina, no matter which Joker we fought in the last S2 episode.

---

Now regarding her own game... She had one already with a 1999 Game Boy Color game. Nothing huge but I count it. Especially since she’s wearing her 90s suit in it. 😉

I would very much welcome a Catwoman game with her as the lead! An Arkham like game: open world Gotham, you get to meet many Rogues, you have to flee from Batman and/or fight his kiddies. Maybe you need to team up with Harley and Ivy, or with Batgirl! OR make it like a Lara Croft game with lots of breaking and entering, and stealing valuable artefacts.

Alas, I think the chances of getting a Catwoman game are very slim! DC are so focused on Batman and Superman, they won’t spend millions of dollars on the production of a game that’s... not starring at least one of those two. I mean there’s not even a Wonder Woman game so why would they make one starring Catwoman? A shame really.

#asks #catwoman #Anonymous

[idairsauthor]

Women On Fire reviews Once Upon A Time

So we have started watching Once Upon a Time and are midway through Season 2. PJ is very into it. It’s a bit weird for me for a specific reason: Because OUAT and WOF both use a lot of fairy tale/fantasy tropes, some things that I think of as very specifically WOF things show up sort of prominently in OUAT and...that’s weird. So when I watch it, I can’t help thinking about how this show would play with the WOF crowd. Behind the cut tag, some of them will be discussing their reactions. It’ll involve spoilers for seasons 1-2 of OUAT and basically all of WOF.

PLAIDDER: All right, so, for the sake of any readers who may remember this show well enough to care where we are with it, we’re about midway through Season 2. Emma and Snow have returned from the Bad Place, and Cora has followed them and has just faked Regina killing Archie, causing Emma et al. to turn on the partially-redeemed Regina, while actually keeping Archie captive on Hook’s invisible pirate ship. OK?

AINE: I suppose WOF’s plot would also sound pretty stupid if you had to summarize it in one paragraph. 

THEAMH: I don’t think it would sound THAT stupid.

PLAIDDER: ANYWAY! I just wanted to get your reactions to some of the...you know...correspondences.

THEAMH: Oh, you mean the whole reuniting the separated lovers thing? You know, “We will always find each other!”

ISTRIA: “But will we always lose each other? Is that our fate?”

PLAIDDER: To be honest I do kind of think that given that the show runs for seven seasons, it pretty much is gonna be their fate. The whole ‘waking the pseudo-dead beloved with true love’s kiss’ has already been done so many damn times and yet I fear it will happen with increasing frequency as we--

THEAMH: I’m sorry, you do not have a leg to stand on there. Istri, how many times have we--

ISTRIA: So let’s see...you lose me, you find me, you get taken prisoner, I find you. That’s all just up to Greenhaven. Then you get arrested by those traitors at Lythril’s old castle--

THEAMH: You lose me--

ISTRIA: Trial at Mypril--

THEAMH: You find me. Giant arani fight at Amranth--

ISTRIA: You lose me, you find me. 

THEAMH: I think that’s the last time. So that’s...

ISTRIA: No, no, we’re forgetting about “Homeswept.”

THEAMH: Oh FNAA. Idair’s HAIRPINS. Well I mean can you blame me?

ISTRIA: I cannot.

THEAMH: Yes. You lose me, I lose you, we manage to more or less find each other--

PLAIDDER: All right. Yes. I am a sucker for a good reunion. I mean as much as I bitch about it I actually sort of can watch that story line a fair few times before I get tired of it. It’s nice how reciprocal it is with Charming and Snow. 

THEAMH: Yes, that IS nice. Can I just ask though...why do all the men look the same?

ISTRIA: They don’t all look the same. There are two kinds. The blonde kind is a prince and the dark-haired kind is a dark user’s familiar.

PLAIDDER: Yes, I will say they made the Maerin figure a lot more interesting on OUAT. I actually kind of like both of them, which is strange, because I fucking HATE Maerin.

LYTHRIL: So do I.

PLAIDDER: Yes. Well, Lythril, since you’re here--

LYTHRIL: The reason you can...attach yourself...to Graham and Hook is that their dark users haven’t properly broken them. The bond is in the playful stage, where both partners are capable of enjoying each other. 

PLAIDDER: And...did you and Maerin have...a playful stage?

LYTHRIL: Of course.

PLAIDDER: I’m really glad I didn’t have to write that.

LYTHRIL: It was brief.

PLAIDDER: Well, as long as you’re here...I mean what’s it like for you watching Regina? 

THEAMH: Are you sure these people haven’t been reading your--

PLAIDDER: Yes, I’m sure. I’m very sure. Look, I saw Snow White just like everyone else and the evil Queen freaked me out just like everyone else and Lythril does kind of have the evil Queen’s vibe and that’s the transmission pattern. The film Snow White is the common source. WOF and OUAT aren’t borrowing from each other. I never watched the show while I was writing WOF, and I am 100% certain that nobody on the WOF distribution list ended up writing for a nighttime drama on ABC.

AINE: How can you be sure?

PLAIDDER: Look, I asked Lythril a question--

LYTHRIL: And because it will amuse me, I’m going to answer it: I find watching Regina EXTREMELY frustrating. 

PLAIDDER: Why?

LYTHRIL: It’s a very long list. 

PLAIDDER: Could we have the condensed version?

LYTHRIL: She doesn’t have the commitment. She doesn’t love the work. She doesn’t LIKE being evil.  

PLAIDDER: Oh, I think she does like it.

LYTHRIL: No. It looks that way at first, but then they give her this...

PLAIDDER: Backstory.

LYTHRIL: That simpering little girl with her stableboy lover--that was PAINFUL. There is NO way that girl grows up to be the most powerful dark user in the kingdom. 

TARIC: If I could--

PLAIDDER: Yes, of course, Taric.

TARIC: I don’t think I realized before that I was a...trope?

PLAIDDER: Yes, I did try to keep that from you. I’m sorry--

TARIC: Is that why I’m...you know...simple?

KEANRIH: Oh Taric. You’re not simple. You’re very complex. 

TARIC: No, I mean...not very smart, and not good with words, and generally...not really very interesting.

KEANRIH: Don’t SAY those things about yourself!

PLAIDDER: All right, look, there is this whole thing with girls and horses and even though I never had a horse I did sort of become fascinated with horses for a while and yes, you two were a trope, but so are Theamh and Istria. I mean there were people back in the day who categorized WOF as a Xena a/u. 

AINE: WHAT?!

THEAMH: Aine, just calm--

AINE: THERE IS NO SUBTEXT. THERE WAS NEVER ANY SUBTEXT. WE DISCUSSED THIS EXPLICITLY--

PLAIDDER: Aine, you cannot do anything about what people do with your story. You write, they read, what happens next is up to the gods. My point is: yes, Taric, you are a cheesy romance trope, I am very sorry, but I did do my best to give you the same kind of character depth that I gave everyone else, which is something that definitely DOES NOT happen with Daniel. So you are both the same trope but Daniel is a lot more...trope-y...than you are.

KEANRIH: Also I would never have turned you into a zombie.

TARIC: Thank you.

PLAIDDER: Look, speaking of zombies staggering around heartless, can we get back to Lythril’s take on--

LYTHRIL: Despite all the other fnaa you’ve pulled on me I feel almost moved to thank you for never giving me a backstory...if THIS is what it looks like.

PLAIDDER: Well...to some extent it inevitably does, because nobody’s just born evil. 

LYTHRIL: No, but not everyone has evil thrust upon them. Some of us chose it.

PLAIDDER: Well, Rumplestiltskin--

LYTHRIL: Do not SPEAK TO ME about that BLASPHEMY.

PLAIDDER: Well I don’t think they mean the same thing that you mean when they say “Dark One”--

AINE: Are you SURE they haven’t read your books?

PLAIDDER: YES I AM SURE!

LYTHRIL: She wants to be redeemed? She wants to be a better mother? WHY? Why does she want to be a mother at all? I didn’t want that for a steaming hot second.

PLAIDDER: Oh, you are obsessed with fertility. OBSESSED.

LYTHRIL: Dark magic and maternity are profoundly incompatible.

RENNA: My gleacha they are.

LYTHRIL: Your entire *existence* proves my point. Take Regina out of the Enchanted Forest and she turns into YOU. An idiot who would choose some child over magic and power. I hate Storybrooke Regina. Always weak, and incompetent, and--

RENNA: I was strong enough to kill YOU.

LYTHRIL: You had help.

PLAIDDER: I actually don’t hate Storybrooke Regina’s redemption arc. I mean I don’t know how it’s going to end, but--

ISTRIA: You call that a redemption arc?

PLAIDDER: Oh dear. 

ISTRIA: She doesn’t understand the FIRST DAMN THING about redemption. 

THEAMH: She yells at the screen a LOT when Regina’s on it.

ISTRIA: You’re all hurt when people don’t want to invite you to their parties. Of course they don’t! You ruined all of their lives! And except *sometimes* regarding Henry, you have done NOTHING to live it down!

THEAMH: Like that.

ISTRIA: Redemption is not about getting people to like you. It’s about taking responsibility for the harm you’ve done and trying to undo it. Whether people *like* you again is irrelevant. It’s not about you and what you want any more, that’s the point.

PLAIDDER: Listen, this cannot go on forever, and I don’t want to quit without talking about the hearts thing.

LYTHRIL: Yes. The hearts thing.

AINE: I just don’t see how you can be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that nobody who writes for that show has--

PLAIDDER: For the love of Pete, Aine, in the story of Snow White the evil Queen says she wants the huntsman to rip out Snow White’s heart and liver and bring them back to her and that is where ALL of these chest-punching heart-ripping evil women in black came from.

LYTHRIL: It’s HILARIOUS. Nobody needs THAT many hearts.

PLAIDDER: Well I think she uses these hearts for different purposes than--

LYTHRIL: Every time I watch her or Cora do that I have to pause it because I’m laughing so hard. Where’s the blood? Where are the screams? Where are the broken ribs and the--

THEAMH: Could you not--

LYTHRIL: And this glowing red Lucite thing that comes out--

ISTRIA: I know!

LYTHRIL: That’s not a heart. I don’t know what that is but it’s not...hearts are bloody, they’re warm, they pulse, they’re--

THEAMH: They’re messy. Really, really--

LYTHRIL: That’s the whole POINT of a heart, that’s why people miss them in the first place.  

THEAMH: Yeah, they’re like...that’s where the whole soul/body thing happens, at least if you’re heart seated, and it matters that it’s all squishy and misshapen and--

LYTHRIL: They’re flesh. Hearts are flesh. They’re meat. That’s the point of hearts.

THEAMH: ExACTly!

[high-five begins]

ISTRIA: HEY! Are you both INSANE?

[high-five aborted]

PLAIDDER: Can I at least get your thoughts on Regina’s fashion sense?

[Everybody laughs]

AINE: Who is MAKING all those gowns for her? Who is doing her hair? Where does she get the materials?

PLAIDDER: And why does she lead with her cleavage, even in battle?

LYTHRIL: Oh come on. I have seen your illustrations.

PLAIDDER: What? They’re nothing like--

LYTHRIL: Shriias, back me up here: does she or does she not have me doing everything tits out?

THEAMH: I do have to admit--

PLAIDDER: No! Your outfits are--

LYTHRIL: Very tight. 

PLAIDDER: Well sure but--

THEAMH: At least she’s never drawn you naked.

PLAIDDER: LOOK.

LYTHRIL: I don’t mind. Sincerely, I do not mind being the sexiest woman in this universe--

[confused and vehement shouts of protest from all assembled]

PLAIDDER: All right all RIGHT! There will be NO MORE discussion of costuming! Or hearts! Or competitive sexiness!

CHANDRA: Are we not even going to TALK about Mulan?

PLAIDDER: And another country is heard from.

CHANDRA: You know I heard there was going to be queer-baiting in this show and all through season one I was like, where is it? All the men seem very very straight to me.And then Mulan and Aurora show up and it’s like, oh, I see it now.

PLAIDDER: Yes. Well...

CHANDRA: “I promised Prince Phillip I would protect you and I will fight both of these other hot women to do it!”

PLAIDDER: All right, point--

CHANDRA: Mulan literally holds Aurora’s heart in her hands and actually PUTS IT BACK IN HER CHEST--

PLAIDDER: Sure--

CHANDRA: I mean even those two over there never got THAT close. And then the NEXT THURKING LINE: “Let’s go see if we can bring my useless dead boyfriend back to life!”

