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historyhermann · 1 year

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Counting Beans: Power, Mental Health, and Queerness in "Disenchantment" Part 4

On February 9, the ten episodes of Disenchantment's Part 4 aired on Netflix. It continues the story of Bean, a fearless Princess, attempting to return to her homeland, Dreamland. She hopes to reclaim the throne but faces internal and external challenges which prevent her from completing this quest.

Reprinted from The Geekiary, my History Hermann WordPress blog, and Wayback Machine. This was the thirtieth article I wrote for The Geekiary. This post was originally published on February 18, 2022.

Disenchantment is an animated fantasy, sitcom, adventure, and satire, by Matt Groening. He is best known for his long-running animated sitcom, The Simpsons, and his late animated sci-fi comedy-drama, Futurama. Groening is the series showrunner along with Josh Weinstein and Claudia Katz. Eric Horsted, Bill Oakley, and Patric V. Verrone are co-executive producers.

As a warning, this review discusses some spoilers for Disenchantment. It will also discuss topics such as death, blood, murder, trauma, sexual intercourse, and mental health.

Part 4 of Disenchantment begins with Dagmar (Sharon Horgan) kidnapping her daughter, Princess Bean (Abbi Jacobson). Dagmar tries to force her to marry the King of Hell, Satan (Rich Fulcher), in an attempt to "seal the deal" between Bean's homeland, Dreamland, and Hell. Bean's friend, Luci (Eric Andre), tries to leave Heaven. Elfo (Nat Faxon) tries to escape the ogres who have captured him.

Luci and Jerry (David Herman) help Bean flee Hell. They are able to commandeer an airship en route to Dreamland. On the way, they rescue Elfo. Once back in Dreamland, they discover that Bean's devious cousins, aunt Becky (Lucy Montgomery) and uncle Cloyd (Fulcher), are ruling Dreamland. Later, agreement Bean and her dad, Zog (John DiMaggio), agree to share power in Dreamland. Becky, Cloyd, and their newfound puppet friend, Freckles (DiMaggio), try to manipulate whoever they can to gain power. Bean tries to be a better ruler. She has recurring nightmares and faces Satan and Dagmar. The latter pushes Bean into the water and seizes control of the throne.

The series maintains its "good rhythm." It has occasional humor, like a recurring joke where Luci loses his head, and has to put it back on. There are twisted plots, occasional nudity, smoking, and drinking, mainly by Bean. This is so important to her character that when she drinks less, her friends Luci and Elfo get worried.

Throughout the series, there are bloody scenes and casual violence. Characters injure each other with swords, spears, and other weapons. Some are even eaten by worms. The level of violence is akin to the violence in Inside Job.

Power, authority, manipulation, and exploitation

There is the continual struggle for power and authority in Disenchantment. Cloyd and Becky engage in human experimentation to create their own goons. They also try and manipulate anyone to complete their goals. After their reported defeat, Bean and Zog agree to rule together. Both face an evil puppet named Freckles who works for Becky and Cloyd.

Later, Bean tries to give back and let people come to her in hopes of solving their problems. This is akin to what Rapunzel sings about in a Season 1 episode of Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure. In the case of Bean, it doesn't work out, and she ends up getting exhausted.

Freckles becomes one of the most evil characters of the series. After Sorcerio brings him "back to life," in an homage to Frankenstein, he tries to manipulate Zog. He has more success with Jasper and Derek (voiced by Tress MacNeille), teaching them to fight dirty. As a result, Derek ends up killing one of the bullies by accident. He feels bad about this and goes with Jasper and Derek, leaving town. Before they leave, Freckles visits the bullies and he reveals that he had staged the fight.

Freckles tries to drive Zog and Bean apart

This reminds me of how Khepra paid off people to fight with her, and the show's protagonist, Cleo, in Cleopatra in Space. Like Freckles, Khepra did this to gain her trust, while she was working with the villain the whole time. In Disenchantment, his efforts are for naught. The series ends with Dagmar and Satan in charge, willing to do anything to keep their power.

This series has a major focus on organized religion, just like gen:LOCK. There are places named "heaven" and "hell." Luci appears in Heaven despite the fact he is a demon. God (voiced by Phil LaMarr) tells Jerry that God is everywhere, even in a toilet when people are taking a crap. He also says that the troubles of humans are for them to sort out, so he doesn't intervene. Hell is a place that people can travel to with a scary elevator. On the one hand, the series depicts religion as restorative. Zog becomes more at peace with himself while in a monastery. On the other, it is a place of violence. Bean's doppelganger kills her inside a church during one of her nightmares.

Organized religion is only one form of exploitation and oppression depicted in Part 4 of Disenchantment. Some episodes serve as commentary about trophy hunting, explorers, and zoos. In episode 7, explorers from the League of Gallivanting Scrutinators come in an airship from Steamland. They hope to catch game in the forest.

While they can't capture the "right" animal, they still capture a "beast." When a huge fire burns a huge swath of the forest after explorers speared Zog's cigar rather than him, they leave and don't look back.

In the final episode, Odval and Zog search for Derek, Jasper, and Freckles. They try and save them. Unfortunately, someone in Steamland kidnaps them for an exhibition, making them part of a supposed "freak show."

Memories, dreams, and mental health

Like Inside Job, memories and dreams are a central part of Disenchantment. This begins with Freckles invading the dreams of Zog and Bean. He probes into the Zog's repressed memories. This reveals hidden trauma. He hopes to turn Zog and Bean, who is 19 years old, against one another. This strategy is unsuccessful.

Episode 6 takes place almost exclusively in an underwater kingdom, Bean wants to atone to the sea trogs for what their ancestors did. This is after Zog reveals that humans took Dreamland from the elves. She finds out that the sea trogs put worms into people's ears, mind-controlling them, a little like the brain worms in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. She barely escapes alive.

Throughout the last few episodes of Part 4, Bean begins to have recurring nightmares. She becomes so dedicated to stopping them that she cuts the rope to the elevator to hell. This causes causing Hansel and Gretel to plummet to their deaths! This is because she believes that the person in her dreams is her sadistic mother, Dagmar. When she drinks a special liquid, her nightmares become clearer. She then discovers something horrifying: the person she had been following is herself. It was an unexpected twist, for sure.

This makes for an exciting final episode. Bean debates her evil doppelganger, who she calls "Bad Bean." She begins starts to trust and believe Bad Bean. Akin to Darth Sideous training Anakin Skywalker on how to concentrate his hatred, Bad Bean tells Bean that her electric powers only flow when she is angry. She riles her up, saying she should be furious at the "damn patriarchy" and the "whole system." At one point, she taunts her by saying she knows what a mermaid kiss tastes like.

As it turns out, Bad Bean is a total snake. She does the switcheroo and traps Bean in her own dream. She only gets rescued with the help of her friends and is able to kill the Bad Bean. Although Bean does not defeat her sadistic mother, the series has an optimistic message.

Disenchantment seems to be saying that you can take control of your mind and body, and push out bad thoughts and attitudes. The series makes clear that everyone has a part inside them capable of great harm. This means that it is a struggle to keep that part of yourself in check.

Bad Bean (on the bed) talking to "good" Bean

This connects to the show's commentary on mental asylums. Early on in Part 4, Zog expresses his trauma from someone burying him alive during Part 3 and has "therapy sessions." He even begins to speak normally, rather than honking, even to his fellow inmate, Giggles.

At one point, he tries to kill the therapist after the therapist declares he will stay there forever. Instead of the therapist facing consequences, they believe Zog is the one at fault. Zog is then taken away to a room and put in a straightjacket. The series seems to depict mental institutions as agents of oppression that engage in structural violence.

Chazzzzz (voiced by Herman), the practitioner who tortures people, works at the asylum. He is someone who enforces this structural violence onto Zog and other inmates. Luckily, Zog is able to flee and his loyal servants, Vip and Vap help him.

In these ways, the series has some similar themes to ND Stevenson's Nimona. That webcomic, and later graphic novel, does a better job at showing structural violence than Disenchantment.

Romance and queer themes

Early this month, David Opie, TV editor for Digital Spy, tweeted that Part 4 of Disenchantment could have been "queerer this time round." I have to agree. I say this as a person whose first review for The Geekiary was about Disenchantment parts 1-3. At the time, I argued that queerness in Disenchantment is "integrated into the show itself." I noted the casual queerness, the gay relationship between Odval and Sorcerio, and the possible relationship between Big Jo and Porky. I pointed to Bean and Lady Bowmore crushing on one another, the love story between Mora and Bean, and that Bean is bisexual or pansexual.

I even said that the story is a step forward for Matt Groening, in terms of inclusive storytelling. I pointed to stereotypes in Futurama and the lack of strong queer representation among The Simpsons main cast. I have become a better writer and editor since then and I'm more critical of the series now than I was back then.

Romance is an important theme in Disenchantment. The series sends the message that love should be heartfelt rather than forced. Dagmar's arranged marriage between Satan and Bean is portrayed negatively. Even the theme of their wedding is "love is hell" which is like how Greg Universe described love as "torture" to Rose Quartz in Steven Universe.

Although Bean's mom puts her in leg irons and handcuffs, she still rebels. She gets Satan to dislike her and cuts Dagmar's hand, so that she is the "Queen of Dreamland" on paper rather than her. This will likely have significance in future seasons. In other episodes, Zog reconnects with Ursula, learning he has another son named Jasper, a bear cub. He later bonds with his daughter, Bean, as well.

This interconnects with queer moments weaved throughout Part 4. In episode 4, Bean realizes what the audience already knew: her romance with the mermaid, Mora (voiced by Meredith Hagner), was real. In a later episode, Freckles refers to Bean's romance with Mora to set her off. In another episode, Luci tells Bean that "pearls don't go with your whole tomboy femme thing anyway."

The first part of the phrase could refer to the term "pearl-clutch," with gay men using it to mean a "sense of shock, surprise, and awed admiration." Alternatively, it could be a reference to another related term: "pearl-clutching." That is a charge often lobbed at women, accusing them of "not being liberal, or feminist, or open-minded enough." The latter seems more likely than the former.

Luci's use of the term "tomboy femme" likely refers to when someone plays with their gender presentation. It blurs the "lines between what it is to be purely on one side of the feminine to masculine spectrum." This includes pairing designs seen as masculine with those seen as feminine.

Bean-Mora slow romance and other queer moments

Part 4 of Disenchantment continues the very slow romance between Bean and Mora. At the end of episode 6, Mora saves Bean, and she slips away, telling Bean, saying "damn it, I got to go." As such, Bean doesn't realize she was even there. In the following episode, she is defensive about who saved her. She wears the necklace Mora gave her but hides it.

At one point in Part 4, Bean admits to her father, Zog, that she is in love with Mora. He reveals to her that his first love was a mermaid, and adds that there is never a right time for love. Later, Bean avoids the pub and goes to the beach instead, believing she needs to "get over" Mora before it is "too late."

In episode 8, one character tells Bean that his wife is bisexual. In the same episode, she has a nightmare with Mora telling her to wake up. In the final episode, Bean's toxic, and controlling, mother, pushes her into the ocean. Once there, Mora pulls her close, with both kissing and embracing one another.

Mora and Bean together in the final episode of Part 4

The slow romance leaves a lot to be desired. Fans are rightly happy at the Morabeanie moments in Part 4, and have posted beautiful fan art. Even the official Instagram account has posted Morabeanie fan art. The official Twitter account, when responding to a fan about Bean and Satan together, added "I think she has her eyes on someone else...," hinting at Mora. Despite this, the moments Bean and Mora have together in the actual episodes are too far and few between.

The romance between Mora and Bean is, perhaps, better than the slow-moving romance between Vi and Caitlyn in Arcane. But, it seems like there was more time between Mora and Bean in Part 3 than in the recent episodes. There was a whole episode about it, "Last Splash." In the episodes that followed, Bean reflected on what happened, believing that it was not real.

A major sub-theme of Part 4 of Disenchantment is Bean realizing she has feelings for Mora and trying to act on them. The plot focused more on Zog's new son, Jasper, manipulative beings like Freckles, and other lore than Bean's romance with Mora, or Mora's feelings for Bean.

I wish there had been more "conversations about love, romance, and relationships" like those in the Part 3 episode, "Last Splash." Both actresses adlibbed lines about romance in the episode. Hopefully, future episodes expand on the relationship between them, allowing Bean (and Mora) to be happy together. I'd like Bean to be more of a "messy queer."

Other queer moments in the series were also minimal. For example, Odval and Sorcerio did not have many scenes where they experienced their time together. Furthermore, the series makes it clear that Jo and Porky are not a couple. Instead, Porky doesn't mind when Jo is taken to the mental asylum, in place of Zog, and seems glad he is gone.

This means that the series is more likely saying that Jo and Porky have a toxic relationship. This is like some descriptions of the Gem fusion between Lapis Lazuli and Jasper in Steven Universe.

Bean, bisexuality, and pansexuality

Part 4 of Disenchantment hints that Bean is bisexual. For Bean, gender does not seem to be a barrier to attraction. She has kissed a male elf, Elfo, and a female mermaid, Mora, and had various male callers in the past.

Bean fulfills GLAAD's definition of someone who is bi. This means someone who has the "capacity to form enduring physical, romantic, and/ or emotional attractions to those of the same gender or to those of another gender." The organization also says that those who have "the capacity to be attracted to people of any gender" might consider themselves as part of the bi+ community, or use terms like pansexual, omnisexual, polysexual, and so on.

You could say that she is only attracted to those of specific genders, with gender as a factor in attraction. This is further supported by Netflix Geeked describing her as a "new bisexual icon" and voice actress, Jacobson, as a bisexual woman.

In Part 4, Bean said that she does not like labels. Some might guess that idea of pansexuality would draw her in. It has been described as a "sense of freedom" which validates the "fluidity of attraction...[with] no boundaries or limitations" by some people. You could argue that Bean is not limited by gender, sex, or gender identity in who she loves, and that she loves those of any gender. Even so, for those who are pansexual, there can still be "gendered elements" in a person's attraction toward someone else.

Bean would likely not describe herself as "bisexual" or "pansexual." The creators have not directly addressed Bean's sexual orientation, just as Mike McMahan has not confirmed whether Beckett Mariner in Star Trek: Lower Decks is bisexual or pansexual.

Abbi Jacobson recently described her role in voicing Bean in a recent interview. Jacobson said that she has been voicing Bean since 2017. She said that is "changing with the character...grow[ing] and chang[ing] with them a little bit." She called it "a huge gig," saying she now feels "more confident with her" than in the past.

She described how she has a similar vibe to Bean. She remarked that Bean's character development has included "Bean's finding her sexuality and that part of herself." She added that started to "lean toward" her in a way as a result, seeing even more similarities. Since Jacobson is one with the character and it is an inherent manifestation of her, it again confirms that Bean is bisexual.

Jacobson added that she feels the "seeking, searching part of her, and finding your people." She argued that Elfo and Luci are her "chosen friends and found family," which she relates to more than anything else.

Bean is not alone in this. Tamara in Star Wars Resistance and Reagan in Inside Job, both have chosen or found families of their own. Taken in this light, Disenchantment has a story that makes clear that "the ones who accept and love us aren’t always blood-related."

Drama, fantasy, adventure, and satire

On February 9, 2022, Opie, tweeted that Part 4 was a mess, that the narrative is all over the place and said the jokes were "pretty sporadic." He added that something about the show kept him watching."

Opie has a valid point. The narrative of Disenchantment moves rapidly. Even so, it stays together as one story. At the same time, the narrative could be stronger. There are some "subplots that fall flat" as one reviewer put it.

Part 4 of Disenchantment emphasizes drama, fantasy, adventure, and satire more than comedy. There are some funny parts, like the scenes with Laughing Horse, Elfo chased by a boulder, and an elf admitting he writes "elf erotica." There is some morbid humor. For example, Stan the executioner (voiced by Noel Fielding) admits that he killed a teacher because she was starting a teachers union.

The episodes are more serious than any of the other parts of the series. This tonal change may cause some to pull away from the series and not watch it. Even if this is the case, Part 4 is doing very well. New episodes are pulling in millions of viewers.

Despite the changed tone, family togetherness is a major theme. In Part 4, Elfo learns that his mother is an ogre named Grogda. She had sex with his dad, a traveling candy salesperson, and that they lived in the trees to hide from gnomes. But, this didn't last. Their home was destroyed during a gnome attack. Elfo returned to Elfwood with his pop, while Grogda stayed on the outside. Later, he learns that Junior, a ogre he stabbed earlier in the series, is his half-brother. They agree to not fight one another, with Junior accidentally killing his stepfather.

In another episode, Luci tells Bean that Dagmar sees her not as a person but as an extension of herself. He suggests she stop focusing on revenge, anger, and wrath if she wants to break free. In other episodes, Derek and Jasper, who are Zog's sons, take a dislike to each other at first. They later agree to work together. Both say they can hurt people better if they work together than if they are apart, with Elfo as their first victim.

Art, animation, lore, voice acting, writing, and beyond

Airship driven by Bean leaving Steamland

The background art and animation are superb. This includes the art of Steamland, the steam-powered steampunk city. It is one of my favorite locations in the series. It first appears in episode 2 when Bean, Luci, and Jerry stumble into an elevator from Hell. I found it fascinating that while Steamland is progressive on the surface, the steam which allows the city to run comes from Hell.

It was funny to see Alva Gunderson (voiced by Richard Ayoade) watching cartoons. I loved seeing the splendor of Steamland. I also loved seeing his invention, a steam-powered wheelchair, which he dubbed the "ass chariot." The huge airship that Bean and her friends stole from him so they could get back to Dreamland, is a tremendous work of machinery and science. It is not immune from attack, however. In typical Disenchantment fashion, it is shot down, and Bean, and her friends, somehow escape.

The design of Steamland makes me think of the mix of medieval and modern in High Guardian Spice. Disenchantment is a series that does something similar, blending both together. Some fan fiction writers on Archive of Our Own even focused on Steamland in their stories. Apart from Steamland, the background art of the series remains amazing. The storyboarders, animators, and background artists have done a great job.

These episodes reveal a lot of lore. This begins with the elves attempting to find their legendary homeland which they believed was Dreamland. The airship from Steamland has settings like Dankmire, New Cremorium, Dullsville, Naked City, Twinkletown, and Oxnard.

Bean is shown to have magical powers of some type. She is even able to heal scratches on her father's arm. In another episode, she touches a sword and it flashes her back to the battle in the cove. We also learn that the elves and trogs are interrelated.

One of the strongest parts of Disenchantment is the voice acting. This is evident in Part 4. Voice talents of Jacobson, Horgan, Fulcher, Faxon, Herman, DiMaggio, and Montgomery stand out, as does the voice acting for supporting and minor characters.

For instance, Mary (voiced by Lauren Tom), otherwise known as the mop girl, had a bigger part in this season. Oona (voiced by Tress MacNeille), the unnamed owner of a "freak show," and Stan the executioner (voiced by Fielding) stood out as well.

Disenchantment's voice actors have appeared in animated series like Inside Job, Amphibia, Solar Opposites, The Great North, Housebroken, and Twelve Forever. This makes clear the strength of the show's voice cast. While the cast is not very diverse, it includes voice actors like LaMarr, Andre, and Ayoade who are Black men.

The writers and directors of Part 4 episodes are a talented group of individuals. Of the eight episode directors, five directed Futurama episodes, and two worked on The Simpsons and Drawn Together. Others worked on Sym-Bionic Titan, Bob's Burgers, and Rick and Morty. Only one, Ed Tadem, was new to animation directing and had not directed on any show previously.

Two directors, Crystal Chesney-Thompson and Edmund Fong, are part of Rough Draft Studios which is producing the series. The same studio produced the original Star Wars: Clone Wars series, seasons of Futurama and subsequent made-for-TV films.

The writers of Disenchantment Part 4 are similar. Of the show's nine writers, four wrote for Futurama. The others wrote for Simpsons video games (Jamie Angell) and Bob's Burgers (Jameel Saleem). One of the writers, Liz Suggs, has written for live-action series and is co-producer of an upcoming animated series, Wings of Fire.

Saleem, a Black man, has a production company of his own named Black Bear and Fluffy. Adam Briggs is an Indigenous Australian rapper. Abe Groening is the son of Matt Groening. This series appears to be the first writing credit for Abe Groening. As such, the show has some diversity in the writers room, but could still do better.

