#which doesn’t actually work because Joyboy

[lewiscarrolatemybrain]

So I’ve got an idea for an AU where Luffy is actually factually the reincarnation of Nika and not just Joyboy’s successor (Nika being a true deity loved people but couldn’t understand them so he ripped part of his being off and turned it into a soul and that soul was Joyboy and then that was a whole thing — not central to this post don’t worry about it)

And one of the key parts of that au idea is that Joyboy lies dormant within Luffy and after Luffy wakes him up Joyboy occasionally takes him over. Not really in a possession sense but more in like a Yugioh kinda way?

And honestly? I think it would be hilarious if Joyboy just. Hates Shanks.

Joyboy was a grown ass adult when he died. Joyboy had a wife and two kids. Joyboy heavily hardcore extremely disapproves of basically all the fathers in One Piece, but Shanks is the worst of the bunch cause Luffy’s not even his kid! He doesn’t even have a right to be using Luffy! And here he is, kicking back with his fucking pirate buddies while Luffy does the dirty work. Good intentions or not Joyboy is Not About The Child Endangerment.

(Garp also absolutely gets a visit from Catch D Hands when Joyboy first meets him.)

But other than the catharsis of watching all of One Piece’s awful parents get got mostly I’m amused by the idea of Luffy and Joyboy fighting like cats in a sack whenever the topic of Shanks comes up because Luffy will insist until he’s blue in the face that Shanks was good to him when he was young and that’s TRUE but it’s also NOT THE POINT LUFFY

#one piece #monkey d. luffy #joy boy #sun god nika #red hair shanks #this isn’t shanks bashing btw #it’s just like the one thing they Don’t Agree On #the name Shanks comes up in conversation #and all the other straw hats are immediately trying to change the topic #because dear god they do not want to listen to this again #Luffy has his ears plugged and is going LALALALA #which doesn’t actually work because Joyboy #is speaking directly into his mind. so noise doesn’t matter.

[eggelette]

Simplicity and One Piece

So recently, I’ve completely caught up to the One Piece Manga. I usually take a year or two sabbatical (while keeping my eye out on spoilers), to let the story continue and so I can binge it one fell swoop. So before we embark on the “final arc” I’ve decided to articulate some of my thoughts:

I think One Piece has become too complex, where it functions fantastically when it executes its simplicity well. I hope that in the ending it goes back to its simplicity.

Spoilers from all of One Piece here on out.

World-Building: One of my favourite parts of one piece is how many forces are at play, from pirates, the world government, the marines and the revolutionaries, and all the different individuals without those collectives based on the information that is built. However, One Piece is at a peak when these forces effect each other naturally and logically- Nico Robin can read poneglyphs, thus she is a threat to world government, thus her capture is a top priority, thus she is captured (willingly due to the impact of the world government on her mistrustful character), and then she escapes. All of the forces are acting at their utmost. However, with the revelation that the gomu-gomu fruit is actually the Sun God Nika, it throws into question these forces. If the world-government knew it had resurfaced, why didn’t they send out the Admirals to take care of Luffy there and then? It makes the world government look stupid and incompetent, they hunted . By complicating the nature of the gomu-gomu fruit it makes the plot more convoluted. Even the Luffy is JoyBoy revelation, it questions the simplicity of Luffy’s charisma and personality as his greatest power, is it because of who he is or because of the Sun-God Nika fruit? Rather than remove the Joy Boy aspect, I think it would be more simple to compare the two. To compare Luffy’s drive and selfishly selfless nature to JoyBoy, rather than making him actually a reincarnation. This could still work with Gear Five, as it is the extent of the rubber-rubber fruit is to make the world around him into rubber, and still have those cartoonish fights (I really like them).

