#I actually REALLY hate how his arc was resolved and strongly feel that he should have progressed into a bigger problem

[bonefall]

⭕️Hey Bones! Is it ok if you explain and/or elaborate how Crowfeather is abusive to Breezepelt if please?⭕️

I do KNOW that crowfeather is indeed, abusive to Breezepelt, due to the fact that he emotionally and/or physically neglected him - with child neglect being known to BE a form of child abuse - and I also heard that he slashed and/or hit him within one of the books, which I believe is in the book Outcast, in chapter 16.

But I also wish people would talk and be informed about it more within the fandom, because in the parts of the fandom I’ve known portrayed Crowfeather’s neglect on Breezepelt as negative and bad, but not in a way that made me think and/or feel: “Wow, that’s pretty bad. That’s…actually abusive.” I suppose? So I hope more people will talk about it more in that type of way.

Also, please be aware that I have NOT read PoT, OoTS, etc. or barely any warrior cats books, since the majority of the information I got from the series is from the wiki and the fandom, so that probably explains why I didn’t know this part of Crowfeather’s character is as bad as it actually is until now. Also, feel free to talk about Crowfeather’s abuse on Breezepelt I haven’t mentioned and/or don’t know right now as well if you want.

I’m SO sorry that if this ask is unintentionally quite long, and feel free to make sure to take all the time you need to answer it. Thank you!

OH LET'S GOOOO

Breezepelt is both physically and emotionally abused by Crowfeather. I'm not talking about only child neglect; he is screamed at, belittled, and even once hit on-screen.

The fact that Crowfeather both neglected and abused him is very important to the canonical story of Breezepaw. There's actually a lot more to this character than people remember! Even from his first appearances he displays good qualities, a strained relationship with his father and adult clanmates, and is clearly shown to be troubled before we understand why.

As many problems as I have with the direction of Breezepelt's arc (especially Crowfeather's Trial), his setup is legitimately a praiseworthy bit of writing from Po3 which carries over into OotS. To say that Breezepelt was not abused is to completely miss two arcs worth of books SCREAMING it.

BIG POST. Glossary;

INTRO TO BREEZEPELT: The Sight and Dark River

ABUSE: Outcast, Social Alienation, the Tribe Journey.

DARK FOREST: How these factors push him towards radicalization.

For "brevity," I'm not getting into anything post-OotS. I'm just showing that Breezepelt was abused, the narrative wants you to know that he was abused, and that his status as a victim of child abuse is CENTRAL to understanding why he is training in the Dark Forest.

INTRO TO BREEZEPELT: The Sight and Dark River

Our very first introduction to Breeze is when Jaypaw walks off a cliff in the first book of Po3 and is rescued by a WindClan patrol. He's making snarky remarks, and Whitetail and Crowfeather are not happy about it. Whitetail snaps for Crow to teach his son some manners, and Crow growls for Breezepaw to be quiet.

But our proper introduction to him is at his announcement gathering, when Heatherpaw playfully introduces him as a friend,

From the offset something's not entirely right here between Breezepaw and his father. He's cut off by Heatherpaw here, but he's touchy whenever his father is involved, and we're not entirely sure why.

Throughout Book 1, he's just rude, with a notable xenophobic streak. He's a bit of a mean rival character for Lionpaw, as they're both interested in the affections of Heatherpaw and make bids to get her attention, but nothing particularly violent yet.

He participates in the beloved Kitty Olympics and gets buried in liquid dirt with Lionpaw, basically a rite of passage for any arc.

(And Nightcloud has a cute moment where she watches over them until they fall asleep)

As the books progress, the relationship between Crow and Breeze visibly deteriorates. They start from being simply tense with each other in The Sight, to the open shouting and hitting we see in Outcast.

In the very first chapter of Dark River, we learn where his behavioral issues are really coming from;

Crowfeather.

Breezepelt is getting xenophobia from his father. Occasionally he says something bigoted and his dad will agree and chime in, and those are the only positive moments they have together.

(Note: In contrast, Nightcloud explicitly pushes back against xenophobia, chiding Breezepelt for his rudeness to Lionpaw in back in The Sight, Chapter 21. The Sight is the book where a lot of "evidence" that the Evil Overbearing Woman is actually responsible for the rift between father and son but. No. She's not. Though she can be overprotective; Crow and Breeze have a bad relationship when she's not even around in Breeze's first appearance and even his Crowfeather's Trial Epiphany refutes it. Anyway this post isn't about Nightcloud.)

So he starts acting on his bigotry, accusing cats in other Clans of stealing, running really close to the border. What's interesting though, is that this is not entirely his doing. The first time we get physical trouble from Breezepaw, DUSTPELT aggressed it. Breezepaw and Harepaw were just chasing a squirrel and hadn't yet gone over the border at all.

We learn that WindClan is teaching its apprentices how to hunt in woodland, and tensions between the two Clans is starting to escalate as ThunderClan isn't entirely trusting of their intentions.

The second time, fighting breaks out over him and Harepaw actually crossing the border and catching a squirrel. WindClan is adamant that because it came from their land, it's their squirrel. So it's as if Breezepaw is modelling the aggression around him, learning how to behave from the older warriors and his father.

When he joins Heatherpaw and The Three to go find Gorsetail's kits in the tunnels, he's grouchy towards the ThunderClan cats, but very gentle with the kittens. Notably so. When Thistlekit is dangerously cold, he cuddles up next to her, and even assures Swallowkit when she's scared,

Through this entire excursion, he's the one in the comforting roles for the kittens. Breezepaw is the one who is taking time to tell the kits they'll be okay, that he'll protect them, and physically supporting them when they're weak, even when he's terrified.

And it's always contrasted to Heatherpaw who's way more 'disciplined,' as a side note. It's a detail I'm just fond of.

All this to point out,

Breezepelt displays his best qualities when he's away from the older warriors of WindClan, and he's at his worst whenever he's near Crowfeather. Even while he's essentially just a bully character for The Three to deal with. He's gruff but cooperative when it's just him and Heatherpaw interacting with The Three, but mean when there is an adult to please.

We're getting to the on-screen abuse now, but Po3 actually sets up Breezepaw's troubles and dynamics well before it's finally confirmed that he is a victim of child abuse.

ABUSE: Outcast, the Tribe Journey.

In Outcast, Breezepaw's problems have escalated into open aggression towards cats of other Clans, and is now a legitimate concern for his own safety. Yet, he's spoken over by older warriors, and reprimanded at nearly every opportunity, right in front of the warrior of another Clan.

Squilf just asked the poor kid how his training was going, and then Whitetail JUMPS to talk over him so she can complain, RIGHT in front of his face.

They can't even wait until they're alone to grumble something rude about Breezepaw, who is still just a teenager here;

They taught him already that a bit of prey that runs off their own territory still belongs to WindClan, encourage him to blow past borders in pursuit, and started a battle with ThunderClan over this. And then they're pissed off at him for being aggressive, thinking it's deserved to scold him in public.

When Onestar announces that he wants Breezepaw to go on the Tribe Journey, he's devastated by it...

Because he thinks WindClan doesn't like him, and he's right. He's gossiped about, torn into in front of a ThunderClan warrior, and even his own dad doesn't want to be around him. It's clear that Breezepaw's impulsive "codebreaking" behaviors are a desire to prove himself, and once you realize that, the way that he's being alienated is heartbreaking.

But Wait!! Hold on a minute! Where did he get a "patrol of apprentices" from to confront the dogs with, exactly?

Simple. Breezepaw CAN make friends! He actually values them a lot! So much that it's the first thing Crowfeather snaps at him over, out of frustration that his son is also being forced on this journey with him. It's an angry response to his child having emotional and physical needs, resentment that will continue all journey long.

Note that it's plural, friends. Breezepelt has multiple friends, at least one who is not Heatherpaw, and she promises to say goodbye to them.

Up next, they state over and over, Crowfeather and Breezepaw do not like each other. Crowfeather resents being around him and dealing with his rudeness, embarrassed and angry, and Breezepaw is absolutely miserable being sent on a journey to the mountains with a man who hates his guts.

The whole while, Crowfeather is brooding longingly about Feathertail, already thinking about her as soon as he kitty-kisses Nightcloud goodbye, his eyes looking somewhere distant. He makes a jab about loyalty when Breezepaw doesn't understand why they're helping the Tribe.

Breezepaw gets smacked after he's "shoved" at Purdy and acts rude to him, while the other three manage to be polite (while still having internal dialogue about how stinky he is).

Without so much as a, "cut that out," Crowfeather raises his paw and hits him. Breeze is quiet after that.

I don't give a shit how rude your teenager is being. Do not hit kids. Being throttled on the head is not okay.

In spite of the Three not liking Breezepaw, or even Crowfeather, they're constantly noting that their arguments are not normal, and that Crow is a cold, unsupportive father who digs into his kid constantly, and the only time he ever DOES "discipline" his child it's through immediately smacking him.

At one point, the apprentices get hungry, and decide to foolishly hunt in a barn that they know has dogs in it against Purdy's warnings. Once again, JUST like the first two books, Breezepaw is more friendly when Crowfeather is not around.

EVERY time he is alone with cats his own age, he's grumpy but cooperative. Even enthusiastic at times! The minute Crowfeather is in the picture, he's nasty.

Naturally, the dogs show up, but Purdy rescues them. Though Brambleclaw also chews his kids out (and i have strong opinions about bramble's parenting style for another time), Hollypaw is taken aback by the contrast of what a scolding from Brambleclaw looks like vs how Crowfeather reacts.

The narrative is desperately trying to tell you that the way Crowfeather treats his son is not normal.

And then Crowfeather is pissed off that Breezepaw is exhausted from running for his life from hungry dogs,

And he's constantly losing his shit whenever Breezepaw says something as innocuous as "dad im hungry"

Then, Breezepaw is made to watch his dad pine over the grave of a woman who died long before Crowfeather was even considering his mother for a mate. What he feels is jealousy, because he knows his own father doesn't love him anywhere near as much as he loves the memory of Feathertail.

This really goes on and on and on. The ENTIRE trip is like this, with Crowfeather treating Breezepelt poorly, giving him a smack before even verbally warning him, pushing him past his limits and blowing up on him when he asks simple questions about eating or resting.

It all comes to a head in this one exchange, towards the end. Hollypaw ends up snapping at Breezepaw for his rudeness, before having an epiphany.

It's explicit. Crowfeather's emotional abuse, his "scorn" for Breezepelt, is what is driving a wedge between him and all of his older Clanmates. Between EVERYONE in Breezepelt's life who wasn't already his friend. This awful treatment is only making him worse and worse.

Realizing this, she has more sympathy for him, but it's too late. He continues to be rude to her because he feels insulted, and her patience completely runs out. She's just a kid. They're both just kids. She's not responsible for fixing him when he's pushing everyone away at this point.

That's the end of Breezepelt in Outcast. It can't be helped anymore. Any spark of friendship they had together in the barn, or in the tunnels, is gone.

As the series progresses, Crowfeather continues to refuse any personal responsibility for the mistreatment of his son, even pinning all of Breezepelt's behavioral problems on Nightcloud. He is a cold, selfish father who only ever thinks about his own pain and reputation.

DARK FOREST: How these factors push him towards radicalization.

Everyone talks about the Attack on Poppyfrost, which happens in the first book of OotS, in oversimplified terms. YES he is going after a nun and a pregnant woman. I've never said that's not Bad.

But no one talks about "WHY", and that reason is NOT just that he desires power like so many other WC villains. Breezepelt makes his motivation very clear on the page.

Escalating to violence was about making Jayfeather feel the way that he does.

When Breezepelt says that he wants Jay to be surrounded by "lies, hatred, and things that should never have happened," he's talking about the way HE grew up, knowing his father never wanted him, and that his Clan HATES him as a result. Killing Poppyfrost is about trying to frame Jayfeather for her murder, so ThunderClan won't trust him anymore.

When Jayfeather points out the simple truth that what Breezepelt is saying doesn't make any goddamn sense, his hatred "falters." He's blaming his half-clan half-brother for his own treatment because of the reveal, but totally failed to consider that JAYFEATHER'S ALREADY GOING THROUGH IT... so his response is just this pitiful, "s-shut up, man."

Then the ghost of Brokenstar and Breezepelt bounce him back and forth between them like a beach ball for a bit until Honeyfern's spirit shows up.

Breezepelt's childhood abuse and social alienation was a hook that the Dark Forest latched onto, to reel him in. His anger at his half-brother is so obviously misplaced that its absurdity was something Jayfeather pointed out.

We soon learn that it's the Dark Forest who's planting that ridiculous idea in his head;

The narration is SCREAMING, "The Dark Forest is validating the anger he feels towards his father, and redirecting it towards The Three." He's described as 'kitlike,' Tigerstar's eyes are compared to a hypnotizing snake.

This prose could not make it more obvious if it drove to your house, beat you with it, and then spoon fed you the point while you were hospitalized.

At the end of this scene, Tigerstar sends Hawkfrost to recruit Ivypaw. This scene where Breezepelt is being lovebombed, and the command to start grooming Ivypaw, ARE LINKED. That was a choice.

A VERY GOOD choice! Again, as many issues as I have with OotS, its handling of indoctrination is unironically fantastic, and it owes a good amount of that to the outstanding setup of Breezepelt that was done back in Po3. And that setup doesn't work if Crowfeather was merely distant.

Breezepelt was abused by his father, both verbally and physically. It drove him to be more aggressive to prove himself, modeling the battle culture around him. The adults of WindClan judged him based off Crowfeather's responses, shunning and belittling the 'problem' teenager, which eventually drove Breezepelt to the only group that he felt "understood" him.

In a book series that is RIFE with abuse apologia, this is one of the few times that there's any behavioral consequences for abuse and the narrative holds the perpetrator accountable for it.

But people hear Crowfeather's deflective excuse in The Last Hope where he says he never hated him, blames Nightcloud for everything, and just lick it up uncritically.

Gee whiz, I wonder why the guy who never blames himself for any of his problems would suddenly say it was his ex-wife's fault. Real headscratcher!

(Crowfeather's Trial then goes onto, for all my own problems with it, also hold Crow accountable as the reason why Breezepelt turned out like he did. But that's a topic for another day.)

#This is headcanon territory here. But one day I realized I can read Breezy-P with BPD and he became a blorbo. #Never been able to unsee it and it massively endears him to me... Breeze Pelt Disorder... #I actually REALLY hate how his arc was resolved and strongly feel that he should have progressed into a bigger problem #But I equally strongly feel that being redeemed is the ideal ending for him #so if it was between him being pure evil/redemption death or the awful halting we got at the end of oots.... #I'd pick the halting over him being pure evil or a redemption death. #I think BB made me REALLY fall in love with him. He's my sweet cheese. My good time boy. #Bones when he sees an angry black cat: ''i can fix you. first i must break you. but then i can fix you'' #Like. what i dislike about where he went is that even if your anger issues came from abuse. you STILL are responsible for your actions #but in the end getting that Shitty Dad Approval fixes him. Not his own growth or self-reflection. #it feels like BREEZE gets his agency stripped away for HIS ABUSIVE DAD'S character arc #It retcons in a reason why Breezepelt is not still a problem and then he faded into the background. #while Crowfeather continues to get supporting roles and every now and then Breeze now looks at him fondly #BLECH. #Crowfeather #Breezepelt #Abuse #Child Abuse #Warrior Cats Analysis #And now you know anon!!

[dukeofonions]

“Because I was one of them.”

“Oh, okay cool.”

Or alternatively: Why Virgil’s confession has lost it’s impact.

Exploring the Dark Sides (Part One)

Something I realized the other day is that a lot of my current issues with this series wouldn’t exist if there was a consistent uploading schedule. 

You see when there’s a steady stream of new content flowing I’m more inclined to just go with the flow and not spend so much time looking back analyzing things I’ve already floated past because why should I when there’s so much new stuff ahead? 

