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davidmann95 · 3 years

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Sooo… Superman and the Authority?

magnus-king123 asked: Your thoughts on Superman & the authority Give it to me...lol

Anonymous asked: Seeing Bezos take his little trip into space the same day Morrison puts out a Superman comic that touches on how far we’ve fallen from the days when we dreamed of utopian futures where everyone explored the stars was a big gut punch. Not used to Superman being topical in that way.

Anonymous asked: What'd you think of Superman and the Authority#1?

This is far beyond what I can fit in the normal weekly reviews, so taking this as my notes on the first six pages, with this and this as my major lead-in thoughts:

* Janin's such a perfect fit for Morrison - the scale, the power, the facial expressions selling the character work, the screwing around with the panel formatting as necessary to sell the effect, the numinous sense of things going on larger than you can fully perceive amidst the beauty and chaos. It's a shame he wasn't around 25 years ago to draw JLA, but I'll take him going with Morrison onto other future projects.

* His intro action sequence is such a great demonstration of why Black actually does have something to offer, and also how he's such a dumbass desperately needing Superman to save him from himself.

* While Jordie Bellaire didn't legit go with an entirely monochromatic palate the way early previews suggested, it's still an effect frequently and excellently deployed here. And glad to see Steve Wands carry into this from Blackstars since there's such an obvious carryover from its work with Superman.

* "Gentlemen. Ladies. Others." Great both because of the obvious - hey, Superman's nodding at me! - and because it's a phrasing that reinforces that this take on him (and let's be real Morrison) is old as hell.

* I'm mostly past caring about whether this is an alt-Earth Superman until it becomes indisputable one way or another, this and Action both rule so what does it really matter? But while there are still a couple signs in play suggesting some kind of division (the Action Comics #1036 cover, Midnighter up to time-travel shenanigans) the "lost in time" quote clearly thrown in after the fact to explain how he could have met Kennedy outside of 5G that wouldn't be necessary for an Elseworlds, the assorted gestures towards Superman's current status quo, the Kingdom Come symbol appearing in Action, and that Morrison would have had to completely rewrite the ending if this wasn't supposed to be 'the' version of Clark Kent going forward as was the intent when they first planned it all say to me that no, no fooling around, this is our guy going forward one way or another.

* Janin and Bellaire making the first version of the crystal Fortress ever that actually looks as cool as you want it to.

Anonymous asked: I like that Superman and The Authority is basically the anti-All-Star; instead of the laid back, immortal Superman who is supercharged, we have a stressed, ageing Superman whose tremendous powers are fading. The former will always be there to save us, but the latter is running out of time and needs to pull off a Hail Mary. Also, he mentions in his monologue to Black that he was "lost in time" when he met JFK, so maybe he is the main continuity Clark. Or he's the t-shirt Supes from Sideways.

* You're absolutely right - the power reversal is obvious and the ticking clock in play seemingly isn't for his own survival but everyone around him as he wakes up and realizes all the old icons grew complacent with the gains they'd made and he's not leaving behind the world he meant to. Both, however, are built on the idea of preparing the world to not need them anymore - it'll still have a Superman in his son, but that'll only work because of the others he empowers and inspires. The question is what happens to Clark if he's not going to live in the sun for 83000 years.

* Clark's 'exercise' here does more to sell me on the idea of Old Man Superman as a cool idea than however many decades of Earth 2 stuff.

* Intergang being noted alongside Darkseid and Doomsday speaks to how much Kirby informed Morrison's conception of Superman.

* This isn't exactly the most progressive in its disability politics but at least it makes clear Black's being a piece of shit about it.

* It's startling how much Clark can get away with saying stuff in here you'd never expect to come out of Superman's mouth. "I made an executive decision" "Privacy, really...?" "You have nowhere to go, Black. Nothing to live for." "There are few people in my life who I instinctively and viscerally dislike, and you've always been one of them." It only works because there's zero aggression behind it, he's just past the point of niceties and being totally frank while making clear none of these assessments preclude that he cares and is going to unconditionally do the right thing every time. He is absolutely, per Morrison, humanity's dad picking us up when we're too drunk to drive ourselves home.

* The story doesn't put a big flashing light over it, but it's not even a little bit subtle having the material threat of the issue be a ticking timebomb left by the carelessness and hubris of generations past.

* Manchester keeps trying to poke the bear and prove his hot takes about Superman and it's just not working. The front he put up under Kelley is gone after decades of defeats, and as Morrison understands what actually conceptually works about him as a rival to Superman underneath the aging nerd paranoia he's exposed as what he absolutely would be in 2021: a dude with a horrific terminal case of Twitter brainworms. I was PANICKED when I heard there was an 'offensive term' joke in this, I was braced for Morrison at their well-meaning worst, but it's such a goddamn perfect encapsulation of a very specific breed of Twitter leftist who uses their politics first and foremost as a cudgel and justification to label their abrasive, judgmental shittiness as self-righteousness (plus it's a killer payoff to a joke from way back in his original appearance). Cannot believe they pulled that off when they're so very, very open about basically not knowing how the internet works.

* @charlottefinn: Manchester Black using his telekinetic powers to force someone he hates to fave a problematic tweet so that he can screenshot it and start a dogpile

@intergalactic-zoo: “Once they cancel Bibbo, Superman won’t be *anyone’s* fav’rit anymore!”

* Friend noted this issue had to be fully the conversation because the whole premise stands on the house of cards of these two somehow working together, and with three 'silent' inset panels the creative team pulls off that turning point.

* So much of this feels on the surface like Morrison bringing back the All-Star vibes with Clark, but when he drops a "That's all you got?" in a brawl you realize what's underlining that bluntness and confidence in the face of failure is that deep down this is still the Action guy too. This dude ain't gonna get wrecked in his Fortress while the other guy chuckles about him being A SOFT WEE SCIENTIST'S SON!

* Bringing up Jor-El made me realize that Morrison already spelled out that this is the final threat to Superman, what he faces at the end of the road:

"Now it's your turn, Superman."

* A l'il Superman 2000/All-Star reference with the Phantom Zone map!

* There's so much intertextuality going on here even by Morrison standards - Change or Die with the old hero putting together a team of morally nebulous folks out to 'fix' everything, Flex Mentallo with the muscleman trying to redeem the punk, Doomsday Clock with the fate of the world hinging on whether Superman can get through to a meta stand-in for an idea of 'modern' comics cynicism, DKR and New Frontier and Kingdom Come and Multiversity and Seven Soldiers and What's So Funny and All-Star and Action and the last 5 years of monthly Superman comics and Authority and probably Jupiter's Legacy and Tom Strong - but none of that's needed. You could go in with the baseline pop cultural understanding of the character and not care about any of the inside baseball shit and get that this is a story about a leader of a generation that let down the people they made all their grand promises to as inertia and day-to-day demands and complacency let him be satisfied with the accomplishments they'd made long ago, looking at a new era and seeing the ways its own activists are dropping the ball. The only thing that fundamentally matters in a "you have to accept you're reading a superhero story" sense is that because he's Superman he's willing to own up to it and listen to people who might know better about some things and try to set things right while he and those who'll take his place still have a chance. And yes, the oldster looking back on their legacy with a skeptical eye and hoping for better from the next generation, hoping most of all that their little heir apparent can fulfill the promise inside of him instead of being a provocating little shitkicker, is obviously also autobiographical.

* The overlaying Kennedy reprisal is such a great visual of a sudden intrusive thought.

* The Kryptonite secret is the obvious "This is going to matter!" moment, but "He lied about his son" is a bit that doesn't connect to anything going on right now so maybe that's important here too? More significantly, the Justice League can't actually be the villains here but that Ultra-Humanite's crew are in an Earth-orbiting satellite makes pretty clear what's up.

* I've said before that between Superman, OMAC, and a New Gods-affiliated speedster this was going to use all of Morrison's favorite things. King Arthur playing a role isn't exactly dissuading me.

* Love the idea that all the antiheroes have their own community in the same way as the capes and tights crew. They definitely all privately think the rest are posers though and that they alone are Garth Ennis Punisher in a mob of Garth Ennis Wolverines.

* Manchester's fallen so far he's gone from trying to convince Superman to kill to convince him to dunk on people for their bad takes and Clark just doesn't get it. Official prediction of dialogue for upcoming issues:

"According to these bloody Fortress scans, the only thing that can restore your powers is an unfiltered hit of dopamine. Don't worry, Doctor Black has a few ideas."

"Hmm. Maybe I'll plant a nice tree?"

"...fuck you."

* Ok I already talked about how great the Fortress looks in here but LOVE this library.

* A pair of pages this seems like the right spot to discuss from Black's original appearance that underlines both his and Superman's inadequacies up to this point:

Responding to the problem of "the government and penal system are hopelessly corrupt" neither of them has any actual notion of what to do about it in spite of their respective posturing beyond how to handle individual outside actors - each is in their own way every bit as small-minded and reactionary as the other. Clark's coming around though, and he's holding out hope for the other guy.

* Superman: Have a lovely mineral water :) proper hydration is important :)

Manchester Black: *Is a dude who can get so mad he vomits and passes out. At water.*

* That last page is the one to beat for the year, and does more to put over the idea of this as an Authority book than that Midnighter and Apollo are literally going to show up. It also feels like Morrison tacitly acknowledging all the ways the premise could go or at least be received wrong - from Superman saying 'enough is enough' to who he's bringing into the fold to go about it - in the most beautifully on-the-nose fashion imaginable. Maybe they'll save us all! Or maybe they'll drown us in their vomit.

#Superman and The Authority #Superman #The Authority #Manchester Black #Grant Morrison #Mikel Janin #Jordie Bellaire #Steve Wands #Opinion

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singtotheskiies · 3 years

Text

dream come true // five hargreeves x fem!reader (royal au)

masterlist

summary: prince five longs for a taste of the world outside the marble walls of the castle he’s always known—and when he meets you at the annual ball, he discovers that it’s even more beautiful than he could have imagined.

request (by my absolute favorite anon): I was wondering if you'd be up for writing an AU one shot? I can't get the idea of something similar to a Cinderella (or prince/princess royalty AU) out of my mind. At some point Reggie throws a Grand Ball for some reason and thats where Reader and Five meet and fall in love and well idk if there would be conflict regarding Reggie and his approval (not like Five would ask) but happy ending? Whether Reader is a princess or a commoner or something else I'll leave up to you.

words: 2000

warnings: none besides reggie’s shit parenting lolz

a/n: i,,,,,, am BLOWN AWAY by this request it is so cute!!! i feel like i really could have done more with this, but here’s a lil unedited smth for you all to enjoy!!! (i wouldn’t be 100% opposed to writing more for this au at some point either)

✖️✖️✖️

Five rolls his eyes to the back of his head for what seems like the thousandth time today. If he has to listen to Luther and Diego tear into each other for five more minutes, he thinks he’s actually going to go insane.

He can see Allison glare at him from the corner of his vision, and he raises his hand in a choice gesture without bothering to look at her directly. Reginald’s cane comes down hard on the floor, voice slicing through the room and silencing Luther and Diego’s bickering.

“Five, your behavior is absolutely un—“ “Spare me the lecture, father.” Five cracks a humorless smile. “I already know what you’re going to say—the future of the kingdom is in our hands, all of us must be prepared since we never know when our moment will come, and so on and so on. Well, I’m tired of this! So tired. All we ever do is sit here and listen to those two—“ he pins Luther and Diego with an angry stare— “argue on and on while you just sit there all self-righteous and above it all, never having the decency to tell us who’s going to inherit—“ “That is quite enough,” Reginald snaps, voice taut with rage. “Out.” Five’s eyes narrow. “Out!” And so he finds himself outside the throne room for the third time in as many weeks, head lolling back against the cool marble. I’m really not cut out for this, he thinks. If this is all royalty is—just endless arguing and politics day after day—then I don’t want it. The mid-morning sun breaks through the clouds, shining through the huge glass panes that line the hall. Gold trimmings catch the light, and a glimmer hits Five right in the eyes. He stands up with a sigh and makes his way to the window, looking out on the courtyard and the distant hills beyond. He’s spent hours looking outside at those hills, longing to run for them with all his might. Small homes dot the slopes like beads on a necklace, and Five wants to walk among them, feeling the ground against his feet and listening to all the villagers greet each other as they go about their days. He longs to be free of marble walls and false smiles and instead feel the freedom that he imagines comes from interacting with real people. An impossible dream, perhaps—but a lovely one all the same. And when Reginald calls Five back to the throne room for a talking-to, it certainly helps take his mind off things. Maybe someday, he thinks. ✖️✖️✖️ The sun beams down bright and warm, and you’re grateful for the shade of your stall in the market. It’s been a slow day for selling, and you can’t help but wish that the time would go faster so that you can be free to roam about as you wish. As much as you love selling your jewelry, there’s other prospects that spark more excitement in you—namely, the yearly Presentation Ball being held in just two days. A smile spreads across your face at the thought of it. It’s going to be beautiful, you imagine, full of normal people trying to be their best for one night. And, of course, the royals will be there. Now, you’re not one to gush over a family who’s never seen in public, but a tiny part of you has to admit that the allure of the elite is tempting. This is the first year you’ve ever been able to go, and you wonder if the stories you’ve heard of rulers more statue than person are true. You hope to get a glimpse of them—just to see if they are, in fact, human. The pads of your fingers brush over the necklace in your pocket you’re saving for the ball, and a smile stays on your face for the rest of the day. ✖️✖️✖️ “You had better redeem yourself tonight, boy!” Reginald says to Five, all rancid decorum and thinly-veiled contempt. “I think it unreasonable to expect that I will sit still like—like some puppet all night, Father,” Five shoots back. “Not when our people will be there—I fully expect to speak with some of them.” “What have I always told you and your siblings ever since you were young? Commoners—“ “—Are to be avoided at all costs. Yes, I know. And I am telling you that I believe we cannot be true rulers without knowing who we are reigning over,” Five speaks earnestly, face flushed. “You are a disgrace to this family,” Reginald shouts, all traces of civility gone. “Your siblings would never—“ “Well, I am not my siblings! And I am certainly not going to sit there next to them and feign pompousness,” Five spits. “I’ve had enough of doing things your way.” His turns his heel, moving to storm out of the room.

“Where are you going, boy? The opening introduction will start any minute!” Reginald shouts after him.

“Do it without me! I’m going to be where it really matters—with my people.” Five yells over his shoulder.

Defying Father feels better than he ever could have imagined—and so he takes a deep breath and enters the crowd with a growing smile.

✖️✖️✖️

It’s quite possibly the most exciting night of your life, and you’re completely, heartbreakingly late.

You curse under your breath as you run up the castle stairs, dress gathered up in your hands to keep from tripping. Guards stand on either side of the grand, gilded entrance, and you breathe a sigh of relief when you see a small knot of people entering just before you. You reach the doors and hold out your invitation, smiling at the guard as he nods in acceptance. “Enjoy,” he says, and you beam back.

“I will.”

The ballroom is just as stunningly beautiful as you’d imagined. Gold swirls along the white marble walls, accents of royal red adding to the decadence. The huge room is chock-full of people smiling and drinking and making eyes at each other. You breathe deeply in awe, eyes shining as your head moves side to side, hardly knowing where to look next.

After several moments of looking around, your eyes land on the grand throne at the very front of the room, furthest from you. King Reginald is seated in all his harsh glory on it, flanked on either side by two of the princes. They’re dressed in brilliant royal clothes, trying their best to look as commanding as their father. Four other beautiful royals sit next to them, but your eye is drawn most to the empty throne at the end of the row. If you remember correctly, there should be five princes and two princesses—but only four men are sitting with the king. You wonder where the other is—perhaps sick or off on royal business? The kingdom rarely sees the royals outside of the balls, so it’s impossible to tell which prince is missing.

You turn away from the thrones, curiosity overcome by your thirst. Maneuvering your way through the packs of people is a bit tricky, but you manage to reach the refreshments table without any major accidents. A servant pours you a drink, and you thank him with a smile. As you turn to leave, you nearly bump into a boy about your age.

“I’m so sorry!” you exclaim, before continuing on.

“Wait,” his voice comes after you. You stop and turn back around, pleasantly surprised. “I’m sorry too. What’s your name?”