PLAIDDER: I did notice--

CHANDRA: You’ve got this intense, smoldering woman in armor staring at you with love beaming out of her eyes and--I mean if you’ve got Mulan, WHO NEEDS PHILIP?

PLAIDDER: You know, some women ARE straight, and--

CHANDRA: Everyone ELSE gets to bring their true love back with a kiss but Mulan and Aurora have to do it through open heart surgery?

PLAIDDER: OK, but the coding makes it more intense and more interesting. Admit it.

THEAMH: You didn’t code us.

KEANRIH: Or us.

PLAIDDER: Yeah, well your story was never published, was it?

AINE: You regret that?

PLAIDDER: No. I really don’t. I honestly don’t know what would have become of all of you if I’d had to really try to make you marketable.

CHANDRA: But that was the 1990s. This was freaking 2011.

PLAIDDER: All right, this has gone on long enough. Are we going to finish Season 2 or not?

LYTHRIL: I think your spawn has doomed us to it.

PLAIDDER: Well...are you enjoying any of this?

LYTHRIL: I enjoy imagining ways to kill Cora.

PLAIDDER: You know, Lythril, we never found out what your mother was like.

LYTHRIL: Thank the Dark One for that.

PLAIDDER: Or if you’d ever been in love, before...

LYTHRIL: Never.

PLAIDDER: You sure about that?

LYTHRIL: NEVER.

PLAIDDER: Because something did go on with you and Ulnach at scoil, and I go back and forth on what exactly it was, but I will tell you, sometimes in my mind it looks a lot like a Cinderella AU.

LYTHRIL: You’re not going to actually write that, are you?

PLAIDDER: Probably not. See, this is kind of interesting to me as an idea, but if I actually committed to it, I think I would--

LYTHRIL: Because that would be a GREAT way to lose a heart.

PLAIDDER: Well look. We complain, but we’re all having fun here, right? I mean you’re enjoying getting together and making fun of your...counterparts?

ISTRIA: I will admit, it is sort of fun.

THEAMH: It’s better than talking about American politics.

PLAIDDER: All right, let’s wrap this up before Conn shows up. Thanks everyone; I’ll see you at the end of season 2, maybe.

#wof #ouat #once upon a time #spoilers #meta review

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

i was mostly wondering how you would’ve handled the reylo storyline? here’s the thing, i’m such a sucker for a trash ship (hello garcy) but i am so not a reylo shipper (finnrey!! you saw me in a way no one else has come oN they were RIGHT THERE DISNEY UGH). however, i thought their kiss at the end was objectively kinda cute (and i loved the ben solo redemption arc cause i’m a trash human), but it was so random based on how they were presented throughout the trilogy?? (part one)

(part two) you’re an amazing writer and lover of trash as well, and i was wondering if you had to construct the reylo arc, how you would’ve handled it? this is purely an objective thing because the end scene made me realize that they had potential, like garcy level potential, to be a really good dynamic and ship, but it was just handled so poorly everywhere overall, it makes me want to go back and be like “now THIS is how you do a trash ship, not whatever actual garbage you tried to pass off”

(again if you don’t want to that’s 1000% okay cause it was so gross i’m just bitter at the trilogy as a whole cause i don’t understand why they all didn’t decide on an overarching plot for all three and then direct/write their movies based off that????? like????? how?????? good?????? writing????? is????? supposed?????? to????? happen??????) (part three) 🤗

(thank you and i love you) (part four)

Aww you are so sweet anon, thank you! Much love and kisses and hugs to you! I hope that you’ve been having a good holiday season, disappointment over Star Wars notwithstanding.

I would also like to thank you for your patience–it’s been a crazy few days, with the holidays and all, so it took me a little bit to get around to this.

This will get long, I’m sure, so it’s all behind the cut! I apologize for how this turned into complete rambling. There is no structure to this. I’m sorry.

Now, I love a properly done, slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers ship as much as the next feral hyperfixating moron, but so few people do it properly. An enemies-to-lovers ship that’s done properly is one that has two people be enemies because of equally valid but opposing moral viewpoints or, takes the time to show the ‘enemy’ character a) recognize that what they’re doing and have done is wrong b) apologize c) make reparations d) continue to improve in their behavior and do good, not to win back favor or make reparations but because they have seen the error in their ways and they want to keep doing good for its own sake.

The example of the first is Flynn/Lucy from Timeless. Flynn and Lucy start out as enemies, and as we learn over the course of the first season, Flynn is actually the hero. He’s the one who is opposing the white supremacist bullshit cult trying to take over the country/world. Flynn, out of grief and desperation, does things that are morally questionable and objectionable, and through his interactions with Lucy, tries to hone and adjust his plans. Lucy on the other hand has the more “moral” standpoint aka let’s not kill people, etc, but she’s working on behalf of the evil bullshit cult. Their viewpoints are opposing but equally valid and the joy of season one is watching them start to fumble their way to meeting in the middle so Rittenhouse can be defeated.

An example of the second is Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Now, I’m not going to call out any particular ship here, but no matter who you ship Zuko with, it’s only possible for you to do that because he spends seasons and seasons of television making up for his mistakes. We see him slowly come to question his motives and actions, realize he’s wrong, and take steps to apologize and make reparations. After he does that, he then continues to do good. He doesn’t say, “well I apologized and then I taught the Avatar how to firebend so I’m all good now bye!” He continues to fight the good fight, and not because he wants a reward or praise, but because he knows it’s the right thing to do, and he wants to do the right thing.

So right away, we’re off on the wrong foot with Kyle Ron.

I don’t give a flying piece of monkey fuck what any other books or media say about Kyle’s fall to the dark side. Most people are only going to watch the films and in the films, all we know is that there was darkness sensed in him, Luke thought about killing him (which is a shitty piece of characterization that I will never forgive Rian Johnson for and trust me he can throw whatever arguments he wants at me with his I’m So Woke White Guy Persona and I can and will destroy every inch of his arguments and his brain but that’s a story for another time), Snoke started talking to Kyle or rather Palpatine as it’s explained in a quick ham-fisted explanation in TROS, and Kyle goes and MURDERS A BUNCH OF HIS PEERS WHO ARE ALL CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS, THEN PROCEEDS TO BECOME A SPACE NAZI.

…yeah that sure doesn’t sound to me like a traumatized child trying to make his father proud (Zuko) or a grieving widower and father trying to fight white supremacists and destroy their organization with full knowledge that he’s breaking his own moral code to do so (Flynn).

So yeah, right away, we gotta fix that.

The next thing we gotta fix is his first interactions with Rey. The Force Awakens didn’t set Rey and Kyle up to be romantic at all. He tries to mind rape her with his Force abilities, for crying out loud. And this is after he mind rapes and tortures Poe for information with his Force abilities. Then, after his father offers him redemption and love, he kills him–right in front of Rey, who had come to see Han as her adopted father.

Never once does Kylo Ren apologize for any of it. Not. Fucking. Once. Not even a simple ‘I’m sorry’. What the fuck.

I wouldn’t have him hurt Rey in any way. Capture her, okay, but not hurt her, certainly not try and force himself into her very mind. That’s not something I could ever forgive someone for doing. Sorry not sorry. Then I wouldn’t have him kill his own father after said father had offered him love and understanding and redemption. Nope.

Then, if we wanted to show the two of them establishing a Force bond et al like in TLJ, I wouldn’t have him fucking gaslight her. Saying “you came from nothing, you are nothing, but not to me” is a manipulative as fuck thing to say where you a) destroy the person’s self worth b) make them think everyone is against them and c) that you are the only person who values them. That is, as I’m sure I don’t have to remind everyone, not. healthy.

Having Kylo treat her with respect and consideration, praising her, not gaslighting her, and also um NOT TRYING TO GET HER TO JOIN THE DARK SIDE, especially after he killed Snoke. He rejects once again an offer of rejection, this time from Rey, and decides to rule the Space Nazi Army. Not cool bro.

Let’s compare that to Garcy real quick.

Flynn tries to get Lucy to help him specifically because Lucy is the person who told him to do this in the first place. He is doing things he hates doing and needs a true ally, a partner, someone he can trust and turn to for advice and assistance. Lucy’s refusal to budge on her moral stance even once she knows about the existence of Rittenhouse is actually a problem because it draws out the conflict between her and Flynn and makes it so that Rittenhouse has more chances to succeed. Flynn goes about asking for her help in an entirely trash way which… doesn’t help either. But he never lies to her, never manipulates or gaslights her, he respects her (and makes that clear) and repeatedly, when Lucy offers him redemption (or what she thinks is redemption) begs her to explain to him how he can accept it. Lucy repeatedly says to Flynn, “please do abc in order to be the honorable man I know you are,” and Flynn’s response to that is, “but will that mean that my terms of xyz are fulfilled.” They’re negotiating a treaty, essentially. Flynn needs certain things so that he has a guarantee that Rittenhouse is defeated, and until he gets that, he cannot accept Lucy’s offers despite making it clear he wants to.

Kyle Ron, incel fuckboy, does not do this. He instead kills his ‘mentor’ and assumes the throne as supreme leader after manipulating Rey and gaslighting her and then tells her to join him or die. Not… the same thing… at all.

Basically the whole Reylo thing suffered because there was never originally an intention for Reylo to be A Thing. Rey and Kylo Ren were set up in TFA to be opposites and to be enemies. Then in TLJ we got an enemies-to-lovers setup that was done incredibly poorly with gaslighting and manipulation and no effort on Kylo Ren’s part to actually apologize or atone for any of his behavior. How can anyone possibly have seen good in that boy? Because he talked to Rey a couple times across the galaxy when she was too far away for him to kill?

So to make Reylo work, you have to go back to TFA and completely change the setup, the character interactions, and THEN you get into TLJ and you have to change how Kylo Ren talks to her. Perhaps his decision at the end after murdering Snoke is to stay so he can destroy the First Order from within because he knows that if he doesn’t, someone else will just step up into Snoke’s place–you can’t just erase an entire movement just because one leader is gone, although that is a pretty big blow. Something like that.

THEN in TROS you wouldn’t have to change much at least as far as Kylo Ren and Rey’s interactions because you would’ve established them from the start in TFA and left out the blatant emotional abuse in TLJ. Oh, and have Kyle say he’s sorry and do some actively good things for other people BESIDES Rey so that we actually see him doing good. Someone realizing they did wrong is not the end of a redemption arc, it’s the START of one.

And the guy can’t only do good things for his love interest. Nope nope nope. Going, again, back to Garcy, over the course of season two we see Flynn a) save Rufus’s life several times and care about him b) give Denise a pep talk and come to an understanding with her c) support and praise Mason d) give Wyatt advice that Wyatt didn’t even deserve and e) joke about giving Jiya a hug (and would’ve given her one if she’d wanted it) and protect her in Chinatown.

Flynn mostly interacts with Lucy because she’s the person who gives him a real chance and opens up to him, but he’s there for the others as well and we see that. To get the same from Kylo Ren, we’d need to see him apologizing to and doing good things for Poe, Finn, etc.

Again: Reylo sucked ass because TFA didn’t set it up to be a romance. TLJ made it all worse by making the romance actually A Thing and using emotional abuse to do it, but TLJ really didn’t have much of a chance to make it a Good Thing anyway because it was building off of what TFA started, and TFA started off on the wrong foot if you want a romance between those two.

Personally, I think that there just isn’t enough time in three movies to pull off a really solid Zuko-style redemption arc for Kyle. There are too many other characters to worry about and too much else to deal with. So the answer would be to make Kyle Ron more like Flynn, but that would completely change his character, so… it’s a vicious circle of going around and around trying to make something work when the framework, the foundation, is just not going to let you do that.

How would I do Reylo? Well, to be honest, I wouldn’t do Reylo in the first goddamn place because I am so FUCKING sick and tired of white boys getting redemption arcs. I know this makes me a hypocrite because I have written 50+ fics of Wyatt Logan, The Most Whitebread of White Boys, earning his redemption, but I wasn’t starting from scratch there (and if I get a chance to make a boring white het person into a queer as fuck person, thereby actually making them interesting, then I’m taking that chance). And if I’m starting from scratch, if you’re giving me this new trilogy and saying “here are the characters, do with them what you want,” I ain’t having one more fucking lily-white privileged-ass bitch motherfucker be the “hero” because he said he was sorry and he looked longingly at the pretty girl a few times.