(Really minor gripe I have is that the straw-hats bounties after Wano refer to them as the “Nine Commanders of the Straw-hats” Yet Chopper is considered a “pet”? how is a pet a commander world government ? If the explanation is that Luffy is a commander too I simply call it as cap) 

Character: Another gripe I have with One Piece recently is that when characters say they’ll do something, recently they don’t do it. A lot of telling with no showing. Zoro says he’s going to fight Orochi for what he did with the smiles? Why didn’t he? Zoro said he’s going to visit Ryuma’s grave. Why doesn’t he? Even further than specifically Wano, the core of the Stawhats is that they have their own dreams and their dreams all align together with the dream of Luffy being pirate king. Why don’t we see Nami drawing the map of the world? Her endeavours could easily become catalyst of conflict especially in secretive territory, such as drawing a map and realising the blank space between Wano and its height and figuring out that there was something underneath. Why did Usopp not get any meaningful fight scenes in Wano to show him becoming a brave warrior of the sea? Like for instance when Kaido called Luffy’s “death”, we could have gotten Usopp’s courage to inspire the rest to live with their dreams. Showing the characters being characters, through their successes and failures is better than telling us about them. Even my man Chopper, whose dream is to cure every disease, isn’t shown to be making an active effort to cure the adverse effects of the Smile Fruit? Perhaps, he discovers something crazy which causes the tides to turn in the conflict against the Beast Pirates, rather than Tama who is more useful in Wano that the coward trio, members of the Straw Hats themselves.

Fight Scenes: I love LOVE love One Piece for its fights. It’s so exciting, but I think they excel when there’s this simplicity to it. Luffy beats Crocodile because he coats his fist with his own blood, Enel because he’s made of rubber, Lucci because his friends are on the line and it was SO close, Oars he beats because he has his crew fighting alongside him. Yet the most memorable moments aren’t the entire fight sequence but only one moment. From stopping Doflamingo kicking Law with his own foot, an action to protect a friend, and the best the BEST is when he rocks up to the celestial dragon and punching his face so hard it turns it back into the manga, out of revenge. Thus when there is no pivotal simple moment, the fight scene blurs together. Beating Kaido, my favourite scene is when Luffy reaches down and fucking grabs this dude. Yet it continues for way too long. There are too many cool simple scenes that they reduce their overall impact due to their frequency. Less is more, in my opinion. For all the time dedicated to Nine Scabbards talking about bringing Kaido down, they didn’t succeed or fail. If they succeeded, to bring him to his knees but failed in the end it would make Luffy carrying Wano on his back much more devastating, rather than living. If they failed in the beginning and died, it would have the same devastating impact. I know the scene of their return from the Onigashima was cool, but they could have still fooled the capital by maybe sending the nine strawhats disguised as the nine scabbards. Perhaps some of them live.

Death: This brings me to next point, of how the complexity and gymnastic involved with avoiding death cheapens the plot and its characters. I thought Orochi died like four times before he actually died, making his eventual death less impactful. It also cheapens the nine scabbards competency as samurai that they couldn’t bring Kaido down, it threatens Kaido’s presence as the villain if he couldn’t kill someone. It also raises the stakes of Wano as an arc. Kaido should have killed Kinemon, who we as readers spent several arcs with. Even Zoro, who faces the grim reaper (possibly Enma or death itself), there are no repercussions of his closeness to death or his inability to control his sword. Like with Thriller Bark, Zoro was put out of commission due to taking so much pain, unable to awake in the celebration and rendering him unable to fight in Saboady yet he awoke seven days after in Wano? Why not keep him unconscious, perhaps in a state of continued haki to stay alive or to appease his sword? Perhaps his deal with Enma or death is that when he completes goal he dies on the spot, it’s only his Haki keeping him alive, conquering death and/or conquering Enma? It would show us a fantastic setup for his eventual duel with Mihawk. Rather than show us the flashback, give us the worrying and the concern, the anxiety of reading the manga each time he lies his life on the line, of knowing why he collapses after winning. The grief rather than the celebration of the bittersweet moment.

Visuals: They are too cluttered and difficult to read most of the time, compared to earlier scenes.