You tell him, and he smiles.

“I’m F—“ he pauses. “Felix. It’s very nice to meet you.” He reaches for your hand and plants a soft kiss on your knuckles with surprising grace. He’s really quite handsome, you think—slender, searing green eyes, well-groomed, thick hair. Most endearing of all is a dimple in his cheek that deepens as he smiles at you.

“Very nice to meet you too, Felix,” you grin, still-tingling hand slowly coming back down to your side.

“That’s a beautiful necklace,” he says with admiration. “Where is it from?”

“I actually made it myself! I sell my own jewelry at the market on weekdays,” you beam. “The wire is made from metal mined right here in the kingdom. It’s purer here than in any surrounding region.”

“That’s amazing,” Felix says with another soft smile. “You must know all sorts of things about jewelry.”

“I guess I’ve learned my fair share,” you laugh quietly. “Jewelry is how I make a living—and it’s one of my passions, so I suppose you’re right.”

“Tell me about how you make pieces,” he asks as the two of you find a relatively quiet place to sit, voice genuine and curious.

And so you do.

✖️✖️✖️

You’re the most beautiful thing Five has ever seen—high praise from a boy who’s lived in splendor all his life. As he watches you talk about your craft, he can’t tear his eyes away from your animated face and hands. How had he lived this long without realizing how beautiful people were? He’d never known something as small as a wisp of hair falling over an eye could make his heart swell nearly to bursting.

“Felix? Felix!” Your voice cuts through his daze, and his eyes snap to yours, embarrassed.

“Sorry, just got, um—distracted.” Was Felix really the best he could come up with?

“Am I boring you?” you ask teasingly, the corners of your mouth tipping up. He looks into your eyes, sparkling with amusement, and finds that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, he’s so overtaken by his thoughts that he blurts them out loud.

“N-no. No! Absolutely not! I think you’re fascinating—and so beautiful.” He curses his voice for whispering those last words, and averts his eyes in shame.

“You’re too kind,” comes your voice, soft but somehow makes the pounding of his heart even louder. “If it makes you feel any better, I think you’re quite handsome yourself.”

Years of lessons in diplomacy and etiquette have done absolutely nothing to prepare Five for the feeling that washes over him when you say those last few words. He has absolutely no idea how to respond, and the best his mind can come up with is a “really?”

“Yes,” you giggle, and he’s suddenly aware of just how close you are to him. You smell so nice, and the skin of your wrist is brushing his forearm—and next thing he knows, his fingers are flickering over yours, filling up the spaces in your hand. The look you give him is so beautiful that he wishes he had met you years ago so that it would already be ingrained in his mind.

Your head is nearing his shoulder now, and he’s afraid to breathe in case he ruins your descent. The moment your hair brushes against his neck, he hears his name from behind him. He whirls around to see Klaus with an enormous grin on his face.

“I see you’re enjoying yourself, brother,” he quips. “Unfortunately, dear old father has just about reached his limit with you. If you’re not on your throne in the next few minutes, he’s going to send some guards to find you.”

Five’s eyes are wide as he meets yours. “I’m so sorry. I can explain—“

“No, I apologize, your highness,” you say. “I’ve no doubt broken some sort of royal rule tonight.”

“You were perfect—you are perfect,” he whispers, shaking his head vehemently. “I will find you later tonight—I promise.”

Your smile is more precious than any title he’s been given. “Then I will wait for you—Felix.”

He presses a lingering kiss to your soft hand, unwilling to tear his eyes away from you. And, when he still doesn’t feel satisfied, he moves his lips to the tips of your fingers, your palm, your wrist. He’s only drawn away by the sound of Klaus clearing his throat pointedly.

And for the rest of the night, Klaus’ endless teasing and Reginald’s equally endless scolding are mere echos in his ears—his head is filled with only you.

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hopetofantasy · 3 years

Text

Translated interview with Willem De Schryver

Also on my website: Behind wtFOCK - link in comments

The young stars of Streamz series 'Déjà-vu': 'You learn more on the internet than at school'

‘Déjà-vu’ is the name of the latest Flemish fiction series that’s rolling off the production line of ‘Streamz’. In addition to the traditional list of actors' names, Xenia Borremans (21) and Willem De Schryver (19) are featured as fresh blood in the credits. Two newcomers who shamelessly rival the established values.

Calling Willem De Schryver a newcomer is really failing the truth. He has more than 50,000 followers on Instagram and cannot cross the Ghent Korenmarkt without posing for a selfie. It’s the fault of ‘wtFOCK’, a youth series that mainly takes place online and is extremely popular with all those who saw the light of day after 2000. The chance that you’ve seen Xenia Borremans in action, is much smaller. Her only claim to fame for time being, is the horror short ‘De vijver’. And ofcourse, there’s her family name. Xenia is the only daughter of artist Michaël Borremans, but really wants to make a name for herself now.

How did you get into acting? Borremans: “Ever since I was a child, I wanted to act. There are piles of videos at home in which I try to recreate scenes from old films like ‘Some Like it Hot’. I also acted for ten years at ‘Kopergietery’ (children's theater company in Ghent). Acting was a dream, but I didn't dare to hope for that too much. There was always that little voice in the back of my mind that said, "You don’t only need talent but a lot of luck to make it." That was evident when I started to participate in castings. I often cried when I didn’t get a role.

I didn't dare to hope too much for ‘Déjà-vu’ either. Actually, I had no intention of auditioning at all. For fear of being rejected again. In the end, it’s my mom who pushed me to try. When they called me to say I had the part, it came as a complete surprise.”

De Schryver: “I can recognize myself in that story. I too was always performing plays at home. I did ‘Diction’ on Wednesday afternoons, but that wasn’t more than a hobby. When I no longer felt at home at school in secondary school, I took the step to go to the ‘Lemmensinstuut’ in Leuven. That was a revelation. Suddenly, I was allowed to be involved in theater day in, day out. I was happy to get up in the morning, when before, I often came home crying because I really didn't want to go to school anymore. It was obvious that after secondary school I would take the step to theater education at the ‘KASK’.” Borremans: “I also took the entrance exam at the ‘KASK’, but I wasn’t admitted. Maybe I'll try again next year. But maybe not. I’m not convinced that such an education is necessary. There are plenty of examples of actors and actresses who also made it without a diploma.” De Schryver: “In the classes I’m taking now, there isn’t only attention for acting, but also for making plays. I get building blocks to get started in the future. But, just like Xenia, I’m convinced that it can also be done without it.”

In ‘Déjà-vu’ you play the ideal son and the rebellious adolescent daughter, respectively. How deep did you have to dig for that role? De Schryver: “The role of Max is pretty close to my own personality, so that wasn’t too bad. I only had to practice playing hockey. (laughs) Although as far as I’m concerned, a role does not necessarily have to be written for me. For example, in ‘wtFOCK’ I play a bipolar, gay boy. That’s difficult and I had to do a lot of research for it. But when - like recently - you’re approached on the street by a boy who tells me that through my role he had learned to live with his own bipolarity, then the satisfaction is all the greater. ” Borremans: “I recognized myself super hard in Louise's character. I have done quite a lot of rebellion in my puberty years and just like Louise - who has a mother who makes a living as a radio host - I can be bothered too by the fact that one of my parents is famous.”

In what sense? Borremans: “I’m very proud of my dad, that's not the point. We have a very good relationship. He's my best friend. For real. But my family name isn’t always a gift. Many times in the past people have tried to contact me with the sole intention of getting closer to him. Even people I thought were friends, turned out to be solely interested in me because they were fans of my father's work. I also noticed that some teachers marked my grades more strictly just because I was ‘the daughter of’.” Did that influence you to choose acting and not, for example, drawing? Borremans: “I did drawing. In ‘Sint-Lucas’, just like my father. He did push me a bit in that direction. But I stopped when all the lessons suddenly had to be online due to corona. Dad thinks it's important to get a diploma. I attach less importance to that. I prefer to figure things out on my own. If you have the discipline to do self-study, then that’s in my opinion as valuable as any education. I’ve already learned a lot more on the internet than in school. My mom is part of that story, daddy still has some work to do in that aspect.”

You both had a supporting role on the set of ‘Déjà-vu’. How much pressure did it cause? De Schryver: “I did lie awake at night. Although it had a lot to do with the beginning of the shooting period, when I overslept. I cried when I arrived on the set. Such a gigantic production and it gets delayed, because a rookie like me, is late. In the end we hardly lost any time, but the nights after, I was wide awake in my bed waiting for the alarm to go off.” Borremans: “Willem arrived on the set, crying, but was professional enough to put himself in the shoes of Max a few minutes later. Pretty impressive.” De Schryver: “There really was no time to lose. The makeup artist just had about enough time to get rid of my red eyes, but that was it.” Borremans: “I’ve experienced something similar. During the shooting period, I met with a friend who turned out to have corona. Panic, of course. In the end, the shooting stopped for a week as a precaution. There were some tears then. You have a first major role and then something like that happens. Fortunately, it was handled very well on the set. Everyone came to tell me that it could’ve happened to them too.”

The corona crisis has been defining our lives for over a year now. How do you deal with this? De Schryver: “The first weeks, I didn't mind the lockdown. It gave me a chance to catch my breath. By the way, I still don't miss going out that much. Although that also has to do with ‘wtFOCK’. That show has a very fanatic fan base. And you notice. In any case, going out to a bar with friends was no longer possible without being approached or posing for selfies. When people have been drinking, a number of inhibitions also disappear. As soon as they recognize you, they’ll immediately hang onto you. It made me prefer to stay in the room even before the lockdown.” Borremans: “I’m now 21 years old. This may sound strange, but I’m kinda done with nightlife. Of course, I also want to be able to go out again and see people, but I notice that it’s more difficult for those who are younger. I get bored sometimes. But that also has its positive sides. It makes you do creative things. For example, I started to design and make clothes. Without the lockdown, that would’ve never occurred to me. I never read books either, now I do. Although, I would like for it to gradually return to normal. " De Schryver: “I mainly suffer from touch starvation. Actually hug people. I really miss that. But just like Xenia, I also think this is an interesting period. It makes you think. About yourself, about where you want to go in life.”

The Covid crisis also makes painfully clear how vulnerable creative professions are. Did that change your plans for the future? Borremans: “I was already looking for a plan B before this whole situation. Acting is and remains the big dream. But there are no guarantees. I’ll continue to go for it anyway, but I realize that I cannot assume that I’ll succeed in making acting my livelihood.” De Schryver: “We shouldn't be shy about that: the acting world is a tough world with a lot of competition. It’ll not be easy to make it and I know that there are still difficult moments to come. But I do not intend to suddenly follow other classes just to have something as a back-up. The corona crisis has made me realize even more how important acting is to me. I could never completely push it aside. This’s what I was made for. I just feel that.” Déjà-vu can be seen on Streamz. The series will be released on Play4 later this year.

#wtfock #wtfam

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enberlight · 2 years

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Please please please drop your own full lovesquare story I am BEGGING 🙏🙏🙏

I cannot think of a better account name to have asked this XD

The following recounts my disastrous teen experience with love and destiny, where I was simultaneously Adrien and Marinette (from Miraculous Ladybug) with a Love Destined By Fate(TM), and my own near-love-square identity shenanigans that were the result of a bunch of dominoes set off by watching Sailor Moon as a teen with that dang elevator scene and subsequent delicious angst @lnc2 reminded me of and drop kicked me back into ancient feels over XD

The dominoes started in 1998 when a friend remarked he liked Sailor Moon. I hadn't gotten into anime yet but I respected his opinions and art talent so I gave it a try. It was horrible! The first episode I saw was the theme park one where Serena and Rei are competing over Darien and it just seemed so ridiculous and juvenile. But boredom and afternoons spent with Cartoon Network brought me back to the show and the shenanigans eventually hooked me. I was also into the image songs and hollered along to the Kid Rhino CD.

At that time I was a Junior in high school (11th grade), and one year into a deep crush with the violin prodigy in my honors classes. My oh moment literally snuck up on me the year before in the art class we shared, while "All I Want for Christmas" was playing. Instead of "is You" my brain whispered "is Crush's Name" and my world came to a grinding halt as I froze then looked over at his table and went Oh Noes.

I had it bad. But like Marinette, I couldn't bring it up to him, I didn't have the guts. And when I found out he had a long distance girlfriend, I tried to backburner my feelings. But Fate kept throwing us together. We had all the same classes together except foreign language. We both had ADHD and had seriously chaotic ene-rivals-almost-friends energy together. We were born on the same day. In every math class our seating was right next to each other, despite taking place in two different rooms, being non-alphabetical, and changing up mid year. The universe was making sure this guy stayed stuck in my head, but I was too dang slow to make a move when he ended up single again. I'd had a love letter written in wingdings ready to attach to his locker with some chocolates for Valentines and I chickened out. Then he started dating The Most Perfect Girl (seriously she was amazing. Beautiful, Top Grades, Honor Society, Track Star, and Genuinely Nice). So I backburnered again. We graduated and went to separate colleges and I've only seen him once since, but he was still in my brain rent free until 2001.

Meanwhile I was also Adrien because it took me a damn decade or two to retroactively realize all the times a guy or girl was interested in me back then. I blame being a social outcast nerd and my inability to read social cues coupled with being conditioned to never trust anyone being nice (because it was usually a trick to go Ha Ha she fell for it).

I did finally date some in 1999 but it didn't pan out. My next relationship was in 2000 online, part of the Sailor Moon dominoes.

College in 1999 gave me Ethernet and SenshiTV.dhs, which had all of Sailor Moon from S3 onward subtitled in two part downloads. That meant I could watch Part A as Part B downloaded, then watch the second half of the ep while downloading the next Part A. I spent many nights not sleeping due to this, no regrets. I discovered the original soundtrack and supplemental image songs and fell in love with them. This transferred to the Ronin Warriors and Gundam Wing soundtracks, too. Finding music that wasn't a midi was trickier back then, til community College in 2000 when a guy pointed me to AudioGalaxy, a peer sharing site for any and all music.

Each genre or artist had its own message board, and I settled into the Gundam Wing Message Board where I met a lot of people I'm still friends with today, including @absentlyabbie and my Hub. The message board was a text based RP hub, a hodgepodge of fantasy and sci-fi from various popular anime at the time plus Just Plain Random. I ended up cyber dating one of my RP partners, and our character pairing was a popular one on the main non-Gundam RP. But after we met in person we just didn't work out, and I couldn't find any peace when I logged in to RP or join the board or AIM chats because our friend group kept bemoaning how OTP we were.

So... I made another login, complete with new AIM name, so that I could still hang out but be left to my own devices as I swore off men. Of course, as soon as I did, I was hit with another Oh moment with one of my friends in the RP group.

We were on AIM doing something and he used his lightning ability. My secondary character, Eve, went something weebish like "ooo, inazuma no karada". Then I realized I hadn't picked quite the right words, so I had my original account, Kitz, laugh at me and call me out for talking about Storm's naked lightning body.

Somehow after that we ended up together as Storm and Eve, both in RP and out, while I wingmanned for myself as his other friend Kitz (he was one of my supports and confidante after the breakup). We spent Thanksgiving together in 2003 when I was visiting my Aunt in his home state, then he moved in with me in 2005. We got married a bit later and have two kids together.

As an aside, our RP characters had twins, then months later his RL sister got pregnant with twins. A few years later our characters had another child... and so did she. We decided our characters were done having kids then, lol.

But yeah... because I watched Sailor Moon after randomly overhearing a friend mention it, I ended up overcoming my not-so-fated crush and have had a wonderful 20 year relationship with my best friend (we spent years watching the same shows together over the telephone).

On a different branch of those dominoes I also met @silentmagi and @brushfeathers-thoughts and was introduced to furries which is how I finally realized I'm Bi, Ace, and Nonbinary. But that's another story!

#enber life #enber askbox #enber answers #animetrashfire #please let the readmore work #sailor moon #miraculous ladybug #love square

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poisonfallen · 3 years

Note

Your take on cancel culture and stan culture?

Oh boy, oh boy, it's happening.

Alright, let's talk about toxic people on the internet. And keep in mind that my opinion goes beneath the mcyt community. I feel the same about the kpop community and any other community that is famous for having lots of toxic people.