But say that stream suddenly comes to an abrupt stop and I’m left sitting with nowhere else to go. At that point I start looking back, noticing little things that I hadn’t noticed during my initial trip down this metaphorical river. I now notice all the jagged rocks, how shallow the water actually is, etc. 

And while this doesn’t necessarily ruin my experience over all, I’m left scratching my head wondering whose idea it was to come to this place anyway. Sure it’s not the worst place to go floating, but surely there’s a better place with deeper water and less hazards. Just an easier way to float along where one doesn’t have to worry about the stream suddenly ending. 

I don’t know where this metaphor came from but to sum it up: since there are such long waits (years now) between actual Sanders Sides episodes and there’s a lack of new content to take in, I’m left looking back over what we have now and during my little look backs I’ve begun to notice some things that cause issues with the latest additions to the series. 

Some of the more interesting things I’ve noticed revolve around the three resident “Dark Sides” and how they’re written in the series. While a lot of it is really good and I think they’ve got some of the best moments in the series, there’s also a lot of little things that pop up that, when looking at the series as a whole, don’t make a lot of sense. 

Which is why I’ve begun this little series where I do a little deep dive into some of these things I’ve noticed and break them down to see if I can try and make sense of it, and this post is going to focus on Virgil.

More specifically, Virgil’s confession to being a former “Dark Side” and how it’s kinda lost it’s thunder.

As per usual, this is all my own opinion and you’re free to agree or disagree as you see fit. Of course I get pretty salty but I try to avoid getting too negative because where’s the fun in that? 

Anywho, on with the show! 

I’ll admit, despite my problems with the concept of “Dark Sides” as a whole, I genuinely loved the subplot of Virgil hiding that he used to be one of them from Thomas.

From a story telling standpoint they do a good job with the foreshadowing, leaving plenty of clues for the audience to find and it all pays off at the end. It’s also unclear at first whether Roman, Logan, and Patton know (Spoiler alert they do) and there’s some close calls via Janus and Remus dropping hints in front of Thomas which cause Virgil to freak out and adds some tension to the series. 

It also provides a bit of a mystery around Virgil, Janus, and Remus as while it’s clear that the three have some kind of history together we’re never told or shown explicitly how their relationship was. Of course, we’re given plenty of hints, but we have yet to know what life was like when Virgil was “one of them” and it gives the audience more to look forward to and theorize about. 

And of course, the actual reveal itself is amazing. The acting, the music, the complete silence after Virgil confesses and him looking like he’s about to cry as he sinks out is just *cheff’s kiss* perfect.

So what exactly is the problem here? 

The foreshadowing? There’s just enough to get people theorizing but still plenty of room for people to speculate without spelling everything out. 

The reveal? What can I say, I don’t have any complaints here. It’s definitely one of my favorite scenes from the series and I can’t find a single thing wrong with it from a technical stand point.

But as mentioned before, I started thinking about it more, and after taking everything we know about Virgil and "the dark sides" into account, this question suddenly came to mind:

Why is Thomas so shocked by this?

Think about it, when Virgil first appeared he was a little bitch. He was kind of the first antagonist of the series. Not evil per say, but compared to the other Sides he was a little shit who enjoyed bringing Thomas down. He was very much what one might consider a "dark side."

He wasn't ever trying to act like a "good guy" in order to earn Thomas's trust or anything, he was very open about what his role was and how it’s just who he is. So really, Thomas's reaction should have been something along the lines of, "Oh, okay. Makes sense."

Of course, we do see Virgil change over time and we learn that he isn't as bad as he seems (even though that seems questionable now) but that should have made his "past" even more obvious.

Like, Thomas, the guy had a whole acceptance arc because he was a bitch and no one liked him. You were literally there throughout his entire journey, it shouldn't surprise you that he was once part of a group you consider to be "evil."

Well okay, maybe Virgil just wanted to be honest regardless of whether or not the "dark sides" are actually evil or not. Who knows? Maybe he chose to confess when he did because he saw how horribly Remus had been affecting Thomas and seeing as he felt as though he'd failed to protect Thomas from Remus and Janus, figured he might as well try to protect Thomas from himself as well.

Which, okay, if that were the case then that could explain Thomas's reaction. He'd just met Remus, saw him at what could he his worst (we've only had one actual episode with Remus so who knows how bad he can get?) and while he learned that he's actually pretty easy to deal with and isn't as scary as he thought, who's to say the reverse couldn't happen with Virgil?

He saw that he wasn't as bad as he thought, but when you look at how nasty Virgil's been lately, who's to say that couldn't happen? It's been said that Virgil, as Thomas's anxiety, is manageable and isn't as bad as others. But we've literally seen Thomas say that he's afraid of what Virgil could do and so he just kind of has to let him do his thing in order to avoid all the "bad stuff" he could do.

According to Thomas: "There's a lot that Virgil could do that I don't want him to do. He knows exactly how to push my buttons. But he is who he is. All we can do is try to listen to him as best as we can and adapt to his needs."

(For anyone who wants to watch the clip here's the time stamp Embarrassing Phases 20:31)

Uh, yeah, that sounds super healthy there. But I'll get into my issues with that little message in another post.

Just before this though, Roman had asked Thomas if "He's (Virgil) going back to being scary can I go back to calling him names?"

Thomas responds by telling him as he's leaving that he still has to be nice to him, before Logan expresses that he's glad (or relieved) that Virgil didn't go into Thomas's "girl phase" which just hearing it being mentioned seems to stress Thomas out. Then finally after Logan leaves Patton explains that while he's trying to respect Virgil's wants and still be a good friend, he feels like he just makes things worse which is where Thomas attempts to reassure him.

Except his advice is to just, let Virgil do what he wants so he doesn't hurt them? And while he says they need to work with Virgil it doesn't seem like he's requiring Virgil to work with him as well in order to not make his life miserable?

Hm, is it possible that my answer as to why Thomas reacts so strongly to Virgil being "one of them" lies within my least favorite episode in the series?

Perhaps Thomas was already starting to be afraid of Virgil before the whole confession in DWIT, and has gotten to a point where he's forcing himself (shown by him telling the others to keep "being nice to Virgil" despite how he treats them) to just take whatever Virgil throws at him in order to spare himself from whatever worse things Virgil could do to him?

That, added with everything that happens in Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts, where Thomas witnesses a Side of himself that appears to be worse than Virgil, could have set him on edge. And if Remus, who he considers a dark side, who he openly admits to hating and is so afraid of him that he loses sleep, then just how bad could Virgil be if he was ever at his worst?

With all that in mind, yeah. It does make sense why Thomas would react the way he did and why he'd be cautious of trusting Virgil in the future.

Except, none of this has actually been confirmed within the series and is purely speculation and since we still don't have the season two finale, we really have no idea what Thomas actually feels towards the situation since he kinda brushes it off at the end of DWIT by doing the outro.

But wait... we actually do know how Thomas feels. In fact, we already know how the issue is resolved!

Looks like it's time for-

How Asides Ruins Everything!

You all remember when Asides was first announced, right? These were meant to be shorter, lighter videos that took place outside of the current series and were meant to give us content in between the long breaks for regular Sanders Sides episodes that also wouldn't get in the way of filming said episodes.

Well we all know how that little idea turned out seeing as it's now been a year since Putting Others First and they decided that we needed to have two Asides episodes before the finale that were apparently essential to the "plot" even though the current plot in Sanders Sides has nothing to do with Thomas getting a boyfriend but I digress.

But you know, I wouldn't be as upset about the Asides causing us having to wait longer for the actual story to pick up again, if the Asides episodes didn't ruin the actual series!

How did it manage this? Well, let's just look at Virgil here and the entire point of this post which is, as the title states, why his confession has lost its impact.

And the answer? Well, at some point the writer's decided that the best way to resolve the new conflict between Thomas and Virgil was to have them indirectly make amends by using some random character that is clearly just a stand in for Virgil and use this character's "confession of a past they weren't proud of" as a way to discuss the situation and Thomas's feelings on the matter just to have Thomas indirectly assure Virgil that they're still "okay" and it doesn't bother him.

So according to Asides, Thomas is just fine with Virgil despite his confession. And as we see in the following Asides episode, they're still cool with each other!

So what was the point of that dramatic confession, which was being built up towards throughout pretty much all of season two, just to have the characters indirectly discuss it and make amends like it was nothing???

Why should the audience care when it all just gets brushed aside (ha) like it's no big deal?

Everything was in place for Virgil's reveal before the Asides came into the picture. You had the build up, you had the pay off, there was the suspense when Virgil was completely absent from POF, and then you would have had him confronting Thomas and the two having to directly come to terms with this new information.

But nope! Let's just have them sit awkwardly by each other on the couch while they watch Frozen in onesies while everyone keeps talking about some random character whom the audience has never heard of before that we're supposed to figure out is meant to represent Virgil and Thomas is all "Nah we're still cool bro."

What's supposed to happen now? Janus is supposedly a "good guy" now so why would he bring up Virgil's past to get under his skin? And if he still does why would it bother Thomas since he's already come to terms with it?

Look, even though I've got my problems with the concept of "dark sides" as a whole, it wouldn't have mattered to me if they'd at least committed to telling a good story here with Virgil's past because I was genuinely interested in that.

I freaked out when he told Thomas, and initially I thought we weren't going to see those two interact again until the finale where Virgil would finally have to face Thomas and we'd get to watch how he comes to terms with it. And if Asides hadn't been a thing and we had gone straight from DWIT to POF it looks like this was the direction they were headed.

But instead we're basically told (not shown) by Thomas that he's fine with Virgil. And the reason as to why Virgil's not in POF despite being on good terms with Thomas?

"There was just no reason for him to be there."

Really? There was no reason for Virgil, who was directly part of the discussion that led to POF in the first place, to be present during the aftermath of the decision they all had helped Thomas make?

There was more reason for him to be there than Logan and he still showed up! They had the perfect explanation set up for them in DWIT: Virgil had just revealed his past to Thomas and due to being afraid of how he'd respond (or just wanting to give Thomas space and not stress him out more) chose to remain absent from the conversation.

That actually makes sense and lines up with the story but nope.

The "Dark Sides" and Virgil's past with them was one of my favorite things about the series. The mystery surrounding it all and Virgil trying to protect Thomas from them while keeping his own history with them a secret was a brilliant concept thats just kinda fallen flat on its face.

The long waits between episodes don't help, and how they're rushing through certain aspects within the series itself along with Asides coming in and muddling things up, I don't really care to be invested anymore.

Why should I when there's a chance anything interesting they come up with will just be glossed over like it's no big deal?

It's hard to make a final judgment here in regards to Virgil's current arc when we still have no conclusion in sight. But from what we've seen from Asides, which is now integral to the plot of Sanders Sides, we kinda already have our answer.

Thomas and Virgil are just fine with each other. We learned that Flirting With Social Anxiety takes place right after POF and that Virgil already knows about Janus getting on Thomas's good side so there's no suspension with him finding out about that either.

All that's really left with him is his troubling relationship with Patton but I don't even care about that anymore. They've hardly addressed it at all and given what we've been seeing I doubt the conclusion to their strained relationship won't be satisfying either.

I don't know what the finale, or the rest of the series, will hold concerning Virgil. While I hope that things will turn around and get better, at this current rate it doesn't seem likely.

Episodes are still taking years to make, and the ones we're getting are just distracting from the main plot or taking things away.

Virgil isn't the only character suffering from this, but at least he's not as worse off as others.

Which is why in the next installment of this series, we'll be taking a look at a little, yellow snake and how one of the characters with the most potential ended up being the most underwhelming parts of the series.

#dukeofcritical #exploringthedarksides

[makiema]

I love Dead Apple so much and not just bc it’s fan service galore but also bc it’s riddled with a shit ton of symbolism which gives like a LOT of insight into characters! and also character dynamics!! The best example is ofc Fyodor’s monologue that has so many implications in what 4-5 lines but, my personal favorite is the Soukoku moment. part of it has to do with the fact that they’re da OTP but that aside, the meaning behind it and the representation of it all is so subtle and beautiful, I fall in love every time. so anyway thought i’d share my thoughts on the scene uh putting it below the cut bc it got long lol

First off the idea of Dazai enclosed in a circle, above the ground, beyond what can be called the realm of humans, can be construed as an allusion to his detachment from everyone. And, in a way, the manifestation of his ability “no longer human”. The main theme/conflict in DA is characters vs their abilities (and by extension, abilities represent issues each character faces and eventually overcomes) but a physical representation of “no longer human” is not possible like it’s not an animal/person/anything; it’s more like a concept. so, it’s represented on a symbolical level with Dazai trapped in a circle up above, cut off from the human world under. And the fact that Chuuya is the one who breaks into the circle is a reference to how he shares his pain and faces the same issue— isolation. (Only difference is that Dazai’s detachment is self-imposed while Chuuya’s isolation comes from the alienation he’s subjected to by others) This motif is explored in Fifteen too when Dazai decides to live after learning about Chuuya’s identity. But anyway coming back to DA, the main conflict (ability vs human) is resolved by winning against the ability and also by accepting it to a certain degree (like when Kyouka says that she needs Demon Snow) Now Dazai does it too— he wins against “no longer human” and also accepts it; but all that happens with Chuuya in the frame. The moment he touches Chuuya, he uses his ability to save him which shows his acceptance of an ability that others detest and even, he might personally hate at times, but that can be used to save someone. Unfortunately this ability also represents his nullification from being human—the deeper psychological issue as far as Dazai is concerned. However, someone does break in and make it possible for him to fall back on the ground, in extension, makes him human again/reminds him of his humanity/brings him back to the human world. And that ofc has to be Chuuya, someone who does share this issue of alienation thanks to him being half Arahabaki and half human. so, basically the subtext here is that just like Chuuya needs Dazai to save him from himself (something that is literally represented) Dazai needs Chuuya too (something that is represented thru a series of metaphors, symbols and motifs) Chuuya is the figure that makes Dazai think living is worth it simply bc he has it far worse than Dazai, he has a literal God trapped in him and his first 8 years is a void, so if someone that alien/“non human” can still push on then why can’t he (this is the message in Fifteen) and the message in DA is that Chuuya experiences the same isolation that Dazai does. The freeze frame of both of them, enclosed in a dividing bubble, cut off from everything, is strongly suggestive of this. so, Chuuya can and should be the one who helps Dazai win against his ability or rather, fight against his issue; he is the person who can help Dazai reconsider human ties and consequently, make him feel like he’s as much a part of this world as anyone else. because when isolation is shared, it doesn’t really feel like isolation anymore. the sharing becomes significant and like a doorway— it is the first of many potential bonds that are in fact possible for Dazai, giving him a chance at belonging. just like he belongs beside Chuuya, just like his ability can be used in tandem with Chuuya’s, he can, in fact, belong with others too and co-exist with them along with his ability. The things separating him from others are his own fear of loss, his uncanny intelligence and his weird ass ability but, with Chuuya in his life, the gulf closes bc Chuuya is far too strong to die on him and actually needs Dazai’s ability to survive; Chuuya is quite possibly the only person grateful for Dazai’s ability because it’s literally a life saver in his case and also, Dazai’s intelligence doesn’t put him on a solitary pedestal (like Fyodor) bc Chuuya has enough physical strength to counter it and hence, stand his ground against it. He has been doing that since they met and thanks to their rivalry, Dazai didn’t end up developing a God complex like Fyodor. (he still has an annoying superiority complex but it could have gotten worse if Chuuya wasn’t there to sort of humble him) Chuuya can stand beside Dazai as his equal and he’s imbued with every human quality imaginable; he is entirely reliant on the connections he has forged and values and embodies qualities like trust and loyalty to a profound extent, so he becomes the key for Dazai, the key to save Dazai from himself, from the darkest part of himself. The darkest part of Dazai is actually his double, Fyodor and by the end of DA, Dazai is with people while Fyodor is not which signifies that Chuuya has indeed saved him. When Dazai says, “I hope that man fulfilled his loneliness” with a soft smile, it’s not just an observation, it’s more than that— it’s a v subtle personal realization. so what DA implies is that Chuuya can and does reach him at a place where no one else can. and that is something that serves as a constant reminder to Dazai that he’s not really non-human/cancelled from human society like he thinks he is. Just by existing, Chuuya helps Dazai overcome all three of his issues: 

suicidal tendencies— he thinks living is worth a try as opposed to his prev conclusion that there is nothing worth prolonging a life of suffering.

isolation— there’s a strong sense of belonging and connection with chuuya in DA that, in turn, foreshadows the development of future connections with others something that Dazai does crave but, doesn’t/can’t pursue bc of his own fear of loss (oda and ango) and also bc people idolize him too much and altho it doesn’t seem too bad on the surface, it does end up alienating him bc the dependency is working one way (akutagawa and atsushi) 

superiority complex— he counters Fyodor by saying that even if humans are ‘sinfully stupid’ (and who is a better example of this than chuuya lol. the fact that the panel of fyodor saying this comes right after a chuuya panel is no conincidence it’s fairly telling) there’s nothing wrong with it! dazai’s superiority complex could have gotten worse and developed into a god complex just like fyodor’s had chuuya not strived to maintain an equal footing with him or if he hadn’t seen chuuya, someone who is actually half-god, going out his way for people and in a way, being more “human” than he ever can bc chuuya considers himself at the same level as others, if not lower (i mean, his self esteem is so low that he thinks he has to swear loyalty to a p*do) unlike dazai. so yeah that self-sacrificing nature and sense of loyalty, which may seem “sinfully stupid” is something appreciable to Dazai simply bc empathy, loyalty, trust,etc are things that human connections are based on. things that dazai lack, but chuuya embodies. things that dazai wishes he had so he could belong. so anyway, my point is chuuya just being himself does a number on dazai’s superiority complex whcih in turn helps him challenge fyodor! 