The trilogy gave us Poe and Finn. Two excellent, handsome as fuck, kind, loyal, good-hearted men who were fighting to save the ones they love and the galaxy. I would marry the fuck out of both of them. I wouldn’t do Reylo.

But if you put a gun to my head…

…no wait I don’t fear death that’s a bad analogy…

…if you put a gun to a kitten and told me I had to do Reylo, that’s how I would do it. Go all the way back to TFA and have Kyle Ron treat Rey with respect, never try to force himself into her mind or torture her, I’d have him not be nearly so murderous in the first place and I wouldn’t have him throwing tantrums left and right, and I wouldn’t have him MURDER! HIS! FATHER! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!

Then in TLJ I’d start to show his conflicts, have the Force bond be established but have him talk honestly with Rey and open up to her instead of having him manipulate her and try to get her to the dark side at every turn. I certainly wouldn’t have him keep telling her that they’re meant for greatness together and all that bullshit while she kept telling him no, stop, go away, I don’t want this. You know that what kind of scenario reminds me of? A man continuing to push and do things when the woman told him to stop? You know what that makes me think of?

Yeah, I bet you do.

At the end of TLJ he would not just murder Snoke and take the throne, he’d be shown in the middle of a moral quandary so that we’re given a nice and satisfying emotional cliffhanger for his storyline for us to look forward to seeing resolved in TROS. Then, TROS, at that point eh I’d leave that pretty much the same, because it would WORK, BECAUSE THE GROUNDWORK HAD BEEN LAID PROPERLY IN TFA AND THERE WOULD BE NO BULLSHIT EMOTIONAL ABUSE AND MANIPULATION IN TLJ.

So there you are, nonny. I contribute anyone enjoying that last bit of Reylo in TROS to Adam Driver’s admittedly good and dedicated acting, and I hope that my answer explains my (rambling) train of thought and explains how I would do things. But to be honest I really wouldn’t do Reylo in the first place, the whole thing sickens me, I want to set the entire Disney studio buildings on fire, and if anyone tells me they ship Reylo I can and will stop talking to them for the rest of my goddamn life because they are not to be trusted and I can successfully hold grudges for decades.

…wow, I’m just a pillar of rage.

Thank you for your very lovely asks, nonny! I hope that this satisfies. If you have any follow up questions, don’t hesitate to ask them! I admit this wasn’t a very structured response but I hope it explained everything. Have a beautiful day and give yourself a hug!

#mads answers things #anti reylo #anti kylo ren #star wars spoilers #FLAMES #FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE #I really hope I explained all of this well #I feel like I was just kind of word vomiting

[honeysucklepink]

Stranger Things 3 Spoilers...

In no particular order...completely random thoughts on the new season DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU SAW THE WHOLE THING:

Okaaaaay so they are officially teens...Eleven and Mike can’t stop making out, and Hopper is a drunker, more belligerent Burt Hummel.

When Max takes El to the mall to find what SHE likes to wear (not what Hopper gets for her or what Mike would like), El’s style is totally mine from sixth-seventh grade. And I am of course living for the “Material Girl” shopping montage.

From previews I totally thought Karen Wheeler was divorced...nope, still married.

Of COURSE Mr. Clarke is a Weird Al fan, of course he is.

Robin is my new favorite character. When I saw her whiteboard keeping track of Steve’s flirting failures, she reminded me of Santana in a million Glee Coffeeshop AUs.

Erica is still a pain, but a funny pain nonetheless.

This Suzie better be real...if she’s not the writers did Dustin dirty.

I look forward to the Hawkins Post shutting down in thirty years thanks to the internet, those misogynists fucking deserve it.

Okay, so I feel like the local politics were a thinly-veiled commentary on...current events. Mayor Cary Elwes is a corrupt asshole in bed with the Russians that secretly own the mall, AND he figures the huge July 4th blow-out will help the citizens forget he destroyed downtown and they’ll vote for him anyway? Good god that shit played out in real life TODAY (well except Sentient Circus Peanut’s shindig was a wash-out).

Dustin’s explanation to Erica that she’s a nerd whether she likes it or not was a brilliant break-down...she’s a math whiz, is tuned into political and economic structures, AND she’s a My Little Pony fan? NERD.

This whole Steve and Robin thing where she was “obsessed” with him in high school? Ugh I hate this trope.

Ugh now Steve is gonna confess now he has feelings for Robin because Russian Truth Serum, sheesh...

TROPE TURNED ON HEAD BECAUSE ROBIN’S A BIG OLE LESBIAN WHO WAS MAD AT STEVE BECAUSE HER CRUSH TAMMY LIKED HIM AND SHE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND WHY

STEVE’S COOL WITH IT AND THINKS ROBIN CAN DO SO MUCH BETTER THAN TAMMY HAHAHAHAHA

Also I know everyone is coding Will as gay because he doesn’t like girls but why can’t be ace? Will Byers Is Ace Icon I said it.

Murray is just the man who is determined to break up unresolved sexual tension involving anyone with the last name Byers, huh?

Alexei is cute, he just wants to watch Woody Woodpecker and drink Slurpees, AMERICA! Alas he will be one of many casualties this season.

As will be Michael Park (hey, it’s Dear Evan Hansen dad!) and a bunch of others.

RIP Billy...his character arc felt rushed in a way...I mean he was still a douche willing to seduce married women right up until the Mind Flayer sucked him up, so I feel like the El-going-into-his-memories trick to uncover “oh he actually was a sweet kid who loved his mom but his dad was an abusive asshole that’s why he’s bad” was a sloppy device...

What WAS interesting was when El LOST HER POWERS and had to rely on that memory to get through to him to stop the monster. Reach out to scared kid Billy that loved his mom, El! Oh and poor Max...so is she all alone now?

Lucas sees those fireworks in the grocery store and knows they will be useful...that’s Chekov’s fireworks right there.

Oh god the carnies are hysterical. I don’t even wanna cross the woman running the whirling ride.

SUZIE IS REAL! And she won’t give her Dusty-Bun the code he needs unless he “does the thing”...dueting on “The Never Ending Story” theme song! And everyone else on the walkie-talkies has to hear, probably the best scene ever in the series.

“For God’s sake leave the door open three inches” is the new “I love you 3000″, RIP Hopper...or IS IT?!?!?!

#stranger things #stranger things 3 #stranger things spoilers

[masterthespianduchovny]

Let’s Talk About Narrative Literacy

As a disclaimer, I’d like to start off by saying I don’t mean to come off as condescending or anything like that, but this is important discussion we need to have. I’m not going to pretend I know everything there is to know about writing or even most of it, but one thing I do know incredibly well is how to follow a a narrative.

By this, I don’t simply mean casually consume it, but rather, process the what, why, when, how, etc regardless of if I personally care for it.

This is why, despite disliking a film, I will say with all seriousness, “this doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie, I just don’t like it.” Or if I do like something, I’ll say, “I love it, but it’s not a great movie.”

People may argue, “the fact that you love it makes it a great movie.”

And to this I say, “No.”

When I make qualifying statements about things, it’s because I’m differentiating between subjective and objective things. And, IMO, some cannot, which contributes to narrative illiteracy. When a person cannot distinguish their personal feelings from objective facts, your mental grip of a thing makes most conversations go standstill. Because, now, feelings are being argued and how can you tell anyone how they feel about something?

This becomes important for mediums like Game of Thrones and The Harry Potter series, but for different reasons. (There will be spoilers)

When it comes to Game of Thrones, the lack of understanding of literary functions such as foreshadowing, character development, narrative arcs, chekovs gun, and so forth is vexing.

Writing is about intentionality. There must be a reason the writer included x, y, and z. What purpose does it serve even if it’s very minor? Why is it there? How does it influence the character or narrative?

When people say the last few season of GOT is bad, esp the last episode, we aren’t saying this because we didn’t like ending, as in, it wasn’t our preferred ending. We don’t like it because it doesn’t make any sense narratively and that is a fundamental difference.

My favorite show of all time is the X-Files and, despite the utter mess seasons 8 and 9 are, I still watch it whenever I decide to do a series rewatch. It pains me, but I still do it. Despite the massive inconsistencies with the revival of season 10, I still watched it. But, after hearing about the complete break down of the characters, which is why the series lasted as long as it did and come back, I haven’t not seen the season 11 finale over a year later.

Technically, it could be argued, it ended how I wanted (romantically), but the narrative is so shit that the characters and their motivations don’t make any sense to me. They just don’t! I’m not sure anyone can argue otherwise.

I’ll probably still rewatch the x files (and may skip the last episode) before I ever rewatch GOT again. Perhaps I’m exaggerating, but that’s how nonsensical, pisspoor, and narratively destructive the ending was.

Let’s start off the many examples of some GOT viewers having poor narrative literacy:

1. Arya’s ending.

This isn’t about whether or not you like how her story ending, it’s about people arguing that it makes sense. It does not.

The two endings that makes sense for Arya was either ending up in Winterfell or Storms End.

Why?

Because, despite Arya’s kill list, her overarching narrative has always been about getting back to her family. Arya was with the NW because Yoren was supposed to take her to Jon who could then send her to winterfell. Arya wasn’t traveling through the woods for an adventure. She went from the NW to prisoners of Harrenhal, the BWB, and then the Hound. Arya was literally on the run for her life. The first time she had true agency, she tried to go to East Watch to get to Jon, but was unable to, so she went to Braavos.

At this time, Arya believed most of her family was dead or was unable to reach them. When she talks about going west of Westeros, it’s because she think there is nothing left for her in Westeros.

She is on her way to kill Cersei when the news of Jon being at winterfell literally makes her journey to kill Cersei and go to him instead. Despite aryablosong some of her humanity, it’s still there. Then, Gendry comes back and they have sex and she fully experienced her humanity and that’s when she truly understands what she has to live for. Not Gendry: but, life, love (in all forms), humanity, etc.

Arya regressing back to her list doesn’t make any narrative sense. What was the catalyst??? Remember she was acting strange by isolating herself during the celebration and when turning down Gendry’s proposal? I’m not saying she should’ve said yes, but she clearly wasn’t herself. What set that off? What made her think that Cersei was a threat she needed to take out and die for???

We could say she needed to hear it from the hound to live life, but imo, that’s bullshit because she learned that on the night of the battle. She (WE) was explicitly told by him to justify having her in KL. Arya wasn’t there for a narrative purpose, she was there for a visual purpose and to make us care about the citizens of KL dying from dragon’s fire. That’s it.

It makes even less sense because Arya stayed in KL for what reason??? She had no intentions on killing Dany herself. She served no purpose there and it showed.

I’m not against people trying to find the best out of Aryas ending, I’m saying her ending was executed poorly because it was inconsistent with everything we’ve seen before.

No, Arya has never expressed interest in being a warrior, but warriors were her idols. No, Arya isn’t against marriage, she’s against its function in her society. Arya not wanting to be a lady doesn’t mean she doesn’t want a position of power that she can use for good ie being a lord, which she explicitly said she wanted to be in the “not me” conversation.

And a double whammy as to how they fucked her chsradter up so much, Arya admired the Targaryen women who fought and were rulers. She named her direwolf Nymeria after a warrior Queen. To make her hate Dany, be xenophobic, and reject opportunities that would allow her to achieve her dreams is laughably bad writing.

People can argue that people change, but we can’t reference the “not me” convo and argue at the same time that people change. That’s having your cake and eating it too.

2. Narrative techniques like foreshadowing means nothing if it isn’t consistently built up. I’m going to use an example from the show “Atlanta”, so stop reading if you don’t want spoilers for season 2.

All season, it was foreshadowed that Earn would be fire by his cousin Al because he wasn’t doing enough and kept messing up. At the end, it was basically a given, but instead, Al doesn’t fire him because of something Earn did at the last minute. During this foreshadowing, we constantly saw that Al didn’t want to fire him, but wanted his cousin to manage him better and show that he actually would do whatever it took to help him succeed. Despite it being foreshadowed that he was getting fired, Earn keeping his job was also something subtext supported and ended up being a nice twist.