Also, keep in mind that this is my opinion about these topics, I don’t intend to offend or misinform anybody. I might be wrong, and if I am wrong indeed, please help me correct any mistake that I’ve done.

Cancel culture

Before ranting about its toxicity, let's understand what it actually means and how it works.

What is cancel culture?

Well, according to Wikipedia, “cancel culture or call-out culture is a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – whether it be online, on social media, or in person” (source).

Basically, cancel culture is the process of ceasing offering support to a public figure after saying or doing something that is considered objectionable or offensive.

In theory, cancel culture is a good thing that helps the victims speak up and properly defend themselves, as well as preventing other people from doing the same mistakes. No harm done to innocent people, just a way of saying why a certain person or a certain company has done something that really hurt a category of people. Some even say that it’s an exercise of free speech.

However, while a culture that encourages calling out inappropriate behaviour is important, a culture that is quick to cancel and reluctant to forgive is something that divides the internet and starts wars in the trial of defending an opinion that is not shared by every single person on the internet, thus becoming the thing that its purpose is to defeat. (a vicious cycle of hatred)

So why is it toxic?

From my point of view, I don’t think that cancel culture is a toxic thing in theory. But the way people actually use it is what concerns (and bothers) me.

In its current form, anonymous and fuelled by negative emotions, cancel culture has the power to destroy a person’s career in a matter of minutes. There are no gray areas, just the white and black pack mentality: “I am right and you are wrong”.

The subject of the cancelation becomes “cancelled” for disagreeing with a certain opinion, and the cancelled one feels like the whole world is hating them. No one can argue that going through a cancellation, no matter how big or small it is, can severely affect one’s mental health and leave them scarred for life.

Cancel culture, at this point, is bullying someone famous without facing the consequences. We are already used to surf the web and stumble across someone’s cancelation over something that not even in our wildest dreams we would be able to imagine otherwise.

I think that all of us are familiar with a stupid cancelation, like canceling someone over a burger that somehow became the sole reason of obesity (see: Dream MrBeast burger). We can’t help but laugh at people trying to cancel someone for a stupid reason.

But, unfortunately, not all of our cancelations are stupid or laughable. There are people cancelled over their physical aspect or them not being political active, people cancelled over being friends with certain people or over saying something that is now considered to be slightly offensive a few years ago. The ones who are under the spotlight can’t make jokes or take decisions by themselves, they are supposed to be the marionettes of their fans.

(I do not intend to say that all cancelations are bad, but I’m trying to highlight how the majority of the most recent cancelations are out of place. If someone actually tries to actively harm your minority, your beliefs etc. you should call out that inappropriate behaviour, but without purposely harming that person as a means of payback)

There is also a toxic behaviour that I’ve noticed in a cancelation: the “I forgive you”/”I don’t forgive you” phrase used by people who have no right to do so. If you are part of the minority who has been hurt, then you have every right to forgive or not someone for saying or doing something hurtful towards your minority.

But if you are not a part of that minority, shut the f*** up. By speaking on behalf of a minority while you aren’t part of that minority you take away the right of actually addressing the issue from the people who are part of that minority. You can support them from the sides and let them express their pain with their own voice. They perfectly capable of addressing the issue, they need your support but not you taking the spotlight away from the actual problem.

What is my take on cancel culture?

I think that there are more civil ways of resolving an issue without actively trying to destroy someone’s career. Instead of cancelling that person, we could educate them (but not in that harmful way I’ve seen on twitter) on the subject and on why their words or actions are hurtful.

We should remember that we are all humans and that every human makes mistakes. Don’t forget that children learn by making mistakes. And while I’m well aware that we are not talking about children here, you should also be well aware that we are talking about actual humans with feelings.

Cancelation should be the last weapon we use, but only if that person refuses to give an apology and educate themselves on the subject.

Overall, don’t. Just don’t cancel people. Don’t attack people on the internet. Don’t try to harm people on the internet.

Some of you might disagree with my opinion and I’m open to criticism as long as you can help me educate more on the subject.

Now let’s move on to the other topic

Stan culture

Before I start talking about this one, I’d like to point out that stans actually scare me, a lot.

What is stan culture?

“Stan culture describes an online phenomenon in which communities of stalker fans, or stans, engage in overly enthusiastic support of a favorite celebrity online (called “stanning”), including at times vehement, coordinated attacks against detractors and critics” (source).

Basically stan = stalker + fan.

There are also people who say that the word stan comes from Eminem’s song “Stan” which tells the story of a crazed fan. I do recommend listening to the lyrics of this song if Eminem is not your cup of tea, it’s a good intake in what stan culture was at the beginning of 2000′s.

To be honest, I don’t have anything more to add at this section. Anything more I’d say would, in the end, be the same as what was already stated. (but you can see my opinion on it with more comments at the end)

It stan culture toxic?

You have to live under a rock if you had never seen a stan on twitter or tumblr. You usually recognize them by their profile pictures, the content they share, their posts and their ready to argue behaviour in case you insult or disagree with the ones they worship.

I’d like to point out that there is a fine line between a stan and a fan: stans know no length when it comes to defending their object of worship and often have really toxic ways of expressing their opinions, while a fan is there just to enjoy their favourite content without engaging in harmful discussion and hate speeches.

This topic is filled with controversy. In essence, stanning should be a means of showing support. The majority of them don’t even realize the toxicity they spread only after leaving the fandom.

The real problem here is the moment when they engage in conflicts without entertaining the thought that they might be wrong. Anything they do is right and their object of worship can say or do no mistake. This extends to the point of sending death threats and even doxxing.

For those who don’t know about doxxing, short for dropping dox: doxxing is an internet slang that means to publish personal information (of an individual) on the internet. You can find more about it here.

With no intend to disrespect or disregard one’s religious beliefs, you can say that stanning is like being part of a religion. The stans are the extremist people who practice that religion, while the fans are those who practice it from time to time (eg. like a Christian who goes to Church only on Christmas and Easter - me).

In the end, stan culture is toxic to both the stans and celebrities.

Is there a connection between stan culture and cancel culture?

They are both toxic internet cultures, this one is right for sure.

From what I’ve noticed during my short timed stay on twitter, a lot of cancelations are made by stans from the same community or different communities.

I’m part of mcyt community, so I’ve seen a lot of Dream fans and Dream antis fighting over the past months, trying to cancel each other and harm each other. It’s mental seeing people actively trying to do these kind of things just because they love or hate a certain person. Of course that we can’t tie the situation to a certain content creator.

I know that his also happens a lot in the kpop community where stans are in a constant fight to destroy the career of each other’s favourite idol group or bias (someone's most favorite member of an idol group).

What is my take on stan culture?

I feel like I need to repeat myself: stans scare the s*** out of me.

It’s like their sole purpose in life is to support someone and don’t have the basic sense of boundaries. A lot of problems arise with this: like shipping people who are uncomfortable being shipped with, intense sexualizing (sexualizing the minors is the worst from my point of view), creating drama and intentionally ignoring real world problems just to make their favourite person(s) trend, and the list is so long that I feel like I’d create a record on tumblr for the longest post if I go on.

We are talking about some weird adaptation of Lord of the Flies where children raise each other on the internet. It’s like a cult and they are brainwashed into believing what everybody else thinks. And the worst part is that I don’t think we’ll ever get better from this, things are only going south to heaven.

I might be wrong and biased, so I do expect someone to help me understand these topics better, but for now these are my firm opinions.

I’d also like to clarify, once again, that in the religion example I’m not making fun of Christianity, I’m just using it as a means to help people better understand my point.

#if you think doxxing and death threats are justified unfollow me #I'm sorry but I'm so fucking sick of internet at this point #or even better block me you fucking coward #I feel like I have lots of words misspelled but it is what it is #cancel culture #stan culture #mcyt #kpop #free speech #censorship #stanning #important #personal opinion #ask

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onelastbreath-writes · 3 years

Text

I Spy

Pairing: Frankie “Catfish” Morales/Fem!Reader (AFAB, no y/n)

Word Count: 1.7K

Warnings: Brief mention of bad(abusive/manipulative) parents, general adult topics, swearing.

Summary: You meet a cute guy at a bar, you date, you fall in love, and oops, it turns out you’ve both been lying about your careers. Classified only stays classified until you get assigned a mission together. (SpecOps&Spies, with Young!Frankie)

A/N: Hey guys, I was bad and started another fic. Whoops. This one is for Triple Frontier because I love that soft boi Francisco. The flavour of this fic, the vibe if you will, is basically the spiderman pointing meme. I’ve vaguely set the timeline to like mid-2000s? so I’ll be trying my best to stay true to technology and aesthetic of the era. There was so much denim. Anyways, that means I’m trying to write for about a 27-33 year old Frankie and a similarly aged reader. I don’t see this series being more than a couple chapters at best, so it’ll be short and sweet. Also, like, very little angst if I can help it; I just want this one to be a good, cute, fun read. Hope y’all enjoy! Xoxo

[AO3][Masterlist]

“So, you’re coming out tonight, right? You’re not busy or anything?”

“Please don’t say it like that, you know how busy work actually is. And I’m a grown woman; if I didn’t want to go to a shady dive bar with you and your very loud friends from the office, I’d say so,” You loved your best friend, and you missed spending time together, but you really couldn’t say the same for her co-workers.

You had nothing against the women she worked with, and you found that they were all perfectly lovely and usually quite fun to be around… it was just that when the alcohol came out, the volume control and verbal filters disappeared.

You wouldn’t say that barhopping was what you’d prefer to be doing tonight, along with more or less babysitting your friend and her friends, but you didn’t know when you’d next be able to squeeze in a night off to just hang out and have fun, so this was happening. You would laugh and smile and keep the drunk secretaries from going home with questionable people, and then you would look back on your ladies’ night with fond memories until you could eventually attend another.

You had known when you picked your career that it would be an around-the-clock, all-day, every-day sort of thing. You never deluded yourself into thinking you would have much of a social life or long-term relationships. Most partners, hell even most friends, would have a problem with you jetting off for weekends, or disappearing for days at a time under mountains of paperwork and appointments.

It just made your best friend that much more important to you. You’d met as kids, went through years of school beside each other, hung out, did stupid teenager things and then stupid young adult things together. You’d cried and laughed and fought and made up a million times, you’d gone to different colleges and still kept in touch, moved away, moved back, and you were still going strong. She was your ride-or-die, your anchor and your parachute and everything in between, so if you could use some of your precious, hoarded, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it time off to see her, that’s just what you’d do.

“You should take some of that fire, and direct it at your boss. Tell him no for a change. I’d love to see his face at that!” She meant well, always trying to look out for you and your health when it came to your beyond demanding job. You weren’t even allowed to tell her a fraction of what you were doing in your professional life, and she knew it, but that didn’t stop her from being ready to throw fists at your employer at a moment’s notice.

“One does not simply tell the über-rich that they don’t need to fly to Paris, again. Being a PA is a full-time nannying gig, except your charge is an adult who can argue when you say no, and you cannot put them on timeout when they’re being a brat. Where he goes, I go, and unless something drastic happens, it will probably continue on like that for a while.” She laughed at your jokes, and your heart hurt a little less at her glee. You knew she would never give up on you or blame you for your work being unpredictable, but that didn’t make the sting of last-minute cancels and missed outings hurt any less, for either of you.

“But it must be nice, just getting on a plane and going somewhere amazing at the drop of a hat. Travelling the world like a superstar, meeting people, having amazing adventures with mysterious strangers…”

“Easy there, Mamma Mia, your wanderlust is showing. And I’d take you with me in a heartbeat if I could. You were born to be a jetsetter, not to be stuck in this town with nothing but the office cubicle beside you to stare at. And I still think you should apply for one of those immersive culture grants you keep mooning over. They’d be fools not to fund your writing expedition!” She was an incredible person, three full degrees to her name in the time it took a normal student to get one, and a brain that could run miles around the rest of the professionals in her field. But she was tethered to this quiet backwater town, and she wasn’t free to fly like she deserved.

“You know I can’t just… go, like you can. My mom, it’d just break her heart… I don’t want to leave her alone, not after Dad,” You honestly doubted that you’d ever meet a woman more horrible and undeserving of her own daughter’s kindness. Helen was a parasite full of lies and manipulations and greed, and she had attached herself like a bad rash to your friend after she’d chased away the rest of her family members.

Your friend searched for the good in everyone, but you wished she’d stop looking for it at that home.

“You deserve your own happiness and freedom, and she should be encouraging you to spread your wings if and when you’re ready.” Politicking your friend was never something you enjoyed. She was the last person you wanted to use your negotiating credentials and sly subterfuge tactics against, but you wanted, needed, her safety and health more. You considered it almost bribery; dangling her dream future in front of her in exchange of being rid of the garbage in her life.

“Hey now, we’re getting way too deep into sad-drunk night conversations, and this is strictly a happy-fun-drunk night. Please leave all baggage and woes at the door, thank you!” You admitted your defeat and surrendered your verbal power point on Why Helen Needs to Disappear. You would get her next time for sure, give her the accelerant to burn down that bridge. “Anyways, the reason I called was to remind you of our haunt for the night. One of the girls, Kelly, you remember Kelly, found this adorable little hole in the wall. A total boys’ club apparently: darts, pool, sports games on the TV, but Kelly’s sister’s friend’s brother Tyler said the place was a favourite of the local army guys. So, if nothing else, we’ll at least have some hunks to look at for a while. It’ll be great!”

You jotted down the directions to the bar as she listed them, and the time you were expected to arrive there.

“Oh! And wear that cute little blue number you bought last spring; I know you still have it so don’t you dare lie. It makes your ass and legs look divine, and I think you could stand to make a new acquaintance tonight.” That Little Blue Number was buried in the back of your closet where you had hoped it would remain forever, but luck was not on your side tonight it seemed. But it did make you look, and feel, fantastic. It was just so… breezy. “And heels! Real ones, not your cute little personal assistant kitten heels. Those black strappy ones would work like a dream!” You just sighed dramatically into the receiver and agreed to her demands.

“I’ll let you go now, and yes, I suppose I can be presentable tonight, dress and all. See-ya later!”

---

Hole in the wall was right. This place was basically underground it was so on the D.L. It was warm inside though, and in the middle of autumn with so much skin on display, you could not be more pleased to get away from the chilled outside air.

You would describe the interior as comfortable with a hint of rustic; lots of warm dark wood and low lights, mixed with the soft Latin music crooning in the background and the few patrons’ conversations adding to the ambience.

All in all, it was probably the nicest dive bar you’d been to in your hometown.

Your party was easy to spot where they had claimed a group of pushed together tables towards the far side of the establishment, and you carefully made your way over to them in your tricky high heels.

You said your hellos to returning faces and introduced yourself to the new additions, and accepted the chair you were pointed to and the drink pressed into your hand.

And so, the hours rolled.

You had enjoyed two fruity cocktails and a flaming shot before you called it quits on the alcohol for the night. You still had a few hours to sober up enough to drive home safely, and you would be able to help the girls get to their rides and ways home too. You appreciated having a social drink or two, but you didn’t care for hangovers and would happily take slightly tipsy over party-hard drunk anytime. Plus, your contract stated you were on-call, always, and you could be required to navigate high-stress negotiations at the drop of a hat. It was just better to cut yourself off, then reap the consequences of your actions later.

You tapped your friend’s shoulder as you walked past and leaned over to talk into her ear. “I’m getting some water for the table; do you want anything else?”

“Mmmm, no I think we’re good for now, thanks!” She was plastered already, but she had a huge grin on her face and was laughing at her co-workers’ stories, so you considered it a win of a night. You gave her a pat goodbye and swayed your way to the bar.

But you just were not accounting for the uneven floorboards, or how much your heels affected your currently less than steady equilibrium, and before you could blink you were teetering over into a nasty fall.

“Whoa there, easy does it, muñequita” Arms wrapped around you and pulled you back into a warm chest. “Careful now, don’t go twisting an ankle in those fancy shoes.”

You certainly did not account for the man you turned around to face. Wow.

His hands glided respectfully from where he had caught you around the waist to your still bent and held out elbows, steadying you as you swayed dangerously again.