 All in all from the way Dazai and Chuuya’s arcs and their interactions are planned out, it’s safe to say they are indeed soulmates and I’m not trying to push this romantically, bc altho the canon is strongly suggestive, it’s not of romance per se it’s more like suggesting how they need each other to complete and save each other. Like, Dazai needs to incorporate Chuuya’s qualities and vice versa to become better versions of themselves and also needs each other on a very literal level just to survive/live on. Asagiri mightn’t draw them holding hands or smth or use conventional soulmate tropes/proofs that’s fanfic material but I’m just saying that it is v much canon that they really do complete each other and absolutely can’t survive w/o each other and that to me is really really beautiful <3

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #soukoku #dazai osamu #nakahara chuuya #bsd meta #bsd thoughts #i wish i could talk abt fifteen too #and the other symbols peppered thru out the manga #but that'd be LONG long #and i don't have enough time rn #but anyway the symbolism in DA is the best one tbh #so yeah #the gloves/bandages parallel is also v nice doe 🥺 #like the way gloves is an attempt for chuuya to cover up his inhuman parts #and bandages for Dazai is the physical representation of the barrier he puts b/w humself and others #; ; sobs #they so belong together #plus the way chuuya is like haha u suicidal maniac @dazai #but the fact that he is just as much self destructive #and the way dazai is jealous of chuuya simply bc mf wud get stabbed than cut off people #smth that dazai cudnt imagine doing before s3 #no wonder fyodor was so unsettled bc ofc someone like him wudnt do that but whos gonna tell fyodor that dazai is learning from his soulmate #and has come a long way #also not @15 yo dazai saving chuuya by assuring him it's okay to live for himself #these bois out here saving each other and helping each other live thru everything #.....fuck #im emo

[the2020romanceproject]

Review: Red, White, and Royal Blue

You guys. This book. This book is FREAKING AMAZING. This is basically everything I wanted from a romance novel. I am probably ruined for other romance novels now because this one is SO GREAT.

Not going to do a full summary of this one, because 1) lots of stuff happens (which is part of why it’s so great), and 2) I want everyone to read it and don’t want to completely spoil it. But the basic premise is that Alex is the son of the sitting U.S. president and Henry is a prince of England, and—according to Alex, anyway—they start out hating each other. Then they inadvertently cause an international incident and have to pretend to be friends for P.R. reasons, and feelings happen and so do lots and lots of other things and it is ADORABLE and ANGSTY and PLOTTY and all the characters are amazing and I can marry this book, yes? Thank you.

I was worried when I started reading romance novels. I was worried that the strength of the romance-focused plots found in fanfiction would be diluted by the need to include other aspects of plot. Then I read a couple of romance novels and was worried that the strength of the romance-focused plot would be diluted by romance-genre customs like having the characters sleep together halfway through even if that destroys all the tension. This book is proof that neither of those things has to be a problem. It had an excellent romance plot that was only enhanced by the very robust political and interpersonal subplots that happened around it. I am SO impressed.

Okay, the romance plot first. Here are some of the things I liked about it (spoilers, caution):

Alex didn’t realize he was attracted! He didn’t even realize he was bi!*

But he obviously was attracted to Henry

Henry was obviously into him (obvious to everyone except Alex, that is)

We were only in Alex’s POV and not Henry’s and so we got to enjoy the dramatic irony of the above

Alex is very stupid about his own sexual past and how normal best friends act together

Everyone else knew basically all of this before Alex did

Even after they got together, Alex lied to himself about how he was falling in love even those it was clear that he was

Henry had real reasons for backing off from the relationship and being scared

The characters had SO MUCH DEPTH omg

Their banter! It was so good

I really liked both of them and believed that they were better together

(*It’s super legit to write characters who do know they’re queer. I just personally love it when they don’t know, because it speaks to my didn’t-realize-she-was-bi-until-age-25 soul.)

These plot elements are not specific to fanfiction. There’s plenty of fanfiction that doesn’t do all or even any these things. But they’re also all very common in fic, and when you put them all together it felt very much like the kind of romance plot I might have come across on AO3. I hope these plot elements aren’t unusual in the romance genre, either, because I find them SO effective and satisfying.

Take Alex not realizing at first that he was attracted. This is something I was surprised by in the other romance novels I’ve read so far: that those characters saw each other and were immediately like, “Yup, that’s my type of person, super into that body!” And...that’s fine, I guess? A little alien to me, since I don’t tend to experience attraction that way, but I guess there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a bit of a missed opportunity, though, because it jumps right over the potential tension of us watching and waiting for the character to realize they’re attracted.

Granted, it can be hard in a book with original characters to signal to the reader right away that yes, these two people are going to be into each other. I can see why many romance novels include that initial recognition of attraction. But this book is proof that you don’t need to do it that way. It’s completely clear to the reader that Alex is going to be into Henry—that he already is, and isn’t recognizing that attraction for what it is—and we still get to watch him go on the delightful journey from, “Ew, this guy is the worst” to “Oh crap I’m actually super into him.”

I think this is getting at a fundamental type of tension that was missing from the first two romance novels I read. I talked about the difference between sexual and romantic tension, and that stands, but each of those comes in a couple varieties: there’s the tension between what the characters want and what they have, and then there’s the tension between what the characters want and what they THINK they want. In The Soldier’s Scoundrel, those two things are pretty much the same: the two characters know they’re attracted to each other, and then, as they go through each step of falling in love, they acknowledge it openly in the narration. That’s fine but kind of boring, and it means that instead of waiting for the characters to catch up to their own feelings, we’re waiting for those feelings to form. It is just plain not as interesting to wait for a character to develop a feeling as it is to wait for them to acknowledge a feeling they’re hiding from themselves. Plus, people are bad at recognizing their own desires! It’s a thing! Especially when those desires are inconvenient or unexpected or would leave them vulnerable. There are plenty of good ways to introduce this tension without it feeling forced, and it can add so much.

(This is probably part of why I like characters who don’t recognize that they’re queer, actually—it adds another layer to the knowledge gap. But, again, that’s largely a personal preference, and I recognize the value of a variety of queer experiences in literature.)

The other thing this book did that I think strengthened the romantic plot in a major way was to stick to one point of view. I honestly don’t think I would have said a month ago that I felt so strongly about this. Most of the fic I’ve read is in one point of view, and I’ve never really thought about the alternative. But I’m starting to realize that switching points of view can take a reader out of the characters’ heads in really unfortunate ways. The human experience just never involves knowing absolutely what someone else is thinking. So if you’re living through a character’s eyes, experiencing the world as them...you shouldn’t know what a different character is thinking. Not every story has to immerse us in a character’s head to this degree—but romance should, I think. That’s the fun of it. And it just doesn’t work as well with two points of view. Plus, you lose the question of what exactly the other person is thinking, and even if you can pretty much guess—well, again, you’re going to be more fully in the main character’s head if you have to guess instead of knowing.

And the tension. Oh man. There isn’t one thing this book did to ensure continual tension in its romantic plot; it just did a fantastic job of transitioning between one kind of tension and the next. (Major spoilers ahead.) First Alex doesn’t think he’s into Henry, even though the reader can tell he has a crush. Then Henry kisses him and Alex realizes he’s attracted, but we get sexual tension because Henry’s not talking to him and then because it’s hard for them to end up in the same place at the same time (situational tension). Then we start to get romantic tension where Alex is in love but doesn’t recognize it, and then later when Alex knows he’s in love but isn’t saying it yet. Then more romantic tension when Alex finally confesses and Henry walks away (which, btw, major props to this book for succeeding at having someone walk away from a love confession and not having me think any less of their potential relationship). Then they finally get together for real but there’s the situational tension of them maybe doing serious damage their respective governments. Every single time one kind of tension gets resolved, there’s another kind waiting in the wings, ready to take over. It’s just...what a masterpiece.

So, yes, excellent romance plot, top marks. Everything surrounding the romance was fantastic, too, which just...that is SO HARD TO DO. One of my questions at the start of this year of reading was whether romance novels would feel more like novels than fanfiction does, and this one certainly does. There’s a phenomenon in fanfiction, and I noticed it in previous romance novels, too, where the outside world just sort of...dips into view where convenient, and then recedes from view without having real consequences or significant continuity. And that’s fine. It works better in fanfiction than in original works, I think, because fanfiction can draw on an independent canon or fanon. But in both places, it results (or can result) in a very strong romance where nothing else in the world matters much to the story, and that’s okay.

But this book. There was so much plot! So much world, and I cared about all of it! ALL the characters are extremely well-drawn, and I cared about their mini-arcs. The political situation interacted with and enhanced the romance plot but also mattered in its own right and had its own complexities. And none of it made the romance feel any less present or central or powerful. It was so well done.

Okay. I’m done gushing now. I’m moving on to what I hope will be a recurring new feature: fanfiction I’m going to recommend based on this book. These are all stories that I thought about while reading Red, White, and Royal Blue, and if you liked the book, you might want to explore these. (It’s worth noting that I regularly read fanfiction without knowing anything about the canon. I know that weirds some people out, but if you’re on the fence, I would encourage you to give it a try!)

Let Toretto Be Toretto (The Fast and the Furious political AU, by astolat)—oh man, astolat. Truly the best of us all. This one is much shorter and doesn’t have the prince aspect, but it’s a fanastic journey through gay pining and the presidency.

The Student Prince (Arthur/Merlin college AU, by fayjay)—this felt like the most obvious comparison story for me. Fanfiction boasts a plethora of modern-day prince AUs across many fandoms, but this is one I read recently and really enjoyed. The non-romance plot is less robust than in Red, White, and Royal Blue, but there are a lot of strong similarities.

Not Easily Conquered (Steve/Bucky, by dropdeaddreams and WhatAreFears)—Henry and Alex’s emails reminded me so strongly of this one. All-around gorgeous.

And now, on to the next romance novel that I will almost inevitably be disappointed in after this phenomenon. Someone tell me when Casey McQuiston publishes something else.

#reviews #romance novels #red white and royal blue #fanfic meta

[thekrawra]

hey my dudes, so as always i do have plans for a breakdown of the most recent episode coming but it’ll probably be a in couple days — i’m planning on rewatching the entire series because a lot of my feelings about this episode relate to tone and flow and wrapping up story threads so i want to make sure i don’t forget about anything and make real inaccurate statements...

in the mean time though: i’ve got some preliminary thoughts and ideas that i figures i’d word vomit out there.

so a) i actually didn’t hate the episode. there was one scene with what felt to me like a major tonal shift that felt a bit out of place (you know the scene i’m talking about) but i for the most part thought there was a lot of potential and nothing that they can’t fix/adjust coming into another season.

b) carlos and seb are beautiful and pure and i love them so so so so much and seb kills as sharpay and carlos as chad had my dying of laughter and man they were lovely and i’m so excited for seb to be a main role in season two and can’t wait for more content.

c) big red. big red. big red the third? i died. this guy honestly. so sweet. just out here impressing everyone with his talent. and him and ashlyn! and he sent the flowers! and all of it was amazing a real highlight — and when his parents were like “he’s never really done anything before so we’re happy he’s out here doing something” and supporting him. and like man big red and his family and big red and ashlyn, i want more, i hope they keep it at zero angst all wholesome adorable sweet love.

d) ej. so like i know ej has been a love him or hate him character with most people leaning hate. i’ve actually really enjoyed ej’s character and i think in another post i’m probably going to do a breakdown/analysis of all the characters: but man ej was a lot of comic relief to me and he’s mistakes always read more just oblivious/idiotic than with any sort of ill intention. and this ep when he said “i’m playing to lose”: that was actually such a great moment that i felt and i mean it shows that he actually does care about nini...i mean in a way he kinda did what ricky did too? stepping away to give nini the best chance/what she wants/deserves. so i thought that was really well done and him buying the ticket for gina and honestly, there’s no ej hate here.

e) a piece of nitpicky criticism: there should have been a nini/kourtney scene after the show about the school? like should have at least been kourtney comforting nini/nini saying she wants to be alone/something because like the two of them are close and besties and i know that realistically kourtney would be the first there to comfort her and if nini felt how she told ricky she did she wouldn’t have let kourtney worry so like ?? as i said nitpicky but like i just know if that happened to my best friend she’d have a hard time getting rid of me until she 100% reassured me she was alright.

f) let’s talk ricky’s mom because why not? “i didn’t want to throw you off”? there’s so much about that line: there’s the fact that to some extent she obviously knew having todd there would throw ricky off, the fact that somehow she assumed it would be better to have him just show up mid show and give ricky NO time to consider it — as ricky pointed out. it’s that she just obviously so out of tune with her son that she doesn’t know him, and doesn’t seem to get that everything she thought was wrong and was a bad idea. and that she was like where were you and ricky was like “check your messages” and man i felt that because i’ve done that when i don’t want to talk to people and if they don’t get the message man honestly it just makes the situation worse so get out of here lynne until your like actually going to make an effort to like know/listen to your son.

g) on the other hand, ricky’s dad!!! he barely even did anything but you can just feel his support of ricky. like he tries, and he’s there and don’t get me wrong i LOVED the ricky/gina scene but i kinda wished his dad had come out and spoken to him — id love to see a heart to heart between the two of them and i think 100% they should talk because ricky is way more likely to listen to his dad than his mom.

h) alright i’ll stop delaying the inevitable: ricky and nini. personally i wasn’t feeling it. i thought the individual pieces were there as a climax of their relationship — i thought it was written fine and executed fine in the context of THIS EPISODE. but it felt almost out of place to me. a lot of this has to do with the fact that i hadn’t been sold on the relationship, i personally don’t feel like they are a good fit and idk i feel like the show’s main lacking point was that they didn’t really push them as positive? and even leading up to the ricky/nini moments the tone still felt off? like ricky’s mom said the thing about relationships sometimes not working? for me: it just didn’t fit. it didn’t have the right build up to sell me which overall affected how i felt about the scenes, no matter how well performed they were? that being said, i do have hope leading into season two...i think they have a couple things they need to come to terms with still, i think white i ship ricky/gina depending on how they handle season two maybe they work? but maybe they don’t? they didn’t dismiss the ricky/gina connection, and ej redeemed himself a bit/showed he obviously still cares for nini, plus nini got the offer to the school so who knows honestly... i’ll talk about it more in another post though — point is it just felt off for me.

i) gina moving in with ashlyn!!! i’m happy gina’s probably coming back, and am excited to see how they work it out.

and my final two thoughts:

j) nini getting the offer. i’m happy she got the offer and i’m interested to see how it plays into the next season. i just really hope they don’t go for: im staying here for the boy — that’s like an awful message, and in a world where schools and jobs are so competitive, like take your chances if it’s what you want — so if she doesn’t go, i’m just praying that it’s for a better reason then :( i just got back with this guy.

and last but definitely not least k) ricky’s story. okay so i have semi conflicted feelings about how ricky’s season one story wrapped because i really felt it didn’t. he got to say “i love you” which is great and all, but there’s so much else going on with him...obviously it means there’s a lot more to talk about in season two but my biggest thing is that none of his BIG problems got resolved and while yes he said “i love you” to nini, i felt like he didn’t really come out of the season learning anything? and this is just in regards to my own personal feelings about his character: having him fulfill the “winning back the girl” arc just feels like it takes away from all the dealing with change, finding his support and all his character development. like i love ricky so much and i’m happy he was able to say i love you cause that’s huge, but i felt like he didn’t come away from the season as strongly as some of the others character did in the finale.

but as i said, these are mainly just initial thoughts. i’m going to rewatch everything and will probably have a couple posts coming out about the individual characters/more cohesive thoughts on the season finale.

but nonetheless, the agonizing wait for season two begins, i wish everyone the best of luck.