Another example of foreshadowing, Snape from Harry Potter. People still debate that Snape is evil blah blah blah. But, all throughout the series, the subtext always supported that Snape was on the good side, despite being a grey character.

None of his actions makes sense for someone flat out evil unless he was planning to pull a con on Voldemort to take his spot. But, when people argue with feelings and not logic, they make it make sense to them, despite ample evidence that proves otherwise.

I’m in my 20s now, but when I read this series when I was 9, I could never shake the subtext that Snape was fighting for the good guys.

This is all to say, the subtext of the SHOW doesn’t support Dany’s heel turn nor does the foreshadowing. Burning people isn’t proof because Dany used her dragons like northerners used their swords. Dany made tactical war decisions. To suddenly pervert it to support a narrative decision that was shoddily built because the show said so is narrative illiteracy.

The only reason I suspected that Dany could go mad was because of book readers. Not because the show built this reality up well, but bedause book readers kept talking about it non stop and usually those who hated her.

3. Jon’s identity. All of that drama for him to live beyond the wall??? Ned taking a hit to his honor? People saying it’s dire that Jon knows??? Riding Rhaegal?

What the fuck was this for?

Why did we bring Jon back to life???

How does Jon’s arc make narrative sense? How?

Bexause he ended up with the wildlings and tormund?

Even if you take out the prophecies, this shit is a mess. Part of this mess started because of his parents and Jon went through all of that shit to end up where he started.

4. What’s the point of the NK? The symbols? What does it mean???

I could go on and on, but I’m tired. Certain things become important because of how much we love the world that was created and the characters. I’m not saying it’s not important—it’s actually very important, but what’s also important is internal logic and consistency.

What’s also important is telling a story that truly makes sense and not because you like a character or “there’s just so many things to wrap up, so this is good enough.” When someone tells a story, they need to tell it or not bother at all.

Perhaps certain character arcs were emotionally satisfying, but they didn’t make any sense minus Theon. But, the series overall wasn’t emotionally satisfying, but rather, a major let down.

It sacrificed good storytelling to rush a conclusion where they’ve literally known the ending since the beginning. Very few movies or shows have down multiple big bads in one narrative arc that makes sense and GOT is not one of them.

It explained very little while having some think they addressed the pertinent details. Nothing was explained. Nothing makes sense.

Like, what was brans purpose? I don’t want HC and fan theories—give me a full explanation from the series.

How was his ending emotionally satisfying or Cersei’s or jaimes or almost anyone else?

How???

This is why I’m talking about narrative literacy/illiteracy. Many people don’t understand what they’re consuming and are relying on whatever the writers say.

But, these are men who scoffed at someone asking them about themes, to which they said, “this ain’t an 8th grade report.”

And for people who think I’m taking this too seriously, please fuck off. I mean, why are you reading this. To seriously address this potential mode of thinking, Emilia Clark drew strength during her near death experiences from Dany. Abuse victims saw Dany as a role model. Sophie turner learned things from Sansa.

Fictional people can have real life impact. So, what are we telling people who identify with these characters?

That no matter what you do you can’t escape your family legacy and you are your genes?

That you aren’t deserving of love and stability because you were in an emotionally dark place for a while?

That you abuser define who you are and you should be thankful for them?

That you’ll have to harm loved ones for the greater good and get punished for it.

That you can get rewarded I life for not doing shit in you’re born in the right family and have the right story.

That we’re doomed to repeat of families mistakes.

What’s the point?

What’s the lesson here?

GOT’s ending isn’t bad because it’s didn’t turn out the way I theorized—hell, I didn’t have any theories. It’s bad because it’s atrocious writing that betrays it’s characters, plot, and overall narrative. It poorly sets up events with terrible execution to subvert expectations or reach a point that they didn’t earn.

Characters and shows that earn what they strive for: Snape, the good place, 12 monkeys, earn not getting fired in Atlanta—but, this only happens when writers give a shit, which D&D did not.

And one last thing: for those who insist that Emilia didn’t understand her character, if you watch the GOT doc “the last watch”, almost every actor negatively responded to her getting killed. Conleth, kit, Lena, Peter, and so forth. These are people who embody the characters, some of which oppose her, and even they could not believe what the series did. It wasn’t simply shock. Some were devastated and Conleth was straight up pissed.

So, please, when you or if you dismiss criticism of the series for fans not getting what they want, please try to deconstruct the narrative and ask yourself if it makes sense. Ask yourself if you understand what the series is saying or trying to say. See if you are trying to rationalize conflicting things.

#got #game of thrones

[bthump]

what are the things you like and dislike about the '97 anime and the films?

ty for asking, i’m just gonna write a few long lists lol

97 anime likes:

the animation, including the like, yk the more detailed stills they pan over in place of action or to punctuate important moments, i love it

the gorgeous backgrounds

most of the colour choices. red eclipse, femto’s blue eyes, casca’s skintone, griffith’s mauve clothes, etc.

how close it is to the manga. like, it’s a solid adaption just by virtue of making very few changes.

so like, most of it really, because i like the manga

special mention to the entire lead up to the eclipse from griffith’s reality break to the sacrifice tho, because i think that was all pretty damn perfect. it’s the most important scene and they did it right.

actually also shout out to casca’s flashback to griffith and the dead kid, gennon, the river scene, all that. another difficult v emotional sequence that they nailed imo.

griffith thinking about how he “loves” guts during the monologue

skipped most of the griffith/charlotte sex scene iirc which i approve of

the glimpse of black swordsman guts in ep 1. it’s not perfect but it’s way better than the ovas starting w/ 15 yr old guts

the opening and closing themes. fucking love both songs ngl

also the opening monologue. never get tired of hearing it

the score

the portrayal of griffith was honestly pretty solid imo. i have very few issues there. and lbr that’s important lol

97 anime dislikes:

not a big fan of griffith or guts’ character designs.

just about everything that isn’t identical to the manga is a change for the worse

turned griffith’s scratch marks into that giant unexplained scar

adding extra scenes where casca is secretly impressed with guts’ skills in battle in an attempt to build up their relationship better, which instead just made casca look unfair for still being a dick to him for 3 years and made guts stupidly gary stu-ish

obviously the straightforwardly romantic portrayal of guts and casca’s relationship

through several seemingly minor changes (eg, skipping guts’ night of self-doubt after he leaves, giving guts’ stay with godo its own half-episode, making guts inviting casca along super romantic rather than the incredibly casual and assholish way he does it in the manga, etc) it makes Guts’ dream seem legitimately noble and worthwhile, with none of the like… implicit critique the manga has. like honestly it completely fucks up what i consider one of the central themes of the story lol

the pre eclipse stuff also fails to sell guts’ sense of regret - through things like playing guts’ theme while judeau is telling guts to leave, not repeating guts’ statement of regret after casca tells him to leave again, the tone remains consistently in favour of guts’ dream. wrong and bad.

like it really reads like the suggested tragedy is that guts doesn’t get the chance to ditch griffith with judeau and take off with casca and the raiders lol

also fucks it up by never directly mentioning guts’ csa trauma

also fucks it up by losing guts’ self-destructive single-minded urge to fight monsters that we saw thru the wyald stuff. i’m not gonna say that losing wyald was a bad decision, but they should’ve at least moved erika suggesting that guts just wants to fight zodd again to the fucking waterfall scene in question, which they portrayed completely sans zodd discussion, completely sans implication of the self-destructiveness of guts’ dream

like in the manga he nearly gets killed by the falling logs and just laughs it off like a dumbass while erika is concerned and suggests that guts is driven by something irrational and not actually a ~noble~ dream, ie, wanting to fight zodd again (ie, going deeper, his csa trauma), while in the anime we get a 2nd scene where he successfully slices through the logs as a super basic symbol of growth and a narrative pat on guts’ back that shouldn’t be there!

honestly just fucking everything about the portrayal of guts’ dream lol it just takes it at face value in a way the manga consistently never did and always undermined and critiqued, and it bugs the hell out of me.

guts is just drawn in a way that makes him look angry way too often and he often feels ooc to me bc of it. like he lacks a lot of the warmth he has in the manga imo

showing that griffith is awake when guts says “i’ll stay too” even tho in the manga those words are placed over a panel of him asleep for a reason like, ffs

lots of other random nitpicky details that only i give a fuck about because my opinions and feelings about the story are too strong lol. like not showing griffith’s face when he asks if guts thinks he’s cruel

oh huge one: moving the scene where the torturer rips off griffith’s behelit from about a day after he was imprisoned to right before his rescue. completely trivializes griffith’s torture because it still looks like he’s been in there for a day at most

why on earth did it end where it ended????????????? who’s bright idea was that? the perfect ending is skull knight riding tf out with guts and casca and femto not killing them, but then they also cut out skull knight’s first appearance so idfk man.

oh some downplaying of griffguts, like i can’t complain too much about this because it was still p homoerotic, but things like omitting guts assuming griffith wants to fuck him right before their first duel. boo.

ultimately at the end of the day as much as i do genuinely like the anime, it’s not telling quite the same story the manga was - the story it’s telling is more boring and basic. but because it sticks so close to the manga the good story still shines through? it just means there’s inconsistent tone choices and stuff, like the aforementioned grievances.

it’s like, they kept casca’s diatribe at guts line for line while she’s screaming that griffith needed him and a man can’t live on dreams alone, but they don’t extend that train of thought to guts going off to pursue his dream, while the manga does.

anyway despite that giant list of dislikes i still think the anime is pretty fantastic overall. i just also like, blame it for a lot of wrong fandom takes lol.

movie likes:

character designs! honestly imo everyone looked pretty great.

they played up the homoeroticism and i appreciate that

illustrating griffith being torn between guts and his dream through that lovely moment when he catches guts when he nearly falls off the stairs right before he catches charlotte, and in a more romantically suggestive way

the whole scene where griffith shows up at charlotte’s window thoroughly improved on the manga, so hats off there. loved how completely out of it he was to the point where he barely realized where he was and immediately turned to leave when charlotte was like ‘woah dude wtf,’ love that charlotte was the one to ask him to stay and then physically move his hand back to her tit, love how emphatically griffith was thinking about guts during that sex scene, etc. like it’s still not perfect, but it is a vast improvement.

griffith showing up in person after the hundred man fight was a nice touch

it was cool that they got a lot of the same english vas from the anime dub back, and they all did a gr8 job. like it’s a pretty good dub imo.

i liked that they moved ‘the crystalization of your last tear shed’ to after guts’ post-eclipse breakdown

compared to the anime at least gtsca was more low-key and chill rather than dramatically romantic. still don’t want it there, and still not as… unromantic as the manga, but i’ll take what i can get

the animation during griffith’s transformation into femto, yk that whole sequence, was cool

slan’s english voice was super sexy

ummmmm i feel like they conveyed the whole dreams are stupid theme, and guts’ decision to leave being a mistake, better than the anime? like i got the sense that the ova ppl recognized that was a theme, at least. i’d have to watch them again to really be sure of that tho

movie dislikes:

GRIFFITH’S. NARRATIVE.

like holy fuck they completely destroyed his character lmao

i cannot believe

no backstory! no tombstone of flame! no ‘do you think i’m cruel?’ THAT WAS THE REASON HE MADE THE SACRIFICE FFS HOW DO YOU SKIP IT????

no dead kid angst, gennon only in vague implication, no self harm - oh no wait we saw self inflicted scratches, they were just completely contextless and meaningless to the point where we could assume charlotte’s nails made them

no torture chamber monologue

no guts monologue in the tavern either for that matter

no rooftop scene

again barely the implication of guts’ childhood trauma, both the sexual abuse and the general parental abuse. one vague flashbacky nightmare doesn’t cut it, it’s the cornerstone of the story

like i get it, it’s a movie trilogy, you have to cut some things, but goddamn, cut out gtsca. trim the hundred man fight. add 20 minutes to the first ova and take the insanely long rape scene out of the third. trim down the whole eclipse sequence. don’t cut out like… the story. like they cut out SO MANY emotionally relevant scenes and kept so many much less relevant scenes, idek.

and like let’s be real here, they turned griffith from an immensely interesting and complex character into a 1 dimensional dude who is torn between a vaguely evil ambition and being in vaguely evil love with guts, just for the sake of streamlining the least interesting aspects of the story

they don’t even try to pretend otherwise lol, look at his fucking hilarious evil smile here

also while i’m looking at it, in general i think they failed at the whole eclipse sequence. looks, lighting, colour, build up of tension… there are a few minor improvements here and there (eg casca’s point of view shot of femto, femto telekinesising guts back a la the black swordsman arc which emphasizes his failure to act when he escapes), but overall it doesn’t work for me at all. like imo the anime has the exact same highs and lows as the manga, but while the ova avoids some lows it never reaches those highs.

they also had griffith overhear guts saying he wants to stay. i really don’t get why this happened twice lol, like… ok his face is kind of shadowed here but he’s still very clearly asleep? this is an important detail, guts’ interrupted words are even on that very panel, so why would you go out of your way to show that he’s awake and listening at that point.

the pacing sucked. 3rd movie was too long, 1st was too short, and they skipped waaaaaay too many significant scenes that should’ve been there as emotional beats

honestly the movies are pretty, they’re nicely fanservicey in ways, they capture some good subtleties and nuances at times, but they’re a husk of the story

oh did i mention the music during the eclipse rape? incredible.

also i am actually generally positive about the movies too despite what it seems like here lmao. i’ve watched them all like, 3 or more times and i find them v enjoyable.

i just have a way easier time listing nitpicky flaws than positives honestly. the flaws stand out to me, the virtues pass me by because i’m just enjoying them and not dwelling on them

and lbr here at the end of the day no adaption will ever really satisfy me unless i somehow find several million dollars lying around and make my own lol. and that would probably be a flop anyway.