Warm brown eyes, soft brown curls, and the sweetest smile you’d ever seen. It felt like your heart was going to beat out of your chest, and you knew that it wasn’t left over adrenaline from your near wipeout. He was gorgeous and handling you so gently, and you wanted to spend forever in that moment.

“Hey there, palomita, I’m Frankie, can I buy you a drink?”

[Next Part]

#triple frontier #frankie morales x reader #frankie morales #frankie morales x you #Pedro Pascal #triple frontier fanfiction #pedro pascal x reader

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novantinuum · 3 years

Link

Fandom: Steven Universe

Rating: Teen Audiences

Words: 2.2K~

Summary: A series of shorts detailing what might’ve happened in the moments after I Am My Monster, told from six different points of view.

Greg apparently had a LOT on his mind, because this was supposed to be short and instead it’s over 2000 words, ahah. Final chapter!

If you read this and enjoy, I’d greatly appreciate your support through reblogs here, or kudos/comments on AO3. Thank you! <3

Chapter warning: Allusions to past non-canon character suicide.

____

Chapter 6: Greg

Hours pass.

Bismuth makes quick and quiet work of replacing the cracked slider door in Steven’s room while he sleeps, and secures a thick tarp over the open front of the house to keep the coastal breeze somewhat at bay until she can finish her repairs to the windows and siding. She warns that might take a day or two. Garnet, meanwhile, busies herself the rest of the afternoon and evening fielding all of the Diamonds’ frazzled calls, and reassuring them of the boy’s current stability. Pooling their knowledge, Dr. Maheswaran and Peridot make sure to confirm that. Beyond some minor scarring, neither his organic or Gem half seems to exhibit any serious physical health conditions in consequence of what happened today, news which works to ever so slightly lift the air of the household. With no other concrete tasks to complete, Pearl, Amethyst, Lapis, Connie, and Greg all rotate between sweeping debris off the floor, wandering the beach to mentally recuperate, and dutifully sitting at Steven’s side as he rests. It may not sound like a lot, but alas the level of emotional labor demanded by such a situation is immense.

All in all, the sun’s long since dipped below the horizon by the time Greg finally collapses onto the mattress laid out in the back of his van, craving if but a moment of privacy and respite from all the chaos. It’s been... an insufferably long day, to put it lightly. Busy. Tons of cleaning, and intercepting nosy neighbors, and bedside monitoring...

He offered to take the first night shift watching Steven a few minutes ago, but Pearl must’ve noticed the dark circles creeping ever wider under his eyes, because she proceeded to gently overturn his offer and remind him of humanity’s daily sleep requirement. And she’s right, of course. He can’t stay up as long as he used to in his twenties anymore. Plus, he probably deserves some time to himself after everything that’s transpired. There’s plenty of Gems left in the house who can keep watch, after all. Steven will be fine for a few hours. Surely nothing else can happen when he’s asleep, right?

Right??

Exhaustedly slumping against the side wall, Greg offers a glassy, vacant stare at the contacts list of his phone, roughly wiping the damp from his cheeks with his other hand as his thumb hovers over one of the numbers. Does he dare drag someone else into this whole situation? Surely the kinder solution would be to refrain from widening the circle any more, from letting anyone else learn about today’s harrowing events. And yet if he fails to find a proper outlet for the raw emotions all of this has violently hauled to the surface, he fears he just may suffer a mental break himself, repressed memories bursting like a vicious flood through the dam he desperately tried to seal them behind all those years back. Much of this is just... far too familiar.

His phone slips right through his trembling hands as the cruel reality of what he witnessed today finally begins to carve its indelible presence in his mind. A strained sob leaking from between his tightly pursed lips, he buries his head between his knees, clutching at the worn bottom hem of his jean shorts like an infant to a parent’s finger. Small. Vulnerable.

Helpless.

His son... oh stars, his only son, he—

He can’t talk about any of this to the Gems; they wouldn’t wholly grasp the uniquely human nature of his concerns. And he doesn’t feel comfortable discussing these matters with Dr. Maheswaran, especially not after the stern words she dealt to him back at the hospital. He’s burdened her enough already, by this point. No, there’s only one fellow human he feels close enough with to engage in this sort of conversation.

Taking a deep, cleansing breath, he reaches for the phone he dropped on the mattress. Turns it on. Nervously clamps down on his bottom lip as he selects his cousin’s contact and dials.

The passing heartbeats slamming against his ribs are almost nauseating in their needy clamor as he waits, his calloused fingers tapping against the thick rubber of his phone case. Andy’s never been a particularly tech savvy guy, so honestly, it’s well within reason he might not even carry his phone on his person to answer. And that’d be fine, really. In fact, he might even prefer it, since he’s still not confident he’s emotionally prepared to discuss any of this at this precise moment, anyways. But just as he’s beginning to undergo mental preparations for what on Earth he might leave as a voicemail message, his older family member finally picks up.

“Greg?” Andy’s gravelly voice rings through, sounding somewhat tinny through their connection. “Hey, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? How’s the ol’ Universe family unit doin’?”

“Not great, honestly,” he narrowly manages in response, his throat constricting tight. “That’s kinda why I’m calling, if you have the time to listen?”

“Heh. I’m a drifter, you know I ain’t got no schedule. Carry on.”

“Well... geeze, how do I put this. There was, uh... a bit of an incident today. With Steven.”

“An incident?” his cousin questions, marked worry immediately painting his tone. “The kid okay??”

He falls silent for a few seconds upon this question, threading his hyperactive digits through the split ends in his hair on automatic, a stress-induced habit. “Unclear,” he says, a slight quiver making itself intimately known in his words. “I mean, physically, at the moment, yes, but—“

He cuts off once more. It suddenly occurs to him that little of today’s events would make sense to Andy without providing the appropriate context. Or, at least, what little context he’s capable of giving as a father. It’s still terrifying to admit the truth to himself— that he doesn’t possess the full story. That he hasn’t been paying close enough attention. That, in many ways, he willfully blinded himself to all the troubling events transpiring around his son throughout the years, foolishly believing that if he didn’t involve himself... that if he simply stayed out of the Gems’ hair... everything would go to plan, and Steven would finally receive the training he needed. He didn’t expect things would grow so complicated.

He didn’t expect that his teenage son would have to march into battle carrying nothing but his wits and a shield time and time again.

With a weary sigh and a quick apology, to which Andy brushes off, Greg begins to weave a verbal picture of everything that’s transpired across the last few days. First, the hospital call. Rushing home from tour, only to find his son giant and flushed pink, literally filling an entire room with the sheer volume of his trauma. The shattered x-ray in his chart, hinting towards hidden hurts that— before all this— even Steven seemingly hadn’t processed or quantified. Then, the road trip. The unwanted reminders of his childhood. That blasted CD. His expression sobers as he describes the fateful argument they had on the road home, one which lead to his son accidentally breaking the steering wheel and flipping the van. Next... his disappearance. No texts for four whole days, which is so unlike him. He was worried sick. And the next time he saw him, he was eight feet tall, glowing, and painfully manic in behavior, with each new sentence spilling from his mouth revealing an even more heartbreaking picture of the sort of poor mental state he’d spiraled into. It was nothing short of a father’s worst nightmare, propelled into horrifying, vivid reality.

Nothing in this corner of the galaxy could’ve prepared him for the primal surge of terror and anguish he was engulfed within when that nightmare distorted and transformed even further.

His only son... colossal and coated in thick scales and spines, sclera black as night... roughly clawing at this unfamiliar form, smashing his skull against the cliffside, roaring with an inner pain so primal that the sound now haunts the depths of his very soul—

“I- you remember what happened with cousin Jo, back when we were young?” Greg says softly once he’s caught Andy up with the details of situation, his voice frail and unsteady, the tone of a man helplessly marooned amidst his anxieties. “Before she was sent to that mental rehab place? Well, I’m... with the addition of Gem magic, it almost felt like that. I mean, h-he’s fine for now, we have him resting, but... but I’m just so scared he won’t come out of this, like her, a-a-and that one day he’ll—“

A mewling sob bubbles up in his throat, swiftly severing that train of thought. N-no. No, he refuses to even utter that horrible idea out loud! After all, a world without Steven in it isn’t worth envisioning.

Andy’s eventual response— albeit tinged with a justified shade of awkwardness, given the emotionally charged nature of this conversation— is filled with genuine compassion, and for that he’s dearly thankful.

“Aw, hell... Greg, I’m- I’m so sorry. I, uh- I could fly over, if any of ya’ need me? For emotional support, or whatever?”

Upon this kind offer, he inhales deep to steady his breath, and wipes away dewy beads of moisture from the corner of his eyes, desperately hoping that he can mitigate the pitiful wavering of his voice over the phone. He’s gotta fight to reliably keep some form of composure in front of other people, damnit. His kid can’t have his dad breaking down around him too, of course.

“No, you’ve got places to be,” he replies evenly, pressing his thumb and pointer against one of his aching temples. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“You ain’t asking,” he retorts, the eye-roll evident in his tone. “I’m offering. Listen- family takes care of family, y’hear? And I’m only about a day’s flight away, anyways. It’s really the least I could do.”

He sighs. Absentmindedly tugs at a thick strand of his hair. Offers a long, contemplative stare at the rickety age-worn handle affixed to the inside of the van’s back doors. Truth be told— ignoring his deep-seated guilt at dragging Andy into all this to begin with— he’d love having another family member around to embrace, especially a human one who can more deeply understand the crux of his anxieties about this delicate situation. But in the end, he shouldn’t be prioritizing his own feelings and comfort. He’s not the one in crisis, his son is.

Desperately hoping he’s making the right choice, Greg flexes his fingers, and acquiesces to the offer, on one condition: only if Steven consents to having visitors, once he’s awake.

Andy hums in approval. “Understood. Don’t wanna overload the poor guy with any surprise visits, or whatever.”

“Yeah. The last thing I want to do is push him too hard, too fast.”

He pauses, braving waves of parental grief to spend a moment to reflect on Steven’s emotional progression over the past few months... a stray negative comment here, an unusually forlorn mannerism there... All of them events that, in isolation, wouldn’t point to anything more than your standard ‘teenage angst,’ but when observed in strong, unceasing patterns, begin to reveal deeply harrowing truths about the state of an individual’s self-image. How did he never notice? Why wasn’t he there to catch him in his fall?

“I think he hates himself,” he says quietly, his voice hitching up at the end. “He didn’t say so directly, but- but I can sense it. And I don’t know how to help him, I-I... I don’t know if I can.”

“Nonsense,” his cousin scoffs, “‘course ya’ know what to do! What does any good father worth their salt give their sons?”

Unable to evade the momentary temptation of feeling miserable and sorry for himself, he slumps back against the wall, giving a weak shrug that his current audience would never see.

“I dunno, maybe a stable, safe childhood? Not growing up poor as dirt in a van?”

“No, you numbskull,” Andy immediately cuts back, “you love on ‘em and support ‘em just as much as you always have! Y’ show him that you’re always gonna be there for him, and that he can trust you with anything.”

“But I haven’t always been there for him,” he exclaims petulantly. “That’s the whole problem! That’s one of the reasons he ended up like this.”

“Greg,” he says, his voice softer this time. “Listen to me, ain’t nobody perfect, okay? We’ve all made our mistakes with people. Me? More than most. But what we can’t do is let those mistakes cloud what’s happening right now. Y’know, that’s one of the hard lessons I’ve had to learn over the past two years, that you can’t always make things about you. Because right now, it’s about him. He’s dealin’ with some hard feelings, and he needs all of our help. So, let’s help him. Together. We’ll start with one foot in front of us, and we can take it from there. All right?”

Closing his weary, exhausted eyes and pressing his thumb firm against his still-aching temple, Greg Universe gives a long sigh and finally concedes to the reality that— just as he’s not solely responsible for the decline of his son’s mental state— no man should be an island when it comes to the task of supporting one’s journey towards recovery. As with everything, the extended Universe family unit will face the future together, hand-in-hand. Step-by-step.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah, I think that’s do-able.”

#su #su future #greg universe #andy demayo #su fanfiction #my writing stuff

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ghostmartyr · 4 years

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SnK 133 Thoughts

They’re trying to stop the apocalypse but they’re dummy traumatized and the clap of their sins keeps alerting the glow tree.

Kids, just remember: Body count doesn’t matter, it’s how you feel while producing that body count. If you’ve killed people to stop genocide, you are not immune to being party to genocide. ⭑⭒⋆

I’m being reductive because I’m not too eager to go over how not all murder is created equal again.

Going by a good faith read, I do think what the narrative is attempting to establish is that these characters all know what it’s like to be backed into a corner and do desperate things they’re horrified by.

Putting aside the extra psychological difficulties of his childhood preceding the choice to knock down the wall, Reiner believes he’s saving humanity. There’s an island full of devils, and he’s attacking them. He, Bertolt, and Annie are dumb kids who do what they’re told. Because they think it’s right, or because they want to go home, or just because they are dumb kids.

Armin’s killed plenty of people with the power of the Colossus. He can’t plead innocence; he attacks Liberio’s port intentionally, knowing exactly what terror the people on the ground will be going through.

Connie kills the friends he’s trained with for years, when the worst thing about Reiner and Bertolt revealing themselves is feeling betrayed by comrades he loves.

None of this is directly equivalent. Dumb children at war are trying their best. Always, this conflict has been orchestrated above their pay grade. RAB get abandoned behind enemy lines and are told to make the best of it. Armin destroys Marley’s port because Marley will not stop going after Paradis, and Eren has forced a renewed conflict that they need to move against fast. Connie betrays his friends because they’re okay with letting the rest of the world die.

No one on this ship has enjoyed any of this. They have consistently been doing their best with the information given to them while people with more power drag them into fights that never should have happened.

Shiganshina falls because Marley chooses to murder Paradis.

Liberio falls because Eren turns himself into Paradis’ only hope and puts himself into a situation he can’t win alone.

In the crudest way of putting it, these people are grunts. They’re not the ones who picked the game being played. They’re the ones being manipulated into war after war.

That’s why they look at each other without counting the bodies. It isn’t the scale of their actions that hits at this moment, it’s the decisions they’ve made to be part of it. They choose to keep fighting. When it creates an outcome they hate, what can they say? ‘Look what you made me do’?

Whatever their reasons, and whoever set up the board, they are the ones who participate. In this case, pure moral imperative is the driving force. Daz and Samuel die because they’re willing to let genocide go uncontested. That’s on them.

Guilt doesn’t work like that, though. Daz and Samuel die because they are killed. Connie kills them. He betrays their trust.

All of this is to say that the people on the ship truly do understand each other perfectly, even despite the difference in scale. It’s a bit on the nose, but I don’t think anything they’re going through is at odds with the people they are.

Applying that feeling to Eren is a feat of misguided grace that... hell, I don’t know.

As a human person, I like grace as a concept and want more of it. I don’t want the world to burn, I want the burning to stop, and for everyone to be okay in the end even if they don’t deserve it. A world where we all get precisely what we deserve seems an incredibly dark place to me. That doesn’t leave room for mercy or kindness. You get what you earn, and nothing more.

The more time we spend on this portion of the story, the more I’m inclined to think that the themes agree with me. Our heroes at this point aren’t full of the rage they’re entitled to. Every inch of them is tired, and they’re not here for more death. They’re willing to keep going, but even the thought of killing Eren, when he’s massacred thousands, makes them all hesitate.

Everyone wants to go home and have the fighting stop.

That’s all.

Whatever happened, and whose fault it is -- forget all of it, just give them a place to rest and have it be over.

Thematically, yay. I approve. Beautiful. We start out with a series that makes a name for itself almost entirely on the back of the spectacle of violence, and after years of participating in that violence, the main cast wants nothing to do with it anymore. Love it.

Within the plot, I am not in the mood to have Eren’s traumatized friends apologize for not understanding him.

I get it.

I get why they all feel this way.

I do not like reading it.

They’re projecting their own guilt on someone who has shown a reckless disregard for their lives and sanity.

They’re trying to reach Eren as a human being and friend when he’s done his absolute best to make himself unreachable.

That’s sort of the point Reiner thinks is being made. Eren has intentionally set them up as his adversary so that if he has to be doing all of this, maybe there’s still a chance someone can stop him.

Okay, fine.