The music of Disenchantment fits with the story. It ties in with the opening sequence of each episode which previews what will happen in that episode. Mark Mothersbaugh is the series composer. He is the co-founder, keyboardist, and lead singer of Devo. He has worked on series such as Regular Show, Summer Camp Island, and Close Enough. As Groening described it, Mothersbaugh put together a "theme song that’s Eastern European brass band-klezmer with accordions and tubas"

Future of Disenchantment

Netflix will likely renew this animated series. Despite the fact that executives sometimes can make wild decisions and cancel shows, it is unlikely to happen with Disenchantment. After all, there is already nice fan merchandise and the show seems to be getting a lot of attention.

Although some vowed to stop watching the show because Andre is selling an edible NFT, it is extreme to boycott a show because of what one actor has done. For instance, I could stop watching Young Justice because Greg Cipes (who voiced Beast Boy) digests and expels crypto-babble. If I decided to boycott it because of Cipes, I would miss out on stories featuring Halo/Violet (voiced by Zehra Fazal), a genderqueer character, and my favorite in the whole series.

Apart from the obvious continuation of the Bean-Mora romance, future stories could focus on Bean's possible ancestor, characters who were absent from Part 4 episodes, and Bean's attempt to retake the throne. That's only some of the many storylines for possible Parts 5 and 6.

The show could be under strain because Futurama is coming back for an eighth season in 2023 on Hulu. The return has been controversial because DiMaggio, who voices Bender, has not agreed to come back. This has led some to say that they would not watch the series unless he returns.

Even so, there is a possibility of a crossover. Disenchantment references Futurama various times. This includes a reference to the Futurama episode "Devil's Things Are Idle Playthings," Doctor Zoidberg, Futurama comics, and Enos Fry.

The creators of Disenchantment will be pushing for another season. A new season may be announced in the next few months and released sometime in February 2023 or March 2023. In February 2021, Josh Weinstein, one of the showrunners, said that if Netflix renewed Disenchantment, there would be two more 10-episode parts before the story came to an end.

In the end, Disenchantment deserves a watch for its queer content, strong voice acting, storytelling, art, animation, writing, music, and focus on mental health. Disenchantment is currently streaming on Netflix.

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klaeusd · 1 year

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a compilation of dash games i want to keep.

which tragic death would you suffer?

the betrayal. you die at the hands of the person you love most. maybe there are tears in their eyes as they drive the sword into your chest, maybe there is none. there are certainly tears in yours. your mouth will open to ask 'why' only to spit blood instead. you will die never knowing if they loved you at all, wondering if you could've done something to prevent this, or if it was always going to end this way.

what’s your literary archetype?

the rebel. you were probably made painfully aware of the reality of the world at an early age. this might have left you a bit jaded, but it mostly has made you angry. why do things have to be this way? is there really no way to change things, or are people just afraid to do so? you’re very stubborn and determined, sometimes too stubborn for your own good. don’t forget that your way isn’t the only way, be open to discussion. your heart’s in the right place though, and i admire your spirit. the world always needs more people like you, that’s how the course of history keeps on rolling. remember, even small changes can do so much for the lives of others.

what's peculiar about your soul?

your soul is… volatile. there is a deep, painful energy harbored within this soul… at its very core festers malice, and a deeply rooted pain that craves nothing more but to inflict itself onto everything around it. special care has been given to it- to stop examiners from coming into any harm should they draw too near to it. you coil like a serpent, awaiting a moment to strike. to claim your revenge. it never comes.

what type of anger do you have?

loud antagonism. yelling, screaming, making yourself known. you want them to hurt just as you've hurt. you won't resort to violence, but you wish you could. you want them to suffer the most unspeakable pain known to man.

what does your heart look like?

iced over, out of the sun. your heart is very lonely, isn’t it? is your fortress of ice self-made? are others afraid of you, or are you afraid of them? are you afraid of hurting them, or of being hurt? vulnerability and connection can be frightening, but that’s no reason to shy away from their light, to tuck yourself small into corners, to build up frigid walls to keep yourself from feeling. you will heal when you allow yourself to draw closer to the flames and thaw.

how do you need to be touched?

you crave a hug that cracks your ribs… the feeling of your wandering soul being crushed back into the bones that can't seem to hold it. you need a hand gripping yours so tightly you almost fear it may leave a bruise, a reminder that you are here. and that you are not alone.

#study.#dash games.

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toomuchdickfort · 2 years

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Thinkin abt pb again

#like. it shared a head with both Larry and Derrek #and it’s good at making its thoughts feel like yours.#thinking abt how Larry spent almost a straight week hunting Geryon before he found him #and how the second he broke contact with the sword he was disgusted with himself #and how the sword has a history of driving people to violence for its own entertainment #and both Larry and Derrek have several moments that they’ll never know what thoughts were and weren’t theirs #and the sword wouldn’t tell them even if they asked #and like. points at the analogy of the sword wielding its users more than the other way around #also points at the idea that art inspires art #read smth that turned into a fight and had to set it aside Bc apparently these men still live in my brain rent free #don't mind me #character rambles #elysur #like. points at Lawrence using the sword to commit atrocities. who’s idea was that really #pb would say it was Larry’s but it would say that either way Bc it’d want to see his reaction whether it was the truth or not #the sword is no stranger to lies. it’s only here for entertainment #Geryon Amnes #lawrence nighy #peraq benval’n #derrek velhues

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reachexceedinggrasp · 3 years

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Would love to hear about your beefs with Lucas because I have beefs with Lucas

(Sorry it took me three thousand years to answer this, anon.)

They mainly fall under a few headings, with the third being the most serious and the thing that I am genuinely irl furious about at least biannually (and feeling unable to adequately sum up The Problem with it after yelling about it so often is a huge part of why this post has been in my drafts for such a long time):

1. His self-mythologising and the subsequent uncritical repetition of his bullshit in the fandom. Obvious lies like that he had some master plan for 10 films when it’s clear he did not have anything like a plot outline at any point. We all know the thing was written at the seat of various people’s pants, it’s blatantly self-evident that’s the case. There’s also plenty of public record about how the OT was written. Even dumber, more obvious lies, like that Anakin was ‘always the protagonist’ and the entire 6 films were his story from the beginning. This is preposterous and every time someone brings it up (usually with palpable smugness) as fanboys ‘not understanding star wars’ because they don't get that ‘the OT is not Luke's story’... Yeah, I just... I cannot.

Vader wasn’t Anakin Skywalker until ESB, it’s a retcon. It’s a brilliant retcon and it works perfectly, it elevated SW into something timeless and special it otherwise would not have been, but you can tell it wasn’t the original plan and there’s proof it wasn’t the original plan. Let’s not pretend. And Luke is the protagonist. No amount of waffling about such esoteric flights of theory as ‘ring structure’ is going to get away from the rigidly orthodox narrative and the indisputable fact that it is Luke’s hero’s journey. Vader’s redemption isn’t about his character development (he has almost none) and has no basis in any kind of convincing psychological reality for his character, but it doesn’t need to be because it’s part of Luke’s arc, because Vader is entirely a foil in Luke’s story. It’s a coming-of-age myth about confronting and growing beyond the father.

All attempts to de-centre Luke in RotJ just break the OT’s narrative logic. It’s a character-driven story and the character driving is Luke. Trying to read it as Anakin’s victory, the moral culmination of his choices rather than Luke’s and putting all the agency into Anakin’s hands just destroys the trilogy’s coherence and ignores most of its content in favour of appropriating a handful of scenes into an arc existing only in the prequels. The dilemma of RotJ is how Luke will define ethical adulthood after learning and growing through two previous films worth of challenge, education, failure, and triumph; it’s his choice to love his father and throw down his sword which answers the question the entire story has been asking. Vader’s redemption and the restoration of the galaxy are the consequences of that choice which tell us what kind of world we’re in, but the major dramatic conflict was resolved by Luke’s decision not the response to it.

And, just all over, the idea of Lucas as an infallible auteur is inaccurate and annoying to me. Obviously he’s a tremendous creative force and we wouldn’t have sw without him, but he didn’t create it alone or out of whole cloth. The OT was a very collaborative effort and that’s why it’s what it is and the prequels are what they are. Speaking of which.

2. The hubris of the prequels in general and all the damage their many terrible, protected-from-editors choices do to the symbolic fabric of the sw universe. Midicholrians, Yoda fighting with a lightsabre, Obi-wan as Anakin's surrogate father instead of his peer, incoherent and unmotivated character arcs, the laundry list of serious and meaningful continuity errors, the bad storytelling, the bad direction, the bad characterisation, the shallowness of the parallels which undermine the OT’s imagery, the very clumsy and contradictory way the A/P romance was handled, the weird attitude to romance in general, it goeth on. I don’t want to re-litigate the entire PT here and I’m not going to, but they are both bad as films and bad as prequels. The main idea of them, to add Anakin’s pov and create an actual arc for him as well as to flesh out the themes of compassion and redemption, was totally appropriate. The concept works as a narrative unit, there are lots of powerful thematic elements they introduce, they have a lot of cool building blocks, it’s only in execution and detail that they do a bunch of irreparable harm.

But the constant refrain that only ageing fanboys don’t like them and they only don’t like them because of their themes or because they humanise Anakin... can we not. The shoddy film making in the prequels is an objective fact. If you want to overlook the bad parts for the good or prioritise ideas over technique, that’s fine, but don’t sit here and tell me they’re masterworks of cinema there can be no valid reason to criticise. I was the exact right age for them when I saw them, I am fully on board with the fairy tale nature of sw, I am fully on board with humanising Anakin- the prequels just have a lot of very big problems with a) their scripts and b) their direction, especially of dialogue scenes. If Lucas had acknowledged his limitations like he did back in the day instead of believing his own press, he could have again had the help he obviously needed instead of embarrassing himself.

3. Killing and suppressing the original original trilogy. I consider the fact that the actual original films are not currently available in any form, have never been available in an archival format, and have not been presented in acceptable quality since the VHS release a very troubling case study in the problems of corporate-owned art. LF seizing prints of the films whenever they are shown, destroying the in-camera negatives to make the special editions with no plans to restore them, and doing all in the company’s considerable power to suppress the original versions is something I consider an act of cultural vandalism. The OT defined a whole generation of Hollywood. It had a global impact on popular entertainment. ANH is considered so historically significant it was one of the first films added to the US Library of Congress (Lucas refused to provide even them with a print of the theatrical release, so they made their own viewable scan from the 70s copyright submission).

The fact that the films which made that impact cannot be legally accessed by the public is offensive to me. The fact that Lucas has seen fit to dub over or composite out entire performances (deleting certain actors from the films), to dramatically alter the composition of shots chosen by the original directors, to radically change the entire stylistic tone by completely reinventing the films’ colour timing in attempt to make them match the plasticy palate of the prequels, to shoot new scenes for movies he DID NOT DIRECT, add entire sequences or re-edit existing sequences to the point of being unrecognisable etc. etc. is NOT OKAY WITH ME when he insists that his versions be the ONLY ones available.

I’m okay with the Special Editions existing, though I think they’re mostly... not good... but I’m not okay with them replacing the original films. And all people can say is ‘well, they’re his movies’.

Lucas may have clear legal ownership in the capitalistic sense, but in no way does he have clear artistic ownership. Forget the fans, I’m not one of those people who argue the fans are owed something: A film is always a collaborative exercise and almost never can it be said that the end product is the ultimate responsibility and possession of one person. Even the auteur directors aren't the sole creative vision, even a triple threat like Orson Welles still had cinematographers and production designers, etc. Hundreds of artists work on films. Neither a writer nor a director (nor one person who is both) is The Artist behind a film the way a novelist is The Artist behind a novel. And Lucas did NOT write the screenplays for or direct ESB or RotJ. So in what sense does he have a moral right to alter those films from what the people primarily involved in making them deemed the final product? In what sense would he have the right to make a years-later revision the ONLY version even if he WERE the director?

Then you get into the issue of the immeasurable cultural impact those films had in their original form and the imperative to preserve something that is defining to the history of film and the state of the zeitgeist. I don't think there is any ‘fan entitlement’ involved in saying the originals belonged to the world after being part of its consciousness for decades and it is doing violence to the artistic record to try to erase the films which actually occupied that space. It's exactly like trying to replace every copy of It's a Wonderful Life with a colourised version (well, it's worse but still), and that was something Lucas himself railed against. It’s like if Michaelangelo were miraculously resuscitated and he decided to repaint the Sistine Ceiling to add a gunfight and change his style to something contemporary.

I get genuinely very upset at the cold reality that generations of people are watching sw for the first time and it’s the fucking SE-except-worse they’re seeing. And as fewer people keep physical media and the US corporate oligarchy continues to perform censorship and rewrite history on its streaming services unchecked by any kind of public welfare concerns, you’ll see more and more ‘real Mandela effect’ type shit where the cultural record has suddenly ‘always’ been in line with whatever they want it to be just now. And US media continues to infect us all with its insidious ubiquity. I think misrepresenting and censoring the past is an objectively bad thing and we can’t learn from things we pretend never happened, but apparently not many people are worried about handing the keys to our collective experience to Disney and Amazon.

4. The ‘Jedi don’t marry’ thing and how he wanted this to continue with Luke post-RotJ, so it’s obviously not meant to be part of what was wrong with the order in the prequels. I find this... incoherent on a storytelling level. The moral of the anidala story then indeed becomes just plain ‘romantic love is bad and will make you crazy’, rather than the charitable reading of the prequels which I ascribe to, which is that the problem isn’t Anakin’s love for Padmé, it’s that he ceased to love her and began to covet her. And I can’t help but feel this attitude is maybe an expression of GL’s issues with women following his divorce. I don’t remember if there’s evidence to contradict that take, since it’s been some time since I read about this but yeah. ANH absolutely does sow seeds for possible Luke/Leia development and GL was still married while working on that film. Subsequently he was dead set against Luke ever having a relationship and decided Jedi could not marry. Coincidence?

There’s a lot of blinking red ‘issues with women’ warning signs all over Lucas’s work, but the prequels are really... egregious.

#sw #salt #more unhinged rambling #anyway dowload the despecialised editions #unsubscribe from Disney+#be free #usually we'd be having a big family thing for Boxing Day but you know #so God bless us all at home separately #I hope everyone had as happy a Christmas as possible in keeping with the situation #I should see if I can drag my brother outside to build a snowman

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c-is-for-circinate · 4 years

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I’m not good at violence.

I think I used to be. I was raised to it; I’m a white woman, and I grew up with privilege and with trauma, and none of that makes me special but it does mean I have the capacity to cause harm to others. I know violence. I hate seeing it in other people. I hate seeing it in myself.

And here is a fact: the violence coming from protestors and rioters right now is justified. The violence happening right now has every chance of being effective. This post is a really excellent breakdown of riots, both as an effective means of driving social change, and a valid and justified expression of the well-deserved rage of a community. I support the anger and the violence that is happening right now.

But. But I freeze, when I’m around it, when I see it directed at people around me, when I’m asked to be a part of it. I’ve spent so many years trying to stop myself from lashing out that now it cuts the legs right out from under me. Whether it’s the physical violence of a riot just down the block from my living room windows, or the verbal violence of one friend eviscerating another for daring to be worried about a brother and friends on the police force--I can’t do it. I can’t help wanting to defuse it. I can’t help freezing and wanting to run away.

Is it privilege, that I get to say no to violence in this case? Yes, yes it absolutely is. Everybody should have that privilege. That’s the point of all of this in the first place. And if I used that privilege to just sit down and hide from all of this, and do nothing, and say nothing, except “I’m not good at violence so I’m excused,” well--would that be as evil as all the sins that started this in the first place? Of course not. But it wouldn’t be good, either.

So the question is, what can I do? If now is the time when decent people are called upon to act, what action can I take that will actually help? Is there a place, in this moment of history that seems to be crying out for a violent response, to be non-violent and still help?

Of course there is. There always is. Not because nonviolence is the True, Correct Way (fuck that, sometimes violence is called for, and this is one of them), but because it is always most effective to go after a goal with a multi-pronged approach. It’s not about how I turn myself into a sword. It’s about figuring out what other skills I can bring to bear, and using them effectively.

For me, my number one skill, the thing I make my bread and butter on, the thing I can do right now is: I can talk.

I can talk to the people in charge. I have government representatives on so many levels. Yes, I can write to my senator, to my House of Representatives congressperson, to my state governor--but I can also think small. My city runs on its city council. The representative for my district has an office half a mile from my apartment; I go in there a couple of times a year for parking passes. He’s not a scary, distant stranger. I can email him. And once I’ve done that, if I move on to emailing the mayor, the county commissioner, the state legislature, and up and up and on up the chain, that’s great--but starting local is easy, and in so many ways, it’s the most important thing to do right now. The woman in Washington is trying to save the whole country, but the man in the community garden down the block has the power to do something about rubber bullets and tear gas right now.

I can talk to the people who disagree. I can talk to them with patience, and kindness, and understanding that other activists may not have the time or emotional wherewithal for. My mom wants everybody to be safe and happy, and only sees riots as violence and danger. My friend loves her brother, the cop, and refuses to go along with any absolutist anti-police rhetoric. They are both (as all humans are) wrong about some things and right about others. They’re wrong about whether these riots should happen, but they’re not wrong to be scared. Ultimately, maybe they don’t matter--maybe they deserve to be denounced and shouted at, maybe they deserve violence--but I love them, and I’d rather have them for allies than enemies. I can embrace patience. I can validate their fears and the truths they know, and share with them the truths that I know: that the world is very scary right now, and that’s why demanding reform is so important. That police officers aren’t fundamentally evil, they’re human, but humans can cause harm even by inaction, even by good intentions. That riots and absolutism are violence. That sometimes, violence should happen.

I can talk to the people who don’t know what’s going on. I am a teacher. Even now, in the middle of a quarantine, teaching composition and trigonometry over Zoom in one-on-one tutoring sessions with kids still wearing pyjamas, I’m a teacher. And my students are young, and confused, and scared, because they don’t know what’s right or wrong but they know that the world is angry. I can listen to them. I can be calm, and gentle, and protect them from my own cynicism, because loading young children down with the whole weight of the world is violence, and it most hurts those who can’t fight back. I can help them work through the things they don’t understand.

I can talk to other people in my same position. I can write this post. I can talk to my students and my mom and my other friends, who want to support black communities and protesters and the course of social justice. I can remind people who hate and fear violence that some violence is necessary, and I can help them find ways to contribute if they are as bad at it as I am. I can help steer them away from lashing out in fear and confusion at the very protesters and victims and social justice warriors they want to help. I can patch them up and help them get working again, when the broadsword of “ZERO TOLERANCE” and “IF YOU’RE NOT WITH US, YOU’RE AGAINST US” accidentally catches them on the backswing.

Of course, not everybody’s a talker! And talking, like violence, isn’t ever the one-size-fits-all solution to an entire problem either. You may have to think through your own skills to find a good way to contribute, but there are a few additional things that I know I can also do, and they may be a good start:

I can provide literal, physical support. Maybe this means donating money to bail funds and other BLM-related nonprofits. Maybe this means getting masks and bottled water for protesters well before the protest starts. Maybe it means setting up a space in the courtyard of my apartment building where protesters can seek safety if things go very bad two blocks away again. Monetary donations are the most visible and obvious way we’ve been asked to contribute nonviolently, and they are important. We can all watch an ad-supported donating YouTube stream.

I can help the people caught in the crossfire. Whatever reason or justification these riots have, the accompanying looting is actively harming small black- and minority-owned businesses, including those in my neighborhood. I can help sweep glass and board up windows. I can bring coffee and doughnuts and ask my neighbors what they need to get back up on their feet. I can help clean up the aftermath.

I can remember. This is, as they always say, a marathon, not a sprint. In a few weeks or a few months the active, visible, national news parts of this will be over, but the problems won’t be. Some things may get fixed. Some things won’t. What do I do then? Do I keep writing letters to my local representatives? Do I go to community association meetings and community policing events, and ask awkward questions, and request accountability and reform in polite, measured, nonviolent, implacable, unrelenting ways when the time for outrage and shouting is over? Do I look for the quiet, boring, nonviolent, tedious things that need to be done to help solve the problems of economic disparity that brought this about in the long run? Now might not be the time for quiet, polite, and tedious--but it will come again. There is always quiet, tedious work to be done, when the news crews and protesters go away. I can make sure not to forget that.

#there are a lot of reasons this is not a social justice blog #but this is something I can do

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ansu-gurleht · 4 years

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sermon 35 annotated: the scripture of love

before i begin, it’s important to note that this is probably the trickiest sermon in the whole bunch to interpret. i’ve spent months mulling this one over, and there’s still stuff i don’t understand. so if you disagree with me on any of this, great! i’d love to hear what you have to say! but here’s my best guess:

- - -

'The formulas of proper Velothi magic continue in ancient tradition, but that virility is dead, by which I mean at least replaced.'

the ways of the velothi remain the same in practice, but the “virility,” the purpose and driving force, has shifted from the good daedra to the tribunal.