#Anonymous #ask #a #b #theme: adaption #theme: dreams #arc: ga

[megaphonemonday]

If you were the one writing pitch and it’s hadn’t been canceled (😭) how would you plan out season 2? Or even the rest of the show in your vision. When would ginny and mike get together? Would either get a World Series? Kids? Evelyn and Andre and their twins +kid.. Will? Amelia? How long would Al hang around and would mike ever go see his dad?

I actually wrote a post a while ago about what I’d want to see out of a season two, and you can find it right here! 

More specific/in depth answers under the cut!

Anyway, to answer your questions: 

How I’d do it: I initially planned that post/some of the arcs before the show was canceled (ditto on the crying, still), but once that news dropped, I couldn’t bring myself to write it all down for a long time. Once I did, though, I kept the structure that I originally thought was realistic given Fox’s reluctance to renew: a second season followed by a tie-it-all-up tv movie. I wanted the season to follow Ginny’s spring training and regular season and the movie to follow the postseason or just the World Series itself, with Ginny and Mike getting together at the end. 

I don’t know if I could satisfyingly, to me at least, plot out much beyond that. Fanfiction is fun because I’m playing in someone else’s sandbox. I use their characters and adhere to their rules; it’s more work than I really want when I have to fend for myself on those fronts. But if we went much past another ten eps, there’d for sure have to be new characters and plotlines to develop.

When Ginny and Mike get together: Ideally, had the show continued on, I don’t think I’d want Ginny and Mike to get together right away. That’s especially true if Mike didn’t retire or went on to take a coaching position with the Padres. That’s partly because I love my unrequited pining and forbidden love tropes, but also largely because I don’t think that a lot of shows know what to do with established relationships. It feels like a lot of times, writers will mess with a couple to insert drama to the show; if bawson hasn’t happened, it’s a little harder to fuck them over irreparably. 

World Series: For sure they’d go, at least once together. Often as I write them winning it, I’m not 100% sold on them winning in the show. I would love to see a callback to the Pilot, when Blip says something about Mike thinking he needs a ring for his legacy, but that it’d turn out to be Ginny. I like the idea of Mike telling her that in some capacity. If it doubles as a (tacit or not) confession of love, I’m all for it. Also, even if Mike doesn’t get his own ring, the idea of Ginny eventually getting one or two of her own (maybe one as Ginny Baker and one as Ginny Baker-Lawson??) and sharing them with him is very appealing to me.

Kids: I, personally, also don’t see the show spinning out until Ginny is actually prepared for kids? Mike’s probably there already, but I think it would take way more time, at least three more seasons, to get Ginny realistically on the same page. That’s partially because I, again personally, am not super interested in seeing the whole married-with-children thing play out between any of my favorite pairings. It’s great that other people want to see that, it’s just not typically where my shipping leads me.

Blip and Ev: I saw Ev either having a pregnancy scare or actually having an unplanned pregnancy as she tries to finish her degree; I’m not super tied to that storyline. I think I’ve moved onto musing about other sources of tension for them? Though, to be clear, I am very tied to her and Blip working things out in the long run. 

Will: I don’t think I had anything planned for Will in a season two, though he’d probably have to pop up, wouldn’t he? Hmm. I’m not sure what kind of storyline wouldn’t be a rehash of stuff from season 1. It’d be really nice to see him turn over a new leaf and struggle with maintaining Ginny’s (and Ev’s and Amelia’s) trust, but I also think that could take a lot of time away from the main plot arcs to do it well.

Amelia: She for sure comes back. Realistically, you don’t cast Ali Larter if you don’t intend to keep her if you can? Plus, her and Ginny’s relationship was too central to season one to completely scrap it in season two. I kind of definitely want to see her take up with a much younger guy? Maybe one of Ginny’s teammates because it worked so well the first time? 

Al: I think Al probably bows out of managing after the end of season two. Maybe he gets his ring, maybe he doesn’t, but he’s had a good long run and figures it’s time to let someone else have the reins. This then opens up the possibility of more shakeups in the clubhouse, possibly a lot of staff turnover, as a new manager steps into Al’s shoes. (Also, consider the possibilities of getting a younger, foxier type as the new skip. Seeing Mike fend off jealousy over Ginny from someone even older than him would be delicious.)

Dave Grissom: I’m… eh on him coming back. On the one hand, I can see how it’d be emotionally cathartic for Mike, especially if it was tied into a story about Al retiring/possibly getting sick. On the other… I don’t really think Mike needs him. Although if it were Dave making the overtures, once Mike’s determined he doesn’t need what he’s never known, that’d open up some interesting possibilities… I will say I’d for sure love to see Jackie Lawson blow through town. We could see how much/if she’s grown out of her disaster-dom or how much of it Mike picked up from her.

#Anonymous #replies #qs and as #Pitch #more thoughts on a #spec season 2 #if anyone's interested #i do think i should add in two eps #because there's a lot of filler #in my rundown as is #but i haven't figured out what they'd be #bawson #long post

[thebastardofgloucester]

Okay, so. Thoughts on the mess that was Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi.

- I can see why a lot of people had a big problem with Poe’s arc – mostly that it started him from such an obnoxious place that wasn’t entirely in keeping with his portrayal in Before the Awakening or the comics (honestly I think his character in TFA is sufficiently thin that it wasn’t really out of the realm of possibility). There’s also the component of the Angry Latino Man racist trope with his aggression towards Holdo and Leia. Leia slapping him was unnecessary. Leia stunning him so he flew back into a wall(?!) was really unnecessary, and combined with brutalization of the other characters of color was a Problem.

- But nonetheless I loved where it ended up. I did love Poe learning the brutal lessons of command, putting him in a place to be Leia’s successor as the leader of the Resistance. He is a hotshot pilot. Going from that to general, with all the need for long-term thinking that requires, is not an easy leap. So while I understand where people who hate it are coming from, I think that Poe’s journey to becoming Leia’s heir to the role of leader is the most compelling part of the film.

- God Luke was a mess. His grumpy old man act was funny but it hurt so much to see Luke, the beating heart of the OT, reduced to a bitter version of Obi-Wan, minus the hope of believing in the future. TFA and TLJ utterly broke Luke in a way that was just…too much. And god, he would never draw a weapon on his fucking nephew, no matter how scared he was. He might aggressively confront Ben, trying to get him to give Snoke up, go after the source, but killing his nephew out of fear? What? W H A T ?

- that said, that was the most meaty material Mark Hamill has ever been given and he fucking killed it, so props to him.

- What was Rey even doing through most of this movie. All the clarity and dynamism of her character was just sucked away and outside of some moments on Ahch-To she was either a prop in Kyle Ben’s narrative or a walking deus ex machina. She technically becomes the Last Jedi and turns her back on Ron but like…we didn’t see any of that? Does she even want to be a Jedi?

- look…I have been on the Rey Skywalker train forever. I am not happy with her being from unremarkable origins (assuming Kyle is telling the truth, and given that he is a manipulative abusive asshole he may not be) in part because it actually feeds the unfair idea that she’s somehow unrealistic (whatever that means in a space wizards franchise) or a Mary Sue character. She shows a level of skill, instinct, and power that has previously only been manifested by…Anakin Skywalker. That needs an explanation. Either she’s a Skywalker, or a vessel or champion of the Light Side of the Force, or some other shit, but there does need to be a reason. Luke and Anakin have a reason – they are Skywalkers, one Space Jesus and the other the son of Space Jesus.

- I have no idea what motivated Rey for so much of the film. Her quasi-Bespin going to Kyle thing was a fucking mess and required a lot of idiot balling. Rey is smarter than that. Rey saw Kyle murder his father – she would not just trust him enough to go alone. Basically Rian either did not get Rey as JJ Abrams made her or he didn’t care. Either one is utter bullshit. Some cool action sequences mean nothing without the character dynamics to back them up.

- God, Finn…Rian took the problematic aspects of Finn’s comic relief role from TFA and just…ran with them. I didn’t object to him trying to run off to find Rey – he has no real attachment to the Resistance. But his whole mission is just…pointless. There’s no follow up on his being a Stormtrooper who overcame his programming. We get some interesting stuff with Rose about his being a legend when he’s not comfortable in that role, and I kind of liked the way his self-sacrificing behavior was called out by Rose so he knew that besides Rey people actually cared about him, but…there were so many missed opportunities, and so many unnecessary injuries and physical jokes.

- I love Rose. I do. I don’t know that there was really a place for her in this story. Her ‘eat the rich’ working class background was cool, she’s a huge sweetheart, Kelly Marie Tran gave a great performance. Her romance with Finn was a rushed mess. A crush I can believe, fine. Love after like two days max? No. They didn’t earn that. Honestly if you are going to introduce your first significant woc you have to find more to do with her. It was nice that (unlike Leia and Luke) she got a chance to grieve her losses

- Kyle Ben’s eventually becoming the irredeemable supreme leader actually works pretty well, but how it got there…on the other hand…Kyle shows his true colors when he turns on Snoke…in order to take his place in the finest traditions of the Sith. He’s the full-fledged villain for episode IX. As it should be.

- What the fuck was Snoke. Why did the film bring him and Rey and Kylo together in an awkward and forced series of developments and then just cut him in half. We have no idea where he came from, his relationship to the Empire, his goals, his plan with Kyle and Rey and Luke…it’s just an enormous blank and we’ll never get an answer because Rian got bored and just decided to off him. It’s not like I care about him as a character, obviously. His death hardly upset me other than the fact that it was pretty bad writing.

- why the everliving fuck did we have to have YODA show up, basically to give a non-chalannt mea culpa and say ‘actually the Jedi were kind of shit.’ Like ANAKIN? Why the fuck would you not use the person the Order failed the most. Also Yoda looked fucking terrible I have no idea why they used a puppet AND CGI.

- On the plus side, Leia did a truly spectacular Force Thing (though that was some cheap shit by Rian spacing her like that). Then she was unconscious. She never got to mourn Han at all. She passed the torch to Poe, but I can’t help but be disappointed when so much was promised. Also…no one came to her aid? I know that in Bloodline her parentage being revealed ruins her reputation and strips her of her influence…but no one? What the fuck?

- DJ was just a useless character. Maybe they’ll be a payoff in episode ix, but he serves no purpose but to set up an inconsequential betrayal, unless you count Phasma dying (also a cheapening of her character as laid out in her novel) as a tremendously important moment. All the damage was done by Holto’s sacrifice. Finn and Rose and BB-8 were pretty incidental.

- the Porgs were stupid space puffins and despite myself I’m kind of fond of the stupid things. The crystal foxes were much cooler, of course.

- R2D2 and C3PO were props in this film. Chewbacca too.