It falls short for the same reason all of Eren’s stuff is falling short.

We don’t actually know what the fuck is going on with him. We’re guessing.

You know those picture puzzles you do as a kid? Draw a line from bubble 1 to bubble 2 to bubble 3, and eventually you will make a bunny. Or a dog, or flowers, or something that looks like a picture in the sloppy mess of numbers.

Eren’s general portrayal matches that of a toddler who doesn’t yet know his numbers, and understands the instructions to be that he’s trying to get to the last bubble by scribbling lines through all the other bubbles.

Look, it’s a bunny.

And Eren’s friends are all like, oh wow, that’s such a good job! We’re going to put it on the fridge!

Then people come over and are like, why is there a constellation of a deer jumping through a house on the fridge, but they hear the child did it and immediately are like, oh yeah, that’s the best bunny I’ve ever seen, I can’t draw like that.

The child, being a child, is like, ‘Damn right. I’m going to be in bunny museums.’

Meanwhile, I’m just going to come out and say it.

It’s not a fucking bunny.

What it is, I don’t know, but it is not a bunny, stop calling it a bunny, it is actively erasing the knowledge of what a bunny looks like in my mind.

So ends this skit on what Eren’s portrayal has been like.

Eren has decided that this is all necessary. He doesn’t like it, and wants someone to stop him, but he is totally going to do it, and he knows he’s going to do it because future vision told him so and he’s really sad about that even though he’s emotionally in a place where genocide sounds like the only way out but that is wrong.

I think I’ve said before that Eren getting to this place mentally isn’t too off the rails. His sanity has been deteriorating with each mission, and he’s nineteen. Snapping like this could arguably be expected.

But the last we see of Eren’s thoughts, we still have this back and forth of how he refuses to yield the future to fate, but he already feels condemned by that future because he chooses to cause it.

Eren is clearly trapped by this web of contradictions, but his motivational core is so obstructed that it’s hard to actually connect to. It is easier to say that Eren’s gone off the deep end than it is to spend any amount of time asking how Point A became Point 3.

That’s frustrating, as a reader. I don’t want to be told a story, I want to experience it.

Eren’s experiences are not universal.

I need some hand-holding here. There needs to be a few more clear indications of Eren The Person, and how the individual we know wrapped around to making these choices.

Hooray, he’s not taking away their powers.

The guy he let run his cult still nearly killed all of them.

Hooray, he’s protecting his island.

He just actively courted an international incident so everyone wants the island dead.

Yes, Eren thinks that hope is lost before he makes these choices. That’s how moving forward drags him to this place; he doesn’t have the vision to imagine a world where this isn’t happening.

If you don’t fight, you can’t win, and Eren’s still fighting. But he’s forgotten what winning looks like. All he knows is the dreary march forward.

I would like for that to be explicit, not me extrapolating. Because even as I’m typing all of that, and feeling like it makes sense, it has the confidence of tissue paper, and I know my numbers, but half the numbers making this bunny were missing, and I’m not an artist.

The story I’m digging around here for is one I could like, but I don’t trust that it’s actually the one being told, because too much feels unexplained and weird. You can’t just make your main character nuts and use that as an excuse for anything.

Well, okay, you can.

You shouldn’t.

Please don’t do that.

Which I guess leads us to Eren and OG Ymir doing a Shining twins thing.

Here is my wild speculation.

The Attack Titan is the only Titan capable of resisting the Founder. It cannot be controlled, it simply continues forward, fighting for freedom.

When Eren talks to Ymir, her eyes losing their shadows are the cue for him taking full control of the Founder.

Now we’re back here, and her eyes are shadowed again, with Eren’s joining the ride.

I think that where we’re going to end up is that Eren’s mental fragility made him incredibly susceptible to the Attack Titan’s core nature, and enough of that nature aligned with Eren’s that everything except pursuing a way forward fell away. The Attack Titan is Ymir’s furious will, and she’s had it suppressed for 2000 years. I don’t think either one is emotionally capable of surfacing and deciding to resist the urge to march forward and destroy this world that has cursed them so.

Making my theory that yeah, okay, Eren’s lost it, but he lost it with the help of ancient plot magic, which we are now seeing the full extent of.

Does that have any basis in anything?

Who the fuck knows.

But one thing is very clear: Eren’s not free.

“In order to gain my own freedom... I will take freedom away from the world. [...] You are all free.”

The Attack Titan “has always moved ahead, seeking freedom. It has fought on for freedom.”

Eren, embodiment of the Attack Titan, is the first one to hear Ymir in 2000 years. Going with the vaguely logical theory that Titans are all pieces of Ymir herself, the Attack Titan is the part that rebels against every indignity she bows to in life.

Zeke frees the Founder from its promise of peace. Eren frees Ymir from the chains tying her to the royal family’s will.

All that’s left is 2000 years of trauma, and the ability and will, for the first time, to lash out.

It’s not what you’d call surprising.

It’s the getting here that I take issue with. Now that we’re here, yeah, got it. But I really don’t feel like Eren’s journey here has been done well enough to capture the emotional rawness that is trying to be accessed. His friends are shouting for someone who is effectively dead, for all the presence he’s showing.

Then you’ve got Annie and Kiyomi sad.

ON A BOAT.

While Falco wants to be a Titan with WIIIIIIIIIIINGS.

Kiddos, you’re very cute, and I support you not wanting to sit still and do nothing while the world is ending, but I can’t begin to express how little I care.

Except that your families are alive and you two and Annie deserve to be reunited.

SO FINE, OKAY, FALCO CAN HAVE HIS WINGS AND SAY HI TO HIS PARENTS AND GABI CAN SAY HI TO HER PARENTS AND ANNIE CAN SAY HI TO HER DAD AND IT’LL ALL BE FINE DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT THE FUCK WE’RE GOING TO DO ABOUT EREN?

BECAUSE YEAH, I’M SURE THE AIRSHIPS ARE JUST GOING TO SPLODE HIM AND END ALL OF THIS AND EVERYONE WILL HOLD HANDS AND SING SONGS THAT THE EVIL HAS BEEN DEFEATED AND THAT WILL BE THE END OF IT.

Conversation: FAILED

Attack: probably FAILED

GO AHEAD, MANGA. SHOW ME THE DEUS EX MACHINA. I’M NOT GOING TO LIKE IT, BUT I AM PREPARED FOR IT.

inb4 yeah they just are going to bomb Eren with Armin that’s how we end this.

133 status: Still Looking For A Win Condition (This Ain’t It Chief)

#Shingeki no Kyojin #SnK 133 #shingeki no spoilers #SnK spoilers #Survey Corps #tl;dr #chapter post

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oscopelabs · 3 years

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Christopher Nolan: The Man Who Wasn’t There by Daniel Carlson

So, we’ll start with the fact that all movies are make-believe. It’s a bunch of actors on a set, wearing costumes and standing with props picked out by hordes of people you’ll never see, under the guidance of a director, saying things that have been written down for them while doing their best to say these things so that it sounds like they’re just now thinking of them. We all know this—saying it feels incredibly stupid, like pointing out that water is wet—but it’s still worth noting. There is, for example, no such person as Luke Skywalker. Never has been, never will be. He was invented by a baby boomer from Modesto. He is not real.

And we know this, and that’s part of the fun. We know that Luke Skywalker isn’t real but is being portrayed by an actor (another boomer from the Bay Area, come to think of it), and that none of the things we’re seeing are real. But we give ourselves over to the collective fiction for the greater experience of becoming involved in a story. This is one of the most amazing things that we do as humans. We know—deep down, in our bones, without-a-doubt know—that the thing we’re watching is fiction, but we enter a state of suspended reality where we imagine the story to be real, and we allow ourselves to be moved by it. We’ve been doing this since we developed language. The people telling these stories know this and bring the same level of commitment and imagination and assurance that we do as viewers, too. The storyteller knows that the story isn’t real, but for lack of a better way to get a handle on it, it feels real. So, to continue with the example, we’re excited when Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star because he helped the good guys win. For us viewers, in this state of mutually reinforced agreement, that “happened.” It’s not real, but it’s “real”—that is, it’s real within the established boundaries of the invented world that we’ve all agreed to sit and look at for a couple of hours. Every viewer knows this, and every filmmaker acts on it, too. Except:

Christopher Nolan does not do this.

There’s no one single owner or maker of any movie, and anyone who tells you different has their hand in your pocket. But there’s an argument to be made that when somebody both writes and directs the movie, it’s a bit easier to locate a sense of personhood in the final product. (This is all really rough math, too, and should not be used in court.) Christopher Nolan has directed 11 films to date, and while his style can be found in all of them, his self is more present in the ones where he had a hand in the shaping of the story—and crucially, not just that, but in the construction of the fictional world. Take away the superhero trilogy, the remake of a Norwegian thriller, the adaptation of a novel, and the historical drama, and Nolan’s directed five films that can reasonably be attributed to his own creative universe: Following (1998), Memento (2000), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), and Tenet (2020). These movies all involve themes that Nolan seems to enjoy working with no matter the source material, including identity, memory, and how easily reality can be called into question when two people refuse to concede that they had very different experiences of the same event. Basically, he makes movies about how perception shapes existence. How he does this, though, is unlike pretty much everybody else.

Take Inception. After a decade spent going from hotshot new talent to household name (thanks to directing the two highest-grossing Batman movies ever made, as well as the first superhero movie to earn an Oscar for acting), he had the credit line to make something big and flashy that was also weird and personal. So we got an action movie that, when first announced in the Hollywood trades, was described as being set within “the architecture of the mind.” Although this at first seemed to be a phrase that only a publicist could love, it turned out to be the best way to describe the film. This is a film, after all, about a group of elite agents who use special technology to enter someone’s subconscious dream-state and then manipulate that person’s memories and emotions. The second half of the film sees team leader Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the rest of the squad actually descend through multiple nested subconsciouses to achieve their goal, even as they’re chased every step of the way by representations of Mal (Marion Cotillard), Dom’s late wife, who committed suicide after spending too much time in another’s subconscious and lost the ability to discern whether she was really alive or still in the dream-world.

I say “representations” because that’s what they are: Mal is long dead, but Dom still feels enormous guilt over his complicity in her actions, and that guilt shows up looking like Mal, whose villainous actions (the representation’s actions, that is) are just more signs of Dom not being able to come to grips with his own past. It’s his own brain making these things up and attacking itself, and it chases his entire crew down three successive layers of dream worlds. You get caught up in the movie’s world as a viewer, and you go along because Nolan is pretty good at making exciting movies that feel like theme-park rides. You accept that Dom and everybody else refer to Mal as Mal and not, say, Dom. Dom even addresses her (“her”) when her projection shows up, speaking to her as if she’s a separate being with her own will and desires and not a puppet that he’s pretending not to know he’s controlling. It’s only later that you realize that the movie is in some ways just a big-budget rendition of what it would look like to really, really want to avoid therapy.

Which is what makes Nolan different from other filmmakers:

None of this is actually happening.

Again, yes, it’s happening in the sense that we see things on screen—explosions, chases, a fight scene in a rotating hallway that’s still some of the best practical-effects work in modern action movies—but within the universe of the film, none of what’s going on is taking place in the real world. It’s all unfolding in the subconsciouses of Dom’s teammates. In the movie’s real world, they’re all asleep on a luxury jet. They’re “doing” things that have an outcome on the plot, but Nolan sets more than half the movie inside dreams. It’s a movie about reality where we spend less time in reality than in fantasy. Half the movie is pretend.

For Nolan, filmmaking is about using a dazzling array of techniques to create a visual spectacle that distracts the viewer from the fact that the real and true story is happening somewhere else: in the fringes we can’t quite see, in the things we forget to remember, or even in the realm of pure speculation.

Memento arrived like (and with) a gunshot. It seemed to come out of nowhere and leave people struggling to describe it, and they usually wound up saying something like “it goes backward, but also forward at the same time, except some parts are actually really backward, like in reverse, so it’s maybe a circle?” Written by Christopher Nolan from an idea originally shared with him by his brother, Jonathan (who eventually turned it into a very different short story titled “Memento Mori”), the film follows a man named Leonard (Guy Pearce) who has anterograde amnesia and can’t form new memories, so every few minutes he sort of just resets and has to figure out where he is, what he’s doing there, and so on. He’s on the hunt for the man who attacked him and his wife, leaving his wife dead and Leonard in his present condition, which you can imagine does not make the gathering and synthesis of clues easy.

What’s more, Nolan puts the viewer in Leonard’s shoes by breaking the film’s linear timeline into two halves—call them A and B—and then alternating between them, with the added disorientation coming from the fact that one of those timeline halves plays out backward, with each successive scene showing what happened before the one you previously saw. So, if you numbered all the scenes in each timeline in chronological order, they’d look something like this when arranged in the final film: Scene A1, Scene B22, Scene A2, Scene B21, Scene A3, Scene B20, etc. You get why it messed with people’s heads.

As a result, we spend most of the movie pretty confused, just like Leonard, whose suppositions about what might or might not take place next begin to substitute for our own understanding of the film. It’s not until the end that we find out the shoe already dropped, and that Leonard killed the original attacker some time ago and has since been led on a series of goose chases by his cop friend, Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), who’s planting fake clues to get Leonard to take out other criminals. In other words, we realize that the story we thought was happening was pretend, and the real story was happening all around us, in the margins, memories, and imaginations of the characters. The most honest moment in the movie is the scene where Leonard hires a sex worker to wait several minutes in the bathroom while he gets in bed, then make a noise with the door to wake him, at which point his amnesia has kicked in again and he briefly thinks that the noise is being made by his wife. He’s wrong, of course, but this is the only time in the movie that we actually know he’s wrong. It’s the only time we truly know what’s real and what isn’t.

Yet you can’t talk about Memento without talking about Following, Nolan’s first feature. Although the film’s production was so extremely low-budget you’d think they were lying—the cast and crew all had day jobs and could only film on the weekends, so the thing took a year to make—Nolan’s willingness to dwell completely in a make-believe world that the viewer never knows about is already evident. It’s about a bored young writer who starts following strangers through the city for kicks, only for one of those strangers to catch him in the act and confront him. The stranger introduces himself as Cobb—I kindly submit here that it is not a coincidence that this is also Leonardo DiCaprio’s character’s name in Inception, but you already knew that—and reveals himself to be a burglar, spooked by the tail but willing to take on an apprentice. Cobb trains the writer to be a burglar, only for the situation to ultimately wind up implicating the writer himself in a complex blackmail plot. You see, the writer didn’t latch onto Cobb in a crowd; Cobb lured him in. The whole movie has been Cobb’s story all along, with the writer as a patsy who doesn’t understand the truth until the final frame. None of what we saw mattered, and everything that actually happened happened off-screen just before or just after we came in on a given scene. It’s like realizing the movie you’re watching turned out to be just deleted scenes from something else. You can’t say Nolan didn’t show his hand from the start.

That same general concept—that the movie we’re watching is actually the knock-on effect of a movie we’ll only glimpse, or maybe never even see—underpins Nolan’s latest movies, Interstellar and Tenet, too. Interstellar has some concepts that are iffy even for Nolan (it makes total sense for someone to do something for another out of love, but somewhat less sense that that love somehow reshapes the physical universe), but it’s still a big, bold approach to exploring how time and perception shape our actions. As the film follows its core group of astronauts while they search for potentially habitable new worlds, they encounter strange visions and experiences that turn out to be their handiwork from the future reflected back at them. Sure, it raises the paradoxical question of whether they had a first mission before this that failed, so now their future selves are intervening to make the second one (which feels like the first one to the astronauts the whole time) successful, and all sorts of other stuff that your sophomore-year roommate would like to talk with you about in great detail. But so much of what we see isn’t the stuff that happens, or that winds up being important. There’s the great scene where the astronauts land on a planet near a black hole, which is wreaking havoc on how time passes on the planet. A minor disaster delays their departure for the main ship still in orbit, but when the landing team returns, they find that more than 20 years have “passed” since they left, with the one remaining team member on the ship having spent more than two decades waiting for them to return. It’s a moment of genuine horror, and it underscores the fact that what we thought was the one true reality was just the perspective of a handful of characters we happened to follow for a few minutes. There were whole things happening that changed the plot and story and direction of everything that would follow, and we never saw them; we didn’t even know we’d missed them.