#hsmtmts #ricky bowen #gina porter #big red #ashlyn hsmtmts #ashlyn caswell #ej caswell #nini salazar roberts #hsmtmts episode 10 #ramblings of a slightly educated film student #i didnt hate the ep #but i didnt love it either #so im confused #anyway #see you dudes next time

[theorynexus]

68 will be my second post, this morning. I wonder if it will start section 8 of the Meat Epilogue.

Oh darn it. I forgot to make a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy/Meaning of Life reference on Meat 42. At least we’re back to a 43, and things might therefore be luckier. Maybe.    (I am very silly when it comes to superstitions regarding numbers, sometimes, even though I don’t really believe them.)

MY TIMING SENSES WERE TINGLING!!!

Hmm. Well, strategy meetings and investigations are important.  (Also:  I am again reminded of the dreadful likelihood that Terezi went with Dirk, which continues to be a disturbing thought.)

Hmm.  For some reason, I have the impression that he does indeed have a vague idea where he’s going, but he may not actually know where/how to find it, yet. That seems pretty likely.  Thus, Roxy would be partially correct. (On that note: Interesting that Jake didn’t actually come with. I thought for sure he’d have snuck aboard at the last moment, or something, as a stow-away.)

Eh, I’d say it goes a little beyond “prove a point,” but it’s also probably incomprehensible to you, right now.  I guess we’ll all have to be patient before we can more thoroughly sort through his insanity in that regard. As for Jane...   I don’t know. It might be more trouble than it’s worth to contact her.  The fact that Dirk has her as a seemingly important part of his plans suggest that it could essentially be springing a trap on yourself. I wonder how she’ll react to finding out that Dirk’s been mind controlling people and that that probably invalidates the actual results of her election, in the sense that it dramatically undermined the democratic process. (That is a really complicated issue that is somewhat entangled with real life politics, though, so I don’t want to get into a deep and proper discussion of what determines electoral legitimacy on a philosophical or political level here.)

It is a very interesting choice on Alt!Calliope’s call to focus on incestuous questions and Dave being awkward, rather than to follow tat important call.

Dirk is so twisted at this point that I’d almost not put it past him, but at the same time, why, Dave, do you have to assume that the motivations are sexual in nature?   (I mean, honestly, it could be the fact that Dirk was trying to force him to have sex with Karkat that gave him the impression that Dirk was [and he is, but maybe not to that extent] way too carnally-minded and motivated.)   Honestly, Dirk’s head is way too concerned with philosophical matters, and if anything he’s probably going to make a clone of himself to have sex with or something stupid like that, if he REALLY has to engage in some sort of tension-releasing copulation that isn’t masturbatory in the way that having sex with someone you’ve brainwashed and twisted into being your personal object of amusement is.   Therefore, I juuust can’t quite see Dirk having sex with Rose/her new robot body.  (Gosh, I hate that I feel compelled to address this.)

I honestly quite agree with Karkat, and now understand a little bit more about why our focus strayed where it did--- though it would have been nice to receive some sort of narration to indicate that.  And yes, it’s sad that Kanaya’s being put on hold, I guess. A little bit.  (Not really. I understand politicians in places of power can get quite busy, and it may not even be Jane’s decision to have her on hold... though if it is, I can most certainly affirm that that is quite rude.)

I mean... to be fair, Karkat, it’s rooted in biology.  Humans not having a Mother Grub means that the don’t have a natural means to reduce the genetic load that would be caused by related populations interbreeding and therefore dangerously duplicating genes.  Thus, it is not actually arbitrary, which I am sure you would know if you had spent a bit more time acting like the “geneticist” your troll handle suggests you happen to be (yes, I know it means to refer to his ectobiological frog wrangling/recombination; even so, the point stands).

I take it that Karkat’s dejection about the election has kept him a bit preoccupied and out of the loop, lately.

This is horrible (Karkat’s part, I mean).    Roxy’s new new outfit sounds like something I would be very interested in seeing fan art of.   A pink-looking slightly more effeminate Dave look sounds aesthetically striking (and I’m not even a fan of pink). But yeah, good on her for not giving up in frustration for people confusing them, I guess.   ***shrug***

And we return to this awkward and slightly funny subject. Considering it was not resolved last time, I guess that’s reasonable.   (Some day, maybe I’ll write a post analyzing Roxy’s trans-iness and/or how they/he seems to have been affected by those around he/them in his/their path to figuring it all out.  This sort of issue is always a bit difficult to properly tackle without raising some people’s hackles, so to speak, though, so I am not sure if I’ll end up doing it.  Regardless, it’ll have to be quite some time in the future, should I do so, after I’m at least done reading both sides of the epilogues. I’m sure Roxy’s interactions with John will have some important light to shed on the matter.)   It’s sortof nice that Dave and Roxy can joke about this without it becoming too uncomfortable (apparently) for either of them.

...   Is revealing this something they’ve discussed before now?  I mean, doing this in front of friends and family could be sortof... bad for things between them, if Karkat’s still trying to figure out how he feels about it and whether he wants to press on vs throttle back?  I mean, just calling each other boyfriends is not something either of them were comfortable with, and just because Dave is now doesn’t mean Karkat necessarily will be.   I dunno.  I feel conflicted on the matter, despite the fact that it is on the border of being cute.

Yeah, see, this is what I meant:  Awwwwkwaaard.

Yeah, it definitely did serve as a good distraction, at the very least. ~~~ Jane either not knowing or not being willing to tell (we’ll have to wait for a perspective shift to her to be certain) is no surprise.

Gah. FINALLY.  If Roxy weren’t such a Void-y ball of fun, everyone would have known this for some time, by now.  (Also: This is another reason why I am quite certain that Dirk was responsible for at least the way that John died. He didn’t want him to be a threat to him.  [I wonder, though: will Candy John potentially pose that problem, in the future, given the fact that he will likely be able to traverse the two different timelines, should he become aware of them?   Heck, this could be the reason why one had to die in the first place. Or one reason.])

This is what you get when you    A S S   U   M E. Also, Terezi would really be useful due to her Seer powers in particular.

Well. That is a useful compromise. Good on you for finally figuring something out to bridge the gap between your morals and Dirk’s amorality.  (Also, that presents interesting potential conflict in the future, insofar as there might be a point where Calliope has to decide whether to allow them to take Jade with or not.)

Has little Timmy fallen down a well?   O: <

This is funny because it’s like that one time where Jade was sleeping and Dave couldn’t get in touch with her. That time his weird fursona came up. Tightest butt in the jungle, or some stupid nonsense like that.

Dave is smarter than Dirk would give him credit for, calling him the dumbest of the Stralondes, by the way.

Not only do they need one of his ships, but it is quite reasonable to assume that they might be able to entice him to follow with them to where Dirk is going.  This is a potentially dangerous gambit, like bringing Gamzee along anywhere, but I think it could pay off in the end.  I think that, as I suggested earlier, Jake’s probably going to be the one to end up killing Dirk, in spite of all the underestimation that and horrific invective that had been directed his way.   In all honesty, this would really seem to be the direction that Jake’s been being pushed in all along, considering all the failed opportunities to interject him into a place of importance in the story.  

Considering his level of devotion and love for Dirk, now, he very strongly reminds me of that one old clown story that AH wrote... the one where the clown was never able to pull himself away from the service of his abusive, evil master. I bring that up specifically to suggest that Jake WILL succeed, however.  I believe that, counter to the example that I just cited, and contrary to all of the deterministic forces that Homestuck has seen in play, the power of Hope will be what is necessary to do the impossible.  A Page has a long, pain-filled story arc, but when it finally blossoms into the great behemoth that its seed of potential suggested it was from the very beginning, amazing things can happen. A Page of Hope is perhaps one of the most potent Classpect-endowed figures that Paradox Space could conjure up.  I have come now to see that this turn on Dirk’s part was probably planned from the beginning, as was the fact that Dirk’s abandonment of him was likely meant to be the catalyst for the eventual realization of Jake’s full potential. Obviously, this will not likely happen in the near future, much to our short-term misfortune. Dirk, if you ever see this, know your folly:  Jake English is just the force you would need to break free of the shackles of the reality you live in---   if only you believed in the him that believes in you.   Instead, your Rage will consume you. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I love this dramatic comedy.

Honestly... this is great. From a writing stand-point, this is excellent. The decision to have Dirk drag Terezi along brings more significant stakes to things and drama for the future, especially with the fact that we DO know that he can be brought back to life, now, despite Dirk’s statement to the contrary. Despite all of my pathos earlier, the way this story (the story of Homestuck) is ending is actually getting me excited and washing away the scars that came from the darkest hour of the path previous.     I really like the mechanic of Dirk having reality warping powers and Alt!Calliope being able to counter them, but only in close proximity. With the speed of his ship being a factor, especially, this sets up for some really interesting potential action in the further development of the story, as well.                    That Hussie was able to so masterfully navigate these emotional waters and string me along to this point was brilliant too.    In sum:  WOW, GUYS, I’M PUMPED!!! ... But... while this would actually serve as an excellent, fully complete and enticing epilogue in and of itself, the fact remains... there is yet more. Not only in the Postscript, but in Candy.      This throws many spanners into the works, and I honestly don’t know how to feel about all that!     If this weren’t Andrew Hussie we were talking about, I would be incredibly afraid that what is to come would throw everything off and make the eventual follow-up in Homestuck^2 (which I know he’s at least directing, though he’s not quite as involved in the story as he was in Homestuck, apparently?!) potentially quite messy and of a much lesser quality than I might expect. Given this IS Andrew Hussie we are talking about, however, I actually am quite confident that eventually, it will work out splendidly, and raise his literary accomplishments to even greater heights. Though... I am filled with a bit of trepidation. That “eventually” will be so far in the future. ***laughs awkwardly*** ... Buuuuutttt there’s still more left, even on this page, so I had better get to that. ...

It is very interesting that she’s been enveloped in that blanket of space so thickly and constantly that she’s come to find it comforting. That said:  How is it possible for her to withdraw and still let narration continue, supposedly without source or accountability, as she states?   Is this meant to suggest that the passive forces of Paradox Space will naturally fill in the gap if there is no one manning the ship, so to speak?   This feels a bit unlikely, considering the lack of content for years of the characters’ lives, and Dirk’s suggestion that “God had abandoned them,” or however the heck he put it. This is all veerrry curious, indeed.  (I do like her commentary on narration. A lot.) ~~~ Woooooo!!!~    It’s really nice to finish this at--   Dangit, time, why do you have to keep ticking into the future?!       Well, even though it’s not 3:14, anymore, it’s still very nice to finish the Meat Epilogue on 02/02/2020.   :’)

#Meat Epilogue #Homestuck Epilogue #Homestuck Spoilers #Homestuck Liveblog #To Be Continued #Homestuck^2 #Author Intent #Planning #Andrew Hussie #Excellent Writing #Skill #Wonder #Hope Aspect #Jake English #Dirk Strider #Alt!Calliope #Alternate Calliope #Page of Hope #Destiny #Choice #References #Themes #02/02/2020

[rantshemlock]

It: Chapter 2

It: Chapter 2 is an almost three hour movie in which just about nothing of value happens

this review contains implied spoilers for the movie! if that bothers you, don’t read ahead.

It (2017) had some incredible setpieces with brilliant monster designs and fantastic practical effects, bolstered by a couple of excellent performances from the show-stealing Finn Wolfhard and Jack Dylan Grazer, along with an outstanding performance by Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise. this, and the simplicity of the plot, make up for the fact that the character writing was often shallow and the dialogue laden with exposition.

It: Chapter 2 has almost all of those qualities, but also one major flaw: it's a bad movie.

there’s a lot to unpack when it comes to why exactly It 2 is such an extreme drop in quality to the first movie; the biggest is the story, which is a mish-mash of new footage of the child actors and the characters as adults, and is probably the biggest pisstake in film history in terms how much of an extreme waste of time it is. for a film to so thoroughly enforce the idea that the characters’ actions are pointless and serve nothing is unbelievable. as a movie that should be a triumphant ending to the saga, we’re given what is explicitly told to us to be pointless.

It 2′s sin is that it doesn’t build up to anything. not storybeats, not relationships, often not even scares. things are laughably obviously telegraphed, even more so than It 2017′s often heavy-handed exposition. the movie wants us to care about the characters because of their past together, but rather than building off the first film’s two hours of story it instead patches in new settings and scenes that no viewer has any attachment to.

“remember the club house? you love the club house!” the film says, showing us to a set we’ve never seen before and have no reason to care about other than it dictates we have to now care about it. the first movie was incredibly well received and is now beloved, it has more than enough emotional moments to build off of, but the film rejects all that in favour of bringing up new ideas, new concepts that hardly get built upon. it demands you care, but doesn’t earn that compassion or attention.

unresolved issues is the name of the game in this movie; characters are constantly shown to have problems, huge, serious problems. Beverly is being abused by her husband, something we’re shown in overly graphic detail. Mike is suffering from untold trauma from standing vigil over Derry for years. Bill is fucking up his movie and his relationship with his wife. Richie is living a lie, deep within the closet. what’s most egregious is not just that these issues don’t get resolved, but that they never get addressed.

we are meant to believe that these characters care about each other, care deeply, have a connection that would drive them to die for each other, but no one notices that Bev is covered with bruises and is desperately avoiding home. no one questions Mike’s erratic, terrified behaviour. Bill forgets his wife exists. as i watched the movie i found myself asking, if Ben loves Beverly so much, why can’t he see her pain?

in the first movie, the characters’ issues were deeply entrenched in their psyche, were part of what Pennywise used to manipulate and attack them. in this movie, they haven’t moved on from their childhood issues and their adult issues are merely tacked on, lip service to the idea that they have grown up but a refusal to actually spend time examining what their issues as adults are. all the characters are suffering in some way, but they never share these things. for all their love and trust, they never developed past their childhood and they never learned how to be adults. their arcs from the first movie are reset completely; their development in that film never happened. for how little that film ties into this one and how much this one wants to retell history with new content, it might as well not have existed at all.

if It: Chapter 2 lacks anything, it’s tact. it’s carelessly violent and shallow, throwing around horrifying concepts and spending no time to flesh them out. while the idea in the book that Pennywise’s presence leads to more violence, abuse and bigotry deserves criticism, this film manages to do an even worse job. what in the book might be questionable and in need of updating becomes uncomfortable and thoughtless in the movie. the gay hate crime at the film is one of the most prominent examples; always a horrifying thing to read in the movie it serves even less purpose, exposes even less about the town, adds nothing, means nothing. goes nowhere.

let’s talk about being gay. let’s talk about Richie.

here’s a fun fact; discounting Nightmare on Elm Street 2 (as painful as it is for me to say this, as someone who fucking adores that movie) It: Chapter 2 is the first horror movie in a big franchise to have a gay hero, unless there’s some information i really badly need to be updated on. making Richie gay was a good move, and i think Richie was the perfect character to pick for it. he’s by far one of the two most likeable characters in the film, the most memorable, gets the best moments and the best lines.

but the conclusion the film gives him, combined with the hate crime earlier in the movie, after he spends the entire film in the closet letting no one know he is suffering, is that he will never be happy. he can’t open up to anyone about what he’s feeling; he never tells any of the others, even Eddie, the character strongly implied to be the love of his life. while Ben and Beverly are given one of the best and most visually striking setpieces of the film to reunite in, there is no such moment for Eddie and Richie. there is no catharsis for either of them.

while making Richie gay was an excellent idea, to try and throw a bone to us starving gays to have someone to cling to, but the ending of the movie left me feeling completely hollow. i did not want my takeaway from his character to be that he is traumatised beyond the point of any healing.

the politics of gay representation in this movie are bad, and so is race.