- Luke…weirdly his facing his fears and sacrificing himself was one of the best parts of the mostly-okay third act? I liked the new, less flashy but still impressive Force power of projection, and he got some chance to say goodbye to Leia at least, and he got to lay down the law to Kyle Ron. But…he died alone. That’s not fucking okay. That’s a betrayal of Luke, the heart of the original trilogy. It’s just…wrong. And it’s sad and heartbreaking but not really in a satisfying way. And he never really passes the torch to Rey – he sacrifices himself to fix his fuck-up with Kyle. He deserved more than that. All the Skywalkers did.

- the space battles were pretty great, the whole tracking thing and the slow race was very Battlestar-y, even if the mechanics of the plot were a bit questionable.

- I need to read Leia Princess of Alderaan to get the backstory on Holdo. Her character was interesting (though we could have used more backstory or elaboration on how she became so respected a military leader) and her relationship with Leia was tantalising but there just wasn’t enough. Her heroic sacrifice was fucking awesome though. If she had to go out she picked a good way to do it.

- Billie Lourd got a character and lines and that was pretty great.

- Okay, minor nitpick that actually REALLY BOTHERED ME. Among the casualties in the opening battle appeared to be Temmin ‘Snap’ Wexley, one of the protagonists of the Aftermath books, and the son of the delightful Norra Wexley. Like, first, Mister Bones would fucking swim through space and stab Kyle Ben with his vibroknives because he is Norra’s motherly love incarnate in a psychotic droid. And second, Norra deserved better. She’s probably dead now and that is bullshit in itself.

- Or it might have been another bearded guy, in which case like Jessica Pava his absence bothered me. Like…where did these people go?

- blowing up the bridge to kill Ackbar et al was just cheap bullshit honestly

- the war profiteering and moral ambiguity was not elaborated enough to justify its inclusion, honestly. I’m not averse to that sort of moral ambiguity but you have to earn it to stick it into a Star Wars film. They didn’t. And again, DJ was just useless.

So, yeah, to review – this is not a movie I was ever going to like. I got almost nothing I wanted out of it, it fucked over the Skywalkers royally in a way that left me feeling bitter and betrayed, it misused or wasted Finn and Rose, Rey’s character was inconsistent at best with little to no on-screen development. The opening was strong. The second act was an epic dumpster fire, particularly everything with Kyle and Rey and Snoke and everything that led there. The third more or less pulled the majority of story threads out and left them in an interesting place for JJ Abrams in episode ix to maybe do some interesting things, but the path it took to get there had…problems.

Rian doesn’t love Star Wars like I love Star Wars, and he really doesn’t like the Skywalkers. I guess that’s what some people wanted – for an end to the Skywalker-centric narrative. Personally I think that is utterly missing the point of literally everything about this series, but whatever, people will disagree.

The writing was overall clumsy to outright bad, with bursts of inspired storytelling but mostly buried under Kyle apologism.

Corvus fairly points out that The Empire Strikes Back is not nearly as good as movie as it is without the events of Return of the Jedi, so to an extent it’s hard to fairly judge the film when you don’t know where it is in the overarching story. But equally this film had so many opportunities to develop the characters and build the world and it just. Did not.

As for a rating, it depends when you ask me. I’d rate it somewhere between a 5 and 6/10. Maybe a 4 in some aspects. It’s not Attack of the Clones bad, but it’s worse than Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens, A New Hope, ESB…I mean, I liked Rogue One more. Frankly Revenge of the Sith was more emotionally satisfying, especially in the context of the Clone Wars series. I’m never really sure where to rate The Phantom Menace. This might be better. I’m not entirely sure, and that’s pretty damning,

I’m just…so disappointed and frustrated and have basically decided to treat the new canon post RotJ as more of alternate universe than anything else. Which is kind of sad, honestly.

tldr; Anakin Skywalker Did Not Die For This Shit

#martinus watches the last jedi #the last jedi spoilers #tlj spoilers #a new hope for a new generation #rian does not love star wars like i love star wars

[darknessfactor]

This is mostly being written because I need to get my own thoughts down about this now, not because I particularly want to get into the Discourse (because I know it exists, and I don’t want to go near it).  Basically, I’m rewatching FMA 2003 and FMAB, and I’m going to talk through my preferences.

I’ll admit that this is my first time watching 03 all the way through.  I got through a little more than half of it in high school, then got bored (ironically right before things started getting good), and tried watching Brotherhood instead.  I did manage to make it all the way through that one.

Having watched both now, I still prefer Brotherhood.  And yes, this is a comparison post.  Untagged, except for my own reference tags.  Like I said: I’m writing this for me.

This list might get long, so if you’ve decided to go ahead and read it anyway, then prepare yourself.  I’ll start with character comparisons, in no particular order.

Roy Mustang: Brotherhood wins by a landslide.  Although 03 does a slightly better job at portraying Roy’s PTSD from the Ishval conflict, I also saw much less of a desire to atone for what he had done.  In Brotherhood, Roy specifically said that he wanted to help rebuild Ishval, and Riza admitted that he planned to allow himself and other state alchemists to be put on trial for their crimes.  In 03, I think that the desire to atone is there, but it is muted, and he seems far more smarmy and power-hungry.  His manipulation of the Elrics is also much more blatant.

Scar: Which leads me to Scar.  Honestly?  This one’s a tie for me.  I liked his ending in Brotherhood more.  I felt he was more threatening in Brotherhood.  I prefer his voice actor in Brotherhood.  However, Brotherhood did one thing that I really, really wish they hadn’t - and that was shift the blame for Winry’s parents from Roy to Scar.  Suddenly it wasn’t alright to root for Scar, because not only had he killed the state alchemists responsible for his people, but he also killed innocent civilians.  Personally, I feel for Scar - he had every reason to believe that his people would never get justice for what had been done to them, so he took matters into his own hands.  Brotherhood was just trying to pull a ‘killing is ALWAYS bad’ thing.

The kids: No, I don’t mean the Elric brothers.  I’m talking about 03′s Wrath and Brotherhood’s Pride.  This time, Brotherhood wins again.  I felt like 03 had the opportunity to go somewhere more meaningful and emotional with Wrath, but instead they just turned him into a psycho (which... considering what he’d been through, it didn’t really surprise me).  Brotherhood’s Pride, however, was almost always a creepy asshole - apart from when Selim acted endearing.  His reveal freaks me out to this day, and to this day he honestly terrifies me.  I do find it somewhat ironic that both Wrath and Pride tried to take Ed’s body for themselves, in the end.

Main villain: Gotta give 03 credit: Dante wins by another landslide.  While both she and Father are fairly one-dimensional, her reveal - as well as her plan - is a lot more insidious, not to mention creepy as hell.  I cringed (in a good way) almost every time she was on screen, and her theme song is AMAZING.  The only time when I really got a ‘what the fuck’ vibe from Father was when he’d half-absorbed Hohenheim just before the country-wide transmutation circle was activated.  For the most part, he was pretty par for the course as far as villains go.  

Bradley: Brotherhood, again.  Much more threatening, much more terrifying.  What happened to Lan Fan, to this day, remains an “oh SHIT” moment for me.  Though personally, I think his death should’ve been more brutal.

Sloth: 03, again.  Really, the only good or interesting thing about Brotherhood’s Sloth was the Armstrong sibling/Curtis teamup to take him down.  03′s Sloth is a hell of a lot more interesting.

Greed: I was kind of surprised by how much I liked 03′s Greed by the time he died.  His arc felt more complete than the arc of the first Greed in Brotherhood.  Still, I’m a sucker for body-sharing tropes, and I love the part that the second Greed played.  So Brotherhood wins this one, though not quite by a landslide.

Characters unique to each series: Brotherhood.  I can’t really think of FMA without thinking of Ling, Lan Fan, Mei, Olivier, or Miles.  Dante is a fantastic villain, and 03′s Sloth and Wrath are interesting characters as well, but Frank Archer almost seems like a Kimblee wanna-be, and I couldn’t give two shits about him.  Ling’s arc might be one of my favorites in Brotherhood, and I can’t not adore Lan Fan and Olivier.  

Riza: Brotherhood, though not by much.  There aren’t too many differences between 03 and Brotherhood Riza, except that Brotherhood went far more in-depth on her character and backstory.  Hell, they devoted an entire episode to it, and though I wasn’t too big of a fan of her learning a lesson from freaking Kimblee, I still appreciate her expanded content.

Worldbuilding: Brotherhood, again.  Brotherhood always felt more... like an actual world, whereas everything in 03 felt sort of... isolated.  In 03 we know nothing about the surrounding areas, and... I don’t know, I just never feel like there are people, anywhere.  I like that Liore got more focus in 03, but overall I prefer Brotherhood - for going more into history, for establishing more of the setting.  (I know it would’ve been tougher for 03′s writers to do such, and I give them credit for writing such a compelling story with what they had.)

Music: Brotherhood.  Oh my god, Brotherhood wins so hard for this.  Dante’s theme is the only one that stuck out to me in 03, but Brotherhood?  I have the names of so many of those tracks memorized.  The Intrepid.  Knives and Shadows.  Trisha’s Lullaby.  I get chills whenever I hear any one of these songs.  

Found family theme: This is something that’s prevalent in both series.  Hell, in 03 Armstrong even says it outright after Ed and Al visit Resembool.  It’s never quite stated outright in Brotherhood, and yet I felt like it carried through more strongly in Brotherhood.

In 03, Ed and Al meet and help plenty of people along their journey, but those people don’t really seem to have an impact on them (except maybe Nina Tucker).  I got the sense that, in spite of that, they were still fairly isolated from everyone else; the Elrics against the world.  They have each other in our world after CoS, but it’s just the two of them.  Against the world.  Again.

In Brotherhood, all those people they meet, and help?  It’s very clear that those bonds are still there.  Just look at the family photo in the credits: look at how many people are in it, even if you count out significant others and the Elrics themselves and their kids.  Paninya and Garfield being there just goes to show that there are so many people that the Elrics could easily consider family, in spite of the lack of blood relations.  Ling, Lan Fan, Mustang, Hawkeye, the Rockbells, all the chimeras that Kimblee brought up to Briggs, Izumi, Sig... in the end, in Brotherhood, it was clear that the Elrics had accepted that they couldn’t get as far as they did without these people’s love and support, and I just love that so much.

Story: Brotherhood’s story just seemed more exciting to me.  That’s all there is to it.  I’m a bit of a sucker for political conspiracies, and this screamed ‘political conspiracy’ a lot more than 03.  Also, though I can appreciate the nuance behind 03′s ending, I’ve always been a sucker for happy endings, and Brotherhood’s was definitely happier.

...well, I think these are about all the thoughts I have on this matter.  If I didn’t mention characters, it’s because I think it was a tie for those characters.  I will say for 03: I’m amazed at how its quality improved over time.  The animation and voice acting get remarkably better over time.  Still, Brotherhood is the one that’ll always be closer to my heart.

#amaya talks crap #amaya watches fma #amaya watches fmab #meta #my meta #opinion #critical tag #(for later)

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: the Wicked + the Divine 455

Spoilers, obv.

The specials have been quite the time, having several ways to stress everyone the hell out. The amount of work that goes into a special is far more than any single script can justify in cold commercial terms. It's lucky that I'm only choosing periods that I'm interested in researching to death.

I suspect (or at least hope) that in terms of background reading, 455 is the most. 1831 was hard, but is a relatively tight period I looked at in depth. 455 basically involved researching the whole of the Western Roman Empire. This means the work was a much broader sweep. In the same way I suspected the 1831 story would be about Frankenstein, I knew this would probably be about what happened at one of the sacks of Rome. Not definitely – I've always got room to change tack if something more profitable turns up in the research – but likely.

As I started work, I realised the main advantage of the sack near the end of the Western Roman Empire is that it means you can do a swan song for the whole thing. Everything has already happened, so you can use it all. Thus we've got something which feels a little like a Roman Greatest Hits story.

Simultaneously, there's the awareness that while I think a lot of this is relatively well known, even the most basic facts aren't. Early readers made me aware that even basic ideas like Julius Caesar being dead for 500 years by this period can't be assumed – a level of historical literacy equivalent of not blinking if Joan of Arc turned up in a WW2 story. That's just audiences, and the vague sense of “Rome stuff” fills about 1000 years of people's imagination. As such, that our story is acounter-history required the introduction of what the real history actually was.