Tenet is, of course, the latest and most recursive exploration yet of Nolan’s obsession with showing us a story that turns out to be mostly fake. It is almost perversely hard to even begin to explain the film (Google “Tenet timeline infographic” and have fun). One way to think about it is to imagine if the two timeline halves from Memento somehow existed at the same time, with people moving both forward and backward through time while inhabiting the same location. Basically, some scientists figured out how to “invert” the basic entropy of objects, so that they exist backward: you hold out your hand and the ball on the ground leaps up into it, because you’ve dropped it in the future, so now you can pick it up, etc. … Look, it doesn’t get easier to understand.

The upshot is, though, that we spend the film following the Protagonist (that’s his name), a CIA agent played by John David Washington, as he’s tasked with tracking down the source of the inverted stuff to figure out what’s unfolding in the future and why it’s suddenly started to make itself known in the present. He gets marginally closer to understanding the truth by the end of the film, but because this is a Nolan film that is maybe more expressly about the nature of reality than anything he’s ever done, his journey doesn’t so much take him forward as it does in a large circle. Because, and stop me if you’ve heard this, the true story of Tenet is taking place outside the Protagonist’s actions and knowledge, alongside him but invisible, often steered by people who themselves are moving “backward” through time and thus have already met the Protagonist in the future and are old friends with him by the time he meets them in his youth. Even more brain-liquefying, some of these people have been working under the orders of the Protagonist himself—the future version, that is—because his past self has already achieved the victories that allowed him to send the future people backward through time to meet his younger self so they’d achieve the victories that allow him to etc., etc., etc.

With Tenet, Nolan didn’t just make a movie that challenged perception, like Memento, or that dwelt in fiction, like Inception. He made a movie that can only be understood (to whatever degree true understanding is possible) by rewatching the movie itself, over and over, as the multiple timelines and harrowingly complex bits of cause and effect come into some kind of focus. The whole movie itself isn’t happening, in a sense, but is just the ramifications of something else, the echoes of a shout whose origin we’re straining to pinpoint. It both is and isn’t.

Christopher Nolan is a talented director of action-driven suspense thrillers. He’s canny at controlling the audience’s emotions, and he knows how to put on a dazzling show. Plus he’s fantastic at picking when to deploy non-computer-generated effects for maximum impact. But you could say that about a lot of other directors, too. What sets Nolan apart from the rest, and what makes him a director to keep watching and returning to, is the teasing way his movies wind up being just deceptive enough to fool you into thinking that you know what’s going on, then just harsh enough to disabuse you of that notion. Looking at what seems to drive him, I don’t think Tenet is his best movie-movie, but it’s his most-Nolan movie. It’s almost a culmination of his continuing efforts to tell stories where what you see and what actually happens are two different things. It’s not that he makes puzzles to solve. There is no solving these movies. Rather, it’s that he sculpts these delicate artifacts that only let you see two dimensions at a time, never all three, no matter how you twist your head. Craning back and forth, you can almost see the whole thing, but not quite. Some part of it will always have to exist in your memory. And that’s where Christopher Nolan likes to be.

#chrisopher nolan #tenet #memento #following #following movie #christopher nolan film #inception #inception film #memento film #tenet film #interstellar #interstellar film #oscilloscope laboratories #musings #film writing #beastie boys

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csykora · 4 years

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Yeah, so, that’s been going on.

I am going to try to summarize what’s been up with Pasha. Thanks to @immoveableobject, the Moscow Times, and the Independent. This is going to be Drunk History in the sense that you should have a stiff drink or another coffee before reading. There’s…context.

After Nikolai II abdicated as emperor in 1917, the Romanov family were sent to live under summer-cabin-arrest in Tobolsk, in Tyumen region (western Siberia). Nikolai spent the summer reading books and chopping firewood to take his mind off things, which he wrote was his favorite activity.

Disagreements between Omsk (the capital of Tyumen) and an acquisitive Yekaterinburg (in the Ural region which neighbors Tyumen to the west), led Moscow to order they move the Romanovs back west. The guards transporting them contacted Moscow to say they had to take a route that passed closer to Omsk, which made Yekaterinburg think Omsk was going to keep them, so they called Moscow too and insisted the convoy stop in Yekaterinburg instead, where the Romanovs were stored in a local merchant’s house.

At that unrelated but unfortunate point, the Czechoslovak Legion came into it. This wasn’t a unit named for the country, which didn’t even exist yet: it consisted of ethnic Czechs and Slovaks who had been volunteered to fight with the Russian army back in 1914. Leaders in the Czech and Slovak homelands of the Austro-Hungarian empire thought this would improve their name recognition in the international community, and build credit toward their own independence after the war. Czech history is actually just dramatic irony.

They were highly effective against the Germans, and then sent east. By 1918 the Czechoslovaks were stationed all along the railroad into Siberia. They were not jazzed about the Bolsheviks. They turned around toward Yekaterinburg to express this.

The guards in Yekaterinburg, who thought the Czechs were coming to take the Romanovs, took them down into the cellar and executed them.

Time passed and so did the Soviet Union. The site of the executions became a church. That church has a shrine in the cellar. It’s not the same cellar, but an exact replica; the church was shifted a bit for a better foundation, so the actual site is now an outside wall. It’s called The Temple on the Blood, although, again, it isn’t on it.

In 1981 the Romanovs were named martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. In 2000 the Russian Orthodox Church that isn’t outside Russia recognized them as passion-bearers. A passion-bearer is believed to have ‘faced their death in a Christ-like manner.’ A martyr is believed to have died defending their faith in Christ. So all martyrs are passion-bearers, but not all passion-bearers are martyrs.

The entire story is going to be like this.

Sometime around 1980, a different man who wasn’t named Nikolai Romanov originally but is now killed someone. He was, of course, a cop. He was sent to a prison camp in Tyumen region for thirteen years. When he was released, he says he walked the length of the Romanov’s last journey to Yekaterinburg.

At some point along the way he changed his legal name from whatever it used to be, became a priest, and took the religious name Father Sergei.

He found a decrepit old monastery and rebuilt it, becoming the confessor for the nuns that live there. He found the pit outside the city where the Romanovs’ bodies were dissolved in acid, called Ganina Yama, and built a complex around Tsar Nikolai’s final resting place.

Except, again, he didn’t. The bones that had been found in Ganina Yama in 1919 weren’t even human. The Yekaterinburg guards didn’t manage to destroy the Romanovs’ bodies (they apparently didn’t bring enough acid with them, because this was all a fuck up), so they buried them in the forest a few kilometers away. The actual burial place was found in 1978 (with the last two children found a little ways away in 2007), and the Romanovs were finally given a funeral in St. Petersburg in 1998. The Orthodox Church did not attend, and still maintains this did not happen and the Romanovs are nowhere but Ganina Yama.

His new next door neighbor told the Independent she was doing the dishes one evening and looked out to see a bunch of strange nuns performing exorcisms.

“They circled around the house; devil this, devil that. And then they put a cross outside our toilet.”

The monastery continued on, annoying their neighbors and growing steadily weirder, for years. Nikolai went from passion-bearer to martyr to a direct analogue of Christ, dying for Russia’s sins. Everything superficially connected to him became, at least to some Russians, holy. The monastery and pilgrimage site became one of the most popular in Russia. Father Sergei came to international attention for:

1. his writing desk, which is a coffin

2. getting big mad about the 2017 film Matilda, which is about young Nikolai fucking ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya, which he very much did do.

Politician Natalia Pokolnskaya, who attends Father Sergei’s services, had the film pulled and audited for its “anti-Russian” Tsar-sex scenes. Another follower of Father Sergei drove his car into a movie theater and then tried to set it (the car, although also the theater I guess) on fire with a Molotov cocktail after attending services at the Temple on the Blood. Another made his own film in response to the film, saying,

“Imagine someone makes a film showing your mother as a prostitute and your father as a German gay porn actor. Go inside the church, look at the lord tsar’s blue eyes and you will see how moral he is.”

Everyone forgets the longer verses of John Lennon’s Imagine.

At some point in the mid 2000s, hockey player Pavel Datsyuk started going to Father Sergei as his confessor. He very much did do that, and stuck by him through the movie thing. When he won gold at the World Championships he gave the medal to the monastery, saying, “we won it together.”

This summer he told Championat, “Father Sergei has been my spiritual father for more than 10 years. [He] has a burning, loving heart, he sees me through and through." Maybe not a great choice of adjective, given the arson.

Then coronavirus.

This spring, Patriach Kirill of Moscow issued a decree to suspend church services. As in most things, though, the rest of Russia runs on the words, “Moscow is far away.” Whether or not the Patriarch has power to tell churches outside Moscow to do anything without a full Synod is its own debate: it doesn’t matter, because they didn’t listen.

Russian Orthodox churches held Pasha like usual, and a lot of people got sick, with at least one bishop dying and the virus spreading dangerously in monasteries. Patriarch Kirill repeated himself, threatening that any priest who conducts services with members of his congregation present may be penalized by an ecclesiastical court.

Father Sergei thinks coronavirus tests are an excuse for Putin to inject people with tracking devices, so back in June—you remember June, right?—he and a bunch of armed Cossacks holed up in the monastery, saying, “I’m not going anywhere... they’ll have to chase me out with police and the National Guard.”

Remember he is writing that statement on his coffin.

The ostensible head of the monastery, Mother Superior Varvara, did not appreciate Cossack boots on her carpets, and quit “to avoid unnecessary infighting, to which Father Sergei is prone, and give him a chance to come to his senses.”

Patriach Kirill and the ecclesiastical courts booted him from the church, although not the monastery, which he is very much still inside.

At that point we got reports that Pavel was holed up in the monastery with him to avoid coronavirus testing. There was a brief flurry on certain (old) parts of hockey twitter that Pasha was off his rocker.

His agent, Dan Milstein, responded by posting a video on twitter, accompanied by the comment, “Pavel Datsyuk’s morning workout and family breakfast at the cottage. Have a good summer everyone!”

It’s short, showing, for some reason, a man from behind against a generic wall. We don’t need to get into whether or not it is Pavel, and if so where and when. I’d hope no one but a hockey player hikes his socks up like that. But whatever Pavel’s role in creating it, in context there’s something unsettling about the choice of subject: like Nikolai Romanov, he’s chopping firewood.

#pavel datsyuk

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theparanormalperiodical · 3 years

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Is Beyoncé A Clone? 7 Of The Craziest Conspiracy Theories About Celebrities That Will Make You Unplug Your WiFi Router

It’s not the first time a strong, black woman has been undermined by rumours writhing with racism. And unfortunately, the claims that Beyoncé is a clone (amongst other theories) will not be the last.

Conspiracy theories recently have taken quite a turn. What was once a right of passage for getting lost on the internet has actually begun having an impact on our future.

Convincing yourself Beyoncé actually died back in 2000, or that her husband is a leading member of the Illuminati wasn’t going to do any real damage, was it? Convincing everyone else that vaccines are a form of mind control/contain trackers/made of dead babies actually can.

Unsolved mysteries, evidence of the unexplained, and stories of the strange have stalked paranormal enthusiasts like myself since the day we heard our first ghost story.

But sometimes, these things can be hilarious. Sometimes, our favourite urban legends and treasured conspiracy theories are just ridiculous.

And hey - who doesn’t need a laugh right now?

Grab your gloss and turn up Destiny’s Child. It’s time to investigate whether Beyoncé *actually is* Beyoncé…

Queen B’s Second Life

At the turn of the millennium, Beyoncé was on the cusp of super stardom. She had snagged her first Grammy with Destiny’s Child and was already identified as the leader of the group with her show-stopping personality and pipes. But some say, at this time, she died. Knowing her potential, it is alleged the big cheeses at her record label cloned her with her very own stem cells.

The evidence is obvious: today she looks very different to when she did in 2000. And it’s not like your looks change within the span of 20 years, or anything.

Many also cite a video of her at a basketball game acting like an NPC to support their claims.

Oh, you don’t think this feminist icon was duplicated for cash-making purposes?

Well, what if I told you she was actually Italian! According to some conspiracy theorists - the sort that are waiting for Qanon to save them from having to wear masks in Walmart - Beyoncé isn’t African-american. Her real name is Ann Marie Lastrassi.

*Apparently* Ann was Beyoncé’s name before she joined the Illuminati. You’ve definitely heard this theory: Jay-Z and his wife are members of the secret society some believe is dictating world events. Her hubby’s frequent use of the diamond hand sign and Beyoncé’s own inspiration from religious symbolism is used as evidence of their practices within the group. But the claim that Beyoncé is using her alleged faked heritage to sell more records is probably more of a ruse against Black Lives Matters than reality.

She’s a powerful black woman - and to some people, that means she’s fake.

So fake, in fact, she didn’t carry her first child. Many point to this image here, where she sits down for an interview, as evidence of a fake baby bump.

But to be honest, I think this is most likely theory to be true. Having a baby is a difficult life decision for any person, but when you’re an international superstar that has to be able to pull off insanely tough choreography with a certain body type, snapping back after a sprog is even more of a challenge.

The rumours of her maternity don’t end there. Some claim her sister, Solange, is actually her daughter.

Alleging that she doesn’t deserve her acclaim is rooted in microaggressions, the thing theorists feast on. Curiosity is okay - racism is not.

Avril Lavigne Is Also Dead

Most celebrities share similar conspiracy theories. They’re all supposedly cloned, the Antichrist, and/or dead.

But Lavigne is most famous for being the latter. This Canadian singer apparently died 2 years after Queen B was cloned with the latest stem cell technology - but she wasn’t replaced with a duplicate. They hired an actress named Melissa to take her place.

And the actress wants out.

Theorists claim lyrics in her songs hint to the actress wanting to break free from her servitude (“The day you slipped away was the day I found it won’t be the same”) and that how she looks now is different to 2 decades ago.

Guys, again, this is just how time works.

In one photoshoot, Lavigne even has “Melissa” written on her hand.

*shocked pikachu face*

Stevie Wonder Isn’t Blind

This African-american singer-songwriter is one of the most celebrated voices in pop music, shaping R&B in the 70s with his various musical talents on a range of instruments. All the while growing up in a segregated America and being blind.

But some believe the latter isn’t so true.

The evidence used to try and disprove his lack of sight includes him going to basketball games, taking a photo, and catching a falling mic stand. Of course, people who are blind can do all of this.

Videos like this are also used to cite his lack of sight (I can’t work out if the pun is inappropriate).

Britney Spears Was Part Of The Bush Administration

Britney has faced a tough - and televised - rise to fame. This former child star has recently had her personal affairs with her father hit the headlines, stacking up the theories about her own life. But the most bizarre takes us back to 2003.

Members of the #FreeBritney movement claim Spears is not in control of her cash with her huge payout from Vegas shows and album records leaving her with a limited allowance. Question is, was she paid for working with the US government to cover publicised scandals of the Bush administration?

It started with an infamous interview when a young Britney said this in response to a question about the Iraq War:

“Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens.”

A year later, her 55-hour-long Vegas marriage left a shadow over the United States V. Libby case. And in 2006, a split from her boyfriend took place a single day before the midterms.

What about when Bush claimed more troops were being sent to Iraq? Britney had her infamous breakdown when was caught shaving her head and attacking the car of a pap with an umbrella.

Paul Is Dead

This 78 year old music legend is probably one of the most famous singer-songwriters, well, ever. The Beatles will forever be the biggest band on the planet - and that’s what makes this theory quite so convincing.

Legend has it that on the 9th November 1966, Paul McCartney died in a car crash and was replaced with a lookalike. And, just like Avril Lavigne’s own replacement, their music apparently communicated hints to what really happened.

Lennon supposedly sang about burying Paul and "here's another clue for you all / the walrus was Paul". And in an album cover photo, McCartney is shown barefoot and out of step with his bandmates.

The rumour has been rebutted on many occasions, even inspiring a live album titled Paul Is Live. Despite this, it is one of the most enduring theories in pop culture.

Katy Perry Is Jonbenet Ramsay

This is a curious conspiracy theory.