Stephen King is a writer with a dirty reputation for his habit of using “native americans” as shorthand for something magic and not understandable, and this film manages to not only dig up the few traces of this from the book but also make it worse, turning the ritual of chud (something that the book implied only worked because the characters believed in it and had no tie to native americans) into the act of ignorant, misinformed indigenous people who get not a single line to explain or defend themselves but are only allowed to be set dressing to later be ridiculed and demonised.

Mike, the sole black character of the movie, is served horribly in this film. while in  the novel he was one of the most important characters, a thoughtful librarian and historian carefully gathering the history of Derry to research the truth of It’s influence, he was given no screen time in the first movie and in this one is the detested outsider of the group. he is pushed into the position of mentor and guide, rather than friend, and comes across almost like the old stereotype of the magical black character, someone who is only there to provide guidance to the white leads through insight he mysteriously and magically possesses. the film stripped away his position as historian and researcher from the first movie and now scrambles to make up for that, leaving him without the history and characterisation to allow us to understand who and why he is.

on top of this, despite the enormity of his sacrifice to stay in Derry and the clear mental strain it’s put him through -- Isaiah Mustafa gives Mike more depth and thought than anyone else did and brings in his performance layers of subtlety this film doesn’t deserve -- the other characters are mocking and derisive of his attempts, don’t trust him and accuse him repeatedly of lying to and betraying them. these moments go nowhere, also. he is always immediately ‘forgiven’ without any thought as to his own suffering or the continual selflessness of his actions. he’s the thoughtless punchbag to a film in which the character continually martyrs himself for the comfort of others.

he isn’t even given the dignity of being called the leader of the group, despite doing everything for them and coming up with every idea. for some reason, the leader is nominated as Bill, despite James McAvoy’s performance being lackluster to the point of fading into the background entirely and the character of Bill doing next to nothing in the film at all.

but again -- the characters in It are not allowed to care about each other’s pain and suffering outside of a few moments. they come with their mental turmoil and they are either completely cured of it or allowed to remain in it, unmentioned again.

there’s not a bad actor in this -- James Ransone is astonishingly good, pitch-perfectly recreating Jack Dylan Grazer’s every mannerism, Bill Hader is both funny and heart-rendering when needed, Isaiah Mustafa moves mountains to make the script give him some depth, and Bill Skarsgard is again incredible as Pennywise -- but there’s also not an actor who isn’t horribly, horribly maligned by the script. Jessica Chastain, an actress of tremendous power and presence, is given next to nothing to do or say. more thought and care is given to Stephen King’s cameo as a shop owner than the role of Henry Bowers.

the film has its moments. Richie and Eddie are a delight, and the monster design and practical effects are again top of the line. it’s just a painful shame that so much talent and craft, the skills of the incredible artists and designers, the hard work of the enthusiastic and engaged cast and the intricacy of the sets are wasted on a movie that has no direction, no idea where it’s going and no point to make about anything.

also, it’s pretty fucking galling for a movie to continually make jokes about how despised a writer’s endings are only for it to take the far better ending of the book and discard it for something so ridiculous it was a strain not to laugh in the theatre.

It: Chapter 2 has no reason to be as bad as it is, but all the goodwill in the world can’t save a story this fragile, this pointless, and that refuses to engage with any of the subject it brings up to this degree. It wants us to take it very seriously indeed, but there’s nothing here to latch onto; this movie is someone screaming ‘oh the horror’ in a beautiful room filled with set dressings that crumble to ash.

#rantsfilmwatch #my writing #it 2017 #it chapter 2 #justice for richie :(

[dailybestiary]

Patch Has Issues: Dungeon #2

Issue: Dungeon #2

Date: November/December 1986 (Pretty sure my Christmas haul that year was full of dope toys from The Transformers movie/show.)

The Cover:

(Use of cover for review purposes only and should not be taken as a challenge to status. Credit and copyright remain with their respective holders.)

Ah, Clyde Caldwell. He, Larry Elmore, Jeff Easley, and last issue’s Keith Parkinson were the mainstays of TSR’s amazing stable of artists. I have a soft spot for Caldwell. He did the covers for the D&D Gazetteer series, which means his work emblazoned some of my absolute favorite books from my middle school years. (At the time I had the whole series except the two island books, GAZ 4 & GAZ 9 (which I’ve since collected), plus the Dawn of the Emperors box set. My favorites, for the record, were GAZ 3, 5, 10, and 13. I...may like elves...a little too much.) And even as I sit here, other covers demand to be named. The very first Dragonlance adventure, the iconic Dragons of Despair? The Finder’s Stone trilogy? The first Ravenloft box? Dragon #147? Yep, he did those covers too. He was amazing.

But hoo-boy, we also have to talk about the not-amazing parts. Once Caldwell settled on a way of doing things, that’s how he did them. Points for consistency, but man, he had tropes. Even his tropes had tropes. He had a way of painting dragon’s wings. He had a way of painting swords and boots. He had a way of painting jewelry, and belts and coins—ovals upon ovals upon ovals.

And his way of painting women was with as few clothes as possible. Everything I said about Parkinson last entry? Yeah, that goes double for Caldwell. He never paints pants when a thong will do. His take on the reserved and regal Goldmoon—thighs as long as a dwarf and bronzed buttcheeks exposed—reportedly left Margaret Weis in tears. Magic-users (God, I hate that term) famously couldn’t use armor in D&D and AD&D, but Caldwell’s sorceresses pretty much stick to gauze just to be safe. And the Finder’s Stone trilogy I mentioned above? Yeah, the authors of Azure Bonds took one look at Caldwell’s cover art and literally had to come up with in-text reasons why the heroine Alias—one of the most surly woman sellswords in existence—would wear armor with a Caldwell boob hole.

Don’t get me wrong, I love cheesecake as much as the next dude. (Actually that’s not true; I came up in the grunge ’90s—our version of cheesecake was an Olympia brunette in three layers of thrift store sweaters reading Sandman while eating a cheesecake. Hell, that’s still my jam.) But context matters. The sorceress from “White Magic,” Dragon #147’s cover, may barely be wearing a negligee, but she’s also in the seat of her power and probably magically warded to the hilt—she can wear whatever she damn wants; it’s her tower. So no complaints there. But this cover’s pirate queen Porky Piggin’ it seems like an unwise choice. (The friction burns alone from clambering around the rigging…)

It’s clear from reading The Art of the Dragonlance Saga that TSR was trying to turn the ship around when it came to portrayals of women in fantasy, however slowly. And in Caldwell’s defense and to his credit, he definitely delivered women with agency—in nearly every image, they are nearly always doing something active and essential. They just tend to be doing it half-dressed.

Which is all a way of saying I dig this cover—the explosion, the churning sea (even if it does more look like snow drifts than waves), the sailors all running to the rail to look—but yeah, that pirate captain needs to put on some damn pants.

The Adventures: Before we get started, I have to note that though we’re only an issue in, already the magazine feels more noticeably like the work of editor Roger Moore. This is 100% a guess, but it really feels to me like Dungeon #1 was made of adventures that the Dragon office already had laying around, whereas Dungeon #2 was composed of adventures that Roger Moore and the new Dungeon team had more of a hand in sifting through. (He also has an assistant editor this time in Robin Jenkins, which had to have helped.) Even the cartography looks better. Again, I have zero confirmation of this, but the feeling is strong.

“The Titan’s Dream” by W. Todo Todorsky, AD&D, Levels 5–9

PCs visiting an oracle accidentally walk right into a titan’s dream and must solve some conundrums to escape. What an awesome concept this is! (Spoilers for “Best Concept” section below.) It’s a shame I don’t like this more.

First of all, dreamworld adventures are really hard to do well. And for them to work, there usually need to be real stakes—and not just “If you die in the dream, you die in real life!”—and/or a real connection to the PCs in your campaign. The latter, especially, is really hard to pull off in a published adventure; typically it’s only achieved through tactics that critics deride as railroading. (For instance, @wesschneider’s excellent In Search of Sanity does a great job of connecting the characters to their dream adventures...but it does that by a) forging the connection at 1st level, and b) pretty strongly dictating how the adventure begins and how the characters are affiliated. It works, but that’s high-wire-act adventure writing.)

Being a magazine adventure, “The Titan’s Dream” doesn’t have that luxury—it’s got to be for a general audience and work for most campaigns. That unfortunately means the default “Why” of the adventure—a lord with a child, a wedding, and an alliance at stake hires the PCs to chat with a wise titan—is little more than that: a default.

On top of that...I cannot get excited about anything Greek mythology-related. To me, just the fact I’m seeing it is a red flag.

Look, Greek mythology is why I got into this hobby. Hell, it’s why I got into fiction, period. (For some reason I somehow decided I had no use for fiction books targeted to my age, with the exception of Beverly Cleary. Then in 4th(?) grade, I got a copy of Alice Low’s Greek Gods and Heroes, and the rest is history.) But Greek mythology is often the only mythology anyone knows. When people think polytheism, that’s where most people’s minds go. Which is why, if you ever played D&D in the ’80s, I pretty much guarantee your first deity was from that pantheon. (In my first game, my first-level cleric pretty much met Ares and got bitch-slapped by him, because that’s what 4th-grade DMs do.)

So to me, putting Greek deities or titans in your adventure is the equivalent of putting dudes riding sandworms into your desert adventures—you can do it, but you better blow me away, because that is ground so well trod it’s mud. And this one doesn’t do the job.

The format is three dreams, each with five scenes. Parties will move randomly—a mechanic meant to represent dream logic (or lack thereof)—through these scenes, until all the scenes from one dream have been resolved. This is actually kind of fascinating, and I wonder how it would play at the table—I have a feeling observant players will dig it, but others may find the mechanism’s charm wears off quickly, especially if they have difficulty solving the scenes or get frustrated with the achronicity of events. I also like that every scene has a number of possible resolutions, so the PCs aren’t locked into achieving a single specific objective like they were stuck in a computer game.

But...I can’t shake the feeling of weak planning and execution (or even laziness?) that stayed with me throughout the adventure. Like, okay, the first adventure is a cyclops encounter out of the Odyssey. Cool! But then...why does the Titan follow it up with pseudo-Norse/Arthurian encounter? Did the Odyssey not hold the author’s attention? (Nor the Iliad, the Aeneid, or Metamorphosis? Really?) And then why is the third dream “drawn from the realm of pure fairy tale”? Like, were you out of pantheons? Horus didn’t return your calls? Or be more specific—why not German fairy tales, or Danish, or French Court, or Elizabethan? It feels like a class project where one group was on point, one group got the assignment a little wrong, and one didn’t even try.

Again, it’s not even that this adventure is bad—I honestly can’t tell if it is or not; I’m sure a lot of its success is determined at the table. And I could totally see throwing this at a party if I was out of inspiration that week or we needed a low-stakes breather before our next big arc. But the instant I think about it for more than a second, it all falls apart for me.

Have any of you tried this one? Let me know what you thought. And for a similar exploration into dream logic/fairy tale scenarios, I recommend Crystal Frasier’s The Harrowing for Pathfinder.

“In The Dwarven King’s Court” by Willie Walsh, AD&D, Levels 3–5

Willie Walsh is a name we’re going to see a lot more in issues to come—he’s a legendarily prolific Dungeon contributor, delivering quality, typically low-level, and often light-hearted or humorous adventurers issue after issue after issue. His first entry is a mystery with a time limit: A dwarf king is supposed to make a gift of a ceremonial sword to seal a treaty, but the sword has vanished. Brought to the king’s court courtesy of a dream, adventurers must find the sword and the surprising identity of the culprit before the rival power’s delegation arrives.

At first I was going to ding this adventure for its “What, even more dreams this issue?” hook...but here’s the thing with Walsh—never judge his modules until you reach the final page. Nearly every time I’m tempted to dismiss one of his sillier or more random adventure elements, it turns out that it makes sense and works just fine. In this case, the cause of the dream is haunt connected to the mystery, and I feel dumb for being all judgy.

So anyway, the PCs are given leave to search for the stolen object and the thief, but of course it turns out there is a whole lot of light-fingeredness going around. As Bryce (see below) puts it, “It’s like a Poirot mystery: everyone has something to hide.” This castle has as much upstairs-downstairs drama as any British farce, with nearly every NPC having either a fun personality and/or a fun secret (and with the major players illustrated by some equally fun portraits) that should make them memorable friends and foils for PCs to interact with. Not to mention the actual culprit is definitely a twist that will be hard explaining to the king...

GMs should be ready to adjust on the fly, though—a) it’s a lot of characters to juggle, and b) since the PCs are 3rd–5th level, the right spells or some lucky secret door searches could prematurely end the adventure as written. You may want to have some last-minute showdowns, betrayals, or other political intrigue outlined and in your back pocket if what’s on the page resolves too quickly.

Overall though, I’m a big fan of this adventure, and look forward to the rest of Walsh’s output. Also, given the dwarven focus and the geography of the land, this adventure could be a very nice sequel to last issue’s “Assault on Eddistone Point.”

“Caermor” by Nigel D. Findley, AD&D, Levels 2–4

Look at this author’s list of writing credits! Findley was amazingly prolific, and his work was pretty high-quality across the board, as far as I know. I particularly loved the original Draconomicon, one of the first and only 2e AD&D books I ever bought as a kid. I also loved his “Ecology of the Gibbering Mouther” from the excellent Dragon #160, and some of his Spelljammer supplements are currently sitting upstairs in my to-read pile, recently purchased but as yet shamefully untouched.

Now look at his age at the time of his death. Life is not always fair or kind.

(Speaking of unkind, man is the bio in this issue unfortunate in retrospect: “[H]e write for DRAGON® Magazine, enjoys windsurfing, plays in a jazz band, and manages a computer software company in the little time he has left.” As Archer would say, “Phrasing!”)

Anyway, this adventure is simple: An otherworldly force has been murdering the locals. The locals have pinned the blame on a handsome bard from out of town, and their own prejudices and general obstinacy are sure to get in the way of the investigation—that is, if the true culprits, some devil-worshipping culprits and and an abishai devil, don’t get in the way first.

All in all, this is a tight, well-written adventure, so I don’t have much to say about it, other than that if you like the idea of sending your party to help out some young lovers and save some faux-Scots/Yorkshiremen too stubborn to save themselves (and maybe slip in a valuable lesson about prejudice and xenophobia as well), this is the adventure for you.

One thing that does jump out to a contemporary reader, though, is the comically overpowered nature of the baddie pulling the strings in this adventure: Baalphegor, Princess of Hell (emphasis mine). Overpowered, you-won’t-really-fight-this-NPC happens with a lot of low-level adventures, when the writers want a story more epic than characters at the table can handle or are trying to plot the seeds for future evils. But still, any princess of Hell would already be a bit much...but an 18-Hit Dice, “supra-genius”, the Princess of Hell? Like, what the f—er, I mean, Hell?