'Truth owes its medicinal nature to the establishment of the myth of justice.'

justice means getting down to the truth. to know the truth means to know justice. but vivec says justice is a myth. although, ze could be using “myth” in its other sense, not so much as “a falsehood” but “a tradition.” a tradition still need not be necessarily based in fact, but it’s still an extant thing which holds sway over culture.

'Its curative properties it likewise owes to the concept of sacrifice.'

for something to be true, that means many other things must not be true. many possible truths are sacrificed for one single truth. (likewise, for justice to run its course, it is sometimes necessary that the guilty go free and the innocent are punished.)

'Princes, chiefs, and angels all subscribe to the same notion.'

all three of these offices are of authority, which are responsible for establishing justice, which here is associated with truth and sacrifice. (also, “princes” are daedric princes, “chiefs” are aedra, and “angels” are magna-ge.)

'This is a view primarily based on a prolific abolition of an implied profanity, seen in ceremonies, knife fighting, hunting, and the exploration of the poetic.'

vivec says that the idea of “truth = justice + sacrifice” is based on getting rid of the things you assume are taboo (“implied profanity”). this means exploring the taboo and redefining it.

'On the ritual of occasions, which comes to us from the days of the cave glow, I can say nothing more than to loosen your equation of moods to lunar currency.'

the first part might be some kind of reference to plato's allegory of the cave - perhaps equating the dawn era to the cave. "loosen your equation of moods to lunar currency" might mean "don't be afraid to turn towards lorkhan” - see: the lunar lorkhan theory (bear in mind, it IS just a theory in-universe, not a given fact)

'Later, and by that I mean much, much later, my reign will be seen as an act of the highest love, which is a return from the astral destiny and the marriages between.'

despite the many crimes of vivec, ze believes that ultimately hir impact on hir people and the world will be overwhelmingly positive. “the astral destiny” is what vivec believes is hir rightful, fated rule.

'By that I mean the catastrophes, which will come from all five corners.'

“the catastrophes” refer to the “the marriages between” of the last line. note that ze refers to hir sexual assault as a “marriage.”

what are the five corners? the house of troubles has four. the provisional house has four. is this referring to the house of troubles plus tiber septim? it fits best, i think.

'Subsequent are the revisions, differentiated between hope and the distraught, situations that are only required by the periodic death of the immutable.'

history has been, and (according to vivec) must be rewritten on multiple occasions, either out of hope of bettering the people, or to shield them from ugliness. if history is immutable, unchangeable, then rewriting history every now and then is the “periodic death of the immutable.”

'Cosmic time is repeated: I wrote of this in an earlier life.'

if i were more into the concept of cyclic kalpas, this would be a wonderful reference. otherwise, this could refer to a belief vivec had in hir “earlier life” as a mortal, wherein the same (usually traumatic) events happen over and over again. this could apply more generally to certain events recurring, such as the catastrophes mentioned above.

'An imitation of submersion is love's premonition, its folly into the underworld, by which I mean the day you will read about outside of yourself in an age of gold.'

love causes a feeling of being submerged, but it’s only an imitation, a folly. someday, in a better time, you will discover it was always external to you. once you no longer need love, you will understand “its folly into the underworld”

'For on that day, which is a shadow of the sacrificial concept, all history is obliged to see me for what you are: in love with evil.'

“concept of sacrifice,” part of what makes truth healing, is again referenced. but the better time is the “shadow” of that concept, meaning on some level the concept is null, or no longer necessary.

who is vivec addressing? hirself? “in love with evil?” is this guilt? vivec knows that the sacrifices ze made are no longer necessary, and the reversal in “see me for what you are” might imply that ze sees hirself as the final sacrifice - very messianic.

'To keep one's powers intact at such a stage is to allow for the existence of what can only be called a continual spirit.'

seems to be a reference to CHIM and zero-summing. in order to achieve CHIM at the stage whereupon you see the wheel sideways is to keep existing as you are, not to join with the tower and zero-sum. (this seems like a nonsequitur following the lines before. maybe those lines hint at this one more than i suspect?)

'Make of your love a defense against the horizon.'

horizon = the world, the unknown world beyond your body and mind. by loving others, you expand your body and mind, thereby expanding your horizon.

'Pure existence is only granted to the holy, which comes in a myriad of forms, half of them frightening and the other half divided into equal parts purposeless and assured.'

on some level, mortal existence is sullied. only immortals, divines, daedra and aedra, can have a pure existence, although it takes many forms, as many as there are spheres of dominion. the daedra are “frightening” and the aedra are “purposeless and assured”

'Late is the lover that comes to this by any other walking way than the fifth, which is the number of the limit of this world.'

confusing. what makes the lover “late?” isn’t the fifth walking way love? how is five “the number of the limit of this world?” is this world vivec's world, limited by the "five corners" mentioned earlier? or does the sixth walking way go beyond the limit of the world?

'The lover is the highest country and a series of beliefs.'

the lover is both of powerful physical (political) power, as well as philosophical power.

'He is the sacred city bereft of a double.'

the hortator has a double in the sharmat. but vivec, the lover, has no double, no equal.

'The uncultivated land of monsters is the rule.'

“uncultivated land of monsters” could refer to morrowind, as it is well known for being a dangerous and unforgiving place. but “monsters” could also refer to the “children” vivec has been hunting in the past several sermons.

'This is clearly attested by ANU and his double, which love knows never really happened.'

anu’s double is padhome. anu happened b/c he said he happened. padhome never claimed to happen, which makes him anu’s double, his opposite. he is defined only by how he is distinct from anu.

'Similarly, all the other symbols of absolute reality are ancient ideas ready for their graves, or at least the essence of such.'

reality is relative, not absolute. absolutist ideas are “ancient ideas ready for their graves,” outdated philosophies. symbols cannot represent absolute reality: they are merely signposts pointing towards it.

'This scripture is directly ordered by the codes of Mephala, the origin of sex and murder, defeated only by those who take up those ideas without my intervention.'

not sure what ze’s trying to say here. could be saying, "i become the lover through mephala. only the lover who becomes such of their own power can defeat me," with an implied, "no lover can do this, so no lover can defeat me."

'The religious elite is not a tendency or a correlation.'

to become “the religious elite” is not something you happen into, it’s something you strive to become. this line seems to clarify the previous.

'They are dogma complemented by the influence of the untrustworthy sea and the governance of the stars, dominated at the center by the sword, which is nothing without a victim to cleave unto.'

sea = seht, stars = ayem, sword = vehk. the sea and stars exist on their own, but a sword requires a victim - just as a lover requires a beloved.

'This is the love of God and he would show you more: predatory but at the same time instrumental to the will of critical harvest, a scenario by which one becomes as he is, of male and female, the magic hermaphrodite.'

“God” needs a victim "to cleave unto", but it’s ultimately very important that ze does so, in order to become what ze’s meant to be. also, "to cleave" is to make one into two, and vehk seeks to reconcile two parts into one - mortal and immortal, chimer and dunmer, male and female. this dichotomy of opposites is important. ze cleaves them apart and then cleaves them together, over and over.

'Mark the norms of violence and it barely registers, suspended as it is by treaties written between the original spirits.'

original spirits = et’ada. if you go about violence in the way prescribed by them, you will achieve little if anything. it's all like games played between gods.

'This should be seen as an opportunity, and in no way tedious, though some will give up for it is easier to kiss the lover than become one.'

but vivec seems to claim that these little victories within ancient boundaries can be useful. the lover seems to live within these boundaries, so as to show others how to escape them. but to take such a position is very difficult, much more so than simply accepting the lover’s assistance.

'The lower regions crawl with these souls, caves of shallow treasures, meeting in places to testify by way of extension, when love is only satisfied by a considerable (incalculable) effort.'

there’s some obvious innuendo here, but i won’t dwell on it. but this line really sums up what i think the walking way of love is. it’s creating a network of “lovers” who (through incalculable effort) help bring all of the souls it can into its breast (‘testify by way of extension’), so as to expand the network as well as help those it can to achieve something greater.

#tes #tesblr #teslore #36 lessons of vivec #vivec #morrowind #almsivi #chim

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liddolwhynot2000 · 3 years

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SPOILERS: DUN READ ANIME ONLY

......

THE ENDING: possible theory

......

I've been reading those Falco theories and I had to add my own two cents.

So, we all all that the entire reason Eren got the co ordinate was because he doesn't have royal blood, so he wouldn't fall under the first Kings curse. Which is true, but it also meant that he couldn't utilise the Co ordinate power without zeke or historia. Which means he isn't the perfect vessel, like we initially thought.

Falco was turned into a titan using Zeke's Royal blood, which gave him a degree of control over his titan that the previous jaw titan shifters didn't have. Like the flying upgrade. So if he eats Eren, THEN HE'LL BE THE PERFECT VESSEL.

Because Falco technically has unlimited access to royal blood, in his spine. But he's not actually a member of royal blood. So the curse of renouncing war won't affect him. It's Isayama way of finally creating a loophole in the curse. Falco can use the power of the co ordinate the way a member of royal blood could have before the curse (before the walls were built) just like how he used the jaw titan to make it fly!!

Oh and why falco in particular? The episode we saw today, it mentioned falco saying he dreamt of flying with swords. And maybe it was ymirs memories? Except no. The jaw titan doesn't have that ability. However, the attack titan is shown to send memories back to its shifter, even before they become shifter. Attack on titan episode 1, Eren wakes up crying from a dream. A series of flashes show him seeing his mothers death. Except it hasn't happened yet. Its the future. Falco likely saw Erens past memories in a haze.

OKAY SO COMING TO YMIR. I promise I'm trying to make sense.

We all know she's calling the shots right now. My own theory is, Eren bargained with ymir. She wanted to kill everyone by forcefully taking control of eren in his titan form.

Remember Mikasa nearly getting punched the first time he transformed? That was probs ymir being too excited and ready to just kill everyone using Erens titan form.

However, she got overwhelmed by Armin talking to Eren, causing him to regain control. Which is why she shut Armin up just now. If he talks to Eren, Eren might waver and force Ymir into making a mistake. One that could make Eren vulnerable to being attacked. Or eaten. Something she's clearly trying to avoid, as evidenced by the army of titans protecting him.

Okay so basically, Eren promised to lay the ground work for the rumbling, getting to zeke and all, if Ymir spared paradise Island. Eren is by no means innocent, because ymir killing everyone else off is beneficial for his people and he's okay with billions of people being sacrificed. But his hand has also been forced.

Because people, Eren isn't the perfect vessel to use the coordinate power. He's the perfect vessel for ymir to extract her revenge. For her to use the founding titans power. All these years, why didn't she just take control of the coordinate shifter and release the rumbling? Simple, becuase every single one had royal blood. Ymir is helpless against Royal blood, she can be controlled and contained as long as the co ordinate shifter has royal blood. Eren is the one she's been waiting for, for all the following reasons:

(a) he doesn't have royal blood, so she can use the co ordinate power through him. Forcefully if she wants to and he can't do shit about it because he has no way of controlling her.

(b) Erens personality and goals line up with hers. He actually allows her to use him, making it easier for her to carry out her plans, as we see in the new chapters.

(c) this goes with (b). Remember all those times eren struggled to use his powers when he needed to most? Like hannes dying? Countless cormades dying for him? I think it was ymir messing with him on purpose. A way of showing him who the real boss is by cutting his power off at will. Reminding him how helpless he is. Eren didn't notice it at the time, but once he started accessing memories, he realized what she had been doing and recognised her power over him. Hence, why he bargains with her for paradise. He can't win against her.

Why didn't ymir immediately take control of eren when he became a shifter? I think the attack titan and its drive for freedom impacted her efforts back then. The attack titan might have kept her at bay for a while, rendering her unable to fully control eren from the very start. Maybe thats why she could never fully cut off erens access to his powers, instead ymir ended up rendering eren powerless during specific, imapctful moments that would haunt him. The attack titan probs gave eren an urge to fight that overwhelmed her ability to control eren completely back then. Also, she needed a member of royal blood for the rumbling, so she probs wanted eren to find that person.

OKAY SO BACK TO FALCO NOW

Falco, however, does have some royal blood, because he was turned into a titan through royal blood, meaning ymir can't take control of him like with Eren. This is the loophole. Falco will be the only Co ordinate titan shifter, since the conception of titans, in 2000 years, who technically doesn't have royal blood. But also does have royal blood. He has immunity to Ymir controlling him because he techncially has some royal blood and won't be held back by the vow of renouncing war becuase he technically doesn't have royal blood. Unlike the shifters who existed before the vow, with full access to the co ordinate powers, he genuinely wants to end the war.

The war could have ended before the walls were built, if the greedy royal fuckers who had the founding titan actually wanted to end it. To them, it was a way of clinging to power and earning riches. No one who had the power to end the war, ever wanted to actually end the eldian war. Until Falco.

Eren bumping into a Falco was no accident. Falco witnessing the brutality of the war firsthand, watching everyone die in all these chapters was no co incidence. His young age. Combined with his genuine intent to fight and protect, he'll make the deicison that someone should have made hundreds of years ago. To end all titans.

It's likely he'll end the 13 year curse with that too. Just ending titans themselves will technically set ymir free to just die. Her own access to power stems from the paths I think, so Falco might chose to just destroy that dimension. Thus ending titans from being created by ymir. She finally just dies, no longer a slave who has to build and heal titans and titan shifters. She will truly be free from her suffering.

In the anime opening, we see erens titan and some colossal titans in hardened form. I think all the colossal titans will harden, then turn to dust. The walls on paradise Island will cease to exist. The titan shifters left alive will lose their powers and will no longer deal with the curse. Maybe Mikasa and levi would lose their strength because titans not existing anymore could mean that the by products of titan science, much like shifters, will just be normal human beings again. No eldian can ever turn into a titan again, including Falco himself. The titan war will come to an end.

But this is no happy ending. Because the equivalent to a world war would start. People will seek revenge on paradise Island. Eren, who committed henious crimes to protect his people, damned them for eternity. No one will believe that the people had no hand in a erens crime (Well, mostly) and they'll blame all the inhabitants equally. I can see war being waged on the island, but there aren't any titans to fight with. Just sub par military forces having it out. Just like in our human history, senseless human violence will take place. Its likely the island the entire story had been about, the island that just wanted to exist in peace, will perish in brutal wars. Other countries, weakened by the rumbling, will be attacked by those who weren't harmed by the rumbling. A destructive world war, that'll cast the world into a dark age, will begin.

Eldians will be free from being turned into titans, but the freedom came at the cost of a war they could never win.

....

#Snk #Aot #Falco #My AOT ending theory #Attack on titan #Attackontitan #Shingekinokoiyojin #Couldn't get this out of my head #Fjcnfjfjdj #Snk135 #Snk135 spoilers #NOT FOR ANIME ONLY #MANGA SPOILERS

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recentanimenews · 3 years

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ESSAY: Berserk's Journey of Acceptance Over 30 Years of Fandom

My descent into anime fandom began in the '90s, and just as watching Neon Genesis Evangelion caused my first revelation that cartoons could be art, reading Berserk gave me the same realization about comics. The news of Kentaro Miura’s death, who passed on May 6, has been emotionally complicated for me, as it's the first time a celebrity's death has hit truly close to home. In addition to being the lynchpin for several important personal revelations, Berserk is one of the longest-lasting works I’ve followed and that I must suddenly bid farewell to after existing alongside it for two-thirds of my life.

Berserk is a monolith not only for anime and manga, but also fantasy literature, video games, you name it. It might be one of the single most influential works of the ‘80s — on a level similar to Blade Runner — to a degree where it’s difficult to imagine what the world might look like without it, and the generations of creators the series inspired.

Although not the first, Guts is the prototypical large sword anime boy: Final Fantasy VII's Cloud Strife, Siegfried/Nightmare from Soulcalibur, and Black Clover's Asta are all links in the same chain, with other series like Dark Souls and Claymore taking clear inspiration from Berserk. But even deeper than that, the three-character dynamic between Guts, Griffith, and Casca, the monster designs, the grotesque violence, Miura’s image of hell — all of them can be spotted in countless pieces of media across the globe.

Despite this, it just doesn’t seem like people talk about it very much. For over 20 years, Berserk has stood among the critical pantheon for both anime and manga, but it doesn’t spur conversations in the same way as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Akira, or Dragon Ball Z still do today. Its graphic depictions certainly represent a barrier to entry much higher than even the aforementioned company.

Seeing the internet exude sympathy and fond reminiscing about Berserk was immensely validating and has been my single most therapeutic experience online. Moreso, it reminded me that the fans have always been there. And even looking into it, Berserk is the single best-selling property in the 35-year history of Dark Horse. My feeling is that Berserk just has something about it that reaches deep into you and gets stuck there.

I recall introducing one of my housemates to Berserk a few years ago — a person with all the intelligence and personal drive to both work on cancer research at Stanford while pursuing his own MD and maintaining a level of physical fitness that was frankly unreasonable for the hours that he kept. He was NOT in any way analytical about the media he consumed, but watching him sitting on the floor turning all his considerable willpower and intellect toward delivering an off-the-cuff treatise on how Berserk had so deeply touched him was a sight in itself to behold. His thoughts on the series' portrayal of sex as fundamentally violent leading up to Guts and Casca’s first moment of intimacy in the Golden Age movies was one of the most beautiful sentiments I’d ever heard in reaction to a piece of fiction.

I don’t think I’d ever heard him provide anything but a surface-level take on a piece of media before or since. He was a pretty forthright guy, but the way he just cut into himself and let his feelings pour out onto the floor left me awestruck. The process of reading Berserk can strike emotional chords within you that are tough to untangle. I’ve been writing analysis and experiential pieces related to anime and manga for almost ten years — and interacting with Berserk’s world for almost 30 years — and writing may just be yet another attempt for me to pull my own twisted-up feelings about it apart.

Berserk is one of the most deeply personal works I’ve ever read, both for myself and in my perception of Miura's works. The series' transformation in the past 30 years artistically and thematically is so singular it's difficult to find another work that comes close. The author of Hajime no Ippo, who was among the first to see Berserk as Miura presented him with some early drafts working as his assistant, claimed that the design for Guts and Puck had come from a mess of ideas Miura had been working on since his early school days.

写真は三浦建太郎君が寄稿してくれた鷹村です。今かなり感傷的になっています。思い出話をさせて下さい。僕が初めての週刊連載でスタッフが一人もいなくて困っていたら手伝いにきてくれました。彼が18で僕が19です。某大学の芸術学部の学生で講義明けにスケッチブックを片手に来てくれました。 pic.twitter.com/hT1JCWBTKu

— 森川ジョージ (@WANPOWANWAN) May 20, 2021

Miura claimed two of his big influences were Go Nagai’s Violence Jack and Tetsuo Hara and Buronson’s Fist of the North Star. Miura wears these influences on his sleeve, discovering the early concepts that had percolated in his mind just felt right. The beginning of Berserk, despite its amazing visual power, feels like it sprang from a very juvenile concept: Guts is a hypermasculine lone traveler breaking his body against nightmarish creatures in his single-minded pursuit of revenge, rigidly independent and distrustful of others due to his dark past.

Uncompromising, rugged, independent, a really big sword ... Guts is a romantic ideal of masculinity on a quest to personally serve justice against the one who wronged him. Almost nefarious in the manner in which his character checked these boxes, especially when it came to his grim stoicism, unblinkingly facing his struggle against literal cosmic forces. Never doubting himself, never trusting others, never weeping for what he had lost.

Miura said he sketched out most of the backstory when the manga began publication, so I have to assume the larger strokes of the Golden Arc were pretty well figured out from the outset, but I’m less sure if he had fully realized where he wanted to take the story to where we are now. After the introductory mini-arcs of demon-slaying, Berserk encounters Griffith and the story draws us back to a massive flashback arc. We see the same Guts living as a lone mercenary who Griffith persuades to join the Band of the Hawk to help realize his ambitions of rising above the circumstances of his birth to join the nobility.

We discover the horrific abuses of Guts’ adoptive father and eventually learn that Guts, Griffith, and Casca are all victims of sexual violence. The story develops into a sprawling semi-historical epic featuring politics and war, but the real narrative is in the growing companionship between Guts and the members of the band. Directionless and traumatized by his childhood, Guts slowly finds a purpose helping Griffith realize his dream and the courage to allow others to grow close to him.