In 1996, JonBenét Ramsey was found dead in her Colorado family home. She had been killed, and her body was found hours later in the basement with a ransom note. What happened to this beauty pageant queen is one of the most infamous unsolved crimes, with many alleging her family had staged the discovery of her body to cover up that they murdered her.

Many theories have followed up this story, some realistic and some bizarre. But there is one that sticks out.

According to one theorist, Ramsey was not murdered. Instead, she grew up to be international-renowned recording artist Katy Perry.

This is when we wander back into familiar territory: Dave Johnson claimed JonBenet’s parents - who are often believed to have staged the discovery or killed her - sacrificed her to the Illuminati for fame ‘n’ fortune.

Their evidence relied on alleged similarities between Ramsey and Perry, focusing exclusively on the eyebrows.

Right.

Nicolas Cage Is A Vampire

A number of celebrities are believed to be immortal. In fact, you can claim anyone is a time traveller, even Doreen down the round! All you have to do is take one of their pictures and look through really old photographs til you catch someone with a slight resemblance.

But one of the most famous cases of this is Mr Meme himself: Nicolas Cage.

Many believe the fact he played one in a film is more than enough evidence that he is one of the undead. Hiding in plain sight, I guess?

So - do you think Beyoncé is a clone?

Let me know what you think in a comment below. And while you’re there, make sure you like ‘n’ reblog!

If you want to hear somethin’ spooky - or somethin’ stupid like this - every weekend go ahead and hit follow.

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rawliverandcigarettes · 3 years

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Mass Effect Retribution, a review

Mass Effect Retribution is the third book in the official Mass Effect trilogy by author Drew Karpyshyn, who happens to also be Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2.

I didn’t expect to pick it up, because to be very honest I didn’t expect to like it. 9 years ago I borrowed Mass Effect Revelations, and I still recall the experience as underwhelming. But this fateful fall of 2020 I had money (yay) and I saw the novel on the shelf of a swedish nerd store. I guess guilt motivated me to give the author another try: guilt, because I’ve been writing a Mass Effect fanfiction for an ungodly amount of years and I’ve been deathly afraid of lore that might contradict my decisions ever since I started -but I knew this book covered elements that are core to plot elements of my story, and I was willing to let my anxiety to the door and see what was up.

Disclaimer: I didn’t reread Mass Effect Revelation before plunging into this read, and entirely skipped Ascension. So anything in relation to character introduction and continuity will have to be skipped.

Back-cover pitch (the official, unbiased, long one)

Humanity has reached the stars, joining the vast galactic community of alien species. But beyond the fringes of explored space lurk the Reapers, a race of sentient starships bent on “harvesting” the galaxy’s organic species for their own dark purpose. The Illusive Man, leader of the pro-human black ops group Cerberus, is one of the few who know the truth about the Reapers. To ensure humanity’s survival, he launches a desperate plan to uncover the enemy’s strengths—and weaknesses—by studying someone implanted with modified Reaper technology. He knows the perfect subject for his horrific experiments: former Cerberus operative Paul Grayson, who wrested his daughter from the cabal’s control with the help of Ascension project director Kahlee Sanders. But when Kahlee learns that Grayson is missing, she turns to the only person she can trust: Alliance war hero Captain David Anderson. Together they set out to find the secret Cerberus facility where Grayson is being held. But they aren’t the only ones after him. And time is running out. As the experiments continue, the sinister Reaper technology twists Grayson’s mind. The insidious whispers grow ever stronger in his head, threatening to take over his very identity and unleash the Reapers on an unsuspecting galaxy. This novel is based on a Mature-rated video game.

Global opinion (TL;DR)

I came in hoping to be positively surprised and learn a thing or two about Reapers, about Cerberus and about Aria T’loak. I wasn’t, and I didn’t learn much. What I did learn was how cool ideas can get wasted by the very nature of game novelization, as the defects are not singular to this novel but quite widespread in this genre, and how annoyed I can get at an overuse of dialogue tags. The pacing is good and the narrative structure alright: everything else poked me in the wrong spots and rubbed how the series have always handled violence on my face with cruder examples. If I was on Good Reads, I’d probably give it something like 2 stars, for the pacing, some of the ideas, and my general sympathy for the IP novel struggle.

The indepth review continue past this point, just know there will be spoilers for the series, the Omega DLC which is often relevant, and the book itself!

What I enjoyed

Drew Karpyshyn is competent in narrative structure, and that does a lot for the pacing. Things rarely drag, and we get from one event to the next seamlessly. I’m not surprised this is one of the book’s qualities, as it comes from the craft of a game writer: pacing and efficiency are mandatory skills in this field. I would have preferred a clearer breaking point perhaps, but otherwise it’s a nice little ride that doesn’t ask a lot of effort from you (I was never tempted to DNF the book because it was so easy to read).

This book is packed with intringuing ideas -from venturing in the mind of the Illusive Man to assist, from the point of view of the victim, to Grayson’s biological transformation and assimilation into the Reaper hivemind, we get plenty to be excited for. I was personally intrigued about Liselle, Aria T’loak’s secret daughter, and eager to get a glimpse at the mind of the Queen Herself -also about how her collaboration with Cerberus came to be. Too bad none of these ideas go anywhere nor are being dealt with in an interesting way!!! But the concepts themselves were very good, so props for setting up interesting premices.

Pain is generally well described. It gets the job done.

I liked Sanak, the batarian that works as a second to Aria. He’s not very well characterized and everyone thinks he’s dumb (rise up for our national himbo), even though he reads almost smarter than her on multiple occasions, but I was happy whenever he was on the page, so yay for Sanak. But it might just be me having a bias for batarians.

Cool to have Kai Leng as a point of view character. I wasn’t enthralled by what was done with it, as he remains incredibly basic and as basically hateable and ungrounded than in Mass Effect 3 (I think he’s very underwhelming as a villain and he should have been built up in Mass Effect 2 to be effective). But there were some neat moments, such as the description of the Afterlife by Grayson who considers it as tugging at his base instincts, compared to Leng’s description of it where everything is deemed disgusting. The execution is not the best, but the concept was fun.

Pre-Reaperification Paul Grayson wasn’t the worst point of view to follow. I wasn’t super involved in his journey and didn’t care when he died one way or the other, but I empathized with his problems and hoped he would find a way out of the cycle of violence. The setup of his character arc was interesting, it’s just sad that any resolution -even negative- was dropped to focus on Reapers and his relationship with Kahlee Sanders, as I think the latter was the least interesting part.

The cover is cool and intringuing. Very soapy. It’s my favorite out of all the official novels, as it owns the cheesier aspect of the series, has nice contrasts and immediately asks questions. Very 90s/2000s. It’s great.

You may notice every thing I enjoyed was coated in complaints, because it’s a reflection of my frustration at this book for setting up interesting ideas and then completely missing the mark in their execution. So without further due, let’s talk about what I think the book didn’t do right.

1. Dumb complaints that don’t matter much

After reading the entire book, I am still a bit confused at to why Tim (the Illusive Man’s acronym is TIM in fandom, but I find immense joy in reffering to him as just Tim) wants his experimentation to be carried out on Grayson specifically, especially when getting to him is harder than pretty much anyone else (also wouldn’t pushing the very first experiments on alien captives make more sense given it’s Cerberus we’re talking about?). It seem to be done out of petty revenge, which is fine, but it still feels like quite the overlook to mess with a competent fighter, enhance him, and then expect things to stay under control (which Tim kind of doesn’t expect to, and that’s even weirder -why waste your components on something you plan to terminate almost immediately). At the same time, the pettiness is the only characterization we get out of Tim so good I guess? But if so, I wished it would have been accentuated to seem even more deliberate (and not have Tim regret to see it in himself, which flattens him and doesn’t inform the way he views the world and himself -but we’ll get to that).

I really disliked the way space travel is characterized. And that might be entirely just me, and perhaps it doesn’t contradict the rest of the lore, but space travel is so fast. People pop up left and right in a matter of hours. At some point we even get a mention of someone being able to jump 3 different Mass Relays and then arrive somewhere in 4 hours. I thought you first had to discharge your ship around a stellar object before being able to engage in the next jump (and that imply finding said object, which would have to take more than an hour). It’s not that big of a deal, but it completely crammed this giant world to a single boulevard for me and my hard-science-loving tastes. Not a big deal, but not a fan at all of this choice.

You wouldn’t believe how often people find themselves in a fight naked or in their underwear. It happens at least 3 times (and everyone naked survives -except one, we’ll get to her later).

Why did I need to know about this fifteen year’s old boner for his older teacher. Surely there were other ways to have his crush come across without this detail, or then have it be an actual point of tension in their relationship and not just a “teehee” moment. Weird choice imo.

I’m not a fan of the Talons. I don’t find them interesting or compelling. There is nothing about them that informs us on the world they live in. The fact they’re turian-ruled don’t tell us anything about turian culture that, say, the Blue Suns don’t tell us already. It’s a generic gang that is powerful because it is. I think they’re very boring, in this book and in the Omega DLC alike (a liiittle less in the DLC because of Nyreen, barely). Not a real criticism, I just don’t care for them at all.

I might just be very ace, but I didn’t find Anderson and Kahlee Sanders to have much chemistry. Same for Kahlee and Grayson (yes we do have some sort of love-triangle-but-not-really, but it’s not very important and it didn’t bother me much). Their relationships were all underwhelming to me, and I’ll explain why in part 4.

The red sand highs are barely described, and very safely -probably not from a place of intimate knowledge with drugs nor from intense research. Addiction is a delicate topic, and I feel like it could have been dealt with better, or not be included at all.

There are more of these, but I don’t want to turn this into a list of minor complaints for things that are more a matter of taste than craft quality or thematic relevance. So let’s move on.

2. Who cares about aliens in a Mass Effect novel

Now we’re getting into actual problems, and this one is kind of endemic to the Mass Effect novels (I thought the same when I read Revelation 9 years ago, though maybe less so as Saren in a PoV character -but I might have forgotten so there’s that). The aliens are described and characterized in the most uncurious, uninspired manner. Krogans are intimidating brutes. Turians are rigid. Asaris are sexy. Elcors are boring. Batarians are thugs (there is something to be said with how Aria’s second in command is literally the same batarian respawned with a different name in Mass Effect 2, this book, then the Omega DLC). Salarians are weak nerds. (if you allow me this little parenthesis because of course I have to complain about salarian characterization: the only salarian that speaks in the book talks in a cheap ripoff of Mordin’s speech pattern, which sucks because it’s specific to Mordin and not salarians as a whole, and is there to be afraid of a threat as a joke. This is SUCH a trope in the original trilogy -especially past Mass Effect 1 when they kind of give up on salarians except for a few chosen ones-, that salarians’ fear is not to be taken seriously and the only salarians who are to be considered don’t express fear at all -see Mordin and Kirrahe. It happens at least once per game, often more. This is one of the reasons why the genophage subplot is allowed to be so morally simple in ME3 and remove salarians from the equation. I get why they did that, but it’s still somewhat of a copeout. On this front, I have to give props to Andromeda for actually engaging with violence on salarians in a serious manner. It’s a refreshing change) I didn’t learn a single thing about any of these species, how they work, what they care about in the course of these 79750 words. I also didn’t learn much about their relationships to other species, including humans. I’ll mention xenophobia in more details later, but this entire aspect of the story takes a huge hit because of this lack of investment of who these species are.

I’ve always find Mass Effect, despite its sprawling universe full of vivid ideas and unique perspectives, to be strangely enamoured with humans, and it has never been so apparent than here. Only humans get to have layers, deserving of empathy and actual engagement. Only their pain is real and important. Only their death deserve mourning (we’ll come back to that). I’d speculate this comes from the same place that was terrified to have Liara as a love interest in ME1 in case she alienated the audience, and then later was surprised when half the fanbase was more interested in banging the dinosaur-bird than their fellow humans: Mass Effect often seem afraid of losing us and breaking our capacity for self-projection. It’s a very weird concern, in my opinion, that reveals the most immature, uncertain and soapy parts of the franchise. Here it’s punched to eleven, and I find it disappointing. It also have a surprising effect on the narrative: again, we’ll come back to that.

3. The squandered potential of Liselle and Aria

Okay. This one hurts. Let’s talk about Liselle: she’s introduced in the story as a teammate to Grayson, who at the time works as a merc for Aria T’loak on Omega, and also sleeps with him on the regular. She likes hitting the Afterlife’s dancefloor: she’s very admired there, as she’s described as extremely attractive. One night after receiving a call from Grayson, she rejoins him in his apartment. They have sex, then Kai Leng and other Cerberus agents barge in to capture Grayson -a fight break out (the first in a long tradition of naked/underwear fights), and both of them are stunned with tranquilizers. Grayson is to be taken to the Illusive Man. Kai Leng decides to slit Liselle’s throat as she lays unconscious to cover their tracks. When Aria T’loak and her team find her naked on a bed, throat gaping and covered in blood, Liselle is revealed, through her internal monologue, to be Aria’s secret daughter -that she kept secret for both of their safety. So Liselle is a sexpot who dies immediately in a very brutal and disempowered manner. This is a sad way to handle Aria T’loak’s daughter I think, but I assume it was done to give a strong motivation to the mother, who thinks Grayson did it. And also, it’s a cool setup to explore her psyche: how does she feel about business catching up with her in such a personal manner, how does she feel about the fact she couldn’t protect her own offspring despite all her power, what’s her relationship with loss and death, how does she slip when under high emotional stress, how does she deal with such a vulnerable position of having to cope without being able to show any sign of weakness... But the book does nothing with that. The most interesting we get is her complete absence of outward reaction when she sees her daughter as the centerpiece of a crime scene. Otherwise we have mentions that she’s not used to lose relatives, vague discomfort when someone mentions Liselle might have been raped, and vague discomfort at her body in display for everyone to gawk at. It’s not exactly revelatory behavior, and the missed potential is borderline criminal. It also doesn’t even justify itself as a strong motivation, as Aria vaguely tries to find Grayson again and then gives up until we give her intel on a silver platter. Then it almost feels as if she forgot her motivation for killing Grayson, and is as motivated by money than she is by her daughter’s murder (and that could be interesting too, but it’s not done in a deliberate way and therefore it seems more like a lack of characterization than anything else).

Now, to Aria. Because this book made me realize something I strongly dislike: the framing might constantly posture her as intelligent, but Aria T’loak is... kind of dumb, actually? In this book alone she’s misled, misinformed or tricked three different times. We’re constantly ensured she’s an amazing people reader but never once do we see this ability work in her favor -everyone fools her all the time. She doesn’t learn from her mistakes and jump from Cerberus trap to Cerberus trap, and her loosing Omega to them later is laughably stupid after the bullshit Tim put her through in this book alone. I’m not joking when I say the book has to pull out an entire paragraph on how it’s easier to lie to smart people to justify her complete dumbassery during her first negotiation with Tim. She doesn’t seem to know anything about how people work that could justify her power. She’s not politically savvy. She’s not good at manipulation. She’s just already established and very, very good at kicking ass. And I wouldn’t mind if Aria was just a brutish thug who maintains her power through violence and nothing else, that could also be interesting to have an asari act that way. But the narrative will not bow to the reality they have created for her, and keep pretending her flaw is in extreme pride only. This makes me think of the treatment of Sansa Stark in the latest seasons of Game of Thrones -the story and everyone in it is persuaded she’s a political mastermind, and in the exact same way I would adore for it to be true, but it’s just... not. It’s even worse for Aria, because Sansa does have victories by virtue of everyone being magically dumber than her whenever convenient. Aria just fails, again and again, and nobody seem to ever acknowledge it. Sadly her writing here completely justifies her writing in the Omega DLC and the comics, which I completely loathe; but turns out Aria isn’t smart or savvy, not even in posture or as a façade. She’s just violent, entitled, easily fooled, and throws public tantrums when things don’t go her way. And again, I guess that would be fine if only the narrative would recognize what she is. Me, I will gently ignore most of this (in her presentation at least, because I think it’s interesting to have something pitiful when you dig a little) and try to write her with a bit more elevation. But this was a very disappointing realization to have.