As I knew this was coming along way off, the research was a slow boil. I knew Rome, in various periods, relatively well. From the Punic Wars to Augustus is stuff I've read about many times – Carthage is something I've always wanted to do a story about. What I was looking for is a long sweep across the whole thing, to live with it a while, and let me think along the way. The actual device I used was The History Of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan, which goes from legendary prehistory to about 20 years after 455. It's about 60 hours of stuff, by my rough match, which I worked into my listening routine – which is mainly when working out, running, travelling or doing the dishes. I listen to my podcasts at 1.5x.

That was for most of 2016. After that, it was digging down into specific texts, the majority which happened in December/January. Trying to play with various theories about the decline of the Roman Empire was paramount. Everyone has one, and be suspicious of anyone who gives you one reason. The book which generally was most influential in terms of how I chose to present Rome was The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History by Peter Heather, which basically forwards the idea that Rome fell due to trade across their borders creating increased population density of Barbarian tribes which (as opposed to earlier periods) the Romans were unwilling to integrate into the fabric of the Empire.

I went with my own counter-theory, of course, which was that an Old Lady Did It.

(The Old Lady Did It is a Roman Trope of long standing. I'm a proud owner of a Livia Did It T-shirt.)

Anyway – too much research, and I'll try and drop some things I'd wanted to use but didn't as we go through it. Suffice to say, there's nothing comforting about reading about Rome in the current political climate.

Anyway – Andre! I'd first encountered his work in Avengers AI, written by my friend Sam Humphries. That weird, neon-infused Cyberpunk vibe was a big part of the book's appeal for me, so I started following him. I believe we started talking properly around the time of his own Man Plus, which was is a Otomo-does-Akira-In-Portugal kick, and was another thing which made me file Andre in my “Sci-fi artist file.”

However, after we got talking, he showed me some of his other in-development pitches, which included historical and fantasy work. Which made me go “Hmm.” He's got a mass of gifts, but I had one image that I knew I needed for 455 – the Roman Triumph, with a God in the chariot. That demanded a certain sort of artist, namely one who was happy to actually draw a triumph in all its ludicrous glory. Andre, someone whose work had more than its fair share of city-scapes and crowds, seemed like someone who'd nail that – plus the confluence of European and Manga influences in the work would gel interestingly. We'd get Rome as a place, and that's what we needed.

He was working on Generation Gone with Ales Kot, but they talked, and Andre took as month off the preparation for that to do the special. Thanks, guys.

Colours are provided by Matt “Eisner For Matt” Wilson, and seeing how the two of them worked together was definitely one of the more intriguing parts of the process.

Andre's Cover

Done early, before the script was actually completed, which meant we were more conservative with the choice. The Laurel reef being lowered by elderly hands, the arrogance of it. A call back to the head-shots of the first year of WicDiv too. Also, compare and contrast Matt's colouring choices here with his ones in the issue. This is a much more subdued, chalkier mode. Or that's wot I think anyway.

Jamie's Cover| We were originally talking about statues of multiple gods, but as the script was still in process we didn't want to tie down any of the cast bar Lucifer. Equally, we leaned symbolic on the cover – the flames of Rome, the statue, the grafitti's Chi-Ro in paint (or blood)? Symbolic is good. We like Symbolic.

The Chi-Ro is an old Christian symbol. It's what they say Constantine had his soldiers paint on his shields to ensure victory. My fave thing of Constantine from the research was that while he was more responsible than any for the Christianization of the Empire, he didn't convert until just before his death. I enjoy the theory that it's because the idea that baptizing may have been a one-time “clear all your sins” opportunity. The idea of confession and absolution wasn't around as much. So if you convert and then commit a mortal sin, you're off to hell. But if you commit a mortal sin and then convert, you're fine. So Constantine may have just been gaming Christianity to ensure the best chance of a good afterlife.

IFC

Oh god. Looking at the last paragraph makes me think this could be eternally long if I just keep on stopping and telling you fun anecdotes from memory. Also, factually dubious, as they're from memory, and my memory cannot be trusted.

Jamie designed the icons, and had to work out what vibe to give it. I suspect he was grateful to me for having most the cast already being dead so saving him work.

The Inverted Chi-Ro isn't a real symbol anyone used, but our best way to make a Lucifer. The biggest historical cheat in the series is using any Lucifer figure like this in the period – as far as I'm aware, the idea of a singular satanic adversary in this mode simply wasn't around. But it dovetails with our mythology.

I get asked whether any special will happen earlier in the cycle. The tendency to lean towards the ends is basically the same urge which pushed towards a Roman Special at the fall. Ends let you write about the whole thing. It's only at the end where you can say with any hope of being correct what was really happening, and even then it's only a hope.

But the 1920s special is a little earlier than the end, if only because we've seen the actual end in issue 1.

(More on the 1920s special soon – there's been a few changes in my planning on that.)

The text on the page is the standard WicDiv one, but the final two lines, briefly explaining the history of the Vandal sack in 455 were added at lettering to provide the necessary context to a reader.

Page 1-2

Steady angle shot, three panels on each page. The issue has been compare to Uber by several readers, primarily for the volume of the violence and the detail of the historical focus. It's also a little like it in its storytelling like this – this lingering attempt to make a scene very normal. We don't see the battle against the Vandals – instead, we observe from a distance. We try and make it documentary, with us an observer.

The animal being gutted is a goat.

An example of an earlier tweak, the shepherd's first line was “Wh...who in god's name are you meant to be?” This could read as that our Lucifer actually is Julius. Changing it to “Dressed up as?” brings the artifice closer to the surface. While the nature of lucifer/Julius is explained in a few pages time, it's not meant to be a mystery. Creating a false uninteresting question is just a distraction for the reader.

I kind of laugh at the idea of Lucifer wandering around near Rome, trying to find an army.

Ave Atque Vale! Is a quote from Catallus, related to death. Originally was Ave in my first draft, which of course means “Hello!” so makes no sense to say when he's heading away to the shepherd. If you were generous, you could say he was greeting the Vandals.

The first pages which Matt coloured were these, and when I saw them, I knew it was going to be something special.

Yes, panicked sheep in the second panel of page 2 is a star.

Page 3-4

WicDiv is about many things, but “The fucking obvious” certainly rates highly. Triumphs are one of the big core Roman rituals we think of, when a general is given a personal parade. They're rare and hugely important. The slave whispering “remember you are only a man” to warn against hubris is the detail which everyone loves. Clearly, in WicDiv, the resonances are all kinds of fun.

In terms of how comics panels are not one moment in time, have a nose at the last panel. You read the line, then the Oh!, and then the response of the slave seeing something, and then you look at the miracle, the smug, painted face, of Lucifer, and his Heh.  That's a little journey.

The red face paint is ceremonial, to be akin to Jupiter. Bear that in mind for later, obv.

The big triumph is the first issue money shot – after 3 pages of very low atmosphere, we have the sprawl of Rome. Choosing the direction of the march was key – I gave Andre the best guess route of the triumph, and he chose his angle. By luck, he would enter via the gate here Lucifer is dragged out at the end of the issue. The triumph also ends at the temple of Jupiter, which is yet more fun subtext for those who really like digging into it.

We tweaked the colouring on the crowds, to try and get more of the cosmopolitan nature of Rome. The majority of legionnaires are white, but that's because most were Germanic in this period.

The triumph was originally planned for a spread, but I decided I needed another page later in the comic.

Page 5

Title drop, and a bleak laugh. The idea of calling a story IMPERIAL PHASE which isn't in the actual Imperial Phase trade came from thinking of Julian Cope having his single World Shut Your Mouth not on the album World Shut Your Mouth, an idea he in turn got from some sixties band I haven't time to look up.

The date was tricky to decide exactly, due to the timeline of real world events I wanted to get in. Clearly, for full trash-Roman pulp, I'd have pushed this story March, so I could Ides of March it, but alas, no dice.

Page 6

Nice atmosphere in the first panel, in terms of going from the chaos of the Triumph to something a little more contemplative.

Enter Dionysus/Bacchus. Flashback colours and... one of the thoughts of Matt was that the SFX budget for God Stuff would be lower back here. So the god powers aren't quite as SFX-y as they are in the present day. Not that there's much here, but I'm reminded by how low-key this is. The intent here is that he's done his god thing on stage and come off... but he could just be an actor, which is about as close as WicDiv gets to a 1:1 thing.

The nature of art in Rome (or “Rome”) is key here, and talked throughout. Actors were the underclass. To act was to be disreputable. The “actress as sexworker” trope arrives in Rome, I believe. I reference Lou Reed in the panel descriptions, in terms of these being a Walk On The Wild Side Romans.

Falerian is a type of fine wine. Mithras is presumably one of the other gods – Scythia being a place.

The nature of Imperial Phase has been about women involved with women, which has nagged. Having the humanising part of the story be a love story between men felt timely. It was a place we could do it, so we should. Though more on that later, in terms of the specifics.

There was the obvious worry of doing it, of course – where Lucifer ends up. Lucifer is not good representation. I haven't seen anyone pick up on that angle. We spend a lot of time worrying about stuff no-one picks up on, which is why we spend all that time worrying about it.

The word “play” is, of course, loaded, as are the name changes. Story about identity, we are in it.

Page 7

The best thing about the specials is definitely getting a chance to write Ananke again. She is a fun time.

If I had more space, I'd have almost certainly done more with Lucifer's adventures during the day. It's worth stressing that by this point, I believe Gladiatorial fights were no longer actually happening in Rome, due to Christianisation. My research has went straight on from Western Rome and barged into Byzantine Rome, and the story of the chariot races there is a delight.

Page 7-8

These scenes are very much me getting my I, Claudius on. Very limited set, two actors going off at one another. Of course, all of this will resonate with anyone who's been following the main series.

Panels 3 and 4 on page 7 are the bit of tight acting I like most from Andre here – it's all about the actions, and the space, with us positioned a little back from it.

I smile at Lucifer referencing something that was said of 2014-Lucifer in the first arc. Ananke has been doing this for a very long time.

A quick buzz through various other gods' fates in the first panel on page 8. There's a lot of historical reference packed in there to unpack for those who wish.

The Inanna/Attila The Hun panel is, I think, the largest panel description in the issue. Well... not true. The Rome Triumph one is much longer, but that's a splash. This one included a potted history of a bunch of Hun-related information for Andre to play with, in terms of deciding the looks, etc.

It was also the most discussed panel at the stage of pencils – avoiding objectifying Inanna here was key.

Attila The Hun died on (one of his) wedding night in the real life.

The “As I understand” is pretty key in the captions, as is other distancing effects. Lucifer would not have been a god when Inanna did this. It is very early in this pantheon's time.

I think this may be a place to have a word about Pantheon times through history. 455 doesn't seem to fit in one of these 90 years, if you follow that strictly.

The short version is, as seen in the first scene of WicDiv which ends the 1920s pantheon at Dec 31st 2013 and we start our story about 6 months into the new Pantheon on January 1st 2014, the question of where the 90 years is measured for has to be (to some degree) flexible. Gods appear over a period of a year or so in our 2014, and die at their own rates. You can assume that the “true” length of a pantheon can wiggle a little – some would be less than a year, some could theoretically stretch across 4 calendar years. As such, it's hard to predict exactly on which year any given recurrence could occur – even from the data we have from 1831, 1923 and 2014, we know that.

I suspect before the end I may give hard dates for every Pantheon. I suspect, anyway. I know where it would appear.

Page 9-11

You know, I suspect Page 9 – for an action scene – is one of the most story-beat laden of the issue, in terms. Lots of great Andre stuff here – the casual-ness of both the burning and the brutal-ness of the kick. Matt goes to town on the colours too, the reds taking over. Obviously the fire is a key thing with Lucifer, and his flame grows and ebbs as we progress.

There's some difficult hard cuts here – page 10 to 11, for example. We just have the “Ananke leaving” beat there, then moving to Dio and Lucifer in bed.

There is a tendency when discussing the ancients to be a bit blasé in terms of writing about their sexual habits. This normally is based around us mapping our readings of sexuality onto the past, while erasing their own social mores. I've ran with some of the information on page 11 before, when doing THREE, specifically the politics of different sexual roles. Relevantly, the status elements Lucifer alludes to here – in terms of being a bottom is always dishonourable. I could ramble at this at length, but I'll spare you.

Lots and lots of stuff here, in terms of trying to set up thematic elements here, but let's just say none of it would matter at all if Matt and Andre hadn't nailed the last panel.