Miura mentioned that many Band of the Hawk members were based on his early friend groups. Although he was always sparse with details about his personal life, he has spoken about how many of them referred to themselves as aspiring manga authors and how he felt an intense sense of competition, admitting that among them he may have been the only one seriously working toward that goal, desperately keeping ahead in his perceived race against them. It’s intriguing thinking about how much of this angst may have made it to the pages, as it's almost impossible not to imagine Miura put quite a bit of himself in Guts.

Perhaps this is why it feels so real and makes The Eclipse — the quintessential anime betrayal at the hands of Griffith — all the more heartbreaking. The raw violence and macabre imagery certainly helped. While Miura owed Hellraiser’s Cenobites much in the designs of the God Hand, his macabre portrayal of the Band of the Hawk’s eradication within the literal bowels of hell, the massive hand, the black sun, the Skull Knight, and even Miura’s page compositions have been endlessly referenced, copied, and outright plagiarized since.

The events were tragic in any context and I have heard many deeply personal experiences others drew from The Eclipse sympathizing with Guts, Casca, or even Griffith’s spiral driven by his perceived rejection by Guts. Mine were most closely aligned with the tragedy of Guts having overcome such painful circumstances to not only reject his own self enforced solitude, but to fearlessly express his affection for his loved ones.

The Golden Age was a methodical destruction of Guts’ self-destructive methods of preservation ruined in a single selfish act by his most trusted friend, leaving him once again alone and afraid of growing close to those around him. It ripped the romance of Guts’ mission and eventually took the story down a course I never expected. Berserk wasn’t a story of revenge but one of recovery.

Guess that’s enough beating around the bush, as I should talk about how this shift affected me personally. When I was young, when I began reading Berserk I found Guts’ unflagging stoicism to be really cool, not just aesthetically but in how I understood guys were supposed to be. I was slow to make friends during school and my rapidly gentrifying neighborhood had my friends' parents moving away faster than I could find new ones. At some point I think I became too afraid of putting myself out there anymore, risking rejection when even acceptance was so fleeting. It began to feel easier just to resign myself to solitude and pretend my circumstances were beyond my own power to correct.

Unfortunately, I became the stereotypical kid who ate alone during lunch break. Under the invisible expectations demanding I not display weakness, my loneliness was compounded by shame for feeling loneliness. My only recourse was to reveal none of those feelings and pretend the whole thing didn't bother me at all. Needless to say my attempts to cope probably fooled no one and only made things even worse, but I really didn’t know of any better way to handle my situation. I felt bad, I felt even worse about feeling bad and had been provided with zero tools to cope, much less even admit that I had a problem at all.

The arcs following the Golden Age completely changed my perspective. Guts had tragically, yet understandably, cut himself off from others to save himself from experiencing that trauma again and, in effect, denied himself any opportunity to allow himself to be happy again. As he began to meet other characters that attached themselves to him, between Rickert and Erica spending months waiting worried for his return, and even the slimmest hope to rescuing Casca began to seed itself into the story, I could only see Guts as a fool pursuing a grim and hopeless task rather than appreciating everything that he had managed to hold onto.

The same attributes that made Guts so compelling in the opening chapters were revealed as his true enemy. Griffith had committed an unforgivable act but Guts’ journey for revenge was one of self-inflicted pain and fear. The romanticism was gone.

Farnese’s inclusion in the Conviction arc was a revelation. Among the many brilliant aspects of her character, I identified with her simply for how she acted as a stand-in for myself as the reader: Plagued by self-doubt and fear, desperate to maintain her own stoic and uncompromising image, and resentful of her place in the world. She sees Guts’ fearlessness in the face of cosmic horror and believes she might be able to learn his confidence.

But in following Guts, Farnese instead finds a teacher in Casca. In taking care of her, Farnese develops a connection and is able to experience genuine sympathy that develops into a sense of responsibility. Caring for Casca allows Farnese to develop the courage she was lacking not out of reckless self-abandon but compassion.

I can’t exactly credit Berserk with turning my life around, but I feel that it genuinely helped crystallize within me a sense of growing doubts about my maladjusted high school days. My growing awareness of Guts' undeniable role in his own suffering forced me to admit my own role in mine and created a determination to take action to fix it rather than pretending enough stoicism might actually result in some sort of solution.

I visited the Berserk subreddit from time to time and always enjoyed the group's penchant for referring to all the members of the board as “fellow strugglers,” owing both to Skull Knight’s label for Guts and their own tongue-in-cheek humor at waiting through extended hiatuses. Only in retrospect did it feel truly fitting to me. Trying to avoid the pitfalls of Guts’ path is a constant struggle. Today I’m blessed with many good friends but still feel primal pangs of fear holding me back nearly every time I meet someone, the idea of telling others how much they mean to me or even sharing my thoughts and feelings about something I care about deeply as if each action will expose me to attack.

It’s taken time to pull myself away from the behaviors that were so deeply ingrained and it’s a journey where I’m not sure the work will ever be truly done, but witnessing Guts’ own slow progress has been a constant source of reassurance. My sense of admiration for Miura’s epic tale of a man allowing himself to let go after suffering such devastating circumstances brought my own humble problems and their way out into focus.

Over the years I, and many others, have been forced to come to terms with the fact that Berserk would likely never finish. The pattern of long, unexplained hiatuses and the solemn recognition that any of them could be the last is a familiar one. The double-edged sword of manga largely being works created by a single individual is that there is rarely anyone in a position to pick up the torch when the creator calls it quits. Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond, Ai Yazawa’s Nana, and likely Yoshihiro Togashi’s Hunter X Hunter all frozen in indefinite hiatus, the publishers respectfully holding the door open should the creators ever decide to return, leaving it in a liminal space with no sense of conclusion for the fans except what we can make for ourselves.

The reason for Miura’s hiatuses was unclear. Fans liked to joke that he would take long breaks to play The Idolmaster, but Miura was also infamous for taking “breaks” spent minutely illustrating panels to his exacting artistic standard, creating a tumultuous release schedule during the wars featuring thousands of tiny soldiers all dressed in period-appropriate armor. If his health was becoming an issue, it’s uncommon that news would be shared with fans for most authors, much less one as private as Miura.

Even without delays, the story Miura was building just seemed to be getting too big. The scale continued to grow, his narrative ambition swelling even faster after 20 years of publication, the depth and breadth of his universe constantly expanding. The fan-dubbed “Millennium Falcon Arc” was massive, changing the landscape of Berserk from a low fantasy plagued by roaming demons to a high fantasy where godlike beings of sanity-defying size battled for control of the world. How could Guts even meet Griffith again? What might Casca want to do when her sanity returned? What are the origins of the Skull Knight? And would he do battle with the God Hand? There was too much left to happen and Miura’s art only grew more and more elaborate. It would take decades to resolve all this.

But it didn’t need to. I imagine we’ll never get a precise picture of the final years of Miura’s life leading up to his tragic passing. In the final chapters he released, it felt as if he had directed the story to some conclusion. The unfinished Fantasia arc finds Guts and his newfound band finding a way to finally restore Casca’s sanity and — although there is still unmistakably a boundary separating them — both seem resolute in finding a way to mend their shared wounds together.

One of the final chapters features Guts drinking around the campfire with the two other men of his group, Serpico and Roderick, as he entrusts the recovery of Casca to Schierke and Farnese. It's a scene that, in the original Band of the Hawk, would have found Guts brooding as his fellows engage in bluster. The tone of this conversation, however, is completely different. The three commiserate over how much has changed and the strength each has found in the companionship of the others. After everything that has happened, Guts declares that he is grateful.

The suicidal dedication to his quest for vengeance and dispassionate pragmatism that defined Guts in the earliest chapters is gone. Although they first appeared to be a source of strength as the Black Swordsman, he has learned that they rose from the fear of losing his friends again, from letting others close enough to harm him, and from having no other purpose without others. Whether or not Guts and Griffith were to ever meet again, Guts has rediscovered the strength to no longer carry his burdens alone.

All that has happened is all there will ever be. We too must be grateful.

Peter Fobian is an Associate Manager of Social Video at Crunchyroll, writer for Anime Academy and Anime in America, and an editor at Anime Feminist. You can follow him on Twitter @PeterFobian.

By: Peter Fobian

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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marinerofthestars · 4 years

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the zodai tag

bit of a late arrival to this fandom, but better late than never, i suppose!

1. How did you hear about the books? about a year ago, i was doing research on the zodiac for an urban fantasy project i’m working on, tales from omphalos, when i found the house ophiuchus info page on the zodiac website. unfortunately life got in the way and i forgot the series for a while, but a little while ago i remembered zodiac’s worldbuilding and got sucked right back in!

2. What is your favorite moment from the series so far? it’s hard to choose just one moment, but i’d have to say skarlet and rho’s first meeting in black moon for how atypical it is. we know skarlet is the hypotenuse in rho and hysan’s love triangle, but she doesn’t act like the stereotypical petty Other Woman at all. she’s charismatic, she’s genuinely fun to be around, and she has sympathetic motives and ambitions. above all, she’s actually super nice towards rho, and doesn’t let her feelings get in the way of their political collaboration. (and then thirteen rising assassinated her character. yes i am still bitter about it why do you ask)

3. Which House are you from? house leo!

4. What do you like about your House? artistry pride is something i’d really love to be a part of as an aspiring author, i have blaze and trax (both criminally underrated characters imo) as my housemates, and our zodai wield FLAMING SWORDS in battle. what’s not to love?

5. If you had to change Houses, which House would you pick? since leo really vibes with my passion for art, this is definitely a tricky question! probably either libra (police brutality is a thing of the past with bind, and their government seems like they have their act together), scorpio (much waterworld. much ambition. much cool tech. wow), or sagittarius (diversity, democracies where the voices of the young and non-complacent can be heard, and really vibrant cities are all things i appreciate)

6. Which system would you most like to visit? capricorn, no question. the zodiax is THE single most location in the entire zodiac bar none to me - an ancient complex the size of a planet, its oldest curators having access to transportation systems most inhabitants don’t even know about? an archive of humanity’s collective knowledge, so massive it has hotels and restaurants within it because leaving to sleep or eat is just so impractical? LET ME TOUR IT. LET ME UNCOVER ITS MYSTERIES I KNOW THEY EXIST (i think history is rad okay)

7. If you got to choose, which Zodiac technology would you like to have? probably...the tattoo? i don’t have anywhere enough knowledge about neuroscience/engineering to design my own, but assuming that i did, i’d love to design a tattoo that can interface with my brain and with digital art software, so that i can turn whatever ideas i have in my head into artwork!

8. Which character would you want as a best friend? skarlet. she’s six feet tall, buff as all hell, super attractive, prefers diplomacy to violence but still perfectly capable of kicking ass, and an outspoken risers’ rights activist. what’s not to love? (though knowing the type of people i usually hang out with, i’d probably end up with like. twain or gyzer as my best friend. one can dream though)

9. Which sign would you like to date? aries, because as previously stated skarlet is awesome. (a sentiment i will continue to reiterate) failing that, either libra for their sense of justice, scorpio for their ambition and passion, or aquarius for their innovative mindset.

10. Who do you hope Rho “ends up with?” (If anyone at all!) firstly, thank you for acknowledging that rho might not be interested in romance after everything she’s been through. (aromantic rho? arho?) secondly: skarlet.

this might be a little controversial, but i feel like in some regards, rho has far more chemistry with skarlet than she has with hysan. (ms. russell. i am sorry but. i have. Issues. with ‘centaur smile’ and the context surrounding it doesn’t make it any better) all of their interactions are marked by a noted admiration on rho’s part, and it’s not just merely admiration of her frankly enviable body (there’s more than enough of that, but it feels respectful somehow, there’s no five-page purple prosey ramblings on how the sweat glints on skar’s brow as she lifts weights, unlike with some people - sorry, mathias), but admiration of skar’s personality.

her charisma. her ambitions. her drive to fight for people who’ve been beaten down for millennia, to give a voice to the voiceless. to use violence as a last resort, not a first strike.

even at their absolute worst in thirteen rising, even when they’re butting heads, they don’t let it get in the way of doing what needs to be done. hell, skarlet even points out that she wouldn’t be giving rho such a hard time if she didn’t respect the hell out of rho, if she didn’t think she was tough enough to take it. there’s a sort of unspoken bond between them, a slow orbit that they’re both caught in. at the end of the series, they part way on relatively good terms, and with the hope that maybe, just maybe, that orbit might become something more than just professional acquaintance.

also their oppositional dichotomy of cardinal fire/water signs is an awesome aesthetic that i really wish was brought up more than it was in canon :(

11. If you could record a Snow Globe, what would you put in it? only A snow globe? you’re not exactly giving me a lot of slack here in all seriousness, if i had to choose one moment to record in a snow globe, probably the moment i first came up with the idea for the urban fantasy project i mentioned above, tales from omphalos. i’ve never been devoted as much time to or invested as much energy in a project as i have with tfo, and i’d like to keep an easily accessible record of my original vision on hand. and hey, if by some chance i manage to follow in romina’s footsteps, get tales from omphalos professionally published, have it become a big success with a respectable fandom, i’d like to look back every once in a while, and remember how it all began.

12. If you had the chance to tell Rho anything, what advice/encouragement would you give her? - lies, especially lies of omission, are necessary a lot of the time to get ahead in politics and life in general use that being ahead to help out the people and groups you care about - don't trust the immortal child-aristocrats or expect them to behave in a way that won't inevitably screw you over - if you must play nice with them, figure out how to decrease gemini’s horrific income inequality, and see what you can do about exporting cell rejuvenation therapy to the wider zodiac - ferez is right, risers are the future and you need to acknowledge that going forward - skarlet is excellent at garnering support and bridging generational gaps, and while fernanda purecell is a bougie running dog, she’s got her head screwed on the right way regarding politics and institutional riserphobia; together, the three of you should be able to make some headway towards making amends for past wrongs - i don’t care if family heads have suffrage, matriarchal aristocracy (aristocratic matriarchy?) is NOT a democracy or a form of government that looks out for the rights of men/NB people/agender people/multigender people/intersex people/you get the idea - romance is by no means an exclusively two-player game, and skarlet has said she would be open to an arrangement; however, if you MUST insist on ignoring that polyamory is a thing, go for the six-foot risers' rights activist - i’m sorry about all the bullshit with your mom. whatever the end result was, whatever her intentions, it does not excuse the way she treated you and your dad and stanton. it’s okay to feel like shit because of what she did to you, and not being able to wall it off doesn’t make you weak or anything dumb like that - you’re already far stronger than she ever was. i know how much it sucks - i was in the same situation as you once - but believe me when i say that things do get better. you’re not alone here, rho. - please you gotta fight the gender binary you live in the FUTURE you gotta do it you gotta-

BONUS QUESTION 13. How would you react if your friend became a Riser? let them know that I love and support them no matter what their house, that being the way that they are is totally valid, and that anyone who says otherwise will have to answer to my fist in their face. if they’re unbalanced, make sure they have access to any resources they need (possibly including memory recap vlogs, definitely including medication and therapy to help out with any health issues they may develop).

#zodiac #zodiac books #wandering star #black moon #thirteen rising #romina russell #romina garber #the zodai tag #skarho #rhoses and thornes #look i stan skarlet okay

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mamthew · 4 years

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A Final Fantasy Ranking

Over the course of the quarantine, and because I had such a good time with the Final Fantasy VII Remake, I've ended up blazing through a ton of Final Fantasy games. Since April, I've played IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, and XIII. 6, 7, 9, and 10 I'd beaten before. 4, 12, and 13 I'd played to some capacity before. 5 and 8 were completely new experiences. I had no interest in going further back than IV, since it was the first one to really put any effort into character work, and I didn't play either MMO because MMOs don't really appeal to me (I'm planning to try XIV whenever this new update drops that makes the story mode more accessible, but it keeps getting pushed back so oh well). I also didn't replay XV because I've played XV three times and watched other people play it in its entirety twice, so I have a much better handle on it than any other game in the series.

Anyway, I didn't really have any plans for what I'd do with this, besides get a better understanding of the series as a whole, but I was kinda inspired to do my own Final Fantasy ranking. I'll probably be a bit more detailed than I should be because I tend to overanalyze my media and end up having too much to say. I’m actually not placing VII Remake in this ranking half because I regard it as a spinoff and half because it’s not yet a complete story, even though Part 1 is unquestionably a complete game. If I were to put it somewhere, it would probably be close to the top, possibly even in second place. Also worth noting that this is gonna have SPOILERS for every game I discuss here. I really just wanna use this as a place to nail down some of my thoughts on these games, so they’re pretty stream of consciousness and I didn’t bother avoiding any details from the plots.

10: Final Fantasy VIII.

I don’t think there’s another game in the series with a more obvious corporate hand in it than VIII. It’s kinda the Fant4stic of FF games; there are the bones of a substantive game in there somewhere, but every aspect of the game is such a bald attempt at checking off a 1999 list of “things gamers want” that the whole affair feels hollow and sickening. A major trend I’ve noticed throughout this series is the extent to which FFVII’s success pushed the architects of almost every subsequent game to try to recapture whatever it was that worked about VII, and VIII got the worst of it. It’s got the sullen guy with a special sword. It’s got the sci-fi. It’s got the terrorists with hearts of gold fighting against an oppressive state. It’s got the train scenes. It’s got the case(s) of amnesia that hides the true premise of the story. It’s got the ability to give any character any loadout.

Besides that, they kinda crammed in just a bunch of stuff popular with kids at the time. Jurassic Park? It’s in there. Beauty and the Beast? Here’s the ballroom scene. Hunchback of Notre Dame? Here’s that carnival. Alien? Now you’re alone on a spaceship running away from a horror monster. Saving Private Ryan? The party shares brains with war veterans and dreams of their experiences at war I guess. Half of anime? It’s all about a high school for mercenaries and the party is trying to get back in time for the school festival. Fandom culture? Zines are a collectible item, and each one you find adds an update to Selphie's Geocities page. It also has astronauts, and transformers, and a haunted castle, and a prison break, and Rome, and Alpine Wakanda, and war crimes, and lion cubs that have attained enlightenment, and there’s almost no connective tissue from one idea to the next.

Also the junction system is convoluted and terrible, using magic makes your stats worse, all enemies level up every time you do, and I couldn’t tell you which character excelled in what stats. The characters were all very flat, and the first time I felt like I was seeing the characters interact in ways that helped me to understand them was in the cutscene that plays during the end credits.

Also the female lead’s role in the story changes entirely with no warning every five hours or so. She’s a terrorist, oh no she’s aristocracy in the country she’s terroristing against, oh no she’s jealous of the others because they grew up together and she didn’t, oh no she’s Sandra Bullock in Gravity, oh no she’s the villain and it’s too dangerous to let her out, oh no it’s actually fine and they were bad for locking her up.

It’s an absolute disaster of a game. However, the music and background art is absolutely beautiful. Maybe they never gave me a good enough reason to be in an evil time traveling haunted castle, but damn is it a gorgeous rendering of an evil time traveling haunted castle.

9: Final Fantasy XII.

I’ve known for years that FFXII had issues in development. The writers came up with a story for it, and execs got scared because there were no young characters and they’d convinced themselves that young protagonists are what makes games sell. So two more characters - Vaan and Penelo - were added, one was framed as the protagonist of the story, and the entire story was rewritten so it could feasibly be from his perspective.

While the two characters they added are egregiously tangential to the plot, XII honestly has no protagonist. The writers originally wanted Basch to be the protagonist, but his entire arc is really just following Ashe around and being sad about his evil twin. Ashe is probably the most important to the story, but doesn’t have much presence for a good chunk of the story, and makes her most character-defining choice offscreen before having it stolen from her by a side character. Balthier has the largest presence in the story, and is most closely related to most of the events of the story, but has pretty much no role in the ending.

Honestly, if I were writing FFXII and told it needed a young protagonist, I would have aged up and expanded the role of Larsa, the brother of the main villain, who shows up as a temporary party member from time to time. The entire game is about family ties, and a journey spotlighting Larsa could have involved his learning about Ashe, Basch, Balthier and Fran’s family situations and using their experiences to grapple with his own. Damn, now I’m sitting here thinking about how good that could have been.

As it is, the game feels disjointed and aimless, and the ending is so bad it’s farcical. When I reached the ending, I watched Basch and Ashe forgive Basch’s evil twin for his villainy rampage, harking back to the moment earlier in the game when Ashe turned down the chance to gain powers that would have allowed her to avenge her country because she realized that those powers could also drive her to hurt innocents in the crossfire. In this moment, I realized how Vaan fit in as the protagonist of the game. “Oh, he’s going to realize that violence begets violence, and that he must break the cycle by forgiving Vayne for the death of his brother. He’s going to let go of that hatred he’s been trying to push onto someone for so long, and it’ll finally allow him to heal.” I realized that even though the road to this point was rocky, the writers had managed to craft a satisfying ending from the seemingly disparate pieces of this uneven plot.