I think One Piece still does the simplicity of these elements extremely really well at times, from set-up of SMILES and their failure resulting in the laughter of Ebisu, the aftereffects of Sanji’s character due to Whole Cake Island, Nico Robin going full demon mode, Momo growing old due to Shinobu’s ripe-ripe fruit, enabling him to be an adult dragon, even the fanservice bath scenes confirming Yamato and Kiku as a transgender man and woman respectively. I still love One Piece, but I really really hope it keeps the simplicity and its perfect execution, which makes it what made fifteen year old me go crazy for it.

Thanks for reading my take!

#one piece #op spoilers #opspoilers #one piece spoilers #spoilers #spoiler #spoiler alert #analaysis

[albertserra]

All of this negativity is not meant to clear ground for a recuperation of The Sergeant. Not exactly. This is no neglected gem, because a) its historical importance means it has gotten more attention than most films of comparable subtlety, coherence, and wit; and b) it has almost no subtlety, coherence, or wit. What then does it have, and why think about it?

It has, simply, a core of power, a nagging substance that even its own foolishness cannot quite erase. Most of that power and substance (and not a little of the foolishness) radiate from Rod Steiger, who manages some masterly effects while giving the overall impression of bulldozing his character into the ground. As Callan, he is alternately ferocious and bagged out, either wound up or depleted; his fury is unproblematically convincing, but his show of soldierly bonhomie is demented, and his heartbreak as stylized as a ballerina’s swoon. Yet for everything that seems misjudged, for all the too-muchness of the performance, not for an instant is it less than fascinating, less than alive. Kael suggested that Steiger was cast only because his renown as a gifted actor-impersonator would assure the public that he (and hence the character) wasn’t “really” gay. While that may indeed have been the moviemakers’ intent, it ignores what had always been Steiger’s latently pansexual talent: no actor of his generation combined such stout male physicality with such delicacies of expression, voice, and movement. The outrageously epicene Mr. Joyboy in The Loved One (1965) saw Steiger playing freely with feints and flickers of body and voice that had been visible since the fifties, not only in the (implicitly gay) Hollywood studio boss of The Big Knife (1955), but also in roughneck characters like Jud in Oklahoma! (1955) and the title gangster in Al Capone (1959).

[...]

In the late sixties, [...] he worked at developing, or merely pushing, his worst tendencies: mannered virtuosity, battering-ram intensity, a wasteful worrying over every picayune mental or emotional process. (“He gives you too much for your five cents,” Sidney Lumet said of Steiger, who he directed in 1965’s The Pawnbroker.) But these performances have interest as a study in a great actor’s unapologetic defiance of good taste and rational proportion to make a style out of objectionable traits.

[...]

But it may be that Steiger’s lack of restraint takes us closer to “the farthest extreme of wretchedness” than we’re accustomed to in acting; that what makes us squirm is the unusual empathy we are being asked to summon in order to see this man as a human being; and that when we ask an actor to delineate pathos and pain with exquisite degrees of control, we may in fact be asking for a seemly, aestheticized distance from the very emotional truth we claim to be seeking.

[...]

At the sound of the gunshot, he sighs in resignation; another doomed faggot has bitten the dust.” Actually, the ending is somewhat different (as opposed to the novel’s ending, which more closely conforms to Russo’s description, but is complicated by the open-endedness of all that has preceded it). It’s true that Swanson doesn’t try to stop Callan from carrying out the inevitable. But instead of resignation, his face shows a dawning torment not remotely like any expression it has carried thus far. Hearing the rifle’s report, Swanson stares in its direction for a few seconds; then looks down and takes a step or two away; then stops, turns, and stares again at the woods. Law’s face looks blasted, flayed, as if somehow the gun has gone off inside his head. Far from shrugging off the demise of “another doomed faggot,” Swanson seems caught in a moment of life-changing realization.  

— Devin McKinney, Looking Back: The Sergeant (1968)

#the sergeant #rod steiger #the whole article is a really really really good writeup if anyone is interested

[scioscribe]

have you got any Star Trek fic recommendations? I love what you’ve written and I’m super into the fandom atm

Oh, boy, do I.  I’ll try to keep this reasonably compact, but there’s a ton of excellent fic.  My to-read folder for this fandom currently has 262 items, and I’m also way behind on leaving comments on the stories I’ve loved because I’ve been glomming them so enthusiastically.  Hopefully this will shame me into appreciating the authors as they deserve.