If you use the adventure as written, the only way to have Baalphegor’s presence make sense is to eventually reveal that the area is an epicenter of some major badness. (Maybe that explains the lost nation of evil dwarves in the adventure background.) For a good model on how to seed early adventures in this matter, Dungeon’s Age of Worms Adventure Path and Pathfinder Adventure Path’s Rise of the Runelords AP, both from Paizo, are exemplars of small-town disturbances that eventually have world-shaking implications.

It’s also fascinating in retrospect to note Ed Greenwood’s massive impact in the hobby. Any article that appears in Dragon has the sheen of being at least semi-official, but it’s clear that Greenwood’s content was a cut above even that. In this case, an NPC from a three-year-old article of his is not just treated as canon, but also supplies the mastermind behind the adventure! It’s no surprise that in the following year his home campaign, the Forgotten Realms, would soon become AD&D’s newest and then its default setting.

Two final thoughts: 1) There’s some fascinating anti-dwarf prejudice in this article. Nearly every mention of dwarves paints them as exceptionally greedy and/or villains. And 2) how did one even begin to balance adventures in those days? This adventure is for “4–8 characters of 2nd–4th level.” There are a lot of difference at the extreme ends of those power scales…

“The Keep at Koralgesh,” by Robert Giacomozzi & Jonathan Simmons, D&D, Levels 1–3

One of the problems of BECMI D&D being known as “basic D&D” is that writers often assumed the players to be basic (that is, younger/new) as well. Which probably accounts for some of the early suggestions to the DM we get at the beginning of this adventure—like some pretty patronizing advice along the lines of not immediately announcing to PCs what the pluses are on their magical swords.

Fortunately, after that the article settles down and gives us Dungeon’s first real D&D adventure. In fact, not just real, but massive: 20 full pages of content—nearly half the issue! It’s a fully fledged dungeon crawl that has the PCs taking advantage of the summer solstice to open a shrine door that will lead them inside a long-ruined keep said to hold great treasure.

Now, I imagine in the coming installments it’s going to seem to many of you like I’m grading D&D adventures on a curve, because of my love for the system and the Known World/Mystara. That’s a fair accusation, but a better way to consider it is that I’m reviewing D&D adventures for what they are—adventures from a separate system, with a more limited rules system and palette of options than AD&D. You don’t go to a performance of Balinese shadow puppetry and compare it against Andrew Lloyd Webber; you look at it for what it achieves in its own medium. Since they appear side-by-side in the same magazine, comparison is going to be inevitable, but that’s with the understanding that AD&D was the kid coloring with the 64-crayon box of Crayola, while D&D was getting by with just eight.

On its own terms then, “The Keep of Korgalesh” is a decent, if not superlative, success. I love that it’s practically module-length and that we get three complete levels—a far cry from the previous issue’s side-trek-at-best, “The Elven Home.” We also get two new monsters, which absolutely fills my inner BECMI D&D player with glee. And I like that what starts as a dungeon crawl/fetch quest evolves into a “kill the big bad thing” and “find out what really happened to this city.”

There are issues, though. If the whole city was destroyed, getting to see some of it besides the keep would have been nice. Some of the ecology for the dungeon inhabitants is questionable. There pretty much wasn’t a single pool or fountain in this era of D&D adventure design that wasn’t magical, and this adventure was no exception. One of the new monster’s names makes no sense except that “tyranna” and “abyss” are cool words (I mean, I guess you could read that as “tyrant of the depths,” but still…) And there are painfully obvious borrowings from other works, especially Tolkien—a door that only opens at solstice, a lake monster, an orc with a split personality that is clearly a Gollum homage, etc.

What this adventure really needs is stakes—just something to give it a bit more oomph beyond the dungeon crawl. (Finding a blacksmith’s lost hammer is the hook offered in the adventure but it’s pretty flimsy.) Perhaps the PCs are some of Kor’s last worshippers, and clearing out the dangers here and resanctifying his temple is one of their first steps toward returning him to prominence. Maybe the PCs’ grandparents were involved in the city’s demise and restoring Koralgesh will restore the families’ honor. Or you could keep it simple and have a band of pirates or a rival adventuring group also trying to clean out the keep, turning it into a race (with the tyrannabyss causing the scales of fate to wobble at appropriately cinematic moments).

So the final analysis is this is a decent dungeon crawl upon which you can build a good adventure. The real reward of this module isn’t treasure; it’s finding out just what happened to Koralgesh. But for that to matter, it needs to tie into the PCs’ pasts, futures, or both.

BONUS CONTENT FOR KNOWN WORLD/MYSTARA NERDS: Kor is almost certainly a local name for the sun god Ixion. The chaotic deity Tram is probably a local version of Alphaks, though Atzanteotl is another strong candidate, especially since deceit was key to the pirates’ success. Koralgesh could be located somewhere on the Isle of Dawn, the northern coast of Davania, or an Ierendi/Minrothad Isle that those nations haven’t made it a priority to rebuild.

Best Read: “Caermor.” Nigel D. Findley was a pro.

Best Adventure I Could Actually Run with Minimal Prep: “The Keep at Koralgesh,” as a well-written, straight-ahead dungeon crawl. Every other adventure here relies on a pretty strong handle of very mobile NPCs and their motivations, or a Titan’s dream mechanics.

Best Concept: “The Titan’s Dream,” as noted above. It’s a great idea very worth exploring, even if I wasn’t about the execution we got in this case.

Best Monster: This was actually a monster-light issue. Despite some awesome art for the tyrannabyss, I have to go with the epadrazzil, a scaly ape from a two-dimensional plane of existence that has to be summoned via a painting. All of those details are just so wonderfully and weirdly specific it has to win. (Extra points for anyone who noticed the thoul—a classic D&D monster (though it did make its way into AD&D’s Mystara setting) born from a typo.)

Best NPC: Since this is a role-playing-heavy issue, there are a bunch of contenders, and the final verdict will go to whoever your party sparks to at the table. Obviously King Baradon the Wise should get the nod for [spoiler-y reasons], but I also really like the opportunity the executioner Tarfa offers, thanks to his incriminating goblet and how it might bring the PCs to the attention of a far-off assassin’s guild at just the right level.

Best Map: All together the maps from “The Keep at Koralgesh” form an extremely appealing whole. But for best single map I have to go for the palace of Mount Diadem—that is a bangin’ dwarven demesne.

Best Thing Worth Stealing: Jim Holloway’s illustrations of dwarves. Good dwarf, gnome, and halfling art is hard to find, and even the good stuff often leans stereotypical. While Holloway’s art is often humorous—I have a feeling he and Roger Moore jibed really well, though that’s totally a guess based purely on what assignments he got handed—his dwarves, especially in this issue, are fresh, specific, and unique. You could identify them by their silhouettes alone—always the sign of good character art. If you need an image of a dwarf NPC to show the players, “In the Dwarven King’s Court” is a great first stop.

Worst Aged: Female thong pirates on magazine covers. Also using the actual names of actual mental illnesses in game materials.

What Bryce Thinks: “This seems to be a stronger issue than #1, although half of the adventures are … unusual.”

Bryce actually almost likes “The Titan’s Dream,” confirming my loathing of it. He in turn loathes “In the Court of the Dwarven King.” Like me, though, he is pro-”Caermor” and sees potential in “The Keep at Koralgesh.” (Also credit where it’s due: I might have missed the condescension at the start if he hadn’t called it out.)

So, Is It Worth It?: If you’re a Clyde Caldwell fan, this issue might be worth searching out in print. So much of Caldwell’s work from this era was dictated by product needs, cropped and boxed up in ads, or shrunk down to fit on a paperback cover. So to get this cover in full magazine size, with only the masthead tucked up top to get in the way—that could be well worth a few bucks to you.

Also, if you’re BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia-era D&D fan (or know someone who is), again, this one might be worth having in print. “The Keep at Koralgesh” is a legit, proper BECMI D&D adventure, spanning 20 whole pages and with two new monsters to boot. I would have practically have cried if someone had given 7th-grade me this.

Beyond that you can probably just rely on the PDF. But both “Caermor” and “In the Dwarven King’s Court” have strong bones worth putting some modern muscle and skin on.

Random Thoughts:

The Caldwell cover painting was also used for the Blackmoor module DA4 The Duchy of Ten. PS: I’m not trying to tell you what to do or anything, but if you do happen to run across a physical copy of The Duchy of Ten or and of the DA modules, holla at ya boy over here.

Since this is our second issue, we now have a “Letters” column. Turns out Dungeon had been announced in Dragon #111 with a really detailed set of writer’s guidelines; most of the correspondence is questions re: those. In the process of answering, we get some surprisingly frank talk about payment. The $900 for a cover seemed low until I converted it to 2018 dollars, and ~$2,000 does seem right to my ignorant eye. I then made the mistake of converting my current salary to 1986 dollars and felt a lot worse about myself and what I’ve achieved.

Apologies this took so long to post. I had the issue read by early October and most of this review written with the next week or two after...but then I got involved in dealing with a 4.5 week hospitalization and aftermath...and then a second still-ongoing hospitalization...and even though I only had about four paragraphs left I just couldn’t find time to put a bow on it.

Notable Ads: The gold Immortals Rules box for D&D. (I also still don’t have that one yet, and Christmas is coming. Just saying, guys, if you happen to find one in your attic.) ;-) Also an ad for subscribing to Dungeon itself, starring “my war dinosaur, Boo-Boo.” No, really.

Over in Dragon: Beneath a glorious cover, Roger Moore is the new editor of Dragon #115, three authors (including Vince Garcia, who I like a lot) share credit on a massive six articles about fantasy thieves, a famous article proposing that clerics get the weapons of their deity (people were still talking about it in the “Forum” column when I was buying my first issues two years later), and a look at harps from the Forgotten Realms (notable because behind the scenes Ed Greenwood’s home setting was being developed for the AD&D game for launch in 1987.) A photographic cover and a 3-D sailing ship are served up in Dragon #116, along with maritime adventures, more Ed Greenwood (rogue stones), and articles for ELFQUEST, Marvel Super Heroes (Crossfire’s gang), and FASA’s Dr. Who game (looking at all six(!) doctors). (Incidentally, I had an Irish babysitter around this time who first mentioned Dr. Who to me—I wish I’d explored more but I was too young to understand what I’d been offered.)

PS: Yes, I’ve heard about the upcoming Tumblr ban. It is a terrible idea that will affect way too many of my readers. It shouldn’t affect me much (and I have all my monster entries backed up at the original site), but I will keep you posted as I learn more, particularly if I find you, my readers, packing up and going elsewhere.

#daily bestiary #patch has issues #pathfinder #paizo #3.5 #dungeons & dragons #dungeons and dragons #d&d #dnd #ad&d #becmi #dungeon #dungeon magazine

[neighbours-kid]

A Very Whovian February

Here we go again, another month over already. To nobody’s surprise whatsoever, I have continued watching way too many movies and tv show episodes in February as well. There weren’t as much as in January because university started again, but there were some. It totals in at 3 movies, 1 musical, and 116 episodes of tv. I was a bit heavy on the shows this month, less so on the movies, as you can see.

February is always a….peculiar month, if you will. It’s short, it’s half holiday and half university, it’s sort of winter but not anymore, and just really weird. What was particularly strange about this month however, was that even though I sort of committed myself to binging through Money Heist once more—and managed three episodes—I quickly went back on that decision and made another, rather bigger commitment: I decided to re-watch and finally catch up on Doctor Who. No one was more surprised at this decision than me, I believe.

I used to love this show, I used to talk about little else. Doctor Who dominated big parts of my interests for a few years. Through a combination of my brother watching the show and me discovering tumblr, I started watching it in 2012. That was right at the end of ninth grade and the beginning of grammar school. I was 16. I was awful. I talked about it constantly, and especially after I “converted” a friend and she ended up watching it too, it was a constant stream of talking about Doctor Who, always, all the time, everywhere. Which I now understand is annoying as hell. However, back then? People being annoyed with it and sort of shaming me for it? That—and the show losing what made me love it mostly through Moffat taking over—made me stop watching it. At some point I just—stopped. I didn’t talk about it, didn’t think about it much anymore, unfollowed a lot of blogs on tumblr who posted about it, and turned my interests elsewhere. I abandoned it.

For a while there it was also just a thing that I didn’t wanna touch. I watched it in a part of my life where I was awful and toxic and just not a really fun human being to be around, I think. At least I don’t look back at this time all too fondly. It was just part of a person who I wasn’t anymore, who I grew out of, grew up from, and largely also moved on from. It was a strange time. But it was always sort of at the back of my mind as something that I loved, something that brought me great joy and parts of which I really missed deep down. Once I got a Netflix account and it kept appearing in my suggestions, my resolve to not go back to it started to crumble and I ultimately decided that I could learn to love this show again and maybe be better about it this time around. And I also just really wanted to give Peter and Jodie a chance, because no matter how good or bad the stories are, taking on a role like the Doctor is a feat, and I want to give them the opportunity to impress me and make me like them.

Watching that very first episode of Chris Eccleston’s arc at the beginning of this month felt very similar to when I completely re-read all of Naruto last Spring. It felt like coming home, like re-discovering a long lost love. And I am loving it. I am enjoying this tremendously. The monsters are ridiculous, the CGI is hilariously bad, the masks and make-up are insanely cool, the stories are simple and honest and lovely and I just adore it so much. Russel T. Davis was such a wonderful show runner, his vision for the show was so….lovely and simple and human. There were so many brilliant moments in the first four seasons, the companions were fascinating and conflicting and challenging and the Doctor was fantastic and brilliant. And even now that I have already binged through most of Matt’s arc as well, I still appreciate this show. The first time around, I think, I wasn’t too fond of Matt as the Doctor because I really loved David and his take on it, but this time, I am really enjoying Matt’s way of navigating that sort of dichotomy of darkness and ridiculousness that the Doctor has. Matt is fun. David is still my absolute favourite, but I am enjoying Matt tremendously as well. The CGI might have gotten better, the stories bigger and bolder, and, what I felt the first time around, maybe lost a bit of it’s simple and human aspects, but it is still a show that makes you keep thinking, what if?

If you know me you know that I often say the words “ugh I hate people”. I hold the opinion on most days that we, humans, are the worst and we’re being for the most part terrible to ourselves, our environment, and that Earth would be better off if we all just died. However, on odd days in between, I am also like insanely fascinated by humans and by what we can do and who we are and all that. Watching nearly seven seasons of Doctor Who in one month and seeing the world and humans through the Doctor’s eyes, raised those odd days in between to a level able to compete with my humans-suck days. It’s basically 50/50 now, to be honest. If you boil my entire life down to a single conflict it’s that of HUMANS SUCK WE’RE THE WORST and HUMANS MY DUDE HUMANS WE HAVE SO MUCH POTENTIAL. Basically. Combine this binge-watch with the Opportunity Rover dying and you have me sobbing in a corner filled with hope for humanity and the need to change the world, because we could.

Oh.

Well.

Look at that. This is supposed to be a recap slash diary entry about this month and I have already spent all this time talking about Doctor Who. Can you imagine how annoying I was when I watched it the first time? Yeeeaaaah.

Anyway.

Watching Doctor Who was not actually the only thing I did in this month. I did a lot of procrastinating on a paper about witchcraft in Dutch art which I then finally finished the day before I had to hand it in, started university back up again in the middle of it, helped some friends on their moving day, hung out with other friends, went to a birthday, and, y’know, did things human beings do.

But—and I’m going back to Doctor Who again, sort of, I am so sorry—I also read a book. And not just some book. It was Good Omens by the two amazing gentlemen Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Watching four seasons of David Tennant being amazing on Doctor Who also made me re-discover my adoration for him. Not that I didn’t already know that, I mean I did just watch him in Broadchurch. He is just great and I love watching him in things. And then he started a podcast (David Tennant Does A Podcast With…, it’s amazing, you should all listen to it) and he’s on radio shows promoting it and he is just ever present. And there was press and information and stuff going around for the tv adaption of Good Omens in which David plays Crowley, so he was just constantly on my mind. So I said to myself, hell yes, you need to re-read Good Omens before the show comes out in May, so why not do that now. And I did. And it was fantastic. And because I am me, and I am weird, I forced myself to stretch the last 100 pages of the book over an entire week, so I could walk into every first session of classes at university reading this book (four of which being theology classes, which was very important for me to be reading this book in). I needed to mark my place as resident weirdo, because who else could it be?