And then Vaan picked up a sword and screamed AAAAAAAAAAA and charged Vayne down and stabbed him, and Vayne turned into a shrapnel robot dragon and exploded all the star wars ships and I threw my controller aside and laughed uncontrollably while my characters beat him up and completed the game on their own without any further input from me.

Oh yeah, the battle system is also incredibly boring. Instead of battling, the player writes up an AI script for each character, then lets them act based on those scripts. I would straight up put the controller down and watch youtube videos whenever a group of enemies showed up. I was pretty excited about the job system, but then there didn’t really feel like much of a difference between jobs, and my characters all behaved pretty much the same as each other.

The hands-off battle system, unfocused story, lethargic voice acting, and tuneless music all left me pretty uninvested in the whole affair. The art style and locations are beautiful, though, and it did make me want to eventually check out some of the Tactics games, which take place in the same universe but are supposed to have excellent stories and gameplay.

8: Final Fantasy XIII.

I’m not sure I’ve ever had two such opposing opinions of a game’s story vs. its gameplay. This game is the only one that plays with a bunch of story elements from FFIX, which did a lot to endear it to me. It’s sort of a game in which the protagonists are Kuja, the villain of IX. Like Kuja, they are created as tools by an uncaring god for the purpose of fighting against one world on behalf of another world, and are subsequently forced to grapple with the horrors of having an artificially shortened lifespan.

The story actually has a lot of Leftist themes, too. The gods of that universe spread ideology among the populace, and the people unquestioningly believe these false stories, as the gods have provided for them for as long as there has been written history. Much of the character arcs center on the characters being forcibly removed from their places within those ideological frameworks and having to unlearn what they’d always believed to be objectively true about the world.

So the story actually is pretty good, but it’s held back by some really clumsy storytelling; it constantly uses undefined jargon, has almost no side characters with which it might flesh out the world, actively fights against players trying to glean information from environmental details, and maintains (at least for me) a weird disconnect between the characters in the gameplay and the characters in the cutscenes. I think this partly stems from Square’s original failed plan for FFXIII to be the first game in a much larger series of games sharing themes and major story details. Despite these issues, however, the characters are all likeable and (mostly) believable, and their interactions are grounded in real emotional weight even while their universe feels intangible.

This all got dragged down by the gameplay, which is total dogshit. It’s got the worst battle system I think I’ve seen in an RPG. The game only stops being doggedly, unflinchingly linear about thirty hours in, the whole game took me about fifty hours, and I spent the last fifteen hours beating my head against each individual battle, waiting until the system hiccuped long enough to accidentally slide me a win. That meant I had about a five hour window of euphoric play, convinced that I actually loved this game, thrilled with every new experience it gave me, and excited to see what would happen next. I guess those five hours are what pushed this game over XII in my ranking.

7: Final Fantasy V.

Until FFXV, this game was the last of the “Warriors of Light” games, in which the game follows a party of four set characters for its entirety. To this day, it’s the last of the “Warriors of Light” games to let the player customize which character holds which roles through the job system.

FFV’s job system is the reason to play the game. Its story is mediocre, and its characters are all fairly flat, but there’s something viscerally satisfying about building party members up in jobs that might enhance the role they ultimately will fill. For my mage character, I maxed out Black Mage, Blue Mage, Mystic Knight, Summoner, and Geomancer. Then at the end, I switched her to a Freelancer with Black Magic and Summoning, and she kept all the passive skills for those jobs and also the highest stats across those jobs.

It was super fun and kind of a shift of focus for me, since I tend to place story above anything else in games. Despite the story not being special, though, the game’s writing is actually a ton of fun. It’s definitely got the most comic relief in the series, and I came away loving Gilgamesh as much as everyone else does.

And while it’s nothing special graphically, it does have some really cool enemy designs, and the final boss design is one of the most memorable ones they’ve ever done. Which is impressive because I keep having to look up Exdeath’s name because the character himself is super forgettable.

6: Final Fantasy IV.

This wasn’t the first game in the series to feature actual characters with names and depth, but I have no interest in playing FFII, so it might as well be. I actually played the DS Remake for this game, so it definitely had some quality of life improvements, like full 3d characters and maps, voice acting, an updated script, the ability to actually see the ATB gauge, and the ability to switch to other characters whose turns are ready without using a turn.

Apparently one thing the remake didn’t do was rebalance the difficulty for more modern sensibilities. Instead, this remake is...harder? It requires more grinding than the original? Why??

Either way, though, the story is actually solid! The game opens on its protagonist, Cecil, committing a war crime on the orders of his king, who raised him as a child. The first ten hours of so of the game follows Cecil as he tries to understand why he was ordered to kill so many innocents, turns his back on his country, and works to redeem himself.

This arc is reinforced by the game mechanics, too, which is super clever. His redemption is marked by a change in job from a Dark Knight to a Paladin, which also resets his level. For a time, his life is considerably harder because he’s finding his footing as a new person, which is marked by battles which had been easy becoming much harder for the player for a time.

This game places storytelling over gameplay more than I think any other game in the series. Each character is locked into a job, which I much prefer in my RPGs to games where characters function pretty much interchangeably. I dunno if it’s because I cut my RPG teeth on Tales, but it really bugs me when I can give Tifa the exact same loadout as Barret. I want the lives of the characters to bleed into their functions as gameplay devices.

However, the developers clearly had a ton of different jobs they wanted to add to their game, but hadn’t figured out how to allow for the player to switch in and out party members in standby. To fix this, they increased the in-battle party to five characters rather than or four (or the later constantly frustrating three), rotated the roster a ton, and had a ton of characters who straight up leave permanently. One character dies and never comes back. Two characters die and only are revived after it’s too late to rejoin the party. Four characters end up too injured to continue traveling.

This let the developers make a ton of jobs, but it doesn’t let the player exploit these jobs to their fullest. Characters’ stats reflect their role in the story, as well. One character is quickly aging out of adventuring, so his magic stats increase on levels, but his attack and defense stats actually decrease, signifying his failing body. Another character has already achieved some form of enlightenment, so he gains no stats when he levels up at all. The purpose of IV is the story, over any other aspect of the game, which makes it even more mindboggling that the remake would have increased the difficulty.

Besides that, the biggest issue I had with this game was the overbearing constant drama of it. While there were a few more lighthearted parts, they were mostly relegated to NPC dialogue and sidequests. The characters in this game don’t become friends so much as they become companions who bonded over shared tragedies, and this makes for quite a few scenes of every character separately wallowing in their own immeasurable sadness. I played FFV directly after this game and the light story and jokey dialogue was a much-needed palette cleanser.

5: Final Fantasy VI.

Before the unexpected success of FFVII irreparably changed the franchise, Square constantly mixed up the story formula for the series. IV, V and VI all handled their stories really differently from each other, and what I remember of III also felt fairly different from the games that came after.

Every game from VII on had a very clear protagonist (except XII, whose botched protagonist was still clearly marketed as the protagonist). The concept of the Dissidia crossover series is built on the idea that every FF has a protagonist at the center of its story. FFVI’s Dissidia character is Terra, but Terra is not the protagonist of FFVI.

Apparently while developing FFVI, the directors decided they didn’t want the game to have a clear protagonist, so they asked the staff to staff to submit concepts for characters, and they’d use as many as they could. This game has fourteen characters, each with their own fun gameplay gimmick in battles. Three of the characters are secret, and one can permanently die halfway through if the player takes the wrong actions. Of these fourteen characters, the main story heavily revolves around 3-6 of them, while five more have substantial character arcs.

There’s kind of a schism in the fandom over whether this game or VII is the best one in the series, and I can see why; this game is absolutely fascinating. No other game in the series has done what this game did, which means it’s one of the two FF games I really want to see remade after they complete this VII remake.

The first half is very linear. It breaks the beginning party into three pieces, then sends each character to a different continent, where they meet more characters and build their own parties before everyone reunites. Once the story has taken the player everywhere in the world, the apocalypse hits. The villain’s evil plan succeeds and tears the entire world apart.

The second half of the game picks up a year later with one character finally getting a raft and escaping the island on which she’s been marooned. In this half, the player navigates the world, which has all the same locations, but in completely different parts of the map. The driving factor for much of the second half is to learn from incidental dialogue where each party member has gone in this new world, to track them down, and to try to fix some of the bad that’s been done to the world before finally stopping the villain who destroyed it.

It’s unique and clever and occasionally legitimately tugs at the heartstrings some, which is impressive for a poorly translated SNES game. The final dungeon is a masterpiece all on its own. It requires the player to make three parties of up to four characters, then send them in and switch between them as new roads open. This way, the game manages to feel like an ensemble piece up to the very end.

4: Final Fantasy VII.

As I previously mentioned, there’s kind of a schism in the fandom over whether FFVI or FFVII is the best game in the series. Neither is the best game in the series. FFVII is better than FFVI. Oops.

When I was first drafting up this list, it was before I’d reached my replays of VI or VII, and I tentatively placed them next to each other, with the strong assumption that I’d end up placing VI a bit higher than VII, since it has so many strongly differentiated characters with solid story arcs, beautiful artwork, great music, etc. etc. Then I reached FFVII and not even four hours in, I realized it would have to be higher on my list than VI.

VI has a better battle system, its characters are much more differentiated by their gameplay, its character sprites have aged much better than VII’s character models, and it has four party members in battles instead of three. But I couldn’t overlook VII’s gorgeous artwork, sharp character work, and character-driven story. In the end, I had to give it the edge.

VII is a strange beast. It simultaneously really holds up and has aged horribly. The story is excellent and I love the characters, but the actual line-to-line writing is pretty bad, making the whole experience of the game a bit like swimming upstream; you’re getting somewhere good, but the age of the game is still pushing you back the best it can. Similarly, the background artwork is fantastic and gives the game locations a sense of place incomparable to anything that had come before it, but the character models are so low-poly that the two are constantly at odds with each other.

Still, the game is more a good game than it is an old one. I think it’s managed to duck the absurd level of hype around it by actually being very different from what the most popular images of it make it out to be, if that makes sense. The super futuristic techno-dystopia city only makes up a very small portion of the larger game, and most newcomers to the game won’t have seen Junon, or Corel, or Cosmo Canyon. Heck, I didn’t know Cait Sith or Red XIII were characters before I played the game for the first time. One of the many reasons I’m excited for the rest of this remake is to see newcomers to the story learning just how much variety there is to the world, events, and characters of this game.

FFVII also began (and pulled off really well) a number of storytelling trends that continued in subsequent games in the series. Obviously, almost every game since this one has a clear protagonist with a cool sword for cosplayers to recreate, and an androgynous villain whose story is closely linked to the protagonist (or one villain who is linked to the protagonist and a second one whose purpose is to look like Sephiroth), but it’s started broader, more quality shifts, too.

FFVII is the first game in the series to try to give all its characters arcs based on a similar theme, for example, a trend that has helped give it and future games a sense of thematic unity, especially in IX, X, and XV. Heck, that trend was why I almost came around on XII before they nuked it. It was also the first game in the series to have a real ending, rather than closing out with essentially a curtain call featuring all the party members, like they did in IV through VI (and I assume earlier).

Another common feature of FF games that it didn’t start with VII but certainly was canonized with it was the mid-game plot twist tying the protagonist to both the villain and the larger story. FFIV had this as well, of course, but I feel like the orphanage twist in VIII, the Zanarkand dream twist in X, and the time skip twist in XV were all meant to recall VII’s twist of Cloud’s…very complex existence (IX’s two worlds twist actually is a clear homage to IV, but it’d be hard to argue that Zidane’s connection to Kuja - and the character of Kuja generally - weren’t more influenced by VII).

2: Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XV.

Sorry, this one is a two-fer. I’m not gonna spend too much time on why I placed these two together in the #2 spot (I wrote a long thing on it here, if you’re interested). In summary, the games kinda mirror each other, in story and design. Each game can be seen in the negative space of what the other game leaves out, and at the end, the characters react to similar situations in completely opposite ways. For this reason, and that they’re of comparable quality, I think they’re best viewed as companion pieces.

FFX was the first mainline Final Fantasy game I ever completed, six years late. It was the first FF game with voice acting and many fully modeled locations. It also kinda marks the beginning of the series’ constant changes to the battle system.

That’s not to say the previous games’ battle systems didn’t also differ from each other, but they all had the same setup, with levels and an ATB gauge. This was the first game since III not to have any real-time element to its battle system, nor numbered levels gained through experience points. Since X, no two FF battle systems have been remotely comparable, which is cool and innovative and keeps things fresh, but also means I’ve been starved for just a regular ATB FF game for too long.

In many ways, FFX feels like a bridge between the PS1 games and the later games. It feels much more streamlined than VII, VIII, or IX, in terms of both storytelling and design. The game is very linear, pushing the player from one area to the next and not allowing much backtracking until the very end. It also loses the aging look of the PS1 games’ menus and UI, finally updating the classic font and the blue menus with white borders to fully modernized and sleek graphics.

However, movement still feels very similar to movement in VIII and IX, the music definitely evokes the PS1 games more than the later games, and most locations are portrayed with beautifully painted backgrounds, rather than modeled in (which I actually prefer, and I was glad to see that VII Remake has gone back to that in some places).

Voice acting in this game is phenomenal for 2001, and honestly on par with many contemporary games. I can’t think of a voice actor for the main cast who didn’t do a great job. Tidus’s narration, especially, is emotional and evocative in all the right ways. Grounding the plot in a very personal story about Tidus’s difficulty coming to terms with and proving himself to his abusive father keeps the story relatable and real.

Something interesting about my experience with X is that because it was my first Final Fantasy game, I thought for a very long time that the series was about organized religion, and the ways it is used to justify evil acts. This might be the only game of the ones I’ve played that is about organized religion, or even prominently features a religious doctrine, which really sets it apart from the rest of the series.

The game’s thematic unity is on point, even if there is a scene where they state the central themes a bit too plainly. Every character, and even the entire universe of the story, is held back by the past, and every subplot and the main plot revolves around finding ways to move forward and leave the past behind.

I love FFXV. It feels like a return to form after XII and XIII. It’s also probably the furthest any game in the series has strayed from the original formula. Battles are entirely real-time, and the game is a straightforward action game. There is very little time spent with menus, and even the leveling system has been stripped down to a few skill trees. It’s immediately obvious that the game was originally created to be a spinoff, not a main title.

FFXV is also probably too much a product of the current era of microtransactions and payment plans. The full story is spread out across *deep breath* a feature film, an anime series, an anime OVA, a standalone demo, two console games, four DLC story chapters, a multiplayer side game, a VR fishing game, four phone games (though really three phone games because A New Empire straight up isn't in that universe and also is terrible), an expansion including several entirely new dungeons, and finally a novel set to release sometime this year. That’s a whole lot of story. I’ve not played the phone games or the VR fishing game, or read the novel yet, but I’ve experienced all the rest.

But I also played FFXV when it first released, before any patches, before I knew there was a film, just the game all on its own. So you can believe me when I say that without any supplementary material, the game is still great.

It goes back to the FFI, II, III, V “Warriors of Light” system, where the party has four characters who do not change at all throughout the game. While this bugged me at first, I soon came to appreciate having a story where almost all character interactions involved these four characters. It meant I came to understand them well enough to feel like they were my friends, too. Most characterization in this game is understated, presented through small shared moments, dialogue, and body language as they travel the world together. Much like X, the overarching story might be expansive and far-reaching, but the real show is in the personal journeys the friends have.

Much of the first half of the game is spent exploring an open world, driving along the road and getting out of the car for pit stops or to explore the forests nearby. This is one of the very few games where I don’t mind just exploring an area without the promise of an upgrade or a new scene, just to see what’s around the corner, or to hear whatever banter the characters might engage in next.

The entire world of this game is gorgeous, and the orchestrated music is some of the best they’ve ever done. The main plot is beautiful, too. It’s bittersweet and emotional, with a charismatic villain and a twist that blew me away the first time I reached it.

The supplementary material is also mostly really quality. I’d recommend the Royal Edition over the original edition for sure, and to watch Kingsglaive as well. The anime series is quick and fairly fun, and Comrades expands on the universe in some great ways, but neither has as much bearing on the overall plot as the DLC chapters and Kingsglaive. I’m so in love with the DLC chapters, actually, that two years ago I wrote a piece just on how much Episode Ignis affected me (here if you care).

This is definitely getting long, so I guess I’ll move on after saying I’m upset that they patched Chapter 13 to make it easier, and I’m angry at everyone who complained that Chapter 13 was too hard. It was a brilliant piece of storytelling through game mechanics, and it’s mostly been stripped of all that, now.

1: Final Fantasy IX.

It’s IX. It was always IX. I actually did come into this with an open mind, wondering if one of the new games I’d experience (IV, V, VIII, XII, XIII) might end up hitting me harder than Final Fantasy IX, but as I replayed my favorite game in the series I quickly realized that wouldn’t be happening.

There are only a handful of games that make me cry. IX is one of two without voice acting. There are several songs from IX that make me tear up just when I hear them.

The story of the black mages gaining sentience, learning that they can die, and trying to force themselves back into being puppets just to lose that knowledge really moves me. The same goes for the story of Dagger no longer recognizing her mother, setting out to find a place to belong, learning that her birth family is long dead, then watching her mother return to her old self a moment before losing her forever. And Zidane’s story, where he has nowhere to call home, finally discovers the circumstances of his birth, and realizes that had he stayed in his birthplace, he would have become a much worse person than he ultimately did.

More than any other, though, Vivi’s story will always stick with me. He was found as a soulless husk by Quan, a creature with the intention of fattening him up and eating him, but each of them awoke something in the other, and Quan ended up raising Vivi as his grandson. When Quan passed, a rudderless Vivi went to the city to find a new home, and eventually learned he was created as a weapon. Other weapons had also gained sentience, but none had the worldliness that Vivi had gained from his loving relationship with Quan. When Vivi discovers that most weapons like him die after only a few months, he grapples with the possibility that he may die at any time, and eventually decides that he can only take control of what life he has by living each moment to the fullest. He ends up becoming an example for the other weapons to follow.

FFIX is a game about belonging: both yearning to have somewhere to belong and learning that the place where you think you belong is actually toxic and harmful to you. Even the menu theme is a tune called “A Place to Call Home.”

IX ran counter to the trends of the series in a number of ways. It was a return to high fantasy after the more sci-fi VII and VIII, and was also much more lighthearted than those games, while still being heartfelt and occasionally bittersweet. Gameplay-wise, it locked each of its characters into a single job, gave them designs based on their jobs, brought back four-character parties, and introduced a skill system in which characters learn skills from equipment. It also had a much softer, less realistic art style, and mostly avoided the attempts to recapture VII that have plagued most other subsequent titles (besides Kuja’s design, I guess).

The story is also structured so well. It regularly shifts perspective for the first thirty hours, allowing the player to spend ample time with each of the party members, and shaking up character combinations for fun new interactions. It introduced a system similar to the skits from Tales games, showing the player often humorous vignettes of what’s happening to other characters at the time. Once the characters have all come together in one party, the game has earned the sense that all of them (except for the criminally underexplored Amarant) have become a family.

The supporting cast are a blast as well. Zidane’s thief troupe (who double as a theater troupe) are likeable and fun. Kuja’s villain arc allows him to be sympathetic without losing his edge. The black mages are tragic without being overdone.

The development team for this game put so much more work into this game than they had to. The background artwork was all made in such high-definition resolutions that the act of downscaling them to fit in the game removed details. Uematsu traveled to Europe to make sure he’d get the feel of the soundtrack right, and has said it’s his favorite score he’s ever done. Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, says IX is his favorite game in the series.

FFIX is one of the two games I would like them to remake after they finish the VII Remake, but I’m terrified they’ll mess it up in some way. Honestly, the game’s only flaws (which I do desperately want them to fix) are a lack of voice acting, the underdeveloped party member Amarant (and to a lesser extent Freya), the dissonance of Beatrix never getting punished in any way for her hand in a genocide, and the fact that very few of the sidequests are story-related because so many of the smaller story details that would normally be relegated to sidequests are covered in the main plot.

Despite the danger, though, I think revisiting IX is absolutely essential moving forward. It represents so much of what made older games like IV and VI great, and its story is much more grounded in real emotion than many current Square stories tend to be. Remaking VII will be good for getting VII out of Square’s system. Remaking IX would be good for putting IX back into Square’s system.