Page 12-13

Lots of historical bits and bobs here. Perhaps the implicit question we don't answer is “what happened to the last Emperor?” He was cut to pieces a few days before this and thrown in the river, because he'd pissed off the Vandals enough to have them invade.

You may notice how thin the senate is populated. That's because the majority of the population of Rome have fucked off to hide. Rome's population is artificially lower during this point in history, which is a thing which tries to lend a little credulity to the Ananke/Geiseric cover-up.

The main tweaks here was making sure the exact nature of Lucifer's slip was tricky. Someone getting mixed up in the time-line requires making sure the reader understands the timeline. I half wonder why I went with Crassus rather than Pompey.

Anyway, let's hope that Lucifer manages to keep on the straight and narrow.

Page 13-14

Well, that escalated quickly.

When planning the issue, you start doing maps of time and space, and I rapidly realised with 25 pages, and so many other essential scenes, there was no possible way to show a slow descent.

The story's structure immediately suggested itself.

While the Triumph was the image we needed to enter the world, this is the one that will be remembered. People reference my Crossed work here – which is true, to some degree, in that it was also about turning flesh into art. I suspect I was more thinking of Banks, and a certain beat involving a certain object of furniture. I say, dancing around spoilers.

The influence here which gets kind of buried is Domitian, who threw the most goth parties of all time. Have a nose at this here, in terms of Things Emperors Got Up To.

Page 15-16

We've already namechecked Caligula and here comes Nero, the other of the most famous Roman Bad Emperors. The elements about Nero here were the closest thing the research unveiled which made me want to reposition the story to a different period – Nero interacting with the gods would have been fascinating, for all the reasons described here.

We had a reader question the direction of Imperial Phase, in that the insanity-leading-to-murder trope that appeared to be coming and the inherent ableism in that. It was a usefully timed question, as it made me dig more sharply into the exact choices we were making in explaining the idea. This isn't about going mad. This is – as Dionysus puts it – about excess. I'm thinking of Bowie living off cocaine and peppers. We lean into it pretty heavily in this issue, and hopefully it delineates the aim.

Just looking at my script, and found the anecdote about the time I threw up a handful of blood slipped in there. I'd forgotten that this page was autobiographical. Comics, eh?

Look at what Matt's doing with the colours here – the whole panel is bloodshot as we progress.

Page 17-20

In terms of buried research in the comic, that a hole was knocked in the roof of the Temple of Jupiter during this sack of Rome is the one which makes me laugh. Behold! Let team WicDiv present the true story of how the temple of Jupiter got a dirty great hole in it.

(I also like that this makes the sack of Rome much more efficient for the Vandals.)

This is an actor making a soliloquy scene, perhaps obviously, recalling both the stage and the Passion. While this issue is heavily in the research, it's also doing ahistorical work. Shakespeare's fingerprints is all over this, to state another obvious thing.

The “Emerge like an Eagle” thing is very much Roman Pagan belief.

I mentioned Nero, Caligulia and Julius. The other Roman Emperor who is in the mix with Lucifer was Julian the Apostate who was the last Pagan Roman emperor, and tried to revive Pagan Rome before dying early. A “What if Julian had lived?” is a counter-factual history which is always a fun one to swill around your mouth. He's the one we don't reference, but much of Lucifer's thought comes from mashing Julian with someone of lower birth and more melodramatic tendencies.

This is the sequence which I cut the page from the Triumph earlier to expand. Clearly this could happen quicker, but we need to let the death sequence come out, in all its horror. Also, the collapse on the page turn seems essential.

I'm almost surprise Et Tu Jupiter reached the final page. We were always wondering whether it was too funny. In the end, it was decided it was, but in juxtaposition with the art, sufficiently bleakly to not break the mood. Especially before the collapse on the next page, which is very much human stripped by the divine.

Clearly this plot beat, is the biggest one for close followers of the book. I suspect at this point of the story, there would be strong suspicions that the “you die in two years” isn't true. Unless this sequence is deeply deceptive, it is true. You die in two years, by yourself. We place the specials pretty carefully, in terms of what they reveal, so this being half way through Imperial Phase underlines what could await our cast.

In terms of craft, going silent for a page after the monologuing seemed key. I mean, Ananke's fundamental disrespect in terms of how she's carrying Lucifer says everything.

Page 21-25

Out the gate towards the Tiber. The names listed are famous Romans whose bodies were thrown in the Tiber so that they could have no honourable end – and in the case of Marius, that there was no place for his followers to gather. The man who did that was Sulla, btw. Marius was dead, he dug them up.

The “Pagan burial, but a shit one” is very much Ananke at peak “I will tell you the truth, but you really have to pay attention to the details” mode.

And here's Geiseric! Looking good. The Vandals have been in Carthage for 20 years, but we decided to have him be kind of pallid so as not to confuse people. Stories like THREE were all about the pure-historical aspect and risked (and often did) lose people by doing things in line with the best research rather than common belief. WicDiv has a slightly different set of priorities, especially on secondary aspects like tanned Vandals.

Heh. Story starts with butchery of a goat, and ends with butchery of Lucifer. WicDiv is a very subtle comic.

Sulla's an interesting dude, and I think the use by Ananke here seems pretty fair. The future she's pointing towards never happens – the marriage is there. Germanic hands ended up ruling what came after the Empire, but that's not really what is going. Of course, Geiseric is also entirely right in recognising he's being manipulated.

They're a fun pair, actually, in terms of the fencing. I kind of realise this is the sort of conversation which is going to be key in Spangly New Thing, which makes me excited about writing it again.

I smile at the Vandal line. People have wondered why I didn't do the earlier sack, so I could have had the goths. Well, it didn't really work for the story, which is about the end of an era. But also it would have been perhaps too much. I did have a joke take, where Ananke is debating which Germanic tribe to manipulate into invading Rome. “The Goths again? No. No More Goths.”

But 455 isn't that kind of book.

The final image! Lovely, in its bleak and awful way.

Page 26

City of God being Augustine's book, written primarily in response to the crisis of faith in the Empire over the 410 sack of Rome by the aforementioned Goths.

Anyway – thanks for reading, and thanks for Andre for joining us on this beast. We're back (eek) tomorrow, with Imperial Phase II. Onwards, etc.

#WicDiv #the wicked and the divine #andre lima araujo #matt wilson #Writer Notes

[zephyrthejester]

Reflecting on Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Please click “Keep Reading” to view my concluding thoughts on Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Unfiltered spoilers inside.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is, simply put, a narrative masterpiece. One of those once-in-a-decade stories. But before I sing its praises, I feel I'd best get my complaints out of the way first thing. They're all laughably petty, as far as complaints go, and I'd hate to leave this reflection off on a sour note.

1: For how important he was, I felt Alphonse's role was too small. He had a very interesting mini-arc about his identity early on, but after that, he was very passive. He took the support role in both dialogue and combat. Though, he did have what is probably the show's single biggest "fuck yeah!" moment all to himself when he turned the tables on Pride and Kimblee. I dunno, maybe I was just hoping for FMA:B to be "The Edward and Alphonse show ft. a ton of cool characters." But it was actually "The Edward show ft. Hohenheim, Alphonse, and a ton of cool characters."

2: Let's be real. Trying to dethrone God and take their place is just about as cliche an anime/JRPG plot you can get. It was a bit underwhelming, but this complaint is completely dwarfed by the fact that the whole narrative I'm about to exclaim love for is written closely around it, and the fact that the villain actually succeeded (briefly).

3: I wish that one of the show's biggest twists, the Country-Wide Transmutation Circle, wasn't revealed so early. Though the plot certainly had some out-of-nowhere reveals (that always made logical sense when they happened), most were foreshadowed or hinted at. But around episode 20, Dr. Marcoh dropped a guess about the plan to sacrifice Amestris, just... out of nowhere. Looking back, I can't help but think it would have been so much better if we first saw the Xerxes flashback story, then learned about Father's plan for Amestris. It would have been a gut-punch double threat. But by the time we did see the Xerxes story, we were well familiar with the concept. We could have been surprised at the same time as "young" Hohenheim. We could have felt that "oh shit!" feeling when we learned it was about to be repeated on a larger scale. But we didn't.

4: Lack of side character screentime. This may actually be a compliment in disguise, because I'm complaining that the characters I really loved weren't around enough! Danny Brosh, Maria Ross, Barry, Alex Armstrong, Sheska, Jean Havoc, Izumi and Sig Curtis, Ling Yao (who disappeared for a chunk of the show, and then when his body was on-screen, half the time he wasn't actually there, if you get what I'm saying)... I guess too much screentime for some of them would have made them grating or tiresome. But as trickle-fed novelties, I ended up loving the characters and just wanting more. More of everything!

5: It's understandable why this happened, as the second half of the show is incredibly grim and serious, but I found myself sorely missing the humor found in the earlier episodes. There was a new joke every minute, once. By the end of the show we were lucky to get one joke in an entire episode. Again, completely understandable, maybe even necessary. But I still missed the humor... because pretty much every joke landed for me.

Um. That's it. That's all the complaining I have in me. Literally every negative thing I feel about this legendary show. Let's get to the good stuff, shall we?

This story. This story is just... it's just mind boggling. It had the illusion that every little detail was planned out from the start. It juggled over 30 important characters and plenty more in lesser roles with breakneck pacing that never felt too rushed (outside the first three episodes). And let me tell you, I am just sitting in stunned awe as I think back about every single nuance. Every major character was admittedly fairly simple, but it is perhaps this very simplicity that makes them so understandable, likable, and sympathetic. Nearly everyone had only one character trait and a very clearly defined goal from the outset of their introduction... The beauty was seeing these various traits bounce off each other and seeing how the characters got to their goal.

This was not a story where characters changed and grew. I think this story was about how the characters fought hard not to be changed. Ed and Al were tempted to drop their morals, and they didn't. Hohenheim was tempted to hate himself, and he didn't. Winry was tempted to take a life, and she didn't. Mustang and Scar were changed-- into monsters-- and were pulled back from the abyss by their friends. It... genuinely feels like everyone was mostly the same person at the start and end of the story. And somehow, it actually all works. Though, saying this sounds a bit silly because Truth scolded Father for not changing... Oh well.

Moving from the macro to the micro, let's talk about the tiny little details. There were so many elements introduced that seemed innocuous and unimportant, but were actually extremely important. Edward's short height, the butt of many early jokes, was because his body was sustaining Alphonse's. The motion of clapping hands to form a Circle out of your body, a "gift" from God, looked like praying. Havoc's family business ending up being a munitions store. The creepy tubes beneath Central, which I didn't even think to question, ended up being the pumps that fuel the Mannequin Army. As I said, it feels like every single remote detail of this grand story was planned from the very beginning. From the small to the large, it all feels so complete. There's not a single part of me wishing something was more fleshed out (aside from wanting more screentime for my favorite characters, of course).

Indeed, I'll be fondly remembering and respecting this show's narrative and characters for a long, long time to come. It started strong, stayed strong, and though it may have slowed its pace at the start of the Briggs arc, it never faltered in its step. Best of all, it even delivered a very satisfying ending. So satisfying. So happy and perfect and sweet it almost made me diabetic.

Let's wrap things up with what's left, shall we? Thinking hard, I can't exactly recall most of the background music in the show. There were one or two standouts, but... Well, I guess none of the songs were jarring or displeasing, but all the same I can't exactly praise them. They were... serviceable. Yeah. Though, I do really like most of the OP and ED songs! They all grew on me more and more, and a few I still can't get out of my head.

Then there's the animation! My goodness, the animation! For an anime of this length, I was blown away by the effort put in to make all the important fight scenes look damn good. And damn, did they look good. This show had some stellar fight choreography, even with the more fantastical magic powers, and I won't lie when I say I immediately went back to re-watch a few fights the moment I had finished a liveblog session.

Well then. That's everything, I think.

I guess there's only one more thing I have to say.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood has succeeded Gurren Lagann as my favorite anime of all time.

In the hopefully long-running lifespan of my blog, I expect that no show will ever top the final score I've allotted FMA:B. By averaging all scores, I calculate the final score of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood to be a stunning 9.3/10!

Experiencing this show was an absolute pleasure. But even better was taking this journey with you guys.

Thanks for reading.

#Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood Liveblog #Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood #Fullmetal Alchemist #Liveblogging #Liveblog