So, in summary, I guess my month could also be called “David Tennant February”. I watch Doctor Who nearly every evening, listen to David’s podcast every Tuesday, think about Good Omens every day—yeah, February was very heavy on the David Tennant content. I am not complaining.

To end this on a less David Tennant-y note, and a more “these things actually happened this month” bit, February has also been a month of, I don’t know, resurrection? Is that a good word? Anyway—February has brought out (or back) more of who I truly am again. Most of it is the weather (thanks climate change, I’m sorry the planet is dying), the sun being out, the temperatures already clocking in above 10 degrees celsius. I am enjoying it tremendously. I am convinced that I might be half-plant because the sun just revitalises me so strongly. Seasonal depression just goes down the gutter once the sun is out and I can feel the warmth of Spring on my skin. I am alive. Another thing is that I stopped, just really stopped giving a shit at university about other people and what they think. I am using all the bathrooms, no matter what. I am going by Alex even in German classes. I don’t apologise for anything or justify my actions. I don’t care anymore. What I do care about, is that I finally got a date for my consultation with a psychiatrist here in the city. I am partially excited and happy about it, however I also, as soon as I opened the envelope, felt completely numb and detached because the date is in June and that’s still so far off, which I guess I knew would be the case, but having confirmation for it, was just a bit…much, I think. Knowing that my future is in the hands of other people is not a thought I like very much and having to wait for other people to have time for me in that perspective is just not a fun thing. But we’ll get there. Eventually.

I don’t know guys, this post is just full on stream of consciousness, just me blabbing on and on about things that I don’t think anybody really cares about. But like I said last time, this is supposed to be a sort of diary entry for my garbage brain to remember what I did in my life, so y’know, this is valid.

I’ll talk to y’all in a month. Be good out there, guys. Be good.

Bye.

#february #blog post #text post #diary #recap #monthly blog #doctor who #good omens #david tennant #writing #trans

[rubyneoalt]

SPOILERS FOR RWBY VOLUMES 4-5!!!!

TL;DR: Sun’s purpose through the series has been as a support for Blake but now that her healing arc has come to a close and we’re entering a new arc that already has a lot of characters, it’s time for him to take his leave and go back to his own team.

y’all i feel the need to say this: volumes 4 and 5 completely CEMENTED the idea of Sun being good for Blake, as a friend. Sun was integral to Blake’s healing arc. Sure, they [the writers] made him act like an ass, and I was pissed over so many of his actions, like him interrupting Blake and Ghira’s talk in V4, but guys. Sun getting injured, saying he’d do it all over again, and then telling Blake he’s sure Yang would say the same?? Only had the weight it did because it was Sun. Sure, they could have had Ghira say something similar, (”I’m sure Yang would do the whole thing over again”) but it wouldn’t come across the same, even if they injured Ghira for it.

He wasn’t there, he didn’t see the way Blake reacted to Yang getting injured. Sun was, Sun saw how Blake grabbed Yang’s hand (putting strain on her own wound so she could do it properly), and curled into a ball to cry “I’m so sorry” over and over again. Sun needed to be the one to say it to Blake. He needed to be there to carry the weight of telling Blake that Yang cares too much for her to not do the same thing again. We as viewers know this, especially with Armed and Ready being released so soon after it, but Blake has no way of knowing it. Yeah, there were a lot of forced Black/Sun moments, but man, those simple moments of Sun just...reassuring Blake?? Being there to tell her, “hey, I get it, you’re scared, but they [RW_Y] love you as much as you love them”, gods I loved those moments.

And I love the parallel between Sun and Weiss being there for Blake and Yang’s respective healing arcs!! Like I wanna talk about that too!! Blake and Yang’s fathers were absolutely USELESS in these situations (Taiyang for bad writing, because he could have been so good...he also didn’t fit the situation and Ghira because he didn’t fit the situation), as was Ruby, because she doesn’t really understand why Yang is angry with Blake. Sun and Weiss both got to see how Blake reacted, and while Sun explained that he knows Yang would do the same thing, Weiss explained that Blake ran because she felt she had no other choice. The one thing she was afraid of happening if she let her guard down happened. They were integral to these girls healing arcs, and I love it so so much!!

I’m really hoping Blake and Yang get to talk this season (maybe after a little push from Weiss and Sun???) and I’m hoping they’ll take the things their friends said to heart.

Sun is such a good friend for Blake to have, even if I strongly disapprove of the way he hid himself from Blake once they got on the same boat, because after hearing her say that she ‘doesn’t want anyone else hurt because of her’ and ‘hopes they [RW_Y] hate her for leaving’ he was able to recognize the root of the issue: Blake blamed herself for what happened to Yang, and he was able to tell her (in not so many words), “It’s not your fault, they all love you, Yang loves you, and she would do it all over again, and I know this because I love you and I’d do the same”. To me, it’s always felt like Sun was placing Yang’s love of Blake at the same level as his own.

I really do understand why people enjoy Black/Sun, and especially after that conversation in Volume 4, but I can’t get behind it since they have SO MANY unresolved issues (and they need to be resolved ON screen okay!!! If they writers try to say that they resolved them off-screen i will SCREAM) and it feels like Sun and Blake’s own arc is coming to an end since she’s back with her team and says she isn’t going anywhere, and there are already SO many characters going to Atlas so there’s no reason for Sun to go with them. The writers have already said it’s hard to keep track of a huge cast (there would be 10 people + everyone in Atlas if Sun goes with), so why would they keep Sun around?? Plus, he’s in Mistral, his team should be there, the school term is about to start, etc etc. Sun is a fun character, but his MAIN reason for existence (as it occurred to me after rewatching the entire damn series for my BB masterpost) is to help Blake through internal/team conflicts. Season 1: he appears to be a catalyst to make Blake out herself when Weiss proves to be racist. He then becomes comic relief/something of a love interest. Season 2: He helps Blake track down Torchwick (even if he fucks off pretty much right after the fight starts). Seasons 4 and 5: He’s there to help Blake actually open up about Yang and Beacon. He helps her through the Ilia thing, etc. Sun is there as a support character for Blake, but Blake is no longer the scared girl who locked away her identity and past to protect her friends. She looked her past dead in the eye and smacked him down. She’s not scared anymore, and as such no longer really needs Sun. He’s a great character and I so so so wish he’d gotten a personality outside of “I like fighting and Blake and I like Blake because she can fight and is a Faunus”. But for now, his purpose and Blake’s healing arc have come to an end, which means, in my eyes at least, that it’s time for him to go.

#quirkify #this got rly long sgskahzna #blake belladonna #sun wukong #i hope this doesnt come across as bashing anyone/ship #the tl;dr sounds rly mean but idk how else to phrase it

[elizabethrobertajones]

Sometimes it freaks me out how similar Claire Novak’s story is to Dean’s D:

It’s funny, I have just started the 10x09 rewatch I need to do before Wayward Sisters, but I watched it the other day with my mum too just because, and I have been thinking about this a lot. 

my desktop has literally been stuck on this all day while I have a migraine at all the things I wanted to do :P

They give her SO many superficial traits to him - the whole connection to Cas told through familiar lines like about her praying to him every night, or the ketchup conversation, and Cas comparing them directly in 10x10 about both being… gosh what was the phrase? I’ll have to look that up… “one extremely messed up human to another”… I’ve been trying to think about Claire in the bigger picture, and she’s a massive Dean mirror, but her story is different and I actually kinda like what it all built up to really.

She loses her family when she’s much older than Dean - 12 to his 4 - and she doesn’t have a sibling so she has to go it completely alone. She knows the supernatural exists but only angels and demons - she doesn’t really have experience with monsters, just the mytharc, and she’s been *possessed by an angel* so they’re unequivocally real to her. She grows up praying directly to Cas while Dean has had no faith since Mary died. 

Ironically Claire is bound to Cas under the exact same “angels are watching over you” link as Dean, Sam and Jack all share with Cas, but it’s the most fucked up iteration (with Sam somehow passing with flying colours as the LEAST fucked up one in this weird umbrella of humans in Cas’s charge :P) because Cas made a bad promise at the very very beginning of his story - so early on they had to make the episode to go back to it because it was only by late season 4 Cas was officially full time main character enough to warrant a more complicated backstory and knowing how his ~existence~ in a form we could understand anyway began and all. 

Claire has been utterly betrayed by Cas, and he’s her Azazel in a way - another mirror to Dean that a supernatural creature stormed in and destroyed her family. Took her father and killed him, and her mother broke and went on the road and became the Worst Parent and physically AND emotionally abandoned her. But Claire doesn’t kill Cas (because he’s not evil and wants to make amends), and she actually manages to forgive and accept his help, and he helps her resolve her family situation and put her on her new path - the end of 10x20 for Claire is what 2x22 was for Dean, but instead of having killed the thing that destroyed her family, she’s hugged it goodbye and kept the grumpy cat plushie it gave her.

And Dean’s the one who sets her on her path. Because Cas represents the big old mytharc stuff and the damage to her family - he has to reconcile personally. But she grew up in the foster system having human problems and the supernatural was maybe the CAUSE of it all but she was just raw frustrated anger when we first see her again, and she has no way “in” to deal with it… 

(And she should not have started hunting as a 12 year old, with no one overseeing her or anything - I was talking to Mittens about it a while back and yeah tbh if they brought her back as a hunter like a lot of the original spec/desires were, that she’s started hunting angels in the gap while she wasn’t on the show, she was too YOUNG and really around the age the show brought her back is really the start of when she would be old enough for them to justify her doing ANYTHING on her own. She COULD have found a Krissy set up - an older hunter to guide her and others to hunt with, to give her a closer backstory to Dean, but the separation from their world was important to start with, I think, that she had plot reasons from 4x20 why she would have started hunting run of the mill monsters and she was too young, so unless she and Amelia became a power duo of mother and daughter hunters… Yeah :P Not many ways to bring her in except either stuff happening TO her to bring her back or Cas wandering in to catch up on her…) 

But yeah Sam also just helps her in the sense of teaching her credit card fraud and his birthday present coming of age gesture to her was a credit card - independence and still not really HUNTING skills, just “you’re a scrappy youngster who needs help surviving in this world” stuff.

It’s Dean who shows her what it’s like to be a hunter, and how it all works, that you do your homework, and sets her up with the question of do you watch movies I rec you or do you hunt monsters like I do? He is the one who sets her up with the choice to continue being normal and to use her resolution of the family arc as a way to finish her involvement with the supernatural and move on and grow up into whoever she might be, or as just the first step before she starts venting her anger and frustration with the world to kill monsters and save people before they end up a messed up human like her. 

And in 11x12 Jody is sort of that guide as well - her place is to encourage Claire towards a normal life but she also has to deal with Claire wanting to be a hunter and in the end agrees to at least teach her “not to hunt like a dumbass” since she sees Claire is really set on doing this - and in that moment also that she now has a new family to defend and it’s less revenge and more helping people. And since she squared up what could have been a revenge arc she’s all “saving people, hunting things” like Dean represents. 

I think for Claire, Jody is like Bobby - the more experienced, kind hunter who steps into her life to fill an emotional gap her dead/abandoning (and then dead also) parents left. It’s similar to Dean in really broad strokes, but Jody has full responsibility of her and it’s Claire’s choice to leave or make use of Jody’s help, while I think Dean was happy for Bobby’s attention as a kid because in the 7x10 flashbacks we see how good Bobby was to him and we know what Dean’s like, and as adults he’s happy to depend on Bobby all the time and they pretty much end up living at his house from season 5-6 - it seems to be official by at least the midseason of season 6 that Sam and Dean are permanently based there although no one ever says anything about it. They drift TO Bobby and the narrative has to burn it all down to get them out of the house but Claire’s coming to Jody later in life and Jody’s attempts to guide her towards normality and away from monsters mean that she actually represents the opposite of what Bobby generally offered… In 7x10 yeah Bobby one time throws a ball around with Dean because John just wants him to learn to shoot all the time, but taking it as the transition in season 3 to Bobby being a permanent fixture in their lives and giving them the family don’t end in blood speech in 3x16 as the parallel to Claire beating her version of season 1 & 2 in season 10 and moving on to season 3 emotionally, we see Dean (and Sam) latching onto Bobby as the last time we see John passes and he’s now the sole parental figure they have. 

And that leads us to Claire wanting to be a hunter because of admiring what Dean and Jody do. And wanting to save people because she clearly feels strongly about monsters and her own frustration before she had a path, that hunting monsters is a clear *righteous* moral path, is not actually something that Dean was allowed to come to naturally. He was raised as a hunter, and he doesn’t get to choose it as an adult.

No, wait, it’s Sunday night I’m allowed to mention it again because it’s basically next week… I won’t quote the whole massive speech though :P Okay, so Dean never gets a choice to be a hunter when he’s growing up but it’s a lifestyle he was completely raised in. When he CHOOSES to be a hunter is in 2x20 after spending the ENTIRE season resenting John and the job and the burden that was put on him, and it’s uuuutterly depressing but he realises in the djinn dream after spending an entire season wrestling with wanting to just give up and stop hunting and leave the whole thing behind because he’s so tired of it all, that no one else will do it and so he has to - and he hates it but those lives are on him. I actually compared it more to Patience’s decision to leave in 13x09 because she would have the visions whether she became a hunter or not, but staying with her dad pretending to be normal would be like Dean being trapped in the wishverse djinn dream, knowing he had wished himself a happy ending but everyone was dying because he wasn’t out saving them. He had news articles of the deaths, Patience has her visions.

But Claire just sees something she really wants to do - to save people and kill monsters and rid the world of evil, and she makes it as a choice as an adult as her coming of age, based on her experiences of the world, and she has an unburdened FREEDOM to decide to do that, to feel like it is something that is in her nature and the idea of doing it is too compelling to sit quietly and do normal things with her life. Every time she has the choice to do normal things - to enrol in colleges and schools and get on with her life as Jody was hoping for her, she takes cases and hunts things and gets deeper and deeper into learning the job she actually WANTS and possibly NEEDS to do. 

I really love this about Claire - that because we got her innocent of monsters to start with, and that she had multiple chances to get off the ride, she chooses to hunt anyway and there’s low angst about it - she doesn’t have decisions the weight of which Dean did in all those instances, because her life or death revenge story is already wrapped up, peacefully. She just ends up on the road hunting monsters because after seeing this is a life people lead, and despite seeing the toll it’s taken on Dean, she still ends up emulating him. But as the next generation of hunters, who aren’t raised into it against their will, or out of necessity to learn everything about evil forces to hunt down anything in particular. She already dealt with Cas AND saved her mom, AND killed the angel that was responsible for that, and so she’s got an angsty backstory, but that’s not the thing that’s compelling her forwards… There’s no revenge and sacrifice cycle like the Winchesters are in. 

It’s similar to Jody, and the others - they all find out the supernatural exists but of all the Wayward Sisters, Kaia is the only one with UNRESOLVED main arc angst and probably a whooole bunch of misery tied to the Bad Place that they need to help her with/she needs to overcome as her personal arc. All the others have dealt with the stuff that makes up their backstory/introduction to the supernatural in their initial episodes, and are pretty much ready for a fresh start when their story begins :D

…

Oh gosh I could probably keep talking all night. Hi, I’m really hyped up for Wayward Sisters :P

#Asks #claaaire #wayward sisters #give it to me nooow #10x09 #10x10 #10x20 #11x12 #12x16 #13x10 #season 13 spoilers #kinda #we all know about this right???>

[bluephoenixdruidicprincess]

Happy Birthday Castiel! My Homage to Castiel -- Within Temptation Style!