Here’s a IX song as a reward for getting this far. I’m gonna go listen to it and tear up again.

#final fantasy #final fantasy iv #final fantasy v #final fantasy vi #final fantasy vii #final fantasy vii remake #final fantasy viii #final fantasy ix #final fantasy x #final fantasy xii #final fantasy xiii #final fantasy xv

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theorynexus · 4 years

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Unrelated to the Epilogues

Apologies for not getting back to liveblogging, yet; however, that’s going to begin again with my next post. This one is simply to express some thoughts that have been kicking around in my head for a few days, which I did not get the chance to express because I was sleep deprived and then briefly sick. Namely: All weapons (or Strife Specibi, I should say) in Homestuck seem to be symbolically representative of the character who owns them to some extent. A few easy examples would be: * the Dualing Pistol (White Magnum/White Wand), which is elegant and precise, only needing to be fired once to provoke massive, impactful change, and doubly representative of Alt!Calliope’s subtle orchestration of events behind the scenes; * The Dudely [Fire]Arm[ament]s (Caliborn/Lord English’s canes/rifles), which the aforementioned doubled set is contrasted to: whilst they are equally intended to convey mastery of events (and particularly the people taking part in them), these are more brutish, and make their impact through repeated blows (a pool cue arranges things through a loud, meaningful break, and then many serious blows to follow--- and while these blows might in theory require precision in order to make the balls fall where they must, in practice, Caliborn’s talent is in ensuring that every hit eventually brings things to a favorable conclusion, rather than in the shortest route possible). Brute force methods are used to bring about the desired conclusion--- an inevitable death, generally ---and the overkill that Caliborn (the Lord of Death, in some ways) utilizes whenever his rifle’s sights fall upon a target (for it’s never a single bullet that hits) is representative of his general methodology and spirit. * Dave’s broken/mended sword, split over time, is obviously representative of his own Aspect, how it gradually affects him (time heals all wounds, as the saying goes, despite the fact that he seems to become quite incensed with it at some points, and struggles with it to the point of refusing to embrace it for a very long time), and especially how his personal history ties into his personal arc (Dave is more affected by his time with his Guardian than perhaps any other kid, despite the fact that Jade is fused with the replacement surrogate that might arguably be said to have usurped the position from her grandpa, and this is also a reflection on the Aspect of Time in his life, I should think). How Bro (Dirk) Broke his Heart, and how Dave struggled to mend it over the course of the series has been much better discussed elsewhere than I could attempt to express in the brief space I’m allotting to this discussion, here, though, and thus I shall cut this off right here, just as both brothers have a habit off symbolically cutting things off, themselves. ~~~ The train of thought that I am wanting to express herein started with a thought that caught me by surprise: I continue to have no idea what, precisely John’s Strife Specibus is supposed to represent, you see, so when I remembered that there was a method of inheritance called Gavelkind, it struck me that it could be related to this, as a pun. Unfortunately, this seems like a dead end, unless it is a very forward thinking joke about every member of his party taking up the main character mantle after he dies in the “more canon [more relevant in Dirk’s eyes]” Meat Epilogue (or, alternatively, Davesprite and Rose’s inherited self from the timeline having to clean up John’s mess after the idiot got himself obliterated in the deal he made with Typheus after Terezi tricked him). It could also be related to him forging the group through his Heir of Breath inspiration toward a path mechanic, but what are the chances of it being that simple an answer? Unfortunately, said inheritance business seemed more promising than it was, because I was initially confusing it with the Elective method of kingmaking that is to be found in German historical culture. That truly fits with who John is, and resonates with the “I’m not your leader, I’m your friend” humblepie that was served up to us (and everyone else in his party). ... This line of thinking was useful, however, because it led me to thinking about Karkat’s own weapon. Obviously, the “Heh, heh, Communism” line of thinking briefly occurred to me, but more relevantly, I thought of the reason why the sickle is used as a symbol of Communism. It is a classic symbol of the lower class--- farmers, in particular ---which hints at the very beginning to Karkat’s rather humble origins. While many people might like to think of his mutant blood as “potentially higher than fuschia,” or some such nonsense, more realistically, one has to realize that Karkat was placed in the lowest of low positions: not only was he the only member of his kind, but he would have been without a Lusus and immediately abandoned to death, if the worshipers of his Ancestor had not ensured that he had the dimmest possibility of a relatively normal life. At the same time, he wanted to defy this lowborn status and become a mighty general in )-(er Imperious Condescension’s army. While this initial spark of revolution was not much, it is representative of all that was to come-- you see, the sickle is to some extent also a symbol of revolt, and while peasant revolts would generally be brutally put down throughout history (just as the waves of opposition to the Condesce were in Alternian lore), this would not in fact be the case with Karkat, or the session that he (and Aradia) would lead. You see, Karkat’s own ideals and the weapon that represents them are but the tip of the iceberg. The Beta Trolls’ entire session was littered with themes of rebellion against the established social order, and the consequent turning of it upon its head. First and most obviously, it would be two Lowborn trolls that would come to lead the two “teams” which the session had to offer. Both of these figures acquired this position by usurping it from Bluebloods, who might traditionally have taken up this role in a circumstance where the empress-to-be didn’t show interest in leadership and the Purple Blood in the group appeared to be an incompetent, serially inebriated sack of garbage. This theme particularly shown through in [concupiscent] romance, where we saw pairings that, without exception (other than possibly the crush that Ms. Leijon bore for Karkat, which saw no fruition and arguably did not count for anything, just as Eridan’s flushed feelings for Feferi didn’t “matter” in the end, and Kanaya x Vriska, while being a borderline issue for this topic, doesn’t count either, also due to it just being a crush), all saw subversion of social hierarchy:

Equius x Aradia, Gamzee x Tavros, Feferi x Sollux {I just noticed that these relationships all have the same social distance from one another for some reason.}, Terezi x Karkat. Vriska x Tavros is one-sided, and thus debatable, but also fits this pattern, intriguingly enough. Equius was hit with this subversive force in their social lives particularly hard, possibly because he was the Heir of Void, and thus was more inundated with forces of subtext than the rest of the group [particularly since he was a failure in that role]. Not only could he not resist the drive to submit to those it was “perverse” for one of his “station” to bend the knee to, when the opportunity to truly embrace the anti-normative forces that he had been dipping into (despite his Classist upbringing) came, he was so confused and uncertain that he could not properly understand what he was being pushed to do, and the necessity of it--- and thus froze, allowing himself to be swept away by the Rage Gamzee filled him with. These themes play out in Operation Regisurp, both in name and its practical implementation. Furthermore, I have just, in the course of writing this post, come to the conclusion that this is why Gamzee had to be the final obstacle to the true end of the Beta Trolls’ session. He was a crystallized manifestation of the old regime, and its established order: Gamzee acted as a shadow of the Condesce’s will, the Hemospectrum’s implications, and the brutal reality that was Alternia. It was thus quite fitting that Karkat was the one to stop his rampage, for he was the Knight of Blood who cajoled everyone to work together as a single team, rejecting the classical restrictions that would have spelled DOOM for their party in favor of bonds beyond the literal nature of the blood that flowed through all of their veins. Furthermore, I think this is why that confrontation ended in the Shush Pap scene. Not only was it true that Karkat had literally zero percent chance of actually killing Gamzee in the fight (and a very small chance, indeed, to defeat him through violence), but this would to some extent additionally be an endorsement of the old Alternian way of life. Rather than through violence, Karkat used his bond with Gamzee to find a solution, and by this means, turned him away from his role as brutal Subjugglator--- though unfortunately this also meant that Gamzee would take a turn for the worse, becoming even more firmly cemented in his role as a servant to the Mirthful Messiah’s. ... Heading back to the meaning of Karkat’s weapon for a moment, I think that the sickle has another implication to explore: it is an implement of the harvest. Karkat initially wanted to be a sort of grim reaper, slaughtering Alternia’s foes and claiming glory for himself and for his empress. While he was correct in thinking that he just needed an opportunity to prove himself (and thus, he was embracing the symbolic “one must wait until the fruits of the harvest are ripe” implications of the sickle in his own life), the climax of this narrative arc would come when Karkat found himself at the head of Meenah’s united army of all the trolls in the afterlife and bravely charged to meet a foe he knew could destroy the soul with very breath--- and the very real equivalent of the Grim Reaper, himself ---wielding the closest thing he had to a weapon painted with the rainbow (Fuschia an Lime Green bound together betwixt bands of black and white, thus singled out amidst all the colors of the light spectrum). This was his ultimate rejection of the Alternia that was, as he challenged the hidden hand that had twisted it into the place of horror it had been; and upon the fulfillment of that destiny, Karkat would vanish.

Yet, by some miracle, this was not the end: in a place separated beyond barriers of space and time, he would awaken, and but a short time later, he would be granted the Ultimate Reward that had once been wrenched from his grasp. ....................................................................................................................... One last matter of note: It should be pretty obvious, considering the fact that universes are shaped to reflect the wills and designs of the Players involved, but I am pretty sure humans’ singularly colored blood is an explicit rejection of the hemospectrum, and the particular color that was “chosen” may very well be reflective of the important role Karkat in particular played in the session. What may not be so obvious is how fitting, symbolically, it is that it is a human that stands triumphant over the corpse of )-(er Imperious Condescension. Curse baggage aside (which still has been irksomely unexplored, to my knowledge), the fact that it is essentially the Beta Trolls’ rejection of her world order that does the empress in feels very right and, upon reflection, is quite beautiful. Obviously, there’s also a nice splash of revenge playing into that too, as visibly denoted by the weapon used and the handle wrapping, in particular. I am curious as to the implications of Roxy’s typing color being the same as the blood of said fishy tyrant, though. That, I can’t quite figure out.

#Homestuck Analysis #Homestuck Spoilers #Karkat Vantas #Symbolic Meaning #Thematic

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sweetwatersong · 4 years

Text

let the land come at you, love rating: pg characters: Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian, cameos warnings: canon-typical injury and violence

summary: As a Cultivator Lan Wangji brings light into darkness, hope into towns filled with fear, and a bard along on the long road he walks. One of the three was entirely unintended.

author’s note: I got really excited about a Witcher/The Untamed fusion yesterday? So have an AU I am surprisingly mushy about. Title and lyrics from Not Yet / Love Run (Reprise) by The Amazing Devil.

O let the land come at you, love With all its sand and sin, a-singing A song you once knew well's begun

Love run, love run... Run to show that love’s worth running to!

Those that see his bright sword and white robes know him to be a Cultivator. Those that recognize the forehead ribbon, the guqin slung across his back, call him Hanguang-jun. In the wake of his passing they whisper that he vanquishes monsters, rescues the lost, seeks out chaos.

One night, tucked into an inn to eat after a long hunt, chaos finds him.

The bard that has been working the crowd is now circling through his audience, his black and red robes standing out as he manuevers towards Lan Wangji’s table with fascination sparking in his eyes. Used to only hearing pleas and prayers from those approaching him, expecting shock and a withdrawal, the Cultivator is taken aback when the bard blinks, smiles fit to light the room, and declares, “Hanguang-jun!”

He says it as if it’s a revelation, and true, Cultivators are rare enough that it’s not common to see one. But it’s also not the brilliant deduction the bard seems to think it is. Any number of clues give it away: the scrollwork on Bichen’s sheath. The pristine robes. The circle of silence and space everyone else has afforded him that this young human has deliberately breached. Ridiculous.

The bard, oblivious to Lan Wangji’s stony silence, throws himself into the seat opposite him. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he says delightedly. “It’s taken me three months just to feel that I was even in the right area. And the first tavern that I decide to stop at-” His expression turns serious. “Hanguang-jun, it must be fate.”

Lan Wangji, who has debated whether fate is impossible for almost a century, ignores him. Silence is the only answer he has to give this man.

Unexpectedly, though, the bard studies him for a moment before his lips quirk into a pout that can’t disguise his smile. “Ah, Hanguang-jun, don’t worry. I’ll show you why we were destined to meet. And the songs that I’ll sing of your glory!” He sighes, putting a hand to his heart. “Wei Wuxian, bard extraordinaire, and your grateful companion for the road ahead.”

Wei Wuxian does, in fact, invite himself along on Lan Wangji’s travel. That is to say that when Lan Wangji leaves the tavern, the whispered rumors of trouble steering his footsteps towards the south, the bard catches up to Apple’s heels and only avoids being kicked by virtue of a swift dodge. The cranky mare has little love for anyone other than Lan Wangji, and even then only on good days.

“Hanguang-jun,” he says accusingly, a laugh in his voice. “Were you trying to leave without me?”

Lan Wangji spares him a cutting glance. “Boring.”

Wei Wuxian staggers back for a moment, one hand going to his heart. “Boring? Me? Hanguang-jun, you wound me! I could never be boring.”

He proves his point, too, much to Lan Wangji’s irritation.

It is not the done thing in the Cultivator world to use spells on ordinary people. It is too easy to slide into disagreeable habits, to begin the cycle of fear that has set common folk against Cultivators more often than not in their long history. Still, Lan Wangji considers, if he is forced to continue listening to these ramblings, he is more likely to go mad than if he simply solves the issue with the use of a Silencing spell.

He is glad his reserved nature keeps him from smiling at Wei Wuxian’s face when the bard struggles to speak and realizes what has happened.

He is even more thankful when the spell wears off and Wei Wuxian launches into another story, seeming to understand that his best revenge was to continue talking. The man is irrepressible.

Five hours down the road, aware that they are nearly to the point he plans to camp at, Lan Wangji is ready to forcibly part ways with the bard when a snarl rumbles through the underbrush.

Another joins it, off to its left. Two more answer on the other side of the road.

Lan Wangji swings off of Apple, drawing his sword. He is grateful, in that moment, that Wei Wuxian has at last fallen silent of his own accord.

He meets the bard’s wide eyes for a split second before the jagged shapes launch out of the shadows, strands of white saliva dripping from their jaws.

“Hanguang-jun!”

It is simple if brutal work to dispatch two of the demonic beasts. Apple claims a third victim, her vicious temper putting paid to the notion that she might be easy prey, and when Lan Wangji spins to defend the helpless bard - irritating or not, he is still a victim here - he pauses.

A sword gleams in Wei Wuxian’s hand, black ichor coating its blade as its owner relaxes from his ready stance to look over at Lan Wangji, genuine concern in his eyes.

“They must have been rabid. Hanguang-jun, you’re not hurt are-”

A surge of movement, out of the corner of his eye. A streak of silver flying past him as Wei Wuxian’s sword finds its target in the mortally wounded beast’s heart.

A heartbeat where Lan Wangji stares at the shadow wolf’s slumped body, half-turned to defend himself.

“Were you cut?” Wei Wuxian asks worriedly as the bard stops an arm’s length away, scanning Lan Wangji for any sign of injury.

Lan Wangji slowly lowers Bichen and glances back at the wolf. At that Wei Wuxian seems to realize it’s the sword that has him distracted. He pulls it free and grimaces at the gore before looking back at Lan Wangji. “Ah, it’s important be to be able to defend yourself with whatever you have on hand. Don’t you know it’s dangerous to travel alone?” And then he beams with pride. “That’s why we should go together!”

Ringing with the sound of his mirth, despite the nearing dusk, the battle-torn road seems to brighten.

Lan Wangji is experienced, has fought more battles than the human can imagine. This was nothing except unexpected. But Wei Wuxian’s worry over his safety while they collect the heads of the pack is unexpected as well. Unlooked for. He complains about Lan Wangji’s pristine robes and laments his own splattered ones (”Black is good for hiding stains, and still! If only we all had your Cultivator secrets, Hanguang-jun.”), helps to pitch camp, keeps a tune flowing through the air as the grouse he snared roasts over the fire. And Lan Wangji’s silence or blunt remarks do not drive him away at all.

He is too old to pretend to storm away, to bristle at the bard or turn his icy exterior into a shield as his younger self might have. He has grown past the point that his pride and dignity can be bruised so easily. At this point it is simpler to wait. The next town is half a day’s ride and will see them part ways.

The next town sees Wei Wuxian remain by Lan Wangji’s side, effortlessly weaving himself into the routine questioning of the townsfolk. Perhaps it is their surprise at seeing someone accompanying a Cultivator; perhaps it is Wei Wuxian’s personality. Regardless, before Lan Wangji has time to give more than a curt glare and try to order Wei Wuxian to mind his own business, the bard has begun sweet talking the shop keepers and stall vendors into revealing the details of what had been rumors in other towns. Details spill forth like welcome rains, revealing that the rabid shadow wolves had not been the culprit - at least not for the crimes he was called for.

Somehow, as Wei Wuxian drags him all over the town in pursuit of the next lead, Lan Wangji realizes that the distance that everyone treats a Cultivator with has grown smaller. Those who would be uncertain about his reserved demeanor instead laugh and treat Wei Wuxian like an old friend. And after every conversation Wei Wuxian turns to him, expectant, and seems satisfied with a simple “Hn” in response.

Clues in hand, the job goes smoothly. So does the one after that, and the one after that.

They do not all go so easily.

The acrid scent of venom scorches the sand, forces tears into Lan Wangji’s eyes. It sizzles harmlessly against the enchantments sewn into his robes, each drop crackling as it falls away, but underneath the noise Lan Wangji can hear another sound too.

Wei Wuxian grips his sword arm, teeth clenched, Suibian steady. Smoke rises from the holes splattered into his dark robes.

The warped cobra rises again, swaying side to side as it prepares to strike, and it has two targets instead of one because a certain bard is too stubborn to understand when he is in mortal danger. Lan Wangji can see how the diamond-shaped head is angled towards Wei Wuxian, knows the scent of blood will draw its attention almost to the exclusion of everything else.

If he can use that, if he can take advantage of the distraction to find the right weak point -

Wei Wuxian looks to him and nods sharply, setting his stance. He opens his mouth to shout, to draw the creature’s attention, and Lan Wangji’s fingers fly.

It might be comical, in any other circumstance, how shocked Wei Wuxian is when Lan Wangji’s outer robe settles over him.

“Go!” Lan Wangji snaps, darting to the side to catch the cobra’s attention. He flings a flare taliman at its eyes and throws his arms up to protect his face when he is rewarded with a deadly spray of venom. The enchantments hold, as he knows they will, and he redoubles the flares the moment he can. The cobra shakes its head and lunges, head stretching out impossibly far, fangs half the length of his body; nearer, nearer. Then Wei Wuxian is in the cobra’s blindspot, white robe caught around his elbows, Suibian shining in the sun.

Afterward Wei Wuxian shakes his borrowed robe to slough the clinging blood off like water. “I knew your robes had to be magic somehow,” he tells Lan Wangji, shaking his head. “No wonder you look so put-together all of the time.”

He offers the outer robe back with thanks. Lan Wangji takes it. But when they sit down around the campfire that night and Wei Wuxian pulls out thread and needle with a grimace, Lan Wangji takes the battered black robe and patches the venom holes with small, neat stitches.

If he also sews four small protection characters into the robe’s hem, well. No one will ever notice, and no one without a golden core will be abe to replicate their effects. It only makes sense to give the bard one more small advantage, given the way he throws himself so recklessly into danger.

His blood is boiling in his veins. That’s the only thought that pierces the haze surrounding him, turning the forest into clinging white fog and all his senses into things far removed from his control. Heat continues flooding his chest, seeping in from the acid that lingers like a cloud in his lungs. Suspended in the fire Lan Wangji can feel his heart and every beat of its futile fight against the confines of his ribcage. More than that, more than anything else, his blood is boiling in his veins.

A touch on his shoulder. Bichen is in his hand, striking out at the danger, fighting even though he is nearly helpless -

A voice, muted and warped by the distance; words, distorted beyond recognition. But comforting. Known. Reassuring.

Lan Wangji loosens his grip on Bichen’s hilt, surrendering to the voice’s care, and focuses on breathing through the fire as he is lifted. Set on a surface that sways from side to side. Lowered onto solid ground. Laid down.

Inside the haze his golden core swirls and churns with energy, fighting the acid’s effects. Outside of the haze cool compresses cover his forehead, press against his neck.

When the fever breaks he opens his eyes to see Apple cropping grass in the distance, her tack stripped, her picket line tied to a sturdy root. He doesn’t understand for a moment how she has been taken care of. He has not done it, and her foul attitude won’t allow anyone else to do it. So -

A figure settles by his side, dipping a compress into a bowl. There is worry written in the lines on his brow, dark circles under his eyes. Wei Wuxian starts when he reaches to put on a new compress, realizing Lan Wangji is awake. “Hanguang-jun!”

He captures the wrist that pulls back, holds it in a butterfly grasp and marvels at the coolness of his skin.