My definition of “reasonably compact” apparently means “twenty-two separate recs,” so have a cut, everyone.

Kirk/Spock

Communication: One of my all-time favorites.  It’s a beautiful, incredibly romantic epistolary romance where Kirk and Spock wind up captaining separate ships during a war with the Tholians.  They write each other letters where they slowly feel out a resolution to their mutual pining, and the characterization is exquisite.

To Sing the Sun in Flight: I will happily read a million “Amok Time” AUs, but this might be my favorite.  It’s simple, hot, beautifully written, and perfectly characterized.

Our Bodies Safe to Shore: Excellent, plotty, and emotionally complex fic where Spock’s body is taken over by a hostile alien intelligence, one that can read his thoughts and imitate him, and he’s locked helplessly inside.  And the alien has noticed his feelings for Jim.

Joyboy: Post-Tarsus IV story where Kirk and Spock meet as teenagers, when Spock is with his father on a diplomatic mission where the Tarsus survivors are brought for temporary shelter.  Great characterization, maybe especially of Kirk, who gets to be both the woobie (he’s being shunned by a lot of people for doing sex work on Tarsus to stay alive) and the controlled, honorable budding leader.  Little bit of underage, but not particularly explicit.

Fulfilling the Needs of the One (Or the Both): Sweet Old Married Spirk story that blends slice-of-life with a nuanced emotional plot where Spock suddenly fears that he hasn’t been giving Jim the emotional support and romance Jim needs.  (Jim begs to differ.)

Sunlight: Kirk, Spock, and McCoy start filling out one of those “getting to know you” questionnaires together for a crew newsletter, and of course Spock and Kirk have ridiculously detailed opinions about things as simple as the other one’s hair color and eye color and what kind of animal they would be.  Also some cute McCoy characterization and appreciation for shortish Jim, which I always appreciate.

Freely Given: The last by this author, I promise!  This is the best “McCoy subtly plays matchmaker” fic I’ve read, where his prods and a trip to a planet where on-the-mouth kisses are a common form of greeting make Spock start thinking about what he wants from his relationship with Kirk.  Delightful, sharp Bones, a Kirk who wants to make sure his authority as captain isn’t coming into play here, and a beautifully analytical Spock who is slowly realizing the depths of his pining.

Great Expectations: My favorite bit of xeno!  Kirk and Spock are about to have their first time together, but Spock shies away from getting completely naked, and when he finally does, Kirk has an unfortunate reflexive reaction to his unfamiliar genitals.  Before sweetly and humorously consoling Spock about it and boldly and sexily going where no man has gone before.  This is hot and romantic and perfectly characterized, and I just want to give Spock a hug.

Centennial: More Old Married Spirk!  Kirk is turning one hundred, and he’s feeling his age a little.  But Spock has the perfect gift for him.  Absolutely heartwarming, and written with grace and restraint.

A Private Obsession: Outsider-POV narrated by a man from a rigid, sexually conservative planet.  He owns a factory where Kirk and Spock (clearly stranded and/or forced undercover for purposes the narrator doesn’t know) wind up working.  He becomes sexually and romantically obsessed with Kirk and painfully jealous of Spock–and the ease with which the two men love each other–and, of course, leveraging Spock’s failing health to get Kirk into his bed doesn’t, and can’t, solve his problems.

Famous Last Words: Super adorable fic where there’s a shipboard poll of everyone’s favorite quotes of famous people’s last words, and all of Kirk’s have, um, a certain subtext about seconds-in-command, love, and sex.  Contains flirting and foreplay and love confessions via quotes.  Which is fitting, because Kirk and Spock are enormous nerds.

The Game: Funny, insightful story with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty playing a game–come up with something another person at the table would never, ever say–that then takes a sharp turn into devastating pining.  This ends as UST, but I can’t believe they don’t get together.  I mean, come on.