So this weekend I was cleaning my apartment and I happened to have my Within Temptation playlist on Spotify playing. Within Temptation is basically my favorite band of all time. I know some of you might not know that about me as lately I’ve been on this Asia Pop kick. But for real, Within Temptation is absolutely wonderful, I’ve been listening to them since I was 18 and I highly recommend them if you’re into Evanescence or similar bands along that line. Although, personal opinion here, to me Within Temptation is in league completely of their own. I hate comparing them to Evanescence but for the purposes of this post, it’ll do in a pinch to quickly describe what kind of style this band is. “ 

But anyway, I was cleaning my bathroom whilst listening to my Within Temptation playlist and their song, Angels, comes on and as I’m listening, I’m realizing that this song is just screaming, “CAS!!!” This song is describin my wonderful, selfless angel and I was so here for it. And then I got to thinking, you know, it’s not just this particular song that is a huge homage to Cas, no, practically the entire Silent Force album is paying homage to Cas. Now obiviously, I in no way am saying that the author intent behind this album was to create an album specifically for Cas. After all, this album was dropped way back in 2004, well before Cas’s time, I doubt Eric Kripke had even come up with the idea of Cas yet when this album came out. But it does have a lot of themes in it that I feel kind of parallel well with Cas’s story. And I just felt like it would be cool to go through this soundtrack and use it as a way to pay homage to our wonderful, dorky, fierce angel. 

So welcome to the Silent Force tour of Castiel! And doesn’t the beautiful Sharon Den Adel give some serious Castiel vibes? So here we go. 

First track is technically the intro track, a lot of metal bands do this but I don’t really have anything to say on this particular track in regards to Cas. It’s a brief musical intro to give you an overall feeling of the album. 

Track 1: See Who I am

And wow, this is a really nice song to use to kind of introduce Cas’s entrance to the story. Someone who’s coming into the world as someone who wants to save it and in the process is learning more about himself but is also trying to get his comrades to understand him as well, to see him as who he really is. It’s no secret that when Cas first comes into the story, Sam and Dean aren’t particularly receptive to him once they see more of his somewhat cold-hearted approaches to getting missions done. But along the way he learns about himself and sees himself as who he really is and slowly throughout the season Sam and Dean begin to see who he really is. They’re “breaking through the surface, freeing their minds, to see who Cas is.” 

Track 2: Jillian (I’d Give My Heart)

Now this song has a lot of connotations to Cas. Particularly the things he feels guilty about Basically, the chorus of this song is, “I’d give my heart, give my soul, I’d turn it back, its my fault. Your destiny is forlorn, have to live ‘til it’s undone”. So obviously, we can take from this in regards to his guilt towards the angels. In his attempts to save them, he only makes things worse for them but he still keeps pushing on, still continues living to give them the lives he wants for them. 

Track 3 : Stand My Ground

This song, in a nutshell is learning that by staying low -- following orders in Cas’s case -- isn’t going to save the world. You have to take action, you have to fight, you have to Stand Your Ground, if you don’t make it, someone else will but at least you lived your life doing something. Following orders, being docile, is a safe thing to do but sometimes you have to break out of that to save what matters to you. And I feel like this is something that Cas grapples with a lot. As I mentioned before, a lot of time when he tries to do things meant to help, it sometimes comes out wrong and ends up hurting others more. And then Cas will fall into this deep depression about it but he eventually will crawl back out and realize that bad shit happened but you have to keep going because if you don’t at least try to do something, then nothing will happen. 

Track 4: Pale

Now I’ve always loved this song in particular because the intro gives me heavy Lord of the Rings-Shire music vibes, but that’s neither here nor there. In relation to Cas, this song parallels well with Cas’s struggles during his time in the Empty. As he fights with his own depression about to consume him, does he need to go back to the world or should he just stay here and ultimately he fights against his depression realizing that there are people out there who love him and still do need him and he’s going to fight for them “they’re the reason he needs to stay”. “Have to try to break free from these thoughts in my mind, use the time that I have, I can’t say goodbye, have to make it right” again, there’s that guilt “have to fight, cause I know in the end it’s worthwhile, that the pain that I feel slowly fades away, it will be alright”. Basically his time in the Empty filled him with this deep resolve that no matter what, he has to see this through to the end. 

Track 5: Forsaken

This is a very bleak song but it probably best conincides with their fight against Chuck. God himself has forsaken them, the fight maybe fruitless but they’re still going to keep on going, keep on seeing it to the end. 

Track 6: Angels

Ah, yes, we’re finally here. The song that started this all. As a reference, I would strongly recommend everyone watch the Within Temptation Angels music video as I feel like it gives a lot of symbolism that we can use to parallel to Cas’s story. Essentially, this song is about seeing someone as an “angel” believing this person is your savior and putting your faith and trust into that person only for you to be stabbed in the back by it. In the music video, its about Sharon being with this guy she really likes but ultimately finds out he’s a serial killer but her friends free her just before she’s about to be buried alive. I feel like this has a lot of parallels to Cas and his found family. Cas puts a great deal of trust into individuals he shouldn’t and his found family will always break through and get him to fight through it. There’s a moment in the music video where just as Sharon’s friends show up, Sharon opens her eyes (she had been chloroformed in the previous scene) and you see divine retribution in her eyes. And she gets up and joins the fight. Much in the same way I feel that Cas wakes up and realizes these individuals were not worthy of his faith or trust. He brings his own divine retribution and they ride off into the sunset looking for a different way to save the world. Now, an interesting thing that the music video does is at the end of the video, Sharon rides on the back of one of her friends’ motorcycles, she doesn’t have her own motorcycle. Similarly in the context with Cas in that he typically sits in the backseat of the impala. He’s not really in the driver’s seat of his destiny so to speak. He’s still trying to find his way. 

Track 7: Memories

This is a simple one. Reminiscing on previous memories, I like to think it’s Cas’s previous memories with his angel friends that have passed on. Even though they’re gone, those memories are still strong within him and it keeps them alive in his heart. 

Track 8: Aquarius

This song might have some negative connotations as it relates to Cas’s relationship with the Winchesters. This song is basically about an individual being so enthralled by someone but everyone else is warning this person that you need to stay away or that person won’t let you go. And I like to think this is how the angels were kind of reacting to Cas become more personally linked to the Winchesters even before he betrayed the angels. The angels were watching as Cas was kind of forsaking the mission to be with these people he’d become so enthralled with and I’m sure many of them were worried that Cas was losing himself through his time spent with the Winchesters. 

Track 9: It’s the Fear

This song is about giving in to fear, losing who you are and being unable to carry on. And this definitely falls into Cas’s previous depression angles where he’s failed so much and there definitely is a fear that he may continue to fail in the future and that can sometimes freeze him in place, unable to move forward. But breaking through this fear of failure is what’s really important so Cas can save the ones important to him. 

Track 10: Somehwere

I firmly believe this song is hardcore about Cas bringing the angels back, restoring them to what they once were. And he won’t give up no longer how it takes to give them a piece of the life he now has. 

Track 11: A Dangerous Mind

I’m pretty sure this song is a continuation to Aquarius. Essentially, we have Cas realizing there’s co-dependency issues going on with his relationships with the Winchesters (and I’m just going to put it our there, his co-dependency issues with Dean in particular). And in a sense, this song is about him realizing the flaws within these individuals now and wondering if he still has a place with them. 

Track 12: The Swan Song

What a coincidence right? We’ve seen this title before haven’t we? This is a nice song to really end the Empty arc on where Cas is asking himself if it’s only a dream that he has that the Winchesters actually still have a use for him? Do they need him or does he just selfishly want to go back? And when he returns will his desire to be useful be what he needs or is being selfish what he needs to truly live? Which will he choose? Well, I suppose we’ll have to wait for the finale on that. 

And that’s all I have for you all. This was pretty fun!

And Happy Birthday Cas! As the finale edges closer to us, I truly hope for a happy ending for you! The fandom is always fighting about if your happiness is contingent on being with Dean, being with Sam, being with Meg, saving the angels, whatever, you name it, the fandom has probably argued about it at one time or another. Me personally, I only hope that you find happiness that doesn’t rely so much on being useful, I just want you to be you and its okay if being selfish is what allows you to continue to be you. So Happy Birthday Cas! 

#castiel #within temptation

[indygotcha]

who in your opinion is the coolest mc ever?

IDK how to answer this truthfully, TBQH. This question landed right on my face during me suddenly feeling dissociated with my interests out of nowhere yesterday.

I more or less dunno if I can entirely distill myself to talking about who’s best among best when it comes to certain things and stuff. It seems like I can take everyone for who they are, and the ones I would love the most are the ones I might want to relate to the most, or have certain special connection.Like right now, your question brought reminded me that lately I haven’t bothered watching BNHA at all, and have had very.. “indifferent” feelings to it over these times despite having read all the chapters and everything

I think it has had to do with the time I had watched the 1st season and had overall on-going history with dissociating on liking fictional characters or relating to them and stuff. When I got into the series first time, I think it was because of its amazing shonen spirit that felt like simple, yet very reconstructed. I had been pretty depressed during that time and was already in middle of struggling through graduating high school. 

Thanks to my hard efforts though, I managed to get through and graduate with quite a bang. Quite amazing times too, especially since BNHA was still on-going and I had a blast watching it. You can read more about it here.

But again, what did happen? I think it’s an awful mix of me again having to start to thinking I’m nothing in a fandom if I can’t make myself well-known there in some way, or something. I guess because I tried to draw a BNHA OC due them becoming a trend, but then none batted an eye as much as I though they would despite me working hard on it, and it had me lose interest due war flashbacks on being rejected/ignored in some previous fandoms I was part in, and went on to go try writing some fanfictions in order to build a following. Even worse if something happens to become hated even when I liked it: Because TBQH, it’s hard for me to hate something to the point of bandwagoning on it out of spite -  I always believe they can be made better without changing the character outright most of the time.

This has been like this for the whole time now since being back in this fandom, and lately it had me lose interest on keeping up watching the newest episodes. I instead decided to follow my curiosity and watch something less intensive and prone for me to think I need to make myself “alive” here in this fandom.

Which um, leads to what I think is what reflects my feeling on this question: Kazuto “Kirito” Kirigaya A.K.A “Jesus-kun”

Most standard response on this would be “why would I even wanna a bat an eye on this dude, he’s nothing well-written, he’s clearly a stupid wish-fulfilment character, etc. Hell, why am I checking out what’s considered “the worst anime” of all time, at least in mainstream presence?

Perhaps the starting point was that I knew there was already better anime out there I can kick back into if it really is trash, and well, I have nothing to lose if I watch this incase I wanna go back to good stuff again. Might as well gain knowledge on how mainstream anime works today. TBQH, I had also had some subtle feelings of being tired of watching high quality stuff and wanting to kick back a bit. 

So something odd happened during certain moments in the show. I… had moments of “feels” for more emotional scenes and stuff.

I was, frankly, appalled. Because for longest time, I had been thinking that the overall reception to something is the truth. So there was no way this show would have me in feels. In fact, it should had been complete opposite because there’s clearly plot holes, deus ex machinas, etc.

In fact, I wondered what had me keep going watching this show, and I soon realized why: because the show wasn’t actually as bad as peeps made it to be.And frankly, the “wish-fulfillment” or other things that would feel unrealistic in some ways, felt actually more beautiful due their imperfection:  because they forced me to feel them instead of trying to dissect intellectually in order to allow myself feel them in a legit fashion (A.K.A every frigging argument on Tumblr other site ever).  

Like yeah, this is definitely a dumbest excuse for a family ever

But I again, feel like that the imperfection on how this family got together anyway, being stranded together by the circumstances that the world they got trapped and how they can be so sweet with each other makes it actually something I wanna find one day due coming from a rather broken family myself. It’s all in the feelings that this stupidly imperfect yet so cuddly and badass gave to me. 

Then come videos like this which dissect how it all is so illogical for it all to happen it is that frankly, I lose the sight of getting to it because “it’s unrealistc” and “stupid” and that feeling gets broken:

They keep piling on and on which frankly has me lose the sight of the feelings that these kind of things gives to me, from my own ground and personal past experiences + desires. And thus, I rather try to cover up my thoughts via intellectual reasonings among other things in order to stay on top instead of being forgotten.

And that’s how it’s been for most of my life, I had treated things I used to enjoy as something I need to analyze and find so objectively good that there’s no way I can be looked down upon for liking it because I was made fun of or treated like shit for just liking them for my own reasons (usually more emotional than intellectual).

But that’s not how it goes when you try to enjoy these things. It’s not about how objectively good they are - it’s about what they made you feel. The surprising part is… there usually is a reason. And it has something to do with yourself deep within. IMO, those reasonings are more purer and perhaps larger than life, compared to whatever objective reasons there are to say when something is good, reasonably explained, or other things to be allowed to be felt validly about.

So why Mr.”Jesus”-kun? 

Well, because… at first he and the series reminds me of the appealing things in anime. The keyword is on “appeal”. 

Like, you see a dude who gets some kickass moves or abilities, who seems like, liked overall by many folk and yadda yadda. Your usual mess and stuff. But overtime on always just analyzing these things instead of just taking them in, I kinda felt like a kid again wanting to be all those things that makes for a cool person even if they might appear to be some dumbass wish-fulfillment char. But it’s the feelings that matter - since in the end, they springboard you right away from there. Like, don’t think of how he got there. Think of the first impressions you had on some characters upon seeing them be awesome enough to hype you when you flicked a channel on randomly running these anime.

Now I would have dropped this whole series at once due harem shenanigans that were so brought in about as one of the series’ most notable “infamies”, yet frankly enough, there was no such stuff enough to make Certain Magical Index look a genuinely romantic series. It just kept on whatever plots it had, even if it had some controversial stuff going for it (like the whole cousin incest-shit, but they actually resolved it in pretty “okay”, dare I say, tasteful manner compared to your other animes with much heavier focus on such topic and never bring it up again ever since.)

I thought it’d be there, but since the show wasn’t apparently harem jazz and tried to tell story arcs as they came anyway, I decided to chug along since I had gone enough deep  -  yet later on in the 2nd season, Mr.Jesus-kun goes through some hard events and through that he went on to make an act of being a fucking DECENT PERSON  pretty damn admirable and heartwarming - something I always took for granted even if I do that a lot of the time. In fact, I think he’s quite a heroic guy for a “boring” person. 

Like, he goes to kick rapists’ asses even if you might say they rip that stuff of from better anime and it’s used for pointless drama. 

And if that wasn’t enough, he goes all the way to help a girl he bonded throughout the arc she’s featured with her severe PTSD to see a very positive flipside to the incident that led her to get one, which leads to one of the most satisfying endings for an arc I’ve seen in anime for a long while:

I think what took me most aback was how Jesus-kun himself felt so strongly about giving her opportunity such resolve, which is frankly admirable thing. 

In the arc, he had to deal with similar feelings due certain incidents in SAO that had him also kill folk before, much like this gal Shino above. He found resolve through as well after talking it out with his personal doctor:

Like, say what the fucking ever you want about this overly dumb MC, but this guy deep inside is a decent person throughout and tries to go all by helping others beyond virtual reality jazz that he’s given so much flack about. No fucking rocket science why girls fall for him. :P  Not that the anime is like the spinoff-games which has the harem mess people laud the series so much as for some reason.

For that, he’s been “coolest” MC for these past 3 days (and gets to join in ranks with others I know in similar being). And from what I heard about this series, it seems to keep on getting better, if only for the fact that the author (Reki Kawahara) appears to not be some stuck-up man and tries to address problems with his writing as series goes on, even to the point of rebooting the whole series for a new series of light novels. On that end, most peeps lauded anime as worse than original LNs, so I guess it means I can go fill in the blanks for these chars in them incase I get curious, and build my vision of them even further.

In short, I have a lot of MCs I consider cool.  Why settle on one only?

And now here comes the unfollows

#sao #sword art online #kazuto kirigaya #kirito #I can't believe I wrote this #hatefilledpoptarts #long post #holy shit this post is long