“Lan Wangji,” he says hoarsely, voice scraping at his throat. “Lan Zhan.”

For a moment Wei Wuxian is still. Then he smiles, something broken but soft, and smooths the new compress over Lan Wangji’s forehead despite the hand still encircling his wrist.

“When you recover your senses,” he admonishes, “you don’t get to take that back.”

He calls him Lan Zhan from that moment forward, a gift, a gesture of thanks, and it echoes somewhere in the beat of Lan Wangji’s slow heart.

There is a point at which Lan Wangji realizes that he now spends as many evenings listening to Wei Wuxian regale townsfolk with songs and talk about the glory of Cultivators as he once did sitting alone, as far removed from this world as his spotless white robes were from his muddy and mundane surroundings.

It is a strangely comforting thought.

The night that Wei Wuxian first coaxes Lan Wangji into playing a duet together leaves the bard beaming so brightly that it seems the sun has emerged from the night sky, that the joy bubbling up through his laugther and song is a tangible thing.

Lan Wangji does not deny him such requests after that and Wei Wuxian nevers asks him to play when they are in public.

It is not uncommon for Wei Wuxian to receive letters. His contacts seem to scatter them like wishes to the wind, hoping that one or the other will intercept him at a tavern along the way, and for the most part it seems to work. But when Wei Wuxian’s excited grin falters and fades, when all color drains from his face, Lan Wangji sets his tea down and watches him closely.

“Lan Zhan,” the bard says, and the words shake and tremble in a way Lan Wangji has never heard before. “I need your help.”

Lan Wangji meets his eyes and nods. There is nothing more needed between them than that.

They ride double on Apple, maintaining the fine balance between her stamina and her strength, and travel west into the sun. Lan Wangji does not recognize the surroundings as they race towards their destination. To his eyes the forest and streams no different from a hundred thousand others he has passed by in years before. He knows when they are nearing the village, though, by the slow tightening of Wei Wuxian’s hands on his belt.

They fly past the neat farms arrayed on the outskirts, clatter through the streets that are more hard-packed dirt than paved stone. Cries follow them, even in their passage, of “Hanguang-jun!” and “A Cultivator!” and “Wei Wuxian!” There is hope in their voices, in the fear that saturates the air of this place, and Lan Wangji trusts Wei Wuxian to know their next move.

Apple senses it first. She tucks her hindquarters under herself and comes to a lathered halt as Wei Wuxian throws himself off, lands almost on the doorstep of a sun-helmed shop. He has barely had time to pound on the door before it opens. Two figures pour out, a slender woman, another young man, who greet the bard with open arms and cries of their own.

“A-Xian,” the woman says, “A-Yuan,” Wei Wuxian chokes, and the young man answers, “It took him, A-Xian, we can’t find them anywhere-”

Lan Wangji dismounts slowly, stroking Apple’s foam-covered neck, and understands that he is watching a small family embrace. Wonders how much of Wei Wuxian’s life he does not know for all the bard’s openness.

It does not take long for the townspeople to settle Apple in a nearby stable and promise to make sure she does not founder. It takes even less time for the story to be laid out before him, a white-knuckled Wei Wuxian at his side.

A monster has taken children from the village. A monster has captured A-Yuan, Wen Qing and Wen Ning’s cousin, Wei Wuxian’s brother in all but name, and all the healer’s arts and all the young man’s archery cannot show them where it lairs.

“We’ll bring him back,” Wei Wuxian swears, his jaw tight. He looks to Lan Wangji then, not for reassurance but for confirmation. “Lan Zhan, we will.”

“We will find them,” Lan Wangji replies, and keeps any questions about the state that they will be in tucked behind his teeth. From the despair in Wen Qing’s fiery gaze she hears them anyway.

“Bring him home,” she tells Wei Wuxian when they prepare themselves, swords at their sides, talismans at the ready. Then her reddened gaze turns to Lan Wangji and he understands what she does not say. Bring Wei Wuxian home.

“Good luck,” Wen Ning says solemnly. “Good hunting.”

His words hold true. They track the monster, Lan Wangji’s keen eyes picking up the traces that few would recognize as such. They find its lair, holed into the mountainside, a narrow sliver the only entrance.

They find the children, held in a stasis that breaks and in doing so brings the monster.

In the midst of battle, talismans and thundering rocks flying, Lan Wangji fights as fiercely as he has ever fought before. For once the death of his enemy is far from his thoughts. Its armored exterior is impervious to blades, its natural energy gives it protection from his spells. No, it is the need to cover Wei Wuxian’s retreat that defines his tactics instead, the need to keep Suibian clean and the small knot of children safe.

It is the need to protect that lets him take in the cave’s shuddering ceiling, and the monster’s wild, deafening cries, and make a grim decision.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian calls, the cave echoing his desperation through the roar of crumbling rock. Lan Wangji spares him only a glance.

“Go!”

It is enough. The children crawl free; Wei Wuxian slips out of harm’s way; Bichen strikes true through a narrow eye that glints with malice and rage. The monster shrieks, its death throes slamming against the walls, and Lan Wangji, Hanguang-jun, knows that it is worth it, to have brought light into this last dark place.

The monster will not get them this day.

When he opens his eyes an inderminable amount of time later, focusing on wooden ceilings instead of tumbling rock, he realizes it has not gotten him either.

Wounds ache and sting across his body, broken bones a deep and underlying thrum, bandages lying tight across his scraped skin. There is the soft sound of breathing here too, loud in comparison to his own, and Lan Wangji turns his head to look across the room.

Wei Wuxian sits slumped against a nearby wall, his arms cradling a slumbering toddler, his hands bandaged a dozen times over.

A swordsman’s life is in his hands, a musicmaker’s as well. Wen Qing tells him the truth after Wei Wuxian brushes his concern off with laughter and comments about Lan Wangji’s own state. Wei Wuxian dug through the rubble with his bare hands, his bard’s hands, to find him.

They stay in the village longer than Lan Wangji has stayed anywhere in his long memory. Wei Wuxian’s flagrant avoidance of his Cultivator title rubs off to the point that the villagers begin to respectfully call him by his courtesy name. No one dares to use his birth name, of course; no one but the fearless, reckless man who tries coaching the little ones into playing melodies he can sing along to, just to stay in practice while he heals. The brilliant, bold bard who stills when Lan Wangji unwraps his guqin and plays the requested melody note-perfect, hands light on the strings.

He sings, when he recovers from the surprise and startled warmth that shines in his eyes, and their duets drift through the village with blessings of peace and prosperity.

Wen Qing doesn’t make threats of violence against Lan Wangji when they prepare to leave; given her sharp, unmistakable expression, she doesn’t have to. But her hands are gentle as she gifts him new medicines, for the inevitable time when one of them is so foolish as to get wounded, and her embrace is kind.

Clutching onto first Wei Wuxian’s leg, then Lan Wangji’s, A-Yuan begs them to stay. When all else fails he promises to learn how to play the guqin by the time that they return, asking them to make it soon, swearing they will be proud of him.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian laughs as they ride away, the shine of tears in his eyes. “I think you have a son!”

Lan Wangji says nothing, of course, but more from the odd sensation in his throat than from his long-standing practice of silence.

They travel, side by side, through rain and darkness. They meet Lan Xichen, the renowned Zewu-jun, who looks at Wei Wuxian with delight and Lan Wangji with understanding. They pass through Yunmeng where Wei Wuxian’s flippant tongue turns to awkward expressions in the court that Lan Wangji’s aid has been requested at, and where the heirs flanking the lord’s seat look at Wei Wuxian with displeasure or compassion according to their nature.

Lan Wangji declines the Jiang Clan’s request before Wei Wuxian grabs his wrist, eyes wide and startled, to ask what he is doing.

“We do not have to stay where you are not welcome,” Lan Wangji tells him. The gratified surprise that crosses his face stirs something in Lan Wangji’s chest.

“They need our help,” the bard says after a moment, ease settling back into the shape of his shoulders, and his discomfort does not return even when the whole court reflects the irritation of the lord’s wife, crackling like lightning over the scene.

This could have been Wei Wuxian’s family, Lan Wangji learns. He could have been trapped within these walls, had his mother not set off on her own course. He would have been bound to servitude under the weight of centuries of tradition.

Lan Wangji thinks of the bard, of his easy comraderie and boundless love, and of a road that might never have joined with his.

He does not with the Jiang Clan ill. He does, however, offer his gratitude for the journey that Wei Wuxian’s steps were set upon, all those years ago. Fate may not be real but if it is, it has granted him Wei Wuxian. That is enough.

They travel, side by side, through sunshine and snow. Their songs rise to the distant stars, their blades keep danger far from the innocent, and their travels are never lonely.

The Song of Clarity hums through the small glade, resonant and rich, and under the guqin’s voice a flute follows the melody easily, effortlessly. Lan Wangji pauses, lets Wei Wuxian sing out the ending in Chenqing’s sweet voice.

In the calm stillness that follows Lan Wangji listens with his ears, his shoulders, his hands. Under the dance of the fireflies, surrounding the stems of grass crushed under their feet, a faint trace of spiritual power drifts through the night air and over his skin.

Music is a strange thing. It is in beyond comprehension in ways that he has come to appreciate during his long life. If being taught the songs of a Cultivator defies tradition, if playing songs of power draws forth energy though the player has no core, if learning to speak the heartbeat of the world leads to the impossible - he cannot deny the truth.

He has put no power of his own into playing this night, and still Clarity has come.

He carries hope on his tongue, fragile and cautious, and draws Wei Wuxian into a kiss to share it.

Wei Wuxian studies him curiously when they draw apart, unaware of his thoughts. “What was that for?”

“Every day,” Lan Zhan tells him quietly. Every day. Their mantra that each one could be their last, that a Cultivator and a human might not out-live each other when the dangers they face come from magic and monsters and men.

Every day, each day, worth it because it’s one they’ve shared together.

The laugh lines on Wei Wuxian’s face, visible now in the golden firelight, crinkle as he smiles. “Every day,” he replies. Then he puts Chenqing in his lap to lean back on his hands, looking up at the night sky. “Ah, Lan Zhan, I’m so glad I found you in that tavern.”

“As am I, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji replies, and looks down at his guqin, begins to pluck the notes of a song that has no power but what it speaks to between them.

Forgetting envies, and every day, and I love you.

These are the words that Wei Wuxian does not put in the songs that he sings of their travels, but they find their way into the stories in due time. And they, all of them, are true.

#wangxian #the untamed #mdzs #the witcher #lan wangji #wei wuxian #guys I have FEELINGS about this #help #my writing

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nuttyrabbit · 5 years

Photo

So it’s been a while since I posted Gambit’s bio, and I think it’s about time I started posting bios for my other characters, don’t you?

This is Frost the Snow Leopard, and next to Gambit, he’s the character I’m the most proud of out of all the characters I’ve made. He’s also the one I’ve put the most amount of work into when taking into account both the character and everything surrounding him.

But this wasn’t something I did on my own. Huge, HUGE shoutouts to my best friend @pidgeonspen who not only helped make Frost’s initial design, but also did his redesign, did this entire beautiful ref sheet, helped me figure out a lot of character stuff and of course, helped me with the bio.

Speaking of the bio, let’s get right into it! Everything is below the readmore

Age: 30

Occupation: Self-proclaimed Emperor of Osakiru

Personality: Cold, calculating, driven and authoritative - these are but some of the words that can describe Frost.

His immaculate ability to inspire both the best and the worst in those around him is drawn from his ambition, his driving ideals of both strength and self, and his sheer intensity. He is a skilled manipulator, able to easily influence those around him into fighting for his cause using a his natural inclinations towards both strategy and diplomacy. Frost is a very pragmatic individual, often making decisions based off of what he feels is objectively the “best” for both his country and himself. He is not someone who angers quickly, nor is he someone who will resort to violence unless he deems it necessary. However, if he feels he needs to, he will use the threat of violence to get his subordinates in line, and more often than not, he will use both fear and violence to subjugate those that dare to resist, justifying it under the guise of a “greater good”

He also possesses a keen insight which allows him to quickly and easily derive information about people, places, and situations that he then uses to his advantage.

Skills: As his name implies, Frost can control ice; he employs his power both offensively and defensively, and to great effect. However, this power does not come freely. The sheer cold he produces takes quite an extensive toll on his body, and using it for too long can have detrimental - possibly even permanent- effects on his body. because of this , Frost has had to spend most of his life learning to control this power, with him only recently having found a way to do so. While he can now control his power without actively concentrating on it, it still poses a huge risk to him. As a result, in combat Frost only uses his powers when he absolutely needs to, instead usually falling back on both his swordsmanship and hand to hand combat skills instead. Since he has had little to no formal training in either, he’s instead self-taught, spending hours upon hours studying and training himself, with the end result being a fighting style he can truly call his own. When it comes to his swordsmanship, his focus is primarily on quick, precise sword slashes that dispatch foes quickly . His hand-to-hand style is one that is heavily counter-focused , taking advantage of openings with hard-hitting, precise strikes. When he is forced to use his powers however, he usually channels them through his katana, minimizing the toll his powers take on his body, and boosting the power and range of his strikes

Hobbies: Training is Frost’s main hobby, and one he takes very seriously. Reading- While Frost places great value on the importance of honing ones’ physical strength, he places just as much importance on the strengthening of ones’ mind, and as such, he is an avid reader. If he is not in his personal dojo, he can often be found in his study, perusing the many books he has acquired via his conquest or otherwise. While he occasionally dips his toes into the realm of fiction, his preferences lie in the realms of history and philosophy, both spritual and practical. Mental challenges- In the same vein as his love of reading, Frost has recently taken to occasionally indulging in mental exercises in an attempt to truly stimulate his mind. Games such as Sudoku, Shogi, and even Risk are ones he not only enjoys on the rare occasion he gets to play them, but ones he is also extremely good at, since they play to his strengths. Meditation- This is less so a hobby and moreso a problem solving technique Frost has found useful. Whenever he needs to figure out the solution to a complicated issue, he will often sit in silent meditation to clear his mind so he can come to what he feels is the perfect solution.

Likes: The pursuit of strength, seafood (In particular lobster and salmon), reading, comfortable silence, mental exercises/problem solving of any kind, clothing (Suits and jackets in particular. He gets them custom made), order/control, sake, and hot baths/saunas (he finds them relaxing)

Dislikes: Disorder, insubordination, cowardice, excessive heat, “talking heads” shows, sweet foods and drinks, and excessive noise (He can handle it he just dislikes it)

Flaws: Frost’s cold, calculating worldview ultimately leads him to see people less as individuals to be treated with respect and more as tools to be used to reach whatever ends he desires. While Frost is an excellent strategist, his plans tend to be rather complex in both scope and execution, requiring many moving parts to work in tandem. As a result, his plans can fall apart if exposed to an overly chaotic element, albeit there is usually a slight margin of error there anyways.

Backstory: From the very start, Frost’s life was marked by constant struggle, in part due to his powers. When his gelid powers began to manifest in his early childhood, Frost needed help to survive - his powers would begin freezing him to death lest his body temperature was regulated. As he lived in poverty, the most viable option came in the form of quite literally boiling water for baths at regular intervals in an attempt to keep him from freezing himself over. Unfortunately, these powers had a tendency to attract attention - something his family truly didn’t need nor want, living in squalor among one of the most crime-ridden parts of the country.

Frost’s father himself was a low-ranking thug in the local yakuza, while his mother stayed at home, looking after Frost – and over her shoulder constantly. Frost’s parents demanded Frost “keep [his] head down and don’t draw attention.”; and for a long time, he did just that. But try as he might to “blend into the background” as his parents wanted, his inability to control his power continually drew attention to him, often leaving him ostracized and sometimes even harassed by his peers. Even his older brother was of no use, instead content to follow in his father’s footsteps and pretend all was well, also desperate not to make a “fuss” as it were, the few times he stood up for the young leopard ultimately making little difference..

Alone, living in absolute filth, burdened with powers he could not control, the young Frost was miserable, and he constantly hoped and prayed that things would change, that he wouldn’t have to live like this, that things would just somehow get better. But those prayers would never be answered, and for a long time it seemed like there was no way out for Frost–until he found it. One day, while enduring yet another round of harassment from his peers, something in Frost just *snapped*. For the first time in his life, he truly unleashed his power and froze his tormentors solid. The incident quickly drew unwanted attention, resulting in his father pulling him out of the school to prevent any further mishaps, desperately hoping things would blow over and return to normal. But they never would, for Frost had learned a very valuable lesson: the power of fear.

The faces of those around him - frozen in fear, their hands trembling, their jaws slackened - desperately backing away from him, in what seemed like pure terror, told him everything he needed to know. But perhaps almost as telling was his father’s solution to this issue; instead of trying to figure out how things had gotten to this point, he had simply chosen to keep quiet, too worried about “making a fuss”, perfectly content to let things go on as they always did. And when Frost had finally snapped after years of torment, his father’s solution was to simply hide him away, trying to wait for things to go back to normal. In fact, when Frost thought about it, that is what everyone else had done all this time. They were content to simply let things go on as they always had, too worried about causing a fuss or shaking up the “status quo”, too concerned with saving themselves above all else . That is when Frost realized something: if he truly wanted to improve his situation, he would have to be the one to do it; him and no one else.

Yet despite these revelations, Frost was still very much at a loss as to what to do: He knew that he was the only person who could improve his situation, but he was still at a loss as to the how. He knew fear would be an effective tool in reaching those ends, but he was still at a loss as to what those ends even were, much less how he would even use it effectively. But as fate would have it, he would not find his answers in the present, but the past. Stuck in his own home with no recourse, Frost stumbled upon a dusty, nearly tattered book on his father’s bookshelf. The book itself told the tales of great kings and empires gone by, of men turned myth, who were respected, beloved, and most of all, *feared*. But that alone was not enough to give Frost the direction he needed. It was only when he began to pay attention to the news, to the state of his country, that it all came together. It struck him with a revelation: it wasn’t just his parents or his teachers or the adults around him that were complacent and fearful of change, it was the entire country. The entire country was just as stagnant, squalid, and content to lie in its own filth as the small corner he was forced to call home. Those in power - the formal Osakiran government, and the Yakuza syndicates that held the leash, were far too weak, too complacent with their comfortable lives to bring the change the country needed. It brought to mind those emperors of old Frost had read about; men who rose to power, uplifting and uniting their people all the while. Not like the privileged cowards who ruled now… and that’s when Frost realized what it would take to salvage both himself and Osakiru, what separated the historical rulers from the present: strength. Osakiru would need someone who was truly strong not just in body, but mind and will as well. And it was then that Frost realized that he and only he could become that man. He would have to dispose the feeble cowards and take their place at the top, not just for himself, but everyone else.

Frost knew what he had to do now, and he was already training both his mind and body in preparation for the task to come. All he needed was an opportunity, and one such opportunity would soon make itself known. One day, the syndicate Frost’s father had spent his life working for finally came for him, punishing him for one mistake too many, dumping his fetid corpse onto the street for all to see. All, including Frost and what was left of his family. His brother, seeing the very clear writing on the wall, decided to flee the country, attempting to take both Frost and his mother with him to safety. But despite the pleading of both his mother and brother, calling his actions “suicide”, Frost would not flee. He knew what he had to do, the image of his father’s corpse only cementing into his mind his mission. And so they fled, leaving Frost alone, and it was then that Frost, not even an adult yet at the age of 17, pledged himself into the service of the very syndicate that had taken his father’s life, seeing the path to the top through them

Frost began his climb to the top then and there. Despite the many mistakes he made in those formative years, which showed themselves through bruises, scars, and even a missing finger, Frost pressed on, pushing himself to become the *best*. He trained his body, his mind, his *will* to the point where he could not take any more, yet he kept going, pushing himself to greater and greater heights, modeling himself after the very rulers he had read about all those years ago, all in an effort to be the very image of strength he knew he had to be. His efforts would not go unnoticed, and within a few years, Frost found himself to be the 2nd in command of the entire syndicate. But this was not enough, and Frost knew this, and soon enough he struck down the patriarch, and took the entire syndicate for himself, as well as the thing that would come to be Frost’s trademark: his katana. Though it was merely a talking piece hung on the wall of the patriarch’s office, Frost would make the blade his own, a true extension of himself in every sense of the word.

From here on, Frost would truly begin his conquest of Osakiru and one by one, the other yakuza syndicates fell to Frost, surrendering their power, their influence, and most of all, their resources. As Frost’s reach grew, so did his numbers, whether it be through assimilating the other syndicates or people joining his ranks of their own volition. Four individuals in particular, all of whom Frost saw untapped potential in and who saw in Frost the key to their own salvation, would come to make up his inner circle, soon to be known as the Black Lotus.