4. The squandered potential of Grayson and the Reapers

The waste of a subplot with Aria and Liselle might have hurt me more in a personal way, but what went down between Grayson and the Reapers hurts the entire series in a startling manner. And it’s so infuriating because the potential was there. Every setpiece was available to create something truly unique and disturbing by simply following the series’ own established lore. But this is not what happens. See, when The Illusive Man, our dearest Tim, captures Grayson for a betrayal that happened last book (something about his biotic autistic daughter -what’s the deal with autistic biotics being traumatized by Cerberus btw), he decides to use him as the key part of an experiment to understand how Reapers operate. So he forcefully implants the guy with Reaper technology (what they do exactly is unclear) to study his change into a husk and be prepared when Reapers come for humanity -it’s also compared to what happened with Saren when he “agreed” to be augmented by Sovereign. From there on, Grayson slowly turns into a husk. Doesn’t it sound fascinating, to be stuck in the mind of someone losing themselves to unknowable monsters? If you agree with me then I’m sorry because the execution is certainly... not that. The way the author chooses to describe the event is to use the trope of mind control used in media like Get Out: Grayson taking the backseat of his own mind and body. And I haaaaate it. I hate it so much. I don’t hate the trope itself (it can be interesting in other media, like Get Out!), but I loathe that it’s used here in a way that totally contradicts both the lore and basic biology. Grayson doesn’t find himself manipulated. He doesn’t find himself justifying increasingly jarring actions the way Saren has. He just... loses control of himself, disagreeing with what’s being done with him but not able to change much about it. He also can fight back and regain control sometimes -but his thoughts are almost untainted by Reaper influence. The technology is supposed to literally replace and reorganize the cells of his body; is this implying that body and mind are separated, that there maybe exists a soul that transcends indoctrination? I don’t know but I hate it. This also implies that every victim of the Reaper is secretely aware of what they’re doing and pained and disagreeing with their own actions. And I’m sorry but if it’s true, I think this sucks ass and removes one of the creepiest ideas of the Mass Effect universe -that identity can and will be lost, and that Reapers do not care about devouring individuality and reshaping it to the whims of their inexorable march. Keeping a clear stream of consciousness in the victim’s body makes it feel like a curse and not like a disease. None of the victims are truly gone that way, and it removes so much of the tragic powerlessness of organics in their fight against the machines. Imagine if Saren watched himself be a meanie and being like “nooo” from within until he had a chance to kill himself in a near-victorious battle, compared to him being completely persuaded he’s acting for the good of organic life until, for a split second, he comes to realize he doesn’t make any sense and is loosing his mind like someone with dementia would, and needs to grasp to this instant to make the last possible thing he could do to save others and his own mind from domination. I feel so little things for Saren in the former case, and so much for the latter. But it might just be me: I’m deeply touched by the exploration of how environment and things like medication can change someone’s behavior, it’s such a painfully human subject while forceful mind control is... just kind of cheap.

SPEAKING OF THE REAPERS. Did you know “The Reapers” as an entity is an actual character in this book? Because it is. And “The Reapers” is not a good character. During the introduction of Grayson and explaining his troubles, we get presented with the mean little voice in his head. It’s his thoughts in italics, nothing crazy, in fact it’s a little bit of a copeout from actually implementing his insecurities into the prose. But I gave the author the benefit of the doubt, as I knew Grayson would be indoctrinated later, and I fully expected the little voice to slowly start twisting into what the Reapers suggested to him. This doesn’t happen, or at least not in that slowburn sort of way. Instead the little voice is dropped almost immediately, and the Reapers are described, as a presence. And as the infection progresses, what Grayson do become what the Reapers do. The Reapers have emotions, it turns out. They’re disgusted at organic discharges. They’re pleased when Grayson accomplish what they want, and it’s told as such. They foment little plans to get their puppet to point A to point B, and we are privy to their calculations. And I’m sorry but the best way to ruin your lovecraftian concept is to try and explain its motivations and how it thinks. Because by definition the unknown is scarier, smarter, and colder than whatever a human author could come up with. I couldn’t take the Reapers’ dumb infiltration plans seriously, and now I think they are dumb all the time, and I didn’t want to!! The only cases in which the Reapers influence Grayson, we are told in very explicit details how so. For example, they won’t let Grayson commit suicide by flooding his brain with hope and determination when he tries, or they will change the words he types when he tries to send a message to Kahlee Sanders. And we are told exactly what they do every time. There was a glorious occasion to flex as a writer by diving deep into an unreliable narrator and write incredibly creepy prose, but I guess we could have been confused, and apparently that’s not allowed. And all of this is handled that poorly becauuuuuse...

5. Subtext is dead and Drew killed it

Now we need to talk about the prose. The style of the author is... let’s be generous and call it functional. It’s about clarity. The writing is so involved in its quest for clarity that it basically ruins the book, and most of the previous issues are direct consequences of the prose and adjacent decisions.The direct prose issues are puzzling, as they are known as rookie technical flaws and not something I would expect from the series’ Lead Writer for Mass Effect 1 and 2, but in this book we find problems such as:

The reliance on adverbs. Example: "Breathing heavily from the exertion, he stood up slowly”. I have nothing about a well-placed adverb that gives a verb a revelatory twist, but these could be replaced by stronger verbs, or cut altogether.

Filtering. Example: “Anderson knew that the fact they were getting no response was a bad sign”. This example is particularly egregious, but characters know things, feel things, realize things (boy do they realize things)... And this pulls us away from their internal world instead of making us live what they live, expliciting what should be implicit. For example, consider the alternative: “They were getting no reponse, which was a bad sign in Anderson’s experience.” We don’t really need the “in Anderson’s experience” either, but that already brings us significantly closer to his world, his lived experience as a soldier.

The goddamn dialogue tags. This one is the worst offender of the bunch. Nobody is allowed to talk without a dialogue tag in this book, and wow do people imply, admit, inform, remark and every other verb under the sun. Consider this example, which made me lose my mind a little: “What are you talking about? Kahlee wanted to know.” I couldn’t find it again, but I’m fairly certain I read a “What is it?” Anderson wanted to know. as well. Not only is it very distracting, it’s also yet another way to remove reader interpretation from the equation (also sometimes there will be a paragraph break inside a monologue -not even a long one-, and that doesn’t seem to be justified by anything? It’s not as big of a problem than the aversion to subtext, but it still confused me more than once)

Another writing choice that hurts the book in disproportionate ways is the reliance on point of view switches. In Retribution, we get the point of view of: Tim, Paul Grayson, Kai Leng, Kahlee Sanders, David Anderson, Aria T’loak, and Nick (a biotic teenager, the one with the boner). Maybe Sanak had a very small section too, but I couldn’t find it again so don’t take my word for it. That’s too many point of views for a plot-heavy 80k book in my opinion, but even besides that: the point of view switch several times in one single chapter. This is done in the most harmful way possible for tension: characters involved in the same scene take turns on the page explaining their perspective about the events, in a way that leaves the reader entirely aware of every stake to every character and every information that would be relevant in a scene. Take for example the first negotiation between Aria and Tim. The second Aria needs to ponder what her best move could possibly be, we get thrown back into Tim’s perspective explaining the exact ways in which he’s trying to deceive her -removing our agency to be either convinced or fooled alongside her. This results in a book that goes out of his way to keep us from engaging with its ideas and do any mental work on our own. Everything is laid out, bare and as overexplained as humanly possible. The format is also very repetitive: characters talk or do an action, and then we spend a paragraph explaining the exact mental reasoning for why they did what they did. There is nothing to interpret. No subtext at all whatsoever; and this contributes in casting a harsh light on the Mass Effect universe, cheapening it and overtly expliciting some of its worst ideas instead of leaving them politely blurred and for us to dress up in our minds. There is only one theme that remains subtextual in my opinion. And it’s not a pretty one.

6. Violence

So here’s the thing when you adapt a third person shooter into a novel: you created a violent world and now you will have to deal with death en-masse too (get it get it I’m so sorry). But while in videogames you can get away with thoughtless murder because it’s a gameplay mechanic and you’re not expected to philosophize on every splatter of blood, novels are all about internalization. Violent murder is by definition more uncomfortable in books, because we’re out of gamer conventions and now every death is actual when in games we just spawned more guys because we wanted that level to be a bit harder and on a subconscious level we know this and it makes it somewhat okay. I felt, in this book, a strange disconnect between the horrendous violence and the fact we’re expected to care about it like we would in a game: not much, or as a spectacle. Like in a game, we are expected to root for the safety of named characters the story indicated us we should be invested in. And because we’re in a book, this doesn’t feel like the objective truth of the universe spelled at us through user interface and quest logs, but the subjective worldview of the characters we’re following. And that makes them.... somewhat disturbing to follow.

I haven’t touched on Anderson and Kahlee Sanders much yet, but now I guess I have too, as they are the worst offenders of what is mentioned above. Kahlee cares about Grayson. She only cares about Grayson -and her students like the forementioned Nick, but mostly Grayson. Grayson is out there murdering people like it’s nobody’s business, but still, keeping Grayson alive is more important that people dying like flies around him. This is vaguely touched on, but not with the gravitas that I think was warranted. Also, Anderson goes with it. Because he cares about Kahlee. Anderson organizes a major political scandal between humans and turians because of Kahlee, because of Grayson. He convinces turians to risk a lot to bring Cerberus down, and I guess that could be understandable, but it’s mostly manipulation for the sake of Grayson’s survival: and a lot of turians die as a result. But not only turians: I was not comfortable with how casually the course of action to deal a huge blow to Cerberus and try to bring the organization down was to launch assault on stations and cover-ups for their organization. Not mass arrests: military assault. They came to arrest high operatives, maybe, but the grunts were okay to slaughter. This universe has a problem with systemic violence by the supposedly good guys in charge -and it’s always held up as the righteous and efficient way compared to these UGH boring politicians and these treaties and peace and such (amirite Anderson). And as the cadavers pile up, it starts to make our loveable protagonists... kind of self-centered assholes. Also: I think we might want to touch on who these cadavers tend to be, and get to my biggest point of discomfort with this novel.

Xenophobia is hard to write well, and I super sympathize with the attempts made and their inherent difficulty. This novel tries to evoke this theme in multiple ways: by virtue of having Cerberus’ heart and blade as point of view characters, we get a window into Tim and Kai Leng’s bigotry against aliens, and how this belief informs their actions. I wasn’t ever sold in their bigotry as it was shown to us. Tim evokes his scorn for whatever aliens do and how it’s inferior to humanity’s resilience -but it’s surface-level, not informed by deep and specific entranched beliefs on aliens motives and bodies, and how they are a threat on humanity according to them. The history of Mass Effect is rich with conflict and baggage between species, yet every expression of hatred is relegated to a vague “eww aliens” that doesn’t feed off systemically enforced beliefs but personal feelings of mistrust and disgust. I’ll take this example of Kai Leng, and his supposedly revulsion at the Afterlife as a peak example of alien decadence: he sees an asari in skimpy clothing, and deems her “whorish”. And this feels... off. Not because I don’t think Kai Leng would consider asaris whorish, but because this is supposed to represent Cerberus’ core beliefs: yet both him and Tim go on and on about how their goal is to uplift humanity, how no human is an enemy. But if that’s the case, then what makes Kai Leng call an Afterlife asari whorish and mean it in a way that’s meaningfully different from how he would consider a human sex worker in similar dispositions? Not that I don’t buy that Cerberus would have a very specific idea of what humans need to be to be considered worth preserving as good little ur-fascists, but this internal bias is never expressed in any way, and it makes the whole act feel hollow. Cerberus is not the only offender, though. Every time an alien expresses bias against humans in a way we’re meant to recognize as xenophobic, it reads the same way: as personal dislike and suspicion. As bullying. Which is such a small part of what bigotry encompasses. It’s so unspecific and divorced from their common history that it just never truly works in my opinion. You know what I thought worked, though? The golden trio of non-Cerberus human characters, and their attitude towards aliens. Grayson’s slight fetishism and suspicion of his attraction to Liselle, how bestial (in a cool, sexy way) he perceives the Afterlife to be. The way Anderson and Kahlee use turians for their own ends and do not spare a single thought towards those who died directly trying to protect them or Grayson immediately after the fact (they are more interested in Kahlee’s broken fingers and in kissing each other). How they feel disgust watching turians looting Cerberus soldiers, not because it’s disrespectful in general and the deaths are a inherent tragedy but because they are turians and the dead are humans. But it's not even really on them: the narration itself is engrossed by the suffering of humans, but aliens are relegated to setpieces in gore spectacles. Not even Grayson truly cares about the aliens the Reapers make him kill. Nobody does. Not even the aliens among each other: see, once again, Aria and Liselle, or Aria and Sanak. Nobody cares. At the very end of the story, Anderson comes to Kahlee and asks if she gives him permission to have Grayson’s body studied, the same way Cerberus planned to. It’s source of discomfort, but Kahlee gives in as it’s important, and probably what Grayson would have wanted, maybe? So yeah. In the end the only subtextual theme to find here (probably as an accident) is how the Alliance’s good guys are not that different from Cerberus it turns out. And I’m not sure how I feel about that.

7. Lore-approved books, or the art of shrinking an expanding universe

I’d like to open the conversation on a bigger topic: the very practice of game novelization, or IP-books. Because as much as I think Drew Karpyshyn’s final draft should not have ended up reading that amateur given the credits to his name, I really want to acknowledge the realities of this industry, and why the whole endeavor was perhaps doomed from the start regardless of Karpyshyn’s talent or wishes as an author.

The most jarring thing about this reading experience is as follows: I spent almost 80k words exploring this universe with new characters and side characters, all of them supposedly cool and interesting, and I learned nothing. I learned nothing new about the world, nothing new about the characters. Now that it’s over, I’m left wondering how I could chew on so much and gain so little. Maybe it’s just me, but more likely it’s by design. Not on poor Drew. Now that I did IP work myself, I have developed an acute sympathy for anyone who has to deal with the maddening contradictions of this type of business. Let me explain.

IP-adjacent media (in the West at least) sure has for goal to expand the universe: but expand as in bloat, not as in deepen. The target for this book is nerds like me, who liked the games and want more of this thing we liked. But then we’re confronted by two major competitors: the actual original media (in ME’s case, the games) whose this product is a marketing tool for, and fandom. IP books are not allowed to compete with the main media: the good ideas are for the main media, and any meaningful development has to be made in the main media (see: what happened with Kai Leng, or how everyone including me complains about the worldbuilding to the Disney Star Swars trilogy being hidden in the novelization). And when it comes to authorship (as in: taking an actual risk with the media and give it a personal spin), then we risk introducing ideas that complicate the main media even though a ridiculously small percent of the public will be attached to it, or ideas that fans despise. Of course we can’t have the latter. And once the fandom is huge enough, digging into anything the fans have strong headcanons for already risks creating a lot of emotions once some of these are made canon and some are disregarded. As much as I joke about how in Mass Effect you can learn about any gun in excrutiating details but we still don’t know if asaris have a concept for marriage... would we really want to know how/if asaris marry, or aren’t we glad we get to be creative and put our own spin on things? The dance between fandom and canon is a delicate one that can and will go wrong. And IP books are generally not worth the drama for the stakeholders.

Add this to insane deadlines, numerous parties all involved in some way and the usual struggles of book writing, and we get a situation where creating anything of value is pretty much a herculean task.

But then I ask... why do IP books *have* to be considered canon? I know this is part of the appeal, and that removing the “licenced” part only leaves us with published fanfiction, but... yeah. Yeah. I think it could be a fascinating model. Can you imagine having your IP and hiring X amount of distinctive authors to give it their own spin, not as definitive additions to the world but as creative endeavours and authorial deepdives? It would allow for these novels to be comparative and companion to the main media instead of being weird appendages that can never compare, and the structure would allow for these stories to be polished and edited to a higher level than most fanfictions. Of course I’m biased because I have a deep belief in the power of fanfiction as commentary and conversational piece. But I would really love to see companies’ approach to creative risk and canon to change. We might get Disney stuff until we die now, so the least we can ask for is for this content to be a little weird, personal and human.

That’s it. That’s the whole review. Thank you for reading, it was very long and weirdly passionate, have a nice dayyyyy.

#Mass Effect #mass effect retribution #me critical #writing #mass effect novels #anderson #kahlee sanders #Aria T'loak #paul grayson #liselle #salarians #IP conversation #omega #mass effect lore #reapers #book review

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