Warm Thoughts: Lovely, aching post-”Amok Time” story where Kirk wants to talk about what happened on Vulcan, Spock really doesn’t, and everything is brought to a head by an absolute hurt/comfort gift of a situation where Kirk comes back from a planet with an inability to get warm.  Spock can ostensibly use mind melds to help him a little–but things keep slipping through that he’d rather not deal with.  Excellent hurt/comfort and pining.

…And a Bottle of Rum: Adorable, hilarious, sexy established relationship fic where Kirk tries to use the “Shore Leave” planet for a bit of fun pirate role-play and Spock tries to be a good sport about it.  Hilarity ensues: “Help, help,” Spock called dutifully, and was set down again with a thump as Jim collapsed in a paroxysm of laughter.

Not So Last Words: Heartbreaking post-Wrath of Khan soulmate AU.  Your soulmate’s last words are supposed to be written on your wrist, but Kirk can’t understand how Spock could have died without saying what’s on his.  There is beautifully layered tearjerker stuff here.

Round is a Shape: There are a bunch of “older Kirk is self-conscious about his weight, Spock loves him just the way he is,” and I will read them all, because I am a chubby sap.  But this is my favorite.  Utterly adorable.

And the Truth Shall Set You Free: Smug telepathic aliens force Kirk to publicly declare his feelings to a shocked, unresponsive Spock who has been avoiding him lately.  The aliens feel like they could come straight out of an episode–there’s lots of debating about morality!  I love debating about morality!–and the romance is lovely and the crew is 1000% in Kirk and Spock’s corner.  And it’s delightful.

Cut Point: Spock gets an exceptionally flattering haircut, one that would probably make me moan, “I want to touch his hair,” even more than I already do.  Suddenly, everyone on the ship can’t stop talking about how good he looks, while Kirk loses his mind due to what he thinks is unrequited love.

Gen

Way, Hey, An’ Up She Rises: Nuanced and exquisitely written first meeting story about Kirk coming onto the Enterprise and Spock evaluating him.  Really well-characterized and great at the tentative feeling of the two of them feeling each other out.  And has “pretty shitty but not actually an indiscriminate villain” Gary Mitchell, which is a take I’m especially fond of.

Second Decent Destiny: Very shippy and technically pre-slash, but reads comfortably enough as gen.  “Amok Time” AU where T’Pau doesn’t alibi them to Starfleet and Kirk winds up with an honorable discharge for diverting the ship.  Spock joins him in extremely early retirement and the two of them try to figure out where they’re going from here.  Lovely, and a very good idea for a second-chance life.

Fortune’s Favoured Child: The formatting on this is kind of terrible, but it’s extremely well-worth it if you love Kirk hurt/comfort as much as I do.  In the aftermath of the deaths of Edith Keeler and his brother, Kirk is foundering a little, and seems to snap under the impact of yet another crisis–and in the process, reveals layers of suppressed pain that even his friends didn’t know about.

Lost and Found: Again, superb Kirk hurt/comfort–well-plotted, tense, angsty, and perfectly executed.  Kirk has been kidnapped and brutally tortured by Romulans, and as the story opens, he’s been brought back to the Federation in disgrace, having made a televised confession to all manner of crimes and (presumably) spilled Federation secrets to stay alive.  His crew is supposed to keep him in the brig and bring him to justice, but of course their loyalty is such that their immediate response is basically, “Fuck no.”  (I am bowled over by the sweetness of a particular gesture here.)  And Kirk gets to be both extremely damaged and extremely resourceful and inventive.

Other Ships

Matchmaker of Mars: I initially left this off by mistake because I was going through my bookmarks, and I always just get to this one through my gift page!  It’s Uhura/T’Pring 1930s Science Fiction Writer AU, which should be enough to make you want to read it--it has lovely characterization, note-perfect pastiche, and the two of them struggling to deal with John W. Campbell.

Oh, okay, so this was the short version.  It could have been longer, I promise.  This was relative restraint!