Eventually, the last of the syndicates fell to Frost’s forces. Now, all that was left to do was to overthrow the formal government. At this point, they knew that Frost was on his way, and that it was too late to stop him; they were outmatched, outplayed, and ultimately overwhelmed. When his icy blade ripped through the Prime Minister’s chest, spilling crimson onto the steps of Osakiru’s Capitol Building, it marked the final, bloody conclusion of Frost’s 11 year conquest. No longer would Osakiru be ruled by yakuza thugs or ineffectual Prime Ministers. Now it would be ruled by an *emperor*, one who would bring Osakiru into a new golden age.

Despite the success of his initial conquest, Frost knew the real work had only just begun; there was no time for celebration, and he quickly got to work imposing his will unto the country. He cleaned the streets, both figuratively and literally, reorganizing the pathetic OSDF into a true army, and created a new police force to unflinchingly carry out his will and being the emperor’s eyes and ears. He knew that in order to secure his vision, sacrifices would have to be made, and so he quickly consolidated all of Osakiru’s media under a single banner in a bid to suppress any thought of rebellion, and to push his ideology onto the people. Schools suffered the same, their curriculum changed to emphasize nationalistic pride and personal achievement. Every able-bodied adult was put to work under his rule, for the betterment of economy and to aid in building his ideal nation. Among the first orders of business was renovating the decrepit palace to fit Frost’s vision, a symbol of his immense power and of the dynasties he sought to emulate. He made sure that no matter where you were in Osakiru, his presence was *felt*. He became at once the most beloved figure in all of Osakiru and the one everyone feared the most.

Two years later, and Frost continues to rule Osakiru with an iron fist, still seeking new ways to develop and strengthen both his country and himself. One of his latest approaches involves seeking new, diplomatic relationships with powerful allies, such as the Kingdom of Acorn and G.U.N., hoping for both an economic partnership and one to strengthen defenses against the likes of Dr. Eggman - the one factor that keeps Frost from expanding Osakiru’s territory. With his sights set southward to Osakiru’s historical rival, Chun-nan, Frost knows it’s simply a matter of time. Eventually, the opportunity will rise, and Frost happens to be a very patient man.

#Frost the Snow Leopard #OC Stuff #Sonic OC #Archie Sonic #Sonic FC #Sonic #I am more than open to taking questions about him

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mittensmorgul · 5 years

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300, and other random observations

Last night Mel and I were scouring the episode looking for the expected obvious “300″ to jump out from some random door or building number, or appear SOMEWHERE in the episode the way 100 did in 5.18:

or 200 did in 10.05:

In case it isn’t obvious from this image, this is the 200 Motel:

So I was looking for the 300 in 14.13, and weirdly didn’t find anything quite this obvious. I rambled a bit about my search here on @drsilverfish;s post:

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/182669346730/14x13-lebanon-some-silent-storytelling-notes-on

But I saw some interesting things in the pawn shop and around Lebanon that I can appreciate, as well as some very well hidden “300″ references. Basically this is just my Jerry Wanek appreciation post, because what a guy!

All screencaps are from hotn.

The one thing I’d overlooked as a HUGE “300″ is the most prominently featured guitar in the shop:

That one right in the middle, raised up above the others, looks a bit downtrodden. It’s missing its strings, first off. While another guitar is labeled “PLAY ME!” this one isn’t playable at all. And yet it might be the rarest instrument in the shop, and with a bit of tlc could easily be worth thousands. It’s a ww2 era Gibson ES300. Between 1942 and 1946, Gibson only produced a few acoustic guitars, since metals for the electric pickups were needed for the war effort. I think this could be one of those guitars. So talk about a big, blaring 300. Unstrung, a product of war, seemingly unplayable, but with care and attention, possibly the most valuable and precious instrument in the shop. Easy to see why it’s given pride of place.

But again, this isn’t an obvious 300. You kinda have to know something about something to even recognize it among all the other second-hand guitars.

(also lol at the giant tv in the background that makes us think of 13.16)

(and lol at the tuba that makes me think of the house of horns or whatever from 6.06. This show has such a bizarre history with pawn shops...)

Under a cut because this got way longer and more rambly and tangential than I intended >.>

There’s a lot going on just at the register:

Roadhouse Monkey, “You break it, you buy it,” and the sign that says “Your baby daddy sitting in jail? Sell your gold and get bail!” with the weirdest assortment of random jewelry pictured on it... and oddly a mala draped around the register itself. Clearly this dude hasn’t been using his mala for meditation practice.

In the post I linked above, I already described their entrance into the secret back room, where everything was “one of a kind” and we immediately saw two identical goblets. Go read that post for more on that. :D

Behind the goblets, it almost looks like a heart frozen in a block of something. But what the shop owner points to is a Hand of Glory, which was the central magical item from 3.06, the plot of which had to do with people who committed acts of violence against family (and the spell they found to banish the ghost killing people forever contained the first use of the word “Castiel” on the show).

He goes on to point out “gris gris bags” and “anointed dove’s blood.” Gris gris bags are protective talismans, which my brain immediately associates with Gordon Walker. He traded his to Bela for the Winchesters’ location in 3.07, and after giving it up, he was turned into a vampire and then killed by Sam. I can’t remember any use for the dove’s blood in canon...

It’s hard to see, but one shelf over is a Jason Voorhees style hockey mask (which is interesting to me because of 14.04 and the horror movie callbacks that were referenced later in 14.13 again at the movie theater in Lebanon playing All Saint’s Day and Hell Hazers). Not to mention as we talked about during 14.04, the original “monster” they were supposed to fight with in 3.10 in their nightmares was Jason, but Kripke didn’t realize they couldn’t obtain the rights to it, so that scene had to be cut. So in a roundabout way we get another reference to that iconic scene between Dean and his demon self, rejecting John’s influence over him. Beside the mask is the first of three Centurion Helmets we see in the episode (actually the second instance is probably this helmet again, but in a different context, in the box the teens steal from the Impala and take into their party house, along with the teddy bear Sam plays with here in a minute).

There’s the spray bottle of Dragon’s Breath, that looks like an innocent bottle of perfume with the squeezy bulb, but shoots out a gout of fire.

Inside his safe, along with the skull of Sarah Goode, executed during the Salem Witch Trials, is an odd assortment of things, double-locked inside this already secret room:

It looks like a clock of some sort, a brass globe, and a genie’s oil lamp. But it’s the fact he had the skull at all, stolen from a murdered hunter that they knew, meant that he’d been involved with that horrific crime, like the previous references to Bela who traded in these artifacts (and had sold the hand of glory when she’d needed to destroy it to save her own life... I mean this was pretty heavy Bela parallels here), the owner turns the Dragon’s breath on them and pulls out a saber:

It’s called “Chrysaor.” Whether the one from Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene” that belonged to Sir Artegal, the Knight of Justice, and had supposedly been used by Zeus to battle the Titans, or to the offspring of Poseidon and Medusa and the brother of Pegasus, or whether it was a nod to Assassin’s Creed (I honestly think it’s the former and the latter is a bonus here...)

This reminded me SO MUCH of Gog and Magog and their Special Swords forged by a god, with the reference back to Zeus and the Titans here, AND to the actual circumstances around how Dean managed to kill them. Because Gog and Magog... just would not shut up. Dean even lampshades the fact this guy stood there with the sword over his head, raised above Sam sprawled on the ground the same way Cas was in 13.14:

But he talked long enough about Cas’s “beautiful death” that Dean was able to stab him from behind, just as he was able to shoot the store owner now, because he wouldn’t stop talking. Forged by a god, touched by God...

Then we see the store’s secret ledger:

I honestly don’t want to know what’s in the “genitalia jar.” But these entries are dated from 1956. How long has this shop been into this sort of shady business? At least as far back as the original MoL was operating in the US (they were annihilated in 1958 by Abaddon). And there’s even a reference to a “Men of Letters membership discussion” in the ledger:

Of interest on the next page is a lock of hair from a victim of HH Holmes (taking us back to 2.06), as well as trinkets associated with Vlad the Impaler and Napoleon, a “bag of sorrows,” and a “razor of the damned.” Among other items of interest.

But here’s the page with the magical pearl:

And nowhere in this book does it say the pearl “gives you what your heart desires.” It says, “a pearl that grants wishes.” So... where did Sam get that additional information? I find it fascinating how things that are written in books are interpreted in a much broader fashion by the reader-- first Dean with the book Billie gave him in 14.10, and now Sam with this entry in this ledger.

Because this has been happening a lot.

For example in the scene immediately prior to this, the kids outside are talking about the Winchesters when they actually drive up. Their conversation is really interesting:

Eliot: People say they’re brothers. All I know is I was standing right here when-- when I heard this BAM! from the trunk of their car. And then, this like, shallow breathing. Max: No way. Flower Shirt Girl: Eliot, you’re creeping Max out.

I have to assume this was when they still had Garth in the trunk of the car, and just :’). Eliot is making some assumptions, but he’s much more terrifyingly accurate than he probably could guess. And Max’s flippant comment in her next scene proves it:

Eliot: I mean think about it. Where do they even come from? Them or their weird sidekick with the trenchcoat. Or what about the kid with the dumb Bambi look on his face all the time? Max: So what, it doesn’t mean they kidnapped Bigfoot or whatever.

And they all laugh, and Eliot calls them dicks. :P

And all of this makes me think of how the show spent the early part of the season teaching us how to read between the lines, to fill in narrative gaps, and to parse the subtext to understand exactly what it was they were actively not showing us.

Like in the scene at the party house where the John Wayne Gacy clown appears, we don’t see Dean thrown by the clown (just as we didn’t see the other boy who was attacked escape from the clown), nor do we see Sam light the fire that burned the cigar box tethering the ghost. But it’s clear that Dean was thrown because we saw him land, and Sam obviously eventually got his lighter to work because there’s the evidence of the flames.

Also, did they bring that old pickup truck from the bunker? Because they should DEFINITELY drive that thing more often. :’)

And Eliot follows his instincts, wanting to know what’s up and witnesses the ghost going up in flames. And he knows what he saw, and doesn’t even question it. When Sam confirms it, he feels so validated. Just like us when we read the subtext and fill in the blanks.

I have no idea how I got here from rambling about finding the 300′s in the episode but here we are.

OH. Right! The Centurion Helmets!

The first we see was in the shop pictured above. We see it again at the Party House in the Establishing Shot inside, nestled in a box with Sarah Goode’s skull, which was the original Macguffin that led Sam and Dean to that pawn shop in the first place, which enabled them to find the pearl to even be able to make this wish at all:

And the second and third Centurions are on the wall of B&E Pizza:

(and the one on the other side of the menu board hasn’t been screencapped yet, but is much more clearly visible than this one because Cas lights it up:

Three Centurions. Each of whom commands a century, or a group of 100 soldiers. So I’m going to use the fact that the show is actively telling us to notice and read between the lines, and assume we’re seeing yet another 300.

Especially after Misha’s tweet joking about it: https://twitter.com/mishacollins/status/1093606706532282371

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failes-xtra-bits · 4 years

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Review: Prince's Gambit Ch 1

Prince’s Gambit

Review Chapter 1:

So we start off this book with our characters riding towards Chastillon. What I really like about the beginning is that we see Damen becoming more friendly with the other men.

“It’s hunting country,’ said Orlant, mistaking the nature of his gaze. "Dare you to make a run for it.”

This piece of dialogue is half joking, half wary (if that makes any sense) which I absolutely love and sets the foundations for the trust the builds as we go through the book.

After a while Damen is summoned by Paschal, the physician:

It was fine. His back had healed enough that new scars had replaced new wounds. Damen craned for a glimpse but, not being an owl, saw almost nothing. He stopped before he got a crick in his neck.

The physician rummaged in the satchel and produced one of his endless ointments.

‘A massage?’

‘These are healing salves. It should be done every night. It will help the scarring to fade a little, in time.’

That was really too much. ‘It’s cosmetic?’

The physician said, ‘I was told you would be difficult. Very well. The better it heals, the less your back will trouble you with stiffness, both now and later in life, so that you will be better able to swing a sword around, killing a great many people. I was told you would be responsive to that argument.’

‘The Prince,’ said Damen. But of course. All this tender care of his back, like soothing with a kiss the reddened cheek you have slapped.

I always found this exchange interesting (side note I found the owl thing kinda amusing.) The question “is it cosmetic” hearkens back to what we know about Akielon culture and how while male nudity is not reviled using cosmetics on the male body is. Damen’s reluctance is not just him being rebellious but is coloured by this cultural view and his reluctance is only assuaged by the physician propounding its practical value.

Further the last bit is also very interesting, it serves to remind the reader of all the brutalities Laurent has inflicted upon Damen, but also symbolises the beginning of Laurent trying to remedy all of it.

As they talk we find out that Paschal served the king and tended to the fallen at Marlas.

“If you served the King,’ said Damen, ‘how is it you now find yourself in the Prince’s household, and not his uncle’s?’

‘Men find themselves in the places they put themselves,’ Paschal said, closing his satchel with a snap.”

This exchange is interesting because it really hones in the idea that there are people who serve Laurent out of sheer loyalty. Up until this point the reader is positioned to hate Laurent, so it's a surprise to see that there a people willing to be on his side. Slowly our hatred for him is unraveling.

After this Damen goes to the courtyard and meets Jord who tells him to go to the armoury. Once there we meet Aimeric (who was briefly introduced at the end of Captive Prince) who was getting his ass beat. When Damen enters he tells the three men to stop.

“It wasn’t Damen’s size that stopped them. It wasn’t the sword he held casually in his hand. If these men really wanted to make a fight out of it, there were enough swords, flingable armour pieces, and teetering shelves to turn this into something long and ludicrous. It was only when the leader of the men saw Damen’s gold collar that he shoved out an arm, holding the others back.

And Damen understood, in that moment, exactly how things were going to be on this campaign: the Regent’s men in ascendancy. Aimeric and the Prince’s men were targets because they had no one to complain to except Govart, who would slap them back down. Govart, the Regent’s favourite thug, brought here to keep the Prince’s men in “and the Prince’s men were targets because they had no one to complain to except Govart, who would slap them back down. Govart, the Regent’s favourite thug, brought here to keep the Prince’s men in check. But Damen was different. Damen was untouchable, because Damen had a direct line of reportage to the Prince.”

I always think it must be weird for Damen (a prince, future king, war hero, etc) to see that his power doesn’t come from he himself this time but rather because of Laurent. I don’t really have much commentary on this other than it must feel weird for him.

Anyway the men leave, Damen and Aimeric talk to each other for the first time. We learn that Aimeric is young, 19. Once again we are presented with notion of loyalty.

“Aimeric didn’t budge. ‘You couldn’t take a flogging like a man. You opened your mouth and squealed to the Regent. You laid hands on him. You spat on his reputation. Then you tried to escape, and he still intervened for you, because he’d never abandon a member of his household to the Regency. Not even someone like you.’

Damen had gone very still. He looked at the boy’s young, bloody face, and reminded himself that Aimeric had been willing to take a beating from three men in defence of his Prince’s honour. He’d call it misguided puppy love, except that he’d seen the glint of something similar in Jord, in Orlant, and even, in his own quiet way, in Paschal/ him.

“Damen thought of the ivory and gold casing that held a creature duplicitous, self-serving and untrustworthy.

‘You’re so loyal to him. Why is that?’

‘I’m not a turncoat Akielon dog,’ said Aimeric.

It’s kinda of interesting in hindsight now that we know Aimeric is on the regents side. I’m not going to comment on this bc idk what I can say.

Anyway after this Damen delivers the inventory to Rochert as promised. It’s mentioned that the preparations should have happened a lot earlier and out of the 150 men the regent sent only less than two dozen are actually helping.

Jord then approached Damen and says that Aimeric won’t foment any more tension which Damen knows is a lie. Damen asks where the Captain is and we find out that:

“The Captain is in one of the horse stalls, up to his waist in the stableboy,”

And that Damen is going to be the one to fetch him. When Damen finally arrives at the stables we see Govart fucking the stable boy. When told that he his to see the Prince, Govart is adamant in wanting to finish his business and says Laurent is just

“ really just a tease who wants cock”

This provokes an interesting reaction in Damen

“Damen felt anger settle inside him, a tangible weight. He recognised an echo of the impotence Aimeric must have experienced in the armoury, except that he was not a green nineteen year old who had never seen a fight. His eyes passed impassively over the half-unclothed body of the stableboy. He realised that in a moment he was going to return to Govart in this small, dusty stall all that was owed for the rape of Erasmus.”

While we know that Damen and Govart have some history but its interesting that this reaction is provoked when Govart insults the Prince. Does it imply that Damen feels a weird sense of loyalty? Perhaps. Or perhaps he just really hates Govart.

Eventually Govart gives in to the Prince’s orders.

Finally it is time for Damen to report to the castellan and he is led to to the bedchamber. Here we get another crumb about the regent and Laurent’s relationship.

“The Prince stays here often?’

The castellan mistook him to mean the keep, not the rooms. ‘Not often. He and his uncle came here a great deal together, in the year or two after Marlas. As he grew older, the Prince lost his taste for the runs here. He now comes only rarely to Chastillon.”

While most of us picked up on their relationship, its a surprise Damen does not. Once again this serves to reveal Damen’s naivety which stems from his trusting nature and the straightforwardness of his culture.

Food is brought and Damen waits for Laurent while pondering on the political situation the regent has created for Laurent. He intends to tear the group apart.

Laurent finally arrives:

“'I have saved you till last'….Laurent calmly helped himself to goblet and pitcher, pouring himself a drink. Damen couldn’t help glancing at the goblet, remembering the last time they had been alone together in Laurent’s rooms.

Pale brows arched a fraction. ‘Your virtue’s safe. It’s just water. Probably.’ Laurent took a sip, then lowered the goblet, holding it in refined fingers. He glanced at the chair, as a host might offering a seat, and said, as though the words amused him, ‘Make yourself comfortable. You are going to stay the night.’

‘No restraints?’ said Damen. ‘You don’t think I’ll try to leave, pausing only to kill you on the way out?’

‘Not until we get closer to the border,’ said Laurent.

He returned Damen’s gaze evenly. There was no sound but the crack and pop of the banked fire.

‘You really do have ice in your veins, don’t you,’ said Damen.”

“Laurent placed the goblet carefully back on the table, and picked up the knife.

It was a sharp knife, made for cutting meat. Damen felt his pulse quicken as Laurent came forward. Only a handful of nights ago, he had watched Laurent slit a man’s throat, spilling blood as red as the silk that covered this room’s bed. He felt shock as Laurent’s fingers touched his, pressing the hilt of the knife into his hand. Laurent took hold of Damen’s wrist below the gold cuff, firmed his grip, and drew the knife forward so that it was angled towards his own stomach. The tip of the blade pressed slightly into the dark blue of his prince’s garment.

‘You heard me tell Orlant to leave,’ said Laurent.

Damen felt Laurent’s grip slide down his wrist to his fingers, and tighten.

“Laurent said, ‘I am not going to waste time on posturing and threats. Why don’t we clear up any uncertainty about your intentions?’

It was well placed, just below the rib cage. All you would have to do was push in, then angle up.

He was so infuriatingly sure of himself, proving a point. Damen felt desire come hard upon him: not wholly a desire for violence, but a desire to drive the knife into Laurent’s composure, to force him to show something other than cool indifference.

He said: ‘I’m sure there are house servants still awake. How do I know you won’t scream?’

‘Do I seem like the type to scream?’

‘I’m not going to use the knife,’ said Damen, ‘but if you’re willing to put it in my hand, you underestimate how much I want to.’

‘No,’ said Laurent. ‘I know exactly what it is to want to kill a man, and to wait.”

This scene here is interesting. We are once again reminded of the assassination attempt and Laurent and Damen's tenuous relationship. They are clearly not friends, there is still hate between them yet a weird sort of trust is forming. Further last bit hints at what we know in hindsight is Laurent’s almost life long obsession with wanting to kill Damen in retribution for Auguste’s death.

“Laurent said, ‘When this campaign is over, I think—if you are a man and not a worm—you will attempt to gain retribution for what has happened to you. I expect it. On that day, we roll the dice and see how they fall. Until then, you serve me. Let me therefore make one thing above all clear to you: I expect your obedience. You are under my command. If you object to what you are told to do I will hear reasoned arguments in private, but if you disobey an order once it is made, I will send you back to the flogging post.”

The terms of their relationship are now set and now Laurent reveals why Damen is here.

“You said you knew the territory,’ ”

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