#star trek #star trek tos #fic recs

[chaosandcandy20]

Clown cars and talking dolls

And the weirdness continues. Even if this is all in my mind manifesting in fucked up ways, it’s been interesting and kind of fun. I haven’t had as many flash visions of Jack or hearing his voice lately, but the dreams have been weird. Loki seems to have taken a backseat to him, not that I WANT it that way (I did have one good dream about Loki a few nights ago, and one vision of him in the middle of the night that was very realistic). But I’m just going with it. The one dream I had about Rainbow Jack driving the car inspired me to do a story on Wattpad which I’ll write soon. I had been driving my car through a parking lot and suddenly this orange Smartcar with rainbow joyboy in it sideswipes me. I think he did it intentionally, because he was giggling as he sped away. I yelled at him out the window to watch where he was going. Later, I go somewhere to stand in line at a store of some kind, and there he is again, talking to some kid in line only the kid (and I) can see. The joke he tells is so funny I laugh my ass off. It goes right over the kid’s head though and he doesn’t even react to it. Jack doesn’t look over at me because I don’t think he sees me.

Last night, I had a creepy dream about seeing him lying on a shelf as a small talking doll. It was the colored version. There was the black and white one lying next to him, who was also sentient because I saw his eyes move. The black and white one was taller but he never talked to me. What was so creepy was the way the eyes of the rainbow one moved sideways looking at me while lying on his back. I can’t remember what he said but it wasn’t anything bad, I remember THAT much. The whole concept of him coming to life was just so weird yet fascinating. His doll eyes were beedy, blue and bright. They literally glowed. When they slid over and locked with mine I froze with fear and fascination.

Other manifestations have been occurring too, like the sign falling off my bathroom wall while I was in the shower. I put up some pictures of him, both versions, and for two days I came home to find just the rainbow one fallen off the wall. It didn’t fall to the floor, but onto a table next to it. Aren’t objects supposed to fall straight? Not sideways??? I put it back up with thicker tape and now it’s staying on. If THAT falls off, I’ll know something, or someone, is doing it.

I still love Loki. I still wish he would visit my dreams and interact like he used to, so I’m leaving that open. It’s not like I’ve shut him out, I’m still waiting for him every day to come around. And he has, kinda sorta, just not directly anymore. I miss those nights. His presence feels different. It’s warmer, more loving. Jack’s is like the edge of a knife. Fall to one side, you get darkness and fear. The other, sensuality, fun, a chaotic kind of love. I feel  like I’ve been balancing on the edge trying to fall into the latter and avoid the darkness. He seems real and unreal at the same time. I’m not sure anymore if the interdimensional beings we meet, whether gods, thoughtforms, various spirits and whatnot are created by a Big Spirit, random cosmic bang, the collective unconscious manifestations or even sheer will of a person wanting them to be real. How are any spirit beings actually created? What’s physical and real in this world doesn’t apply to other dimensions, I know that much. Everything is fluid and changing, not set to the physical laws. So anything is possible. You get out of the physical realm, anything goes. And when that crosses with ours, it can get pretty wild. The line between imagination and reality blurs. That’s why practicing good magic is so important. Willing good things. Overcoming fear with love. To fill my head with loving, joyful and constructive things especially when something happening can go either way. In the dream I had recently about Loki, I was looking at a painting of all these women from different time periods reaching out to him. They were surrounded by all these houses with Loki standing on the side. There was a caption on the picture that read “Loki brings healing.” That was so comforting to me. I carried the picture into another room in the house I was in in the dream and just stared at it. So I still love him like crazy. I’m just preoccupied by this new thing right now. It doesn’t mean I love him any less. Just distracted. If Jack is a real entity, if anyone needs healing, it’s him. Maybe Loki can work on him to bring his colors back, and his positive and negative sides together in a balance. If anyone knows about being imprisoned and tortured, it’s Loki. Then again, there’s still the possibility that Jack is just another of Loki’s little tricks to teach ME something, and bring us closer together. I still think they’re separate beings though. Time will tell.